Sports week

"Takraw"

(above is our school's swimming pool.)

We missed monday and tuesday classes due to our visa run, and showed up wednesday, which is the first day of what Thailand calls sports week. Which is basically a five day long sports extravaganza, pitting all of the high schools in the Chaiyaphum province (there are 42 of them) against each other in all different events. The first day included a giant ceremony where all the schools paraded and sang their school songs. We were able to catch some swimming, which was at our own Muangpayalae, and "Takraw", which is a game that originated in Thailand. It involves a rattan ball and a low volleyball net, the players are only allowed to use their feet or heads to move the ball, and the rules are similar to ping pong or volleyball. Here are a few pictures of some Chaiyaphum students playing the game. As you can see the games get pretty intense and are very fun to watch. On friday we watched some Muay Thai boxing and a few basketball games. Thursday ended with an elephant sighting on the way to the gas station.

(Above are pictures from the ceremony)

(and the elephant on the way to the gas station)

Khon Kaen Visa Run

This week began with an interesting visa run, after a fun weekend in Bangkok. We woke up monday morning to pick up our work permits at the local Chaiyaphum office, and made our way to Khon Kaen, (a two hour open air bus ride.) We arrived around 1:30 pm. When we arrived we went straight to the visa office where we encountered a long queue with "take a number" box. we took numbers 71 and 72. We then sat and sat while watching other teachers, some american families, but mostly American men with thai wives/girlfriends receive their visas. 3 hours went by, and we were still 10 numbers away from being helped, and we were told to come back the next day. We took it in stride and grabbed a city bus back to the city center. and found a cheap hotel for about $6 USD. We took this as a chance to explore Khon Kaen, a city of about 250,000, though the census numbers in Thailand seem to be skewed. Khon Kaen is very different from Chaiyaphum, it features an airport, a train station, many nice restaurants (Chaiyaphum has 1 nice restaurant), but the pride and glory of khon kaen is its brand new 6 story super-mall which was constructed last year. We bowled a round at its bowling alley, and then grabbed some street food, and an english newspaper published in Bangkok, and headed to bed. The next morning we woke early and camped out at the visa office at 7:30, we were finally awarded with our visas around 10 am.

Liz's Birthday in Bangkok

We headed to Bangkok for a weekend of birthday celebrations. We met up with some of the other teachers from our TESOL course on Khao San road (backpackers paradise, in other words cheap hostels, cheap food, clothing vendors, and bars). After a long bus ride and a mix up with our hotel we finally got dinner around 9:00. After being in Chaiyaphum for 2 months the idea of pizza was impossible to resist. We then went to meet up with everyone and celebrate our friend Sara’s birthday. Saturday we woke up and ate brunch and decided to head to the markets on the other end of Bangkok. After a boat taxi and sky train ride we finally made it with less than two hours to walk around since we had a reservation for dinner. We probably managed to see about a tenth of what there was to see at the markets but it was plenty with the crowds and heat. For dinner Dylan took me to a wine bar that had a Saturday deal all you can eat tapas and a bottle of wine. You would think with this kind of deal they would try to get you in and out as quickly as possible and we weren’t sure the tapas would really fill us up. It was the exact opposite. The waiter made sure to check on us after every dish came out and would encourage us to keep ordering more. After goat cheese, apple walnut salad, tuna, asparagus wrapped in bacon and many more tapas we couldn’t possibly eat any more; this is when the servers come out with a half a cheesecake and sing Happy Birthday. It was the perfect place for my birthday, exactly what I wanted. Afterwards we walked around Bangkok center and it started to feel a little bit like Christmas with all the decorations and then we met up with our friends. On Sunday we had a hard time leaving and ended up taking a late bus in evening but it was totally worth it, such a fun weekend.

