the break - Yee Ling Tang

Malaysia
Cameron Highlands, Malaysia
The Petronas Towers
I arrive in Kuala Lumpur Sept 5th for an intended 2 day stop over in Chinatown before taking to the beach of Cherating. But as I am unable to get everything back in my backpack or carry it without the support of a taxi, I stay in Kuala Lumpur four days. Wandering about, breaking for dumplings, sweet local coffee, Fuckien noodles, Tiger Beer, Thai noodles, Korma, Roti cani. I read and people watch - I like Kuala Lumpur - so far.
The first evening I share my streetside dinner table with two men from Singapore here with their families. Their families are still shopping. One of them worked for a couple of years in Luton (not such a pleasant experience for him). We discusss South East Asian Economics (I listen, they try to explain) and then they invite me to join them at 7am the next morning for a trip to the Genting Higlands 'for gambling and relaxation'. I decline having arrived in Malaysia only 30 minutes previously.
Third day, (I think) I take a 'Hop On Hop Off Bus' tour of the city, stopping off at Merdeka Square, Little India, the Petronas Towers and the Golden Triangle (shopping malls). All very flash, I traipse into this Parkson Department Store landing at the Origins Counter and this assistant asks me if I'm looking for anything in particular and i say no, I'm just looking. She smiles and says, "Let me give you some peace of mind". She demonstrates for me to hold out my hands and puts a squirt of a little bottle labelled 'Peace of Mind' on the index, middle and ring fingers of my right hand. She tells me to join the fingers of my left hand to my right just under my nose. She demonstrates for me to breath in through the nose, out through the mouth three times. It actually smelt really good, refreshing and relaxing. Then she demonstrates (and I copy) massaging the ears, the forehead and the temples and shoulders before finishing with the three breaths in through the nose and out the mouth whilst adopting a prayer position. Anyway, it was very relaxing - lovely smell, but far too expensive.
Last evening in Kuala Lumpur, I go back to the same cafe as the first evening because it makes me smile. The kitchen is open so I can see that one of the chefs is wearing a T'shirt that reads (in big letters) ELECRICIAN and the chef next to him has a T'shirt on with FBI on it and then there's a another sitting on a chair in front of the wok with a Vicks inhalor stick plugged up his nose. This evening, I share my table with Angel, a wonderful Chinese Malaysian (32) from Kuantan who loves Cheshire Oakes - my idea of Retail Park Hell. We note how good the Fuckien Noodles are and then she asks about my next port of call which is Kuantan in order to get to Cherating. Angel lives in Kuantan and insists I call her when I arrive and "we will do lunch" and she will drive me to Cherating in her "wee white car". She also insists on paying for my dinner telling me tonight is my lucky night(!)
Next day, after a bus ride to Kuantan (in an arm chair seat), I check into Makmur Hotel because it's the closest hotel to the station (cannot carry the pack any further). I have dinner in Makmur restaurant and call Angel to arrange lunch for the next day. I am to be outside my hotel at 10am the next morning. A little early but perhaps she is busy at lunch. So, at 10 am Angels turns up in her wee white car proposing that I spend just one more night in Kuantan. I can have the guest room (with en suite), she will do my washing for me, we will go for lunch, pick up her son from school and then go out in the evening. I accept. So she drives me to her big house with electric gates and palm trees in the garden. Lunch is in a very Chinese restaurant and it seems rather extravagant for a lunch with friends. After we pick Angel's son (Owen) from School. He's six and then we drive out to the East Coast Mall for Sushi (Owen's lunch - our snack). Back at Angel's house I meet Angel's sisters Connie and Karen and later Niel, Angel's husband who is Scottish - hence Angel's expressions like "wee white car". In the evening, Angel, Niel, Owen and I dine at a very nice Western Style restuarant in Kuantan and then at 10.30! (after the children are all in bed) we go to the Pub (Angel, Karen and myself). Angel tells Owen she's "going to the Gossip Centre to work" when she's going to the pub, and this evening she tells him that I am also going as we want to see if I can get a job at the Gossip Centre. I don't really know how to play this one with Owen. I have a lovely day and a lovely evening and then alarmingly both Angel and Karen drink drive home.
The next morning we go for a Noodle Curry breakfast
and then Karen and Angel drive me to the coast of Cherating and settle me into Mimi's Guesthouse. We go for lunch at the Chinese cafe overlooking the beach and this is the first time they let me pay - as though I'm on some sort of pilgramage which they must support. Over lunch we discuss my next port of call after Cherating which is Terengganu in order to get to Redang Island. It turns out Karen's husband, Peter, has business in Terengganu on Saturday and they are making a day trip of it. A few phone calls and it is agreed they will pick me up Saturday at 6am.
Mimi's Guesthouse
Cherating is quiet. It is nice to be by the sea and have time to read and walk for two days, but after the excitement of the last week it is as though something is missing.
Cherating Beach
. Then, Connie and Karen turn up at my Bungalow on the off chance that I want to go back to Kuantan and join them for a Seafood Feast. So, we head back down the Coast line to Kuantan and I am dropped at Angel's house while the sisters collect their children. Curry Fish on a coal burner, two different dishes of lobster, scallops in a creamy butter sauce, Tofu, my favourite greens (tung choy) and Tiger beer - yum yum.
6.30 the next morning Peter and Karen take me for a Curry Noodle Breakfast before we begin the road trip to Terengganu. (The business Peter has to attend to is the delivery of three truckloads of mattresses to an enormous hotel in Terengganu.) We arrive in Terengganu at lunch time and while Peter goes off to do his business stuff and Karen books me a hotel challet and Ferry ticket to Redang Island. We do lunch and then they drive me to the Jetti.
Redang is gorgeous. (Part of a protected marine park!) Beautiful water, white white sand and lush dense jungle all the way round to the tiny strip of beach which I dont have a ticket to leave for three days. The beach is lined with luxury resorts. The first I can see from the boat is the Grand Laguna Hotel and on seeing this I panic that I've been tranferred to the wrong strip of beach. (I only paid RM60 for my Laguna Challet.) But I find my Laguna Hotel is a little place round the corner. I introduce myself to Miss Ma who Karen has spoken to on the phone to make the booking. Miss Ma assumes I speak Malay and only after many attempts to book me in in Malay realises I am not the person she spoke to on the phone. I do lots of swimming alone in the big sea whilst off around the rocks are large groups Chinese people snorkelling (fully clothed and with Lifejackets on). In between swims I work my way along the beach from resort to resort sampling Keoy Tow noodles, Ice lemon tea and Satay Chicken. The food in Redang is all good! In the evening a live Chinese band plays (very loudly) outside the Lagoon Resort and this continues until 3am along with fireworks. At 1am, rain is pouring in down the far wall of my challet directly onto the light switch. As reception is shut, I arrange the hotel towels above and around the light switch and turn off the Air Con. The next morning, I report this to Miss Ma and she has a word with House keeping and they say "it is not dangerous and no problem". (It doesn't rain again.)
the view from a Redang Bar
After a glum night in Terengannu town, I take a bus to the small Perhentian Island. I spend six glorious days swimming and running (only actually ran twice), eating great food (especially in Rumours hill side restuarant); watching free movies in the restaurants in the evenings; meeting up with new friends, Anna and Pete (from England) and Vidard from France (on a visa break from Shang Hai) and it is all so easy and comfortable its hard to leave. Feeling flush, I book myself on a snorkelling trip . Charging out in a speedboat, first stop Turlte Bay, driver gives you the signal, fins and mask on, jump in, find the turtles. We see three, the last of which swims right past me to the surface. It is massive (well, about 3 foot long). Fins off, back in the boat, off to Shark point, jump out of the boat, sharks all gone, flippers off, back in the boat, signal from the driver, flippers on, back over board. We see four (little) sharks. Next, Coral Garden. Gorgeous coral and so many amazing fish of different sizes and colours, you cannot see for fish.
Last stop before the Malaysian month is up is spent in the cool Cameron Highlands (tea plantations, strawberries and cream, scones and a cup of tea, lunch at the Smokehouse and quieter roads much easier to cross than those in Kuala Lumper). I am staying in the best place I have stayed so far (aside from Angel's House). A main 1920s building, big clean rooms in the gardens which grow nastursuims and roses and gladioli and lots more but I don't know their names. There's a movies room, a cafe which does the tastiest fry up (perhaps coated in honey), a small bar and its only RM25 a night.
Father's Guesthouse
BOH (Best of Highland) Tea Plantation
Next, Thailand.
written by  Yee Ling Tang on September 24, 2008 from Cameron Highlands, Malaysia
from the travel blog: the break

Thailand
Bangkok, Thailand
From the Cameron Highlands, I take the local the bus to the west coast, to the town of Ipor and then another bus into the city centre. With glee the driver, the passenger in front of me and a passenger to my left give me a guided tour from the bus window pointing out the old shopping mall, the new shopping mall and McDonalds as places I might visit. I spend the entire day in the new shopping mall - a fascinating (air conditioned) voyage through shops selling homeware, candles, lanterns, stationary, tins, bags, toiletries, shoes. With a large food hall on the top floor, coffee shops at ground level, a computer game shop (from where I send a few emails) and all the shops in between, it is a perfect day.
The overnight train from Malaysia - Thailand
To Thailand, I take the overnight train from Ipor to Hat Yai in very southern Thailand, crossing at the border town of Pedang Besar. Here, at 7 am we walk around different sides of a counter to be stamped out of Malaysia and into Thailand. At Hat Yai, a guy wearing an orange waitcoast with a number 18 on it asks me where I am going and I say, Krabi. He points me in the direction of a travel agent opposite the station and an hour later a minibus picks up me up from just in front of the travel agent. An hour on the minibus and we have picked up 10 other people (from their hotels), four boxes of raisons (for what?), nine unknown other food boxes, two single manilla envelopes handed to the driver with some Thai Baht on top and a pair of glasses from the Opticians. All the backpacks are moved out of the boot and onto the roof rack, (secured with rope and tarpaulin) and the food boxes are crammed under our feet(perhaps to benefit from the air con?). After all the deliveries and the dropping off of each passenger direct to their hotel, what should take five hours ends up taking eight. A grand total of 16 hours travelling - way too big a journey for one day; I end up spending two days in Krabi town - recovering. From the hotel, I make it as far as the cafe next door-but-one and the restaurant opposite. I do Laundry, send some emails and read my books. I take ridiculous delight in ham and cheese sandwiches made with brown bread, perfectly cooked soft boiled eggs and filtered coffee.
From Krabi I plan to visit each of the west coast islands beginning with Koh Lanta, the furthest one south. Again, I am picked up by the minibus (this time direct from my hotel) and similar food packages are again collected and delivered along the way. Two hours on the minibus and two ferries later (the minibus just drives onto the ferry) and I am dropped off at my chosen destination, The Sanctuary Resort. My beautiful bamboo bungalow has an outdoor bathroom set in a little garden, a big balcony with high benches either side, a hammock and cool silk sheets and it costs six pounds per night. But I share this with a huge noisy gecko and a mouse. Turning on my headtorch everytime I hear them move and having to keep moving my Lush soap out of the mouse's reach (impossible), I have the worst night's sleep yet. In the morning I do a sea facing Yoga class, I go for lunch in town, I take long beach walks late afternoon, a couple of hours sleep in the hammock after and in the evenings I dine out at tasty restuarants.
My room at Sanctuary
Ko Lanta cafe
From Koh Lanta, I head back to Krabi town from where I can further island hop. But with a bad weather forecast for the West coast, I decide to head north to BANGKOK!!! and return to the islands at a later date when the weather is better and the season offers more of the snorkelling and a boating trips I have my eyes set on.
For the trip to Bangkok, I book an overnight VIP bus (double decker coach) from a travel agent on Krabi pier. So it seems strange that I am picked up by a minibus that takes me to: another travel agent, who takes my ticket, puts a sticker on my T'shirt and gives me a new ticket. Thirty minutes later, another minibus picks me up and takes me to another travel agent where I hand in my ticket and get a VIP sticker for my T'shirt. Two beers, three hours and a new friend (Constanze from Austria) later and the most amazing VIP bus turns up. Big purple draping curtains with tassles, reclining velvet red chairs, pink fleecy blankets and a huge flat screen TV showing movies in English - it is a moving cinema! And as the bus is half full we all get two seats each in which to experiment with various sleeping positions. And just as you find the best position for sleeping, the lights come up and the driver shouts, "Morning, morning. Wake up, wake up. Bangkok, Bangkok, Kao San Road" "Morning, morning, Wake up, wake up, BangKok, Bangkok, Kao San Road. " So at 5.30 a.m. we trundle off the bus, our bags are thrown at our feet and we are surrounded by taxi drivers showing us maps, offering to take us to MBK Shopping Centre, to visit a Tailors and have suits and dresses made, to go to the Temple and the Grand Palace. No one takes takes a Taxi.
In Bangkok, I room share with Constanze. In the day we go for coffee and lunch, followed by shopping, followed by Chang beers and dinner and more shopping and another beer. Then Contanze goes north to Chang Mai and I spend my days on the internet searching and applying for jobs in Malaysia, and after one week, Bangkok is all way too much. The constant "Tuk Tuk?", "Taxi?", "Where are you going?" calls, the task of negoiating for the Tuk Tuk not to take you via a tailors or a gem factory, negoiating that the taxi meter be turned on (I never managed this), saying politely that I don't want a wooden frog for the 20th time, it is all too much. So, I head east to the island of Koh Chang for a four day break.
