Travel to Teach: Thailand Volunteer Story

David teaching computers in Phon Phisai

David, 26, UK

I initially arrived in Phon Phisai intending to stay for the first month of my 3 months volunteering in Thailand, however that was nearly 5 months ago and despite trips to Namsom, Loei and Vietnam I've enjoyed it so much that I'm still here.

Phon Phisai really gives you the chance to experience Isan village life. The dorm is located in the middle of a group of Thai houses in which the people are like one giant family. This initially seemed quite daunting, especially as they spoke virtually no English, but with the help of Jack (the Thai T2T staff member who's village we stay in and possibly the worlds happiest person) we where quickly made to feel part of the family and where constantly being invited to eat and drink with various neighbours.

Although initially I found myself having 5 minute conversations in which neither party understood anything the other was saying, I quickly picked up quite a bit of the Thai/Isaan (admittedly some of this isn't appropriate for use in the classroom) and its amazing how well you can get on with that little language, even if you do sometimes find yourself having the same conversations over and over again.

I've spent most of my time teaching various IT courses including basic computing, Microsoft Office, HTML and Photoshop. Perhaps the most satisfying thing about the computing course is how far the students can progress in a short space of time, some of them going from being unable to even use a mouse at the start of the basic course to being able to being confident in Excel, Word and even Photoshop only a few weeks later. One of these students Som who was previously a buffalo farmer has even managed to get a job working with computers in Bangkok. The fact that you're only teaching to 6 people at a time also makes the computing class an ideal place to start if (as I was) you're nervous about standing up in front of a class for the first time.

Although Phon Phisai is pretty quiet there are still plenty of things to do. Jack has his his own badminton court and there are nightly competitions with the locals as well as a swimming pool at the local guest house, football, pool tables and the karaoki bars. If you get bored of these there's always eating weird food to keep you occupied. Since I've been here I've tried buffallo, dog, eel, ant, frog, grasshopper (v good in a peanut style snack sort of way), cricket and scorpion amongst other things. My only regret being that I wasn't here during rat eating season. Another big plus point is that Nong Khai, where there are always numerous other volunteers and Bar Nana (the disco), is only 35 minutes away so it's easy to return there for the weekend.

I'm really sad to be leaving Phon Phisai and have made some great and hopefully lifelong friends here in particular Jack, his girlfriend Pim and neighbour Noung, not to mention the semi-legendary kii mao drinking partnership of Mr Nung and Mr Kum who I'll certainly never forget even if I won't miss their insistance on me drinking Lao at 10 o'clock in the morning.

Thank you Phon Phisai.