Filling The Pages » Thailand

The pros and cons of working abroad

Marianne — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 04:40:21 +0000

I’ve worked abroad a few times. Just like most people who do it, I seek labour to help me fund the rest of my traveling – hostels, food, drink, transport, and everything else in between. It can add up to be a pretty big bill.

I’ve taught English, handed out flyers on the street and sold promotion packages. Soon (fingers crossed…) I’ll either be employed in a bar, or on a farm.

To work, officially, you need a work visa. But there are PLENTY of places who will overlook this small detail. In fact, of the three jobs abroad I have held up until now, only one required any proof that I was legally eligible to work. One. The others? They’ve decided to take the calculated risk, which of course means that you do too.

Thailand

My Thai working visa was organised through a company called CIEE – the people who also found my teaching placement. I paid them a fee (which I found to be very reasonable) which covered all the costs of my visa, plus a great deal more, and it took away the headache of going through all the paperwork myself. Not bad. Because CIEE handled my paperwork, I don’t know much about obtaining a working visa for Thailand. What I understand is that you must first have a non-immigrant visa on your passport. Then to obtain a work permit, it seems that you must have a job lined up with an employer who will in effect ‘sponsor’ you and provide a contract with your job description and the dates that you will be employed.

In Thailand, my English teaching job was very official. I filled in any number of forms, got a fancy stamp in my passport, got a whole new booklet (my work permit) that looked a lot like another passport and signed a document every month when I received my salary.

We never came across any real problems, and I received my salary in cash which made things a lot simpler. The only hiccup was that my original contract ended on the last day of school. Of course it would; why not, right? The problem? Once my contract was over, I was no loner authorised to stay in the country and would have to either leave, or at least do a quick hop over the border to get a new entry visa as a tourist. The issue: it would mean missing the last week of school to get to the border and back. Luckily, we were able to have our contracts extended as long as the other teachers and I promised not to demand a salary for the extra month which, in theory, we could probably have done.

After teaching, and a couple of months of traveling through Laos and Cambodia, I was back in Thailand and looking for ways to save my dwindling pile of money. Now, of course, I had no valid work permit and nor did my traveling friend. So what did we do? We landed on Koh Phi Phi and quickly became one of the many travelers you see there handing out flyers for the various bars, advertising free buckets (of alcohol), free barbeques, Thai boxing, and any number of incentives to drive traffic. We were paid in cash at the end of each night, no questions asked. The problem is, the island had a slight run-in with the law and, as a result, the police (usually bribed to look the other way) took our photos and shut the bars down early. Luckily that was the worst that happened. I still got paid.

In theory, you are taking the risk of getting in trouble if you do this. But in my own experience and from what I’ve seen, the benefit outweighs the risk. It’s more often the company (i.e. the bar that hired me) that deal with the problems. The police know that you’re going to be gone soon anyway. Spending time getting you in trouble is rarely worthwhile for them.

Australia

Now I’m spending time in Australia, and again looking for ways to support myself and enable my traveling.

Before I arrived here, I obtained a Working Holiday Visa which was incredibly easy. Australia does all of their visas online, which means no need to send your passport anywhere. All I did was apply online, make a quick appointment at the doctors for a chest x-ray, and presto – a visa confirmation in my Gmail inbox. Simple as that.

Unlike the Thai visa, I didn’t have to have a job lined up for me. The Working Holiday Visa allows you to seek any kind of work after you have entered the country for up to six months at a time. Much easier.

When I first came here back in May, I stopped in Byron Bay for about a week. While I didn’t work there, I became good friends with quite a few people who did. Everyone I met worked in the hostel where I had a bed – Aquarius Backpackers. I don’t think that their work required a Working Holiday Visa, although most of them had one and often held a second job in bars and offices in the town. I would strongly recommend looking for hostel work to anyone traveling around Oz. It doesn’t require much work (at Aquarius, it was two hours a day) and your pay is in the form of free accommodation. It’s perfect if you’re running low on money and looking for ways to ease the pain. With free accommodation, you’re saving anywhere from $20 – $40/night. That’s pretty good if you ask me!

For the last month in Sydney I worked for Redhot PR, selling promotional packages for Sydney’s top hair salons on the street, in shopping centres, on the beach. Just about anywhere. The pros: they also promote bars and big events, which meant free club entry, and free tickets to things like the Space Ibiza party I went to on New Years Day. They also sent me to Melbourne for a week to work, paying for my flight and accommodation. Plus, every Friday they provided drinks and a small party in the office before we headed out for the night. They certainly piled on the added bonuses.

The cons: technically we were not allowed to sell inside shopping centres, the airport, or anywhere else, which meant spending the day dodging security guards and occasionally getting kicked out. There was no hourly wage, which meant all of my income was commission based. This could be seen as a good thing, as it meant your potential salary is completely unlimited. The difficulty is, if you’re having a rough day, you’re not on your game – you come home with nothing. A lot of people are fantastic at this job. Myself – I had a great start, but I quickly got worn down and eventually it became impossible for me to stay. You’ll find, in Sydney at least, that there are a LOT of jobs like this. My advice – give it a go, and try to stick it out for one week. If, by then, you don’t see the potential, at least you tried, but a week should be enough time for you to see whether you have what it takes.

Next on my list is either bar work or farm work, so we’ll see how it goes!

