Thursday 11th March 2010

I've just updated my details of exchange rate history between the UK pound and Thai Baht.

It doesn't make very good reading for Brits living in Thailand, whose main source of income comes from the UK.

The exchange rates I've used are real ones: simply dividing the number of UK pounds I am charged for obtaining a fixed amount of Baht. The exchange rate used when you obtain money is always worse than the official exchange rate.

The official exchange rate is Bt48.something at the moment so the real exchange rate will be really bad.

When I first came to live in Thailand the rate was around Bt70. Within about six months it had climbed to almost Bt75. Those were the days.

In the second half of 2008 the rate went from above 60 to below 50. Since then, it has hovered around Bt50 but last month it took a turn for the worse.

In December 2009, my UK bank decided that their fee for overseas ATM transactions wasn't high enough so they increased it.

Last year, all the Thai banks with the exception of the Bank of Ayudhya, started charging Bt150 for ATM withdrawals from overseas bank accounts.

I normally draw Bt10,000 at a time. At one stage, this was costing me £137.92. The last transaction I made cost me £208.50 (around a 51% increase).

I am fed up with this. A short time ago I transferred some money from the UK. The charge for doing so worked out less than if I had drawn the same amount of money from ATMs. Fortunately, the rate at the time was quite a bit higher than it is now.

I have decided to stop using my UK bank account for the time being and will use my Thai bank account instead. I will let the money in my UK account accumulate and make another transfer when the exchange rate is better.

I know the UK economy is bad, but with all the political problems in Thailand (that are just about to get a lot worse) I can't believe how strong the Baht is against the pound.

I keep reading that the fear of a hung parliament in the UK is affecting the strength of the pound. A UK election is due before June this year and the British electorate need to make sure that Brown is put somewhere where he can no longer cause damage to the economy.

The rift between the red and yellow shirts in Thailand will only get worse, and eventually I suspect the political problems will hurt the Thai economy.

Only a few years ago, it was quite feasible for Brits with fairly limited means to move to Thailand and have a good life. If they owned a modest house worth, for example, £200,000 and sold it, they could get around 5% interest in a savings account.

That income, converted to Thai Baht using the exchange rate at that time, wouldn't have made anyone rich in Thailand but it would have been enough for a fairly comfortable lifestyle.

With interest rates falling to 0.5% and the collapse of the exchange rate, the situation has changed completely in a very short space of time.

As Buddhism tells us, nothing is permanent.

Tuesday 9th March 2010

I haven't been this excited about the end of a school year since I was 16.

I enjoy my job; I very much enjoy meeting the people I meet through work; the money is more than handy (especially now that the British pound has become a Mickey Mouse currency); the visa that comes with the job is worth a huge amount in saved expenses and hassle, but since I've been teaching full-time I have very little free time to do the things that I really want to do.

At the moment I am planning on doing one more year of teaching before hanging up my teacher's hat for good. However, the final decision will depend very much on what happens regarding the occupational pension that I am due to start receiving at the end of the year.

Had I reached 50 one year earlier, it wouldn't have been a problem, but this is the year the UK government has introduced new regulations regarding occupational pensions.

I have been assured by the company pensions department that the new regulations won't affect me, but until I get my first payment I'm not counting any chickens.

I have one more week of teaching commitments, and then I will get a long break. This last week will be quite intense, though, and I'm not sure that I will have much time to make any updates here.

If you use the RSS feed, I will continue to update it as I make changes so that you are notified automatically of any changes.

Monday 8th March 2010

Most e-mails I get from Thais are the usual boring chain e-mails that get circulated around the globe every day. They get deleted immediately. Occasionally, though, something good drops into my in-box.

I was sent one today which I think will be nostalgic to many Thais. It's pages from what looks like a standard text book designed for very young learners. Due to the fact it is being circulated in an e-mail, I guess that it is widely known in Thailand. However, I had never seen it before.

It starts off with a picture of a village and the names of the buildings, followed by an introduction of the characters who are children and animals.

The text is extremely simple but it soon becomes evident that the book is about pronunciation, especially tones. I got quite excited when I saw this because my efforts so far to determine how Thais are taught to read and interpret tones have not been very successful.

Whenever I have spoken to Thais about how tone rules are taught to foreigners learning to read Thai, they look completely baffled.

