Week 4 - Short interlude

Just a quick update on how the decision making skills are coming along. Recognise the picture? Well that's pretty much how it goes...

Stephen - So what shall we do today?

Anya - I don't know. What do you want to do?

Stephen - I don't mind. What do you want to do...

Anya - you decide, I really don't mind. What do you want to do?

OR

Stephen - shall we go to the market tonight

Anya - Yeh. I don't mind. If you want.

Stephen - well do you wany to?

Anya - Yeh I don't mind

OR

Anya - shall we go to the national museum tomorrow morning

Stephen - yeh I don't mind. Do you want to go?

Anya - Sure I don't mind really

etc.

So there you go.

But we do still manage to get stuff done :)

Week 4 - a new project at last

The next day we got up early, found a better place to stay and ventured on to find our orphanage. It was really close by and easy to find. We spoke to a lady there and explained we could help out for about 3 weeks. She told us that proper full time staff had to give 3 months + but we could go every day at 3pm and spend a few hours with the kids. Oh and the ones we were to play with were 3 yrs old. All the 3's! How random. I just noticed that. She then ushered us in to the yard where the kids were playing. It's hard to know what to do at first I think. You can't converse with them and I didn't think they would trust us much to play with them. But they did. As soon as we appeared, about 4 of them came running over to be picked up. I think they just want cuddles. And they're so easily kept happy. We had been given a leaflet to read about the orphanage, which 2 of the kids took off us. But it kept them occupied for the hour that we were there for.



The second day we got there and sat in a small hall. They were playing with plastic fruit. Another lady volunteer from Perth told us to just sit and they would come play if they wanted. And they did. Just bouncing round us and wanting to be picked up and stuff. It took me a couple of days to stop being emotional about it all. It really makes you appreciate the upbringing you have been so fortunate to have.

In the past week we have come to get to know the characters of the kids, and we have our own names for them. They're pretty self explainatary...

Cry baby

Flip flop (a.k.a. piss pants)

Evil - we have since tried to come up for a different name for her and she's not so evil anymore - bossy boots

Tom Thumb (he's the one I want to adopt)

Thumberlina (or her)

Clingon/bubblehead

Wigglebum

Bulldog

Bunchface

Bunchies

Cuteface

Bullyboy/Lad - he was a bully but he is actually just bigger than the rest. He's really polite and says hello to us every day.

There's lots of signs up around the place saying no photos, so we don't have any as yet. I'm sure they'll let us take a few in due course though. Or you'll meet the one I want to adopt when I bring him back home...

Our time with them is taken up playing inside or outside. They do play reasonably nicely. One day we went on a trip to a park. It was a bit of a dull park but a change of scene for everyone. We got there for 9am (which was a struggle) and spent 5 hours with them. I think me and Stephen were more tired than the kids by the end. And the van we took them in was hilarious. In a way that so many laws would be broken if it was england! There was probably enough room for about 15 people, but they stuffed all 20 kids in at once, along with the 12 supervisors. Stephen even stood at the back and held on tight. We've had national crying day, national weeing day and possibly pooing... it's like a domino effect. One goes and the rest follows. Oh and one time I had about 7 of them pinning me down, and Tom thumb laughing by my head as he tried to take my glasses. It was like that scene from Gulliver's travels. Just like it. So I don't wear my glasses anymore. Or my watch. And then when our few hours is over and our clothes have no more space for any more wee/food/spit/chocolate, we leave. It becomes easier to walk once we're out the gates as we haven't got any kids attached to our legs.

I'm really loving it there.

You can check out their website as well

http://www.baan-kingkaew-orphanage.org/

Week 3 - First night in Chiang Mai

"Chiang Mai sits in a lush tropical valley, surrounded by mountains which historically have protected the city from any major outside influence. Although foreigners have been living here for more than 150 years, it is only during the last 10 years that their presence here has become significant. Some retire here, others come and go at their own leisure, while an increasing number enjoy making it their home for a few years"

I really love Chiang Mai. I reckon I could come and live here. DON'T PANIC! I said I could, not I would... despite what some of you have said, I really will come home eventually!

Our room was fine, but it really stank. We dumped our stuff, got showered (and a real shower, not a wet wipe shower that I had been having over the past 30 hours). It's at this point I became grateful for being so shortsighted. It means I can't see any bugs when having showers. Stephen questioned why I hadn't screamed at the beetle that was passing me the shower gel. I just hadn't seen it. Nor had I seen the one in the Khao Lak shower. A true short sighted blessing!

We just wandered about that evening. It was Thursday and quite busy. The long wknd festivities had began and we watched as a parade went by. Lots of costumes, and colours and music.

Back in our room that night was the first time I had to use my mosquito net. I felt like a princess. A suffocating princess. I don't think I put it up high enough, but it did the trick and I was bite free in the morning :)

Week 3 - The loooong journey up t'north

So yes there was that annoyance that we had jumped on the first bus that came along, and then a Bangkok bus was just behind, but it actually turned out that it didn't make any difference. When we arrived at the next bus station, the Bangkok bus was standing there. We got our tickets, asked how long the journey was, got told it was 12 hours, sighed very deeply, and jumped on. Actually I just pulled myself on. 37 degree heat doesn't allow for much jumping. It was just after midday.

