Season 2 Archives - Bangkok Podcast: Recent Episodes
As Evo reflects on the 2.5 years spent in Thailand and as your co-host on the Bangkok Podcast, he’s come to love a lot of things about living in Bangkok. Soon, he’ll be repatriated to the recently-made-great-again America, and things just aren’t going to be the same.
In no particular order, here are 10 things Evo’s going to miss about living in Bangkok:
• Amazing and immediate access to healthcare
• Not paying $65 or more for a massage
• No seasons or extreme weather
• Having cheat codes for bad traffic (see: motorbike)
• Seeing the Chao Phraya river every day
• A pleasant income tax experience
• Never moving furniture
• Ying, the greatest housekeeper ever. (Seriously, get in touch with Evo if you need a great and reliable housekeeper!)
• The Skytrain/BTS
• and finally, spending time with you every week as the co-host of the Bangkok Podcast. You are awesome!
The post Bye Bye Bangkok- Season Two Finale [Season 2, Episode 72] appeared first on Bangkok Podcast.
Though various types of pestilence plagued all of your hosts, two of of us managed to muster the necessary strength to record the episode this week. You’re welcome. (Hi again, Ed!)
We’ve a special guest on this week that anyone into in finance in Bangkok probably knows, Mr. Andrew Stotz, Ph.D. He’s an award-winning equity analyst, the current President of the CFA Society Thailand, and the founder and CEO of A. Stotz Investment Research. Prior to that he spent 20 years working global investment banks in Asia, and has been a university lecturer in finance for more than two decades. Voted the #1 investor in Thailand by his peers several times over, he's also a co-founder of CoffeeWORKS Co. Ltd., Thailand’s specialty coffee roaster. He and Greg chat about investing in Thailand at the lay-person level, since many of us aren’t the most well-versed in financial options.
The post Investing in Thailand: Risk & Reward with Andrew Stotz [Season 2, Episode 71] appeared first on Bangkok Podcast.
On the first show in our new series that digs into some of Bangkok’s better-known ‘hoods, we ask: did you know that Bangkok (that is, Thailand’s modern capital) is not the original Bangkok? Nope! The first Bangkok (that is, the new capital after Ayutthaya was thrashed by the Burmese) was a little town called Thonburi. But, that didn’t last long. Another little village called Bangkok became the new, new capital and Thonburi became a sleepy suburb.
But after only 236 years, Thonburi is about to step into the limelight in a big way. How, you ask? Malls! Trains! Hotels! Markets! Craft beer! And...cable cars?
The post Neighborhood Focus: Thonburi, the Original Bangkok [Season 2, Episode 70] appeared first on Bangkok Podcast.
As you heard last week, Evo’s time as co-host is coming to a close in a few short weeks. But as promised, we’ve already secured a new voice for season 3 of the Bangkok Podcast, and it’s a voice you’re already familiar with. Ed Knuth, a teacher at Thammasat University, guest hosted the Thai Smile episode a few weeks back, giving us one of our most popular recent episodes. So thanks to you, he’ll soon be the regular voice behind the mic.
The three of us gathered at Jack’s bar on the banks of the beautiful, pristine Chao Phraya river in Bangkok to discuss how living in Thailand for long or short durations changes your perception. Is it easier to deal with “This Is Thailand” when the little peculiarities Thailand throws at you become just part of the scenery? Or is long term exposure bad for your mental health? Or perhaps it’s a cycle, leading from love to loathe to just living?
The post What’s Next for Season 3 of the Bangkok Podcast? [Season 2, Episode 69] appeared first on Bangkok Podcast.
One of the OG travel bloggers, Matt Kepnes, AKA Nomadic Matt, joins the program with all kinds of stories, tips, and reflections on travel on his site NomadicMatt.com. He even has a NYTimes best-selling book on how to travel the world on a budget! He's a hard guy to pin down, but he recently came through town on his way to New Zealand, and he very kindly let Greg to discuss an important question: Why do people (him included!) keep coming back to Bangkok?
