Dancing Farang

An average day in my second teaching job in Thailand starts with my little students following me two by two, holding hands, across the school to the flag-raising ceremony. Everyone stands still and quiet for the national anthem whilst the school's giant flag is raised by students on a podium; the school band plays before prayers and chants are recited in unison by the thousands of children and teachers who are spread across the school's playing field. After about twenty five minutes, once the daily routine has finished, all the older kids leave to start class leaving only the kindergarten students; us foreign teachers all take turns getting up onto the stage to dance and sing English songs into a microphone whilst the students copy our actions. This is followed by fifteen minutes of dancing to Thai songs and by this point we are all drenched in sweat and desperate to retire to our arctic air-con in our classrooms because the humidity, even at 8am in the morning, makes it difficult to be outside. After I've handed out milk, distributed baby powder for their little faces and brushed their hair I begin my lesson. At 11.30am the train of students reappears as I lead the way to the cafeteria whilst they fight to hold my hand and after handing out their lunch trays I sit with them to eat; one of the best perks of the jobs is the free school lunches! Forget soggy carrots and chicken nuggets, no, no, no...every day is like going to a Thai restaurant. Some of my favourite dishes are deep-fried eggplant, papaya salad, glass-noodle salad, egg soup and grilled mackerel all served without fail, every single day, with plain white rice (yes, the Asian/rice stereotype is true - I eat it twice a day!). I then read to them whilst they wriggle around on their sleeping mats before walking home for two hours whilst they have their nap. The afternoon is filled with more stories, time with their workbooks, them using me as a human climbing frame at every opportunity and then and 3pm we have yet another break where we go to the cafeteria to eat hot rice soup with pork- how the Thais are so slim I will never know because they are always eating! 

Posing with the director of the school at the New Year party where they raffled off a mixture of prizes such as fans, bikes and gold(!!) before making us dance on stage - Thais LOVE making the foreigners dance...

 ...daily dancing after the flag raising ceremony...

...dancing around the school with a tambourine with trees made out of money to show off how much my students' parents had donated towards the new building!

Here are my little rascals eating lunch and mucking around - no wonder I'm always finding rice in their hair!

Sports day in Thailand - where the students are plastered with make up, hair pieces and frilly, sparkly outfits then paraded through the town!

The name of this sport in Thai translates to 'monkeys carrying watermelons'.

I was asked by the Grandma of one of my students, four-year-old Zoe, if I would tutor her and her two three-year-old twin brothers after school; the Grandma, or Khun Yai in Thai, is very rich and pushes me to tutor her grandchildren every day whilst speaking to me solely in Thai which is a challenge since I'm still learning. I'm concentrating so hard when she speaks that I must look almost constipated! The extra money is great but the children are a handful, so much so that they each have their own nanny amongst the vast team of domestic servants that the Grandma employs. I can't blame three and four year olds for not wanting to learn a second language after a long day at school but I sometimes feel like I'm battling with them to pay attention and it doesn't help that on more than one occasion the little ones have weed on my leg or poked my eye out with a pencil! 

This is Huns, one of the little boys I tutor for and although they can be hard work they are extremely cute as you can see!

We went on a school field trip to a beautiful temple which had these giant statues outside.

The school trip ended at a rather sad zoo where the animals were kept in tiny cages.

Aoei and Yok showing us that Thailand really is the land of smiles! My students are so happy and it really makes going to work every day a pleasure!

On the weekends we have room parties and sometimes visit the local Thai clubs.

I will never get tired of the fruit here! This is juicy dragon fruit. 

