A Farang's Observations

My Neighbourhood/Living in Thailand

My view - King Rama IX Bridge

Today I decided to go for a walk around my neighbourhood – partly to explore and partly to be able to show you where I’m living. Yesterday I went into Bangkok and visited Chatuchak market, also known as the weekend market. It is the largest market in Bangkok and definitely one of the largest in the world. I was also able to meet up with my friend Karima, who is teaching in northern Bangkok.

I am definitely experiencing the culture shock phenomenon that people talk about. Everything here is just so different than back home. Where I’m from, things are much quieter and less... chaotic. In Thailand, you senses are always being assaulted (not in a bad way) by different sights and smells. There is just a lot MORE of everything: more shops, more people, more cars, more motorcycles, and more STUFF. I constantly feel like I’m in a state of sensory overload. It’s impossible to take everything in, and it makes making decisions really difficult. And it’s also exhausting. Also, simple things like crossing the road and buying groceries have become ordeals. I haven’t quite figured out how a lot of things work here in general. For example, yesterday we had to take the 138 bus into Bangkok. We weren’t sure if we were at the right stop, and we asked the attendant, who said it was still coming. But we ended up missing it and ending up a ways away from where we wanted to be. On the way back, we took the exact same bus route and foolishly assumed it would drop us off near where we got on. We even asked the driver if it went to the “Phra Pradaeng Market”, and they said it did. But it didn’t and we ended up at some random station. Fortunately Bangkok and area has LOTS of taxis, so in a pinch you can always jump on one of them. Needless to say, we were exhausted after yesterday and I bought a 4 dollar 200g thing of nutella from the Tesco Lotus Express. But I digress... Basically my point is I generally have no idea what’s going on, which drives me CRAZY. I just need to learn to relax. 

 ANYWAY Anna wasn’t feeling well this morning, so I decided to go exploring a bit on my own. There is a park near us, so I wandered around there first. It was quite nice, and had many trees, a man-made lake and a pavilion. Some of the trees had little signs in front of them that gave their name and some of their characteristics (in English). I have been wondering about the different types of trees around, so I enjoyed that immensely. There were also two Thai couples taking their wedding pictures in the park.

The Park's Spirit House

After the park, I walked to the Chao Praya River. On the way, I passed a pack of stray dogs. They started growling and barking at a lone dog wandering around, and it was all I could do not to just bolt. There are stray dogs all over the place, as Thais don’t believe in euthanasia for the dogs. There are a few that hang out in front of our apartment. They seem to mind their own business but I am still uneasy around them. Mostly because I don’t want to get bitten and undergo several rabies shots.  I also walked by the front of my school. I found a post office but it was closed – I will try to go tomorrow so I can mail some postcards! There are also a few Wat near us, but I don’t know the proper protocol for visiting and am too shy to just wander in. One of them has a building that glitters, especially at night.

I eventually made it to the water. There was a sort of boardwalk along the shore, and there were people fishing off it. I saw several barge-type boats travelling towards Bangkok, and I could also see some kind of factory a ways away. I’m sure the water is quite polluted but I saw a couple Thai men going for dips from the boardwalk.  

The main road near my neighbourhood is called Nakon Kuan Kan, and it is lined by hundreds of shops, vendors, and food stands. We’ve been venturing around here a lot to buy things for out apartments. Some people speak English but many don’t. I’ve been trying to ask how much things cost in Thai, but no one seems to understand what I’m trying to say (not surprisingly). As it is the weekend today, many of the shops were closed, but there were many more vendors on the sidewalks. I bought a few things, including a small towel for 30 cents, a pair of converse knock-offs for $6, some mini-bananas (SO GOOD), and some fresh watermelon from a vendor. The fruit here is AMAZING. Street vendors will sell fresh watermelon, pineapple, mango, papaya, and you name it from their stands. During my walk through the market, I felt much less frazzled/overwhelmed than I have so far, so I think there’s hope for me yet.

*In this picture, you can see an archyway with the pictures of the King Bhumidol or Ramam IX and Queen Siriki. The King is revered here, and you see pictures of the King and Queen everywhere. The King is considered an IS very hard working, and has done much to unify the country. He is also the current longest-serving head of state/monarch (crowned in 1946)

Knowing what to and not to eat has also been challenging here. There are street vendors everywhere, but I have yet to eat from them (other than the fruit ones). I’m sure some of them are perfectly safe, but I need to wrap my head around it still. Also, many of them don’t look to clean or have food just stagnating. I will make the plunge eventually, but at my own pace. Yesterday, we were introduced to a nearby restaurant that all the foreign teachers go to – a small place called Keon’s. It’s basically a small, open air place, and Keon cooks the food from the front. There is no written menu, but what the dishes are has been recorded by some of the teachers. I had two meals there yesterday, curry for lunch, and a type of stir fry for dinner. I don’t remember what either of them are called but they were both delicious, or “aroi” in Thai.

