Thailand has always been a tourist’s paradise: sandy beaches, the tastiest, traditional grub, friendly locals and beautiful temples.
Here’s a great graphic that showcases Thailand’s many attractions for each month of the year. Read More
A Week in China
I can’t believe it has been two months since I lasted posted anything here. Where have the days gone? What with doing more freelance writing, working on several websites and going on the occasional trip, the first two years of retirement have flown by!
Last week, I took a quick one-week jaunt over to China to visit with old friends in Wuhan and my son in Changsha. In the two years that have passed since we left China, both places have completed citywide subways. What used to be a 150RMB taxi ride in each places has turned into a 4RMB metro ticket. A completely new school complex has been added to the Maple Leaf campus along with several dozen new skyscrapers in the surrounding landscape.
After a couple of days in Wuhan visiting friends, I jumped on the bullet train and headed to Changsha. 500 km in about 1.5 hours at an average speed of over 300 kph. What used to be empty train stations only a few years ago are now crowded with masses of people. And these things leave several times each hour all day. I walked into the station and was able to get on a train within twenty minutes. North America has a long ways to go to catch up!
Once I arrived in Changsha, I just hopped on the subway that left from under the train station and was within a block of my son’s bar and apartment within a half hour. The last time I visited only two years ago, I had the choice of either a long bus trip or expensive taxi ride. It really is easy getting around from city to city. Read More
The Joys of Learning Another Language…
This poor blog seems to have taken the back seat to a myriad of other activities for the last few weeks. Retirement is turning out to be as busy as my previous working life which I guess is a good thing. What with building websites for others, starting my own Chiang Mai tourist site and writing articles for International Living Magazine, the days are flying by. And then, on top of everything else, we decided to enrol in Thai language courses this year for two hours every day. We finished Conversation 1 before Christmas and are now more than halfway through Conversation 2. These are six-week sessions and the vocabulary is coming at us strong and quickly. Now, we are into Thai grammar which is a whole other ball game. As much as I learned with the High Speed Thai course that I purchased online a couple of years ago, I found that I needed interaction with a teacher and other students in a classroom situation to stay motivated.
Of course, the first question that comes up by many people is,”Why the hell do you want to bother studying Thai?”. Despite the many foreigners that decide to indulge in some sort of Thai lessons, there are also a huge number who think it is either a complete waste of time or too difficult. Then there is the group that pretends to be studying Thai in order to get an Education Visa. However, playing hooky is becoming more difficult with the recent crackdown by the ruling Junta. There is much more demand for accountability now for those that say they are going to school here. Read More
