Exchange student's life has changed a great deal since 1972

Source By  Pati LaLonde | For Mlive.com 

BAY CITY — Tongbai Tongmak remembers Nov. 14, 1972, well as the day he first saw snow.

Tongmak, a resident of Thailand, where winters are too warm for snow, spent the 1972-1973 school year in Michigan as a high school exchange student.

He recently returned to visit Bay Cityan Lloyd Thomas, Tongmak's host during his year as an exchange student. Lloyd Thomas remembers the first meeting with the young man he calls Tom. It was a hot August afternoon.

“He was wearing a wool suit, very dirty, very crumpled,” Thomas said. “He could speak a few words of English, but not many. The first thing we found out is he was hungry.”

They fed him and then bought him clothing, since he had arrived with only the suit he was wearing. Tongmak recalls that he had acquired the suit especially for the trip from a charitable organization. He then walked for a day to catch a bus, a train and eventually a plane as he embarked on his journey to the United States.

“All the way, this young fellow hadn’t eaten, and he had only the clothes he had on,” Thomas said.

Food was of little importance to the young man, who was focused only on the adventure before him.

“I came from a rural village with no electricity, no toilet” he said. “Everything was completely new to me. We came to New York. I saw the freeway. It was so beautiful, I had to pray. It was amazing. Such a difference in culture from Bangkok to New York.”

Tongmak attended high school in Portage, Mich., where Thomas lived at the time with his first wife, Jean, who has since passed away. Thomas now lives in Bay City with his wife Sharon.

His recent visit was his fourth to the United States.

Much has changed over the past 40 years, but he still credits his year at Portage High School and the trips made with “mom and dad” for giving him the inspiration to open his own school, the Tongbai Tongmak English Center in Sisaket Provence, Thailand.

Upon returning to Thailand, Tongmak received a certificate of education and began teaching in a rural village.

“With the ideas I learned during my year in America, I thought I could improve so many things that normally other teachers did not do,” he said. “I thought of the system in America and how I could manage to improve my school. My school became the top school in Sisaket Provence.”

He went on to receive a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in education and work as a education supervisor.

“I worked for a long time developing instruction in the area,” he said. “I had 230 schools under my responsibility and many teachers. We tried hard to improve the quality of education.” 

Ten years ago, he and his wife Napaporn, a teacher, decided to retire and open the English Center.

“We started with only two students,” he said. “The emphasis was on teaching English to students. Finally, we now have 700 students.

“In Thai education curriculum, English is one subject that is taught to the students from grade 1 up to grade 12,” he said. “Those who know and understand English have a better chance for many things, especially for work.”

He cultivated more ideas during his recent visit, ideas that possibly can be implement in his native land.

After leaving Bay City, the couple planned a few more stops — at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, London Bridge at Lake Havasu, Ariz., the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas.

Their visit ends at the Seattle home of the Peace Corps volunteer who helped Tongmak become an exchange student.

Tongmak says he is still as impressed with the U.S. as he was on his first visit.

“This is a great country,” he said. “You all have so much.”