How Did I End Up Here In Thailand?

How did I end up here? I suppose I can ask myself that, but deep down I know the truth. I was looking for something different, something to remove me from the drudgery of day-to-day life. I’d already been to Thailand, already married a Thai, and we had a son, and we were living in England, just existing. I didn’t want to just exist. I wanted to enjoy myself, enjoy my life, and give a great life to my son and wife.

I just found that in England I could never get ahead. I never had a chance to be able to move forward and always felt like I was stationary. Time goes by, as it does for everyone. But with the passing of time, our financial situation; our life remained all too similar to how it was when my wife moved to England 5 years prior. You’d expect to be able to look back at your year and see progress. But when you compare it to the year before and there is nothing different, it’s very disillusioning. No money in your bank at the end of the year. Nothing to show for all the work and sacrifice and early mornings.

I even got on the bus to work in my early 40s, all with the purpose of trying to save money. Yet, no money was being saved.

The Seeds of an Idea

With this going on all around you, you start watching people online—people who are where you want to be showing their lives, sharing the intimate details of what life is like in Thailand. And it starts to plant pictures in your mind. Starts to make you think that perhaps this is what we should be doing as a family. If they can do it, so can we.

And when you finally start to understand that the option is open to anyone, not just the guys already there you start to feel better about your situation. And you start to plan. You start thinking about how you’re going to make that your reality. What’s it going to take to get us back to my wife’s village? The simple nature of life there was calling to us.

The longer time went on, the louder it shouted, beckoning to us and trying to pry us away from the place we found ourselves yet where we so very much didn’t want to be. This is the position we found ourselves in up until a few years ago.

we went through COVID like everyone else, suffering. Watching people online though was our retreat, and ultimately we decided to move the three of us to my wife’s village. We made that decision close to 2 years ago. It started out okay, yet it got worse. And I want to talk about the truth of what it is actually like living somewhere like that because most people completely miss the point. No one tells you what goes on but we’ll get to that later.

First Time in Thailand 2017

I found myself in Thailand for the first time in 2017. I loved it. It was just what I needed. A shock to the senses to wake you up and show you that there’s so much more to life than where you came from. I spent the time in Bangkok mainly. One of my favorite things to do was just walk the streets. Seeing things so different to what I was used to opens up your mind to the possibility of doing things that you’ve never done before. And I got drawn into Thailand just like so many other people do.

I was there for three months. Call it an early midlife crisis, or perhaps I just needed a bit of time out of work. I’d worked for the best part of the 20 years prior, and I needed a break from that and Thailand seemed like the perfect option. Like many people that go to Thailand, I adored it. Everything about it. I wasn’t really interested in the main tourist areas. I liked exploring further away, looking at more local things.

Meeting My Wife

I met my wife after I’d been in Thailand for approximately a month. I know it was around that time because it was when I went to extend my stay for an extra 15 days. It was the day after, and I was walking in the daytime like I love to do. I’d gotten on the BTS at Asok, three stations to Chit Lom, where I got off and walked in the direction of Pratunam. I’d heard it was an interesting place to go and look wholesale shops and things like that and I also wanted to go and look at that big building, the Baiyoke. You see it when you drive in in the taxi from the airport. They’ve got signage on it, and it seems to be the highlight of Bangkok’s cityscape.

I was walking around there having a good time. Even had a great tom yam in one of the restaurants close by. But after I’d been there, I decided to continue walking in the same direction. You had to cross over the train track. And I continued to walk where things started to feel a lot more local. You didn’t need to go far in Bangkok to find a local feel. And I always felt like that was the most exhilarating thing.

I was probably walking for 20 to 25 minutes and I saw a big building that indicated massage. I was feeling quite tired after the walk, so I thought a massage sounded great. I had no idea it was one of those sort of massage places. I knew of the bars and massage places that catered to followers never my scene but this place was different. It seemed to be mainly local. But as I’d already gone in, I didn’t want to turn around.

When I walked into the massage parlor, a guy came over. Wasn’t really someone I wanted to be speaking to in what seemed to be a girl centric environment. But he kept gesturing to me, pointing out different girls behind the glass window. I felt extremely uncomfortable in there and left quickly and went into a cafe next door. I was very flustered and indicated to the girl behind the counter that I was shocked about what went on in there. She spoke a bit of English and smiled and joked with me and the rest is history.

We were married soon after still are. She’s amazing, and the story is not about her doing anything bad to me. She was 31 when we met.

For the following few weeks, I kept going back to that cafe, and eventually she agreed to go on a date. And by the end of my time there, I felt like we were inseparable. I knew going back to England wouldn’t be the same without her. So, we got married before I left, and we started the process to get her to England. Everything kind of just fell into place, and she was with me 6 months later. She’d learned a lot of English during those 6 months, and we were able to have good conversations. And not long after her being in England, she fell pregnant, and we had a wonderful son.

