Down and Out in BKK?

More Thai politics and another dash of Laos

2009-04-19T15:09:00.003+07:00

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.

Thai politics and a dash of Laos

2008-10-29T16:09:00.011+07:00

Let me start by apologising to the 2 or 3 people who still check my blog to see if I’ve written anything new, because you’ve been waiting a while. I fear my updates from now on will be fairly irregular, quite honestly because the novelty of living in Bangkok is wearing off and therefore the novelty of writing about it is wearing off. But I will persist with the occasional update, particularly after holidays, when I’ll actually have something worthy to document.

But before I get onto my latest holiday, there have been some interesting goings-on in Bangkok lately. In particular, an on-going political demonstration by a large group of people who believe (quite rightly it seems) that the current government is a corrupt proxy government of the former billionaire Prime Minister who was ousted in the military coup a couple of years ago and is now hiding out in London because he was recently found guilty of corruption and has been sentenced to 2 years jail if he returns to Thailand. As part of these demonstrations, they have hijacked the parliament building for the last 2 months, forcing the government to move their entire operation to the old airport. This is a classic “only in Thailand” moment - I can’t imagine a few thousand people would ever be able to just take over parliament house in Canberra! In the midst of all this, the Prime Minister of Thailand got sacked about 6 weeks ago because he continued to appear on his long-running TV cooking show. And the new Prime Minister now appears to be facing court on charges relating to the deaths of two protesters a few weeks ago. Add to this that there’s a good chance the current government may be disqualified entirely if an impending court decision rules that they broke the law at the last election. I must say, Thai politics are far more interesting than Australian politics. Although on a more serious note, it is very sad that many people have been injured and a few people killed during isolated violent clashes during some protests.

Fortunately however, none of this has affected me directly. In fact, if I hadn’t read about all this stuff in the paper, I’d have no idea that it was all going on in Bangkok, as nothing has really changed in most people’s day-to-day life as a result of it. Work has been very busy for me since school started back in August. I got a few weekends away, although most of them were for school-related training – one to Khao Yai National Park and one to Ayuddhaya. Even though they both involved work, it was nice to see some other parts of Thailand and get out of Bangkok for a bit. I also got to go white water rafting in Chiang Mai again for a weekend, which was a very enjoyable weekend away.

Last week we had a week off, so I decided to head up to Laos. I flew into Luang Prabang, which is a beautiful little town on the Mekong river. It’s a UNESCO Heritage town, so all the buildings were quite historic, mainly with a French colonial flavour, but there are also dozens of Buddhist temples around the place as well. I found it an incredibly peaceful and relaxing place to be – quite the opposite of Bangkok in many ways. I spent a lot of time just walking around, visiting temples, stopping off at cafe’s for proper bread (something Thailand has particular trouble producing), fresh fruit shakes and delicious desserts (while in principle I am opposed to the whole colonialist thing, the French influence on Laos cuisine is no bad thing), all at ridiculously cheap prices. I did a couple of day trips to a waterfall and a cave, got several massages and spent a fair bit of time chatting with some of the many monks around the place who were keen to practice their English. One monk in particular named Aot I became quite good friends with during the 5 days I was there. I really enjoyed my time in Luang Prabang. After a busy and at times quite stressful few weeks previously, it provided the quiet serenity I really needed at the time.

The main street of Luang Prabang

Novice monks collecting their morning alms

Inside a Buddhist temple

A local inhabitant

And another

And some more - the locals are nothing if not diverse

A typical village scene

Luang Prabang from the top of a hill

The night market in front of a temple

Another temple

The main street of Luang Prabang

And again

A village up-river from Luang Prabang

Some chillies drying in that village

Pak Ou Cave

My original plan had been to take the bus from Luang Prabang and spend a couple of days in Vang Vieng before continuing on to the capital Vientiane. However, due to a combination of not wanting to leave Luang Prabang so soon and not wanting to endure a fairly unpleasant (by all accounts) 8-hour bus ride to Vang Vieng, followed by another 3-hour bus-ride to the capital, I decided to fly directly to Vientiane (which took all of 40 minutes). I had been warned that Vientiane is not all that exciting, and that pretty much sums it up in my opinion. It’s essentially like a big version of Luang Prabang without the charm, and while spending hours wandering around the quiet streets and temples of Luang Prabang was a delight, doing the same thing in Vientiane was just a bit dull. However, the restaurants and cafe’s in Vientiane are amazing. I had one of the most delicious French meals I’ve ever had, which included without doubt the best steak I’ve had since leaving Australia, all for only $6! And that was a fancy, expensive meal by Vientiane standards. In several other places I ate in, it was very hard to choose what to eat because so many things looked fantastic. If there was more to do outside of mealtimes in Vientiane, it would be an incredible place to visit.

The Vientiane version of the Arc de Triomphe

And the view from the top of it

A temple in Vientiane

Vientiane is very close to the border with Thailand, so coming home I took a short bus ride across into Thailand then jumped on a domestic flight back to Bangkok. Even though it was only a week away from work, it was very restful and enjoyable. So now I’m back at work again, waiting for my next holiday in December, which I’ll be spending back in Sydney. It will be nice to come back and visit and I’m looking forward to catching up with as many people as possible then. Cheers!

Summer lovin' - Euro style

2008-08-30T11:12:00.010+07:00

It is now over a year since I moved to Bangkok, and what an exciting, eventful and enjoyable year it has been. And while I have definitely missed some things about Australia during the year (live music, the variety of beer, the demise of John Howard, and of course friends and family) I have not regretted my decision to move to Thailand at all.

One of the things that I continue to really appreciate about being here is the holidays. I recently had 7 weeks of holiday to fill in, so here is a rundown of what I got up to.

LONDON

The school very generously paid for me to attend a 5-day course in London, and also paid for my return flight. The course was actually quite useful and I got to meet a lot of other counsellors from international schools all over the world. I got a limited chance to explore London a bit and for the first time I really enjoyed the place. The fact that the weather was perfect the whole time I was there may have been a factor, but the area I stayed (Islington) was also very pleasant, with several good pubs around.

Trafalgar Square

South Bank of the Thames

Parliament House - I actually went and watched a bit of parliamentary debate while I was here

CZECH REPUBLIC

As many of you may be aware, I love Prague. I still can’t say exactly why I like it so much, but even after my fourth visit to the place, it is still my favourite city in Europe. There is just something about it that really appeals to me. I had a really enjoyable 3 days in Prague where I mainly hang out with an Aussie guy named Adam who I met on the bus from the airport. I got to explore some new parts of the city and of course sampled plenty of the local food and drink. Czech beers are so good! I renewed my love affair with Velvet and also discovered a few other very tasty ales, including my new favourite: Master 18° - a jet black beer with really intense flavours. The other thing I got to do in Prague was see one of my favourite bands, Flogging Molly, play live. For me, it was a much-needed dose of quality live music after a year of cold turkey in Bangkok.

The main square in the Old Town of Prague

More Prague and more tourists

Charles Bridge in Prague

A happy man

On my previous three visits to Prague, I had never managed to bring myself to leave it and explore other parts of the Czech Republic, but I was determined to do so this time. I managed to visit six other places throughout the country:

Karlstejn is a small little village just outside Prague with a fantastic castle overlooking it.
Tabor is a nice little town south of Prague with some good museums.
Cesky Krumlov is almost as good as Prague ... almost! It is a stunningly beautiful, tiny medieval town with a nice river running through it with a castle on a cliff overlooking it. So picture-perfect it’s almost surreal.
Telc was another small village but unfortunately for me it suffered from being not as good as Cesky Krumlov.
Brno is the second-biggest Czech city and is much more functional than Prague and therefore not as interesting, but still quite nice.
Olomouc was another place I really liked – a small city (or big town) that had a great feel to it and didn’t suffer from tourist overload (the only downsides of Prague and Cesky Krumlov).

