Chinese New Year in Phuket

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Before I write about my vacation I'm going to talk about school for a little bit. This past week I took over full control for the remaining classes that I wasn't teaching in yet so now I am teaching all four classes that I am placed in. I think so far things are going well but I got really mixed reactions from the students when I told them that I would be teaching their class for the remainder of the month. Some of them cheered and for others, their jaws hit the floor. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, but either way, they're stuck with me for the next 3 weeks. I think my first couple of lessons have gone well but I am really nervous about this week. I begin a unit on Thai history tomorrow and firstly, I'm teaching the material to myself basically the day before I'm teaching it to the class and secondly, I feel like my resources and activities for the unit are very limited. I've used a powerpoint presentation for both major lessons I've taught thus far and I'm using one again for my first lesson on Thai history. I'm trying really hard to limit how often I use them but since I'm not familiar with the material and it's not covered in the student's textbooks, I don't know what sort of an activity I can do. I haven't been able to get my first lesson critiqued by my coops because I just wrote it earlier today so I'm hoping it will go well but I'm still nervous. And to add onto the fact that I'm doubting the quality of the lesson, the professor from TCNJ is here this week to observe me and the others. I'm able to pick which lessons she comes to see so whether she sees my first lesson on Thai history or my second one, I'm going to make sure she comes to watch it the second time I teach it. Since I teach every lesson twice, this gives me the opportunity to make any revisions I may need to improve it before she sees it. I'm not too worried about my grade because I know that I'm perfectly capable once I'm teaching, but I've been having difficulties with my lesson planning. I just feel like the stuff they do here is more teacher centered and I'm used to stuff in the US trying to be more student centered. The students here enjoy listening to a lecture and taking notes so it's really easy to just rely on that. They don't work well when given group work but I still personally feel that students learn better that way (or at least in the US they do) so I try to always include some form of group or class activity or discussion but I'm finding that to be a little difficult. I'm hoping that this will get easier as I've been teaching longer, but I also think it will be easier when I'm teaching in the US because I just feel like they have better resources there. I'm not saying that the school here has bad resources, because they don't, I just feel like right now I'm doing all the work and making everything up myself and while that may sound good, it really isn't. Teachers don't need to reinvent the wheel everytime they have to write a lesson. I can't tell you how many times I've been told to beg, steal, and borrow lesson ideas and activities because if it works for one teacher, it will probably work for another. And frankly, when teachers work together and share ideas, it benefits everyone. Either way, this is a learning process and I suppose that in the big scheme of things it isn't bad if I'm doing more work now than I might have to. If anything, it will probably benefit me knowing that I can make an entire lesson up on my own because I know that it will have to be done many many times.

Anyway, now onto the vacation. I had off from school this past Thursday and Friday for the Chinese New Year so the four of us went to Phuket (pronounced poo ket) from Thursday-Saturday. Everything went really smoothly with the flight and getting the van to the hotel and it turned out that the hotel I booked for the first night was actually really nice. It was about a 5-10 minute walk from the beach and there was plenty of shops and restaurants right nearby. Our first day was at Karon Beach, which was pretty nice. The beach was crowded but not packed. We spent a good part of the day on the beach and then in the late afternoon we went back to the hotel to wash up and relax for a while before dinner. While the others napped I decided that I was going to go out and finally get my Thai massage. There was a place right down the road which looked clean and respectable so I went in there and got my massage. It was really nice but it wasn't amazing like I had expected it to be. I was a little uncomfortable at first because they made me take my shirt off, then gave me a little pair of pants to put on. So I put them on and they were enormous so I was trying to tie the drawstrings when the woman came back in and apparently I had them on backwards. So I took them off and when she saw that I was wearing boxers she said that was ok so she just gave me the massage in my boxers. They cover you up with towels for most of it so it wasn't a big deal but I'm just not used to it so it was a little uncomfortable at first. Plus I was face down in a pillow and was nearly suffocating for the first few minutes until I finally got my face into a comfortable position where I was getting fresh air. They definitely don't have any problems with touching people because I'm pretty sure that about 95% of my body was massaged, which again was a little uncomfortable. Even though it seemed like a respectable place I was a little worried that in the back of my head they'd ask me if I wanted the special service (yes a lot of the massage parlors here offer happy ending massages) so I was a little scared but fortunately it was just a regular massage. After the massage they gave me a cup of tea and I paid my $12 and was on my way. Overall it was pretty nice, but the next day I was pretty sore. That night we went out to dinner and we didn't want a crazy night so we found a decent looking bar down the road and 3 of us hung out there and had some drinks. We didn't know it until we were about to leave, but it turned out that the bartenders, who were all female, were also all working girls. There was another guy at the bar and before he left he bought one of the girls for the night and left with her. So it was a little funny to know that some of the bartenders were also prostitutes.

