Not trailing, but travelling together.

In the time I've been blogging about my life as an expat husband, a certain expression I've never heard before has come to my attention - 'trailing spouse'. This seems to be the prevailing term for people in my position, at least if Twitter is to be believed (which, admittedly, is a whole other discussion entirely).

I was rather surprised to see this term used. What sort of person would willingly describe themself in such a way? I certainly don't see myself as trailing behind my wife. Yes, she may be the one who's job enabled us to come here, but it was very much a joint decision. For many years now we've talked about living abroad, and it's never felt like one of us was more enthusiastic about the idea than the other.

Realistically, we knew we could only make the leap into the unknown with an income to support us, and as a teacher she is the one with the more easily transferable skills, so it became obvious that she would likely be the one who could secure an job and get us started. The dream of a new life, though, was one we shared. I'd hope that this was the case for any couple in our situation. A step this big should be taken together, hand in hand and heads held high, not with one partner following reluctantly behind the other. If you truly are a 'trailing' spouse, I'd question whether you've really made the right decision for you both.

So what term should we use? If we must apply such a label, 'accompanying spouse' seems a better fit. But to be honest, I would prefer simply 'partner', as that's how I see us - equal partners in a great adventure, regardless of our differing roles.

A summons to court

One of my favourite things about Thailand is the ubiquitous presence of food. Eating seems to be the number one pastime, and the fact that you're never far from the aroma of something delicious was a major draw for me in moving here. The problem with the street food, though, is that despite tempting you from every corner, it's not always that accessible or convenient. As a newly arrived expat, my language skills aren't yet up to scratch, which can make ordering (or even understanding what you might get when you order) a little tricky. And eating on the street on a hot day when burdened with shopping is not always ideal.

Let's be thankful, then for Bangkok's many food courts. These awesome culinary institutions basically provide tasty and cheap street food in a convenient, farang-friendly environment. What greater joy can life have to offer than a delicious 40 baht lunch in a clean, air-conditioned environment, with a side order of people watching thrown in? They also sidestep a particular pet hate of mine when it comes to eating out - waiting for the bill. I don't mind waiting for my food to be delivered - the anticipation only serves to heighten the flavour - but when it comes to eating I'm a 'wham bam thank you ma'am' kind of diner. Once I'm satiated I want to move on, not sit around awkwardly trying to catch the eye of the waiting staff.

For the benefit of the uninitiated, here's how it works. Upon entering the food court, you must (usually) pay first. Look for the counter with a queue but no food - here you can hand over some money and receive a plastic card in return (or sometimes some paper vouchers, but these seem to be rapidly becoming redundant). It may seem strange to have to estimate the price of your meal in advance, but don't worry, you can get a refund later. I find a hundred baht is usually plenty, but who am I to judge you on your appetite? You may find the odd place that just hands over a card and expects you to pay at the end (such as the one at the top of Central World), but these are in the minority.

Once you have your magic card, you can begin to browse the various stalls. Think of these as highlights of the city's street food vendors, handily convened in one place for you to choose from. A menu you can take a stroll through. Most stalls specialise in a particular type of dish, and will have an English translation on the menu behind the vendors (although annoyingly they usually only state the name in Thai script and an English translation, which makes it hard to learn the Thai name for that delicious chicken thing with the noodles that you enjoyed so much). Once you've chosen your dish, ordering is simple. In the courts more used to dealing with tourists, for example the excellent one in MBK, the vendors will generally speak English. Even where they don't, the menus are usually numbered, or a little pointing and smiling will get the message across.

Now comes the best bit. Stand back and watch as your dish is prepared in front of you in a fascinating display of culinary dexterity. These people prepare the same dishes hundreds of times a day, and practice makes perfect. This is fast food as it should be - freshly prepared to order and served up piping hot and at its best. After helping yourself to the condiments on offer (native Bangkokians tend to go heavy on the sugar. You may prefer not to), find a seat and enjoy.

Actually, a quick word on seating. If you visit a popular court at a busy time, you may find it difficult to get a seat. The first couple of times this happened to me I wandered round clutching my tray, my noodle soup getting cold whilst I searched fruitlessly for an empty table. It was only after approaching several seemingly-unoccupied places to find they were not as empty as they appeared that the system became clear. During busy periods, you find an empty table before getting your food (I find scanning for somebody finishing their meal and then swooping as they get up and leave their empty dishes works best), and then 'reserve' it by leaving one of your possessions on it whilst you go and get your food. Right now, during rainy season, the umbrella seems to be a popular choice, but I've also seen packs of cigarettes, sunglasses, and most surprisingly but quite commonly, security passes. People here are quite trusting when it comes to leaving their stuff unattended.