Growing Dissatisfaction with Life in England

Life was starting to feel good for me now. I finally had a partner who I could share my life with. I had a great son, and I was happy. One of the problems was life just kept getting in the way. I don’t mean that in any strange sort of way. I just mean that negative parts of my life such as having to go to work, doing a job you absolutely hate it was getting in the way of happiness. I wasn’t seeing my wife as often as I wanted to, and all she was doing was staying at home. She didn’t have the confidence to go out by herself. The reason this was going to be a problem eventually: our son would start nursery and school, and because of that, she would need to go and take him.

We’re coming up with all these reasons why Thailand seems to be a better option. Then COVID happens, and we’re not even able to get to Thailand. But we can get to Thailand by watching people who live there online. It opens up a new world that you’ve never seen before and exciting to think that there is a possibility to be able to do something like that yourself.

My wife was from Buriram. I’d never been. When we got married, we just did it quickly in Bangkok to help with the visa application. But she kept talking about how much she liked it there and how she’d like to live there again at some point. I didn’t know anything about that part of Thailand, but when you start seeing people showing their lives the types of houses they’ve got, and the types of things they can do and the fact that they seem to indicate that it’s not a high stress environment like at home, that’s what drew me in. The thought that I didn’t need to work all the time anymore even though I wanted to and I don’t need to spend as much money or a lot of time away from the family, and I can start enjoying myself and saving money for the first time.

With lots of people transitioning to online work which I had to do during COVID this even more opened up the possibility that Thailand should be where we were living. We decided that we would move to Thailand when we could. Let’s do something different. We might not be able to make as much money. We might not have as much stuff, but we would have our time and that’s what we valued.

Turns out though, I was lucky and I kept the same job and the same salary. I know lots of people were thinking about moving to places like Thailand during COVID, and when they were able to people who prior to COVID happening would never have been brave enough to move anywhere or do anything. These were the sorts of people you now saw moving. And this filled me with confidence that it was the right thing for us to do.

Planning the Move to Rural Thailand

When we finally came to the decision to move to Thailand, we put together a plan. I had some equity in the house, a tiny bit of savings, a car you know, just the typical things that you collect over the course of a few decades. Sell everything. Get rid of everything. And move to Thailand and build a house only a small one get ourselves a car, and I can start working there remotely. That was what made it easier the fact that my job allowed me to work from anywhere. I was paid quite well, so I would be going with an okay Western salary, and we’d be living in rural Thailand in Isan. And based on how much I earned, we should have a lot better time there than in England.

So when we could, we packed up, sold everything, and moved to Thailand. I left nothing behind. If it was too big to take, it was sold. We were going to start a brand new life, and we didn’t want any of the remnants of the old one getting in the way. Got together about £100,000. I still would be on the same salary, and we wouldn’t have a mortgage anymore. Bills would be lower, and we could start to save. Plus, the house we were going to have would be better than the one we had in England.

Arrival in Thailand

Arriving in Thailand felt like I was returning home even though I’d only spent 3 months total there. As I said, mainly in Bangkok. My wife was delighted to be in Thailand. She never did like England. She never admitted it, but you could tell by the look on her face anytime we went anywhere. It was too far out of her comfort zone. But I loved Thailand. And knowing that we were there to start our new life was a very exhilarating time.

It was our son’s first time in Thailand. He was a dual national. Managed to get him a Thai passport sorted from the embassy in London so we could enter the country with him on that. I got a non immigrant visa which I plan to extend because of marriage. So far so good.

Spent a few weeks in Bangkok. My wife seeing all the friends she hasn’t seen for years. Me acclimatizing to working different hours. Although I was still doing the same job and I could do it remotely, I did have to do it during UK hours. And although I didn’t like starting work so late and finishing work even later, I felt like it was a small price to pay for us to be able to be in Thailand.

During those first weeks, we bought a car. Based on all the videos I’d watched about other guys moving to rural Thailand, it was quite apparent that a car was necessary. One thing I found about buying a car: I expected to be able to pick up something reasonable for a couple of thousand. I wasn’t yet aware that secondhand car prices in Thailand were so high, so it made far more sense for us to buy a new one. We got a Honda City around 650,000 baht.

Those first few weeks in Thailand were brilliant. Everything I expected it to be and then some. But we knew the plan wasn’t to live in Bangkok. It was to go and live in Buriram. If I could do anything anything to change what we did, I would. But we can’t go back in time and have another go.

