Living in Thailand is NOT What You Think It's Like...

living in Thailand is not what you think it is that's the title of this video and what do I mean by that what I mean is that people that move to Thailand often have an image in their head uh of what it's going to be like after you move here you might have it right and you might have it wrong and some people's opinions on life in Thailand change but only after they've been living here for a while I'm going to explain everything in this video give you my take on it but I found a really great video from a guy on YouTube named Brett Dev that's his YouTube channel name and uh this guy's like a young digital Nomad who lives up in changai and he provides all kinds of good information too about relocating to Thailand especially For You younger folks out there my channel is uh speaks more to the the Aging geriatric population perhaps people like me uh about life in Thailand and the views that we have at this stage in our life so I thought that it would be cool to bring in the Viewpoint of this younger guy living the digital Nomad life he's been living in Thailand for ages I really like his viewpoints I like his style Brett if you are actually watching this video shout out to you man I'm going to react to a video that you made because I thought that you raised some really good points so I'm going to go through a couple of clips of Brett's video and then I'm going to give you my take on what he's saying and it it's pretty enlightening and something for you to think about if you're considering moving to Thailand especially if you're in the early stages and you've never lived here before so first let's just kind of hear what Brett has to say about the general topic titled living in Thailand is not what you think it is I've been living out here in Thailand for 7 years and I remember a few years back riding in a car with one of my friends who at the time had been in Thailand for about eight or nine years and I actually said to him I said his name is John I said John do you ever feel like after being here for this long that kind of the novel's worn off and he said what do you mean I said well you know when you first come to Thailand it's incredible it's an absolute mindblowing experience especially like your first holiday or your first trip or whatever everything is so new it's so wild there's Tuk Turks and there's street food and it's hot and it's crazy and there's cables in the sky and it's messy and chaotic and it just gives you this overwhelming um buzz basically like coming to Thailand for the first time is basically like trying a drug for the first time in my opinion I mean it's true right like that feeling of first coming to Thailand being compared to to a drug it's a great analogy I'm not sure what the drug is it's a little bit it's a little bit of little bit of caffeine little bit of little bit of crack and craziness little bit of kind of good times and weed and just a little trippy stuff like the old shroomies maybe but Thailand in itself is a bit of a drug and and I myself experienced that I came here for the first time in 1994 and it was exact L like Brett described it just kind of opened my eyes to this whole new world this whole new way of life and it did feel intoxicating and that feeling never left me for over 20 years I went back to North America came here every year for a vacation frequented the place often and uh the dream of moving here was like a flame burning in my belly and then every year the flame started growing stronger and stronger until uh finally 5 years ago just decided to pull the trigger and F and finally make the move and been here five years now and I can I can relate to what Brett's saying um you know and and like most drugs I would imagine after a while the feeling is not the same you know like the the the Euphoria the joyous feeling wears off and then it kind of leads to the question well like what happens next most people that move here long term they come here because they have that buzz they experien Thailand for a few times they come on holiday they come back on holiday again and they just can't get enough and they say I want that all the time but what happens if you have it all the time does the feeling does that excitement eventually go away I always say to people if you come to Thailand the number one thing you should not do is is join Facebook groups you shouldn't go on to the tire forums because there are literally whole communities of thousands of experts who have lived here for so long that the novelty is clearly wor off and all they do is and moan about the place yeah uh again this is why I chose Brat's video the guy hits the nail right on the head um there is a ton of foreigners expats who for some reason continue to choose to call Thailand home even though the shine has clearly worn off for them and they have nothing but negative things to say as Brett says they they moan they talk about how stupid the ties are how stupid it is how they do this how the government is is dumb for doing that you know how everything in society just doesn't function the way it should and and I honestly feel sorry for these people it's like you know out of the I don't know how many countries there are in the world drop a comment below let me know but out of the 200 and some odd countries that there are in the world why anyone would choose to live in one that makes them unhappy is beyond me and then that's when you really start to dissect and and dig deep into the psyche of these people and it and it really isn't Thailand that's pissing them off I think it's just that that they're you know grumpy people people that uh for some reason wake