Filling The Pages » Tha Wang Pha

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!

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.

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!

New PM, ABC News, oh and Happy Christmas!

Marianne — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 16:16:00 +0000

Happy Christmas everyone! I had a great day here in Thailand. This morning in front of the whole school, Shaleas, Kelly and I sang ‘Silent Night’ and ‘We Wish You A Merry Christmas’ while Devon played the violin. It was a beautiful sight. Kelly also told the historical story of the real Santa – St Nick, and a student spoke the words of the song ‘Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’ among other activities.

The kids enjoyed having one more thing to yell at us down the hallways. Now instead of just “Hello teacher! Good morning!” it’s “Hello teacher! Good morning! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!”

My friend Kara had sent me a can of cranberry jelly, powdered mashed potatoes and powdered gravy from the States which the four of us made and ate with some good chicken for Christmas dinner. Then it was followed up by some delicious mince pies and traditional Christmas pudding which I received this morning from London thanks to Naomi!

After stuffing our faces we watched The Christmas Story on Kelly’s laptop and I now feel appropriately ‘Christmassy.’ But now Christmas is about to be over, so what now? By the way, HILARIOUS skit about the time between Christmas and New Years by Michael McIntyre here. Please check it out, he is hilarious. American’s may not find him as funny, so Brits, enjoy.

I hope you’ve all had a great holiday, it was definitely strange not being home for the first time, but I got lots of love from a lot of you through cards, e-mails and Facebook messages so thanks so much for that.

Moving on briefly…

A few blog posts ago I wrote about the political situation here in Thailand.

Since then I’ve mentioned that Thailand does now have a new Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva. One blog reader asked me what I thought about him. Right now I’m not sure what to think. He represents a political party that I’m not particularly supportive of, however if you check out what he has said in that past (read here, thank you Wikipedia…it’s on the internet so it must be true right?) he seems to be all about helping out the people. The PAD as a party appear to be more about supporting the rich and ignoring the poor, but Abhisit says he supports creating free health care and lower gas prices among other things, which clearly help out the less fortunate in this country, of which there are many. So in other words, I don’t know and I will wait and see just like everyone else! He was educated at Eton and Oxford (more bio information here) so maybe it’s just my innate tendencies to love my fellow Brits…

As far as news in other parts of the world – my only connection to the Western World is Aljazeera, the Internet, and my podcasts. I am a podcast junkie, subscribing to over two dozen including ABC Nightly News. I am currently watching the December 22nd episode, and I just want to say how ridiculous it is that the FIRST headline news story; the one Charles Gibson/whoever actually organises the show thought was most important, was the weather. That’s right everyone, it’s winter. In winter, it snows sometimes. Sometimes a lot. Apparently this year, so much snow that it trumped the economic downturn, the many wars going on in the world, and all the other fun things Charles Gibson chatted about. The reporter on the scene – standing in front of some …snow… Linsey Davis (someone should tell her there’s a D in Lindsey) described it as ‘bone numbing.’ That’s one level above ‘bone chilling’ I guess? Fascinating stuff. Also in the podcast – you can now buy an attachment for your iPhone called the iBreath to test your own alcohol blood content. Love technology.

That’s it for now. I miss you all especially during this holiday season, so have a great time and Happy New Year!!

English camp and English nicknames..

Marianne — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 03:44:00 +0000

So just over a week ago I went down to Nakhon Sawan with Kelly, Shaleas and Kru Rin to help out at an English camp for the day.

It was fun, nothing too much to report, but I wanted to take the opportunity to discuss the ridiculous nicknames Thai children have.

When Thai kids are babies, their parents name them, and then also give them a nickname that they go by except in more formal situations. Some of the names are nothing to look twice at, but some are priceless. In their quest to be more American, a lot of Thai kids are given English words as nicknames. I don’t mean English nic

knames, like Tom, Nick, Ali, etc. I mean just completely random words, including ‘Milk,’ ‘Beer’ and ‘Tutor.’ Pictured here are ‘Bank,’ ‘Nut’ and ‘Beer.’

