Busy, busy Bangkok

To say that Bangkok is a busy city is certainly an understatement. The people here love their cars and when you add to that the colourful and numerous taxis, the network of very cheap, smoke belching buses and all the motorbikes of all sizes and loads weaving inbetween them all, you often end up with everything coming to a complete stop, as you can see in the city centre below.

However, the city does have a good public transport system, including the BTS (skytrain) shown below and the MRT (underground) which whip you around the city in clean, air conditioned comfort. Unfortunately it only covers a limited area of the city, although a new link out to the Airport is opening up in December.

The skytrain has been built over the streets as you can see in the next photo. It is not the most attractive piece of architecture, but it certainly moves faster than the traffic below.

Every inch of the sidewalk is taken up with street stalls, often spilling out onto the streets. Walking down the sidewalk can also end up as a traffic jam! On the quieter back streets like the one below, the best option if you are in a hurry is to walk down the road if you are game to take on the drivers, the push carts and the tuk tuks!

You can pretty much buy anything you could think of on the streets. The vendors go quietly about their business and there is no hassling of you as you walk through. Prices, as you would expect, are dirt cheap, although the quality can be a little dodgy.

Another option is the markets. They are fun just to walk through and experience the sights and smells. The biggest of these markets is Chatuchak, and it is always packed with locals and tourists alike each weekend. After a day out at this market you could find yourself going home with a new pair of jeans, a few secondhand textbooks, a nice painting bought from the artist and a pet dog and fish.

Bangkok is, however, suprisingly green and there are plenty of open spaces and parks. One of the biggest is Lumpini Park, shown below. While the city bustles along around it's perimeter, you can take some time to catch your breath, sit in the shade and plan what to do next in this amazing city.

The River Kwai

At Ruamrudee International School, High School begins in Year 9 and, following the American lingo, the students are known as 'freshmen'. The "class of 2013" spent this past weekend away on camp and I was one of the staff members accompanying 140 over-excited kids.



The camp was located on the famous River Kwai, found about 200km north-west of Bangkok, in the district of Kanchanaburi, not far from the mountainous border with Burma.


The hotel was right on the bank of the river, the view from my room shown below. Not a bad way to wake up in the morning! The photo shows a couple of mobile river rooms being towed along by the long boats.

We took a fun boat ride up the river in one of these boats, the motors struggling against the current. With the river cutting through the steep sides of the valley, it was a spectacular journey.

Our destination up river was the Lava Caves. The limestone stalagtites and stalacmites were pretty impressive and well worth a visit, although the hundreds of bats perched on the roof of the caves were a little disconcerting.

The highlight of the trip for me was having the very good fortune of going to Hellfire Pass, a place of great significance in the history of Australia. The view that greeted us there was spectacular.

Hellfire Pass is a particular section of the Thailand to Burma "Death" Railway. The railway was built by prisoners of war, a large contigent from Australia. About 2500 diggers died in this location, either from the dangerous work involved in building the railway, or from the cruelty of their Japanese captors. A moving memorial to the Australians who lost their lives form 1942-45 is shown below.

The Aussies named this section Hellfire Pass because of how hard it was to carve the railway through the rock in this area. The cutting that their back breaking work produced is shown below.

The Allied POW's could not build the track fast enough for the liking of the Japanese, so hundreds of thousands of Asian workers were also brought in to keep the work going. They make up the majority of the lives lost on this infamous railway.

We also visited the museum, which is kept open thanks to money provided by Australia. The students seemed genuinely moved as they read about the history of the Burma Railway and saw pictures and artifacts that brought home the horror that was faced by the prisoners. I feel like I have visited a very special place for an Australian - who would have thought that it would be found here in Thailand.

A Day in the City

Bangkok is a vibrant, frenetic city, where old asian history and modern western ideas exist happily side by side. You are confronted with with an amazing array of sights, sounds, smells and tastes that you have never experienced before. The oppresive heat and humidity only adds to the sensation.

It seems that everywhere you go in Bangkok there is somebody trying to sell you something. You can choose the brand new, multi-level, air-conditioned shopping malls, the chaotic, pulsating markets or the street vendors - commerce is the way of life in this South-East Asian metropolis.

