Living and working in Paradise

What was the first impression you got when you came to Thailand for the first time?
As for me….my first visit 12 years ago was a 3 weeks vacation at Phuket.
I booked a charter travel and stayed at Vises Hotel in Patong.
12 years ago Patong was kind of a small town with bamboo huts and wooden houses and dirt roads.And a very nice and clean beach!
The first impression I got was HOT and SPICY food….WARM weather….poor people….dirt cheap clothes and food….FAKE goods on every corner…..and a girl in every bar who wanted to fool you into buying drinks and sex….
Today 12 years later it is almost still the same…except the prices has raised tenfold!Except the roads has been paved! Except the bamboo huts and the wooden style Thai houses has been exchanged with concrete towers and shop houses!And except that you hardly can see the beach for beach chairs, vendors and tourists!And the water is kind of ugly!
But apart from that Patong looks like itself 12 years after my first visit.

I have lived 5 years in Pattaya. After 5 years living and working in Pattaya I got fed up with the drunken foreigners, the girly bars, the go go bars, the traffic noise and pollution, the dirty beaches….so I relocated to Phuket because I remembered how nice it was 12 years ago….and now I am living in Patong which is almost similar to Pattaya with drunken foreigners, girly bars, traffic noise, pollution and dirty beaches……

But you know what? I still love Phuket! I just relocated to the east coast of the island. No noisy traffic and pollution, no girly bars, no drunken foreigners and no dirty beaches….it’s Paradise!

When I decided to relocate from my native home country and settle in Thailand I had a dream of living and working in Paradise.
No cold winters, no expensive living costs, no pollution, no traffic noise….and no dirty, over crowded beaches….
And I end up in Pattaya!! What a joke! But Pattaya is a good place to do business….Later I end up in Phuket and Patong….what a joke! But Phuket is also a good place to do business….and more a kind of Paradise than Pattaya….but an expensive Paradise….

So WHAT is Paradise? Paradise in Thailand?
Well…. it depends on WHO ARE YOU? What do you expect from Paradise? Ask 100 people the same question: “What is Paradise?” and you get 100 different answers!

For me Thailand is still Paradise….even 8 years experience here in the Land Of Smiles has learned me something…about myself! And about Thailand indeed! And I am still learning!

Take my advice….if you want to live and work in Paradise then stay away from the over crowded tourist destinations like Phuket, Pattaya and Koh Samui, then you will be more likely to discover your very own Paradise here! And at a fraction of the cost in these high profit tourist magnets!

But if you just want to retire in Paradise and don’t bother of the prices and overcrowded beaches….well then Phuket or Koh Samui might be what you’re looking for!