Khao Yai

There are certain times in Thailand when I am still really surprised at what this country has to offer. One of those days was on the weekend when I visited Khao Yai the National Park in the center of Thailand.

With a few days spare in my holidays I decided to make the trip there on the bus and explore the national park on one of the organized day and a half tours.

The first afternoon was the half day trip and somehow as we were driving along our guide spotted a thin whip snake hidden in the trees. I was standing right underneath it and still could not spot the snake. It was the first of many creatures the guide was able to spot and teach us about, while also letting us hold the animals and insects. We explored a bat cave with bats, centipedes, millipedes, spiders, scorpions and a scorpion spider.

The main highlight of the afternoon trip was standing near the exit of a bat cave as two million bats exited the cave to fly around for the night. We were standing well away from the exit but the million insect bats flew overhead floating in the sight wind.

The following morning we set off early to spend the day in Khao Yai. Early in the morning we spotted  gibbons and hornbills two of the main drawcards to the park. Hornbills are a toucan looking bird that sits high up in the trees. The gibbon is a monkey looking creature which also lives at the tops of trees. Never walking on the ground.  An excellent telescope helped us see the animals in a better view.

My group consisted of myself, two Dutch couples and a French couple and together we followed the Thai guide through the jungle for a couple of hours. The whole time we were under the canopy of the tall trees it was raining then when we came into a large opening luckily the rain stopped.

Next stop after the walk was Nam Tok Haew Suwat the waterfall used in the film The Beach. I was really excited to see this as I am a big fan of the movie. It did resemble what I remembered from the movie although people are no longer allowed to swim there. Our guide explained it was because too many drunk Thai people were drowning there.  I would not have swam though because of all the rain the water was really gushing down the waterfall.

Our last mission for the day was to go in search of a wild elephant.  It wasn’t hard to miss as the elephant was standing right in the middle of the road. I have seen elephants in Thailand but this was the first time I had seen a wild elephant. Wild elephants are unpredictable and can be quite dangerous so we stayed in the bus which was an open songthaew style bus and reversed slowly towards the elephant. Should the elephant have decided to charge us we could drive off in a hurry. Luckily it did not and we were safe. After spotting the elephant we headed back to the guesthouse after an impressive day exploring a magnificent part of Thailand.

7-11

It is impossible to visit Thailand and not enter a 7-11 store. According to a credible internet source (Wikipedia) there were more than 6,300 stores in Thailand last year and that number is quickly expanding.
There are at least ten in the city I live in and there is one located at the entrance to the building where I live. I pass by the 7-11 maybe seven or eight times a day.
7-11 stores are always cool with their air conditioning blasting and there is nearly always a dog sleeping at the entrance to the store. It is funny when the dog decides the entrance is not cool enough and sleep inside instead.
When 7-11 introduce a scheme whereby you collect stamps for certain purchases it became a very successful promotion. My girlfriend Prang became almost obsessed with collecting the stamps to redeem for prizes. She asked her students and friends to collect the tokens for her.
The promotion was so successful that all the products you can buy to collect tokens were sold out.
Prang has already collected enough tokens for a backpack, a chair, a small lunchbox and we need only fifty more tokens for a small table to collect the full set of prizes.

Our new 'free' chair from 7-11.

Bang Saen beach

Thailand is famous for its beaches. Many have white sand with clear blue water. Bang saen beach is definitely not one of those beaches used on posters around the World to advertise Thailand. The sand was dirty almost black, the beach umbrellas were so close together that no sun was reaching the beach chairs and the food being cooked along the beach smelt so bad I could hardly walk down the path.
I visited the beach because many of the students at school say it is their favourite beach in Thailand. This is because it is the closest beach to where I live and therefore it can be easily reached in a day trip. I am guessing many of the students have never visited the more famous beaches on the islands. Many Thai people also like visiting the beach without sunbathing. Which is the reason for the umbrellas being so close together. The most popular time to visit the beach in Thailand is at dusk when the sun is not so bright.
Bang Sean beach is also just near the University where Prang is currently studying her Master's Degree therefore I was intrigued to see what the beach was like. Prang and I decided to stay in one of the only room  for less than a thousand baht a night. The room was a tiny box above a toilet block which we had to walk through to get in and out of the building.
I was not impressed by the beach at all and I am in no hurry to go back.

