30 Jun, 2006 - READ THIS ONE AFTER "25 JUN" ENTRY

As we teach Kindergarten, I have been gagging to use "Kinder surprise" as a message title! (Not that there has been one, particularly.)

Anyway...........this week has been rather calmer than the visa fiasco of last week, and Rob is now getting ready to go back to BKK on monday to see if they will grant him a visa.

This week has been about tests, really - either preparing for them or doing them. The horror class are so much better now, and they relish a challenge and love tests! (Strange children.) So I've just given them the English test I made up, and it was in fact enough of a challenge for them! That's good. A highlight was Umay, a littel girl who is so quiet and shy and comes across as not understanding a thing. i knew she would need help, so I spent some time with her, and she did "get it" in the end - tht was a real breakthrough. I don't think I've ever heard her speak, and she was quite vocal when she realised she had the right idea. Namwa and Fluck also needed help, and did "get it" too, and it was a real sense of achievement for all of us!

I'm uploading more photos onto snapfish as I type this, so I'll send you the usual invitation to look at them.

Something I must clear up......you know the chillis-in-porridge thing? Well, I got an email from Honor saying that she couldn't handle eating that.........and then i realised that I didn't tell you - it's a savoury porridge! Just in case you don't fancy chillis with your drizzled honey. No, khao dtom is like a broth. It's made from rice which is cooked and cooked in stock until all the gluten comes out of the rice and it's all gloopy and thick. A bit like a very over-cooked risotto! In fact, a lot like that. It's really tasty. It has a bit of minced pork on top, and plenty fresh coriander and some garlic. You mix it all up in your bowl, and then on the table there's a holder with 4 glass pots - one of white vinegar with chopped mild chillis, 1 of white sugar, 1 of soya beam paste (miso) and the 4th is crushed dried chillis. also a bottle of fish sauce. So you add whatever condiments you want, to make it to your own taste, as is the way with noodle soups and lots of otherwise bland food here. It's very Thai - you get to make it taste just how you like it. Things like Khao dtom and noodle soups are, I always think, the kind of food it's cheap to make, with few ingredients and lots of watering-down to make it go further, as is so necessary when you have a huge number of people to feed. In developing countries, that's essential. So you can make watery soups and so on, and if there are the extra seasonings to make it how your customers want it, then it's not bland and watery.

This afternoon there's been a rock band playing in the school, so that echoed all around the school and made Kinder impossible to deal with! They were so excited and the classroom assisatnt went to watch the band, I think, so I had to try and do it myself - not easy when they don't understand me! Ho hum.

Glad to see that we have next Saturday off work. It's a real wrench having to get up and come to school 6 days a week, and it's really hard to do it on a Saturday morning. We HAVE to be here by 8 a.m., then teach from 8.30-10.10 and 10.30-12.00. So the lessons are 1 hour 40 mins long, rather than the usual 50 minutes, and the students aren't our usual ones. No one wants to be there! Last week us 3 foreign teachers took all of our 3 classes to the "mini-theatre" in school and showed "The Incredibles" on DVD, which went down quite well. They rather liked my "Yellow Bird" song the first week, too. I'm lucky, too, cos all the kids (2 classes) I'm scheduled to teach on Saturdays are in 1 group - not so many of the Year 5&6 must be up for Saturdays. So I teach the first session and then i'm free, which is brilliant! I have time for lesson-planning and suchlike.

Next weekend is a national holiday and we actually get the time off!!!!!!!!!!! That's not that common at our school. They were really stingy when it was the 4-day national holiday for the King's 60th jubilee. We only got 1 day off, the Friday, and were still meant to come in on the Saturday, just for the sake of 3 hours - how often is it that the King celebrates 60 years on the throne? That will probably never happen again in Thailand, and it's a huge deal here because the King is revered like a god - really, he is. So I was surprised that our school didn't close for the 4 days (Friday-Saturday-(Sunday)-Monday). But yes! Next weekend is the Buddhist holiday of Asama Bucha, which I think commemorates the Buddha's first sermon to the people. There's a 2-day holiday, and curiously I think we will be staying in Prachinburi for it! Maybe try out some recipes and potter about a bit.

Any musicians or people who want to record themselves - download a program called AUDACITY. once it's installed on your computer, you can record by plugging a microphone into your computer. It turns your computer into a multi-track recorder, and you can then put what you've recorded onto a CD. It's a free download: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ is the web address. It's a really fantastic program!

Might be getting a visit tomorrow from a couple who are friends of friends - we've never met them before! they're in Thailand on holiday and our friend Marick put me in touch with them, so I invited them up for the night and they may be coming tomorrow. That's quite exciting!

A few other friends are planning to come to Thailand, too, and some others are thinking about it. You know who you are!

. We went out for dinner last Friday night with Cassie (the Aussie girl we work with), her brother Jared , who’s visiting, and Erica , a girl from Connecticut who spent a year at St. Andrew ’s University in Scotland and played football for Kilmarnock in the Women’s Premier League!!

We had a fine feast: 2 whole fish (red snapper), one deep-fried whole, served with lots of garlic on top, and the other steamed and then steeped in lime juice, raw garlic and chopped chillis……..along with fish cakes with dipping sauce, stir-fried vegetables, chicken with cashews (for non-spicy-eating Erica), steamed rice, and some kind of hot & tangy salad, I should imagine, as Rob and I can’t have dinner without one, not that I can remember what we had. Oh, and a kilo of big barbecued shrimps! So we dined in style, and then the owner turned up. He had spent 4 years in Australia , setting up a restaurant, and spoke great English. He was really welcoming, a lovely host, and when we’d finished our meal he plied us with coffee and an array of fresh fruit. And those mangosteens were one of the things he fed us – from his own fruit garden (orchard?). I’ve always seen them on stalls and never tried them………but now that I have, I’m mortified that I didn’t have any earlier!! They are theeee most delicious thing. They taste to me like rhubarb and custard, heavy on the custard, and they’re all squishy and sensual to eat. The outer shell is about 5mm thick, and quite sturdy, which protects the soft fruit inside. The shell itself is quite bitter, but the fruit….!!! I’m a bit hooked! We also had star fruit, watermelon, pineapple, and chompu (rose apple). Chompu also means “pink” in Thai, fact-finders. It’s shaped like a pear, but has the same kind of skin as a pepper/capsicum/bell pepper, except softer. You cut it into segments – it’s very delicious and light, with the texture of a really crisp apple and the flavour of a Golden Delicious that IS actually delicious (one of the more misleading names – I’ve always found them to be watery and boring!!). Just lovely to bite into, and you can’t help taking another piece!

20 Aug, 2006

I bought some little badges the other day. They have the usual dubious English writing on them, that you see on t-shirts and the like.
one badge says "OVER THE RAINBOWFL", but the winner must surely be "YPOW IN THE TLARK". That means "glow in the dark", as far as i can imagine.

Hmm.

18 Aug, 2006

Hello from Prachinburi.

The last couple of weeks have been quite uneventful. Last weekend was a national holiday, so we had Saturday and Monday off (usually have to work on Sat mornings). We didn't go anywhere for the weekend - just stayed at home and didn't do much. It was nice to relax.

Guess what? we have more tests in about 3 weeks' time. it feels like no time at all since the mid-terms - it's not like primary school was in my day, when you just spent the year learning..........now it's all monitored and recorded and tested. Last week I was given the lovely task of rewriting the reports that Rob had written! We were given report sheets to write for all our students, so we took half each. I was quite long-winded on mine (you may have noticed this tendency in my emails!!!), and rob was really brief.........so I think the parents were given the reports to read and they decided they didn't like the ones Rob had written, so i had to do them all, on top of all the ones I had done myself. Not fun! Oh, and do you know, as regards marking: we're NOT ALLOWED to give marks under 50%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not allowed!! How ridiculous! It makes the whole exercise of testing them into a farce. I imagine there are a lot of things tied up in this, but the most significant aspects surely have to be: a) money - the parents are paying a LOT of money for this tuition, and b) saving face. Farsai's mum does not want to let on to Fifa's dad that her daughter might only have scored 37% - it has to look as if their little darlings are doing "well". So why are we bothering marking the tests at all? We may as well give evryone 100%. It was the same at Rob's posh school last year. The marks are meant to reflect the kids' performance, but we are told they are not allowed to. Grr!

Other than school......Rob was hacking away at the encrusted snow inside the freezer compartment in the fridge that we' ve had just over a year, and he busted it - all the refigeration gas spurted out and now we have sent it to be mended. We started Thai lessons properly yesterday! We are losing weight by going to the gym, tho we are eating loads! And it's our holidays soon - my friend Cath is coming over for a couple of weeks so we're planning a girls' holiday in some gorgeous places around Thailand. I can't wait.

28 Jul, 2006

Hello again, everybody.

This week has been a week of tests - following the "pre-tests" of about 4 weeks ago (which were surely tests in themselves??), we have now done the mid-term tests. Too much testing for these little 'uns! It's quite bizarre to me, having never had any significant exams before the age of 15/16.
These mid-terms had to be worth 30 marks, the pre-tests were 20, and there are more pre-tests in 5 weeks: "pre" the END-OF-SEMESTER tests (50 marks). Then the semester 1 final tests will be in September. Then the same next term: pre-test/mid-term/pre-test/final test. They are held in the same regard as real exams would be - and the parents are SO serious about it, it's not so good for the kids at all. they are under all this pressure - especially 1 boy in Year 1, whose name is JJ. He is 6 years old. He is being groomed to be a top swimmer, so that's one area he's pushed to perform in. His dad takes him swimming almost every night. Then on Mondays and Wednesdays from 5 till 6 he has an hour's extra class with either me or Rob......and often goes swimming after that. On Monday I gave his class their tests, and that evening, his dad was asking me how JJ had done in his exam. i had actually marked them, but JJ hadn't finished his, so I was planning to give the ones who hadn't finished an extra hour to complete them. Unbeknownst to JJ's dad, though. I was NOT telling him that JJ hadn't finished it! i bluffed and said that I hadn't marked them. i didn't want MORE pressure on the little lad! And I didn't tell you that the night before the exam, his dad actually rang up to ask what was going to be on the test! (He has Rob's phone number.) This boy is six years old, but he doesn't get much time to be a 6-year-old boy. Plus he gets rather ostracised at school and is always getting complained at. Poor JJ.

So, yes, the week has been rather taken up with tests. Monday and Tuesday we gave our English Program ones, and Wednesday, yesterday and today have been the Thai-language ones. So we've had no lessons for the past 3 days - quite nice and relaxing!

2 friends are coming over tonight, so i'm cooking up a storm for the 4 of us.