Karlstejn Castle

View from the top of the church in Tabor

Tabor

Cesky Krumlov - looking out from the castle

Rafting down the river from Cesky Krumlov

Cesky Krumlov at night

The main square of Telc

Renaissance houses in Telc

The main square of Olomouc

POLAND

I had never been Poland before, but had heard many good things about it. And it’s certainly an interesting place. I only had a week to spend there, so I spent 4 days in Krakow and 3 days in Warsaw. A lot of people compare Krakow with Prague and I can see why, as the old town in particular is beautiful and has heaps of tourists. And while I liked it, I couldn’t help get the feeling that the city is very superficial, in that there’s not a lot of depth to it. It looks beautiful from the outside, but there’s not much beneath the surface. I’m sure I’m being unfair to it, but that was my experience. I did day trips to Auschwitz and the Wieliczka salt mine, both of which were very interesting. I also had an interesting night in a bar when I met a guy named Sergei from Belarus, who was so amazed that I was from Australia, he insisted on buying me many shots of vodka until I had to say no more, and then stumbled out of the bar and had to buy a kebab (which I then spilt all over myself) to try to counteract some of the vodka.

Central Krakow

The main cathedral in Krakow Castle

An aerial view of part of Krakow's Old Town

Auschwitz

Wieliczka Salt Mine - everything here (including the chandelier) is carved out of salt!

Krakow's main square at night

Warsaw on the other hand I felt had a lot of depth to it and I actually enjoyed it a lot more. I feel it has a real buzz and energy about it that I felt was lacking in Krakow. There was also more of a sense of how the recent history (WW2 and the fall of communism) has affected the city and its people. I also got to hang out with a really cool guy named Miguel, who was in the process of taking a marathon train trip from his home in Lisbon, Portugal to Hong Kong, via Moscow and Mongolia, on the Trans-Siberian railway. A trip I would love to take sometime.

During the three weeks I was travelling around Czech Republic and Poland I was staying in hostels. I was initially not looking forward to that aspect of the trip as it’s been many years since I’ve had to stay in hostels (they don’t really exist in Asia since hotels are so cheap) and I was feeling like I’m a bit old to be staying in hostels these days. But for the most part I really enjoyed it. I met some really decent people and certainly part of what I enjoyed so much about my time there was the people I got to meet and hang out with.

Warsaw

The old town in Warsaw

Inside Warsaw Palace

SPAIN

Due to the emergence of so many cheap airlines, flying around in Europe is now very easy and cheap. And conveniently for me, Norwegian Air curiously fly from Warsaw to Alicante in Spain. I was there to visit Chris and Lubbertus, two friends of mine from Bangkok who had moved there to retire only a week prior to me arriving. But fortunately they were quite happy to let me stay with them despite that. They live in a tiny village called La Apparecida, which is at the foothills of some beautiful mountains about half an hour from the coast. I hadn’t been to that part of Spain before and it is really interesting, laid back and relaxed – everything still shuts down for siesta in the afternoon. I spent a day in Orihuela and a couple of days in Alicante while I was there. A very nice part of the world and I imagine a great place to retire. I also loved being able to speak some Spanish again.

La Aparecida

Alicante, with the old fortress on the hill in background

A view from the ruined fortress in Alicante

IRELAND

Ireland is another of those places in Europe that I really like because it’s so unapologetically unique. People still live in tiny villages and are happy to do that. They still drive tractors down the main roads. There are still towns located 8 kilometres apart that are distinctly different from each other. They still have pubs the size of an average living room where only 7 locals turn up each night. It’s still quite quaint in that way, which means that it hasn’t been developed much (outside of the big cities) and it is still therefore amazingly beautiful.

I visited two friends of mine, Carmel and Ollie, from my old Abu Dhabi days and it was great fun catching up with them. We drove around the country side, visited many a pub, ate many a potato and drank many a Guinness. It was great. Carmel lives in a town outside Cork and Ollie lives in a town outside Kilkenny so I was only down in the south of Ireland this time round.

Some Irish locals hanging out

One of the many beautiful scenes in Ireland

Myself, Carmel, Elaine and Ollie

LONDON

I flew back to London just for a couple of nights before leaving to fly back to Bangkok. I stayed with my friend Marianne and enjoyed the chance to slow down a bit and see a bit more of London.

BANGKOK

I was actually quite exhausted by the time I got back to Bangkok. The first thing I had to do when I got back move into a new apartment, as I had moved out of my previous apartment in Bangna. So that morning I picked up the key for my new apartment, then had to go and pick up my stuff from Bangna and bring it back. My new apartment is smaller than my last one, but the location is infinitely better. I am now living in a decent little one-bedroom apartment in a very quiet soi about 3 minutes walk from Silom Rd, which is a very lively, busy street with lots of, shall we say, character. It is choc-full of street-side food stalls, shops, bars, restaurants and cafes. And even though there are lots of foreigners who hang out there, it is still very Thai, which is what I really like about it. The other thing I’m really happy about is that I’m only 4 minutes walk from a Skytrain station, which means it’s really easy for me to get around to other parts of Bangkok.

The view from my new apartment

After getting back from Europe I spent about a week doing very little other than sleeping in, settling into my new apartment and catching up with a few people. It was very relaxing and enjoyable. After a week of that I managed to go down to Ko Samet for a few days with a friend of mine to chill out on the beach before having to go back to work.

And that pretty much is where I'm up to now. We have just finished the first full week of the new school year and so far all is going well. So, I think that might do for now. Cheers!

One down...

2008-06-24T13:13:00.003+07:00

Things I will miss about Bangkok while I'm away:

Hot weather
Smiling locals
Sleeping in a king-size bed
Cheap and very tasty food
Making fun of my friend Owen about his ladyboy stalker

I'm still a bit stunned that my first school year here in Bangkok has come to an end. Tonight, I attend the end of year staff party, then leave for the airport to get my overnight flight to London. Of course, I'm not really on holidays at that point, as I'm attending a week-long course, which hopefully will be very useful. After that I'm looking forward to getting back to Prague (my favourite city in Europe) and doing some travelling around Eastern Europe. And for those of you who have endured my raving in the past about Velvet beer, I will particularly enjoy being able to imbibe some of that again. Ahhh, sweet Velvet...

Anyway, the last few weeks have been very busy with work, farewell parties, sorting out apartments and packing. I will be moving into a new apartment the day I get back from Europe - sadly I'm having to downsize a bit due to financial constraints, but the positive aspect is that I'll be living in a much more interesting part of Bangkok. Not that the suburban idyll of Bangna hasn't been fun, but let's face it - if you had the choice between living in the Bangkok equivalent of, say Glebe or Liverpool, where would you choose?

And so, that's about it for my first year in Bangkok. I'm pleased to say I haven't regretted my decision to come here at all and I expect I'll be happy here for a bit longer yet. So, don't hesitate to make plans to come and visit. Cheers!

End of year countdown

2008-05-28T16:07:00.009+07:00

It amazes me to think that in only 4 weeks I will have completed my first school year here in Bangkok. It has gone by scarily quickly, yet looking back it feels like so long ago that I first arrived, as so much has happened in the meantime. This school term in particular has flown by, mainly because I've been so busy. Work continues to go well and I still enjoy working at the school.

Outside of school, I have still enjoyed living in Bangkok and there have been a lot of social events to attend. As a result I have had some great nights out and met some really great people in the process. These will continue apace as the school year winds down and there are farewells for staff who are leaving, and end-of-year bashes. I have also done a few cultural things - I went to visit the local snake farm, where the red cross milks venemous snakes for anti-venom, but they also have a snake show each day. I also visited the National Museum twice (there was too much to see in one visit), which was quite interesting. Here are a few photos, plus for all of you who are craving some genuine Thai culture, a short video of a Thai pop concert that I stumbled upon in one of the shopping centres in town - pure class!

Two cobras face off against each other.

Funky bird-head statues at the museum.

Like most things in Bangkok, the museum is free for monks.

The other thing that has kept me busy of late is looking for a new place to live. The school have provided me (along with all the new staff) with accommodation near the school for the first year of my contract. However, from August I need to arrange my own accommodation. This involves a fairly tedious process of trying to find an apartment that is not only in a useful location (ie: reasonably easy access to school) but also within my budget. I have decided that one year in the suburban utopia of Bangna is enough and I will therefore move closer into the "centre" of Bangkok and commute. As long as I am not too far from an expressway entrance, it should only be a 20-30 minute commute each way. So many of my weekend days have been spent looking at a range of places from very nice and overly-expensive (it is clearly a global phenomenon that real estate agents show you really nice places above the budget you have specified in the hope that you will get suckered in by their transparent ploy), to very unpleasant hovels in a horrible location. However, during this process I did manage to find a few places that I would be quite happy with, so now I need to try to negotiate prices and arrange a lease in the next few weeks. Great fun!

