Teaching in Thailand

04:04 am - Photos Thailand 13

Christmas Tree at Central World	The King with a Christmas Tree
Hill Tribe Children	Hill Tribe Dance Performance
Hill Tribe Dance Performance	Orchids
Giraffes at the Dusit Zoo	Bear at the Dusit Zoo
Orangutan at the Dusit Zoo	New Year's Party at School- Primary 3
New Year's Band	Me and Ashley on New Year's Eve

07:36 am - Photos Thailand 12

Me and Pond making Kratongs	Our Kratongs
Our luminary	Monkey Festival in Lopburi
Monkey Festival in Lopburi	Kaeng Krachen
Kaeng Krachen	Kaeng Krachen
Christmas Fair at Saint Gabriel's	Christmas Fair at Saint Gabriel's
Christmas Fair at Saint Gabriel's	Me shooting fireworks

09:44 am - Thailand 11/15/07

11/15/07

As you can see from the many photos, I had a lot of fun over midyear break, and I have many interesting stories to share. But first I will explain the worst part of vacation, which involved my bout with Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever! In all likelihood you never heard of this virus before because I myself did not hear about it until the doctor told me I had it two weeks ago.

I contracted Dengue Fever from a stupid mosquito bite I got when I was on the southern islands of Thailand, and that little bite caused by far in the most pain I was ever in in my whole entire life. I wound up being in the hospital for seven days. I just got back from the hospital one week ago, but I was supposed to rest last week, so I did not wind up retuning to work until this past Monday.

I am relieved to say that I don’t feel the pain anymore, but I can try to describe what it was like when I was infected with the virus. I think I started to feel the symptoms my last day on the lower islands of Thailand when I was just really tired, and I actually just slept in the hotel the whole day, which is very unusual for me to do when on vacation because normally I am the last person to lay around in a hotel room. However, I figured my body was probably just overwhelmed from traveling for one month straight and I needed rest. So the next day we headed back up to Bangkok (and it took us 22 hours to get back here because we took this really cheap deal and wound up having to take like 5 different vans, 2 ferries, 1 songtow, 1 tuk-tuk, and 1 bus to get back here… but that is a whole different story in it of itself).

So anyway we got back to Bangkok, and I was trying to get my life back into order and prepare for the new school semester. I was just cleaning my room, and then all of a sudden I felt overwhelmingly exhausted, like someone came out of nowhere and shot me with a giant tranquilizer. So I just laid down, and I wound up having a really bad fever and I was drenched in sweat even though I had my air-conditioner on, so I knew things were not normal.

And of course I couldn’t sleep because my head hurt so much- like it felt like someone dropped a boulder on my skull. So I kept waking up every hour, and I kept showering to cool off but by the time I got back into bed I would be sweating again. I must have been ridiculously dehydrated because in the middle of the night I started hallucinating, and it was really weird because I wasn’t sleeping but I wasn’t awake either. I kept opening my curtains because bizarrely enough I was trying to find the river to search for a baby that accidentally drowned fifteen years ago. I was really confused at the time because there isn’t even a river outside of my window, but now I realize the idea of searching for this dead baby came from the book that I was/am reading Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald- which is good but ridiculously long so it is hard to maintain interest. But anyway, at the time I was almost positive I was going insane, and I remember being shocked by the fine line between sanity and insanity and was wondering what pushed me over the edge.

Anyway, after being almost positive that I lost my mind, I took a taxi to the hospital the first thing in the morning, and I was in just really bad shape there but they took care of me. They did lots of different tests and put me on IVs, and by the end of my first day I was able to understand what was going on around me, but I was just in a lot of pain.

Dengue Fever has the nickname “Break Bone Fever,” and I completely understand where that name comes from. Like my body basically felt like someone ripped all of my muscles into tiny pieces and then tied them into knots- especially in my back and legs. But on the positive side, each night a nurse gave me a massage before I went to sleep, and that was basically the highlight of my stay in the hospital.

I wound up having a fever of about 102 my first five days in the hospital, and I was constantly drenched in sweat even though I wasn’t even moving, and in the middle of the night I kept waking up shivering because my sheets were soaking wet from sweating so much, and it was just a very unpleasant experience to say the least. And I wasn’t even allowed to walk around because I was dizzy, and if I fell it was likely that I would have hemorrhaged (hence the name Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever), so I had to use a wheelchair to go anywhere which was kind of awkward.

And it was really frustrating because there isn’t even a cure for Dengue Fever; we were basically just waiting for my body to fight off the virus, but the virus was really strong and my white blood cell count and platelet count kept on decreasing, and then eventually I had red spots all over my arms and it felt really itchy. So the doctors and nurses kept telling me to eat as much as possible, but that was difficult because first of all my mouth and throat were all scratched up so it hurt to swallow, and second of all I didn’t have an appetite, and third of all they kept on giving me meat (or at least what I thought was meat) even though I kept explaining that I was a vegetarian.

And at some points the language barrier was frustrating because they messed up a few times, and I tried to explain it them, but they didn’t understand me at all even though I had my little Thai-English dictionary to help me. I know that at least one of the blood tests they gave me one morning was for a different patient because there was someone else’s name on the tubes.