12 Jul, 2006

Hi,

Just had a much-needed weekend of 3 days' fun in Bangkok. We got there on Friday around 5.30, then got in a taxi to go to Banglamphu (the backpackers' area). BUT that didn't quite work. The road we were on, after Rob had told the driver which route to take, was absolutely chock-a-block with traffic. We sat in the car for about 20 minutes and moved about 3 feet. We were going nowhere! So we got out and walked for about 15 more minutes, and still the cars had not moved at all on that road. We made our own way to the road where our guest house was, and got in a tuk-tuk - 5 mins later we were there.

The guest house is in the vegetarian restaurant whose cooking class i did. http://www.maykaidee.com We are good friends with the owner and the people who run it, and it's like staying at your auntie's house! the rooms are lovely and clean, the beds are super-comfy, and when you go out of your room you get the great cooking smells wafting up the stairs. (I am such a huge fan of their food!) So it's really a home from home, and i would recommend anyone to stay there.

After a good veggie dinner, we headed out and met up with a good friend, Sian, who we met in the national park last October. She teaches in Bangkok, and is always out of a weekend. She was in "Hippie de Bar", which is retro heaven - full of gaudy decor and 1950s furniture and fittings. So we had a couple of cocktails with her and 2 of her fellow teachers, and when they had gone we set off home. However, we bumped into Mick, a lean, mean harmonica-playing friend of ours, who was going to a party at the next bar along and invited us along.

There were a few people there that we knew and hadn't seen for a while, so the rest of the night vanished and we got out of there at about 5.30 a.m. - the place was still busy! Spent Saturday taking it easy, I had a facial in the forecourt of a disused petrol station!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, and then in the evening we went to Adhere The 13th, the little blues bar that was such a favourite of ours when we lived in the city. Early in the evening, Rob was chatting to some bloke from England who never shut up and I couldn't get a word in, so I went off to Adhere first and got chatting to 2 social workers, one from Brighton and one from Germany, who were in BKK for a conference. Rob turned up, they went off, and we stayed in the bar until about 12, talking to a glamorousThai woman, and then went across the road for some late-night dinner. I had got up at2 p.m. that day, had breakfast about 2.30, then a snack at 5, and didn't want any food until the end of the night, so we went to Soi 2, a legendary lane off the main road, where there are lots of late-night food places where you can sit down and eat and drink some more when the bars have closed. So we did, and got to bed about 2 a.m.

On Sunday, we went downtown to go bowling, which we did, to no great effect - our scores were pretty naff. Did a bit of browsing, too, and in the evening we met up with Sian again and went to Brick Bar, where a ska reggae band plays every Sunday night. That was fab fun, and I was dancing on the seats! (Not quite on the table.) They finished about 1 a.m., and then the football was on, so Rob went off to find somewhere to watch it, and we ladies soon joined him. There were a lot of Italians and French people watching, and they were a bit more subdued than the English hooligans, so we satand watched the whole thing. I was falling asleep by the time 90 minutes were up, but I had to stay for extra time and penalties........got home around 04:30.

On Monday Rob managed to get his passport sorted, so that will be ready on the 25th, thankfully. the plan had been to come back to Prachin when that was done, but no way was i getting in a minibus for 2 or 3 hours, so we ended up staying another night, and came home yesterday. Lesson-planning prevailed, then a DVD, and now we're back at school.

The river is now really high - it flooded last October, and looks fit to do it again, except it's only July this time. The rain last night...........i thought we would never get to sleep! I have never seen or heard rain like it rains here. It started about 10 last night, the thunder began, and it was still pouring like you wouldn't believe at 2 a.m. - same at half past 3, too. Just the weather for hot rice porridge of a morning.........!

Do you know, i teach in bare feet! Everyone does. You have to take off your shoes outside the classroom.

3 Jul, 2006

Hello.

You may remember that we were about to have some visitors - friends of a friend. Well, this weekend has turned out to be rather bizarre! Let me tell you.....

Marick, a friend of ours in Bath, wrote to me on myspace.com and said that his friends, Julia and Mike, were about to come to Thailand on holiday, and said he would put them in touch with me if that was ok. I said yes, and soon after that I got a message from a Julia, saying she was coming to thailand on holiday. So I told her that Marick had told me that she was coming, and said that if she and her boyfriend (Joe, not Mike) wanted to come and visit one weekend and see the real side of Thailand, they were welcome. So that set the cogs in motion, and it was all arrranged that they would come last weekend.

They had changed their plans by the time the weekend came, so they said they couldn't make it, but then last week I got another message saying they'd love to come this weekend instead. So as we were just planning to stay at home this weekend, I told them to come and stay.

It was all set for Saturday - they were going to come to Prachinburi after going to the market in Bangkok. They rang me at 6 p.m., though, and had just got back from the market, and Julia was feeling off-colour, so they asked if they could come the next day (yesterday) instead. I was still really keen to meet them, so said that was fine - Maerick said he'd known them for years, so I was sure they were lovely people. Bought lots of veg and sorted out the spare room for them to stay.

So. yesterday rolled around, and they rang me at 11a.m. to say they were just getting on the bus. The journey usually takes a couple of hours, so around 1p.m. I went to the bus station to meet them. 2 p.m. came and went, no sign of them. Then they called and said they had been sitting on the bus on the middle of nowhere, going nowhere, for an hour, and had then had to get off the bus and change to another one which was leaving in 20 minutes. They were quite bashful, and said that if I'd been messed around too much they would go back to BKK. By this time, though, they were almost here, we'd bought food and were all ready for them, so they got on this last bus and rang 20 mins later to say they were in Prachinburi.........by a 7-11 shop. There are 2 7-11s in town, so Rob went to one and I went to the other........no sign of them. It was pouring with rain, so they must be sheltering somewhere, but we could not find them. They had no phone either, so the only contact was when they rang my mobile every so often with an update. But every call seemed to leave out some piece of information that I only thought to ask them once the call was over! So we had to just wait for them to ring back each time.

It had now been about half an hour of trying to figure out where they could be, and we even thought they'd maybe gone to Petchaburi, Pranburi.........but Joe checked and they were assured they were in Prachinburi. So I was trying to think what to do, and then it dawned on me! I was right outside a little shop that's owned by the parents of Minny, one of our students, and they speak excellent English. Joe was calling me from a Thai bus driver's phone, so I put Minny's dad on the phone, he spoke to the Thai guy and it was established where our visitors, Marick's friends, were. They were a little way out of town, and so they were put in a tuk-tuk and brought to Minny's shop. Phew.

So, we met Julia and Joe, commiserated about the nightmare journey, and took them to our place.

This is the strange part (well, the strangEST.....) - sitting chatting, Rob asked them "So, how do you know Marick?"

And back came the answer........yes, you've guessed it......"WHO'S MARICK?"

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do you know what had happened? This Julia, who was sitting in our house, was coming to Thailand, and thought she would search for some people in Thailand on myspace.com to ask for any recommendations. I had replied, and invited her to stay, thinking she was Marick's friend Julia, as he had just alerted me that someone of that name was coming to Thailand. So I assumed that the 2 Julias were the same person (geddit?), AND THEY'RE NOT AT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was just the weirdest moment! (There was the Mike/Joe issue, I admit, but I just thought that maybe Julia was with Mike when Marick last saw them but that she now had a new boyfriend.)

So we all sat there in shock and realised what had happened! We laughed!

And the evening turned out really nicely. We cooked, Joe watched with enthusiasm, and it was a great dinner, with bottles of red wine and lots of guitar-playing and singing from all 4 of us. The night wore on and it got to half past 1.........best go to bed. So Joe and Julia had the spare room, and we said - what a funny, lovely thing to have happened!

So..........thankyou, Marick...........I think?????!!! That ranks among the oddest things ever to have happened to me!

25 Jun, 2006

Hello, all. We had a bit of a week last week. here is an email I sent to a friend on Thursday:

"It's been an annoying couple of days, we've had to go to immigration two days in a row. My work permit is now sorted, but Rob has a different issue with his because he had one at the last school. They cancelled it when he left, as they should, and when we came here he asked our new school if he should go out of Thailand and come back in with a tourist visa instead of the year-long one. (the thing is, if you finish employment and you have a work permit for that job, when it's finished you then have 7 days to get out of the country and then come back in on a tourist visa if you are getting a new job or travelling again.) That would mean that a work permit could be applied for, along with a new 1-year visa, and all would be fine. BUT the nun who runs the school told him: oh no, don't worry, give us your passport and we'll do everything. So we waited, and it turned out it was wrong. So he went to immigration last week and was told he had overstayed his visa since the end of April!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So he had a fine of 20,000 Baht, which is about 270 quid. He made the school pay it cos it was their fault, and then yesterday we went to a different immig. office with the 4 CHinese teachers, and we were told that 1) they couldn't do Rob's there, it had to be Bangkok, and 2) none of ours could be done either cos they had had a power cut and their computer was out of order. So............we had left town at 7 a.m. and got back at 5 p.m. - a total trip of 10 hours (3 hours travelling there, hours and hours waiting around, and 2.5 hours back) for NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And we were going to have to do it all again today.

Then Rob told me it had been decided that we would all of us go to Bangkok today and we had to meet at school at *6* in the morning!!!!!!!!!!!! To avoid the morning traffic into Bangkok. But of course that didn't work, which added an hour and a half onto our outward journey this morning. Got to the counter about 10 a.m., and the woman said she couldn't do the papers there and we had to go to another office, and couldn't do rob's at all till the 3rd of july when the result of his visa applic will be known. She did change her mind, and did our papers after all. We were all done and dusted by about 12, then the others set off back home. I wanted to stay in Bangkok for a bit and relax with a foot massage - didn't want to get straight back in the minibus and go all the way back. So while rob was in the loo I told them we were staying and they should go. Then when he came out of the loo he said he'd been planning to go back in the minibus as well. So that was that - he set off back on the public minibus and I had a massage - and then he rang to say he was on the wrong bus to the wrong town in the wrong direction because the driver had told him it was the right bus.

I just hate sitting around in offices and on minibuses for hours and hours, just for the sake of filling in 2 forms! - that's all i have done in the past 2 days and in 22 hours of trips to immigration - fill in 2 forms."

Rob now has to wait another week until the outcome of his applic is known.

Other than that......school has been pretty uneventful (who am I kidding?), and today I joined the gym. You may remember we were members of one in Bangkok - really expensive to keep our membership and not very motivating. But here - it's a low-tech affair, no pumping music, no showy people, no fanciness. it's much nicer, and they have big French doors that open out onto a spectacular view of green fields and distant mountains. So when i'm doing my torso twists, my incentive for each twist is getting to see that view. There's also a little sauna, which I had all to myself today, and I did a good workout and found before I started that I had lost a bit of weight. I'm sure it's because we're eating so much better than in Bangkok, lots of home cooking, no rice in the evening, and we're also having a good breakfast every day - rice porridge (khao dtom), piping hot like oat porridge, with dried chillis, fish sauce and a bit of sugar added by me to spice it up a bit. We have it at a stall outside school, and it's 10 Baht for a big bowl and sets us up for the next 3 or 4 hours. (10 Baht is about 15p!!!!) So our metabolism is kicked into action first thing in the morning, with the comfort food of khao dtom. I honestly don't know what I will do without it when i leave Thailand! Maybe I'll go on a porridge odyssey of the world.