First Impressions of Buriram

So, we found ourselves that weekend driving up to see her hometown for what would be my first time. When we got there that is Buriram City I thought everything looked even better than I thought. It looked like a smaller version of the more local places that you see in Bangkok. You don’t see many other foreigners there. And when you’re at a place like that as a foreigner, you feel a bigger connection to Thailand or a deeper connection to Thailand that perhaps you feel when you’re in Bangkok. That was the first thing I was thinking about when we found a hotel in the city. You don’t feel like a tourist there.

And I’ve heard guys who have lived in Bangkok for a few years still feeling like a tourist because that’s how people talk to them. That’s how people treat them as if they are a tourist even though they’re not. However, up in Buriram, people weren’t like that, and I loved it. I thought we were off to a great start.

I knew from what my wife talked about that where she came from was very different to the city. It was a lot more rural, but we weren’t going straight to her village. We were going to spend a week acclimatizing to the city first. I had to work still, and it was a 30 minute drive probably a bit longer to her village. So rather than packing everything in all at once, we spent a week in a hotel close to that water. I see it all the time, but I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like a curve of water like a semicircle type shape but there is a great restaurant next to it.

My wife was excited to be there. You could tell she felt very comfortable being closer to home. While I was working, she’d go and visit friends, taking our son with her, of course. And when I wasn’t working, we’d go out to eat. And I walked around by myself all the time like I used to in Bangkok. Again, I was loving it. At that moment in time, I was happier than ever. I felt like moving to Thailand was the best thing we ever did.

I was still earning the same amount of money. I’ll tell you about £25,000 a month and now our bills were going to be considerably less. That first week in Buriram was everything I expected it to be. There was a temple overlooking the town that we went to. That was great. And as someone who really loves football, having Thailand’s best club in the city was really exciting to me.

My wife was speaking to her family regularly. In fact, she went to the village when I was working on more than one occasion, and her family knew it was our plan to build a house there. I haven’t mentioned this yet, but it is important. Not once has her family asked for money or help. Not once. They have their own money although it’s only a little bit. They don’t have much. But they never asked us or me for anything. The only thing I wanted to make sure though was you could get good internet in the village. That was the only thing I cared about. The only thing. And when my wife confirmed that yes, indeed, you can get good internet there because a few people already have it, the deal was sealed.

The Village

I finished work around 11:00 p.m. one Friday, and the following morning, we drove for the first time to her village. Leaving the town, things immediately start to feel more rural. The roads are still fantastic. You shouldn’t be picturing dirt tracks or gravel paths. The roads are great really new, built over the past few years. It’s a never ending cycle of improvements happening in Thailand.

I need to talk about things like this because I want to paint my picture of this part of Thailand. I want to describe it exactly as it is so that people can think for themselves about whether they’re going to like it or not. So, we’re driving on down this road. It’s getting more rural. Houses start to look more different to how they did in the city more rustic. You had houses that looked like this in the city as well. But you could tell that ever so slowly they were being replaced more modern. But the further you got out of the city, the more backwards things became. Initially though, these differences excite you. They intrigue you. It is like a novelty, and you never expect that novelty to wear off.

We drove for 20 25 minutes and turned off onto a smaller road that was paved as well, but there were lots of potholes in that one. So many that you had to slow down and physically veer around them and they were deep. I learned that lots of flooding happened around there, and that can have negative effects on the road surface. Also, lots of people drive really heavy farming equipment, and that can damage the road. They do fix the roads often, but this one seemed to have a lack of attention for at least a few years.

But we’re driving on down there, and I’m looking out of the window while driving, and just about everything I see around me is amazing. It’s nothing like I was expecting it to be, but it’s beautiful. There’s something that you really need to say the beauty around there, especially in the season that we were in, it’s second to none. Lush and green. Bet you can guess it was the rainy season. And the rice fields as far as the eye can see. It was very flat flat plains and at least where we were driving, there were no signs of any differences in elevation.

We continued driving down this road for 5 to 10 minutes and we turn off it. Now we’re on a dirt track. Again, you shouldn’t be picturing a full dirt track full of holes and ups and downs and because we’re in rainy season, these holes are filled with water. It wasn’t like that. It was the next best thing to a proper road, and it was very easy to drive along. And a few minutes later, we approached a village maybe a village of 50 to 100 houses. And this is where my wife was from.

