An ESL experience at a for-profit college in Thailand.

BACKGROUND: Originally, I'd been in business, as an insurance underwriter, but left that occupation when my company was decimated by the "Great Recession" of 2008.

The following year my wife and I divorced after a short, unhappy, childless marriage.

I decided to change careers. Reinvent myself. Do something more rewarding.

Having taught English in Europe, during a backpacking stint after college, and having loved it, I figured I'd try teaching as a career.

But, after getting licensed as a high school teacher, I was having difficulty finding full-time teaching positions, even though I had an MBA and prior teaching experience.

All I could get was part-time substitute work...

A classmate of mine from grad school, in a similar situation, had been teaching English in Asia and encouraged me to try it.

Since I've practiced martial arts my entire life, I've always been fascinated by Asia, Asian cultures, and have always wished to travel there.

But the time was never right. It being an expensive, 15-hour plane ride, didn't help, either.

However, now the time was right.

The divorce was amicable. There were no kids, no debts, and no alimony payments.

I'd lived frugally, had money saved. I was still somewhat young. The time had arrived for such an adventure. It was then or likely never.

I found a few ESL, TEFL job websites, posted my resume.

With my MBA, business experience, teaching license, and prior teaching experience, I found that I was highly sought after.

I decided on a college in Korea that hired me to teach business courses and conversational English. The thought of being a "university lecturer" intrigued me and was a lot more prestigious sounding than working at a training center, cram school or high school.

It'd look sweet on my resume, too, if nothing else.

I planned to stay a year or two in Korea, rack up more teaching experience and head back to the States. But that anticipated short stay morphed into a prolonged stint at a public college in Korea. 8 years in all.

I'd stayed because I liked it.

A lot.

I had a fantastic overall time in Korea, enjoyed the teaching, the respectful, hard-working students, helpful staff, friendly deans, and I especially liked and got on well with my perpetually half-drunken, backslapping school president.

I liked most everything, except being forced into working the occasional extra-curricular activity, mostly as a judge for contests, debates, talent shows, and except the excessive weekend drinking culture and casual racism I faced...

Such as Korean women gasping, clutching their purses as me, a middle-aged white man, in a suit and tie, passed by them, being followed around stores by suspicious shopkeepers and refused service at the occasional bar, restaurant or taxi; many NPC, everyday Koreans I encountered seemed genuinely afraid of foreigners...

Aside from those trivial annoyances, generally my time in Korea was an immensely happy one. I learned Korean, learned to love kimchi, and loved my job, role at the school.

Not only did I like the work, but the position had its perks too, namely tons of time off, and I used the ample vacation time I had, and generous salary, to travel the world, hitting Australia, Canada, parts of the States, but, the best by far, was traversing the entirety of Asia.

My favorite spot- definitely-

Thailand.

The "Land of Smiles" as it's called.

The friendly people, fascinating culture, the food, the kickboxing.

Having been into martial arts forever, and seeing movies set there, I'd always been intrigued by Thailand, and found myself in love with the place, the fun and sun, particularly the bustle of Bangkok, with its crazy nightlife, and the jaw-dropping beauty of the numerous Thai islands, their cerulean waters, white sand beaches, conical, jagged mountains jutting from the seas.

I was instantly hooked, and once I'd been to most every country I'd wanted to visit, and between visits to other countries, I revisited Thailand at virtually every opportunity.

It had pretty much become my vacation home. And I daydreamed of someday working or living there.

But, in Korea, I had a great job, and had been with a great girl, the first serious relationship I had since my divorce.

We got along tremendously. She was gorgeous, could have been a K-Pop star, maybe. She worked in administration in my school's admissions office.

Sadly, our ethnic differences would be what doomed us...

Her family wanted to marry her off to another Korean family; for racial reasons, they couldn't accept their daughter married to a foreigner.

Although I was financially secure, had saved money, and was making decent cash as a university lecturer, when my girlfriend came out to them, about me, after us "secretly dating" for years, her parents vetoed any chance of us being together and forced her to marry a man, a policeman, she had no interest in.

Due to traditions, filial piety, she had no choice but to do it, and, even though she initially offered to "run away with me," possibly to another country, I couldn't let her do that. I couldn't make her choose between me and her family.

So, we split up. It was one of the most difficult, gut-wrenching things I'd ever done. Worse than my divorce.

From then on, I decided I needed another change.

On a trip to Thailand, I decided to see what was available, on the job front there, and see if I could use my MBA and over 8 years' teaching experience to land work there...

But it was a struggle to find university work in Thailand.

In fact, due to the rising cost of education, the lower birth rate, many colleges, universities in Thailand have been closing, and I'd read in the Bangkok Post that official estimates forecast perhaps up to 50% to 75% of higher education institutions will close throughout the 2020s.

I didn't wish to teach high school or middle school, especially after hearing firsthand accounts of tiny, crumbling classrooms with no AC, warped blackboards, and Lord of the Flies type atmospheres...

The teaching conditions like a zoo, kids running around, going nuts, admins completely inept, often hostile to foreign teachers, teachers having to "clock in" every day like a factory worker, having to ask for permission to leave the school grounds, having to do "gate duty"- stand outside the school's front gates, in searing heat, breathing in diesel fumes from cavalcades of motorbikes and pickup trucks while waving "hello," welcoming somnolent kids to school in the morning.

It sounded like hell.

The training center jobs I saw, with their assembly line teaching, dancing monkey duties- literally having to sing and dance for clapping children- that didn't sound much better.

The training centers also were corporate operations, chains, offering little vacation time, short contracts, and low pay, unsteady, often part-time hours, probably, largely, due to the plentitude of foreigners already in Thailand, especially the backpacker, begpacker sorts, who'd teach for scraps.

I'd seen almost no universities hiring, and read that to get a uni job, one needed to contact the schools directly.

So I emailed several, asking about vacancies but didn't hear anything. The search was looking grim, and I figured I'd either return to Korea or perhaps look back into teaching in America, as the economic situation there had improved.

Suddenly, lo and behold, a job ad graced my phone.

It was from a school, on the outskirts of Bangkok; a college, A COLLEGE! A private college called: "St. Benedict International College." It was a Catholic school, in Thailand, about 20 years old, claiming to be a top ranked school.

The ad listed a decent salary, for Thailand, 40-60k baht, per month, and the ad's pictures displayed a sprawling, verdant campus with macadamized walkways, marble statues and palm trees everywhere.

They were recruiting university lecturers, particularly those with prior teaching and business experience...

Being a school founded 20 years ago, there was shockingly little online about the school aside from official school promulgated information, school created Facebook groups.

There weren't many previous teachers' experiences or reviews posted anywhere. Only a handful of positive reviews on Glassdoor, and nothing on Dave's ESL, ThaiVisa, except a previous applicant asking if anyone had info on the place.

Many advise speaking with current teachers at the school to ask questions, speak with before you apply or accept a job offer at a school abroad, but the problem with that is schools will only provide well-adjusted teachers as references.

(I know, because I was asked by my previous school to help recruit!)

So I figured, whatever, I'd take a shot. It's only a one-year contract. Might as well apply. See what happens...

APPLICATION PROCESS: I followed the usual interview protocol. Sent in my CV, cover letter. A few days later, I had a request to set up a Skype interview.

The interview started with a stressed out looking middle-aged lady from HR, asking me a few basic questions, probably just gauging whether or not I was sane, didn't have a speech impediment, a thick regional accent or that I wasn't too old or disabled (in Thailand, there aren't the same age, racial, handicapped discrimination laws as there are in Western nations, at least ones that are regularly enforced...)

Stressed out lady then asked me to hold on, while she got the school's president to come speak with me.

I was made to wait for nearly 10 minutes.

To me, as a Westerner, this would normally be considered rude, inconsiderate, waiting so long; however, having spent much vacation time in Thailand, I knew they often operated on "Thai Time," where things are done at a slower pace...

People walk slower, are usually late for anything (unless direct payment of money is involved, then they're generally quite punctual!) so I didn't think much of it.

When the president arrived, we had a positive chat, chemistry, and I liked her idea of creating an international school, a college, with teachers from around the world, providing the students an English environment, where they could not only learn, enhance their English, but could concurrently enrich their knowledge of the world, being exposed to teachers from a venerable UN Council of Nations.

There were around 20 countries represented at the school, she said.

She was an elegant, charismatic woman, I must say, the president.

She was a tad older than me, at 46, and slightly chubby, but she presented herself well, wore heavy makeup and an exquisite aqua blue taffeta dress.

Moving her hands as she spoke, I saw she was donning hefty gold rings, and her pearly necklace and diamond earrings sparkled prismatically, like lightning off my laptop screen.

Her smile too, was high-voltage, electric, and as she spoke, in near-perfect English, I could envision her being a keen, shrewd businesswoman.

I wanted to work with her. I wanted the job. It'd been exactly what I'd hoped to find, for some time, and, with alacrity, I told her I'd be happy to work there.

Our interview ended well, and I figured I'd passed the test and might have an offer.

But nearly a month passed with no response. I considered contacting them, to inquire, before I sent off any additional resumes.

It wouldn't be necessary. A couple days later, I received an offer from St. Benedict and was elated.

I still had a semester remaining at my college in Korea, though, and I promptly informed the Korean school I'd be leaving and emailed St. Benedict that I'd take the job and signed and returned their contract.

Their contract, like my school in Korea, had vague, legalese language, as most contracts do.

A lot wasn't clear.

There was nothing in it about office hours, which I didn't have at my school in Korea.

There were similar contract-breaking penalties as my Korean contract, but those are fairly standard in ESL jobs.

The only thing I didn't like was that the plane ticket, visa application fees were to be covered entirely by me, whereas my previous college, many other colleges, schools will reimburse that or at least a portion of it, and that St. Benedict's probation period would last four months, and during this time, I'd have no health insurance.

But, nothing's perfect, and I was ready to sacrifice financially, to an extent, to be in a less xenophobic, warmer, friendlier place.

The school was also to provide an apartment close to campus, plus a shuttle bus, daily. I'd been living on campus, and preferred that, but I figured that I'd be close enough to school that it wouldn't be a big deal.

The school had sent me a picture of a nice, sunny, big furnished apartment, with a king-sized bed, fridge, and big screen TV.

My current place, as is typical in Korea, was super small, though clean and upscale, so I looked forward to having more space.

I looked forward most to living in Thailand, really, and being around friendly, fun, kind people, getting lots of sun and not having to return to frigid air and cold faces.

The whole term, I prepared for arriving in Thailand. I began studying rudimentary Thai. I learned about the history, culture, do's and don'ts. I researched the area I'd live.

Soon enough, my arrival date approached. Aside from a holiday greeting I'd received from HR, I'd not had regular communication with anyone.

The time to collect paperwork from the school, for my visa, came, and I fired off a few emails requesting basic, crucial documents.

I also emailed the Thai consulate near my hometown.

Neither the school nor the consulate returned any of my emails.

I phoned both places. Nobody answered the phone.

I emailed the school again. Again, no reply.

I wasn't sure what to do. Perhaps the lady from HR, the one who'd sent the holiday greeting, was gone? On vacation? Left the job? Who knows.

But someone should have responded to such serious requests for visa documentation. Not that I expected an instantaneous reply, but two weeks went by, and there'd been nothing, and I was getting worried...

VISA ISSUES: Since I wasn't receiving any replies, I decided to search the school website and email several other addresses, practically begging for a reply, clearly stating my situation, hoping a kind soul would be charitable enough to answer.

(My Korean visa was about to expire, and I needed to vacate my Korean apartment. Time was becoming thin...)

It was a day or two after my email carpet-bombing campaign that I finally received a reply and got a couple of the documents. But not all of them.

I emailed back but didn't have any response, for a week, until I again carpet-bomb emailed various departments to finally get the documents I required.

Although this was disheartening, all throughout I never took it personally, got angry, or sent all-caps emails or anything of the sort.

I thought this to be more of the "mai pen rai" "sabai sabai" sort of commonly Thai attitude, that maybe "Thai Time" included emailing too.

My term was to start in the fall, and over that summer I came by the school, for a visit, and to collect a few documents, provide the school documentation they'd need to process my visa, residence permit.

Most international schools, at least in Asia, when a foreign teacher arrives, will send someone to the airport to welcome and bring the teacher to the school...

Arriving in a foreign land, can be nerve-racking for novices, first timers, especially coming to countries as diametrically different as those in Asia, where many nations are developing, in flux, chaotic...

Additionally, a foreign teacher will probably have spent ten to twenty hours on a plane, be terribly jet-lagged, so any postulant arriving into that sort of situation would likely necessitate such procedure from a practical standpoint, if not a moral one.

Most international schools in Asia do take responsibility, ensure a teacher who has just travelled fifteen thousand miles has, at least, a ride to the school, basic accommodation, upon landing.

However, no offer of pick up or anyone meeting me at the airport was provided from St. Benedict.

Since I was already in Asia, had been to Thailand many times, this wasn't a big deal for me. But for others, it could be.

The school not offering a simple pick up at the airport was, though, a massive red flag...

Along with the red flags raised in how little info about the school there was online, and how I had to carpet-bomb email them and beg for critical visa documents, red flags were now popping up everywhere, like a beach before a storm.

And I began to see myself as a surfer standing under a molasses of dark clouds, on a windswept beach- about to jump into the maw of a swirling, angry ocean, somewhat nauseous when I clicked "confirm" to purchase my plane ticket.

But, what the hell, it was only a one-year contract...

ARRIVAL: I spent the first couple days in Bangkok, at a cheap hotel, and received a phone call from the school, asking when I would come there. We arranged a day and time.

