Summaries

I'd like to return to Thailand now. Firstly, thanks to everyone for all your comments and suggestions. Have a lot of research to do, people to talk to and things to work through, but will keep this updated about it. Even at Papworth (transplant clinic) they said probably best not to go for a while anyway, but with the latest news saying that the FO are advising Britons to leave Tokyo and the French pulling all their people out of the city, things just look to be getting much worse.

So I wanted to take stock in this post. We have arrived at my third week in Thailand. This really is a watershed week for me, the other volunteer finishes and I'm left to run the classes on my own. I've also concentrated a lot on the travelling around the country and some of the teachings. I wanted to take a step back and focus on some of the things that I've learnt out here about life for the families and people out here. I will try and point out some big cultural differences as well.

Dogs! Didn't have the rabies vaccines since three injections of 70 quid each was only going to give me an extra 12 hours to get to a hospital. Twenty four is enough! Discussing this with the nurse she said: "That's fine, and a lot of people do this. I mean you just need to avoid dogs." I nodded my head, just as naive in thinking, just avoid dogs. They are seriously everywhere. I am not exaggerating. I have photos of them all over the place, in the streets, in the temples, in the fields and in the school. During the day they loaf around and don't really do much. Sleep and eat. One night Vanessa had some badly swollen ankles and I was on the phone to the volunteer project coordinator. I had to leave the school, walk a few houses down and find the guy who worked in the pharmacy and put the coordinator on the phone with him. As I started walking down the road I was told "And Nick... watch out for dogs. At night, they fight you!" And they barked at me, some chased me down the road. I don't like the dogs at night.

What's the most shocking thing? Very few, if any, are actually strays. These are peoples pets. But they don't keep them in the house because the animals don't like it. They will 'own' some three or four dogs, but they just roam the streets. The dogs will fight and badly hurt and even kill each other.

Food. Everyone knows what Thai food is, if you don't, go to a Thai restaurant. Trust me, it will be westernised. The dishes will be generally the same though. But the flavours would be quite different. For lunch at the school there was normally three or four different dishes, so it was a help yourself to whatever you want. Most days this meant there was at least one thing I liked. About 90% of the meals were severed with rice. It was a kind of rice that I had never eaten before, it was very lumpy and starchy. Very filling. When a meal wasn't spicy (it was either not spicy or ON FIRE!!) there were condiments to go on top of it. Some kind of chilli powder, salted water, fish sauce and... most strangely... sugar. Sugar was put on the main courses and not the deserts. I did this once and it wasn't really great, putting sugar on Pad-Thai!

When it comes to dinners out here, not just for me, but for the people who live here, eating out is the thing to do. Food is so cheap. From the vendors all over the town about three or four miles away, you can get a meal and a drink for 20-30 Baht (40-60p). I didn't really learn anything about the poor out here. But the way the people in the village lived was to eat out most every night because it was cheaper than buying the food in shops and cooking at home.

Family and respect. A lot of commentaries say the problem with the UK is the lack of respect people have, for family, for elders, for the community and for others in general. I'm not going to chime my ideas here past, there is a hell of lot more importance in showing respect to everyone and how important family is out there then here. Families are large and many stay living together. Generally people don't tend to travel and leave the areas they grew up in and so communities become very tight and know each other very well. People know who the dark horse of the area is, who you need to be protected from, and you can be trusted to go out for a weekend of drinking with.

Religion is a big part of life out here. I wasn't as aware of it at this point as I will be later, but I was really building up my understanding of how important this aspect of life is. The local Wat (temple) is the centre of the village. Festivals are held here of all types (including non-religious ones, e.g. the Kings Birthday). I didn't really know much about how the monk's lived in the temple at this point. And right now I won't go into it, I want to talk about that in a later blog after visiting and talking with some monks. But everyone here is deeply religious and donate what they can to the temples.

There is a lot of other aspects of life I wanted to include, and I will as this blog develops. In the next instalment (assuming real life doesn't intrude) I'll talk about the final week with Vanessa and the plans that have been made for the next few weeks.