Khao Lak, Takuapa, Chang Wat Phang-nga, Thailand
It was going to be a messy sort of week. The end of the school year was fast approaching with the usual quota of exams and end of term activities taking priority over our lessons.
The three girls, Greta, Audrey and Bella had all left over the weekend but the young Canadian, Taylor Rae, had returned and there were two new arrivals, both young girls, one of whom was to work with me and the other who was to go off for the week to an outlying school with James. However, over the weekend, the two new girls and James had become big buddies and didn’t want to be separated. I received a begging email……..would I mind awfully working on my own so that they could all go to the school together? As my understanding was that this week I was to be teaching at Ban Bang Maruan, the lovely small school, I was quite happy to go along with this arrangement.
So at lesson preparation on Monday, David and Taylor prepared lessons for the usual Primary schools and I prepared lessons for Ban Bang Maruan school. Then Sunny arrived with the news that the Primary schools only wanted volunteers on Tuesday and Wednesday, and Ban Bang Maruan only wanted volunteers on Tuesday and Friday.
So we would work separately on Tuesday, together on Wednesday and Friday and not at all on Thursday!
We eventually got our heads around the lesson planning but it was later than usual when I wandered up to Kinnaree Cafe for lunch. After a little shopping I went to the beach but not for long. It was just too hot! And I’d finished the book I was reading as well. It was quite a relief when there was a frighteningly loud clap of thunder at about 6.00pm and then a torrential downpour. An hour later the air was a lot fresher.
I planned to eat at Khao Lak Seafood Restaurant but it looked very busy and so I ended up next door at Easy Bar. They offer a lot of dishes with duck which makes a nice change but I never seem to get quite what I expect. Last time I was there I ordered stir fried duck with mango but could find not a trace of mango in it (I subsequently realised that the Thai for mango was very similar to the Thai for cashew nut, of which there were a lot and so it was a problem with the English translation of the menu).
This time I went for red curry with duck and was proudly presented with red curry and chicken. I didn't have the heart to send it back and it was very nice.
It was good to be back at Ban Bang Maruan School on Tuesday and everyone seemed pleased to see me. I wasn't surprised to find the principal and a couple of other teachers busy making paper flowers when I arrived. They just love their handicrafts.
However, instead of the usual small morning classes I was given P4, P5 and P6, half the school, to teach for the next two hours! I was sort of expecting this and had two lessons ready, Classroom Items and Thai Road Signs which I managed to spin out until lunchtime.
After lunch which was delicious as usual I had a stroll around until the teeth brushing music started blaring out, marking the start of afternoon lessons . I then settled in a cool spot to read for an hour before my next class. But not today. The teachers came to find me. I was to teach P1, P2 and P3 for the rest of the afternoon! The hour after lunch had always been devoted to TV watching in the past.
Maybe the educational broadcasts had finished for the school year?
The little ones were lively and noisy, and with the mix of ages, some were out of their depth while others were bored. I did Parts of the Body with them first and was glad of the matching card memory game that occupied them in groups for a while. The second lesson I had was on Colours and thankfully the worksheet was a comprehensive one and they worked hard on that for quite a while. One of the Thai teachers sat in from time to time to try to keep the noise levels at a reasonable pitch but it was tiring and very hot (despite the refreshing iced coffee that I was brought during the afternoon). After two and a half hours I decided that enough was enough. There wasn't time to start another lesson anyway and the teacher was quite happy to close the class for me.
I felt a little bit taken advantage of, but the staff are all so generous and appreciative that I didn't really mind. Back in the staffroom they were all busily making little photo frames for each kindergarten child in preparation for graduation next week.
In no time at all they had taken a photo of me with some of the children, printed it off, made me a frame and presented it to me as a gift. They also extended an invitation to the graduation ceremony next week which I was delighted to accept.
