Skates and Scooters in Thailand
I think I mixed up my packing lists. I packed my bags for five months’ working remotely in hot and humid Southeast Asia, to meet some of our team on the ground, and explore further into the region I love the most, so why did my hockey skates take up the most room?
Hockey has always been front and centre in my life, the thing that brings me the most joy. And I had heard whispers of a few arenas popping up in Thailand, Malaysia, and Cambodia. Some internet sleuthing later, and I found myself in touch with an organization in Northern Thailand (just outside of Chiang Mai) that ran a local arena, provided daily lessons and games for the hockey-playing Thais in the area, and had even graduated a few players to the Thai National hockey team. I agreed to teach some of the kids a couple times a week, joining the coaches already in place, to attempt to impart some Canadian hockey wisdom to these aspiring players.
I have never felt more like a local, and less like a tourist, than leaving Chiang Mai, driving my scooter for 30 minutes twice weekly down a ‘rustic’ highway to the arena. The families would greet me every time with food, drinks, and gifts. They invited me to their family Christmas parties. We would hang out after the practice, drinking Leo, Chang, or Singha beer and we would try our best to chat and laugh with each other – language barriers be damned! The arena, which everybody helped maintain, felt like a community centre for these families – while I was helping out a couple times a week, most were there every evening. To see a sport from home so dear to my heart helping create new communities and opportunities in a tropical, faraway land was truly heartwarming.
As I moved around the Southeast Asian region, with my skates always the cause of my luggage weight overage fees, I needed to find more (and justify their place in my bag). Phnom Penh, Cambodia has a new ice ‘dome’ and I connected with the ex-pat running it. Similar experiences in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (playing on a rink inside a giant shopping mall) and Bangkok, Thailand (at the newly-constructed National arena commissioned by the King of Thailand) yielded an alternative look at those cities. In lieu of the locals playing in Northern Thailand I was introduced to the ex-pat communities of those cities, full of Canadians and Europeans who had set up a new life.
When travelling the world, finding a common bond with the people that live there, especially one as unlikely as hockey in Southeast Asia, allows one to pull back the curtain and see beyond the tourist lens. You get a more fulsome feel for the kaleidoscope of lives lived there and, if you’re lucky, for a brief moment you feel like you’re one of them.