So where can you find these temples of taste? Most of Bangkok's many shopping malls have one, although they're not always well advertised or signposted. Check the top floor first, or wander until you see a knife and fork sign. Some malls will have more than one - the type I've described above, and also a more international version with higher prices and bigger stalls selling food from around the world. Your choice, but I didn't move here to eat overpriced European food. Also supermarkets - Tesco Lotus and Tops both feature one.

Some recommendations? The aforementioned MBK one is good, offering a great range of dishes, as long as you don't mind watching pasty tourists in beachwear wander past as you eat. Cut-price fashion mecca Platinum Fashion Mall has a great one hidden away on the top floor, well worth a visit if you're in the area anyway seeking out cheap threads. My personal favourite though is my regular lunch venue, Terminal 21 at Asoke. This entertaining mall is worth a visit anyway for its odd air travel theme, with each floor based around a different destination - the London floor I find particularly amusing - but head on up to the 5th floor (confusingly, one of two dedicated to San Francisco) and among the restaurants you'll discover one of the cheapest and tastiest courts in town. So good I keep their card permanently in my wallet. I particularly recommend the egg noodles and crispy chicken in Sukhothai style broth. You can thank me later.

Changing the channel

It's not just because of the exotic surroundings that my life now is a big departure from prior experience. Before we moved out here, I worked in TV. A lot of people seem to think this must have been interesting or glamourous. Hunter S. Thompson, a man who was right about a lot of things, saw it a little differently -

"The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.

Which is more or less true. For the most part, they are dirty little animals with huge brains and no pulse."

Personally, I think he was exaggerating. But only a little. It's hard to spend a decade in an industry like that without becoming a little jaded. In recent years it had certainly become less rewarding. I was an editor. One of the people who take everything that has been filmed and attempt to piece it together into a coherent and entertaining whole. I was pretty good at it, and reasonably successful. At some point, my name has probably scrolled up your TV screen whilst you ate dinner or held a conversation, happily oblivious to the hours of toil in stuffy rooms behind the scenes. But who really cares? It's only TV, the background noise of modern life. If people knew how much money and time actually went into assembling those flickering images they pay scant attention to, they'd probably conclude it was barely worth it. Lately, this had felt more and more the case to me. Sadly, as in many other parts of life, money and expertise seem to be in much shorter supply these days, which means the quality of the raw materials I was supplied with had declined, and the time available to attempt to make something from them dwindled. A little like being asked to build a house in a hurry from substandard bricks. You can cobble them together into something, but who would want to live in it?

So when the opportunity to move abroad came along, I was happy to grasp it with both hands, despite knowing that it would mean a fundamental change in how I filled my days. My passport is currently stamped with the words 'Employment Prohibited', but even if it were not, I lack the necessary language skills and cultural background to fulfill my old role in what is a very different business here.

My wife and I knew this would be the case, and so the bargain on which our life is currently based was made. She would be the one earning the money - for her professional situation has improved greatly by coming here - whilst I would take care of everything else. Once she comes home, she should not have to lift a finger. I'll admit, this seemed like a good deal from my point of view. I'd pictured an idyllic life in which I spent a minimal amount of time doing some gentle household duties, and the rest as a kind of long-term tourist. The reality has been surprisingly hard work. There's always something else that needs doing. I have admittedly made things somewhat more difficult for myself - whilst I'm not earning, it seems only fair that I spend as little as possible, which means doing a lot of things the hard way.

I'm happy with this, though. It seems that for many expats, the shift in economic situation places them in a comfortable bubble, where others fetch everything they need and take care of the dirty jobs. As comparatively wealthy westerners, they're now above that sort of thing. That's not how I want to live. I might get a little hot and sweaty lugging the groceries home from Big C, but I enjoy being out there on the streets of my new home. I might have to get my hands dirty cleaning the apartment, but it still feels somehow less grubby than when I used them to press buttons, achieving little more than to distract people whilst they were sold things they didn't really need.

Will this be the case indefinitely? I don't know. I may return to something like my old role at some point. I may do something entirely different. Stepping into the unknown is part of the appeal. But for now, I'm content to lead a simpler life, and enjoy a period of detox from my previous existence.

Let's wok...

Once we'd moved into our new apartment, our next step was to kit it out. Back in London, furnished rentals usually came with pretty much everything - generally the landlord's old stuff that they couldn't be bothered to remove - but here you just seem to get the furniture. So where do you go for all those bits and pieces that are essential to modern life? The same place people go to the world over. Ikea. A bit of a trek out to the epic mall that is Mega Bangna, and a slightly surreal experience, as apart from the prices being in baht we could have been back in North London. The Swedes sorted us out with most things we required, apart from a few electrical items from Powerbuy, and a big TV bought in Tesco Lotus and lugged home in the back of one of those dinky little pickup trucks you see around the place.

