Happy New Year
Happy New Year

Happy New Year

Happy New Year
Happy New Year

Happy New Year

This is the last day of Christmas, so the trimmings will be coming down all over the Western World this evening. Along with the rain and the snow, so I have heard. Here in Thailand, it is a sunny, but cool evening of 31c and very nice it is too in the garden with a cold beer. Many of the houses I can see are sporting a Happy New Year and a Merry Christmas banner, but they don’t take them down until the monsoons do it for them in May.

The motivation is more how to get maximum value for money than laziness though, since there are at least three reasons for wishing people a Happy New Year in the first four months of the year that I know of.

Thais have adopted the Western New Year in January; then forty-odd percent of Thais have some Chinese ancestry, and he Chinese New Year is usually in February (I think); and finally, the best Thai holiday of the year, Songkhran, the Thai New Year in the middle of April.

Of the three, Songkhran is my favourite and I think that 99% of people who live here would agree. It is as if the whole nation becomes happy in the celebration of its cultural heritage.

So, it often seems that Thailand bounces along the first four months from one Happy New Year to the next, since many Thais get a substantial time off work for January 1st; the Chinese festival lasts a week and Songkhran is celebrated for at least three days, but up to ten, depending upon the location.
If you want to treat yourself to an exotic winter or spring holiday, why not try Thailand next time? I’m sure that you will not regret it.

By the way, ‘Sawut dee, Bpi Mai’ – Happy New Year – whichever one you have just celebrated.

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All the best,

Owen

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Owen

Owen Jones, Amazon Best-Selling Author from Barry, Wales, has lived in several countries and travelled in many more. While studying Russian in the USSR in the '70's, he hobnobbed with spies on a regular basis; in Suriname, he got caught up in the 1982 coup; and while a company director, he joined the crew of four as the galley slave to sail from Barry to Gibraltar a home-made concrete yacht, which was almost rammed by a Russian oil tanker and an American aircraft carrier.
“I am a Celt, and we are romantic”, he said when asked about his writing style, “and I firmly believe in reincarnation, Karma and Fate, so, sayings like 'Do unto another...', and 'What goes round comes around' are central to my life and reflected in my work. I write about what I see, or think I see, or dream... and, in the end it is all the same really”. He speaks seven languages and is learning Thai, since he lives in Thailand with his Thai wife of fifteen years.
His first novel, Daddy's Hobby is from the seven-part series 'Behind The Smile: The Story of Lek, a Bar Girl in Pattaya', but his largest collection is 'The Megan Series', twenty-three novelettes on the psychic development of a teenage girl, the subtitle of which, 'A Spirit Guide, A Ghost Tiger and One Scary Mother!' sums them up nicely. He has written fifty novels and novelettes, including: Dead Centre; Andropov's Cuckoo; Fate Twister; The Disallowed (a philosophical comedy); Tiger Lily of Bangkok; and A Night in Annwn (Annwn being the ancient Welsh word for Heaven). Many have been translated into foreign languages and narrated into audio books.
Owen Jones writes stories set in Wales, Spain and Thailand, where he now lives. He is a life-long Spiritualist, and this belief is interwoven, in a very realistic way, into many of his books and storylines. If you like a touch of the 'supernatural', try his books
He sums his life up thus: “Born in the Land of Song, Living in the Land of Smiles”.

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