There weren't any seats together. It was a troubling time. But after a few hours there was a toilet stop and then some woman moved so we could sit together so it was all ok. Phew. I was pleasantly surprised with the toilets. Seeing as they were in the middle of nowhere on a dusty Thai 'road'. But they seemed to be kept reasonably clean and there weren't too many flying bugs to contend with so I could easily concentrate on the hovering and not weeing on my shorts.
The next 12 hours was just taken up with the following:

- toilet/dinner stops, where everyone would quickly get off the bus, go ram some rice down their throat and then get back on again. We missed this the first time despite being pretty hungry, but were ready for the next one. Instead we bought some nice looking biscuit things from an outside stall. I think I must have Polish/Jewish survival rootings where anything goes at times of need as I didn't find them too bad, but Stephen's face was pretty funny when he tried them.

- playing squares

- listening to ipods

- the bus stopping in the middle of nowhere for the driver to go and chat to his girlfriend for 10 minutes. I'm not making this up.

- a few stops so the driver to pick up some rather underhand type stuff (and yes I do mean underhand - (private joke with my mum and dad) )

- admiring and possibly considering some fruit at one of the pit stops, until an old woman with no jaw climbed all over the table with the fruit on and the spat in a cup

- talking about favourite films/comedians - this was at my request. I needed to be entertained by then

- Stephen moaning about his lack of leg room (which I have to say was pretty minimal)

- Questioning why when it got dark, the lights kept flashing on and off. On and off. On and off.

- Oh yes and quite a bit of sleeping, but the sort that you dribble in and hope no1 sees, or the sort when you wake up and think you're paralysed due to the funny neck position you've been dozing in...

00.30am. Arrive Bangkok in a different bus station to what we expected. Obviously. We wouldn't possibly arrive somewhere that we expected would we?! Not in Thailand. But it was better. We hadn't really thought too much about the next move, but this station was closer to the airport if we had decided to just go get a flight to Chiang Mai. We retrieved our backpacks from underneath, and made our way over to the station. As you'd expect, it was pretty deserted. There were a few people asleep on the floor, or trying to sleep on the chairs. I went and had a long winded conversation with a Thai policeman who thought he could speak english, but couldn't. I managed to find out that the next bus to Chiang Mai was at 4am. So not toooo bad. He also said there was no internet. We cheated and texted a couple of people at home to just ask them to check online for any flights, but not much luck there either. For some reason flights were quite expensive, and there didn't seem to be any for the morning. So we waited. The station became incredibly hot and the mosquitoes were having a picnic. The time went by pretty quickly though, and before we knew it it was 3.30am. For some reason the station came alive at this point. There was a sudden influx of locals going about their business. The policeman came over and pointed outside and said 'Chiang Mai' so I went to investigate. It turned out that 4am was actually the time the ticket booth opened. 7am looked to be the first bus. Another thing we noticed on the way to the shop, was an internet booth...

I was surprised that I wasn't too tired at this point, but we both just wanted to get to Chiang Mai and decided to go to the airport and use Stephen's dimples to talk us on to the first flight... and that's what we did. Well, the airport bit is what we did. What we had forgotten was that it was a long wknd in Thailand. Every flight was booked up for the day. Even the dimples wouldn't have got us up there, so we returned to the bus station. Still, at least our taxi bartering skills were in use. Although Stephen's impression of me bartering sounds like Eliza Doolittle after sinking a bottle of chardonnay. I'm pretty sure I don't sound like that...

So back in the station. All the ticket desks were open now, and queues were forming. Well they don't really queue. Just sort of bundle. We got our tickets for our VIP 1st class bus (this, I had to see) and went to get some food for the next 10 hour journey on the road. Rice for breaksfast didn't seem weird seeing as we hadn't been to bed for a while now. Once again in a truly typical way, we had to rush to finish our food as the bus would be leaving really soon. The journey was similar to the last one, with a couple of pit stops and quick time food shovelling. The bus was actually nicer though. Huge amounts of leg room to stop Stephen's moaning, and the chairs went back so you pretty much felt like you were lying down. There was yet another amusing lady boy as a stewardess who brought round more funny cake things (one that looked like a bum hole - really sorry to lower the tone but I wish I took a picture of it. It looked like it had prunes in it. Haha. Brilliant). They also played Rush Hour 2, very loudly dubbed. I haven't seen it but S said it was funnier that way. The scenery was really amazing. Driving up in to mountains, with more jurassic views of the country. It's really cool.

11 hours later we arrive in Chiang Mai - HURRAY!! I had already called a guest house from my book as we didn't want to chance not having a place to stay! They reserved our room and as an added bonus told me to call when we arrived and they would come and pick us up for free. It actually said that some places do this in my book so I wasn't too suspicious of it. Stephen was. He didn't believe it would happen. But I did actually have a good feeling about Chiang Mai, and low and behold, only a 15 minute wait after my call and a van with the guest house name turned up.

As we drove through the streets I was really excited. I know we still didn't have a new project yet but everything looked really buzzy and like there was plenty to do. I realised that I hadn't really minded the couple of days it took to get from south to north. I actually quite like bus journeys, haha.