So I'm now full of adrenalin and endorphins after a good workout and a couple of bowls of noodle soup with plenty dried chillis. Very happy!

NOW READ THE ENTRY MARKED "25 JUNE", A LITTLE WAY UP THE LIST OF ENTRIES.

7 June, 2006

Hi again.

Much better news to report now that the wicked witch of the east is no longer our classroom assistant. I don't think I told you that one day she screwed up a sheet of paper and stuffed it into Namo's mouth. He is 7. She was called Jarn, but I decided she should be called Jarn-tanamo.

No.........we now have a lovely lady who has been working at school for a while as a kindergartne teacher. She's older than Jarn, and has that wonderful motherly presence in the room, which has a great effect on the kids. So guess what? My job is 100% easier! That makes me happy. I can now plan to actually DO stuff, rather than spend all that time trying to control the class. This week's topic for Year 2 has been Birthdays, which has been fun, and I'll be continuing that next week. Year 1 are doing Families. Very interested to see my photo of Granny!

Last Friday rocked! I took my guitar to school and taught all my students my rewritten version of "Yellow Bird". The usual Jamaican accent and dialect of the song are not much use here, so i changed it into a cleverly-disguised prepositions song! And just a really nice song!
YELLOW BIRD, UP HIGH IN A BANANA TREE.......
WHY ARE YOU SO HIGH, HIGH UP IN THE SKY, FAR AWAY FROM ME, IN THE BANANA TREE? PLEASE COME DOWN TO ME, COME DOWN FROM YOUR TREE; WE WILL BE VERY HAPPY

They bloody loved it! i had them all eating out of my hand, and they actually SANG, they didn't make a horrible noise. It was beautiful, and so moving! I'll record them one of these days. Now I suppose i'll have to keep coming up with lots of songs to keep face!

27 May, 2006

Hello, and welcome to the wonderful world of teaching at Marywitthaya School in Prachinburi.

Well......we have just finished week 2. And what a week! I can proudly say that it was much, much better than week 1, so that is great. By Thursday things were pretty bad with the year-2s - but are only 2 weeks into the year, and things are still new. The year 1 students are really warming up now, but I think they're also feeling the burn of "real" school life! They absolutely LOVED the topic this week, though - I've been teaching them about classroom commands (sit down, make a line), and I found an ideas in a book: robots. So we sang a robot song that they loved, and I gave them all a paper plate, with a slot to see out of, to make into a robot mask. They really enjoyed that, and there were some beautiful ones! It was a great topic that lasted me 3 or 4 lessons, and they were desperate for Friday to come so they could wear their masks.

Hope you enjoyed the photos! Those teddy bears were Winnie The Pooh! -as drawn by my year 1 students.

We got bikes the other day - yet more equipment supplied by the school! They have kitted us out good and proper, with our house and its contents, our cooking stuff, my uniform (I wish the 80's fashion revival hadn't reached Prachinburi........) - it's brilliant. And Rob has been given the confidential information that his bonus from his last school is waiting for him. A month's wages! Sam, who he used to work with, rang last night and told him. No WAY would the school have told him. So that's fantastic! And yeah - a bike ride is in order tomorrow, along with a massage at tha hospital, where it's meant to be really good and half the price of one in Bangkok.

As well as the week's school time, Rob and I are both doing extra classes after school - 1:1 with some of the kids from year 1. So that's extra cash, and not very demanding. We have some CD-Roms at school and last week I used one for one of my after-school boys. He got right into it and it worked really well. So they're a good tool.

So are the campfire songs that I learnt over the years at diabetic camp. I'm finding Auntie Dot's amazing performances to be an endless inspiration, and the kids adore the songs! "Boom Chick-a-boom" and "Tongo" currently top the charts. I'm going to start nominating some of the kids to lead the songs!

In a couple of weeks' time we have a lovely 4-day weekend! It's the King's jubilee - 60 (count 'em!!) years on the throne! So we shall be heading somewhere nice for that. And then the floodgates will be open for all the many national holidays of the school year. I think it's Wai Kroo (Teacher Worship Day) next, as it is titled on our school calendar. Teacher Worship!

Still mayhem with the year 2 kids, but I have to say that it was better this week. I did read them the riot act on Thursday morning, as it was unbearable in that classroom, and they seemed to take notice..........but when I taught them again that afternoon it had not really made any difference. It's a hard slog trying to find out what will work. And the classroom assistant has got to go. She appears to actually hate children (though she's about 28 and looks all dainty and nice) and has been doing some things that I really won't have in my classroom. they make no bones about hitting the children in Thailand, and it's really shocking! So hopefully they will get rid of her and hire someone good.

I had a contest to see who could guess how old my granny is (97 this August!), which was funny.........don't tell Granny........

It's not all bad with those year 2s. They are actually ok sometimes. Krystal, who taught them last year, could apparently never control them. I want to direct their energy into something, because they have buckets of it! Don't want to dismiss them as a complete nightmare. Well, not yet. I do have a Superstars system going now, with a book to stick stickers in for good behaviour, etc., and many of them do actually take notice of that, so maybe it will eventually filter through into their collective consciousness! If they were like that last year, though, then 1) at least it's not ME! and 2) it will take more to try and reverse it. The 1st years aren't like that, so they won't be going into the next year as wild animals!

La di da.........such is life. It's all exciting and good, despite the setbacks. I'm finding I'm very tired but really content here, what with the good food I'm cooking, the fresh air, the lack of traffic, the local shops, the fact we can walk or bike to school in no time at all, the community feeling.........just my cup of tea!

19 May, 2006

Hello, vicarious travellers,

Well........we did it - we've completed our first week at our new school. It's a challenge! We came in at 07:22 on Monday, and at 10 past 9 our first lessons began. We're only teaching 1 class of year 1 and 1 class of year 2 per day, and 1 of Kinder 3, but we have to be here at school from half seven till half four every day! So that has been quite something - 9 hours in school, of which only 3 or 4 are lessons. We have plenty time to do planning, but thast seems to just go, so we're in the general habit at the moment of getting up at 6.30, getting to school for 7.30, start lessons at 9.10, lunch at 11, finish lessons at 3.30 at the latest, then we have to stay for another hour. After that we do a bit of internet or something, then have dinner, then start planning again, which goes on until after 11 most nights. Then to bed and up again! Don't tell me the whole year will be like this! please!!
I'm sure it won't be, once we get into the swing of it all and can better gauge what is required.
And also.........once we can work out how to control those bloody year 2 kids. They are absolutely horrendous!!! I mean that seriously. Today I FINALLY got them to play the game I was trying to do with them..........but they WILL NOT shut up and listen to anything, they have no respect, they are pretty unconcerned whether or not I want them to do anything. They are, what, 6 years old???????? Yet it seems that they have this class identity of being uncontrollable. They seem to believe they rule the roost - the Thai teachers have no lasting control over them, which is not much use to me - I generally have Jarn, a Thai teaching assistant, in the room too, when she's actually there, but she holds little sway, and anyway, none of any of it makes the least diffrerence. there has hardly been a lesson this week when they have paid any attention at all, and I've used all my usual strategies for classroom control. But they literally do not care, on the whole, so anything I do just seems pointless and I feel unable to do anything about it. It's very frustrating indeed.
As i said, I did manage to get them to play the game today........but that was this afternoon. The full story is, I had them this morning as well, and tried to get the game going, and it WAS a good game, but they would not stop talking and fooling around, so I spent the whole lesson trying to get them to be quiet and listen to how you played the game. To no avail. Same yesterday - I spent 55 minutes just telling them to be quiet and listen. Otherwise I cannot teach them a damn thing, and it's only 4 days into the year.
So this afternoon I did get them to do the game, and it worked, although it took 45 minutes to get to the point where we could start!
the year 1 kids are better, and don't seem to have the same defiant, we-as-a-class-do-not-care attitude. So it's a bit easier with them, and they're a bit easier to deal with. In those classes I have another assistant, Sook, and she has a good relationship with the students. Although this morning those kids were giving Rob merry hell, and when he spoke to Sook about it she said that if they're being naughty, they would like to sing a song, which wasn't really the kind of proactive solution for controlling those stuadents that we had in mind! Something has to be done - we're tearing our hair out most of the time. They're actually great kids, but they will not pay attention or stop being noisy. Hmmmmmmmmm. Any teachers out there - ideas, please!

I must say, though, on the whole I'm feeling ok about this year to come. Teaching this age group is so different to last year, and it's making me use my brain in a different way - this job requires different things to teaching teenagers. We shall see. It's Friday now, so that feels good to know that we don't have to get up at dawn tomorrow - some beers are in order! It's good to be working with Rob and having that support - we're teaching the same kids, but I'm doing social Studies and English - 19 lessons a week, while Rob is teaching Science and Maths and Health, 20 lessons.

1 May, 2006

Hi!
Well, at long last, here we are in Prachinburi, all moved in for another year's teaching. We thought we were going to be living in the house we stayed at when we first ever visited the school. I came up to Prachin last weekend and was told we could move in there, so off I went back to BKK with glad tidings for Rob that that would be our house. We were really happy about that!
Anyway, events took an interesting turn when, on Wednesday, I rang Sister Lamyong, who runs the school, and she told me that she'd found us a different house, as the first one needed work doing on the roof and it would be a while before that could happen. The one she now had in mind was a brand new build, owned by the brother of one of the teachers, near the school - it sounded exciting and intriguing. So on Saturday, with hangovers, in about 35 degrees of hot sun, we met Sister and a couple of people from the school, and they came to our condo with the school minivan. it was a bit of a last-minute rush towards the end, getting the last bits and pieces, but pretty much all of our stuff was already packed up and ready to go. So we loaded it all in the van, including the fridge, which we were thinking we'd have to go back for..........and off we set, with many well-wishes from the chef woman in our yard and the cleaners and security guards.

When we arrived outside our house, I was over the moon! It's down a side-street, off a road, in a little neighbourhood, and it's painted sky blue, with a cute little front door and a balcony. Inside it's all painted custard yellow, quite small, very cute and homey, tiled floors, and a brilliant little yard out the back. Perfect for our cooking and eating escapades! That's a definite highlight! We have a nice bedroom, a spare room with 2 wardrobes in it (that's where we'll keep the computer), and a proper Thai toilet (tho' not a squatter!!) - quite a departure from "modern" condo living in Bangkok! And all the better for it. We got there about 6.30 p.m., and loads of locals materialised and helped us to carry everything into the house - so it literally took about 10 minutes to get it all in there! A really nice welcome to the place.

