The First Meeting

By : alisterbredee
Views : 491

The bus delivered them to a huge school, somewhere in the north east of the province. This was a new scheme, that would provide the area with 200 English Teachers. The government financed the project, because a recent report had pointed put that the level of spoken English in lagged considerably behind its neighbors. Here was the great experiment designed to turn the situation around, and, perhaps, provide a model for others to follow.

The American was the manager of the project. He stood on stage as the teachers and their counterparts from the schools involved drifted into the cavernous hall. He seemed young compared to the teachers he bossed. Clearly some American academic who would be the sacrificial lamb if the project back fired. The real boss sat behind him. A large lady with an Elvis quiff who with a dismissive flick of the wrist had the American jumping up and down like a performing seal. Still they drifted in, and the American was beginning to look impatient.

He sat there at the end of a row, apart from the others watching the proceedings. It had been a matter of days since he joined the plan. In fact it was perfect for him.

It had all begun almost a year previously. He had come to for a short visit. He had traveled around a little bit. A quick trip down south and then back to Bangkok via Hua Hin. After that he had caught the bus and gone to Pattaya, and it was there that it happened. A very Thai situation. He was out in a bar in Jomtien when he met somebody! He bar fined and they went off and spent the night together. It was good. He went back to the same bar the next day, once more there was bar fine and they spent the day together, followed by too many beers and another night of pleasure.

Sunday was the last night. He had a flight back to London on the Monday night. So they arranged to meet that night, for one last and presumably pleasurable night of passion. They agreed to rendezvous when the bar closed at mid-night. This would avoid the bar fine!

He went off with friends, had a few too many beers and when the mid-night hour drew near, time for the tryst to take place, he decided things were all getting rather intense in that relationship department, and decided to give the meeting a miss. Instead he met somebody else in some other bar. It was a very different experience and in the cold morning light of the rainy day of departure rather regretted his decision to renounce the original date of the previous night.

He boarded the plane with a sweet tinge of regret that Monday night, but he was secretly pleased with himself. In the past he had always got dashed away by the early pleasures of a new liaison. But this time he was able to walk away, completely without complications. Still there was a bitter tang of remorse, but it would pass with the miles and with the inevitable movement of time. was nice enough, but that was that! No need to come rushing back.

A month later there was an e-mail. Those friends in Pattaya had gone to Jomtien Beach. They had spent a pleasant enough afternoon reading, drinking and people watching. Jomtien is a treasure trove for simply looking, as there was so much to see! “Farangs” with big bellies wearing ridiculously tiny thongs, long limbed Thais jumping adroitly into the air in pursuit of the volleyball in the game taking place beside the lazily lapping sea. And topless Caucasian ladies of uncertain age who insist on sunbathing bare breasted wherever they might go, totally oblivious of the more refined sensibilities of the Thai population.

The sun was beginning to slide down into dusk when the two of them moved off the beach and made for the car. On the way they passed the bar. The fateful bar where he had had that encounter four weeks earlier.

“Let’s slip for just the one shall we?”

“OK, then, you don’t need to twist my arm!”

The e-mail was to tell him that they had met the jilted lover sitting waiting for new customers in that bar a few paces from Jomtien beach. They all recognized one another because they had met on those two fateful evenings of encounter

“Oh, where John? Why he go without saying good-bye?”

“Dunno!”

“I love John very much! When he come back to Thailand?”

“Dunno!”

“You speak to him by e-mail?”

“Yeah, sometimes!”

“You tell him Dao ask for him and still love him velly much!”

“O.K!”

So it arrived! He was feeling dissatisfied and very much deflated since the Thai trip. He had what his mother would describe as “ants in his pants.” So when he saw the e-mail he was excited. Life fell into sharper focus and he had something to do. He had the phone number of course, but was very self-satisfied because he had not succumbed to phoning it! Now, in a flash of clarity he knew he could make that call! He did and that one simple phone call changed his life and turned it on its head.

He would go to and they would make a life together. Everything was stale “samey” and expensive back home. Self-employment was a constant struggle never quite knowing whether there was going to be quite enough money to meet the next bill, and often there was a shortfall. Credit was easy, however, and the bills mounted. Here was a way out.

“They are always looking for English teachers in . I used to do that before. Worked in the Middle East for years. You made real money there in those days. I have a teaching qualification and a cert. TEFL albeit 30 years old. Sure I can find a job over there!”

