Hi, my name is Mark. I'm a 41 year old British man, and I have been living in Bangkok, Thailand for the last 6 years. I thought it would be fun, and hopefully helpful to anyone planning on living in Thailand, to share my experiences of daily life here.When I first came to Bangkok I went down the well-tried route of many before me and obtained a position teaching English in a Thai government school. Although this was great fun at times, the low salary and long commute eventually wore me down and I came back to the UK for six months to recuperate and re-think my plans.
During my time back home, I was lucky enough to pick some freelance work up, doing some database design and programming work for a travel agency website. Although I thought this was going to last for just a few weeks and took it on to provide me with some extra cash for my return to Bangkok, five years later I am still working on the site. This enabled me to pick and choose what I did when I came back, and although I did some more teaching when I arrived back in Thailand, I quickly chose to phase this out.
So here I am, six years and 12 days later (as you can see above from the first of many visas on arrival in my old passport)still living in Bangkok and, over the last few days, wondering what has happened to the weather.
Every year, roughly from July to October, is the monsoon, or rainy, season in central Thailand. This means that late most afternoons you can expect what feels like the annual rainfall for Manchester to fall out of the sky in the space of an hour or so. This year we've had rain every day for the last week or so, and it's only mid-May. Still, the fact that the temperature stays in the early thirties is a comfort!
There's been a lot in the news about the unrest in Bangkok over the last few months, but apart from having a letter from the UK held up for a couple of days, it hasn't affected me. At times this country may look pretty chaotic from a distance (and it certainly can be) but most of the time people just get on with their lives, much the same as anywhere else. The Thai people do have an irrepressible sense of fun though, which I think helps them deal with the ups and downs of life.
I am hoping to get out and about with my camera this week, so I can show you some of the sights, if not the sounds, of life in the Big Mango, as some like to call Bangkok.
Wishing you a good week
Mark