We have now been here 2 days, and are finding our feet. Prachinburi is a small town, nothing is geared towards foreigners at all, it's just a normal Thai community with all the usual things. A huge bonus!! And Saturday and Wednesday nights are market time - our house is 2 mins' walk from the market and we can hear all the hustle and bustle. That will be a great social thing - everybody goes out to the market and strolls around and bumps into their mates. So that will be fun! We've found a couple of good places to eat (of course), and have been shopping for some bits and pieces for our kitchen adventures. Time to put our vegetarian and fish-cooking classes into practice! Now we're just waiting for our gas hob to be delivered. Sister has done us proud, though - we have pretty much everything we need in the house, and we haven't had to fork out loads of cash on furniture that we'll only be using for a year.

So now we've got a couple of weeks before school starts, so we can go in and do preparation work and settle in before work begins. We're living 5 minutes' walk from the school, and we'll be getting push-bikes this week so it will be more like 3 minutes.

the cupboard under our stairs is now well-sealed all round the edges, as Rob opened it when we moved in to find about 6 big horrible cockroaches. Not nice! there have been a few that scuttled across the floor in an escape bid, but they didn't get far. We have some good spray to blast them with. So much for the non-harming philosophy of Buddhism! We've put poison down and fastened the hatch up with some very wide tape, so hopefully that will hold out fine. I bet they find some other way of getting out, though! But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

My next t-shirt purchase will be one that says "I'M IN THE MOOD FOR YOGHURT". :0)

Out the back of the house is a swamp! If you jump up to peer over the wall of the yard (it's about 6 feet high), you get a lovely view of green waterlilies and lilypads. You can get a really good view of it from the spare room. It's really beautiful, and so noisy with cicadas and frogs! I'll be making some recordings of the cacophony at night. We've also rigged up some fairy lights out there, so we can sit in the evenings and have dinner and chill out outdoors.

So, on that note...........I'l take some photos and invite you to look at them on snapfish, as usual. Hope you are well and sharing some of this sunny weather we're having in Thailand.

26 Mar, 2006

Hi again, from hot, sticky Thailand! It's getting very hot and humid here now. We're definitely ready to move out of this biiiiiiiig city to the peace and quiet of Prachinburi. Just spent the weekend in Trat, where our friends Joy and Alex live. Their first baby is on its way and so that was lovely to see them. I had a visa run to do, so I hopped over into Cambodia yesterday for about 10 minutes and then back into Thailand! 1,500 Baht (about 23 pounds Sterling)to do that for 10 minutes. You get charged 300 Baht for the simple fact that you're just crossing into their country and straight back out again, without contributing to their economy by staying there.
So, I did that, and the rest of the time we just had a nice relaxing time.

Other than that.......I've been teaching some boys from Rob's school for the past couple of weeks. Very different to the kids I was teaching at my school. They're ok, but don't really want to be there - it's more a case of their parents paying to have them taken off their hands! (And I can see why, in a couple of cases!!!) So we've been doing some activities and I've been trying to make it fun for them. Not that I can make them have fun! 12-year-old rich Thai boys are not what I'm used to! Anyway, that finishes tomorrow, which is fine by me, to be honest.

My friend Cath and her friend Helen have been in Thailand for a couple of weeks, and they've spent some of that time with us, which was lovely, and brilliant fun!

Not much else to report. Awaiting the arrival of my Mum and Dad and a family friend, Sue, on Tues 4th. We've a few very nice plans for their 2 weeks here.

3 Mar, 2006

I had the greatest compliment yesterday. Tik, who recruited us for our jobs in Bangkok, told me that she's been instructed by my school here to find a teacher for next year who is just like me! Apparently they really, really appreciated the work I did and how I did it, and Tik says that in all the 5 years she's been supplying them with foreign English teachers, they've never said anything like that about anyone before me!

I'm really happy about that! It's nice to hear that they really appreciated what I did. I knew they did at the time I was working there, but I'm pretty bowled over by those remarks!

1 Mar, 2006

Well, here I am, unemployed in Bangkok. My job finished yesterday, 28th Feb, and now I'm at Rob's school taking advantage of their fast Internet connection! I've just uploaded ALL the rest of our photos onto snapfish.com - so I'll send you all a link to the website so you can see them all.

My last day at work was a bit of a damp squib anyway - due to this horrible ear infection i've got. Really, really painful! The doctor tried to scrape and blast away at the blockage, but told me that the Caucasian skull has much narrower ear canals, and they go much deeper, than in the Asian skull, so that makes it much harder to deal with ear wax. So i now have antibiotics and anti-inflammatories for 5 days, and it feels like I've got a migraine and am almost deaf in my right ear. Not fun!

I do have a couple of weeks' work in a couple of weeks' time, teaching Primary 5 students from Rob's school, which should be fun and very different from my secondary-school students. I have lots of things planned for them to do, including (I hope) a penpal thing with my brother David's class in England. Any teachers out there, I'm open to any game/song ideas you might have!

It's getting even hotter, here in the world's 2nd most polluted city after Mexico City. Climate change.......the thing is, everyone here is addicted to air-conditioning, in buildings and cars, which uses a lot of electricity and/or car fuel. And the hotter it gets, the more cooling-down everyone wants, thereby using more and more energy and contributing more and more to global warming. Bit of a vicious circle.

A fantastic film we saw recently is "Walk the Line", the story of the late Johnny Cash. Go and see it if you can - it's brilliant!

5 Feb, 2006

...to take the jobs in Prachinburi, at the school we visited, in May!! We were walking in the park today, and I said maybe we should just take the jobs we've been offered and not bother looking at any more schools when we're actually quite keen on Prachin. So, there we have it - straight from the horse's mouth! So we now know where we'll be working, we've stayed a couple of nights in the house we'll be living in, and everything is just dandy.:0):0):0):0)GREAT NEWS!!!xxxx

