Round 4.....

Saturday 12th July,

I woke up this morning... er... afternoon, feeling pretty shocking. You see it was Friday night yesterday, and it is the only time I (along with the friends on my course) can go out and have a few drinks. After school, I went for a glass of wine with one of my course teachers. She is a nice woman in her 40’s who has spent a lot of time working in Turkey and has been a language teacher and trainer for many years. I don’t think she likes it here so much as she doesn’t really know anyone, she worked in Chaing Mai for 4 weeks, teaching one CELTA, and now she is here teaching the first of two in a row. She has got a bit of a reputation here as being difficult to get on with – she is a bit Jekyll and Hyde, but she is a really good teacher, one of our observation tasks today was to watch an experienced teacher teach for 2 hours and see how it can be done. She pretty much blew us away really. You can tell she enjoys teaching the language students more than teaching the trainers. We talked in some length about how in this way the CELTA should perhaps be a longer course with less focus on intensity and more in creating a fuller understanding of what it is to be a teacher. Aside from that we decided not to talk shop and just had a good chat about what we like to do and what we thought of Bangkok and in extension of that Thailand. After about an hour and a half we parted company and I went home to get ready to go out for the night, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to getting drunk, i think we all really needed to blow off some steam from the week.
I met up with Jez, Konrad and Mike (the only 3 white guys on the course – all from England and Jez and Mike actually lived within a mile radius of me in Leeds, and none of us knew each other previously). Fortunately we all get on like a house on fire and we had a good plan for the night as well. Konrad’s Israeli girlfriend was coming to see him at midnight, so we went to see him for a couple of beers first on Kho Som road, close to where he lives. Kho Som is one of those places which kind of reminds me of what hell would be like – especially on a Friday night. But in the right company, even hell can be a funny place. We just stood outside on the busy tourist packed streets for a couple of hours laughing and fooling around drinking cheap strong beers which we got from the 7/11 for 18 Baht a pop. The majority of the amusement came from a couple of sources, firstly, you have to understand that when you are on this road and you are white, you are a tourist and will be treated like one, it is just accepted – you don’t go there otherwise! Because of this, you will spend a large proportion of your time fending off street vendors of all descriptions. I think the way to get rid of them is just to ignore their very existence and they will move on pretty quickly. But due to my social and polite manner, this is not an natural tendency for me, and this was picked up on by Mike and Konrad, who decided it would be pretty funny to send every hammock seller, jewellery and trinket pusher and can collector my way assuring them that I was desperate to own a piece of novelty rubbish. This of course resulted in me having to deal with these vendors for unbelievable amounts of time, which was very funny – more so to them than for me because I just couldn’t get rid of them, and Konrad and Mike would continue to make it worse for me by telling the sellers my name and what I wanted to buy and other information to add further fuel to their fire. Bastards! They were going down! I did however soon learn the game and managed to come up with my own variations in order to balance this victimisation! After two hours or so, most of the vendors knew my name – I don’t know if this is good or bad, but at least they all knew that I didn’t want to buy anything!
At about 10:30pm, we left Konrad and went to our destination for the evening, a launch party for a new shop – between me and Jez, we have some pretty good contacts in the trendy arty media types in Bangkok, and with this we hold a key to the cities night life. We got to the club (no psy-trance tonight!), sat outside and got some bottles of rum, soda and ice and proceeded to drink. I met a Swiss guy and a Girl called Elizabet from Estonia – both of which were a little on the mental side. But I also met a freelance Art Director called Pum, and a Film producer called Ani. Both very nice guys, who were keen to involve me in their ideas for an underground film festival – so we swapped emails and numbers and said we would meet up next weekend. In fact it wasn’t long before I realised that everyone at this party was someone pretty interesting or high up in the various media industries. Jez’s friend Nookie who I met last week works as a producer and party liaison for V-Channel (think MTV, but Thai), and she gets us in free for most things and introduces me to some useful people. When we went inside to this club, it was a pretty amazing venue, and again prices were very expensive in comparison to the already expensive night life in Bangkok. However, armed with the free entrance and the bag full of bottles of hard liquor, it wasn’t long before we were dancing along to the Electro beats. It also wasn’t long before we were all completely blasted either, and as has become the way of the times, we decided to go back outside so we could talk and for the all important SMOKO (probably the best Aussie word ever taken from its shores – brought to us by Konrad who spent a year or so working there). And so Smoko we did! By 2am the club (like all the reputable places) was closing and instead of deciding to take it to a dangerous level, we decided to call it a night as far as the clubs and bars were concerned. We ambled off in a small group, sat down for some food, bought some more booze and shared a few more drinks before we went our separate ways.