At English camp I think I found my favourite name so far. God. I met a child named God. I’m not sure if he had any divine tendencies, but I started to doubt it after watching the way he fumbled through ‘Head, shoulders knees and toes.’

At camp, the kids were also split into groups, with names from Disney characters and things like that. Except one group. The Playboy group. Referring

back to the picture of the three boys, you’ll see that Bank and Beer were both members of this group.

The teachers insist that it’s okay, because they don’t know that Playboy is a company that promotes sex and naked women. Maybe that’s true, but it is still disturbing to hear a group of eight year olds singing ‘I like Playboy, you like Playboy, I like Playboy, let’s all be friends!’

The day after camp, Kru Rin’s friend showed us around the city, which was nice. I bought a kick-ass jacket at the night market. It’s amazing. It’s made of plastic, but that’s a

small detail and if you could see it you would all be jealous. Or you should be at least. I’m sure it will feature in a photo some time in the future. For now you’ll just have to imagine it.

The Friday after we

came back from camp, our school had their Exhibition day which was a day of good food cooked by the students, singing, dancing, a

nd all around good times. I even got some students to make a custom cloth bag for me with my name in Thai letters painted on it which I love.

Since then, it’s just been school as usual, although I have to admit that the pangs of homesickness are starting to kick in a bit. It’s definitely going to be hard to be away from home over Christmas, but thanks to all of you that have sent Christmas cards and/or care packages so far, including the lovely e-card I received from Blair, and the card from Liz! Thanks as well to Johanna, Kara, Jackie and Naomi who between them are supporting the Thai postal system’s finances. I know some more of you have sent packages and I can’t wait to receive them.

This Thursday we’ll be singing some carols and playing lots of Christmas games with the kids, so I’ll let you know how it goes! Miss you tons, have a great Christmas/Hanukkah and Happy New Year!

My encounters with Thai wildlife…

Marianne — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 02:15:00 +0000

Apparently December is spider season here in Tha Wang Pha.

If you know me at all, and especially if you’ve ever lived with me, you will know that I suffer from pretty major arachnophobia. I’d like to take this time to thank my previous roommates for their wonderful tolerance of my problem. Especially when residing on Buswell Street, Boston. Any BU alum/students reading this who have ever lived in an old South Campus brownstone know how fun the bug problems can become…

Anyway, last week I was pleasantly surprised by a rather large (but thankfully already dead) spider that had managed to jam itself in between the open slits in my bathroom wall and the screen that I am SO happy we had installed. When we first moved in, these open slits which presumably serve the purpose of ventilating the bathroom (and making sure it is always cold in there at night) were exposed, and Kelly, Shaleas and I found ourselves with a whole host of guests including beetles, geckos (which are actually very welcome since they take care of my mosquito problem), and at one point a frog. Nothing too scarring, but a slight nuisance nonetheless, so we all had a wire screen installed to cover up these slits.

Fast forward again to last week and I had to spot this spider (about the size of my palm with nice hairy legs) jammed in this screen. Kelly, my official spider assassin, somehow managed to use the combination of a wire hanger and some water from my shower to push the spider back out into the back area where I hope he made a nice dinner for the chickens.

So I thought that was bad. Come to yesterday morning when Devon and Shaleas discovered a live spider, reportedly even larger than my deceased friend, running around the bedroom. Needless to say that resulted in some blood curdling screams from Shaleas, although they did take their time trying to capture it, deciding instead to video tape the experience. I did not partake in this event except to yell at Shaleas for waking me up with a noise that sent chills down my spine, so I cannot comment first hand on the spider, but those involved were clearly pretty shaken by it all.

So just to confirm that we clearly have an infestation of enormous spiders, Kelly was visited by one this morning, also stuck between her bathroom slits and the screen, alive. Being far more rational about these things, she went about her business and left it alone. Needless to say this recent sequence of events has not helped to settle my nerves.

At least I don’t live near here. Cyanide millipede?! Come on now.