As it's just for 4 days, I take a small rucksack and leave my heavy backpack in my hotel's lock up room (Yipee!). I turn up at the travel agents at 8 am and five minutes later a Thai guy turns up on a motorbike to drop me off at the Koh Chang VIP bus pick up point. The idea of travelling through BANGKOK!!! on a motorbike does not please me but nor does the task of negoiating a reasonable fair from a taxi. So I jump on the back and hope for the best. My driver dreams of visiting England and driving along he turns to look at me and tell me that specifically his dream is to visit Big Ben and see Manchester United play. I tell him to watch the road and slow down.
Again the VIP bus to Koh Chang is a colourful, comfortable and straighforward journey. When I first came to Thailand eight years earlier I took a VIP bus from Bangkok to Koh Phang Ngan and within five hours it had broken down. The clutch had gone and at 1a.m we were in the middle of nowhere waiting for a new clutch to be driven from Bangkok. But this time it all seems to run like clockwork. We are dropped at the Ferry Pier bang on time, we are directed to exchange our tickets for stickers and then we are pointed in the direction of the ferry. An hour on the ferry and lots of photos later and on a mountain in the distance the words "Welcome to Koh Chang" come into focus.
At the pier, waiting for us are Songthaew (pick up truck) taxis which I give my resort name to and which we are all grouped into (according to our destination). I am heading to Sunset Resort on Lonely beach at the recommendation of Kim, who owns the Koreon restaurant attached to my hotel in Bangkok.
Sunset Resort's rooms overlook the water (Nice choice Kim) and the restaurant is just paces from my room. And the moment I head there it is perfect timing. The sun is actually setting over the water, I take a cushion and a mat (already arranged on the restuarant's wooden floor), have a beer at my tiny table and watch it go down. The background music is lovely and so is my spicy noodle supper. At 10.55 I allow myself to call it a day. I fall asleep to and wake up to, the sound of waves.
Sunset Resort view
An early morning swim, breakfast at a 'Nature' beachside cafe, coffee time, another swim, a watermelon shake, finish a book, start a new one, another watermelon shake, check the emails, coffee at Mr A's cafe and oh, it's time for dinner, meet a friend, a friend of the friend's and friends of the friends. I have Thai friends, Dutch friends, German friends and English friends and before I know it I'm eating spicy frogs (cooked on a pot on the road side) with sticky rice and banana flower fruits (whatever these are). We are sat ON the table by the roadside and sharing food with my friends' family, my friends' friends and anyone passing by who fancies some. Unknowingly (it was dark) I've ingested raw fish & ants, noodles with cartlidge and intestine soup. Given that I've always been quite a prude for those Chinese dishes of chicken's feet, tongue, pig's ears/feet, this is incredible progress for me.
In only a week, I have a large network of friends and each day a few appointments (breakfast, lunch, dinner, drinks, a walk). Just as I'm thinking this is sooooo easy, on my eigth day on Koh Chang, I use the cash machine and it retains my card. Do not panic, do not panic, do not panic. By the time I get back to my room I am really panicing. This is the one account with all my travelling funds and, surprisingly for me, I have never lost my cashcard before. So I climb in the hammock (to help me calm down) and I am about to cancel the card and before I get through I get a phone message from my mum about spending on my credit card - something in India, something skype accounts, something monsterjobs (I haven't used my credit card since August - it is my back-up emergency fund). I phone home, agree that this is not my spending and then drop in that I also have no cashcard. But we shouldn't panic. I will cancel them both and replacements can be here within perhaps a week. Sitting in my hammock, I decide to cancel my credit card first (prioritising the stolen card over the retained card). This takes a horriffc amount of time as Barclaycard keep me on hold for so long, I run out of phone credit and have get out of the hammock in order to get more phone top ups and then start the whole process all over again. I confirm that the thing for India, the skype accounts, the monsterjobs thing are all not mine and a further list of purchases is read back to me. Time to get another phone top up for dealing with the Nationwide card and again I'm on hold for so painfully long working through press 1 if..., press 2 if..., press 7... We're sorry, all our.... Finally I get the thing cancelled. The replacement cards are to be sent to my home address first and then fowarded to a local shop address. They should be with me in 15 days.
Remember, I am meant to be on Koh Chang for four days - time for the weather to improve in the south and a relaxing break from the unsuccessful Malaysian jobhunt. As my passport is with a travel agent in Bangkok (arranging a Visa for Laos for me), and my big pack is locked up in my Bangkok Guesthouse, I feel the need to go and collect my things, to hold onto whatever I can that is mine and important. So, I head back to Bangkok. I pick up my passport and book a ticket back to Koh Chang for the next morning. Bearing in mind I will be carrying my very heavy pack this time, I ask the travel agent if the transfer to the pick up point will be on the back of a motorbike this time as I don't think I can sit on the back and carry my pack (I mime lifting a very heavy pack). The agent sympathises and makes three phonecalls after each of which he shakes his head. He gives it one last try and comes off the phone pleased and showing me a photograph of the minibus that will do the transfer.
8am the next morning, I turn up at the Travel Agents for my pick up and a small Thai woman walks towards me with 10 Farang (foreigners) walking slowly behind her, lugging their packs, their surfboards, guitars and 1 child. The lady has my name on her list and tells me to follow her. No minibus? I say. No, she says and she begins to walk really slowly so that the people carrying heavy things don't lose the will to walk. We stop at various guesthouses along the way and we pick up more people and I decide there is a minibus but it's waiting for us at the end of the road and then we get to the end of the road I think it must be at the end of the next road, or we'll see it when we've crossed the main road because my pack is really really heavy and Bangkok is very hot and I am dripping. But no, this was a walking transfer.
In very little time, considering (10 days), I have a new Nationwide card. I am so happy I cry when it is handed to me. I put the card in the machine and I look to the screen for cues and it says, CARD RETAINED. CONTACT YOUR BANK. I take a deep breath, pick up some phone top up cards and climb in the hammock to call the Nationwide. They inform me that for security reasons they have put a block on my card. They wanted to check that it was me that was using it and now that they know it is, they can remove the block! I need to try and get the card back. By now I have a team of peope trying to help me. We find a phone number on the Cash Machine screen saver and we call the bank. The bank agree to open the machine at 9.am the next morning.
8.45 the next morning, I'm there ready to get my card. I give them a call and they say they will have to call me back when they know what time they can open it. A couple of hours later, we phone them again and they say they can't open the machine today; we need to go to the main branch on the island to find out when the machine can be opened. I get a lift to the main branch (a coupla beaches down the island) and they say they only open the machine on Wednesdays (they'd opened it just before I had my card retained), but I can get it in 8 days.
It is strange to be in a beautiful place with so little demanded of you and yet at the same tme feel paralysed by the memory of a cashcard/funds you once had access to but no longer do. While people are really trying to help me (cafes giving me my meals on credit, restaurant owners offering to loan me money, friends letting me use their skype accounts and everyone is buying me drinks), I never shut up about my cards. People just have to ask how I am and they get the full story. People leave Koh Chang for two weeks in Laos and still come back to me saying the same thing. "Well, I got my replacement card, and I put it in the machine and... so now I'm waiting for a new one." I am there for three birthday parties and four leaving Do's. People come to Koh Chang for a Bamboo tattoo, spend a week thinking about it, have it done, think about another one for a week, have that done and I am still there in the same cafe saying the same thing. People joke about how they imagine themselves returning in a couple of years to me, still here, still waiting for a card with some other ridiculous reason why it didn't work out. Suspecting my whining might be bad for business I attempt to limit the number of times I tell my story. And in between my winge(s) I do manage to visit some lovely beaches, eat some great food (Nature's Burger with freedom fries) and make it to a couple of Parties.
A birthday party
Mr A
Crazy/A
Itsey
Noy's Bamboo Tattoo
As my visa for thailand is due to expire before my cashcard is released from the machine, and my morale is still a little low, a local friend offers to drive me to the Cambodian border to sort this out. Here, I am stamped out of Thailand. I walk 200 yards across the border, buy a Cambodian visa which I am not going to use and walk back to Thailand to get stamped back in for another 30 days. We are allowed to do this three times and this is called a visa run!
So that I don't feel too stranded on Koh Chang (by the card business), I head with some friends across the water to the island of Koh Mak. Turqoise waters, desserted white sand beaches, a gorgeous bungalow with secret swing door leading to outdoor bathroom, bar you help yourself to drinks from and pop your money in the biscuit tin, cool sea breeze, live music, a pharmacy that sells second hand clothes (!). Koh Mak wins my award for the best island. It is peaceful, stunning and sooooo clean.
the Koh Mak bungalow
When the '8th' day arrives I leave Koh Mak to go to the bank in Koh Chang. I show my passport, sign my name and they hand me back my card. I receive it as though it is a winning lottery ticket. I put it into a different cash machine to the one I used last time (as instructed by the Nationwide) and then it is gone. CARD RETAINED. CONTACT YOUR BANK. Four phonecards down and they can only tell me that I must have used the wrong pin number. I definately did not use the wrong pin number. So, we order another card and this one I am having sent to Bangkok because I need to move on, to continue with my trip rather than spend the rest of my life card chasing on Koh Chang. I decide I am going to Laos (on a tight budget because I am now forced to call on the Bank of Mum and Dad).
The last weekend in Koh Chang there is a festival on at the Temple in Bang Bao (up the road). I cadge a lift there with some Thai friends who have a pick up truck. The inside of the truck is full and it looks like it's women and children inside and men hanging off the back. We're about half way there, travelling in the dark and we go over a pot hole and the seat panels all collapse and next thing we're all on the floor. There's a six month old and a four year old who I visualise being crushed. I reach out in the dark and grab the arm of a child - must be the four year old and I'm trying to stand her up incase she's trapped and then the inside of the pick up is lit up as we pass the lights of a resort on the right and I see that everyone is happily sat on the floor of the pick up truck. Everyone is fine and they are smiling at what the little bump did. Something happened. They adjusted and they got on with it. And there I was, seeing the worst, trying to stand up, trying to save people, ready to bang on the Pick up and scream for it to stop if I couldn't get the girl up.
written by  Yee Ling Tang on November 2, 2008 from Bangkok, Thailand
from the travel blog: the break

Laos
Luang Prabang, Laos
I travel to Laos with Mariella, a Dutch friend I met on Koh Chang. After a night in Bangkok, we take a sleeper train north east to the capital of Laos, Vientiene. I lurve sleeper trains (the seats that convert to beds by 8pm, the crisp clean white sheets and the way you draw your cubicle curtain and you suddenly have your own room). We are on the train 10 minutes when we meet Christy from America who is doing a visa run. Very shortly after the initial introductions, we find some resemblance to Charlie's Angels in our trio. We find ourselves extremely funny getting poor bemused passengers to take photos of us posing with our imaginary pistols. This continues for hours - past the noise curfew of 10pm, which makes us worse. The more you know you shouldn't laugh...
I wake at 6am to vast views of flat green land with a haze of white hovering above. Christy tells me this is Issan. At 9 a.m we arrive at the border and Christy has offered to be our guide which is fortunate as neither I nor Mariella can be bothered to read the guidebook. Our border crossing town is Nong Kai and after immigration on the Thai side, we get a Tuk Tuk to a place called the Friendship Bridge, where we're stamped into Laos and from here we take a Tuk Tuk into Vientiene. Christy has been in Thailand three years and has been to Laos many times, so we let her do the talking and for a change its great just to follow. In Vientiene, first thing we do is breakfast at the Swedish bakery (part of Christy's tour). We devour enormous croissants and scrambled eggs with swiss cheese, a fruit platter (it's a set menu) and strong coffee. We are sat out on the Cafe balcony, overlooking a huge fountain and it's all so calm and fresh and pretty. I am confused. I expected pollution, baking heat, litter and poverty. I assumed it being a capital it would be full of poor people. But it's all quite posh and if you don't want a Tuk Tuk no one's going to ask you twice.
After breakfast we amble down the main street which is quiet, tree lined, has a coupla little shops, a temple, some internet cafes and a posh Deli supermarket. At the end of the street we find a guesthouse which has a room with three beds (on the fourth floor) and it costs a pound each (very good for the budget). Late morning we continue Christy's tour with a walk out to Vientiane’s Arc de Triumph, Patuxai Monument. Vientiene is so quiet and the people seem gentle and genuine and it's sooooo lovely here. We end the day in a very nice little restuarant (I have my first piece of organic steak - with the obligatory baguette (ex French colony), and now that its so cheap, 2 glasses of wine!) Day two in Vientiene, we hire bikes and cycle out of town to a place the guidebook recommends for a traditional herbal sauna and massage. We get there with a slip of paper our guest house has the written the address on and Christy shows this to each of the roadside vendors and they all point, that way and an hour later we are heading into the woods. We mime being in a sauna (being hot) and the kneading action of a massage up to a some women on the first floor of the first wooden house we see and they mime where to park the bikes. We wander up to the house to ask for further directions and are handed a sarong. After a couple of hours sweating in a wooden room steaming with herbs, showering down, drinking tea, repeating the process, we finish with a rather gentle yet thorough massage.