And for at least one hour I was on the wrong IV, and I knew it was the wrong one because the solution in mine was yellow and when it ran out they gave me a new one, but the solution was clear, so I was trying to explain that the solution was supposed to be yellow like the yellow Gatorade I was drinking, but they had no idea what I was talking about and probably thought I was asking them to put Gatorade in my IV. And then my friends came to see me, and they were confused as to why my IV bag had the name of the other patient in my room, and they pointed that out to the hospital staff, so a nurse just came in with a marker and crossed out the other patient’s name and wrote my name, and that didn’t really help at all, but I guess she thought that fixed the problem. But then one of my Thai friends came to see me, and he was able to communicate with the hospital staff, and then they finally realized that I was in fact literally on the wrong IV, so they switched it and gave me one that had a yellow solution like I was asking for the whole time.

And the most annoying part of my hospital stay was at some point when I was sleeping somebody burned my arm (and it wasn’t even the arm my IV was in!), and I have no idea how or why they did it. It probably sounds like I am crazy, but one of the days I woke up and my arm had four different cuts on it that were really deep and were covered in a bandage. So I don’t know what they did to me when I was sleeping or why they did it, but it looks and feels like someone used my arm as an ashtray to put out cigarettes. I showed the cuts to the doctor in the morning, and he didn’t even know what happened, but he gave me a cream to apply to the scabs.

So all in all, I don’t think I stayed at a very good hospital, but my insurance through school is supposed to cover all of the expenses. But at the time I had to pay for everything with my own money, and I literally took all of the money I had out of the bank to pay the bill but I wound up being $3 short, so they just let me have a $3 discount, and one of the nurses was nice enough to give me $1 to catch a bus home. So I am grateful for their generosity, and right now my boss is letting me borrow money from her until the school pays me back for my medical expenses, which will probably take a very long time.

So that was definitely the most expensive mosquito bite I ever received. Oh yeah, and I left this part out of the story, but I was the person who was the most careful about protecting myself from insect bites throughout our travels. I went through two bottles of bug spray over the vacation (and some of my friends didn’t even bring any insect repellant), and I was the one person who was constantly applying it whenever I went outside and encouraging everyone else to do the same, and of course I am the only one who got sick from a mosquito bite.

Well, I have to go to class now, but don’t worry- my next posting will be about happier experiences.

Sincerely,
Amanda

01:52 pm - Photos Thailand 11

Koh Lanta Beach	Railay Beach
Me and Carrie on Koh Phi Phi	Baby Monkeys on Monkey Island
Tsunami Evacuation Route	Me on Bamboo Island
Bamboo Island	Monkeys on Monkey Island
Me Snorkeling in Koh Phi Phi	Me with my Choux Creme Pastry
Sunset on Railay Beach	Sunset on Railay Beach

05:12 pm - Photos Thailand 10

Mae Hong Son Night Market on the Lake	People from the Akha Hill Tribe
Chiang Mai Mountains	Me and Chi in the Pai River
Chiang Mai Night Market	Chiang Mai Night Market
Me Riding an Elephant	Houses in Pai
Koh Phi Phi Island	Koh Phi Phi Island
Me and Carrie Rock Climbing in Railay	Me Rock Climbing in Railay

11:14 am - Photos Thailand 9

Chi, Liz, Mike, Sheena, and Me White Water Rafting	Me, Carrie, and Liz getting facials at the hot springs
Chi, Liz, Me, and Carrie in a Waterfall	Me, Carrie, and Sheena White Water Rafting
Me Riding an Elephant in Chiang Mai	Woman from the Lisu Hill Tribe
Children Perfoming Traditional Dances in Chiang Mai	Waterfall in Chiang Mai
Mountains in Chiang Mai	Chiang Mai Jungle
Monks in Chiang Mai	Monk in Chiang Mai

01:04 pm - Photos Thailand 8

Millipede in Khao Yai	Me and Ashley Hiking in Khao Yai
Scorpion in Khao Yai	Thousands of Bats Hunting in Khao Yai
Monkey in Khao Yai	Hornbills in Khao Yai
Malaysian Poisonous Pit Viper in Khao Yai	My Student at Grade 2 Camp
Vineyard in Saraburi	My Students at Grade 2 Camp
Ashley, Bobo, Me, Tommy, and Leda

11:52 am - Photos Thailand 7

Me at Mambo Cabaret	Mambo Cabaret Drag Show
Mambo Cabaret Drag Show	Buffalo Horns- My Students Grade 3
Ashley, Me, Alex and Alyssa in Hua Hin	Thailand Open Tennis Match
My Student at Grade 2 Camp	Me with my Students at Grade 2 Camp
My Students at Grade 2 Camp	Monk Ringing the 5:00 Bell in Khao Yai
Buddha Statue in a Cave in Khao Yai	Me at the Grand Palace

12:13 pm - Thailand 9/25/07

9/25/07

Things have become pretty normal for me here; I almost feel like this is my home (as opposed to a random, temporary residence). I guess that makes sense because I have been here for more than three months already, so I feel like I am settled in by now. Now I have posters all around my room (three of the posters are of King Bhumibol), and I have drawings students made of me (one of which I am an alien and in another one I have a layer of reptile scales) on my desk.

