Settling In

Moving is always a bit of a stressful thing. When it involves moving a family of five from the frontiers of China into the unknown of Thailand, without a home, job or family to come to, it is a little more stressful….
However, if you break down the whole ordeal step-by-step, it’s not actually a big deal.

We left China to move to Bangkok for several reasons: a better education for the kids, living in a more comfortable city, more access to culture and entertainment, better weather, a better job for Clare and more business opportunities for me.

So after packing all our household items, getting them delivered to the Port of Dalian, having to go there to get them inspected by customs officials, arranging transport to Bangkok, the 17 hour train ride to Beijing, the 5 hour flight to Bangkok, we finally arrived in the city which would be our new home for the next while.

After a night in a hotel and slowly getting accustomed to the high heat and humidity, the search for an apartment started and quickly ended after finding the perfect place near a school and with a pool.

Next was to register the kids in school while also asking the school to hire Clare as a teacher at the same time. School fees are very high in Thailand so for a school to get three new students is a nice influx of revenue. If this revenue comes on the condition that the student’s mother needs to work there, well this is a cause for some negotiations.

A couple hours later, my kids are registered in an international school and my wife is now an employee of that school! Their commute to their new school and place of work is now about 3 minutes by foot….How convenient!

With the home, school and wife’s employment sorted out now comes the much larger job of building my personal network and setting up my company in our new country. More on that soon…

Now Living in Thailand…

Greetings from the “Land of Smiles”!
I have not written in my blog since mid October. Wow, that is ridiculous!

Well, quite a few things have happened since then and it will take me quite a while just to get this up to date.

You can now tell from the changed blog header that I no longer live in China. I presently live in the “City of Angels”, that’s Bangkok for most people.

Why did I move? Well the reasons are a bit complex, but they did involve a lot of thought. The simple reasons such as “I can’t face another winter in -25’C!” helped a bit in choosing Thailand as my next stop but this was obviously a very small part of it.

I really enjoyed my time in China for the last four or so years. I could write volumes on the interesting things that have happened to me there and will certainly be back as often as I can. On the other hand, however rich the culture in China is, it will never be my own and I can never be fully attached to it. I have lived in the rich areas of China as well as the poor and have visited almost every corner of the country. I just felt, at this point in my life that it was time to move on, see different things and experience life at a different pace.

I am now in Thailand to pursue some very interesting and exciting business opportunities, more of which I will explain later.

It has been a very fascinating, busy and mind-expanding few months here in Thailand and I will attempt to record a few of these events in the next few days. Check back here soon!

Moved out of the “Guetto”

Well, after living in a small, dingy apartment that my wife described as “living in Krakow”, we now live in something more decent.

Last Saturday was moving day. We were finally reunited with all our belongings. Half of which were stored at the company warehouse because we did not have enough room in our old apartment. We now have all our books and clothes and the kids now have all their toys to play with.

Our new place is very nice, spacious and in a perfect location. The apartment is luxurious by Chinese standards and the view of the local mountains is great. The only snag is that it is on the eighth floor with no elevator. Most apartment buildings in China are under eight stories because developers do not have to install lifts in buildings that are eight stories or under. It was a hell of a job for the movers to bring up furniture and heavy book boxes 16 flights of stairs but they got it done and nothing got broken or lost.

We can now enjoy our stay in Tonghua a little more, Clare feels safer and we can all get in better shape going up all these stairs every day…