Clinic visits in Thailand

Any building with a green or red cross will be able
to provide basic medical and pharmaceutical care
Photo from Nana Thai Herb

Some of our coworkers have an ongoing joke that Thailand hates us, because Emiliya and I rarely go a week without one of us being injured or sick. The environment here is definitely giving us a run for our money, and at the very least the constant change of 90 degree weather to an air-conditioned room is always giving us colds. This week I've been presented with a new challenge following an inevitable motorbike crash that I had last week. There's chatter in the expat community which says you're not a true expat in Asia until you get hurt from a motorbike, because with more bikes than cars on the road it's just bound to happen at some point. Emiliya has her motorcycle license so in the past she's always been trusted as our chauffeur whenever we rent a bike on the islands or in Chiang Mai, but last week I attempted to prove myself capable, which resulted in my lasting about 2 minutes before crashing into the sidewalk. Overall I walked away relatively unharmed, and thankfully there was a Thai guy who stopped nearby and drove me back to Emiliya so I wouldn't do any more damage. Lesson learned: I'm going to stay away from motorbikes for now. Unfortunately my immune system isn't up to par with Thailand, and the wound on my foot quickly got infected giving me a rather painful and swollen foot, thus resulting in another adventure with healthcare in Thailand.
As I've previously mentioned, there are countless clinics throughout Thailand which seem to be helpful with ailments anywhere from the flu to infections, and it's the first place we head whenever we're having health issues. Unfortunately we've become somewhat of regulars at our local clinic, as we've visited in the past for bad cases of food poisoning, tooth infections, stomach problems and now my foot. I've been pleasantly surprised by healthcare in Thailand, and this most recent visit was no exception. The nurses speak minimal English, but the doctor himself probably has a better vocabulary than myself. He quickly informed me that the wound on my foot was infected, and assured me that I would receive a good cleaning and some meds to help me get back on my feet (pun intended). He sent me to another room to get care from a nurse, but he popped in every few minutes between other patients to help translate and make sure that I understood what was going on. He was also extremely patient with me while I looked up my medical history online with Cleveland Clinic (thank goodness for MyChart) and urged me to get a tetanus shot because my most recent was almost ten years ago. I was also informed that I could come back each day to get a proper cleaning and redressing of my foot, which is awesome and something I will definitely take them up on.
Overall I got an exam, wound dressing, topical ointment, a tetanus shot and 7 days of antibiotics for about $25, which in the end will be reimbursed by my Thai health insurance. I believe that if I go back in the future for redressing that won't be covered by insurance, but it shouldn't cost more than $3-4 each time. Of course following true Thai disarray, when checking out the nurse told me to take the antibiotics twice a day. Later while at a nearby coffee shop I noticed that although the package has a number two on it, there's also a number four mixed in among the Thai letters. Fortunately we've made friends with the barista at this coffee shop and I went up to her for some clarification. In almost perfect English she informed me I have to take two pills, four times a day. Leave it to the cafe worker to outshine the nurse! With just about 6 weeks left in Asia I'm hoping this will be the last of any health issues, but it's also good to know that minus a few translation issues, the clinics have yet to fail us!

Last weeks of school

I was really just hoping for
a yes or no answer.. 

The normal structure of Thai culture often prevents me from really knowing what's going on, and as a result I've been pretty lost and confused at school these last few weeks. I was aware that there would be a lot of testing the second week of March, and beyond that I wasn't so sure if I would continue teaching each day. There would be days I would show up to school and ask a teacher if I would be teaching only to be given some vague answer such as "oh maybe, I don't know. Perhaps the teacher told students not to come today." What!? So I spent each day showing up to my assigned classroom, usually just to play games with the handful of students that showed up to school. It seems that the last day for students was up to the teacher, so there was no official last day for any of my kids. Meanwhile, the ones who have working parents are still showing up to school, even though lessons have been finished for days. This has kind of been a bummer because I never really got to say goodbye to my students, because I was never aware when the last day was.

some of the kindergarteners on graduation day (with faces full of makeup) 

However, last week we got one last hoopla with all of the teachers and a handful of students. Our school put on a graduation ceremony for the oldest students who are done with school (Emiliya's students), and for the kindergarteners who are moving up to the first grade. It was an adorable day of the little ones performing Thai dance and showing off a lot of Thai tradition. It's common practice for the teachers to tie white bracelets onto the wrists of the graduating students, wishing them good luck in their future. So after each kid walked across the stage and received their diploma they then lined up around the teachers to receive a wrist full of bracelets. It was a really fun tradition, and one of the Thai teachers taught us a few Thai phrases to bestow upon the students, like how to wish them happiness and adventure. So although I didn't formally say goodbye to my older students, I still got a last day and a lot of photos with my kindergarteners.

