Episodes

Greg and Ed discuss an important conundrum facing expats and tourists in Thailand: When sick or injured, should you go to a private Thai hospital or a public one? The difference in cost is substantial, typically somewhere between a factor of three and ten. For major procedures you probably want to spring for private care, if you can, but for ‘standard’ things like stitches and sprains, is a public hospital okay? Greg begins with the very recent story of his son needing stitches for a split lip....

Greg interviews resident legal expert Dave Lawrence about the ins and outs of interacting with police officers in Bangkok. The guys begin by going over the various options for run-ins with the boys in brown in Bangkok, which run the gamut of being stopped while walking down the street, while riding a motorbike, or while in a taxi or car at a checkpoint. The guys run through their own personal experiences, which luckily turned out harmless enough. Greg then queries Dave about a person’s exact ri...

Greg and Ed discuss whether or not they prefer to be treated the same as Thai people are treated. On the one hand, after living in Thailand for twenty years, the guys feel like they’ve ‘earned’ the right to be accepted into Thai society and be treated with the same respect a Thai person would be. Ed recounts his frustration with meeting Thai people who do not ‘wai’ him even after learning that he is an ajarn at a Thai university. On the other hand, to be TRULY Thai, the boys would also be subjec...

Ed interviews his old friend Jim Cirillo, a good example of a repeat tourist (or re-tourist) to Thailand, the sizeable population of people all over the world who keep coming back to Thailand but for a variety of reasons have decided not to live here. A global Thailand fan club, if you will. The guys begin by recounting Jim’s first visit to Thailand in 2002, when traffic was even more chaotic and elephants roamed the streets of Bangkok. Fast forward to 2016, and Jim returned to get a break from...

Sparked by a , Greg and Ed consider the ways in which Thai public transportation misses the mark. Granted, both guys agree that overall, public transportation in Thailand is actually pretty good, and miles ahead of where it was when they got here. The...

Greg interviews Gary Butler or ‘The Roaming Cook’ about his YouTube channel and the wonders of food in Thonburi, the cool side of the Chao Praya River. Gary begins with some background information: he’s a native Londoner who had a career as a house painter (!) but who started a Thai food blog back in 2015. He eventually moved to Thailand and began a YouTube channel focusing on street food throughout the city. However the guys quickly focus on the Thonburi side of Bangkok, which Greg points out ...

Greg and Ed go over the election results, with Ed leading the way and doing his best to evaluate his pre-election predictions. First, Ed discusses the obvious way the election was NOT a surprise: the conservative parties (UTN, Palang Pracharath, and the Democrats) were destroyed as expected. If anything, their decimation was even worse than expected. Second, Ed mentions how the election did involve somewhat of a shocker: the Move Forward Party overperformed and actually beat the Pheu Thai Party...

Greg and Ed discuss their personal experiences as victims of crime in Bangkok. Greg opens with a recap of his recent bike theft story which has been discussed in more detail on the bonus show. Although the bike has yet to be retrieved, the Thai police were surprisingly responsive and professional. Greg then relates a couple encounters with pickpockets and an odd experience with an angry street kid. All in all, not bad for twenty years in a giant, teeming metropolis. Ed then talks about his exper...

Greg interviews Ryan Cullinan of the . The guys open with a discussion of the nature of blood donation: everyone knows it exists, everyone knows they SHOULD do it, but due to lack of social pressure, many people never donate. Greg manned up though for...

In this show, Ed does his best to summarize the Thai political parties contesting the upcoming elections, as well as their various policy positions. As an overview, Ed notes a couple general themes. One is the possible return to power of the Pheu Thai party, the heir to the previous Thai Rak Thai party and Shinawatra clan. Thai people are not entirely sure whether they want to fully turn the page on the previous era in Thai politics, and this election will do a lot to settle this issue. Second, ...

In a unique episode, the guys take six characteristics of a ‘livable city’ (established by renowned urban planner Alex Garvin) and give their own opinions on how Bangkok fares. Neither guy knows what the other is gonna say, so part of the fun is seeing where they agree and disagree. The first characteristic is that a city must be open to people with different backgrounds and goals. The guys roughly agree on this issue, with Greg giving Bangkok a score of 7 and Ed a score of 6. The second charac...

Greg interviews Wiramrudee ‘Pink’ Mokkhavesa, an attorney at the law firm of in Bangkok. Tilleke is one of the most well-known firms in the city, and it is probably most famous for its intellectual property group, which leads the fight against...

