Adventures in Thailand – WordCamp Asia 2023

It’s a gloomy Monday morning here in California, and I just reactivated my co-working membership after taking a several-week break to travel around Southeast Asia. I had the opportunity to attend WordCamp Asia in the vibrant city of Bangkok, Thailand. In this post, I’ll share some stories and photos from the WordCamp and the trip, as well as talk about my experience volunteering on the AV team!

ICONSIAM Mall and Event Center

WordCamp Asia was held at a huge multi-level shopping mall + event center called ICONSIAM. I’ve attended many WordCamps and this was by far one of the most fun venues I have ever been to. On the mall’s ground floor, there was a giant food court that featured many different restaurants and a collection of classic Thai street food vendors. On my first pass through, I picked up some mango sticky rice and a made-to-order plate of pad thai. Yum!

The upper floors of the mall featured dozens of different stores. There was a great coffee shop, an Apple store, and various other brands and kiosks. It was really nice being able to pop down an escalator from the WordCamp to find great food and a place to do some window shopping or grab anything one might have forgotten to bring from home (in my case, a mouse and a camera bag).

Volunteering on the AV Crew

The tickets for WC Asia sold out extremely quickly, so I tried signing up to volunteer for the AV crew as a photographer. I was accepted for the position and ended up spending quite a bit of time working in one of the speaker rooms taking photos. Spending so much time listening to talks was a bit of a new experience for me as I tend to mostly hang out in the “hallway track” at WordCamps.

The organizers of WC Asia put in a bunch of work and it was cool getting to see a behind-the-scenes look at how much activity was going on in the volunteer Slack. Any day now, there should be a public Flickr album available with all of the photos from the camp. I also posted a bunch of the pictures I took on Twitter.

Meeting WordPress Friends

One of the best things about attending WordCamps is getting to travel to new places, see old friends, and hopefully make some new ones. I got to do all of this in Bangkok this year. I ran into Sujay from BrainStorm Force, Bryce from Metorik, Karim from CrowdFavorite, Syed from WP Beginner, James Giroux from TeamWP, and dozens of other familiar faces from the WordPress community. Miriam Schwab of Strattic made a point to introduce me to a few of the team from Elementor!

As always, one of the highlights of the WordCamp was the after-party! One of the suggestions for the party was to wear an outfit from your country or culture. Being from California, I decided to wear beach clothes – a tank top and flip-flops. Luckily for me, it was a hot and humid evening, so I was quite comfortable! Towards the end of the night, the dance floor really started popping off…

The #WCAsia after-party was one for the books.

I loved seeing all the different outfits from everyone’s countries/cultures.

🤙🏽🩴🎽🏄🏽‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/X5gOfomtof

— Robby McCullough (@RobbyMcCullough) February 20, 2023

The day after the WordCamp ended, I hosted a little Beaver Builder and friends dinner. We ate Japanese food and then went to a tropical-themed bar for a drink. Coincidentally, the last time I was in Bangkok in 2019, my Dad was there and we got to spend some time together. On this trip, my Mom came out to Thailand! The guys from WPMU DEV had an extra ticket that they generously gave to her, so she got to attend the last day of the WordCamp and also come out to the after-party.

Post-Camp Adventures in Thailand & Singapore

After the WordCamp was over, I spent several more days in Bangkok, visited the island Koh Samet for some beach time, then spent some time in Singapore before flying back to San Francisco. One of the beautiful things about working remotely is, while I did some time off to rest and relax, I was able to get a good amount of work done during the three weeks that I was out of the country.

What’s Next for Team BB

After missing out on a couple of years of WordCamps, we’re hoping to make up for lost time this year. In just a few days after this article goes live, Beaver Builder will be attending and sponsoring WordCamp Pheonix in Arizona (March 24-25). If you’re there, be sure to come by our table, say hello, and grab a couple of stickers! We’re also planning to attend WordCamp US later this year in August.

Thanks again to all the sponsors, organizers, and volunteers that work hard to make WordCamps happen. We hope to see you at the next one!