I was impressed they called.

(At this point, my expectations, the proverbial "bar" had been lowering, further and further downwards, like a limbo contest...)

I thought they might send a car to get me, but no offer was made, nor did they provide a car when I asked, so I had to book a taxi out there, pay and find my own way...

The school was a good hour and a half from downtown Bangkok.

I knew this going in, and it wasn't a problem.

I'd been in an industrial area in Korea, that had air pollution issues, and I'd been looking forward to being in a cleaner, bucolic surrounding, at least that's what the pictures, Google maps, website of the school had led me to believe.

I thought I'd head into Bangkok once or twice a month, on weekends, holidays, for fun, but mostly I was happy to be living out in the Thai countryside and was wishing to explore the nearby national park via motorbike, as I done in the north of Thailand, traversing Esan, the Laotian border, on a previous journey to Thailand.

But as the taxi approached the school, the uglier and uglier the outskirts of Bangkok became.

Decrepit buildings, bumper to bumper traffic, even an hour outside the city. Though I did see the occasional gorgeous temple or decent looking school, half-built or unsold condo.

The further we got, the closer to the school, the more it looked like I thought. Sprawling green rice fields, canals, egrets soaring by, even the hovels lining the canals had a rustic charm to them.

The cab driver had trouble finding the school, because it was so remote, so I had to call the HR lady to help give him directions. Fortunately, she picked up her phone and helped.

When we got there, though, finally, 10 minutes later, no one greeted us at the school, at the gate or at the door, and the HR lady didn't answer her phone.

Stepping into the administration building, which sat at the head of the small campus, I noticed immediately that the building was in shabbier shape than it seemed in its photos.

It was dark inside, with paint chipping off the walls, and there was a damp, moldy smell...

I plopped my bags in the hallway and wandered around until I found the office responsible for foreign teachers.

Immediately upon entering the office, I could tell something was amiss. The office didn't seem like a happy place. There was a palpable tension that I sensed just stepping foot inside. Something ugly in the air. Something suffocating.

The secretary, contrary to many Thais, who smile upon greeting a stranger (mind you they were supposed to be aware of my arrival, too, and I was dressed in a suit and tie), the secretary, with a stone cold, unpleasant, exasperated face, asked simply if "she could help me..."
Her words broke off like icicles.

I smiled and told her I was a new teacher and was here to meet with HR, provide, receive documents for my visa.

She begrudgingly asked me to sit down (as many Thais do; they'll often ask, albeit more politely, for you to sit down if you have entered an office).

I waited for around 20 minutes, flipping around on my phone, but largely taking in the disturbing vibe I was absorbing from the place.

Panning my gaze, scanning the office with analytical eyes, I could tell that everyone there seemed generally miserable.

No one was smiling. There was no jocund chatter or laughing. Everyone looked solemn, downtrodden.

This was not sanuk.

Eventually the head of HR received me, a tiny, 60ish lady, half-German, half-Thai, and 100% mean.

Her gray hair was dyed into a neon green shade, and her angular, jagged, bird-like face made her appear sort of like the Grinch.

The Grinch, in true Grinch fashion, herself had no smile.

I sat down into her cramped, messy office that she shared with two other bureaucrats.

Two towering mountains of bureaucracy sprung up like fangs from opposite sides of her desk; the assorted stacks of papers, manila folders flanked and framed the Grinch, forming a gorge, an aperture to her sharp face.

She launched into a tirade about the poor behavior of foreign teachers at the school, how awful so many of them were.

She mentioned current teachers, by name, saying how one was "okay," but another was "difficult," one was "rude, with no people skills," two others had "terrible" classes that she'd had to coach them to improve.

She mentioned a Russian lady there, teaching English, as having handwriting so atrocious it was too difficult for students to read.

Then she went into a rant about a teacher who'd recently left. A girl from Australia, who'd been unhappy with everything, especially the school's accommodation, and the Grinch mocked and scathingly rehashed the Aussie's complaints. The grievances had obviously bothered her deeply.

I made a mental note not to complain much about my accommodation.

I also made a mental note to avoid interaction with this lady as much as possible. Her bitterness was upsetting. It was as if she was embalmed in malcontent.

I can certainly see her being descended from Nazis.

(Sometimes you'll meet a nice German and think, wow, how could his/her family have done that... But this lady, it was pretty obvious...)

And I'd never, not once, had an HR person complain to me about her employees, especially calling people out by name, badmouthing them to me, when I'd just walked in the door.

After using me as an emotional toilet, emptying her mental bowels, her diarrhea of disdain for her employees, she did speak of her teaching at the school and a couple accomplishments, students she was proud of.

Although she was a Grinch, she, for a moment, struck me as a caring, dedicated teacher.

(I mean, not ALL the Nazis were bad, right? They built nice cars, the autobahn, had cool clothes and logos. If you get past the genocidal racism and just think of the good...)

While perhaps a good teacher, the Grinch seemed to have genuine issues with foreigners, which could have stemmed from negative past experiences with foreign coworkers, employees.

(Buddha knows many a feckless farang has [dis]graced Thai classrooms.)

Or maybe she had daddy issues related to her German father, or maybe it had to do with experiences she'd had studying in America.

Who knows. But I knew to steer clear of the green lady as much as I could.

After that encounter, I was brought to see the vice president, in her tiny office, which she had to herself.

The office was freezing cold and dark as a tomb, with no windows and flickering, weak fluorescent overhead lights, and as opposed to the other bureaucrats, the office had no decorations, postings on the wall, pictures of family members.

Its desk was entirely empty.

The vice president was another administrator who most definitely made a memorable first impression on me...

She was far older than the Grinch, a cadaver of a lady, practically a corpse. She was tiny, maybe 4'11, with a humpback.

Wan, almost deathly pale, she looked like a zombie and didn't walk, but sort of hovered, casting not exactly a shadow, but a spectral penumbra.

Her facial features, facial structure made her appear more upper-caste Indian than Thai, and around her long lavender batiste dress, she was mummified in a wrap-around white silk shawl.

Her skin sagged and dripped from her face like hot wax, and she'd dabbed on dense blotches of makeup, heavy splashes of Diptyque Paris Eau Rose.

Her bulbous mutton fat jade earrings and a string necklace of crystalline pink pearls implied wealth...

Her opal eyes seemed three sizes too big for her face.

The Corpse spoke in a quiet, soft-spoken voice, almost syrupy susurrations, finishing most every sentence with the Thai polite particle "na."

During our first (of what would be many) meetings, she rambled on, also badmouthing a couple current teachers, by name, and asking questions and immediately answering her own questions about school policy, referring to the students as "children" and that we could "call their parents" if we needed to and that if a girl came to my class wearing too short a skirt, I should demand her to leave, go change into a longer one.

At my past college, although many of my Korean students acted immature (a consequence of only studying throughout high school, not doing much socially, leaving their emotional development stunted), still, we, me, the school, treated the students, mostly, as adults, and so her monologue was unexpected.

I guess, being a Catholic school, I should have expected it, but she wasn't a nun. I'd have been more comfortable with an old nun having this sort of soliloquy, for some reason, possibly because it's what I'd expect from a nun, not what I'd expect from a Thai corpse.

Following those two meetings, my last meeting was with a very un-Thai Thai. An HR hench(wo)man in charge of visa procedures, paperwork. Maybe the person I should have emailed with, long, long ago...

The Corpse did at least force a smile as she spoke. This henchlady didn't. She was gruff. Laconic. Phlegmatic. Didn't smile. Once. Made no pleasantries whatsoever.

She greeted me coolly with a copy of my bachelor's degree to sign, for the visa paperwork. I asked her if I also needed to sign a copy of my MBA. She then asked me if I had an MBA.

The HR person in charge of handling my visa paperwork didn't know or have my correct degree. She'd probably not seen my CV. Or didn't care.

Things weren't off to a great start. I left that office with a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. What the hell had I gotten myself into.

Red flags were everywhere. This place was becoming Tiananmen Square.

But hey, it was only a one-year contract...

THE APARTMENT: I wasn't much happier upon arriving at the school provided apartment.

The school had a nice lady from the accounting department drive me there, because it was on her way home.

She, the accountant, was a true Thai, as I'd known them. Friendly, smiling, helpful, patient as we circled around, lost, seeking the apartment, which turned out to be far farther from the school than I'd thought.

It was nearly 40 minutes away and in a neighborhood near an industrial area.

Nauseating burning plastic smells from a nearby garbage fire filled the air... My throat got sore and eyes burned...

I was shocked how crowded the streets were, compared to the area around the school.

There were swarms, floods of motorbikes.

Motorbikes driven by men, women, children as young as 9 or 10, motorbikes with 3, 4, 5 people, whole families, a baby or toddler stuck up front, motorbikes carrying large loads of food, bags, boxes, work, construction equipment, long, lance-like poles, live animals, things I couldn't imagine could fit onto a motorbike.

Everywhere there were street side, makeshift restaurants, butchers, fishmongers, vendors of all sorts, lining the main road adjacent to the highway, and twin Seven-Elevens on every permutation of parallel blocks.

The air was blanketed in diesel exhaust and charcoal smoke... The AQI must have been China-level...

It was way busier, noisier, and chaotic than I thought, but the Big C supercenter containing a massive grocery store, restaurants and a movie theater across the street made me feel better about living there and about being so far from campus.

Not only the area, but the apartment itself was not as advertised.

It was further down a side street; nearly 10 minutes-walk from the main road, which was nice, because it was far quieter and the air not as thick with diesel fumes.

But I'd been sent a picture of a spacious studio, with a big screen TV, fridge, two chairs and a small table.

And what I received was a tiny studio, with no furniture, no TV, no fridge, and only a rock-hard box spring mattress.

The place had no windows, though a sliding glass door leading to a tiny balcony funneled in a trickle of sunlight (much of it obscured, however, by a rolling tarp, controlled by pulleys and rope, which I tried to roll up to the summit but broke in the process, and I was forced to tie it via laundry line rope to the balcony railing).

Worse than its size was its smell. It's common in Thailand, and other Asian countries, for pipes in the bathroom to be built in a straight or slanted, / shape, and not the U shape found elsewhere.

The straight-line shape pipes allow in stinky funkiness to bubble up from the sewer or septic tank, and the bathroom being tiny, lacking a window that could be opened, or any sort of ventilation, didn't help with the smell, either.

Then the "wet" shower (one w/no curtain or glass casing) didn't have a water heater, and the building didn't pipe in hot water, which wasn't always a problem, given the tropical climate of Thailand- except for when I did want a warm shower.

Though I was misled, at the end of the day, the place was free, not including utilities, so I couldn't complain too much. However, I did need to pay rent until the semester started, a whopping total of $100.

I couldn't grumble too much about that. You get what you pay for.

The lower cost of living certainly was a benefit of Thailand and Southeast Asia in general...

Given the red flags raised in my first visit to the school and how incompetent they'd been throughout the visa process, I decided not to make myself too at home, though, in the apartment. I bought only bare-minimum essentials, sheets, pillows, towels, cleaning supplies, a kettle and coffee maker.

Bloody hell was I glad I did. Especially that I didn't buy a hotplate, TV, fridge, or other heavy electricity consuming appliances, because it turned out the apartment management was charging the building's foreigners electric fees that were far more than the official government rate of 3 baht per kilowatt.

We were being charged 9 baht per kilowatt, 3 times the government rate...

This practice is, officially, illegal in Thailand. However, when foreigners who can speak little to no Thai, or even those fluent in Thai complain, nothing is usually done.

Despite receiving electric bills nearly equal to, often more than, far more than, our rent, and many previous teachers complaining to the school, the building continued to charge the inflated rate, and so I decided to hold off on buying any electrical appliances and was glad I did when I saw what my neighbor was being charged for using his AC, TV, fridge, and cooker.

Nearly $300 per month...

THE TEACHERS: That neighbor was one of the foreign teachers at the school. Many of the teachers came from India, Bangladesh, but the majority hailed from the Philippines.

(It wasn't until later that I'd discover how these racial dynamics affected work relations...)

Most of the guys (and I do mean guys, 90% of foreign teachers in Asia are men, white men, usually) most of the foreign teachers in my building were of the handful of farangs the school employed.

The neighbor being charged $300 a month for electricity was a guy named Will; Will came from Canada; he was 50ish, had a buzzcut, pearly white teeth and cut, lean figure, and scabrous legs from a motorcycle accident, a serious one, which rendered him clinically dead for almost a minute.

The accident left him with TBI (traumatic brain injury), and while he seemed quite together, well-dressed and sharp, when first meeting him, the cracks would show later, as he'd fly off his knurled handle on a whim, verbally assault coworkers, and, for no apparent reason, get up and leave work, disappear for a short time, or exit our school van while it was stuck in traffic, walking down the highway, off to who knows where.

He'd carry his backpack, a heavy bag, filled with books and a bulky laptop, in the crook of his arm, like a waiter delivering a dish on a silver tray.

His lessons consisted of using small packets of candy as extrinsic motivation for the students to stand in front of the class and read from their books. He'd had no previous teaching experience, aside from a short TEFL course in Phuket.

But he was white.

Another teacher was named Terry. A tall, 50ish, Irish American from Boston, with a big bulging beer gut, bouffant hairdo, fat head and florid face, gummy smile and raspy, clam chowda accent.

He walked with a limp-like gait, always shaking his hands and legs, complaining of arthritis.

An anomaly, he'd been in Thailand since the 1990s, originally as a Peace Corp volunteer teacher, and had just stayed, teaching at various schools and colleges throughout the Kingdom.

