It is probably one of the biggest and oldest shopping malls in Thailand and without any doubt one of the most famous ones as well (numerous people walk around with ‘i love mbk’ t-shirts). However it is also a place of frustration and annoyances. At least for foreigners / farangs.

mbk shopping mall in bangkok

The MBK shopping mall is located in the famous shopping district of Bangkok. Not to far away from Chulalongkorn University and other schools or Universities. This makes the shopping mall kind of a natural habitat for students of all ages. When you ask in Bangkok ‘where can i find product A or B’ or ‘where can I go shopping’ most people will answer ‘at MBK’. There are other shopping malls that are bigger, better or more modern (Central World, Siam Paragon, etc...

1.5 years. -12 kilogram.

Quite funny. Most people I know gain weight when leaving their used surrounding and start to enjoy and experience different eating habits and cultures. Even a lot of the people I know who came to Thailand to stay and work here gained a decent amount of weight. So quite interesting that for me it was completely different.

When I came to Thailand I had about 84 kg and now I weigh in with about 72//73. How I did this? Well, here’s the trick:

I don’t know!

I didn’t do anything special, in fact I even did less sport here than back home (since they don’t have beach/volleyball teams here). The only sport I do on a regular basis is running. (7km/day). However this is nothing compared to the amount of sport I did back home.

 

after the thai diet

Furthermore I didn’t sto...

February 18th: Last school day of the term. Finally holidays. Yeah. Let’s gooooo…oh no. Back to school!

Why? Because the college said so. When? One week before the holidays.

Besides the usual school work we’ve also been waiting for a ‘College Evaluation Committee’ for the past few weeks. Since the ladies and gentlemen from the committee were tooooo busy coming here in time they came up with a great plan. “Let’s visit Udon Thani Vocational College AFTER they already finished their term…”.

students udon thani - no, no holidays

Obviously a great idea! Thanks for that. Now, with that in mind, our college decided to extend the current school term and extended it for one week telling students last week ‘btw, you have to come to school next week’...

‘Sascha, you know what is missing here? The ability to think’

That quote of one of my colleagues over here at Udon Thani Vocational College says it all and I couldn’t agree more. During a conversation we had last week we tried to figure out why Thai people would rather spend their time searching for and copying things they find instead of using the same amount of time to think of their own.

This is not a students problem only though. This problem can be found everywhere in Thailand. Among teachers, workers, doctors….everybody is a copy cat – and not a thinker. While we all copy things once in a while it still stays important to think about the things you copy...

As time goes by! The next semester at Udon Thani Vocational College comes to an end and since last term’s ‘cooking adventure’ was such a success I decided to invite my students again to our big college kitchen and cook ‘European food’ with them.

pizza with thai students

Last term we focused on German food (Schnitzel and potato salad), this term it was ‘forza Italia’ time. Pizzaaaaa! Now you might say ‘come on, everybody knows Pizza – why do you have to introduce it to students?’ (yeah, that’s how I think you talk while you are reading my articles). Well the answer is easy: Thai Pizza sucks! Pizza in Thailand does not deserve the name at all. The Pizza here is ‘over americanized’ and has nothing to do with fine italian cuisine...

Over the past few weeks I received a lot of mails asking what it takes to teach English as a second language (ESL) here in Thailand. So here’s a short post covering the most important facts and qualifications you need to know.

Personal Qualifications:

Don’t take this to easy! You really need to be able to adapt to a completely new culture, life style and learning approach. I’ve seen many foreign teachers come and go – most of them annoyed by the Thai style of organizing the school system, curriculums and all things regarding work in a school. It’s even worse when you work for a governmental school and are forced to do office hours. So really think twice before you say ‘yeah let’s go to Thailand’ – it’s not the funny and relaxed thing you probably dream of.

Here are some requirements your p...

Since my time in Udon Thani slowly comes to an end it is time for a final recap. I already told you more than once that I love teaching and most of my students and I probably will say it again in a final post, however this post is about my college and the education commission which supervises all colleges. I figured that, if I give these complaints in a letter to the college or the commission, nobody will ever read it. So I decided to publish it here and, with some luck, it might end up on someone’s screen who cares. At least it can be of value for other foreigners who think of teaching in Udon or on a Vocational College.

I. Udon Thani Vocational College

1.) Udon Thani Vocational (UVC) NEVER communicates any changes of schedule, appointments, meetings...

A few days ago I had the chance to meet a television superstar here in Thailand. Christopher Wright is an English teacher who produced several successful DVDs and books, has his on TV shows (Chris Delivery) and an incredibly funny and successful stand-up comedy program (Chris Unseen).

chris unseen - chris delivery

I was quite surprised and lucky that he took the time to great me and even had some minutes left to talk to me about teaching, his motivations and experiences.

Since the talk was quite honest and not only coined by marketing phrase, I won’t tell you what we talked about – that wouldn’t be fair. However it was nice to see how energetic this famous tv teacher is (well if you’re famous and rich this helps to keep the motivation up I guess)...

The time mentioned in the title is the time it took until I couldn’t take it anymore. Usually I always play nice and smile and try to not be offended by the way local sales people / tuk tuk driver and similar scam treat me (like foreigners are stupid, money making, waiting to be milked, machines). I always reply with a friendly ‘mai ao khrap’ (I don’t need, thank you). However, now, 1 year 3 months and 9 days after setting first food on Thai soil it was to much. And I gave a random tuk tuk driver as much crap as possible. In both, Thai and English.

Actually he didn’t do anything worse than other tuk tuk drivers, he just did it repeatedly and after I already said politely ‘no’ to half a dozen of his friends...

I just came back from something that was supposed to be a ‘steak dinner’. However what they served was not quite what I consider to be worth called ‘steak’. Unfortunately this hasn’t been the first disappointment when it comes to ‘non Thai food’ here in Udon Thani.

Right now I am quite aware of the fact that, if you go to a ‘normal’ steak shop (lets not call it restaurant) here on the street (e.g. ‘Relax Steak’), you can’t expect a ‘real’ steak to be deserved. It’s usually a small ‘pork steak’ that has been in the pan far to long and has been drowned to death in some sweet sour sauce. So before going there one is well-advised to consider going for ‘steak south east asian style’ and simply go to one of the local Vietnamese steak houses. At least they serve what you expect...