Lilly Zhang

As a child, Lilly learnt a lot from her paternal grandmother, in her dad’s hometown of Lopburi.  It was her grandmother who took her in a boat, across the Lopburi River, to the temple to pray, meditate, take alms to the monks and so make merit.  Looking back now, she sees how these times with her grandmother have been pivotal to the woman she has become.  A further cherished childhood memory is of her father’s nightly return home.  Her dad taught Lilly about how to care deeply for others. A bartender at an exclusive cocktail bar in a 5-star restaurant in Bangkok, he was rarely home before 1 or 2am.  Lilly would try to stay up to greet him on his return, and would wait outside or just inside the front door, inevitably falling asleep.  Her dad would tenderly pick her up each evening and ensure she woke up in her bed, regardless of where slumber overtook the tired child.

Lilly recalls visiting Hua Hin several times during her childhood, on holiday from her birthplace of Bangkok. There were 4 children in Lilly’s family, she being the oldest of 3 girls with a younger brother, who tragically lost his life in the river Kwai on a family break to Kanchanaburi.  Lilly has one sister who still resides in Bangkok, while she is pleased to have the other sister living here in Hua Hin, running a coffee shop. Lilly’s mother was the homemaker, though she was also called on to cater events for other people.  Lilly is glad she had the opportunity to learn to cook from her mother.

Family means a huge deal to Lilly. The ability to have family, blood or chosen, around her is one of the things she most likes about living in Hua Hin.  There is the call of the natural environment: the beach with its sea pines, the mountains, their waterfalls, yet this was only a secondary consideration for Lilly when she chose Hua Hin for her “forever home”.  More important was the need to be able to build a large home, which she has managed to fill regularly with friends from school with their kids, with the additional hope of enticing her own three sons, now adults, to visit more often.  Lilly is a very social being and it appears that she has boundless space in her heart for new additions to the group she considers her family. Although she had encountered Hua Hin early in life, it was a visit on holiday twenty years ago now, with her American husband Paul that really introduced Lilly to the beauty and amenity of the area.

Lilly has had 3 marriages and an additional long-term relationship. She admits she has not been lucky in love, divorcing two husbands and losing Paul to cancer. However, she would not change the past as it delivered her sons to her, who are now aged 32, 31 and 26.  Lilly is not a patient or tolerant person when it comes to a life-partner, and if the relationship is not working, she will not hesitate to end it.  This is likely as a result of the trauma she suffered as a late teenager when her parents separated. In normal Thai style, she was not given many details of the relationship issues her parents were experiencing and one day returned home to find her father gone.  Her mother “poisoned” her memories of her beloved father, a mistake that Lilly made sure not to repeat when her own marriages ended. She was never going to position her sons to feel the guilt and remorse she had borne at her mother’s hands. Lilly strives to do good each and every day, and it has become her mantra.

Despite this intention, Lilly willingly recounts times she has slipped up.  She is human, after all.  At school, Lilly was not usually the sort to cause problems for teachers or other students.  In class she was well behaved and hardworking yet it was on the sporting field that she truly excelled.  She played volleyball and basketball and participated in judo, Thai dancing and athletics, winning a silver medal for her hurdling skills.  Lilly was also an enthusiastic ten-pin bowler and has the trophy to prove it. Yet Lilly lost her temper one day and caused real hurt to a friend by jabbing her in the head with a pencil.  It was a mistake she made once only.  To this day, Lilly doesn’t tolerate aggressive behaviour, even when it is amongst the dogs. Romeo, her elderly chocolate labrador and his local friends are required to play nice with each other. Peace, tidiness and everything moving to the drum of natural order is what Lilly aspires to.

It was Lilly’s senior high school education which set her firmly on her career path.  She was one of a small number of students accepted in her cohort, out of several thousand applicants, to attend the Borpitpimuk Mahamek college, now a university campus, to study business management and foreign languages.  Capitalising on her parent’s Chinese heritage, she became fluent in both Mandarin and Cantonese and has skills in 3 other Chinese languages as well as English.  Lilly is officially a polyglot, and along with her natural flair for developing strong interpersonal relationships, this stood her in very good stead in the business world of international trade, an exciting area of work for a young Thai woman, but one she embraced wholeheartedly. Lilly views her passion for work as one of her core strengths, along with her propensity for positive thinking and her ability to make good decisions and back herself in them.

