Sometimes, I feel like I time travel. In reality, I just don’t understand how time and airplanes work.
For example when I flew back from Hong Kong, I left at 11:30 am in Hong Kong. I landed 15 hours later at 1:15 pm the same day in Chicago.
Are you up for scuba?
But I’ve time traveled once in another way.
Did you know that in Thailand, they use a different calendar from the rest of the world? YES. In Thailand, it is currently August 26, 2562.
Here’s a few other super interesting things that I learned in Thailand:
– They adore their king. The late king Rama Vajiralongkorn died in 2016, yet he is still very well revered. His face is printed on all Thai Baht, and stepping on money can be an arrestable offense. What to do if a 100 Baht ($3.30 USD) note gets whisked away by the wind?
– Thailand is the only country in SE Asia that was never colonized. Thailand translates roughly to ‘land of the free’ for this reason.
– They drive on the left-hand side of the road: typically reserved for countries once colonized by Britain. However, they were briefly occupied by Japan in the second world war, and this is when they adopted the practice of driving on the left.
– There is a college for monkeys in Surat Thani, a city that I spent one night in en route to Koh Tao
– I learned how to SCUBA dive and became obsessed. That isn’t really about Thailand, but it’s notable because I WILL be going back to do it again, and I WILL be doing a lot more diving in the future in other places.
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