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WHAT IS IT LIKE "Living in
Thailand"?
This is a short online book about
"Living in Thailand!". I decided to put
it on the site now though it's not completely fleshed-out yet. It
started out as this simple online book with about 25,000 words. It
has grown to a 130,000 word auto-biography about my entire life.
There are more than a few things in the book that refer to
corruption and other situations I found myself in while in the Land
of Smiles. I'll publish it at a later date.
I've lived in Thailand for just about 3 years since
leaving America. I share a little bit about life here and what you
might expect if you visit or decide to live here. If you're thinking
about selling everything and moving overseas you should consider
Thailand!
An average of 12 million foreign visitors each year make it to Thailand.
It's really a tropical paradise here... it's not always hot, though
Bangkok has been rated as the hottest place to live in the WORLD
because it's night time temperatures are also quite hot whereas
other hot places in the world cool off more at night.
There are so many things to do in Thailand that there really is
something for everyone. Thousands of families enjoy coming here, as
well as singles in search of something they can't get at home (or
get enough of maybe).
There seem to be many, many more visitors from Europe here than from
America and Canada though I have met people from many countries:
Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Austria,
England, Ireland, Africa, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Laos, Cambodia,
Burma, Indonesia, Japan, China, India, Italy, Spain, hmm... I'm sure
there are more but they aren't coming to mind right now.
Anyway - there are many expats as we're called, living here. I'm
from the U.S.A. and there are plenty of us here. Too many where I am
presently. I didn't come here to be surrounded by other American
citizens. I came to get away! Some say they came here to get away
too, but they've brought America with them. They want to see only
American movies with the original soundtrack... they won't see Thai
movies. Many expats living here for more than 4 years can't even
hold a 5 minute conversation in Thai if it takes place away from a
bar. The expats I'm teaching with are constantly bringing up the USA
and what is going on - what SHOULD be done and what they used to do
in the past... I gotta get away from this school and go somewhere to
teach where either I'm the ONLY farang (foreigner) or there are just
a couple and they're not American or from the UK. The western
attitude is not at all something I need to experience more of.
Why leave the USA?
In the US I fell for the whole "achieve everything" syndrome... and
the "world is your oyster" foolishness. When I graduated high school I went to the Air Force and got sent to Oahu, Hawaii. Nice tour of
duty. I stayed there in paradise for 4 years and then I moved to NYC
with a girl I met and married from Canada. She was accepted to a top
modeling agency in NYC (ZOLI) and offered her an immediate job and
free apart ment and so we moved to New York from Honolulu in 1991.
She modeled in Paris, Tokyo, Milan, and other fashion hotspots and I
walked the streets as a freelance paparazzi photographer for 3
years. I learned photography and had some good (and crazy)
experiences in New York, but overall - to go from the jaw-dropping
natural beauty of Hawaii to living between 2nd and 3rd avenue and
East 78th Street, New York City, was the definition of hell on
earth.
After 3 years of my wife rarely being 'home' in NYC with me I found
out that she was less than faithful to me with a famous French
photographer (in France). I quickly moved away from New York back to
Pittsburgh where I grew up, to stay with my family for 7 months to
save money for going to college in Florida. I know what you're
thinking - moving from NYC to Pittsburgh had to be yet another
"low"... and yes, in a way it was - but it allowed me to relax and
get over my failed marriage... and get into fitness a bit. I entered
a lot of running and bicycle races and started my addiction for
serious exercise during this time.
When I had saved enough money I went to Miami for a year of school. I stayed in the dorms and had a really good time meeting people from
many different countries and cultures. I was surrounded by Cuban
people, music, food and language and I really enjoyed it. Then I
decided that Miami was a bit too hot and too crowded so I moved up
to Tampa, Florida. I really loved Tampa and the Clearwater - St.
Petersburg area. Incredible fishing... traffic not too horrendous,
and jobs a plenty. I spent 9 years in Florida then two more in
Hawaii.
I've always flipped around from job to job... I did many things,
never satisfied in one career field... My degrees in Florida were a
BA and MA in psychology. I did the big brother program for kids with
serious mental health issues for almost 3 years. I worked with
adults and teens with severe mental illness like paranoid
schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, multiple personality
disorder, antisocial personality and interesting things like that.
