Soooo Alice is not longer coming travelling with me, so it
seems I’m on my own for a while until people maybe turn up in Indonesia this
July. I’ve decided to head down to Penang in Malaysia where a friend of Olly’s
(thank you a million times Olly!) is putting me up and giving me work to do. I’ll
be doing some business stuff, some UNESCO stuff for his wife, and some au
pairing of their 12 year old daughter. So I should be pretty busy, but it’ll be
good to have lots of different things to do and to live somewhere new. I’m off
tonight actually, hopping on the night bus to Bangkok with my friend Daniel and
then getting the train to Hat Yai when I’ll get the train, bus or boat to
Penang and he’ll go on to Singapore.
I’ve loved my time in Mae Sot and I’ll really miss the
awesome friends I’ve made, but hopefully I’ll be back at some point to do
another 3 month placement, or maybe something more permanent.
So since the last time I wrote (sorry, I don’t know why it takes
so much effort to do this!) I’ve actually done quite a lot.
I went to Koh Samet for 6 days to ‘teach’ at an English
camp, which was a weird but entertaining experience. Leaving the bus ticket
buying up to a boy turned out to be a bit of an error, because while he was
trying to get a tick to Ban Phe (which it turns out no bus from Mae Sot even
goes to directly) he accidentally got one to Ban Suan (we think, although still
aren’t entirely sure where we ended up). Anyway, we got on the right bus, we
just got kicked off about 3 hours away from where we needed to be...at 3am, on
the side of a highway. So we sat down and sulked for a bit, tried to find out
where we were, and eventually I just ended up jumping up and down on the
highway until a bus from Bangkok picked us up and took us to Rayong, from where
we got a Songthaew to Ban Phe, literally arriving at 7.55am, to start teaching
at 8. We were pretty tired from the trip but spent the day doing about an hour
supervision of Thai kids doing activities and then sat on the beach watching
them in the sea, so not too too strenuous! Basically we were just there to
provide white faces to be photographed I think, I was in about a million photos
and I’m sure I’m in Thai laptops all across Southern Thailand! The next day we
just went to the Aquarium with them, and then hopped across to Koh Samet for a
weekend of relaxation and fun.
Which it definitely was, we spent time on the beach, walked
along the coast, danced in what we quickly realised must have been the only gay
bar on the island, and stared at the amount of white guys with Thai ‘girlfriends’.
It’s a weird phenomenon, and although I knew it was all over Thailand it just
doesn’t happen in Mae Sot, so I’d never really seen the situation. I found it
pretty disturbing to be honest, and it kind of made me not want to spend much
more time on the beaches, although I’m sure they’re not all that bad, I think
Koh Samet’s proximity to Bangkok makes it a bit of a hub.
Anyway, after a weekend of fun we headed back to Mae Sot, I
worked back at BI for a while, and then heading back on the same bus to Koh
Chang to see Mum for her birthday week. Obviously she missed her flight from
Burma and was late arriving, but it was not a problem cos I had a tv, air con,
a huuuuge bed and a Jacuzzi on my balcony! Ha, so different to the bucket
showers, broken fans, mats on the floor and dust everywhere.
I had a great week with Mum (thanks Mum and Will!), lots of
coconut shakes, a Thai massage, an elephant ride, swimming in pools and the sea
(although a bit jelly fish infested, but only got stung twice!) and generally
lying around reading books and eating. Fab. On Mum’s birthday we went on a boat
trip around the smaller islands off Koh Chang...some of them looked well worth
checking out, especially Koh Wai, so maybe I’ll do that in the future. Mum
jumped off the top of the boat ‘screaming’ (she thought she did this out loud
but it may have just been in her head) “I’m 50!” which was rather cool of her. Then
we got the whole boat to sing Happy Birthday to her and ate a pile of whipped
glutinous cream pretending to be a cake while doing lateral thinking games with
one of the completely bonkers but hilarious Thai crew.
Since then I’ve been finishing off this month’s paper and
finishing off all things Mae Sot...eating my favourite foods again (Mango
sticky rice, Kow Soi, Pirate Pad Thai, Cashew Chicken), finally going to the
one night club Y2K, which is unutterably horrific but has to be done at least
once, biking to the border to buy a longyi and get some iced coffee, and
generally saying goodbye to people I’m going to miss loads.
But hopefully I’ll be back at some point.
Anyway, next stop: Penang...
