A bit more abou Lang Suan and also the Non profit English camp

Monday after school I decided to go rent a scooter (CHEEAAAP. Only 2500 baht and no deposit – R710 for the whole month). Well then I realized that it was semi-automatic and I looked like a massive idiot trying to change to a higher gear and ending up to put it in 1^st gear all the time. (Think bobberhead dog meets earthquake) Our scooter:

I decided rather to walk and explore the area and discovered the most beautiful river area about 1 km from our house:

On my way back I Bought some some stuff for our house – a dustbin, plates, glasses, washing bowl etc. I got EVERYTHING for 250 baht (R71). 

At school on Tuesday they told me that the contract with the recruiting agency will not be renewed and that I will only be employed until the end of the semester (which meant I would only have a job for 2 more weeks), they also told me that it is not necessary for Steven to come through since the semester is only 2 more weeks and a new teacher will only confuse the learners. (Couldn’t they have told me this before I spent our almost last money on food, home stuff and a scooter. Well at least we would be classy hoboes.) So I immediately started job searching – I didn’t mind being a hobo, but Thailand does not have a very big niche for beggars and it did not seem as if the dogs would like to share the only bridge in Lang Suan.

On the plus side – I had off on the Tuesday and Wednesday – there are a lot of surprise, unplanned school holidays in Thailand. So Tuesday after school I headed back up to Hua Hin – to talk to Steven about what we are going to do in terms of employment, help him move the rest of our stuff down to Lang Suan and to help at the volunteer English camp.

Some photos of the English camp:

 I have no idea why they call it a camp, since no one is actually camping (except if you call teaching under a tree with a portable white board camping). The general set up of an English camp in Thailand is like this:

·         It is usually 2 days.

·         There is a MASSIVE opening ceremony that takes 4 – 5 hours. This is where they give thanks, recognize and praise every single person in Thailand that is NOT part of the camp. Then they spend another 1 or 2 hours thinking the actual contributors to the camp.

·         You go to the venue where the “camp” is held – usually a city hall or school.

·         Learners get divided into groups while you set up camp (mobile classroom somewhere comfortable under a tree away from sunlight and snakes).

·         Learners then rotate in groups and you teach each group for about an hour.

·         Everyone goes home at the end of the day and the next day more or less the same happens – except for the ceremony which gets replaced by a massive breakfast and lunch.

So in actual fact you only teach for about 6 hours in a 2 day English “camp”.

After the camp we packed all our stuff and checked out of Centennial to start our next leg of the adventure. In the next blog Steven will tell you about his first experience on the trains in Thailand and there will also be pictures of Hua Hin train station.