“Are we making the right the decision to move to Thailand now?”
Just to give you a little taste of what I have been dealing with.
We both are in the early 40s, I have thai-american passport (been in US for 23 yrs), hubby – american, and we have a 20 yrs marriage. We owned a fairly successful engineering firm for 14 yrs. All these years being in the US, we both think we have accumulated quite a bit of acadamic degrees, knowledges, work and life experiences, along with money. At 40 we have finally come to the junction middle point in our live that it’s time for us to move on and to try doing something new which will in turn gives us unique experiences and pleasures.
I’m an architect/urban planner, hubby – an structural engineer. We have a strong interest in design and homes building. We can work on the project all days and all nights without getting tired on it. We did this on our last 2 homes and had made a sizable profit from them. Now we’re at the point that the housing market here is still red hot, and if we could build 1 more home then we will able to walk away with extra few hundreds thousand profit, but the problem is in our area is so difficult or almost next to impossible to get a building lot to build on – the price had gone up so crazy since last year – tripled from the last year price. So we had thought to ourselves why do we want to build and move again – so much hassles in the process – why don’t we just sell our house which have appreciated so much in value since we built it 2 yrs ago, then take the money+savings and move to thailand…..then we can develop the housing over there instead….thus in turn we will be doing something we truly love and give us pleasures so much.
Beside the points mentioned above……We used to think we have a good life and an american dream. But lately there also seems to be something missing in our lives. Working on someone else projects is not “sanuk” any more. It becomes quite a mundane feeling…..A typical day in, day out of getting up in the morning, going to work, then getting paid for the job well done. There is no bliss in life or happiness in doing it anymore.
I read from somewhere that “Happiness” is…
1- Be able to do what you love (follows your passions)
2- Be able to control your own destiny
3- Be able to get helps when you need one
4- Be able to get reward you deserved (materials or non-materials)
So there you have it “my dilema”. I don’t know what is worse, the fact that I took the time to think about the decision, or the fact that I thought it twice, or the fact that I began to understand it the third time we thought on it…..and why do we like Thailand.
All we know is this…. I will miss the USA, the great country (in my eyes) that gives me soo much. I’m sure that In the first five years I will painted a mind picture of how great things were back in the states. But somehow after our recent 4 weeks vacation there over the X’mas, something had happened. We just couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was. All I know is that…..When we came back to the US we found things had changed or at least changed from what we remembered. Within two weeks we wondered why we had came back and was already thinking of ways to get back to Thailand. What do we miss SO MUCH now?? ….THAILAND!
We know when we move there, it will be an amazing new life begining, discovering new ways of life, food, places, people, and politics oh boy!. The most difficult thing for us to accept are the constant dangerous situations and manoeuvres you’ll see almost every time you drive on the roads, be it in the moo ban or on the motorway. Drives both of us insane! But we know we will have traded off many of our former daily routines for new ones. It’ will be a refreshing experience and making me realize how familiarty can breed a degree of boredom. There will be enough new things to see, learn and experience in Thailand that we’re set for the rest of our life. We will feel like a kid again, full of much wonderment.
So I guess, it won’t all be as boring or terrifying as I originally planned, I hope.
Stay Tuned…for the next chapter of our life.
Thanks for reading my story
Nisha
