My Trip to Thailand

When traveling east from Sri Lanka I generally travel through Thailand and transit in Bangkok. However I rarely get an opportunity to meet the people on the road as I am in a rush of checking in and out of hotels and flights. In April I was in Bangkok for a training assignment and had the opportunity to interact with people in Bangkok. I enjoyed the interaction with shop keepers and street vendors. However, I saw a significant difference in the pulse of the ordinary people. There was a more tense feeling with quite a high degree of uncertainty given the political situation in Thailand. Even though the current Prime Minister has promised to hold elections the majority of the Thais feel that the Army has started a war along the Cambodian boarder to postpone or effectively suspend the constitution again.

The fight between the “old traditional Thai power base” and the “modern Thai power base” led by Thaksim. Some of the expatriates I met seem to think that Thailand is getting into a situation or a case of “Thailand having an Army that owns the country”; something similar to Pakistan. The Army seems to have a great say in the lives of the Thai people and the politicians.

Thailand still remains a polite and friendly place to visit, however it seems to have shot itself in the foot regarding the tremendous progress it had made in the economic and democratic frontiers. As I come from a country that has seen decades of civil war I hope that sanity will prevail and the Thai people can sort out their differences and get ahead.

My trip to Australia, Adelaide & Melbourne

The trip to Australia has many connotations, projects, jobs, fun etc. I started my journey (with my wife) without any expectations and reached my transit point of Singapore with relative comfort and uneventful. On the leg between Singapore and Adelaide we were unlucky to be seated next to a person who was clearly suffering from the flue, coughing and sneezing. When will the airlines seat such passengers in a different area of the flight? I wonder if I live to see such care by an airline; anyway reached Adelaide with the knowledge that, we have a high probability of getting the flue or at least a cold.

Australians are very strict in terms of anything you bring into Australia so being my first trip down under I din not anticipate the ques, baggage scanning and physical inspection for any food items etc. Man it just not worth the hassle to take anything to Australia. We reached out hotel (Granada Motor Inn) in the morning and had to wait for a while till our room was ready. It was a comfortable hand had a decent air conditioner coz the outside temperature was around 42 C. In the evening we went for a quick tour of Adelaide and had dinner at an award winning Korean restaurant. Dining in Australia is also a big thing.

The next day we went to an area north of Adelaide (Playford North) where a new federal government led development was being rolled out. Needless to say there are employment opportunities and project opportunities there. We met the people and had a look around to see if it was to our liking.

Between the 31^st of January and the 3^rd of February we were in Adelaide and had a good look around Adelaide. We ventured out alone on several occasions and found the public transport (Busses) to be the most economical mode of transport. On the 4^th of February we took a tiger airways flight to Avalon / Melbourne were a friend of my wife picked us up. We went straight to the Crown Casino to have lunch. You can be fooled when you are at Crown Casino thinking you are in Hong Kong or China as 90% of the punters are of Chinese origin.

After Lunch we went to the river bank / pier where there was a street carnival on account of the Chinese New Year of the Rabbit. It was great to observe how clean the street carnival was. Guess the minute emigrants from this part of the world go to Australia they become model citizens. Wonder what makes them behave like animals (my apologies to all animals) when they are in their own country?

In the evening we went to a nearby forest reserve to see some wild Kangaroos and were treated by some good sightings. On the way back to our friends place we went to a drive in liquor store which was unique for me. I hope that they would bring this concept to Colombo.

We had a BBQ for dinner (yes I had Kangaroo stakes) and had a great time with our friends. The next day we had to head back to Adelaide so; In the Morning We went to our friend’s restaurant for breakfast ZEST 89 and drove to Avalon to get back to Adelaide. I recommend anyone who visits Melbourne to at least have one meal at the ZEST 89 restaurant it is a great place.

We reached Adelaide by mid afternoon. We then took the Mount Lofty Scenic Route and went to Cleland Park for the afternoon to see the other wild life in a park environment. Cleland Park was an education. There I was able to see the famous “black swan” in real life. It is a truly remarkable astonishing site even though you have heard about it seeing one in real life was beautiful.

We stayed in Adelaide until the 8^th and took the flight back to Singapore. In Singapore we had arranged to meet some of our good friends for dinner. The immigration officers at Changi Air Port were a bit amused that we went out for 3 Hours. Anyway we returned to Colombo without incident and I am certain we will be going back to Australia in the near future.

Given the position of all the Asian countries and their role in the post financial crisis global economy Australia is a very attractive prospect vis-à-vis US and Europe.

My trip to Dhaka, Bangladesh, November & December 2010 & January 2011

January 2011

Back again at the Hotel De castle; it looks like I have spent more time here in the past 3 months than at home.

The original brief was to develop a Sustainability Plan for the organization. However, most managers confuse it with Resource Mobilization / Fund Raising Plans. Typically a Sustainability Plan involves a risk analysis of the organization comprising of Board, Executive Leadership, Resource Audits (Man, Money, Material & Technology / knowledge), HR, ICT, Finance and other support services systems audits plus a host of other environmental issues.

