I’ve been working in Paris too long. Time to return to the origins of this website and report something more exotic than my exploits in Clichy for a change. Time for a report from Thailand.

Two days and two massages into my latest trip to Bangkok, and I remember all the reasons I love Thailand. Great food, great service, friendly people, and warm weather.

I flew on Thai airlines from Zurich on Saturday afternoon. The flight was perfect. My colleague made the rookie mistake of ordering the western meal (filet mignon – always sounds great but ends up dry as boot leather when cooked in an airline oven) and looked on jealously as my pork curry came out – it tasted and smelled even better than it looked. After dinner, I settled in for some sleep, and managed to squeeze in eight hours of good sleep before being woken for breakfast about an hour before landing.

We arrived at 5:30am Sunday morning. Our driver was waiting and we were at the hotel about thirty minutes later. We dropped off our bags, took an hour to have some breakfast and grab a shower, then headed out to explore the city. We started with a little shopping, then had Japanese for lunch – and ordered so much food that they needed to bring a second table (Gina, if you’re reading this, you’ll recognize the situation from our Japanese meals in Singapore!). When the food is this cheap and this good, it’s hard to resist.

I passed the afternoon with a little snooze, a few hours by the pool, and a massage – just about the perfect way to pass an afternoon in Thailand in my book. Another of our colleagues arrived on the evening flight, and we all headed out to dinner at Ruen Mallika, a Thai place I’ve eaten in before and still one of the best that I’ve eaten in Thailand.

Despite asking the waitress to warn us if we over-ordered, we…you guessed it…over-ordered. Fish cakes, spring rolls, tom yum goom with prawns that were as big as lobsters, then red duck curry, more jumbo prawns in garlic, fried heart of palm, chili beef salad, fried morning glory, rice, noodles, and more. Moral of the story: never order when you’re hungry. I had taken charge of the ordering, but I had two willing assistants cheering me on from the sidelines… “Ohh, let’s have one of those, too!” Delicious fresh mango to finish it all off, and the ubiquitous Singha beer. (Apparently, it’s the formaldehyde that gives it the unique taste.)

It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it…

Today was a quiet day. Slept well overnight, had a late start, then a little more shopping, more pool, and more food. Took a few hours out of my afternoon to visit our office in Bangkok where I’ll be running workshops for the next few days, then off for another massage.

We’re just about to head out to the Seafood Market for dinner – you choose it, they kill it, they cook it, you eat it. My kinda dinner.

Not quite sure how I managed to land this job, but it’s not a bad way to make a living…

The new airport in Bangkok is really nice (aside from a woefully inadequate passport control area – passport clearance both into and out of Bangkok took ages and was absolute chaos as people flooded from a number of flights). The airport is bright and airy with plenty of shopping, although my taxi driver said that a lot of what I seemed so nice was superficial. Due to massive corruption, most of the airport has been built on the cheap and is falling apart already.

Still, it’s worlds better than the old airport – the transformation is as big as the transformation between the old and new airports in Detroit, and that’s really saying something!

Statues at the entrance of Bangkok airport

Statues at the entrance of Bangkok airport

Statues at the entrance of Bangkok airport. I’m dying to know what’s happened to cause this expression on his face…

Concourse at Bangkok Airport

Concourse at Bangkok Airport

A funky chair in the new Thai lounge.

Thai Airways lounge. Including a very fast-moving Thai Airways lounge attendant. She’s the blur on the left-hand side.