Why I love it here

I live in Thailand. I have lived here more time than I have in the country of my birth. Im quite certain I will live here for the rest of my life. People often ask me why and my family ask me what's so great about Thailand. It would take 1000's of words to even begin to explain why my heart belongs to Thailand. So I will try with images instead.

Basically to sum up my feelings as a westerner living in Thailand or I guess anywhere in S.E. Asia to be frank, is the feeling of living in some kind of fantasy novel that I used to read as a kid. A place where magic can happen, a place that has bizarre rituals and ceremonies that us westerners could never get our heads around. That to me is the main reason I love it here. Lets look at some of these images - all were taken by me and all contribute in some way to the reasons I love it here.

Just a bunch of kids clinging to the back of a school bus heading down the highway.

Only some ladies wearing traditional Akha costumes as they prepare for the annual matchmaking ceremony in hope of finding a good husband.

This plate of delicious fish curry with a soup and a cold beer that cost me a grand total of $2.80

Just shopping for some new floor mats made by hand in a local village using methods unchanged for a millennium.

How about a wooden bridge made by the local villagers and replaced every time it gets swept away in monsoonal floods.

Are you starting to understand? These random images could never and will never be taken in the west - in the over regulated and controlled societies we hail from. A place of rules and misconceptions about the correct way that things must be done. Asia is my home and I am honoured to be part of the mad world that surrounds me every day. I am never leaving.