what is life like in Thailand for an American woman
hey folks Pete here from Thairish times how are you doing how's it going as we say in Ireland
it's going well over here the sun is right above my head it's the hottest time of the year right
now march April we're heating up in Bangkok it's like an oven so my pasty Irish skin is not gonna
survive out in this uh sun so I have to get the intro out of the way sharpish okay so today we're
gonna interview Alex an American woman living and working in Thailand and I wanted to do this
interview because I really wanted to contrast this interview with the previous interview with tony
a polygamist living in Pattaya I just thought it'd be interesting to hear an American woman's
story in Thailand so without further ado let's go meet Alex before we do that let
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Alex thank you very much nice to see you again nice to see you too I can't believe we're doing
this Alex was there a couple of years ago when I first started talking about starting a channel
and here we go I'm actually interviewing yeah yeah interview amazing crazy isn't it that's
awesome all right so tell everybody where you're from and what you're doing over here yeah so I'm
from Boston Massachusetts USA and I came over here about four years ago to teach English
and yeah that's what I've been doing for the past four years I really love it I took some time away
from Thailand to go to China and then I was back in America for a little bit but back here in
Thailand and it feels awesome feels right and yeah so where are you in Thailand where are you living
so right now I'm in Banchan Thailand uh near Rayong so kind of a little bit south of Bangkok
but I've lived in Bangkok and taught in Bangkok and I was in Sapanburi before Bangkok what's your
school like tell us about your situation yeah so I work at a bilingual school in Banchang so I have
lots of different nationalities working there and the students are amazing they're super cute they
speak you know quite good English and I don't know it's fun it's an it's an interesting job
I get to be really creative with my lesson plans which I love um we work from a book and we have a
curriculum but I also get a lot of freedom with my teaching so that's just been great to kind of um
yeah it's been great to practice my own thing of like creating lesson plans and you know trying
to make sure each student gets a good lesson and um yeah I work with like South Africans Americans
British people people from all over the world so it's quite diverse and you like what you're doing
I like what I'm doing yeah yeah i wasn't my like initial intent to be a teacher I literally just
wanted to travel but I don't know I love teaching and it's I think it's my calling I think I'm gonna
continue on with it even if I go back to America so yeah so we'll come back to that one in a while
so let's let's go back to um a couple of years ago because that's how I know you we met in I
think 2016 I think a while I think so yeah yeah Alex was my manager in when I worked at a school
so we'll ask her questions about that in a moment so 2016 you were you were in Thailand you were
here for like a year or two and then didn't you where'd you go now yeah so I was here a year and
a half and I knew I wanted to join the peace corps because I felt like that was really the next step
in my journey to join the peace corps um just kind of get better at teaching get more official
training I'd already gotten my TEFL certificate but peace corps um provides a lot of really like
exceptional training to continue growing as a teacher so I joined peace corps and went to china
tell everybody what peace corps so the peace corps is like a us government organization and
they send people to you know countries all over the world and we teach English we do agriculture
there's like a medical part of the peace corps but I was in the education sector
and basically you're supposed to you know you teach English in the country that you're in but
you also learn about that country and you learn the language and you get to know the people
and you're not supposed to come in and kind of like dictate what's going to happen you really
learn about your community and you learn the needs of the community and you start projects to help
the community help the kids of the community so it's just a really great great organization you
serve in a country for two years but I was only there a year and a half because of Covid so which
country were you in so I was in china what was that like because you were there at the very start
when all this mess happened yeah yeah it was crazy so I went home end of 2018 beginning of 2019
because that was Christmas I hadn't been home for like over a year wanted to see my family of course
and then I came back to china and everything was normal at first this was beginning of 2019 but you
were kind of hearing like whispers of something something was going on people were getting sick
and something was coming out of Wuhan in china so we had a peace corps meeting we were supposed to
have this meeting anyways but they did mention in the meeting like maybe wear a mask you don't have
to but might be a good idea they gave us all masks but it wasn't like this big panic chaos thing um
it was just kind of like whispers and then you did start to notice more and more people were wearing
