It’s been a little over a month since I’ve arrived in Thailand. It certainly is a completely new world compared to the modern and sleet infrastructure of Singapore. The difference is, of course, not just in the country’s infrastructures. The attitudes and personalities of these two countries can’t be more far apart. Singapore was a completely westernized culture, making me think of a cleaner, more organized and up-tech version of New York. People were always on the go, too busy to notice the gorgeous architecture or smile at their fellow pedestrians.

This is certainly not the case in the sleepy town of Khun Yuam, Mae Hong Son, where I am currently living. I had originally thought I would spend 9 months in Singapore, 1 academic term and 1 co-op cycle. That was the initial plan and how the exchange program with Nanyang Technological University (NTU) was suppose to work. However things did not end up as planned, obviously. NTU was unsuccessful in obtaining a work placement for me and I had a change of heart about what type of internship I had wanted. To make things more complicated, the University could not offer us dormitory living during internship period so we were required to move out. As many people know, cost of living is extremely high in Singapore. And to make matters worse, the average pay of an internship is approximately $700 SGD a month, equivalent to the monthly rent of a small one person room. That left nothing for food, transportation, and other daily expenses. The situation left me with little choice but to look for jobs outside of Singapore.

This led to me fly to this remote northern part of Thailand. It’s really interesting actually how I did end up here. A Thai monk had come to NTU for a dharma talk. I was interested in spending my third co-op doing volunteer work, preferably in a nearby Southeast Asian country (such as Thailand). So, counting on my luck, I decided to ask the Thai monk if he knew any schools that would require my services. Not that I recommend this, but I decided to put all my trust in the monk and waited for him to refer me to a nonprofit organization. After 3 weeks of nervous anticipation, I received an email from the monk about a job position with a school called Buddha Kasettra School. And so, I bought my tickets and flew into this quite little town high up in the mountains. It was a really exciting and nerve wrecking journey because I had no idea what to expect. All I knew was that someone from the school would pick me up and I would be staying there for the rest of my program period.

This is a brief introduction of where I am at the moment and how I ended up here. More about my initial shock and reaction in the next post!

Picture caption: My flight to MaeHongSon