Today makes twenty-five years since I arrived in Southeast Asia.
I flew into Bangkok late one sultry afternoon and after checking into an inexpensive hotel in Sukhumvit Road, I threw myself on the bed and went into a deep sleep. Even short flights are enervating. I woke in the evening starving and went in search of a new eating place where I could enjoy Bangkok’s famed street food. I walked past all the restaurants that I was familiar with; the expensive and touristy ones and those at the other end.
As I strolled up and down arguably the Thai capital’s most famous street, all the TVs in the bars, the restaurants and the food courts were showing the same movie: planes crashing into skyscrapers. The chyrons were in Thai. I wondered which Steven Spielberg movie it was because most Thai people were just chatting or eating, ignoring the screens. The tourists were more interested in the beer and the bar girls. After dinner, I went back to my hotel room for an early sleep. It wasn’t until the next morning that I read the Bangkok Post.
My personal September 11, 2001 was the start of a new chapter in my life. Just how major it would turn out to be, I never imagined. Taking a long break from a business in India that was sapping me, I arrived in Bangkok to do a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) course. Months later, after receiving my certification, I decided to stay on for a few more weeks and get some practical experience. Despite all the assurances when I had registered for the course that jobs were plentiful, the reality turned out to be quite different. I suspected that there was a reluctance to hire me. How could a non-white teacher be a native speaker of English? I registered on a volunteer program at the city’s main Catholic cathedral and after about a week, got a call from one of Thailand’s leading hospitals. Would I be free to meet the dean of their nursing college? My work would entail raising the English levels of student nurses and other staff with limited language skills. I enjoyed working at the college. Though I was just an ordinary language teacher, I was treated like a respected member of the medical staff. I met some terrific people and till today we remain close friends. Many of them keep an open house for me and I rarely book a hotel when passing through the Thai capital.
Life in Bangkok was hectic but friends were surprised that I had never been to the flesh spots of Patpong, Nana or Cowboy. By chance – and chance was to play a large part in the coming years – I made friends with a Thai businessman, a real gourmet. Two or three times a week we would try a new eating place; from fancy high-end restaurants to streetside stalls. Bangkok’s famed street food was often flavored with the fumes of Bangkok’s famed traffic jams. My friend invited me to a few private parties, where I could smell money. I was always the lone foreigner there. Years later, we would spend long weekends staying in various temples. I got to like the monks’ way of life.
One amusing incident comes always to mind. An American friend had been invited to tea by a Thai senator. He took me along and we entered a huge hall with the heavy wooden chairs the kind favored in this part of the world. All over the walls were framed photographs of people that the politician had met: King Hussein of Jordan, President Bush, Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, Arab royalty and various Asian politicians. For some reason, the senator asked me to sit next to him on a podium. We chatted about various things and he told me how much he appreciated the Indian custom of touching the feet of elders. And he bent down and touched my feet to demonstrate how it was done. I sensed everybody in the room staring at me. When we left, his hangers-on bowed and pushed people out of my way. But a few days later, I received a request for a loan of fifty million baht!
Work permits and visa renewals were always a hassle and after a couple of months when another job-hunting friend told me about a well-respected Australian language school in neighboring Laos, I applied for a job. The owner/director replied saying that there were no vacancies but he would still like to meet me one day. We did so about one month later when he came to Bangkok to sign a very big contract. Probably because he was in a good mood, he offered me a job on the spot.
I arrived in Vientiane, the capital of Laos (officially the Lao PDR) on April Fool’s Day 2002.
My intended three-month sojourn has stretched on for a quarter of a century. This means that I’ve spent fully one-third of my life, living, working, and travelling in Southeast Asia. True, there have been numerous trips back to India, Australia and countries beyond. But this is the region where my heart rests.
When I moved to Laos, the nursing college faculty and students gave me a farewell party. Faux humility didn’t allow me to believe some of the over-the-top speeches. One of the students started crying and wanted to marry me. Months later, seven of the staff turned up in Vientiane to force me to go back. For a couple of days, I had seven women, including the dean, occupying the bedrooms upstairs, while I slept on the sofa downstairs.
At first, I didn’t like Vientiane. After Bangkok, a city that never slept, the Lao capital was positively soporific. In Bangkok, I usually got back to my apartment after midnight. In Vientiane, the city was almost in total darkness by 9.00 pm. The rural feel of the place was half a century behind the atmosphere of the school where I taught. I decided to leave at the end of that semester. At my interview in Bangkok, the larger-than-life owner had told me that nobody ever left his school unless they were returning to their home countries. Over the years it turned out to be absolutely true. Vientiane grew on me.
Standards in the school were high and no expense was spared in giving the students value for money. But if the school philosophy was to work hard, it was also to play hard. There were parties galore and invitations to the year-end Christmas ball were much sought after.