Of course, with the end of the school year comes another well-earned holiday. I hope you're not getting too sick of hearing about all the holidays I get here, so sorry if you are, but in my mind they are the most interesting aspects of my life here. The school have seen fit to send me on a 5-day course in London at the start of the summer holidays at the end of June. The downside is that I have to do some work during my holidays. The upside is that the school is paying for my flight, so I get a free trip to Europe for the summer. So, my plan is to fly to Prague after the course has finished, then spend a few weeks travelling round Czech Republic and Poland. After that I will visit some friends in Spain and Ireland, then back to London for a couple of days before flying back to Bangkok in early August. I feel quite fortunate do be able to do this, as there's no way I could afford to visit Europe otherwise.

So, in the belief that a short update is better than no update at all, I will finish here. I hope all is well with everyone. Cheers.

The Wilds of Borneo - part 2

2008-04-29T17:13:00.009+07:00

When I was a kid, I used to really hate it when I was watching a TV show and it ended with “To be continued...” (Get Smart and Happy Days were two shows that I recall did this occasionally, much to my annoyance). So, to those of you who have been desperately waiting for the second part of my Borneo story, fret no longer. I only hope that contrary to so many sequels, this will be as almost as good as the original.

So, when we left our story last time, Jayne and I had just left Gomantong Cave. From there we were subject to a very uncomfortable ride in a mini bus to Lahan Datu, where we had a quick bit of lunch (sadly at the Sabah equivalent of KFC – if you were to ask why we ate there, I’m think we would have mumbled something about it being the only place we could find close to the bus station that had air-conditioning). We then had to wait for an hour for a second (even less comfortable) mini-bus further south to Semporna. All up, it was about a 6 hour trip. Fortunately, we were rewarded by staying in a very nice (and very cheap) hotel in Semporna that was built over the water. We met up with Marianne again that night for dinner. The next day Jayne and I took things fairly easy (Marianne was diving) after what had actually been a fairly hectic week or so that had involved a lot of activity and moving around.

The next day was our first day diving around the island of Mabul - about a 45 minute boat ride from Semporna. It was interesting diving, part of which was on man-made reefs, which were partly made out of rubbish (like old scaffolding, car parts and glass bottles). While it wasn’t nearly as attractive as the natural reef we also dived on, there was some great marine life, particularly things like frogfish and nudibranchs. I took all the photos here with my new camera and underwater casing. I was very pleased with the results.

A frogfish - they are freaky looking creatures.

Another frogfish - I call this one Sexy.

A nudibranch, kind of like a colourful sea slug.

Another nudibranch - they are only a few centimetres long.

And yet another nudibranch - they are quite beautiful.

That night we stayed in a long-house on Mabul Island. It was basic accommodation, but very relaxed and chilled, over the water with the back deck looking out over the ocean. Very pleasant.

Part of the view from our accommodation on Mabul.

The next day we dived at Sipidan Island, which is the main reason people come to Borneo to dive. Sipidan Island is consistently rated as one of the best dive sites in the world, and it was indeed very impressive. The island itself is the tip of a very high underwater mountain that drops straight down for up to 2000 metres to the ocean floor. Due to some unusually environmentally-friendly restrictions on the number of divers allowed to dive at the island each day, the coral is in remarkably good condition, meaning the marine life is amazingly abundant, especially big stuff like turtles, sharks and rays. We saw so many turtles and reef sharks, but only saw one big eagle ray and we missed out on seeing hammerhead sharks. It was rather special diving.

Sipidan Island.

One of the many turtles we saw.

And another turtle.

I also took a couple of video clips, one of a white-tipped reef shark and the other of a turtle swimming. The turtle video should give some idea of the abundance of fish life around.

Our final day diving was on at Kapalai (very close to Mabul) and again we saw some great stuff on these dives.

A very large potato cod.

A white-eyed moray eel.

A large cuttlefish.

A nudibranch.

A yellow-edged moray eel.

A crocodile fish.

A spot-fin lionfish.

A spotted ray.

An anenome fish hiding in its anenome.

A ribbon eel.

A frogfish on its side - its mouth is on the right side.

Another nudibranch.

We had to have a day of rest after our diving, which we spent exploring the tiny island of Mabul – it is a curious mix of a couple of very simple villages and a few very expensive resorts, all squeezed onto an island about 1 km long and maybe 500 metres wide.

The village we stayed in on Mabul Island.

A local villager posing for the camera.

Not sure what they were looking at, but it must have been interesting.

That afternoon we got a boat back to Semporna and arrived in the middle of the town’s biggest annual festival. So the town was buzzing with excitement (a far cry from its normal state) and the harbour was packed with very brightly-coloured boats in preparation for the boat races which were due to start the next day. Of course, finding accommodation there that night was impossible, so we jumped in a mini-bus to Tawau, about one and a half hours away. We spent a fairly unremarkable evening in Tawau then the next day Jayne and I flew back to KK, where we spent our final night in Borneo. The next day we were back at the airport and flying to Kuala Lumpur, where Jayne and I parted ways – I got my flight back to Bangkok while Jayne had to wait another 7 hours for her flight back to Sydney (not the best way to finish a holiday, but sometimes unavoidable).

And so ended my adventures in Borneo. One thing I found interesting was how nice it was for me to get back to Bangkok. While I enjoyed my time in Borneo, it certainly didn’t have the easy-going feel and friendly atmosphere that Thailand has. I realised just how accustomed I have become to having people smile and greet you everywhere, and therefore how much I notice it when it’s not there, as was largely the case in Borneo. It’s not that people were unfriendly there, but they didn’t come across as warmly as the Thais do, generally speaking.

And so I'm now back at work and back to my relatively normal life here in Bangkok. Well, that's about it for the Wilds of Borneo. I hope you enjoyed it. Cheers.

The Wilds of Borneo - part 1

2008-04-23T16:23:00.017+07:00

I have returned from the deep, dark jungles of Borneo in one piece and now feel the need to let you all know about my experiences there. My friend Jayne came over to Bangkok for a few days before the two of us departed for Malaysian Borneo together.

Now, I like to think that part of my role is to educate as well as rant, so in the interest of knowledge expansion, here is some information on Borneo for those who may be (until now at least) a little ignorant about it. Borneo is the third largest island on the planet (fourth largest if you count Australia, which doesn’t seem to make it on the official lists for islands, presumably because it’s also a continent) and is partly owned by the Indonesia (the larger southern part) and Malaysia (the smaller northern part). The Malaysian part is further split into two semi-autonomous regions: Sarawak (the western part) and Sabah (the eastern part). We only visited Sabah during this holiday.

We flew into Kota Kinabalu (KK), the capital of Sabah, on our very cheap Air Asia flights (about A$200 return) and were struck by how modern the city looked. We were expecting something a bit more basic.

The sunset on our first night in Kota Kinabalu

We only spent a day in KK (where we met up with Amy, one of the other teachers from school) before we headed up to Mt Kinabalu, which is the highest mountain in South-East Asia at over 4000 metres. Jayne and I had toyed with the idea of climbing it (it’s a very popular climb), but decided we couldn’t be bothered. It was nice to see it and do a bit of walking around the area. Unfortunately, I was feeling rather unwell on this day so I didn’t get to do much walking. We spent the next day at a place called Poring, where there are some hot springs in the National Park. Why so many people felt that the 35 degree air temperature was too mild and what they really wanted was to soak in some 50 degree water was a bit lost on me, I confess. Instead, I enjoyed a refreshing dip in a nearby waterfall and also had a swim in the cold pool, rather than sit in one of the hot spring baths.

