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Christmas greetings once again from sunny Thailand.
It’s hard to believe that I am now into my second year here – time has gone by so fast, and I must start by saying that one year on, I do not regret my move here at all.
Of course there are some things that are less good here – for example the television service is pretty awful, getting on the Internet via a telephone line is also a sometimes frustrating task, and of course the language barrier does not help when trying to get some repair done or trying to find something you need to buy, but overall these small disadvantages are greatly outnumbered by the advantages, not the least of which is that I am now able to lead an active social life and still live within my means.
A year ago found me awaiting my personal possessions from the UK and still in the throws of moving in and making my apartment here feel like a proper home.
That has now been accomplished and this year finds me sitting here surrounded by most of the things I need for a comfortable existence here including all my movie and record collection plus some new equipment to play them on – not quite up to the indoor cinema standard I had back in Bideford, but still a pretty adequate substitute.
Part of the thinking about providing my home here with some creature comforts was to reduce the need to go out all the time, thus ensuring that I did not live here like I used to when I came as a tourist – i.e. drinking at bars every night.
Mind I still do lead a pretty active life, but am still searching from that elusive activity that does not involve some form of eating or drinking either before, during or after.
Having tried a few clubs, societies and various other organisations, my week has now pretty well settled into a regular routine.
On Sunday mornings I still attend the Pattaya Expats club breakfast meeting where we have guest speakers on various topics of interest and also have a question and answer forum where we can seek information from other members present on all sorts of topics ranging from where to buy some needed item to how much the cost of a buffalo is. Unfortunately the person who used to host this forum, a real personality, died a few months ago, and somehow I seem to have been co-opted to run it in his stead even though I cannot hope to match his wit or devotion to duty.
 Monday mornings finds me still doing my 3 times weekly keep fit class (also Wednesday and Friday mornings).
I confess that I have had a few breaks from this during the year, partly due to some minor health problems – mostly related to my knees which are showing signs of my advancing years, and partly due to lack of willpower, but as of now I am back in harness so to speak and hoping to keep going.
Although I cannot say I have actually lost any weight from this, I am still confident that it is doing me good, and at least stopping the other social events from putting it on too much.
It is also a chance to meet other friends (as is the Expats club), for after our workout we usually have a relaxing swim and chat in the pool of the hotel that hosts our gym.
For a time on Monday afternoon I went running with the local branch of the Hash House Harriers, but after a time I found the novelty of fighting my way through the jungle, getting covered in mud and soaked with water whilst wading though streams, ponds and general bogland, plus afterwards sitting on blocks of ice whilst beer was poured over me, this novelty began to wear off. Also said knees began to protest about the weekly jarring they were getting, so I have now given that up and instead on Monday evenings settled for a game of bowls at the club I joined some months ago, plus an occasional general knowledge quiz at a nearby pub afterwards.
I also go to this bowls club on Wednesday evenings where a group of us have a friendly game each week, and sometimes on a Friday when they have more competitive league games. I am not a member of any of the league teams, but quite often get called up as a substitute when someone is unavailable to play – in many ways this suits me better as Friday evenings are often when other social calls intrude, not the least of which is the monthly wine club meeting.
Although I did play indoor bowls for a few years back in Bideford (albeit pretty badly), I have found the move to an outdoor surface (and a pretty rough one at that), quite difficult to adapt to, sometimes I finally think I am getting the hang of it, only to next play a really dreadful game.
But the club is also a good social centre complete with excellent restaurant and bar and most of the members there are very friendly and welcoming (and pretty forgiving of poor play), so even after a rotten game it is still enjoyable to have a bite to eat, a drink to wash it down with and enjoyable company to chat with.
Quite often on Wednesday’s we later adjourn to the bar which one of our players owns – a quiet place in an out of the way street where we are usually the only customers.
For a time on Thursdays I went to a local computer club which ran in late afternoon and was situated above the computer shop from which I have bought most of the additional equipment I now have, but I quite often found that the topics covered were a bit too specialist and esoteric for me, so now I tend to only go when I have some problem that I feel they can help me with.
As I mentioned, Fridays is another gym morning, and if free and required a bowls evening. It is also quite often a busy social night with the monthly wine club meeting and also many other events such as charity dinners and public festivals tend to happen on that day of the week.
The aforementioned wine club is a very different animal from the one I attended in Bideford. This one is run by the top hotel here and the president is also the hotel general manager.
As such events are usually held in the hotel grand ballroom, or sometimes if a meal is involved, in one of the hotel’s many restaurants.
Meetings are usually held about once a month and tend to alternate between a wine tasting event, and a gourmet dinner complete with wines.
Both of these are usually sponsored by one of a number of wine importing companies, and although the price of wine here is very high (due to 700 percent import tax), nevertheless these companies usually provide us with six or seven excellent wines to drink and not just tasting quantities also.
In fact to celebrate the club’s second anniversary a few months ago, the importer of Rothschilds wines provided us with some of the most expensive wines ever tasted in Thailand, including one that even in Europe would cost several thousand pounds  per bottle.
And the gourmet dinners speak for themselves, being truly sumptuous affairs.
Of course all this means that these events are more formal affairs than the relaxed informality of the Bideford Wine Circle, and although initially I felt a bit out of it with most other attendees being business people working here, as time has progressed, I have got to know a few of the regulars and also some of my friends have also become members.
Another advantage of membership is the award of a free meal for two each year at one of the hotel restaurants, and it was this that we took advantage of when we booked there in October for my 60th birthday party.
