Travel to Teach: Thailand Volunteer Story

Jeroen Hoexum, 30, Holland

Same same, but different. You see above text on a lot of T-shirts in Thailand and you also hear this phrase many times on the streets, but what does it mean and what has it to do with volunteers work in Thailand?

From mid March to mid April 2005 I did several different volunteer placements for Travel to Teach and then I began to understand what Thai people mean when they say same same but different.

Together with some other volunteers, I taught English on several seminars to English teachers. This was really a great experience. Great in a way that the Thai people are in general much more kinder than the people in Europe. Almost everyday they invite you to have something to eat with them, or just to have a conversation in English and to talk about all possible topics. Furthermore it seems that Thai people express more appreciation about the things you do comparable to Europeans.

In that way: don't be afraid that your level of English is too low, in 95% of the cases your English (and especially the pronunciation) will be much better than the level of English from the English teacher from Thailand.

What else did I do during my stay? I helped Travel to Teach to develop IT courses with topics based around Basic Computer Knowledge, Internet and Microsoft Office. Next to this I also helped Travel to Teach improve their business processes based around their application process. During that period I discovered the differences between working for a normal company and working for a volunteer company. One thing is for sure: volunteers maybe have even more motivation to improve the quality of the volunteering company than most employees in regular companies.

Whilst in Nong Khai I really was interested in teaching a bit mathematics. Due to the fact that you are much closer to the population than normally during a holiday, this wish was easily realised. It was a lot of fun to do some tutoring this way.

The first 3 weeks of my volunteer period I stayed in or around Nong Khai most of the time. The last week of my volunteer period I stayed in Namson, where we run an English summer camp in the local library. Students from 6 to 60 accompanied the courses and the enthusiasm of the student was immense. The number of students grew every day. In Namson the largest part of the population are farmers and the volunteers are really the only Western people you meet here. The dorms are a little bit more primitive than in Nong Khai, but I think that you learn more about the everyday Thai life in Namsom than you do Nong Khai.

Do you have enough reasons to do volunteering work? Maybe, then you should realise that you also learn a little bit Thai during your stay with Travel to Teach. They have Thai language lessons and you also learn to prepare spicy food during the Thai cooking lessons.

Is there no time to relax? Of course, plenty of time, the Thai sauna is a really great experience and almost every evening you can have a beer with one or more of the volunteers in one of the dorms or in Nong Khai, for example on the bank of the Mekong river.

To summarise, I am convinced that I will never forget this great time! Going back to the phrase 'Same same' in the way that I am sure that all western people are able to do it, 'different' in the way that you will get back so many experiences! If you have any questions, don't Hesitate and send me an email.

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