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A Weekend in Siem Reap - Culture, Relaxation, Indulgence and Debauchery!

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...
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The Cross-Cultural Challenge - Part 2

Having now completed the Cross-Cultural Management course, and being presented with a certificate to prove this,  I am obviously totally proficient expat manager in Thailand. I no longer make cataclysmic errors in how I talk to people that result in blank stares and a wall of silence, and I have been able to influence my team’s thinking so that they anticipate issues and plan! Well maybe not, but the course did throw up a few interesting points. Nervous Anticipation After an intense, yet unusually productive two days at work, it was nice to have a change of scenery in the form of a swanky central Bangkok hotel, endless coffee and a seemingly never-ending array of deliciously tempting food. I felt quite nervous about the course, slightly afraid of how I might uncover previously unregistered, heinous crimes against Thai culture and feel truly mortified. But I was also excited to gain some knowledge and hopefully some useful techniques to make me a whole lot more effect...
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Gossip, Respect & Office Politics

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...
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The Cross-Cultural Challenge - Part 1

Now that I’ve been here for 6 months, work has decided to send me on a two-day cross-cultural management course to learn how to work with Thais. Fortunately, I’ve been lucky enough not to have to interact with many Thais on a regular basis, so haven’t needed any guidance on this up to now…oh wait! Flailing Around By all accounts, it is better to have spent some time here before you attend this type of course so you have some real-life examples that you can reflect on. As I’ve been left to flail around, committing social faux-pas and offending people for several months, I have a lot of examples that I hope will be given some context. Hopefully I will feel completely enlightened by the whole experience and return to work as an effective expatriate manager, however, I fear it might be slightly more complicated than that. We’ve been issued with some pre-reading ahead of the course, and it appears the cultural differences run a lot deeper than I’d originally thought. The aim of the ...
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Food, Farewells & Karaoke!

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...
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Ten Things to Do in Kanchanaburi Province

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...
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