Day 39: Tuesday, January 18th Dordrecht to Bangkok
Sadly our last day with Robyn (we said goodbye to Damien last night) and our last day before we begin our homeward journey.
We had arranged to go to Robyn’s school and spend a little time in her classroom at the end of the day. We did the long suitcase drag –hopefully for the last time – from our B&B to the station at Dordrecht. Yesterday Robyn had helped us buy tickets and track our route, so all we had to do was to carry it all out.
Her school is at The Hague – past Delft but not as far as Amsterdam. It is a long journey for her each day. She leaves at 6am and isn’t home again until after 7pm and at this time of the year, it is still dark when school starts for the day. On that note, R&D were telling us that suicide is the most common cause of non-natural death in The Netherlands and the Monday closest to Jan 21 is statistically the day on which most suicides occur. Why? It’s a Monday for a start. Christmas and New Year celebrations are over , there is still so much of winter to go, there has been very little sun for weeks on end and much of the waking time is spent in darkness. We in Australia have so much to be grateful for.
So, off we went to The Hague. We booked our suitcases into lockers at the station, had a very nice lunch and then walked to Robyn’s school. We would have to say that we weren’t very excited by The Hague, although Robyn tells us that there are lovely parts of it. It reminded us of Canberra – very much an administrative city, with mostly office or government buildings. We walked through a small shopping area but shops certainly didn’t predominate it the part of the city that we saw. There wasn’t much for me to photograph really, but this ribbed structure through which the tram runs caught my eye.
By arrangement, we arrived at Rob’s school at 2:15. The school, the name of which I have no idea, is a multi-campus British school. The campus at which Robyn teaches is the International campus. All the teaching is done in English and they (not Robyn) teach Dutch as a second language. Rob’s class is equivalent to our Grade 2 and she has 20 children in the class. One of the things that she likes best about it is that over those twenty children, she has twelve different nationalities. Most are children whose parents are in the diplomatic corps or who are ex-pats in international businesses. Her summary is that they are children who lack not much in tangible terms but who could, in many cases do with a bit more family interaction.
We had a delightful time with the children – oh how nice it is to breeze in as the day’s special surprise and to again after half an hour! We showed them on maps where we live in Australia – (no our house isn’t flooded) - and where we have travelled. We answered their questions which Miss Peck had previously vetted for appropriateness – nothing about age, hair or hats! One little boy, who asked us when we began teaching, was astounded to hear that we began in the year before his dad was born. I read them “Who Sank the Boat” and then it was pack up time.
Once the children had gone Rob showed us around her school. It was quite an eye-opener. The library of this school for which the parents pay quite considerable fees, is a collection of a few shelves and maybe a couple of hundred books in a foyer area that has been partitioned off to form a library. Forget comfy bean bags or quiet reading corners – there is room for about three children at a time to sit infront of the shelves on the tiled floor.
Rob showed us the computer lab –there are no computers in the classrooms. The lab has about a dozen laptops which are about fifteen years old. She tells us that they take a full 45 minutes to boot up and that when her class has computer after lunch, she has to start booting them up at the beginning of lunch time. Next was the art room – for grades 4- 6 only. Younger grades have only the art that they do with their class teacher. Rob’s class will be OK because she loves teaching art and took it as her major at uni, but they’re lucky they haven’t got me – art came second only to phys ed in the subjects I avoided like the plague!
From there we went to the playground – a walled concrete area about the size of a narrow house block. There are a few pieces of climbing equipment, a small court marked out on the ground for ball games and the rest is non-specified space. That’s it. No grass, no plants, no shady trees, no shade cloth area, no place to play ‘hidey’. The childen are given chalk that they are allowed to use to mark or draw on the walls or pavement, but apparently the chalk budget for the year has been spent, so no more chalk for a while.
As you can imagine, all this was a bit of a shock to Robyn’s system initially, but she has become used to it and she really likes the school now. She is hoping to have the same grade level next year so that she can consolidate/repeat/revise as needed for what will be only her second year of full-time teaching.
