BangkokOddballs.com

That’s right I hit the jackpot! I was offered (and accepted) a job teaching in a UK independent school  - Economics and IELTS.

This was after successfully completing a PGCE following a few years TEFL teaching abroad in Thailand and Japan. The main reason I left Thailand (after 3 years) was because of lack of opportunity and to earn more money and develop a real, solid career in teaching. Securing this

The Government are offering $30 reward for each croc captured, well done sirs! $10 each.

job which began in September 2011 I feel kind of vindicated my decision to return despite being reluctant to leave Bangkok.

There are lots of good things about the new school. For starters it has high entrance fees which does tend to keep the riff raff out and class sizes are small. It is a very professional working environment with plenty of scope for development free of the restrictions of a government school. Overall it so far has proven a great place to work.

The downsides of the jobs are that expectations are much higher e.g. two year courses squeezed into one and pressure for higher grades. Still the two real drawback of the job are a) that it is in the UK and b) the pay.

Let’s face it it is hard for any place in the world to compete with Bangkok for the sheer awesomeness of lifestyle. The food, the relaxed attitude, the smiles, the weather, a grim small English town can hardly compare to this. Some people here think the location is idyllic and fair play to them, however I’m not one of those people.

It is a real problem for me that everywhere I go, I compare it to Bangkok. I know a lot of teacher’s here in the UK would kill for this job and my set-up right now and I’m trying hard to suppress the urge to jump on the next flight back to where I feel my real home is. I don’t know if I am thinking of Bangkok through rose tinted spectacles or not, but life here doesn’t stack up despite other people telling how lucky I am to have this job.

I mean for example, take the salary. After rent, food, car expenses and other daily essentials I can save about £300, which is about 15,000 baht per month. I could easily save that amount or more if I went back to even a half decent international/bilingual school. Ok, I wouldn’t have the teacher’s pension plan ticking over in the background like I do now but as regards disposable income I reckon I would be much better off.

For arguments sake lets’ say I landed a job for 70,000b/month at a decent school. I know I can happily live in Bangkok on 40,000b and I could pocket the extra 30,000b. I would, to my mind have a much more enjoyable lifestyle and be able to satisfy my urge to see more of the world in the holidays. Speaking of which I have to balance this up against the ridiculous amount of holiday I do get with my current job – 17 weeks fully paid holiday per year! That is awesome and is something I wouldn’t get in Bangkok.

In fact over Christmas I have a month off! So, guess what I am planning, a trip to see some old buddies in Bangkok. I have no intention of doing less than a year at this school and ideally I’d like to stick it out for two years as that seems to be the bare minimum requirement for teaching experience if you want to apply for real international school jobs as suggested in reputable international school job search agencies such as Search Associates.

Splish, splash, splosh!

It has been hard readjusting to a farang working environment, it is pretty serious and people are much less likely to have fun and relax at work. Everyone is always racing around doing something and students whilst yes, they are well behaved, they are still not as fun to teach as Thai students.

Having said that, you can get a lot more real, problem solving type activities on the go, which require real thinking and analytical skills which in my experience Thai students really seemed to lack the ability to do.

As I mentioned earlier I am also teaching IELTS to the international students here, this was one of the main reasons I was offered the job I’m sure. There were over 80 applicants for the job but amazingly none of the other short listed candidates had taught abroad, so I really do feel that my TEFL teaching experience in Asia was seen as valid and that it did most certainly count for something. So if anyone else out there is thinking of making the break back to the UK, that should offer some hope!

The interview was OK, I never really have a problem with them, just be myself, be honest, show some personality and it usually goes down
well. The sample lesson also went well, I taught the third conditional to a small group of Chinese students using pictures and put together a sweet ass lesson plan to back it up with.

So, now I have bought this blog bang up to date. I have been doing this job since September, still missing Thailand and longing to go back, but at the same time trying to keep everything in perspective and realise how lucky I am and that if nothing else I am laying myself the foundations for a future career in international teaching!

