25 Things That Surprised Me After Moving to Thailand
Moving to Thailand has been full of tiny moments where I’ve had to stop and think, “Wait… is this normal here?”
Some things are genuinely surprising, some are things I’ve grown to love, and some I still don’t understand at all. Like why is it 35°C and every Thai woman is wearing a cardigan while I’m sweating through my clothes? Or why are there two 7-Elevens directly next to each other? Or why does everyone seem perfectly comfortable with geckos living in their homes? After a few months here, I’ve realized I could probably make this list 100 things long. But here are 25 of the ones that have surprised me the most:
How everyone is wearing long sleeves and jackets in peak summer while you’re quietly melting into the ground writing the blog post “Thailand Sweaty Girl Essentials”
Enough said.
How aggressively cold 7-Eleven can be
Outside: 35°C. Inside: apparently they are preserving a body. It’s mine.
The national tolerance for sleeping absolutely anywhere
Chair, hammock, motorbike sidecar, bench. If there is a horizontal-ish surface, someone may be asleep on it. And they are not just asleep. They are in REM sleep.
Meanwhile, I need blackout curtains, the perfect temperature, three pillows, a noise machine, and approximately 45 minutes of negotiating with my nervous system that we are safe.
Multiple 7-elevens right next to each other
What demographic is being served by the 7-Eleven approximately 14 feet away from the other 7-Eleven?
Did the first 7-Eleven simply become too successful?
Did they have a falling out?
Are they competitors? Sister stores? Enemies? Enemies to lovers?
And somehow, nobody seems to think this is strange. AND both are still successful.
The tiny rubber band collection you will acquire
You’ll never throw them away, but you’ll also never have a need for them.
At some point you just have a drawer full of tiny rubber bands that you've convinced yourself will be useful someday.
Thai people eat basically anything for breakfast
Rice? Breakfast.
Noodles? Breakfast.
Curry? Breakfast.
Grilled pork? Breakfast.
A meal that I personally would categorize as “something I would eat at 7 PM”? Apparently breakfast.
And I love this because the American breakfast system suddenly seems a little ridiculous. Why did we decide that eggs, pancakes, cereal, and toast are acceptable at 8 AM but noodles are somehow suspicious?
The terrifyingly casual relationship with geckos
Everyone else: “Oh, there's a gecko.”
Me: “there.is.a.reptile.in.my.home”And then… you realize all your friends are girls or gays and no one is coming to save you so now you live with a gecko in your spare bathroom while your other until they feel like it’s time to head out (+ the only working shower is in that bathroom) :’(
How many things happen on “LINE”
Your landlord. Your hairdresser. Your doctor. Your delivery driver. Your bank. Your entire life.
Entire ecosystems are set up on this app.
Your relationship with Grab becomes borderline codependent
Food? Grab. Errand? Grab. Something you forgot? Grab. Organ transplant? Existential crisis? Probably Grab.
The bizarre experience of trying to explain your address to a delivery driver
In America:
“What's your address?”
“123 Main Street.”
Done.
In Thailand:
“What's your address?”
“Well… I'm near the temple.”
“Which temple?”
“The big one.”
“What's the street?”
“I don't know.”
“Can you send a location?”
14-message LINE conversation
Google Maps screenshot
Three landmarks
Dropped pin
Coordinates sent
“I'm next to the 7-Eleven.”
Which one?
There are four.
How people transport completely unreasonable things on motorbikes
At some point you stop asking “How are they doing that?”
and start asking “Is that a refrigerator?” and admiring them.
Because somehow, yes.
Leaving your car in neutral
Apparently sometimes the collective parking strategy is just: We'll figure it out later.
You park. Put the car in neutral. Sometimes leave the keys. Someone can move it if they need to. This is apparently a common system.
You will learn that “closed” and “open” are more of a vibe than a binary
The sign says closed. Someone is inside. The lights are on. There are customers. Nobody knows. But everyone knows?
Toilet paper + sometimes paying for the bathroom
Sometimes you bring your own toilet paper.