I feel comfortable here in this part of Bangkok, and I think it is a really cute neighborhood, and by now I know where a lot of things are. For example, my skirt had a hole in it, so I went to this lady around the block who has a sowing machine in front of her house, and she fixed my skirt for 10 baht. And there are many other specialized workers all over the streets. Like there is this one guy at the end of the block who has a stand during the day and he fixes watches, and there is a guy across the street who has a stand during the day and he repairs shoes- and there is even a man who has a stand a few blocks down who fixes zippers on backpacks all day long.

And I like the feeling of knowing different people around here because it makes Bangkok feel more like a close-knit community (as opposed to an overwhelming, impersonal city). There are different vendors and restaurants where I usually buy food and they always know what I want without me saying anything because I go so often. Like at Tommy’s the waitress knows that when I come in, I order spaghetti with tomato sauce and tofu, and a street vendor around the block knows that I always get rice with tofu and soy sauce.

I think Bangkok is an interesting paradox because there are elements of traditional Thailand, but at the same time there are aspects of a modern, global city. Like there is a McDonalds across the street, but I still haven’t eaten there in an attempt to protest the imperialist forces of the global economy. There is also a 7-Eleven on every other block, and I must admit I go there quite often, so my protesting McDonalds is somewhat hypocritical, but 7-Eleven has a lot of things that I use often such as phone cards and bread, so I feel like going there is more justifiable. But all in all, I try to buy things from the local vendors whenever I am able to because it is cheaper and does a better job of helping the local economy.

I think it is interesting how people have all different types of businesses in their houses. I guess people do whatever they can to make money, which makes sense. Many families live upstairs and have a restaurant or small store downstairs. One restaurant around the block has an ice crushing machine, so throughout the day they put giant blocks of ice through this machine that makes a lot of noise while it crushes the ice, and then they sell the bags of ice to local food vendors. And the travel agent that we go to has an interesting business because in the front of the store he makes business deals as a travel agent and then in the back of the store there is a barbershop. Oh yeah and there are poles have swirling colors around them outside of every hair salon here (like the kind you see once in a while in the U.S. and always see in 1950s movies).

And here are some brief explanations of some of my photos. Burmese soldiers decapitated Buddha statues in Ayutthia during a war when Burma was trying to take over Thailand. I think it is pretty sad that the Burmese desecrated Thai religious statues. My friend made a helpful analogy when she said that cutting the heads off of the Buddha statues would be like people going into Christian churches in the U.S. and cutting off the heads of Jesus statues; that would certainly cause a lot of controversy.

And Cabbages and Condoms is a restaurant in Bangkok that promotes family planning. Throughout the restaurant there are many items humorously decorated with condoms and birth control pills (such as mannequins, pocketbooks, boots, lampshades, ect.). There is also a lot of serious information around the restaurant such as posters that give information about HIV protection and sexually transmitted diseases. I am not sure if I remember this correctly, but I think a portion of the restaurant’s profits goes to helping people who have HIV receive medical treatment. And instead of getting a mint at the end of your meal, you are given a condom, which can be useful.

Well that’s all the time I have for now. Talk to many of you soon.

Sincerely,
Amanda

08:04 am - Photos Thailand 6

Headless Buddhas in Ayutthaya	Sala Thai (Spirit House)
Garden in Cha-am	Me with a new friend
Parade outside my window	Wat Phra Kaew
Abhisek Dusit Throne Hall	Abhisek Dusit Museum
My Student- Grade 2	Me with an elephant
Hua Hin Beach	Me with my student- Grade 3

01:28 pm - Thailand 9/13/07

9/13/07

How would you describe the color of the sun? I always would have said yellow or maybe yellowish orange without even thinking- however, kids in Thailand would say the sun is red and will always draw a red sun in their pictures. Interesting… huh? So what color is the sun really?- Do we just think we see the color our culture tells us to see? I’m not sure, but every now and then I look up at the sun, and I still think I am seeing the color yellow or maybe whitish-yellow.

I really enjoy teaching- working with the students is my favorite part of being here in Thailand. I feel like they are my own children. Oh yeah, and incidentally “I.E. month” (that went on for 10 weeks) ended 2 weeks ago, so I am back with my regular second and third graders again, but the semester is ending at the end of this month and then we are going to have the month of October off before the next semester begins, so I will have some time to travel!

I started tutoring a young man named Montri who is very good at English. He is a blind student who is in tenth grade, and he inspires me. I worked with him during I.E. week for tenth graders when I taught at the art station. When he was at my station I was talking with him, and he said he wanted to draw a soccer stadium, so he was holding a pencil and I put my hand over his and I led the pencil movements and explained what each stroke was, so we drew a stadium together (albeit not the most beautiful stadium ever drawn). When we finished I basically invited myself to tutor him, so now we meet once a week after school, and it is probably my favorite part of the week.

