Hey Cos, If you see this can you put a little dot on a map to show me where you live? People who up sticks and re-locate to somewhere completely alien/exotic/different fascinate me.
I would love it if you were to write more about it, especially the emotional aspect.
xx
I wrote our a long reply to this a week ago and didn't like it so deleted before posting.
Right now I live in the middle of central Bangkok, somewhere I hated my first few years in Thailand. I never imagined I'd end up living here. Then again I never imagined I'd end up living in Thailand full stop.
I came out with Amatay in the years before he was collecting his pension and our plan was to do a year based in Phuket with regular travel to some other places in Asia. Apologies if im re-hashing old information btw.
Anyway the first day I remember thinking, I'm not going to last very long here. Some maniac taxi driver taking us from the air port in a 50 year old car that could still do 120mph and was going in and out of lanes non stop. Going up a quiet big hill road in the last part of our journey i could see shacks and streets dogs howling I thought no no no. We arrived at a lovely villa and things were a little better when the sun came up but I'm very OCD with cleanliness and nowhwere looked clean enough for me to feel comfortable eating at. Luckily there were still enough great things until I got used to the things I initially thought were bad but were in reality just unknown. The street dogs are just dogs without homes, most of them kind and beautiful. The shacks were places where people cooked amazing thai food at ridicously cheap prices. It was actually Amatay who said to me about a week in, mate I didnt come here to keep eating in this tourist trap places. Once we started eating at the local places, it never even crossed my mind to go back to those ever again.
While I got comfortable being there I didn't do much adventuring or anything outlandish. Just worked out very hard every day, ate good food, got lots of beach and sun and played a lot online. I quickly fell in love with the place and the lifestyle and then began to meet more people. There was a huge community of poker players who all shared the same interests. It was a few years of poker, beach, sport, good food etc day in day out. I played in a 2 different football teams 3 times a week and later on a pool league. I just loved it so much.
As poker began to get a little tougher to beat, that thinned out some of the community but there were still a lot of guys. However several started to move to Bangkok which I couldn't understand. A lot of them moved initially for the night life and im not much of a partier. I'd made a few trips to Bangkok but stayed in some of the more touristy areas of Sukhumvit (central Bkk) which are horrible imo. Once almost all my friends moved across, several were messaging me regularly to join. While one friend went away for a week I took his apartment in Bangkok and all my friends showed me around. I saw a different side than I'd seen before. One that I loved. Food is incredible here and there is also incredible live poker.
I was also going back and forward to Macau initially and Bangkok made the travel very easy too. Once I stopped going to Macau and we decided to start a family, we naturally extended a bit longer in Bangkok because schools and healthcare are very good here. Now it's just difficult to leave.
Author