Sometimes you buy it.
Sometimes you pay to use the bathroom.
Sometimes there is toilet paper outside the bathroom that you are apparently supposed to take with you but you forget to.
And sometimes you walk into a bathroom and realize you've made a terrible mistake because you have neither toilet paper nor cash. Character development.
How ants will find everything
I don't know how they know, who they know, where they're coming from, or how they can detect one microscopic crumb from a rumor they heard three generations ago.
But they will.
You can wipe down the counter. Clean the entire kitchen. Put something in a container. Go to bed. Wake up.
Ants. Ant MF party.
Your entire bathroom will be wet after a shower
The floor. The walls. The toilet. Somehow the ceiling. You are no longer showering in the bathroom. The bathroom is showering with you.
The amount of sugar in foods + drinks
One thing that genuinely surprised me was how much sugar can be hiding in things that, at first glance, seem like the healthy option. Fruit juices, tea, foods — sweetened. Things you did not know could ever have sugar in them — sweetened.
Why everything seems to be “whitening” or “brightening”
Soap. Lotion. Sunscreen. Face wash. Deodorant. If it touches your body, someone has probably figured out how to make it “brightening.”' #itshardbeingatangirlinAsia
Cats apparently having employment
Café cat. Restaurant cat. Temple cat. Shop cat. Nobody hired them, but they're clearly on staff. And I love that.
There is always a dog
There is always another dog. And they’re both lying in the center of a busy street.
How Thai people can be incredibly direct about some things and extraordinarily indirect about others
One of the more interesting cultural differences I've noticed is how direct some people can be about certain things while being incredibly indirect about others.
A fascinating cultural combination of “you are fat” and “perhaps we could maybe consider possibly doing something about this.”
There isn't always the same level of American awkwardness around certain observations.
But then other situations become an elaborate dance of hints, politeness, and reading between the lines.
Learning that “same same” is simultaneously a joke, a philosophy and occasionally an accurate description
At first I thought it was just a funny phrase. Then I realized it basically covers an entire spectrum of situations.
And eventually you find yourself saying it completely unironically.
That's when you know you've been here long enough.
Asking “have you eaten” is basically the sixth Love Language
It took me a minute to understand that sometimes “have you eaten?” isn't actually a question about whether you've eaten. It's “I care about you.”
Going to the hospital
Going to a doctor or hospital here can feel like you've accidentally entered a completely different version of healthcare.
The efficiency. The process. The sheer number of people involved in your hour healthcare journey.
The fact that you can sometimes get things done incredibly quickly that would have required multiple appointments and a small mortgage over the course of 6 months back home.
There are definitely moments where you're sitting there thinking: “Wait. That's it?”
And then other moments where you're thinking: “Okay… so what exactly is happening right now?”
It's one of those experiences where you realize how much of what you consider “normal” is actually just what you're accustomed to.
The most dangerous people in thailand are tourists
After living here for a while, I've developed a theory that the most dangerous thing in Thailand isn't the traffic, the heat, the geckos, or the questionable electrical wiring.
Other tourists. Specifically tourists who landed 48 hours ago, have never driven a motorbike in their lives, rented a Honda Click, and have decided that a helmet, insurance + driver’s license are apparently optional.
You will see someone wobbling through traffic with their girlfriend sitting sideways on the back, both wearing beach clothes, neither wearing a helmet, and think: Oh. So this is how we're doing this.
Meanwhile, the Thai guy carrying an entire refrigerator on the back of his motorbike is somehow the safest person on the road.
Alex who arrived from Manchester on Tuesday? Get. him. off. the. road.
I'm sure there are at least 100 more things I could add to this list, and I'm equally sure I'll discover plenty more the longer I live here. But I think overall, what makes Thailand so great, is that it’s just not that serious. Shit gets done and people are taken care of. Life keeps moving. There’s a lot less of that constant urgency and rigidity that I think I had gotten used to in the US. Things may not always happen exactly the way you expect them to, but somehow, they usually work themselves out. And honestly, I love that.
