Stings & Stung

OK, OK here’s some more for you.

Provincial Sports Day proved to be not quite the right name. As far as I could make out there were only about six schools in attendance; furthermore, the paucity of sports being played meant that the event was about as far removed from the name as possible. There were only three sports being contested – football, volleyball and takraw. Of these, St John’s were playing in the final of the boys football, boys takraw and the semi-finals of the girls volleyball. As is the Thai way, the day started with a parade. This one wound it’s way down one of Loei’s main streets; causing the first traffic jam probably since the last Sports Day.

It was just as we were leaving the compound to start the parade that the clouds above us decided to drop their loads on us. The thirty minute trudge through increasingly heavy rain meant that as the stadium came in to view the parade became more of a scuttle. We abandoned the organisers intended lap around the clay sports track (now resembling a rice paddy) and took shelter under the stand. Unfortunately for the participants, the opening ceremony was still to go ahead. From across the pitch came a huddle of dancers and singers, skating their way across the mud and getting in to formation. Amongst them were a group of lads from a primary school dressed in skirts and school ties, a la Britney Spears in the video for Oops I Did It Again…

The ceremony got under way and the music started booming. The rain kept falling too. The singers sang and the dancers danced. Then after the singers the dancers took centre-stage. Each troupe had their individual costumes and individual dance routines to the same music blaring out. This is when those lads in skirts came into their own. Or rather, one portly kid slap bang in the front-middle came into his own.

The fat lad’s dancing became quite raunchy. His tie came loose so he threw it, burlesque dancer-style, over his shoulder. He grabbed his crotch and made like he was humping. Everyone in the stands was wetting themselves, which only spurred him on. At the end of the song the whole crowd gave a huge cheer and the dancers headed to the stands to act as cheerleaders for their schools. The chubster kept up his performance all day.

First up was football, which due to the incessant rain turned out not to be a game of flair and skill, but simply a test of who could stay on their feet long enough to twat the ball towards the goal, in the hope that: a) the wet ball will squirm under the keeper; b) the keeper will end up on his own arse after over-estimating his ability to stay on his feet; and c) the ball will not stop dead in the deep, muddy puddles in the goalmouths. The choice of flat-soled plimsolls by most players didn’t help their game or their chances.

The first game turned in to a rout (4-0), then St. John’s were up. I’d played footy with some of the lads in the team and they are very good. That is to say, very good on dry land. Cast adrift in a sea of shit and water, their skills weren’t really able to shine. Slide tackles carried on for about 20 feet; the ball failed to bounce; lads swung to clear the ball and found themselves looking up at the rain or face down in mud. A peculiarity of watching football in Thailand made itself known – complete and utter excitement from the crowd whenever the ball gets within 10 yards of the goal, no matter who has the ball or what’s happening with the ball. Proper screaming and shrieking. Admittedly mostly from the girls who, by gender default, can’t understand the game (…any feminists out there?), but also a few of the lads. Anyhow, St. John’s lost 2-0 to Loei Technical College but hit the woodwork and the ref gave a decidedly dodgy freekick for the first. Unlucky fellas.

The volleyball and takraw were being played on the drier bit of the pitch (Loei City FC will be fuming about the pitch being carved up), a good 100 metres from the stands. At that distance, there was little chance of following the games. A few brave souls ventured out to watch, tip-toeing over the mud, but by and large everyone stayed in the stands. St. John’s failed to win at any of their remaining competitions, and my interest in the events waned quickly. The practiced cheerleading and chanting carried on unabated though; a concept I couldn’t quite get my head around, as St. John’s had no-one left in any competitions to cheer on. Still, it kept the kids from fighting with the other schools, something which has apparently happened in previous years.

At the end of the day St. John’s returned with a runners-up trophy for football and the winners trophy for cheerleading. Everyone returned home and readied themselves for the next day…a school trip to the neighbouring province of Khon Kaen. The whole school. And we were setting off at 3am.

I was up at 1.30am; having gone to bed at 9pm with a good dose of whiskey in me. I was tired, but not hungover. I maintain I would’ve been equally tired (and therefore pissed off) if I hadn’t drank. Kae picked us up and we landed at school, where a few kids were milling about and playing, and a Highway Police patrol car was in attendance. Adam and I were assigned one of the third year classes to travel with; a fleet of buses had been hired, seven in total.

The departure time came and went. The kids were boisterous and the teachers were trying to keep a lid on them until they could box them up in the confines of a bus where they would surely settle down for the long journey ahead. I was looking forward to getting some more sleep also. Finally the buses showed up and we set off shortly before 4am. I closed my eyes and drifted off. At about 4.30am I was woken by music. Loud music. VERY LOUD MUSIC. The driver had turned on the CD player and treating us all to the latest Thai pop songs. The kids went nuts. Dancing in the aisle; leaping on seats; screaming like The Beatles were playing on the front seats.

