Please notice this was first posted in the period 2012-2014 and can be outdated
Now that the pre-bonding activities are cleared, it is time to do the actual bonding trip. On Thursday the 29th a total of 6 busses lined up in front of Sasin to take all 2012 and 2013 students to Hua Hin where we would spend 3 days in a resort to get to know each other a bit better. None of the busses was really full since many of my classmates had decided to go there by own transportation. Why else did you buy that overly expensive car, right?
The planning of the trip looked pretty much like last year, including some “CSR” activity, which has little to do with CSR but more with taking a group picture in front of a banner to show we “do good”, and an Amazing Race even though quite some people complained about this last year. But don’t assume we took the easy road by just copying the activities of last year there since they now switched the CSR activity from day 2 to day 1 and the Amazing Race from day 1 to day 2. So in a way it was all totally different and new.
The schedule for the trip which looks (un-)surprisingly like the schedule of last year
During the bus trip we had the first ice-breaking games where everybody had to introduce themselves; the idea was to state your name and tell something interesting about yourself but that interesting part seemed to be a problem for a lot of people. Not so much because what they said was not interesting, more because they themselves stated they knew nothing interesting about themselves. Maybe it is time to introduce some soul-searching courses into the Sasin curriculum.
The first activity outside of the bus was a lunch in the Sirindhorn International Environmental park followed by planting a mangrove tree to save Thai nature. This 5-minute tree planting activity counted as a CSR activity assuring Sasin would pick up the tab of this trip as long as we gave big smiles in the picture standing behind a banner which Sasin can use to show their students are involved in saving the country and take their social responsibility.
Stick a tree in the mud to save the world. By now I better understand CSR, and I know this has not much to do with it 😉
Next stop was the Evason resort where most people were positively surprised by the quality of the resort, the rooms, and the swimming pool. The people who were less positively surprised were the current guests who would see their oasis of rest being trashed by a group of 100-150 MBA students who were ready to get drunk, puke everywhere, and stay up all night.
Besides a nice room we even had an extra lounge-bed outside. You won’t hear me complain about the room.
The first evening was filled with a dinner in the resort followed by a ceremony to “initiate” the new students. I can’t comment too much on this since I missed both activities because I was stuck in a room to finish a project we had to hand in the next day.
The following day we had a quick breakfast, which was surprisingly good with a broad choice of freshly squeezed juices, after which we would enter the bus to complete an “Amazing Race” through Hua Hin. Most quests that had to be solved during this race could easily be summarized in one sentence: or we had to send out a few people to buy something in a supermarket or we all had to get out of the bus to take a group picture and jump back in again. The level of activity required in these activities was pretty low but looking at the sleepy faces around me I guess most people were fine with it.
The choice of ham and cheese was not bad, but the freshly squeezed juice bar was better.
Since the race was over well ahead of schedule we had all afternoon off which could be nicely filled by some swimming and some freeze tag, the most fun activity of last year’s trip. After being completely exhausted of the freeze tagging we went on for the first dinner at the resort for me which could be classified as “mediocre” at best. Next we had to finish up the Amazing Race since each team had to spend a certain amount of money in a supermarket to fit a certain theme and this was the time to show all others what the team had bought and how it would fit into the theme. This part was surprisingly fun as some groups had really taken the effort to build a complete story around the items they bought. With this last part out of the way the total points from both the pre-bonding activities and the amazing race could be added up to come to a ranking. For some reason my group ended last which can only be due to fraud but unfortunately I cannot prove that since the details of the scoring were not revealed. From there on it didn’t take long till the drinking games started followed by performances from the 2012 band and the 2013 band.
The perfect decor for freeze-tag.
The very next day it was unsurprisingly quiet during breakfast; most people had spent a good part of the night drinking, puking, and keeping other guests awake. Around noon the busses took us to a seafood restaurant nearby where, just like last year, every student nicely picked a table with only people from the same year sitting at that table. From there on it was still a long drive back to Bangkok with several busses only half occupied at best since quite some people decided to screw this part of the bonding trip and rather stay in Hua Hin for 1 or 2 more days. I couldn’t care less since I slept the whole trip back.
The cooks could bake the eggs slowly since it was not busy at breakfast after the drinking night.
Up to the next trip!