After a couple of days, Mariella and I head north to Vang Vieng and Christy goes back to Bangkok. In Vang Vieng we get a bungalow with a view of the river and the mountains and again we hire bikes and cycle out towards the lush countryside. As Vang Vieng is famed for it's Tubing, we decide we ought to experience this but, not quite sure how one goes about Tubing, we book a Tubing day trip. (For people who are not familiar with Tubing, it entails sitting/lying in the inner tube of a truck tire and paddling into caves or down river with your hands.) Our Tubing tour starts with us paddling ourselves through the tiniest hole and into an enormous cave. I thought we'd get lessons in tubing but you just put on a headtorch, try out a range of paddling techniques and try to stay with the group. After an hour in the freezing cave, we come back through the hole (blinded by the daylight) and upon hitting dry land we are handed a BBQ lunch to have by the water's adge. We are then driven out to the river and told we are to tube back to Vang Vieng's centre stopping off along the way at the riverside bars which will throw us a rope to haul us in. The first place to throw a rope with a plastic bottle attached, clouts me on the head, pulls me in and then leaves me to scramble up the rocks which we have been warned not to stand on because they are sharp. Luckily, our tour guides (who canoe ahead and behind us on the water) haul us up off the rocks before we break our necks trying to get from lying in a tube to standing - without standing on sharp rocks! Is it not possible to build some steps or a ramp into the bar??? Arriving into these bars is like stepping into a party once it's really got going. The music is so loud you can't talk. People are dancing on the wooden platforms of the riverside or they are sunburning hard. There's a big queue for the bar and a big queue for the rope swing (more like the Ariel Runway bit of the Krypton Factor). We visit three bars and I only trust myself to have one beer and one mohjito in these waters. Back in the water we find that the line up of bars takes up maybe a third of the river journey and then fields of scenery take over and it is beautiful. Mountains, palm trees, fields, reeds, and a sunset at the end. And when the sun goes in we start to get really cold and we really don't want to paddle anymore and after five hours on the water, shivering and weak , our group loses the will to paddle. And just when we think we are going die of exhaustion or hyperthermia our tour guides throw us some rope, and pull us to the finish racing their canoes against each other with our entire group tailing behind.
After two days in Vang Vieng we take a mini bus north to Luang Prabang. It is so cold I venture into the very depths of my back pack to drag out those items I have been lugging around for months and have not yet seen the light of day. Thermal underwear, the thickest T'shirts, the jeans, 2 hats, a scarf, one fleece, one waterproof jacket, army socks, gloves and we're ready to find somewhere for dinner. We stumble on the night market which sells beautiful Laotian bedding, silk scarfs, sarongs, handmade notebooks, lanterns and I want it all but settle for a scarf. Gin and tonics, garlic bread, a fine salad and a few glasses of red (wine) later and I contemplate working in Luang Prabang. Then I dismiss this idea because it's too cold.
In truth, in four days I barely ventured further than the street of the night market and it's immacuate restuarants and cafes. I read, I people watch, I wander and in between I meet Mariella for coffee, lunch or drinks in the evening, and I think I should be getting a job soon. At this point in my big plan I am supposed to be heading to Nepal, but I am feeling very tired. My funds are dwindling; I haven’t secured any work for the future and somebody said it is raining in Nepal.
So, as Mariella heads back to Koh Chang, I venture off the plan to visit Issan (north east Thailand) where half the people I met on Koh Chang are heading to harvest the rice. In Koh Chang, both Thais and tourists talked about wanting to visit Issan at some point in the future soon. As it is neither a city nor an island (my two favourites) I am not convinced it is my thing but, not quite ready for the job hunt, I reckon I can manage a few days off.
written by  Yee Ling Tang on November 30, 2008 from Luang Prabang, Laos
from the travel blog: the break

Thailand
Udon Thani, Thailand
The place I am heading to in Issan is just an hour on the train from Vientienne – maybe 5 hours tops with a minibus from Vang Vieng. But as I have to collect my new cash card from Bangkok, I reluctantly book the 19 hour bus to Bangkok. (I am so tired of minibuses, buses, trains, boats – the novelty has truly worn off.) So when a minibus turns up calling for passengers to Bangkok and, Vietnam, I am again a suspicious of the agent through whom I have booked. As it turns out, the four hour minibus to Vientienne is extremely comfortable. Tarmac roads as opposed to rubble ones, seats with backs, leg room and air conditioning. We pass through villages with people selling chilli and rice (laid out on big mats) on the roadside. We pass people farming rice, people in the river and lots of hardcore Farang cyclists. Even the minibus is struggling to climb these roads and in the midday heat I am astounded these people are even upright and I have no idea why they are doing this. Then, two giant haystacks jump out of a field on the left and begin to move up the hill. Only when we are meters away do I stop panicing and I realise these are people with what looks like long bundles of straw tied to their bodies.
We arrive in Vientienne thirty minutes late and are dropped off at the pick up point for the Vietnam bus. Maps are handed out for those heading to Bangkok. We have to find our pick up point. We (11 Westerners) take a few wrong turns and end up on a street I recognise. As the pick up point is the Swedish Bakery by the fountain, it is me that ends up guiding up us to the bus stop! Although we are very late our bus hasn't yet arrived. So, while my group goes nuts for supplies from the Swedish bakery (I am not taking any chances of missing this bus) I begin questioning those already waiting at the bus stop as to the reliability of the bus from here. They don’t know if it’s straight through from here or if maps are involved. But I do find out that one of them is also only going back to Bangkok to pick up a new cashcard, another is hoping to find work in Bangkok teaching Japanese and another is German and volunteering in Cambodia. Our bus arrives just as it begins to hammer it down with rain. After fourty minutes sat stationary listening to the bus window wipers, we finally drive to the border. We climb off the bus manhandling our backpacks through the door and on autopilot head straight to the outdoor Immigration booths, filling our paperwork in on the way. Other side of the booths a guide suddenly appears. He describes the process from here, hands out the relevant forms and then we follow him to a VIP bus. Five minutes on the bus and we pull into a restaurant car park. Our guide accompanies us to our free dinner which comes with the bus ticket. He sees us all back on the bus and then he disappears. I look at my watch - it’s 6.20pm. A bit early to sleep but I am so tired. At 3 am I am woken to shouting: “Bangkok, Bangkok”. We are supposed to arrive at 7a.m. So, at 3.15 in the morning, the German girl, the Japanese girl and me are sitting outside a bar drinking watermelon shakes waiting for the sun to come up. (Too tight fisted to pay for a hotel for a few hours.) The next day I collect my cashcard and it works (hooray, hooray, hooray); I meet Krungthai, a friend (from Koh Chang) whose family's house I am going to stay in and we take a bus back to where I've just come from. As I am traveling with a Thai person, we get to take a Thai bus rather than a tourist bus and this is even better than the tourist bus. Arm Chair seats like those in Malaysia but these ones massage your head, back or calves at the press of a button. We get on the bus at 5pm and after trying out all the buttons, I go into another one of my deep sleeps only half waking to take the bottle of cold water, fried rice dinner in a polystyrene tray, bread buns and various other snacks handed out by the male hostess (free with the bus ticket). Too tired to eat or drink I just put these in the net attached to the back of the chair in front of me (for when I wake up). We arrive at 3 am (supposed to be 8am) and half asleep wait at the roadside for Krungthai's family to pick us up and drive us to their house in Kukaew.
Krungthai's family have no idea that I am staying with them but apparently it is fine for me to stay as anyone can stay without prior arrangement. As we drive up, I can see standing on the porch at the big wooden doors are Kringthai's parents. Upon being a meter way from them Krungthai drops his bag, puts his hands in prayer position and slowly moves his forehead to his finger tips. His parents do this back and nobody says a thing. So I shout “Sawadee Ka” (hello) and they say nothing back. The house is huge. It is tiled top to bottom with bright blue tiles and it is full of glass cupboards packed with tiny fold up mattresses and tiny pillows.
I am shown to my room and handed by Krungthai's mum one of the beautifully coloured fold up beds, one of those tiny pillows and a duvet. Now it’s time to meet the family at Grandma’s house across the road. (Can’t I meet them in the morning?)
As everyone has been rubber tree farming (which apparently takes place at night), the family are all awake lying on the floor (on their sides), propped up on their elbows and a tiny pillow chattiing away as if it were the middle of the day. I greet everyone with my “Sawadee Ka” hello and there are lots of nods and Krungthai tells me to Wai them. I repeat the nodding and Sawadee Ka - ing with my hands in prayer position and a little nod and the greeting is returned by each person followed by smiles. (This is a little more ceremonial than I imagined and I am not sure if I am going to be OK.) I sit on the floor and answer lots of questions (interpreted to me through Krungthai's aunt who speaks excellent English - Phew! I am then handed a little pillow which I put my elbow on and adopt the same positioning as everyone else for talking. I manage this for an hour and then make my apologies as once again I need to sleep.
At 5.30 a.m. there is this banging on my bedroom door. Do I want to take food for the monks? I hear myself say, “No, not today – maybe another day.” I wake at 11 a.m. to the sound of cocks crowing and pigs grunting. Krungthai has not yet been to bed, everyone else is rice farming and there are eggs, bread and coffee in the cupboard if I want them. So as Krungthai goes of to find for me another English girl he hears is in the village, I sit out on the big porch (rather like a big balcony), with my boiled eggs and coffee thinking how lovely this is. Lush green rice fields, tree lined red dusty roads. It’s sunny but cool and the air is fresh, it’s quiet and there is nothing I have to do. An hour later, Krungthai returns with Ali and her baby Meisa to keep me company. Ali goes back to hers for supplies of fresh coffee and coffee filter papers and Meisa is left with me. We drink one cup of coffee after another, boil up more eggs for Ali and Meisa and then our leisurely afternoon is abandoned as Krungthai turns up saying it's my chance to go rice farming.
We drive out to a field in the middle of nowhere and all of Krungthai's family are there dressed like scarecrows (woolly hats, scarves covering their faces, anoraks, jeans and boots) and they’re all holding machetes like my Gran used on her vegetables in Hong Kong.
rice farming
I am wearing my jeans because I haven’t anything else that’s clean but am highly commended on this choice as you get lots of bites in the rice field. (Oh, no. I am the most allergic person I know. I am allergic to all bites.) I am handed a little machetes (my Gran would never allow this) and I am given a demonstration on cutting rice. I am painfully slow in my method but everyone else thinks I’m blooming marvelous at it so I keep going for three hours until we take a break. I am offered water but decline it as it's not bottled but from a pot with a tile as a lid. I am assured it is clean as it is from a hole in the ground, but still I decide it cannot be safe for me. A small picnic of fish, chicken, sticky rice and Papaya salad is laid out and the family is strangely impressed that I can eat this. Another couple of hours rice farming and we head back to the house for and showers and dinner. After dinner, the family goes off to farm the rubber and I go straight to bed.
Again next morning at 5.30 a.m. there is that banging on my door (Do I want to take food for the monks today?) and again I hear myself say “Not today, thank you” as I sink back into the deep state of sleep which I seem to be spending a lot of time in. I wake in the afternoon and over my coffee and eggs consider that I may have developed that condition where you sleep all the time or I maybe I am sick with no symptoms other than the need to sleep (to recover). Having woken too late for a lift to the rice field, I sweep the floor, do the washing up, and fill the water buts ready for people’s showers once they get back from rice farming. I read my book on the porch, have more coffee and daydream as I wait for the others to get back. Late afternoon we meet friends from Koh Chang for beer on a bamboo table outside the local shop but before long, I need to sleep again.
The next day I make it to the Temple to give food to the monks! But with such an early start, I do not feel up to farming today and head back to bed. I suspect I am the laziest person the family has met to date. I wake at lunch time and have my usual breakfast. I watch people rice farming from the porch. I sweep the porch. I get round to doing my Laundry. I fill up the water buts and I read my book. When the family gets home I go to the market, food shopping with Jane (Jane is 7.) and bump into more old faces from Koh Chang. After dinner, Krungthai's sister wipes down the house’s interior walls and then washes (and dries) the pick up truck before covering it with a perfectly fitting coat. (She does this everyday).
The next day I wake up naturally at 5.30 a.m. Perfect timing for taking food for the monks, buying breakfast for the family (from a woman who turns up on a motorbike with everything for breakfast hanging from it) and I even feel up to farming. We eat breakfast sitting on a mat on the porch floor. (I didn’t realise they also sat on the porch for breakfast.)
I farm till 11a.m. when I am sent to the shade of a tree because my face is burnt. As lunch is hanging in carrier bags from the branches of this tree, a herd of cows surround me (I have issues with cows since a freesian ran after me last year). Though eventually they wander off to another field they return and terrify me every thirty minutes. So I spend the two hours (until the family breaks for lunch) planning escape routes (up the tree), counter attacks (loud clapping) and negotiation (handing over lunch).
I farm for a few more hours after lunch and then I am driven home earlier than the others – perhaps I am a liability in this heat with a small machetes. I have totally lost my cutting technique (I am now cutting towards as opposed to away from my stomach). I am no longer laying my rice down in lines as I can’t see the laying down pattern anymore).