I was glad to get home and put my feet up. Tomorrow it was back to working as a team. I felt I deserved a treat for dinner and so went to Sun Star Siam restaurant for their fish with ginger. There I bumped into a couple who originally hail from Oldham and are regular visitors to Khao Lak. They had just returned from a visa run to Kuala Lumpur and, over dinner, related tales of their stay.
I was up early again on Wednesday to join Taylor Rae and David at Wat Pratchatikkaram school, for what would be the last time this term. I wasn't sure how the day would go as I had heard that Taylor Rae liked to do things her way and was rather bossy. But we got on OK and she seemed prepared to work in the way that I am used to, as a team. Occasionally she took over the class but I had no problem with that.
She had after all done the lesson preparation and I was quite content to follow her lead.
She had some rather ambitious group activities planned for P6 which didn't work too well but we got through to lunchtime and then learned that P3 were involved in some National Tests and so we had a free hour. It was very hot. We each found a quiet corner in which to sit and relax.
The P4 lesson was on Nouns and Adjectives, and was one I had never taught before. Taylor Rae took command of things, however and the class went pretty well.
She was well into her stride by the time we set up our last lesson of the afternoon for the little P1 children and monopolised the front of the class. David and I hardly got involved at all! Actually it made a nice change to have someone else take the initiative for once.
And so the regular classes had come to an end again. Sunny had one or two things planned for us but we would no longer be following the usual routine.
Everywhere seemed very wet when I got home to Phukhaolak.
They must have had a lot of rain this afternoon. There had been no hint of rain in Thai Mueang.
With a free day on Thursday I went out a little later on Wednesday evening and tackled a chicken massaman curry at Khao Lak Seafood. As ever, it confirmed my belief that it was the best massaman curry in Khao Lak and as ever, I failed to finish it. Later, after a lengthy walk I ended up at Tarzan Bar for a couple of beers.
I decided to spend Thursday on the beach at Bang Niang. I set off fairly early hoping to get the walk over before it became too hot. It took around an hour and I was very sweaty and footsore when I eventually reached Jade Restaurant where I traditionally stop for breakfast. The owners declared how nice it was to see me again! I only visit about twice a year. Do they really remember me?
After coffee, fruit juice, bacon and eggs and their rather good homemade bread I continued on my way to the beach. Earlier in the season I had been disappointed to find the beach strewn with construction rubble after yet another failed attempt to build on the narrow sandy spit of land. Today however it seemed to have been cleaned up and some of the unoccupied tourist bungalows, built a few years ago, had been taken over by massage businesses and beach bar operations. It was hugely popular, being one of the few areas where, for some reason, sunbeds and umbrellas were still permitted on the beach.
I wandered past the scruffy sunbeds at Nong Prew, once the only beach bar here and at the end of the strip found some comfortable loungers near one of the new beach bars.
I had a most enjoyable day. The loungers were well spread out and partly shaded by some trees, there didn't seem to be any charge for them and there was a very pleasant sea breeze. The beach bar kept me supplied with cold drinks and at lunchtime cooked me some fried prawns with ginger.
It was too hot even to think about going for a stroll along the beach and so I spent the day with my nose in a book. I contemplated walking home but in the end succumbed to the temptation of getting a taxi. The pool was my first stop on getting home but even that was not as refreshing as it sometimes is, the sun having heated the water to the temperature of a warm bath!
On Friday, David, Taylor Rae and I went to Ban Bang Maruan school. Sunny had organised a one day “mini English camp” and was joining us so we could teach as a team of four. The children had been put into four groups and we each chose two lessons, one suitable for the younger children and one for the older children which we would teach twice during the day.
Taylor Rae set up her teaching station in the open area outside while Sunny, David and I had classrooms.
I was quite pleased to find that my two morning classes were with the little ones. The first group were very well behaved but the second group were not nearly as attentive and I could well imagine how difficult they might become by the afternoon!
The subject, “Transport “ was a little easy for them and we seemed to get through it very quickly. Thank goodness the worksheet involved lots of colouring for them to do.
