Hello! Giles from Bangkok, Thailand …and I finally did it!

As a fun way to introduce myself, I have created a short video in which I’ll preform a mentalist trick on you.  

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some sort of amateur stage magician or anything of that sort – it’s just for fun. You can view the video at the end of this post, so stay tuned...   

But first, who am I?   

My name is Giles (Hi there!) and it’s such an honour to become a part of this amazing community. I joined a while ago, but I wanted to see how things work here before making a post, and now I have… Yipee!   

I’m an English guy who’s been living in Thailand for the last 16 years. In that time it’s been an amazing roller-coaster ride and relocating here was one of the best choices I ever made. Prior to making the move, I felt I was in a real rut because I was living in a crumby bedsit with no heating; in a dead-end job and dreading the English winter.    

I always had the travel bug and prior to coming to Thailand I had spent quite a bit of time, on and off, over the years travelling around India. India was – and still is – so magical to me that there’ll always be a place for it in my heart.  My experiences there gave me that irresistible urge to live somewhere new and more exotic.    

It wasn’t until quite a few years later that I learnt that I could study a course on Teaching English as a Foreign Language and following that I quickly discovered that there were lots of job opportunities in Thailand. It didn’t take long before I had booked my flight, piled up my belongings into my mother’s garage to the point in which she couldn’t drive her car back in and  left one overcast October day by Aeroflot jet heading for a new life and not really quite knowing what to expect.    

Now jump forward sixteen years and I’ve developed a good understanding of the Thai culture and I feel privileged to have made many good friends here, both Thai and foreign. The foreigners can be fairly transient as they come and go, but I often think how lucky I am because our paths would never have crossed had I not been here.   

It shouldn’t be forgotten, though, that there are things I do miss from home; mainly my parents, who aren’t getting any younger, my UK friends, and not forgetting the occasional pint of English ale. Because of this, I always make sure to visit home once a year.   

During my time in Thailand I’ve mainly taught English, which is the reason for learning the mentalist trick that follows. This trick is one of the many things I do to entertain my students because Thai students love to have fun. Thais in general have a desire for fun and this permeates all of Thai culture and is known as sanook.   

As any teacher would probably tell you, teaching can have both its highs and lows, but if I had one thing I to say about my own experience is that it has been very rewarding and this quote from an unknown author sums it up beautifully:   

“I call my students ‘my kids’ because in our year together they aren't just kids in my class list, they become a part of my heart.”   

This is so true.   

Outside of teaching my interests are many, but mainly range from music, travel, communication, crypto, freedom and movies.   

Did I say movies?!   

In fact, I'm a movie buff. I love movies of all types, and many of these would be classified as "psychotronic". This was a name coined by the editor of the now long defunct magazine Psychotronic Video to mean those that were traditionally ignored or ridiculed by mainstream critics at the time of their release. To put it in a nutshell, I like cinema without boundaries and from any time in cinema’s long varied history.    

One thing you’ll never find too far from me is a book and I’m proud to say that I’m still a proponent of the traditional book format. By that I mean leafing through the pages of a paperback rather than reading the text on the digital screen of a tablet or a Kindle.    

I’m an avid reader of such diverse topics as conspiracies, crime, strange behaviour, human oddities, extreme beliefs, movies (that goes without saying), mind-altering chemicals, suppressed science, mayhem and hidden history. The real world is as escapist for me as maybe fiction is to someone else.    

Books and cinema are my two drugs of choice, as well a good dose of caffeine first thing in the morning. I’m never bored – I just wish I had more time in a day.   

I look forward to hopefully sharing my interests with you and allowing you to learn more about me in future posts, but for now, here’s my short mentalism video. I hope you like it and that it works for you, and if it does, don’t forget to leave a comment below. Actually, leave a comment below even if it doesn’t because it’ll still be great to hear from you. 

Have fun and see you soon.