Since this whole blog is about female travel, I’m referring to girls that can’t wear pants and forever have to wear a skirt to work.
While I was packing my giant suitcase for Thailand, I didn’t pack any cold weather clothes for the obvious reasons. Why would I need a sweater?….
I packed my normal work clothes such as black pants, some button up shirts, blazers, etc. Typical office attire that I figured would be fine for teaching. Little did I know….
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The Uniform
While completing my TEFL, using Premiertefl courses, it became known to me that most teachers in Thailand are required to wear black and white and females can only wear skirts. Now, depending on your school, this dress code may be a little more relaxed and you can wear different colors. However, most of the schools have a certain color that they wear on certain days. For example, at my school, on Monday we wear purple, Tuesday is pink, Wednesday is your choice, Thursday is scouts uniform, and Friday is a traditional Thai shirt.
This month (July) is the King’s birthday and we are supposed to wear yellow every day in celebration.
So basically my hours that I spent packing my giant suitcase have gone to waste, and I had to buy new outfits for work. There’s a place called Wararot Market in Chinatown in Chiang Mai where you can buy anything and everything for really cheap. I was told to look there for all my clothes. On the second floor, there are a handful of shops that sell all kinds of uniforms and tailors in the back ready to make any kind of alteration.
I bought four white shirts and two skirts and a traditional shirt. I spent about $20 for three or four outfits. Not bad!
After a semester teaching I’ve had to replace the white shirts because they were getting stained and I’ve bought a few more traditional shirts because I didn’t want to keep wearing the same one on Friday. A girl’s gotta have some choices!
The skirts have held up for the most part. The buttons in the back have been lost in the washing machine but the zipper still works so I can still wear them. They will have to be replaced at some point because the fabric is wearing down in high stress areas and from being washed a lot.
I only wish that I was able to send back the clothes that I packed and never wear. That way I would have more room in my suitcase.