Me: "Hey internet, want to upload some photos today?" Internet: "Hmmm…well it’s been awhile, so sure why not!"

Marianne — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 06:12:00 +0000

Apparently my internet connection got up on the right side of bed this morning and has briefly allowed me the ability to upload photos, so here are a few!

Juliette’s visit to Tha Wang Pha:

Out on the rice fields before sunset

Hanging out at the apartment (that’s my room behind us)

Shaleas and Devon outside the apartment

Sports Day:

One of the medal ceremonies I was able to preside over.

My adopted colour for the day – blue, or sii fah if you speak Thai

The seniors on the purple stage dancing and trying to keep the first years motivated

During the parade, each colour was led by a student dressed in traditional Thai costume. I chose this student to post on my blog but as beautiful as she is, she is actually a he. Love those ladyboys.

The purple dancers in the parade

I just called to say…

Marianne — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 07:36:00 +0000

It is so nice to be reminded that some people are in fact reading this blog and that they even get worried when I don’t post. Last night I received a phone call from my lovely friend Naomi in London, calling to say hi and to make sure everything was okay due to the lack of blog updates. Now that is friendship. To my other readers…I love you all, and I’m sure you love me too…but maybe I would feel more secure about that love if I saw some more comments on my blog posts. That’s all it takes people. Oh yea, and a care package. Am I being too needy here?

So to calm Naomi’s and any other concerned friend/relative out there’s nerves, here is my new blog post to show that I haven’t in fact been taken into the jungle to be used in a non-existent cannibalistic ritual.

There is a lot to catch up on, which means I will probably skip over some of the more insignificant events of the past couple of weeks. Like Sports Day. Was made out to be a huge deal – is more like moderately organised chaos. The students were split into colours and in each colour about 50 students competed in sports like running, high jump and javelin toss. The rest of the student body either skipped school, hung out doing nothing, or were one of the lucky (unlucky?) few to be sat on the bleachers all day waving pom-poms and cheering. The excitement for me was contained to dancing around on the stages in front of the bleachers, and getting to run in the teacher’s relay. Remember on sports day at school (if you had a sports day…this may be lost on a lot of my American readers) the teachers had a race, the sole purpose of which was to give the students something to laugh at? Well welcome to the other side of the coin. But since teachers apparently cannot run even half a lap around a track, I barely had time to speed up in my leg before I had to hand my baton over. My team came in second but I still maintain that Kelly’s team had an unfair victory because they had one less person. Cheaters. But I’m not bitter.

The rest of the weekend was relatively calm in Tha Wang Pha. Juliette came to visit from Chang Rai to escape the city and come hang out in the countryside for a day. The two of us ventured out on my bike for an unintentionally romantic sunset before going out to dinner with the group followed by the usual evening ritual of entertaining ourselves outside our apartment building.

This past weekend was significantly more eventful, but probably deserves it’s own post, so sit back, maybe go get some food, or go to work depending on what time you are reading this. Maybe by the time you come back I will have some new posts about my adventures.

More photo evidence

Marianne — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 14:21:00 +0000

Yesterday Kelly and I were taken by Kru Rin and Kru Noy to the funeral of the King’s sister. It wasn’t her ACTUAL funeral, which was happening in Bangkok, but every temple had it’s own ceremony. The King’s sister actually died a year ago, but for the past year people have been going to pay their respects to her body, and so now she is getting put to rest. It was a pretty interesting ceremony, I was glad I got to see something like that. The monks chanted for the first half hour which was really cool and very calming, I loved it. Followed by a half hour sermon which of course I didn’t understand, before we laid our flowers and incense sticks on the memorial created outside.

Today Kelly and I went on a short road trip to do a little exploring. We drove to the next big town, called Pua, and then up a windy road that has beautiful scenery and eventually leads to the nearest National Park, but we didn’t make it quite that far today.

Here are a few more photos from Chang Mai and this weekend in Tha Wang Pha. I created a Facebook album with photos from Loy Kratong festival which a know a lot of people reading this can access. I will put a link to it on this blog for those without Facebook to connect to as soon as I can access the website again myself! For some reason Facebook does not work for me a lot of the time, so apologies.