Giving bracelets to each of the graduating kids 

Tiny Thai dancers! 

Although the students are gone the teachers are working through the end of March, so Emiliya and I are expected to be working as well, even though we have no papers to grade or students to teach. As a result we're spending the last two weeks of the month sitting in the teacher's lounge for seven hours each day. It's definitely easy money, and is giving us ample time to plan all of our travel adventures that we're starting at the end of the month, but I would much rather be off doing something exciting as opposed to sitting at my desk each day. 

Some of my travel plans for the next two months

It's crazy how quickly these five months have flown by and it's so nice to see how far I've come since my first day at school. It took a while but I finally gained control over my classrooms and formed friendships with a lot of my students. For quite a while I was toying with staying for another term, but currently going home outweighs the pros of staying in Thailand. I'm falling harder for this country more and more each passing week, but I'm just not in love with the lifestyle I have here. In my small town I eat from the same market each day and am finding it increasingly difficult to have some variety in my food but still stay a vegetarian. On top of that, last week our fruit lady stopped showing up to the market so now we have no easy access to any fresh fruit, which was one of our daily staples. I'm eager to get out of this hot and humid climate and I look forward to spending a day outside instead of always running for the AC or waiting for the sun to go down. I've grown to love teaching a lot more than I was expecting to and am definitely not ruling it out as a future option.
Next week my dad, step mom and step brother are coming to Thailand and they're helping me kick off six weeks of travel. I'll be showing them around Bangkok and Chiang Mai and the adventures will continue from there. I'm also excited for the arrival of my sister who's bringing along her friend and boyfriend, and together we'll be exploring some of the islands in the south of Thailand. From there I'll be traveling south through Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. I don't have the time or money to accomplish everything on my bucket list, but I'm definitely excited to get started on some Southeast Asia adventures!

Special education in Thailand

The treatment and education of special needs students in Thailand is something that has startled me from day one, and it's a concept that I'm still having a hard time understanding. In my school of 1,000 students we have somewhere around 10 kids who should be diagnosed on the autism spectrum, and far more beyond that who have some sort of mild learning disability or behavioral issues, and all of these children go relatively unnoticed with little attention or care from the school. From what I can tell, Thai people as a whole appear to be grossly uneducated on the subject of special education. We have students who are clearly autistic or have some sort of behavioral issues, but in the eyes of Thai people these children are all labeled as "abnormal". There is no category beyond that, you're either normal or abnormal. Out of the 500 students I teach each week I have a few with obvious cognitive impairments and even more with mild to severe learning disabilities. I have a kindergartener who continuously hits himself and myself over the head, and another that sits in the corner for the entire hour I'm there. I have a second grader who is clearly autistic but he has no extra supervision or help, instead while I'm teaching he's either holding my hand, hitting kids, or laying in the middle of the floor. I teach numerous kids who still can't read or write in Thai or English, but are otherwise brilliant. Emiliya teaches one boy who stands out among our 1,000 students as one of the best English speakers, so she was startled to find he can't properly recognize a single English letter. After watching my mom dedicate the later half of my life to teaching and helping special needs and learning impaired children it was so heartbreaking for me to land at this school where countless children need so much more help and attention than they're getting.