Greg and Ed take up the somewhat grim topic of motorbike accidents in Thailand. As this episode is essentially the Songkran episode for this year, the timing could not be more appropriate because more people die in road accidents during the ‘7 dangerous days’ around the holiday than during any other time of the year. Ed takes the lead and tries to break down the situation. First, Thai roads in general are just more dangerous than almost anywhere in the world, most likely due to lax enforcement ...

Greg interviews Pailin Chongchitnant of , a returning guest from Season 3, Episode 4. Pailin begins with a basic introduction to her YouTube channel: she de-mystifies Thai cuisine (and how to cook it) to the English-speaking world. Each video...

Greg begins by explaining the momentous time we live in: soon there will be a general election in the Land of Smiles. He turns to Ed, allegedly a professor of political science, to give a primer (long ‘i’) on the upcoming election scene, but with a focus on how we got here in the first place. Ed begins by going all the way back to the elections of 2000, when Thailand was reeling from the economic crisis of 1997 and straddled with billions of dollars of debt to the IMF. On to the scene marched a...

This is the second part of a two part interview with Paul and Yuangrat Wedel, longtime scholars and writers on Thai history and society. The first part of the interview focused on the roots of radicalism in Thai politics, especially the cultural impact of the Hindu ‘sakdina’ system. The second part begins with a discussion of the 1932 coup that led to the dissolution of absolute monarchy. Paul explains the education of both Pridi Banomyong and Phibul Songkhram in France, and their desire to bri...

Greg and Ed interview a fascinating and very erudite couple, Paul and Yuangrat Wedel. Paul, a native of New Jersey, met Yuangrat, a native of Nakhon Si Thammarat, in Bangkok in the late 1970s and through various twists and turns ended up both getting advanced degrees in the States and carrying on a romance and eventually getting married. (Their daughter, documentary filmmaker Pailin Wedel, is a former guest of the show, as is Pailin’s husband Patrick). After setting up their life in Thailand, w...

Greg and Ed look at a few recent world rankings to see where Thailand fits into a world with nearly two hundred different countries. First, Greg brings up the ‘Global Power City Index,’ a comprehensive ranking of 48 large cities around the world that focuses on a city’s ‘magnetism’ or ability to attract visitors and expats. Greg outlines some of the factors measured, including livability, environment, economy and cultural interaction. Ed guesses that Bangkok will probably rank fairly low based o...

This is Part 2 of our epic interview with Richard Barrow, giant among expats in Thailand. In the second half of the discussion, Richard continues with explaining his slow rise as a ‘citizen journalist,’ first simply documenting his travels around Thailand, but eventually becoming a chronicler for English-speakers of daily events in the country. The yellow and red shirt political struggles and natural disasters such as the floods of 2011 meant that the expat community was in serious need of a ded...

Greg and Ed meet the icon Richard Barrow in Samut Prakan and interview him about his unusual life in Thailand. Richard begins by explaining his life roaming Asia as a young man on his way to Australia. By chance he made some connections in Thailand at a small Thai school in Samut Prakan, leading to a quaint few weeks experiencing ‘real’ Thai culture, wholly separate from the normal touristed locations. The memory stuck with him and he subsequently returned to become a teacher at the school, and ...

Unless you’ve been living under a rock lately, you’ve probably heard of ChatGPT, a brand new AI writing tool that produces some shockingly advanced stuff. It’s only a few months old but it’s already threatening to upend a number of industries in a big way. So, in a slightly odd show that shows how technologically hip the Bangkok Podcast is, Greg and Ed discuss ChatGPTs take on Bangkok and Thailand, Greg queries the new search engine with a host of questions about the Land of Smiles to see how m...

Ed interviews Sahajak “Poo” Boonthakit, Thai actor and entertainer. K. Poo begins by explaining his unusual childhood: his father was a Thai diplomat and when Poo was a young boy his family moved to Nairobi, Kenya, where Poo would spend the next 11 years. Poo discusses life in Kenya among Africans and Indians and white ‘colonialists,’ but also the incredible natural phenomena of the African savannah. However, in high school, Poo’s family would move to New York, where he at first became more Amer...

Greg and Ed get all deep by asking the question “Is Thailand really the Land of the Free?” And what does “freedom” even mean? Many people know that the word ‘Thailand’ is supposed to translate as the ‘Land of the Free.’ The guys first discuss the etymology of the word, with both Google and linguist friends revealing the actual provenance of that translation is unknown, and it’s possible that it is more of a folk belief than something linguistically legitimate. So how about in real life? Walking ...

Greg interviews Justin Dunne of ,’ a tour company in Bangkok that focuses on Thai ghost stories and their relevant locations. Justin is an old friend of Greg’s and after trading a few stories of the old days, the guys get into their mutual love of...