Good luck getting a tan on these beach chairs.

Elephants, Tigers and Crocs

Si Racha Tiger Zoo  is a popular tourist attraction in the South East of Thailand. Although I had read reports of the mistreatment of animals and the poor living conditions for the animals I still wanted to see the zoo for myself.

Therefore Prang and I went for an afternoon visit one sunny Sunday afternoon.  Yes there was mistreatment of animals and yes the cages were small but I had never seen so many tigers in the one place. There were hundreds.  At a young age the tiger cubs are taken from their mothers and feed by pigs. It’s strange to see but they say the amount of tigers at the zoo is proof the plan works.

For a little extra money visitors are allowed to have their photo taken with the animals. I have never been near or had a photo taken with a live Tiger, Orang-Utan or Crocodile before and although the eopportunities.

The zoo also have a tiger, elephant and crocodile show. All three of these animals are very smart and trainable and can put on a good show. The least trainable of the three is the crocodile. A crocodile cannot walk across a tightrope and play basketball. All the trainers were able to do was open the crocs mouth and slide across the ground till their head was in the mouth of the croc. Every time the trainer finished the trick he looked genuinely excited that he still had a head.

Wai Kru Day

Teachers are well respected in Thailand and at the start of every year there is a day of teacher appreciation. It is known as Wai Kru Day and always held on a Thursday in June. At my school the ceremony was held last Thursday morning. All the students gathered together in an assembly and the teachers walked onto the stage in their year levels and sat in chairs. The students then presented the teachers with a specially made gift and kissed the ground at their feet as the teachers 'wai' the students. To wai in Thailand means to place your hands together in a prayer like motion and slightly bow your head. It is the common way to greet somebody in Thailand.
I actually took part in the ceremony twice. I was ushered onto the stage one time and was presented with a gift the students made which I immediately gave to the student who was hiding behind me before I walked off the stage. I was ushered onto the stage again when one year level did not have enough teachers to fill the seats.

I enjoyed participating in the ceremony and it was just another example of an event which happens in Thailand which would never happen in Australia.

Drink Milk, No Drugs

Today's slogan of the day. 'Drink Milk, No drugs.' Every student and teacher at morning assembly was given a small bottle of milk as they raised them as one and drank together. The slogan kind of works at least it is giving the students an alternative to taking drugs. Also in Thailand not many people drink milk and whenever people ask me why am I so tall they often say it must be because I drink a lot of milk. It's true I do like to drink milk but I am not sure it is the reason I am so tall.

Week one done

Having taught the same lesson 14 times I was quite glad to see the end of my first week of school. I decided on a lesson plan asking the students what they did on the holidays as a good start to the school year.
I taught 18 lessons for the week to 14 different classes starting with the secondary one students on their first day of high school and also taught to classes of secondary 6 in their final year of school.
As well as asking the students what they did on the holiday I asked what the students knew about Australia. 'Kangaroos and Koalas' were always the first answers but their wasn't a lot else they knew. Only one student mentioned the Great Barrier Reef and very few could tell me the capital is Canberra.
A couple of big differences from school last semester to this semester is that I am now teaching alone in every lesson. Therefore I have to discipline the students as well as teach. Luckily in my first week this was not an issue as the students were all well behaved.
Another difference is their are only two classrooms in which I teach which have air-conditioning and in many of the classrooms the fans at the front are broken or completely ripped off the ceiling. It's hot in the classrooms luckily the staff office has air-conditioning so I go and cool off at the end of each lesson.

All you hear is Lady Gaga

Every morning for about the last three months while in Thailand I have watched the morning news. In the news service their is very little news from outside Thailand. The show is all in Thai so I have no idea what they are talking about and even watching the pictures many of the stories still make no sense to me.

Today though I was able to decipher one of the stories. Lady Gaga is in Thailand and almost twenty minutes of the breakfast news was dedicated to her with footage of fans screaming and crying while waiting for her at the airport.

