School summer/school break (bpit term) in Thailand takes place between March and May and includes time off for everyone during the Thai New Year celebration (Songkran) in April.
Many Thai people take advantage of the Songkran holiday to travel home and spend time with their families. While volunteers are encouraged to spend time in their communities during the summer to lesson plan, participate in community activities, and go into their local government office (no rest for the wicked!) – many find time to travel around Thailand with friends, host family, or even travel to other countries.
Here’s what some of our Sticky Rice writing staff got up to during our second summer bpit term in Thailand!
Kayla Kawalec, 134 YinD
I fractured my elbow at the beginning of the break which made for a very uneventful summer for me! The air quality was quite bad up north and the heat not much better so I spent most of the time holed up in my house, prone and in front of a fan. It was a good reminder to not only take things slower than the break-neck pace I typically find myself running at, but to find joy in the simplest of things. Here are five little things that I’m grateful for this summer:
- Attending my neighborhood primary school graduation and confirming the mix of nerves and excitement that moving onto secondary school brings on is universal
- Spending time with my girly Morgan in Bangkok when I went to get my cast off and indulging in good coffee, good food, and goooooood espresso martinis
- Trips with Thai friends to river spots and the refreshment of dipping my toes in the cool water
- When the kid that serves ice cream from his motorcycle would show up on long, hot, feverish weekends right outside my front gate
- Lazy days with Popcorn
Bradford Reszel, 134 TESS
Parents in Thailand!
For the first time since leaving the US in January 2023, we got to be with Bradford’s parents in person! Barry, of Chaa Thai podcast fame, and Lori traveled to us at site to see our home and schools, meet our co-teachers and host family, and celebrate Songkran!
After celebrating in our village, we all traveled to Chiang Mai where we got the best massages, toured Doi Inthanon National Park, and hung out with elephants! For all of us, it was our first time in Northern Thailand and it did not disappoint.
Next, we flew down to Bangkok where we showed them some of our favorite spots and met up with some staff at the Peace Corps Office. A special treat, we were fortunate to meet Khun Mechai Viravaidya in his Cabbages & Condoms restaurant where he invited us to talk with him about our work in the Peace Corps and his ongoing work helping the people of Thailand.
Finally, we went further south to Krabi and stayed at a magnificent resort on the beach. A great time to relax, we enjoyed daily happy hours by the pool and watching some of the most incredible sunsets we’ve ever seen!
Of course, through all of this, we had some amazing food! In our village, we took the parents to the best noodles in all of Thailand and also ate Mu-gra-tat (Thai style Korean BBQ). In Chiang Mai, we had the legendary Khao Soi which we hadn’t tasted since the early days of PST. In Bangkok, we took a great Tuk Tuk food tour that showed off the variety of Thai food including dishes from each region. And in Krabi, we were able to try some southern style fried chicken while also enjoying some other Thai classics like Pad Thai and Red Curry.
Teresa Derr, 134 YinD
Met up with these lovely people in Krabi. So glad to get to travel to a new place and meet up with friends!
Kyra, Pat (her brother), and I did a bunch of touristy things in Krabi, including: kayaking, feeding elephants, zip-lining, and climbing 1,260 stairs up a mountain to visit a Wat (temple). It was the first time I’ve done the whole “farang (foreigner) experience”. I had a blast!
Spending Songkran with my host family, attending a Somtam (papaya salad) competition, and meeting the cousins!
I visited Laos with my host sister. We stayed in bungalows floating on the river and did tours to nearby caves. Super fun!
Special studies at the อบต (local government office)! I’ve been teaching English (and playing Uno) with several Bpratom (primary school) students, and helping my Youth Council students prepare for a Life Skills camp where they will be leading a round of games. I’m proud of them for stepping into this leadership role!
Bianca Palese, 134 TESS
Bpit term on my school calendar is about 6 weeks long. I spent the first half at my site, hanging around school or my house. The teachers at my school are all close friends, so we like to come to campus and chill in the one room that has working A/C (it was so HOT this summer, like 107 every day). Sometimes we play card games or they just nap. They also had school administrative tasks to do sometimes but no one was in a rush.
I killed time taking an online free course from UNICEF on education in emergencies and reading books. I read two really, really good ones this summer: First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung and Educated by Tara Westover. Both of these are memoirs, my genre of choice because I love learning about what life is like for people in other places. When I was at my host family house I spent a lot of time playing with my host sister’s two daughters, ages 3 and 8.
In the last half of the bpit term I went on annual leave to return to the US. I spent a week in Chicago and a week in New York visiting friends and family. It was so nice to have a break. I felt like I was living life as it was but also as if the world was ending soon because I spent everyday trying to squeeze in all my favorite activities and places. When I got back to Thailand I went straight to Mid-Service Conference and began shifting back into work mode.