2 Feb, 2006

Hello!! Wow, it's been absolutely ages since I last wrote and told you the latest. So here goes.Actually, I didn't tell you what we did once I was back in Thailand after my time in England. Rob and I went down South and stayed in a national park - Khao Sok. It was great, quite wet due to the rainy season, but blissfully quiet; a lot of people think that the rainy season is the worst time to go to the rainforest, but that worked in our favour as there was hardly anyone there. We got some beautiful photos and really enjoyed the peace and quiet and the GREEN. It was quite humid there, and cloudy most of the time, but one day we went on a trip with our guide (who calls himself Rambo! - don't ask) and we got so sunburnt. There was not a chink in the clouds, but we were very red and sore. We did things like wading through mangrovey shallows, swimming in a reservoir that was apparently 40m deep (which I found quite disturbing!), eating lunch at a raft house, braving the torrents of a cave (rushing water up to your armpits) with torches, and walking through the jungle. There were 5 of us - 2 German women, a lass from England, Sian, who used to drink in the Bell sometimes, and us. I had a great time. though it wasn't quite intrepid enough for Rob, who wanted to eat grubs and sleep in a hammock and be adventurous. I can understand that - it WAS a little bit tame, though I personally did really enjoy it. Next time we go, we'll do a couple of days' trek with a night included. Not with Rambo, though! - he was the kind of guide who, when Rob asked him what that big bird was, replied "an eagle", and as for what type of eagle, he said it was "a big one". Har har..... And more recently........things are hotting up here, meteorologically and life-wise. Because we have new jobs, in a new town, for the next academic year. Yes, we're staying in Thailand for another year! It's a mixture of really liking it here and, well, having NO money to move on. And that's ok. Here's the story: Rob is a member of a website called "W.A.Y.N. - Where Are You Now?", a bit like Friends Reunited and so on. You can find people you used to go to school with, etc. - and Rob saw someone on there who said she was teaching in Thailand, so he read her profile. She'd written a message that there were teaching vacancies for the next year at her school, so Rob got in touch with her and asked what the deal was. She (Karla) is an Aussie girl, working with 2 other Aussies, Cassie and Krystal, at a Catholic primary school in the town of Prachinburi, about 2 hours from Bangkok. She and Cassie are leaving next month, which has meant there are 2 jobs up for grabs. So we kept in touch, and 3 weeks ago we went up to "Prachin" for the weekend to check the place out and see the school. We met Sister Yai, one of the 2 nuns who run the school, had a short chat with her, and left our CVs for her perusal. The school looks great - lovely classrooms full of all that brilliant stuff you get in primary classrooms, like pictures on the walls, little displays, etc. Lots of photos up of the children and teachers doing activities. So that was really nice. Prachin itself is quite small. It's the provincial capital, and has all the things we've got used to in Thai towns we've visited, such as a night market, a brilliant day market, too, with fresh produce, lots of grocery shops......also a peaceful river with a "fitness park" alongside it, and apparently there's a sports centre with a gym and swimming pool, and everything you would expect of a fairly large Thai town. There are some bars and places for a drink at night, and quite a good live music scene, though I fear I may go mad if all they play is Thai pop covers, as is the Thai way - copyright and performance rights seem to stand for nothing in Thailand, and EVERYONE plays the current pop chart hits! Which the Thais just lap up! So, that was a few weeks ago. Then last weekend we went back there to have a proper meeting with Sister Yai and see what was what. However, she was out of town, despite having arranged a definite meeting for Saturday. So we went to the office of the Head of English and met him instead. He was a sweet man, and took one look at us and said "So, you are the new teachers for next semester!" Err......yeah......er.......I think so...! Quite funny! We had a chat with him and he gave us a copy of the proposed contract to look over. It's a good contract, and Krystal can vouch for the fact that it's a nice school and that conditions are good. We would earn 25,000 Baht a month, and also get 2,500 a month each in housing allowance. Here we earn 30,000, but it just GOES in Bangkok. The Prachin girls, though, assure us that they do just 2 or 3 hours' extra teaching a week and just live off that money, and save all of their salary!! So we'd be in a great position to save for future travels. There's not much to spend your money on in Prachin, and also we'd be able to COOK, which has been totally lacking this year in Bangkok, as we have nothing but our little electric travel hob (which has, admittedly, been worth buying just for the opportunity to make scrambled eggs on a Saturday morning :0) !). The thing is, Karla and Krystal are living in a house at the moment, and when Karla leaves, Kris will move into a room at the school.....which leaves their house free!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is a major focus of excitement for me and Rob at the moment, as we actually stayed at the house when we went for that first weekend, and it is LOVELY! Really peaceful, down a little lane, looking out onto a field (a field!), 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a kitcheny bit, a covered little area out the front where we could put a table and chairs and cook on a gas hob.......it's just great, and we can't wait to be in a house again. And out of Bangkok, away from the pollution and traffic, near to loads of interesting towns and also near enough to Bangkok to pop back for the odd weekend and see our friends. Prachinburi province is a fruit-growing area, too, and the mango season is coming up, which makes me very happy because I have taken to eating 3 of them at once - they're HUGE, as big as the palm of your hand, and sooooo juicy and sweet and yellow. I just peel them, chop them up, and scoff away. It's such a pleasure! So a mango SEASON is very exciting! So, the man we met asked us if the contacts were ok, to which we said yes, and he emphatically asked us not to change our minds, and to go back there and teach in April! I had to let him know that my Mum and Dad and our family friend Sue are coming over here from April 3rd to 18th, so I wouldn't be able to start till after that. I'd been a bit concerned that it would be a problem.....but no, the man just said "Ok, so you can come for the last week of April, then." No problem! All sorted, then! We do have some other offers of interviews in a different province, Chonburi province, which we definitely want to check out, as we'd LOVE to live there, near the sea and within easy reach of some islands. We'll be going down there in a couple of weeks' time to meet some more school people and have some more chats. But if nothing happens, we still have jobs in Prachinburi, a done deal, so we have no stress about finding new work! It's amazing - things have a habit of working out beautifully for us - once again we are being told, "Well, here are 2 jobs and somewhere to live - you want it?", just like when we got our jobs here. Ahhhhhhhh.What else?I did a Thai cookery class the other week. It was a vegetarian one, at my favourite restaurant in BKK, May Kaidee's - all vege food and all heavenly. We cooked 10 dishes and got to try al of them as we went along. there were 4 of us: Jeanette and her dad, Gordon, from Manchester; Shannon, a Kiwi woman who lives in Sydney, and me. We went to the market and supermarket with May first, and she showed us the ingredients we'd be using, and then the 5 of us all piled into a tuk-tuk (which was about big enough for 3!!) back to the restaurant. We had a list of the 10 recipes, and took it in turns to cook a dish and then serve it to our fellow students. I cooked a Muslim curry and stir-fried veg with cashew nuts, both of which were lovely. I go to that restaurant a LOT for a dose of good vege food, and I was really thrilled that all the dishes we all cooked, tasted exactly as delicious as they do at the restaurant! So now I am super-inspired, but as I said, we have no way of really cooking at our flat. BUT we've just struck a deal with Sam and Dan, 2 Indian guys that Rob works with, that we're going to their house tomorrow night to cook! And Dan also cooks fabulous Indian food, so I'm told, and he's going to teach us how. What a deal!My school year finishes on the last day of Feb, and wow, am I going to miss that school. I love it there, I wish I didn't have to leave, but Rob and I HAVE to get out of this bloody city. It's such a drain on time, money, health, energy...! We will miss it, but, like I said, we can easily get back here from either of the places we may end up working. After I finish at Wat Noi Nai, I hopefully have a month's work with some primary 5 kids, teaching them conversational English, 10a.m.-12 and 1-3 p.m., Monday-Thursday, for about the same money I get paid now! All because Dave, an American guy that Rob works with should be doing it but wants to travel in March, so needs someone to cover for him for that month! How perfect is that? So that brings you a bit more up to date with goings-on in Bangkok. Oh! Also, creative news! Recently it was our friend Charlee's 60th birthday, and he had a party in his little "soi" (lane) outside his house. (Charlee owns the guest house we were staying in on the fateful weekend last year that Rob lot the camera and we got our jobs in BKK as a result.) There was a Dutch fella there, Foy, and we eventually found out that he was a guitarist. Rob went on to tell him that I love singing, so he ran off and brought back a folder full of songwords and guitar chords, and asked me if there was anything in there that I'd like to sing. so i picked out 5 songs, sort of jazz ones, and we performed them at the party - Foy on guitar and me singing! It was fun, hampered by a few technical hitches like the microphone giving out and having to do the whole thing with no amplification!! But it went ok and everyone seemed to, er, dig it. At the end of the night, Foy and I exchanged numbers, and 3 weeks later he was back in BKK so we met up to work out a few songs, with a view to performing them at that little blues bar where I went on my birthday. Wow! He knows the people there, and usually plays bass there every night when he's in town. It was never to be, though, as he had to peg it back to Koh Chang, the island where he's just opened a music school to train islanders so they can make a living from their music. But Rob and I are invited over there any time and I'm officially welcome to sing there - do a gig! Ohhh! Wow! So that's pretty darn exciting, eh?!! I've also bought a guitar, which is brilliant. Any guitarists out there, budding or otherwise, look at www.chordie.com and www.e-chords.com - you can get chords/tab for thousands of songs!

24 June, 2005

Well, hello at last.

I said I'd send you a big fat email, but the one I did write and then save on a CD won't let itself be emailed. So I shall now write the whole story of our jobs............... and other news..........

So. We went to the weekend Chatuchak Market 4 weeks ago. Rob and I went off separately to explore, and he lost the camera (or it was stolen - we don't know). So the next day, we headed down to Khao San (where that big water fight happened) to download an insurance claim form and use a fax machine. It was the only place we knew where we could do what we needed to do.
Having done that, we were walking along looking for some food, when I saw a sign asking for English-speaking people to do teaching work. Rob and I had been talking about maybe looking for work, so we asked the woman who was recruiting.
And within the next half hour, after loads of questions about our school-teaching experience (i.e. none, but we didn't put it quite as honestly as that!!!!!), Tik (the recruiting woman) took us off in her car to see the 2 schools in question. One was a government school in a poor community, and they were looking for someone to teach basic conversation and pronunciation. The other was Hogwarts!!!!! Looking for a computer studies teacher. So I would potentially teach at the poor school, and Rob at the posh one.
Into the bargain, we were offered an apartment as well, in the same building as Tik, very near to my school, and it was lovely. So the whole deal was there for the taking - ours if we wanted it.
We thought for a day, and then were taken back to the schools to meet the relevant people and talk about the jobs and what they would entail. Both sounded like interesting challenges, and it was all there on a plate.
We went off for a talk and a think, and wondered whether this mission (should we choose to accept it) was a good and viable one. And we decided, as you now know, to take the opportunity! It was a really huge decision at the time, but now I'm really glad we decided to give it a go. My job is indeed challenging. The level of English at the school varies from "hardly any" to some top students, and, as I teach all years from 1 to 6 (age 11-18), I deal with it all. I have no set curriculum, so I have complete freedom in deciding what topics we cover, and I think I've got off to a good start - as of yesterday I have been teaching for 4 weeks, and it's all going quite well really. I have some real fans among the kids, and almost every student who I see or who sees me in the corridor says "Hello, teacher", or some kind of greeting. it's a lovely school, I have a very challenging job, but the cons are MASSIVELY outweighed by the upliftingness of it. Some lessons are just a joy. I have so much fun with years 1 and 2, they're so full of energy that I wish I had them for the last lesson every day. They're SO enthusiastic! We just play games all lesson, and I've invented one in particular that just raises the roof every time. I've named it "Rolf Harris", as it's all based on "can you tell what it is yet"?!! (NOTE TO JOY & LUKE, VAL & KEN, AND JENN: Rolf Harris is an Aussie fella who used to have a kids' TV programme where he would make massive paintings and you had to try and guess what it was as he painted.) I have since realised that it's actually called Pictionary!! - anyway, it works a treat, and the kids have an endless appetite for it. Anagrams are also excellent - i write various vocabulary on the board in anagram form, and they solve them. Again, endlessly entertaining!
Rob's school is very posh, a private boys' school, all the kids are RICH, and get driven to school in such things as Mercedes Benz with the windows blacked out. Bizarre. He has a set curriculum. One of the lessons he taught was about things that have a computer in them, such as a calculator, a TV..........so he asked the kids what else they could think of that had a computer in them, and one boy said "a limousine".........to which Rob replied, "Do you have a limousine?" and the boy said yes.........
Ouch.
Anything you want to ask me about my job and school, I'd be happy to answer - otherwise I'll be here for hours!
Well, today (Friday) I found out that next Monday and Tuesday the school is closed for a staff conference! So I don't have to go! (It will all be in Thai.) So that's great!
I'll probably be down at the gym for some of that time - we've joined a big gym down the road from our apartment, and have been members for a couple of weeks now. It's super-swanky and has all sorts of facilities, and we've both got personal trainers! (Can you believe I just said that?!!) Mine is great, he's teaching me bits of Thai too. So we go there 4 or 5 times a week, and it's actually really good fun, not a chore (yet)!
Other than that, Rob has to be at school at 7.45, and me at 8.30, so no drunken nights out or staying up till 2 a.m.! Weekends are fun, though - there's so much to do here, and there's no real centre of Bangkok - it's all just sort of big suburbs - we can do everything near to where we live. Getting into the main downtown shopping area takes an hour or more, so we don't really bother with that - but public transport is really plentiful and efficient and cheap, so we can get around easily.
Our apartment is lovely, nice and cool and quite spacious, and we've bought a few things to make it more homely - a fridge, kettle, laptop, rice cooker, a little electric camping hob, some speakers to play our iPod and minidisc through, and some lamps and fairy lights. It's really lovely, so handy, and nice and comfortable. We're on the 8th floor, and we have a great view over the city! Thunderstorms are quite a common occurrence in the early evening, and watching them come in is pretty exciting. There's a bridge that looks like the Eiffel Tower from the angle our window is at, so sometimes I imagine I'm in Paris. And a green construction crane that has the definite look of the Statue of Liberty from a certain viewpoint..........!
Anyway, the long and short of it is, we're settled and happy in our unexpected new life in Bangkok. Rob's contract is for a year, and mine's for 10 months, so we have a little time ahead of us yet.....!

As for other news.............on 24th March, up at Bhagsu waterfall in the Himalayas, Rob, er, ASKED ME TO MARRY HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was all very romantic and unexpected, and i said yes............so we'll get married when we live in England again. We were going to wait and tell everyone when we got home from travelling, which we thought would probably be in December or something, but no, we're finally letting the cat out of the bag.