At one of the service stations we stopped at I went for a wazz. Bizarrely none of the lads were using the urinals and instead they were queuing up to use the stalls. I sauntered past and relieved myself. I then felt something wet on my foot. Glancing down I realised that the urinals hadn’t been plumbed in and I was simply urinating directly on to my own feet. This did little to lift my mood. It gave the lads something to laugh about though.

We arrived at Khon Kaen Science Education Centre at about half nine. Five hours of thumping music, shrieking, shrill screams of a pitch that only 15 year old girls can reach, minimal sleep and little food made Dave very grumpy indeed. At the two stops we’d made on the way down I’d necked Red Bull to try to see me through. This had little effect, so I progressed to a bottle of M-150 which has much the same effect as Red Bull. I was further dismayed to hear that only our bus had had music on on the way down; all the others had a bit of quiet time and caught up on sleep.

The Science Centre was done and dusted by 10am and we were off to the next stop; a temple. After about 45 minutes of thumping music, shrieking, shrill screams of a pitch that only 15 year old girls can reach, minimal sleep and little food we arrived at a grand 9-tiered Buddhist temple. My appreciation dulled by the bus journeys, I laboured up to the top floor, which turned out to be the size of a garden shed and becoming increasingly full of St. John’s kids. In amongst the kids were people offering prayers to the Buddha at the top. TIP FOR TEMPLE DESIGNERS: If you’re going to build a temple in a city without many tourist sights, a temple that will inevitably become a tourist sight, please make the stairs wider than one person. People will want to go down as well as up. Either that or lob a slide down the side.

The temple now sacked by the kids we were back on the bus and heading for Khon Kaen Museum. After about 45 minutes of thumping music, shrieking, shrill screams of a pitch that only 15 year old girls can reach, minimal sleep and little food we arrived at the Museum. The kids filed in and were told not to touch anything and immediately set about touching everything. The displays were quite interesting to me, and also in English. Probably the town planner geek in me but there were some ace explanations of the city states that used to dot this region of Thailand.

Getting close to lunch time I asked where we would be stopping. I was told that one of the teachers has a friend that owns a restaurant and we would all be going there. Then five minutes later we weren’t. We all boarded the bus again and set off to our next destination. The Highway Patrol car that was at St John’s had, it turned out, been with us all day, and helped us through the traffic of Khon Kaen as we crawled towards wherever we were going. After about 30 minutes of thumping music, shrieking, shrill screams of a pitch that only 15-year old girls can reach, minimal sleep and little food we pulled up on the side of the road, got pointed towards a small 7-11 convenience store and unleashed 7 coachloads of kids on it. This was lunch. The 7-11 was part of a filling station, to give you an idea of size. And it was filled with kids for a solid 45 minutes. Their takings must’ve been through the roof. I had to laugh when I saw the faces of normal customers as they pushed the door open to be confronted by a sea of light green shirts all clutching whatever foodstuff they could find. Even I gave up and went to sit outside until it all died own. When I did venture in all the decent food had been scavenged and I was left to pick up a ropey tuna sandwich and a can of pop. An hour or so later we set off again.

After about an hour and a half of thumping music, shrieking, shrill screams of a pitch that only 15-year old girls can reach, minimal sleep and little food we arrived at a dinosaur museum. Fossils had been found in the jungles near Khon Kaen and they’d built an attraction out of it. It was a modern building that had more than a passing resemblance to the dinosaur museum in Jurassic Park. There was much to read but I didn’t, in all honesty, feel in the mood for looking at rocks. I wanted sleep. I wanted to murder. I wanted to rip out the speakers on the bus, stab the driver in the face with them and get some bloody sleep.

After whizzing around the museum it was time to trek out to the actual sites of the fossil finds. A 5 kilometre round trip it turned out. Up a mountain. 281 students walking up a mountain at 5pm, and the sun due to set at 6pm. I did question whether all of them would make it back to the bus. I sprinted ahead (I did actually run) which caused much laughter and mimicking. My reasoning was that the quicker I did it the sooner I could get back to a bus without kids, and therefore without thumping music and shrieking, shrill screams of a pitch that only 15-year old girls can reach, and hopefully find some sleep. I paid cursory glances towards the fossils themselves and then headed own. I was joined by some of the ‘academically challenged’ lads from the third year. The ones that continually play up in class. It came as a great surprise that they were genuinely interested in trying to talk to me and ask me about England; I was quite touched really. I made a note to myself to try and take them out of the classroom for a lesson or two and go for a wander around Tha Bom, in English.