Australia cont’d

Marianne — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 12:47:00 +0000

I’ve had some issues with Internet connectivity lately so here goes the very delayed last entry to my traveling blog. Since I left Australia I was back in London for two weeks, doing some work for a quick bank account boost, and I’m currently in the States visiting friends and family for a few weeks.

Here it goes:

So after leaving Sydney I headed up to Byron Bay with the Wills. We got off the bus after what ended up being a pretty sleepless night for me and arrived to several backpacker staff with their vans trying to draw us to their hostels. It worked; Will, Will and I were too tired to do any deciding ourselves, so we followed a blond Canadian named Eric to his van and he took us to Aquarius hostel.

We checked in to the nicest dorm I’ve ever stayed in and picked beds on the top floor of our duplex style room where we met Katie, another Canadian who had also just arrived.

Our first day in Byron was spent watching the rain POUR down like I’ve never seen before. We realized that this may go on, so we found out about bus trips to a place called Nimbin – a hippie town that hasn’t moved on since about 1968. We took a very psychedelic bus tour to the town listening to Pink Floyd, The Doors and other ‘free love’ bands to arrive in a multi-coloured tie-dye town. Walking down the main street was an exercise in turning down one offer after another for weed, brownies, more weed, cookies…you get the idea. I took a tour of the Nimbin Museum whose design concept was something along the lines of ‘here’s some stuff I found on the street/at the flea market/in my cellar.’ There was stuff EVERYWHERE, and none of it seemed to make any sort of sense. Hippie heaven. At the end, before exiting, we met a 50-something year old woman rushing off yelling “just wait 15 minutes guys, I’ll be back with the cookies soon, I just have to pick them up from my house.” This wasn’t just a nice lady who baked things for visitors. She made her money making tourists feel like they were on a Grateful Dead tour, or a character in Ken Kesey’s acid charged life. On the way home our bus driver pointed out all the ‘beautiful shades of green’ in the countryside and took us through the mud back to our Byron home. Where it was still raining.

Unfortunately the rain continued so after meeting the backpacker staff and we spent our nights exploring Byron Bay nightlife with them and spending most of our days watching the rain come down with two days of sun that we spent on the beach and walking to the lighthouse – the Easternmost point of mainland Australia.

After a few days I decided I needed to make a move up north if I wanted to see more of the country. One problem. All that rain? Causes problems. Like flooding. In both directions.

Nobody, myself included, could get in or (more importantly) OUT of Byron for a few days.

I embraced my fate and paid at the reception for more nights at Aquarius. At least I could hang out here with people I liked, and I got free dinner every night, even if it was the same stuff over and over again… free is free. Plus we entertained ourselves with pub quiz nights and poker tournaments.

For all the less-than-ideal weather, I had an amazing time in Byron Bay thanks to the Wills, Katie and the Aquarius staff. After deciding that it was time for me to leave I realized that my time was now quite short, so instead of heading up north I headed back to Sydney and the twins. Since the highway was still flooded I took a flight from the small airport inland that was still accessible down to Sydney airport where Joh met me to take me back to another few days of home comforts. Mike and Lisa were still around so I spent my last few days seeing them, taking a day trip to the Blue Mountains, and going to the Sydney Aquarium where I saw a platypus! They’d been hiding when we went to the Sydney Zoo in my first week, so I was glad to check off that last Australian animal from my list after kangaroo, wallaby and koala among others.

I also cooked a meal for Nad, Sal, Joh and Lisa that went down well, I think?

I loved Australia, a sentiment perhaps not expressed well enough in this shortened version of my time there, but I have decided to save up as quickly as possible for a return trip on a one year work-holiday visa.

So that’s it! I took a flight from Sydney back to Bangkok where I spent a day doing some last minute shopping and sharing my stories with new travelers experiencing their first nights abroad on Koh San Road. Then it was back to the airport to travel back to London and home.

Seven and a half months later, a term of teaching and an amazing backpacker experience through Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and finally Australia and I’m back where I started. Back in the Foster home in Crouch End, London. Dreaming of my next adventure.

I’ve had a great time writing this blog and plan on setting up a more permanent URL to continue life as a blogger, so watch this space for a final update and a name URL address.

Thanks for reading, commenting, and sending me all those great letters and packages. I write for you.

“The world is a book and those who do not travel only read one page.” – St Augustine.

Koh Pha Ngan – A Bermuda triangle of Fridays and Saturdays

Marianne — Tue, 12 May 2009 05:40:00 +0000

I have survived another ten nights on Koh Pha Ngan. Somehow.

Claudia and I took a bus and an evening ferry over to the island where we met two other English girls, Claire and Laura, on their way to Koh Tao via Koh Pha Ngan for one night.

Since the full moon was on the same night as last month, Claudia and I assumed that the half moon party – basically the same as full moon except in the jungle.. would also be the same day, giving us one night to rest before starting the party. However once we got to the island we quickly found out that in fact the half moon party was that night, so there would be no rest for us. Skipping the half moon party was not an option since we had yet to make it to one.

So we booked into the same place we stayed last month – Rin Beach Resort and got a cheaper deal since we’re getting further into low season now which was a nice surprise. After some dinner at the Lucky Crab where Claudia and I shared our favourite green curry we headed back to our balconies via the liquor store where we bought ingredients for our own buckets.

