John Morgan

The semi-retired Quantity Surveyor John Morgan is one man who never gives up. He is also someone who has either been it, done it, or had one! Be that sailing, flying, motor racing, brewing, travelling or just having a damn good time, John Morgan has done it all.

Born in Cardiff, Wales, but not a patriotic Welsh flag waver, he was the baby in a well-off family, having two elder sisters, and his father was a successful building contractor.

He went through grammar school education, but admits, “I wasn’t the best student!” For John, the natural step was into his father’s business, where he showed aptitude in the surveying field. This was then followed by formal training in the Quantity Surveying discipline with indentureship, a stint in the Bristol School of Technology and then a B.Sc from Reading University.

However, when John was 24 years old his father died suddenly and he had to leave the family business and join another contracting group. The managing director of the company was a believer in young blood being promoted, and told the youthful John, “Your future is in your mobility.” To prove the point he was sent to the Cayman Islands in the West Indies.

After a few years there, where he made excellent money as an expat, he returned to the UK. However, it was around this time he first came to Thailand as a tourist on vacation with his wife and two young children.

He did not stay long in Mother England, taking a position as a Quantity Surveyor in Nigeria. He retold the story of how he won the job at the interview over several bottles of wine. Affable and a good storyteller, is our John. At that time the Nigerian construction boom was just beginning, and his services were very much in demand. So much so that he spent ten years there. “The white face meant honesty,” he recounted. With all the Nigerian scams operating these days, you can imagine the white face was probably pre-requisite for key positions even then.

At the end of that time John came back to Thailand and spent six months in Bangkok, enjoying some of the money he had earned in his Nigerian decade. But the next step was to be ‘head hunted’ and taken to Iraq. With the Iraqi War there were unfinished construction projects everywhere and John shifted his focus slightly to become a Claims Quantity Surveyor, working closely with legal counsels. “It was an easier lifestyle.”

After Iraq, it was off to the great sandbox - Saudi Arabia, to be head of the quantity surveying department of a large group, who flew him everywhere in their private jet. He described life in Saudi as, “Different to say the least. I became an expert in brewing beer and producing wine.” Three years was enough and he left to come to Thailand.

“It was 1986 and the growth was coming. I could see the potential in this country.” At that time the Asian Tiger economy appeared very strong and John started his own construction consulting company, expanding into Vietnam and Laos. Each year he began to collect data on the hospitality industry, eventually producing a commercial report on the hotels. It was not long before he was predicting the over-supply of hotel rooms, one of the indicators that the Asian Tiger was growing too fast.

However, the next major event in John Morgan’s life was a stroke. He remembers it well, “It was the 28th of February, 1994. It was a very bad one. I couldn’t walk, I had to get a massage therapist to come in. I had to learn to walk all over again. And then came the mental trauma, with work going down and being unable to do anything about it.”

To come to terms with this he returned to the UK and the support of his sisters. Occupational Therapy was his daily routine in the hospital, until he was offered another job in Saudi to do Quantity Surveying again. It was one year since the stroke, but he took it. “The Saudi’s respect age and experience.” John did another five years between Riyadh and Jeddah, then decided it was time to retire and return to Thailand last year. “I’m now in semi-retirement and doing consultancy work outside Thailand.”

John considers that success should not be thought of in monetary terms, and feels that the key to it is basic training. “You don’t like doing it at the time, but you need a discipline and you have to continually update yourself.” He has been very happy with his career choice. “As a Quantity Surveyor you are paid rather well to travel the world.”

But what about his hobbies? He got his glider pilot’s license when he was 15 years old and his private flying license when he was 24. He sailed Olympic Class Finns and crewed on the Flying Dutchman yachts. He rallied in the UK and then purchased a Lotus XI to compete on the circuits like Brands Hatch and Oulton Park. He even raced at our local Bira Raceway and rallied all over Thailand. He even became a model in the early ’90s for Thai and Japanese TV. However, these days, post-stroke, he is more into the admin side and enjoys the local bowling green, surfs the Internet, belongs to a Masonic Lodge and is a rally official. “I’ve always been a bit of a gypsy, but I’m going to stay in Pattaya and get involved with the community.”

John Morgan believes that, “everyone who has lived abroad is a survivor.” In his own case, this describes him to a ‘T’. Welcome to Pattaya, John, you are a survivor!