We fit in one more day of farming before it is time to head back to Bangkok where Krungthai is to pick up his visa for a trip to the Netherlands and I will find a job! As it is my last night, I offer to cook my Beef and Mozzarella burgers (actually Jamie Oliver’s originally) with brown bread and a bottle of red from Tescos. To my surprise everyone tries a burger and wine and I am congratulated on my ability to cook.
written by  Yee Ling Tang on December 12, 2008 from Udon Thani, Thailand

Finding work
Bangkok, Thailand
I'm not very good at looking for a job. Meeting up with Christy, Krungthai and his friends from Ireland for lunch, dinner or just one drink, seems to fill the day. But, I set myself a target of applying for 20 jobs and having a job within the next two weeks. I give up looking a Malaysia and insthose things that attracted me to Malaysia in the first place and also seems a little more familiar. In the Internet cafes of Bang Lam Poo (in between my social appointments) I force myself to hunt for jobs teaching English as a foriegn language. At the same time, all around me, people are trying to change their flights or they’re trying to work out alternative ways out of Thailand or they’re calling their Embassies for advice because the Peoples’ Alliance for Democracy protests are becoming more threatening. I ask Christy if I should still be looking for work here. She thinks its fine. She was here during the Military Koo a few years back and that was fine. I move into a guesthouse with cable TV (for the news) and find out what a Military Koo is. It’s a Coup for short with coup d'état being the full term. In Thailand’s case this took place in 2006, when the Thai Army overthrew the elected government. The army cancelled the elections, dissolved Parliament, banned protests and political activities, censored the media, declared martial law and arrested Cabinet members.
As Christy goes off on holiday, Krungthai goes to Holland and my new Irish friends go off to the islands, I spend an evening on my own trying to piece together the news images of protests. There are people wearing yellow (the Peoples’ Alliance for Democracy) and another party, who wear red (the National United Front of Democracy Against Dictatorship) and both parties look like they’re just picnicing rather than a protestesting. Even with a web search of the English papers, I have no real idea what is going on. Then, the Peoples’ Alliance for Democracy (who I understand are calling for the Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat to resign. They occupy the airport and those people in yellow who looked like they were having a huge picnic are blocking the roads with luggage trolleys, they’re wearing bandanas across their faces and they’re wielding pieces of bamboo. Now the internet cafes are so packed with (angry) tourists, I have to queue for a computer. They’re skype calling their airlines, un-booking their hotels and their onward travel plans, and I just keep on job searching and I really get into sending the applications. Everywhere, all people are talking about is their personal trauma of trying to get out of Bangkok. All the guesthouses are full and no-one dares attempt a move to a nicer guesthouse or a cheaper guesthouse for fear the room they have will be snapped up and the one they want will be gone by the time they get to it. I too am looking for a cheaper place. I lost my purse which I then found but only after I’d cancelled my cards. So I’m reading my book in my guesthouse restaurant one evening - trying to ignore the moaning of the stranded, when Fleur from New Zealand, at the table next to me asks if I too am stranded. I say I’m looking for a job - quite urgently now as I lost my purse, found it but not till I’d cancelled the cards etc. Within a minute I’m invited to share her hotel room. Big room in the gorgeous Nevali hotel. It has a bath, a DVD player, a fridge, a rooftop pool and free buffet breakfast. I accept. In the mornings we have our breakfast together and then I go off to apply for some jobs while Fleur hangs out by the pool. In the afternoon, we meet for lunch, do some sightseeing (temples, the riverboat, China town) and in evenings we watch DVDs bought off the Kao San road. This routine continues until Fathers’ Day: the King’s birthday and an official public holiday in Thailand. I take the excuse not to apply for any more jobs but to celebrate along with the rest of Thailand, this special day. We head to the Palace where the streets are paved with people who have positioned themselves on the floor for a good view of what turns out to be a spectacular procession involving the army, police, nurses, school children, brass bands. At the end, the National Anthem is played over loud speakers and everyone stands. The pride in people’s stance and their faces is like nothing I have seen before. At the end of the Anthem, people rattle their small flags in the air and a drunk old man comes to speak aggressively about something to Fleur and I. Immediately a Thai woman steps in waving her flag at him, not saying a word. Another woman does the same not far behind the first woman and the guy backs off.
Finally, the People’s Alliance for Democracy ends its occupation of the airport as a Court order bans Somchai Wongsawat from politics for five years (something about vote-buying). Slowly people begin to fly off. My replacement cash cards arrive and I have a job interview at a school in Southern Bangkok! The evening before the interview I pre - book a taxi but as this doesn’t show in the morning, I get a Tuk Tuk driver to agree to take me (for a fiver). On the way, he tells me it’s too expensive for a Tuk Tuk back. He says he saw some Song toews just before which go back to the pier. If I get off when I see Yannawa Wat and take a left after the bridge, I can take a boat back to Bang Lam Poo.
I arrive at school just before lunch and there’s a rehearsal for a Christmas show in the Foyer. Although I know the children are talking in English, I do not know what they are saying. With their Thai accent they seem to have a whole language of their own which I cannot yet decipher. They bow, exit stage left and I am called for interview for which I immediately develop a tickly cough and so can only answer with short sentences in between coughs. This, my interviewer explains is due to the change in the season. I suspect I have blown my chances with the coughing but have such a good feeling about the school, I plan to work harder at applying for jobs. (I lost momentum again after the Father’s day break.) I follow those directions back to Bang Lam Poo and it’s such a lovely journey back on the river boat, I can really picture a year here.
At 5pm I open my emails and I have been offered the job. As its midnight back in the UK and everyone I know here has left or is out of town, the only people I can find to tell my good news to are the Tuk Tuk driver who took me for interview and my ironing lady. Yes, I have an ironing lady (Well, a lady who ironed my interview clothes). They are both delighted for me.
The evening before my first day at school, I pre book a Tuk Tuk for 5.30 in the morning. This is another driver who is also very pleased for me. (I know him well and he has taken me on numerous short journeys around Bangkok.) He advises me to take care of my money – keep it separated, invest in a money belt. If I have any problems, let him know or call my Embassy. Find out the number for my Embassy in Bangkok.
I wake up at 4.30 and at 5am he’s already waiting outside my guesthouse. From Seven – Eleven, I get a can of coffee and a croissant for a breakfast to have in the back of the Tuk Tuk. As we rattle along, the driver gives me more advice. I’m not to take a Tuk tuk or taxi home. I’m to take the Song teow to the pier and the boat back to Bang Lam Poo. It will cost me 20 baht instead of 200. Tomorrow, I’m to take the bus or the boat to School. I can’t keep paying for Tuk Tuks – I’m not a tourist any more. I argue the case for one more day whilst I get used to it all.
I arrive at school early enough for teachers’ free toast and coffee and then I am introduced to my co – (Thai) teacher, Miss Supranee, the classroom assistant, Miss Jantiwa and the teacher who is going to teach with me for the first week, Mr Allan (from the Philippines). Between 7a.m. and 7.30a.m, I meet the 36 beautiful six year olds I am to teach English vocabulary, conversation and maths to. (I told them at interview I wouldn’t feel confident teaching Maths but they laughed and said it was really easy.)
I’m told to take my shoes off in the classroom and the morning starts with the children lying on the floor on their fronts for Thai workbook work. At 8 a.m. we parade to the roof top for assembly. We stand for the national anthem, two students raise the flag, we pray in English and then in Thai (it’s a Catholic school). The Children raise their right hand pledging to respect and obey their teachers, concentrate, be polite etc. The teachers pledge to be honest to ourselves and others, to be resourceful. Then we break into songs with actions which the children love and before we know it we’re parading back to the classroom.
The first lesson is Thai which I watch from my desk at the side of the classroom whilst I’m preparing my ‘getting to know you’ materials. (We’re making name badges with pictures of the things we like and telling each other about ourselves.) Next lesson is Yoga for which I’m not needed for so Allan and I co – plan the week. Then it is lunch time. English teachers help with lunch. I have a bowl of noodles, a bowl of soup with vegetables in it and a tray of fish balls and all the children asking for more at pretty much the same time. After fifteen minutes I’m sent for my lunch while the children have a run around and bizzarely clean their teeth.
After lunch it’s my English lesson. Lots of children like ice-cream, one boy likes Pattaya and the rest, like me, like cheese. We play some conversation games with a ball (they like this) and I throw out some questions and get some good answers back. (I don't have to start working with the themes for a couple of weeks). Then, its nap time for which the students roll out little mattresses with pillows attached and find a space to sleep in (they bring their mattress in on a Monday and take them home Friday for a wash). They sleep and I sit at my desk (in the dark) on one side of the room and Miss Supranee sits at her desk on the other side of the room. Oh for a nap. This time is a killer. Next lesson is a Library session which again I am not teaching. We watch an English cartoon altogether, talk about the story and then they all find a book and find somewhere to have a read. Next lesson we’re rehearsing the Christmas show and again I hear that other language which I now think comes from reading from a script. Last lesson we work through the students' English workbooks and Allan teaches this acting like a comedian to keep their attention and I animate my side as best I can. The bell goes at three and some children go home, but most go to an after school option class (an extra lesson in Thai, English, Phonics or Taikwondo). During this hour, I dream up more lesson ideas and do some prep for tomorrow’s lessons. At 4 p.m. I queue up with the other teachers to scan my finger as part of the clock out. Although I have done very little this day, after 4 months of not working, I am exhausted. I take the Song teow and the boat home and on the way get a phone call from my Irish friends who are back in town. Have I time for dinner and a drink? I manage two hours with the boys who are celebrating my new job more than I am. By 8pm I am fast asleep.
The next day, neither the Tuk tuk who took me for the interview nor my Tuk Tuk from yesterday are about. I try negotiating with another driver. He says it’s too expensive. I say, I can pay. I am happy to pay. He looks away uncomfortably, then after a long pause, agrees to take me. This day is very similar to yesterday only the students are a little rowdier. I can’t remember their names and they can’t remember mine. After work, I meet the Irish again and make it to 9p.m and they are still celebrating my new job.
Wednesday, 5.30 am, the new driver from yesterday and the guy from the day before are outside my guesthouse and they’re shaking their heads at me. The guy from the day before yesterday says, “We not take you - too expensive. You take the bus - number 35 or take the boat” I tell him I don’t know where to take the bus from. I think the matter is over. I tell him I’m going to get breakfast. I pop into Seven - Eleven and usually they ask me how I am and I say I have a headache or a cold or a cough and they mime their ailments and show me their cracked lips and we smile and say goodbye. But today, no-one says anything. They are transfixed with their mouths open. They are staring at the space above my head, which it turns out there is a small flat screen TV above. They are watching back what appears to be a fight in the shop perhaps from the night before. Back with my Tuk Tuk drivers, one of them is on his mobile and the other one is taking notes for him. They have phoned the boat company and the bus company. There are no boats or buses running from here to south Bangkok at this hour. But if I take the number 1 bus from the Palace, it will take me part of the way and from there I can get a Song toew which ends its journey outside my school. “But I don’t know where abouts at the Palace to get the bus or where I should get off and this is only short term. I’m going to move to Bang Pong Pang very soon and then I’ll save my money.”
“You know the place” says my driver from yesterday. “You remember, we drive past yesterday - lots of Thai people eating breakfast under bridge. Get off under bridge.” No, I don’t know where that is. There were lots of Thai people eating breakfast under lots of bridges, everywhere. “I don’t know where you mean”. (I am beginning to panic that I am going to be very late on only my third day – new job!) Reluctantly, the driver from the day before yesterday gestures for me to get in the back. On the way, he points out where I get bus from, he takes me on the route the number one bus takes, he points out a number one bus in front of us, the bridge where I get off and where the songthaews run from.
I arrive just in time and tell Allan of my Tuk Tuk nightmare but it’s OK because I’m going to move closer to work soon. Allan is looking for someone to take his apartment on so he can move out before his contract ends. So after work, we take a Songtoew to his apartment. It’s very spacious, has nice furniture and is on the ninth floor of a ‘Condo Villa’ (not too high up). It has a mini Tescos and a Seven – Eleven on the corner, 24 hour security, a launderette, massage shop, ironing shop and internet café on the ground floor. On the sixth floor there’s a restaurant and free access to the swimming pool, gym and sauna. I am overwhelmed by the pool. It is 7500baht (150 quid) a month. I want it. I cannot consider house hunting further when I can have this.
Saturday morning, I pack up my pack and empty my locker. I am moving to a Condo in Bang Pong Pang. My Tuk Tuk driver that took me for interview is in the street. I tell him I’m moving, show him the address and ask him if he’ll take me. He says it’s too expensive. At this time of day you can get a taxi for 100 baht. I tell him I can’t get taxi drivers to turn on the meter. So he drives me out to the main road and flags down taxis until one agrees to use the meter.
After only an hour in the apartment, I feel the need to email home, to tell everyone about my new home. I lock the door from inside and instantly remember the keys are inside. After failed attempts to break in, I call the management agency who arrange for a locksmith to break in (to the amusement of the Locksmith and Security and my management agent). I am feeling a bit down having just wasted four quid locking myself out. I decide to go for a swim. I go to reception and say I want to swim to the Security guard behind the desk. She has a badge on her arm which says “Doing Well Security”. She shouts something at me in Thai and I say and mime that I don’t understand. I ask her in Chinese if she speaks Chinese. This seems to make her angry. She points to a sign which says swimming caps must be worn in the pool. I ask if she sells them and she gets even angrier. I ask if I can Sauna instead. Sauna she understands and takes my card and signs me in. I sit in the Sauna for 20 minutes pouring water on the coals which just floods the floor and I conclude that that they must only have cool saunas in Thailand because it’s so hot anyway. On the way out I see the instructions for turning on the Sauna and see that the dial is pointed to ‘OFF’. Pool and Sauna are not so impressive now. I head to Tescos to stock up and also get myself a swimming cap. I try to buy a bottle of wine but alcohol isn’t allowed until after 5pm. It is 4pm.
