Graduation day in Bangkok

So today I graduated officially from the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing. I am celebrating by not attending and enjoying myself (read: trying not choke on the air) in Bangkok. We scheduled a longtail boat ride on the river for the morning. When we got there, there were people bathing and doing their laundry on the shore of the river. This wasn't outside the city; it was in the heart of Bangkok and they were doing their daily routines in the murky water. The boat ride took us along the river passed temples and tiny dilapidated shacks that looked like if you'd step too hard, they'd crumble into the river.

After the canal trip we stopped for lunch at an Indian restaurant on KohSan Road. It was sweltering outside and we ordered Curry. It didn't help that the restaurant had no a/c and we were drenched through the entire tasty meal. We then took our sweaty bodies to the King's Palace by way of tuk-tuk.

We had prepared and wore long dresses and brought scarves to cover our shoulders; Shannon did all the research on how to dress appropriately. We walked proudly onto the grounds onto to be stopped and told that we had to stand in line for the "borrowed clothing." We really did not understand completely why we couldn't just wear a shawl/scarf around our shoulders but we were made to wear oversized men's short sleeved (why do they make short sleeved dress shirts anymore except for postal workers and middle-aged balding men in Milwaukee?) button-down shirts over our long dresses. We looked like hurricane victims emerging from a tag sale. Needless to say most of the pictures from the King's Palace do not include the ragged peasants, aka Shannon and me. The pictures were beautiful, though; the sky was semi-cluoudy with bright blue parts interspersed. The backdrop of all the steeples and buildings was breathtaking. The buildings were extremely intricate; I can't wrap my head around the fact that someone sat at the building and put a piece of mosaic onto the wall one by one. It stresses me out just to think of it.

We saw the emerald Buddha which is a Buddha that was found and after some time someone dusted it off to find that - surprise - it was made of complete emerald underneath the dirt. When you go into the house of the Emerald Buddha you cannot sit with your feet facing the Buddha at any time (this goes for any Buddha statue). When we were inside that building, it drizzled and then the brightest blue sky emerged and the pictures of the bright blue sky behind the bright gold of the tops of the National Temple was indescribable. I have some pictures of it but again, they don't do the scene justice.

We went from the Buddha to the King's Palace and throne and then to see the Temple of the Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho. It is a building with an enormous golden Buddha in the reclining position. We took a picture of us at the feet of the Buddha to show how large it was - but keep in mind you will never see it as Shannon and I are depicted in our oversized homeless clothing and sweating profusely in that picture.

We took a Tuk-Tuk home and they managed to get us lost and dropped us off nowheere near our hotel. We should have probably heeded the warning signs in our hotel that said "Tuk-tuk causes problem." One hour later and three circles walked, we were so turned around, sweaty and exhausted that we just got into a cab to go a mere two blocks. The one turn we didn't take was the one we needed to get us home.

We ran inside and jumped directly into the pool. We were honestly disgusting and should have listened to the "please shower before entering pool" but at that point it was just too much work for us. I had imprints of my sandals in dirt on my feet when I took them off (no wonder 10 percent of the population has respiratory problems and wears masks), but hey, that's what chlorine is for, right? Right. Once the city was washed off of us, we then went to the roofdeck and I sat up there and listened to the sounds of the city as the warm polluted breeze blew by. It was quite a view; we could experience the whole city from up there: skyscrapers, dilapidated apartments, women pushing carts of food (or whole kitchens on wheels, should I say), temle domes and the sound of motorbikes and carhorns.

We cleaned ourselves up and went to Sky Bar at the top of the State Tower for drinks that evening. It is an open-air bar at the top of the building and it is about 70 stories high. We had overpriced mojitoes (Shannon) and overpriced beer (me) and soaked in the view. The city is widely spread out which lends itself to a large skyline to see from the top. I wonder if we were high enough to spare our lungs a few hours of non-polluted air. Most likely not. It still looked beautiful, though.

So, happy graduation day to me. I'm $80K in debt but now have a career that I feel unbelievably passionate about. I couldn't have celebrated with a better person or in a more interesting place. Cheers! Make that $80K plus one overpriced beer.