The only way to drink alcohol on Koh Pha Ngan is in bucket form. It’s a rare sight to see a glass of gin & tonic, because why get a glass when you can get a whole bucket for about 4 pounds?! A bucket consists of one of those half size bottles of the alcohol of your choice (ours was vodka) and then whatever mixers you like (our choice was M-150 or Red Bull and a bottle of Sprite). If you’re drinking these buckets on your own and you have a normal capacity for alcohol you can very easily get through two or three of these, or four or five if you’re a man perhaps. If you’re sharing, you can start to lose count, or if you’re Claudia and you have an amazing capacity for vodka and M-150 you can go through six all by yourself. Claudia’s a real trooper.

After sharing a bucket between the three of us we hopped on the back of some taxi motorbikes and headed off to the jungle where we came across a party almost exclusively lit by UV lights going strong. I’m not sure how long we lasted, but long enough anyway before we realized it was time for us to get home. On the way out I ran into Chris – the bartender of Outback bar who I met last month when I was here and whose job I considered taking at one point. The drive to and from half moon is pretty hair raising – Koh Pha Ngan hills are not something to be taken lightly, so I sat in the taxi and held on to Chris while he held on to the back bars, and Claudia found room on the roof since the inside was full. I have no idea how she survived, but I’m so glad she did.

After that night you’d think we’d have a night or two off, but the thing about Koh Pha Ngan is that it possesses this weird kind of energy that somehow makes going out every single night surprisingly easy. We often described it to people as this Bermuda Triangle, or Twilight Zone, where every night was a Friday night, and everyday was a Saturday spent recovering from the night before and getting ready for that nights festivities.

We spent most of our days in Lazyhouse watching films, or occasionally in Utopia watching Friends which they play all day long. Lazyhouse and Utopia are owned by the same guy who has great taste in good British food, so despite how expensive it was I had some delicious home comforts including a Sunday roast the day after full moon. It even had a Yorkshire pudding. Amazing.

Then each evening we headed down to Cactus Bar where Woody the Scot worked. We met Woody last month as well and since we quickly became his regulars again we got a nice discount on our vodka & Red Bull buckets. What a nice guy.

One day just to mix it up, Claudia and I rented a motorbike and drove to the other side of the island, up the coast and cutting across the middle over a mountain to visit Sara and Caroline. Sara is Claudia’s friend from school and both of them joined us down at Rin Beach for the last few days around full moon. The ride was pretty terrifying but I’m pretty proud of myself for making it and for not completely having a break down since the paved hills average a 20% incline and the unpaved roads have huge ravines in them caused by the water running down. But we made it there and back, then headed straight to Woody’s for a drink.

The good thing about being friends with the bartender (other than the cheap drinks) was that we could sit at the bar facing the beach for hours without being bothered and we got to watch all the Cactus fireboys do their thing each night. The Cactus fireboys are all young Thai guys who make a living by playing with fire, and doing it very well. After they started recognizing us they tried to get us involved and I once had to hold a stick of fire while another guy blew alcohol/kerosene at it to create an enormous fireball. I gave it back after one blow because I value my eyebrows and my unscarred skin.

A few days before full moon we were also joined by Will and Will, two English boys that Claudia had met in Chang Mai while I was in Koh Phi Phi with Emily. They were two guys traveling on their gap year before uni and were a great addition to the group. We also reunited with Bella and Lucy who we last saw on Koh Lanta, along with Lucy’s sister and friend who were over on holiday.

By the time full moon finally rolled around we had a pretty big group, with a few additional characters that we met on the island along with a few more faces from the past, mostly from Koh Phi Phi.

The actual night was a great time as expected. My favourite part might have been when me and some of the girls climbed up to Drop In bar’s balcony and entertained outselves by throwing ice cubes at unsuspecting people below. I know, I know, immature, but don’t pretend that you’re not laughing too.

The next day we had our Sunday roast at Lazyhouse and I went around to Woody, Chris. Ay (the bartender at Reggae bar who I talked to about being a teacher) and the Thai guy who ran the art gallery (I still feel bad for forgetting his name since he remembered my name after I’d been gone for a month…terrible) to say my goodbyes.

It was pretty difficult to leave this time, and I actually made one of the Wills walk back down to the beach with me to see it one more time because I couldn’t get to bed at about 1am. This was my last big party in Thailand and I don’t know when I’ll be back.

I’ve been in SE Asia for almost exactly seven months now, six of which have been in Thailand and while I don’t want to stay here forever, it still feels strange to leave and go back to a world I feel like I haven’t lived in for so long.

But the big unexpected surprise is that about four hours after I’ve written this blog I’ll be getting on a plane to….Sydney!!!

I’m a pretty lucky girl and I have some amazing people for godparents who have made it possible for me to go to Oz for about three weeks! It’s not a huge amount of time and I won’t get to see everything, but it’ll be an amazing chance to see a new country and a place I’ve always wanted to go. I’ll be arriving in Sydney on Wednesday morning and have no plans from there except to hopefully meet up with Will and Will again, plus Lisa, who you may remember from my teaching days. Lisa now works as an au pair in Sydney and is going to be a tourist with me this coming weekend. Thanks to all the people I’ve met traveling and to the connections I have through friends and family, I actually know quite a few people in Oz and I can’t wait to see some of them while seeing as much of the country as I can.

So there it is! My final post about Thailand. For now.