The only other non Thai news which I found out through watching the show was the death of Whitney Houston.

Many of the other news items show car accidents and people being arrested. 

New start, new school

Having spent much of time while in Australia worried about where I would be teaching when I returned to Thailand it was a relief to be given a good job at a good school. I returned to Chachoengsao to continue teaching and through an agency got a job at a school only five minutes or so by motorbike from the school where I taught last semester.
I am now teaching at Benchama Rat Rangsarit School. It is a public secondary school of 3000 students and I will be teaching secondary 1, 5 and 6. I am teaching the equivalent of year 7, 11 and 12 in Australia.
On  the second day of school myself along with four other new foreign teachers introduced ourselves in Thai to the whole school at morning assembly. I have lived in Thailand for close to six months and it was probably the most Thai I have spoken since learning the language.

Short time, not a long time in Australia

At the end of my first semester teaching in Thailand I decided I would return to Australia. I was planning to spend time with friends and family and hopefully work for some of the time as money made in Australia is worth a lot in Thailand. The students in Thailand get eight weeks of school holidays from the end of March until the end of May. I also thought I did not want to spend this time in Thailand as I did not have a lot of money to support myself.
Therefore I returned to Australia. Visited some of my friends and family and worked many different jobs in order to make some money. I painted a house, dug a few trenches, mowed some lawns and helped demolish a house.
Then on Mother's Day morning my Mum dropped me at the airport knowing I probably will not see her again this year.
I enjoyed my time in Australia I also enjoyed getting on the plane and returning to Thailand.

Riding an elephant

‘You can now all enter the water and swim with the elephants,’ the tour guide said just as a large piece of elephant poo floated to the surface of the water. I hesitated for a moment but then thought when would I again get to swim with an elephant and a large piece of poo. So I dived in head first, not really I moved cautiously through the water and climbed up on top of the elephant with the trainer. I scrubbed the elephant with a brush while sitting on top of the elephant which was sitting in the shallow water.

Prang did not enter the water and was hardly watching the elephants, she was too distracted watching the Eastern European men in their tight bathers. Following the half an hour or so spent in the water we walked back to the camp and were assigned an elephant each.  Our guide like most of the guides was Cambodian although he could communicate enough in Thai for Prang to have a conversation with him.

I am not sure if he felt sorry for her for having to spend time with me or whether he just didn’t feel like riding the elephant because after only ten minutes he got off and let Prang sit on the neck of the elephant and take charge.

For the rest of the ride our guide became our personal photograph taking almost one hundred photos in the hour.  At one point I rode on the neck of the elephant and could feel its muscles and bones move as it walked.

I enjoyed the ride and so did Prang and thanks to our guide we had many great photos to keep and share.  

Koh Chang

A four day holiday on the island of Koh Chang was a fun relaxing way to spend the last few days of the first part of my time in Thailand. My girlfriend Prang and I spent almost a day on buses, boats and minivans getting to the island. We arrived late at night to a small guesthouse with shacks on Lonely Beach. It was difficult in the rain and darkness to appreciate the location. All I could hear while I was trying to sleep was the noise of the tattooist only meters from our bed. We decided we would move the following morning to a better guesthouse.

Although when we woke the following morning to see the empty beach and clean water we decided to stay at same guesthouse but move away from the tattoo shack. Ko Chang is one of the biggest islands in Thailand and Lonely Beach was at one time Lonely but now full of tourists.

We spent the first day relaxing on the beach enjoying the sun. After one full day on the beach we decided the following day to move to a different part of the island. I really wanted to ride an elephant therefore we moved closer to where the elephant camp was set up.

We stayed another night at the Blue Lagoon resort without a tattoo parlour in sight. We organized and went on an elephant ride before returning to eat  some very delicious fish on the beach to end our time on the island.

Prang's Birthday

I was sitting in the cinemas watching a movie when it struck me that the movie was about Snow White. Somehow I had agreed to go to the cinemas to watch a Julia Roberts movie about Snow White translated into a language I can hardly understand. The movie was called Mirror Mirror so I probably should have guessed it would be a take on the Snow White story. I must admit though I did fall asleep for some of the movie.