Week3 - Khao Lak

"At the time of the tsunami, Khao Lak was Thailand's fastest growing tourist destination. Khao Lak was one of the areas of Thailand hardest hit by the tsunami resulting from the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. Many people died including many foreign tourists. The final death toll was over 4000, with local unofficial estimates topping 10,000 due to the lack of accurate censuses and the mere fact that the Burmese population was not recognized as residents. This confict between the official death toll and the actual loss of life will forever be debated.
Most of the coastal landscape i.e. beaches, resorts and vegetation was completely stripped back by the power of the tsunami. Some replanting programmes have been initiated and a great deal has been accomplished in the rejuvenation of surrounding foilage. Studies suggesting that coastal vegetation may have helped buffer the effects of the waves have ensured that replanting and maintenance of the coastal vegetation have become a priority in the reconstruction of the landscape.."

It was only a 2 hour ish bus journey from Phuket. Getting off at our stop was yet another guess work routine, but we managed. I think it would be easier if the conductor wasn't trying to help. He was signing for us to sit back down when we thought we should be getting up. We have now figured out that this actually means get up off your bums and get off the bus quick time... so after the musical chairs type game we played with the conductor, we had arrived in Khao Lak. We had passed the Tsunami center about 2Km back. Things were looking up for the search of a new project. I had a good feeling about Khao Lak. We sat for a few mintues to get our bearings... well Stephen got the bearings bit. I'm absolutely hopeless at that sort of thing, which I'm sure he wouldn't argue about. Anyway we started walking down the road we thought would take us to all the guest houses that were in Stephen's book. I still had high hopes. That was until we kept being turned away due to places being closed. It was a complete ghost town. And we discovered from finding a new map that Stephen's book possibly hadn't been updated since the tsunami, so it was likely that most of the places we were looking for no longer existed anyway. It was 5pm by now. The heat was immense and both of us were sweating buckets. Oh sorry. I was actually perspiring buckets, not sweating... Anyho, we went to check out the beach. It had a real cold feel to it. Like you knew something bad had happened there. Even 4 years on, there was still rubbish and all sorts all over the beach. We asked a random irish guy on a walk, who said it's all closed for the season, hence the ghost town. He said he had been before the Tsunami and spoke a bit about how lively it was etc. So it was a bit of a sad 15 mintues I think.

We decided to head back up the hill to the main road in hope of finding some sort of hostel for the night. We walked past a place that looked like you might expect to see Fred Flinstone running past your window every morning. I wanted to stay there. We enquired, and the room rate was fine, but the fan was tiiiiinnnnny, and nowhere near the bed. At this stage, we ha to be picky about this. I really felt like I was losing pounds from all the perspiring, and needed to cool down. We headed up the hill again, back to the main road and followed the first sign to 'vacant room'. It was cheaper, and had air con. Bliss. The only thing I was aware of was the HUGE 'WED' ANTS nesting outside our door. Massive things. We dumped our stuff, cooled down and headed out for some food.

I love this part of the story. We still laugh about it. The funniest lady boy I think I'll ever meet along my way. It won't be funny to anyone else I don't think. I'm not laughing at the image because that's his/her decision to be like that, although he/she did look incredibly weird. It was the lisp and the real hanging on the words that did it for me.

Here's a short Thai lesson:

Hello = Sawadeeka

Thank you = Kap-kun-ka

End of lesson

Weird Thai waiter: "Sawadeeeeekkaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" with a huge funny smile.

We ordered our 7-ups and pad thai, and also some spring rolls. I'll never forget his/her reaction to the spring rolls. He/she squealed in almost horror, and then said something very lispy, producing some spit along the way and moving his/her hands around. We figured that they possibly didn't have any, and ordered something else.

Weird Thai waiter: "Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" (probably short for Kapkunka).

The food was amazing. Yes we were very hungry, but it tasted so good. The Pad Thai had something different about it that we couldn't put our finger on at the time. We made a joke that maybe they just had a kettle round the back and it was a thai pot noodle. Now it took us a while. Well a week. We were talking about it and both realised that different element was that of the sweat n' sour type flavouring you get in super noodles. Ha. We don't care. It was still a good Pad Thai, even if it was fake.

So we were a little disappointed at this point. Our search still wasn't as easy as we'd hoped for. I'd been trying to call the volunteer place but the number wasn't working. We walked around the supermarket that claimed to sell everything. Complete lie. And then we went on the internet for a bit that to research some places, and see if anything else was around in the area. We both agreed we didn't like the feel of the place much and wouldn't really like to spend the next 3 weeks there so looked in to leaving early the next day to head up north the Chiang Mai. We'd spoken to an orphanage there so knew we had something to aim for. I was still glad we had gone to Khao Lak though. You have to find these things out for yourself. We headed to the 7-11 for some bedtime water and milk and came outside to a bitch of a monsoon downfall. We stood in disbelief for a few minutes as there hadn't been any signs of rain before going inside. Our room was just 30 seconds away so we made a run for it. 30 seconds later and drenched like 2 people who had just run through a monsoon downpour for 30 seconds, we were home. Well it was home for the night anyway.

A good night's sleep saw us up early the next day. A guy who worked in an information place told us to get a taxi down the road to the bus station (again, using the word 'station' very lightly here) and we would be able to get a bus to bangkok. I think it was about 10am when we got there. The woman told us that the next bus was at 5pm. Great. We were pretty sure we'd seen other buses going places on the main road so we waited on the road to stop any bus that came alone. About 2 hours later, a failed attempt by myself to hitch a ride off a scotsman, and a nice conversation with a couple waiting to go the other way, we stop a bus going to Takua Pau. We didn't want to wait any more and Takua Pau is another bus station so thought there must be more buses going through that way. Here's sod's law for you. As we got on the bus, with our backpacks already packed up underneath, a bus to Bangkok overtook our one.