He spoke perfect Thai, and had a Thai wife, who he rarely saw, and fought like crazy with on the phone, practically every night.

Although he'd been in Thailand for nearly three decades, due to Thailand's ethnocentric and stringent citizenship requirements, even after close to 30 years, he still didn't have a Thai passport or a long-term visa, and would every year, every 90 days, really, be required to renew his papers.

Terry spoke in hushed tones, often mumbling. You'd have to lean in to understand him, ask him to repeat himself.

While he was once health-conscious, he'd taken to smoking cigarettes and drinking 5 or 6 tall bottles of Thai beer, via glasses filled with ice cubes, every night, saying that after he turned 50, he didn't care anymore.

"Who wants to live to be 80?" he asked me, once, mentioning how miserable his mother was, dying a wrinkled shell of her former self, in a nursing home that reeked of piss and puke and that sort of smell only old people make.

Terry'd sit out in front of the building, drunk, and would rant, in mumbles, usually about Trump, or something he saw on Fox News, like how over 70% of people in America speak other languages than English at home, and occasionally using racial epithets to illustrate a point.

He once said how his hometown was like the Congo these days, there were so many...

The guy he'd smoke, drink with, was a weasel face, rat-tailed, beady eyed South African guy, 20ish, who didn't teach at our school (instead he taught at a nearby private middle school).

Weasel face liked to reminisce about South Africa and how much better his family said it was during apartheid.

A guy weasel face worked with, lived next door to, was a 30ish, super-skinny, tall, high pants wearing, pedo-looking Hungarian, who didn't talk much with anyone in the building.

Perhaps because he was fighting a war with the building manager's dogs.

Every time he'd leave the building, the (usually docile) dogs would go berserk, barking like mad at him. He'd curse and scream back at them, in a mixture of English and Hungarian and would kick the dogs...

There were a couple other farangs in the building, but they didn't talk to anyone, just kept to themselves.

One (who lived there before I arrived) was a heroin addict who flipped out in 7-11, throwing instant noodle packs at the clerks, storming out, because they wouldn't sell him booze (it was either a Buddhist holiday or before 5pm).

The guy wound up dying, as do many foreigners in Thailand.

This farang overdosed on smack.

When the cops, paramedics brought him out, Terry Mumbles said that, along with a river of takeout food trays, empty bottles, they'd found dead lizards, geckos, scattered around his apartment.

Apparently, he'd been stabbing the lizards with a switchblade knife and smearing the lizard guts and blood on the walls, writing gibberish and random curse words, drawing pentagrams with the blood.

The last farang I knew living there, Stan, was a 40ish fellow, with a hook nose and a shiny bright bald head; 5'5, skinny, he wore huge horn-rimmed coke bottle glasses and had electric green eyes that'd rubiate.

He'd sometimes wear suspenders, bowties, but often wore short sleeve, button-down dress shirts with a necktie.

He played the ukulele in his classes and taught his students how to prune topiaries.

Stan spoke in cyclic bursts. He intensely disliked Hillary Clinton and Greta Thunberg.

No one talked much with Stan, though (other than his students, me and Terry Mumbles).

Most everyone was scared of him after Stan'd gone postal, one scorching hot day, the previous term...

That morning in the school van, after starting a near fistfight, with another teacher, over a seat in the van, he'd become apoplectic, barging into the Grinch's office, ripping up sheets of paper, shrieking, cursing everyone out.

His rampage culminated in he and the administration in a running shouting match throughout the office, one that ended with him banging and breaking a drumstick on a desk, throwing a chair into a wall, bursting into tears and running like a spider out of the office, face red as a tomato.

After that, amazingly, his contract was renewed, but he wasn't asked to any more meetings and was excluded from most school activities.

He was barred from the school van, too, so he bought an old beat up navy blue Toyota, slapped tons of NASCAR stickers, MAGA stickers on it, and would leave the car running for 10 minutes every morning outside the apartment building, creating a massive cloud of black smoke.

(The Canuck would grumble that there was no way that vehicle could have passed any sort of emission test.)

Pretty much everyone was afraid of Stan, after his meltdown, and he ate alone in the cafeteria, and rode alone to work. He rarely came to the office, either, spending his time in the library, with his head down on a table, sleeping...

The other farangs at the school, not living in my building:

Ronald: A 60ish Brit, former soldier in Northern Ireland. He had slicked back salt and pepper hair, a furrowed forehead and crazy blue eyes; one eye always squinting.

Irascible, Ronald hated the school, everything about Thailand. Everything about Thais. Every time you encountered him, he was pissed off, venting, on about something Thailand.

I couldn't figure out why, if he detested Thailand so much, he'd married a Thai lady and bought a house in the countryside nearby.

Allegedly he'd gone to Cambridge.

I wondered why he even worked.

Don't UK military servicemen get decent pensions? What would possibly make him stay living, let alone working, in a place he completely despised? Was it Brexit? It must have been Brexit.

(Disgruntlement was a common trait among many Western expats in Thailand; especially online, sites like ThaiVisa, message boards catering to and seething with venomous Thailand bashers; mostly grumpy, gray-haired, portly geezers grumbling about anything, everything Thailand. Yet they remained in Thailand, visited Thailand, year after year...)
When I respectfully quizzed Ronald as to why he remained at the school, Thailand, he said he stayed for the students, that they're the best he'd had in 5 years of working in Thailand.

Nah, I thought to myself. It was probably because of Brexit...

Vinny: Nearly 80. A grizzled, grizzly, hairy, leathery-skinned biker from New Zealand, who'd retired to Thailand, and worked part-time at the school.

A genuinely friendly guy, well-read, knowledgeable. He was apt to complain, be annoyed with the school, its policies, but he rather enjoyed Thailand and his life, wife there.

Kris: Late 20s to early 30s, a chunky, pallid Russian lady, her fire red hair usually worn in pig tails.

Boisterous, she had a sonic boom of a laugh, a shrieking sneeze, and an aura of insouciance.

Kris could turn petulant in an instant, though, and regularly fought with the administration and was loathed by the bosses, formally banned from speaking at staff meetings, yet was kept in her teaching position, going on 3 years as of this writing.

Derrick (Dimitry): A Croatian, 60ish, gangly gray ape of a man, a former priest, who'd been kicked out of the church for touching young girls, and had fled America, where he'd lived for many years, after his wife left him and legal action was pending (but later was dropped).

His scandals hadn't altered his behavior, though. He'd be pervy with girls at the college, liking to touch their breasts, under the guise of adjusting or admiring a pin on the blouse of their mandated school uniforms.

He was also seen, by more than one teacher, taking photos of the girls by and in their dorms.

(A long-time Thai expat I spoke with had a theory the school kept him there because they liked to reinforce the stereotype of the gropey foreigner. Though I don't know if I believe this, as such people aren't good for school reputations.)

While he may have been a groper, perv, he was at least dedicated to his teaching.

At 8 years, he was the longest serving farang teacher and had been made into the director of the English Department, despite his strong Eastern-European accent that made him sound sort of like Dracula.

Amazingly, he was not paid any additional stipend, didn't receive a raise to be director, even though it entailed a heap of extra paperwork, writing, spending hours creating, editing midterms and final exams.

He'd done it simply because he was passionate about the work.

So passionate, in fact, that he ran his classes like the military. Locking the door after 5 minutes, not letting latecomers enter. Screaming and berating those on phones, those who talked over him, ripping up small bits of money in front of students, telling them: "This is what YOU do NOT STUDYING!"

" ... "

ORIENTATION: I was required to report to the school a week before my classes began, for an orientation.

The day arrived, and I waited outside my apartment building for the school van.

After waiting 30 minutes, however, it never showed.

I called the school. No one answered. I messaged the school online. No one responded.

So I set out to the main road, about a 15 minute-walk.

I was wearing formal clothes, black trousers, a long dark blue button-down shirt and a black necktie, black wingtips.

A pickup truck full of 10, 11 y/o kids, in boy scout, girl scout-like, mocha brown school uniforms passed me. One girl pointed and yelled "farang" and another screamed "fuck you!" his face contorted into a scowl...

The weather, even in morning, was humid, scorching hot; the tropical sun, its blades of heat, bouncing off the asphalt, boiling my bones; my limbs feeling like floppy noodles in a soup of sweat...

Walking to the main road, walking anywhere, really, in Thailand was treacherous.

It's no country for pedestrians.

Most places, residential areas, most roads, don't have sidewalks. Basically, everyone drives or rides a motorbike...

Trudging down to the main road to catch the public minivan that went by the school was like traversing an obstacle course.

I had to dodge motorcycles flying down the street at the speed of sound, pickup trucks, songthaew, all sorts of random motorized contraptions, whirring by, some carrying gas canisters, loads of fruit, live animals.

By the time I made it to the main road, I was drenched in perspiration, and it was then I understood why no one in Thailand walked (except idiot foreigners like me).

When I got to the school, I thought there'd be a sign out front: "Welcome, New Teachers, to St. Benedict" or signage along those lines.

But there was nothing.

I went to the room the orientation was supposed to be held in (as per the email I was sent), a spacious hall, designed for events, conferences.

But the room was empty. Not a soul. Not a sign or anything.

I glanced at the school's shamrock adorned logo emblazoned on the wall behind the stage and looked up at the huge poster of the Pope, hanging from the rafters. I took a deep breath.

Things were off to a lousy start. I was pouring sweat. The school van hadn't shown up. No one answered my calls or texts. No one was in the room for the orientation. I wasn't sure what to think. Did I mix up the dates?

I checked my phone again to confirm that it was the correct day. It was.

I took a few more deep breaths and decided to head to the office, see if maybe anyone was there. Maybe they'd changed the date and not informed me. Something to that effect was seeming likely.

I was on "Thai Time," after all...

The administration building was deserted. Except for a small crew of construction workers, who appeared to be Burmese. (One of them couldn't have been more than 13 and was smoking a cigarette as he worked, tearing apart a wall with a pickaxe.)

The workers were literally tearing apart the building, renovating it.

The place was a mess. Wires hanging from the roof. Paneling missing. Buckets of grout. Chunks of the floor ripped out. There was a heavy industrial stench of paint and indeterminate fumes. A symphony of ear-splitting drilling sounds reverberated through the hallways.

I navigated the madness, stepping over the debris, finally locating a secretary, who scoffed and flippantly pointed me in the direction of a room towards the end of a corridor, lined with tiny offices.

Inside a hexagonal room, behind a painting of a bloody, crucified Jesus, were two Indian fellows and one Indian lady.

The older of the men was 30ish, quite tall and heavyset, clean shaven, and had the longest spirals of fingernails I'd ever seen on a man.

He sat shining in a well-tailored, glossy silver suit and spoke in aphorisms; intermittently he read a tattered paperback book by Hagel.

The lady, 20ish, was attractive and petite, wearing a colorful sari. Her raven hair was scrunched into a tight bun, heavy rouge dappled along her high cheekbones.

The other fellow, also in a well-fitted, glossy silver suit, was only 23; he was thin and short, a fresh college grad, doe-eyed and green, rocking a well-trimmed pornstache and a frohawk.

They were affable folks, though I did have some trouble understanding their accents, at first. Mostly they spoke amongst themselves in their local, northeastern Indian dialect.

One told me indirectly that he'd come to St. Benedict on a gap year of sorts, to save money so he could pay a bribe to his department head and get a promotion. At his university, without the right relative, that was the only way one could rise through the ranks.

The lady spoke glowingly of how happy she was to be in Thailand, working there, since she didn't have to worry for her safety as much. She said in Thailand she didn't need to worry about getting raped or groped every time she left her house, especially at night.

The fresh college grad was obsessed with America. He'd seen tons of Hollywood movies and had always dreamed to go. He was particularly into Las Vegas. I'd never been to Vegas, myself, but he couldn't stop asking me questions about it.

That and the WWE. He loved the WWE and said it was extremely popular in his hometown, that there were rowdy WWE fight watching parties all the time in his neighborhood.

We waited for nearly an hour for anyone to show up. Eventually came a chubby guy, from the IT department.

He wore a short sleeve collared dress shirt and a necktie, which was exactly how I'd imagine a person from the IT department to look. His name was Kenny.

He was a British fellow, of Filipino descent, with a thick cockney accent, and had been at the school for about 4 years, starting as a teacher and later moving into the IT dept full-time.

A likable guy, he gave a well-versed oral introduction to the school and took us out in a creaky old school van, showed us the school's small campus.

There wasn't too much to see. A small gym, with moldy walls, a few free weights, a couple treadmills, but no AC.

A tiny ovoid swimming pool with dirty green water, algae.

Four teaching buildings, the performance hall, a sparse cafeteria that had a noxious stench in its corner, a tiny library, a couple rows of decrepit dorms at the far end of the campus.

The entirety of the buildings looked as though they'd seen better days. The place sure looked a lot nicer on its website.

The surrounding area was gorgeous, though. The school's campus was carved out of a rice paddy, and the adjacent fields were verdant- coconut palms, lush tropical shrubbery crisscrossed by canals branching into the distance of every direction, like aquatic veins.

Sadly, the wondrous scenery was dotted with plumes of smoke.

In Thailand it's common to burn off parts of the rice fields and stubble crop, in the idea that burning will create higher yields.

(The smoke would occasionally reach its tentacles into the school, into the classrooms, the library; garbage, plastic, Styrofoam, as well, would be burned, oftentimes within mere meters of the school...)

The tranquil surroundings, swaying palm trees and scattered fires.

Parallel symbolism. Prefatory.

A dog, I couldn't see anywhere, was manically barking as our van squeaked and coughed us back to the admin building...