Lilly travelled extensively over her working life, and interacted and socialised in different parts of the world with some very prominent people.  Frankly though, if Lilly were not to see the inside of a plane ever again, it would be no hardship.  At home, in her bed, is now her favourite place in the world.  Her work earnt her money, a good amount of it, and prestige, but it came with sacrifices, and regularly sleeping in her bed was one of them, along with missing significant milestones in the lives of her young sons, who luckily had extended family and even step-parents to help care for them.

While still studying, Lilly had some casual work.  She waitressed and also worked with an agency supplying visa support services to foreigners, particularly of Taiwanese or English background because of her language skills.  She recalled assisting each foreigner to obtain the required visa could earn her 500 baht at a time years ago when a meal typically cost her 20 baht, so she felt well-rewarded for the help she could provide. Upon graduation, Lilly secured a job as the secretary to the marketing manager of a Taiwanese trading company who specialised in securing garment manufacturing services in Thailand and then shipping the product to Taiwan for sale.  Three months into the job she began her move up the business ladder by becoming the secretary to the Managing Director, a position she held for roughly two years.  She wore business attire, full makeup, high heels and had a luxury office on the 23rd floor in Bangkok, but that all was far less important to Lilly than the opportunity to learn the ropes of the business.  She was the guardian of the fax machine (Google it if you are too young to understand), and information about all aspects of the business passed across her desk, to and from the MD. Lilly had a high level of responsibility and accountability and so a commensurate pay packet. Yet even at this early stage in her career, Lilly was thinking of others and regularly sending money to family members. One other activity that has kept Lilly’s interest for a long time, 30 years or so, is tarot card reading. She estimates she has done readings for almost 500,000 people, both in Thailand and overseas, yet has recently decided to retire her cards, encouraging others to believe foremost in themselves. 

To detail all of Lilly’s business exploits is beyond the scope of this article.  Perhaps the high point of her career was working in overseas marketing for Cosco, organising to bring container ships from Bangkok to Sihanoukville in Cambodia. High pressure, high pay, but her mother passed away while she was working in Cambodia.

Lilly always thought she would remain a city woman. Business was at the core of her life, she was a member of the Lions Club, she became a confident public speaker and a retreat to the natural life did not seem on the cards.  Yet that is exactly what happened to Lilly when she built her home in Hua Hin ten years or so ago now.  Not that she has abandoned Bangkok. Lilly recounted a story of how, during intense flooding in Bangkok, she was motivated by pity for those affected and drove to the city with 600 meal boxes and fresh, clean bottled water.  The plight of others pulls tight on Lilly’s heart strings and at times she struggles to remember that she needs to also prioritise her own needs. One of Lilly’s sons would like her to return to live close to him in Bangkok, and has even offered to buy her a new condominium, but Lilly has declined, firm in her decision to move forward with her life and not backwards.

Lilly is proud of her independence. When her marriages ended, she neither required or asked for money from her exes. Lilly is able to take good care of herself and her loved ones. In recent years, Lilly has taught herself how to bake, and finds the activity oddly therapeutic, along with cleaning and tidying the house.  Lilly’s baking skills are well recognised by others.  She cooks and delivers her apple pie for sale in two places in Khao Tao, Remember, opposite the reservoir, and Turtle Bay Eco Lodge, owned by her dear friends Node and Indy. Lilly lives on a large parcel of land, 18 rai, a considerable portion of which she allows local farmers to cultivate with aloe vera and sweet potato, at no cost.  She retains a home parcel of land, approximately 3 rai, which has become part of her most recent business venture, Sunflower Café & Mini Golf, which is flourishing due to the input from her business partner and great friend Dave. A musician and singer by profession, he has turned his attention to building a productive garden and is now growing sunflowers and a wide variety of fruit and vegetables.  Indeed, if disaster were to strike the world tomorrow, Lilly and Dave could comfortably survive, self-sufficient for a long time.  Lilly describes meeting Dave as destiny.  They met at a food event at the Centara Grand Hotel in Hua Hin some 5 years ago and were introduced by a mutual friend.  Lilly helped Dave with his visa and he invited her, repeatedly, to hear him sing. It all clicked for her when she finally did and the pair now have a strong, almost fraternal, bond.  During the covid era, Lilly invited Dave into her home, because he already had a place in her heart and they could be company for each other.  It was Dave’s vision to construct the mini golf course, which is attracting regular groups of players.  It is one of the few local activities available to families and is complemented so well by the café.

Although she uses Facebook and Google to promote her business venture, and to keep in regular contact with her sons, Lilly is wary of the overuse of social media, aware of the unhappiness and dissatisfaction it can bring to people’s lives.  Lilly’s current focus is to live her life according to her own nature, and it certainly seems she is doing this well.