Really fun stuff. Two highlights of working in the mental health
field were both when I was working in "supervised apartments" at a
place in Tampa, Florida. Supervised apartments is a place where
adults with profound mental challenges are in an apartment program.
They are supposed to have us monitor their medicine so we can ensure
they're taking it as directed by the psychiatrists. Many times the
residents "cheeked" their meds and came up with other ways to fool
the staff into thinking they had swallowed it.
When they didn't take their medications some of them became quite
crazy. I worked the night shift - 11pm until 7 am. I remember half
falling asleep watching a movie on television... during the brief
couple minutes I was asleep I had a dream that one of the residents
was standing over me with a knife as I slept and was about to plunge
it into my chest. I woke up with a VERY loud scream and all the
residents came to see what had happened! The guy in my dream was an
actual resident living upstairs that had killed his landlord and his
wife with a hatchet and then set their home on fire about 6 years
back.
Another time I was reading a book at about 3am in the office. All
the sudden a large sofa chair came flying through the window! A
resident was having hallucinations in which his television was
telling him to go hurt the staff.
So anyway - I tired of the mental health field - not because it
wasn't any fun - on the contrary - it was the most interesting time
I've ever spent working! But, it was very depressing to be
counseling these people with profound disturbances and not having
them get any better.... even after years of it. I kind of burnt out,
figuring that I'm not helping "enough" to stay with the career.
Then I got my real estate license and worked with Century 21. That
was fun and I had some small success but I really didn't have enough
money saved to continue it and so I went into the computer field. I
took a job as a technician fixing computers with GTE in Tampa. I
then began to get more excited about internet marketing and started
building web sites and advertisements as well as selling things on
EBay like 'fat burners' and body-building supplements. That too went
OK, but I was still looking for something else.
I began to market myself as a search engine optimization expert -
which I was. I was hired by companies to optimize their internet
marketing efforts and get them on the right track. I had some fun
with this - but the whole notion of living in the USA and making
more and more money to survive began to grate on my nerves...
I
moved to Hawaii for 2 years and was an internet marketing manager
there for a luxury resort. This too was 'OK', but I was starting to
think I really needed to get away from America and truly relax...
see how others in 3rd world countries lived... or at least 2nd
world. I moved back to Florida where my son was (with a girlfriend of 5
years) and my ex-girlfriend promptly told me she was moving to
California with my son. I was heart broken again and decided that
life in the USA was too much to handle. I knew I'd be a mental case
if I kept struggling to live there day after day. I knew then that I was going away - far away to forget as much as
possible. But, I wasn't sure where yet.
USA Rat Race
There were these personal reasons for leaving the USA - wanting to
separate from my ex-girlfriend and the relationship problems that
she caused by promising my son would be close to me one day and then
the next day telling me about moving to California or China. But,
there were other reasons to leave too - perhaps even more
compelling...
Living in the USA became taxing on me emotionally. I wondered, could
everyone in the world be living life like this? Wasn't this a crazy
lifestyle? I was enjoying it less as time passed... the materialism feeds off
itself... advertising agencies spend billions to keep the ball
rolling - things get harder as I get older, not easier. I save less
as I get older, not more. There are more toys to buy and get
involved with now.
The USA is money driven. All people care about is money. It's what
we are brainwashed with from infancy. Make more. Do more. Spend
more. Get more. Create more. Achieve more. We are the most advanced
nation on earth and yet we didn't get there without some major
sacrifices to family values... morality... I found the USA no longer fun to live in. I found it disgusting
really. I found that just thinking about the simple necessities:
Food, House, Car, Health Insurance, and finding time to relax was
getting too overwhelming. I am NOT good with money. I've made lots
of money - but have no savings. I was 38 when I left the USA. I let
the bank repossess my truck. I didn't have any credit card bills or
other bills, but I had student loans I was about to default on.