THE SCANNER: After our brief tour around the school, we returned to the same hexagonal room in the back of the clanking, rattling office and were told to wait for someone who'd take our fingerprints for the scanner.

The school had implemented a system where all staff, teachers, secretaries, cleaners, cooks, everyone (except the deans, HR dept and president) was required to sign in and out, every workday, via scanning their fingerprint (an index or thumbprint) into a 2.4 inch optical screen on the wall-mounted, 17 L 12 W 3.1cm H, black square biometric fingerprint password attendance machine.

(The employee checking-in recorder machine looking sort of like a corded phone you'd see in an office- but w/a neon green optical screen instead of a receiver).

The scanner hung to the left of the secretaries' L-shaped desk, at the mouth of the admins' office, and ominously blinked red dots from a skinny oblong button on its top rightmost corner.

Failure to sign in the morning, via fingerprint scan, before 8:00 am, even if you didn't have class until late morning, afternoon, or at all that day, meant that you were marked late and fined, had salary deducted.

Failure to sign out, via fingerprint scan, after 5:00 pm, meant that you left early, without permission, and you'd have half a day's salary deducted.

If you missed a Friday or Monday, didn't sign in and out on either of those days, the school would deduct 3 days' pay (the Saturday, Sunday) to deter anyone from taking a long weekend.

The info about attendance, the fingerprint scanner wasn't covered in the contract or during the interview. It was told to us, quickly, by Kenny, who looked embarrassed for having to disclose it, straining to make eye contact as he spoke.

We waited for nearly two hours for whomever to show and take our fingerprints. By this time, it was nearing 1pm, and I was hungry, having not eaten since breakfast, so I got up and went for lunch, by myself.

I didn't enjoy my time being wasted, being made to wait so long.

If this was more "Thai Time," it was a lot more tolerable when I was on vacation...

And I didn't appreciate the scanner, attendance policies, not imagining a college would force its teachers to scan in and out via fingerprint, and annoyed they'd deduct pay, force you to be there, even if you didn't have class.

I couldn't figure out why that would be necessary, for teachers, as it's pretty easy to know whether or not a person is showing up to his/her classes.

In Thailand, it's frowned upon to lose one's temper. One should always maintain the "jai yen," which can be loosely translated as keeping one's cool, i.e. not freaking out.

Though I wanted to freak out, I kept cool, and after eating a tasty Pad Thai noodle dish, my mood lifted a touch.

When I got back, we waited another hour and a half, and eventually another IT guy, a shifty eyed, nervous young Thai fellow in ripped blue jeans and a pink polo shirt, came to take our fingerprints, log our info into the scanner.

Altogether, including the half hour I'd spent eating lunch, we'd been waiting for 4 hours.

Not sure what that amounts to in "Thai Time..."

NO VACATION: After our fingerprints were collected, we waited another hour, and a stressed-out looking, square-jawed, frizzy-haired, 30ish HR lady, with crooked eyeglasses, came in to talk to us about school policy.

She began talking about "leave." In reading the contract, there was time in between the terms, about 2 months total, when we wouldn't be teaching.

Most schools, colleges allow teachers, students to leave the school during such time, time between terms.

But at St. Benedict staff was required to report to the school, even when classes weren't in session (except weekends, select state holidays).

I was dumbfounded by this. I couldn't comprehend how a school would work like that. Didn't they understand how tough teaching is? How much energy it takes out of a person?

It's far more tiring than a desk job. Anyone who has ever taught, at least diligently, can certainly affirm this.

As a teacher you're a performer. You're on stage, you're speaking loudly, interacting with crowds of students. You're hyper-focused on your lesson plan, your students' progress.

You're planning courses, grading papers, attending meetings, doing paperwork. For any effective teacher, for every hour spent teaching, there's another hour or two spent in preparation, grading, or other functions...

20 hours teaching a week, 20 to 40 hours of prep, etc.

There's a reason why, under the most optimal circumstances, even, teachers burn out at a high rate.

Vacation time, summer breaks, a winter break, is part of the bargain in teaching, part of the trade-off one might make to earn less money, have more time off, time to spend with his/her kids, recuperate, do part-time or other work, do whatever.

When reading the contract, I'd figured "leave" pertained to taking time off during the term. Not in between terms. There was simply no logical reason to have us there if we weren't teaching or partaking in any school functions.

Altogether, the school's allotted leave was 2 weeks per year and not guaranteed. It had to be approved, in writing, by 3 different departments, 2 months in advance.

I'd noticed a couple of Thai teachers sitting around the office, sleeping at their desks. I couldn't figure out why they were there, with this being a break between terms. Now I knew.

However, it got worse.

For the summer session, summer school, a condensed term having 25 teaching hours per week, the English department was forced to work. For no extra pay. Generally, schools pay stipends, extra for overtime, working during the summers.

Not St. Benedict.

Again, this wasn't spelled out in the contract and wasn't something I'd anticipated.

Hearing the crooked glasses lady tell us this, in a monotone voice, I wanted to run out the door.

But I'd signed the contract. I'd committed to teach there. And that meant something to me. My word was my bond.

Should I have asked about the summer? The vacation? Perhaps. Perhaps I shouldn't have taken it as a given. It was, ironically, a teachable moment, and a mistake I wouldn't make again.

It was, however, simply a one-year contract. A one-year contract. That's a beautiful thing about temp work, that it's temporary. While you don't have stability, you do have freedom to move elsewhere soon enough.

Only one year, I thought. I'll knock it out, move on. No vacation, no summer break, scanning in and out via fingerprint, all ugly, authoritarian, awful, sure, it sucked, but, hey, one stinking year. How bad, otherwise, could it be?

It was only a one-year contract. One year...

CLASSES BEGIN: No book.

"What? Are you serious? There's no book?" I asked Terry Mumbles, while him, me, and the Crazy Canuck waited outside our apartment building, in the searing sun, for the school van, which was running 15 minutes late.

The Canuck was pacing back and forth by the laundry machines, squeezing a vise-gripper...

It was the first day of the semester...

Mumbles muttered something about how the school didn't give teachers a copy of the book. We needed to go to the library and check out a copy.

As did the students. And the students' versions had been previously used and most of the copies had the answers to assignment, activity questions already written in them.

None of us yet had been given a semester schedule, told when we'd have exams.

Mumbles mumbled something about how the first week of class, hardly any students would be there anyway.

The Crazy Canuck went into a diatribe about the TQF reports, labelling them, as well as almost everything else he disliked, "retarded," and saying how we'd need to go into those to find which book we needed, but that the library often didn't have copies, so we'd have to download the book ourselves or buy it online.

He ranted about how he'd spent hours last term writing and rewriting his TQF evaluations, because there were students from 5 different majors in his English 2 class, and he'd been made to write separate sets of reports for each major, even though they'd all been in the same class.

He wasn't sure what to write because most of them didn't come to class. Most of the students didn't speak English, either. Not a word.

Mumbles interjected, grumbling about how it wouldn't matter the grades we gave them, because they'd be changed anyway.

One class he taught last term was excellent, and he gave most of them A's, but the school had changed the scores, changed many to B's, C's, at random, and the students were pissed off about it. As was he.

Mumbles mumbled something about the grades being on a curve distribution.

The van arrived in a stinky black mist of dust and diesel fumes.

It wasn't the shuttle bus I expected, either.

The minivan was probably 20 years old. Beat up. A couple letters embossed on its sliding door were missing.

St. B nedi t ...

Inside was worse. Parts of the flooring looked like they'd cave in. The seats were torn. It had a couple flies in it. The AC didn't work so we kept the windows open, letting in all the exhaust, heat from the road.

The van's driver, an angry, jowls of fire, middle-aged Thai man, appeared to be nursing a hangover. He reeked of booze and drove at breakneck speed, weaving furiously through traffic, and nearly forgot two or three of the stops.

Along the way we picked up a young Bangladeshi couple, who worked as teachers/admins, a phone addict 50ish Indian- who needed us to honk at him to realize we were there, staying glued to his phone, throughout the ride (later at school too).

And two early 20ish African girls, one bone skinny, one rhino plump, the girls doing an MBA program and part-time (possibly illegal) admin work at the school.
Towards the end of our journey, on that first day, the school van, unsurprisingly, broke down, sputtered and stalled and we, the men, got out and pushed it to the side of the road and had to wait in the hot sun for 20 minutes or so for the school to send another van.

But it was no van they dispatched. It was a pickup truck. A very humble one at that.

And we all, dressed in suits, ties, formal dresses, the Bangladeshi lady in a floral-patterned hijab, we teachers, we all piled into the bed of the pickup truck and rode in silence, sun and sweat for that last 5 km of our commute...

THE FIRST DAY: Being the first day, maybe there'd be a party, welcoming ceremony.

There was nothing.

We didn't have schedules until 7:45am, that morning, when we arrived the school, which seemed half-abandoned, the office still rocking and rattling through its last trimester of renovation.

The shifty-eyed IT guy, this time in a button-down blue shirt, khaki slacks and black Adidas sneakers, was handing schedules out to teachers as we entered the office to scan in via fingerprint.

(He'd cut his hair like Ronaldo, smelled of pineapples, and gave me an enthusiastic handshake, his clammy right hand having slightly too firm a grip...)

I saw the accounting lady who'd driven me home, who'd been friendly, but she didn't offer much of a hello, only a gruff, "Good morning, Ajarn."

(I'd later discover a cold formality at the school. The admins never called any teachers by name, simply referring to us as "Ajarn," the Thai word for "professor," completing nearly every sentence with it.)

I sat down for a minute at a vacant desk, next to Mumbles and the cagey Brit.

The Brit admonished me, saying how that wasn't my desk, and how I should be careful, because if "they" caught me sitting at a desk that wasn't mine, or if I purposely switched desks, without asking permission, I'd be in "big trouble."

I'd not been assigned a desk or told I was required to be at one or be required to request to change seats, like a kindergartener. There was nothing in the orientation or contract about that.

He was right, though. This incident, the mere sitting down at a desk that wasn't mine, not being at my desk, even though I was never assigned a desk, this would come back to haunt me later...

The office was in shabby condition.

I'd have thought with the renovation that they'd have fixed it up.

But not so, or perhaps not yet.

The place was crumbling, had grimy walls and stanchions, rutted floors, and part of the AC casing was missing, exposing the inner pipes, and nearby the junky AC, the ceiling was rotting and leaking.

I'd come to find there were occasional cockroaches, huge flying cockroaches and micro-ants.

And there were wasps, which would sporadically fly into the office, meetings, and classrooms, and the Indian phone-zombie guy once saw and snapped a photo of a cobra slithering into a field nearby the school.

The most troublesome, however, had to be the rats.

Big bamboo rats, the size of little dogs. Rats that'd chew through your backpack, bite at your feet, legs sometimes as you sat at your desk.

Mumbles mumbled about rats in the office last term because the Filipino teachers had been eating in the break room behind the office, leaving half-eaten food out, which had attracted the gargantuan rats of the rice fields, and the rats had been running amok, dropping pellet-shaped rat turds everywhere.

One of the teachers, a farang, one of the 6 or 7 who'd resigned after only a month or two, in the last year, had gotten into a heated argument with the Filipinos about not eating in the office.

There was even a sign, posted in the stairwell, in English and Thai, warning us not to eat or bring food above the first floor, and that violators WILL BE FINED.

But that hadn't dissuaded this set of Filipinos from munching on their morning chicken and rice.

And the farang took them to task about it, and a melee ensued, one of the Filipino teachers grabbing a protractor, using the sharp point, waving it like a knife, threatening to cut the farang's throat and the farang being restrained by the other farangs before he could get his hands on the protractor brandishing Filipino.

Neither teacher was fired or fined. Though for a time the Filipinos quit eating in that room. They were doing it again, now, this morning, and the Brit and Canuck discussed who'd go to HR to complain.

Mumbles, the Brit and Canuck, called the Filipinos the "Flippers," and spoke disparagingly of them, spoke of them monolithically. Although not in front of the two Filipinas (a jovial, chunky 40ish lady, and stern-faced, tiny lady, probably about 50) who shared our office.

There was a definite tension in the air, which I noticed my first time there, and the past conflicts I was becoming aware of explained why.

While I'd talked to and gotten along well with a couple of the Filipino teachers I met, many weren't friendly, at all, not even making eye contact or any effort to introduce themselves, or being cold, distant, when I took the initiative.

The Brit said not to trust a single one of them. That any who were friendly were just being fake...

IN THE CLASSROOM: I'd only minutes prior received my schedule, so I hadn't much time to prepare and drew up a quick lesson plan for introductions, class rules, and a "what you did over the vacation" class discussion, activity.

When I got to the classroom, the reality of my situation became further apparent.

First off, there was nobody there. It was 7:58am, and the class was to begin at 8:15am.

"Thai Time," I guessed, applied to students, too, as it did to most everything.

At my previous school, the students would be there well before class began. There'd be students studying, reading aloud from books, practicing their English.

At St. Benedict, the classroom was full of ghosts.

Humans eventually arrived. In body, if not in mind.

About half the class turned up, filing in anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes late.

To my dismay, despite St. Benedict touting itself as a top international school in Thailand, out of the nearly 30 students who came, only 2 or 3 could really have a conversation in English, speak fluently.

Maybe 10 could speak some English, low to low-intermediate levels.

The rest, around 17 or 18 of them couldn't speak a word. Not a word. They couldn't answer simple questions like "How are you?" or tell you their name, introduce themselves.

It was disheartening. Many of my previous students, in Korea, were shy, but spoke quite well, were motivated to study. This was a much different situation.

