Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Signs 2


One of our frustrations with life as Peace Corps Volunteers in Thailand has been observing the spending choices made by school directors at our local schools. When the kids need teachers, desks, fans, and interesting library books, money is instead spent on teacher field trips, digital cameras, and signs. Almost every school we see has a large, fancy sign out front, usually black with gold lettering, attempting to symbolize that this, indeed, is a wonderful school.

It’s not just the schools in Thailand that go in for big fancy signs, though. Many of the local villages have their own signs, and some, like the one in the photo, are very big and ornate! When we were out biking a year ago we came across this sign, signifying the entrance to Bahn Sa Pae Village about 8 kilometers south of our house. You can see that it is no ordinary sign. The village itself, of course, is quite ordinary.

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