Quiet Birthday and travel plans

(just so its clear i do not dress like this in the classroom and the thing on the side of my head is a microphone)

I had a relatively quiet birthday recently in Li, saving the craziness for Chiang Mai at the weekend. Basically the day panned out as any other Tuesday. I only have two classes and a giant gap in between them. So science class rolls around towards the end of the day and i get a surprise. The class barrel in late with big grins on their faces, not usually what happens for science. Then at the back of the troop are two of the students carrying a cake with a couple of candles on it. The kids belt out 'Happy Birthday' and present me with a handmade card signed by most of them and a couple of gifts. But im doing the whole scenario an injustice. The cake had a picture on it, a picture that one of the kids (Googig) had drawn and got the bakery to create on the top of the cake. It was a picture of yours truly and i was a bit taken aback at the work they had put into the whole thing from the cake to the card and even going and getting me gifts. It was all very cute. So i rewarded their kindness by cutting science class short and giving them the rest of the afternoon off.

Besides this little event its been fairly quiet. I have a heap of work to get through this month between regular teaching, end of year exams to write, an entrance exam for next year's batch to come up with, some projects to dream up and an English camp on the way its been a bit hectic. So instead of boring you with my complaints about that i thought id go through what im doing after my little stint as a teacher. Ive been asked a few times by a few different people what my travel plans so hopefully this blog will stop me repeating myself constantly. Come the 31st March i finish my contract with the school and head off on my travels officially. I start with a few weeks in the North of Thailand in order to see Chiang Rai, Pai and Doi Inthanon among other things. I also want to be in Chiang Mai for Songkran (Thai New Year). This occurs over 3 days around the 13-15th April and is celebrated by people splashing water at others. This has developed into a 3 day pitched water fight on the streets of Chiang Mai so should be quite the experience. After this craziness i head for the border in order to cross over to Laos. From here i will travel south to the capital Vientiane taking in a few places along the way. From here i will head for Hanoi in Vietnam. Then i will go down the coast and arrive in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). From here i will go across the border and into Cambodia, head west through that country and end up in South Thailand. Here i will have a few weeks to wind up my South East Asia adventure before taking a flight to Australia. So between the 16th April and the 18th June i aim to see as much of SE Asia as i can. Im looking at about 2 weeks in Laos, 3 in Vietnam, 2 in Cambodia and 3 in Thailand at the end. This gives me a week spare to spend as i wish between the lot of them and will probably be set aside as travel days in between everything. I have a few places in mind on that journey but i dont want to tie myself down to a strict itinerary.

The next stop after that is Australia where i have about 2 months to take in the East Coast and Melbourne which are my main targets though im not sure how that will work out just yet. Im sure between now and mid June i will have plenty of time to mull it over though. Then after that i have a month in New Zealand where i have a month. I figure NZ will sort itself out as i have to travel from the north to the south over the month anyway in order to catch my flight home. On that note my flight will leave Queenstown, New Zealand bound for Sydney where i change to a flight to London at which point i will embark on my final leg back to Dublin at some stage on the 19th September (i think). So I will arrive back in Eire penniless, tired and without much clue what to do with myself at that point. Maybe i will end up back in Thailand for another go at teaching, they are trying every trick in the book to guilt me into coming back. They even have some of the parents of the kids asking me to come back now. Maybe i will end up teaching somewhere else or god forbid even find a job in Ireland! Anyway thats something to worry about in September, plenty of time to think about it on the long flight home!

Mai pen rai, right?

Tigers and an Irish invasion

Recently i met up with two friends from Maynooth, Rob and Linda, who are on an adventure of their own touring the countries of South East Asia. The route they took through Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos is what i want to do just in reverse. On this particular weekend in Chiang Mai it also happened to be the flower festival which meant a few of my teacher buddies would be up for a visit as well. All this boded well for a good weekend in the capital of the north! However when i got to CM on the Saturday morning (early start as per fricking usual) i was cursing the festival as it took me around 3 times as long to get in to where i wanted to go from the bus station. Thailand love their parades and this one was big, it had giant floats made of flowers and everything. Of course, no parade in thailand is complete without its marching band component. This had at least one and some of the songs the bang out are good. There is nothing like listening to a marching brass band blasting out a rendition of 'Smoke on the Water' swiftly followed by 'The Flinstones'. Epic stuff i can tell you!