Working one on one with Montri is such a pleasure because he is always so eager to learn and is so grateful for me working with him, and it is such a contrast from working with my second and third graders because they are adorable but a lot of times they have way too much energy, and they don’t focus, so I need to try to trick them into learning by having competitions and giving out stickers and giving rows stars. But with Montri, there aren’t any tricks involved- it is just me and him working together and we both enjoy it.

And Montri has taught me so much. For example, I didn’t understand how he was able to read his watch, and he showed me how the glass covering on his watch lifts up and underneath the numbers are in brail and he can gently slide his fingers over the face of the watch to tell the time. And he showed me how he writes in Braille- he has a plastic case, which kind of has a grid on it, and it is a little bigger than the pencil cases of the younger students. And he clamps a piece of paper into the plastic case and places his fingers on the grid and uses a pencil-type thing to punch holes in each space. I know I am not being clear, but I don’t know a better way to describe it. And one time I walked Montri to the bus stop, which is a few blocks away, and walking with him was so amazing. As we were walking, he was the one telling me when we needed to turn and when we needed to go straight because I didn’t know exactly where we were going. He held onto my arm the whole time and I walked with him, and I told him each time we were crossing a street and where the sidewalk was broken and when there were curbs (but he probably would have known without me saying anything). And we got to the bus stop fine even though the streets were so crowded and it was rush hour and so many things were going on the sidewalks. I am just completely amazed by how strong and brave he is.

Well, I have to go to class now and do the whole teaching thing. Sorry it has been so long since my last written posting, I need to get back into the habit of writing regularly.

Talk to you soon.
Sincerely,
Amanda

10:31 am - Photos Thailand 5

Me and Ashley at the top of Wat Arun	Shark at Siam Aquarium
My Students- Grade 2	My Student- Grade 3
The Grand Palace	The Grand Palace
Wat Phra Kaew	Wat Phra Kaew
Students Dance Performance	My Students- Grade 2
Priests at the New Building Ceremony	Queen's Sirikit's Birthday Ceremony

06:48 am - Photos Thailand 4

My students- Grade 9	My students- Grade 9
Marukhathaiyawan Palace	Ancient Ruins in Ayutthaya
Buddha in Ayutthaya	My student- Grade 2
Elephant walking across a tightrope	Ko Chang Beach
Mannequin at Cabbages and Condoms Resturant	Mannequin at Cabbages and Condoms Resturant
Carrie and Me at Ko Chang	Chao Phraya River

01:13 pm - Photos Thailand 3

Me and Por at Marukhathaiyawan Palace	Mural of the King with students
Globalization	My students- Grade 7 at soccer game
My students- Grade 8 at basketball game	Our group of American teachers with students
Ashley, Me, Carrie, and Liz at Ko Chang	My students- Grade 7 at soccer game
The River Kwai	Mural in Bangkok
Crocodile Wrestling	Elephant riding a tricycle

05:46 pm - Thailand 8/15/07

The school I teach at is located in downtown Bangkok and this area isn’t really a place for tourists. In fact, for the most part we are the only foreigners in this section of the city. There is a small tourist area in Bangkok- which is mostly located on Koh San Road (which by the way is not at all representative of what most of Bangkok is like and that small part of the city which caters to tourists winds up giving all of Bangkok a bad reputation), but Koh San Road is a few miles away- which by bus it takes about half an hour to get there.

But anyway, for the most part our small group of fifteen English teachers from America is somewhat isolated from other people in this giant city on a day-to-day basis. Outside of the school, most people here do not know English- and if they do, they generally only know a little bit, and at our regular speaking pace we talk too quickly for other people to understand us. So usually we talk to one another and most people don’t understand what we are saying (or at least we don’t think other people understand us), and we don’t understand what people around us are saying either, so it is kind of like we are living in our own little world in the middle of this giant city. This pattern became so normal that I didn’t even think about it until we went to Koh Chang Island three weeks ago, and there were some American and European tourists there who were speaking English and we were able to overhear what other people were saying, and it was such a bizarre feeling because we understood what was going on around us. My friend, who studied in Thailand for a semester his junior year, said that oddly enough being able to understand what other people were saying all around him was the hardest thing to adjust to when he got back to America.

Koh Chang is the second largest island off the coast of Thailand, and it is about a six hour bus ride from Bangkok. The island sits on the Gulf of Thailand, and the saltwater is very warm and in the sunlight it was a pretty shade of turquoise. Most of the sand was white and there were some colorful shells along the coast. The water was mostly calm, but there were some small waves during high tide. There were not any biting fish- which made swimming very pleasant, but my one friends did get stung by several jellyfish (but I was happy that I didn’t see any).

We mostly relaxed on the beach and read on the sand and swam in the water. One day I went for a run along the shore, and we played a few games of frisbee in the water. It was a pleasant break from the hustle and bustle and pollution in Bangkok. Oh yeah, and at Koh Chang one night when we were at a restaurant we saw fire-throwers, and their performance was really pretty at night. The men were really talented (and muscular).