These were second year students, too, at St. Benedict. They'd, in theory, passed 3 semesters of English courses, been through 10 years or so of English study in primary, middle and high school. How did they get this far, not able to speak a single word?

In Korea I had occasional situations where a student had squeaked by, not able to string together a sentence or say more than a few words. But usually they could read and write. I'd never had a single student that couldn't read or write.

But many of these students could barely read or write. Or do anything.

They were poorly behaved as well.

They wouldn't be quiet. Most would ignore me as I spoke, speaking over me, in Thai, chatting away with each other, playing on phones, some sleeping.

I was beginning to understand why they couldn't speak English.

They had no interest in learning.

Basically, the entire school must have been a fraud. A diploma mill.

It was a private school. It was about money. They brought these students in, and, as long as they paid, they'd get a diploma. It didn't matter how they behaved, how little effort they made. If they paid, they'd graduate.

We'd been told during orientation that these students would need to take and pass the IELTS test, read 7 English language novels per semester, and complete several online learning activities on Moodle in order to graduate.

I couldn't imagine how any of that would happen...

Unless, of course, they paid the right price, or person.

NO MORE MR. NICE GUY: Generally, I'd be pretty laid back in my classes.

I found that Asian students, at least Koreans, were ashamed of making mistakes, that it made them "lose face" and that the best way to help them overcome this fear and aversion to speaking up, trying to talk, is to create a caring, relaxed and fun, humorous atmosphere in the classroom.

In ESL classrooms, there's a lot of "edutainment." Many teachers being clowns, dancing monkeys, sometimes entertaining more than teaching.

I'd try to balance joking around, humor, lightheartedness, with a healthy dose of actual content, useful info, correct students' grammar, pronunciation judiciously, tenderly, and here and there speak and mangle a little of their native language, to show that it's okay to make mistakes, and that we can learn from those mistakes, improve.

Mostly, I'd done well with this approach. I'd avoided conflicts with students, staff, and had very few problems.

But it was quite clear that things would be different at St. Benedict.

I didn't appreciate the students talking over me, using my classroom as their relaxation time.

So, I switched my approach, and slapped, hard, on my desk, and let them know, in certain terms, what the rules for the class were. No talking when the teacher or a classmate is talking, no playing on phones, do your class assignments when told, and don't be late.

I informed them that anyone breaking any of these rules would have 2 points deducted for each rule infraction. (I had a similar set of simple rules for my classes in Korea, though I rarely had to deduct points, as the students were quite well-behaved).

I wrote the rules on the board. I had the students read them aloud, as a class, and then had one (of the few who could speak English) translate, orally and in writing, the rules into Thai.

Then I went into what I'd planned, for introductions...

Using this same approach cleared up most of the behavior issues. Some classes were better than others, didn't require too much prodding.

The attendance rates were terrible, though.

I thought I'd scared them away, but Mumbles told me his classes, and everyone's were the same. Most of the students dropped out. In fact, out of 200 or so per group, only around 20 graduated.

But how could that be? All they needed to do was be there. Sit there. And they'd be passed on. English majors, even, didn't need to speak English.

Mumbles, the Brit, and Postal Stan, who'd all been in Thailand for 5 years or more, told me that the school mostly targeted students who didn't pass or take the government issued college entrance exams.

(This could be that their school had issues. Many Thai secondary schools are akin to Lord of the Flies.)

((Students running wild in the hallways. Never going to class. Playing soccer when they're supposed to be in math class.))

(((It's easy to see how after 10, 12 years of that they couldn't pass any sort of college entrance test or why they couldn't speak English. Heck, a handful often couldn't write proper Thai when called to the board to write a translation.)))

((((Then there were others who were simply lazy. They hated school. They wanted to do whatever else. Their parents forced them to be there...))))

What was most upsetting, though, was that many of the students had taken out loans to come to St. Benedict.

The loans could be too big, too much for their families to repay, and they'd need to drop out because of financial reasons, leaving the school with no degree and a staggering pile of debt that their families, often impoverished farmers, would struggle to repay.

The whole scheme made me highly uncomfortable and reminded me of a string of for-profit colleges in America that were shut down for predatory lending, deceptive business practices...

SCAM: St. Benedict was closely aligned with a lending company, I discovered from an online deep dive.

Many of my students, despite unruly classroom behavior at times, turned out to be quite lovely people, and, in talking with the few who could speak English, it seemed many of the students were sold a fake bill of goods, misled to believe they'd be attending a prestigious international school with state-of-the-art facilities, dorms.

In reality, though, the dorms were dilapidated and full of roaches, at times visited by rats, snakes and bats. There were constant power cuts, blackouts, brownouts, water cuts that could last up to one week.

The students, many of whom came from hovels, moved out of the dorms, into nearby housing as quickly as they could.

St. Benedict had also placed them in majors they didn't want, forced them into classes they didn't want to take.

(It made me think, like, if I were in their shoes, and I was forced to take classes in Thai, from a Thai teacher, who only spoke Thai, and tried to make me speak Thai, write Thai, how would I react to that...)

((Many of the students were not only very friendly, but outgoing, too. Contrary to Korean students, who'd be shy, difficult to motivate to stand in front of the class, do roleplays, presentations, or play games, the Thai students relished it, were fantastic performers, and were extremely creative, especially talented at drawing, handicrafts. Many were left-handed, too, which I rarely found in Korea... Once you got past the initial rowdiness, had the right group, hit them with the right material, lesson plan, they could be a fun bunch.))

(((The majority of St. Benedict's students were females. The few male students were, by and large, clearly gay. This led to Mumbles making the off-color observation that the school had brought in one or two handsome young foreign male students, per semester, to satisfy the girls' needs. Last term it was a handsome young German. This term it was a handsome young, muscular Lebanese Christian with a noticeable, but ruggedly attractive scar on his cheek.)))

((((Mumbles theorized the school had a room, love hotel, set up for them somewhere on campus. That all day, all the Lebanese guy did was "nail broads." Like 3 or 4 a day. Mumbles theorized that if the school hadn't brought in the handsome young bucks, the girls would kidnap the middle-aged teachers, lock the doors, feed them Viagra, and gang-rape the men, and not that he'd mind...))))

(((((Many of the male teachers at St. Benedict, in addition to Dracula, were pervy. Most of the Indians were gropey, a few to the extent they got fired, but that was rare. Usually they'd pat girls' shoulders, hang their arms around girls in photos, clutch them extra tight. Mumbles was pervy and would make his students do activities where the girls would get up, move around and dance, so he could watch them move. Mumbles said how the school planning to relocate all the teachers into on-campus housing later was a "bad idea" because he'd be out raping and masturbating far too much, with so many "chicks" around...)))))

St. Benedict had a handful of international students, 4 or 5 Africans, one or two Filipinos, a couple Indians, the handsome Lebanese, and one American girl, who was part Thai.

The American girl, despite being born and raised in America, only coming to Thailand for college, was placed in basic English speaking, reading and writing classes, as were the other international students.

Although they'd flown 8, 10, 20 hours to come to St. Benedict, whomever in the admission dept seemingly hadn't checked their transcripts, tailored their schedules accordingly.

(I had the American and an Indian in my English classes and decided to make them into de facto assistant teachers, had them help me and their classmates.)

The state-of-the-art facilities didn't pan out, either. The classrooms were in poor condition.

The whiteboards were warped, stained.

The projectors often were not working. Wires hanging from the ceiling. There were amps and audio equipment that looked to come from Radio Shack or the year 1996.

Desks were broken, beat up. There was graffiti on the desks, chairs, walls. Green and black mold on the floors and walls, ceilings. Occasionally a stray dog would run in.

A chair I sat in once collapsed, fell apart, and I'm only 5'9, 160 pounds.

Ceiling panels were missing. Water poured from a battered old AC once. The power would cut off. Water would go out in the filthy bathrooms.

There were no computers inside the classrooms. Teachers were required to bring their own laptops, but often the projectors were unreliable or too old to connect with newer laptops. Mine required an adapter the IT dept didn't have, and I had to order, buy the adapter myself, so the first week of class I wasn't able to use my laptop.

I used the board and sent out assignments via email and social media groups I created for each class. But the school WIFI often ran slow or not at all. Uploading could be a chore.

The working conditions, facilities were challenging. For students and teachers alike.

The facilities, maybe, were a cracked mirror, metonymy...

RACE WAR: I came to discover that the school had a prison yard mentality.

In the cafeteria, the offices, common spaces, the Indians sat with the Indians, Filipinos with the Filipinos, Thais with the Thais, and Westerners with the Westerners. There wasn't much mixing or friendliness between the groups.

Things came to a boil one day, at the end of the semester's first week.

At the end of the working day, staff, teachers, secretaries, drivers, cooks, cleaners, everyone, lined up to scan out, feed their fingers to the fingerprint scanner.

The line could get quite long, snaking out into the hallway, over 50 people deep.

It could take around 20 minutes waiting for a turn to scan out, especially since sometimes the fingerprint scanner didn't work upon first or second touch and one'd need to resort to inputting their work ID number manually, via the machine's numeric keypad.

(There was one Westerner, who'd since resigned, who'd punched the fingerprint scanner a few times, in frustration.)

((He'd also smashed and sawed apart a few chairs in the hallway, outside his classroom.))

To notch their place in line, staff members would often leave a bottle or bag near the scanner, then come back a couple minutes prior to scan out time, so they could bypass the line, which, at approximately 4:56pm, would be lengthy.

The Brit, who was waging a sort of cold war with the Filipinos, would always be first to line up, arriving at 4:45pm to stake his spot.

(He'd claimed that if he didn't get there early, his van driver, who was "controlled by the Filipinos," would leave without him and that it'd happened a few times before...)

Usually he'd get his spot at the head of the line, but today, his spot had been taken by Alfredo.

Alfredo, one of the Filipino teachers, Alfredo the near midget, or little person, as they're now called.

Alfredo, a flamboyantly gay, middle-aged, former hairdresser of the school's president; Alfredo who'd done an online PHD course at a Filipino university to attain Thai teaching licensure;

Alfredo, with a high-pitched, sing-song accent, lisp and slicked-back hair; Alfredo with a puffy face and marshmallow body; Alfredo, dressed daily in well-ironed, perfectly starched and creased, fabulously dapper suits;

Alfredo in Gucci belts;

Alfredo draped in glittering gold necklaces, studded gold earrings, and bulky 14k gold rings;

Alfredo in alligator skin shoes.

Alfredo, who habitually touched other male teachers, male students on the arm, shoulders and lower back; Alfredo, whose hello/goodbye touches lingered slightly too long...

Alfredo that day was there before the Brit. And the Brit's sneer displayed his displeasure.
There was a palpable tension between the two, dirty looks exchanged as they waited, but they mostly ignored each other, with Alfredo paying his attention to, chatting with, touching the arms of the 23-year-old Indian fresh meat teacher, with whom Alfredo had taken a shine.

The time arrived to scan out. 5pm. Watching it from about 5 people away (I'd also get there early, to bypass the line), it was like a Wild West showdown.

(Cue the John Wayne music- duh-nuh-nuh-wah-weeh-waaaahhhh!)

The Brit drew first. Reached over, literally, over wee Alfredo, which wasn't difficult, as the Brit was tall and lanky, around 6'3 or so and Alfredo stood at about 5'0.

Alfredo's fangs came out. Alfredo retaliated by lunging and pushing the Brit, upwards, paddy-caking into the Brit's chest, vampire Alfredo shoving the 64 y/o man, hard.

The Brit was not deterred or hurt, falling back slightly, but quickly regaining his balance, and the Brit stepped towards, towered over Alfredo, leaned down, got right in his face and told him sternly: "Do that again, little man!"

Sensing that either Alfredo might make a move, bite into or otherwise attack the Brit's testicular region, or that the Brit might rip Alfredo's head off (the more probable outcome, this guy was a former soldier, after all! And still in good shape, older or not).

Neither possible scenario I wished to witness, so I stepped up, played the peacemaker, got between them, broke up the altercation, told them both to calm down.

Having been in Korea, and very accustomed to the Asian thing of deeply respecting my elders, I told Alfredo to just let the Brit go first. That the Brit was always first, he's our elder; we should let him go.

(I didn't appreciate watching anyone, even an unintimidating little person, physically attack a senior citizen, I must say, and I'd have reacted the same way, no matter who was involved.)

Alfredo backed down, skulked off, went back further into the line, saying something about: "such attitude."

As he walked away, I noticed the Filipino teachers giving me the stink eye.

So, to further calm down the situation, I smiled, said to everyone that we should all "relax and take it easy," that "It's been a long week; let's enjoy the weekend."

I let a few Filipinos standing behind me in line go ahead of me, smiled at everyone. I felt proud of myself for stepping up, being magnanimous.

After such an incident, I thought that the following Monday morning, there'd be disciplinary hearings. I might get invited to testify.

But there was nothing. They simply took a short, written statement from Alfredo, in which he blamed the Brit entirely and stated the Brit pushed him, that he never touched the Brit.

For the Brit, the admins, three of the admins, the Grinch, the dean, and the Corpse, called him into a meeting, blamed him for the incident, and gave him a written warning, telling him to sign it, which he refused to do and stormed out of the meeting.

Afterwards, the Grinch taped a laminated sign next to the fingerprint scanner, saying how no one was allowed to line up before 5pm or leave bags by the fingerprint scanner. Anyone breaking this rule WILL BE FINED.

Later that morning, after finishing my first class, I stepped into the hallway, outside my classroom, and a Filipina teacher I didn't know was walking towards me.

