Thai people abroad (1)

Many Thais go abroad, to work, to study, and increasingly as tourists. I have known people going abroad for each of these reasons, and what they all seem to have in common is an urge to see, and preferably to touch, snow. I suppose that as the world becomes increasingly the same in many (superficial, perhaps) respects, snow is the one thing that is most clearly NOT Thai.

My family, all of them more or less Thai except for me and our son-in-law, are no exceptions to this. This year we all spent a few weeks in Spain and France, and shared a week in the Pyrenees mountains. So we all saw snow, albeit only in patches and high up on the peaks. But one day they drove up to a lake, itself pretty high at about 3,000 metres, and then walked and climbed higher to a patch or block of snow that was still clinging to the rocks some distance below the mountain-top. Pensri and I pleaded old age and didn't accompany them on this particular outing, but here are some pictures of more or less Thai people enjoying themselves on and under SNOW!

Here is our son, Dominic, making hard work of it ...

... while his wife, Jay, looks the part of a real mountaineer:

For Darunee and two of her girls it looks just like a leisurely stroll ...

...and here comes Esme, showing her mother and younger sisters the way ...

 

... followed by Ben, with the lake way down below in the background:

 

Esme and Anna get to grips with the snow:

and so do Kim and Ben:

He's behind you!

 

So for these Thai-ish people that's one ambition achieved.

Comments

[Boonsong]

Great post!
By the way, I'm interested to know what you're excuse for not accompanying was.... Perhaps something like, "Snow use, I don't think that I can do it".

Have a good day, Boonsong

[Boonsong]

Sorry about the grammatical goolie in my previous comment - "you're" should be "your"

[Lawrence]

Thanks for your comments, Boonsong. You got my excuse almost spot on although I think I was frozen out by ageism. How about you ghost-writing my blog since I have dried up a bit recently?

Yes, it should be "your" but not a lot of people know that, as somebody about my age once (or twice) didn't say.

[Paul Garrigan]

My Thai wife would love to see snow. We've been back to Ireland many times, but the closest we got to it was sleet. A few weeks ago I went with my wife and son to Dreamworld. We went and looked at the artificial snow there but it would be nice to see the real thing.

[Mike]

Spot on with this one Lawrence, Duen has this thing about snow and wanting to touch it.

Little does she know how cold she would be. If I have the air-con at 25C she says its cold :-)

[Lawrence]

Thanks for your comment, Paul. Yes, sleet doesn't quite make it up there as a must-see, does it?

Maybe you can relate to Mike's comment, and think it's best to keep some dreams out of reach because making them come true can destroy the magic they promised.

[Martyn]

Lawrence I really enjoyed looking at the photos, not a shivering tooth in sight, only beautiful smiles. Everybody must have loved it. In the bottom photo young Ben looks like he's aiming a small snowball at someone, surely not, Thai's wouldn't do that sort of thing would they.

[Lawrence]

Martyn ... they might, if the police are "looking the other way" ... which they might, with a bit of encouragement.