up every day looking to jump on the internet find a forum find a YouTube video I've had lots of them in my comment section write some angry comments move on to the next forum move on to the next YouTube video write some more Angry comments and somehow you know go through life day to day to day like that and so I if that's the type of person you are at your core then yeah that's probably going to happen to you Thailand will probably bring that out in you in in in maybe the worst way because you know as Brett said it is like a drug and so the intoxicating effect on the positive side's amazing but what it can do to people uh that go down the negative path equally astonishing you know it can really really bring out the uh that side of people to the extreme so I I would heed Brett's advice and when you do move here if you want to avoid going down that road you you just really have to you know choose your friends wisely you're going to be faced with the opportunity to make friends with a lot of expats and you're going to have a decision to make do you befriend the ones that just want to sit around moan complain whine go home write angry comments on forums or do you want to find the group of expats who are positive enjoying life experiencing Thailand experiencing you know things that this country has to offer and just generally being you know Happy People positive to be around because I can tell you both of those camps exist in massive numbers you know I choose to surround myself with positive people shout out to you Dana Jerome Jeff Scott Adam you know all of the people that I'd like to call my friends we there some of them have been living here for as little as 2 years some have been living here for as much as 25 years every single one of them still very positive very much on board maybe the the the euphoric drug likee feeling has worn off but the you know overwhelming feel of positivity towards being able to live in Thailand has not and and that kind of leads to the question I'm curious what Brett has to say about the flip side of this on the flip side to that you know you can let it weigh you down like that or you can actually be be grateful for it and be grateful for where you live be grateful that you're in Thailand and appreciate things that you know sometimes you forget so there are days that I get where I feel you know down and bored and like the novelty of it's worn off and I'm just there are also way more days where I snap out of that because that's just me being miserable and um I actually appreciate where I'm at now I think what helped a lot with this is the fact of where I live so I live like in this amazing place um I've got like hammock right here next to me which I spend about half the day in living in this sort of environment with the palm trees and the nature and I just lay here and I just watch all these mad weird animals these tropical birds like jumping around the trees and all that sort of stuff that kind of stuff really really makes me appreciate where I live I mean for some people it could be different I mean that's why if you're going to come to Thailand I always say you know don't necessarily stay in changai you've got to go and explore the first month that you get to Thailand or the first three months you should literally go and live in different cities you know um some people like the beach some people like the mountains some people like the jungle whatever it might be the city some people like Bangkok you know I hate Bangkok could never live there I like it for a short while for a few days but could never ever live there but some people love it and they really want to live there I mean it's true Thailand offers a pretty wide variety of living options and different living options speak to different types of people different personalities so you really got to ask yourself like what what's your happy place you know I live in Bangkok been living here for 5 years I personally also love changai but I wouldn't want to live up there in the Burning Season um I'm going to be moving down to Kos Samui uh later this year and I believe that that's my happy place the only reason I moved to Bangkok when I moved here 5 years ago was because my daughter was 15 years old at the time and had a couple of years of high school left and the high schools down in Kos Samui weren't quite up to par to at at those Senior High School years so we chose to live in Bangkok to get her into an amazing school here and then you know Co hits we get comfortable time passes at our age the last three years you know they're gone like this so you know about last year we decided hey maybe maybe it's time to get out of Bangkok some of the things I don't like about living in Bangkok or just the kind of relentlessness of this city it's the most exciting thing CU it's a city that has something going on all day every day all night every night it's in your face Bangkok and I do love that about it but as I'm starting to get older and as time goes on you know um I just kind of want a little bit more nature in my life I want to see blue skies I want to see Green Jungle I want to breathe some fresher air so it's time for me to to change up the scenery head down to kosui I mean I'll let you guys know how that goes I might get Island fever hat it and come running back to Bangkok this time next year who who knows I will keep you updated I got friends from New York you know I tried to convince them to move down to Samui and they're like ah you know we're big city people we just love Bangkok we love the live music scene we love the food scene we love the bar scene they love everything about it and and K Samui certainly wouldn't be for them