She wasn't a bad looking lady, maybe early 30s, had a killer body, long mane of jet-black hair and a cute face. Her eyeglasses lent her a sort of sexy librarian thing.

I attempted to make eye contact, say hello, but when her gaze met mine, she grimaced and swiveled her head in the opposite direction.

Unlike many Filipinas, I guessed she wasn't into middle-aged white guys, at least not me, and that was okay. I respect that.

But I couldn't handle what she did next. I moved to the side, to let her pass me, and she reached her arm out, like a stiff arm, American football motion, a Heisman pose, and she shoved me, knocking me so hard I lost my balance for a second.

Then she screamed at me to: "Go home!"

I couldn't believe what had just happened. I'd been shoved and berated. In the hallway. By another teacher. A woman, nonetheless.

My tongue touched my hard palate. I was frozen in shock, for a minute, nothing of the sort had happened to me since I was a freshman in high school.

This, though, I couldn't let slide. Someone who'd treat a coworker, abuse a fellow teacher, like that, had to be held accountable.

If I knew who she was, I'd report her to HR, straightaway.

But I didn't. I'd never seen her. So, I followed her to her classroom, where her class was beginning, and I walked in, pointed my smartphone and snapped a picture of her, asked her name, and, as I was leaving, told her never to touch me again, and that I'd be reporting her to HR.

She followed me out into the hallway, and again screamed at me to "Go home!"

I went downstairs and reported the incident to an unsympathetic HR acolyte.

I figured I'd hear something by the end of the business day. I heard nothing.

Talking to Mumbles about it in the van ride home, he said it was probably payback for breaking up the fight between Alfredo and the Brit.

He'd heard through the grapevine that there'd been chatter all the "flippers" hated me now. I'd, inadvertently, become Public Enemy Number One at the school.

(Which was weird. I'd never been in that situation before. In my corporate job, my previous school, even my part-time jobs in high school, college, I'd always gotten along with most everyone, had very few problems.)

((Even scarier, I came to discover that this beautiful bully was connected to the school's president; they were tight. Some sort of family friend relation.))

(((The beautiful bully was basically royalty at the school. Could do whatever she wanted. She'd refused to work overtime when the school was understaffed and had shouted down the previous chair of her department. She'd taken extra-long, 3-month vacations. Outside of her small, but highly powerful circle, she was widely reviled. She, however, was untouchable, and I had totally "bumped" into the wrong person.)))

Thinking there might be further reprisals, and deciding, at this point, the place was too disorderly, unprofessional, and downright dangerous, I knew that I'd need to leave.

(I worried the Filipinos might jump me after school, gangs of them with lead pipes, beating me, kicking me, or one might try to stab me with a protractor, or maybe my parents' bimonthly cleaners, who were Filipinos, might know the St. Benedict Filipinos, that somehow it could all be connected, and they might take my parents hostage; like maybe I'd receive a panicked phone call from my mother at 3am, my 73 y/o mother, duct-taped to a chair...)

Having seen what I had of the school's policies, its classrooms, staff, and how tough it was trying to teach so many students who didn't speak English or want to speak English, and especially after witnessing a senior citizen be physically assaulted, and being physically, verbally assaulted myself, I knew I'd need to leave, probably at the end of the semester, and I decided to take the next two days off, called in sick, and notified the students the next two days' classes would be redone at a later date.

The next two days were bliss. I spent the time relaxing, searching for, applying for new jobs. None of them in Thailand.

(All I was finding in Thailand were training center, dancing monkey jobs, and Lord of the Flies high school jobs. Even the upper crust, elite private schools in Bangkok didn't sound appealing. The pay wasn't much better, and I'd heard from a few different expats how awful, spoiled the lot of the students were at those schools, the classes like zoos. That you'd need to don a full 3-piece suit, blazer and everything, and refer to the students as "Master" - "Master Puchai" "Master William")

When I returned to the school, the stink eye had increased 1000%. Weirdly, people I didn't know either knew my name, or gave me extra dirty looks.

Though there was an attractive secretary, a tall, dark skinned Thai, with an outstanding hourglass figure and gorgeous face, who'd not paid any attention to me before, and who was now all smiley with me and flirty.

Maybe she was into "bad boys" and my newfound notoriety had piqued her interest.

Public Enemy Number One, a middle-aged honky, ignominious, wearing khakis, loafers, eyeglasses and a fanny pack.

(I asked the caramel lovely out, and she said "yes." My dalliance with her one of the few fun things I'd found there. At least for a short time... But that's another story.)

I'd requested, by email, to have a meeting with HR, the beautiful bully. I'd also requested there to be security cameras placed around the school, and a security guard or two present, patrolling the hallways, keeping the peace, and especially for security to be present during the fingerprint scanning in the afternoon.

But no security guards appeared, anywhere; no cameras were installed.

And when I was called into a meeting with HR, that afternoon, the day of my return, I'd planned, envisioned myself as a plenipotentiary...

ADMINISTRATION: Coming to the meeting, I thought the beautiful bully and maybe one HR acolyte would be there.

But instead the beautiful bully was nowhere to be seen.

There were only 3 admins, the dean of my dept (who I'd never met), the Grinch, and a portly, 60ish Thai man (I'd never seen before) who was one of the school's high-ranking vice presidents of something or other.

They all looked extremely pissed off.

Seeing that the beautiful bully wasn't there, I initially, politely, refused to take part in the meeting. But the dean told me the beautiful bully (not the dean's exact words) had provided a written statement and assured me that all they wanted was for me to give my side of the story.

Figuring that I wouldn't be sticking around much longer anyway, I nodded and sat down.

I thought they'd ask a few questions, hear me out. But that's not what happened.

Instead, the three of them launched into a fusillade of criticism, condemnation, blaming me for the entire incident.

The dean, a chunky woman, said it was impossible for a slim woman to attack a grown man. That she couldn't believe it.

(Although she said someone of her size could- her exact words)

The Grinch, shaking with anger, screamed at me, calling me rude, immature.

The vice president of something wagged his finger in my face, called me names, said I knew nothing about Thai culture. That I shouldn't teach in Thailand.

All this before I had a chance to tell my side of the story.

I calmly listened, didn't yell back, or sink to their mudslinging level.

However, in retrospect, I did something that probably worsened the situation. I laughed at them. I smiled as they berated me.

It was actually a very Thai thing to do.

Thais, generally, pride themselves on maintaining their cool, not freaking out, letting things roll off their backs.

"Jai Yen," the ability to keep one's cool, is a matter of national pride. That patience, chill demeanor is part of what makes Thailand such a great vacation spot and what makes so many Thais genuinely cool people.

But there wasn't much jai yen in that room, except for me, the only foreigner in there.

After they'd unloaded on me, I decided someone had to be the adult...

I suggested to them, calmly, courteously, that this wasn't productive, that we should relax, take a deep breath.

That took them off guard. They really did seem to be expecting a freak out, on my part, and they weren't getting it (which I think made them even angrier).

Then I slowly explained my side of the story, what happened. Again, the dean said she didn't believe me. The Grinch then said that I had done the same thing to her, had shoved her in the hallway, which wasn't true.

I told her, nicely, that didn't happen, I have no recollection of that. I don't usually, ever, to be honest, shove old ladies in hallways.

But she insisted it happened. Then she exclaimed that I was calling her a liar, slandering her, and that she was recording the whole conversation on her phone, which she waved in my face.

Then the vice president of something started to say that I'd pushed the Grinch, and that me taking a photo of the beautiful bully, in her classroom, without permission, was akin to slapping her across the face, that taking someone's picture in Thailand, without their express consent, was illegal.

He said how the police might have to get involved. Maybe the school would need to contact immigration too.

I saw where this was going.

Possibly me landing in jail.

Me being assaulted, reporting it, taking pictures, filing complaints, maybe posting things online, exposing the gang of thug teachers infesting the place, none of that was going to be positive publicity for this for-profit school.

They were going to pin the whole thing on me. Send me to a Thai prison over it, if they had to.

What the hell had this come to? All I came there to do was teach, help the students, have fun, enjoy Thailand. The Land of Smiles.

Now I was being harangued and faced with maybe going to jail. Over me and a senior citizen getting physically assaulted by roughneck, (likely) fake degree holding, sham teachers.

I'd found myself in a situation that illustrates one of the biggest drawbacks of being in a developing country.

As a foreigner, especially one from a first world country, you can be a target of scams. If you work in a developing country for an employer, one that is corrupt or malicious, things can get ugly. Quick.

They, your employer, the school, holds all the cards. You, as a foreigner, are alone, vulnerable in any dispute. You have, pretty much, no rights. There isn't rule of law; very few, if any, laws will go in your favor.

(File a lawsuit in a country where you aren't fluent in the language- yeah right. And the guy at immigration is, probably, friends, or related to the school's admins... The school, probably, gives "tea money" to the cops... Good luck dialing 911... Call the US Embassy- they don't give a fuck, either.)

While researching working, living in Thailand, one thing I'd seen, again and again, was to never make Thais mad. Never make them "lose face." How they'd go from 0 to 60, in seconds flat. Even get violent.

(Mumbles spoke once of seeing a drunken foreigner, from Texas, tell a gaggle of loud Thais at a karaoke bar to "fuck off." They'd responded by circling him and stabbing him to death with kitchen knives.)

Seeing that my situation was going downhill, fast, feeling like a gazelle that'd wandered, inadvertently, into a lion's den, I decided to de-escalate.

I admitted I was wrong for taking her photo. I said the whole thing was a misunderstanding. I'm sorry for anyone I offended. I just wanted to get back to work, teach my classes, and put the whole thing behind me.

I also let them know, in the politest way possible, that there's a lot of tension at the school, much of it felt racial, and that perhaps we could have a few staff get-togethers, parties, something to bring people together.

(I'd been dismayed at the school's dearth of social events. I posited that might be a real reason for the separation, tension among the staff. Like if we got together, did more social things together, we'd get to know each other, the office could be a friendlier place.)

My suggestion fell on deaf ears.

The vice president of something said how I probably believed that "everything is because of racism," and that he, while working as a waiter in a hotel in NYC, the dean and Grinch had all experienced serious racism in America.

(And it was then I understood, possibly, why some Asians, like the Grinch, who return from Western countries after having bad experiences, are so vindictive and maybe purposely attain positions of power over foreigners...)

I didn't doubt their unfortunate experiences. But that wasn't relevant to the situation at hand, and I was saddened they didn't want to do anything to improve the atmosphere.

(Them not wanting to improve the atmosphere certainly wasn't as bad as them trying to have me thrown into a Thai jail, chained to a wall, in a stinky, boiling hot, tiny room with 40 other people, but still, it was kind of a bummer.)

I again reaffirmed my wish to "put the incident in the past, move on." And they required me to apologize to the beautiful bully.

The vice president of something was happy enough to let it go, his wry smile symbolizing victory, but the Grinch and dean didn't appear too content. The Grinch shouted at me, again, about how she "was proud of her country" and that "I should show respect to her."

I told her she should be proud of Thailand. And that I love Thailand. That's part of why I was there working. And that I was sorry if I'd done anything that upset her.

The vice president of something (who I found out later was married to the president of the school) put an end to the Grinch's bickering and sent me to apologize to the beautiful bully.

Knowing that this was better than jail and that I'd be leaving soon anyway, I agreed, swallowed my pride and went to her office, shook hands with her, made up.

She took no responsibility for any of it. Made it out to be all my fault, played the victim. Said she would expect that sort of thing in North Korea but not Thailand. But at least she accepted my apology. I thought that'd be the end of it.

But it wasn't.

I was called into another meeting. This one with five people. Two HR acolytes, the dean, the vice president of something, and the Corpse.

The Corpse was the highest-ranking person, and the oldest, and when she entered the room, everyone rose, like smoke from a candle.

When we sat down, everyone's gaze and attention focused solely on me. Five sets of tiger eyes glaring.

The Corpse, with a painting of a bloody, crucified Jesus hanging behind her, held a typed letter, in school letterhead.

Snarling, she gripped the letter like a talisman.

She handed me the rambling screed, which was in calque, and which castigated me for the whole incident and warned me against any further insubordination.

She demanded I sign it. Reluctantly, I did, only because, again, it was better than jail or being deported.

(They held all the cards. I'd made them lose face. I'd committed the ultimate foreigner sin in Thailand.)

((This incoherent letter was my retribution.))

The Corpse told me, orally and telepathically, that I would be docked two days' pay and that I wasn't allowed any leave during my probation period; even if I was sick, seriously ill, I had to come to class, and as long as I followed all school rules, there would be no problems.

She queried if I'd like to "continue here," hinting at my resignation.

I did want to resign, but not so quickly. I had to collect a couple checks from these jerkoffs, to pay back some of my expenses. I was way in the red after paying for plane tickets, the assorted visa costs, setting up my apartment. etc...

Plus, I felt obligated to finish the term, for my handful of diligent students' sake.

Although most of the students didn't care, these few did, and I wanted to do what I could to help them, provide them with tools, methods to improve their English, their general knowledge, teach them to learn how to learn...

(Many teachers in Thailand, at primary schools, high schools, and colleges, wind up teaching to this small, select group of students in the front; the ones in the back rarely coming or not doing much when they did...)

I reiterated my apology, that it was a misunderstanding, and that I hoped we could have a positive relationship going forward.

The Corpse surprised me by saying that she was aware of the problems at the school, the tensions between groups. She asked me to be the person to talk to other groups, be a diplomat, sit at the same table in the cafeteria, talk to the Indians, whomever.
I appreciated her sentiment.

I thought maybe the Corpse was okay. I tried to brush off her past transgressions. I decided to give her a second chance.

