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Picture if you will a poor little fat kid getting his first intercity bus. Its a 5 1/2 hour journey so he brought snacks. He is fat, thats what fat people do. Now picture him walking up to the driver

Yes, I can vouch that Ippy is a real person and a very messy room-mate!  

Ippy doesn't have sex though. He finds it troublesome, or something.

  • 2 weeks later...

Next is (belated update because theres nothing to tell you), Koh Samui. Finished teaching on wednesday, the apostilles arrived this afternoon and was going to leave tomorrow, but decided id get the sleeper train 3/4s of the way there so dont need that day to recover in bangkok before the second half of the journey. So saturday it is! Im also ecstatic that i could literally decide to go to daveseslcafe and pick any job i like and probably start within the week if i wanted. All docs a go-go. But before all that theres the small not entirely insignificant issue of moving house with a gigantic 180cm long snowboard bag with 30kgs of crap in it from one side of thailand to the other. Its going to be a rough weekend. Im sure therell be blood.

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aside missing my first bus option (thanks to the person replacing me sleeping in, then upon arrival at his new digs pitching a fit and having to be consoled by the teacher chaperoning him to maybe not go straight back to bangkok), a largely uneventful 20 hours of travel thus far. Just got to catch the boat, then its taxi/pick up to my digs for the month. Snowboard bag is of course as annoying as ever mind you and i got no sleep, but the bowels have remained relatively silent throughout. Sorry dudes.

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i know, and im actually in a lovely hotel as well. aside the insane cost of taxis, its kinda nice compared to both bkk and the endless rain of trat. i might actually be... enjoying(?) it?

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Tefling on koh samui. Not much to tell ya. Been doing observation lessons all week. Id just be repeating myself by suggesting that the thai education system is a cluster****, and the lord only knows how they plan on staying some kind of power base in south east asia. I mean, ffs, fifty five 9 year olds in a class. I also saw a class for TWO DAYS that had a teacher for around 3 lessons out of 12 (two of them were my tefl colleagues). The kids just ran amok in their classroom or wandering about the school as you might expect any 9 year old to do. "Wheres their teacher?" "oh he didnt come today".

I dont think they have a clue what education is actually about. In thailand it seems to be childminding... (to an extent, since you know... no one was specifically minding those kids).

 

Probably not the schools fault (its definitely partly the schools fault though), but you cant help but wonder what this place is going to be like in 30 years.

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not to get too po-faced about it, but first up they need basic skills. They aint learning them by throwing paper aeroplanes about (unless of course theyre training for a career throwing shit into bins and having to factor in air resistance (though unfortunately no ones teaching them what air resistance is anyway so theyll just have to figure it out by also throwing it on whatever that job is - unless of course their job actually is to design and throw paper aeroplanes). Secondly every kid should have an opportunity to excel regardless of where they live. Its not a surprise that a great many of the people on the front desks of hotels arent Thai, but Malay, burmese, and Laotians. When asean hits, theres a lot of people in the tourist industry who will be seriously fearing for their jobs.

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Asean is just a general platform for countries from south east asia to debate and proceed towards a common south east asian identity. Whilst AEC is an economic agreement allowing the free movement of people, capital and produce between those countries. Kinda like the european union in a way.... sort of, since the EU actually incorporates the European Economic community (now the EC) into the EU and sees it as a corner stone of EU discussion and organisation.

 

AEC means members of states outside thailand can now come to thailand and work here without the current visa restrictions they face. There is a huge push in thailand (even in elementary schools) about the amazing benefits of the AEC. Indeed, i recently had to teach a NINE YEAR OLD a speech she couldnt possibly understand on the amazing impact the AEC would have on Thailands economy and integration with its ASEAN member states for her speech contest.

 

Theyre pretty gung ho about it, but they recognise they are way behind countries like laos and cambodia for english, and Myanmar for business and labor. So despite the cheerful tunes you hear, one of their biggest economic drivers (tourism) is about to find a great many people from thailand being replaced by far more polite, courteous, fluent and above all CHEAP Laotians/cambodians. And from that, a great deal of cash leaving thailand for their families back home. And what with iraq recently sending a huge shipment of rice back to thailand for being of extremely substandard quality, its number one export is also hitting the skids. The complete disrespect that thai people have for farang (its way worse than korea or japan) despite tourism being one of their biggest revenue sources is going to bite them on the ass. Corruption is eating away at this country from what i can see. Id say its a pity, but i really dont think it is. Its well earned. When you have farang prices and think of farang as idiots you can take for a ride, and an industry that relies on corruption, its not going to be long until that attitude starts seeping through into your exports and you try and see what corners you can cut and what you can get away with because farang are stupid.