Teacher Jellyfart

After a very memorable month off school travelling around Indonesia I landed in Bangkok and made my way to my new home town, Sisaket, in the north-east of Thailand. I was still unable to walk properly, due to my bunk bed fiasco in Bali weeks earlier, so I hobbled on and off planes and buses with my overflowing backpack (moving house at the same time as travelling...I don't recommend it) until I reached Sisaket. When I arrived in my previous town, Lampang, six months earlier I didn't know anyone, I had no idea where I was going to live or even where to start looking, there were no other foreigners, nobody spoke English and I didn't know any Thai and so the feeling I got was a weird mixture of fear, excitement, adrenaline and anxiety however my arrival in Sisaket couldn't have been more different; waiting for me at the bus station were my friends (who I'd met during my teacher training course in Bangkok last April), there's a small community of foreign teachers, I had an apartment waiting for me and friends to show me around. Sisaket is similar to Lampang in the sense that it is very much, at the risk of sounding clichéd, the 'real Thailand' - tourists just do not come here - so forget the paradisiacal images of palm tree-fringed beaches and bars crawling with bucket-wielding backpackers - those destinations are firmly reserved for school holidays! My new home town is like most (non-touristic) towns in Thailand; the obstacle courses they call pavements are crowded with bins, drains, giant wobbly chunks of concrete, the odd sleeping person, motorcycles and Thai barbecue stalls, everywhere you go you are incessantly stared at and talked about (p.s. dear strangers: I can speak a bit of Thai now so I can understand what you're saying!!!), there are stray dogs chilling on every corner, there's a market that comes alive after dark, you can't swing a Siamese cat without hitting a 7/11 convenience store and (now this next one is the best part) everywhere you look there is a plethora of street food stands each selling its own specialty dish or snack from crispy deep-fried bananas, Thai pancakes, coconut ice cream topped with peanuts and fresh tropical fruit to squids on wooden sticks, mango and papaya salads, noodle soup, sticky rice, chicken feet and cups full of sweetcorn covered in sugar! That being said Sisaket does have a few features that make it special, namely the giant lake that plays host to regular outdoor festivals and events, has running and cycling tracks around its 2.3 mile circumference and an unrivaled view of the sunset.  

My absolute favourite Thai snack - crunchy fried bananas with sesame seeds and massive potential for addiction!!!

The Tree House Hotel in Sisaket is home to the swimming pool we visit most weekends.

Sunset at the lake.

The Thailand sky never fails to please. 

A shrine at a temple in neighbouring town Surin.

 Loi Krathong festival at the lake was a colourful frenzy of flowers, lights, fireworks and Thai dancing. 

We launched our handmade 'krathongs' - made out of banana tree trunks and leaves, flowers, incense and candles - into the water to symbolise good luck.

Thai street food (complete with child under table).

My second Christmas in Asia was spent in a restaurant run by an English man who cooked us a traditional festive lunch with a side of fancy dress.

We didn't get any time off over the festive period apart from a long weekend at New Year which was a blur of beaches and bars on Koh Samet island - a great example of the aforementioned Thai paradise.

After a few days of settling in to my new home it was time to start my new job; instead of teaching a whole high school full of lovely, sometimes shy, giggly teenagers obsessed with their phones I am now responsible for imparting knowledge to twenty-eight curious, impossibly-adorable and for the most part snotty five-year-old students who are obsessed with...me! Rather than teaching twelve different classes once or twice a week I am now a kindergarten English Program homeroom teacher which means I am with the same class all day and able to build special relationships with the children whose parents pay extra for them to have a farang (foreigner) with them all day; I teach them in the mornings using flashcards, games and songs and and the rest of the day is spent reading them stories, guiding them through their English and maths workbooks, playing with them, cuddling them and sitting in on their music, computer, swimming and Chinese lessons (yes, they are five years old and they are learning English AND Chinese!). All this is done with the help of three, yes THREE, Thai teachers who are with me all day: T.Grace is the head teacher who is in charge of organising the class, teaching them Thai and attending meetings, T.Rainy helps control the class and we also have a nanny, T.May, who cleans the kids up. This allows us farangs to be the 'fun' teachers and therefore we're pretty popular with the children and sometimes I can't quite believe I'm getting paid to sing, dance, act like a clown and have so much fun! A lot of my kids are better at expressing themselves in English than my eighteen-year-old students at my last school however they are still learning how to speak Thai and form words; they pronounce my name 'Teacher Jellyfart', partly thanks to the 'J is for Jellyfish' poster that's on the wall and as for the 'fart' part, well...I can't explain that one. I've noticed a big difference in Thai nicknames here compared to what I'm used to - probably a geographical and generational thing - but instead of having the odd 'Poo' in my class I've now got children with names like Boss, Bambam, Tamtam, Ninja, Fighter and Progress (who has a brother called Program). I tell a lie, I did have a poo in my new class but it was not the 'nickname that means crab in Thai' variety, more the 'freshly laid by a five-year-old next to the classroom door' kind. 