At the time of writing the flooding situation is still ongoing, check out this hilarious video telling the real story…

It has been a long and arduous 14 months since returning from LOS and I am greatly looking forward to returning for a holiday! I will continue to blog about my teaching, hopefully adding a few different sections to this site. I wanted to start off by telling ‘my story’ so anyone reading can get an idea of my background and the type of person I am but from now on I shall be also be adding posts about topical news and other general comment on the Bangkok scene.  If you are interested in following the future updates of this site then please give us a book mark and pop back soon.

Chok dee kap

James

Your BangkokOddBall in Chief

So, I had finally decided to be bite the bullet and return to the UK after about 4 years living in Thailand on an off. I was planning on leaving Thailand to do a PGCE teacher training course which would enable me to get better paying jobs in the future.

Destination UK via Suvarnabhumi

As mentioned in the previous post I could see little future in staying in the TEFL teaching game in Thailand long term and felt I needed to further myself in some capacity. Becoming a properly qualified teacher seemed like the answer. There were two major stumbling blocks to this though.

The first stumbling block was the PGCE application process. This is can be a rather drawn out process which is especially so when applying from abroad. The process requires the applicant to complete a lengthy online form on the GTTR (Graduate Teacher Training Registry, the UK government orgranisation responsible for teacher recruitment) website outlining all of your credentials and most importantly a lengthy and impressive personal statement about why you want to be a teacher. This needs completing as soon as possible as some universities work on a first come forst serve basis. For that reason I gave myself a deadline of December 09 to complete this all by so that I would be able to start the PGCE course in September of 2010 i.e. well in advance, I didn’t want to muck this up now that I had made the decision.

The applications process also requires the submission of two references via email. I wasn’t sure how much weight they would give to my boss’s reference from Bangkok although I had been there so long it would have looked odd if I hadn’t included that one (he gave me one, it was excellent – beer provided). For the second referee I contacted someone from the school I had worked at in the UK so that was pretty water tight but this still took a few weeks to organise and work through. The GTTR system sends e-mails to the referees who then fill in the forms and send them back. The application form cannot be submitted until this has been done.

Thai Air Hostesses Soften The Blow!

I was also required to select 5 different universities that I would be happy to study at along with the courses that they offered. For this I had to ferret around a bit to get the correct course codes and so on but nothing to dramatic. Finally after making an online payment of around £30 (cheeky fuckers!), I was able to submit the form.

After a few weeks my first choice university offered me an interview. Whilst I contacted the university to ask, they declined the option of an interview via Skype and instead I had to use up all ten of my annual vacation days to take a trip back to blighty for an interview (yes I did only have 10 days per year). It felt like a bit of a waste of my annual leave but to be fair I hadn’t been back to the UK and seen my family for 3 years so I guess it wasn’t all bad. I also concluded that it would allow me some useful insights into life back into the UK which would hopefully make the transition back to UK life a bit easier when the time came.

The interview went smoothly enough, no questions too tricky and I managed to sell my time in Bangkok teaching TEFL as valuable teaching experience in a variety of different settings blah blah blah. I must say however that I did feel that the year I had spent previously as a Cover Supervisor teacher in the UK and the time I spent teaching TEFL in Japan sort of legitimised my CV i.e. I felt it didn’t come across as though I was just teaching in Thailand for an extended holiday or something. That and my generally positive demeanour and confidence I think led me to receiving an offer letter in the post a week later.

Disturbingly however the insights I had hoped to gain of being in the UK again were not overly positive. I remember walking back to the car after the interview and walking through a ‘average looking housing estate’ housing estate. A young Asian gentleman was bringing his bins in (trash cans for you yanks) and was at the end of his drive as I walked passed. I looked up and we made eye

Bye Bye Grand Palace!

contact. I smiled (accidentally I guess, still in Thai mode) to which he responded to me with a brash:

“What you fucking looking at!”

Charming I thought. Of course I didn’t grace that abuse with a response and walked on. Of course the weather was none to impressive either although I must say I had missed the changing of the seasons/weather, fresh air and lower humidity levels. So, both good and bad on that point.