He looked at the www.ajarn.com website, the principal source of job information and teacher news in . He saw there were lots of jobs to be had. Not all of them however paid very much money, but some struggled towards the Bt 40,000 per month and he felt that would be the minimum to suffice.

Next he put his profile on ajarn.com and waited and waited and waited. Nobody came back to him.

“O.K. that’s fair enough, why would they want to contact me in Europe . I’ll wait until I get there!”

Thus he packed up the flat, stored his stuff and culled what he could take down into a volume that would fit a suitcase and not cost a mortgage in airline overweight charges. Oh, and then he bought an air ticket.

Soon he was on his way. The object that had caused this earthquake of an upheaval was waiting at Bangkok Airport and shyly came forward brandishing a big bouquet of blood red roses.

He had read on Thai websites devoted to the stories of the misadventures of foreigners in of how so many of these Thais, particularly the bar and sex workers just wanted the money. Once they had milked the golden goose, they disappeared back to Isean or wherever and were never heard from again. He knew this, but realized if something like that was to happen to him that was the way of the world. Still he pondered on an “Universal Truth”.

“You get what you expect in life. So why not await the best, for you might just get it!”

They were lucky. Their friends in Pattaya found them a house at a reasonable rent. He had some cash but not enough to last for more than a couple of months of no income.

So he started looking for a teaching job. He started in Pattaya. For the most part the pay offered was scarcely more than a couple of hundred Baht per hour. Those were slave’s wages. However, bad things might be he had his self-respect and would in no circumstances ply his skills for such a pittance. He told them that and walked out of the interviews. They were all somewhat surprised, surely it was a privilege for a newcomer to work in the paradise of Pattaya?

There was an ad for a job in “The Pattaya Mail” He bought a copy every Friday and looked forward to reading about the horror stories that surrounded so many of the visitors who visited that resort by the sea. Each story could have provided a plot for a novel or film. They came from all over, Europe, the Middle-East and or even some came from Asia itself. They behaved crassly and were robbed, beaten and in some cases murdered.

Had they come expecting the worse, and found it he wondered.

Had they learned the lessons that inevitably offered them? Or did those lucky enough to survive return home as innocent victims who forever besmirched the name of the country and its people.

There were always smatterings of teaching jobs advertised. The first to catch his attention was an announcement inviting someone to come and teach English to the “Katoy” community. For the most part these transsexuals worked as prostitutes and were a high-risk group in the infection stakes of sexually transmissible diseases and Aids. He got lost on the way to the interview. The interviewer who had come from Bangkok had already left when he finally reached the project office and so that was that!

The job next job was in Rayong. So he caught the bus and went along to meet Khru Wasanee.

They got on like a house on fire. She wanted him to teach English to adults under the aegis of the plethora of contracts she had with companies in the surrounding area. Oh, he could speak French; too, she could use that, too. The money? She was prepared to offer him Bt 500.00 per hour and that was just fine!

The job would start soon. She would have to talk to the companies involved and promised to get back to him in no time at all. He needed a house. No problem at all, she would help them find one and it was bound to be much cheaper than Pattaya.

The silence became deafening. No call and still no call. Eventually he rang her and she said she was still waiting to hear, August was a bad month. September would be better, but then October might be even better still.

“John, I have job for you. Teacher is sick. Can you take a class in Rayong tonight?.”

“Yeah, sure, I’ll catch the bus.”

"No, no bus, I send car for you. You tell me where to tell driver to come!”

He did, but no car came. The company cancelled the class instead!

A newly formed language school offered him some work with off shore oil workers. This was another lucrative company contract, but this time the teaching was scheduled to take place in Pattaya so no travelling was involved.

He turned up and sat in on the class. The non-native speaker made several grammatical and other English language mistakes during the three-hour presentation. He was foolish enough to point these out.

After the lesson the non-native speaker and he had a beer together and talked vaguely and briefly about the job. He repeated he would not work for any less than Baht 500.00 per hour, but the non-English speaker who had come from the head-office in Bangkok was doubtful whether his superiors would be willing to pay so much. They weren’t and so that was the end of that one!

Time was marching on and money was running out. Still he had his return air ticket. He got another month from Immigration when the two-month visa expired, but that seemed to be last stretch.

He told “lover”; incidentally the relationship was going pretty well, for indeed it does pay to always expect the best. Nobody else believed it would last five minutes and quietly scoffed his back.

“They were only together for a couple days, how can it possibly last or for that matter work?”

