To me the stories that people tell about moving abroad tend to just repeat, which is why I've never written about this here before. But not everyone would be exposed to those discussions, and maybe some of it isn't what you'd expect, so I'll write a bit on it. I'll cover lots of parts, and keep each brief, to balance covering plenty of scope and keeping length reasonable.
This is written as my own take and experiences, but pretty much all of it is standard in online discussion. The different factors tend to shift a bit, depending on individual perspective. I'll go from what people experience early on to much later; that form makes sense. Or as an exception, since I've already used an expat group photo capture as an intro I'll explain a little about networking with other foreigners first.
expat groups / networking: as with any social group this works out differently for everyone. Some people are happy to stay more isolated, others have families to focus on, others can meet people in bars or gyms, or wherever, and so on. Online groups are another main theme. I went to different "Internations" events (photo credit for the header image here), and it was your basic networking experience. In theory it would have to do with making connections for different reasons, and in practice socializing and hooking up were main focuses. This is a dedicated reference page for foreigner meetup themes. Of course they mention meetups, and a few specific groups, and about exercise related clubs and such.
It's funny how all of that applies to some people but not others. Someone relocated with a family may feel a little out of place, and a retiree probably all the more so. A full-on sexpat might not mesh well with young "digital nomads," someone in Thailand mostly for nightlife and adult services. All of those categories of people are out there. It's all probably somewhat "Western" oriented, so Asians, from Asia, might not feel as included. Two of the people in that page header group photo don't look completely white. That carries over to the next photo; two of eight there are not. It's surely not intended as targeted marketing, as inclusion or exclusion, but the proportion might be about right.
This isn't really about how to make social life work out, but it overlaps with that. It's more about how the experience tends to go. So let's start at the beginning of that.
honeymoon period: I didn't exactly experience this, in a standard form, because I didn't vacation in Thailand and then want to move. In that sense some transplants would have local exposure even prior to this phase of actually moving. I didn't. I met my Thai wife in grad school, and scholarship conditions brought us back to Thailand. I needed to figure out how to work here quickly, and never really experienced living on extensive savings on a vacation lifestyle. But that other form is one normal experience, that it all feels like a vacation, because it either carries over from vacations or involves a transition phase like that experience form. Then within months or years a longer term reality would set in, and everything would change, most typically.
Some of the same things could've been just as captivating and positive for me, like seeing temples, or experiencing new foods. But the context was a little different. If you eat food on vacation that is too spicy, or the textures seem unappealing, that represents novel themes to experience, but over a longer term--even just related to expectations, not actual timing--it could signal that you might have problems with your diet later on. Really people end up missing what is familiar more, later. For example, the selection of cheese and bread wasn't as complete when we moved to Thailand 18 years ago, which only changes as you explore different types of specialty grocery stores. Now it's not an issue; it doesn't work as a current problem, because Thai grocery stores have evolved to cover most of the scope of earlier international grocery stores, with room for both to still operate.
initial culture shock: of course lots of differences stood out. The smells took months to adapt to, which oddly I almost never smell at all now (canals, old markets where there is no refrigeration, fragrant Chinatown shops--those I still do). I was worried about what might be unsafe for months; it took a few years to realize that I wasn't really at risk from crime, even though places certainly look rough. I had to adapt to eating different foods, which takes time. Plenty of people would love the foods right away, but the range of textures is different, and for something like blood-thickened soup--my son's favorite--you need to get over the idea to appreciate the dish. I'm ok with blood-thickened soup now (boat noodles, in the main form).
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those boat noodles; I actually like them now |
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grilled chicken, papaya salad, and sticky rice; just about anyone would love this |
language: it's hard being somewhere where you can't communicate well. Lots of expats recommend that people become fluent ASAP, which is easier for some than others. I still can't really hear the tones, so I certainly can't pronounce them. I can understand more than 500 words, since context helps identify them, even when those sound differences don't, but when I try to speak them I'm not actually saying lots of it right.
