Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a nice party and a lot of fun celebrating into our possibly last year on earth. Like every year, the first day of January always brings a lot of new things with it. So does it this time. Besides many things that, luckily, do not affect me, there is one new rule that bothers me quite a bit.

From now on schools are forced to provide a time and space to practice English once (!!) a week. Many schools will simply include English into their morning activities once a week. That’s how the government tries to increase the English knowledge among students. This year is now even called ‘The English Year’. Woohoo! While it is a good thing that people realized that English is important (well they realized it because ASEAN is coming close and other countries ...

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During this years North-Eastern Thailand Vocational College Championships I was selected to be one of three judges sitting in the committee of the English speech competition. Besides being the by far youngest judge, I also was the only non-native speaker there. Turned out that the two old English guys and I did have total different points of view on how to judge students and their speaking knowledge.

They are only Thais

During the speeches the two English judges always kept talking to each other and complained about the grammar and speeches. In the end, however, they said ‘well done. good job. you are great’ and gave everyone a high rating with saying ‘Well, they are only Thais. They can’t do it better’ – That’s the point were I totally disagree...

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Day number 4 of the North-Eastern Vocational College Exhibition hosted by our college. While the upcoming two days are more an exhibition style, the past three days have been all about competition. The North-Eastern Thailand Vocational College Championships 2011 took place and showed some great and impressive skillsets as well as some funny failures and emotional victories.

I do not have the time and the ability to write about all competitions that took place. I really tried to see as many as possible but had to focus on the ones with my students in it. And even this wasn’t always possible since many of the competitions took place at the same time. So here is just a short round up of what I’ve seen and heard...

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This post is inspired by nomadteacher.org. Pictures are however all my-thai.org exclusive.

I will keep it short and simple. I thought it would be a nice idea to post the 5 pictures that I liked the most the past year. All photos taken by me or with me on it (then, obviously, not always taken by myself).

5.) Bayoke II, Bangkok. This is the highest building in Bangkok and offers a ‘skywalk’. Furthermore it offers a bar/restaurant on the top which lets you escape the hectic city life and enjoy the silence while watching the chaos beneath you. At night the colors of the city become quite impressive. Bayoke II itself also shows some nice colors.

4.) Baguette, Vientiane, Laos. This picture wasn’t taken in Thailand. It was taken in Laos. However Laos is almost considered Thailand...

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My first complete year in Thailand comes to an end. Time to reflect, re-think, reconsider and review. Highlights, lowlights, learnings, earnings, disappointments. The good, the bad and the ugly of living a teaching life in Thailand. I divided this po...Read More

Right now almost every educational institution goes crazy (well it actually started 2 months ago when students were forced to spend their saturdays in the biggest assembly halls listening – not understanding –  to people talking on the microphone without explaining something)  over here in Thailand. It is time for the National Education Tests (NET). Since I am working for a Vocational College, the test here is named Vocational National Education Test, or short, V-NET.

So right now there are many v-net preparation courses all over the country. Offered by schools as well as by private institutions. Everybody is hopping on the hype and making it even worse. Woooooaaaaah v-net….(or c-net or d-net…any-net). This week there are even so called PRE V-NET tests...

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While spending the last weekend in Bangkok again I came across many tourists (yeah, the city is getting crowded again. Reserving a hostel before arriving might make sense during December & January.) who bought clothes.

While some of them were arguing about the quality (we all should understand that a 2 Euro shirt might not have the same quality like a 20 euro shirt at home) almost everybody was confused about the clothing sizes here in Thailand.

The common problem: Either way clothes are to long but not wide enough or simply tooo damn short. Thai people simply have a complete different body. Knowing this it is almost unbelievable that a common size measurement is something called ‘free size’...

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During my life in Thailand I meet / met a lot of interesting and fascinating people. This is their place to tell the world what they think about all different kinds of subjects. You will find interviews with students, colleagues, workers, farangs and more random citizens, tourists or friends. Today it is one of my friends who I met in the big city, the city of Angels, Krung Thep Mahanakhon. She talks about her life as well as about her studies in Nakhom Phatom. Luckily she is very talkative and has a lot to say. But see for yourself….

What’s your name?
Peipei M. Hong

Where are you from?
Ratchaburi, Thailand

How old are you?
22, almost 23 soon – but still looking young

Where do you live?
Photharam,Ratchaburi Thailand

Why are you there?
Hmm,  Because I was...

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December 5. Time for a holiday! Again. Yes, there are many holidays in Thailand. This time it was quite an important one though. It was as well father’s day as the King’s Birthday. King Bhumibol Adulyadej turned 84 today. Reason to celebrate!

Like you already learned in my post about mother’s day (The Queen’s Birthday) those days need a special way of celebration. For once there are extra activities in schools, colleges and universities all across the country as well as parades, fireworks and festivals in each and every city.

Since the day itself is a public holiday schools usually celebrate this event on the last day before it happens. This year it was past friday...

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Since we are heading towards the annual English speech competition and this year’s topic is ‘Vocational Education & ASEAN’ (or something like this – topics are told in Thai…) I thought it might be a good idea to go a little more into this topic.

So what does ASEAN actually mean? Many people think that the European Union is something special and unique in this world…well…they are right! ASEAN is not exactly like the EU but in order to ease the explanation we can compare it a little bit.

ASEAN stands for Association for Southeast Asian Nations. It was started in 1967 by it’s inicial members Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Since then, membership has expanded to include Brunei, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.

There are usually confere...

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