Over 500 Posts

Today's song is: The Wind at Your Back  .. an ode to an Irish Buddy

I just realized I have gone over 500 posts on this blog (actually 516). I never thought I would posting this long. My original post was on October 27, 2014:

Tails vs Tales

Ideally, alliteration aside, I would have preferred Thai Tales but that URL was taken. However Thai Tails is appropriate as this is Blog is appended to my Malaysian House Blog at http://malaysianhouse.blogspot.ca/ which I will keep online but not add to. It is a chapter in my life that is now closed and I begin a new chapter with this new blog.

You can expect my usual non politically correct narrative about how I view the world around me. Expect lots of pictures and stories from 'The Land of Smiles'.

I have tried to be true to the above statement and call things the way I see them.

When I started this blog, I had already been living in Thailand, off and on for a couple of years and had been visiting Thailand since the Fall of 2009. I have changed and Thailand has changed. One reason I started this blog was to document the changes as I entered into a permanent relationship with a Thai woman which led to the birth of our child Jaidan who will be turning 4 years old on July 31st of this year.

The changes are not over and in fact will start to accelerate this summer. Stay tuned for the latest news. However, Thavorn is not pregnant, at least at this moment in time and place.

I meet people from all over the world and today was no different. I met my buddy John at the Kiwi pub, along with his Thai wife Fon and we ended up talking with an American who has embraced life after being given a death sentence of cancer. He came to Thailand to fight it and is now in remission and enjoying his new found life. As usual, he is different from the run of the mill person you would meet at Starbucks or Tim Hortons back home.

I like to say, that the lifers I meet are usually running away from something or running to something, although I am not sure their is a difference. They all seem to have asked themselves the question, 'Is this all there is?'  Are they all blissfully happy? No, not all the time, but they are happier than they were in their former life.  Do some of them bail and go back to their former existence? Yes, because unlike fairy tails (and massage parlors), sometimes there is not a happy ending.

Yes, and we are in the midst of sauna hell, as some like to refer to the summer season in Thailand, but you surely do not have to shovel it, and you can always hideout in the air condition comfort of homes or the mall. However, I am always puzzled by the tourists in the Tuk Tuks, paying 3 times the amount an air-con Taxi would charge, to suck back on gas fumes, and sit stalled in traffic, unlike motorcycle taxis. Be warned .. forgo the Tuk Tuk ride!

So am I ecstatic? No, I get bored at times (been same place for 4 years now), my pool game sucks at times as I don't practice or play enough, and my friends come and go for months at a time.  The winds of change, they be a blowing soon  :-)

TTYL