To clarify that, vowel sounds vary based on tonal shift, so the rising tone you use when you indicate a question, at the end, is pretty similar to one of 4 additional tonal variations (I think it's 4; it's been awhile since I even tried to learn it). You are trained to hear that slight shift in tone, to process it, and in a similar way Thais hear that as a normal part of vowel sounds. But English speakers don't. Vowel length is a similar complication; they can hold the same vowel sound for an extra marginal duration, that no one would even hear without practice, and then that's a different sound too.
You should learn a local language, of course, if you live abroad. I should have underwent formal training many years ago. I got busy with work and raising kids, and when it finally became easier, a decade or so later, it was all just normal for me, speaking some but not well at all. It's hard to describe how that kind of factor works out. It would seem like laziness, that you just don't want to put the effort in, and on some level that's part of it. But lots of dimensions need to become normal for you that aren't already familiar, and what you adapt to over the first couple of years becomes your new normal. For some that's relatively complete integration; perhaps for more it's acceptance of being an outsider, in some ways. Just being white places you as that, regardless of anything else, so it's natural to accept it.
personal perspective differences: I won't do this justice. Within about 3 years of working in a Thai company I could see how others would see different ideas, reacting to contexts differently, or communicating differently, but that only came through related to an incredible amount of exposure. I thought that I knew a bit about Thai culture from marrying my wife back in the US, after knowing her for a year, and living together for another year there, but I didn't.
Her perspective and ways of communicating aren't even standard for a Thai, it later turned out. I'll put it bluntly: she's kind of a Karen. That's not normal in Thailand, but it can come up. I remember teasing her about it a little, when our daughter was much younger, asking Kalani what the clearest sign of that is, and she would say "Mommy always wants to talk to the manager." I always felt bad for those people. At least in the US they're accustomed to it.
Under different circumstances, and less immersion, someone could probably live in Thailand for 20 or 30 years and never really get the Thai perspective. It's been unusually helpful having older kids help explain parts to me, but teenagers are kind of touch and go on who they even are, so it takes some drilling down to get to any finer points, of any kind. Someone working in a Thai company would automatically need to immerse more, and someone working mostly with other foreigners never would have to.
religion differences: this changes a lot. Someone being from another country who isn't religious, seeing it as irrelevant, wouldn't change that you still go through the same contrasting perspective related to holding that opinion. It's not belief in God versus atheism that would contrast, it's Buddhism versus everything else.
I studied Buddhism for a long time prior to coming to Thailand, in different forms and contexts, and ordained as a Thai monk here for 2 months, but it still took years to appreciate how it all comes together. One fragment is that people believe in fate in a much more concrete form, versus self-determinism, and that changes a lot of things. Some is positive; people can resign themselves to things being out of control better. We don't get to pick when we die, usually, and dealing with death relates to making peace with that. Some parts are negative; you only want to resign yourself to what fate is dictating when your own input isn't going to make the critical and positive difference. Either belief in your own agency, based on culture, or your own experienced karma has also helped you become that person that makes things happen, or else not (mixing the two themes).
Plenty of people would see Thais as hypocritical, because they can be corrupt, or might lie as much as anyone, or are unfaithful in relationships, and so on. Basic human nature is kind of consistent across cultures, but how it all manifests varies. Some of it is really positive; people are far less inclined to commit a broad range of crimes. Being superficially pleasant is a good thing. Then other parts don't work out so differently than in the US.
It might seem like you don't need to trace back underlying perspective difference to underlying associated cultural influences, that you can just deal with people as they are, by noticing differences. That sort of works. But it really helps taking in as much as you can about all of it, to adjust better. If that extends to absolutely needing to work within a group dynamic, for example in a work context, that more basic approach just isn't going to work. The patterns need to become clear to you, so you can react in ways that go without questioning for people from within that local culture.
back to experience curve idea, the middle part: one theme that comes up online all the time is how a foreigner will build a good life in Thailand, and positive relationships, then a significant other--the Thai woman, as the story always goes--will not remain faithful, and will cheat that guy out of everything, or sometimes worse. That's a limited sub-theme, but people do experience it. Lots of that probably relates to people getting into bad situations, from the beginning. I get a sense that maybe miscommunication related to perspective and expectations may be factoring in, a lot of cases. Relationships are hard enough with plenty of communication, without working through a culture divide.