For the couple months before I left the USA I seriously felt like,
and KNEW, in my professional opinion that I could seriously lose my
mind. I am sure, absolutely sure that I was headed for a monumental
breakdown and I could not face that - I had to delay it. Getting
away completely from the insanity of it all seemed like the best
idea. I started to research different places to live - I never had any
desire to live in Europe where it would be more of the same type of
living as America. I wanted something different. Kind of remote like I had read about in "Jack London's" Tales of Hawaii book I'd read
many years before. I wanted something remote and backwoods and yet
the people needed to be friendly where I was going... not hostile. I
didn't want to be in the "heart of Darkness"..., but somewhere
close. Somewhere friendlier.
It had to be somewhere with good food. Japanese food doesn't do it
for me. Korean has some great food and yet overall there is little
healthy about their food from what I ate in Korea during a 3 month
stay in the Air Force on a temporary duty assignment called, "Team
Spirit".
Indian food is my favorite to BEAT ALL. But, the Indians are a bit
annoying. A bit too serious. A bit too unclean - from what I've
heard and read. Not to say they all are of course, but there are a
large number of them - a high proportion of them that are not so
clean. Cleanliness is nice. I enjoy cleanliness myself. I'd rather
stay among very clean people who take lots of showers and among whom
it is not "OK" to smell bad.
Laos was too backwards - and not enough foreigners living there. I
wanted to have foreigners, "farang" as they're called, living there
- just not with me. I wanted pizza and Italian bread occasionally
too, but didn't want to be living with a family of Italians either.
Living in
Cambodia was out of the question. Too dangerous. Too many crazy
stories of lawlessness and he with the biggest or fastest or
most-used gun wins. There is more corruption there and in Vietnam
than most of the other Asian countries - at least more than is
talked about... except maybe Burma (Myanmar).
The guys I know that liked Cambodia liked two things. Drugs and
young kids for sex. There really are NO OTHER GOOD reasons to go
there and actually LIVE THERE. The place is a haven for derelicts
and degenerates. One can teach English there - but really the only
reason you'd stay is if you craved one or both of the vices
mentioned. Don't let anyone tell you they were there for a different
reason - other than humanitarian reasons. The place is a hole. Sick
guys go there for sick reasons. The teacher "Gary" that I saw
physically abuse kids and whom I suspected of sexually abusing kids
used to talk about what a great place Cambodia was to visit. He was
so eager to go back...
Malaysia seemed to be OK, but I wasn't up for being surrounded by
Muslim people. I didn't know anything about the religion at the time
and I didn't want to find out and have negative experiences for my
first year overseas. There are Muslims fighting with Thai people in
the Southern part s of Thailand. They are killing teachers and monks
randomly. They appear to be a separatist group of fanatical Muslims
that are insisting on breaking the south away from Thai control to
give back to Malaysia.
I've been to Malaysia recently - Penang, and the Muslims were
friendly from the heart . They couldn't have faked the kind of
generosity and friendliness they showed me. Incredible! So, I really
believe it's just these splinter groups of radicals that are causing
the trouble. I still wouldn't LIVE in Malaysia - but for many other
reasons.
Living in
China was a possibility. I wasn't up for living in a communist
controlled country with limits on the internet though. The food can
be good and unhealthy at the same time. As far as food goes,
Thailand and Vietnam had the best in the world next to Indian food
and it was between these two countries that I knew I would choose
from.
My son is half-Vietnamese. His mom came to America when she was 11
yrs old. She told me stories of Vietnam and I've read some books.
Mostly what turned me against it was that there is widespread
corruption among the police force and military and a foreigner is
totally at their whim. Usually they are gentlemanly about the fines
you must pay and what not, but still... you know? They do it to
their own people too.
The other negative about the Vietnamese people was that I heard from
some people before leaving that they really try hard to take
foreigners to the cleaners - cheating them on money and inflating
prices for foreigners. Even if one LIVES there. They are rather cold
and ruthless so the stories go... I cannot verify any of this as
I've not gone there yet, but back two years ago when I was trying to
decide it was good enough evidence to help me decide that I didn't
want to go there and spend a year or so.... visit later, yes. Live
there now. No.
Is Living in Thailand the
way to go?
So I began to look in-depth at Thailand. Thailand had Buddhism...