Doh.

Week 3 - A weekend in Phuket

We found a great guest house in Phuket town, got cleaned up, handed them all our washing to do, and went out for a a nice quiet evening of a couple of drinks and some food. It was quiet alright. Phuket town really didn't have much going on. But we didn't mind, had a nice chilled evening and got the best night's sleep ever. Although me and Vikki left the air con on a bit too low so our room was like a freezer when we got back. The first time i'd actually felt cold in a long while! The following day we packed up our lovely clean clothes and headed out to find the sawngthaew (open air us type thing) that took us to the other side of Phuket - Pattong beach. It wasn't long before we had settled in a new room, got ready and got ourselves down to the beach. Bliss.

The beach was golden (I was convinced it actually had bits of gold in it but Vikki didn't believe me) and the sea was warm and the sun was bloody hot. That's not a complaint by the way. And we still hadn't escaped the constant pestering. One day on the beach, they were actually coming up to us in 3's, selling either aloe vera (some of which an old lady clumped a big blob on Vikki so she was slimey for the rest of the day), dresses (to which Kimberley and I eventually gave in to and bought one each), 'massaaaaages' (they tend to hang on to there words out here), or pipes (the musical kind - i was almost tempted by this as I'm missing playing my clarinet, but it just wasn't the same). The next few days were made up pretty much of beach, food and evenings out. And just to clarify mainly to my mum and dad, that it's not all a drunken blur, ok!! When I say we went out for a few drinks, it just means a few. It doesn't mean we're out 'on the lash' all the time. Just wanted to clear that up because I know exactly what you're thinking!! :)

Apart from the beach, the nightlife wasn't too much to boast about. I was pretty sickened by the amount of middle aged 'falang' men (white men) who obviously came here on their holidays purely to get their wicked ways with the ladies... and lady boys. I'm not naive about these things, but it's actually everywhere and right in your face. Not discrete in any way at all. I just didn't like it. One evening we found and irish pub though and had a good giggle in there. They had live irish music which is always good, and Kimberley and I had a bit of a jig. Oh and we ended up getting KFC on the way home, which we have now vowed not to be doing any more. Yuk...

... but that didn't work as the next evening we ended up in McDonalds. Doh. It's just too easy!! This was followed by a late night dip in the sea (with clothes on of course). That was funny though, as were the looks we got from people walking back to our hostel with wet sandy clothes. I actually ended up throwing away that top because it was far too sandy to wash or put back in my backpack. Makes a lighter backpack though!

Anyway back to the real stuff. So a few days of holidaying. Oh yes and the last night we found the Saxophone pub, obviously at my request. I loved it in there. They had a live band playing classic jazz songs. Couldn't really understand what the woman was singing but the music was good and we played some pool. I let Stephen win coz I can tell he's a real bad loser.

Another amusing part of Phuket were the random signs we saw. A couple we got pictures of as above, and that t-shirt. We all want one because it really does round up what you get hassled with every other step you take! Another funny sign was one on the beach advertising the water sports. Before it gives the prices it says "Good Luck". Needless to say I didn't fancy doing any. This also had something to do with the rastafarian swinging on the ropes of the parasailing. Funny to watch but I wouldn't fancy him jumping around and swinging on it when I was up there.

So anyway, really back to the story. At this point it was time for us all to part. Vikki was flying home in a few days so she had decided to make her way back to Bangkok for a couple of days of shopping and a luxury hotel. Kimberely had friends who had arrived in Phi Phi so she was heading that way, and Stephen and I had decided to venture on to find the new project we kept threatening to do. This was another 2 day decision by the way. I'm hoping the decision making will get better. Maybe we should just play the dice game. Anyway we had decided to head back up north a little to Khao Lak (on the map above). In our books it explained it was the worse affected area from the Tsunami, and there was a Tsunami volunteer centre there. "We must be able to find something there." So Monday morning we all went our separate ways, sob :(

We jumped on the sawngthaew back to Phuket town, lost about 3 stone walking with our backpacks to find the bus station again, and got on a bus to Khao Lak.

Week 2 - Journey to Phuket

So we set off to Hua Hin station after a bit of grub. The only class left was 3rd. It was fine as it was obviously the cheapest. So we braced ourselves for how we were to spend the next 7 hours. I wondered if it would be any better than connex south eastern. The train was delayed by 30 minutes, so no it wasn't any better so far... It actually wasn't as bad as expected. We had a few fights with mosquitoes and other unknown bugs, and then there was the T-Rex that jumped on our train, ripped it apart and roared up to the chilling moon. That was fun. Ok so that part was made up. It was the rather backdated breaks that stopped the train and the random crashing sound made it sound like it was a T-rex. Also the pitch black surroundings gave the whole thing a J Park feel. I got pretty excited about it and know a certain sister who would have done as well :)

But we got there. It's always a bit hit and miss with these journeys as to when to get off. Most of the station signs are just in Thai. We jumped off at the stop we figured was probably the right one. Our guide books had said that from here we were to get a taxi to the bus garage. So some french bloke started hounding us, saying he would take us to the bus garage. He boasted that it had internet access, sofas, drinks etc for while we were waiting. The cost to get there was about quadruple what we'd expected (still cheap in english terms but expensive for thailand). It was 2am at this point and nothing much else around so we bartered him down as much as possible and agreed to be ripped off just to get to this glorious bus garage.

