Chinese New Year

Thailand loves a celebration. As well as celebrating New Year on January 1 with the rest of the World they also have their own Thai New Year in April. On top of that they also celebrate the Chinese New Year. The Christmas decoarations had only just been packed away beside the river when the Chinese New Year decorations were put in place. On the Chinese New Years Eve many houses lit a bonfire in front of their house and burn fake money and gold which is said to be passed on to those who have died in the afterlife.

The streets were full of celebrations and at school on Chinese New Years Day every teacher was given a red envelope with money inside as a gift for the New Year.

Dressed for the occassion

As a teacher at St Louis every Monday I will come to school in my Thai shirt I was given for Christmas. Every Tuesday I will wear a pink polo shirt which we wear to help the King live a long life. Every Wednesday and Thursday I wear a shirt and tie, then on Friday I wear a sport uniform.
The students also have different uniforms to wear on different days including a sport uniform and every Wednesday all the primary students wear a scout uniform.

A typical school day

There is no such thing as a typical school day at St Louis School. Every day I still manage to see something which makes me laugh or something I am fairly sure would never happen at a school in Australia.
I arrive everyday at school to sign in using a fingerprint scanner before 7.45am. I will go to the foreigners office and sit there until the start of the first class. At 8am everybody stands for the Thailand national anthem and a prayer which signifies the start of the day.
Every lesson lasts 50 minutes and at 11am lunch is served for all the teachers in a communal teachers eating area. It’s free which is the great thing and for the most part the food is good. If I am hungry enough I will eat the chicken feet which are occasional served. A lot of the time I am not actually sure what I am eating, sometimes the Thai teachers do not even know what it is or cannot translate the dish into English. Every meal is served with rice which is a good thing at least I know what it will taste like.
The day is broken into seven 50 minute periods and depending on what time your class is depends on how long the lesson actually goes for or how interested the students are in listening. The later afternoon classes are usually the ones were not a lot of teaching takes place.
School finishes around 3.45pm although the teachers are not allowed to scan out until 4.30pm. We usually sit in the office counting down the minutes until we are allowed to go home. On Fridays the teachers are supposed to participate in sport at the end of the day therefore we are not allowed to scan out until 5pm.
In a week I teach 18 classes. I teach six classes of primary six twice a week and three classes of primary five twice a week. The class size is around 45 therefore in a week I teach 405 students. I have been teaching now for over eight weeks and I know less than six students names.

On many occasions I have turned up to teach and the class is not there, they either have a meeting or playing games. It can become difficult to plan lessons when you are not sure if the students will be there or not. It’s all fun though and I try to fit my teaching around the relaxed Thai schedules.

50 minutes in a Thai classroom

At the beginning of every lesson the students all stand to collectively say “Good morning Teacher and Master,” or “Good afternoon teacher and master,” Depending on the class this make take place as soon as I walk in, some lessons it will take the students up to ten minutes to find their seats and stand ready for class.

If there is ever writing on the board at the start of a class the students argue over who gets to clean the board.

I always have a Thai teacher in the classroom who is there to translate to the students when they cannot understand. The students often cannot understand when I give them an activity to do even when I think I am making the instructions very clear. I am quite luckily because my partner teachers can speak good English and are therefore able to translate easily.

The Thai teachers are also there to discipline the students. In Thailand it is not uncommon for teachers to hit the students and although I have not really seen it happen I know it takes place. The students know I will not do this to them therefore if the teacher walks out of the room or is not there for the whole lesson the students decide it is their time to have fun and muck around. It is difficult to keep 45 students interested and listening without some discipline.

The other week I was teaching a lesson on feelings and getting the students to tell me something they are happy about. One of the students wanted to answer the question although they were unable to so they translated through the teacher. “The student would like to say she is happy about having a handsome teacher.” I had to write it on the board and the students thought it was quite funny.

Thai students are often embarrassed to speak in front of their peers in case they get the answer wrong. Therefore if I ask the class collectively a question nobody will answer. To eliminate this I take a ball to class every lesson and throw the bal

l at a student make them stand up and answer the questions. The students are actually excited when I use the ball in class and they are more involved.

A couple of times I have been doing spelling tests on the board and will write a word on the board such as ‘join,’ and the whole class will start laughing. It turned out Join was the nickname of one the boys in the class. The students each have a name, a nickname and a number at the moment I call the students by their number because I do not know any of their names or nicknames.

In one of my spelling tests the student did not know how to spell the word so instead wrote a load of random letters with ‘KFC’ in the middle. I had to laugh.

At the end of every lesson all the students stand again and collectively say ‘Thank you teacher.’

Chachoengsao Day Tour

There are many interesting places to visit in and around Chachoengsao the only difficulty is to get to many of them you need your own transport. As I do not have a car or bike I have not seem many of these sights until yesterday when I went touring with some friends in there car.
We stopped first at bat temple. It's not really called that just got the name from all the bats which hang in the trees around the temple. There were thousands of them and they were all fanning themselves to try and keep cool. We also stopped at a couple of other temples and visited a floating market where we took a ride on a small boat for about a hour. Almost the minute we stepped off the boat the rain started and it absolutely poured for well over an hour and we were unable to get back to the car. We sat eating on a floating platform at the market watching all the stall holders continuning to cook in the heavy rain.

A couple of the boats without covers were full of water and sinking by the time we left. As we left only a few minutes down the road and there was no more rain. Where we live did not get a drop all day. It was a good day out and quite an experience to see the heavy rain. I had not seen such an amount of rain since my very first night in Thailand.