If two people in a relationship are never remotely close to on the same page for perspective it's probably going to go badly. Not that badly, necessarily, but if someone marries a bar-girl--a woman working as a prostitute--then there is a high potential for her doing whatever seems necessary later on, even if it violates a social norm, since she's acted on this capacity in the past. Right and wrong can naturally seem a bit more fluid, if someone had to part with their standard societal norms at one point.
To clarify, people adopting atypical group behavior norms is not all that unusual, in any culture. If you join a biker gang in the US maybe some forms of crime automatically become normal. When I grew up just smoking weed was illegal, so someone changed to be a criminal just by dabbling in that. Maybe that was a lot of the gateway effect; if you didn't mind the risk and stigma of smoking a joint, why not keep going?
Back to that earlier thread, if a husband remains isolated within a Western social circle, not really embracing local connections, there is potential for an offset parallel of two very different perspectives, never coming together.
It could be tempting to see your Thai wife as embracing common ground with you, that you are on the same page, but it's just synced with your page, but that's potentially problematic. Then not even noticing that she is the one making all of the allowances for this kind of thing could be even more problematic. The Thai woman, or I guess this could apply to men, might feel like it related to making more and more allowances, until some event or tipping point makes it all seem untenable.
I suppose a foreigner could interpret their own somewhat forced integration in such a way, to try to see this as I might possibly experience it. The standard stories are about foreigners loving the new foods, learning language, embracing the religion, seeing Thai social roles as admirable and special, and so on. But it's possible that it could be too much. It would relate to a relationship power dynamic, I guess.
I'm not saying that I fully integrated and completely worked around that. The claim here is that the more someone "doesn't get" Thai culture and the Thai perspective the more that sets up potential for a relationship disconnect later. The base Thai culture has "Westernized" quite a bit over the last 20 years, it seems to me, but surely lots of that is superficial, with media content exposing people to social forms and images more than underlying perspective. It's more normal for people to go camping or ride larger motorcycles now, for example.
Any relationship that's relatively transactional would be unstable anyway, if the transaction changed in any way. And it's quite possible that role-related perspective could make it seem that this is essentially what the other perspective is all about, that there are only role differences, not this other layer, maybe even from both directions.
Maybe it's that an older, wealthy foreigner marrying a younger, attractive Thai woman is close enough to the US "trophy wife" theme, which could also be unstable, and perhaps unfulfilling all around. Or it could work. You hear about cases of it not working online (I mean the foreigner-Thai relationships), which makes for good stories, but comments saying that someone's relationship is fine are boring, and don't draw much attention.
resuming a "normal" social circle: this kind of thing divides up differently even with the US. Many people, men and women, find that they focus on work and life circumstances and lose the 20s and early 30s emphasis on partying, and on other forms of group interaction. Some don't. Some women turn to cats, or some guys focus on careers, or the gym; there are stereotypes based on these sub-themes.
Thais are pretty good about not getting caught up in that, from what I've seen (social isolation based on narrowing interests). Work socialization can work out, or people group together to turn hobbies that could be singular pursuits to become group activities, like running. There are run clubs in the US too, of course. Somehow US culture seems to "run ahead" related to online isolation being more pronounced, as I see it. Or maybe one of my wife's friends is a stereotypical cat lady now, and I'm biased by what I see at work, and in our neighborhood environment.
I've been considering if broad, problematic social issues in the US play a significant role in that, or not. I don't know. I mean that public safety is more of a concern there, for example, so people have one more reason to not go to malls, or in public in general. Really there have only been two public shootings in Thailand, that I'm aware of, beyond lots and lots of people killing each other for personal reasons. Both were in malls. Only one followed the "some guy snapped" paradigm, and in the other someone shot two people, for almost no reason, I think it was (so that guy was a bit out of balance too). Probably it's not that simple, that this is a main cause of social isolation in the US. I was questioning more to what extent it could play any role.
