A Pandemic Relocation: So I Live in Thailand Now

Greetings from Bangkok!!(…!?!?)

So I live in Thailand now, and three months into it that’s a sentence I’m still wrapping my head around. Of all the pandemic consequences, this wasn’t even remotely in the realm of realities I thought possible. (Broke? Yes, very likely. Discouraged and despondent? Totally. Relocating to Southeast Asia for the first time in 9 years to live a whole new life? Get outta here.)

To be clear, I moved to Thailand during a pandemic due to a job offer, not as an escape. It was early September and I was finally settling into Chicago (– my second pandemic move of the year, after getting laid off from my San Francisco job at the beginning of lockdown) when a friend reached out with a job opening she’d seen in Bangkok, setting some wheels in very quick motion.

One week and several interviews later, I was signing my contract. By the end of the month, I was waving goodbye to O’Hare from a largely empty 777 en route to Bangkok. My third and final pandemic move.

Left: A Boeing 777 seats 300+ people; I think my flight had maybe 30. Right: My life stuffed into two suitcases, yet again.

*Random asides on the move:

– It was a bit of a beast to repack everything I’d juusst finished unpacking from my cross-country relocation. While in San Francisco, thinking I was going to be staying put awhile, I’d finally allowed myself to accumulate ~t h i n g s~.  So I moved to Illinois with a couple more boxes than my usual “everything I own fits into two suitcases and backpack” scenario. I’ve moved to Thailand with about half of those things. I would love to not pack anything up again for at least, like, eight months.

– I’m not saying this next part to brag, but because I found the universe so ridiculous: after months of being unemployed, the same week I applied for and got the job in Bangkok…I was headhunted and received a (sports-related!) job offer at Apple. If they had reached out just a few days earlier, I’d probably be Stateside right now. The timing still blows my mind.

– Funny thing: exactly one year ago to the day, Halloween 2019, I was also on a one-way flight moving to a new city for a new job (the San Francisco one). Fingers crossed Halloween 2021 doesn’t prove to be a threepeat.

My last trip to Bangkok: April 2014. I was so sick and barely left my hotel the entire time.

I’m enormously grateful and beyond excited to be here. I’ve loved Thailand the few times I visited while living in Singapore in 2010/2011, and Bangkok was always a place I thought I’d love to make a base and explore in-depth, though I never imagined it would actually happen.

Never mind that it happened when it did — after getting laid off; after spending months quarantining and barely scraping by in a pandemic. I know I am lucky: I recognize that being able to stay indoors right now is a privilege; that I had the safety nets to stay at home and job hunt and survive off unemployment is an enormous privilege. I know how difficult things are for literally millions of people, and I don’t want to take any of this for granted. If 2020 taught me anything, it’s that the bottom can drop out from under you at any second.

The scene upon arrival at BKK. Step one of many checks just to be able to leave the airport.

I’m also relieved to be in a country that has taken the pandemic seriously from the beginning. While a few cases are starting to pop up again, the situation here is nowhere near the catastrophe it is back home. I can live a life that more closely resembles “normal” than it has in a very long time (I know it’s only technically been since March, but doesn’t it feel so much longer).

But that also leads to some questions on how to move forward with my writing. (Not that I’ve posted much in recent years anyway, I’m aware! Or that I have much free time to start again, either — this post alone took weeks to cobble together).

Who wants to hear about other people’s travels when so many of us worldwide are still in various stages of lockdowns and suffering on numerous levels?

Lauren of Never Ending Footsteps wrote it best in her post about moving to New Zealand: “To jump back into normality and share nothing but virus-free experiences would be tone deaf. I’d feel like I was bragging; being the actual worst. I’m hyper-aware of my privilege right now and struggling to figure out how to handle it.”

I don’t want to cause anyone to feel bad; I went through that myself for much of last year, watching others travel when I neither had the finances nor the perceived safety to do so. It can bring up a lot.

For now if I do write, I’ll try to keep focus on the purpose of storytelling, not bragging: what mandatory quarantine was like (spoiler: kind of really nice…?), what Thailand is like right now without the tourists, and of course the usual records of what I’m eating.

But for now, I just wanted to at least announce this new chapter here so y’all know where I am these days (both physically and, like, generally in life).

I bought a plant?? Fixed life content to come?? Who am I??? (and should I name my plant?)

For the first time since I left the US 13 years ago, I can see myself staying in a city for a while…and wanting to stay put for a while.

Expect more from me coming out of this part of the world — especially with borders still closed, I’m keeping my pin dropped in Thailand for the foreseeable future. Whenever they reopen though, I can’t wait to see you all here.

Questions about the pandemic moving process? Comments on what you’d like to read about life in Thailand right now? Tips for keeping monsteras alive in a condo? Drop ’em all below.