A Question of Time

I have had a life long fascination with time, not only am I very intolerant of people who are bad time keepers but am personally fanatical about timekeeping. It is almost an obsession to always be at an appointment at least 5 minutes early,and if for some reason I am late it drives me crazy. Speaking to family members it seems that as a child I was always completely fascinated with watches,and clocks and learned to tell the time at a very young age. This has developed into a mania for wrist watches and I currently own about 30, ranging from very cheap plastic cased digitals to my prized possessions, a Rolex and an Omega.In fact when we toured the far east in 1999 I purchased no less than 7. I can never leave the house not wearing a watch, in fact the first thing I do when I wake is to put on my watch.

Writing of our trip to the far east has put me in mind of something which I had not thought of and that is a memory of buying a "fake" Rolex divers watch from a night street market on Koh Samui, the stall holder was a ladyboy and the purchase was the end result of 25 minutes of bartering of the most hilarious kind bringing the price down from the original £40 to £6!

This has also reminded me that I have been remiss in not finding out the extent of the damage done to the island by the tsunami, I will do this as soon as I can and I hope and pray that the wonderfull people of this beautiful place are not too badly affected.
Thailand has in some way been given a bad name due to the so called "sex tourists" and I know from experience that there are some who will not visit for this reason, They are missing out on a country of great beauty, culture, and a people who are one of the friendliest I have ever met. The Grand Palace in Bangkok is worth the journey alone. Another time I will tell more of our time in Thailand and also of Hong Kong.