Living in Bangkok with Two Lurchers

I would say the three main things to do in Bangkok are visiting temples, ambling around a market, or eating/drinking. But when you live here the novelty of those activities begins to wear off. You crave a pastime with more meaning, more purpose. You actually need to head no further than the Royal Bangkok Sports Club (RBSC) for the horse racing. It's conveniently located right in the center of Bangkok. On two Sundays per month (but sometimes Saturday instead) the horse racing is held at the RBSC. It normally begins at around 12:00 and then I think the last race is at around 17:30. But it's a pretty casual affair so you can wander in whenever you feel like it. And nobody will bat an eyelid if you've had enough and want to leave before the end. There are normally ten races, generally of around the same distance, so it gets quite repetitive. Prawn Sandwich Brigade We've been to the horse racing in Bangkok on two occasions. On our first visit, we were with an RBSC membe...

All I Have to Do is Dream A few weeks ago I had an incredibly vivid dream that was so packed with symbolic objects and actions, it would have been a treat for any dream interpreter to decipher. Chris and I were at a train station, hoping to get a train somewhere. The problem was that we couldn't find anywhere to buy tickets. We instead stumbled across a supermarket and went to buy some food. Whilst we were in the supermarket I was attacked by two pigeons. They dug their claws into my head but I was quickly able to remove them and shoo them away. Then whilst Chris was in the queue for the checkout, I was attacked by two crows. They proved more difficult to remove and I remember struggling to get them off my head. When I did finally manage to extract them, I threw them on the ground outside the supermarket. But their legs were entwined and they struggled on the floor to pull apart from each other. I went inside to find Chris and by this time we had definitely missed the tra...

Workplace gossip is pretty common. There's always a rumour floating around about what someone got up to at the Christmas party. But in my experience it's normally harmless fun and indulging in a little gossip is a nice interlude. In Thailand, it's so much more than this. It genuinely seems to determine the effectiveness of your entire team. No matter what you're doing to manage workload and engagement,  the complexities of the individual relationships actually make the real difference. There is so much going on behind the scenes that Farang managers will never know about, nor understand. Right now, there are so many people within my extended team who are not speaking to each other I'm surprised anything is getting done! A Little Respect... From what I've observed so far, it all seems to boil down to respect, or lack thereof. As a Farang, I feel somewhat protected from the 'respect' conundrum in Thailand. During the  Cross-Cultural Management cour...

I think it's fairly well known that Thailand is in the top ten of the most dangerous places to drive in the World.  Around 24,000 people die on the roads in Thailand every year. Holiday seasons like New Year and Songkran are the most dangerous times as almost everyone seems to be travelling and partying at the same time. But actually, there is constant risky behaviour on the roads. Working in the Distribution industry in Thailand means I get to hear about some pretty horrific accidents. Hearing news of a fatal accident is quite a regular occurrence. Yet it never seems to get any less shocking for me. So why is Thailand so unsafe? In my company, we focus on Safety relentlessly. Every accident, no matter how minor, is investigated in great detail with preventive actions outlined. Looks Can Be Deceiving Driving through various industrial estates each week, I can see that other businesses also focus on Safety, on the face of it at least. They proudly display their record...

As we've passed the one year in Thailand milestone, it feels like we're running out of 'firsts'. I've already been for my second annual medical and have renewed my work permit. Our second Christmas is fast approaching and we feel like we know the drill for New Year and Songkran. I'm sure I'll still feel like an idiot the next time I have to 'make merit' but at least I will know what to expect. So, I was very excited when we got our first wedding invitation! The invitation was from one of Chris' staff at work and we were requested to attend the evening reception. I think it's quite normal for only close family and friends to attend the actual ceremonial parts of the day. A wider group then joins in the evening. A Last Minute Decision Initially, Chris had declined the invitation. This was because our flight home from Japan was originally not due to land until around 7pm so we would have missed the whole event. Following a change of flight...

I probably should have done some research before we departed for Japan, as I had quite a limited view of what Japan might be like! What did I really know about Japan? I remember a friend going on a school trip to Japan and her Japanese roommate getting up at 5 am to study every day. In 'Bridget Jones' Diary' when Mark Darcy is introduced, we find out that his wife divorced him. Bridget’s Mum comments that ‘His wife was Japanese. Very cruel race.’ I also remember the film ‘Lost in Translation’ with Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson bonding over their mutual loneliness in an alien city. So my expectation of Japan was that I would feel like an alien, surrounded by mean workaholics! What I actually found was quite different, and actually a lot more familiar than I expected. Japan with the Thais Now, it’s worth remembering that my immediate reference point is my life in Thailand. I only understand around half of what's going on almost...

As we're approaching one whole year in Thailand, I thought it might be nice to check in with the dogs and see how they've found the whole experience.  How have they survived the rainy season? Have they made any new friends? Do they miss the rolling green fields of Northamptonshire? Charles the laziest dog in the world... Let's start with Charles. Now he is the older and larger of the two, and definitely, the dominant one, which quite frankly is a good thing as goodness knows what would happen if Siale had to take the lead! Charles is more greyhound than any other type of sighthound. He looks very athletic, he's very agile - able to jump very high and very precisely from a standing start. He's a complex character, sometimes behaving aggressively towards other dogs (which actually works pretty well to keep the soi dogs at bay) but also loves nothing more than being spooned on the sofa. He is obsessed with cats but is constantly battling his urge to chase them ...