So back to the issue of forming a social circle, Westerners have two options: fully integrate, as some do, becoming fluent and embedded in social circles, or join up with other foreigners. Both could work. Foreigners tend to cycle through, so you would need to keep renewing those group connections, for the second.
why the culture suits some people, but not others: this would be a mix of the other themes I've covered. If someone wants to live an isolated life that's definitely helpful, because that can work out anywhere, but it's cheaper abroad, and food range can be better, or travel options. I think some people love the "outsider" role, instead of being put off by it. At least they have a public image, versus just being invisible.
I suppose I'm good with focusing almost entirely on family life, which is one reason why I feel so at home in Thailand. Living in Honolulu I do a little more with others, related to kids' events, but not too much. I connect with others related to tea interest some, but more in Thailand. And I love what there is to love in Thailand, the look and feel, exploring new places, getting into new themes (like tea), appreciating local holiday themes and festivals, and so on.
Being more flexible helps. I don't really need to get back to eating exactly the same foods I did back in the US, for example. But then I cook, so it's not the best example. Having a personality type that matches a Thai culture norm also helps. I tend to say exactly what I think, so that's a mismatch, but beyond that I'm generally calm and relaxed. And I'm inclined to take others' perspectives into account, and don't care for the experience of conflict. Some people really do, even if they probably wouldn't frame it that way.
Thais love gossip and drama, so I'm not saying they they favor ideal social interactions. There's just more emphasis on meeting expectations related to social interactions. Not a norm to be faithful in relationships, oddly; I mean in a superficial form, related to how people are. People are pleasant. Not to throw shade on some other random culture, but it's kind of the opposite of the running theme in Russia, where showing friendliness and openness to a stranger is seen as a sign of weakness, or at least of unconventional behavior.
Youtuber norms: this has almost nothing to do with a lot of what I'm saying. People make "viral" content videos about how to live on 100 baht a day ($3), or show off what beach areas look like, which often has little to do with normal life experience. I can eat in inexpensive local food shops, so that's a match, but these are tourists communicating tourist perspectives. A walking tour video shows what places look like; that's kind of universal, separate from perspective. Then lots cover why someone experienced a falling out with their relatively short-term girlfriend; back to scope that people do experience, but not so much related to long-term stay experiences.
It's like the rest of social media; more extreme images and stories draw attention. It's helpful if someone dies in the story, and a pretty, barely dressed woman's image would be good for clicks. Some expats, the "sexpats," live out this kind of lifestyle for years. It's fine, I guess. Living a similar lifestyle in a place like Miami would cost a lot more, and you wouldn't need to push it nearly as far to get into real trouble there.
That's probably why it's normal for some people to pursue it to a bad end, here, because it goes so well for so long. There are lots of videos of foreigners fighting in the streets. In other places you would need to be even more careful about what you said and did around others, or it would come down to that faster. I've lived in a bunch of US cities, and you just can't be walking into some parts of many of them, or you'd be lucky to walk back out, regardless of your behavior. In those videos you usually see guys calling out a lot of the bar customers, or trying to fight others, shoving women on the street when surrounded by Thais. In Baltimore, where I lived at one time, you would be shot or knifed long before your behavior became that outrageous, again maybe even for just being in the wrong place.
the best case: would there be a best case? An ordinary, positive, fulfilling life is a difficult balance to achieve, anywhere. People get things wrong, or external conditions can go badly. There are certainly lots of pitfalls to look out for in Thailand, for a foreigner, and it requires a long learning curve to even know what those are. Mixed culture marriages are rough, period. They don't look it, when others see parts that work well from the outside, but it's the lower probability mix of personality inputs that help most with that.
That's not different elsewhere; a good example of a mainland white guy happily married to a Filipina woman in Honolulu comes to mind. They put work in, for sure. If they hadn't reached across the divide to see how the other partner sees things, and wants different things, it never would have balanced as I'm seeing it. My own marriage feels like an extreme case.
Of course a lot of this applies to same nationality, same background and race couples. People vary, and you need to work around differences. If you don't communicate well or drift apart that's that.