So most of our needs were now met, but one item still remained elusive - a decent wok. Not one of those non-stick things you see in the fancy stores, or the aluminium or stainless steel ones available in Tesco Lotus or Big C, but a proper, traditional, cheap carbon steel wok that you can lovingly coat with a patina of burnt oil and never ever wash. I'd assumed such an item would be easy to find, but like many of my assumptions, this proved somewhat wide of the mark.

The solution seemed obvious. Chinatown. Surely there would be woks everywhere? I jumped on the MRT and headed down to Hualamphong. My rather cursory research suggested that Sampeng Lane market would be the first place to try, and so I found myself negotiating this long and surprisingly narrow thoroughfare crowded with shops of all kinds that seem to somehow meet in the middle, creating a kind of tunnel of commerce.

I was glad I'd gone fairly early in the morning, as even with comparatively few people around progress was rather slow. All manner of goods were on offer - handbags, wigs, lanterns, endless brightly coloured paraphernalia. The hectic, claustrophobic atmosphere was enhanced by the fact that I'd arrived the day of the Ghost Festival, when the Chinese lay out offerings of food to the spirits of their departed ancestors, and burn paper representations of valuable goods and money for them with scant regard for health and safety.

All rather fascinating, but kitchenware was apparently one of the few categories of goods this alleyway didn't offer. Undeterred, I found my way to Soi Issaranuphap, another narrow alley that runs perpendicular to Sampeng Lane, which I was reliably informed was some sort of foodie's paradise. And so it proved to be. Store after store piled high with pretty much everything a Chinese person might conceivably want to put in their mouth, seemingly arranged in categories. One stretch would be nothing but fruit, then ten metres or so entirely consisting of dried items I didn't recognise. The hardest section to negotiate was the duck district - the sheer amount of grease on the floor made this part more like skating than walking.

Amongst all this, I was pleased to see, were a number of shops selling kitchen equipment. However, on closer inspection they seemed to sell everything but woks. I began to wonder if maybe woks just weren't an item anyone bought - after all, who wants a brand-new one when you can have one with decades of deliciousness baked into its surface? Perhaps the same ones had been handed down through Thai families for generations. My quest was beginning to feel fruitless. Even meeting a couple of cute cats only lifted my spirits a little.

I had pretty much given up. A quick search of the internet offered little help - the only lead I could find suggested some obscure store near Soi 77, a long way across town. So I did what I often do when in a strange part of a same town and out of ideas. I decided to get lost.

After wandering down several streets at random, witnessing some fairly impressive roadside fires and narrowly avoiding getting blown up with firecrackers, I found myself in what appeared to be the metal district. In the back of a small store, sandwiched between a place full of impressive lengths of steel piping on one side and one that sold nothing but turbochargers on the other, I spotted a tell-tale bunch of handles poking out from a metallic stack. My hopes rising at last, I ventured in. Here they were at last! Woks. Dozens of woks. Stacked high in various sizes. No fancy packaging. No non-stick coating. Just plain old steel beaten into shape with a handle attached. 250 baht? Thank you very much.

In case anyone has stumbled across this post on a similar quest to mine, I've done my best to retrace my steps. As far as I could tell, I was just down the road from the impressively named Wat Pathum Khongkha Ratchaworawihan. Make your way there and look around a little, you should find the place. I'm happy to recommend them - I'm pleased with my purchase. It makes a mean Pad See Ew.

What not to wear

Ok, so I admit it, I used to be a bit of a scruffy git back in the UK. One of my favourite things about working in TV was that nobody really cared what I wore, which meant I could basically carry on dressing like a student years after I graduated. I never had much need for grown up clothes. However, since arriving in Bangkok, I've felt the need to adjust my look. Once you've been here a while, the tourists in beach wear really seem to stick out like a sore thumb in the city. I got the sense that the locals weren't very impressed with them, and I don't want them to judge me the same way. So, despite having brought over a load of shorts and t-shirts, they're now relegated to wearing round the house, or maybe the odd quick trip to the 7-Eleven. Anywhere else, even a shopping expedition to Tesco-Lotus, and I wear grown-up long trousers and a proper shirt. The kind you have to iron and everything. That way I can walk the broken pavements of Bangkok with my head held high. But not too high - you still need to look where you're going to avoid breaking an ankle. There are other benefits to adopting trouser legs and sleeves, too. Sun block costs a fortune here, so covering up is an economically sound decision, as well as a sartorial one.