Swimming cap in my hand I go back to the pool. I sign in and head to the changing rooms - with my shoes on. Security lady follows me in and barks something at me in Thai. I shake my head and raise my eyebrows and she says in English “Shoes off”. I say, “Oh, we can’t wear shoes. Oh, Ok, I’m taking them off now anyway.” But I don’t take them off because I’m struggling with the locker. “Shoes off, shoes off” she shouts. So I whip them off and she yanks open the changing room door and points to a shoe rack outside. Before leaving the changing room she mimes that I need to shower. Apart from Dragon features at the pool, the Security guards at the Condo Villa are great. They tap their feet as they salute “hello” (Sawadee krap). They ask where you’re going, if you’ve eaten yet. They hold open doors for you, flag down your taxi and every morning they do this fancy changing of the guards display where they stamp, salute and face different directions before shouting something (which I imagine is “atten – sion!") - very professional.
After only 8 at days work, I have a 10 day break for Christmas…
written by  Yee Ling Tang on December 22, 2008 from Bangkok, Thailand

Into 2009
Bangkok, Thailand
The first few days of my Christmas break I spend finishing my hand-made travel washbag. (I have been working on this for the last two years.) I also read my second-hand books off the Kao San road, see two films at Lido cinema and spend long sessions in the gym and the Condo pool. Then, Allan (from school) throws a Christmas party with lots of his Philippino friends and because they’re all so musical, they play songs on the guitar, google up the lyrics to the TV screen and we sing along to the tunes of our choice until the early hours. Then, Christy holds a party – a cheese and wine party (yum yum!) and we are required to bring a present which can either be something we no longer want or something costing no more than 2 quid. I have very little and want everything I have so opt for the traditional smellies present (nice body lotion and shower gel and soap). It’s over the 2 quid budget but hey, this is a cheap night out. The crowd is a mix of Christy’s (American) friends with whom she volunteered for years in Thailand and her boyfriend Jack’s (Iranian) friends. We eat and drink for the first hour and then it is time to play Secret Santa which I think is the game where you get a present but you don’t know who it’s from. No, this is not that game. So, we are called to sit in a circle and numbers are drawn from a party hat. Number 1 gets to choose a present from under the tree first. Then, number two and so on. But, if 2 likes number 1’s present more than their own, they can take number 1’s present and number 1 picks again. Each person can take any of the presents before them but the final say goes to number 1. Number 1 can have any present they want. I really want to be number 1. I have number 1! The present I open unfolds into a draught excluder snake which I have no use for but hold onto as I can choose anything I want later. Number two opens a present that turns out to be a T’shirt and Number 2 is happy with this. Number 3 wants my draught excluder and dramatically snatches it from me. So I choose another present which turns out to be a set of speakers (I want these) but later number 5 politely takes them from me and then number 7 takes them from her. Number 8 has a set of wine glasses but these are taken by numbers 9 and 11. Seeing how happy 7 and 11 are I decide the best thing is just to take my smellies. Number 12 is really pleased with my smellies. Number 13 has an iron! (I really need an iron!) But number 13 is of course so pleased with the iron I can’t take it from her and number 11 is holding the wine glasses like they’re already hers, so I don’t take them and in the end the speakers from number 6 go to numbers 14 and 16 and I just can’t bring myself to take someone else’s present so my final choice is the mayonnaise that is the last present under the tree. Everyone considers this a very dull ending to the game. So relieved it is all over I tuck into more cheese and wine.
Back at school, I begin really trying to learn the names of my students. I flick through their name tags when they’re not wearing them (trying to visualize their faces) and I go through the class photo trying to put a name to a face. I am appalled at my inability to remember names. Although, these are hard names like Suwichaya, Kochakorn, Sirapob, Phuri and Tae Goon. The only easy ones are Jennifer and Monique and they’re twins so I spend a lot of time spotting the differences between them. (We can’t wear name badges forever). Teaching in Hong Kong, the students would open their mouths to speak and barely any sound would come out. Here, I am bombarded with questions (pointing to my sweeteners) “What is this?" / "Miss Yee Ling is a Mummy?" / (pointing to my necklace) “What is this?” “How old are you?” and once they start talking amongst themselves, it takes some kind of dramatic performance by myself before I can get them back. The one strange hour where I didn’t have to sing and dance to get them back was when I set them about paper macheing hot air balloons (transport theme). And now I have table, chairs, tablecloth and a menu on standby for getting their attension. We first used this for role playing ‘At the restaurant’ (Occupations theme). But these days I seem to be dragging the whole set out at the most illogical moments just to get them back. A quick go at being waiters and customers and they're with me. Normal instructions like “Listen up”/ “Are we ready?”/ “Let’s start”/ “Quiet please” are all useless.
Monday 23rd February, I’m sitting a the lunch table with Sirapop (he’s six) and we’re chatting about the origins of this little fabric case he’s given me for my tissues (his aunt makes them) and mid conversation he politey says he has to go now. He points to a big cloud of black smoke in the sky and walks away. All the students are being taken away by their Thai teachers and so I think they must have called teeth cleaning early this lunch break. So I go to the teachers dining area and some of them are picking up their belongings saying they’re getting out of here because the smoke looks pretty bad. I assume someone is burning rubbish behind the school. For lunch today we have a choice of Penang curry, Green (Chicken) curry and a Yellow curry and for the first time ever they are all labeled. Another rarity is that I can serve myself and so have a larger portion than they usually give me. Halfway through devouring this treat I am perturbed by the fact that I am on my own in this very big school. There is a big cloud of black smoke hovering above the school but surely if there was any danger, the fire alarm would go off. Three Philippino teachers come running from the other direction. One is hysterically shouting “What about the children? They are trapped in the classroom and it is spreading so quickly” The others reassure her it will be OK. I drop my cutlery into my curry and make my way out of the main entrance to the car park. It is packed with children, some crying, some screaming and some sitting on the floor in lines which the teachers are all asking them to. As soon as I find my children, we are being directed over the walky talkies to go back into the classrooms. (Who goes back into a building when there’s a fire?) Standing in the classroom with so many bewildered children, wondering where the fire might have reached by now, visualizing it roaring into the classroom. (I am going to die in a fire with 36 scared children and a co- teacher who has barely said a word to me…) One of the kids asks if Miss Zaida died. Miss Zaida is the teacher I am covering for – the one who left before her contract finished. I meant to explain my being here and Zaida not but what with the Christmas show needing some work and the difficulties I was having just engaging them and I kind of hoped someone else had explained where she had disappeared to. I say that Zaida is working some where else and then some of them begin to chip in her whereabouts, some of which are correct, like that she is working in Canada. (How do they know?). Before we have finished the conversation we are being directed out of the classroom.. We traipse cautiously down the three flights of stairs through gardens and into a sister school's canteen area and then to an area I imagine this school conducts its assembles in. We make makeshift signs for our classes and sit and wait amidst the sounds of sirens. Within minutes parents are arriving to take their children away. These parents have dropped everything to come from the office it appears; one mother is wearing a pilot’s uniform, another looks to be an immigration officer. I try to amuse the remaining students until to my relief the last one is collected and we are sent home for the rest of the day. We are told School is cancelled tomorrow but we need to come in our scruffs tomorrow in order to clean up.
For the clean up, we are divided into Thai and Foreign staff teams. Foreign teachers carry out of the building all of the paperwork hosed wet the day before, the school bags thrown from the window in the panic, and move those items which people had attempted to carry out to safety (ceiling fans, clocks, pictures). The Thai teachers go in with a bucket and a cloth to clean up the rooms and then the foreign teachers carry everything back in. In the carrying task, I begin to piece it together. The fire was actually in the slum behind our school. I didn’t even know there was a slum behind our school or even that slums exist in Bangkok. (Where have I been?) Even the word seems very alien to me. Through the charred school windows you can see a mass of land black and burned to the ground. Where apparently 60 homes previously existed there are now just people rummaging (for their belongings?).
Having missed the opportunity to talk to my class about their last teacher’s disappearance, first lesson back, we talk about the fire. They talk about being scared, hot, happy now, about having seen the firefighters (one of their ‘Occupations’ vocab words) and the whole incident becomes a lesson in itself.
While we're writing the English and Maths exam papers, it comes to light that I should have been assessing each student on an ongoing basis on their speaking, listening, reading and writing (two or three tests in each area) and their English, Maths and Handwriting workbooks should be complete before the end of term (mid March). They must take these home complete on the last day of term. I have five weeks to get them ready for their exams, finish their workbooks and do all of the assessments. (Arggghhhh!) All planned creative activities, games and role play are abandoned in place of finishing the workbooks and exam revision and any free time I or the students have is spent hurdling them through one assessment after another. They beg for role play, they attempt to start the question and answer game and when they ask “What is this?” about all the interesting resources on my desk (which we will no longer be using), they are led into yet another assessment. An hour before the Computerised assessment ‘system’ closes, their exam results and assessment scores are submitted. Three hours before they are due to finish school for this year, we are still finishing their workbooks. I have enlisted the help of every teacher not doing something in marking them and just in time their books are ready for them to take home.
written by  Yee Ling Tang on March 24, 2009 from Bangkok, Thailand

Travel time!
School’s Summer holidays run from mid March to the beginning of May! My Thai friends, Krungthai and Pan and what’s left of the Irish (Heno) have picked up along the way John - a Yorkshire man, and they are all now in Pai (in northern Thailand). So, I take an overnight train to Chang Mai and in the morning a bus journey of hairpin bends to Pai to meet up with my friends. Pai is great. Hot springs you can cook eggs in (at the top), soak in (at the bottom), waterfalls to cool off in, bars to lounge in, an open air swimming pool I spend whole days at and good, good food and, for a change, the countryside. As I am due to fly to India soon, I spend only 10 days here which feels very wrong because I need a month of this. To break up the journey back to Bangkok we stop off at the ancient capitals of Sukhothai and Ayutthaya .
Sukhothai, despite how close it looks on the map, horridly takes a whole day to get to. But the next morning we head to the lush green grounds of the palace ruins and temples, the layout and names of which seem to mirror those of the Palace temples and streets in Bangkok. Capital during the 13th and 14th centuries the ruins are weathered buddhas and shrines set amongst pillars, pretty ponds and connecting islands. Later we head out to Si Satchanalai which I love even more because this countryside is even more wild, less pruned and the sights require a little climbing.
Next day we take another long, long bus journey to Ayuttaya. Here, we try to find our guesthouse by following directions from the guidebook which indicate the guesthouse is just by the bus station. An hour later we discover that we got off at the wrong bus station - one outside of Ayuttaya. A forty minute taxi ride later we are on the right roads. It is dinner and bed. As the ruins in Ayutthaya are more spread out, we hire bicycles. It is so exciting hunting down the ruins amongst the grassy parkland or coming across a huge reclining Buddha along a dusty road.
After just one day, we take a boat (across the river) to the train station and for a train to Bangkok. I leave the boys in my apartment, pick up my visa from the Indian Embassy and fly to Mumbai.
I am meeting Lisa in Mumbai. Lisa from home – from Newcastle-under-Lyme, my dancing friend, my Fat Cat’s bar mojhitos drinking buddy, my sit by the fire with wine and good food friend. I cannot wait. My flight gets in earlier than Lisa’s and before I know it I’m outside Mumbai airport trying to second guess which arrivals door she might appear from. With a bottle of water and a Samosa in hand for Lisa’s arrival, I spend a little time at each of the arrival exits. After an hour (now I’ve wrapped the Samosa in tissue to keep it from drying out) I find her as I have instructed, armed with bottles of Rioja and duty free perfume. I have found a nice taxi driver who has been waiting for ages to take us to Colaba and told me where he would wait only he’s not in his cab but the cab is open so we get in and wait. He appears 10 minutes later and with the windows down (because it is boiling) we drive for an hour past purple spotted cows, slums, the sea, children selling books at the window, people begging at the window, people disappearing into little holes in walls.
We opt for a double room at the Salvation Army because we can’t get a decent hotel room for under 25 quid. The Salvation Army isn’t actually the type of hostel it is in the UK, it’s like a B&B – honest. The room is 8 pounds and this includes free breakfast and lunch but the sheets have not been changed and there are piles of long hair on the floor which the fan has swept into certain corners of the room. I ask a member of staff if the room has been cleaned (knowing full well it hasn’t) and she hands me clean bedding. I collect the hair, change the bedding, drape my sarongs across all the grotty bits of furniture and put candles around the room. (I had proposed to Lisa in a conversation a couple of weeks before that we should have a cozy room in Mumbai for a couple of days before beach hutting it in Goa). Coming from England, Lisa is jet lagged and desperately needs to nap. As I am bright eyed and bushy tailed from Bangkok, while she sleeps I head down to the canteen for lunch. It is pasta in a tomatoe sauce and bananas for afters. I take two plates, one for me and one for Lisa. Embarrassed that it’s not Indian and Lisa has not come all the way to India to eat pasta, yet not wanting to waste it, I offer Lisa’s lunch to a hungry traveler staying in the dorm beds (where lunch not included). He appreciates this and so I rush to wake Lisa and tell her it was pasta for lunch but not to worry as I gave her lunch away and now we can go and eat some real Indian food. Lisa has had no end of Indian food in Newcastle. Pasta would have been fine….