10 minutes later on a tuk tuk thing that kept cutting out, and we arrived. It was at this point that I really started to realise that trusting what people say is just not the done thing. We would have gone there anyway, despite the pesky french guy, but I would have described the 'garage with sofas' more as a 'small room with some plastic garden chairs'... Then phase 2 of being ripped off. The woman selling tickets told us it was about triple what we had expected. We started to wonder if this was in fact the actual bus garage in the guide book but figured it was late, there was nothing else around so we may as well stick with what we had. We got the price down a little and then she buggered off to sleep somewhere. We were left with her sleeping son next to the desk, 2 PCs with internet, and some plastic chairs to get cosy with. Oh and a 4 hour wait for our bus. I decided to brave the toilet, having not been for about 8 hours I was pretty desperate. Now, before embarking on this trip I was aware I'd have to get used to less western type loos and showers and stuff but I just couldn't bring myself to even pull my shorts down in this one. Mainly because I needed both fists to fight the biggest mosquito I've ever seen. I escaped before the attack though. Stephen had the same sort of restling issue. I think Vikki managed it though. Brave brave girl. So I was left still desperate to go. Kimberley and I ventured out in to the night to find a seven 11 (a 24 hr mini mart pretty much on every corner of every street in thailand). 15 minutes later we found one, and they kindly let us use the lovely western loo. After having to buy the loo paper of course. We got a couple of 'chicken' burgers and headed back. The 'chicken' burgers tasted of feet. A few hours later, the bus arrives. We actually nearly missed it as we went for another toilet run. Typical. So we stepped on to the next part of our journey to Phuket. The ticket lady told us it was 3-4 hours...

...7 hours later we arrived at Phuket. However the scenery along the way was really great. And more J Park setting with huge trees and massive leaves and mountains and stuff like that. Without meaning to sound too cheesy, I didn't mind any of the journey as it was all adventure like and you didn't really know what to expect next!! (Apart from more dinosaurs of course).

Week 2 - A new twist to the original volunteering project

It was around this time of the week that we found out from a teacher at the school we had been volunteering in, that the supervisor who had apparently resigned, had actually not... she had turned up on Monday morning with 2 new eager volunteers as if nothing had happened. We had been in touch with a number of new volunteers over facebook. One of them told us that Original Volunteers (the name of the company) had been telling people the reason why we were asked to leave is because we got drunk all the time and didn't respect the thai dress code for school. Absoutely absurd. I won't bore you with it, but in a nutshell there was another looong email (not as long as the last essay though), a few phonecalls, and some angry ranting between the group. We couldn't believe or understand it had happened. But I think it's for the best anyway. That woman was a right psycho...

What made us even more angry was the company didn't have any explanation to all the lies, and even more so they told us to not tell any of the new volunteers the truth about what happened to us or they wouldn't refund us and may take us to court. As if.

Week 2 - Hua Hin

So on the Sunday we packed up our bits and headed to south terminal bus station, got our ticket and hopped on the bus to Hua Hin. After 4 hours of some sleep, repeatative thai music, monkeys roaming out the window, and the cutest thai girl we'd seen so far (she watched us for a lot of the journey. I think Stephen's face confused her) we arrive in Hua Hin. Kimberley and Vikki had already booked us in to a guesthouse so we headed there. It was great. Like a little ship inside, which matched the style of the town itself. A cute little seaside town. I didn't really feel like I was in Thailand for the few days we were there for. It could have been any seaside town. We spent the next couple of days having a wander, sitting on the beach, creating this blog, eating at 'Gobs' (some of the best fish n chips), having a night time stroll on the beach (and nearly getting attacked by rabid dogs - though I could be slightly over exaggerating that bit), eating, walking through the night market, and having an evening of tea lights, cards and vodka on our ship-like balcony. We watched a lot of people from that balcony too. After 3 nights we decided to move on further south to Phuket...

Week 2 - A Wknd in Bangkok

We decided to stay in Bangkok for a couple of days to decide what to do next. Me and Stephen were keen to find a new project to work on. Natalia and Coco only had a few days left so wanted to go to Koh Samet (and island just south of Bangkok). Kimberley and Vikki wanted to head south to the islands. If anyone knows how indecisive I am, then you'll know that I really wouldn't know what to choose to do here. Luckily I had Stephen. Oh no wait. Stephen is possibly even worse than me on making decisions. It actually took us 2 days to decide to follow Kimberley and Vikki and head south. We figured we could head to Phuket and find something there.

Meanwhile our wknd in Bangkok involved eating, wandering around, having travellers tummy, less eating and watching the tennis.

The others went to the zoo, but I really wasn't feeling well. I am going back to Bangkok with Rachel and Sarah when they are here, so I'd rather save the sightseeing until then. I wasn't too impressed by Bangkok so far though. Too hustly for me and started feeling the urge to punch anyone else who asked if I wanted a tuk tuk...

Week 1 - the nutter supervisor resigns

So my original plan was to volunteer my time for the first 4 weeks. I had done research on the company, and everything seemed ok up until my arrival. As I said before, I wasn't too pleased about the set up when I arrived but there's not much you can do but get on with it. Kimberley had actually complained to the company when she arrived but they didn't even reply to her. But it wasn't just the company that led to what happened. It was mainly the supervisor...