Stonehenge of Thailand and the Sticks

Today we took a trip to the "Stonehenge of Thailand" which is located about 35km away from Chaiyaphum, up in the mountains. The trip was interesting as we were trying to read the signs in Thai script that directed us to this natural wonder. After a few wrong turns we found ourselves climbing the final leg of the journey on a dirt road dodging construction equipment and oncoming traffic. Finally we were rewarded with the sight of many rocks jutting out of the hillside about 40 to 50ft high, and a bustle of Thai people, we knew we were in the right place. The rocks were sandstone, and I think they were the remnants of a giant reef, though we can't be sure because all of the signs were also written in Thai script. We snapped a few pictures and began to head home, as we drove back down the hill we noticed that were the construction equipment had been working before, it had all stopped. We scootered past one of the construction workers hiding behind a rock, with a long lead wire headed to a rock the size of the car that we were now driving right next to. I put it all together and realized we were driving through a blast site, we continued driving and found another construction worker. I asked him dynamite? He nodded, and then I asked, meu-arai? Which means when, he muttered the word for now and pointed at the ground and smiled. He then yelled to the man behind the rock, seconds later rock was sent a hundred feet in the air, decimating the road we had just driven over. We continued on our way, stopping at a small music festival in a village, and taking some pictures of the countryside. It was an interesting trip and it was good to get out of Chaiyaphum to see the slower side of life for a day.

Some school pictures, some days off.

Gate Duty, basically say hello good morning 1500 times

The last week has been interesting, we've been settling in nicely to our teaching positions, our apartment and Chaiyaphum. We have to apologize for not updating this blog more often, but its not often where we are around Internet. Last Monday, we were told that school was cancelled for the day, and an activity would hold its place. All of the classes put together presentation boards to display what they had been working on this semester, and all of the students who will not be going to a university next year prepared food and drinks to raise money for their class. On Friday we participated in a celebration for the king's birthday where all the students and teachers lined up along the school roads and gave gifts to visiting monks as they walked through a gauntlet of people. It was hard to keep the students attention because of their anticipation for the long weekend and the festivities planned, but it gave us a good excuse to take some pictures.

Liz teaching her young ones.

Liz giving food and money to the monks

Me and some students from my 5/1 class, Hibari and Lactosoy.

A few of my students from different classes

Travels so far.

Here's a map of our route so far, click on it to show more detail. click between satellite and map and back again if it is showing up blank

Tour of Chaiyaphum

So we’ve been in Chaiyaphum for almost a month now, but it feels like we’ve been here for a week, and its strange to think were already ¼ of the way through our placement. We are really getting to know the town and have our “go-to” restaurant, “Mama’s” which has been catering to the farangs for many years. The weather has been cool, in the mid 50’s at night and around 75 during the day with a surprisingly new England fall-like breeze. Last Tuesday we had a significant amount of rain that left about 10 inches of rain in the streets. This obviously made for a fun ride to school in the morning, trying to dodge the spray from trucks, and hoping that we would not get caught at a red light. Yesterday we went for a walk around Chaiyaphum center and tried to snap some photos to get a feel for what we are seeing. The album is in the photo gallery to the right, and here are a few pictures from it. It’s weird to think we will be missing Thanksgiving; but we are working on finding some turkey, and well be celebrating it 12 hours before you do.

Our School, Muangpayalae

Phi Mai Race

Video from the race

Phi Mai

We got back from Phi Mai last night, and it was well worth the journey. We went with promises of a long tail boat race, and a laser light show. We took a 2½ hour bus ride to Korat were we stayed on Friday night. We stayed at the “Tokyo Mansion” which was far from what the name implies, but the A/C worked and the beds weren’t too hard. Korat is a fun city, and it is claimed to be the second largest city in Thailand. After an entertaining night meeting up with friends from the Phuket, we hopped on a bus Saturday morning to Phi Mai, and arrived around noon. We found our living arrangements to be one room with 12 tatami mats that needed to sleep 16 people, but it was cheap and we didn’t care. We set down our bags and headed to the river where the boat races were taking place. We were surprised to see a large stadium-esque lake with three racing lanes, and large boats with over 40 people in them barreling towards us at the finish line. We sat on the dock area and shook the racers hands after their races congratulating them for their victories. After a day filled with some exciting races and even a few rounds of bumper cars we found ourselves enjoying a cheap dinner and making our way to the “laser light show” which turned out to be inside one of the oldest temples in Thailand and did not include one laser. Instead it was a massive display of Thai history through interpretive dance and fireworks. We went out with our crew of 23 pharangs after the show and shared stories from our first two weeks of teaching. We finished the night off by piling 16 people into the small room that reminded me of camping. Woke up the next day and made our way back to Chaiyaphum in a stifling local bus