I should also mention that this area doesn’t get many “Western” tourists. The Thai word for foreigner/white person is “Farang”, derived from the word they used for the French when they arrived to this area of the world. It is quite common for the Thais in this neighbourhood to stare (often blatantly) as we walk by, and I hear the word “Farang” following me wherever I go. If the person has a child with them, they will often point to us, and talk about the “farang”. A few have even brought their kids over and tried to get them to talk to us in English. Most of the time, I just smile, wave and say “hello”. It’s very odd...

This is the road my apartment building is on – as you can see we are slightly more secluded. I have also included a picture of the water dispenser. Thais don’t drink the tap water as is has a lot of chlorine in it (or so says our TEFL instructor) so you can fill up your containers at these machines. I have yet to figure out how these work yet – we were given full 6L containers when we moved in.

This is my apartment. It’s a bachelor and I also have a bathroom and a balcony (the two doors at the end).  The shower has no actual stall, you just hose yourself down with the nozzle you see there. I have air-conditioning, and I think one English channel on the TV, “Fox Crime”. It’s a nice enough place. Previous occupants have left some books here as well so I will have some reading material when I finish the first 3 “Game of Thrones” books. 

Today, I’m feeling a bit more settled in. Tomorrow we have a staff meeting at the school, and I have no idea what to expect. We start teaching on November first, eep!

I can think of a lot of things to call Saito, but "reasonable"... that's a new one

Trip to Kachanaburi

Oct  23-25

This was the part of the orientation where we took a side-trip to Kachanaburi, a province a few hours west of Bangkok. We left the hotel on the 23^rd in our monster-buses. The drive itself was interesting. Just outside Bangkok, we drove by several VERY nice gated communities, and many much smaller houses that look like they were thrown together with random pieces of wood and metal. Although several of them had satellite dishes... Remember that picture of a shrine I posted a little while ago? This is called a spirit house, and they are for wandering spirits to reside in. This way, they will be less likely to run amok, and haunt people. You see these spirit houses everywhere:  on residential streets, in front of individual houses, in parking lots of office buildings, by gas stations... the list goes on. They are quite beautiful. 

We arrived at the Pavillion hotel in Kachanaburi at around 8:30-9:00PM. The hotel was beautiful – Kachanaburi is known for its natural beauty, and the hotel had many open-air spaces. It also had quite large grounds, containing 2 pools, and went right up to the shore of the River Kwai (pronounced Kwaeh, “kwai” is a water buffalo in Thai, I think). The first night, I went for a swim and it was lovely after a long, hot day (so far, the temperature has been in the mid-thirties each day)(and very humid). We also saw our first monkey from our balcony! Other wildlife spotting included many small geckos (everywhere), and various birds. 

The next day, we went to the Taweechai Elephant Camp, which are quite popular for tourists to Thailand. It was really neat seeing them – they are so majestic... Cute too. The OEG staff had also assured us that the elephants at this camp were treated well. We started our visit with an elephant ride around the camp. First you had to awkwardly climb into this bench, perched like a saddle on top of the elephant. Each elephant had a Thai rider as well. It was hard to balance at first, you rock back and forth a lot on the seat. But they had a seatbelt (which is more than I can say about much of the transportation I’ve been on so far...). The trail led down into the river as well: it was fun to see the elephants spouting the water from their trunks. After the ride, we saw the “elephant show”, which consisted of 3 elephants playing harmonicas, twirling hula hoops on their trunks, shooting baskets, and more. You also got the chance to be lifted in the air by the elephant (with their trunks) – many of us had “elephant burn” on our arms from hanging on so tightly!

 I'm so graceful...

Finally, we had our rafting adventure down the river. To get to the departure point, we rode in the back of a pickup truck with benches. At the departure point, we were given poorly fitting life jackets – this was probably the only safety measure of the endeavor. You just tried to ignore the fact that when you went to tighten the straps, the clasp would come unbuckled. We laughed because if this were happening in Canada, we would have had to sit through a safety presentation and probably sign several waivers. Not so much here! The water was very calm anyway. So 6 of us piled onto a bamboo raft, followed by our guide. After a bit, we were allowed to jump in and be carrier by the current. This was lovely after the heat of the other activities. Our guide liked to smack his paddle on the water near one of us, pretending it was a crocodile. The scenery was also gorgeous – the banks were lined with many tropical trees and plants, with mountains in the background. Eventually, we landed a ways down the river and were taken to back to the camp.

Riding Elephants!