But if everything lines up and works out the overall balance can be great, even when working through extreme differences in backgrounds. I've barely mentioned what is special about Thailand here: the food, the people really are kind, travel options, safety, and a society that holds together fairly well, so far. A foreigner would need to be open to changing who they are to fit in, to an extent, their own perspective and expectations, which would come naturally or else it wouldn't work out.
I'm reminded of a Japanese friend who says that he doesn't feel as at home back in Japan now (now living in Cambodia, but it works out about the same). His wife probably has a more traditional Japanese perspective than him, and maybe they need to put work in to deal with that, or maybe they're lucky in relation to aligned perspectives.
Addressing a bit of a tangent, early on in my stay here an expat commented that later on, after foreign exposure, you can feel equally out of place everywhere. He was more serious than joking, I would later find. I could never be a Thai, not really, and I'm certainly not what Americans expect from each other either. Intuitively maybe I could still make a good liberal back there, but it's really not about that, and not like that. I don't feel like I kept up with the political divide there, and don't feel aligned with either of those two perspectives. I can't accept that the form media presents of the culture war is valid. Of course that's too much of a tangent to get into here, moving way off topic.
calling it quits: I've not really had this experience, but I did move back to the US part time, to Honolulu, so in a limited sense I've had parts of it. It could be hard to re-adjust to your original culture, if you had spent 2 or 3 years acclimating to another one. Some expats spend decades struggling to live in exactly the same ways they had before, while in another culture, and for them it would be easy.
It's obvious enough why someone would see living abroad as very positive for a long time, and then as negative, isn't it? Negative events would lead to this, personal problems, business failure, run-ins with the legal system, and so on. Or maybe it all just wouldn't work out as well as expected, or homesickness could set in, without a major problem as a trigger.
Just moving back and forth I continually experience reverse culture shock, over and over. Another factor related to searching for work back in the States, which never did work out. The work I do, in IT, as quality assurance in a data center and IT services company, does relate to forms in the US, but some parts don't match. Beyond this practical factor there is potential for foreign experience to be seen as inferior in some way, not just partly irrelevant. Ageism is universal; that would be a problem here too.
All of these transition issues, related to cultural forms, local norms, employment, social themes, and so on, could relate to potential problems while living abroad. This relates to the experience curve I mentioned earlier, how things being novel and interesting early on can relate to missing what has been replaced later, or to potential that seemed to apply back there more.
It's funny how these issues seem to mix with a decline into bitterness about life in general, for some, related to aging working out in different ways. I just saw a post online about someone regretting that aging effects were as negative as they are, related to their health, appearance, and social status, at the age of 30. They need to be careful; if you are bitter about losses due to aging right at the start of early middle age that doesn't bode well for late middle age, or for you even making it to old age.
Of course I don't mean this in some sort of judgmental form, saying that too many people don't do aging right, or maintain appropriate connections, or life status and health. It all works out organically. One person's good balance would be another's untenable disaster.
why move abroad: this part might not have been organic, right, the very early primary cause for having these experiences. In my case it seemed to be; I didn't plan to date a Thai, a fellow grad student, and I wasn't great at looking ahead even half a year when I did marry one. Looking back I was a complete idiot in my 20s and 30s. It makes me wonder to what extent I've actually resolved that. I suppose others could get swept along in similar decision making, or a lack of it. A vacation to Thailand, and a downturn "back home," could make the decision to move abroad seem very organic and natural. It's funny how many people discuss avoiding US political problems by moving abroad. That could work, but other problems would come up there, even deeper level issues.
I've not discussed it here, but Thais have their own problems with those political issues, and the forms aren't all that different. As a foreigner / expat it can easily be seen as not relevant, but that's a fairly limited and weak causal input, that turning a blind eye to such important context makes perfect sense. Visa policies change regularly; it can become relevant quickly. Of course you can have no influence as a foreigner, and it's not so simple to follow political groups in relation to how those changes might occur.
