The other day I went to Ayutthaya with two visitors to Sriwittayapaknam School. One came from England and the other one came from Singapore. They came to visit my old school because they were interested in Thai schools and wanted to know how we taught our students. They visited most of our classes helping the students with conversational English.

On the way to Ayutthaya I mostly slept because the night before I worked late on my Thailand Life web magazine. I woke up when we arrived at Bang Sai. Richard talked to the guard at the gate in Thai so he managed to get the Thai price for the tickets. We went to take pictures in the Craft Center first then we went to a Thai style village. In the village, they had Thai style houses from all over Thailand. It was very beautiful and interesting. I got lots of good pictures out of that place. I think I might use them for my wallpaper page. While I was taking photos, Andrew asked me what are the Thai words for "Can I take a picture?" I thought I should have that in my Learn Thai web site so I wrote it down in my little black book.

We stayed there for about one hour. I didn't feel sleepy or tired anymore. I talked to Darren and Andrew as we drove to Bang Pa In. I wanted to go to toilet so I asked the driver to stop at the petrol station. I ran to the toilet straight away and Andrew and Darren followed me. We came back to the van and Andrew started a conversation saying that it is amazing in Thailand that lots of people will run up to a car to clean your window, empty your rubbish and fill up the petrol. He said in England he had to do all that himself. It's different for him when he see things like this but for me I think it's not special. Filling up the car yourself is special for me! Then Darren said that it is amazing that there are lots of modern cars around in Thailand. He thought thailand only had old cars. We then talked about other differences.

Later we stopped at Bang Pa In Palace. We walked around taking pictures. While we walked around, I saw lots of students pointing at us. I wondered why but a second later they started to run over to us. At first I thought they wanted to chat with me. I wasn’t with my girlfriend so I didn’t mind. Some of them were very pretty. But then they walked straight passed me and went up to Richard and Andrew and started to ask them questions. I was very sad. I knew now that their teacher must have given them homework to interview some foreigners because I have done that before.

I listened to the students when they talked to Richard and Andrew. They sounded very shy and I could see that they hadn’t prepared the questions properly. They kept asking each other in Thai how to say the questions properly. I could also see that they were discussing about the grammar too. Richard had told me many times that if I was shy about speaking, I would never be able to speak English properly. Now I am sure that he's right. Whenever I talked to Richard and I couldn’t say some words in English, I just explained that word to him and then he would tell me the right words. I learned it that way without using a dictionary. I told the students not to worry about mistakes. Just try and don’t be shy - learn from your mistakes.

By the time we had finished we were really hungry. Andrew and Darren didn’t know how to order food properly so I did it for them. They wanted to order something each but I said that it was better to order about five or six dishes and then share. When the food arrived, Andrew started to put a lot of food onto his plate from every dish. I told him that's not the Thai way. You should take a spoonfull of what you want then have it first. After you have finished that you can have another spoonfull of something else. He said that will be a good page for my web site. I didn't think about that before because I live with it every day and didn’t think it would be interesting. I wrote it down in my little black book. When we finished, Richard ordered some fruit for us then Darren asked me about names of fruit in Thai. I thought that's a good idea so I wrote it down too! Today was really fun even though I was really tired. I got lots of ideas and beautiful pictures for my web site.

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This is the uncut version of Panrit's article that first appeared in his Gor's World column in the Bangkok Post when he was 16 years old. We will be posting his full versions every Sunday for him while he is still in prison.

Read further information about Ayutthaya at our www.ThailandGuidebook.com website.