The photos are in chronological order starting from the bottom.

One of the many huts dotted around all the fields for the farmers to sit in the shade to rest/eat lunch, etc.

Out on Kelly and I’s road trip. I have no idea what this sign said except that it has the number ’100′ on it.

The beginning of the windy road we took on our mini road trip that does eventually lead to the nearest National Park, and then Laos.

About to go exploring with Kelly!

After the funeral

With Kru Rin (far left), Kelly and Kru Noy at the funeral for the King’s sister.

Devon’s welcome dinner at the restaurant on the hill (I’m sure it has some Thai name, but who knows)

Our school performing Peter Pan at the school competition. Wendy, in the pink dress, is one of my students!

Good times at karaoke at the restaurant on the hill.

Post fight victory with Julien!

Crazy Mauy Thai boxing

Before his fight. I knew he would win.

The fantastic ladyboys of Chang Mai

Inside the temple at Doy Suthep

Getting the white thread tied around my wrist

Before climbing up to the temple

The drive up Doy Suthep

Part of the market in Chang Mai

School competitions/ karaoke/ and Loy Kratong Festival

Marianne — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 04:26:00 +0000

The school competition last weekend was a lot of fun. I yet again went through a little bit of shock when I saw other white people walking around! The other schools that came to compete brought their own foreign English teachers so we made some new contacts which is nice.

The highlight of my day was no doubt the drama section which Shaleas was judging. Three schools including ours competed. We performed Peter Pan (one of my best students was Wendy, I was so proud!) and the other schools performed Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella. It was absolutely rolling-on-the-floor hilarious. The scripts were clearly written by their Thai English teachers, who sometimes get the grammar just a little bit wrong. That along with Thai people’s inability to pronounce certain English sounds resulted in the weirdest versions of my favourite childhood stories ever. Including Peter Pan asking Wendy “you come ON me” instead of “come with me (to Neverland).” Oh goodness.

That weekend, Kelly, Shaleas and I also went to one of the two nice restaurants in this village that we have discovered which also happens to be a karaoke place. The great thing about singing karaoke in Thailand is that a) everybody does it, so there’s no escaping, b) they are all really bad singers so there’s no intimidation, and c) if you’re singing English songs, which clearly we were, it doesn’t really matter anyway because they have no idea what you’re saying.

So I did what I consider an expert rendition of ‘My Heart Will Go On,’ Kelly chose ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You’ and the three of us did a great version of ‘Wonderwall’ among many other songs. When we got back to the school at about 10pm we discovered a bunch of teachers having their own karaoke party in the gym, so we briefly joined them as well. They really really love karaoke here.

Last night was Loy Kratong festival which was amazing. It’s a beautiful festival centred around the river, I recommend you read more about it, but I don’t want to bore you all here. There’s a short paragraph about it here

During lunch period the students set off huge balloons made out of tissue paper into the air by filling them with hot air. Then we decided to cancel our afternoon classes and our coordinators took us to the salon instead to get our hair and makeup done and get us dressed in traditional Thai costume. They didn’t have any makeup pale enough for my British skin, so I looked a little bit like I’d been fake tanning, but other than that it was pretty awesome.

Then we inadvertently ended up leading the entire parade! Kelly and I were grabbing a quick bite to eat at the market and saw the parade starting, so we went up to take photos. The two women in front were carrying a big photo each, one of the king and one of the queen. They came up to us, took our bags/food and handed us the photos! So I walked the 1.5 – 2 mile stretch from the fresh market to the festival grounds by the river leading a parade holding the queen in my hands! It was great fun, and a huge honour to get to do all of that; I loved it.

At the festival we hung out, watched some ADORABLE Thai children dancing, and watched part of a beauty contest for ‘Miss Loy Kratong’ before heading home and collapsing into bed.

