by Dr. Iain Corness
Very
tall, very blonde, very Danish and very charming describes Anja
(pronounced “Anya”) Beyer, hotel management assistant for Ib and
Kannikar Ottesen’s Residence Garden and Jomtien Boathouse. She wants to
try parachuting before she dies, and to also swim with dolphins, so she is
very interesting.
Anja was born in a village 80 km south of Copenhagen.
It is notable in the fact that she grew up around a very old glass works,
and in fact, Anja’s father is a third generation glass-blower.
Anja was the baby of the family, coming 10 years after
her elder brother and sister, and admits she was “spoiled rotten by
everybody!” Her mother stayed home to look after her until she was 10,
but after this was able to work as a cook in a local old people’s home
where Anja would often join her after school, helping her mother in the
kitchen.
She was a good student, and soon found that languages
were her forte, so by the time she was 18 years old she could speak
French, German and English, as well as her native Danish, and was also a
keen student of Latin. “Latin was like a door opening to all the
European languages,” said Anja, after I questioned her love for a
language most students dislike.
When she finished high school she decided that she
wanted to study law, and enrolled for the first year, but went no further.
“It was simply too boring,” she said. Young Anja was not someone who
wanted to be bored for the rest of her life!
After those somewhat wasted 12 months, she decided that
she would enrol in Teacher’s Training College, but found that the
college she had chosen had no spare places that year, so she went and
studied Danish for 12 months while waiting for her placement.
Eventually she entered training college for the four
year teacher’s course, graduating successfully with majors in English
and Physical Education (PE). To help finance these four years, she worked
part-time as a nursing aide in an old people’s home.
After graduation, the school where she had done her
final year’s placement offered her a teaching position and she accepted,
and was to stay there for the next 17 years. However, this was no stuffy
old school ma’am. Anja used her vacations (of which teachers do get more
than the average worker) to see the world. “A good friend lived in
Swaziland. I spent six months in Kruger National Park taking thousands and
thousands of photographs of birds and wildlife,” she said as an example.
She enjoyed the South African experience so much that
on her next big vacation she returned, but life had changed there. “Cape
Town was too violent,” said Anja. But the wanderlust was still there!
“I had read about Father Brennan’s Pattaya
Orphanage, and so I came out (to Thailand) for the first time in 2001.
That was for two months. I was supposed to go back to teaching, but I lost
my heart in Thailand. The people, I think it has something to do with
Buddhism. They simplify things. Every day I learn from the Thai people.
Sometimes just small things or even how to behave,” said Anja, trying to
encapsulate just what it is about Thailand that captures so many of us.
Her two months at the orphanage really changed her
life. She returned to Denmark and arranged three months off work so that
she could come back and work at the orphanage. The next year it was the
same, and the one after that. But that was not enough. She had to resign
to free herself.
So despite the 17 years in the service and all the
attendant benefits, she arrived in Pattaya to work in the orphanage
office. There she experienced an amazing occurrence. Father Brennan was
cleaning up his desk (an event notable in itself) and presented Anja with
a glass candlestick holder he found there. He could not have known, but
that glass ornament came from the factory in Denmark where her father
worked!
During these stays in Thailand, Anja stayed at the
Residence Garden, and being a long stay guest soon became friendly with Ib
(also originally from Denmark) and Kannikar Ottesen, the owners of the
apartment building. Naturally, their conversation drifted around to
hotels, and it was then that they found that Anja’s ex-husband had been
involved in hotels, and all her previous vacations that had not been spent
here in Thailand had been spent in assisting her ex-husband with hotel
management. “You’ve got to come and work for me,” said Ib.
After the six months, she had to return to Denmark, but
she was soon back again to spend another six months. By this stage Anja
knew she had to make some serious decisions, and by June of this year made
the irrevocable one – she was coming to Thailand to make this her new
home. “I sold my car, packed all my stuff and off I went! It just felt
so natural when I came.” Again this was a feeling that many ex-pats here
can understand.
Remembering Ib Ottesen’s invitation, she contacted
him, and a position was created to be an assistant for him and Kannikar.
And while Anja misses the volunteer work, it is obvious she is revelling
in the hotel industry, and with her multilingual abilities, she is a
natural in this industry.
Anja remains a very athletic woman (she even has a
Bachelor’s degree in PE) and sports and swimming feature high in her
hobbies. However, so do less physical pursuits such as bird watching and
photographing wildlife, and she has found she enjoys the art of wine
appreciation.
In her list of aims yet to be completed, travel rates very highly.
“The traveller’s blood is in my veins,” says Anja, and she wants to
visit New Zealand, Namibia and Botswana. That is after her parachute jump
and dolphin swim! Welcome (finally) to Pattaya, Anja Beyer!