I always also shocks me that after I arrive back at Heathrow and make my way through London how multi-cultural it is, and I never really feel at home straightaway. London is incredibly culturally diverse which is clearly evident by the different faces on the street and languages heard, a remarkable mix. Generally the further away from London you get the more the diversity wears thin, however on this trip it was striking that the number of eastern Europeans had increased. There had seemed to be a significant increase during my time away, as evidenced by a) the visible numbers on the street b) the number of Polish shops and c) The number of Polish service staff. Frankly speaking the place seemed awash with Poles!

Not a complaint as such, just an observation. It does seem a tad unfair however that they can come and use our NHS, dental clinics and social security and benefits system without ever putting the years and years of income tax into the system, like for example my father has. This is one of the major reasons the NHS is on its knees! The UK needs much tighter policies regarding immigration to prevent Poles and others from taking advantage of a system that they have not contributed enough too. There, I said it and it felt f++king good!

A Life Without Durian

Anyway, having spent most of my time on that trip with family I returned to Bangkok with the prospect of a 5 month countdown before I would be going back to the UK on a more permanent basis –that fact still scared the shit out of me! What would I do without my fix of beer bars, tom yum, durian and so on. Could I possibly survive without at least one island weekend per month? The list of fears grew in my mind daily!

Still, the university had a few further hurdles for me to cross. The CRB form (Criminal Records Bureau check - UK government site) being next. This basically requires you to provide the details of all your addresses for the last 5 years so the UK police can check out whether or not you have been a bad boy and if you are fit to be a teacher or not.

As I had been out of the UK for the majority of that time this caused a bit of hassle. The uni sent the form to me in Bangkok so I initially filled in my current addresses as being in Thailand but this application was trashed as apparently you are not allowed to apply for a CRB form from abroad. As this is a physical form the university had to then send out another form which I was instructed to lie on as to my current whereabouts! This seemed a little odd but what the hec.

For the time I had spent living in Thailand I had to make something known as a sworn declaration whereby on the first day of university I was sat in front of a lawyer and literally had to say: ‘during my time in Thailand I had been a good boy’ or words to that effect and that was enough to pass the much vaunted CRB check.

No CRB Check Required For Those Hiding In Pattaya!

This CRB check is supposed to prevent undesirables from becoming teachers but it clearly is not very effective if the applicant has been living abroad for any length of time. In fact it is a bit of a joke considering what some people get up to when they are let loose on the world! Still it is not like they can ask the Thai police to do checks on foreigners – they’d never be organised enough for that – and even if they were they could easily be paid off I’m sure.

Anyway with the CRB finally done and out of the way the only other thing that I had to concern myself with was gaining finance from the UK government to actually give me some money to support myself on the course. Different amounts of funding were available for different subjects. If you were studying to be a Math teacher for example you could get a whopping £9,000 whereas other subjects such as PE received as little as £4000. That money was due to all UK PGCE students (it has since been scrapped completely following recent cuts – current government funding options), the problem for me being that I had been outside of the UK for nearly three years and was therefore worried whether or not I would still be classed as ‘ordinarily resident’ in the UK. If I wasn’t then I wouldn’t be entitled to funding at all, even though any German person could go and study in the UK having never been there before and get the full funding as they are in the EU. That little scenario drove me crazy for a while as there is no way I could really afford to do the course otherwise.

Eventually, after a series of letters between myself and the government they relented and gave me the funding. I think only having temporary contracts in Bangkok, being on the electoral register in the UK still and sending money home each month all helped in my case to claim that I was only living abroad temporarily. So, relieved I had the funding I proceeded to buy a one way air ticket back to the UK. To remind myself that Thailand is not heaven on earth, take a look at this…

The last 5 months in Bangkok were odd in that I was desperately trying to treasure every moment of it and enjoy it as much as I could (a bit like a tourist) but only on a TEFL teacher’s budget. I hit all the usual spots for a few big nights out, no doubt pushing my liver to the maximum but it was the only way I felt I could deal with the prospect of upping sticks and leaving to blighty. I was afraid that there were so many things I had been taking for granted in Bangkok that being without them would be a huge struggle.

Still, I finally left Bangkok on August the 28th and was due to start my PGCE on September the 6th 2010, a pretty tight schedule by virtue of the fact I needed to complete that months work to collect my annual bonus which of course was I hoped going to fuel me through the PGCE ahead!