I was excited to be there, happy to meet her family never seen them before, although I’d spoken to them on the phone lots of times in my broken Thai, but it was improving. We parked up outside her family’s house. You had to drive down a small driveway, and the house was on the right a big field of rice behind the house. The next house was approximately 20 meters away, and that was where her uncle and auntie lived. And on the other side of the family’s house was a large pond. Houses dotted around the village, but quite spread out, all interjected with more rice fields and even more rice fields. I turned to my wife. She’s got a huge smile on her face, really happy to be there. But the first thing I said to her is, “Are you sure they’ve got proper internet here?” She looked at me and said, “Yes, I am very sure.” I knew I would need to check this was the case. But first things first, we needed to get the pleasantries out of the way. So, we get out of the car and greet her family. This was her mother and father and her older brother, who was still living at home. Some of the nicest people I’ve ever met. So friendly. Smiles that seemed to be genuine and real. And they welcomed me into their home with open arms, offering me food that had been cooked earlier that morning. They were wonderful people. You might be thinking based on everything I’ve said so far what’s the problem? I will get to that, but I don’t want to come across as anything other than who I am and what I want to share. What I believe is an accurate reflection of somebody from the West attempting to adapt to life in a place so different to what you’re used to. Please bear that in mind. Her family were amazing. I’m surveying everything I can see. It’s a lot to take in. A few minutes later, her auntie and uncle come over and say hi. Equally as wonderful people. So nice. Couldn’t have asked for nicer people to have greeted you. There are too many people who perhaps look at the way things are done in Thailand and consider that because they do things so differently, they must be bad people. That’s not what I’m trying to say.

The Internet Test

But after all the greetings, after spending an hour talking in the best Thai I could I tried really hard with Thai, as I still do our son was left to play with his grandparents. They adore him as you’d expect, and they treat him just like they treat everyone else. But my wife jumps onto a motorcycle that’s parked close by and tells me to get on the bike because we were going to go to a shop. I’d never seen her drive a bike before, but she said she’d been driving it for years and years. She even used to drive herself to school, so I trust that she can drive. And I get on the back. No helmets inside. I bet there was not even one helmet in the entire village.

But we drove for a few minutes and pulled up outside a shop. It was a very basic shop. The nearest 7 Eleven was probably 20 minutes drive away, and it was at one of the PTT stations. This meant you couldn’t buy alcohol there. So, if you wanted a beer from a shop like this, it was going to be a long way. But the local shop sold everything you wanted. And my wife wanted to show me that they had proper internet. They let me connect to their Wi Fi, and I did a speed test.

And that’s when you realize just how wild Thailand can be. Here we were in a village in rural Thailand with extremely fast fiber optic internet. Who would have thought that? Back at home, you’re not going to be getting internet as good as this, especially in a rural location. But here, it was great. That was me sold. I couldn’t honestly believe it. I mean, I really can’t believe even now that the internet in a place like that was so good.

We bought some drinks from the shop and some food to cook. Right next to this shop, they had one of those pork style shops CP and they sold pork and chicken. It seemed to be the place in the village where people bought things like that. I want to talk about this later, but in the moment I don’t think anything of it, and we buy some, go back and have a bit of a barbecue and some drinks just to get to know the family. It was a great time.

The First Night

We were going to be spending the night there. The following day, we planned to go and look at the land that her family were going to give her to build a house on. Then we were going back to the city to start to look for someone to build our house.

That night was an experience. That’s the only way I can describe it. No air conditioning. Mosquito nets are essential. Squat toilet in a small concrete hut with a tin roof. Around the top of this toilet area building, there is like a 1 foot gap around. So if you stood on your tiptoes, you could look out. But next to the squat toilet, there was a large bucket of water with a plastic container that looked like a pan with a handle. And you had to grab hold of the handle, scoop out the water, and then pour it all over yourself to have a shower. There was no water heater. And because you’re so hot in Thailand what, 35, 36 degrees and you’re pouring cool water over yourself, it shocks you. I thought that was an awful feeling when you’re ready to go to bed. It kind of wakes you up just before you’re going to go to sleep.

It was very rudimentary. That would only be the best way to describe it. And a huge shock to the senses for anybody who was not from there. I wasn’t concerned though. Our house was not going to be like this. It was going to have a proper bathroom. But if you’re going somewhere like that, expect the unexpected.

I was barely able to have a shower that evening because I couldn’t physically put this cold water over myself. But to my wife, it was so normal so easy for her and I respected her for that.

It was a very restless night. Our son also wasn’t used to sleeping in such heat either, and I think we were up at 5:00 a.m. at first light, just so happy to have got the night over with. The family were already up cooking. They seem to do things differently at places like that. They’d cook in the morning a number of different dishes, and that food is what they’d eat all day. They’d leave the food completely out in the open under a small plastic net type thing to stop the flies going on, and they’d leave it out in the heat all day. They wouldn’t have any problems because that’s just what they were used to doing.

They offered me some food. The things they ate there I was not used to, but I always tried out of respect.

Choosing Land for the New House

And my wife took me on the bike again to look at the land. It was perfect. About 3 minutes away on the bike from where the family lived, and it was a reasonable size piece. It had already been raised a long time ago, so it was ready for building, but it did have a rice field behind it. I need to be perfectly clear that her family did not want any money for the land. It was a free gift for my wife. That’s just how they do things in Thailand.

