My first complete year in Thailand comes to an end. Time to reflect, re-think, reconsider and review. Highlights, lowlights, learnings, earnings, disappointments. The good, the bad and the ugly of living a teaching life in Thailand.
I divided this post (as well as the complete my-thai.org website) into different sections. Travel, Teaching & Living. I will write about the highlights and lowlights of 2011 in each of these categories.
Let’s get the ball rolling with the travel part. Since I am living in a more rural part of the country I don’t see the beach or the sea every single day. That’s why I am quite happy when there are reasons to travel. One of those reasons during the past year was the visit of one of my good friends from Germany.
We travelled for about two weeks and came across some pretty nice and fascinating places. To name a few of those highlights: Chiang Mai (during Songkran festival – crazy!), Sukhothai (during Songkran festival – crazy crazy!), Bangkok (of course!) and beautiful Krabi (Tonsai Beach!). While every stop during our journey was interesting and somehow impressive, Krabi blew the whole thing off. In an incredible way. Actually there are no words to describe or other places to compare. It was simply perfect. One of my friends who is quite familiar with Thailand once called Krabi (especially the Krabi that is not the main tourist beach) his ‘happy place’ – Now I totally understand that. Heaven is a place on earth. Don’t get me wrong though. Krabi is NOT a typical ‘family resort, let the kids play at the beach and snorkel’ thing. Especially beautiful Tonsai beach is not the kind of place where you hang out in the calm water and enjoy easy waves. It is quite rough and stoney…however this is part of the charme and incredibly impressive. Most people who stay at Tonsai Beach are climbers who are looking for a great spot to enjoy their sport and hang out once in a while. This relaxed atmosphere and the great surrounding fit perfectly together and make Krabi such an incredible spot.
Krabi, Thailand
With Krabi being the absolute highlight of this year it is somehow hard to stop dreaming and coming up with a lowlight…but that’s the plan for today so let’s see what made it to the bottom of my travel destinations. Kinda hard to say since I did not come along totally crappy places or things like that so at the end of this list, and my travel lowlight of the year: Palio in Korat (Nakhon Ratchasima).
Palio is also called ‘little Italy‘ and is in the middle of nowhere. It is kind of a big outlet ‘city’ (Italian style) where you should go, leave your money as fast as possible and go again. One of the few places I’d say they weren’t worth travelling there. However Korat city is close since it is just another typical North Eastern Thai city – which is not a bad thing (well actually it is) but since I already live in a typical Isan city, I don’t need to see to much of others (Korat, Khon Kaen) that are just the same. Finally I have to say that travelling in Thailand is mostly an experience and almost every place is somehow worth going. You’ll always find something that amazes, scares or disturbs you.
Enough with the travel part, let’s check out what was good, bad or ugly in terms of teaching.
The good – teaching highlights of 2011. That’s actually pretty easy. Students. While I still complain about their laziness (Thai style) it turned out that, the more time I spend here and the more they get to know me, the more they try to understand and the more they are willing to participate. While I usually always had some good and bad classes right now I have to say that there are only nice and even nicer classes. However, to name some of my favorite moments: Hanging out with my ‘older’ students at BBQ, going on tour with my tourism students, seeing some amazing assignments & having a fun cooking experience with some of my classes.
Furthermore I started to develop my teaching style further, set up some easy e-learning procedures and published some social media & learning related articles. My new teaching home (www.sayfun.me) became widely accepted and I am looking forward to develop it further over the next few months.
Lowlights in terms of teaching are all regarding my college and the organization. The college over here sucks (sorry!) in terms of communication and organization. Examples: The other day our college had reserved seats at the HUGE local festival. All teachers have been invited and picked up – except one. Yes. The foreign teacher. Nobody thought about telling me. More than ONE YEAR after I came here people still dont’ think or care about me. Thanks a lot – that somehow shows how little they appreciate the work. This, however, is not the only way in which the college sucks.
Next example: When I came here I had no idea about visa regulations and whatever. So I asked my college if I have to do something special, leave Thailand after 3 months like many others or anything similar. They told me: ‘No, you can stay here until you finish’ – unfortunately that wasn’t true. So when the police checked my passport at the airport counter, the made me pay 20.000 (!!!!) Baht for overstaying my visa (of which I didn’t know anything). And the college couldn’t care less. Thanks again!
