Considering that any discussion of Chanthaburi
in Bangkok had been accompanied by a health food warning, the only real thing I
knew about the region was confirmed; its local cuisine was pretty good. In
spite of my apparent inevitable weight gain and the fact that my only real
teaching experience was in skiing (certainly nothing academic), I was looking
forward to the challenge of living and working alone in Thailand. Having just
returned from a semester in Denmark, where I lived with a Danish family, I felt
adequately prepared to accept whatever Chanthaburi threw my way.
We had each been appointed a Thai
mentor, who had, in theory, been present throughout the orientation programme
too, and would be our first point of call should we have any issues over the
next eight weeks. Initial confusion arose as I tried to ascertain whether my
mentor was actually a really feminine man, or maybe just a slightly masculine
female. However, it quickly became clear that there were much more pressing
issues at hand. Like the means of communication. My mentor was obviously very
good at speaking English; in fact, he was pretty good at speaking full stop. It
was more a question of making myself understood, because he literally would not
listen to a word I was saying. As we made our way down South, my surroundings
got more and more remote, and it all felt a world away from Bangkok.
My mentor informed me that for the
next eight weeks I would be living with his friends. Upon arrival in a more
remote area of Chanthaburi, it transpired that there was no one in, and after a
few phone calls in rapid Thai, it seemed pretty clear that no one was expecting
me either. Eventually a girl of about fourteen came to the door, holding a handkerchief
to her face. My mentor later explained to me that she was off school sick, and in
the apparent absence of any adult member of the family, he had instructed her
to clean a room in which I could stay. Meanwhile, he showed me around the
school. The school itself seemed lovely, a primary school about fifteen minutes
from the house, and had other international teachers, too. The only problem was
that no-one seemed to know why I was there. It was all kind of dodgy; I had
absolutely no affinity with my mentor, and he was apparently the only person
who was aware of me, in this foreign school, in an alien place. The other
teachers that tried to communicate with me seemed to be more interested in
whether I thought he was a ladyboy than anything else.
My mentor took me back to the
house, and showed me to my room. However, it quickly became apparent that not
only did I not have my own room, but that I was also to share a bed with the
family’s fourteen year old daughter. Extremely exhausted and essentially
rendered speechless by the ridiculousness of my situation, my mentor explained
that he had to go but that the parents would be back from work later. To make
matters worse, I realised that my new ‘roomie’ could not speak a word of
English, and was painfully shy to the extent that any communication was practically
impossible. The parents both worked fifteen hour days, and could not speak a
word of English between them. It wasn’t the language barrier that was the main
issue, more the total lack of any privacy and the intense isolation. The family
tried their utmost to be nice to me, and I really wish I could thank them
properly for their hospitality, but they clearly had no idea how long I was
staying, who I was, and whether they would be receiving any sort of financial compensation
for hosting me. To this end, I felt like a total burden, unsure if I should
offer money, and not even bearing any sort of gifts, since our contracts had explicitly
assured us that a host family was out of the question. Obviously, my tiredness exacerbated the
situation, but running out of credit in a 7/11- less part of town, whilst frantically
trying to call home was pretty much the last straw.
Things went from bad to worse the
next morning when I tried to have a sensible discussion with my mentor about
the shortfalls of my accommodation. His refusal to address the situation
essentially meant that by the time the Ministry of Education were involved at
lunchtime, we were no longer on speaking terms. Fortunately the British Council
were fantastic throughout the whole ridiculous drama, and, by early- afternoon,
I had been assured that they were working towards a solution.
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