Thailand. Hard Life. Rip Off Schools. Birthday Presents.

Well sometimes life in Thailand is just so hard. I mean even for students who have to study so hard and they are just worn out at the end of everyday. All the hard work with their heads stuck in text books is mentally demanding and very draining.

So after school or university finishes it is put the TV on and have a little nap to recharge the batteries.


Somehow my lovely girlfriend gets so many free days as lecturers are often going here and there and always cancelling classes at short notice and then they expect the students to attend when they see fit or suits their schedules.

I have to admit that university fees here in Thailand are nothing to back home in Australia at of 8,000 baht a term or 16,000 baht a year. This is dirt cheap but again when you look at the resources they are terrible and the level o teaching is very questionable. The university is very happy to blatantly break copyright laws and all text books for students are photocopies of originals. I am 100% sure they wouldn’t have permission from the publishers for this as they would be losing huge amounts of money.

Some of Noot’s books are disgraceful with the amount or errors in the texts. Whenever she asks me to check her work or help her I am never amazed at the mistakes overlooked by the lecturers teaching the courses. After years and years of using the same resources you would think they would have omitted the mistakes but either the lecturers don’t realize the mistakes or they don’t know that they are mistakes.

As with many Thai schools and universities there is this thing with having to buy shirts for this and that, and also a host of other crap. Last year Noot had to buy shirts that I never seen her wear and now this year they have come up with another rip off scheme of students having to buy a suit for 1,300 baht. Now if you have been in Thailand for long enough you know what 1,300 baht can buy and it’s a lot more than one suit that will probably be cheaply made and will be worn once or maybe twice. It’s all a load of shit and money making schemes by these institutions.

Her note books she has to purchase for writing in have to have the Rajabhat logo on the pages and they charge an idiotic price that is 200% more than you can buy the same note books at a bookstore.

Now this isn’t such a problem for me as I can afford it, but many Thai students live on shoe string budgets and every extra baht counts to them. I object to it just because of principal.

Well anyway that’s the Thai system for you.

I forgot about Noot’s birthday present last week. I bought here a MP4 player with a colour screen and it has 1GB storage on the player and then takes an SD card. I downloaded a part of movie onto a 2GB SD card the other day and it was actually pretty good. Even though the screen is small I enjoyed watching the movie and will do this before I go to the Noot’s home town village when she was a kid as there is very bad TV reception and it’s either dreadful Thai TV or read a book or take DVD’s to watch but then they cannot watch the TV so I will use the MP4 player and be happy to listen to music and watch movies.


Her best present I am sure as it brought a huge smile to her face was a home made card from her good friend and these are always great presents and it is now proudly displayed at the head of our bed. The girl used wire to make the Thai letters and then painted them green and as you can see below also decorated the card very nicely and artfully and I am sure took a little bit of time.

A rough translation is " Happy Birthday. Very, very happy. Love Friend."

Maybe someone can give me a better translation or I could interupt my lovely girlfriend who is watching Thai TV but this could endanger my life.

Life is tuff in Isaan.

Brunty