We knew it was hot season but somehow in the planning stages we convinced each other we could handle it. In our hostel room we are dripping sweat. I shower and Lisa tries to wake up. Then whilst I’m waiting outside the hostel where there is the teeniest breeze (and Lisa’s still coming to), I meet Imran, a casting agent for Bollywood films. He’s looking for extras for a film to be shot this evening but he wants white people. I say I have a white friend that might be interested and Lisa is interested but she’s just been here an hour and she only wants to do it if I can too. We find a film for the pair of us. I will play a Thai woman. Lisa will play a Westerner. Pick up is tomorrow at 7am. Delighted with the action about to unfold we practically skip out to lunch. Over Kingfisher beers, lamb Rogan josh and Aloo Paratha naan bread we catch up and I think I’m in heaven.
Free breakfast is hard boiled white shelled eggs which they assure me are chicken eggs (I can’t stand duck eggs), white bread, bananas and a cup of tea.
Imran greets us excitedly at 7am opening the door to his People Carrier which has aircon and white toweling seat covers. As I climb in I suspect we should not be doing this - but how exciting. We pick up more extras along the way and a couple of hours later we are on the set. First, all you can eat Indian buffet lunch. Yes, this is heaven. After lunch it’s time for costumes. Sitting on chests of clothes are three trendy young Indian women. One we gather is the assistant Director, the others, assistants. Behind the treasure chests of costumes, are two trucks of costumes. The women look at us all individually and begin shouting for costumes. Scruffy Indian men plough through the chests and trucks pulling out all sorts of bizarre (bridesmaid like) dresses, jumpers and terrible skimpy numbers. The women scowl shaking their heads until the most hideous and smallest costumes are found and these they like. (Oh no, not that). I am suddenly very nervous. I am wondering what on earth we are doing and I wish I hadn’t eaten so much lunch. We are given a hotel room (the set is a hotel resort) and we change in the bathroom whilst quickly sharing our fears. My costume is a tight black vest, tight brown cropped trousers and a pair of silver high heels tied to my ankles with thin silver laces. I cannot walk. For make up we are directed to sit on the end of the bed and a young Indian man sprays a water can at our faces and then wipes off the water with a piece of Muslin cloth – most refreshing. Foundation, lipstick, blusher, eye shadow and mascara later, I am ready for hair. This is wet, combed and put in exactly the same style I arrived with so that I look even sweatier than I did before. When we’re all done, we head downstairs and we’re given our directions. These are walk on parts across the set. I am playing a Thai woman who is friends with a Westerner (played by Nina from England). We are outside the main gates. As the lead actor walks past the first extras, Lisa and her Thai boyfriend are to walk across the gardens chatting. As the lead actor walks past Lisa and towards us, Nina and I walk in front of the lead actor, chatting like we’re on holiday. We practice this many times without the lead actor. The assistant Director watches. She directs us to be alert. I think Lisa missed her cue (because the guy with her, who looks petrified didn’t move). Nina and I can’t actually see our cue as there are lots of hedges and trees and we’re supposed to be out of view. Um, this is tricky. We try again and are directed to laugh, we are having fun, we are to imagine we are talking about the day we went the Planetarium and remember how much fun it was. (I was seven when I went to Jodrell Bank which is the closest thing I know to the Planetarium – nothing funny about it). Right, let’s try again. Through the railings I can see Lisa and the Assistant Director are having words. Oh dear. Nina and I are perfect – apparently. We are delighted. We go again. Um, not quite right. More words between Lisa and the Assistant Director. We try again and again. Then we come off set and wait hours for our shot. This is unbearable. Finally, the lead actor arrives, we shoot the scene twice. It’s a wrap. Hooray! On the drive back, Imran proposes we stop off and he will treat us to some food. We stop by the water’s edge – a romantic spot lined with couples perched on motorbikes looking out at the high rises and their lights. We eat delicious battered curried prawns and battered fish morsels and we each have a beer and it has been such an exciting and lovely lovely day that Lisa & I decline to accept our wages for the day.
Next morning we check out of the Salvation Army and try to get a train south to Goa, but only a set number of seats are allocated for foreigners and these are all sold out. So, we plonk ourselves in an internet café and book planes. At the airport we have fancy coffee and foot massages and plan an extraordinary route across Goa. We will laze on the beaches of Arambol, shop at Anjuna market, see the Portugese architecture of Panaji, wander the mansion in Chandor and visit the cathedrals of Old Goa.
First stop is Goa’s most northern beach, Arambol in order that we can work our way back to the airport over the next two weeks. Taxi! Our taxi drops us off at the top of a winding street - lined with shops teeming with clothes, jewellery, rugs, throws, ayurvedic medicine. And at the end of this is the beach (it looks soooo good). As directed by the guidebook we head right to where the beach ends, climbing steps to follow the trail to Om Ganesh Guest House. With the help of young guy named Happy, we are booked into a double room with a bathroom and a spare room which we designate the walk in wardrobe.
In Om Ganesh cafe we drink lassis to the sound of the waves crashing up against the rocks. For a week we feast, swim and shop. Our biggest achievement is making it to the mud bath and lake around the corner. We abandon the plan (Cathedrals, markets, mansions) and share a taxi with two local boys to Colva beach. We walk beaches full of Indians swimming fully clothed, we try to walk across desolate beaches (too hot), we eat one curry after another and shop like there is no tomorrow.
Having missed out on the train from Mumbai to Goa, we booked our return tickets as soon as we arrived in Goa – from Arambol. So, between Margao and Arambol we are in the Ladies only third class carriage. Once we get back to Arambol, we can move to our second class sleeper carriage. As there is no door connecting third class to second, we are sat by the door with our bags ready to run along the platform and into 2nd class once we know we’re in Arambol. We arrive as its getting dark and for some reason our third class carriage doesn’t reach the platform. A local demonstrates for us to jump down onto the tracks and run. Afraid I will hit the floor with too much force I begin taking off my back pack but the clock is ticking. We really don’t want to miss the train because of course our flights home are tomorrow. The nice guy is passing our stuff down to us and we’re already trying to run and I’m shouting run Lisa , run and it sounds like the train is about to leave and it feels like 2nd class is 100 yards away, keep running, clamber up onto the platform and just in time we are somewhere in 2nd class. There are six beds to each room and a long corridor along which train staff are selling curries and my new favourite, Aloo Paratha (potato stuffed naan bread) with Yogurt and pickle. Yes please! Sharing our room is an Indian gentleman. He makes his bed properly. Lisa and I just about manage to throw a sheet across the mattress. He gets changed into his PJs. Lisa and I sleep in the same clothes we have been wearing for what looks like a while. And, he cleans his teeth and has a wash before getting into bed. I expect we appear like the great unwashed to this Mumbai Banker who talks with such pride about his two grown up girls.
From the train station in Mumbai we head back to the airport for Lisa’s flight. I want her to come back to Bangkok with me but of course she flies home. Too exhausted to go back into the city, I sit in the airport for a twelve hour wait for my flight. I call friends in Bangkok to check it’s safe to return. (I overheard travelers in Goa talking of riots in Bangkok). From my phone investigations I gather: a State of emergency has been declared in Bangkok (What does this mean?). There are anti government demonstrations by the red shirts (a movement formed from the UDD (United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship) and DAAD (Democratic Alliance Against Dictatorship). The red shirts are apparently throwing rocks and burning vehicles and there have been clashes with the blue-shirts. (The blue shirts - who are the blue-shirts?) But no, it’s fine to come back.
After three hours I decide I can’t bear the airport any longer and so take a cab for lunch at the nearest (Juhu) beach. I am tailed by young children begging and intrigued by the YMCA Centre for Street Children building – a small place right on the beach. I have always had a policy of not giving money directly to beggars. In Hong Kong, beggars with amputations would contort themselves into the most painful positions and lie in the heat for hours motionless. In Bangkok, women sit in the gutter with their babies or leave small children to beg alone and in Mumbai I see street children crying all day as they go up to the tourists and in the evening they are rewarded with a lolly and they’re happy. Whilst I can’t bring myself to encourage this as a lifestyle (and for me giving money really does this), my policy falls on its face where there is no ‘job seeker’s allowance’, ‘child support’ or ‘housing benefit’. Before too long the groups of begging children are getting to me and when a young girl pinches my arm hard after I don’t give her any money the third time she asks, I decide I would rather be in the airport.
As I get off the plane I’m rattling my brain to remember which country I’m in. It shouldn’t be this hard given that I’ve only been to India for a coupla weeks but I am really thrown by this jetting about. When I first arrived in Thailand I kept going to speak Cantonese to Thai people and in India I kept responding in Thai (amazing considering how bad my Thai is.) What’s that about?
With still a couple of weeks to spare before I start back at school, I am invited by Krungthai to join a Rocket festival in his hometown in Isan. (That doesn’t sound that interesting.) I arrive to the entire village drunk. Each house we pass invites us to drink with them and have a bowl of noodles and every house is making their own rocket. (The rockets turn out to be bamboo-rockets, long pieces of bamboo with a blue drain pipe packed with explosives attached.) The big firing day everyone is dancing through the streets to get to the temple (where the rocket firing competition takes place). I quickly gather that walking to the temple is not allowed as the procession demonstrates how I must dance along. People are throwing each other around in the mud and rockets are disappearing into the sky all day. (What happens to them? Do they just blow up and come down as ashes or does that drain pipe land somewhere?)
In Bangkok again, I am on a budget. So I spend the rest of my days at the Condo pool. Upon seeing me for the first time Dragon Features (this is the pool security guard), looks at me aghast and wais me. I think I’m going to fall over. She is so delighted to see me she then throws her arms around me and kisses my cheek. (Has she forgotten who I am?) Turns out because she hadn’t seen me for so long, she thought I’d left. She can’t get over how good my Thai is (it’s bad I just never spoke to her since the last time she shouted at me).
Now, I can’t wait for school to start back.
written by  Yee Ling Tang on April 22, 2009 from Bangkok, Thailand

Back to school
Before the students start back, we have a week of meetings and prep time. Miss Supranne tells me my new class is KG (Kindergarten) 3, my co teacher this year is Miss Maitanee and the class assistant is Miss Baiyamat. I go to find them and my new classroom which the Thai teachers have already decorated with numbers and days of the week in English along with various cartoon characters. It looks great. We all wai each other and then we struggle because they speak no English and I clearly don’t speak enough Thai to be understood. It appears they are both new teachers. Putting a positive slant on things, they communicate through Miss Supranee that they hope to learn much English and I hope that this is my chance to learn Thai. As I beaver away at my own laborious preparations (displays, resources, flashcards) it is days before they can work out what I’m making. We just keep telling other that everything produced is “beautiful” as this seems to be our most commonly understood word.
At last it’s time for the children to arrive. As they come in the classroom I am greeted with a strange combination of unsure looks and yet smiling mouths. They are all very polite in their responses to my questions. “Hello, what’s your name?” “My name is Kodchakorn”. “How are you today?” “I am happy today.”
Wow, this is going to be easy. We start off with my usual ice - breaker games and I get the impression they’re not sure what to make of me and my games but they really like my make a bookmark and draw something you like task. This has them all talking to me and asking for things and thanking me for the ruler, the rubber, the pencil sharpener, which happen to be the vocabulary I’m to teach this month. This is fun.
When they have Thai lessons, I prep my next few crafty projects, make more displays, design my own worksheets and draft up more lesson plans. I never tidy my desk and the workbooks (which need marking) pile up around my latest projects. Workbook based lessons (English, Maths and Handwriting) are my most tedious lessons. Where some children work through the pages independently and have finished in minutes, others need enormous one to one help. But, having left it to the last minute to complete the workbooks last term, this time we MUST do them at all the timetabled points.
Some things I teach my class and they just don’t pick up them. Like when they don’t know the answer, I want them to say “I don’t know.” and when they don’t understand I want them to say so. Then there are the things that I don’t teach but they have taught themselves to use – to death. For example, I have developed a very BBC English voice and it’s become amusing to imitate me, only now, (to Miss Maitanee’s frustration) they can’t even say Miss Maitanee’s name without my English accent. After I told them to look at my mouth to catch how my tongue made the ‘l’ sound at the end of ‘pencil’ and how my teeth make the ‘s’ sound in rice, I now have children stopping me in my tracks to inspect their mouths. “Look at my mouth. Crocodile.” Where I would usually give a countdown for quiet or a five minute warning before time’s up or exclaim, “Oh my Goodness. This is far too noisy” I now have students who take the words out of my mouth or whisper my instructions to me if I’m a little slow in giving them myself.
