The routine of Bangkok life

As I enter the final week of term, I am amazed at how quickly time has gone since I arrived here back in August. It’s been a hectic, exciting and therefore somewhat exhausting four months here, and I have really enjoyed the experience of living and working in such a different culture. I have also enjoyed going back to working in a school, which for a long time I thought I would never do again, but the school I work for is a very good one and actually values what I do there, which means a lot to me. Work has continued to be generally busy and rewarding - not as exciting as Mt Druitt of course, but I seem to be coping OK without the Druitt element.

Sadly, I don’t actually have much interesting stuff to report at the moment. The last couple of weeks have been a bit, dare I say it, routine; at least as far as life in Bangkok goes. I haven’t been away the last couple of weekends, and even though today is the third day of a long weekend here, I couldn’t really afford to go away unfortunately, so I was stuck here. There have however, been a lot of parties around the place to attend, as the end of year approaches. Apart from this, I have just been doing the normal Bangkok thing of heading into town on weekends, wandering round, going to the market, finding new (and sometimes challenging) things to eat, etc.

We had another public holiday last week on Wednesday for the King of Thailand’s birthday. This was quite a big event here. The Thais are very proud and appreciative of their King and go out of their way to show that devotion – quite a contrast to the general cynicism towards our regal regime in Australia. An example of the Thai people’s support of the King is that every Monday, most Thais wear bright yellow shirts. This is because the King was born on a Monday and as such his colour is yellow (each day of the week has a colour associated with it here). The thing I found amusing was that despite it being such a supposedly important day for Thai people, all the shops were still open and there were plenty of people out in the shopping centres. Shopping is definitely a national pastime in Bangkok.

This Friday is the last day of school for the term, following which we have 3 weeks off. Far be it from me to squander such an opportunity, so I’m off to the Philippines on Saturday for the 3 weeks. I spend a few days in Manila, then spend the rest of my time on the islands of Palawan and Busuanga. Supposedly this is a less developed and more naturally beautiful part of the Philippines and I’m travelling by myself, so I’m quite looking forward to getting there and enjoying a complete contrast to my life in Bangkok. There is also supposed to be some great diving there, including some of the best wreck diving in the area. So, I’ll be spending Christmas Day just outside a tiny town called El Nido, and then I’ll be spending New Year in another small town called Coron. I get back to Bangkok on January 5 in preparation for the start of term 2 on the 7th.

So that’s about it for now. I doubt that I’ll get to update this blog again before early Jan, so I’m very sorry to disappoint those out there who eagerly await each update with drooling anticipation. I thought I’d put on a few general photos of Bangkok that I’ve taken since I got here, just for the sake of it. Have a brilliant Christmas and New Year! Cheers.

One of the many posh hotels along the river.

Wat Arun - one of the larger temples in Bangkok.

Some of the prestigious waterfront properties.

Chao Phraya - Bangkok's main waterway.

Another colourful temple.

A typical side street in Bangkok.

A typical main street in Bangkok - this one's in Chinatown.

Space is always a premium in this congested city.

Fresh seafood for sale on the side of the street.

Just to rub it in a bit more...

How good is this? Two posts in two days! Be impressed (but don't expect this kind of craziness too much in the future). Just wanted to share a few photos with you. Unfortunately, I didn't take these, but they do give a bit of an indication of my recent diving experience, the greatness of which I extolled in my post yesterday.

I think this one's a batfish. There were lots of them around.

As I mentioned, lots of fish.

And lots of coral.

And lots of these cool "Christmas Trees" that instantly disappear back into the rock when you get too close to them.

This is a great shot of a sea urchin. There were lots of them around as well.

I love the way the light reflects off my head in that last one. Well, that's all I've got for now. Cheers.

Islands, rainforests and a dash of politics

Life here has been quite busy the last couple of weeks and I have been out and about around Thailand a bit. Allow me to share some of the highlights with you.

