Sawade ka and welcome to Thailand!

My journey started in October of 2024. After a short flight (11 hours) I finally arrived in the megacity of Bangkok. With over 17.4 million people living within the Bangkok Metropolitan Region, it was just a little bit bigger than my home city Graz (which has around 290.000 inhabitants).

After going through customs and showing my “Thai students visa” very proudly to the authorities I was welcomed warmly by a welcoming committee from my university. Apart from meeting fellow students and a university professor, my arrival in South-East Asia was kind of uneventful, given that I fell asleep right after arriving at my accommodation due to jetlag and the near 42°C temperature.

On the next day my new “buddies” showed me the “Suan Dusit University”, the place that I would call home for the following four months. We started our tour at the “OWL (One Word Library)” because there was an exhibition of school materials from nursery to primary school. The first thing I noticed was how much I stood out. Not only because I was the only “farang” (white person) in the room but also because everybody was wearing a school uniform and I was not (a fact I naturally had to change immediately). The SDU campus is more or less a regular campus except for the fact that there are coffee and snack shops EVERYWHERE. Oh and a few palm trees instead of beech or maple trees. There is even a small pond with sprinklers in the because, well, why not?

From November until the start of December I studied at the faculty of culinary arts. There I got the opportunity to learn more about Thai food and cuisine. I made some tasty Pad Thai, shrimp doughnuts, chicken satay with peanut sauce and many more delicious national dishes. My absolute favorite although was “Luk Chup (which translates to “lovely”)” which is a traditional Thai dessert made from mung beans that look like small fruits. I also had some flower arrangement classes where I made a “soap boat”, flower garlands and I even sewed some rose petals together to create one big flower.

In December I took part in an excursion to the “Suan Dusit University – Suphanburi Campus” where I made some Tom Yam soup(spicy fish soup), Som Tum (spicy papaya salad), soy milk, fried spring rolls and Pa-ton-ko which is a Thai version of Chinese doughnuts. Everything was “aloyma” (very delicious). The campus in Suphanburi is even bigger than the campus in Bangkok. There was even a tennis court where I played alongside some local students and was lucky enough to win against them!

In January my time at the faculty of education officially started. Fortunately, the university has a practice school on campus. I not only got the chance to attend classes at the primary school but also at the kindergarten. After some time, I noticed both similarities between our respective school system and our way of teaching. There were some similarities like playing games in foreign language classes or general classroom organization, and I also noticed some differences between our countries. For example, the fact that in Thailand there are more teachers present in the classroom. Each class has at least two teachers the whole time, which is not the case back in Austria. Also, here, every teacher, every student, every assistant is required to wear an ID-card and a mask. It is also custom to have an assembly every morning, during which the students come together to do some morning exercises. It was a really fun way to start the day.

I also got in touch with a lot of students. We talked about university life and how we would like to make our dreams a reality. We also took part in an excursion to the “Old Town” of Bangkok, where we visited some temples.

But enough about university life. During an exchange semester one does not simply go to classes, let me tell you. You also want to visit your host city, get in touch with locals, and learn more about your host country’s culture. And after some time that is exactly what happened to me.

I became one with the city, the locals and the culture. I was not there simply “as a tourist”. I started living the “Thai lifestyle”, which meant wearing jeans and long sleeves in 36°C (in the winter season) weather, going to 7/11 at 2 am for a quick snack or spending some Baht at a night market and of course I am always being seen with a fresh fruits smoothie with a whole lot of ice (even while writing this I am drinking a fresh passionfruit smoothie).
There is too much to say about Bangkok as a city, because it is simply too big and there is simply too much going on all the time. Summarized let´s just say that I would classify Bangkok as organized chaos. At first glance the city looks chaotic and way too stressful, but after some time one gets used to the people, the cars, the noise and of course the famous motorbikes and then, finally everything starts to slow down for you. The thing with Bangkok is that one has to keep one’s mind open and be ready for anything. If you can do that, then the city will be kind to you and accommodate you with the best time of your life.

I think I do not have to mention the differences between our culture in Austria and the culture in Thailand. Not only concerning language, religion and culture but just the way of living in general. Because of my experience abroad I gained not only information on how people live on the other side of the planet, but it also made my interest in learning more about other cultures peek. Not only did my career as a future teacher benefit from my stay here in Thailand but I also benefitted personally from it. When I heard other Erasmus students talk about how much they changed during their semester abroad I did not really believe them. I mean how can somebody change in such a short amount of time? Does it really matter if you are at home or somewhere else? Now I understand what they meant by that. This semester changed me so much, in so many different positive ways and I am unbelievable thankful that I was brave enough to choose Thailand as my destination.

A report by Amina Seeleitner