Returning To England After 9 Months in Thailand

Packing my bags to return to England, I couldn’t help but reflect on what had been the most rewarding year of my life.

My visa was up and i’d been living in Thailand for 9 months. It felt like an extremely fast 9 months, but nevertheless — so much had changed.

I had arrived in Thailand with almost nothing. A small consulting business, some clothes and less than £1000. There was money in the pipeline of course, I certainly wouldn’t recommend moving to Asia with such a low amount. My business though, generated revenue every day and had done for years. The problem was that back in England, I never had any of it left at the end of the month. After being in business for 5 years, that is essentially all I had to show for it. I had cars in the past and still own a racing bike, but that really was it. A small envelope of notes, a cheap laptop, some other electronics and a few clothes. All fitting nicely into a 60L rucksack.

Not very inspiring.

By the time I had spent 9 months in Thailand however, I had acquired 2 new businesses, published a book, filled a room full of stock, met my girlfriend, made loads of new friends and a saved a great deal more cash than I originally left with.

How had this happened? I asked myself.

Economics of course, is the main answer, as i’ve talked about at length in other posts. In any case, the digital nomad experiment was a complete success. Not just because I had started to finally save money and build wealth, but because I was happier. So happy in fact, that even though I missed my friends and family, I didn’t really want to come back to England.

Watch this episode of Digital Nomad X on Youtube.

Unfortunately, I needed to.

I wanted to take my girlfriend back with me too, to see the UK and meet my family. I planned a 2 month trip, one month with her travelling the country and the last month on my own, so I could properly reconnect with friends.

The first month was great. It was refreshing to be on holiday and a tourist in the UK, for a few weeks at least. I will admit that by the last week I was pretty tired of museums and art galleries. Once she had flown back to Thailand I had a whole month of hanging out with friends, working casually on some projects and generally chilling out to look forward to.

After only 1 week though, I had changed my flight to come back to Thailand early.

I’d met my friends, which was awesome. I had already spent quite a bit of time with my family by then. Again, really nice. But after that, I became increasingly bored and frustrated. I desperately wanted to come back to Thailand.

My friends, I realised, were exactly the same as they were before I left. Everything was the same in fact, but I noticed it most with my friends. Conversation ran down the same well worn lines, the issues, stresses and problems people were grappling with hadn’t changed one bit. For me though, I felt like everything had.

I was also staying at my parents, which isn’t ideal. I’ve not been there there for a long time now and after years of independence and freedom it was hard to adjust to. We all have to do it every now and again (Christmas etc) and admittedly it’s not the end of the world. But it’s not the world I like to live in.

I had also spent a huge amount of money, travelling around the UK in the month before. Perhaps enough to live in Thailand for 5 or 6 months. I couldn’t help comparing the prices on almost everything I was buying and baulking at the cost.

Working at the table in my parents kitchen, the same thought kept coming through my head.

“Why am I still here?”.

Time to go back to Thailand.