Almost time to say farewell to Thailand

It’s a quiet Saturday night at our house in Phuket.  This is because Thipp and Alex have been in Laos for the past week.  If I could only be watching hockey right now it would be perfect.  Regardless, I’m enjoying this calm before the storm as our close to three month stay in Thailand is about to come to an end.  This Wednesday night I will be flying to Europe for meetings, returning to Phuket on Saturday.  Then early the following Monday we will be on our way to Uzbekistan.

Someone asked me recently if living in Thailand was what I expected.  I had to think about this for a while.  While our time here hasn’t been perfect, it has been pretty close.  Phuket is busier and more developed than I had expected and I don’t like that we have been reliant on a car for everything from going to the beach to getting groceries.  Still, these are minor complaints.  On the other hand, I can think of many things that we have enjoyed and I’ll list some now:

- The gracious and friendly people of Thailand.  I can’t think of having had even one negative interaction during our time here;

- It’s safe (as long as you’re not driving a motorcycle) and fairly clean;

- The weather (as long as you are near a pool or in an air-conditioned gym);

- The food – and when we got tired of Thai food there was a great wood-fired pizza place with an Italian chef just down the road;

·        -  Our Thai house – except for sleeping we were outside on the ground level almost all of the time we were home;

·         -  Having Alex’s pre-school next door was perfect.  Each day walking home he would pick a fallen flower to give to his Mom;

·         - The gym – Thipp enjoyed her hot yoga and was just starting to make some friends.  My cross fit was great and my fitness level has definitely improved;

·         -  Modern amenities – I’ve mentioned the shopping malls in a previous blog story.  Another example was how this week I was able to get my camera repaired at the Cannon store in Phuket Town.  If we had lived somewhere more remote this wouldn’t have been as simple;

·        -  International airport – it made it easy to get here from Canada via Hong Kong and for other trips to Singapore, Laos, Europe and Uzbekistan.

Phuket may not be the perfect paradise, but it was the perfect place for us at this time in our lives.  I’m sure that there will be many times in the future when we will look back fondly on the time we spent living in Thailand.