I think I'm now beginning to understand why.

The book has many examples of words with the same sound but with different tones. Unless I've missed something, I can't see anything about rules. There is nothing about live and dead syllables, short and long vowels, consonant classes, tone marks; and how different combinations of these things result in a certain tone.

From what I can make out, everything is done purely by rote. Students repeat 'kao kao kao', 'soo soo soo', 'hor hor hor', 'nee nee nee', 'maa maa maa', 'roo roo roo', 'kum kum kum', etc etc., using the appropriate tone for each word.

The words are grouped in such a way that all words in a group use initial consonants of the same class. This means that the tone rules remain consistent for words in that group but there is no explicit mention of consonant classes.

It seems to be very much a case of teaching students how words sound, without teaching them any rules to explain why.

I imagine that all students would do this at the same time, along with the teacher. I do English pronunciation with my students sometimes and they seem to enjoy these drills where they repeat words in unison.

If I ask Thais about tones, instead of being able to explain the tone rules, they will simply start chanting just as they did when they were in primary school.

This is a very good example of the famous Thai rote learning system.

I don't actually have any problems with rote learning for certain things. Some information simply needs to be memorised and rote learning is an effective way of committing facts to memory. I remember learning 'times tables' by rote at a very young age.

The information is still there and unlike many kids today I don't need to use a calculator when performing simple mental arithmetic.

Learning to read Thai tones lends itself to learning by rote quite well, I guess. The only problem is that Thai students seem to get very attached to this way of learning and don't like any teaching methods that require them to think.

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

I have always thought that teaching students some basic rules and techniques would be more beneficial to them, but this hasn't worked very well in Thailand.

I used to teach staff at a hospital who had to deal with foreign patients. Some of them requested that I wrote down set phrases which they would then memorise and spout out parrot-fashion when a patient came in.

They didn't see anything wrong with this or realise how limited that method of 'teaching' would be. Their memory skills were actually excellent. I was amazed at the length of sentences they could memorise, and they could actually perform one page scripts from memory.

The only problem was that if there was any slight deviation from the original script, then they were completely lost.

I believe that there is still a place in education for rote learning, but the Thai education system really needs to focus on developing the students' ability to think.

The problem is that most of the teachers have only ever experienced the Thai education system, and therefore the only way of teaching they know is the way they were taught.

Saturday 6th March 2010

The application of law in Thailand is difficult to fathom out. There are laws for everything but they only seem to be enforced when there is a particular reason to enforce them. Otherwise, illegal activities are simply ignored.

Everyone knew there would be repercussions after Thaksin's court judgement involving his loyal red-shirted supporters, most of whom are from poor rural areas of Thailand.

The farmers in these areas use their agricultural vehicles on the roads to get around. I know a foreigner who has been on motorbike trips in the northeast and he tells me the roads up there are full of strange-looking farm vehicles.

It is illegal to drive these vehicles on the roads but normally no one cares.

However, red-shirted supported were planning to drive down to Bangkok in their farm trucks to stage a protest. The government is now saying they will use traffic laws (which are normally ignored) to keep the farmers' vehicles off the road.

E-taen banned from roads : Suthep

There are hundreds of thousands of motorbikes in Thailand that have sidecar contraptions of some description fitted. Specialist shops exist which build these sidecars to order.

Sometimes they are used to carry extra passengers, and sometimes so that the owner can run a mobile business. Some owners build complete mobile shops and attach them to the sides of their motorbikes.

I was told recently that these too are illegal. I was amazed because there are just so many of them. They may be illegal but no action is taken against the owners.

If, on the other hand, protesters were planning to drive their motorbike sidecars to Bangkok I suspect that the law might suddenly be enforced.

As a Westerner, I just find the whole concept of law in Thailand - and more specifically how it is applied in such a discriminatory fashion - very, very strange.

The Internet is awash with people trying to get information about visas in Thailand. The problem is that the immigration laws are applied in pretty much the same way as the traffic laws and therefore there are never any black and white answers.

I was talking to another foreigner living in Thailand who drives around on a big motorbike that wasn't produced in Thailand.

As I've mentioned before, any vehicle imported into Thailand is subject to a high import duty and therefore expensive. He paid about the same for his big bike as a 125cc Honda Wave. How come?