10 May, 2005

Howdy.
Well, we spent 3 days or so in Bangkok and did loads of exploring, which we were able to do this time - no water fights! So we actually found out how wonderful Bangkok really is. I love it there! We visited the deservedly-famous Reclining Buddha statue (100 feet long and 50 high, or thereabouts), went to Chinatown and busy Sukhumvit Road, and spent time in the main downtown shopping area in the company of Christian Dior, Gucci, Versace, Prada.......to name but a few. No designer purchases, though.
We did a LOT of walking and wore our sandals down a little! The river taxis were a blessing, though - you can travel much of the length of the city really easily and cheaply, so it's no trouble to get to the various parts of town. We also used the Sky-train a few times - it's similar to the Underground, but is elevated above the streets on concrete bridges. It only has 2 lines at the moment, so you can't travel all over the city, but it suited us pretty well.
So it was really good to be back in Bangkok and explore a bit. And now we're in the east, in a small market town called Trat, near the coast and the Cambodian border. We have a gorgeous guest house, we're the only guests, and we're only paying 120 baht, which is about a quid 70 per night for the room. So per person it's very cheap!!
Yesterday we went into Cambodia to renew our Thai visas - an hour in a minibus, then officially left Thailand at Passport Control, crossed into Cambodia where some friendly young chaps helped us out and directed us to the right offices, and filled in one of our forms for us. Then all that was left to do was to go back to Thai immigration and enter Thailand again! Quite a funny situation, it was all so low-key and low-tech - just formalities. We basically walked about 50 metres one way into Cambodia, and then back again into Thailand, and home to Trat.
So we now have another month in Thailand. Yay!!!!!! I love it here, we both do. Trat is a bit more interesting than Prachuap Kiri Khan - there's more to do here in the daytime. Good job, because the rain has been on and off for the past 2 days now. Yesterday didn't matter really, we spent most of the daytime doing the visa run. Then found a great restaurant that was mentioned in the guide book, and spent a few hours there with a gorgeous meal and a couple of beers. And today we hired bikes and cycled to the lake just outside the town, and rode around the edge of it, which took about 40 mins! It was raining, though, so no one else was really there - we had the road to ourselves and could enjoy the peace and quiet and hear the birds and frogs (about 3 different types of frog!).
So we'll most probably be here in Trat for Rob's birthday on Sunday (14 May). Definitely want to go back to Bangkok again, which is simple enough - though our journey here from Bangkok in a minibus on Saturday was to be 5 hours, according to the travel agent.........Great! we thought, and handed over our cash. And in the end it took almost EIGHT!!! So we'll go back on a public bus, and organise things ourselves this time.
We've got a really lovely map of Bangkok, drawn by a woman called Nancy Chandler, who's lived in Thailand for about 30 years and has made her name with this map. Have a look at www.nancychandler.net - you can get an idea of the style she draws in.

24 April, 2005

Sawat dee!
Well, it's a hard old life as usual, lazing on a sunny afternoon..........we're on the gorgeous island of Koh Pha Ngan (pronounced Ko pang gan). Got here 6 days ago, stayed in a, er, "basic" wooden hut on stilts among the coconut palms for 5 nights, and yesterday we moved next door to a swanky place which is all stylish and lovely, for a couple of nights. No basic huts here! Have a look: http://www.sarikantang.com/.
So, island life is lovely. The main reason for coming to this one in particular was that there's a Full Moon party every month, so that sounded like a laugh. We'd heard it was legendary - 10,000 people or so. Bring it on!
The party was last night. We met up with Joy and Luke, our Vermont friends, who have been staying right on the beach where the party happens. In fact, there's a party there every night, bars all along the beach thumping out music and loads of people having a good time. We have been staying on the other side of the peninsular, where it's lovely and quiet! But only 5-10 mins walk over to party central. So we've got the best of both worlds, no sleepless nights!
So the 4 of us went for a good dinner, and then we hit the party around 9:30. It was a lot of fun. A lot. The tipple of choice is a "bucket". It's a little plastic bucket, about a pint and a half, into which they put loads of ice cubes, a can of coke, a small bottle of Songsam, which is Thai rum, and a bottle of Red Bull. So it's a bit of a lethal cocktail once you get going! You also get a load of straws so a group can share a bucket.
So we had "a few" of those and did some crazy dancing (the buckets make everyone think they're the best dancer on the floor), and took a few strolls up and down the beach, stopping in at a few bars. Towards about 3 a.m., Rob and I left the dancefloor to cool off a bit, and decided to go to this particular bar for a cocktail. I ordered some ridiculous concoction, the kind that sounds great on the menu and then turns out to be NOT great when you take your first sip!......and Rob ordered a Sangsom and coke, expecting a glass, and they brought him a whole bucket! Oh dear. we sipped our drinks and soon realised we wouldn't last much longer if we didn't take a break from the party. There was plenty time till sunrise, so we headed back to the ranch to have a nice cold shower and freshen up a bit, then we could go back to the party.
By now it was about half past 4, so we thought we'd have a nap for an hour or so in the meantime...................and I woke up at 9 this morning!!!! oops........we missed the rest of the party. I got up straight away and lounged in the hammock on our verandah (told you it was a hard life) and read. It's half past midday now, I've had some scrambled eggs and coffee and juice and came to do some email, while Rob is still out of it. So we partied hard, it just ended a bit soon for us! A brilliant night. Today will be a hangover day.
Now that the party's been and gone, the island will apparently get much quieter, but we want some real seclusion, so we're going to head to a nearby island, Koh Tao, which is meant to be really nice. Hope to do some scuba diving or snorkelling.
Thailand is fantastic after India! We're having so much fun here, the food is so gorgeous (including great food where we're staying), the weather is divine, the sea's warm and blue........much more fun and MUCH less harassment than India. (It's just different, of course, that's all.) So we're having a really good time and having a proper HOLIDAY!

14 April, 2005

we are SOAKED. At this exact moment, we are actually dry, but being in Bangkok this week means that if you're not indoors, and even if you are sometimes, you get pelted with water from every angle imaginable, and also from some more that you hadn't imagined as well. On Monday the Songkhran (new year) celebrations began, as I said last time, and we knew it was a big water fight.........but nothing could prepare us. I did buy a water gun before the fights even began, thinking I'd be ready for the onslaught. So we went out into the street, armed with our weapons, and within 5 minutes I went to get money so i could buy a bigger gun. You need to be able to retaliate in style. Oh dear, I sound like Donald Rumsfeld.
So we played! all day! Like summer holidays! It was so much fun, just literally walking up the street, then back down, then up, then down.........for about 4 hours. We could not have been any wetter. And you can buy ice-cold water on the street, so that goes in the pistol, or people just tip it down your back. So you are constantly getting freezing cold water chucked at you - but in this heat, it's actually really gorgeous in a warped kind of way. It's damn hot, nice breeze though, and all this water keeps you lovely and cool.
So, what have we done? Very little. You can't! It's a major mission just going into the main street. Yesterday (Weds) was so busy that it felt like there would be a crush, there were so many people and it was really claustrophobic as you couldn't see anything but the crowd. So I bid a retreat to the guest house. By the way, nights 1&2 we were in a double room, night 3 in a single, sharing a bed (luckily we were drunk that night so slept well), and then yesterday we moved again into a double....but it has a 4-poster and a gold satin quilt! So it's luxury! Tonight is our last night in Bangkok, then tomorrow we'll go down south.
Anyone who's headed to Bangkok (Joy and luke included) - try the SHAMBARA guest house where we are...I can't imagine a more lovely place to stay. It's beautiful - only been open a year, too, so all the beds and linen and decor are nice and new and fresh. You can't book on the phone, for some reason, but we had success booking through the Internet.
And the food.....it's wonderful. We've spent all our time in Khao San Road due to the water and crowds - there's no point trying to get anywhere! - and so have eaten all our meals here too. And it's all been fantastic, even in this most touristy of areas. It's really good at the g'house, too, so that's doing us proud.
We're having so much fun here - it's impossible to avoid it! And to think we were going to hang back and wait till it had died down, and go to a national park near Rishikesh! I'm so glad we came here at this mad time! We'll come back to Bangkok on our way up from the South, so we'll do all the cultural stuff then. So it all works out really well. Thank god for that one-way ticket to Delhi - I'm so glad we're not tied to an itinerary.
There's a dangerous ice cream parlour down the end of the road. last night I was writing my journal in the lounge, and Chris, the guy who joint owns the gueat house, was off on an errand to get some ice cream, and asked if I wanted some. So I said yes, and gave him some cash, and off he went. And he came back with an amazing sundae for me, for about a pound - chocolate ice cream, chunks of choc brownies, sliced bananas, whipped cream, a cocktail cherry (which I adore), fudge chunks, choc sprinkles, and broken pieces of sugar cone (like cornetto). It was heaven. I felt very sick afterwards. :0)
Sarah, I'm so glad you're in touch!
Happy birthday Ange!
Rachel, thanks for the hints on Bangkok, I'll keep your mail and try to do those things when we're back here and the streets aren't awash.
Oh, as well as the water, people have tubs of chalk or flour or something, mixed with water, and they smear a bit on your face and say Happy New Year. So you are gungey as well as dripping wet.
Well, that's all from me this time........will write more soon.

Mon, 11 Apr, 2005

Hello everyone,

Well, we made it to Bangkok! Flew here from Delhi yesterday morning at a quarter to five and got here at 12-ish, another 24-hour journey, as we had to check out of our hotel in Rishikesh at noon the day before. We're staying at a lovely, lovely guest house, which Rob found on the internet - a great find. (www.shambarabangkok.com.) So we settled in around lunchtime, had some lunch, then slept loads. Rob's not so well - came down with a bad tum on the morning we were leaving india. Poor him! - all that travelling to do - he got through it, though, and is getting better.
The photos on the guest house website are a bit misleading, by the way - we're in the shoe flower room, though, if you're looking. It's only been open a year and is owned, as far as I can tell, by a Thai girl, and her boyfriend who comes from Devon. So it was good to chat with him and find out what's what. it's a lovely place, very clean, very homely too, as it is actually a house. It's just down an alley off Khao San Road, the travellers' hub of Bangkok, but it's nice and peaceful. Until tomorrow, that is..........Thai New Year celebrations begin then, and apparently it's a national water fight. It would have been handy if there'd been one the day after Holi in India, to wash that evil paint off. So, we hear that Khao San is a crazy place for New Year......we'll find out tomorrow!
The heat here is quite amazing. I knew it would be hot and humid, but just like reading up on India beforehand can never prepare you for what it's like to be there, you can't prepare yourself for the heat here. It's like being in a steamroom. So we're both sweating like mad! Most places have good fans and/or air conditioning - it's being outdoors that's the killer! So the water-fights should cool us down a bit.
The guest house does great food, which is good to know - we had a lovely dinner here last night. Looking forward to getting some amazing street food at the night markets, too, so we'll do that when Rob is properly better.
There's a train that takes us all the way down South in about 15 hours, and I propose that we should make that journey and then work our way up through Thailand. So we're staying here for 5 nights, and if we don't extend our stay in Bangkok, we may well take that train straight down. Hit the beach and have a holiday! (Well, another one.)
We ventured out today to the Grand Palace. It's unbelievable. I've rarely seen anything so ornate. Have a look on a website, there'll be loads of photos, whereas we tourists weren't allowed to take any inside the buildings.
Note to the Muppettes: last night, as we were sitting in the garden, "Dream a little dream" came on the stereo! Aw. I said, "hello girls!"
I sent more postcards from Delhi airport, so watch your letterboxes! I think they take about 3 weeks, though.
Val and Ken, lovely to hear from you! Your trip to Bangladesh sounded, er................but you will be glad to know that the Japanese restaurant in McLeod became a firm favourite, and we even went with Joy and Luke in a kind of "remembering Val and Ken and Bharatpur" way!
Dave, I'm glad you had a great ski trip! In the parcel I've sent mum, there's a big poster of the Himalayas for your classroom.