There were no huge demands for money, but the news of a possible departure was a pitiful affair. There were tears and more tears and an overall feeling of complete hopelessness. The alliance had reached its first major crisis.

Surely he had not come all this way for nothing! And that’s where the fates intervened. The darkest hour is surely the one before the dawn. Sure he still applied for advertised posts on the Ajarn.com website, but only one potential employer had even bothered acknowledge his application. And that was to point out that his salary expectations were really rather too high!

“For Pete’s sake. I only asked for BHt 50,000 to work for a newspaper in Bangkok. Aren’t these things negotiable, or is this some subtle code which really means go to hell?”

"It probably means go to hell!”

The next advertisement was in the Bangkok Post. It caught his attention but the lady in Rayong still extended a hand of hope.

“I’d much rather go to work in Rayong than move to the polluted traffic log jam that comprises Bangkok !” Once more he delayed.

She let him down again! Now there was no choice. He texted the number that had appeared in the “Post”. It was a week late, but still there might be a chance.

There was because the next day the phone rang asking him to attend an interview in Bangkok on the following day.

The American who came across as smug and very distant interviewed him. He answered his questions but was quickly irritated by the condescending attitude.

The teaching job in a nearby province, working in a Government School paid Bht 40,0000 per month. They provided work permit and visa. None of those expensive border runs, this was exactly what he had asked for.

There was a Mickey Mouse training program that lasted three days, and then the selection took place. He must have been an odds on favorite from the outset, but he didn’t know that. For a start he was a native speaker and the majority of other applicants were not.

An older guy wandered about the lecture room listening into each of the groups. A middle-aged Thai lady accompanied him. They stopped at each of the groups where they attended strictly to every syllable uttered. The criterion they sought was intelligibility. If they could understand the speaker he was in. He had passed and was accepted onto the teaching program. It was as simple as that! Sure, they were an eclectic bunch. The possible majority were from the , which after all lays claim to being the second largest English speaking community in the world. He, on the other hand, vehemently disagreed with that particular pronouncement. Still he grudgingly acceded that they spoke more proficient English than some of the other nationalities represented in the room. He felt confident that the Arabs, especially those from would be a mere page or two ahead of the students when the chips were down.

He needn’t have worried. He had teaching experience and qualifications; most of the others had not. But he had been short to the point of rudeness to the American and he somehow felt this would not be held in his favor. It wasn’t but he still got the job. Even then the American’s influence was very much on the wane.

There was a hurried border run to Vientiane to get the necessary visa and then schools were allotted. We saw the address in the west of the province but it meant very little to him. He found it on the map and the area appeared to be a bit on the rural side.

So there he sat on that Monday morning with the 200 other teachers in the huge hall, waiting to be doled out to his school like some sort of parcel. The American organized a complicated meeting procedure, whereby the teachers stood in numerical file at one side of that giant room and the school welcoming committee on the other side. Names were called and it was calculated the two lines would meet when the school was called. It didn’t work that way. His school, the one in the west of the province was called and he stepped forward to be greeted by somebody from somewhere else in the province. Still they sorted it out after a while and he came face to face with the representative sent by his school to meet him.

She was tall for a Thai and dressed casually in jeans that seemed to suggest a good and relaxed environment. He, according to the American’s instructions wore a short sleeved shirt, neck tie, dark trousers and black shoes She looked at him and decided to take a seat at the back of the room. She sat as if to compose herself and asked his name and told him the name of her school just in case a mistake had been made. It hadn’t and she looked disappointed.

"You not the person I was expecting. You look like businessman, not teacher!”

“Really!” was the dry reply.

She led the way out of the building into the car park. She fished a key from her jean’s pocket and made for what must have been the biggest and flashiest SUV parked in that particular car park. She opened the door and he slumped into a white leather seat.

“Now, who was the business man? Or woman for that matter?” he wondered.

They drove away and started off in a direction that would in time bring them to the river.

She asked al, the usual questions.

“Where are you from?”

“How old are you?” This one was accompanied with a sniff, meaning whatever the answer, he was too old.

" Why you come to Thailand? "

Oh, dear he had the naivete to answer this one truthfully, but she didn’t seem to understand the answer so all was well!

“How much they pay you?” Stupidly he told her.

There was a hush.

"I work in the school for 14 years and I earn only Bht 20,000, why they pay you so much?”

Clearly the luxury car had not come via a teacher’s salary, but he kept quiet.

So did she. They were on a downward slope from then on in.