It’s April 2011 and I’ve spent the past six months living and teaching in Phuket Town. The first semester ended in early March and the time absolutely flew.
I’m teaching at a Thai-Chinese school and my students study at Mathayom 4, 5 and 6, which is upper high school level. In many ways this isn’t an easy age group to teach, no longer can they be treated like children but they aren’t quite adults yet either. That said, with the better students (meaning the ones whose English is good), I can have a decent conversation with and they are a real pleasure to teach and guide along with their studies. This past semester I was the core teacher for the M4 students, which means I was following the national curriculum and using a lot of new grammar as part of the course. For M5 and M6, I was the support teacher. With running a support course comes freedom to choose what I want to teach within reason. M5, I could do things under the heading of “Reading and Writing” and M6, “Hotels and tourism”. For the next school year, starting in May, I will be responsible for the support course for all three years of upper Mathayom. So for my M4s, I will be covering “Listening and Speaking” M5 and M6 have the same topics as last year but I will be using a lot of new material. I’ll come back to write what’s happening with my students a few months into the next semester.
There have been quite a few activities, many of which I participated in, starting on 13th November with “Teachers’ Sports Day”, an annual event in which six private schools in Phuket Town get together in friendly competition with games ranging from a three-legged race to futsol and from tug-of-war to volleyball. Two weeks later, the school had it own sports day. We gathered in the town centre at 7:30 in the morning and paraded around a kilometre and a half to the school. Quite a few onlookers en-route came out of their houses and businesses to watch. The students were divided into four teams, Blue, Red, Green and Yellow and once back at the school, the games commenced. I thought it was a much more enjoyable day than the “Teachers’ Sports Day”.
December arrived and we found ourselves busy preparing students for the Christmas show. Children from the Prathom (Primary) levels were going to be singing carols, staging a fashion show and dancing. Lower Mathayom were putting on a nativity play and performing the “Little Drummer Boy”. Upper Matthayom, who I was responsible for, were putting on Cinderella. Friday 24th December came and at assembly we had a Christmas quiz and an appearance from Santa Claus. Lessons finished after period 5 at 1:30 in the afternoon and our show commenced. One of the boys, a katoey (ladyboy) who was due to play an ugly sister, failed to turn up. Drastic action was needed so I ended up getting made up by a number of my M5 students, one working on the lips; another, the cheeks; another the eyes and so on. Soon with the addition of a brunette wig, it must be said, I was looking very much like my mother wearing exaggerated make-up, (although, I hasten to add, she’s no ugly sister). On stage, we had problems with microphone malfunction, the smoke effect intended to screen Cinderella when the Fairy gave her a Ball-Gown didn’t work but our improvisations went down very well with the audience of students and Thai teachers.
Following the success of the Christmas show, we teachers in the English Department had just four days to plan and prepare a short skit or dance that showcased our culture, for the teachers and staff New Year’s Party. Heads were being scratched, and scratched, and scratched until I decided to burst out in song with the Time Warp (The Rocky Horror Show). I then explained how to do the accompanying dance, found a performance on you tube by Glee and so we proceeded to rehearse it. Now anybody who knows me from Karaoke evenings in London, will be aware that The Time Warp was my piece de resistence, particularly when I had a radio mike (as opposed to a wired mike) in my hand. Came the 30th December and the party, which was held at the school. After eating food and imbibing in a drink or two, came the performances. Up we went onto the stage, I played the part of Rif Raf (without the hair) and my colleague Jody played the part of Magenta. We had a lot of fun, everyone, performers and audience, enjoyed it and I was gaining a reputation for being a little bit crazy but nevertheless okay. The whole evening was a lot of fun and it confirmed my thoughts that there was a great bunch of teachers and administration staff working here at the school.
New Years Eve and I went to Patong to see in 2011. Bangla Road, the main drag at nightime, was packed. Silly string was attaching itself everywhere, Ladyboys dancing on podiums, as always they do, and a great sense of fun in the air. Eventually got down to the beach where there was a concert with a Hip Hop band playing. Many people drinking beer in buckets, fireworks going off in many directions and a great party atmosphere. Then it was 2011.
New Year’s Day came with something new and something old. I completed my packing my things and moved from the Condo where I had been staying, with the help of my friend Best and his pick-up truck, into a house at Phuket Villas. I’d just finished unpacking most things and got the place looking habitable when Mayom arrived. He left the job in Kuala Lumpur that he didn’t enjoy to move back to Thailand and be here with me in Phuket. So there I was at the end of the first day of 2011 in a new house with my partner back home.