Every couple of weeks we celebrate a student's birthday by throwing a party for them in the afternoon complete with cake and pizza. For some reason the cake is always eaten first and the pizza is always seafood flavour which is the kids' favourite.

Getting some serious colouring work done.

I was asked to choreograph a dance for the Christmas show to 'Jingle Bells' as well as design their costumes - my students are the little snowmen and reindeer.

 There are four other foreign teachers working for the Kindergarten English Program and here we are with some of our Thai co-teachers.

 Thai dance show at school.

 The students gave food to one hundred monks that came to school in order to 'make merit'.

 Each week I am given a topic to teach - this particular week was the King's Birthday which has been designated as Father's Day in Thailand.

I incorporate craft into my lessons - here are my students with their hand-made krathongs for Loi Krathong Festival (the white on their faces is baby powder which we distribute to them four times a day).

Never a dull moment!

Swimming lessons!

Last of Lampang

My Thai friend, J-Muoy, volunteered to take my American friend, Sarah, and I to Chae Son National Park alongside her eighteen year old son who came suited and booted in his army uniform because he was due to leave Lampang that afternoon to serve in the small war happening on the Malay/Thai border; we drove through Lampang province on roads flanked by craggy mountains that jutted up into the clouds and we arrived a couple of hours later at Chae Son - a sprawling protected park which is home to waterfalls, caves and hot springs. First on the agenda: dunk a basket-full of eggs into the boiling, steaming water of the hot springs and leave them to boil. We then went into our own private spa room with a large, tiled pool full of very hot water and, after alternating between the hot pool and the cold shower next to it for a while, we walked to a row of beds next to a river where we all laid down for an hour-long Thai massage whilst relaxing to the sounds of the waterfall. 

Before we left the park we made sure we tasted our hot spring-boiled eggs which we ate with salty Thai soy sauce and pepper. 

J-Muoy showing us how it's done in the spa pool.

The whole day only cost me less than 400฿ (about £8)

After designing six end of semester exams - one for each year of high school - I tested my students; once I'd marked all 230 exams and issued their results I had fulfilled my duties and so it was time to say goodbye to Maethapattanasuksa school and my students. I have loved every minute of my five months in Lampang but it's time for the next adventure and so, after a month's school holiday, I will be moving to a town called Sisaket in the north-east of Thailand. During the morning flag raising ceremony on my last day two students read out the sweetest speeches to me on stage - they thanked me for being their teacher said they'd "miss me everyday" - one girl burst into tears and wrapped herself around me in a big hug. A few hours later some of my students led me outside, covered my eyes and said, "promise no looking, Teacher", whilst they led me to a large group of students from mathayom three (high school year 3) who had clubbed together to buy me a leaving cake. The cake was then taken back to my desk and everyone, including me, was handed a plastic spoon which we used to attack the typically-Thai cake with its mounds of white, sweet fluffy icing that went flying everywhere and still remains today in the crevices of the very laptop I am typing this on. Over the course of the day I was presented with a mountain of leaving gifts including a large framed photo of The King of Thailand (who is adored by the whole nation - most Thais have a shrine for the King in their house and pictures of him are EVERYWHERE). 

Farewell presents from three girls from mathayom three - these fruits are called pomelos and are similar to grapefruits. 