Robyn came with us to the airport – another 45 minutes or so by train on from her school. Although it was sad waving her goodbye, we will see her again at Easter when she and Damien come home for their wedding, so that made it much easier.
Once on our plane, we sat for two hours before take-off. The delay was firstly because we had to wait for some passengers to come off their flight from Toulouse (where is Toulouse?) and then there was a problem with the oxygen supply in the cabin. Once the necessary part was fetched to fix this problem, it was discovered that the oxygen was now not suitable for a particular passenger, so he and his two travelling companions had to be off-loaded, along with their luggage which had to be found in the luggage hold.
Having arrived at Bangkok, we were in a queue for an hour getting through immigration. There would have been easily a thousand people waiting to be processed and we inched our way to the front over a space of about thirty metres. Of course the fact that we were still in heavy winter clothes in order to keep the weight in our suitcases down, didn’t help at all.
At last we met up with Panom, Alan’s driver, who had been waiting at the airport for us for hours. It was great to be driven door to door for a change. Panom was meant to be returning to the airport with Alan who was flying to Hong Kong, but because of our dely, Alan had to get a taxi. Noi, Beth and Alan’s maid, was still there when we arrived at the apartment. I had met both Panom and Noi when I visited in 2006, so it was good to see them again.
Description of our tiny ex-pat experience I will leave until the next blog. Suffice to say that it will be very easy to take being treated like royalty for a couple of days!
After enjoying the meal Noi had prepared for us, we went for a massage at the place where Alan goes on a regular basis. This was an experience and a half, especially for Roger who had not experienced Thai massage before. However, believing it will be good for his injured shoulder, we booked ourselves in.
When I have had a Thai massage before, Beth has been with me and she has done the talking and guided me through it. Not so this time as Beth is in Melbourne, so it was just Roger and me. We indicated on the price list that was presented to us that we would both have a half hour massage and mostly through gesture, we indicated that it was our shoulder area that we wanted massaging. I was a bit sorry that it wasn’t going to include a foot massage because I had remembered how wonderful they are. However, the owner/manager of the place was able to speak a bit of English and he told us that they would massage our necks, shoulders and backs, so that sounded more essential.
We were shown upstairs by a young Thai woman who was evidently appointed to look after us. She told us through gesture to sit down and remove our shoes which she put in a cupboard. Then she and another woman came with bowls of warm soapy water and washed and dried our feet. We put on the scuffs that they provided for us and then followed them up more stairs and into a room with two couches. They indicated for us to lie back on the couches and then they proceeded to give us the most wonderful foot massage. First came the right foot, which, after ten minutes of pummelling, pushing, prodding and pampering was ceremoniously wrapped in a towel. Then it was time for the left foot – more of the same but this took longer and I began to wonder when in the half hour, which was fast being eaten away, would they start on our shoulders. All this was with dimmed lights and beautiful relaxing music. If Roger hadn’t been laughing occcasionally from his feet being ticklish, I would have easily drifted off to sleep.
Just after the half hour mark, another girl appeared at the door, crawling into the doorway so as to not disturb the atmosphere. There was discussion between her and the two massaging girls – obviously there had been a commnication breakdown between the manager and the girls. They managed to tell us that they thought they were to give us a one and a half hour foot massage! When we explained that we were expecting a shoulder massage, off came the towels quick smart, a quick towelling off of the lovely massage oil and they told us to sit up. They did five minutes or so on our shoulders and then indicated that it ws over.
As we were getting ready to retrieve our shoes and leave, the manager came to us and said that if we wanted the full back and shoulder massage still we could have it. When we agreed, there was a bit of discussion between him and the girls who clearly were not pleased, but they graciously led us to yet another area and pummelled away at our backs, necks and shoulders for another twenty-five minutes. Then it was back to our shoes, a cup of tea brought to us and they ushered us away with all the Thai grace and beauty that I love so much. We have booked in for another massage on Friday night – a full hour this time!
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