A Busy Day in Trang (Work Permits)

Tuesday, October 28

I know that this is quite soon to already be posting a new post, but for now there will be lots of updates and I am sure as we settle in and get use to Trang and school the posts will slow down. The Thai word for westerner (or white person) is "Farang," which is not necessarily a negative word and it is not offensive, but as we walk through the market you can hear whispers of Farang. We had heard that Trang was the up-and-coming tourist location because it is not really touristy. From our first couple of days here, I can already feel that not many farang hang out here. As we were walking to find food our first day, Pat and I were walking along a fairly large road and just about everyone that we past would whip their head around and stare. We also got some honks and some english "hellos." The other night in Tesco Lotus (the wal-mart equivalent) a small Thai kid rushed to try to touch me before his parents were able to grab him. We have been drawing quite a bit of attention although none of it is aggressive or really uncomfortable.

Yesterday (Monday) was a very busy day. Achanee, our coordinator, was to pick us up around 10:30 to go by school and talk about our contracts. I woke up early hand washed some clothes and took the rest down the street to have washed. Nothing is super close to our house, so walking down a six-lane highway with a laundry basket completely full of laundry was fairly amusing. We were picked up at 10:30 and headed to our school, where we sat in the English Department's Teachers' Lounge for a couple hours talking about syllabi and teaching English along with reading our contracts and signing them. We then headed into town for lunch which was quickly followed by making copies of several documents for our work permits, having our pictures taken for the work permits, going to the motorbike store to try to find a second-hand bike to get between school, town and home (since we are living awkwardly in between school and town), hanging out at the Trang hospital for 2 hours to get a physical, and then grabbing dinner. The Thai work permit requires something like 11 documents and 4 copies of all of those documents. The documents include copies of every page of your passport, your diploma, your class schedule, a letter from the school that hired you, a map of the school, a few other documents regarding the English Department and school, two different sized photos, and a physical from a Thai doctor. I guess the place to ge a physical is at the hospital between the Mass Casualty Zone and the Surgical Unit. The physical was to check and see if we had leprosy, elephantitis, drug addiction or chronic alcoholism and should have included an x-ray. We filled out some paperwork and received a number and then we sat for 2 hours and watched stretchers come in and out. Finally our names and numbers were called and we were weighed and had our blood pressure taken and then we waited again. When the doctor finally saw us, we went in together (all 3 American teachers) where he looked at us head to toe and signed the physical and we were on our way. Hmmm...strange. Anywho... all of our paperwork that we need to do is together and now our coordinator has a bit of gathering to do herself.

Today Pat and I are planning on taking a trip to Ko Lanta, an island about 2 hours away that one of our guide books has told us not to miss. Hopefully I will get Pat blogging again, but he tends to be asleep when I am updating the blog.

We now have internet in our house and it seems to be pretty good, which is excellent. We also have a few friends living with us. We have ants and a couple of oversized cocroaches, and this morning when I was putting on my shower shoes in the kitchen there was a large toad purched under Pats shower shoes. It was a bit starting to have a frog face staring at me first thing this morning, but I used the broom to place him outside our back door.

And We're Training it to Trang

Monday, October 27th

So we have a lot to catch everyone up on and currently we do not have internet. Instead of waiting until we do get internet I am just going to create Word Documents to upload.


On Thursday we left Bangkok for a Resort on the River Kwae. On our way to the hotel we stopped at the Bridge over the River Kwae which was built by the Japanese in 1942/1943. Something like 100,000 POWs and laborers lost their lives building this bridge over the 6 month span. As we were checking out the crowded tourist destination, we discovered that the bridge still has an active train that runs across it. As we stepped on the bridge to walk down it a train blew its horn and the crowds on the bridge split left and right onto very small platforms. I was surprised that the bridge was still active and yet they allow tourists to wondered over it. After exploring the bridge and its surroundings we headed to the hotel to settle in. We took a wonderfully refreshing swim and then had dinner on the river.


On Friday, we started the morning off with some elephant rides and bamboo raft rides down the river.