Coming back to the weekly routine, and Saturdays I normally keep free and unless there is some special need to venture out, stay at home or near home – this is partly due to the heavy traffic that runs day and night between here and central Pattaya with many people heading out to the beach by day and back into town in the evening.
Of course in addition to this weekly schedule I have managed through the year to see and sometimes take part in all the various Thai festivals that happen at different points in the calendar.
Of these, among the major ones have been the various New Year festivals, here we celebrate New Year 3 times, the Western one at the end of December, the Chinese one usually in February and the Thai one in mid April. 
This Thai New Year which is otherwise known as Songkran or The Water Festival, can at times be enjoyable and at other times a bit much for it consists of wishing everyone a Happy New Year by giving them a good soaking, and here in Pattaya it tends to go on for a complete week, making venturing out at any time during that week, a hazardous activity, especially if you wish to remain dry.
The other major festival, which in many ways is more enjoyable and certainly more attractive is Loy Krathong which happened in early November this year. This one involves the launching of small boats for good luck, accompanied of course by parties and dancing.
We are also fortunate here in Pattaya to be able to witness several sporting events throughout the calendar. For a start we have an excellent motor racing circuit not far from here at which various types of car races are staged several times throughout the year – and for which there is usually no admission charge, thus often providing us with an enjoyable and inexpensive way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
Also on the reservoir nearby, we once a year have the Thai long boat races in which traditional craft manned by teams of up to 50 rowers compete against each other.
 And then in the provincial capital town of Chonburi – about a 2 hour drive from here, once a year they stage buffalo racing in which contestants race each other each mounted on a buffalo from one end of a muddy field to another – good fun to watch.
The expatriate community also contributes to the social calendar mostly by staging a series of charity events to raise money for local needy people. These are usually very well attended and provide a much needed contribution to these causes, and many of these take the form of a charity dinner and/or party, usually complete with some prize raffle with the proceeds going to the charity and the prizes donated by a number of sponsoring businesses.
All of which makes for a pretty full calendar and sometimes has me wondering how I ever found time to work.
In fact one of the presumptions that I had before coming here, namely that I would spend a fair amount of my time sitting at the beach reading a book, has simply not happened, I think I have been to the beach less than half a dozen times in the whole year.
That doesn’t particularly bother me, but one disappointment I have had is that I have not in the past year managed to venture far beyond Pattaya. Indeed apart from the visit to Chonburi for the buffalo races, my only other two outings out of town have just been shopping trips to Bangkok.
The reason for this has been principally the full social life that keeps me here, but also because this year I had the expense of a visit back to Europe in July, which I enjoyed but feel I cannot afford to repeat every year.
I would hope therefore that in the coming year, I might get the chance to venture further afield both within Thailand and beyond its borders.
I have however contributed to my own lack of free time by instigating my own website. This originally started as a way of conveying news of my happenings here to various friends back in the UK , who had access to computers. Initially I just sent E-mails but I found that as the size of these complete with photographs increased, they became unmanageable both to send and I presume also to receive.
So instead I set up this small website on which from time to time I posted a newsletter containing details of events I had attended plus details of various local happenings in order to try to give people who hadn’t been here a flavour of what life here is like.
But like the proverbial Topsy, this has grown and grown and I have found myself becoming a one man reporter, photographer, newspaper editor, and web site designer.
At times this can be quite enjoyable and certainly helps to fill up any spare time I might find, but at other times it can become frustrating (especially when computer or Internet problems occur) and time consuming – so whether I will keep it up remains to be seen.
 I mentioned about the events I go to in Pattaya but I didn’t cover how I get to them. When I first arrived here I hired a car and then when my retirement visa was granted I took out a local driving license and then bought my own car.
I still use this for shopping or when I want to go anywhere and arrive looking decent – e.g. the wine club, but I found the day to day traffic chaos here a bit much to take every time I ventured out. So noticing that many people found their way through this better astride a motor cycle I decided to invest in one myself. 
So I bought myself a small 100 cc Honda cycle and after an initial nervous introduction to two wheeled driving, have now become more confident on it and certainly find it much easier to get around on during the daytime when for example going to the gym, which unfortunately is at the far end of town from here.
Of course if I want to go out for a social evening (i.e. one that is going to involve drinking) then I don’t use either steed, but instead take advantage of the frequent and cheap bus service here.
These buses are not exactly state of the art, being in fact converted pick-up trucks in which you sit in the open section at the back (albeit with a roof to keep the rain off), but provided you are on one of the main routes which fortunately I am, offer a service frequency where I never have to wait more than a minute for one to turn up – in fact quite often a passing one will see me walking to the condo gate and will stop and wait for me.
So as I approach my second Christmas year, you find me still alive and well in spite of having reached the grand old age of 60, and still enjoying life here to the full.
Of course my continued existence here still depends on the grace and favour of the Thai authorities, I have to have my visa renewed every year and although it went through very easily this time, there is no guarantee of that in the future.
On the other hand, the powers that be here, do value the money we bring into the country (in spite of some of their public pronouncements) and after a difficult year for tourism, due to SARS and the Iraq war, will I’m sure still welcome our contribution to the local economy.
As I said earlier, it may be some time before I make another trip to Europe and I’m sorry that my limited time this year did not permit me to venture beyond London, but hopefully I will turn up again some time like the proverbial bad penny.
So for the time being all I can do is to close by wishing you a Very Happy Christmas and all best wishes for the coming New Year – may 2004 (or 2547 here) be a prosperous and above all peaceful one for us all
.Cheers – Happy Christmas
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