At Suvarnabhumi airport I tried not to, I really did, but inevitably holding back the tears was not possible and I couldn’t stop myself from being a wuss and blubbing my eyes out – wuss. It hurt, I just couldn’t comprehend leaving behind a place I loved being in, to go and live in a place I didn’t!? It just didn’t make sense! That is when I had to remind myself of the bigger picture. I needed the PGCE for a better more prosperous and secure future and so that I could return to Thailand in a better situation. Still walking through those gates turning my back on my girlfriend put me in a world of hurt… pathetic but true… it hurt.

Next up, life in the UK doing a PGCE!

So, by mid 2007 I fancied myself as a bit of an old hand at TEFL teaching in Bangkok, well I mean I was one rung up the ladder from a newbie at least.

My piffling one years experience was dwarfed by many people whom I had previously worked with who had been in the Bangkok TEFL game for over 5 years and one or two of those had been doing it for over a decade!

Bangkok at night

Did I really want to end up like some of those people? I kind of felt that some of the long term TEFLers in Thailand had built up a stone wall between themselves and their homeland. The thought of going home back to farangland seemed to fill them with dread and I swear they would rather die than be forced to go back. At first I found that amusing but these days I actually find it quite sad. The East and the West have many contrasting qualities that are both there to be enjoyed, it would be a real shame to limit yourself to just one part of the world.

Personally I feel there are too many risks/issues that would prevent me from ever settling permanently in Thailand. Just a few issues that spring to mind are: ageing parents in the UK, expensive health care (for decent hospitals e.g. BNH and Bumrungrad) in LOS, lack of real relationships with Thai people (integration ain’t easy), air pollution in Bangkok, double pricing policies, disease being more prevalent, lack of ability to own land, ongoing political problems, constant visa issues, limited employment

Leo Beer Girls - Sooay!

opportunities, corruption everywhere, (often deemed acceptable)… I could keep going but I think you get the point. I believe making a semi-permanent base in Thailand with a fund of ready cash so that you can leave at the drop of a hat and set yourself up somewhere else again (preferably back in your homeland) at anytime provides the best of both worlds.

Anyway, I digress, back on topic… Within a week of arriving back I was easily able to line up an interview for each day of my second week back in Bangkok. I went to all the interviews and was offered all of the jobs. Being relatively young, being qualified and being relatively good looking is just a winning combination for employment in Thailand. The more of those categories you can fit into the better! Failing that, a pulse will probably do.

So, basically I had the pick of a few jobs. However I elected to go for a private language institute which looked quite corporate and professional. I thought this would provide a nice contrast to the underfunded government school I had previously worked in….and it was. Rotten floor boards, typewriters and chalk boards were replaced by glass walls, networks of computers and laminated pre-prepared cards.

Similarly the students were also completely different. At the government school some of the students would have to sleep in the temple next door and had never made it as far as the BTS, whereas at the language institute students would confess to weekends in Hong Kong, how many people their daddy employed and how much money they made yesterday on the stock exchange.

Slums on the Chao Phraya

These two schools were actually, as the crow flies only about 5 miles apart but the difference between rich and poor in Thailand was ridiculously evident. It is even more visually apparent when you take a boat down the Chao Phraya  river. You can literally see the wooden houses and slums within metres of the big 5 star hotels. Same country, different worlds!

Anyway, despite these contrasts being in the back of my mind all the time, I thoroughly enjoyed the new job. It was relatively professional and well run. I never had any problems with my visa/work permit and the salary was in the mid 40’s. The hours were mainly in the afternoons and evenings which happily meant I could party the (every) night away and not have to worry about getting up early. This suited me fine and I got caught in a vicious cycle of work, party, boomboom, collapse, work, party…

It was awesome, I was on fire. I basically felt like a rock star. Each night I would have a few beers, maybe in an expat pub or maybe a couple of big LEO from seven eleven to get the night started. After that depending on my mood or whatever my buddies were doing we would move onto to either some local Thai bars, beer gardens, RCA or sometimes hit the farang ghettos of Sukhumvit.