Since I couldn't get 2 rooms for 2 nights at the same hotel, on Friday we had to check out and go to our other hotel which was at Patong Beach. We got a tuk tuk and drove about 20 minutes to the other hotel. This one seemed pretty nice as well until the receptionist told me that the hotel was booked so they got us a room at another hotel. I tried to argue but the other hotel was right across the street and as long as we had a room I really didn't care. The other hotel really wasn't that nice, but again, it was a bed to sleep in. We bumped into the owner/manager of the hotel we were supposed to stay at and he apologized and explained to me that he made an error in the computer so that was why the hotel was booked. We were still able to use the computer and stuff at the hotel we were supposed to stay at so they were really nice about everything. After we checked in we went to the beach, which again was about a 5 minute walk away and hung out there all afternoon. This beach was nice, but I didn't think it was as nice as the first one. It was a regular beach but there were still some topless women which was a little awkward because I didn't expect it. We spent the afternoon at the beach and that night we went out for dinner at a restaurant around the corner where I had what may have been the best meal I've had yet since I've been here. It was rice in a curry sauce, seafood, cashews, and pineapple served in a gutted out pineapple and in the bottom there was still some of the pineapple left that I scraped out and ate. It was delicious.

Patong beach is supposed to be similar to Patpong, the red light district in Bangkok, and I think it's a fairly accurate description. After dinner we went out bar hopping for a bit and there was this whole big area of go go bars. Keep in mind that go go bars here and back home are not the same thing. All the women are fully clothed here. The only difference is that for a small fee you can take them home with you. After going to a couple different bars we ended up at a club for a few hours until we called it a night. Since we had to check out of our room at noon the next day we didn't want to go to the beach because we wouldn't have anywhere to wash up afterwards. Since we were out late the night before we slept in and by the time we ate breakfast it was already close to noon. We didn't have any ideas of what to do for the day so we looked into doing some sort of a tour on the island but by that point it was already too late. So we wandered around for a bit and ended up in the big mall in town. We decided to see a movie to kill some time so we waited around for the movie to start, saw the movie, then grabbed dinner and desert and bummed around a bit more until we caught the van for our flight back.

Overall it was a really relaxing weekend. Even though I was out late both nights, it was nice to not have to worry about school and to just enjoy myself. The beaches were nice, I ate some good food, I bought some cheap clothes and had a nice time. The one thing I didn't like about it was all the shop owners who harass you to buy stuff. At Karon Beach it wasn't that bad but at Patong beach it was horrible. It's much worse than anywhere else I've ever been. There were massage parlors everywhere (I think these were the happy ending places) and everytime you walked by you'd have girls shouting "Massaaaage. Helllloooo handsome man! Massaaaaage!" And then sometimes they'd walk up to you and grab you and try to pull you in. That got annoying really fast. Then there's all the suit places. They'd always start with "Hello my friend. Where are you from?" and they'd try to shake your hand and then harass you about a suit. It's hard to remain polite with them when every hundred feet there's another guy doing the exact same thing. But those were only minor inconveniences on an otherwise good vacation.

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Photos

Tsunami Evacuation Route
I don't think the tsunami hit the side of the island we were on, but I think Phuket did get hit pretty hard on the other side.

Taxi to Patong Beach
In the taxi driving to Patong Beach. They didn't really have regular taxis so we took a glorified tuk tuk.

Hotel at Patong Beach
The road our hotel at Patong beach was on.

In the courtyard at the mall
Just a hop, skip, and a jump away from home.