Some of the children in the second group were absorbed in applying pretty false nails. This being Thailand, the boys were far from excluded from this activity.
The food has always been interesting at this school and today the cook had pulled out all the stops. We had quite a feast - Chinese pork, prawn curry, stir fried vegetables, pandanus leaf soup, rice, noodles, asparagus peas, eggplant and several things we couldn't identify. The meal finished with a fresh coconut each, just chopped down from one of the trees.
Sunny and the others got involved in playing table tennis after lunch. I went to see what the children were up to and found all the girls in one of the classrooms playing a video of some boy dance band. The younger girls had obviously had instructions to sit quietly and watch while the older girls did their best to emulate the dance moves. It was very entertaining.
I was teaching the older children “What we use water for” in the afternoon and in general they were a lot easier to manage than the little ones. I wasn't surprised, though, to find that the P6 boys were not very good and rather saddened to see that Tip Tip, the handicapped P6 girl seemed not to have been invited to attend the English Camp.
Some of the P4 and P5 girls are very bright. The worksheet was not well set out and although I had tried to explain what was required nobody in the first group managed to complete it properly. But two P4 girls in the second group made my day by persevering long after their less able colleagues had fudged the worksheet and made sure it was done correctly.
All the children and teachers gathered at the end of the afternoon for photos and thanks and then it was all over and we headed back to Khao Lak. Sunny and Ken had tried to find teaching opportunities for the volunteers who would still be here for the next few weeks, but without success. Nobody wanted us! The only date in the diary now was next Friday when we had been invited back as guests for the graduation ceremony at Ban Bang Maruan school.
I ate at Sky Restaurant which was exceedingly busy on Friday night and then walked down to meet Sunny at Monkey Bar. David joined us but the youngsters didn't show up. Sunny was preoccupied with some family problems but she cheered up after a couple of Changs and we had a good evening.
I had a late breakfast of rice soup at Khaolak Seafood restaurant on Saturday morning and as I strolled back through the gardens at Phukhaolak I was a little startled when a snake dropped from a tree I was passing, landed a yard away from me and then shot off across the grass to the cover of some nearby shrubs.
It was approximately 2 feet long, thin and grey and the first snake I had encountered this year.
There was a pleasant breeze blowing on the beach and by late afternoon some cloud cover, perfectly timed for my walk to the market at Bang Niang. We had a few heavy showers and a lot of thunder but I managed to avoid the worst of the rain and, after a very good duck and pineapple curry at Chef Jimmee, a restaurant I hadn't visited for five years, I enjoyed the walk back in the cooler damp air.
For the first time ever I couldn't get a seat in Sakai Bar which was overflowing with Germans watching the Bayern Munich - Hamburg match and so ended the day at a practically empty Tarzan Bar.
As usual I spent Sunday on the beach. I chose a roundabout route to reach the beach to get some exercise and then, after an hour or two’s relaxation, decided to walk even further and ended up at Andalea Beach Bar on Sunset Beach, for lunch.
It was a good day but not as peaceful as I would have liked. The spot I chose for reading in the morning turned out to be an area popular with groups of long stayers who had all apparently got to know each other, had all sorts of food and alcohol to share, were a mixture of German and Spanish and to a man, had very loud voices which became even louder after the second round of G & T’s.
Andalea Beach bar was still very busy when I arrived for lunch, despite leaving it late, and I had to wait for a table. My last hope for some quiet reading was back at the pool at Phukhaolak. There were only four other people there but two of them, elderly German men, plonked themselves down next to me and talked incessantly. I ended up retreating to my secluded verandah for a nice cup of tea!
David joined me for dinner at Everyday Restaurant where we had a chat with Ken and then a night cap at Sakai Bar, where tonight there was plenty of room as the football on offer was from the UK and not from Germany.
David joined me for dinner at Everyday Restaurant where we had a chat with Ken and then a night cap at Sakai Bar, where tonight there was plenty of room as the football on offer was from the UK and not from Germany.
2025-03-20