I agreed to go because it was Prang's birthday and it was what she wanted to do. What I found interesting was that all the previews are in English and after sitting through almost twenty minutes of previews getting comfortable you then have to stand for the King's song. 

I will not be going back to the cinemas any time soon, especially not to watch a movie based on a fairytale.

Exam time

Every student at Saint Loius sits an end of year exam. This includes all the kindergarten students right through to secondary six. As I have taken on the role of teaching Primary 4, 5 and 6. I was required to write three exams, one for each year level. Each exams had to be 40 questions which was broken into 30 multiple choice questions and ten true and false questions. The exam had to be difficult to challenge the students but not too difficult so the students would fail.


I found it easy enough to write the exam for the Primary 5's and 6's as I had been teaching them all semester. The Primary 4 exam was hard to put together though as the exam was due the same week I started teaching the year level and was left little help from the teacher who left the school.

The English exam was the students final exam on Friday afternoon and I am sure they were all tired by then and could not be bothered with the exams.

It really doesn't make a big difference though. No student at Saint Louis can fail English.I am not sure if that's just the school policy or if it is a private school policy. It's a little disheartening when at the end of the semester those students who have tried hard get almost the same mark as those who have shown no progress at all. Many students at the school know they can pass English without trying and therefore do not try. Only one student in the 800 plus exams I corrected ticked true for every answer in the True/False. It was smart thinking as he got 5/10.

Some students at the school can leave without even being able to speak a single sentence in English. But it is not completly there fault, with 50 students in a class it is easy to get lost in the system and get left behind.

While the students sat their exams I along with all the other foreign teachers had nothing to do. Luckily the Facebook ban had been lifted and gave us something to do for at least a couple of hours a day. When all my students had finished there exams I had to correct the true/false questions for all 800 plus exams. Luckily I was helped by some of the other teachers who offered to help to ease the boredam. Then when all exams where marked I put all the results into the computer and my work at Saint Louis was done. In the final week we spent the week trying to sneak out of school for as long as possible as we had to be at school from 7.30am until 4.00pm to get paid a full salary.

My final lesson

There were no big goodbyes when it came to my final lessons with the students at Saint Loius. It's too difficult to try to explain to them why I will not be teaching at the school again next semester. The students also had a lot of work to do in their final lessons as I wanted them to do well on their exams and I knew they would struggle. In the past few weeks the weather has heated up a lot and many times I walk into the classroom and the students are all half asleep because it is just so hot. The students were also losing interest I could see they needed a holiday and so did I. Next week the students will sit their final exams then I am required to be at school for the week following before I am finished at the school

Two weddings and a holiday

In the five months I have been in Thailand I had not attended a wedding then in the space of one week I attended two.
The first was the wedding of an Australian teacher who married a Thai teacher who is the head of the foreign teachers at the school. In Thailand the majority of the guests are not invited to the actual wedding ceremony they are invited to the dinner which is quite similar to a reception for a wedding in the Western world.
As the wedding was held on a Monday we all attended school as per normal and I went to the dinner in a van with many of the other foreign teachers. I ate a meal and listened to a bit of karaoke, which is also very popular in Thailand. At about 9.30pm we all got back on the van to return home. It is also common in Thailand for people to leave parties, weddings included as soon as the food has finished being served.
Two days later I enjoyed yet another public holiday in Thailand. This time it was a Buddhist holiday for Mugha Puja Day. Buddhist Thais visit the temple in the morning then return again in the evening. I visited the Wat Sothon temple in the evening to see what takes place and there where thousands of people walking circles around the temple holding candles. Prior to visiting the temple Prang and I spent the morning at an old market in the outskirts of Chachoengsao.

The second wedding of the week was also held on a school day and was again two people from school. On Friday afternoon I attended another wedding and there were so many people there it took me almost five minutes to find my friend Tim. I asked the groom how many people went and he said 1500. Large weddings are quite common in Thailand. The whole ceremony part was all in Thai so I didn't really understand although I did enjoy the food and the experience. Invitations to weddings in Thailand are given in an envelope which when you arrive at the wedding you give back to the couple with money in it to help pay for the wedding.