Anyway i get as far as my hostel, dump some gear and then head to the Tha Pae gate where i had arranged to meet Rob and Linda at a specific time. This would be done without the modern wonder of a mobile phone as neither of them had one that was working in Thailand. At this point i bumped into four of the gang teaching over here including the other two irish people on the program. When Rob and Linda showed up we irish were in the majority for my first time since landing in this country. So i brought this lot to a local place where i'd had some good hangover food the occasional sunday. The guy who runs it is real nice and recognises me each time i go back. He had a big smile on his face when he saw me with a big group too. He got chatting and after finding out i was a teacher and would be finishing up in this part of the world soon he offered me a free meal before i jet off, SCORE! So buoyed by this piece of news i suggested we all head to something in CM i had been curious about for a while but not got around to visiting, The Tiger Kingdom. We hailed a songthaew and bundled in and arrived at our destination an hour later. I didnt realise it was quite so far out of town.......

Now Tiger Kingdom is a small park with large enclosures of tigers (they have a new one with lions as well now) and the draw is that you can get into the enclosure and get up close and personal with these oversized kitties. You choose whether you want to get in with the big ones or the little ones or splash out and go for both. Our group kind of split down the middle with some choosing the big guys and some choosing the little ones. I spent around 10EUR to get into a cage with 3 tigers and spend 25 minutes with them. I chose the little ones who turned out to be the size of your average dog. They are just tame cats really and you get to watch them play and get your pic taken with them. Our trainer was all for us lying down beside them and putting our heads on their stomachs. He also told us they eat tourists and that it was nearly dinnertime. We all laughed (a bit nervously) and he said it was actually chickens that they were fed. They also sleep 18 hours a day. Easy life huh? When they get over about 2 years old they are sent off to the zoo just in case their wilder instincts start to come through and they do actually eat some tourists or trainers. Cant be too safe!
After our tiger trip we arranged to meet up for dinner and have a few drinks. A good itialian later we are hitting the bars. Our numbers increased but the Irish still stayed in the majority. We had a great time watching the incomprehension on the americans faces when we talked to each other, they just couldnt keep up with how fast us irish talk. It was nice to let loose as i speak pretty slowly almost every day of the week when im talking to thai people. It was a pretty good night and it ended in Fabrique again. The next day i woke up with a less than comfortable hangover but was happy nonetheless. I'd had a good day and night and had got some travel tips for when i finish my attempt at this teaching lark and go bumming round the world for 6 months. What more can a guy ask?

Hot Springs, Snow and Pandas.

We recently went on a school trip to Chiang Mai taking in some Hot Springs and the Zoo. This involved leaving Li at 6am on a Thursday morning so i was a bit cranky when meeting up with everyone at the school gates. Anyway we managed to round up the students and bundle them onto the buses in order to drive them to the hot springs. These are just north of the city of Chiang Mai and it took us the guts of 3 hours to get there from our little town. The kids were fairly quiet at this hour so it was a fairly easy trip. Once we got there we surprised the kids with a worksheet they had to fill in during the stay at the springs. Basically it was a series of science based questions linked to one of my previous classes (we had done geothermal energy). They were thrilled with this of course ("TEACHER! Answers....?" "Yeah i want the answers, well done on working that out"). So we stay at this place for the next 2 hours which consists of some geysers, a park with a canal (of hot spring water)running through it and a place to boil some eggs. There were a few places selling these eggs so the kids thought this was great, dunked their baskets in the water left them there for a while and then ate the eggs after they took them out. I spent some of the time wandering around and some of the time soaking my feet in the canal. the kids were doing the same nearby and when i took my feet out of the water to cool them a bit (the water was bloody hot!)they were amazed that my pasty white skin had now turned pink. Hilarious im sure you'll agree :).

Anyway after this we hopped back on our bus and went to the zoo and had a few hours here. The kids had all been here before so it wasnt that new to them but its a big place and there are a good variety of attractions and activities, some of which the kids hadnt done...... like the snowdome. Now this isnt quite as wonderful as it sounds. It was a pretty small room with an ice slide and artificial snow. It was good fun but i was expecting something a bit bigger if im honest. But the kids loved it, asking me was it like home to which i said yes, sure dont we have -7 all the time and snow blowing about the place. They nearly died in this cold but i just laughed and said it wasnt all that chilly. We had all gotten big ski jackets going into the room so i was actually kind of warm. We got a group photo at the end which consists of 20 odd thai kids, 2 Filipinos and me. I look like a ghost at the side of the pic. After this we walk back outside into the 20+ heat and head for the aquarium. This was ok, they had some pretty coral fish there but nothing too big so it was also not as good as i thought it might be. Next we hit the pandas who are sleeping away the day. I should explain that the thais are nuts about these pandas. They are on a loan from China and had a baby panda here in Chiang Mai recently which is a big deal so its now the emblem of Chiang Mai really. Anyway they were asleep and the baby was in the back so we didnt get to see it but it was cool to see an animal like that up close that could go extinct in my lifetime.


