[preachadaq]

I dont know if this would have been better as a blog , I have been meaning to to write it for years,
In the autumn of 1963,after just arriving back from a 3 month holiday complete with guns and bulletsin the jungles of Borneo compliments of the British army, I was informed my presence was required in Thailand , so I packed my bags,after a very long and uncomfortable flight in a RAF Argosy, we landed at Don muang , what a culture shock and the people! all smiles and beauty, after the poverty and blandness of the iban and dyak villages, the vibrant colours of of the temples that we could see from the airport were amazing but I digress, Back on the plane to fly to Ubon , where our journey was supposed to end, WrongOn arrival in Ubon we were picked by a truck and taken on a two hour drive north To a tented camp at Ban Kok Talat, which was to be my home for the following three years. It was an experience which was to change and influence my life for the next 45 years!!leading to thai friendships all around the world, and always the urge to go back and introduce my english and australian families and friends to the land of smiles, To watch thailand grow over the years, the opening of the first pub in pattaya, building ahouse on the beach as an R and R resort for british troops serving in isaan,Or camping in the jungle near the beach at what is now patong,No matter where my work took me in later years, whether the mountains and jungles of South America orthe plains of Kenya and east africa in the back of my mind there was always the call of Pok Pok and Gai Yang,sadly through my work my use of the thai language was neglected , as german,malay/bahasa, rheto romanic, swahili and portuguese became my languages of trade, even today people say I speak english with a german accent. With age has come the confusion and the mixing of the languages,so sometimes the conversations get confusing when I find myself speaking Swahili to a taxidriver in bali or a jeweller in Mukdaharn, I have so many true stories to tell of our thai experiences over the years, Maybe some readers would like to hear them