Give your Heart to Thailand

This article, give your heart to Thailand, is a guest post from Dan Ogilvie a British entrepreneur and writer who is based in Thailand.

Give Your Heart to Thailand and it Will Give its Heart Back.

I was sat in the solicitor’s waiting room waiting to sign the documents to complete the sale of our house in Canada. A lady of apparently Indian lineage was the only other client there; (have you ever wondered why it is only estate agents, solicitors and prostitutes have clients?).
We struck up a conversation and naturally she asked my purpose there. I explained that we were selling our house so we could move to Thailand. Prompted, I explained that neither I nor my wife, who was Thai, had been able to settle in Canada and to be frank, we really didn’t like the place very much.

So we were leaving a country that is frequently listed in the world’s top five for the standard of living to a country that, in football terms, is in Division 3. As I was called into the office she added, ‘to live in a country you have to give your heart and then it will give its heart back’.

After eighteen months of living in Thailand I now know what this wise woman was saying.

It is not that when I arrived here the red carpet was laid out for me. I often wonder if it is possible to have electricity, Internet and water at one and the same time. I love the heat, but sometimes a cool, misty autumn day would be welcome; I love the intensely flavoured spicy food but there are some times the following morning when sat on the throne that I yearn for traditional British blandness. And I wish they spoke a language where the words for milk and banana and mussels did not have sexual connotations and where the words for far and near were not the bloody same; (‘How near/far is it to the post office?’. ‘Far/near’. ‘Do you mean near/far or far/near?’ ‘Near/Far’. ‘Thank-you’).

BUT, and it is a huge but that even Superman would not leap in a single bound, we are happy here in a way we never were in Canada.

On my occasional travels, when I arrive back at Suwarnabhumi airport I feel I am coming home. I felt the same when we lived in Singapore, especially when Singapore air would announce on landing at Changi airport, ‘to all Singaporeans and Singaporean residents, a warm welcome home’. Thai airways don’t have to announce that for me to feel that sense of familiarity as we get lost leaving the airport.

I haven’t returned to Canada since I left but on a couple of brief visits to the UK I felt a strange detachment to the place. Little had changed save for the increased fares on the Heathrow express and the removal of the bus shelter at Woking so you had to wait outside in the rain for 45 minutes, but I felt no warmth from the familiarity, not the same way I do here as, driving home from the airport at night, I barely bat an eyelid as a lorry stacked 20m high with pigs yet with no lights nonchalantly U-turns just 50m in front of us.

One of the factors in choosing to emigrate from the UK was the fact nothing worked there; trains, (at least on the southern lines), industry, the people, the National health service. When we left the UK our first port of call was Singapore where, of course, everything works. Three years later and head-hunted by a company in the US,  (I love being able to say that but don’t ask what happened), we found ourselves in Canada. Canada is a frozen version of the UK but they still have retained some vestige of respect from the rest of the world by incorporating hooliganism into the rules of ice hockey; in any case as only three countries in the world play ice-hockey the damage to their reputation is minimal compared with football.

But I digress. If you asked the average person which countries they would choose to live in I suspect Singapore and Canada would be quite high on the list. Yet we found ourselves rejecting those two in favour of one that tends to be further down the list.

There are many reasons people cite for not choosing to live here; the weather (heat),  corruption, the political instability, the inability to own land or the continual visa runs. Of course there are attractions that these same people concede; the weather (heat), the food, the people (and dare I say it, the bar girls), the laid back attitude to most things or the cost of living. But I don’t believe you can live here – love living here – unless the former do not irk you, especially not longer term.

A friend of mine says he could not live in a country which did not have seasons. I could no longer live in a country in which I didn’t know what time the sun was going to rise or set from one day to the next or that gets brought to knees by a dusting of snow. I do not believe I could live in Las Vegas but Thailand does have seasons, in fact increasingly so as the (very) cool season this year or the flooding of last year showed. And then there are the wonderful and frequent thunderstorms which are probably my favourite weather event. There is the muscle relaxation the warm weather brings, the healthy dose of vitamin D and the stench from the drains – oh sorry, the latter is in the wrong compartment. But on balance, for me, the heat is a big plus.

I have never been interested in politics. Anyone that voices some interest in being a politician should be taken out and shot. Despite all the political intrigue of past few decades Thailand carries on, GDP continues upwards, exports go up, both of which, to me, shows that politicians are the equivalent of the large furry mascot at baseball games. To expend any energy or emotion on it is futile and a waste of time and to see people being killed over the colour of a shirt or skin just shows how remarkably backward the human race is.

Whereas politics here is somewhat volatile it at least does its best to make itself interesting, although it eventually fails in that respect. We need more despots and unstable megalomaniacs in my opinion if politics is to ever rival bowls as entertainment and Thailand is a breeding ground for them. Along with rice, mangoes and hard disc drives, it is among the things this country does best and residents should all be proud of it.

Corruption is another thing Thailand does well. None of this silly fiddling of expenses for a few tens of thousands of pounds as in the UK, here it is a growth industry and whole airports and telecoms companies can be built on the back of it. I can’t actually say I have a great deal of experience of it; a few tips have been handed out to oil the cogs in setting up our business but to be honest, I wished such things had been possible in UK to get things done quicker or better.

Although in some ways they are. Although the UK government compulsorily takes money from your salary to fund the health service, should you not want your urgent operation to be an autopsy increasing numbers of people – not the poor obviously – are taking out health insurance. Corruption: dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power. Taking that money and using it for purposes other that for which it was intended, just like they do with the road tax or TV license or deliberately mismanaging that service to justify private health care options which some just might have some self interest in, (allegedly) – well that seems to encapsulate that definition nicely.

You can’t own land here as a foreigner is another complaint I frequently read of. Disregarding the ways you can at least secure some rights over land, such as usufructs or leases, I question this need to own the land and the assumption that somehow ownership of land is a right to those not born in the country. True, I see an issue if the world no longer had borders but I am reasonably sure we still do and countries continue to fight over them with some zeal; everywhere. So the contradiction to me is why other countries allow almost anyone to buy up their land. Who is right, Thailand, (and they are not the only country with land ownership restrictions of course), or the UK and the US for their lax laws. I doubt you hear many Thais complaining about this.

Dual pricing, lack of health care, poor education standards – the list goes on, and on. And so do the people that constantly moan about these things, usually and somewhat strangely whilst also living here.

At some point something here is going to get to you. Ex-pats by definition were not born in this country and the chances are have probably spent their greater number of years in a completely different culture. But if you choose Thailand because of just one or two factors then the hundreds of other differences are going to eventually get to you and your life here will not be a happy one. And that is a shame, for you, but also for the Thais and other ex-pats you vent your diatribe on. It is then time to move on – to find that place where the fors much outweigh the nots.

For us that was not Canada. It was Thailand. We gave our heart and it has given its heart back. Now I had better e-mail this before the power goes off again.

Footnote:

If you like Dan’s style of writing, can I recommend that you visit his diary on Dan and Ploy’s website. Here you will find some cracking reads as Dan pulls no punches and takes no prisoners as he writes about his trials and tribulations that are part of his daily life in Thailand where he and his Thai wife  Ploy strive to make their lives and business a success.

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