Class and the Hike up the Mountain

Fourth day of class… today we had a normal day in professor Peters class but then we had a guest speaker in professor Patriyas which was a very established professor in the school of finance and told us that he will be teaching at WSU Vancouver in sometime. His lecture was about doing business in Thailand and the culture of Thailand which I thought was a little redundant for us because we have been learning about the culture of Thailand for the last 6 months but it was informative and I learned a few things. Then we had to present our findings of the field trip in our small business class where every group presented on their particular road they visited. It was interesting to see all the different regions of the city and all the different offerings that it had. We then were done by three and had only an hour to relax before embarking on a 7 mile hike up the mountain for Vesik day which is the biggest Buddha holiday in Thailand. The hike was fun it only took us Americans 2 hours to walk up the mountain compared to the Thai buddies which took about 3 hours to get up the mountain. The worst part was when we got to the last hill which was 300 steps up to the temple, we all hit the wall at this point and were gasping for air and took the longest to get up these stairs. Once on top we were able to take photos of the entire city of Chang-Mai and we then went into the temple which I think was the coolest looking one that I have seen yet. I lit a candle that signified good luck and prosperity and was correlated with the day I was born. We then took more photos as it got dark and the city lit up with the lights which looked very cool. Sore and very tired we walked down the stairs to get some really good street food and to re-hydrate because we had sweat a lot and it rained on us on the way up which made us feel even more gross.

The professors had arranged taxis to take us down the hill so we didn’t have to walk it again but with the thousands of people walking up the hill now it took us about 3 hours to get all the way down the hill and to the International Center. The freshman at the university are forced to walk up the hill and are hazed by the upper classmen pretty tough, we saw freshman tied together walking up the mountain, we saw freshman being pulled up by cars etc… it was like being in the “Dazed and Confused” movie where everyone in the city just accepts the hazing and almost supports what they are doing haha!

We then got home and took a shower and passed out hard for about 12 hours.