Speaking of catching up with friends, but on a much sadder note… the Bangkok expat community is a little smaller and sadder, with the recent passing of Eric Seldin. He was funny, warm, entertaining, and wise, and always had a good story to tell from his decades of working around Asia. In his memory, go spend some quality time with those you love but haven’t caught up with recently, OK?
The post Why Do People Keep Coming Back to Bangkok? [Season 2, Episode 68] appeared first on Bangkok Podcast.
The thought of spending a few days on an island in Thailand sounds about as close to paradise as a westerner can get: blue water, white sand, the works! But the reality of it is a little different than the picture in your mind, and you might want to adjust your expectations a bit when visiting an island in Thailand.
And speaking of Thailand as a great vacation destination, we really do want to meet you when you come through Bangkok. Please reach out and we’ll see if we can get our schedules to align so we can grab a beer, coffee, or even a meal together. We love it!
The post Thailand Island Vacation Realities Exposed [Season 2, Episode 67] appeared first on Bangkok Podcast.
Yes, there are too many plastic bags floating -- literally -- around Bangkok. But rather than you listen to just more expat bitching, we brought on a local Thai person who’s doing more than just bitching about the problem. Joey Liptapanlop is roping in his fellow citizens to start a grassroots movement aimed at… 7-11?
Did you know that Thailand is the 6th worst plastic polluter in the world? That’s thanks to the 1.03 million metric tons of plastic Thais release into the water. Joey and his crew want to do something about that, and this seems like the generation to (finally) get it done.
The post Bangkok vs. Plastic Bags [Season 2, Episode 66] appeared first on Bangkok Podcast.
You’ve probably heard of “the Thai smile”, or know that Thailand is referred to as “the Land of Smiles”. Both of those phrases are well-earned, but that whole smiling thing is more than something done just in the hospitality space. For many Thais, smiling in a situation is a default reaction, even when the experience they are smiling at is a negative one.
Like when a dog almost eats a small child and the owner’s reaction is to smile it off. Oh, and that’s not a hypothetical. It happened to Greg’s kid. Or when a Thai driver almost hits a pedestrian and just smiles and waves. Also not hypothetical, as our special guest Ed Knuth (filling in for Evo Terra this week) will tell you.
The post Breaking Down The Thai Smile [Season 2, Episode 65] appeared first on Bangkok Podcast.
To help us ring in 2018, we’re bringing back a prior guest on his annual pilgrimage to Bangkok. Frank Smith from UC Berkeley teaches Khmer to children of Cambodian refugees. We caught up with him in person at Bangkok’s Central World mall… before we got kicked out by security. Yes, again. Not just because one of us made a foot faux pas.
What’s it like for a Thai speaker who doesn’t live in Thailand to plop back into Bangkok, suddenly surrounded by other Thai speakers? There are actually lot of ways to keep up with the evolving language, thanks to the pervasive nature of the internet.
The post Cultural Takeaways With Educator Frank Smith [Season 2, Episode 64] appeared first on Bangkok Podcast.
Before we start, we have to mention a recent news story from Bangkok, which is appropriate considering the topic of tonight's show. You may recall we discussed traffic on episode 2.27 -- Blood on the Highway: Thailand’s Seven Deadly Days of Songkran. On that episode we mentioned that Thailand was the second-most deadly country in the world for road fatalities. Well, not anymore - we’re #1!
That’s a good way to set up the rest of the program, as it’s all about an accident we (yes, both of us) were recently involved in. Explaining what happened is tricky, but it involved doubling-up on a motorbike taxi without helmets, a possibly illegal Uber driver, three different quasi-cops, a crazy chicken lady, and someone high up in the taxi mafia (Probably. Possibly. Actually, we have no idea who he was). It’s a story you have to hear to understand.
The post A Motorcycle Meets A Car Door In Bangkok [Season 2, Episode 63] appeared first on Bangkok Podcast.