Mt Kinabalu at sunrise

From Poring, we got a bus to Sandakan, luckily managing to avoid getting rorted by a very sneaky local woman who tried to tell the bus driver she was our tour guide and then overcharge us for our bus tickets. There we met up with Marianne, another teacher from school (we bumped into several teachers from school during the 2 weeks, but Amy and Marianne we actually planned to meet up with). It’s fair to say that Sandakan (and indeed every town we subsequently visited in Sabah) was rather uninspiring: small, dull, basic places that transformed into deserted streets lined with closed metal shutters at night.

Not far from Sandakan is a place called Sepilok, which has an orang-utan sanctuary. One of the big issues in Borneo at the moment is that a lot of the natural rainforests are being decimated in order to make space for palm plantations. Palm oil is one of the most profitable industries in that part of the world, so in true human style, companies are tearing down the rainforests and planting thousands of palm trees instead. Of course, this means that a lot of the local wildlife is losing its natural habitat, including the orang-utan. Hence, this sanctuary was set up to care for and rehabilitate orphaned or sick orang-utans. I quite enjoyed seeing the orang-utans. By the way, orang-utan is a Malay word which means “jungle person”, which is kind of appropriate because they are almost human-like (I think our second-closest relatives species-wise after the chimpanzee) and they do live in the jungle. They are very cute and quite fun. Here are a few photos out of the many that I took.

There is a special feeding platform where they come for a mid-morning snack

And there are special ropes to provide easy access to the feeding platform

Apparently this is quite comfortable if you're an orang-utan

After the orang-utans had finished feeding, as soon as the last one had left the platform, about a dozen macaque monkeys immediately raced onto the platform to scavenge the left-overs. They were also very playful and rather amusing. The baby one was particularly cute.

From Sepilok, we headed into the jungle proper and stayed at a jungle camp for a couple of nights. We did several excursions out and about to look for wildlife, mostly by boat along the river. We saw quite a lot of stuff, mainly monkeys and birds. We did see a mother and baby orang-utan in the wild, which was very nice. We also saw many proboscis monkeys, named because of their big and rather hideous noses (by the way, the Malay name for proboscis monkey actually translates as “dutch man”). Here are some more photos.

A white heron

A kingfisher

A hornbill

A proboscis monkey with baby

A typical house in the jungle

Marianne, Amy, myself and Jayne

After leaving the jungle camp we went to Gomantong Cave, which was very interesting. It’s a place where they collect the bird nests used in bird-nest soup. While the bird nest harvesting season had just finished, it was amazing to see the rudimentary equipment and extreme conditions that the people work in to collect these little nests – dangerous in the extreme. The cave itself was massive and therefore very impressive, but also incredibly smelly, as the entire ground was covered in inches of bat and bird droppings, which of course attracted thousands of cockroaches. It was far more pleasant looking up rather than down (so long as you remember to keep your mouth shut when doing so).

We then headed further down the coast to a place called Semporna, but I think this would be a good place to end part one. To be continued...

Weeks fly by

2008-03-30T10:29:00.004+07:00

I know it has been a while since I last updated my blog. This has essentially been due to a lack of time, a lack of exciting thingsto write about, and a little bit of laziness. I have been quite busy lately, both in and out of work and unfortunately, I don’t have much time today either, so this will have to be a fairly brief update of the last few weeks.

So, what have I been so busy doing? Basically, working and socialising. There have been a lot of birthdays among the school staff lately, so that means a lot of going out for dinners and the occasional party.

Work has been very busy lately. As the year goes on, students seem to get a bit more stressed and issues that may have been fairly minor in the past can become more difficult to cope with as the stress of schoolwork builds up. I am also running two counselling skills courses – one with students and one with staff, both of which are going pretty well. We had a big International Day at school a couple of weeks ago, which was a lot of fun. There are over 50 nationalities represented by the students in the school, so having everyone dress up in something to represent their home country was quite spectacular. The students' parents put together an absolutely amazing food expo, with huge amounts of food from dozens of different countries. That was a definite highlight of the day.

A few weekends ago a group of us from school went back to Ko Samet (a small island not too far from here), which was a fun weekend away from Bangkok - relaxing on the beach and eating great food. Unfortunately, it rained a bit (even though we are now in the hot, dry season), but not enough to spoil things too much. In an effort to save some money, I decided stayed in a very cheap (and a little bit nasty) hut that was very basic. I only mention this in an effort to stem the rumours that I'm becoming soft in my old age.

Earlier this week I also went to a soccer match. It was actually a World Cup qualifying match between Thailand and Oman. The atmosphere was great, despite Thailand losing 1-0. Here are a few photos and a video clip.

Here is a video clip which shows a near goal for Thailand and the rather amusing reaction of a couple of fans – my mate Mark is the guy in the orange shirt but I think the reaction of the Thai guy he's talking to is great. (Hopefully this will work.)

I only have one week left of school in this term before having two weeks off. I know I’ve said this before, but I do love the holidays that come with working in a school. So, I’m heading off to Malaysian Borneo for 2 weeks with my friend Jayne, who is coming out from Australia to visit me. I’m looking forward to this trip. I’ve only heard good things about Borneo – some good trekking, interesting wildlife and amazing diving.

So, apologies for the lack of interesting news, but I expect my next update will be a bit more exciting. Cheers.

Maldivian aquatic life

2008-03-04T16:49:00.005+07:00

Here are some more underwater photos from the Maldives. (I didn't take any of these.)

A typical Maldivian underwater scene - nice coral and heaps of fish.

A hawksbill sea turtle

A mapped pufferfish

A painted spiny lobster

Moray eels

A close encounter with a honeycomb moray eel.
It's quite rare to see morays out of their holes like this.

A great shot of a giant moray

Manta ray, plus a few fish

Manta ray, again. Hopefully this gives some sense of scale.

A school of bannerfish

Anenome fish, with their anenome

One of the many white-tipped reef sharks we saw.

I hope you are all impressed with my marine-life naming skills. These were finely honed on our boat after each dive.

And so, back to reality. Cheers.

Tales from the Maldives

2008-02-26T19:16:00.006+07:00

As promised, here is my account of my time in the Maldives. I feel it only to fair to warn you, if you are prone to envy, you may want to reconsider reading this, because it may well provoke some tinges of jealousy. But, for those of you brave enough to read on, hopefully you’ll get some sense of what this beautiful part of the world is like.

The airport in Male’ (the capital of the Maldives) is possibly the only one in the world where you walk out of the terminal and have to get straight onto a boat, which is the only way of getting anywhere as the airport is on its own island. We arrived around 1am, so we spent the night in a hotel in Male’ before being picked up the next morning to get on our boat. The boat we had was fantastic – big, spacious and with plenty of places to chill out and relax. There were 13 of us, as well as a crew of 7 people on the boat, plus 2 dive masters, and they were all great as well. The food was amazing – a lot of fresh fish, some of it caught on the boat. All up, the experience of living on the boat for a week was brilliant. The weather was perfect, the scenery was stunning, and the whole experience was very enjoyable. We really couldn’t have asked for better.

The Keyif - our home for the week.

I spent a lot of time relaxing here on the back of the boat.

Our crew getting into the party spirit.

There’s actually not that much to the Maldives itself. It is a serious of atolls which are made up of scattered reefs with only a few small islands in each atoll. Some of these islands have resorts on them and a few also have a small town on them, but most are uninhabited. They are quite picturesque, with white sand beaches surrounding dense green vegetation, all set within crystal-clear blue water. Seeing all this from a boat was definitely a better way to go than being restricted to one of the small island resorts, in my opinion.

As for the diving, it also lived up to expectation. We did 15 dives altogether and the visibility underwater was fantastic, ranging from 15 to over 40 metres. The variety and quantity of fish and marine life was incredible ... here are some of the highlights of what we saw:

Dozens of reef sharks, some of them very large
About 10 hammerhead sharks on one dive
Manta rays, eagle rays and a large stingray
Turtles
Huge Napoleon wrasses
Dolphins
Heaps of different varieties of moray eels
Giant lobsters
Octopi
Triggerfish, angelfish, surgeonfish, trumpetfish, pufferfish and lionfish by the hundreds
Huge schools of tuna and snapper
AND a whale shark!

