One of the best reasons for living in Asia.

Yesterday was a fine example of one of the many things I love about living in Asia, namely, the chance to meet so many different kinds of people from all over the globe. I mean, if one stays in London or wherever, you usually only meet people from that city or place. Maybe at the office, you might meet a foreign visitor now & again, but here, in a small but surprisingly cosmopolitan town like Hua Hin, meeting people from all over the place is almost routine. Yesterday, we gave a little house party to celebrate my son’s 2^nd birthday. It wasn’t a big affair, less than 20 people I would say, but we still had guests from Africa, America, India, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, & the UK. The weather wasn't ideal, being cloudy & therefore rather humid. However, it didn't rain & so we were able to spend the whole time out in the garden, where it was easy to forget that the main Bangkok - Hua Hin highway was just a couple of hundred metres away. Birds singing, the warm breeze blowing, & my boy laughing fit to burst -- a great way to spend the last day of the Song Kran holiday! My son might not grow up the richest boy alive, & he might well not be the smartest, but I hope that with gatherings like yesterday’s, he will grow up a true ‘cîvis mundî’, a ‘citizen of the world’. Of course, growing up in a lovely seaside town, just a short walk from the beach, does make him a very lucky boy but what he does with the luck is, as they say, in the lap of the gods.

It's Song Kran -- Time for Cricket!

Well here we are in the longest school holiday of the year – good news for teachers like me! What’s more, yesterday was the first day of Song Kran. Now for those of you who don’t know, Song Kran began life as the traditional Thai New Year. It used to be celebrated by doing a lot of cleaning, like cleaning the Buddhist statues at the temple, cleaning your home and cleaning your soul of the last year’s sin – a lot trickier, that part. Now Thailand adopted the western calendar during its modernisation period during the late 19^th century and so Song Kran is now just a long holiday in the middle of the hottest season of the year. So if you happen to be walking down the street and someone throws water all over you, or squirts a large water gun at you, and maybe also smears some white paste on your skin, don’t get annoyed. They are blessing you, in a way, and believe me, when it’s around 42c or more, getting some cool water splashed all over you may feel like a blessing!

So how did I start my Song Kran holiday? By watching some cricket. Oh yes, I did get absolutely soaked on my way to the cricket venue (the Dusit Resort, Hua Hin), but I also enjoyed watching a game I haven’t played or really watched for around 30 years! It was part of the week-long Hua Hin Cricket Sixes. This year, we had 13 teams from Australia, Hong Kong and Thailand competing. These included 3 Melbourne Cricket Club teams, as well as the Phoong (Fat Belly) Follies from Australia and three teams from here in Hua Hin – including the Hua Hin Hopalongs, who were kicked out on day 4. To give you some idea of how desperate the Hopalongs are, they even invited me to play for them! I tried to warn them but what the hell – it’s a nice bunch of guys and a good social life, too.