Ko Chang
Last weekend we had a long weekend, so about 25 people from school went down to Ko Chang, which is a beautiful island near the Cambodian border, although a bit more touristy and developed than I expected. The main reason we all went was to do some diving, and we got to do some great diving in the Marine Park off the south coast of the island. The place we dived the second day was definitely one of the nicest spots I have ever dived – massive amounts of unspoilt coral, thousands of tropical fish and beautiful clear water. It was like diving in an aquarium. I also completed my Enriched Air specialty course, meaning I’m now qualified to dive with oxygen-enriched air, which basically allows for longer dive times. Apart from diving, we just relaxed on the beach and hung out in the little town nearby. Here are some photos from the weekend - and yes, the water really was that colour!






Residential
One of the things I'm really beginning to appreciate about Thailand is the contrast in landscapes it contains - not unlike Australia I guess. So after spending the weekend on a tropical island, last week I went up to Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand with 140 year 9 students for the annual residential week, which means a week away from school doing more non-academic education. It was a great week. Apart from just being in such a beautiful and lush part of Thailand (about as far removed from Bangkok as it's possible to be), we did white water rafting, mountain biking, trekking, kayaking and bamboo rafting. It was a lot of fun and the students were extremely well-behaved – quite a contrast to many of the camps I have been involved with in the past. Here are a couple of photos of where we were.

24 November
Yesterday was significant for several reasons. Firstly, it was my 37th birthday, and after waking up on a train on my way back to Bangkok from the afore-mentioned Chiang Mai trip, I celebrated the occasion by having a few beers with Owen and Marianne (who had also been on the same trip) at about 10am after we got back to Bangna (the outer suburb of Bangkok in which we live and work). In the afternoon I had a very relaxing massage at a rather posh spa and that night I went to a pub for dinner and a few drinks with a bunch of others from school. It was a very enjoyable birthday all round.

You may recall in a previous post that I had a certain birthday wish in relation to the Australian election, which also took place yesterday. Well, I am very chuffed that all my wishes came to pass – not only was there a change in government but the former PM also lost his seat. As I sat watching the telecast on the internet I couldn’t help but smile. Not that I expect the new government to be wonderful, but I am certainly hoping they redress some of the imbalance I believe has crept into Australian life in the last 10 years. I don’t want to go on about this too much, but would like to recount something I have thought about a lot lately. A wiser man than I (that you would be you, Mr Herron) once made a very astute comment to me. Not long after the last election in 2004 I was bemoaning to him about the fact that the Liberal party would get control of the Senate. He said to me it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing because he believed it would spell the end of the government. He said up until then the country had only experienced a watered-down version of Howard conservatism, but with the Senate under his control the country would get a full-on dose of it, and that when Australians realised what that actually entails, it would pretty much guarantee a huge backlash at the next election. Prophetic words as it turned out, as I tend to think this is at least partly what happened yesterday.

Well, I think I’ve done enough political commentating for now. After all this time away from school, I’m back to having to do proper work again tomorrow. But fortunately there’s only 3 weeks before our Christmas break, and there are two public holidays before then as well, including the King's birthday which is a very big event here. Well, it's getting late and I need some sleep. Cheers!

Life-long learning

Some things I have recently learned while living in Bangkok:

• Asian Elvis impersonators are very cheesy.
• So are Asian Tom Jones impersonators.
• Kids letting off bungers (loud, explosive fireworks) outside your apartment building on a regular basis becomes rather annoying after a while.
• It's quite possible to convince yourself that ordinary Aussie wine tastes much better than you always thought it did when it's "imported" and you pay three times the price for it.
• If you like street fashion parades featuring large transvestites, come to Bangkok.
• Phone companies being difficult and incompetent is a global phenomenon.

Some things I am expecting to learn in the near future:

• How to scuba dive using nitrox (oxygen-enriched air).
• Whether it's possible for me to visit a Thai island without getting rained upon mercilessly.
• If voting in an Australian election is as rewarding and thrilling when you're not attacked by "how to vote" people.
• What it's like to take 150 year 9 students away for a week of rafting, trekking and mountain biking.
• How much sleep one can get on an overnight train whilst surrounded by 150 year 9 students.