You will hear all the time about people buying land from their wife or their wife’s family. But these people who are doing this who are selling this land do not accurately represent the majority of families in Thailand. They most definitely don’t. But it does happen from time to time when they want to fleece the foreigner. I need to point that out yet again that my wife’s family are great. Not once have they tried to get anything out of me. In fact, they gave us free land.

The first thing to do would be to get the land transferred onto my wife’s name. Watching YouTube long enough, I knew we needed to make sure it had a proper title which it did and it was going to be sorted out the following week when I was working.

I pictured what our house would look like, and it was like a dream. We even contacted the internet provider in the area, and they would need to run the cable slightly further from the main village, and it would cost a bit extra, but it wasn’t prohibitive.

So, after looking at the land and talking a bit more with the family, we had a late lunch the food that we ate earlier and we drove back to town. We were going to rent somewhere for 3 to 6 months while the house was being built, and then we could move there permanently.

Building the House

By the Wednesday, we’d already rented somewhere, and the land was already transferred to my wife’s name. And we were looking for a company to build the house. We wanted a three bedroom bungalow Thai style, but with a western kitchen, air conditioning, a proper bathroom, and everything to make it feel comfortable. After the money we brought to Thailand, it was our plan to spend £70,000 on the house. We’d already got the car, and I’d have money in my bank for my visa, and my income coming in on a monthly basis was more than enough for us to live on. It was a very exciting time.

And over the following 5 months, we were going every weekend to check on the progress of the house. My wife is going more often than this, and the house is coming on brilliantly. You have to keep an eye on the builders make sure they’re doing things correctly and not cutting any corners but it was coming together well. The most fun part for me was choosing out what color tiles we wanted or what color we wanted the walls painting and the furniture that we would ultimately use on a daily basis.

We chose a really nice, comfortable sofa that was £1,000 a great bed £700 for the mattress and everything we got to a western standard. I need to be frank and honest. You want things to a western standard in Thailand, you’re going to pay Western prices, if not a bit more. You can buy things that are a lot cheaper than they are in the West, but the quality is far, far worse. For example, the mattress that we used at her family’s house when we stayed there those mattresses can be bought for £40, but when you lay down on it, you can tell why they only cost that amount of money. This illusion that Thailand is cheap it’s just that an illusion. It’s cheap generally because the things you’re buying are cheap quality, not good quality at all. That’s important to understand.

We got a big 55 inch TV we put on the wall and another one in our bedroom. I got my dream office desk the one that raises up and down and my office was in the third bedroom overlooking the rice field at the back. It was idyllic, and I completely loved it.

Moving in was exciting. Everything we dreamed of was now here. We had a nice house with no mortgage. We had a car with no car loan. I had an income of £2,500 a month no debts and we’re in a brilliant life position.

Adjusting to Rural Thai Village Life

It didn’t take long until the reality of living somewhere like that started to hit home. It’s the things that people don’t talk about on YouTube the things that you would never expect. Differences in culture, difference in traditions, and a different way of living a day-to-day life. Different practices that people had. Just how different village life is to life in the city. Just how different the people are to the people that come from the city.

When I say that the people are different, I’m not saying that they are any less important or any less of a person. What I’m saying is that what they do and the things that they consider to be normal no matter how friendly they are, no matter how nice they are the things they do often boggle the mind. Doing things that you look at and feel like it’s so backwards. Trying to get the correct word across to explain it. You look at something that someone’s doing, and you kind of want to say to them, “We stopped doing that in the West 100 years ago or 50 years ago.” But you can’t change the mentality of the people.

But one thing that I do think people are becoming less and less like this in Thailand as the generations go on. My wife wasn’t like the rest of the people in her village. She had experienced how people did things elsewhere, and she changed herself because she was moving with the times. They don’t seem to be moving with the times in the village. Not at all. And while I’m not saying anything negative about the people, as someone who was not from there someone who had never experienced this before it didn’t take long for me to start losing my mind.

The Tannoy Speakers

The first thing was the village tannoy speakers situated throughout the village where the village headman would blurt out I don’t know what. I would ask my wife to translate sometimes. Although I was learning Thai and I was getting reasonable at it, it was garbled across the tannoy, and it made it difficult for someone who wasn’t fluent to understand. Maybe one time they’re talking about a particular government scheme, another is talking about something else, but it was a constant daily thing. It was noisy, and they play music on it and it’s really early in the day every day and it would wake you up.

Of course, I heard it when we went to visit, but I just thought it was a one off thing. I would never have come to the conclusion that they would do that every day because it made no sense why they would start talking so loud on a tannoy waking everyone up in the village extremely early. It took its toll on me because I’m working late and I wanted to wake up late. And even though the closest speaker to our house was 100 meters away, you still heard it, and you couldn’t do anything to get away from it. That in itself though wasn’t enough to send me over the edge. It was just one of the little intricacies that you have to adapt to about life in a Thai village. I never adapted to that, and it became a constant annoyance.