Suvannah. In a nutshell, and so I won't get myself all angry over her again, she is a nutjob. I was only there for 1 week, and she wasn't there for 3 of those days, and I could see it. The other guys had weeks before this though so I count myself lucky.
Crazy example 1: Vikki and Stephen asked to do some washing. She said that it was fine and even to give it to her daughter to do and give her 5 baht for her trouble. They didn't really feel too comfortable with this. Especially 5 baht. It's nothing. But Suvannah insisted it was fine. So they did. When washing was done, Vikki gave the daughter the 5 baht, and Suvannah went absolutely nuts at them. Saying how disrespectful they were to do what they did etc.
Crazy example 2: One evening when Suvannah took Vikki and Kimberley up t'north to another school, we decided to just get some cheap noodles and eat dinner in for a change. Not with any music though coz it wasn't allowed. So just Stephen, Natalia, Coco and myself with a plate of noodles and 1 beer each we got to wash it down with (actually I think Natalie and Coco even shared one). We put the rubbish out on Thursday, which was rubbish day. On the way to school that morning, both Stephen and Natalia (the only ones with phones) got a huge number of missed calls from Suvannah. When they called back they got a bollocking about getting drunk and how we're disrespectful to her and her family etc. Oh and apparently we were giving her a bad reputation in the neighbourhood.

Like I said I won't go in to it, but she really is a crazy lady and on the thursday evening she called us together to say that she'd had enough of us and she was resigning from the company. We had to leave the house the following day and were not allowed back to the school after Friday to continue our volunteering. I actually felt quite relieved. Most of the others had pretty much finished their time there anyway, but me and Stephen still had a number of weeks to go. We went to the school on Friday morning to say goodbye and tell our teacher friends what had happened. They said that if she had resigned then we'd be able to go back and work there anyway, and so they would keep us posted on the situation. We went back, packed up our stuff and headed to Bangkok.

Stephen and I got on to the computer to write Original Volunteers (the company) an email. We found they had emailed us to say they would refund us, or they are also trying to find a new project so we could wait for them to tell us about that one. Their email was quite defensive of Suvannah so we decided to write just to let them know that it was in fact her that caused the problems


"Hello,

Thanks for your email. We are glad to hear that you are currently working to resolve the situation. However, we feel that the whole project has not really been what we signed up for, and because of the tone of your email, we would like to take the opportunity to inform and enlighten you about Suvanah's "determination".

Both Stephen and I (we are both writing this together) feel extremely angry about the situation that we have been put in and think that Suvanna has been the main reason for the project to collapse. You are probably unaware that the volunteer apartment that we thought we would be living in alone is actually being occupied by Suvanna and her family. This caused huge privacy problems and also opposed what OV led us to believe. We all have emails to confirm that the volunteers share their own apartment and the supervisor lived in a separate accommodation. When we arrived we thought this a bit odd but decided to just get on with things, thinking it wouldn't make too much difference. But it did. Personally being in my mid twenties if I had known I was being doing a home stay then I would not have signed up with OV. We were made to keep to regimental rules, including not being able to stay out late (even on the wknd), not being allowed to have even 1 bottle of beer with our food (even on the patio outside), not being able to use the washing machine without hassle and moaning from Suv. She also constantly threatened to take us to another apartment which she described as a 'shithole', unless we stopped 'misbehaving'. She never had anything positive to say to us, always moaning on about how lucky we were to be on the project and how the school didn't need or appreciate us (we heard otherwise from many of the teachers at the schools). Apparently we also ruined her reputation in the village which we feel is outrageous because A) she wasn't even meant to be living there, and B) there was absolutely never any misbehaving by any of the volunteers.

Suv also regularly kept 'forgetting' what she had already told us. For example - During Stephen's first week, on one of the days the lessons did not start until 9.30am so she told both him and Vikki that they could lay in, but then she proceeded to knock on their door at 6am the following morning to shout and moan about why they had not yet left. She then denied ever allowing them to lay in. Likewise when we were told that we were allowed to drink beer outside the house, we were once again told off when she saw the 4 empty bottles in the rubbish. We also feel that the others were persistantly bullied by Suv by the way she disrespectfully spoke to them. She constantly told all the girls about being dressed inappropriately, even when she often helped choose and buy the said attire.

As she sat us down last night to tell us that she was resigning from OV, she began by calling us 'assholes' which I found extremely rude seeing as we have done nothing wrong, and have travelled all this way to give our time to a project we were all looking forward to. Noone ever deserves to be treated as we were.

So revisiting what we mentioned earlier about the accommodation, we would like to point out why we think that we have been mislead by OV as well. Aside from the apartment being ocupied by the supervisor and her family, there were only 5 beds for 6 volunteers. Stephen has spent the last 2 weeks sleeping on the floor, when he expected to at least have a single bed, as the documentation outlined. The accommodation was also over 30 minutes away from the schools unlike what we were lead to believe. It was more like 1 hour for the morning and in one case, 3 hours on the way home. We would like to say that the laundry situation was unacceptable. What exactly were we paying rent for? I personally resorted to just doing hand washing just so not to get an earful. Considering the total amount we handed to Suv for rent, or in Stephen's case to OV, and the possibility that Suv was living there rent free, we should have been at least been allowed to do one wash each a week. We have done some research and the money we all paid could actually rent us quite a luxurious apartment or two in the area, or even closer to the school. There was absolutely no need for the 'shithole' threats. We both found them personally degrading.

