Thailand - February to April

January 2006

At the end of January we had to take the trip north to Myanmar (Burma) to get our visas renewed for one month.  This was an all day trip, beginning at 6.30am with a bus ride north to the town of Ranong where we queued up at Immigration and checked out of Thailand, followed a rather terrifying ride in a large, noisy, overcrowded long tail across the river to Kaw Thuong, an outpost right at the very southern-most tip of Myanmar.

The Border Post

We could remain on the boat whilst our agent went ashore and processed everyone’s passports, though some went ashore and bought cheap alcohol and cigarettes. When our stamped passports arrived, there was the return journey to Ranong followed by lunch in a local restaurant, the long hot queue at the Immigration office for our visas and then the bus ride back to Ao Chalong, arriving long after dark.  The whole process is a farce really but a good money earner for a lot of people.  We paid 1200 bhat each (about £15 at that time) for the whole thing, including lunch.  The people living along the water’s edge on both sides of the river were very poor.  Our impression was that the Thais despised the Burmese, many of whom come to Thailand to work, where they usually take up the most menial jobs. Many of our fellow travellers were Burmese and they were treated very differently from us. 

Disembarking from the long tail

Poor Mike had to do this visa run every month for the whole year whereas I had only one more run, south to Malaysia, and then my school arranged a work visa for the year.

The TEFL school was run by a South African, David, one of those rare, truly gifted teachers who quite inspired me, though that didn’t last long once I accepted I hadn’t the same gift! Before I had even finished the course, I had a job at Buranarunluk School, a large private Catholic school in the southern town of Trang. It was a fill-in position until the end of the academic year, 31 March, to replace a young Frenchman – a good teacher but apparently rather too fond of his beer. Leaving Mike in Phuket to look after Forever, I went to Trang for six weeks and attempted to teach English to (mostly) unwilling young Thai teenagers. The classes were enormous (45 to 56 students) and difficult to control, particularly as I spoke no Thai.

I was put up in a single room in a tatty block of flats, within walking distance to the school. There were no cooking facilities so I took my weekend meals in a small local restaurant and during the week I took lunch at school – this was the sort of food eaten by ordinary Thais every day and I liked it. It was quite different from what was available in tourist restaurants or what one finds in Thai restaurants in the UK. Most of it was very spicy, though I learned to identify the less spicy things. Some of the kids were really sweet, but I didn’t much enjoy Trang or this job. My fellow farang English teachers (the word farang or falang is slightly derogatory slang for all foreigners), all male, pretty much ignored me so it was a fairly lonely time down there though Mike came and spent a weekend with me and I went up to Phuket for one weekend.

The head of our English Department was a little Chinese Thai lady called Pee Get who was very kind and did her best to look after me. All Thais have two full, usually unpronounceable, names as well as a short, one syllable, nickname which everyone tends to use – dear little names like Bow, My, Rat and Top - which were mercifully easy to learn. ‘Pee’ is a respectful title for an older woman, similar perhaps but more formal than ‘Auntie’ – hence Pee Get. I was called ‘Teacher Peggy’, not Pee Peggy! Pee Get would cruise about the school maintaining discipline which is brutally enforced in Thai schools and I could never quite credit how such a fierce voice could emanate from such a tiny person! The kids were terrified of her. She and her husband took me out for dinner on a few occasions and also once to a Chinese funeral which was most interesting.

Pee Get and her husband Dum

My normal yachtie wardrobe of shorts and t-shirts was not suitable for teaching, and Pee Get told me I should get some ‘polite’ clothes. I went shopping and managed to find two black pencil skirts, below the knee, and then hunted for blouses, struggling to find anything to fit me. Coming out of a fitting room clad in a too small blouse that wouldn’t button up, I waved at the loitering saleswomen and indicated in mime that I needed a bigger size. These two sweet petite young things just sniggered at me, and I heard the one say “big milk” to her friend which sent them both into paroxysms of laughter. I have never in my life been accused of having big boobs, but one does feel larger than normal in Thailand.