For those of you who don’t know, the whale shark is a bit like the holy grail of diving because they are quite rare, and because they are so big (in fact, the biggest fish in the world) and so placid, everyone wants to spot one. They are not easy to find in the open water, but our trusty boat crew managed to find one in between our dives, so we all jumped in the water with our snorkels. Unfortunately, it swam away quite quickly and we didn’t get to see it. After getting back on the boat and looking round a bit more, we found another one (or possibly the same one), and this time we got in the water in time. I was quite lucky to get quite close and swim along with it for a while. It is a truly majestic creature, gliding along only about 5 or 6 metres below the surface. I was also lucky enough to have borrowed an underwater camera from someone at the time, and managed to dive down and snap the following photos:

I also got a few other underwater photos on our next dive, but none of them are fantastic unfortunately. I am still very much an amateur underwater photographer and the skills needed to take good underwater photos are quite different to normal photography. But, here are some of the better shots I got:

An Oriental Sweetlips

Clown Triggerfish

Powder Blue Surgeonfish

I will hopefully be able to post some of the better underwater photos from other people in the next few days. We spent one night having dinner on a small island, which was a lot of fun. The boat crew had gone to a lot of trouble to create some sand sculptures for us and then cook a sensational meal as well. It was a great night.

The whale shark sand sculpture the crew did for us.

The boat crew on the beach.

A blood-red moon that we saw a couple of times during the week.

The only negative side of the trip was that 2 of our group developed some symptoms of decompression illness and had to leave the boat to spend some time in recompression chambers on a couple of the islands. Fortunately in both cases the symptoms were not severe (although potentially serious enough that the doctors recommended time in the chamber) and in both cases we just happened to be near an island that had a recompression chamber. It was a timely reminder of how diving can actually be a dangerous activity if you’re not careful. On our last day I got to spend a bit of time in Male’ itself. Unfortunately, it’s not the most interesting city in the world, although we did get to see part of what looked like a Maldivian soap opera being filmed.

So, overall it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience and I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have had the opportunity to do it.

Cheers!

Who's your daddy?

2008-02-12T20:58:00.000+07:00

Every so often here in Bangkok I encounter a situation that is so bizarre by Australian standards that it’s difficult to take it seriously. So let be warn you that some details (and definitely some implications) of the following story are weird at best and disturbing at worst.

My friend Lee recently told me that he needed to speak with me privately. I assumed he had some deep personal issue with which he was struggling and wanted to seek my professional counsel on the matter. However, he in fact told me that he had been approached by the security guard in our apartment building, who told him about a situation he was hoping Lee could assist with. The situation is that a local Thai woman who lives in our street has been married for 4 years and has been having sex with her husband all this time (Lee assures me there were some graphic hand gestures to emphasise this point), but so far there is no baby. It would appear that she lays all the blame for this lack of offspring on her husband, so she asked our security guard if there might be any English men in our building who would be interested in a little casual sex with her in order to get her pregnant. The plan would then be that she moves up to the country to have the baby and that would be that – no problem.

The security guard obviously took this matter very seriously and had taken the time to carefully assess each of the males in our building (8 in total). Three were ruled out because they weren’t white (including Lee, who is of Taiwanese background – I secretly think he was rather disappointed about this) and another one because he already has a girlfriend. Two others were eliminated because they had been seen bringing women back to their apartments; on the surface this would seem an illogical reason to deem them unsuitable for such a purpose, but the security guard insisted that the correct candidate must be a “good man”. This only left one other teacher (who happens to be 60) and me. So the security guard had asked Lee to approach the two of us with this enticing offer.

Needless to say I was flattered beyond words. In the ensuing days I started getting a bit of pressure from the security guard to take up the woman’s offer. Whenever I saw him he assured me that he could phone her there and then and she could come down straight away – no problem. While I can only assume that somewhere in this world there might be men who would jump at such an opportunity, I am certainly not one of them. As a result, I was initially in a bit of a dilemma because I knew that saying a blunt no to someone can be interpreted as quite rude in Thai culture, and the last thing I wanted to do was insult someone over such an important matter. So despite the security guard trying to convince me with compliments about my high IQ (clearly a sought-after pre-requisite for sperm donors in Bangna), I have politely declined his request. The only price I’ve had to pay for my negative response was a few days of the security guard insinuating that I must have some difficulties keeping my end up, so to speak.

So after such an existentially stressful experience, I figure I have earned a short holiday. I may have mentioned to some of you in passing that I had arranged a diving trip to the Maldives. Well, I am happy to report that I leave for this on Saturday. I really do feel incredibly lucky to have this opportunity. By any standard, this is going to be a pretty special trip – a week living on a chartered yacht with 12 other staff from school, sailing around the Maldives and diving at will with manta rays, sharks and if we’re really lucky, whale sharks. Rest assured I will write all about it upon my return. Cheers.

The only time my parents will be associated with kick-boxing

2008-02-05T19:11:00.000+07:00

It is amazing how quickly one can adapt to a new environment, without even realising it. My parents have been to visit me the last week and a bit and their comments about the traffic, the dodgy taxi drivers, the spiciness of the food, the number of kids out and about in the street at all hours of the day and night, and the difficulty in making yourself understood have reminded me of how much I just accept that all these things are part of Bangkok life and they don’t really bother me anymore. In so many ways, Bangkok is so different to Sydney, yet I’m increasingly feeling quite comfortable here. I’m still really only scratching the surface of what this huge and diverse city has to offer, but I’m still enjoying both the challenge and the fun of living here.

It’s been good to catch up with my parents while they are here. The first weekend of their visit we took the bus to Kanchanaburi, which is a few hours west of Bangkok. The old part of Kanchanaburi down beside the river is very nice and relaxed, although quite touristy: the street we stayed on seemed to consist of only guest houses, bars, massage places and travel agents. We stayed in a nice guest house right on the River Kwai. The area is famous for its role in WW2 when a lot of English and Australian (among others) POW’s were forced to build a railway for the Japanese from Thailand to Burma, and tragically over 100,000 people (mostly Asian “workers” - in reality they were more like slaves) died in the process. We visited some of the war-related sites, including the cemetery, a couple of museums and Hellfire Pass. We also did some of the cheesier tourist things like an elephant ride and bamboo rafting. After this my parents went to Cambodia for a few days to see Angkor Wat and then returned for the weekend. We went to the huge weekend market in the north of Bangkok last Saturday and then they headed down the coast on Sunday. They get back to Bangkok tomorrow and then fly back to Australia on Thursday.

Mum, Dad and I on our very adventurous elephant trek.

Mum and Dad steering their bamboo raft down a jungle river.

Konyu Cutting, also known as Hellfire Pass.

The Death Railway - with a lot of tourists hanging out the window to get the obligatory photo.

The Bridge over the River Kwai.

While my parents were in Cambodia, I finally got around to seeing a Muay Thai (Thai kick-boxing) match. It was quite an experience. We had to pay 1000 baht for the privilege of being in the standing section up the back. We could have paid twice that much for ringside seats with the tourists, but now that I and my colleagues are Bangkok locals, we decided to hang up the back with the rest of the locals. However, we still had to pay tourist prices (the local ticket windows were only written in Thai, so we don’t know how much they pay to get in, but I did see one Thai guy hand over 100 baht and get change – some serious discrimination we felt). The other thing that made us westerners stand out was that we couldn’t participate in the constant gambling that was going on all around us. The amazing variety of hand signals that were used to bet on various aspects of the fights were completely beyond our comprehension. It was fairly crowded and with all the activity and buzz going on around us, the atmosphere was quite good.

There is a very elaborate ritual that the fighters go through inside the ring before the match starts.

But once that's over, there's no holding back.
These guys were doing "old-school" Muay Thai with no gloves.

A knee to the head is fair play in Muay Thai...

...as is a kick to the head.
This is the more modern style, with gloves and coloured shorts.

And afterwards, there's hugs all round.

So they have been the highlights from my last few weeks. Work continues to be busy and challenging, but that's fairly boring to write about, so I won't. Cheers!

True confessions from a love motel

2008-01-18T17:41:00.000+07:00

While I admit that I have sold out a bit on my socialist ideals by having a mortgage and indulging in more than my fair share of international travel, I do like to think I still have some instinct for social justice. So, in case any of you are concerned that living my high life of massages, eating out and beach escapes here in Bangkok has turned me into a completely selfish and uncaring sod, allow me to dispel your fears. Last weekend I gave up my normal opportunity to relax, hang out in swanky bars and restaurants and enjoy a massage. Instead, I chose to practice a bit of altruism and share some good will with some of the poorer people in rural Thailand.