Rafting along

Once we were finished at the camp, we were taken to the historic Bridge on the River Kwai location. This site is infamous for being a POW forced labour camp in the World War Two. Now the bridge is now made out of metal, and Thai trains use it regularly. While we were walking across the bridge, a train passed by – you had to huddle onto these small “safety platforms” to let the train pass. It was interesting. On the other side of the river, there was a large temple (“wat” in Thai), which we wandered around. There were also some large trees that had offerings in front of them, for the tree spirits. As we were leaving the site, we drove by the Allied War Cemetery as well.

I will also take the time to mention that I’ve started to use the “squatter” toilets here. I know you really wanted to know that. You’re welcome. The trick is to imagine that you are just in the woods somewhere.

In the evening, we were treated to a dinner cruise on a floating restaurant. They eventually started playing music, and basically turned the restaurant into a club. At one point, it started pouring. Naturally, we all thought it was a fantastic idea to dance in the rain. It was one of those moments that is so spontaneous – it takes you by surprise, and I’m sure many of us will remember it for a long time to come. How often can you say you had a dance party in the pouring rain (and thunder... in the middle of a river. NBD) on a floating restaurant on the River Kwai?

We were eventually taken back to the hotel, where a karaoke party was being held for us. In conclusion, a very long and very fun day. 

The next day, we were taken back to Bangkok to meet our school coordinators. It was also at this time we had to say goodbye (for now) to all the friends, acquaintances, and people you still hadn’t met yet. Hopefully we will be able to meet up to travel, but I was sad to see the friends I had made go their separate ways. Oh well, that’s why we have Facebook! Anna and I met our coordinator and another Thai teacher, hopped in our school’s van, and were on our way. The traffic was very heavy, as it always is in Bangkok. I’ve been terrible at checking times so far, as you may have noticed – I also barely know what day it is – so I don’t know how long exactly it took us to drive to our school. We are at Amuayvidhya school in Phra Pradaeng, still fairly close to Bangkok but we are technically in another province, Samut Prakon. Whoever it was that said Phra Pradaeng was quiet lied – it is very busy with people, cars, stores, and as always, motorcycles. We were taken to our apartment, met our landlord (who is very nice and even offered to drive us to a good restaurant), and began to settle in. We are literally down the street from the school, which is great. Nearby is also a bustling road of shops, several temples, and a park. We are basically under the King Rama IX bridge, which is a very interesting bridge. We ventured out to the main road near us to buy some things for our apartments (which are bachelors and quite nice) and it was... more than an adventure and a half. Everything was a challenge – going to the grocery store, buying towels, navigating through the people... even crossing the street. Needless to say, I felt quite overwhelmed to be tossed into this new environment after being pampered at orientation. But we will adjust, I’m sure. I will post more later about our neighbourhood, but this post is already long enough. 

I will finish by saying that I had a fantastic time at Orientation, but this is where the real adventure begins!

P.S. It currently takes about 10 million years to update pictures on the wifi I'm using at the moment, but hopefully I'll be able to upload more soon. 

Journey to the Grand Palace

Day 3 & 4 – October 21

I had a terrible sleep the previous night. I kept walking up and eventually was unable to fall back to sleep. This appears to be the same case for many of the participants – likely the effects of jet lag. So I was exhausted all day, and I ate something that didn’t agree with me for lunch, to top it all off. Oh well, part of the process I guess.

October 22 – Trip to Grand Palace

I had a much better sleep last night. Partly because I went to bed around 9:30PM, so even though I had to get up around 5:30am, I was quite well rested. The reason we had to get up so early was that today, we took a day trip to the Grand Palace in downtown Bangkok. The Grand Palace was built in 1782 and used to house the King (The King now has a different residence) and contains Wat Phra Kaew, where the Emerald Buddha is kept. 

We started the day with a bus ride into Bangkok, which allowed us good views of the city. Some parts look just like back home, except that the trees are tropical. There are some condo buildings being belt that look identical to many I’ve seen in Toronto. Then, of course, there are parts that look very different.

The Grand Palace is one of the busiest tourist destinations in Thailand. We were competing for space with tour groups from all over: China, Japan, Russia, Brazil, and more I’m sure. The Place was just gorgeous. One of the things I’ve noticed in Thailand is everything is much more colourful – things in Ottawa seem pretty bland in comparison – and the Grand Palace was no exception. The buildings are painted beautifully in reds, blues, greens, gold... basically any colour you could imagine. Everything was very ornate and exquisite. The walls of the buildings were adorned with detailed murals and sculptures. I really can’t do it justice in my descriptions... But it was great to finally see some of Bangkok and Thai history.

After the tour of the Palace, we had lunch at a nearby restaurant on the Chao Phraya River, the main river that runs through the city. They served us a set menu of fried chicken, calamari, soup, soft-shell crab curry, vegetables, and, finally – la piece de resistance – a whole fish (head, tail, and all). For those who know me, you know I hate cooked fish and most seafoods... So you will be shocked to find out that I ate a bit of everything and even LIKED it, even the fish. It was very tasty. I worried for a minute that maybe I would have some sort of allergic reaction because I haven’t really eaten seafood before. Then I remembered I eat sushi all the time. Win. 