At the beach, I read the book Thailights by William Wormsley- I liked it in the beginning, but I was somewhat disappointed with it when I finished, and I wouldn’t recommend it to other people. Wormsley won a Fulbright scholarship for anthropology to perform research and teach classes at a university in Thailand for one year, and he wrote about his experiences in Thailand in this book. Most of his research was about female sex workers in Bangkok, and I felt like he wrote it in a sexist way because he made it seem like white men were justified in finding prostitutes here because the poor Western men are only here with Thai prostitutes to seek respite from the “post-feminist West” where women hurt male egos with their attempt to be equal, so that annoyed me (to say the least).

Well, I guess I’ll finish more of my tales from Thailand later. (I keep a never-ending list of things I want to write about for livejournal saved on my computer). I’m really hungry now, so I am going to eat dinner (at Tommy’s).

Keep in touch.

Sincerely,
Amanda

03:28 pm - Thailand 8/4/07

8/4/2007

So- it is really difficult to ride motorcycles even though the Thais make it look so simple. Three weekends ago a group of us traveled to Kanchanaburi, which is a town that is about a four-hour bus ride from Bangkok. Once we were in Kanchanaburi, we rented motorcycles to travel from our hotel to Erawan Falls, which was about 70 kilometers away. Erawan Falls is a beautiful National Park, which has seven tiers of waterfalls.

Getting to and from the waterfalls wound up being quite an adventure. Two people in our group crashed their motorbikes within the first five minutes of getting them. It is really hard to just jump on one and know how to ride because driving is somewhat counterintuitive- for example when we want to stop, our instinctual reaction is to pull back on the handlebars, but pulling back makes the bike go faster, so quickly stopping becomes quite confusing- especially when it is in an emergency situation. And here people drive on the left side of the road, which as Americans we are not accustomed to. And furthermore, the roadways are a lot different here- they don’t really make sense to me because there will be like five lanes of traffic going in one direction and then one lane on the end going in the opposite direction. When cars are going it is easy to see that one lane of traffic is going in the opposite direction but when you are busy thinking about other things, it is easy to forget this important detail.

I am pretty sure that in Thailand you need a license to ride a motorbike, but that law isn’t enforced outside of Bangkok. One of my friends crashed straight into a cactus, which was very unfortunate but quite surprising because it was one of the only cacti that we have seen in Thailand! My friend got a little scraped up and actually had a piece of cactus stuck in his face that he didn’t find until he showered that night- but he is ok, and now it is a somewhat funny story.

I had so much fun riding the motorbike once I got the hang of it, and I envisioned myself getting a motorcycle to travel across the whole United States. However, that was a very short-lived fantasy because I wound up falling off my bike on our way back from the falls. It was my fault because I was going around a sharp turn too quickly and the road was a little bit slick because it was raining earlier in the day, so my bike wound up skidding out and I crashed into the pavement going about twenty miles per hour. I had the wind knocked out of me, and at the time I felt like the pavement beat me up. I had huge bruises from my knees to my thighs, and I had scrapes and bruises on my right shoulder to my elbow. But my body has recovered, and now I only have a scar on my right elbow and a bump on my left knee that won’t go away (although it does seem to be getting smaller).

It was somewhat scary (to say the least) driving back the rest of the way after falling, and I was especially intimidated by the curves in the road, and of course on the way back it seemed like the whole ride was a bunch of turns. But I made it back the rest of the way safely, and I didn’t rent a motorbike again the next day. I planned on staying away from motorbikes for a while, but I actually wound up taking a motorcycle taxi with my friends about a week later because we bought tickets to a movie that was playing in Bangkok’s International Film Festival. The movie started an hour after school ended, and we never would have gotten there on time because of the traffic if we didn’t take motorcycle taxis, so I guess now I am somewhat over my fear of riding on them.

Anyway, Erawan Falls was beautiful and there were many people (mostly Thais) who were hiking and swimming in the park. The water was a pretty turquoise color and there were tons of fish swimming in it, but I didn’t like the fish because they swim in giant schools and bite people in the water! The fish are relatively small and their bites aren’t dangerous- it mostly feels like large insect bites, but nonetheless they were still mildly irritating. Afterwards, one of the Thai teachers told me that the fish bite people to protect their territory (as opposed to biting us because they want to eat us), so I guess I can respect that. It really was a lot of fun climbing and swimming. One of the tiers of the waterfalls had two giant smooth stones that had water cascading down them, and there was a somewhat large pool of water at the bottom. We saw people climb up the rocks and then sit on the top and slide down, so we decided to do the same, and that was a lot of fun. It seemed like a water-ride made by nature.

By the time we reached the forth tier of the waterfalls, I saw a small white sign that was not more than twelve inches wide and six inches long that said “Be careful when swimming and hiking” and presumably had the same thing written in Thai above it. It just seemed like such a contrast from the United States because back home I think there would be brightly colored signs everywhere cautioning visitors not to swim in the falls or hike outside of the paths.