I cleared up this confusion and came to develop a Resource Mobilization Plan (Only Money); however, the team has not completed the budgets. So have to delay the process by a few days. Meanwhile I witnessed riots in Dhaka due to stock market crash yesterday. Stock price manipulation rings were very active in DSE over the past year and sent the stock prices way up beyond the wildest PE ratios possible for some companies. Just like what’s happening at the CSE in Sri Lanka. Most stocks trade much higher than PE ratio. Is this a prelude to what we can expect in the streets of Colombo I wonder?

Finally managed to develop the RM Plan for the organization; this is the end of the assignment for me and look forward to going back to Colombo.

December 2010

It’s good to be back in Dhaka and at the Hotel De Castle. Guess what its Harthal season again! I was in Bangladesh in 2006 and in 2008 for the then famous Harthal “Save Democracy” which was a success in overthrowing the elected government and appointing a caretaker government. However, during Harthal the general public and the visitors to Bangladesh suffers by having severe restrictions in free movement. I will spend 2 weeks in Dhaka for this assignment with the intention of developing the Vision, Mission, Values and Strategies of the organization.

It was hard work but managed to develop the Vision, Mission, Values and Strategies for the organization. During this process there was a one day Harthal, but it seems to have been a flop! What’s going on here, have the people finally realized not to go on Hartal for silly things? Well, we will just have to wait and see.

As part of the assignment I had to help the management team present the Vision, Mission, Values and Strategies to the board and get their comments and final approval. However there is an issue. The issue is that; the roles and responsibilities of governance and the executive branches of the organization are not clearly delineated to ensure efficient operations. In short there is a power struggle between the two. I have to manage this delicate process; otherwise all hell may break loose during the meeting and true to form, the consultant will be the fall guy.

You can read my article titled “Governance – Do we need to build capacity?” published in http://capacitydevelopment.ning.com/

The meeting with the board went off without any major hiccups and got the necessary approvals and consent for the next stage of the assignment.

November 2010

The assignment I undertook was to develop a new Vision, Mission, Values, Strategies and a corresponding Resource Mobilization plan and support services (Finance HR & IT) plans for Acid Survivors Foundation ASF http://www.acidsurvivors.org/ of Bangladesh. I will be staying at the Hotel De castle in Banani, Dhaka.

I must say that I was quite shocked at the number of people being attacked in Bangladesh and the physical and psychological damage it does to people. The major cause of attacks was economic (Dowry & Land). Given the poverty levels in Bangladesh I must say that I am not surprised. Having enough resources to go around for 160 + Million people is not a joke.

The irony is that at the United Nations (Put UN Web Site) review of the Millennium Development Goals (Put MDG review results Web Site) it was concluded that mot poor countries (including Bangladesh) were failing miserably in trying to reach the MGD’s. In my Humble opinion this is because most poor countries are not dealing with the white elephant in the room i.e. population growth. This is obviously considered a sensitive subject given the reluctance of politicians to take on the religious establishments head on be it Islam or the many denominations of Christianity. On the contrary this should be the main subject of discussion by far thinking politicians the world over.

For instance if Bangladesh were to implement strict policies to have ZERO growth in population for the next 10 years it would develop at a faster rate As even the slightest growth in the nations wealth will be held by a content population. This is common sense.

Most people misunderstand when we talk about zero population growth. They think that you are suggesting that people stop having children. In fact it does not mean that at all. It just means that your birth rate has to be equated to your death rate.

In the case of developing countries; the way that externally funded development sector project are implemented creates further frustrations within a given population and at times directly create political and social unrest. Most development sector professional (from the north countries as well as the south countries) don’t even understand this themselves. Consider the following. Most western donors advocate rights based projects. This means that all citizens will demand equal levels of services from the state irrespective of economic, social, political, ethnic or religious status. This in a developing country means that “now” 10,000 people line up for services as opposed to 1,000 people. The issue is that the rights based development project itself does not have any or enough funding to cater for the newly generated demand. The funds are only available to create and sustain the demand by the citizenry. So now the poor government has to serve a larger number of people with the same or slightly increased budget. This only means that in order to cater for the quantity the quality of services will be compromised. This is OK with the rich citizens as they can afford to pay for services by the private sector or bribe the state employees or use influence to get a better service from the state service provider.

One can argue and say that this is a deliberate attempt by some of the donors to create instability within developing countries. I am not a conspiracy theorist but I wouldn’t put it past some of them. The point is that we who hail from the developing countries must act a lot smarter than we currently do if we want to develop.

As for me the assignment will run in to the New Year and I will have to go to Bangladesh a few more times to finish the assignment.

My Trip to Male, Maldives, September 2010

The trip to Maldives was a business development trip. Most people just come to Maldives and stay in a resort and go back. I was lucky to see the Maldives by land, sea and air; as well as spending time in Male. I recommend all to see Maldives in all its glory

View of Water Villas.