The Neighbor’s Music

Then we had the case where someone on the adjoining land started building something. It was empty when we moved there, but they started building a structure on the land about 2 months after we moved in. That in itself shouldn’t cause problems, but they had their little house at the back and a shop at the front that they opened. That was a second shop in the village that had opened. But aside from that, they started playing music in the daytime. Loud.

It’s one of those situations where the guy who was building the house next to you you’ve spoken to him. He’s a really nice guy, older than I was in his 50s apparently working down in Bangkok, saved up enough money to come back and do this in the village. And it was his dream to have a shop. Guys drinking outside, playing music. He was a nice guy. But to him, the thought that he was disturbing me and my family as well as other people in the village that thought didn’t even cross his mind. He wasn’t doing it to annoy people. He didn’t even think it would be annoying people. His mental capacity didn’t take him there. So regardless of how nice he was, his actions were so backwards and so selfish. But he didn’t know he was being selfish.

That made life awful. If you know Thailand, you know the bass the doom, doom, doom. You can feel it in the walls, and you can feel it in your body. My wife hated it as well, and it was always a case of how can we get him to stop playing the music or let’s offer him some beer or something. And fair play to the guy when he understood that he was causing us stress and when we gave him some money, he only played the music at a particular time of the day, not all day. So, it was a good compromise.

It wasn’t the only thing he did, though.

The Burning

My wife would do the washing and hang it up outside, and in this part of Thailand, burning everything is really widespread. So, your washing is hanging up on the line, and they start a fire. They start it with the loose leaves that have fallen off the trees brush it into a pile and burn it. Yet, the leaves are still not 100% dry, and the smoke is hideous. Then they start throwing plastic bottles and other things onto the fire, and that’s going on your washing and is finding its way into your house even though the windows are closed and there are no holes in your house.

They didn’t need to burn things like this because once a week in the village, people came and collected the rubbish. But people still had the mentality of burning of how they did things a long time ago. My wife she hated it. But they were stuck in their ways, and no one was prepared to educate them on how to do things better. So that became a constant smoke in the house.

And you’re trying to ask them, “Can you not burn on this side of your land? Can you burn on the other?” And again, fair play to them they will try to accommodate. But they don’t think they’re doing anything wrong by burning. They don’t think that what they’re doing is antiquated. They believe it’s the right thing to do. And when the government is trying to change their mentality telling them you’re not allowed to burn at this time during burning season, for example people don’t stop even though they’ve been asked to. It’s ingrained into them, and for them it’s normal. But to us, it’s not.

3 months after moving into the house, all the dreams, all the excitement it’s starting to turn into consternation. It’s such a difficult thing to come to terms with. You’re living with your perfect wife in a really nice house on a decent sized piece of land. You’ve got your car parked up outside. You’ve got amazing scenery around you. Great people all around you. But somehow you’re feeling like this place is hell.

I’m still working, and that’s going on okay. We do get the occasional power cut, but I had a hotspot on my phone so I could use the internet even when the power went off and still work from my laptop. That was unless the power went off further afield as well, and then the power went off to the place that provided the signal for the phone. I’m not though saying that power cuts happen a lot. For a place like that so rural the electric supply was extremely stable, far better than you’d ever think it would be. And then again, that adds to the confusion. You’ve got great internet. The internet was better than the internet we had in England. Power cuts maybe once a month not bad at all. You’ve got all these modern conveniences, yet you’ve got these modern conveniences in what appears to be a medieval village.

And I don’t mean that in a negative way, but it’s kind of like you’ve got these modern conveniences, yet you’re still stuck in your old ways instead of trying to move out and get with the times.

Charcoal Making and Dogs

A few houses away from us, they made charcoal. Everyone in the village seemed to cook over charcoal. Nobody had electric stoves, and a few people used gas bottles connected to the stove and it was like 400 baht to fill the gas tank every two months, something like that. And to me, that was the most sensible option. But no, everyone still had to cook over charcoal. That means someone’s got to make charcoal. And if you’ve been around when charcoal is being made, you know that it’s not very pleasant. They’ve got like a hut style building, and then they put the wood in and burn it, and smoke comes out. Two hours of smoking later, you get some charcoal something like that.

That was a few houses away from us. And every few days, they’d start charcoal making, and pollutants would come onto your land, into your house, and into your lungs. And it’s just a thing like you don’t even need to use charcoal. You might use charcoal from time to time if you’re making a barbecue. I get that. But they’re not cooking directly over the charcoal. They’re still using pans on top get the charcoal going, put the pan on, put some oil in, and start cooking. So, that was another thing that I struggle with immensely.

