The wedding singer

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Our last week of teaching started with a blinding hangover and ended with me singing at a Thai wedding. It was an interesting week. I wrote several blog entries last week which got lost somewhere in cyberspace as the internet connections in our school were terrible, so this will be a jumbled recap of the last bit of our time at Klong Nam Sai school.

We spent last Saturday on a road trip with our hosts to Chantaburi, on the south east coast of Thailand. This was notable mainly for one of the weekend's two raging hangovers, the result of a night drinking whiskey with members of the school staff who should, in my opinion, be ashamed of themselves. A previous volunteer at the school, a Canadian named Kai (and weirdly, his parents) were visiting for the weekend and after a long, brandy-soaked meal we ended up in a surreal club inside a bus station listening to a Thai rock band belting out a cover of 'Apple Bottom Jeans', while the male teachers used me as an excuse to chat up girls young enough to be their granddaughters (I had nothing to do with it, I fought against it, I swear).

Suffice to say that finding ourselves watching a dolphin show at 10am the next morning wasn't the ideal thing for our hangovers, although having never been to a dolphin show before I was pretty impressed. It did leave me jaded about something, though - I was informed that when people say they have been 'swimming with dolphins' it usually just means that they've swum in an artificial pool with trainers regulating every movement of both dolphin and swimmer. This truly ruined my image of frolicking with dolphins in the open sea in a noble meeting between man and beast, and it is now way down on my list of things to do before I die, probably about level with pulling out my own teeth.

The next night Kai and his parents invited us and the Klong Nam Sai teachers to their motel to watch the Carling Cup final and more importantly to 'finish off the whiskey'. I introduced my Canadian friend to a few English drinking games (most notably 'Arrogance'); within half an hour he was on the floor embracing a dog and I was declaring my undying love to my fifty year old Thai host. I am ashamed to say that I woke up the following morning unable to move, and consequently unable to stand in front of a class of rambunctious students teaching them 'body parts'. The teachers, far from being annoyed, seemed proud that they had prompted me to such drunken excesses and gave me something approaching a standing ovation when I turned up the following day.

For the last week the students at Klong Nam Sai were doing exams so we did most of our teaching in the primary school across the road - as the facebook photos attest. Thai children are adorable (not in a Gary Glitter way) but, at the same time, pernicious little shits who don't give you time to breathe. The second you finish singing Heads Shoulders Knees and Toes they are clamouring to go out in the searing heat and play football, and after ten minutes of that they are urging you onto the basketball court or under the tree for a game of 'duck goose'. It was really fun but left us in need of some kind of saline drip after each day; I'd recommend it.

At the end of the week (and the end of the school term, coincidentally), we accompanied the staff on a trip to Petburi in Southern Thailand, which was nothing more than an excuse for the aforementioned male teachers to gamble for two solid days - one of them losing a tenth of his salary in the process. Interestingly gambling is illegal in Thailand and frowned upon by most people, so the teachers made use of this rare opportunity with gusto, although they had to hide the cards every time a police car went past. Such was their dedication to heamorrhaging cash that they didn't even deign to let us play with them for fear we'd slow the game down, but it was a good trip nonetheless. We got to see the previous King's beachside palace which was stunning and we got plenty of whiskey and karaoke in the process...

Which brings me to our final weekend, in which I reinvented myself as an all-singing all-dancing entertainer appearing at weddings, parties and whatever the Thai equivalent of a bar mitzvah is. It all started when we attended a party thrown for all the directors of the schools in Sa Kaeo province, with about 1000 guests. We were sitting at the front table (in our role as the token whites proudly displayed by our headmaster) and one of the teachers asked if I'd like to sing a song. Thinking he was joking, given the size of the crowd and the importance of the occasion, I blithely said 'yes' and thought nothing more of it. Minutes later I was standing on stage surrounded by scantily-clad, gyrating dancers singing 'Hotel California' to a stunned and possibly offended audience. This was repeated again the following day when we attended the wedding of one of the Klong Nam Sai students, but by this time it seemed like no big deal, I was taking fame for granted - I even performed a duet of a popular Thai song with Mr Na Long Chai.

This was a fitting end to a great month. We said a surprisingly emotional goodbye to our hosts this morning after a final whiskey dominated evening and an exchange of gifts in which we were presented two toy giraffes in honour of our freakish body shapes compared to the barrel-shaped Thais we have been living with for the last four weeks. In all seriousness, we were made ridiculously welcome in Aranya Prathet and looked after so well it was very hard to leave, not least because we were weighed down by the brand new pot bellies you'll be amused to see when we get home.

We're now back on the backpacking gravy train in a place called Ayutthaya. It is hotter than the sun but we're still planning to get steaming drunk at a karaoke bar for old time's sake. Thanks for reading.x

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