My best lessons seem to be one’s where I can see them blossoming and my worst are those where I lose crowd control. Like the time we made bread – with a bread maker. It starts on Tuesday morning and then we realise my planned lesson is too late in the day to allow the bread to bake in time for them to actually eat it. So, I craftily tell them we’ll make bread tomorrow, today we’ll write down (handwriting practice) the ingredients we’re going to use. Wednesday, KG2 teacher Mr Ol sets me up with my ingredients, oven gloves, apron, the bread making machine and a table at which I will demonstrate. The class eagerly watch as I match up all the ingredients to those they have written out in their handwriting books. In goes the flour, the water, the yeast, the salt, the oil. On goes the machine and while we’re waiting let’s catch up on those workbook pages that people haven’t managed to finish in class time. Everyone has their hands up. One student has his hand up to ask if the bread is ready. The pencil sharpeners aren’t working. There aren’t any rubbers left. Conversations about pencil cases and hair and sweaters have begun and then we have a full blown racket. “Oh my Goodness. This is far too noisy” (Nothing.) “Five, four, three, two, one, shhhhhhhhh.” (Nothing.) . “Five, four, three, two, one, shhhhhhhhh.” (Nothing.) Plan B: Go up to the first children I can see talking and ask them to stop. I have to be quick with this. Sometimes I can hear what sounds like everyone talking but then I look at their mouths and they’re not moving. I think it’s something to do with there being 35 in the class. Got them all. Ok, let’s continue. Quick look at the bread. It’s not rising – but it smells right. Oh, now everyone wants to look. Phew, it’s nearly break time. Five minute warning. Everyone pack away. Extravagant explanation by myself as to how the bread is going to rise and at the end of the day we will eat it – with butter on top. Two hours later and the bread is still powder in the bread maker. I call in Mr Ol and he looks at how much water I have left (too much) and how I have used up all the flour. (Did I get the maths wrong on the flour?) Mr Ol pours in a bottle of water and sets the machine to start over again. (Students can see all of this but I pretend this is all planned – unconvincingly judging by the look on their faces). At the end of the day I triumphantly show the brick that is our bread and Miss Baiyamat slowly saws in to find edible bits. I had hoped we would all sit down in a circle eating our little picnic of bread and butter, chatting in English, but with the clock ticking for home time, I butter (real butter that cost 3 quid from Tescos) and everyone helps themselves from the bread board. Some students refuse the slices available. One says “I don’t want butter”. Then everyone is saying “I don’t want butter too” and I’ve just buttered all the pieces and there isn’t much left that’s edible. “Students, if anyone else say’s I don’t like butter I will be very angry.” Right that’s done it. No - ones talking now. But they clearly want more bread the way they’re loitering round the bread board. So I give them the bone dry crusts that we chipped off to get to the soft bits.
Out of the blue we have a five day weekend and with the extra cash, I decide to nip to Hong Kong to be with my Gran and sort my stuff that I left under my bed 10 years ago. I call some relatives, some old work colleagues, my old boss, and before long my five days are packed with breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner and late evening appointments across Hong Kong. With no time to sort properly through my things under the bed, I bring as much as I can carry back with me to Thailand. My Gran is very confused as to where all this luggage has come from. There are books, photos, throws, rice bowls, teaching materials, children’s story books and hundreds of postcards. I also take back with me Suky – a classroom assistant I worked with 10 years ago. Recently unemployed, Suky wants a holiday in Thailand before she gets her next job. Although she can’t fit any more of my stuff in her suitcase, she happily hand carries my racks of books in a plastic basket I’ve found.
After a few hours in Bangkok, Suky (looking really sad) confesses that she thinks there are ghosts in my apartment which disagree with her and she thinks the area where I’m staying isn’t safe. Wow, I love my apartment and I have never felt unsafe anywhere in Thailand especially around where I live. To help her with this, I sail home from work on a motorbike taxi each lunch break and find that as she has ventured a little further out her feelings towards being here have improved (phew!).
At the weekend we go on holiday to Pattaya – a place Suky came to 10 years ago as part of a package tour from Hong Kong. This is a side of Thailand I dislike (streets of lady bars, restaurant menus screamed into your face.) But we do get time on the beach and that always has me feeling like I’ve been on holiday. Back in Bangkok, we take a trip to the Kao San Road and this is where Suky finds happiness. Ah, the abundance of restaurants (Thai, Farang, Nepalese, Israeli, Indian), the streets of cheap clothes, bookshops, lovely bars, coffee shops, the music shops, the cheap DVD stalls. Kao san is a fake little world but it's full of treats.
By half term I am frazzled, but I’m hungry for more money for more trips away. I sign up for teaching a week long camp. Up till the early hours co planning, making hundreds of mini books, prepping materials for hundreds of children to make crabs, making 'under the sea' board games, finding music for dance workshops, making worksheets. By the time camp comes I am on auto pilot. We welcome in one group, deliver the class, round it up, send them off for a snack, tidy up the classroom, welcome in the next group, deliver the lesson, send them off for lunch, tidy up the classroom, welcome in the next group, deliver the class, send them off for a break, deliver the next class and the next. Go home, adapt the lesson plans, do more prep. Home is a tip. Classroom is a tip. Book flight to the Philippines. Go in to school. Welcome, deliver, tidy, welcome, deliver, tidy, prep, re- plan, deliver, tidy. Rush to the airport. Arrive in Manilla.
written by  Yee Ling Tang on October 10, 2009 from Bangkok, Thailand

the Philipinnes
Manila, Philippines
It is raining in Manilla. The plan is to meet Brittany and Erin, two teachers from the Secondary School section of my school, in a place called the Caramoan Peninsuar – apparently, a secret paradise of little islands, deserted beaches, and aqua marine waters. Brittany and Erin took off for the Philippines a couple of days ahead of me. To get to the Caramoan Peninsular, I need to take a taxi to Araneta bus station, an overnight bus to Naga City, a one hour thirty minute minibus journey and a two hour boat, followed by a cyclo to the guesthouse.
The taxi ride through Manilla is slow through long roads all lined with huge Shopping Centres. At Araneta bus station, I book a ‘lazyboy x-treme bus’ seat for the night and with a few hours until it leaves, I wander into the Shopping Centre opposite to find some dinner. People are walking round with 20 inch pizza boxes. The Italian, McDonalds and Jolly Bee are bursting with people. I opt for the Food Court and a chicken and rice dinner where the staff initially take me for a local and do that weird thing of being so embarrassed they can’t take my order and someone else has to take over. Next job is a Filipino SIM card. I ask around and I’m directed to the Department store. Oh, ho. ho, it is well and truly Christmas in here. It is packed with decorations, Christmas trees and whole sections just selling candles. I stock up (on candles) and eventually, I get my SIM card.
The woman sitting next to me on the ‘lazyboy x-treme bus’ is the double of me only she’s about 20 years older - same style shorts and T - shirt, same hair style (in a bun), same short build and same glasses. She lives in Naga City. We both fall asleep pretty soon after the bus sets off waking every couple of hours to look at each other. We are woken by the fight to stay alive in the freezing air conditioned climate we are being exposed to us. After losing feeling in my nose and my toes and recognizing that everyone on the bus is shivering, I become infuriated but do nothing. (I don’t speak Tagalog!)
At 4 am we arrive in Naga City to a bus station heaving with passengers and porters. The porters have PORTER written on their T’shirts and are all instantly attracted to my backpack. They are surprised to find I am the owner and even more surprised when I open my mouth and then they all try to get some business from me. Unable to deal with PORTERS taking me anywhere at this time in the morning, I plonk myself on the closest chair and my older twin joins me. We establish that my minibus leaves from behind the Shopping Centre opposite. But my sensible side insists that I wait till sunrise for this short journey. By sunrise my older twin’s husband arrives and walks me across to the minibus station. The prices are written on a board in English and I can see that everyone is paying this amount but when it comes to my turn to pay, I say where I’m going the price has doubled. I question it but they insist this is the price. I am given a seat squashed into the back of the minibus where the only room for my back pack is on my knee. The journey to the pier seems to take five minutes as I fall asleep within minutes of getting on. (It actually took 2 hours.) I am woken by the sight and sound of porters banging frantically on the minibus windows. I try to ignore them - although I really want to look because I have never seen anything like this. But then eye contact would surely indicate business. Trying not to look at anyone I stumble down onto the beach towards a large boat which may be mine and then I realize the boat is 100 yards from the waters edge and the water looks pretty deep (it’s up to the porters’ necks). It appears these are in fact people carrying porters. I ask if the boat is to the Caramoan and before I know it I have been lifted pack and all onto the shoulder of a very old and very skinny porter and he is running me to the boat – I am screaming with surprise and fear. I am prompted to sit next to the boat driver (who is standing) .A small boy who appears to be the same age as the kids in my class (about 5) is pushed towards me. He sits next to me and his mum squashes in the other side of him. The water looks great. It is indeed aqua marine and it’s surrounded by lush green land. We pass tiny islands dense with jungle in the middle and fringed by white sand beaches. This is exactly what I needed. I take out my Tony Parsons novel and I am consumed until the boy next to me rests his hand on my lap and his head on my arm. (Has he got me mixed up with his mum?) I realize the boy’s mum isn’t bothered as she asks me where I’ve come from and if I have family in the Caramoan. After an hour of sitting, once the boy wakes up, I take the one step out on deck to take some photos. I return to find the boy pretending to read Tony Parsons in a very convincing manner.
At the Caramoan I am of course mobbed by drivers and end up being swayed by a motorbike taxi who speaks good English. He offers the ride at three times what the guidebook suggests but I think he knows where I want to go. I have never driven down hill, at speed, over rubble, for 30 minutes before. It is quite scary. Once we arrive at my guesthouse, the price has doubled compared to what we agreed at the pier. Why? (This isn’t fun.)
After freshening up at my guesthouse, I stroll into the main street for some breakfast. I am famished. I am (sadly) drawn to a sign which reads ‘real coffee, real hamburger and homemade fries’. I ask for a menu and wait 15 minutes for it to arrive. I order coffee and the waitress doesn’t understand so disappears into the kitchen. Later, a man comes out and says they have no milk. I cancel coffee thinking I can get this anywhere and order eggs and toast. Later, another man comes out and says there is no bread. I say I’ll switch to eggs with rice. Ten minutes later they come to tell me there are no eggs. Oh shit. I have left Bangkok to come to a place where there is no coffee, no milk, no eggs and no bread. How will I survive? This won’t be a holiday. This will be horrible. I head back to my guesthouse and see a sign for a café within a guesthouse. I ask if they have coffee and eggs. People wander off to ask other people. Yes, they have. Twenty minutes later I get a menu. Twenty minutes after ordering I get coffee. An hour later, I have eggs, bacon, beans, toast and tomatoes.
Following a suggestion in the guidebook I take a cyclo out to Gota beach. This takes an hour in a side cart attached to a motorbike (the cyclo) again going at speed across rubble. Gota beach it turns out is actually part of a resort and Security refuse me access. After a protest by myself (mostly after the long hard journey here and the trouble I had getting food), I am allowed through. It is soooooooooo picturesque. And there’s just me on the beach - and all of the resort staff watching me!
I spend the afternoon back at the guest house debating whether this is the place for me. Yes, I wanted to escape the city and I wanted to see what a secret paradise looked like but I also need coffee and eggs and paved roads and good food and maybe some wine…
I decide to give it some time. I have a nice dinner cooked by my guesthouse owner and 2 bottles of Sol and through my guesthouse, book a boatman to take me out to the islands in the morning. Things are looking up.
I have to wake ultra early for the guesthouse breakfast and before I’ve finished it my driver is at the gate waiting for me on his motorbike. Another rubble ride and we are at Paniman beach. We wait 30 minutes for another boatman and then we’re off to one gorgeous island after another. I have never seen anywhere so unspoiled in the world. The last island we visit is the one on which Brittany and Erin are camping. I arrive to them swimming in the clear blue waters, a tiny desert island behind them and nothing on the island but little blue tent in the trees.
Swimming around, we exchange the details of our last few days and our first impressions. The girls have been on some bizarre outings in Legaspi with a local Councillor and others they stumbled on as they were trying to walk Mayon volcano. They spent one night on the mainland and since then have been living on the island. They have arranged for their guesthouse on the mainland to bring us an evening meal each night, beers in a cool box, eggs for breakfast, flasks of hot water and supplies of tea and coffee. The guesthouse also makes us a fire each night. Fantastic!
The small boat from the guesthouse arrives just before sunset complete with three members of staff. They have heard on the mainland that another Filipino has joined the girls on the island! (That’s me of course.) After identifying all our boxes of supplies, the guys set about making the fire and then leave us for the night. Dinner is amazing. Fried fish, a delicious pumpkin curry and hot rice washed down with Sol and al sat around a blazing fire.
Yes, this is Paradise. We do stretches (led by me) on the beach, we read in the shade, we swim to cool down, we read in the shade, we take photos, we read in the shade, we feast out of the boxes, we swim to cool down, we read in the shade, the boat comes in, we help make the fire, we feast again, we pop open the beers, we stargaze. Then the rain comes and it really isn’t paradise at all. Lying in a sleeping bag in the tent (only dry area), I have visions of the water levels rising above this little island. Sand is spraying into everything. Everything is wet (books, clothes, food) and there is nothing to do.
In the morning, we text for a boat back to the mainland and pack up our den. The boat arrives and takes us though the storm back to the girls’ Paniman guesthouse where they pick up the rest of their belongings. We then take a Cyclo (bearing in mind this is a side cart attached to a motorbike) and with the weight of us all it can’t get up the hill. So, we have to get out and run up the hill alongside the Cyclo in the rain. Back in my guesthouse we take shelter from the rain, have guesthouse dinner and talk about getting back to Bangkok. Next morning it’s still pouring. We take a Cyclo to the pier (rubble in the rain) and buy boat tickets. We are directed to tiny wooden canoes which I can’t even climb into without falling (the waves are so high they’re moving the canoe). I am in first and sat flailing around at the back with my backpack on, as Erin and Brittany begin rocking their way in, I think I am surely going to drown. I plan my escape route should we capsize and Brittany and her pack fall on me. (I will kick Brittany up, slip each arm out of my pack and float to the surface.) Against the odds we make it out to a big boat. We are packed into the boat and asked to sign a register detailing our name and age and country of origin. The woman before me is 75. (What the hell is she doing making this journey at 75?) Once registration is over big pieces of tarpaulin are thrown across the boat over our heads and so we are thrown around in the dark and under tarpaulin for two hours. We arrive to PORTERS hanging off the boat, their bodies crashing against the sides of the boat as they try to lift the tarpaulin. People drop off the side of the boat into the porters arms and are quickly carried in the air to the beach. Begrudgingly, I follow suit.
