I first came to Thailand in 2004 and I came here more of less by accident. I had travelled a lot in Europe: Russia, Western Europe, Scandinavia, North Africa and north South America, but I had never got around to travelling to Asia.
One night, I was chatting to a friend who had travelled extensively throughout the world and he was telling me about his favourite place, to where he had been returning year after year for fourteen years. Knowing my friend’s experience as a traveller, I was very taken aback to hear that he had been choosing to go to the same location in Asia for fourteen years.
I had to ask him which part of huge Asia held such an attraction for him and he said Thailand. I knew practically nothing about Thailand, except that I had had a few meals at a near-by Thai restaurant over the years. I also knew from collecting stamps as a boy that it used to be called Siam. Anyway, my friend asked me if I’d like to go. I said that I would ‘one day’ and meant it.
He surprised me by saying that he was going to Thailand for a month soon and that I was welcome to go with him, if I wanted. I replied that I had a couple of jazz festivals to go to soon and maybe I would, if there was at least a month between them and if I could get a flight and if… I could hear myself putting him off, but I did not know why.
A number of hours later, I went home and being a keen Internet user, I checked out a bit about Thailand on the travel brochure sites. It looked truly fantastic. The prices were good too except for the flights. Hotels were cheap to reasonable and food and drinks prices were insignificant compared to where I lived. So, I checked the dates of the two Jazz festivals and they were thirty-three days apart. Now for the flight. I spent well into the next morning checking flights and found one for the day after the first festival leaving from our local airport. It was far from the cheapest flight, but it gave me more time.
In a reckless moment I booked it there and then online. I then found a pub with rooms to let online that my friend had said he went to on quiz evenings and guessed that they would be open by now serving breakfasts. I sent them an email and a reply came back twenty minutes later. I had been lucky again. The boss was in the middle of checking yesterday’s figures, when he saw my email come through. However, not sure of his Internet ability, he wanted me to phone him right away. I checked my watch, it was still 4AM so I phoned.
He accepted my booking on trust and so I did not have to make a deposit. I had heard about Thailand, made up my mind to go and booked the flight and room all within five hours and I could not wait for nine o’clock to come to notify my friend that I would be going too.
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