Third example: In order to make me stay here they promised me that I can keep the classes I want and that I will teach more ‘higher level’ students in this term. And now guess what they did after I signed the contract: Right! They took away all the classes I wanted to keep and didn’t give me any higher level classes this term. So if anyone of you is thinking about teaching in Thailand I can only say: Do it, try it! But DO NOT come to the Udon Thani Vocational College. NEVER!
Enough with the ranting though, let’s see what I complain about in the living part.
Highlights of the living part are hard to explain. I would say living in Thailand made me very very very patient. Coming from marketing agencies I actually was kinda used to know how precious time is and that waiting costs money. In Thailand you ALWAYS have to wait. No matter what or where. Waiting is part of the daily life. Everywhere. Flipping out and going mad won’t help – it actually would make things worse. So all you can do is sit, smile & wait in patience. Of course I still find it annoying from time to time but I also find myself way more often relaxed and thinking ‘is this really worth getting furious’.
What I also appreciate is the fact that people usually never have a problem to share. Food, cars, clothes, rides, whatever. If you are missing something people will share with you. No problem at all and not even something to think about. That’s cool and I like that attitude very much. That’s the way it should be by default. Everywhere.
Another ‘highlight’ was my pretty bad injury (knee luxation). I injured myself when going inline skating (roller blading) pretty bad and couldn’t move after falling to the ground since my knee was totally screwed. Luckily some students witnessed it, came running and took care of me. They tried to calm me down, called the ambulance and even went to the hospital with me to take care of me and make sure that the people there understand who I am and what happened. The hospital itself was terrible – the care taking of my students however heart warming (corny, sorry) and just great. First time I didn’t feel alone for a long time.
Living Lowlights. Well there is one thing that really really pissed me off. The lying! I still can’t get used to the fact that people lie all the time. It’s not only that random people don’t tell you the truth when you ask them for the way or stuff like that. No! It’s real, thought about, lying. Very often without any outcome or advantage for the liar. They simply lie because…well….they are used to it. I had two good friends here (well I thought so) who turned out to lie to me all the time. For no good reason. They didn’t get anything from me and from lying to me. They simply did it ’cause they could and I believed them (well..that’s what friends do, I thought). Actually Thais don’t like to be lied to either but when someone lies to them they’ll get mad. Stay mad. And forget about it the other day and everything will be fine again. ‘It’s to exhausting to stay mad’ someone once told me. But if a ‘friend’ lies to me repeatedly I will stay mad. For a long long time. No matter how exhausting this might be. That’s what they don’t understand quite often and why I don’t have to many close(r) friends.
High Lowlight in this case was one ‘friend’ who told me that lying is the worst thing one can do and that nobody should ever lie…guess who then lied to me all along…yep….wtf. When asking people about it many of them tell me ‘yeah I know a lot of people are lying. They do it because it’s easy…’. This is, unfortunately something that is peculiar for the Thai style of living. Always choosing the easy way. No matter if it’s work, studies, friends, relationships….most people are always taking the easy way or the shortcut to get to their goals. But fellas, you know the saying…there is no easy way out! I believe that my old rocking friend Karma will put boots to asses (and to all the assholes belonging to those asses) and everybody gets what he deserves.
Since I don’t want to finish my review with a negative tone: Thailand is still amazing. As you can see there are many good things, many bad things – but that’s the case everywhere. The important thing is what you make of it. And well…the past few weeks have been pretty exciting and it looks like that 2012 will bring a lot of change and new challenges (and the end of the world of course). So let’s get excited, learn lessons from the past and celebrate New Years Eve in Chiang Mai!
sùk săn wan-krít-mâat láe sà-wàt-dee bpee mài (merry christmas and a happy new year)
Without saying
What obviously goes without saying is that there were obviously events that affected the nation and all the people here much more than the things mentioned above. However this post is about things that happened in my personal life and are therefore covered in greater depth here.
The year started with some earthquakes in the north of Thailand which led to deathly injuries and severe power outtakes. Furthermore this year was the year the Thai people voted for a new government. The party that is sympathized by the red shirts was elected and is now in charge of the country (with the first women to be Prime Minister).
The above mentioned was however only a side note compared to the single most influential event of the year 2011. Natural disasters re-shaped the earth over the past year and also had the biggest impact on this year’s experiences and impressions here in Thailand. The flood disaster is, of course, THE most influential event of 2011 and should never be forgotten. In fact lessons should be learned and people should focus on what really matters. Sticking and working together hand in hand.