Next time I write here I’ll be in the Southern hemisphere for the first time, and will have landed on my fifth continent!

The Thai mafia, illegal work and visa runs…

Marianne — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:35:00 +0000

So I successfully completed three nights of being a promotions girl for Reggae bar. While it was nice to get the small income (can’t complain when you’re getting free alcohol all night plus 300Baht and you’re only paying 200Baht for your bed…) I really enjoyed the chance to get to meet so many different people. Holding a pack of flyers in your hand is a great excuse to talk to complete strangers. The Tiger Bar and Reggae Bar promoters were a great group of people, almost exclusively Brits interestingly enough, and we definitely knew how to have fun. I got to watch the sunrise after my first night of work and then sit on the curbside commiserating with other over tired staff the next day. Then I got to see what influence the Thai mafia/police (same thing…) have around here on my second night, then on my last night I was reminded that my job was actually illegal. Technically.

On most/all of the Thai islands, the place is controlled by the Thai mafia. The only reason bars, especially on the beach, party until the sun comes up is because they pay off the police enough to keep them from shutting down the music. Unfortunately, sometimes things don’t go to plan. Someone doesn’t get their money, or someone elses causes a problem and people get angry. A few days before my first day of work a stabbing occurred at one of the beach bars. The story differs, some people say the guy survived, some insist he’s dead, some say it was a fight between two white guys, others say a Thai bar staff member was involved. Either way, the police were not happy about it. After a few days of uncooperation, the police decided they were going to starve out the information that they apparently think is being kept by some barstaff. So on my second night, all the bars on the island got the call that they had to shut down at 1am or there woul be trouble. Most Thai people don’t like trouble, in fact they really go out of their way to avoid it, so by 1am the island went dark despite the many many angry football fans who were waiting to watch the semi final game at 1:30am. It was a nil-nil game anyway; at least they didn’t have to miss any epic history making match. After walking to the beach just to briefly observe the shocked tourists standing around still trying to order alcohol, I headed home for a proper nights sleep.

Our third night out, the same call went out – 1am shut down. We started work at 7pm – an hour earlier than usual, however Claudia and I showed up at 7:20, unaware of the time change, grabbed our flyers then ran off to sit down for dinner… Very good work ethic, I know. After a yummy green curry we set out to actually start promoting, only to be quickly shut down. A strange looking Thai man had come around taking photos of the white promotion staff, then shortly after that our manager came around taking away our flyers and saying “Immigration police, go go go, come back in one hour.” So we walked off around the corner, found the Tiger Bar staff and joined them at their bar to wait it out and share travel stories.
After our hour waiting period I wandered back to find the immigration police had decided that Reggae Bar wasn’t such a bad place and they would in fact be spending the whole night there. Hmm.. I walked up to the bar, was very generously still given my full wages, then told to hang around outside the bar and discreetly ‘promote’ Reggae Bar without the flyers for awhile. That didnt have to last very long since a curfew was already set. This time it seems the cops relented and allowed one of the beach bars to keep their big screens running without sound so as not to upset the football hooligans two nights in a row. After watching what seemed like the longest game ever with some fellow staff at the beach, I made it home in time to sleep for about three hours before an early wake up and a boat ride to the mainland.

Claudia and I made the ferry, then got into a minivan to drive down to Hat Yai where we hired a private taxi to drive us down aross the Malaysian border and back again. Got to love those visa runs. So now we have one night in Hat Yai before heading to Koh Pha Ngan once again for full moon number three. Hey why not, right?

Then, my very big news is that I may be headed Down Under after all! Will keep you updated…

Living in Paradise

Marianne — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 07:24:00 +0000

The group split up again temporarily and Emily and I headed down to Koh Phi Phi while Claudia stayed behind to meet up one more time with our old travel buddy Calvin before he headed back to Canada and the real world again.

We spent four lovely nights on one of the nicest islands I’ve seen. Our guesthouse was situated on a beautiful beach in a protected bay with white sand and blue waters. Not bad.

The tides in the bay are amazing; I suppose because the level of the sand is so even the tides appear absolutely enormous. Around midday there is often only a few feet of beach, but by the middle of the night you can walk out almost 100 feet before you hit any water at all.

We spent most of the time being beach bums during the day and checking out the bars at night. We managed to run into Bella, a friend of Emily and Claudia’s from home and her friend Lucy who were traveling around the world and celebrating Bella’s 23rd birthday on the island which was a great reason to celebrate!

On our last day there the four of us went on a boat trip to explore the other beaches and the second island of Koh Phi Phi which has, among it’s features, the beach used in the movie “The Beach.” We headed out and although the tide was pretty strong, Lucy and I were determined to go check out the famous beach. It was a pretty tiring swim from the boat and then a rather dangerous climb up and over some rocks on a very wobbly bamboo ladder, but we made it nonetheless. It would probably have been the most beautiful beach I’d ever seen if it weren’t for the hundred other people there thinking the same thing. The sand was soft and pure white and the water amazingly clear.

