Two Years in Chiang Mai by Alex Gunn

Author:Alex Gunn [Gunn, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-02-11T05:00:00+00:00

Book Two;

Another Year

Chapter 1

One Way Round No Bumping

January: Dry and hot, but cool at night and the swimming pool feels cold.

“The first year is a roller coaster ride, the second year is like getting on the Pirate Boat, it’s still scary but you get a chance to see where you are.” Thom.

I’m still wondering how on earth we survived the first year, and then another year, in Chiang Mai. To be honest, I’m still wondering why we did it. Why we uprooted our two young children from their friendly little village school, why we gave up good jobs, a lovely house and all the trappings of a comfortable, middle class lifestyle to embrace a future of complete uncertainty in a hot, strange city in Northern Thailand.

It was, as my new American friend Thom said, “a real dumb ass thing to do.” But then Thom says stuff like this all the time. He also says “the only way to stay sane is to stay half drunk” and the strange and rather worrying “life’s like a dead raccoon in a car wash.”

Thom’s like Plato, but I expect a lot drunker. He is also very big and very friendly and has no censorship system. If it goes through Thom’s mind, it comes out of his mouth, which is a bit of a problem as he has a voice as loud as a ship’s fog horn. He drives a huge truck the size of Berkshire and claims that he can eat more pizza than anyone else in Chiang Mai. He is also prone to exaggeration.

But then I realise if we hadn’t moved here I would never have met Thom, or come to that, Jesse, the strongest and most unpredictable man in the world, or Khun Sonthaya our self appointed guardian angel or, indeed, my new neighbour Jerry who’s in the Hong Kong Mafia. I would never have been arrested by the Chiang Mai Water Police, enjoyed the dubious pleasure of endless visa runs over the border into Burma, become the director of my own little company, burst with pride at seeing my youngest son play the part of the Cheeky Gecko at his new “international” school assembly or any one of the delights or disasters that made up the second year of our new life in Chiang Mai. Besides which, I had just splashed out 100 Baht to buy a supermarket loyalty card (I know!) and found the BBC World Service on my radio.

By comparison, my wife and two children seemed to settle in super quick. I think they did it without me noticing, while I was still unpacking.

Our two little boys couldn’t quite believe their good luck that we had whisked them away from the brink of a large and intimidating secondary school to a land where the sun always shines, swimming pools are warm, orchids bloom in vivid techni-colour and pretty butterflies flit through shady palm trees; a land where it’s permanently the summer holidays.

They made friends at their new school

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