I must admit that it wasn't just my students who teared up on that stage!

My goodbye-cake being attacked; forget cutting cakes into slices - no, no, no, no...we do it the fun way in Thailand!

All my leaving gifts...now how am I going to fit these into my backpack??!!

This. THIS is one of the reasons why I love living in Thailand - all the juicy, sweet, unusual fruit!

I've been continuing with my running despite the constant threat of violent rain; one evening, during my last week in Lampang, I found myself in a countryside village three miles from my apartment when the sky split open and decided to spit out torrents of water. I had no choice but to seek shelter in a deserted temple and, whilst it had all the colourful adornments typical to the Thai style and it was almost inconceivably luxurious considering it belonged to a tiny village, it obviously wasn't somewhere I wanted to stay night so I began to get concerned as it got darker (the sun sets in Thailand pretty early and only varies by about thirty minutes over the course of a year). I decided to brave it and run-swim home. Never before have I had a more literal example of 'making a run for it' - my trainers were aquaplaning most of the way back and I was half carried home by the current that had materialised on the side of the road.
My last few days in Lampang were spent trying in vain to fit all the stuff I'd accumulated into my backpack as well as attending various staff parties which are worlds away from those drunken staff events I'm used to at home - in short, they all involve small, luke-warm plates of Thai food delivered one at a time to share over the course of three hours, thirty to forty people on a stage receiving awards (I have no clue what these awards were as it was all in Thai so I sat there in silence admiring their colourful outfits) and probably about five thousand photos of each person. Sometimes I wonder whether these events only take place so that the Thais can take photos! 

Stranded outside a temple.

Goodbye students!

Goodbye to the view from my apartment!

Once I'd managed to cram everything in my backpack I left my little apartment for the last time; I will miss that room despite it being an ant palace in which pretty much everything was broken - dare I say it I will even miss the hideous, grimy, faux-satin blue curtains and the 'mattress' made out of concrete. After saying goodbye to J-Muoy, Neal and their family, my friends and Lampang I boarded an overnight bus to Bangkok and made my way south to my favourite place on earth - Koh Tao!

"I love meth"

During an English seminar last month my American friend, Sarah, and I met some lovely Thai teachers who wanted to 'adopt' us; one of these ladies was called Pan and she offered to take us to The Thai Elephant Conservation Centre just outside of my hometown, Lampang. Thailand is unfortunately infamous for its mistreatment of elephants however The Conservation Centre is the only government-owned elephant camp, it's known for its pioneering conservation and science work plus it is home to HM King Bhumibol's own elephants so it seemed like somewhere I'd be comfortable visiting. We watched the elephants bathe with their mahouts, fed them bananas and corn, got hugs from baby elephants and saw them paint pictures with their trunks. One week later during the morning drive to school through countryside villages, in a completely different part of the province, I saw a huge flash of grey in my peripheral vision and suddenly the car swerved off the road and screeched to a halt because a baby elephant, bigger than the car, had just run across the road. You don't see that every day! 

The elephants loved their bath - some of the smaller ones would roll around squirting water in the air with their trunks.

Baby elephants!

This is Kru Pan getting up close and personal with the elephants - they weren't in cages or enclosures.

The centre has an on-site hospital and manages a free mobile clinic for needy elephants - this big guy was getting his foot seen to.

After the elephant camp Sarah and I found an actual club with a dance floor in Lampang! But...this is Thailand and so the dance floor was full of tiny tables that everyone kept tripping over!

On the same weekend J Muoy took me to 'Hug You' sheep farm which is basically a load of outdoor structures for people to pose for photos with (this is photo-obsessed Thailand after all!) as well as a few 'sheep' that looked suspiciously like goats.