In the afternoon, we returned to the hotel for more teacher training. We prepared our first lesson plan and presented it to the other group, and I think it went fairly well. At the end of the class, our instructor was wrapping some stuff up, and called me up to the front to teach a class on “the proponents of nuclear energy”. I did the first thing that came to mind: I mimed an atom by making a fist with one had, and moving my other than around it (like an electron), and got the “students” to repeat after me. Good times.

In the evening, we went to dinner and a show at Siam Nakriat – basically the Thai version of a tourist trap. You get pay to get your picture taken with people in old Thai costume, buy souvenirs, see elephants, and buy more stuff. The show was a dance/music re-telling of Thai history and culture. It was spectacular, except I kept dozing off... I was exhausted!

Today (being Oct 23), we are heading to Kachanaburi to see more Elephants and the historic Birdge on the River Kwai. I’m quite excited. I’ll post pictures of the Grand Palace a bit later – now I need to finish getting ready!

First Day of Orientation

October 20

Today was the first day of orientation. I was quite excited to get started: we have TEFL classes as part of the orientation and I need all the help I can get. I am in the “Primary” group as I think the highest grade Anna and I will teach is grade 4. I am pretty happy about this, even though the students will likely not know what I am saying to them most of the time. Immersion is key in Thai English programs, which is good as I can say about 3 things in Thai. 

I managed to get a great night’s sleep and felt rested and ready to go in the morning. As I was getting ready, all of a sudden I heard this drumming start. My first thought was “Is that a train?” but there are no train tracks near our hotel. So I peered out the window and saw several people in a drumming circle outside the hotel’s shrine in the parking lot. Later, I asked one of the OEG staff about it and they said it was customary for Chinese weddings to drum beforehand to ward off bad spirits. Pretty cool! Below is a picture of the shrine, which in the evening. In the lobby of the hotel, there are several, I assume Buddhist, figures of people an animals. They are very lovely and ornately decorated. Each has a different offering in front of it, some are water, some are food, and some are juices. I wish I knew more about the practice, but it is fascinating just to observe!

This is apparently the biggest Teach In Thailand that the Overseas Education Group (OEG) has had. I think there’s about 80 in our orientation, and I imagine probably about the same in Orientation A (which happened last week – I am in Orientation B/the second one). There are so many people it’s overwhelming – I’ve already forgotten more names than I can even count. After a brief welcome with Phil, one of the head OEG staff, we went off into out separate group lessons (There are two other groups for the secondary level). We discussed what we, as foreign teachers, can bring to the class room, and various techniques and practices appropriate for the primary level. One thing we did is our instructor wrote the alphabet on the board, and we each had to write a name of an animal starting with our assigned letter. I had “B” and I wrote “baboon”. Then our instructor said to make sure the students actually knew what their animal was, we could ask them to draw a picture. He then chose me to draw my animal. This is my rendition... 

Lunch was provided for us in the hotel restaurant. It was buffet style, and consisted of many dishes. Below is my plate, which features chicken with cashews, broccoli & shrimp balls, mixed greens/mystery leafy vegetable and dragon fruit. It was all very tasty. After lunch, we had our first Thai lesson. We focused on basics, like greetings, manners, directions, food, and some cultural tips. For example, in Thailand, you eat most of your food with a fork and a spoon. Thais push the food onto their spoons and eat from them. Chopsticks are used only for noodles (and I haven’t seen any yet). I’ve been trying the “put food in mouth with spoon” method, and I’m rather clumsy at it. But I want to take in as much culture as I can, so I am determined to keep at it!

We were finally done for the day around 5:30pm, and most of us were exhausted. We decided to go for dinner around the hotel, as none of us felt like making the trek into Bangkok. We found a nice looking Thai restaurant on the main street. I really need to start figuring out what these places names’ are... Anyway , I had my first authentic Pad Thai experience, and it was very tasty! There was a Thai man singing Karaoke in the restaurant – he asked us for a song request, and we had him sing “Thriller”. He did a pretty good job. My meal, Pad Thai and a bottle of water, was 80 Baht - $2.67 CND... And I couldn’t even finish my plate!

We then stopped at the always near-by 7-11 for ice cream. I decided to go with a Thai ice cream bar – vanilla with chocolate coating. Mmmm. We all sat in the lobby of the hotel, ate our ice cream, and watched the wedding guests go by. The guests were all very fashionable and had many beautiful hairstyles. Some of the younger kids will say “Hi!” and wave when they see us Farang (meaning foreigners...). They are all super cute – but I don’t know if I’ll feel the same way when I’m in a class room full of them! But we shall see. After that, it was bedtime for me... Ready to do it all again tomorrow!