Making fortune tellers with my first graders

The school year is wrapping up and the kids are going through vigorous testing to determine if they are qualified to move on to the next grade, and I've been watching the children with developmental delays with special interest. I recently learned that some of the more severe children have parents who take them to the doctor to get a signed note, which gives them leeway in school. I'm not sure what exactly the notes say, as all of these kids are still labeled as abnormal, with or without a note. The children with doctor's notes, such as my autistic second grader, are essentially given a free pass throughout school. They don't have to sit their exams and will automatically move on to the next grade. This explains the majority of the illiterate kids, I'm assuming they have a diagnosable issue that prevents them from reading, but they are still allowed to move up in school. However, kids without notes are held to the same standards as their peers; they're expected to sit their exams and will not move on to the next grade if they don't pass. One teacher is holding back three students this year because none of them wrote a single word on their exam. Out of these three kids I can clearly see that one boy has such strong behavioral issues he just simply has never sat down to learn. He has never participated in a single activity while I'm teaching and anytime I ask him to write something he just scribbles instead. I can't determine if he mentally can't write in English, or if he just doesn't have the patience to sit down and learn. Either way, with the lack of attention he's getting now I doubt he will progress very far.
Our school is very basic for a public school and many of our children come from low-income families. It's come to my attention that there are other public schools throughout the country that somehow have stricter regulations for students, and therefore they have no special needs children. Talking with other English teachers, Emiliya and I have learned that our school has a much higher population of "abnormal" children, and I assume that's because there are very minimal fees to join our school. I'm not sure how public schools set their standards for enrollment, but ours seems very loose.
While researching this subject, I found that since 1975 the Thai government has provided free education for disabled children, whether mentally or physically. There are specific schools throughout the country offering free enrollment for anyone that fits the criteria. So the question has to be asked; if these schools truly exist and run the way they're claiming, why are there so many neglected children at this school? I can only assume the biggest factors are the stigma of sending your kid to a school for special needs, and the location of the schools, perhaps there isn't one nearby. However, I pulled up a few of these schools and quickly realized that schools for the disabled and special needs focus much more on physical ailments as opposed to mental ones. There are countless programs for blind and deaf students but very few focusing on learning disabilities. So perhaps that's another issue at hand. It seems that the ministry of education has a general understanding of special education and are making an attempt to properly acknowledge the difference between students, but in my opinion they have a long way to go before all students in the public schools are getting proper education.

Visa run to Laos

Vientiane, Laos

Because Thailand likes to keep things complicated we've had a lot of run around when it comes to visa procedures and staying in Thailand legally. Most recently, Emiliya and I had to take a trip to the neighboring country of Laos in order to reapply for our tourist visa, allowing us another 90 days in the country. We've constantly been asking why we keep leaving the country and visiting local immigration for visa extensions when we could just get a work visa, but these decisions are up to our company so we're just going with the flow at this point. And besides, each visit to immigration gets us a day off work and we often welcome the break.                

The Mekong River, separating Thailand and Laos

Our trip to Laos took us to Vientiane, the capital and largest city of Laos. It's right on the border of Thailand and Laos, sitting just over the edge of Mekong River. Thailand is deceivingly large, so although we were just hopping the border it was still about an eight hour drive from Bangkok. We went through a visa service so overall it was a really simple trip. We handed over our money at the beginning of our journey and our driver handled all of the complicated stuff for us, which left us plenty of time to explore the city of Vientiane. I've heard from numerous people that there isn't much to Laos, especially in Vientiane, but I was determined to prove otherwise.
Our journey got off to a rocky and tired start due to the weird schedule of our van. We left Bangkok about 9pm and drove through the night, only to arrive at the Laos border at 4am. There we sat in the van for close to two hours, and then at 6 AM we had to get out of the van and line up in the street, waiting for the border to open. As soon as we saw the doors to immigration open people actually started running towards the building. It honestly felt like I was in some strange refuge movie where I was fleeing the country. Needless to say, it was intense. Anyways, the morning was filled with long lines and paperwork, both to apply for our Laos visa in order to enter, and to apply for a new Thai visa in order to get back to Thailand. By the time we finished it was the afternoon and we were running on very little sleep from the night before. Emiliya and I had a decent list of things we wanted to see in Laos, but we were tired and defeated and decided to take a nap, cutting off a lot of opportunity to see the city. 