And that small sign of caution seems to be part of the general trend here- like people need to be cautious and use their own common sense to protect themselves from danger because there isn’t a larger infrastructure here to protect you. I noticed another example of this when we went to the island Koh Chang this past weekend, when I didn’t even see one lifeguard there- even though it is monsoon season. And even the few times I went swimming in the pool across the street from our school in Bangkok, I never saw a lifeguard, and that is so different from the United States because there people are not allowed to swim in any pools (other than their own) without a lifeguard.

But anyway, when we were in Kanchanaburi, we also visited a Tiger Temple, which is a place where tigers are raised in captivity. People get to go in and pet tigers and even hold baby tigers, which are deceptively cute. It was quite an exhilarating experience, but I don’t think I will do anything like that again because in my opinion it is kind of exploitative for the tigers, but hey- how many people in the world ever get the chance to touch a tiger? But it does make me wonder if maybe one day another creature will hold humans hostage and breed us and take photos of them petting us- but maybe that is just a weird Planet of the Apes fantasy. Oh yeah, and my last piece of advice for this posting is- if you ever think you might come in contact with a tiger- do not wear bright colors because the tigers may mistake you for food!

Well, I have to go.

Keep in touch!

Once again, I am sorry if it takes me a while to update my web-journal or respond to e-mails. Even half way around the world I am still a procrastinator, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care.

Sincerely,
Amanda

11:09 am - Photos Thailand 2

My Students- Grade 3	My Students- Grade 3
Koh Chang Island	Sunrise at Koh Chang
Me at Koh Chang	Gulf of Thailand
Everyday Traffic	Lotus Flowers
Buddha at Ayutthaya	Waterfalls at Kanchanaburi
Waterslides at Kanchanaburi

06:40 am - Photos Thailand 1

Me and Ashley at a Kareoki Bar	Carrie and Me at Gazebo
Ashley, Me, Dave, & Taylor at Royal Barge Museum	Me at Wat Arun
Me and my friend at an orphanage	Me and my friends at an orphanage
My friends at an orphanage	Me at Tiger Temple, Kanchanaburi
My Students- Grade 2	My Students- Grade 2
Reclining Golden Buddha at Wat Po	Elephant in Kanchanaburi

03:40 am - Thailand 7/24/07

7/24/07

I found the novel Thai Girl by Andrew Hicks in a used bookshop a week ago, and I have been completely absorbed in it since the moment I picked it up (and because I have been spending most of my free time reading the book, it has taken me a while to finish writing this journal entry). But I just finished the novel last night, so now I am ready to write about what has been happening.

I don’t think Thai Girl is an amazingly written piece of literature, and I probably wouldn’t have been interested in it at all if I wasn’t in Thailand. But being that I am in Thailand, the book is so relevant to my life here because it is about a young couple from England who just graduated from college and decide to take a month long romantic vacation together in Thailand.

In Thai Girl, the two main characters go to Thailand expecting it to be a tropical paradise and then become disillusioned with Thailand’s reality of suffering and poverty. Many of the things that happen to the characters are similar to the experiences my friends and I have had here, and we have been to many of the places where the characters in the story go. I really like the book because I was able to see how the opinions of the characters slowly evolve as they gain more experiences and become more informed about what Thailand is like. And I really love that the book clearly shows the different perspectives and realities of different groups of people here (including both those of the foreign tourists and those of the Thais themselves). The author has spent a lot of time in Thailand doing research for this book, and he paints a very accurate picture of what life here is like.

I agree with the author that many people from the West (and particularly Europeans) see Thailand as a tropical paradise, but when it comes down to it, it really isn’t. I don’t think that it is fair that many people view Thailand as an exotic wonderland because there is a lot of poverty here. In Bangkok (which is the capital) I see many people beg in the streets for money and a lot of the beggars are missing limbs. In the city during the day it is also common to see blind men singing for spare change. I know that there are homeless people all over the United States, but it seems like there are more homeless people here, and it seems like most of the people who beg for change here clearly have disabilities, so that makes me think that people with special needs are not very well provided for unless they come from very wealthy families.

All around the city there are tons of stray dogs and cats and a lot of them are underfed. In Bangkok the street dogs don’t really move around that much, and they actually aren’t aggressive, they just lie on the sidewalks and sleep because it is so hot- especially for them because they have so much fur. The stray cats seem like they are happier than the dogs because they are more playful and are more likely to go up to people to beg for food (especially at outdoor restaurants). The stray animals are really overpopulated, and I might be wrong but I don’t think there are any animal shelters here. I guess in the United States animal shelters wind up killing or “putting to sleep” many of the strays, so I am not sure if that is really any better.

And there is so much pollution in Bangkok- it probably is the most polluted city I have ever been in. In Bangkok lots of people wear masks (the kind that doctors wear in hospitals) when they walk around the city because there is so much smog from all of the busses, cars, and motorcycles. Many other people carry bandanas with them and use them to cover mouths when they are outside or on a bus, so it is clear that everyone is very aware of the problems pollution causes, so that seems like a step in the right direction.