And then headed to some orphanages to teach some practice lessons. My group started at a small orphanage run by Buddhist nuns. We taught the students in a small one-room structure with a fan and small white board. The students sat on the floor, girls on the left and boys on the right, as we introduced games and activities involving counting, animals, body parts and daily activities. After the lessons, we played outside with the kids. A large game of “duck, duck, goose” was started. Pat started at a much larger orphanage that housed around 130 kids. The orphanage was hidden in a jungle and the buildings were beautiful and scattered throughout the campus. There was a beautiful, wooden auditorium and library along with dorms and other buildings. The orphanage prided itself on being sustainable. It was set up like a “free school” where the students did not have to start lessons unless they wanted to. Grades kindergarten to sixth were taught on the campus and students who were above sixth grade worked on the grounds during the week for a salary and then went to weekend high school. Pat loved playing with the kids. He became a human jungle gym and the kids would run up and hang on him. As Pat headed to the bus he received several hugs from the boys he had been playing with. Everyone really enjoyed the orphanages especially spending time playing with the kids, learning and teaching new games.


On Saturday morning Pat and I signed up for 1½ hour long Thai massages at the hotel spa. For about $25 we had our entire bodies massaged starting with our feet and legs and ending with our heads and necks. The women were incredibly strong and did a wonderful job. We packed up our belongings, loaded the buses and headed back to Bangkok. In Bangkok, we met Daniel, who will also be teaching with us in Trang, and we took a van to the train station. The van dropped us off 2 blocks from the entrance of the train station and it was quite a challenge to drag all of my belongings up and down curbs and across traffic. We met Achanee, our coordinator inside the train station which was full of exhaust and pollution. We found our car and loaded our luggage through the window only to find that not all of our stuff would fit in our car, so we unloaded it back through the window and Achanee and Daniel followed it back to the last car. We had been told that we were traveling 1st class likely with air conditioning. Pat and I were a bit shocked if we were actually in first class and the only air was from the open windows and rotating fan hanging from the ceiling. It did not look like the car was actually a sleeper car and both of us were sweaty and agitated and not looking forward to the next 15 hours. Achanee had bought us KFC (yes, Kentucky Fried Chicken) for dinner on the train. As the train started moving the car cooled off.


Towards 7 or 8pm a staff member came around and pulled down the beds from the ceiling and pushed the seats together to form a bottom bunk and closed the windows because it was raining. For the rest of the night we struggled to open the windows but never successfully did making the night a bit stuffy. We attempted to sleep through the night despite the bumpy rocking. Around 8 am we arrived in Trang. We loaded our luggage into Achanee’s husband’s truck, had breakfast, and headed to our new home. On our way we drove by our school which was 4 main classroom buildings that are probably 4 or 5 stories high. Achanee pointed out the buildings and the gym and then took us to our “one-bedroom house with a small place for a kitchen and a bathroom.” We quickly found that this statement was incredibly accurate. There is a long row of one-bedroom houses attached by carports.

Our one room is air-conditioned and has the potential of having wireless which we are working on. Out the back door you find our “small place for a kitchen” which involves a sink and toaster and then our bathroom that is a sink, non-flushing, western toilet, and shower head.

The house is cozy and should be great as we get used to it. Last night we went to Tesco Lotus which is a Walmart equivalent where we bought everything from toilet paper and clothes hangers to a hot pot and muffins.

Cabbages & Condoms and Muay Thai

Monday morning all 64 Teach in Thailand participants took a group field trip to the Grand Temple, which Pat mentioned in the previous blog. The Grand Temple was incredible beautiful. Large statues guarded the wall of the main entrance. The exterior walls were covered with intricate paintings of warriors and battles in gold leaf. A gold dome pointed into the deep blue sky drawing our attention to the ornate and expansive grounds. Columns were covered in glittery pieces of reds, greens and blues that played with the sunlight like small mirrors. My favorite part of the trip were the sculptures of monkeys and demons posed with bent legs and bent arms. The same glittery blue, red and green mirrors pattern the bodies of the sculptures while their faces were painted like masks. We ventured shoeless into the temple of the Emerald Buddha and sat on our knees as to not point our feet at the Buddha. The interior walls were made up of painted scenes with gold leaf. As we exited the building there was a Thai taking on the tedious task of restoring the gold leaf.