I sent post cards today! I’m working through my address book alphabetically, so if you’re last name starts between A – K and I have your address, you will hopefully get a postcard before I get back to England… I don’t have a lot of your addresses yet, so send them along and I’ll write to you too!

Finally, the wonderful Nims Laban gets a shout out for being the first person to make use of that mailing address I posted. She sent me THREE wonderful care packages so far including some glossy mags and yummy chocolate! Thanks Nims! You should all follow her example.

I am TRYING to upload photos but my internet connection can’t really handle it, so I’m sorry for the lack of picture evidence, I swear I’m doing my best!

WWIII in our back garden

Marianne — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 04:52:00 +0000

So Tuesday morning at 8am, Kelly, Shaleas and I were woken up to the soft gentle sounds of gunshots…Yea.

Turns out our guesthouse is right next door to where the local military branch train, which apparently begins at 8am on Tuesdays. After about 20 minutes of lying in bed listening to what sounded like a town massacre, I stepped outside to see what was happening. After seeing our landlady casually doing laundry I decided it was safe, and ventured out a little further into the porch to see dozens of men in green getting dropped off at the field next to our guesthouse where they were apparently running drills. Thanks for the warning guys. Really appreciate it.

After our less than welcome wake up call, I got to ride on the back of a motorbike (our buddy, Jet, who runs the internet cafe gave me a ride home), and we shared beer and a game of gin rummy with a man who invited himself to our table on the porch that evening. He also insisted that we call him if we ever need a ride to Chang Mai, so we have clearly got the hook up. We can’t remember his name, so we have christened him ‘Mr. Dude’ in our usual highly intellectual fashion.

Meeting the locals is definitely helping us out big time. Orn, our friend who runs one of the shops around here, said she’d help us buy motorbikes so that we can find a good deal. So we have officially been accepted into the Tha Wang Pha commuity.

We ate dinner at the Thai version of a fondue restaurant, which I loved. Maybe mostly because I could control the ingredients and the spice level of my food, which is definitely a blessing after the chaos this stuff is starting to create in my stomache…

Next step – figuring out how the post offices around here work. Then maybe some people reading this blog will receive some fun postcards! Also – Tha Wang Pha doesn’t have postcards, because they don’t have tourists; we are officially the first white people to ever step foot in this place, so your postcards will come from Nan, the closest place to civilization around here.

Wednesday – the day of NOT going to Nan…

The only problem with everyone being so desperate to help us around here, is that it’s actually hard to figure anything out by ourselves, because they won’t let us. So instead of figuring out how to take the bus into Nan, walk around, explore, find the post office; we were driven to the Tha Wang Pha post office, where they also do not sell postcards. People reading this might be saying “why didn’t you just say, ‘no thanks, but could you help me find the bus?’” well trust me, we tried. But they just keep asking us EXACTLY what it is we’re doing, until you answer, and they didn’t seem to understand that we just wanted to walk around and explore, I’m not sure why, I guess they don’t really do that here? So when we mentioned the post office, it was all downhill from there. I shouldn’t be so bitter though, because at the end of the day, everyone around here is desperate to help us out which is very nice, and something we certainly don’t get on this level in the UK/US. Tonight we ate dinner at Kru Noy’s house (kru means teacher, Kru Noy is one of our coordinators/a teacher at our school). It was her and her whole extended family. Her oldest daughter spoke pretty good English luckily, and helped us out with some Thai that we were struggling with. So here are some fun things I have learnt:

Thai lesson #3:

Moo = pig/pork. NOT the sound a cow makes

Cow = rice. NOT the animal that beef comes from

Gai = chicken/far away/near/guide depending on how you say it. Thai is made even more fun by the fact that there are FIVE different tones. Whoever though making ‘near’ and ‘far’ the same word was a good idea??

Today Shaleas took off for Chang Mai before Kelly and I even woke up, so hopefully she’s having fun! This morning we were supposed to teach a private English lesson to Jet, but he wasn’t able to make it. So we’ll see what the rest of the day holds for me and Kelly. Possibly the purchase of a motorbike if we can find Jet or Orn or someone to help us out with translation!