The bike was imported from Japan in parts and assembled by a backstreet mechanic in Thailand. This way, no import duty was paid.

What about registration? He told me that if he gets the bike officially registered he will have to pay the import duty, which would be about Bt80,000 (twice the amount he paid for the bike). He therefore hasn't bothered and rides around without any licence plates, which is illegal.

What if he gets stopped by the police? He told me the guy he bought the bike from has a friend who is a high-ranking policeman. If he gets stopped, he just makes a phone call and the problem will be dealt with.

This is how Thailand is; this is how Thailand has always been; and this is how Thailand probably always will be. I never realised this as a tourist but if you decide to make your Thailand home this is what you have to accept.

Friday 5th March 2010

Who's the most popular farang in Thailand?

I've never met him but I think it's a bloke called Ron - I keep hearing his name wherever I go.

The heat continues to build day-by-day. The humidity is high and the leaves on the trees are almost stationary indicating that there is no breeze. I have resorted to air-conditioning and feel quite housebound at the moment.

I expect my electricity bill this month will be closer to Bt300 than the usual Bt100. I am desperate to do some photography but spending any length of time outside gets very uncomfortable very quickly at this time of year.

My teaching commitments for this school year have almost finished and pretty soon I will be getting a two month break. It's a fantastic opportunity to travel in Thailand but unfortunately my long break coincides with the hottest part of the year.

After avoiding the capital for almost four years, I am due a visit to Bangkok. I'd also like to visit some places I haven't been to in the north and maybe the northeast. However, these places are even hotter than the south during the hot season. It's a bit of a dilemma.

The photo reflects the current weather conditions. My local Tesco Lotus has just removed a large display of flatscreen LCD TVs and replaced them with an even larger display of fans.

Many Thais live without air-conditioning and have to rely on fans to keep them cool. The decision makers at Tesco are obviously planning on selling a lot of fans during the coming months.

ร้อน (ron = hot)

Thursday 4th March 2010

I stumbled across a performance of Thai dancing yesterday. I'm not sure what it was in aid of but all the top local dignitaries were there, including the mayor. I think it might have been to officially open a newly renovated area of town.

Each region of Thailand has its own distinct culture. Culture in the northeast has been influenced by Laos. Culture in the south has a Malay influence, as well as an Indian one.

I know little about Thai classical dance and music but this style of dance is known as Manohra, based on an ancient fable.

Manohra was a beautiful mythological half-bird/half-human creature known as a ginaree in Thai. As in all good fairy tales, she married a prince - Prince Suthon.

While her husband was away fighting wars, a jealous person foretold that she would bring tragic consequences to the prince and to the whole Kingdom. To prevent this, it was decided she would be put to death by burning.

Her last request was that she be allowed to wear her wings for her final dance, and with this she managed to escape by flying away.

The performers looked quite old all dressed up in Thai traditional costume but I spoke to a few of them and they were only M4 students, therefore 15 or 16.

A little while ago I would have missed getting these photos. For a long time I only had an SLR camera and because of its weight and bulk I only carried it around when I intentionally went out to take photos.

There were lots of times when I stumbled across something like this but didn't have my camera. I got fed up with missing photo opportunities so I bought a compact camera at the beginning of November.

It looks the same as all the other compact cameras out there, but the sensor inside is bigger than most. This means that image quality is very good and it works well in low light conditions.

The camera is really small and light, and I carry it around with me all the time ... just in case. Considering how small it is, the image quality is excellent. It will never replace my SLR gear but I love the fact I can carry it around all day and not even realise it is there.

Last week I put together some more thoughts and a few sample photos: Canon PowerShot S90

If you're looking for a small, convenient camera for travel that is capable of very good results I would recommend this one highly.

Wednesday 3rd March 2010

A few years ago I was teaching some mature students and one was complaining about a pain in his back. When I asked what happened he told me he had fallen from a lamppost.

Naturally, I wanted to know more.

There is a large shanty town nearby, next to the railway tracks. It's within the town boundaries but not really looked after by the local municipality. For example, water and electricity aren't supplied.

My ex-student lives on the edge of this area and has set himself up as a utilities company. The local electricity company supplies electricity to his house, which he then distributes to the shanty town.