We were wandering down the track and I was beginning to get a touch concerned about getting back…we hadn’t seen anyone else come past us and couldn’t see anyone behind us. The sun was gone too. My Dad had rang at this point, so I was regaling him with tales of how we were going to have to sleep out under the stars with the tigers and the ants and the snakes. After about 20 minutes we hit a metalled road, I was still on the blower when all the lads sprinted off. I looked up and they’d commandeered a passing pick-up. And it was moving away from me. I hung up on Dad and ran like the wind. As I got close I dived in to the back of the pick-up head first (no exaggeration!) which was greeted with howls of laughter and many high fives. We made our way past others, laughing at them and waving cheerio. We made it back to the buses, only to find that nearly everyone had given up on the full circle. The shits. Even more annoying, some of the teachers hadn’t even bothered going up the bloody hill and had, judging by the empty plates and bottles, had quite a trough. The double shits. And so it was I was faced with a 5 hour ride home, consisting of thumping music, shrieking, shrill screams of a pitch that only 15-year old girls can reach, minimal sleep and little food.

Sure enough, no sooner had we turned our backs on the fossils than the music was cranked up to 11 and the dancing started. Only this time there was the added bonus of Kru Pung (Kru = Teacher) whipping the kids into a frenzy on the mic (turned up one louder than the music). A frenzy sustained until we were 30 minutes short of Tha Bom. At one point I gave in and joined them for some dancing. Adam was more willing and was up for some time, doing a good impression of someone’s dad at a wedding disco. I gave up after 15 minutes, sick of cracking my head on the overhead fans. I sat there; piercing Kru Pung on the mic; the kids doing serious damage to their larynx; pounding Thai beats, all the while wishing for a mute button. I took to putting rolled up bog roll in my lugs which only slightly took the edge off the volume. I resorted to putting my hoody over my head and pretending to be asleep, only so every fucker would leave me the fuck alone thank you very much now fuck off.

I hope this gives you some impression of my ordeal.If it doesn't then maybe this will:



There was a moment of drama and a great example of Thai-ness at one of the stops on the way back. The impatient kids, eager to ransack another 7-11 had made the driver open the door before he had stopped, and were leaping out of the moving bus. The dinner ladies, who had joined us on the trip, followed suit. Only one of them slipped as she was jumping off and got dragged along the ground before her disconcerted face disappeared from my view. I had visions of her being a touch flatter by the time I saw her next. I jumped off too to see her sat on her bum with a number of other dinner ladies tending to her. She then decided it was the drivers fault for her fall and not of course anything to do with her decision to jump from a moving vehicle. She dusted herself down and went to remonstrate.

We landed in Tha Bom and blessed quietness was upon us. We clambered wearily back in to Kae’s pick-up and headed home. Sleep was blissful. Twenty-two hours awake, about 18 of them in a moving sensory assault machine in the form of a bus.

I was still recovering by the time Monday came round. In my emails came a message from Paul in Bangkok asking if I fancied a night out clubbing the following Saturday. I said yes. The week in the school passed by with the usual confusion and organised chaos. The school had asked, early on in my time, to teach the teachers English also. I had said yes but hadn’t pursued it. Typically they’ve waited until I have 4 weeks left and have now instigated the lessons. Not only for St. John’s staff but also Mahathai Primary. I was told initially I would be doing Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday after school. This then morphed in to Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at St. John’s and Monday and Friday at Mahathai (which frankly I thought was taking the piss), and then they finally settled on Monday and Tuesday at Mahathai and Wednesday and Thursday in St. John’s. Excpet that in the first lesson at Mahathai we had 4 attendees. So now Mahathai will be joining St. John’s, who will extend their lessons to Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursdays, i.e. the original plan. To convey the exasperation and hilarity of the organisational ‘skills’ of the school is near impossible. On top of the teacher’s lessons, the third year have had their national exams this last week. In the lead up Adam and I were tutoring them at lunchtimes. They certainly know how to use free labour (I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think they were taking the mickey just a touch). It was depressing to see the regularity of typos, poor grammar and ambiguous questions in the past exam papers. The kids don’t really stand a chance if they’re faced with such a mass of shoddy papers. On top of this, the kids were achieving 3/10, 4/10 or at best 5/10 in the questions we asked. Uh-oh.

In normal lessons I did ‘Job and Ambitions’. They went fairly well overall; in the last lesson with the 5th years I asked them what they wanted to do for a living, and I was pleasantly surprised at the variety of answers, particularly from the girls. Most want to go on to University; one wants to be an architect; two want to be doctors; another couple, tour guides; two receptionists who want to study English at Uni. The best answer though was from one lad who said that he wants “to be the best barber in Thailand”. Quality.

