Don't Move to Thailand.

the most important thing about giving
advice is to avoid giving advice to people who don't want to hear it I'm trying to make this video fast paced and upbeat by basically not talking about myself I do have experience living in Thailand Laos Cambodia Yunnan and a few other places in Asia but this video isn't about me this video is about a bit of a cultural phenomenon a pattern of people dropping out of university and moving to Thailand quitting their jobs and moving to Thailand and I think that's part of an even larger idealization of traveling in Asia in 21st century Western culture and the West in this sense covers a lot of the world when I was living in places like Laos and Thailand and so on I met travelers so called travelers from Russia from Germany of course in the United States and Canada and in a sense they were all accepting this paradigm of the traveler as someone who is not a tourist and it was also not an immigrant I think we used this word traveler to kind of evade the sense of responsibility that comes with the word immigrant or just migrant um if you met someone who migrated to your country just to hang out just to waste time just to lead a life of leisure with no long term aspirations or objectives with just no intentions aside from living a life of self-indulgence because they have the money to burn how would you regard that person now it's very rare in most Western societies in most societies around the world Thailand is in a small minority of kind of destinations that have a large number of people there all the time who don't have a job who don't really have aspirations to have a job and even if they do they're just holding them that job to kind of extend their their vacation their status as a as a so-called traveler without making any of this sort of emotional intellectual and political commitments that come with really becoming an immigrant to another country of taking on another society as your long-term home and taking on your own identity as a kind of permanent outsider within that that society it's not easy to keep track of what your motivations are for doing things as an adult and that's partly because your motivations have to change as time goes on your motivations can change quite rapidly if you make a decision to move to Thailand to quit your job to drop out of university to radically suddenly change your life and move to Chiang Mai I moved to Bangkok moved to Thailand for whatever reason what were your assumptions what were your expectations what we our motivations on day one once you've been there for three months six months probably you will have encountered a series of disappointments series of surprises things that didn't turn out the way you thought they would it's very easy to lie to yourself at each juncture and say oh this is what I wanted this is what I was looking for or just to just to take up a new direction in response to opportunities as they present themselves and forget why you were doing it in the first place here in Victoria I met a South Korean guy and he was that rare example of a man of leisure apparently his parents were very wealthy and you know when I met him I described myself in terms of my aspirations in terms of what I'm doing here at the University and what kind of employment I'm looking for in terms of the struggle of ordinary life ordinary people and with the exception of close personal friends I mean a lot of us describe ourselves that way this is what I'm doing this is what I'm trying to do life is a struggle and you know I'm not on vacation back when I was living in Thailand and Laos I was never on vacation and you know was strange for me to talk to this South Korean guy where his responses his answers how he describes his life has to do totally with self-indulgence and dissipation and wasting time and wasting money he doesn't have a job he described himself as somebody who never had a job he's not looking for a job he's not planning to have a job or a career he was taking courses at the University but just to pass the time he doesn't try to get good grades he never wants to get a more advanced diploma you know he is living that life of leisure and he may be a smart guy he may be a nice guy but it is hard not to regard him as a scumbag if Thai people meet a westerner in Thailand and that's how they see you and if you really stop and think about it maybe that's who you are why shouldn't those Thai people regard you as a scumbag - at least by default it makes a lot of sense before you make that move you should already be studying the Thai language and you should already be reading the newspaper from Thailand in English every day and that is advice I would give you tatis mutandis - a Chinese immigrant who told me that they wanted to move from China to Canada you know nobody thinks twice about that oh you're planning to migrate to Canada well then you need to be studying English now before you go oh you're planning to move to Canada well you need to get familiar with the political and economic and social reality of Canada now something as simple as reading the newspapers it can change you it can change your perspective of the society you can change your perspective of yourself it'll have you asking questions that you would have never thought to ask otherwise and the newspapers in Thailand are censored they are under government influence and government control but nevertheless there are little things that will illustrate the reality of what Thailand is and in 2015 Thailand is a military dictatorship and you should care about that if you want to migrate to Thailand and if you don't care about that and you read the newspaper every day or day for a while and you just don't care then you shouldn't move to Thailand you should look at that big colorful map of the world and choose somewhere else to move to where you do care about the people the politics the economy the culture the history whatever it is why not South Korea why not Saudi Arabia don't throw a dart at the map in theory I mean the airplane ticket is going to cost about the same amount to go almost anywhere what are your motives you know Thailand right now has this strange place in the Western imagination as supposedly offering a sort of cheap life of luxury not really a place between places but a paradise for rent I remember reading in the newspaper a description of a failed assassination attempt against one of the local governors in Thailand and you know the guy was driving his truck he saw a food vendor by the side of the road that he especially liked and he impetuously pulled over his truck to the side of the road and jumped out of the driver's seat to buy whatever kind of food it was soup or something I don't know and a bomb went off under the driver's seat of his truck and he would have died if he hadn't gotten out at just that moment little things reading the newspaper even reading a censored government controlled newspaper little things will clue you in to the social reality of what Thailand is in the 21st century and I say that as somebody who in some ways in some ways I can say I love Thailand and in some ways I can say I hate Thailand and that's what it's like to care about a country there will be both there will be things you respect and there will be things you despise and there will be positive things that motivates you to be there and there will be negative things that scare you apart from the newspapers I spoke to people face-to-face who have witnessed assassinations including political assassinations within Thailand I remember one guy describing to me the strange sight of the police with a garden hose washing the blood off the sidewalk a few seconds after someone was shot to death a political figure minor political figure was shot and it's very likely that whole assassination was arranged by the police that was up and up any Sun northeastern Thailand you know my point is not that political violence is the whole of what Thailand is and my point is not that you can't be indifferent to it I think you know if you want to you can move to Israel and ignore the violence ignore the political problems you know the economic realms if you want to you can move to Saudi Arabia and ignore all those problems and never read the newspaper and take no interest in the outside reality of the world but if so you know you're choosing the wrong country I mean I think that's this is fundamental to why Thai people by and large and in general regard Western tourists as scumbags by default if you go to a foreign country just to live in luxury then you are scum back and keep in mind luxury means different things to different people for some people a life of luxury means living on a yacht for some people it means sex drugs alcohol for some people means gambling means going to the casinos for some people it means swimming at the beach yeah for some people a life of luxury is just a kind of dissipated life of maybe riding your bicycle up a mountain going swimming eating fancy food I'm not insinuating that everyone should be motivated by humanitarian interests or research interests I know I'm in a small minority of people anywhere in the world and everywhere in the world who is really motivated by those things but you should not be surprised that people in Thailand regard you as a scumbag when the objective reality of why you're there and what you're doing there really is a life of dissipation self-indulgence cheap luxury easy pleasures and it's it's a little too easy for people to hide that behind the words like like lifestyle and you know even this use of traveling of being a traveler what are you really if you meet someone and they really have no ambitions they have no aspirations they just want to live a life of self-indulgence permanent vacation how do you feel about them and if that's you if that's who you really are and that's the life you're really living how do you feel about yourself