View of Maldives by Air (Sea Plane)

Not only did I snorkel but I also went on the “Whale Submarine”

As a sprawling archipelago Maldives (I traveled from Male to the northern most inhabited Island and back to Male) is a breathtaking destination. However, I was shocked to see poverty in the Maldives with a population of just over 300,000. I guess corruption and discrimination is rampant in this tiny nation as well. I must say that Maldives presents a unique problem to any government in having to deliver services to small populations spread across 200 islands (Out of 1192 Islands spread across 90,000 square kilometers)

I believe the only solution is to embrace ICT and use it to reach every person. However, having said that; the ICT literacy among the Maldivian population is also very low. A real chicken or egg situation for the politicians of Maldives to solve. If ever there was a country which can be considered easy to develop it must be the Maldives.

My trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Singapore, July 2010

This was my first trip on a budget airline (Air Asia); it definitely changed my opinion of budget airlines. This trip is more a business development and prospecting trip rather than an assignment. On the surface KL does look developed. However I have my doubts regarding the psyche of the Malaysians. I took in the usual site such as the Petronas Tower etc. The weather, the fauna and flora resembles Colombo; I did not enjoy the high humidity and the afternoon thundershowers.

Singapore was as usual (I have stopped counting the number of times I have been there) very orderly and hit the usual shopping and fun places. In my opinion the Singaporeans have not only developed in terms of the look and feel of the place but also in terms of the psyche of the people. I truly believe that they do think like westerners and the Japanese.

Let me give a classic example. As mentioned earlier I went to Malaysia and Singapore during the monsoon season and I made an observation. In KL when it rains; like in Sri Lanka the people stopped what ever they were doing and took shelter from the rain. Those who even had umbrellas took shelter as it appear they did not want to get there footwear wet.

However, in Singapore it was very different. I happened to be out one day early morning (going for a walk) when it started to rain. I was walking pasta a primary school and this is what I saw. A teacher was leading a group of very small children (6-7 years) who were clad in rain gear and they walked in a line and came out of the premises and they walked to the MTR station and got in to the train. Undoubtedly they were going on some sort of educational trip. What does this mean: In my opinion the Singaporeans are teaching their children to face obstacles and overcome / work around / find solutions to them. This is the essence of the psyche of an industrialized nation as opposed to an agrarian nation which generally accepts the affects of the elements as “gods will” or “karma”.

So even the very small children are trained to deal with a simple thing as the rain and have an attitude of using the right equipment to allow them to go about their daily business. So in adult life they do go and conquer the world economically.

I can certainly say that in Sri Lanka the vast majority of people have this agrarian psyche. Based on my observations it seems that quite a number of people in Malaysia still do too. So the challenge for those of us who have the privilege of influencing people is to; in some way contribute towards instilling the right attitude rather than anything else. I can say from my experience as a consultant and a trainer I derive more satisfaction in seeing this than my clients make huge profits. I say this because these individuals with the right attitude have the potential to influence / be a role model for the masses in these underdeveloped countries.

My trip to Hanoi, Vietnam

I returned to Vietnam to facilitate a 2 day planning workshop for the 6 organizations that I did the capacity assessments in January. It felt good to meet everyone and catch up. The workshop went smoothly and I had very positive feedback from the participants.

I was happy to see people genuinely interested and participating / contributing towards the workshop. This ensured a high quality of the results and the buy in by the participating organizations. I put the success of the workshop down to the following:

1. The CEO / Executive director (ultimate boss) of the organization participated


2. They had read the organization capacity assessment report and were familiar with the contents.


3. They were guaranteed of a tangible workable plan at the end of 2 days.


4. Being open and willing to learn

There is a chance that I may be requested to do some more work for them in the near future; however it seems that this is the end of this phase and the client is happy with the results.

The view from the roof top restaurant near Hoan Kiem Lake.

I stayed at the Trang An hotel; It's in the center of Hanoi, near Hoan Kiem Lake, so quite convinient for walking around, shopping, finding nice restaurant, etc... Had a good time too.

Mt Trip to Manila, Philippines cont……..

I returned to Colombo on the 19^th morning without any delays. On the way I met one of my colleagues at Bangkok airport and that helped pass the time as well as chat on the plane.

I found an interesting article on the web regarding “don’t know that you don’t know” I found the article to be spot on and very helpful in understanding this phenomenon. http://www.doceo.co.uk/tools/knowing.htm Now I can start to develop some strategy to work around this problem so that I am better prepared to face such an issue the next time around.

I finished documenting the results of the workshop in Manila and sent the results for comments from the client. I am still waiting for the results. Hope I am able to finish this assignment this week as it has the potential to get delayed and get ugly.

In terms of my future travel plans there are no assignments where I need to travel overseas at present. The assignments I have lined up are in Colombo. However things can change very quickly.