We are immediately squashed into the back of an ice cold minibus and two hours later arrive in Naga City. After roaming the streets for somewhere decent to stay we eventually find a nice hotel by the river, put our clothes in the laundry, clean up and dry out. After a hot meal we spend the evening in SM Shopping Mall. First stop a massage, followed by pizza. The next day we spend wandering the city before again retreating from the rain in SM Shopping Mall where we watch a movie and stock up on extraordinarily cheap wine and gin in the Supermarket. Here, all the staff are (clearly) forced to line up and perform a supermarket dance at midday. (Why?)
I had planned to travel north next week to a place called the Chocolate Hills but I am exhausted after my first semester back at school, the week long camp and the chill of the Philippines. Knowing that Erin and Brittany already have flights for Bangkok tomorrow and that I want to go home too, (to my music, my kingside bed and the Condo pool) I change my flight and book the first bus to Manilla. This resembles a ride on a rickety roller coaster for 12 hours. Halfway there I call a guesthouse in Manilla and as its rooms are fully booked, accept a bed in a dorm. (I want my apartment). To my salvation I have stumbled on a free cheese and wine night at the guesthouse and joyously feast on Feta, olives, blue cheese, brie and red, red wine before a blissfully deep sleep.
written by  Yee Ling Tang on October 30, 2009 from Manila, Philippines

Thailand
We are back at School and I love it. I have the most amazing class. They are so inquisitive and sooo sociable. Days where I only have one lesson, I feel like something is missing. On Loy Kratong Day we wafted around in Thai dress, laying tiny rafts of flowers on water (apologising to the Goddess of the water for all bad we’ve done to the river during the last year). For Halloween my class did some amazingly creepy drawings of severed limbs, and pretty girls (with blood dripping from their eyes) holding pumpkin lanterns. I can’t wait for Valentines. I see a lurve tree with loving messages hanging from it (I like your hair/I like your singing/ I like your face). I see paper mache heart-shaped fridge magnets. I see heart covered cards and boxes.
But first we have a Christmas show to write. It has to be twenty minutes long. I want all 35 children to have a speaking part, showcase their creative dance work we’ve been playing with on Monday mornings and they love the Elephant song (It goes “The elephant moves very slowly…”) and they’re really good at acting out the “I’m hungry” family story and pretty good on the theme of animals so we’ll make it about Animals in the Jungle of Bangkok. They’re also rubbish at sharing (rubbers, crayons, space) so we’ll make the moral of the story about sharing what you know, what you have. This is the first script I have ever written. My first draft is considered too long and I need to take out one of the ‘sharing stories’. That means I have to find new parts for some of the animals. OK, they can be mountains and Christmas trees and they will narrate the story so that my original narrator doesn’t feel the weight of the world on her shoulders. Shit, they kind of need one to one coaching for each line and what are the others meant to do whilst I give this? Never mind, we’ll work on the dance. We’re going to open with a snowstorm using their wind catchers they’ve made and white cotton scarves as props for drifting across the stage. 32 children enter stage left. Think rolling, twisting, falling snow, settling before bustling off again snow. Exit stage right. Um, looks like a riot. “What do you think Miss Maintanee?” Miss Maintanee looks alarmed. She says it’s ‘mai suay’ (not beautiful). She wants me to teach them a dance. Ok, let’s work on the songs. The songs are great. Back to the dialogue. Everyone is really quiet. Except when it’s not their turn to talk and then they’re telling their life story really loud to kid next to them. No one has any idea when it’s their turn. My animals are half asleep, missing their lines, utterly confused and inaudible. Let’s work on another dance. To ‘Everybody needs Somebody’, I see the mountains and trees initiating it with some Salsa style strut forwards, followed by step right, turn, step, clap - step left, turn, step, clap and as the scenery passes the animals they all join in. Second verse they all break off into their groups and free style into a line in which they will pass a ball in the most creative ways they can. I love it. The class love it. They’re making bridges, they’re striking poses, they’re head-banging, ballet dancing, showing their gymnastic training and shaking it. Miss Maitanee disciplines them. She shows them some alternative moves (spotty dog jogging on the spot, miming washing your face, swinging your hips). They all begin to copy the new moves. I hate these moves. Back to practicing the script. I enroll the help of James a Grade 2 teacher and friend. We are going to be Christmas show buddies. Once a week, James will assist me with my class and I will assist him with his. This is so much easier. James works first with the elephant family. He has father elephant moaning “I’m hungry, very, very hungry” in a gruff father like voice (father elephant hadn’t said a word up until this point). James has mother elephant yelling across the Hall “I’m hungry, very, very hungry too”. He has the monkeys scratching away (like monkey’s do) as they call over “Come here, come here. Have some bananas.” He has brother and sister elephant calling, “Were hungry, very, very hungry.” and mother and father calling back “Come here, come here”. And then he has baby elephant with this baby voice, saying how hungry he is and then father, mother, brother, sister and the monkeys call over in delight “Come, here, come here. We have some bananas.” With new found hope I try to work James’s magic on the panda, giraffe, cheeta and camel who have to play being cold, very, very cold. For some unknown reason, one of the animals always either misses their cue or forgets their lines. The entire class is bored. Especially crocodile who had mastered “Come, here, come here. This warm sun is just lovely” four weeks ago. I talk to some of the bosses. One sees the riot of a snowstorm and suggests smaller groups of movement. Ah, that looks much better. Another senior member of the Thai staff team suggests I work on the dialogue with small groups in another classroom while Miss Maintanee works with the rest of the class. This works wonders. Alas, I get a grip on the cold ones. Then I work on the animals that are bored:
“Oh look, here come parrot and peacock.”
“Oh what a beautiful ball they have.”
“I wish we had a ball. It’s so boring here”
“Everybody, come and play with us”
Lines are audible, they’re in the right order and they actually get what they’re saying. I come back down to the class with the last group – beaming. The class is rehearsing to ‘Everybody needs Somebody’ but this is not the dance I choreographed. They are in a V formation jogging on the spot, miming washing their faces, shaking their hips and back to washing their faces. Miss Maintanee and Miss Baiyamat are having a great time. I am sooooooooooo sad. A few days later I try to bring back their creative movement but it has gone. They instinctively turn to jogging on the spot, washing their faces and shaking their bums in unison (eight counts for each set).
The parents are keen to know what the costumes will be. I am keen for us (the class) to make our costumes or use whatever the children already have in their wardrobes at home. I already have animal masks made and in one lesson we make palm trees, Christmas trees and mountains. The trees and mountains look like three year olds have made them. Miss Ushma (Art teacher and friend) works on them and transforms them from brown poo like heaps of cardboard to glittering grey snow capped mountains (like something out of Southpark). I propose all the animals bring in leggings and a T’shirt in the colour of the animal they are (green for the frog, yellow, for the camel, black and white for the Zebra) but this is met with grave concern. So, instead, my Thai teachers are instructed to buy the leggings and T’shirts from Bobai market on Saturday. Although things have never been the same with Miss Maintanee and Miss Baiyamat (we are not speaking) since the day they changed my dance, I cannot allow them to work on a Saturday without me. I insist on coming with them. They are meeting at four thirty because the market finishes at eight. That’s fine with me. And then I have a conversation with Mr Ol and he reckons Bobay is a morning market. I speak to Miss Baiyamat and yes, it’s a morning market but I’m not sure because her English isn’t that good and I haven’t a clue how to talk about the time in Thai. So, I get up at 4am on Saturday morning and flag down a motorbike to Seven Eleven and sure enough they are standing in the pitch black waiting for me. We arrive at the market at 5am delirious from the hour and we begin to walk the line of the market as the sun rises. It is very surreal. You would think it easy finding leggings and T - shirts in the most basic colours, but this market only has children’s T- shirts with statements on like “Save World, save, Life” or cute pictures of elephants, pigs or pandas. Miss Maintanee and Miss Baiyamat love these and propose that we just get T - shirts with some eco friendly message on or a cute animal sewn on. But they just wont work for me with the masks that I’ve already have made. We walk for three hours seeing nothing but the eco friendly, cute animal picture options. The only plain coloured clothes we see are ladies leggings. Panic is beginning to set in. The stalls are beginning to pack up. We buy 14 pairs of ladies small leggings. (The class are 5 -6 six years old.) By now we are all starving. We agree to go for breakfast and wait an hour for the shopping centre to open. There are shorts for the boys in the shopping centre but they have pandas on the pockets. I hate them but I don’t care. I need to go home to bed. They have the right sizes (children’s sizes) but we have to wait for the shop owner to arrive. The woman in the shop can’t sell them to us. We wait 45 minutes for him to arrive. An hour later we begin again looking for T’shirts. We end up buying ladies T - shirts for the whole class just because they are plain and have the right colours. I offer to carry the bulk of it home as unlike Miss Maintanee and Miss Baiyamat I don’t have to be at University in an hour.
In the midst of my Christmas show crisis, I publicly admit that I am ‘in a relationship’ with Krungthai (or at least about to be). He is moving in with me! We have seen each other a few times over the last few months but in the main, the relationship has been a long distance one. (When I moved to Thailand, he moved to the Netherlands. When he got back, I went to India. When I got back, he went to Issan. When he came back from Issan, I went to the Philippines. When I got back to Bangkok, he went to Sukhothai. So, Krungthai moving into my apartment seemed to be the easiest way for us to test things out. Since I moved into my apartment, I have not turned on the TV (It’s all Thai channels.). Now, the TV is on from the moment he comes into the apartment to the moment he leaves. I like to cook my meals. Krungthai likes to cook the meals. I don’t have a problem with clothes on the floor. Krungthai has a problem with clothes on the floor.
Through a friend of a friend, Krungthai gets a job at a fancy restaurant off the Sukhumvit road. He works six days a week, sometimes seven. He leaves for work at noon and comes back at midnight. I leave at 7a.m and I’m asleep by 10pm. To see him I go for dinner at the restaurant.
Unfortunately, this Christmas Show thing is continuing. (Yes, I hoped it would go away.) We practice the show once a day and very slowly, they get the gist of it. We have a rehearsal on stage and they get stage fright but later we work on projecting their voices on command and speeding up the dialogue and I force them into doing mini shows at assembly and they begin to look like this is their second job. It is the night before the show and I am still making Christmas trees for the stage, bananas for the monkeys (I forgot to buy some) and a beautiful ball. (I have lost the ball we were originally using). Of course I’m making everything from paper mache which doesn’t really give anything enough time to dry given that the show is first thing in the morning but I can only make things from paper mache. I can’t face going shopping and I can’t draw so paper mache just seems to be the safer option.
written by  Yee Ling Tang on January 10, 2010 from Bangkok, Thailand

Kanchanaburi
Kanchanaburi, Thailand
In need of respite, I jump at Brittany’s suggestion that we take a road trip to the countryside – to Kanchanaburi. The team consists of me, Brittany and Jessie (our new teacher at School who looks incredibly like my uncle Simon – Jessie is American, originally from Hong Kong). To get to Kanchanaburi we take a two hour taxi. At Brittany’s recommendation we check into the Riverside Guest house. The sun is shining, we have rooms with balconies overlooking the river and it is quiet and pretty. We have lunch a little way up from the Guest house at a Café stilted on the river and then, again at Brittany’s recommendation we hire motorbikes and head off to the Erawan waterfalls. Brittany drives me (I’m too chicken.) and Jessie bless him, learns on route. Arriving so late in the day, we only make it to the height of the second waterfall, where Brittany and I can’t resist a little swim before we head back. (We have a mental appointment with the wine shop in town and we’re not sure what time it closes).
The drive back takes an hour and during this I marvel at Jessie’s sudden ability to ride a motorbike. Back in town, we turn into the road for the wine shop and there’s a crashing sound behind us, breaks screech to a halt. I look back and I can see a truck full of people looking cautiously over the trucks sides and down to the road. There is no sign of Jessie. “Jessie’s down!” I scream, jumping of the back of Brittany’s bike and running towards Jessie. Jessie and bike are lying on their sides. He’s not been squashed. The truck stopped just in time. Everyone is waiting with bated breath. He gets up and say’s “I’m OK.” and everyone exhales. We get the wine and head back to the guesthouse the same way we came, again passing the turning where Jessie was nearly squished. There it is again. Crash, screeching breaks. Look back. No sign of Jessie. ““Jessie’s down!” I scream, jumping of the back of the bike and running towards him. Again he gets up and say’s “I’m OK.”
Blown out by the sun and the fresh air and Jessie’s two near death experiences, we opt for dinner at the guest house – at the tables on the balcony with that bottle of wine.
Next day, Brittany has Kayaking the River Kwai in mind. A phone call is made by the guesthouse owner and next thing we’re picked up by a truck, we stop off to load kayaks into the truck, we drive on for 10 mintes and next thing were paddling down the river. We’re to call again when we get sighting of the Chinese temple. The Company will pick us up at the temple. The paddle is lush. It is quiet, scenic and sunny. It is a million miles from Bangkok and School.
kanchanaburi
written by  Yee Ling Tang on September 18, 2010 from Kanchanaburi, Thailand

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