He has turned his house into a kind of electricity sub-station.

He employs a couple of workers to help him, and they install and maintain all the cables themselves. This is what he was doing when he had his accident. He does the same thing with water and has installed a network of blue PVC water pipes.

It's a lucrative business. His day job is government work, which is secure work in Thailand but pays a pittance. On the other hand, he earns something like ten times his government salary from his business on the side.

He was telling me that his monthly electricity bill is about Bt100,000 (mine is Bt100).

Due to the fact this is a special service he is able to charge his customers a higher rate than usual and I think his profit is about double his expenses.

The authorities must know what goes on but no one seems to be bothered. Good luck to him for spotting an opportunity and capitalising on it.

Elsewhere around town there are small, isolated shanty dwellings (plywood with corrugated iron roofs) which also aren't supplied with any electricity or water.

Whoever lives in the one in the photo has cut a channel in the road and laid a hosepipe. This is connected to a tap belonging to the house opposite and supplies water. Maybe he pays the owner of the house?

To get an electricity supply he has just strung up a couple of cables and connected these to the overhead cables in the street. There is no meter so presumably it's all free.

I like the way poor Thai people are helped like this, but when you see some of these sights - and hear some of the stories - it can all seem rather strange.

Tuesday 2nd March 2010

It's unfair to generalise but most Thais do think differently to most Westerners. When people are brought up in environments with very different value and belief systems, their way of thinking can't help but be different.

This starts to become very evident if you teach in Thailand.

In my early days of teaching, I once tried to play a dinner party game with some older students who were about to go to university. The game should have been within their capabilities but it was an abject failure.

The idea was that each student could be any historical figure from any period, and that they had to engage in conversation with the other dinner party guests. The ideas for guest selection, questions, and interesting conversation should have been endless.

Their first task was to select the guests, and this is where it all started to go wrong. I did my best to explain the idea but the only guests they could think of were Spiderman and a bunch of vacuous teenage pop singers from Thai and Korean boy/girl bands. Oh, well.

The dinner guests they suggested (apart from being fictional) probably didn't know any historical figures, and most likely couldn't ask an interesting question if their lives depended on it.

These were M6 students from supposedly the best school in town and quite a few were just about to go to some of Thailand's top universities.

I gave up in the end; put the whole episode down to experience; and now I don't give my students anything that requires any great deal of intellectual thought.

It's not that they are any less intelligent than kids from elsewhere, but they have a different set of priorities in life. The Thai education system doesn't help, either.

As one long-standing farang teacher told me, the education system is designed to get the students through exams. This is mostly done by memorising and then regurgitating things. A lot of teaching is done by rote and the system doesn't teach the kids to think.

Because it is such a boring way to learn, there is a bad association with books and learning. When the kids are out of school the last thing they want to do is pick up a book.

When asked, a few have told me that they read books over the weekend but further questioning reveals the 'books' were actually Japanese manga comics translated into Thai.

Thai kids love these comics but there is no educational value. They are so popular that there are shops which act like mini-libraries for comics. These shops (often located near schools) are full of thousands of comics that kids can rent for a few Baht.

They are also avid computer game players, and the boys love racing their motorbikes around the streets.

Last year I was doing an exercise from a text book about the environment. One of the questions was, "Do you think cars should be banned from city centres?"

I did this same exercise with quite a few classes and I was amazed that out of several hundred students not a single, solitary student said yes. Not one.

On the contrary, they looked shocked and quite disgusted at the thought of not being able to go into the city centre by car. A few actually got quite angry.

I wouldn't say that Thais don't care about the environment, but in their value system there are other things that are far more important.

Outward appearance, image, and perceived status are of the utmost importance to Thais; and cars in Thailand are the ultimate status symbol. Thais I have spoken to know the exact price of different cars and use this knowledge to judge people depending on the car they drive.

It will be a cold day in southern Thailand before a Thai gives up his/her car and takes public transport instead.

It would be interesting to compare how students think from different parts of the world. If they were given the task to come up with adjectives comparing bicycles and cars, which ones would they use?

Here are some suggestions:

The Thais are lovely people and Thailand is a delightful place to spend a vacation, but after living there for a while you realise that the locals think on a completely different wavelength.

RSS Feed

Blog Archives

Blog Links