Barefoot and Breezy

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 ...