Volunteer Stories  |  Bjoern

I really was very very happy when me and my girl friend arrived in Mae Hong Song. On the one hand we were curious about the new location and the teaching but on the other hand - and in that moment it was my only thougt (to be honest) I was feeling very sick after a six-hour minibus tour and nearly 2000 bends!

We were picked up by Tuny and A, the two T2T contact people for Mae Hong Song and brought to our guest house. This was simple but clean and therefore absolutely ok.

During our two week stay we were teaching English to children of the orphanage and to monks in temple schools. Both where very interesting and rewarding and gave us good insights into Thai culture. We really were fascinated by the children in the orphanage. They are living in very basic circumstances but our impression was that they are happier than European children who are "playing computer all the time". Saying this I don`t want to play down the hard life they have and the excellent work the orphanage is doing. They told me, that they don`t get any money from the state and that they just depend on donations. Sometimes they don`t know how to pay for the food of the next week and some children really had hard fates.

Even though Mae Hong Song is the capital of the region, it`s not a very big city and especially in the evening there is not much you can do (except eating - which we did a lot!). We were staying there in the "rainy" season (it just rained twice in two weeks) therefore there were not many tourists. Our "highlights" in Mae Hong Song were: The Morning Market (we often had Thai breakfast there, you get fresh fruits, souvenirs and mostly we were the only tourists), the motorbike tour into the mountains which we did with our two coordinators, the various Fruit shakes, "Rotee" (kind of indian pancake) and the Thai food in general! I recommend to rent a motorbike. It is not very expensive, and it really is to hot for a "normal" bicycle. In addition nearly everyone is going by motorbike and you are independent to do some trips into the areas surounding Mae Hong Song.

In General I was really positively surprised about the support and performance of T2T.

We were picked up at the train station in Chiang Mai, where we were briefed about the Thai culture and the teaching in general. In Mae Hong Song, the two coordinators helped us very much. We were introduced in the temple school, one of them came with us in each of our lessons to support us if translation problems occured and in addition we had a cooking lesson, Thai language lesson and a motobike trips into the mountains. Several times I was called by T2T staff who asked if everthing was ok. So this was really worth the money we paid and I really can recommend Mae Hong Song as destination!

If you have further questions please feel free to contact me: mailto:bjoernwalden@yahoo.de