After that and some more snorkeling stops we hit Monkey Bay, a secluded beach inhabited by..monkeys! How did you know?? The four of us were the first ones to get on our kayaks and land on the beach. As we started to walk towards these monkeys I picked up a little plastic toy mobile phone thinking ‘oh cute, the monkey’s have toys.’ Then these ‘cute’ monkeys starting approaching us…at a full on sprint…and growling… I RAN back into the water which turned out to be a good choice since they can’t swim and therefore couldn’t get near us. Unfortunately Emily ran the other way and so after I chucked the plastic phone at them to get them away from Bella and myself they turned on poor Emily and one of them managed to sink it’s teeth into her knee before she could hit them away and run to safety. A little traumatic. She is now safe and sound back in England and halfway through a course of Rabies injections. Thanks Thailand. I skipped over this in my last post, but while we were in Pai, Emily also got her hand almost eaten off by a baby elephant. Thai animals and Emily Foot – maybe not such a good idea apparently.

After that we reunited with Claudia who had one night out with me in Phi Phi before we headed to Koh Lanta for some serious peace and quiet. Lanta is a beautiful island but thanks to low season it is really really quiet. Almost eerily so. I enjoyed my time with the girls but this place wasn’t for me. After three nights Claudia and I are now back in Koh Phi Phi! Our bank accounts are feeling very pressured, so to give them a little rest we have become one of those annoying people who stop you in the street with a flyer and try to get you to come to their bar. Yup. I’m a bar flyer girl. Hey it pays and covers my accomodation and most of my food/extra costs each day while we do it, so it doesn’t hurt. Last night was our first night and I actually enjoyed meeting all the other travellers like us who needed a bit of extra cash and an excuse to stay on this island just a bit longer.

After this our trip may be coming to an end sooner than I would like. Money being the main driving factor of course. I was thinking about the idea of going home today, and while it seems strange, I think I am getting close to achieving what I wanted out of this experience. There’s still a small hope that Claudia and I will make it to Vietnam, but barring that happening, it looks like a couple of weeks to make some last memories on the islands before a flight back to London town. Hopefully I will then be making it Stateside to see mum and dad and my other American loves for a few weeks before getting back to London to try and ride out this recession!

Meanwhile, back to the beach for a few hours before it’s time to hand out those flyers!

It was always you Thailand..

Marianne — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 11:20:00 +0000

So after my tour of Laos and Cambodia I headed back into the familiar Land of Smiles. It was nice to be in a country where I didn’t have to learn the language or customs as they were already old familiars to me.

The group split up a little due to various forms of travel. Matt and I took a very long bus from Sihanoukville to Bangkok. Actually I think it ended up being three buses? Four? Five? I lost count. But eventually we got to Khao San Road where we met up with Claudia and Calvin who had flown in from Phnom Penh.
There we also found Emily, Claudia’s friend from home who came to join us for a few weeks and we had one night in the big city before we said a tearful goodbye to the boys and the girls headed to Koh Pha Ngan for a week to join the infamous Full Moon Party. This is the same party I went to for my New Years Eve, so my time on Koh Pha Ngan was “same same, but different” (don’t ask, it’s a Thai phrase, I don’t know why they say it, but there you have it).

Our group became pretty huge after we met up with my friends from London, George, Sophie and Claudia, on top of meeting up with a couple – Graeme and Donna who we had briefly seen in Luang Prabang, and the five people they had also befriended on the island. On top of this Juliet had two friends from home meeting her, one of them brought a boyfriend and another friend in tow, AND Juliet’s friend from Chang Rai plus a friend joined us too so it was quite the crowd.

We spent a week in Koh Pha Ngan and it was pretty interesting watching the island go from relatively quiet to completely overrun by the time the full moon hit. Unlike New Years, this time we all managed to stay on the beach until the sun had risen which was quite a sight to see, although not all of us remember it…

I enjoyed beign on the island for longer and getting to know some people. I befriended a group of Thai guys who work at an art gallery there and who welcomed me into their studio to hang out, listen to guitar and have a few drinks each night when I was walking home from whatever bar we had been in. Koh Pha Ngan is a strange island and I’m not sure I could stay there for too long, but I’m happy I got to know it a bit better this time.

The next day was reserved for being as lazy as possible before Emily, Claudia and I said goodbye and made our way up to Chang Mai for Songkran from April 13th – 15th. Songkran is the Thai New Year celebration; it’s also celebrated in Cambodia and Laos I believe. It was essentially a three day long water fight on the streets. We reunited with Calvin who had been doing some volunteering work in the hilltribes outside of Chang Rai, and every day we went down to the streets armed with our super soakers ready for action. We parked ourselves near a backpacker corner of the city where the bars blasted music and people slowly drove down the streets in pick up trucks with enormous barrels of ICE water on the backs to soak unsuspecting pedestrians. The most fun was probably watching the Thai ladyboys strutting down the streets in their heels, hands in the air, getting drenched and loving it.

After three days of this we were exhausted. Emily, Claudia and I went to Pai, a village I visited in December (click here for the post) . My one day there was spent on rented motorbikes exploring around the various natural hotsprings and waterfalls. The village was significantly quieter than it had been in December, most likely because it was not a holiday weekend and it is summer now and Pai is a big tourist spot for Southern Thais to come in the winter so that they can feel the cold…I know, it’s strange, we don’t get it, but feeling cold is a novelty here. But it still had the feeling of a sleepy hippie town. After that I unfortunately had to leave to go to Myanmar…

The fun thing about visas is that they expire… A very long bus ride and a quick walk across the boarder and back again and I had a brand new visa, plus a new fun stamp on my passport, so everyone wins, especially the Burmese who are 500 Baht richer for every person like me. Rip off if you ask me….

