Missing Thailand in London

December 4, 2011

I am back in London for some business meetings, and last week, as I walked to the tube station in the rain, lost in a throng of dark-clad, cheerless, rushing commuters, standing wet and freezing cold on a tube platform, then fighting to get on a stuffy, packed (and well-delayed) tube train, I realized how much I would hate to be living and working back in London full time.

I don’t mind a few days of it, like now, but by Friday morning I had more than had enough.

Since being back here, the first question everyone has asked me is about the Bangkok floods, which were well publicised in the UK, as was the British government’s warning about travel to Bangkok.

Happily, it seems Thailand’s tourism industry PR machine is already working overtime, hoping for a quick return to business as usual.

Last week I read the following headline on the front page of The Metro newspaper, accompanied by an idyllic beach photograph, which seemed to mock me as it shouted from across the miserable tube carriage: “Thai escape”!

"Some hope", I thought.

When I got round to reading it, it was a plug about a posh island off Phuket which was being touted as a tranquil, exclusive resort by a freelance (journalism not bar) writer, who had stopped there for a treat.

"Some treat", I thought. The cost for a night’s stay and breakfast? NINE THOUSAND baht. Give me cheapo Pattaya any day.

However, the damage was done, and after reading it, I suddenly began missing my usual life in Thailand, wondering what the weather was like in Pattaya, what I’d be doing when I got back there next week, and missing the warm sun, great food and laid back lifestyle.

For now, it seems that sitting wet, cold and miserable in a packed Jubilee line tube on my way to some boring meeting with lawyers in London IS my real life and Pattaya is just a fantasy which I have invented as a coping mechanism for the last nine years of work in London, so far removed does the city seem from me right now.

I look forward to reversing that misperception as soon as possible, on my return to Thailand next week, when I promise I will never take my life there for granted again.