Why did you come to Thailand in the first place?

[WineOh]

for me I was a backpacker.

Thailand was my first solo backpacking adventure at the tender age of 19.

After a summer working in the Mediterranean I was looking for somewhere a bit rough and ready to see out the winter months.

Thailand seemed to fit the bill perfectly so I booked my flight as soon as I landed back in gloomy England.

 

I landed on the Khaosan road at about 3 in the morning in the middle of January,

all rooms on the road were full so ended up walking to soi rambutri and got myself a double room with fan and private bathroom for 120 baht.

after about 3/4 days (once recovered from the jet lag) I travelled north to chiang mai, did some trekking in the mountains in Pai, experimented with the 'medicines' up there then headed south for the islands.

Met a few women along the way, both thai and farang who made my trip all the more magical.

I fell in love with the country at that point and decided to find a job and haven't really looked back since..

 

All the magic has has since gone though,

around 2013/14 things started to change for the worse.

I am hoping those once magical & spontaneous days will return after covid is over but I'm not so sure.

 

So that is why I first came to Thailand.

I was a young kid in search of adventure and I found it.

Those first 2 months in Thailand were amazing and I wouldn't change that decision for anything.

 

Why did you lot come to Thailand?

Is your story similar to mine?

 

Hope you are having a great weekend ???? 

Edited January 10, 2021 by Liverpoolfan

[Pilotman]

Came to Thailand first time at age 18 with the Military on a combined exercise.  Loved it, but at that time I  much preferred Singapore as it was much more fun.  Thailand seemed very backward in those days.   

Edited January 10, 2021 by Pilotman

[ezzra]

Back in 1986 my first preference was going to live in the Philippines what with the easy life, knowing the right kind of people, great night life and all around good place to be at the time, and then come the yellow revolution where Marcos was unseated and Aquino got in to power with shooting and mayhem and tanks in the streets, this is when still in Oz, i have changed course to Thailand and here i'm still...

[WineOh]

6 minutes ago, Pilotman said:

Thailand seemed very backward in those days.   

Even more than it is now? ???? 

only joking, but you know what I mean..

[ThailandRyan]

For me it was for work.  However, over time I met and married a Thai lady, and after a few years we moved back to the US with our daughter.  I still returned with the family for visits and on short term contracts throughout the years.  Even after I divorced I had planned to move and retire here because I really like Thailand for almost everything.  Yes there have been changes throughout time, especially the past 7 years with this latest Coup and the Government.  It still makes sense for me to live here.  However prior to Covid I was here for 3 to 4 months and then back to the US for either 1 or 2 months and so on through the last few years until Covid arrived.  Once things are settled in regards to Covid and international travel can be started up again without the issues currently attached, then I will g back to the way I lived before, 3/4 time here and 1/4 time there, but until then making the most of what we have here now, although I may disagree with the way this government acts, it is almost the same as whence I came from.  Neither place can I make a change in how the Governments act, but I make the most of what I can, and grumble when I can, even though its not my country of Nationality.

[WineOh]

2 minutes ago, ThailandRyan said:

but I make the most of what I can, and grumble when I can,

Nothing wrong with a good old grumble every now and then.

Keeps things balanced.

 

Glad to hear your story mate! ???? 

[Thaiwrath]

Packed my job in, June 1991, and decided to do 6 months around Australia (aged 31).

In those days there was no internet, so flights had to be booked through a travel agent, and the day before I was going to ring Flightbookers to book a flight, I was in a Garston (Liverpool) pub, and my brother introduced me to a fella who lived in Thailand, and was back there, on holiday, to visit his mother. 

The gentleman's name was Jimmy McNally, and he told me about Thailand, and talked me into a stopover on the way to Australia. After the flight, and the 5 and a half hour taxi ride from Don Muang airport (no expressway in those days !), I was sitting in Jimmy Mac's Bar in Soi 6 Pattaya, and the rest is history !