Can you imagine how a foreigner dropped into the middle of the current US political divide would take it? They would have to think "what is wrong with you people?" Trump has turned it all into a complete circus, and it wasn't going that well earlier on anyway.
versus experience curve in the US: lots of this applies to people just moving around the US, doesn't it? Everywhere you go norms are a little different, and foods and activities. I was just talking to someone who moved from a liberal state to a conservative one, and that person felt out of place for a different set of reasons. The difference is a lot more extreme moving between countries and national cultures. And the setting changes a lot more. It's hard to drive in Thailand, at first; little differences like that add up.
But people do change over time everywhere, and have similar relationship issues, and need to change to adapt to environment changes, or else those can work against them. It's possible to experience an "us versus them" mentality in lots of ways in different places. I suppose that can even be experienced positively, if that group identification is meaningful and important, and represents acceptance and inclusion, versus your own exclusion. I suppose in an abstract sense maybe the other side is more intuitive, or maybe that's just my own liberal inclination, thinking that less flexible social groupings could be more of a barrier to new experiences and social acceptance than a support for a consistent and positive lifestyle. I've moved around a lot; it has long since been hard to relate to being part of the most native in-group.
It raises an interesting question, would expats tend to be more liberal than conservative? Maybe. I suppose not always. Openness to different perspectives definitely comes in handy, but again many people interested in living abroad aren't really on that page. They can be attracted to the tropical environment, low cost of living, an acceptance of a "party lifestyle," or perceived relationship opportunities, that don't necessarily relate to them "going local" in terms of their own worldview.
That sort of colonial mindset seems less acceptable now, doesn't it? When I first moved to Thailand, nearly 20 years ago, foreigners held an elevated social status position related to being different. That was in the process of changing, even then, and not so many years later the opposite was just as true.
This reminds me of an old friend living out one odd and slightly tragic relationship stereotype, which doesn't relate so closely, but it was funny. He was an alcoholic, off drinking back in the States, but it made sense to him to go back to it on vacations in Thailand. He had a girlfriend at one point, or a few, really, and stayed with one in her home village. He joked that one particular cousin who was around may have really been her boyfriend, which was funnier because we both knew it wasn't a joke, that it was probably the case. He was just a "walking ATM" to them, per another part of that stereotype paradigm. But probably a poor version of that; his spending potential wouldn't have been what they had hoped for.
Anyone getting involved with that strange range of local experiences may not have long term success. It's all so unthinkable, switched back to a potential Western parallel. A woman could have a boyfriend for financial gain, completely in the open in relation to her family and actual romantic boyfriend? Or who knows, maybe someone could get that to balance. In general the friends I've had engaged in long term alcoholism saw it work out as a gradual decline, and I'd expect the same to be true here too. Of course that friend's relationship was very short lived.
Even though there is reality to those stereotypes that doesn't mean that they're common. I've known plenty of expats in Thailand, from many different countries, and not one fit that mold. A mostly online friend, who I've met IRL a couple of times, married a Thai, and it was nothing like that. They divorced for much more conventional reasons, the same that could apply within any relationship. Then one might wonder if the marriage itself was or wasn't under stress based on that difference, which is a different concern, that people just being from elsewhere might not effectively help sustain a personal connection, as personal commonality might.
I suppose it works to conclude that everyone's case is different, no matter which generalities do or don't apply. This has certainly been a broad discussion of lots of types of patterns. It wouldn't change much if a foreigner from elsewhere moved to Thailand; the "American" part is mostly to my own frame of reference. I get a sense that British people tend to feel more commonality with other Brits, and often rely on that national group inclusion more, but that still might not change much. I would guess that a foreign woman moving to Thailand would have very different experiences. Now that I think of it I've met foreign women here, but never knew one as a close friend, beyond those school friends of my kids. Not one was ever American, or even Western (British, French, etc.).
I would talk to my son's Australian teacher when I dropped him off, to an international school, since it was nice to hear a Western perspective again. But I never had reason to know many foreign teachers, or all that many other expats, in general. This maps to a generality of many Americans being ok with keeping social ties minimal, especially if they have a family.
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