We would like to ask you where the rest of the airport transfer fee goes? This should have been no more than 10 pounds per pick up, as some of the others have done the journey since. Natalia and Corinne were even charged 25 pounds each when they were collected together. We understand the need for OV to make profit but the margin that is added to this service is extortionate and prays on the good will of the volunteers.

One last thing that we feel we were deceived by is the description of the actual school project. We both agree that the one reason we signed up to this particular project was to offer our help to underpriviledged children. This was an average school for Bangkok and could be compared to any state school within England, comparative to the respective country. The OV documentation also stated that if anyone wasn't comfortable leading the class then they could simply be an assistant, but given the nature of the heavy timetable this could never be seen as an option.

Personally Stephen and I have decided to go and find another project ourselves, and therefore are requesting a full refund of our administration fee and remaining rent as follows:

Anya : 30 pounds (3 weeks) + 295 admin fee
Stephen: 295 + 110 pounds (2 weeks @ 20 pounds, and 2 weeks @ 35 pounds) and at your discretion some kind of rebate considering he was attempting to sleep on a hard floor for the first two weeks.

Apologies for the long email but we feel that given the defensive tone of your email towards Suvanna, we wanted to tell you that in no way was the project let down by us volunteers and hope you can use the above to move forward with arranging future projects. We also advise that you issue some sort of contract to the next supervisor, which we are aware didn't happen, as we are all now in a situation which is costly and wasting what we feel is our precious volunteering time that we were all so looking forward to.

We anticipate your acknowledgement of our email and that you recognise that we all did give everything during our stay.

Best regards,
Anya Lukover and Stephen Goodwin

PS - Please can we request a contact number for Poppy who we have been informed arrives today. We can't imagine how she will feel when she turns up at the airport to this mess. We would just like to let her know that she can come and meet us if she is feeling disorientated. Stephen's contact for his Thai mobile is: 0838307371. If you could let her know to call from a payphone as it doesn't work otherwise!"

Week 1 - The school

Well I only ended up doing 1 week of volunteering, which I will go on to tell you later, but rather than going through our day by day journey I thought I would just list my highlights and possibly lowlights:

• 5am wake up to leave the house by 6am to catch the bus which took about 45 mins.


• Morning assembly - 30 minutes of singing the national anthem and reading out stuff. Oh and a really ugly looking and sounding teacher who shriked for about 20 minutes. Poor kids.


• Kids placing their big huge bags (and a few small suitcases) on the back of their chairs so they could barely sit on them


• Mafia kids at the back of the class. One girl fanning herself with some money and then picking on a small kid for some more money. I managed to stop this though. Well that time anyway.


• A huge amount of gay kids. Usually a couple would be made up of one huge fat kid and a complete opposite tiny kid. The tiny kid would sit stroking the fat kids head or sitting on his lap making 'bumming' movements. We weren't too sure what to do with these. They were only about 8 yrs old.


• Every kid wanting to touch you and shake hands and say good morning. I had a clear favourite who we'd see about 3 times a day and he'd come running over and high five us a few times. He was so happy.


• Teaching kids the YMCA


• Being constantly called 'Teacher, Teacher"


• Getting worried by the HUGE wasp, but then calming down when the naughty kid swats it out the air with his ruler and cuts it in to little pieces. Good work.


• The sleeping cat


• The random dog who walked in and out of our lessons


• Trying to teach the colour 'red', but giving up as they really can only manage 'wed'


• Spending 10 minutes on one kid telling him different ways to say 'I'm fine thank you'... That's all they say. Hello, how are you... and they say robotically 'i'm fine thank you, and you'... So after 10 minutes of teaching him 'I'm good thanks', I ask him again. "Hi, how are you?' and his response... 'I'm fine thank you, and you'...


• The bus home. It was hard to know which one to get so we minimised it to lookin out for the driver with massive hands (hands mcgee), and not getting on the one with the conductor who had a big scar on her face (burnface). Needless to say we got a few cabs home.

And then each evening we'd either head to the mall or just chill at the house (which we could only do because the supervisor took Kim and Vikki to a school up north for a few days).

Week 1 - In the beginning

Well, where to start? From the beginning is probably the way to do it. Thursday June 26th 11:55am. I'll just sum up my journey from Heathrow terminal 3 with a few basic do's and dont's:

• Don't ask if your lighter (which apparently you are now allowed to take on the plane. Absurd. Your tweezers get taken off you but lighters are fine??) is likely to blow up. You will get a horrified look. Just smile and walk on..



• Don't believe the guy checking you in when he tells you he will upgrade you for free. Likewise don't take him seriously when he jokes about your visas not being valid. He's just practising he's stand up routine. I didn't really rate it much.



• Do flirt with the security guy testing your toiletries for drugs etc.



• Don't offer him your hand cream to use



• Don't watch chic flick movies back to back after 2 weeks of minimum sleep and maximum emotion. It'll end in tears.



• Do watch 59 minutes of Louis Theroux. He's a genious and a complete stud.



