(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?
No comments:
Post a Comment