There are many options for getting to class in the morning. For the location of my housing specifically, my program gives us students a stipend for taking the taxi everyday. However most of us hop on a shuttle nearby that takes us to campus for free. But that’s not always a convenient option, so it’s extremely helpful that CIS provides this stipend for when we’re in a hurry to class or for those students who’d rather not walk to take the shuttle. Most days I like to walk home from class once it gets cool out. I enjoy the 20-minute walk as opposed to taking a taxi or waiting for the shuttle to pick me up. So we have many options whether it be a taxi, shuttle, or just walk. It just depends on what you’re in the mood for that day.
Public transportation is extremely efficient here. The only down fall—everything is in Thai and is really hard to navigate everything when you can’t understand what any of the signs say. My friends and I have used the bus a couple times and we have to ask the people who collect the money to let us know when to get off. They’re always more than willing to do so. You might wonder why we don’t just look for the signs, but if you are reading this, take a moment to look up Thai and the written symbols they use—if you’re not familiar with the language its difficult to differentiate the words. I’ve also used the sky-rain to get into Bangkok a couple times and that’s been really fun because it’s cool to see the city from so high up. Most of the time we use taxi’s to get around. We’ll show the driver an address or say the place in Thai to the best of our ability and then we’re in the hands of the driver to see where we show up. Most of the time we get the right place, but there have been some moments where we’re dropped off in a random location and have to find where we want to go by looking it up again on one of our phones.
Overall, transportation is really cheap in comparison to Boston. I’ve maybe spent $5 max on getting somewhere by using the taxi (that’s about 150 baht here). It’s easy to use public transportation here besides the difficulty of the language barrier, but if you allow yourself to find the humor and excitement in these situations it’s all good fun.
