September 12, 2009

I had the girl downstairs iron my best dress (remember the Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club dress?) for 34 cents and then hired a driver to take me to Rayong for my interview with ECC today. The driver brought along his wife and infant grandson, I don’t know why other than it must be good entertainment to watch the falang on a sleepy day.

ECC offered me the job 6 days a week one on one tutoring in English and teaching corporate groups in the evening. The teachers were lovely, the facilities nice enough, but now I’m not so sure I want it. Rayong is a sleepy, dirty little town - think Carbondale with garbage. Plus 6 days a week is mandatory, so when can I travel? Plus it’s only 30k baht , or about $1000 US a month for a 100 contact hour month.

I still have an interview in Bangkok on Tuesday with an Indian International School. Ji said the money would probably be better but they work you very hard. But very hard by Thai standards isn’t saying much - these are the teachers who leave school to get a haircut in the middle of the day.

The 2 guys who own this hotel are having a birthday party for one of them - I’m not sure which one though. There are balloons and flowers everywhere and they are singing some REALLY bad karaoke. I sat down there for a while but it wasn’t really a happening thing.

I moved to the third floor - good news , air con! Bad news, lost the internet connection which was lumpy at best even on the second floor. And I have a lot of email communication to do.

Lucky from TEFL has a job for me teaching kindergarten in Chiang Rai, a northern province by Chiang Mai and the Burma border. This is the best prospect so far, the only thing that bugs me is she’s a recruiter so while I would get 30kB /month, she would get 10-20kB kickback. This is SOP in Thailand I know, but I don’t have to like it.

So I’m going to keep my options open for a while. No point in rushing in to something I would learn to hate.

Ji took me for a ride on her scooter and we pulled up to a tiny bar hanging over the sidewalk edge where they served us loow-loow curbside. It’s a shot of rice whiskey with a tiny cup of Chinese herbal tea. Ji says it “cleans the woman’s blood” and makes the man more fertile. From my point of view, it just tasted like turpentine. They serve it with a tiny saucer of logan berries sprinkled with salt, sugar, and chili.   Sort of like a homeopathic drive through.

Tomorrow is Saturday, we might take the ferry over to Koh Samet for a day at the beach but I’m not greatly keen on it since it’s so freakin’ hot.

My next job is to figure out how to get to Bangkok and to this International school by 11 am next Tuesday. It will be a crunch.