After meeting the girls back in Chang Mai we headed down south for some more beachy goodness!

Travelling family

Marianne — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 09:23:00 +0000

I’ve talked a lot about where I’ve been going over the last few weeks but not that much about the people I’ve been sharing the experience with.

This is where I get all emotional about how great friends are…stop if you’ve heard this before, bottom line is – the friends I’ve had with me here are the bomb.

The places I’ve seen have been amazing but this experience would not have been nearly as fun if it weren’t for the people I’ve been with.

Juliet – one of the first people I met when I arrived in Thailand so many months ago now who will always keep me entertained with her drama from getting her passport lost by the Laos immigration office to swimming half drunk down the Mekong river with a broken hand…

Calvin – The youngest of our ‘family’ yet still the ‘dad’ somehow, whose feet haven’t touched a pair of shoes in months. (By the way Calvin you’re rubbing off on me, I’ve been barefoot since arriving in Koh Phangan)

Matt – I don’t think he knows why he stuck with us for six weeks, but we’re so happy he did, even if he did get a bit grumpy sometimes.

Claudia – In Claudia I’ve managed to find someone with almsot the exact same ideas as me about what traveling should be like. Thanks to her I’ve got someone to go see Vietnam with and to hopefully get a job with!

Zoe – She wasn’t with us for nearly as long as I would have liked but my time in Van Vieng wouldn’t have been the same without her, as well as the rest of Laos of course!

Chris – I think he was healthy for about two days of the five weeks I knew him… Moral of the story, M-150 is dangerous stuff….

Patrick – The ‘talented bastard’ whose guitar skills have kept me entertained many a night..

Sophie, Claudia and George – My lovely London friends who I have joined in the islands for a week or so who remind me of what I miss from home.

These are the people who are in all my photos that I will one day manage to post, and they are the people who have made this the best trip of my life. Can you taste the cheese yet?! Whatever, deal with it.

Chang Khong, Huay Xai, Luang Prabang, Van Vieng in a nutshell

Marianne — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 04:27:00 +0000

This is an e-mail I just sent to my friend Lisa covering my travel so far. Since I’m paying for internet and I’m lazy, I have copied it here. So read below to get the short version of what I’ve been up to! It has been edited a little, I tried to add more detail where I felt like it, but like I said, I’m lazy.

Hey dude,

Juliet said she just replied to you in the briefest form possible and would like me to explain that typing is a massive pain for her right now because she has a broken hand!

Let’s rewind shall we? First we get across the Thai/Laos border, after meeting some awesome people in Chang Khong who we’re still traveling with now. On the Laos side, we give our passports in to get stamped by a bunch of people and they give it back. Except Juliet never gets her back.

Long story short, they accidentally gave it to someone else, but Juliet and I are both blessed with dual citizenship so she used her US passport to get across, we get on the slow boat with the friends we’d met the night before plus a ton of other people obviously, then we started a small protest to force the slow boat guys to give us a second boat because there were FAR too many of us to fit on one boat. This ended up really well because we got the second boat and it was way better than the first boat. Comfy seats, plus an area in the back where we just laid down a mat, sat on the floor and did our thing. A Laos border guy calls Juliet, and at the first stop we make they deliver her passport. No idea what happened, but who cares, she is now a dual citizen again!

Two days on the slow boat – big party, it was awesome. We had a great group of people, we just drank a lot and played cards and hung out for two days. Not bad and totally worth it, whatever you do, do not take the speed boat or the bus. The speed boats look like suicide missions and apparently the buses are pretty horrific.

Our group currently consists of myself and Juliet, Calvin from Canada, Matt, Zoe, Claudia, Patrick and Andy from England (the Brits kind of dominate the group), and Chris from Australia.

Luang Prabang was cool, the one thing we really did there except just explore around was to go to this amazing waterfall. The night market is also amazing, I highly recommend it for some shopping although I did none because I cannot fit one more thing into my backack right now.

Most of us took a tuk tuk to the waterfall, but Juliet, this guy Patrick, and this couple Heather and Jason decided they wanted to rent motorbikes. I should say that about a week and a half before that, Juliet had her cards read and was told that while traveling to NEVER ride a motorbike. So a week later that’s exactly what she did. The four of them arrive at the waterfall a little while after the tuk tuk group, Patrick’s arm is covered in blood, and Juliet can’t move her hand. The next morning when her hand is still incredibly swollen, she goes to the pharmacy to get pain killers and comes back a couple of hours later after being sent to the hospital to find out she has snapped a bone in her hand in half. So now she has a large club for a left hand. Luckily it hasn’t stopped her from swimming down the river with the rest of us in Van Vieng, going from bar to bar and enjoying herself. The only thing she can’t do are the HUGE rope swings that are at each bar which is a shame. Another tip – if you go ‘tubing’ in Van Vieng, don’t bother getting a tube. They’re expensive, it’s very easy to swim from bar to bar, and it means you don’t have to keep track of a massive rubber tube that people are constantly trying to steal.

So that’s it so far! Another day of tubing ahead of us I think. We’re currently a band of about nine travellers all doing this thing together and so far it looks like a lot of us will be together for a large amount of this trip, which should be a blast. Sorry there are no photos but I can’t afford toi spend more time in on the internet than already have today! There are LOTS of photos and videos to upload though so I’ll try to get to that sometime soon.