Dogs. The endless barking of dogs when you’re walking around the village or when you’re at home dogs barking throughout the night all the time. It’s a constant. Then, if you’re walking, people don’t chain up the dogs or keep them on their land. Most people don’t have enough money to be able to build a boundary wall around their houses, and dogs roam freely.

I liked walking to the local shop. It was 10 minutes, something like that, and it was a regular occurrence being barked at by dogs. If you showed any sign that you were scared or uncomfortable, they would chase after you. I found out that stamping on the floor showing a bit of aggression and the dogs wouldn’t chase after you. They’d still bark, but they wouldn’t chase you if you did that. But I was still walking to the shop, avoiding the dogs as best you can.

And you walk past the house of people who make the charcoal. They’re sitting outside at the front, and they say hi to you smiling on their face and you say hi to them and smile back. They’re so happy and nice and kind, and it’s such a difference. They’re so nice, yet they do such strange things. In that place, they spoke with more of the Isan dialect which sounds closer to Lao. So I’m trying to pick this up as well. And again, they’re so nice people yet the things they do are causing me untold mental anguish.

The Struggle to Cook

But you get to the shop, you buy your drinks, and then you fancy making yourself something western for dinner. You go to the pork shop next door. This would be the only place where you could buy meat from in the village. The closest other place would have been at least a 15 to 20 minute drive. You get to the pork shop, yet the cut of meat that you want isn’t available. Anything else that you could potentially have is also not available. That happens five times out of ten. They don’t have what you want.

When they did have what you wanted, it was imperative that you picked up the piece of meat with the metal prongs that they use and bring it really close to your face and smell it. Three times out of ten, it smelled awful really old. But the thing is, my wife couldn’t smell it. She couldn’t smell old chicken either. And that’s normal for them. Go to a place like that in rural Thailand make sure that you smell the meat. What that meant was that you’re going out to buy food in the local area, something to cook, and only two times out of ten you’re actually going to be able to buy it in a condition that is not going to make you physically ill.

I was ill lots of times eating food in the village. Nothing wrong with the food. That’s the way they’ve always eaten it for a long time. They’re not getting ill off it, but I am. Not badly. Just, you know I’m not used to eating things like that, and most Westerners aren’t.

On the odd time you pick up that perfect piece of pork of course you would prefer beef, but you can’t buy that in the village you need to go all the way to the town to get that. You go next to the vegetable shop, hoping for potatoes. Sometimes they have potatoes, but most often than not they don’t. Usually you end up having pork steak with whatever they had.

You could buy things in bulk which is what we usually did from the town 35 minutes away or whatever. You buy things in bulk, put it in the freezer. But every time you go to cook and I must say, cooking is one of my favorite things to do I find it very therapeutic and relaxing and then you realize that you don’t have that one ingredient that you need. You forgot something. Your black pepper runs out. Without black pepper, you can’t season hardly any food. And you can’t just go out and buy black pepper easily. Cooking oil you can buy that but you can’t buy olive oil in the village. Anything that you want is very difficult to lay your hands on. And when you do a big shop, certain things run out before others, and then you’re just putting together hodgepodge meals due to lack of ingredients.

The Outhouse Disaster

Then certain things would happen like you wanted to build a small outhouse just behind the main house. I wanted to have my office outdoors, and the idea behind this was that it would be surrounded on all sides one by our house, others by trees, and then the rice field behind us. That way, I would have an extra barrier to the smoke that kept coming in. It was always my dream though to sit outside in the evenings, but the evenings were when everybody was cooking, so you couldn’t sit outside. But if I had this outhouse, turned it into an office, I thought that would be good.

So, you find someone to build it. You tell them what you want or your wife tells them and they start building it. Only you find out that they’re building it and it’s not level with the house. You’d expect it to be parallel, but they built it at a strange angle, and it plays havoc with your mind. Then the concreting outside you clearly indicate that you want the concrete sloped in a particular direction so that the water will drain away but they don’t do that. And when it rains, the water moves towards the door as opposed to away from it. Little things like that that you think are common sense. To them, it’s more “I’ll just do it how I want, and if they don’t like it, tough luck.”

So, my outhouse looked out of place, and it would fill with water when it rained. So, I had to pay to get that fixed.

Woke up one morning, the house is full of smoke. Go outside and there is ash all over your car. The guy next door just decided to have a massive burn off or whatever you want to call it.

The Breaking Point

And after living in the village for only 3 months, I’m at a point where I’d rather be anywhere else. I’m still working, bringing in money, but all the money that we had put into our life in this village everything a beautiful house, it is a beautiful village, beautiful scenery, great people, but a very backward and different and almost antiquated mentality. And it’s that mentality that causes so many people who come from the West to struggle in a village like this.