Tuesday we had a full day of orientation sessions of Thai lessons, teacher training and hearing about traveling in Thailand. After our sessions we grabbed a cab and headed to a restaurant that had been recommended to us, Cabbages and Condoms. Initially I thought the name was just to draw attention, but in fact part of the income of the restaurant and gift shop goes to sex education and AIDS prevention. The décor of the restaurant was fantastic! Super heroes made of condoms greeted us at the door and led us to the dining area. Light fixtures were made of condoms and decorated in flowers made from condoms. The food was fine. I order a dish that had come highly recommended, Yum-Plau-Duk Phoo, grated, fried catfish. The meal ended up looking like a large portion of hair pulled out of the shower drain. Delicious, I know! The grated, fried catfish did not have a strong flavor, but with the addition of some dipping sauce it tasted fine. After dinner, we attempted to fight Bangkok traffic to get back towards our hotel for a Muay Thai boxing fight. The traffic was horrible, so we paid and hopped out of the taxi and headed for the SkyTrain and Metro. We made it to the stadium a bit late, but with 7 or 9 fights a night, we did not actually miss that much. (Side note: Muay Thai is a form of boxing and is the national sport of Thailand.) We bought ringside tickets and we were escorted to the fourth row back from the boxing ring. I was a bit hesitant about watching Muay Thai because I am not the violent type, but I felt that since it is the national sport and would be a cultural experience that I should go to at least one fight. Of course the boxing was violent, but in the end we only saw a little blood and only one of the fighters was hit hard enough to be escorted out in a wheel chair. The fighters wear boxing gloves, a mouth guard and very bright shorts. That’s all. No shoes, no helmet, no nothing. In the stands there are huge crowds of Thai men shouting and waving their hands betting throughout the entire fight. As the fights progressed, we were able to sit in the front row where we were actually getting hit by the sweat from the fighters. Watching the Muay Thai was fascinating! I also took plenty of pictures to share. Hopefully we will post a few to give you a better idea of the fights.

Last night Pat and I met our Foreign Language Coordinator from our school. She is absolutely wonderful! She speaks wonderful English and has a great philosophy on teaching. We asked all kinds of questions. One of us is teaching M1 (which is 7th grade) and the other is teaching M3 (which is 9th grade). We will each be teaching 10 sections twice a week so a total of 20 classes a week. We head South on Saturday with our coordinator either by bus (12 hours) or by train (14 hrs) and then we have a little over a week until school starts (November 3). We will be living about 2km from school and we will be about 45 minutes from the nearest beach.

Today we leave Bangkok for a few days of relaxation and the last part of orientation for a resort at the Bridge over the River Kiew (that may be spelled horribly wrong). We will get to ride elephants and take bamboo rafts on the river. It should be a lot of fun and then we are off to our school locations on Saturday.

First Days in Bangkok

Keats and I have made it to Bangkok. After an extremely long 20 hours of travel time we successfully made it to Thailand. Bangkok is a really crazy city. It has enormous highways and tons of people. It is extremely polluted and many of the tuk-tuk drivers wear masks to protect them from it. It is also extremely hot, it feels like it is the hottest day in the summer of North Carolina pretty much all the time. I think this is something we will slowly get used to. I have already gotten in the habit of taking at least 2 showers a day, sometimes 3. It is pretty much the best way to stay somewhat cool here.
Yesterday we went to a mall to pick up some minutes for our cell phone. The mall was by far the most impressive one that I have ever been in. It had a Ferarri dealership inside of it and all kinds of exotic things to buy.
Today we went to the Grand Palace in Bangkok which was really a trip to go to. It was so oppulent and ornate and bejeweled that it seemed fake. The only places I have ever seen anything like it are in China Towns and Vegas. The statues were enormous and amazingly detailed. We saw the Emerald Buddha which is a sight that to me was on par with the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. When you went in the Temple you had to take your shoes off and if you showed the bottom of your feet to the Buddha a guard would come and make you stop. The respect that the Thai people were showing to this temple was really something to experience. The temple was probably my favorite experience so far in Thailand and I hope to see a few more before I leave here. I'm sorry if this blog post was a little boring and dry but it was my first time so I'm hoping you all will give me another shot at greatness. We have posted some pictures of our time here if you want to see a few of the things that we have been doing and seeing. We'll try to post something more soon.


Pat and Keats

Photographs:
1.Pat & Keats at SFO Airport.

2. A map of Thailand with pushpins marking the locations of teachers from our program. The lone green pushpin at the very bottom is where Pat and I will be.

3. The last three photographs are from the Grand Temple field trip.