The wonderful food of Thailand is one of the many highlights to be experienced. You can choose to dine in a ritzy restaurant, but the saying is that out on the street you get exactly the same thing - just for a fraction of the price. You can get a freshly cooked meal from a street vendor for the equivalent of about $1. It seems clean and safe - I have had no stomach upsets (or even a cold) so far!

Hidden amongst the traffic jams, noise and pollution are the Wats - the Buddhist temples. They give you a chance to catch your breath and to see some of the most amazing, intricate architecture you are ever likely to to come across. The enormous, gold reclining buddha is a sight to behold.

The Grand Palace covers a huge area in the middle of the old part of town. Once the residence of the highly revered King, it is now mainly a ceremonial centre, and Bangkok's number one tourist attraction.

Fortunately for caffeine addicts, coffee shops are never too far away. Here I am in Starbucks with another new teacher at RIS, Stacey, who is from Canada and teaches in the Elementary School

So much of the character of Bangkok revolves around its waterways. Once known as the "Venice of the East" many of its canals have been paved over to satisfy the love affair that Thais have with their cars. However the mighty Chao Phrya River, brown from the silt that it has carried from the north, flows quickly to the Gulf of Thailand and is busy with boats of all shapes and sizes. A number of khlongs or canals still criss-cross the city and provide an alternative to the roads and a place for the water to escape after a thunderstorm. Even so, heavy rain turns most of Bangkok's streets into the canals of the past and the already slow traffic comes to a standstill.

The Baiyoke Tower is the tallest building in Bangkok, soaring above the mass of humanity below to the 84th floor. It is a great place to get your bearings on the size of the city, catch the cooling breeze and grab a meal or a drink. Watching the sunset and the lights of the city take over is a memorable experience.

On a day in Krung Thep - the local name for Bangkok meaning the city of angels - you only really scratch the surface of all that it has to offer. However, there will be plenty more days like this ahead.

Ruamrudee

It's hard to believe I have been in Thailand for six weeks and that we have completed four weeks of school. Time has really raced along!

I am getting more acclimatised to the weather, with the air conditioner getting less use. The usual storm in the afternoon cools things down and if there is a bit of a breeze in the evenings I can sleep comfortably with all the windows open. If it is still it stays very hot all night.

Ruamrudee International School is over 50 years old and it is the largest international school in Thailand. It is not really your traditional international school, as it doesn't contain a huge amount of different nationalities - the students are mainly Thai. It must be difficult for the kids of the teachers - they are a tiny minority as westerners.

The school is located on a large campus divided into different sections: a High School, Middle School and Elementary School. There are also two separate but related schools; Redeemer International for students whose English is not good enough for Ruamrudee, and a small Swiss section where the curriculum is delivered in German. The High School is shown in the photo to the right

The school is well resourced with two swimming pools, large oval (see photo to right), indoor stadium/gymnasium, large library and an impressive auditorium. Unfortunately they have not built enough science laboratories, so I am stuck in an under-resourced classroom in the middle school where I have my desk and computer and have Homeroom each morning. Until they fit out the room more appropriately I have to wander around 6 different classrooms to teach which is challenging. The school leadership express their concern for my situation but solving it seems to be a lower priority.

My Homeroom is Grade 9, in their first year of High School and under the American system are known as "Freshmen". Their names (listed off by heart) are Top, Pun, Sony, Newton, Junior, Pawin & Rio (boys) and Por, Jin Jin, Arosha, Nune, Pear, Mary, Sangtawan, Yada, Kat and Sandra (girls). I will be going away for the weekend with all of the Grade 9 kids weekend after next to Kanchanaburi, famous for the Bridge on the River Kwai and the Burma Railway. I am enjoying my classes; the photo to the right shows my Grade 11/12 Environmental Science students hard at work.

I am still struggling to get used to the 7:15am start each day, but I guess it's appropriate with the hot weather. You feel like you have been working all day and look at the clock and it is only 10am! At least with a 2:40pm finish, there is still plenty of the day left to enjoy.