12 Preparations for Thailand

Less than two weeks to go until we head to San Francisco in preparation for our 8 month Thailand and Southeast Asia venture. The summer has flown by and now our dreamlike adventure is becoming a quickly approaching reality. It seems like yesterday we were only playing around with the idea of spending some time abroad traveling and/or teaching before Pat became serious about law school. Lacking teaching certification and extensive language experience in any language, finding a program that fit kept us searching for a few months.


During the spring we came across CIEE (the Council of International Educational Exchange) an organization that was willing to train us to teach English and to place us together at least in the same city. We applied for the Teach in Thailand program and we have been placed in Trang, a city on the elephant trunk of Thailand and south of Phuket. We will be teaching at the secondary level at a public school with around 2600 students. If you are wondering about what we are supposed to teach in English or what age is actually within the “secondary level,” then we are in the same boat. We are expected to teach around 40-45 students per class and our work day is 8am-4pm, and that is about all we know. During a one week orientation in Bangkok, we are expecting to be enlightened about our teaching assignment and upcoming teaching experience.


After emailing with the Foreign Language Coordinator at our school in Trang, we have found out that we will be living in a house with “a small place for a kitchen and a bathroom.” Hopefully the kitchen and bathroom have been lost in translation and construction will not be our first project after arriving in Trang.


On October 11th we head to San Francisco to spend time with Pat’s brother and family, and then we head to Bangkok on October 17th arriving in Thailand after a nearly twenty hours of travel time.


The 12 Preparations for Thailand (Kind of Like the 12 Days of Christmas)

12 vaccination shots shared between the two of us

11 contacts whom have been to Thailand and Southeast Asia giving us valuable advice on traveling, clothing, and safety and whom have addressed our concerns about “optional” air conditioning, living conditions, and transportation including personal experience in only taking $400 for 6 months and asking for an advance for a monthly stipend to buy a motorbike

10 (supposed) lessons of Rosetta Stone Thai

9 actually words of Thai that we remember from the lessons including Pat’s favorite “krung-bin” meaning plane

8 plane tickets eventually delivering the two of us to Bangkok

7 shots for Pat alone

6 diseases that we absolutely should not get because of our many vaccinations

5 travel books of Thailand and Southeast Asia

4 trips to the travel clinic

3 different travel agents (one who refused to sell me flight insurance because “Asians are nice” the same woman who mailed us someone else’s tickets to South Africa)

2 Thai Visas (that have yet to arrive)

1 pair of underwear each (the package says “17 countries, 6 weeks, 1 pair of underwear” so we figure that we are only going to 5 countries that we will get a few more weeks on that pair of underwear—so maybe “5 countries, 30 weeks, 1 pair of underwear” (and maybe a few extra pairs just in case the advertising is not completely accurate)