Rakhi: Earlier this week, I finally met up with my Thai-Indian Bangkok family whom I hadn’t yet met. My mum has a pretty big extended family and I don’t know all the second-cousin, once removed blah blah terminology so I can’t explain exactly how we’re related. Actually, it doesn’t really matter because I feel like I’ve known them forever.

They are absolutely lovely people and have shown Joel and myself amazing kindness, taking us out for dinner, having us over for dinner and most significantly insisting we move out of our guesthouse… into their empty 43rd floor apartment in the famous State Tower overlooking the Chao Phraya River! It’s actually just a stone’s throw from the plush hotel we stayed in for Joel’s birthday with even better views. At the top of the tower on the 62nd floor, is one of Bangkok’s (and the world’s) best bars and restaurants where none other than the King of Thailand dined last month for his son’s birthday. I feel very lucky.

Since leaving Takhli and recovering from Joel’s shock snake confession (if I’d have known, I’d have packed my bags and been off in a flash! Good on him for keeping it from me), we’ve been pretty busy traversing the streets of Bangkok in the name of various chores. Yesterday, we received our Vietnamese and Indian visas without any hitches and nearly everything else we had to do is done and dusted now as well. All that’s left now is to get Joel doped up on prophylactics! Thankfully, the last time I went to India I had ten year booster jabs so I’m still covered for most things.

On Monday, we’ll be swapping our luxury condo for a sleeper train and heading to Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand. It’s supposed to be a beautiful state with lots of wilderness and greenery. It’s also famous for treks to remote hill tribe villages- something utterly voyeuristic which doesn’t really appeal to me (with thousands of tourists traipsing through every month, how authentic can they really be?). I read that unless you sign up for one of the treks offered at every guesthouse, some of them will evict you- we’ll have to be on our guards.

And, after a week in Chiang Mai, we'll be returning to Bangkok to meet Mr Haynes- I can't wait. It's great being unemployed!

Joel: It’s a fantastic feeling knowing I don’t have to go to work tomorrow. Or the next day, or the next day. Or for the foreseeable future in fact. I’m really excited now we’ve finished working about what we’ve got planned for the next few months - it’s going to be a right old adventure…

The plan is: this week we’re in Bangkok. We’ve got a fair few things to sort out. Yesterday we went to the Indian Embassy and the Vietnamese Embassy with visa applications, Hewlett Packard HQ to get a quote on fixing our computer’s broken drive, Panthip Plaza: Bangkok’s equivalent of Seoul’s Yongsan – a huge electronics market specializing in computers - where we got a replacement drive for half the price HP wanted, then to our Thai Bank to withdraw all our cash and effectively close our accounts, and then to the Emporium shopping mall to meet Rakhi’s aunt, Anupa, who lives in Bangkok with her family and who invited us over to meet the gang before taking us out to dinner. They were all really lovely and extremely generous in true Indian family style. I think we’re going to be seeing a bit more of them this week. We might be paying a visit to Alisia’s (Anupa’s daughter) school, a prestigious International School in central Bangkok – very different from where we’ve been working – for a tour. And they’ve very generously invited us to spend the rest of our time here in a beautiful apartment they own overlooking the river – they even took us there after dinner last night to show us the place and it’s pretty swanky. They really are very lovely and generous people.

Today we had more preparation to do for our big trip. We had to pay a visit to the Mediakids office to sort out a few final things and then put our big cases into storage for six weeks so we don’t have to lug them everywhere with us. On Friday, we should get both of the visas we need and then we should be all set.

Our big plan is this: next week I think we’re going to head up to Chaing Mai, it’s quite a journey so we’re going to get overnight trains. We’re going to stay up there for almost a week and then head back here (overnight again) in time to get an early taxi to the airport to meet Luke on Monday morning. He’s over here for two weeks and I know he’s pretty up for heading out to the islands so I reckon we’re going to have a great time while he’s over. After that, Rakhi and I are going to go on a two week trip through Cambodia and Vietnam before heading back to Bangkok for a final time to get our flights to India. We’re going to stay there for seven weeks, initially with Rakhi’s folks in Delhi (my parents are coming out for a visit too!) Then we’ll fly back to Manchester - just in time to catch the tail end of the Christmas market in Albert Square, so we shouldn’t feel it so necessary to put on our own fantastic, world-renowned home market again this year.