Teachers Day long weekend

The teachers in Thailand every year get a day of celebrations. Instead of organizing activities my school St Louis instead gave all the teachers the day off.  We did not have to teach on the Monday and therefore I decided I would use the time to visit some fellow teachers I met in Bangkok while training and have not seen since.

I travelled to Nang Rong a town in the Buriram Province with the knowledge there is not a lot to do there. I was warned although I still wanted to visit to experience the different conditions each of the interns were placed in.

They were correct there is not a lot to do in Nang Rong. I did visit the ruins of a small temple not far from where my friends were living. I also spent an afternoon celebrating one of the teachers birthday which was quite ok.

I am not disappointed a went the bus journey lasted more than six hours each way and took my through some quite spectacular areas of Thailand. It was also great to see my friends and listen to their very different experience of teaching in Thailand.

At the end of the weekend I was happy I was placed at a school in Chachoengsao and went back to school appreciating how lucky I was.

Childrens Day

The children of Thailand get their own special day where they get to play games, eat loads of snack food and basically have fun. The nation celebrates the day this year on Saturday, January 10.


The school decided the students were too busy on the day before Children’s Day so they instead moved the celebrations forward a week and set up a couple of big jumping castles, many food vendors and games and activities for the students.

The activities were quite similar to the Christmas Days at school, although this time everything was free. I wasn’t missing out on the fun so I too had a go on the jumping castles and spent the day wandering the school eating all the free food.

The teachers do not miss out either, they too get a national day of celebration on the 16th of January we all get the day off. Another three day weekend.

My living conditions

A room with no windows, a cold shower and a television with over 200 channels and not one of them English is what I call home in Chachoengsao. Although I am not complaining it is some of the best living conditions in the city I live.
When I first few weeks I was living in Chachoengsao I was living at the school until one day we were moved into a brand new apartment just a few minutes walk from the school. The other Australian Tim, who I met in Bangkok and is teaching at the same school, have adjoining rooms. For Tim to leave his room he must walk through mine, I decided this was better for me as I have the freedom to come and go whenever I wish. He instead got a window and a balcony.
For the few months I have lived here it has been fine Tim and I get along well enough that we are not in each others way and even sharing the one bathroom has been fine. A cold shower early in the morning is not the most pleasant wake up but the living conditions are some of the best in the city.
In the few minutes I take to walk to school I walk down an laneway past a few houses, some of who I have made friends with and been to dinner at their house. In the alley I pass rabbits, ducks and have to dodge the motorbikes which speed through the narrow path. In the morning I will usually say hello to at least ten people. In the afternoon the street vendors line the laneway and I will usually stop and say hello to a few more of the students as I leave the school.

Bangkok Day Tour

Since arriving in Thailand I had heard a lot about the Chatachuk Market in Bangkok which is only open on weekends. I was intrigued to see what it was all about so when one of the Thai teachers invited me to go with her to the market I accepted the offer.
I met her in the morning at the bus station and she told me she changed her mind and instead wanted to show me some of the temples in Bangkok. The first place she wanted to show me was the Wat Phra Kaew. I was fairly sure it was the same temple next to the Grand Palace I had already visited although I did not know for sure and the teacher I was with could not speak a lot of English.
We boarded a local bus in Bangkok to get to the temple. Then on the way the bus crashed into a car and we all had to get off and wait for another bus and again get on the bus. We reached the entry to the temple and it was the same very famous temple in Bangkok I visited when I was in Bangkok in the first week. The temple was too busy and they would not let me in with shorts on so I told my friend I did not want to go in.
Instead we walked to the Chao Phraya River and organised a boat to take us to a floating market. The floating market was much smaller than I anticipated and all they were selling was food. The food was very good though and we spent over an hour eating fresh seafood.
After the boat ride we visited a few of the smaller temples on the less touristy side of the Chao Phraya River. The temples were quite spectacular only I was a little uncomfortable as the teacher I was was Buddhist she was making me go through the whole Buddhist regime at every temple.
By late afternoon I was exhausted and hot and wanted to just get out of Bangkok so we headed back for the bus station and back to Chachoengsao.
I still have to get to the Chatachuk Market. Maybe I will go alone one day.

New Years Eve Camodian style

The Sydney New Years Eve fireworks were showing on television and I took a quick moment to reflect on the year as I was standing beside the Harbour watching the fireworks last year. I was able to have a shower and get ready and the fireworks were still going. When they finished I walked outside to see how the party was going.
To my surprise the music on Pub Street had not started, instead everybody was watching the Manchester United game on a big screen television. They love the Premier League in this part of Asia. As soon as the game finished they showed a quick Cambodia travel advertisement which definitely inspired me to see more of the country before the music started and the party began.
The streets began to get very busy all the Koreans who usually spend their nights in their fancy hotels were all on the streets partying. At one point a crew of them started dancing well rehearsed dances and everybody on the street stopped to watch. Koreans are the most popular tourists in Cambodia and although I had seen them a lot at Angkor Wat and in the markets it was the first time I had seen them on Pub Street.
At 10pm there was no room to move, Pub Street was one big mosh pit and so I got out of there. I wandered the streets to see what else was going on. There were people everywhere and they were still piling off the big buses.
With only ten minutes to midnight I decided I would try again to join the party on Pub Street. It took close to ten minutes to push through crowds. The music stopped for a ten second countdown followed by a quick firework display and the music started again and the party continued. The Cambodians seemed to be enjoying the night as much as the Westerners.
Later in the night I ate at a street vendor which during the day converts to a kindergarten. Or the Kindergarten converts into food vendors. It was quite strange to see during the day all the students playing in the playground while around the school huge speakers and beer taps were being set up.
I had spent the night alone which was different to previous New Years Eves but I quite enjoyed it. People watching in Siam Reap is never boring.