Sigh!

Drinking of course was the facilitator but the girls were the main attraction. And ‘no’, I’m not a whore monger, I’m not into the ‘pay for play’ bar action, never have been, not my thing. For me, it was a lot more fun and exciting to go out and ‘make friends’ with girls that weren’t into pay for play action. With bargirls out of the equation, those that were left and out for the night would show up on my radar. Now, I’m sure some of these girls were used to being around farangs and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the first – if you get my meaning but nevertheless these were what I would consider really hot girls! And they digged me and I digged them…and so the merry go round continued!

Nurses, flight attendants, waitresses, office girls, business ladies, model(yup that was a good one), singers, tourists, colleagues and yeah ok… oopsie… students, but only after they had finished studying at the institute, honest! These girls all had the pleasure (or otherwise) of well you know… making the two backed beast – an expression my students could never get there head around lol.

It’s not like I can’t get it in the UK, I can. It’s just the girls there are not even half as good looking as the girls in Thailand. Compare your average girls on the sky train with your average girls on a London tube carriage and all becomes clear. I figured I was just doing what any red blooded male would be doing in my position…. living the dream and it felt f***ing good!

Well, it did until a few months went by, then a few more…and a few more and sporadically I would check my financial situation. Even with doing over time and taking home over 50,000b/month I was spending all of this and more on partying. I had been hitting it hard for quite some time now and it was beginning to take its toll.

I had maxed out a credit card and was now having to make the payments on those cards which would have to come out of my salary each month and be sent home via western union. Then I would juggle money backwards and forwards between cards to try and make ends meet, so things were catching up with me.

The other thing that caught up with me was my health. After a random chat with another expat he convinced me that every year you should have a medical. He had just had his and apart from high blood pressure he was fine. I was a keen exerciser and despite the partying still ran and lifted weights often enough so figured I’d be fine. Wrong!

Turned out that I had high blood pressure and massively high blood sugar levels. This was of course put down to me drinking way too much but, was a bit of a wake-up call despite the doctor saying that so long as I cut down a bit it shouldn’t be a major problem and my heart should be OK.I was like, woah slow down doctor, did you just say heart! In my ignorance I didn’t really appreciate that the alcohol you consume enters your blood stream and has to go through your heart.

The alcohol can interfere with the electric impulses within the heart which can cause sudden heart attacks (check out the effects in full here). Now, I was pumping ten pints of Tiger through my heart and dancing all night. This often left me knackered and sometimes with a racing pulse even when I was doing nothing which I’m sure wasn’t a good sign.

I did ponder the motives for me going ‘off the rails’ somewhat at this time and I reckon it was fuelled by: a) being a red blooded male and b) sadness and anger at having wasted four years and lots of money on a Thai girl that played me for a fool. (ha, yes, poor helpless me, taken advantage of by a beautiful office girl – win some lose some). Actually, there’s a thought maybe this rampant behaviour was my own inner revenge on Thai girls – looks like I got issues man! Ha.

So, with money becoming an ever increasing problem and health beginning to suffer. I realised I had to take action if I didn’t want to end up back on a plane to blighty broke and in need of an IV drip!

Next up, how I turned things around…well, you know – kind of!

Quite frankly it was a relief to get back to Bangkok in mid 2005 after having completed a short 5 month spell TEFL teaching in Tokyo.

I hadn’t enjoyed my time there greatly, but had managed to amass a reasonable amount of money, two or three thousand pounds by memory.

"My Buffalo Sick"

This I had done in order to put myself in a position to finish the relationship with my Thai girlfriend ‘Noi’. The previous post here explains the background to this. I knew I was only going to be back in Bangkok for 6 weeks as by this time I had been out of the UK for at least a year and a half and was keen to catch up with the family back home. I also figured that a clean break from Thailand would give me a chance to consider the next step in my teaching career and put the super bitch ‘Noi’ out of my mind.

Suffice to say I was intent on enjoying those few weeks as much as I could. During this time Noi was amazing, a completely different person from the one I had left previously. It seemed she had missed me and she put in a lot of effort to restore the relationship. Like a sucker I didn’t finish the relationship and instead of sacking her I ended up flying back to the UK whilst still in a relationship with her.

