Memories - good and bad
Casting my mind back to a government school I taught at years ago
Part of our family holiday was to be spent in Kalasin so I decided to reach out to my ex-colleagues and see how they were. Truth be told, I was also curious to learn about the school and if my replacements had been successful or not.
Never going back?
The nightmare of losing a passport - before you even get to Thailand!
About an hour before we touched down in Bangkok, my son announced that his passport was missing! Panic started to set in, my wife started to berate our son for being careless, tempers were starting to reach boiling point. Certainly not the best way to start this family holiday.
The poor traveler
The promised land or the den of lions?
One of the books I recently read is Bangkok to Ben Nevis Backwards, by Phil Hall. It could have been my story, minus the marriage to a Thai woman, a son, and an almost completed house in the countryside.
Adventures in Laos
There's rarely such a thing as a straightforward visa run
Visa scammers, restaurant runners and queue-jumpers at the Thai Consulate. They're all part and parcel of a visa run to Laos.
We are family
I play piggy-in-the-middle while the family feuds go on all around me
Here in Thailand, family is supposed to be everything, and quite often that is the case. But what happens when two members of the same family have a serious falling out? What side will the rest of the family take, and does it even matter who is right and who is wrong?
Family Thais
A tale of the simple life in Issan with a bit of financial debt, drug dealing and machete-swinging thrown in.
When we moved from the UK to Thailand via India, I firmly believed that I had made the right move for myself and my family. We’d said goodbye to dismal Britain and were here to stay. What followed was a torrid time that bore little if any resemblance to what I believed Thailand stood for.
Job-hunting in North-East Thailand
Well, job-hunting and snake-hunting to be exact.
So the morning of all mornings finally arrived and it was time for me to become a teacher; a giver of knowledge, a mentor; all of these things. Who was I trying to kid?
Entertainer or educator?
And somehow smiling through the pain while trying to teach a class of 50 kids
I was forced to wear sandals for at least a week as my poor toe needed some pressure-relief in which to heal properly. As I limped into each classroom, the 50 or so kids would all notice my footwear and the large bandage on my toe. But not one student smirked or laughed.
A first lesson disaster
I mean, seriously, how many other teachers pass out in their first class?
when I awoke, I was on the floor slumped against the wall. I looked up to see at least 30 faces looking down on me, and yes, the smartphones were out in force. I could only wonder how much of the event had already been recorded.
My first day at school
An introduction to the cast of characters (my teaching colleagues)
It was already 35 degrees in the shade, and the last thing I really needed now was to be doing star jumps and the like. But it seemed that all of the teachers were getting their own dance moves on, and I had to do the same.