masks and I went to Taiwan just for vacation this was Chinese new year I wanted to celebrate with my
friends I wanted to have a good time um so we all went to Taiwan and you had to like fill something
out on the plane I remember like telling like um questions to make sure that you weren't sick so I
filled out that questionnaire got to Taiwan and was yeah exploring Taiwan and then was supposed
to go back to china and I texted my boss who was in china and said should I come back like is that
a good idea and she said don't stay where you are it's it's not a good idea to come back right now
so it was weird being there at the beginning and then just watching it all play out from where it's
been where'd you go after Taiwan yes America we were evacuated to Thailand they still weren't sure
they didn't know they thought maybe china will be fine and this is just like a short little thing
that's happening it's not going to be a big deal so we all went to Thailand just to kind of wait
it out and see what was going to happen um and then yeah they they basically decided that this
was not going to be a short thing and we should go back to America so we were all evacuated back
yeah okay so crazy let's get back to your life in Thailand so yeah what is life like in Thailand for
an American woman I've had a really positive experience to be honest as an American woman
in Thailand I feel like I'm you know treated really well here everyone's super friendly
I feel like at every school that I've worked at I've been
you know I've made a lot of friends Thai people are very warm very welcoming to me and
I just feel like yeah it's it's it's been great honestly um I don't know what to say about it
what about your future plans are you going to stay here long term are you going back home
or what's going to happen yeah so in the future that's I'm so very much trying to figure that all
out I don't know it's hard I love Thailand um it can be lonely especially where I am
right now I'm in I'm not in Bangkok I love Bangkok I wish I was in Bangkok sometimes
um I'm in kind of like a sleepier town in the south of um a little bit south of Bangkok so yeah
it it gets lonely um I'm thinking about going back to America I do I want to stay here one more year
and and teach one more year in Thailand um yeah I love what I'm doing right now because I get to
you know create my own lesson plans and I feel like it's really preparing me for a career back
in the us I don't know if I would have that much freedom to be honest back in America
and what do you want to do back in America so I want to continue being an ESL teacher
at maybe like a private school in the Boston area um yeah I went back and I got my teaching license
and yeah I really when I came to Thailand did not think that I was going to be a teacher long
term it was literally just my way of traveling around the world and it was kind of like my inn
to get into Thailand and to stay in Thailand but I just really love it and I used to teach older kids
I teach fifth grade now I feel like I've found like a really good age for me they're still young
enough that they're like really excited about school they're not like quite jaded yet they're
they're still really excited about like the silly ideas that you have for them to do
but they're old enough that you can really have like a good conversation with them and really
teach them different stuff so I feel like I've found like my sweet spot with with fifth grade so
I want to go back and teach ESL to fifth graders back in America so you said that you got the
teacher's license is that the American teacher's license or how did you get that what what did you
have to do to get that yeah yeah so every state is different you know if you're certified to stay
teach in one state you're not certified to teach in another state so I picked Florida because they
had an alternate teaching pathway that you could do which is basically um you have to
you know take classes and um get your teaching hours too so it's basically it's very similar
to going back to school for teaching but it's a lot cheaper it's an alternate pathway if you
were a teacher over here and you got the American teacher's license or any other teacher's license
yeah is that like will that benefit your job in Thailand as a teacher in Thailand definitely
absolutely yeah yeah as soon as I was able to show my school that I had this teaching license
I immediately got a raise which was amazing so you can just very simply like make more money when
you have the teaching license which is awesome and then you just feel more confident as a teacher you
know it's not fun going into a classroom and not feeling like you're qualified you know it's almost
for your own just like how you feel you don't feel confident in what you're doing so it's helped me a
lot just to grow as a grow in my confidence as a teacher and be like no I do know what
I'm doing like I do have certain strategies for classroom management or differentiating between
the different students like it's yeah it's helped in a lot of different ways so Alex was my manager
it was yeah back in 2016. yeah okay I'm gonna ask a dangerous question here what was it like
to manage me oh my god it was fine like you were you were good you were be honest
no you made the job really fun we definitely we had fun like it was me and were there five other