Bangkok Pictures

Pictures from Bangkok are now up on the link on the right.
They include pictures from a canal boat trip and a few from the Temple, Grand Palace and Kaoh San Road

loy krathong

Last night we went to the celebration of the water festival, or "Loy Krathong" it’s a huge festival that pays respect, and apologizes to the water for polluting it by sending out small boats with candles made of Styrofoam that literally pollute the water, it’s a little ironic. There was a large fireworks show, which ended with a concert and the lighting of hundreds of balloons made of rice paper. There are many different concerts and most Thai people take the event very seriously, others use it as an excuse to get very drunk.

First Day at school

Our first day is done, and with much surprise it went very well, we showed up at the school at 7am to greet our students at the gate, who mostly gave us no response. We waited at the morning assembly and watched the Thai flag rise and the anthem played. We then took a leisurely walk with our head of English department “Pi-Chu” to our teacher’s lounge where she handed us our schedule. I looked at my schedule and was surprised to see that I had a class in one minute. I stumbled into the class with the expectation that my students would barley know vocab, as we were told. However these students were perfectly capable of forming sentences. I quickly restructured my lesson plan, and got back on my feet with some basic, “what’s your favorite sport?” questions.
I have heard it before, and I will see it all semester that Thai children are very competitive. Give them a dialogue, and they may not pay attention, however give them a dialogue and throw a game of tic-tac-toe into it and you will have every kid begging to be called on.

In Chaiyaphum!

We have arrived in Chaiyaphum (Chai-Ah-Pum) and it is quite a change from Bangkok and Phuket. Basically NO-ONE here speaks English besides hello. Even so, the people here try to be really helpful, and everyone from the lady at the drink store to the tuk tuk drivers want to get a bartered English lesson in exchange for drinks/food/rides. Within the first hour we were here, we had signed a lease, rented a moped and been given a tour of the local hotspots, the night market, the Korean barbeque, and Tesco Lotus. (Think Wal-mart plus 3 stories) All with the help of one of our fellow teacher from the Philippines named Joan. Walking through town we may as well have a sign on our head. If people aren’t staring or calling us pharangs (which means foreigner in Thai), he children are tugging on their parents and pointing at my white legs and blonde hair. We’ve been asked to be in many pictures, and even offered free food and drinks from local restaurant owners.
Chaiyaphum is not the small town that everyone makes it out to be, I would estimate it to have nearly 50,000 people, there is a great sense of community, especially at the night market, where you can feed yourself anything you want for around 20 baht, and get anything from a watch to a fake polo shirt for around 100 baht. The town even has
a driving range.

The Contryside just east of our apartment.

Our school is about 3 miles from our apartment, so the motorbike is a must. And its great for visiting all of the natural parks and waterfalls that are nearby. As well as ride out into the rice paddies, which feels strangely like New England. The climate here is also nearing the winter months, which during the day its still in the 90’s but at night its much cooler, and should get down to around 50 by the end of December.
There are 3 high schools in Chaiyaphum our school, Muangpayalae being on the smaller end with 1500 students. It includes an Olympic sized swimming pool with a three-story stadium, (something you don’t usually see in an American school), plywood doors on the classrooms, holes in the wall, and birds constantly flying through.

Our apartment is also very nice and spacious. It has a living room, a bedroom and a back balcony and the view looks out towards a pond and some palm trees. It’s a brand new building, and the landlord is incredibly nice and hospitable.

Phuket to Bangkok

Sunset at the pool at Nai Harn Villa


Sorry we've been bad about keeping everyone updated. We were taking in as much of Phuket as we could and arrived in Bangkok after an overnight bus ride yesterday.

We've gotten pretty accustomed to traveling around by moped. Dylan's mastered it even on the four lane roads, me on the other hand not so much, I ran into a curb in our villa driveway trying to avoid a water truck while using the gas and brake at the same time, whoops. I'll have to figure it out for Chaiyaphum though. One day we got a biker gang together including 9 mopeds and 15 people. We went all around Phuket it was a lot of fun even though it was raining if not pouring most of the time. Our last night in Phuket a big group of us drove into Phuket Town for the Vegetarian Fest. It's a big festival to rid of bad spirits and everyone dresses in all white and only eats vegetarian food for about 10 days. People who believe the bad spirits are in them put needles and swords through their skin, they can't feel the pain because it's hurting the bad spirits not themselves; but we didn't get to see any of that because it doesn't happen until around the 22nd.