Dano Nissen 134, TESS
This bpit term I expanded my Peace Corps network. I did a Linkedin search for volunteers in Nepal, reaching out to about a dozen people, because I was leaving the April humidity of Thailand for some snow capped mountains…and I needed a guide. After all, PCVs know the best spots.
A Nepal volunteer named Ian agreed to show us around Kathmandu and take us to his site, a village two and a half hours on paved but mostly not so paved roads away from the capital city.
I had just finished showing my friend Chet, from my middle school years, around Thailand. We did the whole tourist shebang – fed elephants outside of Chiang Mai, slept in a floating raft house in Khao Sok, got a 360 view from a swanky rooftop bar in Bangkok and a host of other activities countless other farangs have done before. But most memorable was taking him to farangless zones in my region of Isaan, including celebrating Songkran in Khon Kaen, which was absolute bedlam (what happens in KK stays in KK). Of course, I also took him to my site.
Having people over at your site is more special than anything tripadvisor could recommend. You’re showing someone a corner of the world they would never otherwise travel. You’re letting them in on the greatest secret ever. That’s why it was imperative we go visit another PCV’s site during our Nepal leg of the trip.
My friend Julia from college (go Bears!) met up with Chet and me in Nepal. Shortly after arriving, I stopped by the Nepal Peace Corps office to pick up a satellite phone for the trek we had planned for later on the trip. And just the day after I headed out to the PCV site. Man, I left the country for vacation and I’m still doing Peace Corps stuff. That’s dedication!
Although Nepal is totally different in many ways, I encountered quite a few eerie glitch in the matrix similarities at Ian’s site. Like, kids walking around the village saying, “hello teacher” with the same exact cadence and inflection on “teacher” as my students.
We left Ian’s secret corner of the world to continue our adventure. And when I say adventure I really mean it. Riding the buses was its own high octane attraction. You’d pack into a rickety old thing with a few goats strapped to the roof, and inside strangers would be sitting on one another’s laps. They’d blast epic Nepali ballads, scoring your real life action sequence.
Honestly getting around supplied just as many thrills as the rest of our trip, and we had a lot of fun. We met up for a few days with fellow Thailand PCVs Grace and Emily in Kathmandu, where we all had Passover dinner (who knew, there are Jews in Nepal!). We spent a day on a pilgrimage to the holy Namobuddha monastery, where we spent the night. The next day we flew to Pokhara. We trekked for four days with sweet views of the Annapurna mountain range.
And we went on a safari where we saw a bunch of rhinos, crocodiles, exotic birds, monkeys and massive deer. To cap it off, we got charged by angry sloth bears that were in the middle of enjoying their meal out of a termite hill. These things were fast, aggressive and none too happy about the disturbance. I claim false advertising with their names.
We returned to Thailand, making it out alive from our safari. Julia began her trip in Thailand, and what’s a trip to the Land of Smiles without visiting my site. She was lucky enough to come for the first two days of school, teaching a few classes with me. Some of the students thought she was going to be a new teacher. But alas, she continued with her travels and the kiddos are stuck with me for another year.
As fun as Nepal was, it was nice returning to Thailand, with no bear attacks nor Mad Max-esque roads. Yup, it’s the sabai sabai life out here in Isaan.
Morgan Shupsky, 134 YinD
My bpit term was full of extremes. Extreme travels. Extreme boredom. Extreme baht-spending. My last full week of school was the week of February 26th, so I had over ten weeks off, and I started them off by going to Singapore to see Taylor Swift! Every Swiftie in Thailand was pretty upset with Singapore for monopolizing The Eras Tour in Southeast Asia but that didn’t stop me.
My arrival home was marked by several weeks of crocheting, LSAT-studying, Grey’s Anatomy-rewatching, and English Camp-ing courtesy of Kash (third from the left below) and her wonderful school (<3). I turned 24 at the end of March and my good friends, some might say best friends, Grace and Dano came to visit me for the occasion and helped me ring in 24 at the Dta Wan Daeng Udon.
I spent the second half of break in Bangkok and Surat Thani, where I celebrated Songkran with my friend from home (shoutout Haley <3) in Khao Sok, Koh Samui, and Koh Pha Ngan. If you love sweating all day long and being terrorized with water guns I would highly recommend Thailand in April.
From there, I came back to site to prepare for my second-year summer camp at my SAO (local government office). I was inspired by a past PCV’s Harry Potter themed camp and spent a week playing magical games and doing science experiments with the kids of my SAO co-workers.
As soon as camp ended I was on yet another night bus to Rayong to visit my Don Chedi host family for a weekend! They stuffed me full of food for three days and then sent me back to Bangkok for Group 133 and 134’s Mid-Service Conference which was the PERFECT way to end bpit-term. And thus concludes my last bpit-term yai (ปิดเทอมใหญ่) in Thailand and starts my second school year.
Sticky Rice 
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