Nothing much happened at school in January, except for Student’s Day on the 7th of the month, where the students celebrated with fun and games rather than lessons. February arrived and brought with it the Chinese New Year. On the 1st February it was the Chinese teachers turn to stage a show with students to celebrate their new year, which was two days away. It was a short week for giving lessons, just a day and a half in fact, for the next day school was devoid of students who had almost all stayed at home to prepare by cleaning the home and decorating it before the family get’s together for a New Year’s Eve Dinner, a celebration comparable to Christmas Dinner in the West. The following two days, though not a public holiday in Thailand, were declared a holiday by the school, so it was happy long weekend for me and my colleagues.
The remaining semester soon passed by, at the beginning of March students had their final exams, the M6 students graduated and I attended a seminar for Thai Culture, Language and Professional Ethics. The seminar was in Surat Thani, a four hour drive across the southern peninsula by minivan, it lasted three days and taught me many things I didn’t realise about Thai culture before. I even got to do some traditional dancing and play traditional musical instruments. Back at the school, we were losing three of our native English teachers at the end of the year. Adam to another school on the island, Jody to go back to England for an extended holiday and Cathal, who had his sister’s wedding to attend in Ireland. I was tasked with finding their replacements, a job advert went into Ajarn.com, the largest website in Thailand for foreign teachers. After sifting through many CVs and putting them into three piles, Yes, Definitely Not and Definitely Maybe, I proceeded to telephone applicants, starting with the Yes pile. A chat on the phone first of all, I found helped enormously to separate the chaff from the wheat. For the first couple of interviews, the other native English teachers joined me but we found it was a bit much and obviously quite daunting for the soul who was being interviewed, so after that I interviewed them along with Jody. We took on Michael, first of all, a former Pro Golfer from California, he will be teaching Upper Prathom, the nine to twelve year olds, when the new semester starts in May. Then along came Victoria, who has experience of teaching children and young people in London, she will be other teacher for Mathayom 4, 5 and 6 along with me. That just left one position to fill but now it was the 27th March and time to take a little trip.
The school had organised a 5 day/4 night field trip for its employees to Central Thailand. Most of the teachers and admin staff were going, although I was the only foreigner amongst them. Two big red double decker VIP buses arrived to take us on our trip and so we departed Phuket at 3pm on the last Saturday in March. The journey north was a long one, we had several rest stops and dinner on route but it wasn’t until 6am the following morning that we arrived at our first destination, Suphanburi.
The word Suphan originates from Sanskrit, meaning gold and buri meaning city. So there we were in the City of Gold or Suphanburi and one of the oldest recorded cities in Thailand, with archaeological evidence dating back nearly 4,000 years. After stopping off at a hotel to take a shower and enjoy a breakfast, we started our tour with a visit to a large and beautiful temple, followed by a visit to the Dragon Discovery museum, a most unusual building in the shape of a golden dragon spewing water. Inside the museum we went on a tour showing the 5,000 year history of the Chinese people. Next stop was the Suphanburi National Museum, which told the long history of the province. Lunch followed at a restaurant alongside the river. Our afternoon was spent at the Aquarium, the main attraction for me here was the crocodiles and the crocodile show. The two guys playing with or should I say teasing the creatures were either extremely brave or crazy. On reflection I think the later applies, I mean what sane person would stick their head inside a croc’s mouth, hmmm! Next stop was the floating market. Some floating markets are traditional, others are tourist attractions, I’m pleased to say this one was the former. An array of toys, simple in their style and design, often made of tin and reminding me of my childhood could be found on stalls, clothing and food stools were amongst others that filled the narrow lanes beside the river. Here I bought a T-shirt for myself and another for Mayom. Finally, shopped out, we re-boarded the bus and headed to the hotel for the evening.
5 am the following morning I was cruelly woken up by an alarm call, following breakfast we departed on our big red buses bound for the infamous city of Pattaya. After a journey close on five hours, we arrived about 11:30 in the morning at a seafood restaurant in the Jontiem area of Pattaya. It didn’t take long for me to notice that the waiting staff consisted mainly of ‘ladies’, complete with Adam’s apples and ample breasts. Following on from there we travelled a short distance to a theme park by the name of Mini Siam which had models of famous buildings in Thailand and others around the world, scaled down to 1:25 of their normal size. This was a good place for some photos if nothing else, then we were back on board the bus for a short journey to Nong Nuch Tropical Garden. This however was not just a garden but more of a theme park, with the best cultural show I have yet seen in Thailand, an Elephant show and many other attractions that there just wasn’t the time for. Well after a great time at Nong Nuch we travelled onwards to the Pattaya Floating Market. Now this one was built as a tourist attraction, I actually visited there previously with my last school when we had English Camp at Sathahip, nearby. Whilst this is a tourist attraction, it’s 25 acres displays elements of the floating markets in four regions of Thailand and house types of those regions too, indeed it is a very pleasant place to stroll around. Here, I bought a pair of miniature elephants as souvenirs and for good luck, they now adorn a focal position in my living room.
