LEAVING THAILAND BEHIND

After my erratic beginnings with the University outside of Chiang Rai I finally began teaching 3 days a week the beginning of July. My boss, I refer to her as Dragon Lady, was never easy to deal with. Seemed to always want a little more & not good at keeping her word. I really enjoyed the students, even though the class sizes, of up to 49 students, was a bit overwhelming. The fellow language department staff was delightful. Very hard working & dedicated. I was told often by seasoned Western ESL teachers from around Thailand that their Thai counterparts were expected to work harder & were usually paid less than the foreign teachers. How they stayed cheerful, often on 1/2 the pay we received, is beyond me. My favorite staff member was an ex Buddhist priest. He quit the monk hood after 17 years to help his aging parents. So on the weekends he would travel to their small farm to do the heavy lifting.

(Thailand is the wealthiest of the 4 SE Asian countries I visited by far. Yet all these countries are basically rice crop driven. the majority of these populations raise crops & have a very subsistence existence. Thais are the best educated & the cleanest, so their poverty is less widespread and not as obvious.)

After not receiving my pay for the few days I worked in June I asked Dragon Lady when I would be getting paid. She said I wouldn't. If I worked 3 weekends in a row as her special guest ESL teacher for staff, a total of 30 hours without pay, she could then see her way to paying me. I laughed very hard at this & said no to her request. My July check did not come at the same time as the other teachers got paid & seemed not due for weeks. I figured the price she would ask for that would be even greater so I quit. I had just received an offer from a friend in Chiang Mai to help with ESL students at the new school she was opening. I would be paid weekly. The choice was not a difficult one & I relocated to Chiang Mai the 5th of August. I was offered the house they were moving out of. It was in a gated country club type community. One I had never been able to live in State side. I had a cute 3 bedroom cottage, quiet, safe, & furnished. I joined the pool/gym a whole $30 a year membership. I got a cheap little blue bike with a bell and rode to the pool many a hot day. The reason there were so many days to be care free & swim is my co-worker got very ill. Dengue Fever had hit Chiang Mai with a heavy hand. The hospitals were filled to capacity. No known vaccine, & a 30-50% chance of death if medical care was not received. My friend was unable to work for almost 4 weeks. As a result she lost many of her students & was unable to use my services. She never got nose bleeds but with the Fever had to go to the hospital because of excessive bleeding. Being I had no way to protect myself from this disease I became very concerned, with my history of serious nose bleeds, about staying in the area. I emailed a friend who was doing one of the many volunteer NGO jobs in Cambodia. He said no Dengue Fever to speak of in Cambodia. This also was not a hard decision to make. Angkor Wat in Cambodia is considered the 8th wonder of the world. I originally said i would not leave SE Asia without visit it. So with no job in Thailand and very tired of the job hassles there I decided rather than putting my health at risk I would leave my luxury house lifestyle at under $300 a month. I failed to mention, I had Wi-Fi at the house, a true luxury in Thailand. So after 5 weeks in Chiang Mai i was off to the very poor & wild country of Cambodia.

I have to say Thailand was not my most pleasant travel experience. Thailand was like a beautiful but shallow man. Great to look at, smell. taste. It never quite delivered. I never really got to enjoy its wilderness. Hard to get to & often to hot with lots of poisonous critters. The Thais are very cordial but hard to really share with or get close to. The westerners are mainly men married to Thai women. I had a very hard time meeting Western women in my age group. The job search, with the age discrimination became far too much work. So I was able to experience the feelings, etc of being an expat in a very different culture, for longer here than anywhere else i have visited. It was very enlightening. Was it fun? Not really. It became the loneliest experience of my life after about 4 months of not much job success or real travel pleasure within Thailand. I also know now I can never live that far away or for longer than about 4 months from my many loved ones. I did accomplish part of my dental goal, and have enjoyed all these very different cultural aspects from all the countries. The people in Vietnam & Cambodia, having the worse recent history, are so much more alive, & communicative than the Thais. I was only in Laos 4 days but they seem very poor also, but very much the up & coming as well. The passion these 3 countries feel for living, there expressiveness, motivation to learn etc. was astonishing to me. The movie the Killing Fields, which won many awards explains much of what Cambodians went thru. In these 3 countries there are still many walking wounded but they are also seizing the moment. As individuals, & within each country they are moving forward with hope, gratitude,passion, & joy, unlike many Thais. I am glad I got to meet & experience these brave souls.