Once we woke from our nap half the day was gone, so we decided to skip to our most eagerly awaited item on our list: french bread. During the early half the the 20th century Laos was under the control of the French colonial empire, and as a result there are still some French charms lingering throughout the city of Vientiane. We hit a cafe and had some delicious coffee and fresh bread, which we are sorely lacking in Thailand. Well rested and well fed we headed towards the city center to check out the Patuxai Arc, another French influence in the city. It was built in dedication to those who fought for independence from France, and obviously pulls a lot of influence from the Arc de Triomphe, although the detailing is more Asian than French. We paid 15฿ (about 30 cents) to climb to the top of the arc which offered stunning views of Vientiane. The atmosphere of the city center was great, because it's surrounded by busy traffic but the land itself is very calm. We enjoyed a nice Beerlao (Beer brewed in Laos) which we found to be cheaper than beer in Thailand ($1.50 compared to $2). At this point it was almost dinner time (free through the visa company), and I am not one to pass up free food so we headed back towards our hotel. If we had had a full day in the city we would have ventured to at least two other places in Vientiane, first being Pha That Luang. It's a gold covered Buddha stupa which is thought to have been built in the 3rd century. It's a UNESCO world heritage site and a national symbol for Laos. Our other stop would've been Buddha Park, which is a large plot of land home to over 200 Hindu and Buddhist statues. Beyond that, not much else up on our search for activities in Vientiane, perhaps it is a sleepy town afterall!

The next morning we treated ourselves to more coffee and bread and then headed to immigration to pick up our passports, and then it was time to head back to Thailand. 

Even though the visa company handled a lot of the paperwork and logistical stuff for us, we still spent 5-6 hours in lines at immigration within 24 hours. Legally staying in Thailand is so much more complicated than predicted and as a result I've now been to two different Thai embassies, the US embassy and various Thai immigration offices, and I have to go back to immigration next week! I still don't know how to do taxes, but I'm a pro at visa paperwork, so that has to count for something, right? 

________________________________________________________________________________________

Logistical Info 

-The visa company charges 5550฿ and includes round trip transportation from Bangkok to Vientiane, a hotel in Vientiane, meals, assistance with paperwork, and transportation within Vientiane to all necessary locations (hotel, immigration, the border etc)

- Laos has their own currency, but in Vientiane they accepted Thai baht as payment, however they usually give you change in the Laos currency 

Recently in Thailand

Some of my first graders

2016 (or 2559 in Thai time) is flying by much quicker than anticipated. Thailand being the vague, easygoing country that they are, has been unable to give us an end date to teaching, so we've just been showing up each day with no idea what's going on. Some days we're told we're teaching until the end of March, other days they say we will only teach through the first week of March. Overall it doesn't matter a ton, but it's been making it a little complicated to plan lessons and make sure we have all the proper grades in by the end of the semester. This week I showed up to my kindergarten class only to be told that I'm done teaching kindergarten; what!? I didn't even get to enjoy my last week with them. Fortunately I still get to see the little ones running around in the mornings and after class. School officially closes March 30, but it seems that the students might be leaving earlier than that. As always, it's still a mystery!

I mainly stuck with Teacher Tip and her class throughout the day  

Last week I got to go on a fun and exhausting field trip with grades 1-3. We started off the morning at a NASA space center in Pattaya where the kids had a tour guide who took them through the space museum. We got to watch a 3D movie which the kids absolutely loved and even though the whole day was in Thai I still think I learned a little :) After the space museum we drove another 20 minutes north to an aquarium. This was far less exciting than the space museum, but the last room was awesome, presenting us with a giant glass window looking into a huge pool of fish. I swear, at least half of the kids ran up to me yelling "Teacher! F, fish, ba! F, fish, ba!" (ba is the Thai name for fish). It was awesome seeing them apply their English during a fun day out. Personally I think a seven hour field trip is a little long for kids under the age of 9, and most of the students fell asleep on the way home. But overall I'm so glad I got the opportunity to go with them. It let me bond with the kids in a stress free atmosphere and we had a ton of fun running around learning words in Thai and English.

View from the hotel room at Sheraton Resort

The weekends have been busy as always. A few weeks ago a fellow English teacher, Yavette, had friends visiting from the States. Her one friend had a lot of credit card points to cash in, so she splurged at Sheraton Pattaya Resort, so obviously we mooched off of that for a day, enjoying their numerous pools and private beach. The entire resort was a dream with amazing rooms and stunning views of the ocean. Before coming to Thailand I was strictly a pool girl, much preferring a comfy beach chair over laying in the sand. However, endless weekends at the beach in Thailand quickly changed me, and as nice as the pool was I was almost bummed that we didn't make it to the beach that weekend.