I would put my head down. I would finish out the term strong. Have the fun I could with it. Laugh at the absurdities. I would get through it.

It's only one term... It's only one term...

But, sadly, it was not to be. The Corpse and I eventually found ourselves on a collision course.

The Corpse and I in a pantomime, a macabre dance, a game of chicken. And there was no doubt. She'd be the winner. At all costs...

THE CORPSE: There was an unwritten rule at St. Benedict. If you weren't teaching, you had to be sitting at your desk.

The problem for me, however, was that I was never given a desk or told about this, in the interview, contract, or orientation.

If I had, I wouldn't have taken the job. And after I saw how un-sabai, not sanuk the office's atmosphere was, I didn't care to be there much.

I'd come in the morning, for a quick stop, and talk with Mumbles, the Brit, and the Crazy Canuck.

(I'd been cordial with the Canuck until one morning, totally out of nowhere, he snapped and spazzed on me- during a conversation about pedagogy- saying how dare I mention the age of suffrage as 18, how 12 y/o girls get raped, and how terrible America is.)

((I didn't appreciate it and told him not to raise his voice, asked if he had a problem with me. He responded "no," and shut up. That was the last time we ever spoke.))

(((Following that, we passed by, ignored one another in stubborn silence... He lived next door to me, too, which was awkward, and I'd see him walking his dog, this big, aging French poodle... I disliked him, after that dust up, sure, but it was hard to really hate a person with TBI...)))

((((I felt sorry for him too in that St. Benedict was his first and only ESL experience; what an unfortunate luck of the draw that was, coming all the way from Canada, flying 16 hours, middle seat in coach, for St. Benedict... I don't think I'd ever simultaneously disliked yet pitied anyone as much as I pitied that fucked-up Canuck...))))

When not in the classroom, I was mostly spending my time in the library, where I'd become ensconced...

On top of teaching up to 20 hours a week, we were required to write and submit a research paper, so I'd use my time in between classes to research, read, and lesson plan in the quiet library. It was much quieter, more chill than the office. And, as opposed to the office, with its 58k speed net, the net ran somewhat quickly there.

But then one day I turned up to the library, and a Thai librarian, as if her hair were on fire, started screaming at me to "SCAN ID!" "SCAN ID!!!"

I thought she meant to scan an ID card, which we didn't have, and I shrugged my shoulders and told her calmly that I didn't have an ID card and stepped my way upstairs to do research.

The Fire Woman followed me up the stairs, making a scene, screaming, again and again, "ID!!!" "ID!!!!"

There was a group of students nearby, a few of mine, who witnessed this, and looked terribly embarrassed.

(In Thailand, people, generally, don't appreciate those who lose their temper, throw a tantrum in public. The librarian was losing a massive amount of face.)

I smiled at her, again shrugged my shoulders, kept my jai yen.

As I sat down at a carrel, she punched at her phone, yelled at me, "you name!" "you name!"

I told her.

She let loose a loud barrage of angry Thai appositions; her shrill voice, harsh tones like fingernails on a chalkboard, and she thrusted the phone at me.

On the line was an HR acolyte, who said teachers were now required to enter our ID into the computer at the front desk of the library, anytime we wanted to use the library.

The school was wishing to track our movements, wherever we went. They'd soon enough require the same thing in the cafeteria, I pondered. Maybe the bathrooms too...

(Speaking of bathrooms, the toilet seat in the library bathroom came off, fell off, as I sat down on it... A few days later, behind the library, I'd seen the same toilet seat lying on the road. Someone had thrown it out the window, but it was reattached, fixed a week later...)

((I'm glad I wasn't walking down the road when the toilet seat plunged down from the sky... But I digress...))

Perhaps the school could have informed us of this new policy, us needing to sign in to use the library. Could have prevented the ruckus with the angry librarian lady.

But they hadn't...

The librarian looked extremely mad after hanging up the phone. I tried to apologize to her, not want any more conflicts. But she wouldn't except my apology and replied: "I don't talk to you!" and stormed off.

I was making friends everywhere I went.

Public Enemy Number One...

I came to discover this was the school's M.O.

They'd not tell us things, important dates for exams, paperwork, school functions. Then they'd freak out when we didn't do the things they didn't tell us about. Or if we didn't ask about something we didn't know about.

This squitter, this lack of communication would soon reach a boil and lead to my direct confrontation, head-on collision with the Corpse.

REVENGE OF THE CORPSE: A couple days later, I went to the office to sign a few forms for my immigration paperwork.

They were the same (identically same) forms I'd filled out before. For the 90-day reporting, extending our visas another 3 months, we had to fill the exact same paperwork out every time, confirming our continued existence.

Every 3 months.

Plus pay a $50 fee to the immigration bureau, at our own expense, every time.

(Typical Thai bureaucracy- but it kept someone employed.)

As I signed form after form, having a lighthearted conversation with the square jaw HR lady, the Corpse interrupted, hovering over, appearing like an apparition.

(The Corpse was stealth... One never really saw her coming. She always just kind of appeared.)

The Corpse draped in a heavy tartan shawl like a caul; her frail, hunched over, sinuous body appearing evermore serpentine...

She asked me in slow, saccharin enunciation if I'd submitted my midterm exam yet. It was an exam for another department, which she didn't work with; her perspicacity stunned me.

(The department head was supposed to contact me about the course, a literature class I'd been inveigled to teach... But he never did make contact. I'd never met him. He was never in his office or anywhere around the school. I'd asked a couple colleagues who, where he was. They all told me that he was never around and was usually away, on trips paid for by the school.)

((So while I waited for him to contact me, I used the course outline I'd found on the school's online database. The book for the class wasn't in the library, so I downloaded it, collated other information, put together the class, the syllabus, but instead of doing a midterm exam, I'd planned a class project, that would replace the midterm grade, and figured it wouldn't be a problem.))

(((Never was I told, orally or in writing, that the midterm, unlike the final was required. However, earlier that day, I'd gotten an email from the never there dept head, the first communique I'd had, and he'd asked for a midterm. I'd responded with my class project idea and had asked if it was okay. I was awaiting his response.)))

((((The midterm, final exam were required to be only multiple choice tests, and answers, from the teacher, were to be provided, along with two different versions of each exam... Mumbles mentioned that certain admins would sell answer sheets to students...))))

I averred that I'd emailed the dept head about the test and was awaiting his reply.

Then the Corpse got a shine in her bulging black eyes and said how she wanted me to be in my office more, how we at St. Benedict need to be together, like a family.

I grinned and replied that I didn't have an office, but if the school gave me one and specific office hours, I'd be there.

Her plastic smile, a smile that always appeared too big for her face, disintegrated, and she scoffed and said that it was "impossible" for me not to have an office.

Again, I gently told her I didn't and that someone could assign me one, give me hours, and I'd be there, that it was no problem.

In a rage, she unloaded, querulously, on the square jaw HR lady, in Thai, her wattles jiggling, and then returned her mien to me, and said how she felt such "negativity from me" and that if "I didn't like it at St. Benedict, I should just leave."

At this juncture, I'd have been happy to do that, but, in the contract, there was a 20,000-baht penalty for leaving during the probation period.

Plus, once I quit, the school would call immigration and have my visa cancelled and I'd have only 24 hours to leave Thailand, as is the law for foreign workers in the Kingdom.

I wasn't up for losing 20k baht, buying a plane ticket, or leaving barely halfway into the term.

So I, kindly, reiterated that I intend to continue my classes, and that I don't have an office, one wasn't given to me.

I also threw out a nice face-saving excuse for the school that maybe the person who was supposed to assign it to me wasn't there during orientation, or I mistakenly missed that part of orientation.

(Which could be true- maybe it could have happened when I was required to leave early one day to do a health check at a local clinic, where I waited an hour for a doctor, who looked at me, asked me if I was okay, and collected my cash, stamped and signed a form...)

Anyway, I wasn't looking to anger the Corpse. But she, by the second, got more and more agitated.

Not picking up on the face-saving, metaphorical rope ladder I'd thrown, she asked me "if I had a mouth" and said I should have asked for an office, I was a university lecturer, after all.

I smiled, told her I did have a mouth, didn't let her depredation upset me, and stoically suggested that someone could assign me an office now, and tell me when I need to be there.

Her reply to that was to scream at me: "I don't talk to you! I don't talk to you!" and she began to hover away.

(It was the same mantra as the temperamental librarian. I was sensing a pattern here.)

((Making friends everywhere I go!))

It was so absurd, her reaction, that I couldn't help but laugh.

And as she floated away, I said: "Oh no, don't be like that! Come back! Please!" in a jovial manner that probably didn't help matters. It was like talking to an adolescent. Except this adolescent was in charge.

Lord of the Flies.

She hovered in discontent back to her office, her crypt, and one of the genuinely friendly Filipinas came over to see what was wrong.

Square Jaw, nearby, did the Thai thing, smiled, shrugged her shoulders and walked away, uncomfortably. Mai pen rai!

Friendly Filipina listened to me retell the conversation and said she thought that what the Corpse meant by "office" was a desk I was assigned but never told about.

I told Friendly Filipina that the school can let me know, either orally, or in writing, when I should be there, and I'll be there, and I left, in dismay, unable to believe an incident like that, the vice president of the school, would behave so uncivilly.

I expected a pretty quick response.

But no one contacted me.

I put two and two together. Though it was an unwritten rule, basically the school wanted you, if you weren't teaching, to be sitting at your desk. Always.

Once or twice, when entering the office, an HR acolyte had asked me in a passive aggressive manner: "Where were you?" Now I knew why.

Scan in. Scan out. Sit at your desk. Ask permission to leave. The place was a panopticon. Tiger eyes everywhere.

Total control...

Having gone into teaching to escape the corporate world, desk jobs, it didn't sit well with me to be chained to a desk for hours every day, especially for a teacher's salary, in addition to the offices being hostile, violent, in a terrible state a disrepair, not to mention dirty, stinky, rat, bug-infested and with slow internet and few power outlets around to charge laptops and phones.

Not the place I wanted to spend much time around. But if they demanded me to be there, I'd do it. Again, I figured I'd close out the term, then move on. That way, too, I'd have time to apply for other jobs, plan my path forward.

Only one term... Only one term...

But I wouldn't get that far.

The next day the Corpse had Square Jaw pull me into another meeting.

This time there were six people there, the dean, 4 HR acolytes, and the Corpse. They sat opposite me, in a hate-filled conga line, along a 10-foot-long imitation mahogany table.

Six sets of tiger eyes.

The Corpse clutched a dispositive letter in her brittle claws and handed it to me. It was another rambling, passive aggressive diatribe, in Thaiglish, admonishing me for lying about my midterm, accusing me of abrogating my teaching duties.

Another official warning from the college.

I smiled and replied by saying I had a couple emails about it with the department head and began to explain the project I'd planned, its details.

The Corpse cut me off. Said she didn't care to hear about it. She only wanted to talk about my lying, my refusal to do my work.

I smiled and replied that I'd do it if I needed to, if I couldn't do the alternative project and that I'd not lied about it and had a chain of emails to show my cooperation, intentions, and could forward them to her if she desired.

Sneering, she urged me to sign the letter.

I smiled and replied that I wouldn't do that. That I've got no problem doing the midterm and never knowingly lied.

She sighed. Shook her head. Said to an HR acolyte, who'd been taking notes on the meeting to "let the record show that he refused to sign the letter."

I was beginning to feel like I was in a court of law; this was a criminal tribunal of some sort.

It was at this point, the stress of it all, the ridiculousness, and the disappointment of what an awful place, job this had turned out to be, smacked me like a tsunami.

I did something I'd not done in years.

Suddenly, I began to cry. Tears welled up in my eyes.

Seeing these 6 people staring at me, looking at me as if I were a piece of crap in the toilet that wouldn't flush, being made out to be a liar, accused of things I didn't do, how malicious and horrible the place was, being shoved and yelled at in the hall, students who couldn't speak a word of English and didn't care, burning through a stack of cash, made to bear all the expenses...

I was utterly denuded, overwhelmed.

As the tears streamed down my eyes, I asked the Corpse, in all seriousness, why she was so mean to me.

Perhaps this would be a moment that her humanity would come out. Perhaps one of her acolytes would step in, place a caring hand on my shoulder, tell me it would be okay.

But none of that happened.

The Corpse didn't have any empathy for me, no kind words to soothe my battered soul. She was as dead inside as she looked on the outside. Perhaps her appearance was a mirror to her blackened heart.

The Corpse and her posse got up quickly and left the room. Leaving me alone. The badgering letter left on the table. Unsigned.

I composed myself, strapped on a pair of dark shades, bolted out and took a long walk around the campus to get my head right. I knew what I had to do.

BON VOYAGE: I had to do a runner.

I booked plane tickets to Vietnam, to seek work, live on the cheap while I figured things out.

(It was funny to escape Thailand to Vietnam. As an American, the irony, from a historical perspective, wasn't lost on me.)

I worried Thai border police might detain me at the airport. That St. Benedict had spies everywhere. Nuns with binoculars watching my every movement, the Corpse waiting outside my building.

The Corpse, maybe she was, in fact, a ghost, a poltergeist, a demon.

I had a nightmare about her, the Corpse soaring through the air, like a vulture.

Her using telekinetic powers, causing my apartment to quake, my meager possessions flying around, tornadoes of clothes and bottles, my French press coffee maker slamming and shattering into the wall.

The Corpse swooping, plunging from a stormy sky, lightning tracing her humpback silhouette.

