Living in a country that doesn't match your passport: Part 1, the benefits
What started out as a prolonged vacation has turned into a multi-year existence in a place that while I did enjoy visiting it, I never really thought that I would or COULD end up living here. It hasn't been super simplistic, but over time I have kind of figured out a lot of the ups and downs of living outside of your home country, especially if it is in a developing nation, such as the one I live in, Thailand.
For this post, I am going to focus only on the benefits, I will cover the downsides later, because trust me, there are plenty of those as well.
Costs
Obviously this wouldn't apply to changing where I Live to say, Norway or Switzerland, but moving here from Texas, USA, I immediately saw a rather large drop in my living expenses. The biggest thing is rent. I currently live in a two story mostly furnished house with 2 bedrooms, one of which I barely even use, and the rent is around $400 a month. A bit less than that actually.
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Texas is not as expensive as other states in America, but it is still significantly more expensive than that. I've never even seen a fully furnished apartment for rent at all, let alone a two-bedroom house. My very first apartment that I shared with a buddy in college was $650 a month and trust me, when I say that this place we lived in was an absolute dump, I mean it.
There are other costs too but I wont get into too much detail about them but I will just say that you can get most meals for a couple dollars here, beers cost about 2 dollars, and coffee and other things that people have every day are like 50 cents unless you are going to Starbucks. Even at Starbucks though, which I went to on a date once, it was still roughly half what you would pay for the same thing in another country.
internet service, satellite TV back when people were still doing that, mobile phone data plans, and almost everything else is much cheaper. I have heard that cars are more expensive, but I have never contemplated getting one of those.
My scooter, which I rarely drive, was around $800 and I have never had any problems with it.
Attitude and safety
I feel as though USA is a very unsafe country. I have no idea exactly what the problem is but it is just kind of dangerous and I often felt like I really needed to watch my back there. Thailand is peaceful for reasons that I don't understand fully. Perhaps it is because there are security bars on everything or maybe it is the Buddhist belief in karma. Whatever it is, I have never been subjected to any crime or even felt like i was getting close to it. In USA I frequently felt as though I was going to maybe get into a fight and I was sometimes in rather dicey parts of town where you really need to watch your back for getting robbed.
Almost everyone I knew in Texas had been the victim at one point or another of some sort of crime, much of it violent. Here in Thailand, I don't know anyone that has really had anything bad happen to them and when it does, it is more often than not, at the hands of another foreigner. I'm sure that Thai people get into drunk punch-ups at their bars or over a girl as well, but it really doesn't seem to happen all that often. Things like armed robbery are basically unheard of here.
Some people try to say that it is because I am so much bigger than the average Thai man but let's be real here everyone, a group of guys is going to overpower me. I'm not Jason Borne and even though yes, I am a lot bigger than the average Thai man, I am not bigger than a Thai man with a machete or gun.
Crime just isn't that much of a thing here. The police on the other hand... well, that will be featured in the part 2 of this.
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Next up is attitude. For the most part Thai people are extremely laid back and don't have these massive egos the likes of which I see in the west. I know that online things are not a great example of how people generally behave, but the videos I see of people being interviewed on the streets of USA it just seems like that country and others is just filled with some of the worst people to ever live. They are just nasty towards everyone and have really high self-opinions even when they are wrong.
Over this way, people are generally really nice. People smile, people say hello back when you say "hi" to them. This is not a situation of me being super attractive and therefore everyone is nice to me either. I am on a scale of 1-10 perhaps a solid 6. It isn't that. People are just nice here.
I don't know what happened in the west but even when I am back there visiting it becomes apparent to me that for a lot of people, being rude or stand-offish is the default and I don't like it. I'm really happy to be away from that and its existence is a big part of the reason why I am seriously dragging my feet as far as going back is concerned.
Weather
This is very subjective depending on where you come from and how you feel about warmth and cold but for whatever reason it happens to be, most of the developing nations have near year-round warm weather. There are exceptions of course like from what I hear of Eastern Europe, but I know a ton of people that do the expat life in my field and most of it is in tropical or near tropical temps.
In the "winter" here in Chiang Mai we get some temps that drop down towards maybe you need a jacket sort of weather, but it is chemically impossible for it to ever snow or for ice to form on the roads. Believe it or not, it actually DOES get cold in Texas in the winter and as far as a majority of the 1st work, winter can be a particularly miserable time of year.
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While I do get a bit miffed in the dead of summer and sweating all the time, I will take that over feeling like I am going to freeze to death any day.
There are other benefits, but I don't feel as though it is worth dedicating an entire couple of paragraphs to and one of them has the potential to offend people. The potential offender is that women here are more traditional and really want to not just accept, but actively pursue a traditional woman role the likes of which was the global norm before I was born. I prefer that. I want a feminine woman who wants me to provide for her but isn't a gold-digger. This is really easy to find in Thailand even if you are just a 6/10 like me.
Other benefits include the 24 hour nature of just about everything, and at least for Thailand, the respect that people have that is dictated quite a bit by the "saving face" thing that you may have heard about. Generally speaking, people are polite, even when they really shouldn't be.
This isn't to say that I think all of you should pack your bags and move over here right away though. There are plenty of downsides as well, and I will get into that a bit later.