So just when some of you no doubt thought that this blog had quietly passed away into oblivion, here it is, seemingly back from the dead. Yes, my overwhelming slackness has meant that it’s now been 6 whole months since I last wrote anything. My feeble excuse is that it’s actually a lot of work putting one of these blog entries together, so I’ve decided to cut at least one corner by not posting photos here anymore, because they were very tedious to insert. Instead, I have put my photos in an online album, which you can find here. There is also a link to this online album on the right hand side of this page. Please go and have a look at them sometime.
So I’m sure the question on everyone’s lips is has anything happened in the last 6 months that is actually worth reading about? Curiously there are some similar themes to the last blog entry I wrote, but there is also a lot of other stuff I could write about. I might break it down into sections to help me keep track of myself.
THE THAILAND SITUATION
As I mentioned in my last post, Thai politics can be quite interesting. Even in the last week there’s been some more protests and unrest and many people have commented to me in emails and the like about whether it’s still safe here or not. The situation is quite complicated and has not been very well-reported by a lot of the international media, in my opinion – there was a really poorly written and simplistic article about it in the Sydney Morning Herald last week, for example. Essentially, things have been relatively stable in Thailand for most of the last 5 months since a new government was formed by a coalition of parties after the previous coalition was disbanded following the main party being found guilty of electoral fraud. I won’t bother to go into too much detail, but basically the main issue now is that there are a lot of people (commonly referred to as “red shirts”) who are still angry that Thaksin Shinawatra was ousted in a coup in 1996 and that his allies’ political party was found guilty of electoral fraud last November. Unfortunately the country is now quite divided and recent events have only deepened those divisions. It’s hard to know how things can improve, because there is a lot of passion (and therefore determination) on both sides. But the fact is that the international media have certainly exaggerated how bad the situation is on the ground. Bangkok is a very big city and the unrest has generally been confined to very small sections of the city, meaning that so far it has had no real impact on me personally, nor on most of Bangkok’s residents. The future is of course uncertain and unless there can be some form of reconciliation between the two sides, it only likely to result in further disruption and harm to the country as a whole, which would be a real shame. I guess the important point to make is that I believe Bangkok is still a relatively safe place, despite the sensationalised images in the media, because there is still over 99% of the population are not interested in causing problems for the country right now.
WORK
Things at school have been fine. Although the term that has just finished was by far the most difficult and stressful one I have had so far. I was very busy the whole term and I had some fairly unpleasant incidents to deal with involving quite a few students. The school have generally been very supportive of me throughout, but it was still quite draining at times being the person mainly responsible for dealing with these sensitive situations. However, that’s part of my job there so I have had to accept it. Despite all this I am still enjoying working at the school and there have been some good things happening in amongst all the difficulties. I have decided to sign on at the school for another two year contract, meaning I will be here until at least mid-2011.
One of the good things about working in a school is that I’ve had the chance to get involved in some other aspects of school life. I helped out with the school’s major drama production earlier in the year. I have also been on two school trips – one weekend away taking some students trekking in a national park south of Bangkok as part of the Duke of Edinburgh award, which was very enjoyable. I also got to help out with a History trip to Beijing a couple of weeks ago, which meant spending 5 days in China, all expenses paid, and seeing a lot of very interesting historical stuff in and around Beijing. I have put some photos from this trip up on my photos page (see link above or to the right).
HOLIDAYS
I have had several holidays since I last wrote. In Christmas I went back to Sydney for 3 weeks and it was fantastic catching up with everyone there, although I still wasn’t able to see everyone as much I would have liked.
In February I had one week off and I went down to an island called Ko Tao in the Gulf of Thailand to do some diving. It was very relaxing and enjoyable. The island itself was very touristy but the diving was sensational. There are some photos from this in my online album.
The most recent holiday, of which today is the last day (third term starts tomorrow) I spent the first 5 days in Beijing, with the school trip mentioned above. It was very interesting seeing all the historically significant stuff, although Beijing itself didn’t exactly charm me. It is a huge, modern city with lots of very wide streets and high-rise buildings everywhere. I just didn’t feel like it had much character, but I enjoyed the parts that we visited: Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, the Summer Palace and the Great Wall of China. They were all very beautiful and interesting. We also saw a couple of excellent shows – a kung-fu show which was spectacular, and an acrobatics show which was amazing.
After I got back from Beijing I spent one night in Bangkok before flying to Laos to meet up with some good friends of mine Alex and Ange, who are in the middle of an extended trip around South-East Asia. I was very happy to return to Luang Prabang because I enjoyed it so much when I was there in October. It was just as relaxing and beautiful as last time. Because we had a bit of extra time compared to when I was there last time we braved the bus ride down to Vang Vieng. It was a long and winding road – literally – and many people on the bus got motion sickness because of the constant turns in the road. However, the scenery was absolutely stunning. I haven’t seen huge mountains and tiny villages like that since being in Nepal. It almost made the ride worthwhile. Vang Vieng is nothing particularly special – a curiously touristy little town in the middle of Laos that is extremely popular with young backpackers. The thing that made it worthwhile was one of the activities there: tubing down the Mekong River, which involves hiring a large rubber inner tube and floating down the river from one riverside bar to the next. At several of these bars they have rope swings, zip-wires, giant slides and high platforms where you enjoy various ways of flying through the air and landing back in the water. Anyone who knows me will know that I find this type of mindless fun particularly enjoyable, so I was in my element and had a great time. I only had one near-incident where I misjudged the momentum I had on one large rope swing and missed landing on someone by only about a metre. Can I just say that it’s hard to control yourself when you’re in mid-air. This particular moment happened to get caught on video so you can all enjoy it:
While we were in Vang Vieng, the Laos New Year officially started. This is a time when the local people do a lot of ceremonies at the temples to bring themselves good luck for the new year. But there is also a tradition in Laos (as in Thailand) of splashing people with water to symbolise being cleansed for the new year. This tradition has now become a huge water fight. It was impossible to walk around town without getting drenched, but it was all good fun. New Year goes for three days so it was still going when we got to Vientiane. It was also Alex’s birthday so there was plenty of reasons to celebrate.
After a couple of days in Vientiane it was time for me to head back to Bangkok. And so I have to start back at work again tomorrow. I would like to keep this blog a bit more up-to-date than I have in the last 6 months, so we'll see how I go. Cheers all, I hope life is treating you well.