It seems like life much easier in the United States (for the majority of Americans) than life is here (for the vast majority of Thais). Many people in the United States get so many benefits that we think are natural rights but many of the privileges we have are not even imaginable for most people here. For example, I don’t think there is really a retirement system here- not even for most “white collar” jobs. And there are not health benefits and medical coverage here like there is in the United States. People (especially people outside of Bangkok) are much more likely to use alternative medicines to heal themselves. One place I went to in the countryside had a tub filled with oil from the carcass of a deer, and a man explained that if someone breaks a bone, you put the oil from the dead deer where the bone is broken, and then the bone heals itself so there isn’t any need to see a doctor.

And in general people here do more work than people in the United States. I didn’t even realize it until my third week here (I am not sure how it was possible for me to be so oblivious), but the students here have school on Saturdays, and all of the faculty and staff (except for foreign teachers) have to work on Saturdays and they get money deducted from their salary if they take the day off. And many people who don’t have “professional” jobs, don’t really ever have any days off, so it seems very strange to them that many Westerners come and stay here for long periods of time without working. And I think most Thais work at least sixty hours per week (as opposed to the standard forty hour work week in America).

And I saw a group of child laborers on Sunday. I actually would not have even realized that the children were working if a Thai teacher didn’t explain the situation to me. I was in a different province with a few Thai teachers and one other American teacher, and we wound up stopping on the side of the road because a Thai teacher bought a few bags of dried bananas- they kind of taste like potato chips or caramel popcorn because they are either salty or sweet. And I saw a bunch of children on the other side of the road, and I thought that it was so cute that all of these children got together to play with each other on a Sunday, and they were so smart because they were under an awning so they were not getting burnt by the sun. And then a Thai teacher explained that the children weren’t playing, they were working- they were the ones who were cutting, and rolling the dried bananas that were being sold on our side of the road. I was surprised by the situation, and I was even more shocked that I completely misinterpreted what was happening, and at first I thought such a sad situation was joyful and sweet. I really hope that those children get to go to school the other days of the week because it would be terrible if those kids need to spend their whole childhood cutting bananas for a few baht.

And another big problem here is the sex industry, which primarily caters to white foreign men. Ever since I got here I noticed that there are many white men here with Thai women. It seems like most of the white men are wealthy businessmen and many are very overweight and much older than the Thai women. In seems like a lot of the white men see Thai women as beautiful, exotic objects that they have the right to use. When we were at the forth of July party at the American Embassy, a white American who was wearing a Jets shirt started talking to us because someone in our group said he was also a Jets fan. The other man was probably in his mid-thirties and was there with a Thai woman and their child. He was talking to all of us but was primarily addressing the men in our group. At one point, he pointed to the Thai woman and his daughter and said that this will be our lives in a few years when we settle down and find a “nice child-bearing” woman. I didn’t even know what to say to that comment so I just walked away.

And there are many strip bars here where the women perform explicit sexual acts on stage (like they do things that I never even would have thought were possible) and then go home with their customers. I haven’t gone to any of those places, but I know people who have and I have read a little bit about them in books.

There are also many “special” Thai massage places for men. The woman who are working sit in rows on display, and the men pick out the woman they want and basically buy her for a few hours. During lunch one day at the faculty and staff cafeteria at school a male Thai teacher told me that he goes to those “special” massage places every weekend, and he vaguely described it, so now I make sure that I keep my distance from that teacher.

The book Thai Girl talked a lot about these things, and it said that most of the female prostitutes are from poor farms from the northern part of the country and they are sold when they are very young by their parents. The girls need to make money for their family to survive. People here look down on the women in the sex industry, but the male customers often see themselves as virtuous because they are “helping” young poor Thai women by “giving” them money, so they think they are actually charitable, benevolent men.

This is all I can write for now, but I have several more half-written journal entries about different topics that I want to finish soon, so hopefully there will be a few more entries posted this week.

Keep in touch.

Sincerely,
Amanda

12:32 am - Thailand 7/5/07

7/5/07

Last week one of the American teachers got Typhoid Fever even though he recently got the vaccination for it in the United States. The doctors think that he got it from eating or drinking something unsanitary at a restaurant, but we don’t really know for sure which restaurant it was. We are thinking that he got it from the place around the corner (which we unofficially named ‘The Guy’). Last week there were a lot of Oregon Trail jokes (because Typhoid Fever was a common illness in that computer game- and that is the only place any of us really heard the term Typhoid Fever before). But now the man in our group who had Typhoid fully recovered, so everything is okay.

And one day last week a few of us went to the hospital to visit our friend who had Typhoid. We took motorbike taxis to get there because it was rush hour, so traffic was basically at a standstill. I was slightly afraid of going on a motorbike because one of my friends here fell off of one the weekend before I arrived and she had a burn on her leg that took about four weeks to heal. But I decided to take a motorbike anyway (and make sure that I keep my leg well above the exhaust pipe) because so many people here take motorbike taxis all of the time, so that made me think that it can’t usually be that dangerous. Sometimes I even see a family of four all on one motorbike at the same time. And Thai people who get rides on motorbikes don’t even hold on when they are riding (but all of us Americans tightly hold the bar behind us the whole time- even when we are stopped). And some of the women who ride motorbike taxis here ride side-saddle because they are wearing skirts and they don’t seem to have any problems.

