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Walking in Bangkok

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I suppose it’s probably about time I started writing about living in Bangkok instead of yammering on about nice walks in the Northamptonshire countryside. In fairness, I have only been here for 5 days, although, as is often the case in these kinds of scenarios, familiarity with my surroundings has developed at such a pace that I feel like I’ve been here for a few weeks. The First Walk Having landed at Suvarnabhumi Airport nice and early on Sunday morning, I was able to beat the Bangkok traffic (for once) and get to the house for 08:00. The most obvious thing to do after a 12-hour flight was to take the dogs on their first walk in Thailand. Chris had quite rightly opted to allow the dogs to settle into the house and garden for a day or so, rather than attempting to take on the soi dogs and whatever else Bangkok had to offer, but there was no avoiding it now. The roads were quiet, the temperature was relatively mild, and we had two pairs of hands. We set out equipped with a good sup...
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Shopping in Bangkok

When you search for the top tourist attractions in Bangkok, several websites will point you in the direction of shopping malls. The only recommendation that is more bizarre is to “ride the BTS” which I can assure is not an attraction and is merely a convenient, yet crowded method of getting around Bangkok. A Shopping Mall. Really? So, the first question is why would anyone want to visit a shopping mall when they’re on vacation? You can go shopping any time at home so why would you ever think about deliberately going to a mall when you should be doing something more cultural? When you live here, you do find yourself venturing into malls quite frequently. One reason is there are just so many of them! I’m not actually sure how many there are, but really there is an infinite number, as new ones are constantly being built. The site of the old Dinosaur Planet on Sukhumvit Road (which strangely burnt to the ground just two days ago) is now destined to become a high end, low rise mall s...
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Recent Events in Thailand

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...
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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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Just Go With the Flow...

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Although Bangkok is incredibly westerner friendly with many signs written in English & almost everyone having some sort of basic grasp of spoken English (or at least a willingness to interpret vivid gesticulations without taking offense), I still find myself at times not being entirely sure of what is happening. This includes scenarios where I have been told to wait somewhere but I’m not exactly sure what I’m waiting for and being asked to sign my name on a document which is written entirely in Thai. I am no stranger to not questioning uncertain scenarios. On our reconnaissance visit to Bangkok in August, I was perfectly happy to get into several different cars with complete strangers & then enter properties with them in a country I’d never been to before. This is all worked out fine & life is far less stressful when you overlook the ambiguities. The Medical To get a work permit in Thailand, it is necessary to obtain a medical certificate which I think declares that y...
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Reality Check

We have now almost completed 3 months of our Thailand adventure and our new routine has been firmly established. The surroundings may be somewhat more exotic and the weather much more favourable (for the most part), yet daily life can be just as mundane here as it is in the UK. There are nice parts of the routine, like walking the dogs on a Saturday morning and stopping for coffee, but there is also a lot of general life stuff to do. Survival As in the UK, the main inconvenience is having to go to work. It’s time-consuming and it’s demanding. Work manages to be exactly the same as in the UK and completely different all at once. I’m sure some people think I’m on some sort of mid-thirties gap year working only enough to sustain a carefree traveller lifestyle. But no, my job is real alright, and the combination of the language barrier and cultural differences means I’ve had to adopt a new mantra - ‘double your efforts, halve your expectations’. This mantra is about self-preservati...
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