For now, bye bye!

Thai Royalty

Marianne — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 13:21:00 +0000

So one of the princesses is coming to our school this Friday. Which means there have been no classes all week because they use their students as manual labour instead of hiring people for that. So we have new Zen gardens, white and purple sashes EVERYWHERE (I hope she likes purple…) ALL the building have been repainted including the water tower – all by students. Princess Margaret came to visit my school once when I was younger and I don’t remember being allowed to miss a week of classes to clean up! Although I probably would not have volunteered to climb into the roof with a paint brush attached to a 20 foot pole to paint the wall….

Friday is also our last day of “school” obviously there will not actually BE school, details, details. I was given strict advice on what to wear. No jewelry allowed including rings in case it’s a weapon.

A lot of things are happening on Friday. Thai royalty, the end of my school days in Thaiand, and, as it happens, my good friend Amanda heads off to the Peace Corps in Africa to help save the world like I know she can. Not a bad day overall.

Tha Wang Pha Part Two and a quick catch up

Marianne — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 01:53:00 +0000

Hey everyone,

Sorry for the lack of postings lately, but hopefully this one will make up for that.

My time in Tha Wang Pha is winding down now. I should be leaving this coming weekend to start a new adventure! On that note: THANK YOU for all the packages and cards I’ve received, they have meant so much to me. Since I’ll be leaving in less than a week, please hold off on sending anymore since (unless you send them super Express) I won’t receive them.

On to the quick catch up:

A couple of weeks ago, a student, May, took me out for the evening. We went to the market first and she bought and showed me a bunch of fruit that I had never seen before (the season here is just changing, so all this new exotic stuff is showing up), then she took me out with some of her school friends and we went to the Nan River where we picked algae off the river bed to cook and eat. On our way back through the farm fields, we picked green chili peppers off the plants. May took me back to her house where her aunt taught me how to make naam prik (chili paste) which they eat all the time here with sticky rice (I think it’s a northern Thailand thing). It was great fun, and I got to eat dinner on the floor of her home with May, her sister and brother, mother and father, aunt and grandmother. It was the first time I’ve really felt accepted and welcomed by a Thai family. Everyone here has been very friendly of course, but this family taught me about different food, how to pick the fresh stuff from the fields, how to cook it, and eat it. It was one of my favourite nights here. I’ve added some photos from that night to this album, so check it out.

Another recent weekend involved a Girl Scout camp and an English camp. The Girl Scout camp was fun – the teachers just made the girls go through a number of obstacle course type challenges. English camp was interesting. Me, the girls and Devon were each given a station and asked to come up with an activity. There was no clear direction, and although there was a schedule it included things like “Rehearse for talent show, perform talent show.” What talent show?! The Thai teachers seemed to have slightly high expectations of what this event was going to be…. Luckily Shaleas’ made her station acting. Each group had to write and perform little plays, and the best ones performed for the whole group at the end which saved the “talent show” idea. It was fun although extremely poorly organized, but I met a woman and her daughter at the camp who I now tutor after school, so something good came out of it! Photos from Girl Scout camp, English camp, and some random school photos are all in this album.

A week ago, Kelly and I met up with Kim in Hang Chat, where Lisa and our other friend Nate teach. We stayed with them for two nights, did a lot of shopping and I took everyone’s money in poker which felt good after losing my money to Shaleas and Devon twice since we’ve started playing… Since we don’t have poker chips, or enough 1 baht coins to play with, we have adapted to playing with grains of rice. The first ten minutes of every game is spent counting out 100 grains of rice each. It works surprisingly well. Photos of our first poker tournament when Shaleas’ friend Stephanie (another teach) visited are in the previous album link.

There are a few more memorable events that have occurred over the past week or so but I don’t want this post to get too long. Keep checking the site for another update soon. BUT

Meanwhile….

Another video! I got really into playing around with iMovie, so here is another video, this time based on my school and my students, so I hope you enjoy it! Keep checking for a third installment about my village.

Tha Wang Pha Part One

Marianne — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 05:47:00 +0000

Last night I was sitting in my room getting bored of my own company. So I made a video! The sun was going down so most of the outdoor shots were too dark to include. But here’s a quick tour of my home. I’ll make a couple more about the school and about Tha Wang Pha. Here’s Part One. Enjoy.

Novelist Given 3 Years for Insulting Thai King

Marianne — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:56:00 +0000

An Australian writer was sentenced to three years in prison Monday for insulting the Thai monarchy in a self-published novel. Elaborating may land me in the same position, so I’ll stop there.

Take The Weather With You

Marianne — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 07:46:00 +0000

The weather changes pretty often in a lot of the world. It’s usually pretty unpredictable no matter what Al Roker or any other crazed weatherman/woman tells you.

Have you ever travelled to visit friends or family on a day where their weather happens to change from warm to cold or vice versa? If yes, then have you found people saying things like “oh, you brought the sun with you,” or “ohh, why did you bring the rain with you from England?” I am an innocent traveller. I do not ‘bring’ weather with me, it changes when it wants to change and pays no regard to my travel plans. If it did, I would never ‘bring the rain from England’ as I often seem to do. Despite how aware I am of how weird this phrase is, I’ve found myself thinking it, and I may even have said it at one point, not sure, to our new visitor Matthew, Kelly’s boyfriend.

