Intern life & our house in Kanchanaburi

Teaching English abroad gives a great chance to experience local life like no tourist could. Here’s what you can expect as a TEFL intern in Thailand!

I am currently sitting in my new home for the next 2 months. It’s a Thai style house with a concrete downstairs, which comprises of an open space with a sofa, fridge, microwave, work desk, television and bathroom. The wooden upstairs has a dressing room complete with an iron and ironing board, a landing area for drying clothes and the bedroom. I have definitely had the luck of the draw when it comes to accommodation. Facilities vary from school to school. It is important to be open minded and prepared to experience a lower standard of living than you are used to. Some interns have a spare classroom in the school with a bed shoved in it and a shared bathroom a few floors down; others have a renovated school clinic that is “western standard” in terms of structure but uncomfortable in terms of homeliness.

Our intern house

Some have washing machines, some have microwaves, and some have no living facilities what so ever. The only guarantee is a western toilet (as opposed to a squat), which seemed to be people’s biggest concern. At the end of the day, you just have to make do with whatever you end up with and remember that the school has paid out of their own pocket to provide you with this living space and everything in it. You have to expect to be uncomfortable at times; to endure stomach upset, cold showers and hard beds. And this can all be quite a shock for interns coming straight from Europe. But this is all part of the experience. I am living in Thailand and I live like Thais do. I am experiencing the culture at a more realistic level than other tourists. I am eating and sleeping like the other teachers do.

The general every day attitude towards life is a lot different to England. It’s quite a hard thing to explain. Thais are generally quite laid back. Things only seem serious when it comes to respecting elders and upholding traditions. Everything else is slow, no one is ever in a rush to do anything and everything is subject to change. It’s probably the heat. One thing that was said over and over at orientation was that every single person in our local school area will know who we are. This wasn’t an exaggeration. Although Thailand in general is quite touristy, the TEFL schools are in small, quiet communities, often out in the sticks and cut off from everything else. For the first couple of weeks, walking down the street was a funny ordeal. Sometimes I got looks of respectful recognition and sometimes I got a curious, even distrustful eyeing up that seemed to say “what are you doing here!”. To some people, foreigners are a bit of a novelty because they never see them. They will want to take pictures of you and talk to you no matter how limited their English is.

Teacher’s garden at the TEFL intern house in Kanchanaburi, Thailand

It’s such a small community that every time I leave the school I am bound to run in to a student with his or her parents. Being respectful and following their social norms goes without saying, and if you play things right you might be rewarded. One day I went to buy some shorts from a local shop. After a friendly chat with the owner, in which we told him we were teaching English at the local school and that we were on our way into town to meet other interns, I ended up paying half price and he gave us a lift to town. Almost every day, my partner plays football after school with the kids while parents watch. One of the parents, touched by his involvement, gave him a big packet of Emmental cheese to put in the fridge (cheese is hard to find here, she had great intuition). We have been treated to a free massage from a teacher who owns a salon. We have even visited our English teacher’s mum and step dad for dinner, at which we were utterly spoiled and given bag-fulls of food to take home with us. This communal togetherness that we are being included in is central to Thai culture. Everyone here knows each other, shares what they can and looks out for one another like a big, happy family. We don’t have that in London.

If I had to tell you the “thorn in my side” about living here it would be the noise at night. It might sound like a gross exaggeration but I have a more peaceful night’s sleep in a dorm room on Khao San Road than I do in my room in Tha Muang, Kanchanaburi. If it isn’t every dog (there’s a lot of dogs) in the neighbourhood keeping me awake with their constant, relentless barking and howling, it’s the incessant whoop of a Koel bird that seems to nest directly above my head. But living here isn’t to say that I am completely cut off from the comforts of home. We are lucky to have a bus stop at the top of our road so we are conveniently connected to both Kanchanaburi town and Bangkok.

Waterfalls at Erawan National Park

I am away somewhere almost every weekend with the other interns (there’s a total of 30 in Kanchan) who often choose to stay in a tourist hub where restaurant menus are familiar (in English) and serve western food, where the showers are hot and the wifi actually works. The interns have managed to do it all, from touring the provinces’ famous “death railway” (The Burmese railway), river Kwae and waterfalls at Erawan National Park to flying to Koh Phangan for the full moon party, from the lady boys show, tuk-tuk drag races and Chinese New Year in Bangkok to chilling on the beach drinking coconuts at Hua Hin. The weekends are usually so eventful that by Sunday night we welcome another “quiet” week at school.

Watching the Ladyboys of Bangkok