I think I was also trying to distance myself as much as possible from those expats who haunt Sukhumvit Road's sleazier environs. I still get that weird, suspicious look when out by myself during the day - mostly from other westerners. The one where you just know they're thinking 'A man on his own, in a city like this? What's he up to?' But at least I haven't fallen into any of these traps -

http://bangkok.coconuts.co/2013/08/22/five-things-farang-men-must-stop-wearing

Vice versa...

Being an expat from Europe who moved to Asia so my wife could take a new job, I was interested to discover someone who has gone in the other direction - Jerry from the Philippines, who blogs about his new life in Switzerland as The Trailing Husband. Jerry seems like a cool guy - you can learn a little more about him here. I particularly liked his tips for the expat spouse, including "Accept that you no longer have the life you had in your home base. You are in a different country now where there’s a new way of living." Something more than a few European expats over here seem to forget.

Flat hunting in Bangkok

Once we arrived in the sprawling concrete chaos that we now call home, our first priority was to find somewhere to live. My lovely wife's employers had arranged for us to stay in a hotel - oddly they'd elected to put us up in the heart of Nana, one of Bangkok's least salubrious and most sleazy neighbourhoods - but we needed something more permanent. We'd been scanning the various internet ads for weeks to get an idea of what was available, and ended up with the impression that something odd was going on. The same apartments and condos kept appearing, week after week, seemingly staying on the market for months on end. Being used to London's cut-throat letting market, this seemed very strange. Our last London flat was on the market for one day - we were the first people to view it, and we called the agency to snap it up the moment we left, knowing from experience that it would be gone within a day or two. The only explanation we could see was that these properties were not actually available, but simply posted as bait ads to get you to call a particular letting agent.

This left us a little worried. What properties would actually be available? Would there be anything suitable in our price range? This concern was compounded by the expat cat - very few places seemed willing to take a pet. Still, we needed to find somewhere, and so we contacted a few agents and let them know what we were after.

The results came as a surprise - we needn't have worried. The rental market here is very different to what we were used to in London. The first agent we met said he knew of a place that would be ideal for us, and so we met him and took a taxi to the building. On arrival, he walked up to the office and asked if they had a one-bedroom apartment available. At this point, I started to become a little concerned. It seemed like this guy didn't know whether there was even an empty place here and was just chancing it. But it turned out there was one available, and we were given the keys and went to take a look.

Over the next few days, this pattern was repeated with different agents. What they knew, and we didn't, is that pretty much every apartment building and condo development in Bangkok has places available more or less all the time. Coming from the high-pressure, move fast or lose out market in London, this was a hugely pleasant surprise. Hunting for a home actually became a pleasurable experience for once, as we calmly made our way around viewing various different places, confident that we could take our time and choose carefully without needing to snap one up before someone else did. The sheer amount of choice on the market is such that we became glad of the limitations imposed by our furry flatmate, because it helped to narrow down our options to a manageable number - otherwise there would be such an overwhelming number of possibilities I don't know how we would have chosen. It became clear, too, that those ads we were so suspicious of were genuine after all - some of the places we saw were familiar from the photos we'd seen again and again online.

As it turned out, though, we ended up renting that very first place we saw. A spacious one-bedroom apartment just one storey above a magnificent pool, in a city full of high-rise shoeboxes. It became more and more apparent that we weren't going to find anything we liked more, and it was the cheapest place we found. We began the moving-in process, and had another pleasant surprise - no fees! Back in London, where letting agents charge an awful lot for very little, we were accustomed to handing over a few hundred quid in various fees, charges and other expenses. Here, nothing of the sort. The agents make their money from the landlord's side, and all we had to cough up was the deposit. No references required, no complicated bank transfers to arrange, just sign on the line, hand over some cash, and enjoy your new home. Like so many things here, wonderfully and refreshingly simple and easy. We're very happy here. But it's a little empty. Time to start filling it with some new possessions.

Getting here

Travelling from the UK to Bangkok for a holiday is one thing. Doing it with all your possessions in tow is quite another. For a start, the packing is a little more complicated. My first attempt resulted in a suitcase I had to sit on to close, weighing in at a whopping 12 kilos over the luggage allowance. At $55 a kilo, something was going to have to give. So, a few more 'essentials' go into storage. By the time the taxi arrives to take us to the airport, we've got everything down to the bare minimum. Two large suitcases crammed with stuff, and only a few kilos each over the limit. Two carry-on sized bags equally packed, and rather over the cabin baggage weight limit - but we're prepared for the nonchalant 'lift and swing' over the shoulder that says "Oh, this little bag? Light as a feather. No need to weigh this, nice check-in operative!". A smaller piece of hand luggage each as permitted by the airline - handbag for her, laptop bag for him. A cello - that most beautiful and unwieldy of instruments -  in its hard case. And our intrepid expat cat, inserted under some duress into her carrier and occasionally bleating in a quizzical manner.