As I expected, our last two weeks at Takhliprachasan absolutely rocketed by. When it came to our final day, I did start to feel a bit choked as some of the students gave speeches of thanks and presented me with gifts and cards they had made. We also had to make appearance in the broadcasting room and were beamed live into all the classrooms as we were presented with gifts by the director. The teachers also gave us gifts, as did our lovely neighbours who’ve been so helpful over the past four and a half months. We took all the gifts back home to our by-now cleaned and barren house and sat in our hammocks to open them. From the director – a king shirt each! If I’ve not already mentioned, all Thais absolutely adore their king and wear a yellow shirt bearing his crest every Monday at least and every day of their lives at most. Rakhi and I bought one each when we first arrived and have entered into the tradition every Monday. Only a quick look at the labels showed mine was an XL size and Rakhi’s an XXL. Do we really seem so big to these people, we thought. Then the gift from the English teachers – aaaah! A king shirt each. How thoughtful. Hang on, again – XL for me and XXL for Rakhi. Cheeky buggers! Is this a wind-up. So…on to the parcels from our next-door neighbours. Need I go on? Two more giant king shirts. So with those we already had making a grand total of eight. Er...king shirt anyone?

Rakhi has a bite to eat with the neighbours as we say our goodbyes.

As we sat there in our hammocks one last time, I decided it would now be okay to tell Rakhi about the snake I found in the kitchen. She didn’t believe me at first but then realised that 1) it wasn’t impossible and 2) if I had found a snake I wouldn’t have told her because she would have freaked out – so I would probably keep the such a thing a secret until the day we moved out, which I did. It wasn’t alive. I found under the sink while undertaking a creature check when we got back from Krabi two weeks ago. I reckon it must have got trapped in there, been unable to find any water and then, in the incredible heat, died of dehydration. It was a bit shriveled but a snake it was, about the length of the distance from my elbow to my fingertips. Glad I didn’t have to face it alive really. Could’ve been nasty.

I have one last lunch in our favourite roadside Pad Thai spot.

Rakhi: This is my last week of work THIS YEAR!!!!!!!!! WOO HOO! (Sorry, I don’t mean to rub it in, I’m just VERY excited).

There are some things that I’m going to miss about my school and Takhli but I don’t feel as emotional as I did when we left Korea as we’ve only been here for a comparatively short amount of time. I will miss the Thai English teachers at our school though. They’ve all been unbelievably kind and helpful and I feel very lucky to have been placed here. We’ve just been out for dinner with them and I’m told there are more treats in store for us in our teacher’s class tomorrow.

As for the students, it’s really only the very good and very bad kids that stand out- I teach over a thousand students and each only once a week so it’s impossible to get know them well. As this week is my final lesson with each class, I’ve been saying my goodbyes. Today after my 2/12 (genius class), the students wanted a group photo with me in front of the school- it’s a nice memento. Even my 5/1 (very, very low level, affectionately referred to as ‘5 slash Bonehead’) who are normally completely unenthusiastic said their thanks and goodbyes and told me that they’d had fun.

Whilst I’m glad of the contrasts between living in rural Takhli and ginormous Seoul, one thing I’ve realised about myself is that I’m a city girl through and through. However, It’s been amazing and challenging living in the middle of the tropical Thai countryside; I doubt I’ll still be scared of the tame dogs or little weenie house spiders we get in England when I get back! My most appreciative thing about living and working in Thailand though is that Joel and I have gotten to see a side of the country that most of the many tourists who come here don’t get to.

Some of my favourite things about teaching in Takhli are…

Watching students being stopped in their tracks to have their hair shorn off by a teacher. Or, if said teacher is interrupted by a phone call, the students accompanying friend relieves him of the duty.

