Thailand is a silken web of temptations. Welcoming, relatively kind-hearted people. A way of life that basks in Buddhist wisdom. Numerous exciting ways to play all day. Warm scented nights that murmur - unwind. It's a sensuous, partying melting pot. Spicy cuisine is ever a whim away. Limitless shopping. Inexhaustible temptations. I wandered into this web and was snared - my struggles have been, at best, half-hearted.
Thailand straddles fifteen degrees north to south and ten degrees east to west - a broad stage upon which parades a colourful cast. Lush rain forests; rainbow plumage; sunlit hills and shaded valleys; blossoms of every hue; sunflower-coloured beaches; butterfly wings like ancient silk; ocean and bays of sapphire and jade; and silent pools, sparkling streams and tumbling waterfalls.
And if all this were not reason enough to spend time in Thailand, life in my adopted country of more than forty-five years is now so beset with bureaucratic pedants, mindless aspiration, celebrity mania, opinionated self-serving, self-proclaimed experts and other media mindlessness, bad manners, and 'nannying' by a bloated governmental apparatus sustained by unchecked avarice - it is time to move on.
So I dreamed of having a home in the ancient land of Siam and with all this in mind I spent fifteen minutes in a small 'village' of ready-built, modest but modern cottage-like houses - and bought one. Mind you, there's so much you don't notice in such a short time.
I went from dreamer to owner in about the time it takes to prepare Tom Yum Goong!
So - I sound half-witted - but it really did happen that way, because I was, and still am, dazzled by nearly everything Thai.
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