Rain, monks and fish

OK, so it’s been a few weeks since my last entry. Clearly my noble intentions of writing about once a week were a touch ambitious. Oh well. Allow me to fill you on the last few weeks then...

Not long after my last entry we had a staff development day at school. I shan’t bore you with the details of this. Suffice to say there were several lowlights and two highlights: a free proper coffee and a free foot massage. So it wasn’t all bad. And the fact that it was the last day of school before our half-term break also made it slightly more bearable. So, that night I was off to the airport to fly down to Ko Samui.

The first inconvenience of the trip was that my flight was delayed by an hour and a half, meaning I didn’t actually arrive on the island until nearly midnight. (In hindsight, this could be seen as an omen for the whole week.) However, I did arrive OK and found the hotel that my mate Owen had previously arranged for us (he had fortuitously managed to get on an earlier flight). The next morning we got on the ferry to Ko Pha Ngan, which is about 20 km north of Samui. We found some very nice beachfront bungalows for the few days we planned to stay there. The rest of the day was as expected: relaxing on the beach, reading, unwinding, eating, getting a massage, having a few quiet drinks in the evening - surely the start of a well-deserved break on a lush tropical island. But it’s funny how things can change. The next morning we woke up to very heavy rain. And basically, the rain barely stopped for the next 5 days. I had all these grand plans for my time down there: do some diving (the rain was so heavy the dive boats weren’t going out most days and the visibility would have been dreadful), do some trekking around the island (heavy rain puts a dampener on such things), do some photography (again, rain and cameras don’t tend to get along too well) and relax on the beach (a challenge to relax while enduring water torture). So, our plans were forced to change somewhat. What we actually did instead was: sleep, read, walk around the few shops nearby, eat, drink, watch TV in the pubs and restaurants (when there wasn’t a blackout due to the heavy rain), get a massage pretty much every day, and that’s about it. One good thing was that the rain held off for the night of the rugby world cup final, so we were able to watch that. Owen is Scottish and possibly enjoyed the anguish of the many English supporters around us even more than I did. That finished about 3:30 local time, after which we headed down to the all-night beach party until dawn, at which point the rain started up again. So it was a fairly uneventful time on Ko Pha Ngan. Our original plan was to go to another island called Ko Tao as well, but we decided given the weather to go back to Ko Samui, where there were at least a few more shops and restaurants in which to avoid the rain. We met up with another guy from school Lee on Samui and the three of us pretty much did the same things there that Owen and I did on Ko Pha Ngan. I only stayed for a few more days before flying back to Bangkok, but at least my last day down there the rain eased up, so I could enjoy some time on the beach. All in all, the trip was a bit disappointing, only because of the weather, but at least I got to relax a lot. Needless to say it hadn’t rained at all in Bangkok during that week.

The day after I arrived back (Friday), a friend of mine phoned me and asked if I wanted to go down to Rayong (south-east of Bangkok) with him and few of his mates. So that afternoon we headed off to his mate’s apartment overlooking the beach, about 3 hours out of Bangkok. Very nice spot. The next morning we went to see a local Buddhist festival, which was really interesting. It involved a very colourful parade walking along the main street of this small village, followed by all the monks from the local area walking along collecting donations of food and supplies from the local community. The local people were lined up along the side of the road behind make-shift tables and as each monk walked past, they put something in his bowl (usually something small like a spoonful of raw rice). I don’t know how many monks there were – we didn’t stay long enough to see them all (potentially over a hundred I would reckon), but the line of local people lined up along the street stretched on for several kilometres. Some of the monks were very young – hard to say exactly but about 10 years old I’d say. It was a huge event given the small size of the village and I was one of only a few foreigners there, which was also really nice. I got some great photos. Here are a few but the better ones are on my flickr page (see link to the right).

That afternoon we all went for a walk up to a local river, which ran down the side of a mountain and had several waterfalls along the way. It was a fantastic walk and at one point there was a section where people could feed some fish. It was amazing how these fish were so desperate for food they would actually come out of the water to get it. After a few seconds of course they had to frantically get back into the water. These fish were literally risking their own lives in order to get a bit of green bean. I was going to try to attach a short video of this spectacle, but unfortunately Windows crappy Movie Maker is useless and I don't have another video editing program at the moment. Sorry.

