Two weeks in Thailand. Part one....

Sounds good doesn’t it and it was - but not because I was lying on a beach sipping a pina colada, as at times I may have wished for! I was there for the regional communications conference and also some meetings I had before in Bangkok, which went really well. I flew out from Hyderabad on the 27^th Feb to arrive the same evening and make my way to the hotel in Bangkok. The next few days were spent finalising plans for the conference and lots of meetings with the Asia Pacific office directors, among others. I love my new laptop rucksack, which crammed full was flung on my back each night as I hopped onto the back of one of the many motorbike taxis, which whiz around the city... Cheap and effective they beat the heavy Bangkok traffic and are great fun into the bargain.

On the Friday we left Bangkok stopping off at the airport to pick up my colleague Katie and head further in Thailand. On the way we spent time at one of our World Vision long term community programmes, to check on a disaster preparedness simulation we had planned to train a few teams the next week. We met some of the fantastic community members and WV staff who were helping us by being actors for the day. Having provided scripts, notes etc for them I needed to check everyone was happy and prepared, which apparently they were as they asked if an Oscar for the best performance would be presented at the end!

Leaving them with everything ready for a fake flooding scenario the next week (!), we went on to our final destination Pattaya, where we were staying in a hotel shaped like a ship, very interesting! Was nice to see the ocean and to be honest that’s all I did the whole week - gaze longingly at the sea as we didn’t have any time to do much more but work!

More to come in part two, hope it's not too boring!