As we struggle through the airport, its the latter that attracts the most attention. Not many people fly with a cat, or are even aware that it's possible, and she's become quite a celebrity by the time we reach the check-in desk. Where, comically, we're greeted by a trainee, visibly bemused by this stressed-looking couple with a huge amount of luggage plus a cat and a fiddle. This, it seems, has not yet been covered in her training. Gradually, with the help of the nice lady at the adjacent counter, we figure out what to do. The cello has it's own seat, and thus is checked in as if it was a third passenger - our misshapen, musical offspring. Strangely, whilst this inanimate object is treated as a person, the by-now resigned to her fate travelcat is processed as a piece of excess luggage, for which a fee must be paid at some distant counter. My wife is despatched to pay this fee whilst I continue the check-in process. What's next? You need the card that the flights were booked with? That'll be the one my wife has just taken with her to the mysterious excess baggage counter. So the trainee and I fill the time with a nice little chat as the growing queue looks on. "No", she says "I haven't had anyone check in with a cat before. I knew it was possible - but who does a thing like that?". Weirdos like us, apparently.

As luck would have it, all this complication and confusion plays in our favour. By the time my wife returns from her far-flung financial errand, the poor trainee has had enough of us, and despite a raised eyebrow at the weight readout when we heave our suitcases onto the belt, elects to waive the excess baggage fees in the name of an easy life - saving us several hundred pounds in the process. Quite a result.

After this, our final barrier is the security check. Arriving at the metal detectors, we're advised to remove any laptops and electrical devices from our hand luggage to go through the little tunnel separately. This rather complicates my passage through, as I'm carrying a laptop, a miniature PC and an Xbox in my hand luggage. As I load them into their separate trays I feel the shameful gaze of our fellow passengers upon me. What sort of person, they're wondering, takes an Xbox on holiday?

Our furry friend is not to be fed through the x ray machine, but I am obliged to remove her from the safe haven of her carrier. I'd been concerned about this in advance - she's not an easy cat to hold on to, and I have visions of her fleeing into the airport, never to be seen again. Luckily, the security people seem unfazed by the scenario, and after I pass through the beeping hoop alone, we're whisked off to a private side room where I can remove her so her empty carrier can be scanned. The door is left ajar, though, and I'm still nervous about her fleeing, but she hugs close to me, clearly fearful of this strange environment. I've never managed to hold her still for anywhere near this length of time, and she only struggles when her carrier is returned - such is her eagerness to return to the cosy safe haven that she practically leaps out of my arms into it, a sharp contrast to the struggle involved in getting her in there in the first place.

Our furry co-passenger, rather unimpressed with her temporary accommodation.

After this, things are fairly straightforward. Boarding the plane is a little awkward with our extra burdens, but the cabin crew are delighted to meet our furry companion. During the flight she snoozes at my feet, with none of the non-stop howling I was concerned about - just an occasional, questioning miaow, the cat equivalent of 'are we there yet?'.

On arrival at Bangkok's rather grand (and hard to pronounce) Suvarnabhumi airport, we locate the animal quarantine officer, who turns out to be a rather fun, chatty type. He cheerfully processes her documents whilst asking curious questions about the odd farang couple before him. 'You play?', he asks, gesturing at the cello. No, I tell him, my wife does. 'Aha, and you drink!'. Well, maybe. But don't tell her that.

Once the paperwork is complete, and a few hundred baht handed over, he cheerfully sends us on our way. Having read up on the next stage of the process - presenting the documents to the customs officials and negotiating what duty is to be paid on our cuddly cargo - I ask if we should progress through the red channel. 'No no', he says. She is hard to see in her carrier anyway, so he advises us to simply pass through the 'nothing to declare' channel and hope for the best! So this we do, trying to look nonchalant and hoping she doesn't miaow at the wrong moment. My hand luggage falls off my trolley as we pass the watchful eyes of the customs people, and I swoop it up in one smooth movement, not daring to stop for a second in case they notice the eyes peering out of the odd-shaped bag on top of my suitcase. Thankfully, they're entirely disinterested, and we're soon over this final hurdle and find ourselves entering freely into the 'Land of Smiles', our new home!