The school sponsors a large number of children and young people in a group of villages in north-east Thailand, which is generally considered to be the least advantaged part of the country. So, most of the classes in the secondary school, as well as a bunch of individual staff members, each financially sponsor a child in order to help them pay for their education. Each year, a group from the school go up to visit the area to take up a load of donated clothes and toys for one of the local villages. So, I volunteered to go along this year. Apart from the 6-hour bus ride each way, it was a really interesting experience. The whole program is organised by a local writer named Pira who lives in Napo (the main village in that area), who grew up there and knows the area quite well. This part of Thailand is certainly very different to Bangkok and the people live quite simple lives (although I must say, compared with what I saw on Palawan in the Philippines a few weeks ago, these people have it relatively good – not to say they aren’t struggling and are very deserving of assistance though).

We arrived on Saturday afternoon at which point we had to sort through the one and a half mini-buses full of donations we had taken up with us. There were 11 of us altogether (7 students and 4 staff). After a tasty dinner at a local “restaurant”, which was a very local affair consisting of some plastic tables and chairs under a bamboo shelter and no menu (in fact Pira had to supply many of the ingredients for them to cook with), we returned to our accommodation for the night. Now, Napo is not exactly on the Thai tourist trail, so they don’t actually have any hotels that target tourists, so the only option for us was to stay in the local “love motel”. It was in a fairly isolated spot about 3 kms outside the village and featured a full range of amenities, including a full-wall mirror next to the bed, the option of red “mood lighting” in the room (very alluring), complimentary breath mints and condoms with your towel, a tarpaulin to hang across the car space so your car won't be recognised, and the option of having the room for 3 hours (180 baht) or overnight (350 baht). Needless to say, the students in particular were amused by this. I did feel a little bit guilty because we actually took up all 6 rooms in the hotel, meaning that the several cars that turned up during the evening looking for a bit of “privacy”, had to be turned away. I felt slightly better when I was told that there is one other such hotel on the other side of town they could go to.

The next day we went to one of the very small villages not too far from Napo. A lot of the village had already gathered in the temple grounds in preparation for our arrival. We had a lot of stuff to hand out and it started out quite orderly, with everyone sitting in 2 lines and we all walked along handing out items as appropriate.

However, it didn’t take too long before things started to get a little bit less orderly. In the end we just had a crowd of people around us and we just had to hand things out the best we could. By and large, everyone was very polite and appreciative, and it was really nice to see the gratitude in their faces.

After we finished handing everything out we drove around to several other nearby villages to visit some of the students that the school sponsors, to see how they are doing and give them a small gift each. This was also very nice and it was interesting seeing the variety of living conditions in which these people lived. Pira told us some of their stories as well, some of which were very sad. There were several orphans who had to rely on extended family to raise them, and there was one boy who as a baby was left outside Pira’s front door in a box. He is now about 8 and has been raised by Pira’s sister-in-law. All in all, it was a very worthwhile experience and a sober contrast to the very wealthy environment where I work in school.

Speaking of which, my work is going well. The first week back this term was very quiet for me – students just settling back in I guess – and then this week I was extremely busy. But fortunately, it’s now the weekend! I’m going out with some friends tonight then tomorrow I’m helping out with a cricket match at school. This is the first proper match of the year so I will be interested to see how the team goes. Out again tomorrow night, then I think a bit of relaxing on Sunday.

The other thing I’ll quickly mention is that I had to go to the hospital last week (which is significant, as this was the first time in my life I have had to go to hospital). I was playing soccer with some of the other staff when I managed to rather severely pull a muscle in my left calf. I hobbled home, not thinking much of it, but after laying down for half an hour, suddenly discovered I couldn’t walk. With the help of my good friend Owen, I managed to get to hospital, where the very helpful doctor asked me what happened, prodded at my calf a bit (while I was trying not to scream too much) and then very reassuringly informed me that he thinks I have muscle damage. After this startling revelation he even more confidently informed me that I didn’t have any broken bones. My relief was overwhelming. And then in true Thai medical style, I got given 5 different medications and told to rest. I was barely able to walk the next day, but it did improved a bit after that. Unfortunately it’s still quite painful at times and my foot is now a very pleasant shade of purple and yellow, but at least I can get around without too much trouble.

So that’s about all my news for now. Apologies if you read the title of this post and are now disappointed. Have a great weekend. Cheers.

Pinoy adventures

2008-01-08T18:25:00.000+07:00

Happy New Year and all the best for 2008! I hope you all had a fun Christmas and new year. I had a really enjoyable time in the Philippines, so here is a bit of a rundown on some of the highlights.

This was my second visit to the Philippines, and somehow I had forgotten how dull Manila is. There’s really not a lot to see or do there, unless you really love big shopping centres, smelly waterways and people begging on the street. There are some good places to hang out at night, but during the day it’s really not a very interesting place. It has all the bad things about Bangkok (serious pollution, crowded streets, crazy traffic and a horrid disparity between the filthy rich and the filthy poor), but without the good things about Bangkok (interesting culture, a generally positive outlook on life and amazing food). The one thing that did make my 3 days in Manila worthwhile was some of the very interesting and friendly locals that I met. Most people in Manila can speak English and many of them are quite happy to talk to tourists, and since I was travelling solo, I was generally quite happy to chat with them (with a few notable exceptions, such as the homeless guy who wanted to sell me a packet of Viagra – he wouldn’t take no for an answer and didn’t seem to accept the fact that even if I was interested in purchasing some medication, I wasn’t going to buy an already opened packet off some guy in the street). So apart from getting to know a few locals, I was quite happy to get on a plane and escape Manila.

I spent the rest of my time there in the province of Palawan, which is a series of islands south-west of Manila. I flew into the main town (calling it a city would be stretching things a bit) Puerto Princesa, where I did a couple of days trips – one to an underground river which was quite interesting and another out to some islands in Honda Bay to do some swimming and snorkelling.

This is the main church in Puerto Princesa and nicely embodies two of the biggest Philippine passions: Catholicism and basketball.

A giant Christmas tree in Puerto Princesa.

Entrance to the underground river in Sabang.

Part of the underground river.

Exit to the underground river.

A local hanging around near the underground river.

Another friendly local.

One of the beaches on an island in Honda Bay.

From there I took a local bus up the coast to a place called Taytay. It turned out to be a typical third-world bus journey. I was the only non-Filipino on the bus. There were dramas buying a ticket because I was given vastly different information by different people. The bus was at least 40 years old and was jam-packed (both inside and on the roof) with boxes, huge bags of rice, live chickens and too many people. The bus left about an hour late. About 2 hours into the journey the bus broke down in a tiny little village that consisted of about 14 wooden huts. We then had to wait 3 hours for another bus and then another half hour while the mountains of luggage were transferred from the old bus to the new bus.

One of the things that struck me as we drove along (and as we were waiting in the village for a new bus) was how simple the locals’ lifestyle is over there. Most of Palawan island doesn’t have electricity or running water. The locals live in accommodation and live in ways that are literally generations behind Manila, let alone Australia. Farming is all done by hand and animal – there is no technology to speak of anywhere in that area. Outside of Puerto Princesa, everywhere else I stayed in Palawan Island only had electricity for a few hours at night (when it worked – blackouts were very common). It was both humbling and refreshing to visit a place like this. As a result of course, there were not many other tourists around; in fact I didn’t speak with any other tourists between Puerto Princesa and El Nido.

Waiting for a new bus.

We eventually arrived in Taytay after about 10 hours in total (the trip was only supposed to take 5 hours). I was exhausted and covered with dust (thanks to the dirt roads and windowless bus) but managed to find somewhere reasonable to stay for the night. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see much of Taytay, as I arrived very late in the day and the next morning I had to take another bus to El Nido at the north end of Palawan island. Again, I was the only foreigner on the bus, the bus was even more run-down that the previous day’s relic and we left 2 hours late because they had to repair the bus first. Even after the repairs, the bus didn’t start and after a crowd of locals had tried pushing the bus down the street so the driver could clutch-start it (he tried about 12 times without success), we ended up having to get towed by another bus to get the engine started.