As I sat in Siem Reap International Airport watching the various travellers preparing to depart on the next stage of their adventure, I couldn’t help feeling as if I was living life in a bit of a strange order. I don’t think I’ve regressed exactly, despite my new found interest in travel my 35-year-old body does demand a certain level of comfort that a hostel can’t provide. But I do seem to be retracing the steps that my friends took in their early 20s. Weekend Break So last weekend we visited Siem Reap - the novelty of being able to hop on a flight on a Friday night to visit somewhere that previously seemed remote and exotic has certainly not worn off! I’d pre-booked a 2-day tour -I use the word ‘tour’ is used in the loosest sense as it was essentially a driver and a car who drove between the various attractions and gave us water. That being said it did take away all the thinking about where to go, where to get tickets etc., and as it was insanely hot getting into an air-conditi...

There doesn't appear to be much sign of any Thai lessons starting through work any time soon - I really wish I'd had the thought earlier! The Basics But anyway I've decided to try to expand my knowledge of basic, everyday Thai phrases. I quite quickly learned the various greetings, the numbers and how to say left and right, which essentially qualifies me to get a taxi and buy things! Actually, this basic level of Thai has served me well so far, but there are a few more things I'd like to be able to say. So this week I have learnt to tell the time in Thai. The main reason for this is that I have a daily conversation with Chaiwat, my driver, about what time we need to leave the next day, or when I need to be picked up. He's managed to learn how to tell the time in English and actually since I've known him he's definitely made an effort to learn more English words. I at least need to maintain the same equivalent level of Thai as Chaiwat's level of Eng...

Something strange has happened to me. Well actually nothing has really happened, just something has changed, things are not quite the same. Slow Progress After the novelty of the first week of working in Thailand last December, I've spent the last 9 months feeling quite unsatisfied by my job. Yes, I've enjoyed some of the new experiences and have made friends, but I've found that no matter how hard I've tried, not a lot has really progressed, or not quickly enough to notice! I'm not exactly sure when things did change, whether it's been happening gradually or there was a giant thunderbolt, but this week I noticed that I wasn't counting down the hours until I could go home from work. And I wasn't waking up in the morning desperately wishing it was the weekend. I wouldn't say that I've been enjoying myself but it's definitely felt a lot less painful. Things have actually been happening as a result of my actions! How did this happen? ...

We've been back in Thailand for just over a month now and it seems the initial post-holiday blues have subsided and we've settled back into the normal routine, or as normal as it can be! A Fresh Perspective Returning to Thailand after even just a very short break almost feels like starting again. There are things that I now notice that perhaps weren't quite so obvious before, maybe I'd become desensitized? One thing I have noticed a bit more is how Farangs are sometimes treated by Thais at work. This doesn't happen all the time, but quite often I find that Thai colleagues go so over the top in terms of being nice to me, I can only describe it as being fawned over. If I look back through my time so far in Thailand, I initially saw this behaviour as a way of making me feel welcome in a new and unfamiliar country. Making sure I knew where I was going, had everything I needed etc. But now nine months in, it does seem strange that I still attract this level of...

It seems a long time since I last posted, 6 weeks actually which in the blogging world is about a million years! My flow of words and life, in general, has been interrupted by some time away from Thailand. After an eventful 9 months, it was time for our first trip back to the UK. Home Sweet Home? Before we left, I was feeling a combination of both excitement and apprehension. I was clearly excited to see family and friends, we had a wedding to go to and a holiday to the Jersey Shore, but I was also a bit worried about how I would feel being back in my home country but essentially homeless, with the building I do call home around 6000 miles away. Obviously, we had to leave the dogs behind in Thailand which was probably adding to my anxiety. I knew they'd be absolutely fine at home with Rena but it's only natural to question whether it's a good idea to leave your only dependents in the care of a 23-year-old Burmese maid who you've only known for 9 months! The al...

As we were getting ready to depart the UK nine months ago, people were really waking up to the impact that single-use plastic was having on the environment. We were already very accustomed to the 5p charge for carrier bags in the UK which had seemed very effective, there was general uproar when people realized that disposal coffee cups could not be easily recycled so were inevitably heading to landfill, and then the videos of divers swimming through seas consisting of more plastic than water was making people think. Culture Shock So being in this mindset, and then arriving in Thailand, where being able to carry everything in your possession in plastic bags is seen as a basic human right, was a bit of a culture shock. I definitely read somewhere that it was almost some kind of law that takeaway food and drink had to be packaged so that the purchaser could carry it with one finger! This means that Thailand has plastic bags in all shapes and sizes for any scenario. When we fir...

We’ve had a strange few weeks in Thailand which have really centered around two major rescue operations, albeit one which got slightly more media coverage than the other. Tham Luang Cave The first and most well known of these was, of course, the Tham Luang Cave story where twelve young footballers and their coach were finally rescued in a daring operation after more than two weeks underground. This grabbed the attention of the World and social media seemed to pretty much explode with people desperately trying to be the first to post ‘breaking news’ which probably wasn’t actually accurate anyway. Although I very actively followed the whole thing on Twitter, what was quite interesting is that people in Thailand didn’t actually seem to be talking about it all that much. If this scenario had happened in the UK, I’m sure everyone would have been chatting about it non-stop at work (probably interspersed with talk about ‘football coming home’). But I just haven’t really witnessed t...

We spent a long weekend in Kanchanaburi province recently and it was awesome! I would highly recommend it to anyone visiting Thailand - even a day trip from Bangkok is possible. I would say it's a place that has something for everyone - history, landscape, activity, relaxation and great food! Here's a summary of our favourite parts of the trips: 1 - Bathing & Feeding Elephants This was our activity on the first afternoon in Kanchanaburi and it was pretty indescribable. I had not really seen many elephants first hand before, I can only remember the elephants in Parc de la Tête d'Or in Lyon which, to be honest, looked pretty miserable in their concrete enclosure. I have since learned that these elephants ended up being rescued by the Monaco Royal Family after being condemned to death for suspected tuberculosis. They didn't have TB in the end but one of the elephants has since died of chronic kidney failure. Anyway, our afternoon was spent at the Elephant H...