Changing the "here" for "there"

"There" is not better than "here". When your "there" has become a "here", you will simply obtain another "there" that will, again, look better than "here"

This is something I still remember, but while traveling in South East Asia in 1997, I felt more and more at home in this part of the world and especially in the Kingdom of Thailand or also nicknamed the Land of Smiles. Coming home I felt out of place and I tried to find ways to get back to the place where I felt home. My first way back was a 6-weeks job as tour-manager in China, from Beijing to Hong Kong. Quit a different job as my old job in the IT-sector and I had only been to China once for a 10-days all-in trip to Beijing! On forehand this job was to be continued with a 2 times 2-weeks tour in Thailand, from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. It was a good learning experience, but as I was not really qualified as tour-manager at that time, of course it was also my last tour for this company.  I returned back home and started to work again in the IT-sector. But after two weeks of being jailed in an office for 10-hours a day and hearing all the small talk about what was on TV last night I was becoming desperate to find a way back to Thailand. And that came in the offer of a try-out job as PR-manager in a hotel in Bangkok. I did work there for 2 months but working with a Thai boss was too much for me to handle at that moment. So I returned home and I had not much time to think about what to do because I was hospitalized for TB and there almost on the border-line of life and dead I decided that I wanted more out of life as my 9-to-5 well paid job with expensive cars and ditto holidays. It was at that moment that I choose to leave my old life behind me and to start a new one all over again in Thailand. It was in 2001 that I finally made my mind up and to take a dive into what is called "LIFE". I left behind a good and happy life, but sometimes one just has to do something, just because.

Considering the long time view of living in Thailand

I think that most people who move to Thailand don't plan their entire future at one time, because those kinds of people usually wouldn't move to Thailand in the first place. But while considering moving to Thailand I asked myself a few questions, and of course it's difficult to be sure if you can give straight answers to yourself. But just give it a try; you will never know what you will find out. First of all I tried to realize me the quote that I started this posting with, and as someone once said to me while on tour in Thailand "You are not in love with Thailand, you are in love with Thai girls". Did I try to fool myself by saying that Thailand would be better and that I loved Thailand and not the other thing Thailand is famous for? Well there is only one way to find out and that is just to give it a go. Secondly I tried to measure the value of staying in my home country with a good paid job, friends, family and social security or moving to Thailand. For me Thailand did win, but I also realized that my new home country Thailand would basically give me nothing in return. And that while staying away from my home country in the end I would loose all my contacts with friends, work, business and maybe even all my social security that I had build up in my past live. And of course for the first year or tree, euphoria will make me overlook this, but eventually it will come to everyone. And maybe that becomes a moment that I will have to measure the values again, but then of staying in Thailand or moving back home or somewhere else. That's a choice a lot of us have to make at a certain moment. But some of us cannot cope with this decision and they choose to go back in a body-bag. I did choose to move to Thailand but to be prepared that I maybe would return back home soon again. And I did choose to return home once a year for a reality check and to maintain the ties with back home at least a little bit. Until now that's working out fine for me, but somewhere is coming a moment that I have to build up a future in the country that I adopted as my new home country. A moment that you really have to choose and cut all the ties with your old life, and I'm feeling that that time is coming soon.

That's what I did write a few years ago. I did cut the ties and try building up an future together with my wife. Could I ever return? Yes if I have too I will, but adjusting to it will be difficult (in that care I would prefer to stay in Barcelona where my wife also enjoys the tapas). Adjusted to my new home country? A bit but I will always be a guest of this wonderful country, I can never become a Thai (even if I would have a Thai pasport).

Published on 10/3/10