'Some students are absent because they are fat.'

Every class I teach there is usually at least one student missing because they are practicing sport, music or dance. Last Friday though I heard the best reason for some students being absent.
My Thai partner said to me "Some students are absent because they are underground." By underground she meant in the bottom of the building. I asked what they are doing. She explained to me the students are absent because they are doing an activity because they are fat. She continued to say the students will play games and learn how not to be fat.
At the end of class I went to have a look and sure enough all the fat students in the school were grouped together excercising.
It's the sort of bluntness you have to get used to when teaching in Thailand. If you are fat they will tell you, if you smell they will say etc. etc.

Ayutthaya

Ayutthaya is a very popular tourist spot in Thailand and an easy day trip from Bangkok. My girlfriend Prang and I decided to stay overnight and spend the weekend exploring the temples and other sights of the city. Leaving Chachoengsao we caught a minivan to Bangkok and then another to Ayutthaya. I am still unsure if any of the van drivers in this country actually know how to drive as the journey is never comfortable.
Making it to Ayutthaya we checked into a hotel then found our way to the floating market. Thailand is full of floating markets and they are all very touristy and this was no exception. It was clean and well maintained and not to crowded so I quite enjoyed it.
The following morning we found a tuk-tuk driver who would take us to visit the temples and wait while we explored then collect us again and take us to the next one. The temples in Ayutthaya are impressive and there is obvious reason why it is such a popular tourist destination. Having visited three of the most popular temples I also wanted to go see some elephants. The driver dropped us at the elephant kraal pavilion and we met some of the elephants which are looked after in the enclosure behind.
It was the highlight of the trip. One of the very young elephants was chasing Prang around trying to get her bananas. All the elephants seemed well looked after. They are an impressive animal.
Our last temple stop in Ayutthaya was Wat Mahathat, they temple which is where you can see the ancient Buddha head engulfed in the roots of the tree.
This temple seemed to be the worst affected by the devistating floods of late last year which submerged most of the city which is actually located on an island.
Prang and I decided the most comfortable ride back to Chachoengsao was to catch the train. Although it is a little slower than the vans I enjoyed sitting beside the open window watching the Thailand countryside pass by.

I think I'm turning 25. I really think so.

For the one and only time in my life I turned 25 on the 25th of February. In Thailand it's also the year 2555 which made my birthday the 25/2/2555. It was a good enough reason for me to celebrate therefore I invited many of my friends to dinner at a local restaurant.
More than 30 people joined me for dinner at Nong Pu restaurant which the foreigners have nicknamed the Cock and Crab as there are large statues of a Cock and Crab at the entrance.
I enjoyed the night eating and drinking with my friends and following dinner we continued onto the usual hangout Sun.Moon bar.

I am not sure how I feel to be 25 but in Thailand it is either a very lucky or unlucky age. Hopefully for me it will be a lucky year.

Hello. My name is Dylan and I need a job.

Teaching in Thailand is a great job. I am really enjoying it and I feel I am suited for the job. Therefore when I was told I did not have a job at the school I am currently teaching at next semester I started on the search for a new school.
Life in Chachoengsao is also good so my first preference is to stay in the city. It is difficult though to know how to get a job. The first attempt to get a job was to visit the schools and personnally deliver my resume. My friend Tim is also looking for a job next semester so the two of us with my girlfriend Prang visited the schools of Chachoengsao to try and get a job.
If it was the students hiring teachers Tim and I would have been giving a job at the first school we visited. One of the students spoke in Thai and Prang translated for us. The student said '"I am in secondary six although if you are teaching next semester I repeat the year."
The second school we visited told Tim and I they only employ British and American staff. Although the teacher said maybe next semester they will only employ British, American and Australian staff. I am still a little confused as to why some schools do not employ Australian staff.
At the end of the day I did not have a job but at least I felt I was getting somewhere and hopefully something comes up soon. Neither Tim or I got offered a job on the day although Prang who already has a secured job was offered a job.