Same old country, brand new friends

6:00am. So today the greatest adventure of my life was about to begin, but I wasn't thinking about Thailand...I was preoccupied by the fact that, in less than an hour, a girl who I'd never met (if you don't count chatting on facebook) was going to turn up at my front door so that we could drive to Heathrow airport together. Her name was Lauren, and it was the ultimate coincidence that we'd both happened to have applied to International Student Volunteers' Thailand programme at the same time...and that we lived ten minutes away from each other. We could have passed each other in the street so many times, never realising that the other existed, but now we were about to spend a month together in a foreign country, sharing everything from running jokes and tears to medical details and photographs. Starting with this car journey.

We spent the journey getting to know each other and speculating about the other four British volunteers, who we'd be meeting at the airport. As we all gathered together with our huge backpacks at Terminal 3 and introduced ourselves, we six Brits - Sarah, Andy, Jenny, Julia, Lauren and me - had no idea what lay ahead. I wish I'd known then that the month to come would change my life...maybe I could have prepared a bit better!

To Be Continued (one very VERY long plane journey later...)

Longtal boat again

Me and Lauren on a longtail boat (first week)

Siam Niramit cultural dinner show

Lauren and I at the Siam Niramit cultural dinner show (last day)

Same old country, brand new friends

London, United Kingdom