Fortunately, the trip to El Nido was quite short (less than 2 hours) and was well worth the hassle to get there. I had decided to splash out and stay in a beach resort for a few days over Christmas. I must say that despite the expense, it was pretty much worth it. I had a huge cottage to myself, right on the beach and a big verandah complete with hammock that looked out across the crystal-clear water of Bacuit Bay to a string of magnificent limestone islands. It was such a fantastic spot and I spent many hours relaxing on that verandah – reading, listening to music, watching the sunset and just enjoying the serenity. It really is one of the most beautiful spots I have ever seen. Hopefully the photos can give a taste of what it was like.

The outside of my cottage at the resort.

And the inside.

This was the view from my hammock.

While I was there I did a couple of days just exploring some of the islands by boat (this was included in the price of the resort) and did some of the best snorkelling I have ever done. Nearly all the islands there are uninhabited, but they all contain picture-perfect deserted beaches surrounded by dramatic limestone cliffs. On Christmas Day I spent the day diving, which was very nice. Because tourism is still a very new industry there, the coral was all completely unspoilt and there was a lot of marine life to look at.

One of the lagoons in Bacuit Bay.

One of the many limestone islands in Bacuit Bay.

An evening view from my resort verandah.

After my few days of living the high-life in the resort I had to spend one night in El Nido town. The only place I could find was a run-down bamboo shack about the size of a prison cell (but it cost less than $10 for the night). It was a huge contrast to where I’d been the previous few nights, but that didn’t really bother me – I like to think I’m fairly adaptable. In the afternoon I did a fairly challenging climb up a cliff behind the town that offered some fairly spectacular views over the town and part of the bay.

Looking down over El Nido Bay - if I'm looking a bit exhausted there's a good reason for that.

The next day I was on a fairly crowded boat heading further north to Busuanga Island (a rather uneventful 8 hour cruise). I stayed in the town of Coron for 6 days, which was quite small but a little bit more advanced than Palawan Island – they had electricity 24 hours a day (most of the time). During the day I spent most of my time diving. Part of the Japanese navy was based there at the end of the WW2 when the US bombed them, leaving a bunch of wrecks at the bottom of the sea. Conveniently, most of the wrecks are still mostly intact and make for some great wreck diving as a result. I quite enjoy wreck diving and these are quite good ones. I stayed at a dive resort (really, a cheap hotel for divers) so it was quite a social scene as all the divers would hang out in the restaurant and bar at night.

On New Year’s Eve I had a few drinks in the bar with a group of guys that I had met diving, then we headed into town later in the night. Pretty much the whole town (it seemed) were in the main square, letting off fireworks and going a bit crazy. They had a proper fireworks show at midnight, which was surprisingly impressive. It was a really nice atmosphere there and the locals were really enjoying themselves. It was obvious that this was a big night for them.

A view of Coron town.

Part of Coron's local market.

An overview of Coron.

From Coron I flew back to Manila in a tiny 19-seater plane. The airport on Busuanga Island is the most basic I have ever been in – just a small concrete building with no walls and only half the runway is actually paved – the other half is gravel. I only had a day back in Manila and to be honest that was more than enough. Overall though my time in the Philippines was thoroughly enjoyable – I got to do plenty of relaxing, met some really nice people, saw some stunningly beautiful places and had a couple of adventures.

The airport on Busuanga Island.

Flying over the coast of Busuanga Island.

Being in that part of the Philippines made me even more acutely of how lucky I am to have these opportunities to see so much of the world. But, as long as these opportunities exist, I intend to make the most of them. So now I’m back in Bangkok and back to work, but I'll finish this post here. Cheers!

The routine of Bangkok life

2007-12-10T13:18:00.000+07:00

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...

2007-11-26T17:44:00.001+07:00

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

2007-11-25T21:00:00.000+07:00

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

2007-11-13T18:08:00.000+07:00

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

2007-11-06T18:53:00.001+07:00

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?

2007-10-15T18:32:00.000+07:00

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

2007-10-01T20:38:00.000+07:00

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!

It's all about the weekends

2007-09-20T22:17:00.000+07:00

I know I had teased you all in my last blog with the promise of an update about my fascinating work life here in Bangkok, but I’ve decided it would be far more interesting to talk about my recent weekend activities, the most recent being a long weekend in Krabi, which is a province in the south of Thailand. Last Friday the school just decided to give everyone the day off. In theory this was because the summer holiday was a bit shorter than usual, but for us new staff it didn’t make any difference, so in essence we just get a few extra long weekends during the year – score! And the first one was this last weekend, so on Thursday afternoon about 10 of us new staff left school at 3pm and went straight to the airport to get our flight down to Krabi, then a bus to the coast, then a boat to Railay Bay. Because we arrived at low tide, we actually had to wade the last 100 metres from the boat to the shore, and then we got in golf carts to get driven to our hotel. We finally arrived about 7:30. Railay Bay is a very small but very beautiful peninsula which can only be reached by boat, as there are no roads there. There’s just a handful of bungalow-style hotels and a bunch of cliffy mountains (although I was assured by the smarty-pants teachers that they are too small to be called mountains, but they couldn’t be called hills – see the photo below and you’ll see what I mean).

It was a fantastic spot to spend a few days. The only disappointment was that we got a lot of rain while we were there. It didn’t stop us from swimming or relaxing or having massages or eating and drinking, but it did stop us from doing rock-climbing, which is one of the main attractions of the area. I did do one climb on the Saturday, which wasn’t a proper rock-climb, more a scramble up a steep rock face, which was really good. There was a great view from the top.

The trip back on Sunday was rather exciting. The weather was the worst it had been all weekend – very strong winds and very heavy rain – when we had to leave to head to the airport. So, we got in one of the little long-tail boats (like this one) to get back to the mainland.

We could only find one boat driver who was willing to take us, which we should have taken as a bad sign. We got some garbage bags from the hotel to put our bags in so they wouldn’t get soaked and we all put on some very cheap, pastel-coloured ponchos in a vain attempt to avoid getting too wet ourselves. Needless to say, they did nothing but make us look like idiots covered with coloured cling wrap – we still got soaked. The boat trip back was fairly rough-going. About 10 minutes into the trip, the boat engine died, leaving us rocking up and down rather helplessly in the waves. The boat driver tried several times to get the engine started again, to no avail. I had visions of us being stuck out there for a long time, as there were no other boats around (quite wisely it could be argued). However, just when things looked bleak, the engine started again and we were back on our way again. The rest of our cruise was less eventful, just ridiculously wet and windy. Once we got back on land, the rest of the trip back to Bangkok was a breeze. The only sobering moment was just after I got home and heard about the plane crash in Phuket – an awful tragedy that seems to have hit Thailand fairly hard. Phuket is not too far from where we had been staying and I couldn’t help but feel incredibly grateful that the fairly atrocious weather in that area had been no more than an inconvenience to us.

The previous weekend I got to play tourist and visited a couple of temples and the Grand Palace in Bangkok, which were all mighty impressive. You can see some photos of the huge Reclining Buddha statue below. You can see some more photos of this and of Railay Bay on my flickr page – see link to the right.

I also went to see a band – Funeral for a Friend. They were quite good. The mostly Thai crowd were very appreciative and there was a pond in the middle of the club, which was very Thai. Alas, I have been assured that seeing decent western bands in Bangkok is something of a rarity. This weekend I’m going away again with a big group from school to an island called Ko Samet, which is not too far from Bangkok. I know it’s sounding like life over here is all trips away and sight-seeing, but I am actually quite busy at work as well. However, I don’t want to ruin this blog entry by talking too much about work, so to all of you who only want to hear about work stuff, I’m going to dangle that particular carrot a little longer. Cheers!