Our last week in Phuket we went into classes in a couple orphanages and a juvenile detention center for a test run to make sure we're prepared to teach. It was a busy week but teaching was fun the kids were cute. My favorite group was a school for boys who are talented at soccer. The students who live there are either orphans or their families do not have enough money to provide for them. Their English was really high and they were really well behaved.

We just arrived in Bangkok, which is pretty much what I expected a big dirty city, but it's fun to see. We had orientation all day today and found out more about our school. We're in the city of Chaiyaphum working at a high school. I'll be teaching 12-14 year olds and Dylan has one younger class but the rest are 15-18. There are 1500 students at the school, so we'll each have 750 students and 23 classes. We see each class once a week for 50 minutes and travel from classroom to classroom rather than having the students come to us, but that's pretty typical. Sounds like most of our students will have very little english, but in towns further outside of Bangkok that's typical. It'll be an adventure, that's for sure, but we're both excited to get into the classroom.

Seeing Thailand From the Back of a Moped

Lunch stop at Rawai Beach

We rented a moped on Saturday night and took it up to lookout point called Promthep Cape for sunset, well we almost made sunset. It was a last minute decision and by the time we made it large crowds of people were walking down the stairs because the sun was almost completely set. On Sunday we spent a few hours cruising around Phuket and from the back of the moped, not having to concentrate of driving, I could take it all in. We went up a bunch of back roads that take you through the greens of the hills with little more than small shacks and houses and the occasional elephant trekking or ATVing site. As we drove by most people would smile and wave, sometimes it looked like they might have been laughing at us, but either it's funny how many more smiles you get from a moped than just walking. We went through some touristy areas or small towns full of small shops, minimarts, restaurants, and tailors. The restaurants are all open air normally with an area completely outside and when it starts to rain they pull down the plastic siding. We have yet to eat at an indoor restaurant and I would be surprised if we do anytime soon. Thailand really is an incredibly beautiful place. It was a perfect day out and everything was so green. There are viewpoints all over Phuket in the hills and mountains. Everything looks so green from one direction and then in the other direction is the ocean.

On Monday it was back to class. Classes haven't been too much work but long days in air conditioning, which is especially difficult when the class is right on the ocean. Next week we go into local schools with small groups and teach lessons, which should give us a little more feel for what we'll be doing in the next few months.

Snorkling today, Patong yesterday

We went back to Phi Phi today to go snorkeling, saw some monkeys, saw some fish. The seas were rough, and the boat we took was fast and loaded with people. It stopped at different beaches, and let us walk around and swim a little. just rented another moped for some exploring tommorow. We went to Patong last night, which is basically the Las vegas of thailand. very flashy, very scary. probably will be the last time we go, but it was worth the trip.

Start of class. Back to school

This is the view from our "villa"

Weve been in Rawai for about 5 days now, and we've been really busy. The classes are 9 hours a day.
Were all set with the time change, and surprisingly what Ive found so far is that life here isnt much different from life at home, minus the heat and the food being dirt cheap. We rented a moped sunday, it was $5 for 24 hours including a full tank of gas, and explored the areas around here.
Its funny how random things are expensive. we went to the Big C yesterday which is basically wal mart with 4 stories, it has everything from pigs legs to quail eggs. Beer is very expensive, around $1 a beer and it doesn't matter if you buy 1 or 100 its all the same price. i got lunch today at a nice sit down Thai restaurant right on the beach for about $1.50 including a can of coke. The area where our classes are is really nice, a lot of million dollar homes, but there are also slums right nearby.
They placed us in a group of villas, nice homes with a kitchen, living room, 4 bedrooms and two stories. heres the website http://www.naiharnvilla.com/ click on accommodation and you can see pictures.
all the people in our group are really cool from different backgrounds, (theres about 30 of us)and everone is around 25
we found out we are being placed with 7 other people in our area, which is a relief.
The beach is pretty amazing, the waves are huuuuge, and the water is warmer than bath water.
We had a snake in our Villa yesterday, about 3 feet long, and they maintenance guy caught one outside that was 6 feet long.
The beach we are staying at is called Nai Harn beach, and it has a monastary that takes up most of the beachfront land, making it much less touristy than most places in phuket.
Sorry about the choppy sentences, its basically been a stream of thought.
Ill try and throw some new pictures up soon.

