Fourth in a Series on Moving Overseas: Thailand

Last week, I wrote about Stickman’s website about Thailand; this week, I’m covering another popular website about living and working in Thailand, Ajarn.com. This website has been around for a long time, and it targets English teachers in Thailand. Why another site about English teacher’s in Thailand? Well, because there are so many of them, and so many more arrive in Thailand on a regular basis.

For those of you who are new to the expat world, English teaching is one of the favorite ways to have an income while exploring the world. English teaching is particularly popular with the backpacking crowd, and the guys who are looking for relationships with Asian women. Why? That’s the next in this series; right now I want to discuss the Ajarn website.

If you want to move to Thailand, but aren’t an English teacher, this website still has a lot to offer. There are sections on the cost of living – some very detailed writing including the daily expenses for a month’s living by an expat in Thailand. There are sections on getting an apartment or a house and obtaining health insurance. There is a section on immigration and visas – very important topics for an expat. And, if you are an English teacher, or want to be one, there is the famous Ajarn job board. I found a job through there once, although in the end, I accepted a position that I found elsewhere.

For folks that want to live in Thailand, but don’t want to live in Bangkok, there is information about other regions of Thailand. And a big addition to this site is the Ajarn Writers section where you can read about the experiences of teachers in Thailand: sometimes they cover life issues of living in Thailand, other times they cover teaching issues. Some of the writers are quite good, and most of them are humorous.

So if you’re thinking of moving to Thailand, I’d recommend the Ajarn site along with the Stickman site. Once you’ve gone through both, you have a really good idea of what’s waiting for you if you move to Thailand.

Randomness

Random is a phrase that my students use all the time, especially the middle school students. More than a few times my homeroom will say to me “that was random” in response to some remark that intrudes upon my discussions of world economics or the wonders of algebra. “Random” is actually one of those remarks that they use that I actually like (unlike “sweet”) and use myself occasionally when one of the little darlings goes off on some tangent. So here are some random thoughts for the day.

Why is it that so many expat websites about Thailand use really garish colors on their sites? I’m thinking particularly of the ones with the black backgrounds and the electric blue (and unreadable) links and bright yellow fonts. Does it have something to do with them spending too much time in the bars of Soi Cowboy or Nana or Patpong?

If you live on the sea with a nice sea breeze constantly cooling you, you should put lots of paper down on the tiles if you’re outside on the balcony spray painting or rust proofing some fittings for your doors or windows (I didn’t and I have lots of outlines now on my balcony tiles of metal fittings.

Why is it that you can go just about anywhere in Southeast Asia and hear expats whine about the same things – the way we’re treated by locals, getting cheated by a girl/boyfriend/ wife or significant other, being made to feel unwelcome by the government, driving practices, and relatives? Are we the same? Are they the same?

Why is it that expats who have no understanding of and no interest in Islam move to countries that are predominately Muslim and then complain about it (almost always secretly) incessantly? I have a number of issues about the interpretation of the Qu’ran and the practices that are justified by referring to the Qu’ran, but I always make them publically.

Why don’t they sell Gouda cheese in Singaraja?

A Teacher's Vacation

Yesterday was my birthday and today was Mercedes’. She turned 16 today. My god, how hard to believe that I have a 16 year old daughter and a soon-to-be 36 year old son and a grandchild on the way. Time turns quickly.

So sixteen is no the big birthday for girls here – 17 is and Mercedes is already coming up with wild plans for her 17th birthday. Today was fairly tame but highly enjoyed by all. I took the kids to the Bali Tree Top up in Bedugal. I’ve been there before when I brought my students on a field trip to Bali almost a year ago, and I figured that the kids would really enjoy climbing around. It turned out that they did, but not just them, six of the adults took part and they didn’t want to stop. It was a rather expensive afternoon, but the kids will remember this for a long time.

I spent all of the time filming or doing ground control work so I didn’t get a chance to do this again. Maybe next time.
So far this vacation is fairly on schedule for what we wanted to get done in a relatively short period of time. Things done: 1) We enrolled our eldest daughter in a good high school. If she does well, she should be able to get in a good college; 2) We got our second daughter a new American passport so she’s good now until she’s 18 and needs to decide on what citizenship she is going to take – Indonesian or American; 3) We bought the eldest daughter a new handphone so she can keep in touch with us, and perhaps more importantly, we can keep in touch with her; 4) We retiled the second floor bathroom and put in a new toilet; 5) We put a new toilet in the downstairs bathroom; 6) I fixed the phone connection on the third floor (after waiting six months for the family to get a repairman to do it); 7) I’ve finished updating half of the cyberbali site; 8) I answered a lot of back emails; 9) We showed our guest, friend, and handyman around part of Bali; 10) We had a birthday party for Mercedes and Rebecca; 11) I bought Sam a new handset for his PlayStation; 12) We bought Meredith some new Barbie things; 13) I managed to see my old friend once so far. Not bad for the first week.

We have another 12 days to try to finish up the rest which includes: 1) renewing and adding to our retirement time deposit account; 2) opening a bank account for Mercedes and getting her an ATM so we can keep her supplied with money; 3) fixing two windows in the bathrooms; 4) fixing a window on the third floor so that it doesn’t fall off during the rainy season; 5) opening a haj account for my wife; 6) opening student savings accounts for three of the kids; 7) talking to a visa agent about what my visa options are next year when I retire; 9) finishing the cyberbali update; 10) finishing some social studies lessons for next term; 11) reading the PEW study on American Muslims which I downloaded and printed; 12) rereading the Nine Parts of Desire and write a review; 13) learning about the physical requirements of setting up a network; 14) and there’s some more but I don’t have my plan book available at the time.

Finally, vacation!

Finally on a month long vacation period after what seemed like an incredibly long six months. I definitely do not like the school schedule that this school uses. Now that the school day is longer than most schools and the school year is longer than most schools, we’re essentially working an extra two weeks a year for free. Fortunately this is the last year for me. The extended school year that we have with the new schedule is just one of the problems that comes with working for a company school – they have little idea about what education is and teachers are generally not highly valued in the status system that is a large part of living in a mining community. Well, so much for my end of the year complaining.

Baseball. I get a week of watching baseball in the mornings on ESPN from my satellite connection. Today is the Mets and the Yankees. It’s a day game in New York, and the weather there is great – it’s great here in Sumbawa today as well with a nice 80 degrees at 10:30 am. If Indonesia had baseball, it would be almost paradise. With three weeks in Bali coming up as soon as the kids get their school reports at the end of next week, I’ll have internet access at home so I can follow baseball better. One of the key things that I’m looking forward to in retirement is having internet access everyday. Being able to use the internet at school just doesn’t cut it as I don’t have anywhere near enough time to follow what I need do professionally on the internet, and forget about personal stuff.

So on my second day of vacation (the first was spent as it usually is – playing games on the computer), I did lesson plans for fifth, sixth and eighth grade math classes for next semester. Tomorrow, I’ll do the Seventh grade math and then the seventh’eighth grade social studies class. I’ll do the 2-8 grade computer classes when I get to Bali and have some online access so I can use my del.icio.us account to post links there to go with my plans which will be online at the school’s website. I like getting lesson plans done early in the vacation as there isn’t enough time to do them when school starts. As you can see, teaching in a small school means doing extraordinary amounts of work for lessons. Even more in this school than in the other two small schools where I taught. Compare this to the lesson plans I did at the medium size school in Lahore where I had to plan for three levels of math each week.