Perhaps she had known I was looking for a way out and figured that financially she couldn’t afford to lose me, for her families sake as much as anything. It is clear to see looking back, but at the time I never questioned her motives (alas love is blind – ha).

Landing back in the UK without much money or any clear idea what job I was going to do was tough. Of course it was great to see the family but the reality was that I was 25 with no money, no job and not much clue of what to do. All I had been doing recently was travelling and teaching and hadn’t given much thought to my long term career.

No More Weekends On Koh Chang!

On searching through the local job classified ads however one job jumped off the page. It was a position in a UK government school as a ‘Cover Supervisor’. This basically entailed being on site in the school to step in at the last moment for the regular teachers when they were off sick, on a course or on leave. The real beauty of the job was that you didn’t need to be a fully qualified teacher to do the job. Apparently it seemed that all they were looking for was someone with a ‘can do’ attitude and a bit of experience.

To me it sounded perfect, I didn’t want to spend two years becoming a fully qualified UK teacher and do a PGCE as I wasn’t sure at that point if teaching was really the career for me. This sounded like a perfect way to gain more experience, see if I wanted to be a career teacher and to get some cash together.

I recall there being six people interviewed for the job that day so I guess I didn’t really fancy my chances. They asked a few tough questions but I genuinely think they were impressed that I had travelled and taught TEFL so much. After all I guess many people say that they’d love to do the things I had been doing but just never got off their backside and do anything about it. Kudos for me then!

Needless to say I got the job and started soon after. I really enjoyed the work, although it was very challenging. Trying to control rebellious teenagers when you are basically the substitute teacher ain’t always easy and the kids weren’t very motivated to say the least. Behaviour around the school was terrible. Knives, fights, drugs, wide scale disruption were all common place and so it came as no surprise that the school failed the governments ‘Oftsed’ inspection and was put into ‘special measures’ whilst I was teaching there.

Once more this was an interesting experience to see how schools really work and the different pressures involved. However as engrossing as this all was, it wasn’t long before my thoughts began drifting towards Thailand. After September when the nights start getting shorter, that is the worst for me, the darkness and the wet and windy weather just make me miserable. It really is no fun to live in that climate, especially when you have been used to 30 degree heat in Bangkok for so long. Life is just so much duller in so many ways in the UK.

One more won't hurt!

I was still in contact with Noi a few times a week and the requests for money were coming thick and fast again. I guess this is what she had planned. String the dumb farang along until he leaves and then milk him whilst he is earning UK pounds. And that is what she did. I guess by now having been with her for two or three years I had grown quite attached to her even though she was clearly no good for me, something which my family could easily decipher! They could never understand why I would send money to someone on the other side of the world when I wasn’t earning a great deal and really needed it for myself. Still hindsights is a wonderful thing.

After a while, a combination of these factors: not earning a lot of money (850 UK pound after tax), living in cheap shared accommodation, having zero fun in life, having a girlfriend miles away, being depressed by the weather, yearning to see the world, sending a good deal of money to Noi each month anyway it just seemed like the obvious thing to do, I mean to go back to Thailand. I had been away from LOS for nearly a year and figured a year in this job would seem like a natural cut off point…. it wasn’t like I needed much convincing to go back though!

This time planning to return I had no savings but I figured it wouldn’t matter. I guessed I would be able to get a TEFL job in Thailand again easily enough and would just need enough money to get me through until the first pay check in LOS. Anything had to be better than the relatively miserable life I was enduring back in the UK, besides I was just craving to pound the streets of Bangkok again…and see ‘super bitch’ Noi. I figured it was going to be make or break time for the relationship.

Armed with a couple of credit cards, an overdraft and my last month’s pay cheque I hit the ground running when I got back to Bangkok. My over-riding feeling was that of arriving home. It kind of felt like putting back on an old shoe, it feels snug and you know what you are getting.

I had decided to surprise Noi and not tell her I was coming back. Big mistake! She really wasn’t happy or excited when I went to meet her. I couldn’t believe that she wasn’t even a little bit pleased to see me and we argued for a couple of hours. Great welcome back I thought.

