Carley's Trip to the Land of Smiles

by Dora Craven, Junior

September 17, 2016

Over the summer, FHS student Carley Carpenter packed her bags, and left for Thailand with a select group of students from Missoula, Montana. Although her trip was primarily focused on studying recent climate change, that didn’t stop Carley from taking advantage of this mesmerizing country. Within a month she had traveled from Bangkok, located twenty five miles from the Gulf of Thailand where the magnificent Gold Buddha sits peacefully, to Nakhon Si Thammarat (only 610 kilometers away from Bangkok) then all the way to Chiang Mai in the north where she attended the company of elephants.

Carley arrived in Thailand during the rainy season, where it was sweltering and stormed nearly everyday. While she was there, she planted rice with the natives, who she recalled as sweet, humorous and subtly delightful people, hence Thailand’s nickname, the “Land of Smiles.”

Carley mentioned that they often asked if she and the other students could eat spicy food, and became terribly sad if someone said they couldn’t. She claimed that they were very amusing, pleasant people, all though the Thai are very rigid about formal greetings and respect throughout the community.

Carley stayed with either her host family or in a suitable hotel, however, she spoke of an occasion where she was placed in fairly inapt house and needed to be transferred to a safer home. She said that was the only unpleasant experience she had while in Thailand, besides when she became ill and was forced to go to a hospital.

After Carley first arrived in Bangkok, and settled in with her host family, her group ventured the city. She visited vast temples, where shoes needed to be removed. Later that week, she filled cloth bags with sand to build a dam for the natives, and did various other service projects. Carley then traveled to the ruins of Nakhon Si Thammarat, where she stayed at a Muslim boarding school. But her most favorable was when she trekked to Chiang Mai and tended to elephants. She said that she hiked through beautiful rice plantations and shimmering waterfalls.

She had a wonderful time while in Thailand, and said “If I could go back to Thailand I’d want to go to the beautiful beaches and revisit my host family.”