Sunday 13th July
Ants! Where do they come from! There are seven or eight different types of ants in Thailand from what I understand, ranging from monster killers, to placid workers. Fortunately, I have only encountered these little placid guys. Unfortunately, they are in my room! Going by the name ‘sweet ants’, they are predictably partial to anything which leaves a sugary residue, and by the looks of things, they are pretty skilled at finding the source! These are weird little things, they are really small – perhaps one third the size of our common black ants in England. They are also less aggressive; I have only had three bites a few days ago when I moved in – on my ankles of course! I think that they decided that I don’t taste so good, because now they seem to have left me alone. However, if you accidently spill some rum, or you leave a bag of rubbish containing food remnants, then you can guarantee that you will be sharing your room with these little buggers pretty soon!
I noticed that they were hanging around again yesterday, so I swept, mopped and cleaned my apartment to get rid of anything sweet. Whilst I was doing this I got a bit hungry and remembered that I had some muesli bars in my room and ate one of them... seconds later, it occurred to me that these bars were open and that they were located close to one of the more concentrated areas of the ants.... on closer inspection it was pretty plain to see that these muesli bars were pretty infested! How did I not see?! Oh well... as with cockroaches, ants and especially ant eggs (see ant egg salad) are considered a bit of a delicacy – well this time I ate them without even knowing! Later that day, I was pretty incensed with this ant thing, I don’t really mind sharing my room but, it can get a bit crazy with so many, and soon as they aren’t paying rent – only taking up space, I decided to go on a mission to get rid of them somehow!
Now, of course being Bangkok, there is a general problem with insects anyway – it’s just one of those tropical climates. I went to the shopping complex with the aim of buying something to help. I spent some time looking on the internet to see if I could find what type of ants these guys were, and some recommended effective methods of control – it turns out that peppermint oil is a good one (I haven’t found any yet!). I went to the Tesco Lotus to see if I could find anything in the meantime, however all the different buy sprays etc. Looked pretty evil and I don’t really want that in my apartment! So I decided on option two – to buy some superglue and seal all the small holes and cracks which the ants seem to be appearing from! Let’s hope this works!
I’m sat now in this really nice and very small coffee shop called SOLANO. In fact, I have been here a few times now and I’m pretty sure they make the best coffee in Bangkok – I am yet to be proved wrong. The only problem is for some reason there is always some old dude in here chatting up a Thai girl, and nine times out of ten it is a fat American. Today for instance, this old fat fuck just waltzed in, sat down and proceeded to chat up this lass who blatantly was not interested and biting her lip to be polite. I was cringing and having to bite my lip as well! Well, as the tone of the Americans voice was such that it made it impossible to blank out, I was forced to hear his life story, interests and all about his friends. Interesting how this chump only liked to talk about himself. He was 59 and had been in Thailand for seven years, but took pride in the fact he couldn’t speak Thai, saying that, for him communication is body language and gesture not speaking, he claimed to be a retired film producer with credits such as The Crying Game under his belt. To be honest this guy didn’t need to wear a belt because he was such a fat fuck. Bla...bla...bla... I was feeling pretty sick by this point having to listen to all his bullshit. He was really obnoxious and asking if she had a boyfriend or if she was married, how old she was and all of the basic no, no’s of polite conversation. I think he even coaxed her into giving him her phone number – even though it had been determined that she was meeting her ‘friend’ here. I was so glad when this other guy turned up and the headache on Twinkey legs made a hasty exit!
Well I have had enough time to calm down after that little freak show, and after another coffee, I have managed to write a little and get my mind working towards going back home, having some food and trying to come up with some good ideas for the two lessons I have to create from scratch this week and teach. I tell you, it is not easy. I thought I was going to be much happier with the new creative freedom of making my own lesson and not having to take too many cues from a pre-organised lesson context, but with having to teach a higher level (intermediate), and having the responsibility of greater development in the content of lesson plans and the range of skills used while teaching, this is going to be a very tough week, and the weekend has not event been close to providing enough time for me to feel relaxed. The good thing is, that there are only two weeks left of the course, and once the week comes around the tempo is so fast that the time flies. However, it is important for me to raise my game this week, so I need to regain some focus, take some deep breaths and get to grips with some of this grammar! If I don’t know it, how can I teach it!
When I write my next update, I will try to focus a little less on events and bring to you some interesting factoids of Bangkok and the rhetoric behind them. Of which there have been many, and is a lot! At the moment though I am a little drained, probably too much coffee and not enough sleep! Over the next few days I think it is important for me to achieve some more balance in my lifestyle! Normally, this wouldn’t be so hard, but the way this course is designed, certainly does not help you to be healthy! It’s a good job I have plenty of herbal remedies to take during the day, without these I think I could be pretty ill now! On Saturday morning I noticed that the glands in my neck were really swollen and it was painful to swallow etc. I have been taking large doses of Echinacea, Thyme extract and Gingko Balboa to try and sort myself out. So far so good! Right! Time to go sort out these ants!