PHOTOS

We added new photos to my Picasa page. The link is in the right hand column. Also, you can click HERE

Phuket Town and Ko Phi Phi

I’ll try to recap the last few days without going into too much detail; it feels like we’ve been in Thailand for much longer than a week and a half. On Monday morning we took a taxi through most of southern and eastern Phuket to Phuket Town. Phuket Town has a much different feel to it than the touristy beach towns. We were some of the only tourists there and a lot of things were closed down during the low season. This gave us the chance to experience Thailand in a more authentic way. Phuket Town is a large town with a lot of large shops and even a large mall. While we were walking around a group of children got really excited to practice some of their English and everyone was very friendly saying hi and smiling. We had dinner at a more local place than the touristy restaurant’s we’ve been drawn to.

On Tuesday morning, we came to Ko Phi Phi on a ferry. The boat was full of tourists from all over the world and a lot of large tour groups. When we got off the boat we were greeted by a “taxi” driver with a sign for our bungalows. He loaded our stuff into a large metal wheel-barrow like thing as well as one other persons stuff and a washing machine. He starts pushing this through town and through his broken English we’re told he’s bringing us to a truck. After about fifteen minutes of walking through town while this poor guy struggles to push this 300 pound load in 90 degree weather, we get to a large hill and Dylan helps him push it up to the truck. The small truck can barely fit everything plus us into it and we start to go up the hill backwards as we get up speed we begin to roll forward but we made it up. Our bungalows were
set in a hill with a view through the trees of the ocean. Pretty basic places with a bug net to keep the spiders away from Dylan (more likely for mosquitoes but this put Dylan at peace of mind). We spent the first day on the white sand beach full of tourists all around our age. The water isn’t quite as refreshing as you’d want on a 90 degree day, it’s probably in the 80s but it was still absolutely beautiful.

Dylan's fear of the large spider the size of my hand in our bathroom made for a move to Marine House, a guesthouse in the center of town. After moving in yesterday we went up to the viewpoint. Although it was overcast yesterday, it was still pretty hot hiking up there. The viewpoint was absolutely beautiful and well worth the effort. The pictures looking down on Ko Phi Phi are all from the viewpoint. Today has been
the first day we’ve actually felt like it’s monsoon season. It’s been raining all day with sudden showers that are like nothing I’ve ever seen. We were thinking about signing up for snorkeling today, today would not have been the day for it.

Ko Phi Phi really appeals to people around our age it’s full of bars and plenty of people handing out fliers or trying to sell you on a scuba or snorkeling trip; this is probably how people get their visa’s to stick around Ko Phi Phi. The town is small and although my sense of direction is lacking after a few days here I can manage my way around on my own. It’s full of small shops, restaurants, bars, day trips from the island, and plenty of internet cafes. There’s no “motorbikes” instead everyone walks or bikes around. The bikers and plenty of the wheelbarrow-taxis do their best to make you feel you’re in a city by constantly saying “bip, bip” to let you know to get over to the side of the path. At night the town becomes full of loud music and there’s even a bar with a kickboxing ring, if you box someone you get free drinks. The beaches are lined with BBQs and fire throwers. It’s a place I can see why people get easily sucked into it, it’s so laid back and beautiful. Tomorrow vacation comes to an end. We leave for Rawai tomorrow to meet up with our group to start our TESOL course. We look forward to meeting everyone and finding out more about what we’ll be doing. No luck keeping this short but we’ll try and write more often so they’re not so long.

Ko Phi Phi

We got to Ko Phi Phi today, an island a couple hours from Phuket Town. As the ferry made it closer to Ko Phi Phi there were jutting islands of limestone out of the ocean. We'll let you know more in the next couple days but it's almost midnight here and they close so thought I'd just let you know where we are. Send this blog onto anyone you think who would be interested.

Big Buddha of Phuket

You can see the people working on the scaffolding, this thing was HUUUGE