so pick your poison and um you know that that's something that's a decision to not take lightly so when you decide to finally move here to Thailand then I would say uh take your time in picking the the the place that you're going to call home let's go back to Brett and just hear his take on on maybe what happens when the novelty of first move in here does wear off if you're going to live in Thailand long term you need to recognize that it's not going to be the solution to all of your problems the um druglike experience that you feel when you first come here isn't going to be there all of the time so you just have to be mindful and I think if you can be mindful and if you don't allow yourself to go down negative um spirals like a lot of xats do it's actually amazing a lot of expats do this as soon as they've been here for a decade or whatever they just become bitter miserable and they just find faults and problems with everything this is what happens this is what happens when a novelty wears off to an extreme degree but as I say I think it really largely depends on your personality that's the bottom line it depends on your personality and you know as as we get older I think we have to work harder at remaining positive and upbeat no matter where in the world we choose to live whether it's Thailand whether you stay at home in your home country whether you pick another country Philippines Portugal wherever the Hell in the world it is I think part of it is is the country itself and the environment that you're in and then a bigger part of it is yourself your personality and I find you know that as I get older there's it's like there's a fork in the road there's there's the grumpy old man path this way and then there's the happy path this way you know per I had two grandfathers I was lucky enough that they both lived into their '90s and I had one grandfather who by the end I he wasn't the grumpiest guy ever but he was a little bit grumpy and I remember one of the last times I visited him he said Chris if the Grim Reaper came and knocked on my door right now you know what I'd do I'd get up and shake his hand and that I get when you get into your 90s but but he was also just getting more upset with the government with with the state of society and then I had my other grandfather and he was the classic he just laughed at everything the older he got the more he just started to find everything amusing funny entertaining and his Spirit seemed to improve and I I found great inspiration in that and I have to check myself constantly as I get older to make sure that I don't Veer off down the grumpy old man path um so I mean that's going to be a continued work in progress because it it it it ain't easy at times um but that's really the bottom line here in this whole conversation is you decide to move in Thailand you're going to have a lot of opportunities present themselves to you maybe it's your annual trip down to the immigration office the pain in the ass that that is but there's going to be ample opportunities present themselves for you to if you if you're not careful Veer off down that that grumpy old person path but heeds heed Brett's advice like enjoy the surroundings you know I got I got a buddy who's been living here 19 years now all on kosamu kosui for 19 years and he said to me uh just last month and he says this a few times a year he goes you know sometimes I can't sleep at night because I got to I I I almost feel guilty because of how good our lives are over here and I think that that's important to remember you know life in Thailand for all of the little pains and annoyances that you have to endure is pretty damn good um and and you got to keep reminding yourself of that and keep just noticing it when you do decide to finally pull the trigger and move here don't start taking it for granted because that's all too easy to do so it's going to be up to you and your personality uh I am curious kind of where Brett's head is at for his Situation off the 7 years of living here do sometimes I feel the novelty wearing off I do but it's usually not an issue with the place it's usually me just being in a bad state of mind taking things for granted okay guys so that's my take on it does novelty wear of C do depends on you so we agree Brett you know when when it when I start going down that negative path I do have to look at myself in the mirror cuz it's on me it's why I love your videos it's why I love this video and wanted to share it with everyone and it's also why I took it upon myself this year to actually kind of buckle down and go back to school do something that I really don't enjoy doing and I've been studying Thai with my friend fa and I wanted to tell you that she's just launched um her third thae language challenge it's her online course I'm a student in the classroom shooting it with four cameras Adam's in there Haley's in there uh we have a lovely Hungarian girl named bet in there and if you want to get in and and study Thai and get closer to this country of Thailand check it out thail language challenge.com learn some tie I'm trying to doing my best and uh I continue to love life here in Thailand and I hope that it's your turn soon to move over here hope you found this video interesting we'll see you soon

Channel: RW4U

Views: 54,421

Keywords: thailand, move to thailand, retire in thailand, living in thailand, relocate to Thailand, bangkok, chiang mai, phuket, pattaya, koh samui, cost of living thailand, thai visa, thai language course, learn Thai, living in thailand is not what you think, brett dev

Id: juXuXf5LNCg

Length: 19min 38sec (1178 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 30 2024