This little bird is off on her wanders again!

Hello from Thailand where we are slowly but surely 

emerging from those dreary days of lockdown!

We remain under our Covid-19 Emergency Decree.  However, things are reopening and big news for me, we are able to travel now between provinces. This means there is a whole country out there with none of the expected 40 million tourists this year that Thailand had hoped for. Our skies are blue and our air is clear.

There still no news as to when tourists will be allowed to enter the country. So until this happens, I will not be leaving Thailand as I won't be able to get back in! In the meantime, although I would love to see family in the UK and Australia, I fully intend to make the most of exploring Thailand and putting my Baht into domestic tourism.

Kanchanaburi wanders

Would you like to come for a wander with me and see what I have been up to since I last posted? I have been posting over on my (now only) Thailand Travel Blog and would love you to come over here and say hello.

A Love letter to the Hoteliers of Bangkok is found here

This was written as a thank you to the Hoteliers of Bangkok who remained open during the first phase of COVID -19 lockdowns. We were lucky compared with some countries and although we had a curfew from 10 - 4 am, and everything was shut, we could go out to the supermarkets. 

Some of my friends continued to walk outside but we choose to remain within our Apartment building and we walked around a tiny garden and car park for 9 weeks whilst my husband worked from home.

What we did do, was change our social isolation in our apartment into one carefully chosen hotel each Saturday night:

Social distancing at a hotel

Our aim was a sanity break from apartment confinement, to support local hotels, and to put some money back into Thai tourism at a time where we felt this would be most appreciated.

We never left the hotel grounds and found social distancing was way easier because of low hotel occupancy rates than at home in our congested lobby or garden. We were only ever part of a handful of guests within hotels some of which had 500 plus rooms.

I will never forget driving up to the front doors of the Anantara Siam and the Siam Kempinski and leaving the car at the front door as no one else would be arriving by car. We felt like movie stars.

If you would like to see where we went check out :

BANGKOK : Our Best Staycations Bangkok 2020

We have stayed in all sorts from 5-star luxury to the beautiful Chao Praya mansion on the river where we had the whole hotel to ourselves, to an old Porn Theatre - The Prince Theatre! There are some incredible deals out there to be had.

Praya Palazzo Bangkok

HUA HIN : Weekend Wanders Anantara Hua Hin Resort

We went in search of sun, sand and paddling in the Gulf of Thailand.  I got to realise my lockdown goal of saying sod-it and walking on the beach in my bikini! And the Anantara Hua Hin welcomed me with a drawing on the door of our wardrobe taken from my social media accounts! How's that for personal service?

The wonderful staff of the Anantara Hua Hin excited to see guests again and my drawing done by one of the gardeners! 

KANCHANABURI : Staycation Kanchanaburi

We went in search of nature and culture and found temples almost floating on mountain tops. I joined the dawn almsgiving ceremony with a monk who arrived out by boat, in the shadows of the Bridge over the River Kwai

We survived and we are now up to Staycation #21 in Thailand since February.

During this time I wrote my Covid the God of Love article for Expat Life in Thailand.

The Jigsaw Puzzle - it is always the small pieces that make the big picture

C’mon how many of you have been driven to jigsaw puzzles to alleviate a boring couples evening? Oh yes, I’m hearing many of us are searching for marital bliss by piecing together 1,000 tiny disconnected pieces. Have you tried it? It works!

Either through a vain attempt to gain some semblance of marital order, or dispel the threat of having to sit with your partner through yet another repeat of the third round of the 2019 Malaysian Golf Open - won by Scott Hend of Australia by the way. God bless True Sport.

It turns out jigsaws are like some weird form of meditation. I mean it is absolutely impossible not to be fully in the moment when attempting to recreate Monet’s Garden, New York Central Park or Winter Wonderland.

I have learnt so much about my husband during our lockdown. One of the best examples of how men and women operate differently was a jigsaw. We both agree the starting point must be the edge pieces but from here on we differ.  

I go for all the sky pieces and work logically down top to bottom. He goes immediately for glory and gathers all the pieces for the truck in the middle. What? The truck wasn’t even connected to anything. The male brain works in mysterious ways…

Women scan and colour match. While men carry out a forensic analysis of the piece, the box and them triumphantly place it in the exact G spot in the puzzle. With a self-satisfied look.

Ha! I haven't exactly told Mr Wren about how I ended my article, our little secret right?

Lovely to chat with you all again - Have a great week!