Barefoot and Breezy

Vietnam…… what a two weeks!! It would be a lie if I didn’t state that the majority of our travels plans (as in how long we spend in each country) centres pretty much entirely around how long we can get a free tourist visa for (absolute cheap skates ) . As you can currently get a 15 day free tourist for Vietnam…. That’s how long we stayed. Needless to say, this was the first country I was absolutely not ready to leave. 15 days couldn’t possibly do this diverse, beautiful, and fun country justice and the because we crammed so much in the time absolutely flew by. The first 24 hours I was like an excited child on Christmas Eve as I anticipated the long-waited arrival of my mum who was coming to visit us for the duration of our time in Vietnam. I was equally excited when she not only arrived, but arrived armed with fruit pastels, Percy Pigs and ….. NEW CROSSWORD BOOKS. Buzzing. I will have to be quite brief about each of our activities and all that went on becaus

So we already failed at getting back to weekly updates on life away but things have been busy and crazy aaaaaand I have no other excuses. Anyway. We FINALLY made it out of the beautiful country of Thailand after spending 3 months there. Finishing with a bang, we spent our final week in Phuket sunning ourselves, eating, drinking and partying (a bit too much!). Our flight was at 6am in the morning, and following our recent form of (not) catching flights, we left for the airport at 11.30pm and spent a delightful 6 hours in the airport.  Our first stop in Cambodia was at Siem Reap, a lively city which is heavily visited by tourists due to the fact it neighbours the sensational temple complex known as Angkor Wat. Being built all the way back in the early 12th century for the Khmer Empire, it was absolutely breathtaking and we spent a very enjoyable morning driving round to the different sites and admiring the structures. One of the first things to strike us upon arriving in Siem R

So! School’s out for summer (and forever more in my case!) and what better way to celebrate than heading down to the south of the country for some much needed beers, sun and relaxation. We left first thing on the morning after finishing work, and anticipated getting into Bangkok around 4pm to meet with friends and start the celebrations... ....Obviously forgetting this is Thailand, and we should have made allowances for the fact that our bus was a zillion years old, broke down another zillion times, and no one actually seemed to be able to tell us where this bus was going other than the general area of ‘Bangkok’ (e.g. London). So three buses and a taxi ride later, we finally pulled up in the ever delightful Khoa San road around 9pm. We joined forces with Kate and Kemish who’ve come out to join us for some adventures, as well as meeting with some rugby friends who had a stopover in Bangkok before heading to Cambodia. Needless to say, rugby friends + 9 weeks without goin

The last 9 weeks have absolutely flown by, and I can't believe we are already posting our final blog about our teaching experience in Thailand. Needless to say, it's been a pretty busy time which explains the slightly neglected travel blog ... we will be back on it from now on! It's fair to say that the realty of our time teaching TEFL has been quite far from our initial expectations. When we interviewed for 'Media Kids' (the agency that schools then buy into to deliver English lessons) they informed us they targeted rural areas in Thailand where English was not so easily accessible. The recruiter went on to explain that the levels of English were typically very low, and that we would be teaching one topic, say; colour, for one week across each of the classes we saw. Perhaps jumping to conclusions too quickly, we assumed the school we'd be placed in would be out in the sticks, and fairly basic in terms of resources and expectations. Anyway, as explained in