Taking a break at special school
Teaching colors
Limbo time!
The next day we went to another elementary school called Thung Luang, where the kids were purported to be very smart. We went with two new arrivals: Connie, and Nicola. It was a basic review session of the English they had learned that period such as Body Parts, Movements, and Clothing. The students were very smart and able to play our games and understand us most of the time. We split them up into two and rotated them through some learning stations where we would play games to reinforce their material.
Wednesday was the time to do a Thailand tourist tradition: a Visa Run. Since we crossed at the land border of Thailand and Laos, we received only a 15 day visa. This was not enough to cover our stay in Thailand until our flight out to Nepal. So about 15 days before our flight we set out for nearby Burma. We hopped on a packed local bus as it was pulling out of the Chiang Rai station and stood for the majority of the way. Picking up the Thai number system came in handy as we had to figure out how much to pay the bus driver for the 1.5 hour ride to Mae Sai (39 Baht).
Mae Sai is the Thai side of the border, and Tachileik is on the Burmese side. Both have a market area with many random cheap goods. Some people even come up here just to shop. The border crossing is a little strange as you do not have full freedom to enter Burma. Instead, Immigration officials KEEP your passport and issue you a card that allows you to travel only a few towns into Burma. I don't believe you're allowed further past that. This worked fine for us as we just needed to exit Thailand, twiddle our thumbs for a little bit, and then cross back over. While in Burma we walked aroudn the market area and within 10 seconds I was offered a pack of Marlboro's, Viagra, and a pack of cards with Saddam Hussein on the back. When I declined the Viagra the vendor pumped his fist in the air and said, "Oh! You are strong!" I don't think we can really judge Burma from what we saw at the border town, but it did seem to be a little more derelict than the Thai side.
At the Burma - Thai border
We crossed back over the border, and went through the formality of Thai Immigration where we received another 15 day stamp to stay in Thailand. Our stay in Burma was under an hour. It was a fun day trip that turned out very successfully. It was really nice that the border was so close to Chiang Rai, allowing us to do the whole visa run in half a day.
Next up on our agenda was our homestay. We were told very little about the homestay, and this would actually continue for most of the experience. Every month, Mirror gathers Thai volunteers (mostly from Bangkok) to come up and help out at a local village. We were thrown into the middle of this and tagged along for the ride. The moment we stepped into the meeting room, we were surrounded by people speaking Thai, and even the presentation was in Thai. Luckily there were some very kind volunteers there who were able to speak Thai. Mon actually lived in America for 6 years, so his English was superb. He kindly acted as our translator for most of the trip.
We drove out in a huge bus to the village where we would be staying for 3 nights. Men and women volunteers were separated and allowed to stay in villagers houses in groups of 2 or 3. Most of the villagers seemed quite well off, with electricity, running water, TV, and even a fridge! I really liked my host family as they were very welcoming. I was paired up with Mon and we had to sleep in the bamboo house with a mosquito net filled with holes. It was comfortable enough except I kept waking up with new bites all over my body. We had brought our own provisions and cooked our own dinners. Our host mother would make breakfast for us which allowed us to sleep in a little bit. This was hard though as every morning at about 4 am the roosters in the village would go off and begin crowing. I swear there was a rooster less than 10 feet from my head crowing in the morning, making it hard to sleep.
It was nice being able to cook for ourselves though, and we would normally have a potluck with the girls house down the hill (where Rashmi was staying). Breakfast were nice as we would eat with the host father. He actually grew up in China, so we were able to communicate in basic Chinese, although his accent was a little strange. This made me really happy to be able to talk to my host family. The host mother even blasted some Chinese music during our breakfast time.
Our first day of volunteering we went to the local primary school to teach. Most of the Thai volunteers had prepared lesson plans already, but us English speakers were left scratching our heads. Rashmi and I ended up running an English lesson for the 6th graders with another English speaking Thai named A. Most of them were quite smart, but did not have much confidence speaking in English. It was a lot of fun to play different games with them that made sure they had to use and understand English. In the afternoon we played games with the entire school which was great. The kids were a lot of fun and were really cute. Our ride there and back was in the flat bed of a pick up truck. this was a great way to see the country side, but it began pouring on the ride back and by the time we reached our village, we were soaked!
With our sixth grade class
After our wet ride in the pickup
Every night, back at the village, we would meet up at 7 pm in the community center to sing with the village elders and talk about the history of the village. This was all in Thai though, so even with Mon and A translating for us it was still hard to follow everything that was going on. That night there was a local Buddhist ceremony that was followed by a fireworks show. The villagers had made there own fireworks and lit it up in front of the temple. When the fireworks were lit it would emit a shower of sparks up into the air about 40 to 50 feet and the old village men would dance around the falling sparks. It was a little scary but also very thrilling.
The next day was a little frustrating as we worked to strip the paint off fairly new looking playground structures and repainted it. It felt like they did not know what to do with all the volunteers and gave them random tasks. The afternoon was more entertaining as we loaded up rocks into the back of a pickup and threw them into the muddy rain soaked road in an attempt to "fill in" the road. This didn't really work at all and our trucks got stuck in the thick mud. In the end after a large communal effort of volunteers, villagers, and the village children, we were able to push the car out and getting going down the road again.
Riding in the pickup is like being on a rollercoaster!
Overall, the homestay experience was a mixed bag. I definitely enjoyed interacting with Thai people, learning a little about both village and city culture. However, I also felt pretty marginalized and unproductive during our time there as the program was really intended for the Thai volunteers. Most of the time it just seemed like they were making stuff up for the farangs to do. We loaded back into the bus at the end and drove over to the wondrous White Temple, which we'll get into in the next post.
The English speakers group
Bonus! Me slinging fireballs around at a bar in Chiang Rai
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