After the zoo we head for Big C (the highlight of the day for the kids) which is a big department store where the kids buy a heap of junk food. I was slightly more boring and did a bit of grocery shopping, picking up a few things they dont have in my local shop. Now its late in the evening when we depart for home so i guess everyone is pretty knackered and will pass out on the bus right? Wrong! Having spent most of the day on their feet walking around but replenished now by sugar the kids start singing and dancing to thai/korean pop music that the driver is blaring out for them. Fricking nutters the lot of them. This carried on for about two hours accompanied by lots of cameras flashing. I took the attitude that if you cant beat them join them so i went down the bus and tried to talk to some of them and getting caught in a million pictures. It was a good laugh and the kids were having fun so it wasnt doing any harm. Anyway as we got closer to home a few of the kids got dropped off and the party calmed down. We got back to Li around 8pm with everyone pretty tired at this stage. I devoured a bowl of noodles and collapsed into bed, knowing i had work the next day.


Pictures: 1. A sign warning not to touch the 100 degree water.
2. Googig, Namwan, Joy and Bam-Bam.
3. A ray hanging from the ceiling in festive mood.
4. Panda!
5. Some of the kids partying on the bus.

Work, Work and more Work

It has been a while since my last post and this is largely down to (as the title suggests) work. Ive been kept pretty busy since my surprise 2 days off with both Matayom 3 and 6 getting ready for their National tests. Its basically something like the Junior and Leaving Cert i think. Anyway i had to prep M3 for the English part of their NT during the week and then at the weekend as well so was kept occupied with that. At least i was told i was going to be on duty that weekend. I had been told all week that the foreign teachers would be needed to work so i was all set for a working weekend. That was until friday at 4pm when i was told that i wasnt actually on to help. At this point i'd already made up my mind that i was staying in Li and i had nothing else to do so i decided to come to work anyway on Saturday. So up i got at the regular school time and starting helping out the on duty teachers with giving out the answers to a sample test. Basically they will have a multiple choice exam based mostly on converstaions so it was a case of picking out the least wrong answer from the 4 provided. This was a bit trickier than it sounds for some of the questions as the person who wrote the exam clearly didnt have a very strong grasp of English. The grammar was a bit all over the place and for a few questions i started by saying that none of the answers were correct but one was less wrong than the others.

So i did 2 classes in the morning and then for the afternoon i was asked to sit down with my coordinator/boss to run through the M6 version. I should point out that these tests dont come with an answer key, which is a pretty ridiculous idea but something you gotta deal with. Hence why the foreign teachers are enlisted to help out with the preparations, since the thai teachers teaching english arent too sure of the answers themselves. This is especially true for the M6 version which is very grammar heavy and deals with complicated situations and throws in some scientific terms for good measure. Now as far as grammar goes with me i know right from wrong but having to explain why this is right and that is wrong is not my strongest point. I had to explain most sentences and phrases and my boss was a bit flummoxed by some of my answers. And she is the one who gets the highest score from the school in the tests the teachers have to take so i cant imagine what the others would do. This was a particularly draining way to spend two hours but i muddled my way through the test and managed fairly plausible explanations for nearly all the questions. After a hard day's work i went home and relaxed for the evening with the intention of doing nothing that required brainpower the next day.

Unfortunately i forgot that i had to rewrite my Midterm tests as some students failed. They arent allowed to do that so im supposed to retest them until they all pass. Im probably not really supposed to change the exam but if i dont then they will figure out the pattern of answers and just put that in rather than looking at the questions. I had one boy do this for Math even though i told him i had changed the questions and answers. They are too lazy to study and have no incentive to so not a whole lot i can do. Anyway on top of that this week we are going to the zoo come Thursday in Chiang Mai on a field trip and then im heading back up on Sunday to meet Linda and Rob who have been travelling along the route im hoping to take after i finish in the school. So some fun after the recent drudgery!