During February, Mike and Keith took Forever on a week’s sail to Langkawi (Malaysia) to renew the boat’s visa for another six months. Keith sneakily took his own boat papers with him, checked his boat into Malaysia and on his return to Thailand was also granted another 6 months. It is rare that the port captain will come out and check a boat is actually there. When Forever’s visa expired we were able to get an extension because of my position as a teacher.

We met Karen, an English woman renting a three bedroom house on the road between Rawai and Nai Harn. Karen became a very good friend and was extraordinarily kind to Mike and me. She offered us a room in her house and we moved in when I returned to Phuket at the end of March. I had a new job starting in May which meant I had April off whilst my sister Pai and niece Natalie came to visit for three weeks. We all stayed in Karen’s nice air conditioned house with her and her boyfriend, Marcel. Karen was fun, friendly, sometimes hysterically funny and it was a festive time. A small grey cat, with the typical bent and docked tail of all Thai cats, moved in with us. Mike and Marcel insisted on feeding her and that was that – she just stayed and we called her Kat. She was a nice little thing but rather prone to nipping ankles! On the 25th April we celebrated Mike’s birthday at Jimmy Lighthouse, overlooking the anchorage.

Nats, Pai, Marcel, Karen and Mike

The Songkran Festival (water throwing) is celebrated in Thailand as the traditional New Year in mid April. The most obvious celebration of Songkran is the throwing of water, to wash away bad habits and ‘clean up’ for the new year. Thais roam the streets with containers of water or water guns (sometimes mixed with mentholated talc which sticks to you and your vehicle), or post themselves at the side of roads with a garden hose and drench each other and passersby. It can be fun, at times dangerous - a hard squirt from a hosepipe can knock an unwary motorcyclist right off his bike, with disastrous consequences. More traditionally, Songkran is a time to visit and pay respects to elders, including family members, friends and neighbours, and to pray and give food to monks.

As for us, we got well drenched on the way and then had an entertaining day with our neighbours, Noi and Pieter, at Yunique’s bar in Nai Harn.

Yunique's Bar

Yunique was an adorable, charming Thai with long thick black hair.  He owned this groovy bar full of paintings which seemed to attract equal numbers of farangs and Thais.  He came to the house once, saw Mike’s paintings and offered to hang them in his bar and adjoining book shop.  Nothing sold, but it was exciting to have his stuff hanging in the public domain. Karen asked Mike to paint her a picture of Forever which he did.  The day she was supposed to collect it she had an accident hurting her leg, not seriously I’m glad to say, but she was flown out of Thailand and left it behind.  I like it so much we kept it. Sorry Karen.

We took Pai and Nats out for a little cruise around the stunning islands of Phang Nga Bay. Most of the boats that come to these islands are day trippers, so at anchor overnight we were all alone.  Pai and I tucked into the whisky one evening, talking, giggling and singing until the wee hours, annoying Mike no end.  It was dreadfully hot and eventually we cut the trip short.

Pai rented a car and we toured around the island, including an overnight stop at the Ton Sai waterfall, and over the hill to Patong beach, where we had a splendid lunch in the famous Baan Rim Pa restaurant for lunch.

Patong

Patong is particularly well known for its night-life, bars and ‘lady-boys’ – these beautiful, petit transvestites fool many a horny farang.  On the subject of which........ Mike and I would often lunch in a restaurant run by an unusually tall and butch-looking Thai. He was always charming with us, particularly Mike, and we managed to communicate with a few words of his English and a few of mine in Thai, plus mime and sketching. During one of these little charades he conveyed that he was, actually, a ‘lady-boy’ and that he found Mike most attractive.  We all laughed like mad, but we were never sure if he was joking or not.  Surprisingly, Mike didn't take offense and we continued to patronise his restaurant.....