Mai pen rai (pronounced: my bell eye) roughly translates as ‘It doesn’t matter.’ It’s a popular Thai saying and I hear it many times a day. Nothing gets Thai people down and nothing irritates them because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. Sometimes this is good, sometimes this is bad. It’s good when it means I can leave school early for lunch or early to get to Bangkok on a Friday. Or, when classes are unexpectedly (for us) cancelled. On the whole though, working in such a relaxed, free environment is like a breath of fresh air.

Thais LOVE to eat. I don’t understand much Thai but I don’t need to, to understand that the main topic of discussion in our English office is FOOD. Mmm aroi ma ka? Mmm aroi (‘Is it delicious?’ ‘Yes, it’s delicious,’ both totally overused phrases in our office). The teachers are serious eaters. It’s great when the teachers give us food or when they take us to a restaurant because we get to try all sorts of food that we wouldn’t get to otherwise and that you don’t find in the spick and span, clinical looking Thai restaurants in touristy places.

Living in a tiny neighbourhood and in particular, living next door to Pi Tien who’s our neighbour. She’s a character and together with her husband, she’s really looked after me and Joel. She speaks very little English but damn it, she tries! They oil our gate, water our plants, fix our lights, they got us a washing machine, she’s taken me to the market many times and made me taste all the food. Earlier this evening she told me that any time we’re in Thailand we must stay with her, the same goes for our families too.

Riding around on our motorbike- I don’t think we would have got one if we were living in a bigger city with public transport options. It’s been fun and now we have to sell it, Joel is particularly gutted. I don’t think he’ll miss dodging the crazy, wild dogs, chickens or cows though!

Actually, now I’m writing this, I’m starting to realize that there are LOTS of things that have been incredible about being in Takhli and teaching at my school- too many to write about but it's all up there.

We’ve been very lucky (incidentally, that’s what lots of students think my name is!), I’ve had fun and since all the teachers and students keep telling us how much they really want us to stay, I’d say it’s been a job well done!

Sawat dee ka Takhli.

Joel: Ao nang turned out to be the perfect place to relax for a while. In the two weeks we were away, we ventured out to Ko PhiPhi and Ko Lanta and while the former was too busy and hugely disappointing the latter was deserted with very little to do. Which wouldn’t necessarily have been a bit thing – I only really wanted to relax and get through some books – but we really wanted to stay somewhere with a few different places to eat and a decent beach so we spent most of our break in the coastal town of Ao nang. I really liked it there actually. We found a lovely guest house next to the town’s Irish pub and there were loads of places to choose from for dinner – particularly Thai sea food places. Mmmmmn!

If a picture tells a thousand words I’ll save straining my fingers and post these instead:





So now we’re back in Takhli with only two weeks left of our contracts. We’ve got loads to sort out: selling the bike, pills and jabs, a big clear out of Rakhi’s wardrobe etc. but by the end of next week we should be ready to move on.

Oh, and the English play. Well, to cut a long story short, we set off at five in the morning in order to arrive at the school in Phitsanulok for the start of the competition. It was a terrible day with rain absolutely lashing down and when we got to the school we couldn’t believe the crowds. The finals of many other school competitions were being held in the same place and students from around seventy schools were competing. When we finally found our way though the crowds and rain to the location of our competition we discovered it was a tiny outhouse already packed with people with the first performance underway. The words "brewery" and "piss-up" were beginning to feature prominently in my thinking. As it turned out we were to go on last of seventeen schools…so the long wait began. Some of our students had a nap, I somehow stayed awake through some of the most excrutiating versions of Oliver Twist and Cinderella and such like surely to ever have been witnessed, and by around four it was our turn. It was easily the most interesting of the plays put on and the seven students did an absolutely five-star job. I was beginning to think we had no chance of winning though when the only non-Thai of the judges (an old Canadian guy) stood and went to the lav as our play began and didn’t return till it was finishing. Maybe I was the only person there who was taking this thing at all seriously. Anyway, after little deliberation the results were announced – everyone had won! Well, not quite everyone, sixteen of the seventeen teams had won. Have you ever heard anything like it. And yet, everyone (almost) was celebrating with their fellow students. I really have never come across anything like it. But then the Thais were happy. And surely that’s what mattered. Everyone’s a winner baby! Ooooh yeah!