When I was a child on holiday in the sweltering summer of France, moaning to my mum about the oppressive heat, she said I could never live in a hot country.
Struggling to learn French, German and even Latin my curmudgeonly teachers were all of the same opinion – this young lad may well be half decent at his own language, English, but he’ll never make a foreign language student.
After starting my first job I seemed set fair for a life in journalism, Fleet Street in London was then the ultimate destination and I seemed destined for that.
Then in 1980, I went to Australia to see a friend who was working on the P & O liner The Canberra.
Australia didn’t change my life, a stopover in Manila did. The sights and smells of Asia were astounding and on return to my cub reporter’s job in London, I told a colleague we had to leave.
In 1982 we headed one way to India on Ariana Afghan Airlines. It was hot but I coped and learned the numbers in Hindi.
Later we found our way to South East Asia and Thailand – my first day there I can remember to this day; despite the heat and the language barrier I resolved to live there one day.
Bangkok was my passion, not a 4 star hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 11 but certainly living in and around that famous road. By 1985 after several trips to Thailand I started a residence that has endured to this day – yes, next year I will celebrate 40 years in the Kingdom.
Having funds after a working holiday in Australia I immediately set about learning the tricky Thai language. I excelled. After six months I could speak it quite well and I even taught myself to read and write, skills that would lead me to make my Asian fortune!
In the early 1990s, my Thai had progressed so much that I took on the job of Thai teacher at an international school and moving to another one a few years later I became Head of Thai, perhaps the only foreigner in such a position.
I married not once but twice to Thai ladies and have four wonderful children who speak Thai and English.
I always dreamed as a kid that one day I might visit somewhere exotic like Singapore or Hong Kong but it was a place I’d never heard of where I became a resident – Bangkok, Thailand – and where I made my life.
Yes, I moan about the heat in my adoptive homeland but who doesn’t – locals and tourists to this fabulous country all do. Tourists sometimes find the language barrier problematic too!
But now I tell my Thai/British children that they can be whatever they want to be and live wherever they care to.
Even the North Pole.
Our lives never follow a set path – I wonder what my long-departed mum or language teachers would think of me now.
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