• Don't sit behind a nutter who competes with any babies that cry. You are not likely to get ANY sleep on your 12 hr flight to Singapore.



• Do chat to the lovely couple from Melbourne next to you. They will give you their address and number for you to get in touch for a cuppa when you arrive in Melbourne. Really really lovely. We made lots of jokes about the nutter in front of us as well. He claimed to have taken 2 sleeping pills about 200 million times. That a lot of times. But quite frankly they didn't work. Thanks Deanna and Robert. Oh and Deanna informed me that we were flying on a brand new A380 Airbus. So anyone who's in to their plnes can be impressed by that. I was. It was huge. They had to build a new terminal at Singapore for it. Didn't realise they'd go to such great lengths for my arrival.

So I eventually I arrive in Bangkok on Friday 27th June @ 11am and get a small scare when my backpack is pretty much last to show it's pink self. But it did show. And the supervisor was there, as was Kimberley who I had been chatting to loads online for a few weeks. She's another volunteer. We jump in a taxi and drive about 30 minutes to what was going to be my home for the next 4 weeks. Kimberley informed me that Suvannah, the supervisor, was actually living with us as well. This wasn't what I expected and was a bit disappointed with it as I didn't care to be supervised in my own time as well, but there wasn't much we could do about it anyway. I was shown to my room and my rock hard bed and I made myself at home. This pretty much involved spreading my clothes out around the room and placing random bags on and around my bed. Ahhh. The house was big and clean.

The other volunteers were still at school so Kimberley said she'd take me on a bit of a tour around our little town. I don't think any of it had sunk in yet really. We walked up the road a little and Kim started telling me about the crazy transport. She then gave me a prime example of it too by actually getting hit by a motorbike... ok so it wasn't funny at the time but it is now. It completely came out of knowhere as we crossed the road. She got flipped up in the air and came crashing down. Luckily she sort of landed a bit on the bike which broke her fall so only ended up with a few grazes on her back. Oh and an awesome scar to tell the tale for years to come. So back we went to the house to clean up. Then out again, down to the mall for a mooch around. The mall had everything you need - McDonalds (joke), clothes stalls, food hall with dishes of food for about 50p, internet, supermarket, lepers... I bought a dress. I had to. It had stars all over it. But figured at the grand old price of 150 baht (about 2 pound) it'd be ok. And I made a rule that for every item I buy, I had to leave one behind.

We headed back, and I met the others. Kimberley, Stephen, Vikki, Natalia, and Coco. All lovely and we hit it off straight away. None were too pleased about the set up though, which I had already picked up on myself. There seemed to be a number of rather regimented rules that we had to stick to, which I would soon find out got even worse...

That evening (still Friday, when I had not really slept since Tuesday night) we took a bus in to Bangkok to go and see Pendulum, a Drum n Bass night. It was awesome. We had THE best night. What a way to start off. It was wicked. Lots of dancing, or in my case, jumping. Next stop McDonalds. It had to be done. But the nuggets were no good. I think Stephen did warn me but I went ahead anyway. They don't do BBQ sauce so it's just not worth it. We then got it in to our heads to go to a ping pong show, despite Vikki not thinking it appropriate after her burger, so we stopped a cab and Kimberley shouted 'ping pong' a few times at the puzzled driver. Luckily he didn't really get it, so we headed home. I actually slept like a baby.

Next day we went to a school opposite where we lived. We were there to just chat to some students. The school was far from underpriveledged, which does sound awfully picky of me, but I didn't really want to volunteer my time to rich kids. Anyway we went round in different groups and chatted about day to day stuff. They were 15-20 yrs old so they had a good grasp anyway. But it was like we were famous. Afterwards they whacked out their mobile phones and brand new cameras and took a zillion pictures. All the girls kept saying to us girls how beautiful we are. "I know" I replied... We were given donuts which we tucked in to, until we found curried potatoes inside. Slightly odd and not very nice. I wouldn't recommend it. Stephen had a funny moment when he was trying to explain to the group of gays at the back, that he actually liked girls. So he pointed to the girl next to him, who he claimed to have a 'nice set of pins on er' and said "beautiful", to which they all fell about laughing. He then noticed that she had pretty huge feet attached to her lovely pins, and a fairly big adam's apple. Haha.

Saturday evening we went to some Mongolian BBQ place with our supervisor and her family. We had to go collect the food in the middle which included meats we weren't too sure of and then cook it ourselves at our tables. We weren't too overly happy about cooking left out meat for ourselves but just went for it in the end and did it. I had a tiny bit of chicken and then just filled up on rice. It was nice, but I think we were still just over cautious about that sort of thing. Im sure we'll get in to it. So then we headed in to Bangkok again. Natalie, Coco and Stephen and I decided to stay there for the night so we could just get up Sunday and have a snoop around. So we found a hostel at 2 pounds a night... went for a few drinks. I stayed up with Stephen to watch the footie finals, which at 2am we realised wasn't on til the next day. Doh. So we got up the next day and had breakfast. We were in Koah San Road which is very commercialised so we had scambled egg on toast. Very Asian. It was scrummy though. We looked round and then decided to go to the cinema and watched Wanted. Don't bother. It's pants. Went and got some food (actually about 8 hrs gone past since breakfast so we're not just pigs). I had my 1st thai green curry which i had been craving and it blew my head off. But I ate it all. I don't like leaving food even if it does feel like it's actually burning my insides!