Murray Ceff's Blog

We've met some interesting characters here in Bangkok. Maybe the most inspiring was Tom. I wish I had taken a photo of him. He is a sprightly senior man, a full head of wavy grey hair, probably very close to me in height and weight (172cm, 68kg) maybe a bit smaller, and in good shape. I guessed he was in his mid-70s. We had breakfast with Tom and his wife on Tuesesday morning, and then yesterday morning we chatted while in the foyer while they waited for a taxi. I wished we had long to talk to Tom, but one thing I've always  been good at is getting people  to talk about themselves. When we had breakfast together, he told us how old he is. Eighty-four years old. So I got him talking about what he does to keep healthy. Every second day he does 100 push ups. The other days he walks 2 miles. That's pretty darned impressive for an 84 year old. I found that to be pretty inspiring! If you took my kitesurf and SUP surf sessions out of my exercise routine, he actually does mor...

The Bangkok English speaking ward was scheduled to start their Sunday meetings at 10.30am on Sunday. We'd had a late night of course, not arriving at the airport until 11.30pm, but  we figured that even with a bit of a sleepin we would still have plenty of time to get to Church by 10.30am, especially  when we found that we only had to go 2 stops on the underground to get there. We went down to the foyer of the Mini R Hotel, and spoke with the person at the desk, hoping for directions to the station. Another Aussie guy nearby overheard and offered to help. He told us that the Thaliand Culture Centre railway station was just a few hundred metres down the road and we couldn't miss it. Well, we did miss it, and by a fairly large margin! Always be careful  using Google Maps! The problem is that if you search for "Thailand Cultural Centre", Google maps will show you where that is, but it won't show you where the "Thailand Cultural Centre MRT station" is. I...

Margot and I are currently  in Thailand. Today is Wednesday 3rd February 2020. We arrived here in Bangkok on Monday night at 11.30pm. We had a fairly uneventful trip really. A 3 hour layover in Singapore gave us time to have something to eat, which in itself was not worth writing about, except to say that as a guy that only eats fish and chicken meats and avoids chilli, Asian food generally  does not seem to give me many choices. I'll  write about why and how I changed my diet another time. That's not what I intended to write about this morning. We are staying at the Mini R Hotel on Ratchadaphisek Rd in Bangkok. Right next door to us is the Bangkok International Dental Centre. Yesterday I spent 2 hours in the morning getting prepared to have work started on 4 crowns in the afternoon. I need 1 bottom and 3 top teeth crowned. Then in the afternoon  I ended up spending  4 hours in the chair! So 6 hours in total in one day "at the dentist"! It's not a way that I w...