In October 2009 I left Holland to travel trough South East Asia for a few months. Little did I know that 5 weeks later I would end up at Jacks house and staying there for 3 months.

In Nong Khai I met some other volunteers and decided to take a look. I came exactly on the right day, rat bbq! After walking around in the rice fields with a whiskey in my hands, I knew this would be an interesting experience. Jacks house is surrounded by rice fields in a very peaceful and lovely part of Thailand. I was traveling through Thailand for 6 weeks but this is the most magical place where I’ve been.

Mostly I taught at Pak Suay school where I helped out Aiw, the Thai English teacher. The children were so cute and adorable! Although I have absolutely no experience with teaching or with working with children, I enjoyed every minute of it! No experience is required, it’s all about improvising. Playing games, singing songs, not only the kids were having a great time, but I had so much fun too! In these 3 months I learned so much, about teaching, Thailand, Buddhism but above all about myself.

A week in Phon Phisai is never boring, after 1,5 month of teaching children, we went to the Royal Thai Air Force to teach the pilots. For 1 week we taught them English and Western etiquettes but above all, we had a lot of fun with them. I wanted to volunteer for 4 weeks and ended up staying for 3,5 month because I liked it so much. Living with an amazing Thai family, teaching, cleaning a temple, visiting a temple in the mountains for a weekend or dressing up as a Thai lady, it was one fantastic experience!

I can try to describe my experiences but actually, not a single word starts to describe how special this really was. I can honestly say that coming to Jacks house and being involved in local Thai life was a life changing experience and a decision I haven’t regretted for a single moment! Like other volunteers, I’ll come back to visit (Songkran festival) and I think that it wasn’t the last time I came back......

This was written in 2009, nowadays Patricia is part of the Isan Survivor staff