From haulage to handbags: ‘I tend to feel more Thai now than I do Irish’

Dubliner Daragh Connolly: ‘We repair super-high end bags. We would get Hermes brought in worth $150,000′

Thu Nov 12 2026 - 06:00 • 4 MIN READ

Daragh Connolly always counted himself as a “true blue” Dubliner, with a background entrenched in a long-established family freight firm.

But speaking from Bangkok, where he runs an international designer handbag repair business, Connolly says, “I tend to feel more Thai now than I do Irish”.

The road to this point has had some big bumps, with the financial crisis and a life-threatening cancer diagnosis instrumental in ensuring Connolly made Thailand his home.

Connolly began his career as a forklift driver in Connolly Haulage (now Roadtrain Ltd) before making his way to become group managing director.

He had been doing business in southeast Asia since the 1990s. Then in the “heady days of the Celtic Tiger” Connolly took the business into other areas, including two multimillion hotel projects in Phuket.

But when Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008 overnight, “everything went pear-shaped”, he says. “It was crazy”.

Connolly went to Thailand to dispose of the assets and see what he could recover. “I wasn’t supposed to be here that long”. But he ended up staying in what was a “very difficult” few years.

Fortunately, he met his Thai partner Pattita, who was based in central Thailand. He “didn’t really have contact with anybody” as he lived in a provincial Thai city for about three years.

She was “very skilled” and worked in a small studio in Lopburi (there were monkeys outside the door) making hand-cut soaps and crafted bags, he says.

They noticed people were coming to Pattita with mid-range luxury bags with a stain or damage to get them restored. “That’s how the business developed.”

Connolly paired his partner’s craft expertise with his business experience. He knew about machines, trucks and warehouses, so he had to learn new skills such as building websites.

HyerBagSpa, which specialises in repairing high-end bags and training, grew quickly. Repairs include everything from removing mould, restoring colour, to replacing piping and electroplating of metal.

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“We do super-high-end bags. We would get Hermes worth $150,000. We’d get Himalaya croc Birkins; we’d get Chanel made of snakeskin.

“We get people flying from Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong. It’s really extraordinary. They’d get a Birkin, and they’d want it restored to how it was originally. Many of those they work with are high-end bag retailers. It’s all about retaining the authenticity of the bag. So that’s what we’re very good at.”

They moved to Bangkok to make it easier to hold the bag restoration training. And now they train people from around the world, from PLCs to pawnshop groups, he says. When Covid hit, they moved their training online. “It turned out to be one of the best parts of their business”, and they are training people in handbag repair as far away as California.

Connolly seems to have even surprised himself at the pivot. “The learning curve has been enormous, from trucks to handbags, nobody would have bet that,” he says.

Learning the local language during his early years there has been instrumental in helping to fit in. Learning to read and write Thai script was “a milestone” in his integration. “It’s not Australia – it’s a different language, I look different, it’s a different culture. But now I’ve probably become more Thai than Irish”.

However, it was a serious illness that cemented his future in Thailand.

In 2019, he was taken to hospital with sepsis, and doctors found a large brain tumour. He “got scared” and went back to Ireland for a biopsy. “They gave me five years to live.” Doctors told him it was too late to operate and he was facing chemo for the rest of his life.

“I rejected it and came back here. They operated on me, and I am still here,” he says. He acknowledges that the operation was “a big risk”, but when he woke to the doctors speaking Thai, something shifted. “I felt like I was saved here.

“It’s those tough moments, those lines in the sand, that can change you. Now I go home, I have a big family, and even Ireland now seems very strange to me. It just kind of bypassed me,” he says, referring to a lost feeling of connection.

While his cancer is still at stage three, it is “under control” and is treated with hormones rather than chemo or radiotherapy, he says.

“I’m living my life normally,” he says of life with his partner, stepdaughter, wider family and lots of Irish friends.

He is still a big part of the “tight-knit” Irish community in Thailand through groups such as the St Patrick’s Society and Thailand GAA. They regularly raise money for charities such as for Irish nun Sister Louise Horgan, who works with the city’s poorest.

He loves the food, from Thai food in a nearby market for a euro to high-end fusion food. He enjoys the weather in the high 20s most of the year (but a horrendous 45 degrees in April and May). He’s not so keen on smog and road safety.

He says respect is central in Thai society. “On my last trip to Ireland on the Luas I couldn’t believe how disrespectful some people were ... but over here they’re so respectful.”

But what keeps him there is the people. “They’re the loveliest people. They are the most loyal”

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