The Corpse a moving gargoyle, her crawling up the side of my building like a lizard, shattering the glass door to my balcony, with her head, shooting her forked snake tongue out at me, wrapping it around my neck, strangling me, my face full of blue.

My dream was probably, hopefully, fear-based, but there was reason at this point to be genuinely concerned...

The next day Dracula told me the Corpse would be coming to my classes next week to do observations, in not one, but all of my classes.

Those probably wouldn't go too well.

From online research, talking with other teachers I knew, who'd been in Thailand for years, I'd figured out more of St. Benedict's modus operandi...

They wouldn't fire people, not because they didn't want to, but because it was difficult under Thai labor law, and much paperwork would need to be filed. Most importantly, for the school, they'd need to pay severance, 3 months' salary, even to those under the four-month probation period.

So, unless it was something crazy extreme, like an outright physical attack or sex attack on a student, they were too stingy and lazy to fire anyone.

What they did, instead, was ask the teachers to quit, and if they didn't, the school would pressure, antagonize the teachers, harass them, through various means, such as increased, biased observation reports, forced additional duties, paperwork, disciplinary hearings, written warnings, deduction of pay for minor, created infractions.

(For instance: forcing teachers to use personal leave days when they had to do their immigration, government mandated 90-day visa reports at the immigration office, which they done to a guy who'd resigned shortly before I came.)

Basically, they'd make the teachers' lives a living hell, in hopes they'd just leave, since it was easier, cheaper for the school that way.

(It was a winning strategy too. 6 or 7 teachers had quit in the last year, most after the first month.)

The meetings, harassment would continue. The admins at the meetings had been increasing in number and would continue to do so. There'd be 20 of them eventually, at the rate I was going. 20 of them, in a circle around me, screaming, wagging and pointing fingers, brandishing warning letters.

A scarlet letter, a label of "troublemaker" had been branded on my head.

Public Enemy Number One...

It illustrated how hierarchical Thailand can be.

In talking with others, researching online, I found many similar situations to mine. It seemed that many schools, companies operate that way, not always as extreme, but the bottom line, to me, was that you simply can't talk back to the boss. Not in any way.

The only reply you could have would be to grovel or apologize.

(Mumbles suggested playing dumb, shrugging your shoulders and not saying a word...)

Oftentimes a suggestion to a Thai admin, even done in the kindest, gentlest, most face-saving manner possible, will be taken as an insult. Anyone younger, anyone lower in the chain of command has no right to speak, provide input.

Thais often crouch down when walking past superiors or elders. I was seeing that the crouching not only pertained to walking by a superior, it applied universally.

This, this microcosm, systemic dysfunction could be compared in a macro sense and at least partially explain why Thailand perpetually remains a developing country. But I digress...

I knew what I had to do...

ESCAPE: I changed my ticket, moved the date up, to that weekend, that Sunday.
That Friday, my last day, was the school "Sports Day."

Most colleges in Asia have this. It's usually known as "Field Day" in America, more often done in elementary schools.

On Sports Day, classes are cancelled, at most colleges, and participation for teachers is voluntary.

Most colleges send out a notice to teachers, letting them know that classes are cancelled, what the events are, where they'll be, where, how to sign up if you'd like to join.

But no such notice was given. There was massive confusion.

Some teachers and admins said all classes were cancelled. Some teachers and admins said classes would continue as scheduled. Two teachers I knew taught classes as planned.

Many students also weren't given notice. No one really knew what was happening.

The schedule of events was only posted, for teachers, on a small sheet of paper, next to the fingerprint scanner, late afternoon, the day before...

There were t-shirts, though, the school was providing for Sports Day; those were being distributed a few days prior, and teachers were made to buy the t-shirts for 150 baht each.

When Sports Day arrived, I wandered around to find the opening ceremony and found the events were held outdoors, in the blistering Thai sun, 100-degree heat; a couple students collapsed of heat stroke. One had to be rushed in an ambulance to the hospital.

Next to the soccer field, a farmer was burning garbage, and a heavy, nauseating stench of burning leaves and plastic choked the air.

A couple of the scheduled events didn't take place as planned. Many students didn't show up that day or spent most of the time in the shade, playing on phones and sleeping. (Not a whole lot different than they'd have done in their classrooms, I guess.)

Despite the heat, air pollution, it was mostly a relaxing day, and I spent it in the library, walking around the campus, watching a couple of the events, cheering on a couple of my students participating.

As the day wound down, I was elated to be getting out of there.

But they wouldn't let me leave without one last jab.

I was in the library, reading a book about saints, when I was called to the office.

The elusive, never there department head was there and wanted to talk to me. He'd told me it was okay to do my project instead of the midterm.

(The never there dept head turned out to be a congenial, friendly fellow, although like Alfredo, his touches on the arm, pats on the back lingered slightly too long...)

We had to go downstairs to the registrar, sign a paper or two, to confirm the exam's replacement project, which we did, and that was that.

I went back to the library, amazed they'd been flexible. It was the first time they had. Maybe I'd been wrong about them. Maybe they weren't so bad, and I was rushing to judgment, leaving too quickly.

Maybe I was, in fact, the jerk, in all this. I was beginning to second guess myself, a little, but what was done was done. I could only learn from it. I'd set my path forward. Even if I'd maybe, perhaps, possibly made an error.

But then, with only 20 minutes left before feeding the fingerprint scanner one last touch, I was called into the office. Again.

This time there were three people. Square jaw, an admin I'd never heard seen or heard of, who was wearing a big blue surgical mask, and the never there dept head.

Square Jaw, snarling, holding her phone in hand, told me that this class "cannot do" project. "Must do" exam.

But I thought the project would be more beneficial, plus the registrar, the dept head had already agreed to it. We'd signed the paperwork and everything, I pleaded, compendiously.

"Cannot do," "cannot do" reaffirmed Square Jaw, holding her phone, its microphone towards me. I could see the phone's screen. It was holding a live call. I saw the minutes ticking.

No doubt in my mind, the Corpse was on the line, eavesdropping on every minute of the meeting.

(She wouldn't come to the school on Mondays or Fridays, so she was having Square Jaw bully by proxy.)

Knowing I was leaving anyway, I told them that I'd do the midterm if it was required, which was true, I would have done it- if I wouldn't have been boarding a plane that Sunday to flee the country, like a fugitive.

The surgical mask didn't say a word, only nodded as did Square Jaw.

Afterwards, in the hall, the never there dept head was apologetic about it. And I held no ill will towards him.

Heck, if I could have the same never there job as him, I'd have done it. Being part of the crew running that place had its perks.

(And that was it. A tight knit crew, the president's family and her Filipino backers had this place locked down...)

((I'd discovered the president of the school had done her doctorate in the Philippines. She and her family converted to Catholicism there. They had investment funds from companies in the Philippines.))

(((I had basically stumbled into their racket... And I could see why some didn't like me, other Westerners being there. Many Filipino teachers, in Thailand, with the same skills, are paid less than teachers from Western nations, because many students and schools prefer the white face, native accents of Americans, Brits, Aussies, Canucks, etc.)))

((((Black teachers had it even worse. Schools across Asia usually won't hire them, native speaker, qualified teacher or not. Mumbles said how at a previous school of his, a primary school, students broke into tears, ran and hid when an African teacher arrived.))))

(((((And while a lot of the Filipinos didn't like farangs, others perhaps were more willing to except us- if we played by their rules... But I hadn't. I'd spoken up. I called one out. I'd taken sides against one, publicly. And those I clashed with were royalty there... And ultimately that'd sealed my fate...)))))

It was a last kick in the nuts, the last stupid meeting. That last second reneging. Calling me into yet another situation where I was outnumbered 3, 4, 5, 6 to 1, handed a sloppy pile of bullshit.

But it didn't matter much, at that point. Minutes later, after having a friendly conversation with a nice Thai teacher I liked, I scanned out for a final time, waved goodbye to that dark and evil office, forever...

That final night, I drank Thai whisky, packed and cleaned out my apartment, like a madman. I had to keep my luggage weight low, so I threw out some old clothes I'd had for years, cool souvenir shirts from traveling, clothes my ex-girlfriend gifted me, clothes with sentimental attachment.

But it was a shedding of the skin. A ceremony. It was what I had to do...

The next morning, it was time to escape. I'd spend the day, night in Bangkok, at a hotel I liked, and party, see a girl I knew, and leave the next morning.

I'd planned to leave around 10am, but I woke up early, habit from work, waking up 5 days a week at 5:30 am.

I ate a quick oatmeal and fruit breakfast, packed up the rest of my stuff, and decided to make my run.

Opening the door, though, I saw the Crazy Canuck in the hallway. Fortunately, he didn't see me, and I ducked back into my room.

(I didn't want him to see me with my suitcases. I worried he might tip off the school, call Square Jaw. Maybe try to ingratiate himself, get back the bonus they'd wrangled out of him...)

((His Bonus: He'd missed the first day of the term, because his flight was delayed, and the school not only deducted a whole week of pay, they'd also decided to take away his yearly contract bonus, altogether adding up to $1000- for one day of missed classes.))

Waiting for a couple minutes, listening to the Canuck's footsteps pitter-patter down the stairs and trail off, vaporize into the steamy air, I gathered my things, poked my head into the hallway.

I looked left, right, saw the coast was clear.

Then I broke out, made a run for it, walked quickly but as inconspicuously as possible down the stairs, clutching and dragging two heavy duffel bags with all my might.

I felt like an inmate breaking out of jail, looking over my shoulder, pulse racing.

Luckily, I didn't encounter any of my other coworkers, neighbors, or the building manager.

(The school deducted half of my first paycheck, as a security deposit for the apartment, because they'd had so many teachers leave early and had been forced to pay the absconders' unpaid utility bills, so I figured the building would get whatever payment they needed, plus some leftover for a bureaucrat at the school, probably...)

((In retrospect, I could certainly understand better why the school made us front all the costs for the plane tickets, visas, apartment, the college having so many runaway teachers, escapees...))

My Grab car came ten nerve-racking minutes late, having trouble locating the apartment building.

Standing outside the building, clutching my duffel bags, my head was on a swivel, heart was thumping. I was sweating profusely.

Paranoid delusions of the Corpse jumping down from a tree or nuns with baseball bats bursting out the bushes ran through my sleep deprived, hungover mind.

The car showed, though, and we rode off, unscathed...

I had a wonderful time in Bangkok. It reminded me of all the things I loved about Thailand. How fantastic a vacation spot it is.

The next morning, at Suvarnabhumi, I stood in a lengthy line that snaked upstairs, into the security check area, due to the enhanced fingerprinting procedures at immigration checkpoints.

The irony wasn't lost on me.

It was 45 minutes of anxiously waiting. I was fearing the whole time that the Corpse had discovered I'd fled, that she'd put out an APB, that the Corpse would be crouching, lying in wait, popping up like a jack-in-the-box at the immigration counter.

Nuns with nunchucks and rulers, spilling in from the shadows, falling from the ceiling, whacking and kicking me, handcuffing me, dragging me away...

However, luckily, no such misfortune occurred, and I scanned my fingerprints for immigration, had my passport stamped and boarded my plane to Vietnam, to begin life anew...

FINAL THOUGHTS: After doing a runner, my initial elation turned to sadness.

I felt bad to leave early. Felt bad to leave the handful of students I liked and wanted to help.

But I had no choice. The place was scary, unsafe, unsanitary, and had an ungodly, unchill atmosphere, the likes of which I'd never have imagined possible.

The Corpse, administration was gunning for me. They were going to run me out one way or another. It was past the point of no return. No matter what I did.

A terrifying thing about a developing country is the lack of laws. In America or Britain, largely, you can call the police and expect them to show up, do something. You can sue. You have legal rights.

That simply isn't always the case in developing countries. There isn't rule of law. You run afoul of a person who's rich or in a position of power, especially if you're a foreigner, things sour quickly.

Every time I'd vacationed in Thailand, I'd had no problems. I'm generally a friendly, humble person.

I'd come to Thailand with honest intentions. I was there to work. To contribute to the school. To stay for 8 years or more like I did at my previous school.

I wasn't looking for trouble.

But trouble found me.

And the school held all the cards in the situation. One call to immigration. That's all it would take. And I could be deported, fined, who knows what...

Fortunately, it never came to that. I was lucky. I came from a developed country. From a middle-class family. I'd lived frugally and had money saved.

The experiences many of my coworkers, students had, seeing some of the poverty I saw, seeing some desperate situations, seeing that made me grateful and aware of my first world problems. How lucky I was to have the resources to leave. To not be trapped in a place like that.

A relative I spoke with had a poignant take. She said that it's common for long oppressed people, when finding themselves into a position of power, to oppress even worse than their oppressors.

That could definitely be the case here.

And while my teaching experience left much to be desired, as does the entire Thai education system, from what I gather, I have heard of a few schools, here and there, in Thailand, that are excellent, with diligent students, hardworking teachers and administrations.

One can only hope schools like these duplicate, multiply and replace underperforming, Lord of the Flies schools and diploma mills.

Having recently re-watched The Amityville Horror, I wondered if the school had been built over a graveyard, was haunted by malevolent spirits. I don't remember seeing a spirit house nearby. Perhaps angry Buddhist spirits weren't pleased with a Catholic school built over their grounds.

(Students had reported seeing multiple ghosts in the dorms, including one of an angry monk and a mischievous little boy...)

I also pondered if maybe St. Benedict was a cruel joke, a social experiment. Maybe there was a sinister madman in a dark chamber, stroking a white cat, or a doomsday cult, or group of demented psychiatrists with Don King hairdos filming and documenting it...

Maybe any of those things, maybe none.

But, whatever the case, I figured someone should write about it.