The next day (the last day of my break) we just took it easy in the morning, then drove back to Bangkok after lunch. I was very pleased that I got at least a couple of days of doing something interesting without getting rained upon. Last week back at work was a busy one and this week has been a bit up and down so far in terms of workload. Last weekend I spent in Bangkok just hanging out with friends and catching up on stuff. So life is pretty much back to normal here in BKK. Cheers.

Can entrepeneurism go too far?

Allow me to share some profound comments (somewhat paraphrased) that I have recently developed a deeper appreciation of:

"There is a time and place for everything under the sun" - The Philosopher in Ecclesiastes
"You can have too much of a good thing" - Max Headroom

I have reflected previously upon the joy of massages in Thailand, but the above wisdom applies even to something as brilliant as a massage. For example, when using the urinal in a men's public toilet. Yes, I have now experienced this phenomenon on two separate occasions. Without going into too much detail, I go to use the facilities in a restaurant or pub, minding my own business, and the next thing I know there's a wet towel being put across the back of my neck and some guy starts massaging my shoulders. This continues until I finish doing what I initially went in for, at which point the whole thing gets banged up a notch and the guy grabs my chin and the back of my head and twists it so that my neck cracks, chiropractor style, quickly followed by cracking my back as well. Of course, the guy expects a tip for this uninvited service, which I can't help but give because it's quite possibly his only job and even though the establishment obviously allows him to be there, he certainly won't be getting paid any salary for it. Personally, I blame capitalism for this - such shenanigans would never happen under communism! There are just so many problems with this I'm not sure where to begin. Firstly, it's very sexist - the poor females don't get to experience this unique slice of Thai hospitality. Secondly, it only seems to happen at the urinals - if they're all full and you have to use a cubicle you also miss out. Thirdly, if people have the foresight to develop a massage service in a toilet, why not in places where they would be really appreciated - such as airport departure lounges, Bangkok traffic jams or dentist waiting rooms? These are just some of the issues that these bathroom masseurs need to sort out in my humble opinion.

Anyway, enough about the eccentricities of Thai toilets. Things are still going rather well for me over here. Work is still busy. My nights mostly disappear after getting back from school between 4 and 6, maybe having a quick swim, going out for some food (proud to say I still have zero cooking implements), checking email and a brief bit of relaxing watching TV or reading a book. As usual the most interesting things have been happening on weekends.

Two weekends ago I went up to Chiang Mai with a group from school to do some white water rafting. We flew up on Friday evening (I love Air Asia!) and arrived in time to have a night out in Chiang Mai city, which is the second-biggest city in Thailand, but completely different to the capital. It is much smaller and has a much more rural feel to it. I actually really liked it - it reminded me a little of Vietnam. The next day we headed north for a couple of hours to a place called Chiang Dao where we did the rafting. It was a lot of fun, except for one point going through the worst rapids of the day and the raft I was in capsized. It was a little bit scary as two of us got caught in a swirly bit of rapid and kept getting sucked under. Fortunately there were some guys from the rafting company on the far side of the river with ropes who were able to pull us out of the water. Two of the others in the raft ended up floating down river about 100 metres, which would also have been quite unnerving. Fortunately though we all survived with no significant injuries. The next day we did the same bit of river but there was actually a lot more water due to the rain we had overnight, meaning that the river flowed a lot faster but the rapids weren't as churning. The biggest disappointment though was that the Aussies lost to Johnny Wilkinson (curse him!) in the rugby and because we were in the middle of rural Chiang Mai we didn't get to see it and had to rely on text messages for score updates.

This past weekend I stayed in Bangkok and just pottered around a bit. I deliberately wanted to take things a bit easier this weekend because I have been quite tired generally and my weekends have been quite busy and so I haven't had much of a chance to just switch off. However, before you all start to feel too sorry for me, this Thursday night I am going away again for the school's half-term break. I am going down to spend a week and a bit on a couple of the islands south of Bangkok: Ko Pha Ngan and Ko Tao. The plan is just to do some relaxing, eating, drinking, diving, exploring and more relaxing. There are a few of us from school going and I am really looking forward to it. I know this won't be the last time I say this, but I do love school holidays.