Many Pros (and a few cons)

2007-09-04T16:41:00.000+07:00

I'm discovering that there are many things that I can appreciate about Bangkok. I've already mentioned the quality and affordability of the food here, but there is more to Bangkok than just great food and swanky apartments. So, at the risk of establishing a precedent of including a list in each of my blog entries, here is a list of some of the things that I quite like about Bangkok:

Massages - again, the quality and affordability of these is remarkable - about $6 for a one hour Thai massage or $12 for a one hour oil massage (no, it's NOT what you think; you get naked and someone massages oil all over your body - shame on you for thinking it might be something dodgy).
Public Holidays - I thought Australians took their public holidays seriously, but they have about twice as many here in Thailand. Very civilised.
Bars - I have already discovered some very nice bars in Bangkok and they are generally much more reasonably priced than Australia, but even when they're about the same price (some of the funkier bars tend to charge western-type prices), because I've saved so much money on food, I can justify drinking there.
"Home Help" - someone is happy to come and clean my entire apartment for about $10 a week. I believe it's very important to contribute to the local economy.
Live Music - I know I bagged out Thai music in my last blog entry, but I have since discovered some good Thai punk music and one or two places where I can see good live bands for free - joy! Although I must admit I've had some very unsatisfying live music experiences here as well - why do Asian people love bad cover versions of really bad western pop songs?
The "Live and Let Live" Mentality - I'm assuming this is tied into the very strong Buddhist influence on Thai culture, but I really like the fact that people (and animals for that matter) tend to be just accepted here as they are. Whether it be a taxi blocking an entire street to drop someone off, a pack of stray dogs lying in front of the entrance to a restaurant, or one of the many transexuals just living their everyday life, people here tend to just accept everyone's right to be there as they are, without judgement and without the stigma that we would put on them in the more "cultured" western societies. I really respect that.
Banks - I know in the past I have launched the odd impassioned tirade against banks, but in Bangkok they seem much more civilised, they don't charge ludicrous fees for just looking at an ATM, and they are open on Sundays!

(By the way, all prices quoted above are in Australian dollars and are fairly approximate conversions.)

Of course, it's not ALL positive unfortunately. There are a few things that I find a bit frustrating about Bangkok as well:

The orange juice they sell here is so sickly sweet it's pretty much undrinkable.
I can't speak fluent Thai yet.
It's rather humid at times.

That's about it really. Some might suggest these are rather petty complaints and they may well have a point. The truth is that things are going remarkable well for me really and I don't have much to complain about. Work is going well. Non-work is also going well. Weekends have involved a fairly healthy mixture of relaxing and going out. There is seemingly no limit to the options for eating and drinking in this massive city, so my weekend nights have tended to be spent exploring some of these places with some of the other staff from school. Weekend days have tended to be spent vegging out, listening to music, reading, getting the afore-mentioned massages, swimming and watching cheap DVD's.

So I hope you have enjoyed this second edition of my little blog. I might write a bit more about work and the school in the next entry. Cheers.

Subtle it ain't!

2007-08-28T16:15:00.000+07:00

OK, so here I am in Bangkok. Been here nearly 3 weeks now, so I'm clearly somewhat of an expert. I would therefore like to share some gross generalisations with you all:

Bangkok is big, busy and crowded.
The people really do smile ... a lot
Food is everywhere - you can't walk too far along a footpath without having to avoid a food stall
The food is incredibly good - just remember to say "pet nit noi" or your mouth will resemble a ring of fire (or at least its oral equivalent)
The food is incredibly cheap, as are taxis, beer (but not wine) and pirated dvd's
It's mostly quite hot and very humid
The music is mostly awful
The traffic really is pretty bad most of the time
The random smells that one encounters can be quite confronting at times (walking home today I had to endure a few minutes of Eau-de-mouldy fish)

So basically, I think the title of this post ("Subtle it ain't") kind of sums up Bangkok. There is a lot to explore here and I get the feeling it will rarely be boring.

Anyway, I know you'd rather be reading about me than Bangkok, so let me fill you in on some of the highs and lows that has been my life in BKK so far. I will even break it up into nice little sub-headings for you. (Just don't expect this kind of spoon-feeding all the time.)

Work

The bulk of my time here has been spent preparing for my new job. The first week was "induction", although most of us "inductees" came up with other words to describe it. I won't bore you with too many details, but there were about 30 new staff, mostly Brits, mostly very nice and mostly totally overwhelmed by the end of our "induction". Having visited the school for a week in June gave me a huge advantage over most others who were seeing the school for the first time. But the whole week was very much a seemingly non-stop barrage of get up early, try to find something to eat, wish I'd had time to do some proper shopping, drink some water instead, go to school, be grateful the school provided food, eat the food, attend lots of meetings, be inundated with info, meet new people, try to remember the names of the people I met yesterday, eat some more, hear more info, try not to look tired, more meetings, more food, more people, more info, drift into that semi-awake-focus-on-keeping-my-eyes-open state, drink some more water, finally get to go home, go home, rest briefly for a bit, find something else that's wrong with my new apartment (more on that later), get ready to go out, meet everyone downstairs, try to remember everyone's name again, get on the school buses to go out, end up at some nice restaurant somewhere, meet more people, drink, eat, talk, drink, drink, talk, feel exhausted, have one more drink, go home, panic that I've forgotten the electronic key for my apartment, find my key, shower, collapse, sleep, repeat. This happened pretty solidly for 8 days straight. We then had a weekend where we got to relax almost properly (although the frustration of not having much stuff in my apartment meant that I had to spend a fair bit of time shopping).

We are now in the second week of term and so far so good. The school is very efficient and well-run. I believe a bigger contrast with the school I was at in Abu Dhabi could not be possible. And if I thought my life as a counsellor in an expensive private school in Asia would be cruisy, I had a bit of a reality check this week. Obviously, I can't go into details, but I've seen 8 students already, 3 of them with pretty full-on situations, plus I have another 8 or so to follow up. I also have to prepare 2 programs - a basic counselling skills course for year 12's and some stress management workshops for year 11, both of which start in the next week. That might do for work - I'll certainly be providing updates about work as time goes on.

Apartment

My new home is adequate ... barely adequate in fact. Brand new, only 10 minutes walk from the school, right next to a local market. If you'll indulge me, here's a little virtual tour.

This is the main living area (well, only living area, unless you count the bathroom). The furniture was all supplied, including the TV. My balcony overlooks the local market.

The Marantz receiver and speakers weren't included - I bought them with my "settling in allowance". My justification for this is that music helps me de-stress after work. (Any derogatory comments that come into your head about this stem from petty-minded jealousy and you should be ashamed of yourself!)

This is my kitchen. Some might say kitchenette, but given I haven't done any cooking since I've arrived (would you cook when you can get delicious meals right next door for $1?), a kitchenette suits me fine.

Here is my bedroom with my king size bed. I hope you're all appreciating the hardships I'm enduring here.

This is a view of the local market at night from my balcony. It's quite fun and festive and as I said I can get very good, very cheap food there. Not to mention all the chicken feet, duck heads, and pig intestines I could ever need (seriously!)

OK, so I was exaggerating slightly when I said the apartment is adequate. It is a little bit more than adequate. And I haven't even included any photos of the pool, spa, gym or restaurant. Mainly because none of these things are actually finished yet, but when they are I'll be sure to share some photos. In the meantime we have to put up with walking through a construction zone to get into the building and a lot of noise from tools and heavy machinery while they continue working on everything.

So I guess it's becoming abundantly clear that my surroundings are fairly comfortable, and this is indeed true (hence the ironic reference to George Orwell's novel in the name of my blog). The one thing I do feel uncomfortable about is that our apartment building is mostly surrounded by buildings that range from hovels to downright slums. I live in the "outer suburbs" of Bangkok and apart from the school and the odd mansion, it is generally a very poor area. I guess one of the advantages of living in a Buddhist country is that at least the locals don't seem to begrudge us our good fortune (or at least shouldn't begrudge us if they don't want to end up as a malaria-ridden mosquito in the next life).

General

This blogging takes up more time than I anticipated so I'll be finishing up this first edition shortly. But generally speaking, I'm enjoying my time here. The people are nice, there are plans afoot for travel (I think I have 3 weekends away in the next 6 weeks or so) and the place is very interesting. I have the best intentions to keep this blog vaguely up to date in the hope that it might prove more appealing than just a bunch of mass emails. Expect photos, anecdotes, travel stories and even the odd video clip!

That might do for now. Cheers!