Buddhism is one religion I can at least stomach. I had meditated
"Vipassana style" for a period of 10 months back in 1998 and I
experienced some very strange incidents that I was curious to know
more about. I also was married to a Thai girl and met her family -
they all lived in the USA for the past 30 years. The family was very
nice and I got the feeling that it was their culture more than them
just being nice because I married into the family. I looked at visa requirements - there weren't any. A 30 day Visa
could be obtained by any American just by arriving in Bangkok. I
looked at job possibilities and work permits. It seemed like it was
quite easy to get a job with a degree - I have a master's in
psychology but they'd literally take any bachelors degree with any
major. Some schools wanted a teachers course certificate but most
didn't care much about that. The government schools and other good
schools wanted a degree.
I looked at living conditions, temperatures, rainfall, government...
all were tolerable. The heat was actually a plus since I do well in
hot weather - hard to get hotter than Florida - but at times
Thailand can be hotter. Hurricanes were pretty scarce in Thailand. I
considered that another plus since I had just spent the year running
from 3 of them in Florida in 2004. I started to search in Thailand forums on the internet and I met a
guy online that was doing some internet related things that he was
rather vague about... when I sent him my resume he replied that he
had similar interests but still didn't tell me what he was doing
exactly. I asked him many questions... everything I could think of.
He was a great help, and I would advise anyone planning to come over
to LIVE that they find someone that can answer all their questions
about life here before coming. It's quite a help. You'll never know
everything you need to ask -but you can be much more prepared and
hence have much more chance of success. I am not sure if I fit into what would be considered the 'norm' or
if any part of my reasons for choosing to move away from the USA to
come to Thailand were normal. I've met many people here who have
been running away from something stressful there and others that
seem to have been but that didn't choose to share it with me. I've
met people with serious drug addiction problems... people that
dropped out of life so to speak and are living bare minimum lives -
teaching... eating... drinking... smoking... and sitting at the bars
here like they did in the U.S.
I've seen kids come over - in their early twenties that want to see
the world, live in Thailand and teach a bit - some of them volunteering. They come for
many reasons. I've seen hordes of people come just traveling around.
The Europeans seem to have months at a time to travel.... but I've
only met a couple Americans who were traveling for more than 3 weeks
before they had to return to America.
I've seen so many retired guys here - they came for the cheap
life... the cheap women... the cheap food... and they are basically
slugs that just exist here in a slightly more substantial way than
they could have in the states on a small pension or social security
or some other retirement plan. Really, one only needs a savings of
$100,000 USD to live off the interest here. That would give you
about 15,000 baht per month. Housing in smaller cities isn't more
than 3000 baht a month. Food would be 5-6000 for one person. Extras
would take the rest. One could teach English from home (illegally)
but nobody cares much - and make an extra 10,000-20,000 baht per
month without attracting too much attention.
Beer is still expensive I think - 35 baht for a big beer which has
6-7% alcohol content - American beer is 2-3% on average. 35 baht is
about 90 cents USD. A big beer is about 2 1/2 twelve ounce beers
like we drink in the USA. So, maybe it's not expensive - I'm not
much of a beer drinker either here or when I was in the USA so I
don't really know.
Food is cheap - super cheap. One could eat for $62.00 USD per month
if you chose. I can have a hardy noodle soup in the morning for just 20 baht
(50cents USD). I can eat lunch - fried rice with chicken - for just
20 baht. I could eat dinner - som tam - (spicy papaya salad), sticky
rice, and barbequed chicken for just 50 baht. So, for just over 2
dollars a day I can eat some great food. Fortunately, and VERY, VERY
fortunately, my girlfriend cooks breakfast and dinner for me
everyday. It is heavenly... she can cook better than any restaurant
I've ever eaten at. Every meal is perfect. I've eaten like this for
a year and a half. One doesn't really understand what it's like to
eat spectacular food every meal until it happens.
I'll talk more about day-to-day living living in Thailand in next
pages...
This is a short online book about
"Living in Thailand!". I decided to put
it on the site now though it's not completely fleshed-out yet. It
started out as this simple online book with about 25,000 words. It
has grown to a 130,000 word auto-biography about my entire life.
There are more than a few things in the book that refer to
corruption and other situations I found myself in while in the Land
of Smiles. I'll publish it at a later date. 