I started helping an Indian diplomat teach impoverished children early Sunday mornings in a local temple. Laos was hosting its first international summit and the embassy asked for help to manage the delegation from India. With a 300-man delegation attending, the Indians needed extra parking and other allotments. Since I was dating a woman from the Southeast Asia desk requests from either side went through me!
One day, I was in a computer room in the prime minister’s office, when an Indian cabinet minister came in. We were alone for about ten minutes and it was my job to talk with him. I just didn’t like the look of him and totally ignored him. Months later, I felt vindicated when he was forced to resign following some scandal.
My teaching hours were only in the evenings. This left my days free, though the director would often send me out on day-time projects. He called me his trouble shooter. I did off-site work with many ministries sponsored mainly by the Australian government. Chance and contacts started playing a large part in my life. Through the school, I became lead writer at the Lao Business Forum, an International Finance Corporation (IFC) initiative. As the sister organisation of the World Bank, I was appointed to the Bank’s Panel of Editors.
It was my second term at the school and I was still a rookie. Some of the students must have sensed it. One day as I was playing one of my favourite Queen songs in class as a ‘cloze’ listening activity, The three French women at the back were whispering and laughing. Then the ‘ringleader’ came up to me and said that she preferred dancing to listening and asked for a dance! I was not going to be intimidated though I wondered if I would have a job the next day. The woman’s husband was some high-up in the French hierarchy and through him, I started getting a lot of editing and teaching contracts. I got a top-dollar project with a senior French official advising the Ministry of Finance who wanted to practice his conversation skills. We discussed his country’s politics, football and literature. It helped that Albert Camus and Arsène Wenger were two of my favourite French people.
One contact led to another and I became friends with a French epidemiologist. He told me that he was unable to get his papers published in English journals despite doing some cutting edge research. I offered to try editing his papers and soon his work started appearing in some prestigious British and American medical journals. The Institut Francophonie de Médecine Tropical (IFMT) accepting realities introduced English into its curriculum and I was asked to teach students preparing for their masters in France or Canada. I was given free rein to teach whatever I wanted and since I had no clinical knowledge, I did an online course in epidemiology and then taught bio ethics. The UN later hired me to give private lessons to a minister and I ended up also writing his international speeches.
More chance and more contacts and when the publisher of the Lao Airlines inflight magazine offered me the editor’s job, I accepted it with no journalistic experience whatsoever. Later, I became the editor and one of the founders of Oh! Magazine, a Southeast Asia-centric general interest magazine. I can confidently state that this publication was one of the best journals that ever came out of the region.
As much as I enjoyed the variety of my work, the most satisfying assignment was with a 75-year-old Catholic nun. A colleague and Vietnam War-vet asked me to take over from him as he was going back to Australia for more PTSD therapy. Her English was very good and instead, she helped me with French and Lao, Vietnamese and Thai. She tried teaching me cooking, gardening, sewing, drawing, origami, music and half-a-dozen other skills with no success. She was twenty-five years older than me but I couldn’t keep up with her energy levels. I was supposed to visit her once a week but ended up going there two or three times instead because she recharged my batteries. Her face lit up every time she saw me and she told me that I was her cup of caffeine. My feelings were reciprocated a hundred times over. Early one morning she invited me to breakfast. I asked what the matter was but she sort of ordered me to be there by 7.30 am. Her wish was always my command. That morning I had breakfast with four high-level Vatican diplomats and the papal nuncio from Bangkok. Pope John Paul II had sent them to discuss religious freedom with the government. Once in mock anger, the French ambassador banged on a table demanding that I use my contacts with the Vietnamese government (I had none) to get a visa for the nun, who wanted to visit a sick relative in Hué. The director of my school once teased me that when his teachers were absent, it was because they were sick. I was the only one taking off to attend diplomatic parties.
I missed my dear friend the nun, when in her mid-80s she was sent to a retirement home in another province. Then one day as she lay dying, she asked for me. I rushed to see her in Thakhek, 336 km away. The nuns praying at her bedside said she smiled when they whispered that I had arrived. She passed away later that night at the age of 94. I lost a part of me too.
In my time in Southeast Asia, I broke a few hearts and vice versa. Then I found gold.
Over the years, some of my closest friends have moved on, either back to their home countries or to the next world. I still miss them tremendously.
I struggle to think of unpleasant experiences I’ve had in Southeast Asia. Honestly, none come to mind. On the contrary, I’ve often felt that I’ve received privileged treatment. During the Covid years, my landlord refused to charge me any rent. It took a lot of effort to convince him that the school was paying my salary in full without any work.
Though I’ve been a big fish in a small pond in Laos, discretion demands that I don’t mention many of my experiences.
The last twenty-five years have been good to me. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the next twenty-five years will be more of the same!
©Percy Aaron
September 2026