Travelled onto Australia, had an amazing time, but with just over 2 weeks to go, I went to Perth city centre, into a travel agents, and decided to cut short my time in Australia, and have another 2 weeks in Thailand.

Got back to England, booked Thailand for the following Easter, then 40 more holidays to Thailand, and now 15 years living here, the rest is also history !

 

Edited January 10, 2021 by Thaiwrath

[WineOh]

1 minute ago, Thaiwrath said:

Packed my job in, June 1991,

i bet that was the best decision you ever made.

Nice to hear your story mate ???? 

[Pilotman]

8 minutes ago, Liverpoolfan said:

Even more than it is now? ???? 

only joking, but you know what I mean..

I do.  It was late 60s and Thailand for young male visitors was basically Bangkok and it was a dump of a place then, full of Yanks on R & R from Vietnam.  Nobody had heard of Pattaya then, bar the Yanks stationed at the various Thai Air Bases,  who kept it as their private playground, but I believe that Sattahip was more of a small bar town than Pattaya was at that time. We went off to Ubon on exercise and that was a very ethnic town then and quite exotic to a impressionable Yorkshire kid.  

[Crossy]

I met my Thai lady in Rome (yes that's in Italy), there's a whole story there too. After Italy we moved to Brussels with my work, when that contract came to an end it was time to decide where to go.

 

UK looked cold, wet and expensive (it was December), I had a large network of work contacts in SE Asia so we decided that moving to Thailand was going to be a good move (I'd already visited a few times whilst I was working in KL).

 

We arrived on December 25th 2004, yes, the day before the tsunami ???? 

 

My contacts came good and I walked straight into an early iteration of the Red Line, been playing with trains in SE Asia and the Indian sub-continent since.

 

[Fat is a type of crazy]

Similar to your story. Twenty and went with my girlfriend.  

I stayed at the same hotel recently where we stayed at on our first night in Bangkok and it had barely changed.

We booked a tour to Chiang Mai, Chang Rai, a few nights on a raft up the to the Golden Triangle, a night at a hill tribe.  Got a hard massage that left me sick.

A trip to Koh Samui. I could wax lyrical about how different it was then but that's a bit boring. Rode a motorbike around the island. No licence of course. All the things that I tut tut at the youth of today.

A week in Myanmar. One night a local man came up and said he could take us from Mandalay to Pagan and we could stay with his family on the way. We did. Pagan was cool. Funny things that you do.

 

 

 

[Tarteso]

Why did you come to Thailand in the first place?
 

Honestly...To see Temples ????

[WineOh]

2 minutes ago, Crossy said:

UK looked cold, wet and expensive

It still is mate,

at least that's what they tell me back home.

 

Thanks for your story mate! ???? (Rome is a cool spot btw)

[WineOh]

2 minutes ago, Tarteso said:

Honestly...To see Temples ????

I certainly didn't come for the Temples but definitely got my fair share of Templedom on my first trip.

One of the Thai girls I was travelling with at the time was a devout buddhist and would insist rather frequently that we stop at various temples when passing.

Needless to say that relationship never worked out in the end..

[Dagfinnur Traustason]

35 minutes ago, Pilotman said:

Thailand seemed very backward in those days.

And today it´s not???? ????????

[cyril sneer]

46 minutes ago, Liverpoolfan said:

Hope you are having a great weekend ????

are you drunk?

[WineOh]

1 minute ago, cyril sneer said:

are you drunk?

No. Just tipsy.

why, are you?

[bkk6060]

Sex. 

Golf.

Location to other countries I like and varied geographic options in Thailand.

1/3 the overall cost of where I was before I can/do live very very well here.

[userabcd]

6 minutes ago, Dagfinnur Traustason said:

And today it´s not???? ????????

No it is not.

[Pilotman]

6 minutes ago, Dagfinnur Traustason said:

And today it´s not???? ????????

Well its more of a first world country now than the UK is. 

