a week in pictures

 

Me and my partner Beth. Khao San Road, Bangkok. 

 

Riding in a tuk tuk. Bangkok. 

 

Some of our Thai family, (brother on the far left, mum on the far right). Nakhon Sawan. 

Tame, our 12 year old brother, riding his motorbike down the road outside the house. Nakhon Sawan.

 

Making fans at a local school. Nakhon Sawan. 

 

Nursery kids eating lunch at one of the private schools. Nakhon Sawan. 

 

Thai boxing at a local school sports day. Nakhon Sawan. 

 

Me and Beth's room in our Thai family's house. Nakhon Sawan. 

 

And finally, Beth looking pretty. 

xxx

Nakhon Sawan

Hello again from Thailand, I'm well, I still have no tan and I'm covered in mozzie bites. So, we went to meet the mayor the other day and ended up making friends with pretty much the whole of his workforce. This is both good and bad for us; bad because now they are watching us ALL the time, but good because they are, by Thai standards, very rich, and keep wanting to buy us things. A mad old lady with big purple hair who we call 'ma(mother) bum' keeps taking us out to expensive places for lunch, bought us designer umbrellas that cost more than we get paid a month and is about to buy us bikes and new beds.  We think they'll just be bicycles but we're kind of hoping for motorbikes (everyone drives one here, even our 12 year old brother). 'Jai dee' is one of our most used Thai phrases, meaning so kind, it feels like its my birthday every day the amount I get fussed over. 

Our Thai mum has also decided she must put our hair in strange Thai hairstyles every morning, and we leave the house looking like children.  Its one thing I wont miss when we move to the flat.  The family found out we dont have air con in our apartment and got so worried about us they invited me and Beth to live with them for the whole year, so we had to explain we want to learn how to be independent and not be chauffeured around and cooked for 24/7. I'm not really sure they understand though. They are also feeding us non stop, 3 meals a day then snacks constantly in between.  Time and tame are massive, and to me and Beth a look at what the future would hold if we did move in with the family for the whole year - not good.  A funny thing about Thailand is its not offensive to call someone fat.  Ma Bei (mum) and Bai Ahy (dad) are constantly laughing and pointing at Time and Tame, prodding them and saying fat fat fat, you are fat little piglets.  To me and Beth's horror, while watching the Thai National Orchestra today at Nakhon Sawan School (Nakhon Sawan's Dundee High), the MC pulled a fat boy on stage and got him to dance and slap his stomach along to some music.  But apparently this is a totally fine thing to do here, nobody cares, fat is not an insult, its just funny.  Khun Peter, our friend from London who pays our wages, told us there has been fat volunteers in the past who've been pulled up on stage and someones brought out a tape measure. 

Khun Peter is the founder of The Set Foundation, an organisation that pays for boys that come from very poor backgrounds to be put through school as monks, and live and board at the Kirriwong School.  The Foundation also gives out scholarships to monks all over Thailand to study at university so they dont end up having to work in the paddy fields.  The monks at Kirriwong School all come from families with no money and many have been abused.  Me and Beth will be teaching here on Wednesday afternoons, you can read more about it here http://www.thaistudentcharity.org/ 

I'm still trying to get used to the fact that people stare at us all the time.  Beth is Asian so people assume she's Thai until they hear her speak, but me being so pale even by a white persons standards, its like they think I'm some kind of walking doll.  Today we visited a primary school, and I had to apologize to Beth because I felt like such an attention hog, but then she just shrugged and said rather you than me.  Everywhere we go people are trying to practice their English, and a popular greeting we get is 'Hello I love you', although it always just seems to be from 12 year old boys or very old men with no teeth. 

Our day starts by getting up at 6am, which I could never imagine back at home, but because we're so busy all the time we normally fall asleep at about 9pm anyway, if it gets to 10 then its a late night.  Then its breakfast, either a rice or noodle dish, which is hard to get used to so most of the time we just shadily scrape it into the bin.  Getting dressed is also tricky because we have to be totally covered up. Its annoying because I've seen a couple of shops with really nice clothes in them but apparently we cant dress like that. I'm hoping its to do with the family environment we're in right now, then we can relax a bit more when we move to the flat and make some friends who are actually our age, or at least not 40+. 

Hope all is well in Scotland, will try get some photos up soon xxx

Arrived Safe

Just a quick first post to say I've made it safe and sound in Thailand. We arrived at Bangkok airport on Thursday about 5pm, and me and the other 17 volunteers were met by Project Trust staff Lucie and Peter.  Lucie and Peter are both ex PT volunteers from years ago, and they both now live and work in Thailand. Peter owns a rehab centre (that apparently Pete Doherty was chucked out of last year) in Chang Mai, and Lucie is a teacher and owns a British cake shop in the city of Ubon.  They're both really interesting people and should be of great use to me and my partner Beth if we get stuck with anything over the next year.  

We spent two nights in Bangkok with the other volunteers, the first of which we saw a bit of Bangkok's very seedy red light district, and the second we ventured up Khao San Road, trying street food and talking to some other travelers in the bars and clubs. We spent Thursday day shopping at Bangkok's MBK shopping centre, picking up essentials like a Thai sim card (my Thai number is +66833072475) and then ate our last McDonalds for however long. Then this morning, feeling tired after our late night on Khao San Road, me and Beth got on a very rickety and loud train to our new home of Nakhon Sawan.  5 hours later we arrived at the train station, greeted with big bunches of flowers by our new Thai family. We'll be staying with them for two weeks while our apartment is sorted out. They took us home for dinner, and we met all the aunties and cousins, some of our Thai mum's colleagues from her school,  their pet bird Tom who can actually say his own name, and for some reason the electrician. We also have two little really cute and chubby Thai brothers, Time (8) and Tame (12).  They're going to try and teach us Thai over the next two weeks and we're to teach them some more English.  Nobody in the family can speak perfect English so we're getting a little lost in translation but we're getting by.  They've also got WiFi in the house and they've given us a laptop for the time we're staying with them, so I should be able to post a fair bit, I'm going to try and abstain from Facebook as much as possible though.  

We also met another guy called Peter who pays our wages (equivalent of 90 quid a month.. eek) and a boy called Dong who from what I've gathered is here to introduce us to some other young people in Thailand and show us Nakhon Sawan's best places to go out. I was initially worried about staying with a Thai family for a bit, thinking I was just gonna walk in a do and say all the wrong things, but now we're here I'm so glad we are. It'll be cool to see how a typical Thai family works, and I imagine it'll be a lot more of a calmer two weeks than our two nights in Bangkok.  We start properly teaching on the 10th of September, but on Monday we're going to start observing lessons and be introduced us to the schools we'll be working in which is exciting.  We're also meeting the Lord Mayor of Nakhon Sawan on Sunday which will be interesting. Anyway its coming up for midnight and I've got a day of playing badminton with my new brothers tomorrow, plus Beth is already snoring beside me. Night x