guys five other guys yeah and we would all just sit in an office together and laugh and it was a
good time honestly um but no you were an awesome teacher but I felt like I learned a lot from you
and we had a good time it was fun so you know what I liked about how you managed was you were
very relaxed very patient yeah now Alex was you were I think 25 at the time right yeah yeah and
you were managing a couple of older guys that were in their 50s yeah yeah and they weren't easy to
manage like let's just say some of these guys had big egos and they didn't like the fact that a 25
year old American woman was their manager yeah yeah yeah it was intimidating honestly walking
in and seeing all you guys yeah I was really intimidated but you handled it well I handled
it well yeah I mean fake it till you make it that's the key I definitely if I seemed
confident I was not I was completely faking it I was just pretending yeah tell us what do you
like and dislike about living in Thailand I'll start with the dislikes um so just like a very
basic one it's you know hard being away from home away from my family my friends it's like a 20 hour
flight to get back to America super long um so obviously that's like hard being away from family
but just another one like some pollution that you see in Thailand there's definitely there's
a burning season you know where the air gets really smoggy and it's kind of hard to breathe and
you know there's obviously better ways to to deal with the the crops instead of burning them and
polluting the air so I wish that would change and then also I live in Banchang right by the ocean
and um I have to give them a lot of credit because they do have pretty regular beach cleanups but
they have to do those beach cleanups because of all the trash that gets left on the beach so that
is you know really difficult to see water bottles like bowls that people eat out of plastic bags
just kind of gets left on the beach and even when they do those beach cleanups there's like little
pieces of plastic still that are on the beach um which is too bad because it's this beautiful beach
and you know it's lovely to sit on but not when there's all that trash there so
I just hope things in the future get better and there's more awareness about you know cleaning
up after yourself and getting those all that stuff into the trash into the trash bin so
um yeah that's kind of what I've noticed where where I live um but in terms of likes my god I
don't know what is there not to like I love the street food there's you know street food available
all over Thailand it's amazing I love rambutan if you haven't tried rambutan that is like the
best fruit that you can buy in Thailand it kind of looks weird it's red it kind of looks like
an alien has all these little like wiry things hanging off of it but it's really really good
so the delicious fruit the street food and then just the people that have met here I know that's
so cliche to say but everyone is so friendly been very welcoming and a lot of curiosity
too they want to know what your home is like and kind of like share ideas share stories and I've
been learning Thai too so I'm trying to like get better with my Thai to communicate with people
so it's just a great place I would encourage everyone to at least come for a trip come to visit
and you'll probably want to stay longer when you come here Thailand is like a drug yeah there was
a comment made about a guy I interviewed called Alex from Canada I interviewed him right here and
he quit his job in Netflix and was traveling the world but he's right now he's in Thailand
and one comment was said Alex doesn't know it yet but Thailand is like a drug he'll always
be coming back yeah I believe and that's what yeah I noticed that as well it's like
if you leave it you leave Thailand you're gonna want to come back totally it has something it has
that yeah that x factor totally yeah when I was in china I was dreaming of coming back to Thailand
every vacation I had in china you'd think I'd go somewhere that I hadn't been before no I was
coming back to Thailand I missed it so much and then back in America I was watching your YouTube
channel I was watching all these like Thai it was trust me I was watching other YouTube videos
uh other YouTube channels too just because like I missed it and I wanted to feel like I
was living there even though I wasn't there so I don't know it's just it's very hard to quit
um so I say I'm gonna go back to America who knows it I might not it's this might be a
difficult place to leave so stay tuned we'll see what happens stay tuned yeah okay Alex
thank you very much thank you for having me thank you thanks for being my great manager
you're welcome and um look whatever happens we'll keep in touch and uh wish you all the
best if you go back to America or if you stay in Thailand we'll always be in touch because uh
you've been a great friend to me oh thank you yeah I just want to say that on camera so we have this
little moment now this interview together yeah thank you you have two I know sometimes people
you work with you know you're just like in that moment friends with them and then afterwards you
just kind of forget about them but we've stayed in touch for a long time so that's been awesome
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