The other thing I feel I must comment on is the upcoming Australian election. It just so happens to be on my birthday and I am SO pleased that I won't be in Australia having to endure the obscene propaghanda and crap that makes up an Aussie election campaign. Of course, those of you who know me well will no doubt know what I am most wishing for my birthday this year! Cheers all.

When in doubt, blame your environment

Being surrounded as I am by Poms, and bearing in mind the evolutionary notion that one adapts to one's surroundings, I feel the need to have a bit of a whinge. Basically, I'm having to work rather hard over here. For example, today I started work at 7am (as I do every morning) and basically worked non-stop until 6:15pm tonight. Trust me when I say that having worked for the last 6 years as a public servant, I'm not used to such long hours. And you'll be stunned to learn that this is not the latest I have finished work since being here - one night a couple of weeks ago I didn't leave work til 8pm! Shocking, no? On top of this, I made a promise to myself that I would never take work home with me to finish, yet just in the last 2 weeks I have done this no less than twice.

Now while every teacher that I now work with, along with all my friends (and one brother) who happen to be teachers will have absolutely no sympathy for me (as they do this all the time), I am but a simple counsellor and not respecting one's own professional boundaries is rightly frowned upon in counselling circles. However, the fact remains that there is a lot of work to keep me busy at the moment. Most of my days are spent seeing students and then after the students finish school at 2:30, I generally have to type up notes. Occasionally I have students and/or parents come to see me after school as well. On top of all this, I have to prepare a couple of programs that I'm delivering at the moment.

In all honesty, I'm not really complaining about all this. Yes, work is fairly hectic at times, but generally it's quite interesting and rewarding. And I have a fairly nice office and counselling room in which to work:

This is my office area - a bit cramped unfortunately.

This is the counselling room - less cramped fortunately.

And this is view out of the window - very pleasant.

The other thing I get to do at school is run the school cricket program. Admittedly, the program is fairly modest at the moment, but there are plans to build it up over time. So I spend an hour or so every Monday in the cricket nets with some of the students. I am also finding other sporting activities to enjoy after school. On Tuesday arvos I play indoor football (or soccer if you must) with some other staff in the school's brand new and mighty impressive sports hall, and on Wednesdays I've just started playing squash on the school's squash courts. On Thursdays I'm taking Thai lessons through the school, meaning that most of my afternoons are taken up with something productive. It's definitely one of the advantages of being a part of such a large and diverse "community".

The other great thing I've been able to do is go away on weekends. Since my last post I've been to Ko Samet for one weekend, which is a small-ish island about 3 hours south-east of Bangkok. It's not hugely developed (yet!) so it still has a bit of a beach bungalow-rustic feel to it, which is reall nice. It is a great spot and a brilliant spot to spend a weekend. Here's a few photos: the first two are of the beach, the second is taken from the place we were staying, looking towards the beach.

The weekend just gone I was in Bangkok, where I spent all of Saturday in a pub watching, of all things, the AFL grand final. A group from school was going and I sort of felt obliged to go, even though I was supremely disinterested in the game itself. It was a fun day though. This coming weekend I'm off again, this time to go white water rafting in Chiang Mai, again as part of an unofficial school trip. It should be a lot of fun.

So let me take back my whingey comments at the beginning of this post. Although work is busy and I have to work long hours occasionally, the good things about working here far outweigh the bad. There are so many opportunities that I am making the most of and mostly really enjoying. Fortunately, it's fairly rare that one of these opportunities turns out to be a bit disturbing. For example, when I decided to buy something new from the market on my way home tonight: what I guessed was barbecued chicken skewers in fact turned out to be barbecued chunks of fat (possibly chicken, but who knows) and what looked an awful like barbecued pork skewers was in actuality barbecued pieces of kidney (I think). Ahh, the joys of Thai food!

Til next time, cheers!