It was also decided by the powers that be that I would stop going to the state run primary school, in order to help the St. John’s kids practice their exams. I have been invited back for an end of term party though; and also presented with some small gifts of gratitude from the kids – some noodles and dried soup powder (egg flavour). The kids gave me a few handmade cards, many of them saying ‘I love you Dave’. Bless.

Bangkok was calling and Adam and I caught an overnight bus down on the Friday night. I achieved about 1 hours sleep and we were spewed out at Mor Chit bus station in to the thronging mass of tuk-tuks and taxis. We landed at Paul’s at 5am and crashed out for a few more hours kip. In the day we took a quick tour of some Bangkok sights – JJ Market; Khao San Road; a boat up the river. Adam had a friend in town who he had met in Nice on his travels through France, so we met up with him. Douglas is a tall, bald Canadian chap about 50 years old. He seems very chilled and has more than a passing interest in astrology (and he’s at pains to distance himself from the ‘tabloid’ version of astrology). He also has no passport at the moment as he got himself caught up in a drug sting and arrested for possession of some marijuana. It was interesting to hear a first hand account of the Thai legal system. I use the term ‘drug sting’ quite loosely though; he bought some, the kid disappeared so he sat down on the street kerb (…), pulled his guitar on to his lap and began to skin up there and then (…). Talk about making trouble for yourself. Anyway, he’s followed us back to Chiang Khan and taken a room for a month until he heads back to court to hear of his fate. He’s anticipating a small fine.

Back to Paul’s and then out for food. We met up with Tony and Cholor and had Japanese. It was the first time I’d seen Tony since he left Tha Bom with a cheery wave. It was very good to see him, catch up and fill in. After the grub Paul, his girlfriend Poy, Adam and me headed off to the club night. It was at an exhibition centre and was bloody massive. On reflection, probably too big for the event; but we still had a good dance and a few beers. Two people came up to me and said they recognized me from Leeds and Sheffield respectively. I couldn’t remember them for toffee but they managed to place me at many of the bars and clubs I’ve been known to stumble out of. The lad from Sheffield was a good laugh and we ended up agreeing that Sheffield is better than Bangkok, by a significant margin. Giving up at 3am we headed home via McDonalds and the rebuffed advances of a ladyboy prostitute.

Christ knows why but I was awake at 8.30am on the Sunday morning. I had come down to Bangkok with a shopping list too; reasoning that there would be more chance of finding clothing for the larger/Western gent in Bangkok. We brazed up to the bus station and secured bus tickets for the way back then hit town. I’m fairly sure I paid over the odds for most of my stuff (memory card for camera: 20 quid, 10 in the UK…; Nike Cortez for 40 quid but some doubts over the authenticity; two polo shirts for 12 quid which should’ve been 20). We headed back to Paul’s and packed, departed and went to catch the bus. Paul is a top bloke and only too happy for me to abuse his hospitality – cheers mate.

I slept like a log on the bus; drifting off before getting out of Bangkok and waking up as we pulled into Chiang Khan.

This last week has passed by in a blaze of whiskey. One event to properly shit me up – the first since being here – occurred one tea time. We were all sat around and usually there’s one or two moggies knocking about on the scrounge. This evening was no exception and being a bit of a cat person I covertly dropped the odd bit of chicken on to the floor. Out of the corner of my eye I caught something come out of the kitchen. I don’t know why I turned to take a full look but I’m glad I did; the ‘something’ was a fucking scorpion. A big fucking scorpion. I yelped “SCORPION!!” and immediately Pi Nu was up on his feet and Pi Tai soon after. Now I didn’t have my Collins gem SAS Survival Guide book that Mum bought me before departure to hand at this point. If I’d had it I would’ve read that a scorpion’s venom is “…neuro-toxic, causing respiratory or cardiac problems…”, and that whilst the stings are “…seldom fatal in adults”, scorpions should be “treated with respect”. “Respect” in this instance came in the form of repeated strong blows to the body with a metal chair leg. Then a stamp, just to make sure. I felt Pi NU stopped short and should’ve really pumped a couple of rounds in to the jellied mess of exo-skeleton and innards and then killed it dead with fire. That was first bit of wildlife to give me the willies. And I’m intending to go to Cambodia where they eat the bloody things. Things could get interesting.

Today there is a festival in Muang Loei that me, Adam and Douglas are going to take a look at. We’ve been warned by everyone that it’s dangerous. Gang fights are par for the course and we should avoid it, particularly after dark. Stay tuned…