As you may know, I’m not in Thailand anymore. As you may also know, I intended to be in Thailand for some time more. However, I write this post to you from rainy Yangon, Burma.
You see, last week I moved over here to teach English. It’s pretty great so far, but I’ll save details for a further post. For now, feel free to peruse what I wrote when I visited Burma (Myanmar) in April.
Despite my educational grievances and ethical quandaries that I’ve aired the past couple of posts, I really loved Thailand. The area comes surprisingly close to paradise between the food, gorgeous landscape, relaxed quality of life, and especially the absurdly friendly people. Seriously, I can’t count the number of times someone gave me a meal, a little gift, or just helped me out for no other reason than they could. Lots of foreigners get stuck in Thailand for an extra month, then an extra year, than an extra decade or two. Can’t say I entirely blame them.
The faculty and students in Wangnua went out of their way to make me feel welcome, and I do feel that a few people (notably the English teachers) might have improved their language skills. Teaching basic English in a rural area, especially to students who’ve never had an English teacher before, was incredibly rewarding.
Still, I’m hoping to make a more immediate difference by downgrading from 900 students in Thailand to 100 in Yangon. The first week here has been incredible, even if Burmese people seem to have missed the important memo on eating fried eggs with every meal. I’m staying at a hotel downtown for now, but I’m moving into a new apartment on Tuesday.
Once I’m more settled here, I’ll discuss Yangon in a bit more detail. For now…
Love,
Graham