Why Does The Foreign Teacher Always Smell Like Peppermint? – Part 1

I have noticed that there is often a good response to my posts on teaching in Thailand. I could keep churning out the occasional article on this subject, but instead I’ve decided to just do a series on my experience of teaching here. I hope you like it.

“I Want Work English Teach”

When people ask me, I say that it was an English girl who first gave me the idea of working as a teacher in Thailand. While this answer is truthful it is also a bit misleading. It wasn’t like this girl (let’s call her Tracy to avoid embarrassment) saw that I had the makings of a good pedagogue and felt that somebody needed to point it out to me. She hardly knew me at the time. She also couldn’t have had any idea that her words would inspire me so much. The suggestion was just part of general drunken conversation that occurred one night on a Koh Chang beach. Tracy was talking about her plans to find work teaching in Bangkok and I sort of hijacked them.

What Tracy didn’t know that night was how desperate I felt; this would make her words all the more meaningful to me. The world often works like that; we make a flippant remark and it changes someone else’s life forever. It is quite amazing how all the right factors can come together in one place and time.

I spent a lot of nights sitting on a Koh Chang beach that year but this is the only conversation I remember. Most of that time is lost to me because of my almost constant state of inebriation. My routine was to get out of bed at about 2pm and drink until sunrise. I usually couldn’t remember much that happened after the early evening; just vague images of beach bars and long talks about nothing.

That night my usual happy blackout was replaced by deep resentment and despair. My resentment could be easily traced to two events. A group of people who I’d started to view as friends had abandoned me in Cambodia a couple of days before. I was sitting with them now on the beach but I felt betrayed. The other reason for my despondency was that the girl who I’d been referring to as my girlfriend had shacked up with someone else why I’d been away. It felt like the world was out to get me. I had been trying to blot all this out with alcohol but that night it just wasn’t working like it usually did. Worst of all was that these two major stabs in the back could only account for a fraction of my current misery. It felt like my life was progressing towards a nasty and inevitable disaster.

A List of My Betrayals

Before I go on to explain my underlying despair it is probably best that I go a bit deeper into the betrayals that occurred. I did feel hurt by them but it would be unfair of me to just leave it as I explained. The reality is that I was far from guiltless in both episodes. In fact anyone who may have felt a tiny bit of sympathy for me before, might be less inclined to do so after they hear the truth of what actually occurred.

When I say that a group of friend abandoned me in Cambodia it probably sounds like I’ve a justifiable reason to be vexed. If somebody told me that their friends had abandoned them in a strange country I’d probably refer to those people as “complete shits”; I might even advise that poor soul to get new friends. I don’t want you thinking that about the people who left me though; it just wouldn’t be fair. Here is what really happened.

I met two other guys in Koh Chang and for a few weeks we spent our days and nights getting drunk together. I didn’t have any friends in Thailand (or anywhere else for that matter) so I hung onto these people like life-rafts. I was having girl problems on the island and suggested to these two other guys that we hit the road for a few days. Cambodia seemed like a good choice and so off we went.

Our first destination in Cambodia was Sihanoukville. During our first night on the town I was offered an interesting mix of chemicals by some stranger in a bar. I’ve never been known for doing things in half-measures and by the end of the night there was enough drugs in my system to keep me bouncing off the walls for days. My friends didn’t indulge and they were a bit disgusted that I did.

These two travelling companions could have just left me in Sihanoukville but they took me on to Phnom Pehn. They were hoping that by the time we arrived there the effects of whatever I’d taken would have worn off. It didn’t and for the next couple of days I was completely nuts. I was also drinking twice as much alcohol as normal in an attempt to counterbalance whatever was making me so demented. They suggested that I go back with them to Thailand but I felt too paranoid to get on the bus. I spent the next 24 hours alone in Phnom Pehn; waiting for the effects to wear off enough so that I could once again travel.

Girl Trouble

Now we can get onto to the story of what happened with that girl who cheated on me while I was away. If you have read my book Dead Drunk you will have already been introduced to Tep (I’ve not used her real name for obvious reasons). Well Tep did cheat on me while I was away in Cambodia. I was hurt by this, but when you consider my motives for going to Cambodia in the first place my wounded pride seems a bit undeserved.

When I left Koh Chang to visit Cambodia I had no intention of returning to the island. I didn’t want to finish with Tep because I worried that she might make a scene. One of the main reasons I’d suggested Cambodia was that I knew that Tep couldn’t follow me there. She was Cambodian but had fled the country as a young child; she had no intention of ever going back. My plan was to do a bit of touring with the two lads and split up in Trat. They would tell Tep that I’d decided to stay on long term in Cambodia. This is what they did tell her and is probably the reason why she hooked up with someone else without missing a heartbeat.

So why did I end up back in Koh Chang? Well, those twenty-four hours alone scared the shit of me. After I came down I just wanted to see some friendly faces. Even though I’d only been holidaying on Koh Chang for a few months it had started to feel like home. I knew that the whole Tep thing would start back up if I returned, but it was better than the alternative. My recent experience with drugs had scared me and I just wanted to be able to get my head back together somewhere safe.

“I Want Work English Teach”

The real reason for my despair wasn’t just being left alone in Cambodia and a girlfriend who got over me faster than I would have liked. The drink did fuel these resentments but that wasn’t it. The truth was that I was terrified about the future. I had come to Thailand with a good bit of money in my pocket after finishing a job working as a nurse in Saudi Arabia. This money was all gone now and I was living on a credit card. The party was about to end and I’d nowhere to go. This is what was the real reason I couldn’t get a ‘buzz on’ that night. The party was over but they were still serving drinks.

So when Tracy started talking about teaching in Thailand I took notice. My misery meant that my mind was still clear enough to remember what she said the next day. I asked her if this could be an option for me and she gave a non-committed “maybe”. This is what I really mean when I say that my decision to teach in Thailand was due to a suggestion from an English girl.

Tracy was not the first person I heard talking about teaching in Thailand, but it was the first time it seemed relevant to me. We often had ex-pats arriving on Koh Chang on weekend breaks from their teaching jobs. We didn’t take these guys too seriously and we would mock them behind their backs. Most of them didn’t seem qualified to be anywhere near a classroom. Our favourite put-down was “I Want Work English Teach”.

So there you have the first part of my journey into teaching in Thailand. I have no idea how long this series will last but as long as you keep reading I’ll keep writing. Please leave a comment because this makes it all worthwhile.

The Story so Far

Why Does The Foreign Teacher Always Smell Like Peppermint? – Part 1
Why Does The Foreign Teacher Always Smell Like Peppermint? – Part 2
Why Does the Foreign Teacher Always Smell Like Pepperment? – Part 3
Why Does the Foreign Teacher Always Smell Like Peppermint – Sleepy Thai Girl -Part 4
Why Does the Foreign Teacher Always Smell Like Peppermint – How Dare They Not Like Me – Part 5
Why Does the Foreign Teacher Always Smell Like Peppermint – Beers, Jokes, and Gameboys – Part 6
Why Does the Foreign Teacher Always Smell Like Peppermint Part 7 –The Thailand Paperwork Nightmare
Why Does the Foreign Teacher Always Smell Like Peppermint – Bad Reputation Part 8