[WineOh]

1 minute ago, Pilotman said:

Well its more of a first world country now than the UK is. 

I agree that Thailand is definitely no longer a third world country.

However, there still needs to be major improvements in infrastructure and governance.

 

Not my place to change that though.

That's for my wife and my kid to sort out ???? 

[Pilotman]

3 minutes ago, Liverpoolfan said:

I agree that Thailand is definitely no longer a third world country.

However, there still needs to be major improvements in infrastructure and governance.

 

Not my place to change that though.

That's for my wife and my kid to sort out ???? 

around me in the EEC the infrastructure is fantastic and being improved each year.  Internet is fast and cheap and I don't seem to lose electricity much at all. I can buy all the western  foods I need at a good Big C.  Much better quality of life that the UK. 

[Bluespunk]

Work and money...

[BritManToo]

I came here in 2009 (age 52) to have a holiday from an acrimonious divorce, and escape women in general.

Thailand was probably the wrong country to try and escape women.

[BritManToo]

11 minutes ago, Liverpoolfan said:

No. Just tipsy.

why, are you?

Not yet, just had my first 'Tom Collins'.

[xylophone]

In various jobs in the UK I had worked long and hard to try and climb to the top of the corporate ladder and succeeded to a certain extent, but then decided to try my luck in NZ.

 

Cutting to the chase here, the last position was as a Chief Manager Investments for a major bank in NZ, and the investment division was set up by another guy and me, and became very successful, and I replaced him as the top man in that division, and with that came many more hours, much more stress and a huge amount of work, which took its toll.

 

I developed a precancerous condition in my throat through stress and reflux, and my doctor said it was time to think about this: – stay working as you are and under the stress you are currently under and you will probably be dead within a year, or get out of the corporate rat race and do something else!

 

I had already visited Patong with a friend in 2004 and thought it was great and when I went back to NZ I decided to give the corporate life another try, but was sucked back into it and became quite sick, so nothing for it other than to quit my job and take "early retirement" and move to Thailand.

 

I did try it out for a few months before returning to NZ to tidy up my affairs and then move here permanently which I did in 2006/7, and I've been here ever since.

 

In my much younger days I was always a bit of a party animal, so Patong suited me and I really enjoyed it.

 

Met and shacked up with lovely Thai lady and her young daughter, which lasted for five good years or thereabouts, and we are still on good terms, and better still I have unofficially adopted her daughter who is now 20 years old and the apple of my eye.

 

Moving to Thailand was great for me, and I don't think I could live anywhere else now, and I know it has its faults and I complain from time to time, but doesn't everywhere.

[WineOh]

2 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

Thailand was probably the wrong country to try and escape women.

err, just a bit mate.

You could have tried Canal Street in manchester,,,

Heard there are hardly any women there ???? 

[WineOh]

2 minutes ago, xylophone said:

I developed a precancerous condition in my throat through stress and reflux, and my doctor said it was time to think about this: – stay working as you are and under the stress you are currently under and you will probably be dead within a year, or get out of the corporate rat race and do something else!

Sounds like a good guy your Doctor.

Sound advice that mate!

 

Nice to hear your story ???? 

[BritManToo]

Just now, xylophone said:

Met and shacked up with lovely Thai lady and her young daughter, which lasted for five good years or thereabouts, and we are still on good terms, and better still I have unofficially adopted her daughter who is now 20 years old and the apple of my eye.

Snap,

The daughter stayed with me (age 22 now and just about to finish university), the woman didn't.

[xylophone]

Just now, BritManToo said:

Snap,

The daughter stayed with me (age 22 now and just about to finish university), the woman didn't.

Good man..........the daughter went with her Mother and I supported them financially for many years, eventually getting the daughter her own apt in Phuket and paying for a good school, and have done the same thing now she is at Uni north of Bangkok.

 

She is in constant contact with me and visits whenever possible, and is "the apple of my eye".