Living in Thailand can be a good life for a Westerner whose income, city, routine and relationship fit its frictions: visa rules, a language you can't read, heat, smoke in the north and endless paperwork. Thai commenters most often name money going further as why Westerners stay, and name visas, hospital bills and a foreigner bubble as what goes wrong.
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Living in Thailand can be a good life for a Westerner whose income, city, routine and relationship fit its frictions: visa rules, a language you can’t read, heat, smoke in the north and endless paperwork. A holiday is a poor test of that fit. Here is what Thai commenters say goes wrong, and how to test the move first.
Is living in Thailand worth it? Who it suits, and who it doesn’t
Living in Thailand is worth it for people whose ordinary week there would be one they’d choose anyway, and the pros and cons of living in Thailand fall differently for each of them. A man living on a pension paid in pounds or dollars, who likes heat, eats what his neighbours eat and has a reason to be in one town, often finds a calmer and cheaper life than the one he left. A man who needs to earn locally, hates queues, can’t stand the hot season, or is moving mainly because a two-week trip felt wonderful, may find the second year hard. This page is written mostly for men weighing the move, often with a Thai partner.
Readers of the first version of this page, first published in 2017, praised the weather, the food, the hospitality, how far their money went and how open Thailand is to people of different sexual orientations. Two wrote about teaching English: one said a degree all but guarantees a job, and the other, seven years in and still enjoying it, said low salaries had driven many Westerners out of teaching and the process keeps getting more complicated. That first view was one reader’s in 2017; a teaching job still needs an employer, a visa and a work permit. Those comments say what those readers valued, not what every newcomer will find. What a list of reasons leaves out is who it applies to. The warm weather that draws a retiree from northern Europe is the same weather that can keep a man indoors through the afternoon in April. The friendliness that greets a visitor is real, and it is not the same thing as having friends.
The honest way to judge the move is to picture an ordinary Tuesday, not a Saturday on a beach: where you live, what you do between nine and five, who you talk to in the evening, what you pay for and in which currency, and what your partner, if you have one, expects that Tuesday to look like.
Thailand suits a person, not a budget. Judge the move on an ordinary week you would actually live there, not on a holiday.
Quick poll
Would an ordinary week in Thailand beat your ordinary week at home?
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Why Westerners settle in Thailand, as Thai people see it
Money is the reason Thai commenters name most often for why Westerners settle in Thailand: their money goes further there. Most pages about living in Thailand are written from the foreigner’s side, so we read what Thai people say among themselves, in Thai, about the Westerners who retire or settle near them.