Sat, 2 April, 2005

Hi folks. We're still up here in the hills, our last few days. It's lovely and hot and sunny, and the storms are pretty non-existent now. On Tuesday we had the best day out of our trip so far. A Tibetan guy, Rabi, who now lives here, took us and our 2 Italian friends Rino and Rosie out to some hot springs. It was quite spectacular! We had a 1-hour taxi ride (tho' it was really a mini-van) and then walked 30 mins to the springs. This included wading through the river - the water was just melted snow from the Himalayas, and was freezing cold! But the valley was just stunning. Cannabis plants carpeted the valley floor - a strong smell -and 2 cows were grazing on it. We said that the milk from these cows would be great at sending babies off to sleep!

So we got to the springs. There was a tiny Hindu temple there, and the pool was about 6 feet square and 4 deep. There was a pipe about 2 feet above the water, spouting the constant flow from the mountains into the pool. And it was such a nice temperature - just like a lovely warm bath. We soaked in there for a while, then got out and basked in the sun while some local boys enjoyed the water. It was even hotter when we got back in. Total bliss!

On the walk back to the taxi, we obviously had to cross the river again, but this time we swam in it first to cool off from the sun - and just for the sake of swimming in it, too. It was beautiful, not as cold as all that, and just the location was breathtaking, with only a few young guys splashing around, otherwise it was just us...... with the Himalayas towering above us. Got back in the taxi and set off back, which made me quite sick - you would not believe the roads and the drivers around here! The hour's trip was almost constant hairpin bends - anyone who knows of my problems with that will understand. If you've been on those mountain roads in Greece, well, it's like that but even more nailbiting. It was a really fantastic day out!

Apart from that, I have been suffering with my stomach ever since - it's been 5 days now - so 2 days ago i went to the local Tibetan doctor to get it sorted. Thought I'd give traditional medicine a try, rather than getting more antibiotics as before. i took a number and waited my turn. The doctor is an old monk of about 80, apparently world-famous, and he's the Dalai Lama's doctor as well as having treated the Spanish royals, among others.

In his office was an English-speaking man at the desk, and the doc has a stool next to the desk. (A stool as in a SEAT........!!) And I had to sit down on another stool facing him. The English-speaking guy asked me what the problem was, what were my symptoms, etc., and he relayed this to the old doc, who felt the pulse in my right wrist and then in my left. This took about 10 seconds. Then he said something to the guy at the desk, who wrote me out a prescription and told me what to eat and what to avoid, and that was that! So funny and bizarre!

We'd been told that Tibetan medicine was rabbit poo, or at least looked like it. And it is true. It's these smooth round pellets, in varying shades of brown, that are the size of aniseed balls, and they're all stored in big jars like a sweet shop! The man in the dispensary counts out what you need and puts a little instruction slip in each bag of different pellets (I was given 4 separate kinds). So it's 2 of 1 kind at least half an hour before breakfast, then 2 of a different sort at least half an hour after lunch, 2 others at 4 p.m., and 2 of yet another kind at least half an hour after dinner! Quite precise. And they taste indescribably revolting!!!!!! i cannot quite express it. Maybe they ARE from little bunnies' bottoms...... You either "chew them up properly and swallow it down, or else if the tablets are hard to chew you can crush them and swallow it". 1st time, I had them crushed in a pestle and mortar by the lady in our favourite cafe, so they turned to powder, which I then had to tip into my mouth and wash it down with hot water. Man, I was nearly sick! Nothing can prepare you for it! next time, I chewed them up, and that wasn't quite so traumatic. But it's vile. I actually gave up the ghost this morning, after 2 days of trad medicine with no real improvement, and filled my normal prescription for the drugs I'd been prescribed when I 1st had this trouble in India. I know it's lame of me.......but hopefully i should be better quite quickly and (as a bonus) won't have to eat rabbit poo 4 times a day...... I'm keeping theTibetan medicine so I can show it to you readers whenI'm home! you can have a taste too if you like???????? The husband of the woman who runs our guest house works in the Tibetan Health Centre, it turns out, and we'd seen loads of little round pellets of something drying out on the g'house roof when we 1st got here........so it appears that they were actually medicinal remedies - maybe he makes them. he must have a massive complex of hutches.........

Bleughhhhhhh.

The day after tomorrow we're heading off to Dehra Dun,and then on to Rishikesh, and then eventually to Delhi to fly to Thailand - flights seem to be quite cheap. So we're ready to move on. I'm ready to leave here but at the same time i'll be sad to. But - onwards and upwards! Or downwards, really.......but you know whatI mean.

Fri 25 Mar, 2005

hello again.
Today is Good Friday, but here in McLeodganj it's HOLI - a Hindu festival. It basically consists of throwing dry powder paints at everyone. And I mean EVERYONE. There's no apparent religious reason for the festival - just any excuse for a good party. Rob and I were in the street for maybe 20 minutes, and we got absolutely covered in colour - red, pink, green, yellow, dark blue......you should have seen us! people just come up to you with a handful of paint and squish it right in your face, custard pie style. We got laughed at so much! Rob has a scalp full of pink, which will shine through his hair nicely. And of course there happens to be no hot shower at our guest house, and it's gone noon so we can't get a bucket of hot water! Damn!
Apparently today is the least of it - the blokes will have been drinking all night and then tomorrow they do more paint-throwing and also lots of groping. Fun. I've already had a load of paint tipped down inside my top.
Anyway, it's all part of the fun!
We walked up to the nearby Bhagsu waterfall yesterday - quite a climb, but really worth it! I got quite emotional as it was so overwhelmingly beautiful, and because I keep RE-realising that we're in the Himalayas!! It's just so crazy! The Shiva Cafe is further up, and there are loads of painted pieces of stone and slate that people have done and left there leaning against the rock face. It's really lovely. (We did one too.) We'll go up again and take a photo of each stone. We got chatting to about 10 lads from Amritsar who have come here for Holi. They were all about 15 or 16, and insisted on having their photos taken with us. Then a thunderstorm got up - quite spectacular as we were so high up in the mountains, and the rumbling was amazing. We sat the rain out and drank hot chai tea, sweet and spiced. Then came down the hill which was quite treacherous - thank god there was a proper path.

We finished our massage course yesterday - it's been brilliant. We got a certificate and everything! May well do the advanced course.........after the Indian cookery course we're doing next week. aaah, the stress of it all.......(couldn't be further from the truth)! I'm also going to actually HAVE a massage from our teacher tomorrow morning - it should be great. I might not be able to get back up the hill to the guest house afterwards, though - I'll be pummelled and stretched and god knows what!

Not much else to report that I can think of. Of course, gorgeous things happen all the time. And we're gonna spend about 3 more weeks here anyway, so we have all the time in the world. It's a great place, loads of people here, fresh air (a blessing after those polluted cities), endless fantastic food (really good), beautiful scenery, cheap living, good shopping, just a good place to get away from it all. Haven't been to see the Dalai Lama's teachings yet.

We connected our digital camera to the computer today and tried to get our photos onto CD, but there was a problem with the computer and we lost some photos. Nothing major - we still have most of them - but really annoying. so we'll have a look for a better connection before we try again. The ones we looked at were great, though, so we'll get them onto the net and you can all have a look.

I need to get out of this internet cafe - they're playing Celine Dion. I'm stArtiNG To tWitCh.

Weds, 16 Mar, 2006

Hello! here we are in the Himalayas, of all places! we came up yesterday from Amritsar, and are staying in a village called McLeodganj near Dharamsala. We have a nice room which has no en-suite bathroom, but there's a bathroom along the terrace which is fine - it's so cheap to stay here that we don't mind. Only 90 rupees a night for the room, not per person (current exchange rate is 83 rupees to the pound)!!!!!!!! It's nice and clean and comfortable and central, and the views are unbeleievable! being in the Himalayas is unbelievable enough! Good places to eat here, too, and loads of fellow travellers. I think I've got a bit of sunstroke today though, so after a nap I'm feeling really nauseous and got a headache. Maybe it's mild altitude sickness - we're so high-up here. I've just got over my second bout of exploding-bum syndrome, too.
Anyway, at the price we're paying, we think we may stay for 3 or 4 weeks. It's the perfect place to relax and get away from the city stress and hassle and pollution.

Sat, 12 Mar, 2005

Hello!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SO.............here I am again with another bulletin from the road.

It's now Sat 12th March and we've been here 2 weeks. It's been a bit mad and has turned our plans on their head a bit, BUT it's all fine and working out well. As these things tend to do!