I wasn’t just struggling; I was starting to act in a way that I’m shy to admit. I’m working one evening probably 8:00 p.m., it must have been and I’m in a meeting. Perfect internet. Unbelievably so. But then a guy two houses down starts using his wood cutting machine to cut some wood at 8:00 p.m. The tannoy starts playing music. And I haven’t talked about the temple events that happen at least six times a year. They bring in a band loads of speakers and all the village go there. They sell food and they have drinks. It’s a fun time, but it goes on till 1:00 a.m., and the constant doom doom doom of the bass that shakes the wall of the house.

I found myself putting my meeting on hold, walking to the front door, and shouting, “Shut the f*** up.” My wife looks at me like inside she’s smiling because she knows herself how backwards it is, but on her face she’s deadly serious because she doesn’t want anyone in the village to not like me or her. But you understand that nobody understands what you’re saying. But you’re just mentally struggling to come to terms with the fact you’ve put all your money into a house in a place that on the surface is perfect, but behind the surface is like the perfect description of what hell sounds like.

School for Our Son

Then it’s time for my son to start school. The village school leaves a lot to be desired. The closest private school is 30 minutes away. And when you come to the understanding that you’re going to have to make that daily drive for his future there’s nothing wrong with the people at the school in the village. Nothing wrong with the other children. They’re just completely different to our son. I have nothing against my son mixing with the children in the village. He’s friends with them. But I feel like in the village, they should be teaching these children only Thai. Yet, they’re still speaking in the local dialect at schools like this which they don’t do at private schools. They will grow up learning two languages, but I believe it would be better for them if they just spoke Thai.

And we all know how things are in Thailand how people are meant to look up to their elders and respect them. I believe this is as it should be. It’s great. But in the village, it’s sort of taken way too far. For example, the teachers. I’ve met them and spoken to them. Wonderful people. But perhaps they’re not the best people to be teaching children in order for them to be able to bridge the gap between where they come from and their life and the lives of people who live in the city.

The people who live in the city they’re the middle classes. These are the people who have opportunities. And I believe that the way that the villages work you’re not trying to help these people from the village to become like the people in the city. It’s as though the village is there to keep these people in the dark ages. Keep these people at a place where the rich from the city will always have cheap labor to call on. That’s what it feels like to me. That’s my honest opinion.

Where We Are Now

Three years later, we’re still living there, driving to the town every day with my son to send him to the decent school. That’s 50,000 baht per semester, 100,000 baht per year. And most people in the village won’t make that amount of money working all year. So, that is really a big disconnect.

I’m extremely angry with myself for building the house there. Buriram is wonderful. We could have bought a house there for the same price that we built one for, but we wouldn’t have had as much land. But we wouldn’t have had all the goings on of village life around us.

Fortunately, I am still working remotely. That’s great. And every month I’ve been saving money, and as soon as we have enough to buy a small place in town, that’s exactly what we’re going to do. I am barely coping here in the village.

And while this story is nothing to do with anybody ripping me off; my wife are still great together this is just to do with me as a Western person coming to terms with just how difficult life in rural Thailand is. It’s meant as a warning to people thinking about doing something similar. People who live in places like that and who share their lives on YouTube do not paint the full picture. While I agree that they are amazing people it’s a very beautiful part of the country you can have a nice house on a nice piece of land I do not agree with them that it’s suitable for the vast majority of Western people. They never share the things that to Western people are not normal. If they had brought up all these things, I’d have probably thought twice.

I guess I am lucky in the sense that in a year’s time, we will have enough money to get a new place out of the village. I know some people will say, “Why don’t you just move and rent?” But I want stuff that will belong to my son in the future. He’s Thai and can own it.

And I believe that the house we have in the village or maybe not that house, maybe the land eventually over the course of the next generation, the children of the people who live in the village now most of them will seek a life somewhere else and they will come back with their new and modern ways and eventually the village will be a great place to live. But now as a Western person I would avoid living in rural Thailand. I mean, extremely rural Thailand at all costs. There are just too many things that are different to what you’re used to that to them are so normal. But you’re better off sticking to the town. I’ll finish this by saying I know a guy who lives in Buriram in his wife’s village, but his wife’s village is only 5 minutes away from downtown. It still has some of the same things as our village does, but it’s modernizing. New houses are being built, middle class people are moving in, and ways are changing. He’s admitted to it and says since he’s been there across 10 years, things are changing and moving in the right direction. But in these extreme rural villages a long way away from towns things aren’t changing yet. They will change eventually. And living somewhere like that 10 or 15 or 20 years from now might be the case. But if you’re hoping that things will change during your lifetime and you’re willing to wait for that don’t expect them to change anytime soon. Understand what it’s like. Make the correct decisions.