Sawaat dii khrap
After 35+ years of traveling here, 15 years of operating Pok Pok Restaurants, writing several books on the subject and dreaming it, I finally moved to Thailand about a year and a half ago. The circumstances of my move towards the beginning of the pandemic were not the best (nor were they the best circumstances for anyone, except maybe a few billionaires). But here we are and here I am, in a little wood house next to a rice field, trying to figure it all out. How’s it going, I hear you asking? Well for starters, here’s the view from my office as I write this:
Not bad, right? I can report that so far I have no regrets about finally making the big shift. To be honest, it has always been the goal and the best parts of my life were already here: my wife, our house and garden, my kitchen, our cats, most of my friends and of course the culture and country that has been been my muse, focus and (some might say) obsession for the last 3+ decades.
Why subscribe?
If you subscribe to this account you will get an inside view of what it is like to live in Thailand, to eat, to cook, to travel, to do business here and hopefully have a bit of fun!
What I like about this platform is that you are not relegated to 280 characters or just a picture or video that people zip by for a few seconds while trawling the murky waters of social media. So you can expect a potpourri of posts: a newsletter, audio snippets of the sounds of country life, profiles of or interviews with my favorite chefs and food folks of Thailand, maybe a video of a morlam band playing or a giant rocket being fired off to ask the clouds for rain during Boon Bang Fai festival, photo dumps of the long motorcycle trips I take into the mountains of Northern Thailand, an essay on building a house in Thailand (probably several of these), lots of food photos and descriptions of dishes, lists of restaurants to visit in Chiang Mai, cat pics and videos and (eventually) a paid subscription option that will get you in-depth, focussed cooking classes and other content that actually costs me money to produce (sorry, I don’t really have a job anymore but I do have 6 hungry cats that need feeding).
Some of the content will be unvarnished, somewhat grubby reality. Thailand is not all shiny happy people holding hands; there are dark forces at work here as with anywhere else but because I am a foreigner and have no real rights, I must be somewhat careful as to what I say. I have no desire to move back to Portland (love you boo) so don’t expect any hardcore political commentary…that shit can get you into a world of hurt hereabouts including the big boot outta the country. For those in the know, I will not be mentioning he who must not be mentioned. But I might, say, describe what it’s like to renew my visa, just to show how cuckoo bureaucracy can be in the Land of Smiles.
Having said that, life is pretty good here and that will be the overall theme. I want to show you what I think is good, progressive and positive about this country and the people who call it home. There’s a lot of cool shit happening here! Hope you’ll join me.
