Inspiring others to live a life less ordinary. Or something along those lines… Live Less Ordinary started back in 2012 as a place to share my personal experiences as a newly relocated ex-pat living in Bangkok. A story which quickly expanded into exciting adventures through Asia with lots of regular travels in Thailand and beyond. While it’s not really a blog aimed to inspire others, we do like to encourage others to live a life of their own choosing, away from the expectations of social norms and hype of influencers… Anyway, here are some of our more exciting adventures. Welcome to Live Less Ordinary with Allan and Fanfan.

A New Life in Thailand!

This blog follows my somewhat reckless decision to ditch the conventional life back ‘home’ in the U.K. and to follow my own aspirations with a new life in Bangkok, Thailand. A move which inevitably gave me a foothold for travel in Asia. But it did come with years of sacrifice, and wasn’t some whimsical “jump on the next flight out of here”, YOLO adventure etc, just hoping for the best. Instead I planned and invested in a long-term lifestyle change, with a permanent home in Bangkok, and now 10-plus years later I’m still living and loving life in Asia, with my amazing wife and travel partner Fanfan (we married in Bali in 2013).

A World of Food!

As with pretty much everyone in Thailand and Asia, we are both seriously food-obsessed, where food shapes both our daily lives as well as plans and itineraries for travel. There’s rarely a day in life that doesn’t revolve around food. And the spicier the food the better. We even brought this passion to Northern Ireland recently during a stint in lockdown when we opened a Thai food delivery service (Fanfan’s Kitchen: Proper Thai Food) selling authentic street food, Thailand’s regional staples, and authentic homecooked Thai food and recipes… Offering people the opportunity to travel through food when they literally could not travel. Although our passion will always be more in the eating!

Destination Hotels!

An early interest with us here at Live Less Ordinary, inspired partly by Fanfan’s studies in Applied Arts at University (a fancy term for interior design), was our mutual love for unique and boutique travel experiences. Something that was relatively new at the time. So instead of following the notorious backpacker trails of Southeast Asia, we would instead seek out the ‘less ordinary’ experiences of new tourism in the region, which came mostly in accommodation and hotels. Instead of just looking for a bed for a night, the hotel would also be the destination, offering something new and exciting to the otherwise stale and unexciting backdrop of tourism and hospitality at the time.