Travelling for Work
Recently I have been travelling to Asia a lot for work. It has finally stopped after 3 trips in 6 months.
The project I have been helping on is with a client in Asia. I have travelled for work in previous roles. To Europe and US mostly. However, these trips have been different.
I was told this client is difficult and they have not been happy with the quality of what has been delivered to them so far. Luckily, I have been to Thailand before so was not daunted by the idea of going to a brand new country in this scenario. My only focus was going to be to make this project successful and assure the client that we are working towards improving the quality of our deliverable.
Going onsite is a completely different experience to travelling for leisure. My days started at 9 AM and ended at 8 PM (if lucky). Evenings were a bit long too as you end up trying to get to know your team outside of work to work better together. And make new friends.
I was last in Thailand in 2013. Bangkok has changed a lot over 5 years. I noticed a more hipster vibe than before (or maybe I never had the time to explore anything other than the sand and the culture)!
I visited the Grand Palace and the Wat Pho again this time. If you have very little time and can only see a couple of places, do not miss these two.
They were busier than I remembered and I would certainly recommend getting there as soon as the gates open.
Other than these two, I also managed to go to Wat Arun one evening. This one has a surreal feel to it and is actually very different to the other temples I have visited in the city.
Other than that, numerous cafes and a few live music venues made my evenings a little bit more relaxed than I had expected.
My favourite location was The Commons which was a semi-closed multi-food area alongwith live jazz. I ended up having multiple weekend breakfast dates with myself here :)
One thing I started enjoying during this time was my own company again. I would put on my music and walk for miles just taking in the sights and sounds of the country. Whereas the food scene has definitely picked up from about 5 years ago, the temples are still my favourite part of the city. Will have to see how it changes over the next 5 years!