 

Which i guess brings me to micro. Charge farang 400 baht for something worth 50 baht and rely entirely on one time only customers. And those customers once they figure it out, steer clear entirely of street markets and run instead to multinational businesses thereafter to buy stuff because its got a price label on it. Weird place. And far from fixing it they simply change the minister in charge and they say the same shit as the previous one said on his first day. I think its been 4 ministers in charge of education in the last year.

 

And one more thing. Why on earth is it more lucrative to be a tour guide... not RUN a tour guide, but just a humble tour guide or pretty much ANY part of tourism in thailand, than it is to be a teacher. One of my favorite teachers in my last school told me that she could be earning double just working in the tourist industry. She was very clear that she just meant general tourism. Not owning a tour company, not even managing one, but just working in one, than she could working as a teacher. And thus teaching itself attracts the type of teachers that just dont bother showing up, treat it like a mcjob and then the school cant find staff to cover emergencies. So 45 kids are left to run about making paper aeroplanes all day. Its about as close as you can get to a national babysitting service. Which isnt entirely unaccurate since the text books are so incredibly off the actual level of the students that they become fundamentally worthless! but never mind! lets give every student a tablet! Yay! now we can save money on textbooks and offer backhanders to the people pushing them into schools.

 

Actually speaking of annoying shit. I was teaching a class once and i saw two random people roaming about the school grounds. They asked if they could speak to me. I thought maybe they were teacher trainers or something. Can i just remind you im in the MIDDLE of teaching a class. I said "sorry, now is a terrible time, as you can see im in the middle of teaching a class... <obviously!!!>" (the subtle insinuation being of course that as a professional you should maybe recognise that my duty is to the students and not to you at the moment).

 

But they then started telling me it would only take 5 minutes of my time.

 

I told them in no uncertain terms that i would not be speaking with them during class time and that they should come back when im free.

 

And what was so important that they felt they could disturb the middle of my class and pull me out of my room for 5 minutes?

 

Diet supplement pills. It turns out they were trying to sell diet supplement pills. I mean for **** sake. Who is letting these people disturb actual classtime for hawkers to pitch their wares? And what kind of people have so little value in education that they think its absolutely acceptable to interrupt a lesson so they can make bank off one person doing tehir ****ing job.

 

Ive also had parents randomly turn up and interrupt lessons because they baked their kids and all the class cookies because it was someones birthday. Slightly less annoying, but cant it ****ing wait? Why is it in the middle of their lesson? There seems to be this culture where school and classes are just something to keep the kids occupied for the better part of the day, and thus its perfectly fine to disrupt whatevers going on... actually holy shit! i just remembered... one of my ENGLISH teachers did exactly this shit. She barreled into my class mid lesson. I was at the front of the class teaching something, she comes in and then starts chatting to me about nothing at all. Im waiting for the punchline and assuming we're just exchanging pleasentaries because shes interrupting my class, but after a while i realise, shes not here to tell me about some student needing to come with her, or some parent thats phoned up the school. Shes literally coming to chat. She can see me standing there at the board, teaching the ****ing class. What the hell is she doing?

 

Ah, its a strange place and no mistake. If you have any dignity as a teacher, its not for you. If all you do is turn up if you can be bothered stinking of beer from the night before and then SLEEPING or facebooking on your phone (seen both of those) at your desk while the kids run about, then hells yeah! come to thailand and teach.

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Ah, its a strange place and no mistake. If you have any dignity as a teacher, its not for you. If all you do is turn up if you can be bothered stinking of beer from the night before and then SLEEPING or facebooking on your phone (seen both of those) at your desk while the kids run about, then hells yeah! come to thailand and teach.

 

 

Soooo......they have jobs in Japan....right??? ;)

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Whoopsie. Guess i made yet another miss-step.

 

Held out through July for a position in Gangwon do. Nothing came up. Week 1 figured i still had time. Week 2 was so busy lesson planning that forgot to check. At the end of the week suddenly mentally worked out the logistics and thought faaaaaaaark! better get on it. Had a look and the pickings were mega slim. Got nothing back.

Week 3 all PS jobs gone! Got one possible lead, turned out to be false as after the interview with the recruiter got offered yet another entry level shitty hagwon job.

Week 4... Turns out for emergencies now, theres enough people in the country looking for a PS job that they hire internally with people who can do a quick visa run. Its all gone a bit japan.

 

So looks like im in a hagwon (which i dont need a tefl for). And this all assumes i get the visa in time - 19 days to go until my Thai visa expires, and 22 until my criminal records check is no longer valid at korean immi. This is down to the wire nailbiting stuff. Oh, and ive now eaten 500 quid into my 1500 quid credit card. This is the only cash i physically have... and it isnt even mine. :) Oh yeah, and the rent here is over next wednesday. I dont deal with stress very well. Its going to be a tricky couple of weeks. :)

 

ETA: in a panic just put my resume back up on ajarn for a job in thailand. Work for 6 months more here...??? gyah! Got to have a back up if all else fails.

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