Summer will be in full swing starting in April and I'm planning some backpacking adventures throughout Asia which will include Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. In preparation for these adventures I've needed to take two recent trips to Bangkok. The first was to get a Vietnam visa and the second was a quick trip to the US Embassy to get a new passport, because mine is almost full! In order to get a new passport I had to unwillingly turn over my old one, leaving me feeling extremely vulnerable for this past week. My new one is hopefully in the mail as I type, filled with 52 empty pages for me to fill up. When I got my Vietnam visa Emiliya came with me to Bangkok, as we're going to Vietnam together. We enjoyed a low key trip to Bangkok, simply seeking out good coffee and cheap food.

Sunset from Sky Bar 

When I went back up a few days later it happened to coordinate perfectly with Sam's trip to Bangkok. She is also a fellow English teacher who I met through our company, and we hadn't seen each other since New Year's Eve on Koh Samet, so it was great to catch up. We splurged on our evening there and lived a brief life of luxury while having drinks at Sky Bar. This location is known for it's appearance in Hangover 2 and it offers unrivaled views of the Chao Phraya River from 64 stories up. We each bought a drink for the high cost of $15 and drank as slowly as possible in order to catch the sunset. There are many places in Bangkok that offer similar views, but a lot of them have cover fees usually starting around $14, so we were happy to find a place that wouldn't completely ruin our budget. I personally think on a crowded evening it would be easy to sneak up to the roof for a quick view without buying a drink. We definitely lingered after finishing our drinks and no one
was pressuring us to buy another or leave, which was greatly appreciated.

Evening from the Sky Bar

I've now been to Bangkok six times (and returning this weekend!) and I'm still continuously baffled by this huge city. Bangkok is more than double the size of New York City and offers endless amounts of restaurants, temples and shops to visit. Each time I've come to Bangkok I've stayed in a different location in the hopes of one day fully comprehending the entire city, but I'm still a long way from that. Either way, my opinion on Bangkok has drastically changed since my first visit here. I've now learned how to take the public transportation (BTS) and I embrace the challenge of haggling with taxi drivers and I'm always looking forward to my next adventure to Thailand's capital.

My favorite view on the island, the boardwalk to Tien Beach

This past weekend I took another trip to Koh Larn, the beloved island of Pattaya. In November and December I spent most weekends relaxing on the beaches of this island, but haven't had any time to go back since 2016 started. Unfortunately it was a rather breezy day, which brought all sorts of stinging critters close to the beach, so I didn't spend too much in the water. Nonetheless, it's always nice to relax on the sand while drinking a smoothie with some friends. The island is a great weekend getaway for us when we're not trying to spend a lot of money. If we don't go crazy on food or alcohol the whole day could cost as little as $3-4. But of course I can't help myself from splurging on some ice cream or a fresh smoothie.



I recently realized that I'm not taking advantage of all of the amazing things Thailand has to offer, specifically cheap massages and fresh fruit. I've vowed to change that and have started branching out with my fruit options each evening. I usually stick to watermelon because it's the cheapest (and still delicious!) costing me about 40 cents for one serving, but I started mixing it up these past few weeks. I've learned that Thailand has at least four different types of mangoes, possibly more, and they all taste very different. There's the sweet yellow mango which is served as dessert with sticky rice, and then there are three others that are much more bitter. Recently a smaller mango appeared at the market so I gave it a shot with very disappointing results. It was like eating a lemon coated in sour flavor; it was just way too bitter! Our fruit lady didn't seem too surprised when we didn't want to order it again the next day. I've also been eating a lot of jackfruit and dragonfruit, neither of which I had previously tasted before Thailand. I'm quickly expanding my list of fruits tasted, next up is more massages!