We drove back into Pattaya and checked in at the Seaview Resort Hotel, with no sea in sight, I can only assume subsequent building in the area had blocked the view. Everyone was in cheery mood and eight of us took off to get pizza at Central Festival. We eventually returned to the hotel and spent a couple of hours playing cards with colleagues before bed beckoned me.
It was Tuesday morning and following breakfast our buses drove us to Bangkok and the Vimanmek Palace, the world’s largest golden teakwood mansion. Built in the year 1900 by Chulalonkorn, King Rama 5, he lived permanently for five years until 1906.
The building has two right-angled wings, each wing is 60 meters long and is three-storied except for the part where the king resided, which is octagonal and four-stories in height.From there we checked into our hotel and some of us went by taxi through the most awful of traffic jams to the area known as Victory Monument. After a lunch taken at a famous noodle restaurant, it was shopping time. I left my Thai colleagues for a while to go to DK Today, an English Language bookshop nearby, to feast on some new books I could use in my lessons. After another taxi journey back to the hotel through more horrendous traffic, we prepared for dinner on the river. We boarded a very large boat, inside there was a vast restaurant where we enjoyed an excellent meal. Following diiner, we went upstairs to the open deck to enjoy the views as the boat set off along Chao Praya River. Now I lived in Bangkok for a couple of years, March to May are the main summer months between winter and the rainy season with temperatures in the mid to upper thirties by day dropping only a few degrees by night - but not tonight. Throughout this trip we experienced previously unrecorded of temperatures as low as 21 or 22 degrees but not this night, it was even colder at18 degrees and feeling like 16 with the wind chill factor. Never, I repeat never in Bangkok had I felt so cold. The boat took me past building and places I remembered fondly from my time in the city as it journeyed outwards for nearly ninety minutes along the muddy old river. Not long after turning around to head back to its mooring, I went back inside the boat to the restaurant which had now turned into a ballroom, complete with live band. That short visit back to Bangkok made me wonder how I spent so long living there with the traffic and the dirt, maybe I am done with big city living.
After a sound night’s sleep it was another rude awaking at 5 am and we were off to Petchaburi for the business side to the trip. We were visiting another Thai-Chinese school, this one a little smaller than our own but one with an excellent academic record. We arrived at about 9:30 am, nearly all of us not fully awake from our sleep on the way. After speeches, a tour of the school, a lunch and performances by the school band and children singing, we left at about 1:30 pm to make our way back to Phuket. It was a slow return journey. The incredibly strange weather had produced severe flooding on route and sometimes the bus had to slow down to a crawl through the rivers that had temporarily replaced the roads. A couple of times it seemed that the road surface had been destroyed and the bus rocked quite violently as it crept along. In fact it gave a similar sensation to flying in an aeroplane through some heavy turbulence. Finally, just before midnight we arrived back at Thaihua, safe and sound, there was no rain, and though unusually cool at 23 degrees, I felt comparatively warm ad I road my bike home with my suitcase strapped behind.
The next morning, and the last day of March, I still had to find a teacher for the lower Prathoms. A new job advert had been published whilst I was away and I organised a couple of suitable candidates to come in for interview on the following Monday. I was at home and pondering as to whether I should interview a third candidate when I received a phone call from Jody. “Can I come round and see you”, she asked. “Yes, of course, I’ll get a few beers in”, came my reply. Jody arrived, we cracked open the beer as she told me that she was planning to stay in Thailand, not take her extended holiday in the UK and could she apply for the remaining position at the school. She did have to talk it through with her family first and though she was ninety percent certain, Jody would let me know for sure on the Monday.
Well I couldn’t cancel the two candidates for the job as I could not be a hundred percent sure of Jody’s return, besides, I would have to get the okay from the Thai Head of Department, Wandee. Monday morning came and I was still in bed when I got the call I'd been waiting for. Yes, Jody was definitely staying and wanted to be considered for the vacant position. I was thrilled, I get on well with Jody and realised with her on board we could look forward to having a really fantastic team of native English teachers for the new school year. I got to the school, called Wandee out from a meeting and gave her the news. Wandee’s smile said it all, Jody would certainly be welcomed back, however I still had the task of interviewing the other two candidates, which I think I did very well under the circumstances. The following morning I got back to both of them and said that a that a former teacher had applied to return and would be filling the vacancy. Well all this was happening during the start of my holiday, so now I’m going to relax, enjoy the rest of it and indeed enjoy Songkran, the Thai New Year, next week before the new semester commences.