Halfway through September I needed to visit Chiang Mai again to get my visa extended for another thirty days. I woke up at 3.30am and walked a mile and a half along a motorway in the dark to the bus station in the hope I'd get into the queue at the immigration office by 7.30am. To my utter frustration and dismay the bus broke down halfway there (T.I.A.!) and we were trapped inside the bus for over two hours whilst the rain raged outside; I couldn't figure out what was happening because of the language barrier and I was incredibly worried that I would be too late to extend my visa and possibly be kicked out of the country and lose my job but...what I was most concerned about at the time was the fact that I was starting to feel sick with hunger so I had to resort to eating someone's snack that they had left unopened on the bus...needs must! Later on that day I was walking in Chiang Mai city when I saw a cat on its back in the street with its legs in the air which is not an uncommon sight considering how many cats and dogs wander the streets of Thailand; on closer inspection I realised it was bloated, covered in flies and it was, in fact, very dead. Now, I have seen a lot of dead things in Asia (including humans!!) but never have I seen such a spooky case of rigour mortis as this cat with its scraggly paws frozen in a desperate clawing motion.

Luckily I was able to sort out my visa and force the memory of the cat out of my head so the rest of the weekend in Chiang Mai went very well; I spent the day at a swimming pool under a perfect blue sky once the rain had cleared and I bought a replacement camera and spent the day photographing the city.

My friend, Kiren, came to meet me in Chiang Mai. We found a kebab stand after craving them for a very long time and whilst we ate a drunk Thai man sang to us and showed us magic tricks with matches. 

Rachel, a teacher we'd met during an English seminar, came to visit Sarah and I in Lampang one weekendand the three of us squeezed on a moped and scooted round the city.

There was a Lanna, which is the name for the culture in the north of Thailand, and ASEAN concert in Lampang when Rachel came to visit.

After discovering that we can rent mopeds in Lampang, Sarah and I took turns at weekends to drive each other around the countryside.

We stopped at rice paddies - these little huts are where the farmers rest during their hard work on the fields.

I always have a lot of fun with my students at school because I organise a lot of games and activities for them plus, when I stand in front of the classes full of children every day, I feel like I am on stage and I find myself entertaining them like a clown which is especially enjoyable since Thai students are very happy kids. The students have been making me laugh a lot recently; I'd asked a class of my seventeen year-olds to write down questions I had written on the board and fill in their answers in English in preparation for a Q&A speaking activity and one boy decided to copy the answers from another student (rampant copying in school is a big issue in Thailand, in universities they've been known to make students wear paper helmets to prevent it) however he'd copied the words into the wrong spaces for example he'd written 'yesterday I ate Italy for lunch' and 'my telephone number is chicken' - the whole class and I were killing ourselves laughing about this, as did the boy in question after someone explained to him in Thai what he'd written. I have to try really hard not to laugh at some of the things the children say sometimes, especially since I find it off-putting when I get laughed at when I attempt to speak Thai. I am beginning to really appreciate just how difficult English spelling is to non-native speakers, especially those that have a completely different alphabet; I get a lot of 'I am fanny' (i.e. 'I am funny'), 'I feel wankerful' (i.e. 'I feel wonderful') and 'I love Meth' (i.e. 'I love Math'...well, hopefully that's what they meant)!!

My duties at school included designing and writing an English exam for each of the six high school years I teach. I asked them to spread their desks out to prevent cheating and it was the first time I've managed to get them to be silent all semester!

The school is very close to some large mountains and so the rain can get pretty violent during rainy season - often we'll travel ten minutes down the road only to discover it's been bone dry there all day.

Some of my younger students being silly.

Each year is split into two classes, higher and lower, and this is M6/1 so they are the oldest and brightest students in the school and I have to say they are definitely my favourites as they are so funny, polite and keen to learn.

Our 'Thai Mum', Pan, often takes Sarah and I to restaurants for dinner - once she cooked a big Thai spread for us at her house including a massaman curry which is a chicken dish with potatoes and coconut cream.

I have always been a 'dog person' but after suffering through endless sleepless nights because of the barking dogs next door I am starting to see cats in a different light, especially this fluffy one who likes to shop in my local 7/11!