Little Wandering Wren …. chats!

I'm sorry my blogging has been rather intermittent recently, I've been dealing with my own dramas. Well actually if I'm honest the dramas were all my own doing, It's a shame I never took up acting. As in the last few months, I would have won top awards as a Drama Queen, par excellence. I had a major meltdown, hated Bangkok, my life continually on the move and the focus of my fury was our new apartment. It was such a shame that it was all my own decision to move into the 'shithole' as I loved to call it. Which actually was totally unfair, as amongst the issues were that we had a real problem with the plumbing and the toilet blocked! I won't continue my train of thought on this one. Of course, long term Bangkok'ers just rolled their eyes, with a 'yep, get a grip' sort of a look. It was classic culture shock, which hit me by surprise, let's face it I've been living abroad for 25 years now.  Are you sure you're not ...

It has been fun being in Bangkok to celebrate Lunar New Year.  We hardly had time to recover from Valentine's Day  when there appeared to be dogs running around everywhere. We are of course celebrating the year of the dog! These larger than life canines are running wild under giant red flowers outside the Central Embassy shopping mall.  Inside, in the largest shopping centre in Bangkok, the designers had fun. Think bold,   think colourful  and joyous.  I know I keep saying it,  but I am still in wonder at the contrast to last year monotones  during the official year-long mourning period for its late   King Bhumibol Adulyadej.  If this was what was going on in the central business district, we couldn't wait to see how Chinatown looked. Bangkok's has a vast and substantial Chinatown. They say outside of China, this is one of the best Chinese New Year celebrations to attend. It lived up to all our e...

We're on the move again, just call me Gypsy Wren! We took a decision when we arrived in Bangkok to take a short-term lease at Embassy Place Apartments. We couldn’t stay longer because the place will be bulldozed to make way for a new high rise development.  This week we said goodbye! But as moving is what we do, and it seemed like half a plan to take this bigger, better and cheaper apartment, even with the hassle of moving out...   In the dizzy excitement of Bangkok apartment hunting, we knew the moment we walked up the drive, that this was the one we could happily call home.  Come visit with me and see what you think... I have been blessed to have lived in some of the world's most wonderful cities; Hong Kong, Brussels, and Melbourne but I'm a country girl at heart, I can’t live feeling hemmed in.  I like the frenetic pace of life in these big cities, but I do need a retreat, a place of Zen calm.   I need to see light, ha...

Regular readers of this blog will know that we are huge fans of Women’s tennis and indeed we are just about ready to call this year done before heading back to Australia for a family Christmas and the delights of the Australian Open. So with a weekend to spare we thought we’d head out of Bangkok to Hua Hin to watch one of the last WTA tournaments of the year. It is a 200km drive about a 2 1/2 hour drive (on a good run) to Hua Hin on the Gulf of Thailand.  Can it get any better we thought, combining tennis with a beach break? This 6km stretch of beach has been popular with Thai royalty since the 1920's and although it's not my favourite beach in Thailand, we are always drawn to its easy proximity to Bangkok.   We had a few problems finding out about the tournament and so we set off without a hotel booked, hoping that we’d be able to buy tickets once we were there. On the way down we rang a few hotels and got ourselves sorted with somewhere close to...

Hello everyone, sorry I've been away from Blogland for a while. I disappeared into an amazing month where we had over thirty of our family and friends come from Australia, Asia, and Europe to visit us in Bangkok to help celebrate our Wedding Anniversary.  We offered a weekend of fun and festivities and ended up with a glorious month-long celebration, with friends dropping in before and after their extended holidays all over Asia. During this period Thailand was at the culmination of a year's mourning for the late King Bhumibol Abdoulaye. It was not the easiest time to organise a party weekend as basically all celebrations across the country were put on hold. Private events could continue, however, we were all concerned to ensure these were respectful given the circumstances.  I could well find that as event planning goes, our Friday night, complete with a Ladyboy finale, may well be up there as one of my all-time greatest life achievements, but I'll save t...

It is a fascinating time to be in Bangkok. We are seeing the final funeral preparations for Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej who died aged 88, on October 13th, 2016.  The world's longest-reigning monarch will have a spectacular final send-off which has been over a year in the making. His people will show their deep grief for a revered and unifying father figure of Thailand, who oversaw great stability within his 70-year reign, the odd coup aside! You can't walk far without seeing a picture of the Late King, the build-up is immense. Last week the Government added two extra official days of mourning. It feels like the whole of Thailand is preparing for the five days of ceremony, which commences with the cremation on October 26th.  There is some confusion over what impact this will have on our daily lives, but my long-term friends are heading out of town to the beach, expecting the huge numbers of visitors expected in the city to bring the city to even mo...

There has been a feline frenzy at our park, where authorities have declared  that the  park's  cute cats  have  crossed the line...  What's up, I hear you ask? The Thai authorities have stepped in to curtail growing numbers of cats at Lumpini Park, Bangkok. Their solution was to round up as many cats as they could catch to spay and neuter them. The Bangkok Post and The Nation newspapers have reported with sad photos of groggy moggies, sedated, all lined up ready to be taken away.  Fair enough the locals cried, until news broke that the cats would not be returned. Lumpini Park, Bangkok Lumpini is our local park, one of the biggest in our crazy busy city. It is where people come to connect, either with each other or with their inner sporty spice. At times it is so crowded that it's hard to walk!  It is one of the few areas in this urban jungle where you can be at one with nature. You can see why the cats would be h...