We left Delhi and took a train to Jaipur - were planning to stay just 1 night at the hostel but then Rob got ill and then 3 days later I did too. Nothing much with me apart from the runs, but poor Robbie had it baaaaaaaad. Fever and the whole thing. So we rested up and had one day in particular when we laid in our sick bed and watched Back to the Future at about 9.30 in the morning and then they obliged by showing Gladiator at night! So we ate chocolate and drank....well, water really...... So that was the day of hell and then we went to see the doc next door, about 70 years old and used to be the Senior Medical Advisor to the Indian Air Force. We were in good hands. He sorted us out with medication and we were soon all better.
Had some good times in Jaipur, but didn't make it to the farm. We got there (middle of nowhere) and found where we were staying - a real, live mud hut! That would have been fine really, we weren't expecting comfortable accommodation, but it was as basic as basic can be really. One other WWOOFer was there, a guy called Alexis from Belgium, and he'd spent 3 or 4 days alone, as the couple who went there with him had left the next morning, and none of the farm workers had spoken to him. (Not their fault - they couldn't speak anyhting but Hindi, so there was no way for them to communicate.) There was no one on the farm to co-ordinate the WWOOF workers and give things any structure - to say "hello, welcome to the farm, here's where you'll be sleeping, this is the rooutine of the day".....etc. Just nothing really. We had a conversation with a painter-decorator bloke who was there, by finding phrases in our phrase book - that went quite well.........UNTIL he got his mate to take Rob over "to look at his bike", so that he and I were left alone in the room. He got the idea that as Rob and I weren't married, it was open season - he pointed to his cheek and said "kiss?", which was NOT happening, and offered me a massage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Which was also not happening! It was all just very uncomfortable and out of order, and I made a hasty exit from the room - Rob came bounding over, as he hadn't liked the way things were going, and we thought about what to do. All things considered, we decided to just leave - there was just no structure there and it was so, so different from what we'd been expecting. The owneer of the farm, who we'd been in quite close contact with by email for the past few months, wasn't even there - he lived 500 or so miles away! So it was all a bit of a farce.
No worries - we made our decision and set off to the main road to get a bus back to Jaipur, hitching a lift to the road on the back of a pick-up truck - bit of a godsend! We did get the bus, and on the journey Rob realised he'd left his wallet containing passport, credit card and a wad of money at the farm. Shit! So the next morning we got a lift back there with this old Brigadier who was the farm's agricultural consultant - he was going there, as it happened. Got the wallet back - all intact.
Now that the farm was out of the question, we decided to go to Bharatpur (consult atlas) as it sounded nice and less hectic than where we'd been so far. So we did go there, and we met some great people at our lovely guest house - Joy & Luke, in their 20s, from Vermont, USA, and another couple, Val & Ken in their late 50s from NZ. We had so much fun with them - great chats and laughs and telling of stories around the dinner table. We shared music from Rob's iPod too - that proved very popular. The Muppettes d'Amour may like to note that I played them the recording of us that I made that night, and they said they will buy our CD when we are famous!!
We had fun in Bharatpur cycling around a national park tho I nearly broke my bum on the crossbar of one of the bikes I got on! Ow!
And now, after 14 hours on the train (1st class!!!!!!!!) yesterday, we are in Amritsar to visit the Golden Temple - we're staying in a nice guest house after checking in and then straight back out of a scummy (to say the least) hotel down the road from this one. It was GROSS. We tried to get a refund as we'd paid for a night upfront, but they would NOT refund us not matter how hard we tried. So we walked 5 mins down the road and checked in here instead - we stayed here last night and tonight too and then tomorrow we're going to the Golden Temple to visit there and stay the night in one of their gurudwaras (Sikh temples) - you can stay there for free, tho it's meant for bona fide pilgrims - but they open their doors to anyone. (If you saw the Michael Palin "Himalaya" series, you probably remember him staying there.)
Then on to Dharamsala in a couple of days to see the Dalai Lama, and we may be leaving India sooner than we thought for THAILAND - we shall see.

Sat, 12 Mar, 2005

Hello!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SO.............here I am again with another bulletin from the road.

It's now Sat 12th March and we've been here 2 weeks. It's been a bit mad and has turned our plans on their head a bit, BUT it's all fine and working out well. As these things tend to do!

We left Delhi and took a train to Jaipur - were planning to stay just 1 night at the hostel but then Rob got ill and then 3 days later I did too. Nothing much with me apart from the runs, but poor Robbie had it baaaaaaaad. Fever and the whole thing. So we rested up and had one day in particular when we laid in our sick bed and watched Back to the Future at about 9.30 in the morning and then they obliged by showing Gladiator at night! So we ate chocolate and drank....well, water really...... So that was the day of hell and then we went to see the doc next door, about 70 years old and used to be the Senior Medical Advisor to the Indian Air Force. We were in good hands. He sorted us out with medication and we were soon all better.
Had some good times in Jaipur, but didn't make it to the farm. We got there (middle of nowhere) and found where we were staying - a real, live mud hut! That would have been fine really, we weren't expecting comfortable accommodation, but it was as basic as basic can be really. One other WWOOFer was there, a guy called Alexis from Belgium, and he'd spent 3 or 4 days alone, as the couple who went there with him had left the next morning, and none of the farm workers had spoken to him. (Not their fault - they couldn't speak anyhting but Hindi, so there was no way for them to communicate.) There was no one on the farm to co-ordinate the WWOOF workers and give things any structure - to say "hello, welcome to the farm, here's where you'll be sleeping, this is the rooutine of the day".....etc. Just nothing really. We had a conversation with a painter-decorator bloke who was there, by finding phrases in our phrase book - that went quite well.........UNTIL he got his mate to take Rob over "to look at his bike", so that he and I were left alone in the room. He got the idea that as Rob and I weren't married, it was open season - he pointed to his cheek and said "kiss?", which was NOT happening, and offered me a massage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Which was also not happening! It was all just very uncomfortable and out of order, and I made a hasty exit from the room - Rob came bounding over, as he hadn't liked the way things were going, and we thought about what to do. All things considered, we decided to just leave - there was just no structure there and it was so, so different from what we'd been expecting. The owneer of the farm, who we'd been in quite close contact with by email for the past few months, wasn't even there - he lived 500 or so miles away! So it was all a bit of a farce.
No worries - we made our decision and set off to the main road to get a bus back to Jaipur, hitching a lift to the road on the back of a pick-up truck - bit of a godsend! We did get the bus, and on the journey Rob realised he'd left his wallet containing passport, credit card and a wad of money at the farm. Shit! So the next morning we got a lift back there with this old Brigadier who was the farm's agricultural consultant - he was going there, as it happened. Got the wallet back - all intact.
Now that the farm was out of the question, we decided to go to Bharatpur (consult atlas) as it sounded nice and less hectic than where we'd been so far. So we did go there, and we met some great people at our lovely guest house - Joy & Luke, in their 20s, from Vermont, USA, and another couple, Val & Ken in their late 50s from NZ. We had so much fun with them - great chats and laughs and telling of stories around the dinner table. We shared music from Rob's iPod too - that proved very popular. The Muppettes d'Amour may like to note that I played them the recording of us that I made that night, and they said they will buy our CD when we are famous!!
We had fun in Bharatpur cycling around a national park tho I nearly broke my bum on the crossbar of one of the bikes I got on! Ow!
And now, after 14 hours on the train (1st class!!!!!!!!) yesterday, we are in Amritsar to visit the Golden Temple - we're staying in a nice guest house after checking in and then straight back out of a scummy (to say the least) hotel down the road from this one. It was GROSS. We tried to get a refund as we'd paid for a night upfront, but they would NOT refund us not matter how hard we tried. So we walked 5 mins down the road and checked in here instead - we stayed here last night and tonight too and then tomorrow we're going to the Golden Temple to visit there and stay the night in one of their gurudwaras (Sikh temples) - you can stay there for free, tho it's meant for bona fide pilgrims - but they open their doors to anyone. (If you saw the Michael Palin "Himalaya" series, you probably remember him staying there.)
Then on to Dharamsala in a couple of days to see the Dalai Lama, and we may be leaving India sooner than we thought for THAILAND - we shall see.

Sat, 12 Mar, 2005

Hello!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SO.............here I am again with another bulletin from the road.

It's now Sat 12th March and we've been here 2 weeks. It's been a bit mad and has turned our plans on their head a bit, BUT it's all fine and working out well. As these things tend to do!

We left Delhi and took a train to Jaipur - were planning to stay just 1 night at the hostel but then Rob got ill and then 3 days later I did too. Nothing much with me apart from the runs, but poor Robbie had it baaaaaaaad. Fever and the whole thing. So we rested up and had one day in particular when we laid in our sick bed and watched Back to the Future at about 9.30 in the morning and then they obliged by showing Gladiator at night! So we ate chocolate and drank....well, water really...... So that was the day of hell and then we went to see the doc next door, about 70 years old and used to be the Senior Medical Advisor to the Indian Air Force. We were in good hands. He sorted us out with medication and we were soon all better.
Had some good times in Jaipur, but didn't make it to the farm. We got there (middle of nowhere) and found where we were staying - a real, live mud hut! That would have been fine really, we weren't expecting comfortable accommodation, but it was as basic as basic can be really. One other WWOOFer was there, a guy called Alexis from Belgium, and he'd spent 3 or 4 days alone, as the couple who went there with him had left the next morning, and none of the farm workers had spoken to him. (Not their fault - they couldn't speak anyhting but Hindi, so there was no way for them to communicate.) There was no one on the farm to co-ordinate the WWOOF workers and give things any structure - to say "hello, welcome to the farm, here's where you'll be sleeping, this is the rooutine of the day".....etc. Just nothing really. We had a conversation with a painter-decorator bloke who was there, by finding phrases in our phrase book - that went quite well.........UNTIL he got his mate to take Rob over "to look at his bike", so that he and I were left alone in the room. He got the idea that as Rob and I weren't married, it was open season - he pointed to his cheek and said "kiss?", which was NOT happening, and offered me a massage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Which was also not happening! It was all just very uncomfortable and out of order, and I made a hasty exit from the room - Rob came bounding over, as he hadn't liked the way things were going, and we thought about what to do. All things considered, we decided to just leave - there was just no structure there and it was so, so different from what we'd been expecting. The owneer of the farm, who we'd been in quite close contact with by email for the past few months, wasn't even there - he lived 500 or so miles away! So it was all a bit of a farce.
No worries - we made our decision and set off to the main road to get a bus back to Jaipur, hitching a lift to the road on the back of a pick-up truck - bit of a godsend! We did get the bus, and on the journey Rob realised he'd left his wallet containing passport, credit card and a wad of money at the farm. Shit! So the next morning we got a lift back there with this old Brigadier who was the farm's agricultural consultant - he was going there, as it happened. Got the wallet back - all intact.
Now that the farm was out of the question, we decided to go to Bharatpur (consult atlas) as it sounded nice and less hectic than where we'd been so far. So we did go there, and we met some great people at our lovely guest house - Joy & Luke, in their 20s, from Vermont, USA, and another couple, Val & Ken in their late 50s from NZ. We had so much fun with them - great chats and laughs and telling of stories around the dinner table. We shared music from Rob's iPod too - that proved very popular. The Muppettes d'Amour may like to note that I played them the recording of us that I made that night, and they said they will buy our CD when we are famous!!
We had fun in Bharatpur cycling around a national park tho I nearly broke my bum on the crossbar of one of the bikes I got on! Ow!
And now, after 14 hours on the train (1st class!!!!!!!!) yesterday, we are in Amritsar to visit the Golden Temple - we're staying in a nice guest house after checking in and then straight back out of a scummy (to say the least) hotel down the road from this one. It was GROSS. We tried to get a refund as we'd paid for a night upfront, but they would NOT refund us not matter how hard we tried. So we walked 5 mins down the road and checked in here instead - we stayed here last night and tonight too and then tomorrow we're going to the Golden Temple to visit there and stay the night in one of their gurudwaras (Sikh temples) - you can stay there for free, tho it's meant for bona fide pilgrims - but they open their doors to anyone. (If you saw the Michael Palin "Himalaya" series, you probably remember him staying there.)
Then on to Dharamsala in a couple of days to see the Dalai Lama, and we may be leaving India sooner than we thought for THAILAND - we shall see.