Bananas, jackfruit and dragonfrui

An extremely bitter mango

Em's hospital bed in the overflowing waiting room

This past week Emiliya and I had to accomplish something we were definitely hoping to avoid while living in Thailand: a trip to the hospital. Emiliya had been sick all weekend with sharp pains in her side which we were hoping would heal itself on it's own, but eventually it became too serious to ignore. On Monday Em had plans to go to the clinic while I went to school, I showed up in the morning and informed some of the teachers that Em wasn't coming that day because she was sick, and they immediately sent me home to take care of her. I was really grateful that they did that because I was definitely worried about her getting around town by herself while she wasn't feeling well. The teachers were all really great about it, telling me to take the whole day off and make sure she gets better. We headed to a nearby clinic, not really sure what we were getting ourselves into. We had previously been told that the clinics are a great resource whenever we're sick or need some general first aid, but we weren't sure if they could handle something as obscure as Em's problems. We showed up to a clinic full of sniffling but generally healthy people and we realized that we were probably out of luck. The doctor spoke with Em for a few minutes and concluded that she was suffering from some sort of small intestine problem, and he urged us to head to the nearest ER. Fortunately he wrote us a note in Thai to give to the hospital, because we struggled at first with finding someone who spoke English. We've concluded that most nurses and general staff only speak Thai, but it appears that all doctors speak English. It turned into a long and confusing day which included nurses taking pictures with us (everyone is always so excited to see white people), waiting five hours before speaking to a doctor, and even then we really didn't get much more information. He told her she would be getting an IV of antibiotics and would also receive a prescription to take home. Grateful that we were actually getting some medical attention we just rolled with the punches and followed the staff around as they found Em a bed. It appears that we were in some sort of area for outpatient and simple procedures, because there were only a few exam rooms but no patient rooms. While Em was hooked up to the IV she was simply up against the wall in the waiting room.

I was pretty annoyed with waiting five hours, but I later told some of the teachers about it and they said that sounded normal, so apparently that's just how they do things in Thailand. Besides that the medical attention was decent and I think everyone did the best they could despite the language barrier. One really bizarre thing was when it came to actually getting the IV, apparently in Thailand you pay for your medical expenses beforehand. Once they told us she would be getting an IV they sent us to a cashier window where we had to pay for the meds and supplies, which they then physically handed to us and we had to transport back to the nurses. I'm curious what would happen if someone didn't have enough money, would they still be helped, or just sent back to the streets? Thailand's reputation of being cheap spreads to the hospitals, Em paid about $22 for antibiotics, saline, a needle, alcohol wipes and all other materials needed for the day. She can then submit her receipt to our insurance company and will probably get reimbursed for all of it. Once she handed over the cash they presented her with a bag full of all the necessary medicine and supplies. It was a strange procedure but also interesting to observe. 

Minus that one little hiccup, life has been going on as normal. The students start testing this week, but if I've understood correctly they still have to come to school for another week after testing has finished. It sounds like Em and I might be going on a field trip with the older kids next week to an area near Bangkok, and then at some point there will be a small graduation ceremony for the oldest kids who will be leaving school this month. It's crazy how quickly this term flew by, it feels like just yesterday was Christmas. I think I previously mentioned how my sense of time is off because of the weather, and I really do consider that a huge factor in why it feels this semester passed so quickly. Because there are no seasons I've found it really hard to process the concept of passing time, it just always feels like August. When I try to think back about something that happened all I can think is "well it was warm then, and it's warm now, so it hasn't been too long since New Years". To me that's a valid reason, who knows if there's actually any validity towards that. Either way, I have four months of teaching under my belt and I've learned so much since I began teaching in November.
Although it definitely got easier and more enjoyable as the term went on I've decided that I will not be staying for another term. As long as I'm abroad and working in a public school there isn't much potential for me to become more adapted. Unless I start studying intensive Thai, I will always be the quiet girl in the corner and I hate being that person. I constantly depend on Thai people for everything, both inside and outside of school. Papue is always talking to our landlady for us and the teachers at school are my translator whenever I need to tell the director something. I can't help kids when they're crying or trying to explain something to me. I can't even properly explain stuff myself, instead I live a life of miming and drawing out what I want. There are countless activities, lessons and games that I've tried with my students that have ended in failure because they simply couldn't understand what the heck I was attempting to do. I've helped them with their vocabulary and their pronunciation and I'm so grateful that I've had the opportunity to influence these kids, but I feel that there has to be something bigger for me in the world. I feel like no one at school truly knows me, I'm constantly slowing my speech and picking shorter words which will make me more understandable. I'm ready to go back to a job and life where I'm not constantly editing my speech. I think for now I've ruled out teaching English in public schools, but I am still very open to the idea of teaching in an international school where English is a primary language. I would love the opportunity to work around kids from all over the world and be joined by staff who are fluent in English. The future is a mystery! For now I will be teaching through March, followed by a month or two of traveling Asia, after that I will be returning to Ohio until the next opportunity arises.