So anyway, we took motorbike taxis to the hospital- and I reasoned that if anyone got hurt it would have worked out because we were going to the hospital anyway. And I drove with the only driver who had a helmet for the passenger to wear. At first it was really scary- especially because the first thing we did was drive in front of a car that was coming straight at us. So my natural instinct was to scream, and all of my friends laughed. And I think my scream really surprised the man who was driving because that was the only time he turned around to look at me. But after that one time I didn’t scream anymore. It was an exhilarating ride because there are always hundreds of motorbikes driving throughout the city and they all weave in-between cars and drive on the wrong side of the road when it is clear and go through traffic lights when they can- they are very talented drivers- they actually kind of turn driving into a form of art. In the end, all of us made it to the hospital safely, and I actually arrived there first, so I won 5 baht from my friends (which is roughly 15 cents) because we waged a bet on who was going to get there first.

The television was on in the hospital and it had a few channels that were in English. CNN was on and we saw coverage about Paris Hilton getting out of jail, and that made me sad because there are one billion more important things going on around the world and in Thailand itself but the international news was about some American celebrity, and I think that is pathetic.

And speaking of America, this past weekend we went to the American Embassy in Thailand for a Forth of July celebration for Americans in Thailand. The Forth of July party did not really seem like the epitome of American culture to me. It was in a muddy field because it rained the previous night and there was a lot of overpriced food and beer. I think there was an egg tossing competition but I didn’t get to see that. But I did see the hotdog eating contest, and it was kind of gross because it looked like the hotdogs were not even cooked. One man actually ate 14 hotdogs (without the buns) in 2 minutes- which I guess some people see as an achievement. I am very glad that nobody threw up because that could have caused a chain reaction. The announcer was really obnoxious, so I guess that is relatively typical of American culture. There was also a band playing jazz music, so that was nice. And overall we had a good time, it was just not what I expected it to be.

I know I haven’t written for a week but that is because I have been really busy with my job. I found out that “Intensive English Month” is about two months long and it is not only for elementary school students- it is for all students from grades one through twelve. Each grade participates in the program for one week. And as of now all of the American teachers lead the program every week, so we miss our regular classes from Monday through Thursday. By the end of the two months each of us will have worked at least once with all 5,000 students here. In a way working with the different grades each week keeps things interesting, and that is good because I get bored doing the same thing over and over. And we teach different subjects and generally have a different American co-teacher each week, so we can learn from one another and see our different teaching styles. So far the past two weeks I taught Social Studies and next week I am going to teach sixth grade English, but eventually I will get to teach Phys. Ed, Math, Science, Computers, and Art.

And I think our regular co-teachers decide the amount of work that they want to give us outside of the classroom. One of my co-teachers hasn’t given me much work at all even though I always ask him for some; whereas, my other co-teacher has given me a lot of work, and it is hard because I don’t really know what I am doing because I never was a teacher in Thailand before. I spent a lot of time this past week writing a Social Studies test for the third graders, and I showed it to my co-teacher and she said that my test was too difficult and I needed to change it, but she didn’t give me any examples of what the test was supposed to be like, so I have to figure it out myself and redo that test by Monday. And I also have to write a general outline of lesson plans for the next month even though I won’t be there to teach the lessons, and I have a feeling that my co-teacher is going to say that I didn’t write the lessons correctly after I give it to her, so I will probably have to redo that too. And on Monday I am going to get a few hundred projects about Thai holidays to correct and grade, and it is hard because grades are really subjective, so I am not sure what marks I should give out, but I guess eventually I will get the hang of it. But in a way I think us American teachers deserve to have a lot of work because we are getting paid a lot more money than the Thai teachers. But this is probably boring, so I will change the subject.

Here are some interesting facts about the Thai language. Men always speak in the masculine voice, so they add “cop” to the end of most sentences. Similarly, women always speak in the feminine voice and add “ca” to the end of most sentences. So for example men say hello by saying “Swa Dee Cop,” and women say hello by saying “Swa Dee Ca.” I think that might contribute to and/or be reflective of the way gender roles are followed more strictly here. For example, as a woman I have to wear a skirt to work everyday, and I can’t wear pants even if it is part of a suit.

And Thai is a tonal language, and there are five different tones. So the pitch of your voice changes the meaning of the word, so it is really complicated to learn how to speak. And because I didn’t grow up learning a language in which tones are so important, it is hard for me to be able to tell the difference between different tones. The only time in English that I can think of in which the tone of your voice can change the meaning of your sentence is to indicate you are asking a question, the pitch of your voice rises at the end- (I think). But I can’t think of any times in English in which changing the pitch of your voice completely changes what the word actually is.

And written Thai is also really complicated. I think there are more than fifty characters- which I think are very aesthetically pleasing because there are lots of curves and circles on the ends of each character. But it is especially complicated to read Thai because in Thai, you never pronounce sounds in the order in which they are written. I think there are symbols above or below the characters to indicate in which order you say the sounds, but I need to learn more about that.

Well, I have to go. I will write more when I get a chance.

Keep in touch.

-Amanda