I moved my stuff in with her again but this didn’t last. She was still in ‘give me money’ mode. I totalled up all her debt and it was over 70,000 baht on credit cards alone and there were other loans aswell which she wouldn’t reveal.  I couldn’t believe the banks had allowed her to get that much credit when she only earned 20,000b per month. This completely stressed her out yet at the same time it was completely self inflicted and she was incredibly…. still unwilling to change her ways!

It was those two factors plus that we couldn’t actually live civilly together that caused me to finally up and leave. After the best part of 4 years, I did what I should have done about 3 and a half years previously i.e. leave her for good. I clearly remember it being a scorching Saturday morning when after another blazing row I moved my stuff out for the last time.

I safely despatched my stuff in a cheap charlie guesthouse down Banglampoo and immediately hit the bars at around 11am. This was it I thought to myself – single in Bangkok, life surely can’t get better than this. Previously I had always been under the watchful gaze of Noi and been under her thumb somewhat so hadn’t completely indulged in Bangkok nightlife in its full glory but that was most certainly all about to change.

That day, I went on a marathon bender, drinking beer after beer in the restaurants and bars up and down Khao Sahn road in the scorching sun. I spoke to the usual eclectic mix of travellers and vagabonds who also find solace in day time drinking on Khao Sahn and fun times were had.

By the evening time I was a wreck, ending up in a very bad way in Tapas nightclub in Silom, in no fit state to pick anything up. The next day, after vomiting up copious amounts of beer for the first time in a long time, I was reliably informed that I had indeed been a complete idiot for most of the evening but had no recollection of any of that or getting back to Khao Sahn. Oh well such is life.

Next up, how I got my next TEFL teaching job in Bangkok…

Fresh from a year and a half living and teaching in Bangkok, I figured that moving to teach in Tokyo, Japan and having a fresh start would be a nice change… it wasn’t!

The View From My Classroom

To be honest, my entire experience in Japan was tainted by two things. Firstly, for all Japans novelties and culture it was never going to match the bizarreness and ridiculousness of the Thai way of doing things and secondly, I was there as a bit of a mercenary, my self-inflicted goals were to save money for myself and for my soon to be ex girlfriend (if that sounds odd, then read the previous post for an explanation). Despite wanting to have a great time there, I just never quite happened for me there and I ended up counting down the days to leave back to LOS.

When I landed at Narita airport I was greeted by a Japanese guy who worked for the company that I had been recruited to work for. I had found the job through TEFL.com and secured myself a 5 month contract to start with. I was on 285,000 yen per month if I remember correctly and 80,000 of that was deducted from my salary at source for housing. This is a big cost over there and also pretty hard for a foreigner to arrange independently as Japanese tend not to speak much English at all.

Anyway, I digress, on meeting the Japanese gentleman I proceeded to try and make small talk on our journey to the office where I was to then be taken to my accommodation. I tried out some of the Japanese I had been learning from a book and also tried to get some banter going about football and a few other topics but I was completely stone walled by this guy. Sure, he was polite and helpful but there was none of the sabai sabai or sanuk sanuk attitude which I had grown used to. Perhaps I hadn’t realised how much I had actually changed due to living in Thailand and being in Japan was like looking in a mirror and allowed me to see exactly how I had changed.

That is not to say there weren’t good things about teaching in Tokyo, there were. I enjoyed actually being able to talk and debate serious topics with the more advanced Japanese students whereas in Thailand I often found advanced students would rather talk about less intellectually challenging topics if you know what I mean.

Shinjuku - Downtown Tokyo

I enjoyed the fresh air that Tokyo had which is vastly better than Bangkok’s airquality and I loved the changing weather patterns. You could have cold, wet weather and windy days. You could have cherry blossom and autumn leaves and all of this in a city where things worked and trains left on time, to the minute.

The Japanese girls that showed interest in me at the Uni I taught at were very nice and I could have definitely cracked a couple of them but generally speaking I consider anyone studying or working where I teach off limits, tends to just not be worth the hassle or drama. However, going out at night I did have some luck. I hit the foreigner ghetto of Roppongi (see video clip below) occasionally to watch farang sport and nail Japanese girls who were clearly out-looking for a farang and also had some luck in the more trendy Japanese areas – Shibuya I think was the spot I did well at.

