Please notice this was first posted in the period 2012-2014 and can be outdated
On Thursday the long awaited 3-day orientation trip started with the registration in the Sasin canteen. Most people showed up rather early to make sure they would not miss a second of this trip, since this promised to be something, although nobody knew what exactly. On the road everybody understood we are not regular people since we had a police escort for the total trip of 3-4 hours, something that made quite an impression on me since in Holland you have to misbehave quite badly to get a police escort.
Only common people travel in Thailand by bus without police escort
Around noon we arrived in the Dusit Thani hotel in Hua Hin to find out not all rooms were ready yet, and they call themselves a 5-star hotel? It is nice though that Sasin saves no effort to get us into the best hotel in Hua Hin, until you realize we paid for this ourselves with our tuition fees.
Dusit Thani hotel in Hua Hin – indirectly paid for by ourselves
The best part of the hotel, besides the pool, is the restaurant! Every meal was a buffet with a rich choice of sea food, international plates, and Thai food.
International cheese platter at Dusit Thani Hua Hin
The first day activities started with a pin presentation: here everybody gets up stage, tells something about themselves in 10 seconds, and receives a Sasin pin from the director of Sasin.
Director’s welcome and pin presentation
Someone next to me was already counting the times people mentioned the same interests, and yoga and baking were the clear winners as most common favorite activities. This came quite as a surprise to me since nobody brought self-baked brownies to this trip or, as far as I know, nobody was seated in the bus with their legs folded in their neck.
I imagine you should wear this pin on your suit at a job interview, and no matter what you tell them, you will be hired!
Next to the indoor activities (building a Eiffel tower with straws, preparing a presentation about a ASEAN country, rehearsing for the performance) there were also a couple of outdoor activities on the beach and teambuilding activities on the Dusit Thani property. Cheating was rampant during the activities, something that was not addressed in any way which made no sense to me until my wife later explained that cheating is commonly the most fun part of any competition. And again I learned something about Thailand.
Japanese raw fish at Dusit Thani Hua Hin
After dinner on the second day there was finally the opportunity to show the results of all the preparations when every group did their act on stage in groups of about 15 people with the assignment to turn four totally unrelated artists and movies into a performance. In total 5 plays were performed and the atmosphere quickly went from confusion to laughter when alcohol began to flow. Next the drinking games started where each group got a tray with drinks, including a bottle of whiskey, which had to be finished as fast as possible. Games like these are already forbidden in Holland for introduction events of students since several cases of alcohol poisoning, something that nobody seemed to worry about here, which might explain the general attitude to alcohol in this country and drunk driving.
The second welcome party organized by the class of 2011. If you drink enough you won’t notice the huge size of the hall which was impossible to fill with just 75 students.
Right after the drinking games the second welcome party started and it did not take long before the first people left the festivities to go KO in the hallway and puke all over the furniture there. Around 11PM the party was officially over and we moved to the beach where one drunk guy almost broke his legs when he made a huge jump into the pool not realizing it was only 40 cm deep, luckily the hotel has a doctor on call 24/7.
The whole day ended in the bar of the hotel where several reports were received of people throwing up in the hallway, on the stairs, and in their rooms. As a group we got at least 5 complaints from other guests and the police was almost alarmed at a certain stage, so I guess the orientation trip for the 2013 class will take place in another venue.