Matthew lives in San Diego, where Kelly also resided until she decided to jump ship and come to Asia like the rest of us in the CIEE programme. Anyone in a relationship can understand how hard it is to be away from your partner for long stretches of time and the experience has been just as difficult for Kelly and Matthew as can be expected. Apparently one week ago Matthew finally decided that it was just too long since he’d seen his sweetheart. Last Monday night (or Monday morning for Matthew) he managed to get Kelly to give him all the information he could possibly need to get from Bangkok to Tha Wang Pha including the name of the bus station, the name of our town, everything, using some fake story about a bar tender who told him that trains were better than buses in Thailand (which is FALSE…refer to this post from a couple of moths ago for more details).

So on Tuesday morning San Diego time, Matthew hopped in his car, drove to LAX, took a plane to Tokyo (several hours in layover), then another plane to Bangkok (several hours hanging out in the airport), got a taxi to the bus station (a couple of hours of waiting…), bus from Bangkok to Nan, BARELY caught the last local bus from Nan to Tha Wang Pha, then hitched a ride with two students who found him on the side of the road, and showed up at our front door completely unannounced on Thursday night, about 38 hours after he had left. Wow. Talk about a big gesture.

Meanwhile, I was happily cooking away in the kitchen (which is in Kelly’s room) when these two students pulled up. I couldn’t see them in the dark, only their headlights, and all I heard was “hello,” and then “Marianne, I don’t know…” So I went outside only to see Matthew walking towards my front door having assumed that the room I was in was actually mine, not Kelly’s. I recognized him because….well I’m a Facebook stalker (there I said it), and in breathless hysterics tried to explain to Kelly who was outside. I don’t think she understood what I was saying until Matthew had been in the room for a good 30 seconds.

So here he is. White person #5 to temporarily reside at Thawangphapittayakhom school. Unfortunately he’s only here until this Friday when he will return to sunny San Diego to take care of some things before going to Australia and then back to Thailand in March which is when he was supposed to show up in the first place. Speaking of sunny – back to how I started this post. I know I just recently wrote about how incredibly cold it has been around here, especially at night. Well since the night Matthew showed up with his bags on the back of a student’s motorbike it has been surprisingly mild. I wouldn’t call it warm, but I no longer have to sleep with every item of clothing I own. I still have two duvet covers, but Matthew has, as they say, ‘brought the warmth’ with him. So thanks Matthew, for bringing a little sunshine to Tha Wang Pha and for giving this village some new gossip to chatter about.

In other news, my friend Kim just wrote a blog about life in Thailand that I think does a great job of describing all the little everyday things. The only thing that differs between her life here and mine is that I do not have a 7-11 on every corner. We do have one, it’s a pretty cool hangout. But in general, she’s right about the abundance of this 24/7 convenience store. Also, my school does not have buffalo, we have pigs. Kim’s blog.

That’s it for now. We tutored all this past weekend which was just as fun as it sounds. This coming weekend we are more than likely going to be running an English camp for the students, so I’ll let you know how that goes.

Finally – I want your comments. Tell me a story (any big gestures committed/witnessed lately?), say hi, talk about what life is like where you are, I don’t care, I just care that you share it with me and the rest of the blog-o-sphere.

Bye for now

Photos of it all

Marianne — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 10:02:00 +0000

I know these have been long awaited by some people and my internet finally wants to cooperate, so here it is. Photos from all these old stories I’ve been telling. I don’t blame you if you don’t have the energy to go through all of them at once, but here are all the links for those not on Facebook to peruse at your own pace. Enjoy.

The most recent album is from this last weekend. I went to Chang Mai and met up with the girls plus the lovely Sophie and Claudia from London! They are here in Thailand/Laos/Cambodia for the next few months and it was great to see some familiar faces for a couple of days. You can check out their blog about their travels here.

Sophie and Claudia/Chang Mai/Rai

Tha Wang Pha

Tha Wang Pha Sports Day

Pai

Nakhon Sawan English Camp

Chang Mai

Kanchanburi

Sukhothai

Bangkok (way old)

Putting clothes ON to go to bed

Marianne — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 04:50:00 +0000

This week back has been pretty hard so far. I’ve been reminded of all the things I find so frustrating about the Thai education system – mainly that the kids have no discipline whatsoever and are impossible to control. Then there was a small dramatic episode with our visas and work permits. On Monday we went to extend our visas only to find out that they would expire on exactly the last day of school. That means that we would have to do a border run to Laos either the weekend before, or on the very last day of school which is time consuming and not free. We finally got that sorted out, and I can now stay in the country until March 31st with no obligation to leave which is a huge relief.

In case this all wasn’t annoying enough, it is FREEZING here. When most people think of Thailand, they think about tropical weather, beautiful beaches, etc. Read my last two posts to see evidence that this does in fact exist. However, up here in the North, when the sun goes down it takes the heat with it. Yesterday I wore a huge pair of wooly socks, long pajama pants, a long sleeved T-shirt, a sweatshirt with the hood pulled over my head and a SCARF to bed. And I was still freezing underneath my two thick comforters. Our rooms have tiles floors and cement walls with no insulation and no heating/air conditioning, so if it’s cold, we’re cold, if it’s hot, we’re still kind of cold. If you’ve been thinking of sending that care package with the electric blanket, now would be a good time.

Let’s hope it only lasts a couple more weeks, then bring on the Thai summer!