Instead of having short time hotels as they do in Bangkok they have a concept called ‘Love Hotels’. These have developed in response to the lack of living space for courting couple in their own family homes. So, in some places you would find streets full of these love hotels which would often have their own theme. One hotel particularly stays in my mind as it was James bond themed with a great Jacuuzzi.

These places certainly weren’t cheap but did serve their purpose well. As in many Hotels a box of condoms was usually left somewhere in the room. However there was no way in a million years I was going to be able to fit a Japanese sized condom on! Now, I don’t consider myself to be anything more than averagely endowed but these condoms would barely go around my thumb let alone my widger! An embarrassed conversation with the receptionist downstairs ensued as she rooted around for a larger size, I have a feeling my drunken body language describing the issue was not overly polite and did nothing to enhance the reputation of westerners abroad. In the end I found a spare jonny in the deep recesses of my wallet and so finally I was able to complete my own pussy galore role play!

I must also mention that when signing the contract I had also ticked a small box that meant I had to pay a little extra in order to get better medical coverage, or something like that and it had been optional whether I took it or not. Well, thank goodness I did, about half way through the contract I got tonsillitis, badly. I had let it get worse and worse because basically I had just figured it was a sore throat and would go away.

Love Hotels!

One weekend however it suddenly got worse and worse and my throat was almost completely blocked by the white growths that accompany the soreness. I let it get so bad that in the end it was extremely painful just to swallow and I ended up dribbling and choking most of the time. Not being able to talk to any local people where I lived (out in the suburbs) made things difficult to arrange medical help so in the end I just got on the train to downtown Tokyo where I literally just wandered around following signs to a hospital. Once in there I pretty much collapsed and was put straight on a drip and anti-biotics.

The nurse used my phone to call work and sort things out. I was visited regularly by a lady from the office and was hospitalised for 5 days in total which I’m sure amounted to a lot of money ($10,000, I believe but I can’t really remember). Still, I was only covered by the company policy because I had been paying in the extra amount each month which I could easily have not done and would have left me with a huge bill! Moral of the story do not overlook health insurance when you accept a new job.

I was soon back to work. From my classroom window you could actually see Mount Fuji which was pretty cool but the two our commute via four trains and a bus journey was most certainly not! I longed for the BTS skytrain, red and blue taxis and even the moto-cycle drivers that would thread me through traffic jams to the door of my former school in Bangkok. Taxi’s in Japan were out of the budget of a teacher and the drivers seemed very reluctant to accept a ‘Gaijin’ (foreigner).

On the financial side I was saving money, even after sending the 10,000 baht per month back to ‘super bitch’ as I had now christened my soon to be ex Thai girlfriend I was saving over 500 UK pounds per month without doing any overtime or extra work. This I considered to be pretty good after barley scraping by for so long in Thailand, it was refreshing to not be down to my last few satang at the end of each month.

On balance I am glad I went to Tokyo. It gave me another different perspective through which to view the world and myself which I feel adds to the richness of life considerably. It enabled me to save money and be away from ‘super bitch’ for a while whilst at the same time expanding my TEFL teaching experience and credibility with future employers. Whilst it could in no way compete with life in Bangkok, in hindsight I am glad I did it. I did work with a few farang who really loved teaching in Tokyo and there over-riding feeling was that it took more than the 5 months I had given it to really start to appreciate the place. That may well be true however I wasn’t prepared to test that theory.

On departure from Tokyo I was a relieved man. I had missed the weather, the food and the lovely Thai friends I had made previously and of course the more laid back ‘bedn with the breeze’ approach of the Thais. I was back ‘home’ again drinking Singha and eating gen keeow wahn and listening to my favourite Thai voice, the sky train announcer, boy had I missed her!

“Satanee torn bai Sala Daeng, next station Sala Daeng” – Music to my ears!

Next up: Did I manage to finally get rid of super bitch and where would my tefl teaching journey take me next!?