Sunday, April 13, 2014

Day 2 in Bangkok, Thailand (10 April 2014)


Since AIT is a bit out of the city (about an hour drive from our hotel), our host couldn’t manage to arrange a car to shuttle us back and forth. Thus we were told to take a taxi to AIT. With the help of the hotel boys, we got a meter taxi. Hummm! Meter taxi? Yes! The taxi has meter on it but does not provide a receipt. However, we finally figure out some way to get a receipt. When we get at the AIT compound, our host welcomed us and directed us to the room where our magnetometer was stored.

 AIT sponsor countries' flag
 AIT Logos!
 Searching home for our sensor!
What was next? O! boy! It was the hardest thing to get a quite spot for our sensor. The place what our host dreamed of is separated by a river from the building and there was no way to get the cable cross the river. We did search different area of the institute if there is any remote and quite area, but found none. There was one reasonable nice location which is close to the library. I took Dr Nitin with me to the library if they can allow us to put our electronics there, but we were not welcomed at all. The whole morning passed just by searching sites. Finally, after lunch, we laid the down along the bridge and see how far we can take the sensor to the site that our host dreamed of, and found reasonable distance which is away the pedestrian and bicycle population area. However, the professor at the closest side of the building refused to let us put one simple table in his office. Instead we were given the next room, which we had to pull the sensor closer to the bicycle and pedestrian area. One major problem we investigated, there is a huge periodical current coming that disturb the Z-component of the geomagnetic field. We knew this could not be a good site to leave our sensor, thus while I was doing further diplomacy, Dan and Kathryn found out that this big unknown current is coming from the river which I still have no idea how. 
 
 This where we put the electronics for overnight!  
 Look the mysterious current on Z-component of our data!
The cable had to pass on top of this bridge along with the power line!!
Almost at the end of the day, Dr Nitin remembered one possible site, the internet laboratory. We rushed there and it was in deed reasonably quite spot, however, we have to get permission from the head of the lab who is also the vice president of the entire AIT. However, she was nowhere to be found. Finally, we decided to leave our instrument for overnight and see how the data looks like, in the meantime Dr Nitin look for the internet laboratory head. He tried to reach her on phone but her phone was switched off. Finally, we done for the day and walked to the van that Dr Nitin arranged for the entire group to go for dinner; and while we were waiting at the van for the group to join, the lady called back and told Dr Nitin that we can use one of the rooms in her lab. Later Dr Nitin told us the good news. That was really good news, for a while at least. We then went to one of the best Indian restaurants in Bangkok, which we had amazingly delicious dinner. In general, Thursday is gone without any major achievement, let see what will happen tomorrow. 
 Dinner at the Indian Restaurant in Bangkok!

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