Culture shock: leaving made me want to go back

By: Anna Power

I recently read an article which described expat culture shock as being short lived. That was not my experience. I had been so caught up with the idea of moving to Bangkok that the reality of actually living there had not occurred to me.

And at first life was exciting. We were eating out every night, trying new foods, expressing amazement at how much was literally on our doorstep. It was so different to life in the UK. We had a swimming pool and we seemed to be the only residents using it. The fabulous BTS could have us to the other side of Bangkok in just 30 minutes. The weather was fantastic – for some reason life just seems better in the sunshine.

It was only after a few weeks I had the realisation that there was no return ticket home.

And that’s when culture shock hit me in the face full force. The honeymoon period was over. Bangkok was now home. This was not a holiday. This was now life.

But life was just so different. I had gone from working in a high powered, stressful job to having no daily structure. Weather had gone from one extreme to another. My busy social circle had turned into living in a country where I had no friends and no idea how to make any. I won’t even mention my naïve foolery of thinking I would be fluent in Thai after a week!

And the worse thing of it was, I couldn’t tell anyone how I was feeling. How ungrateful to moan about having no job when my friends were still in the stressed position I had been in myself. Who in their right mind would be unhappy about living in the metropolis of Bangkok. I felt selfish and spoilt for feeling how I did.

Seven weeks after moving to Bangkok, I had to unexpectedly return to the UK for three weeks and what initially caused me to worry would I even want to return to Bangkok turned out being the best thing I could do. After about a week, when the excitement of having a car back and being able to drive to a fully stocked supermarket instead of trekking home in the humidity with heavy bags of water and cat litter, I began to realise I did actually miss Bangkok. I wanted to go back. In fact as time went on I couldn’t wait to get back.

Bangkok was home now.

It was sad saying goodbye again, but when I got back to the Big Mango, I was now prepared for how life was there. I was determined to keep busy, to get out and meet people, and to start living.

Even though I now feel I have slowly adjusted to life in Bangkok, I suspect culture shock is something that will remain with me, tapping me on the shoulder to say hello when I am not expecting it too. But that’s OK too. For I now look on culture shock as experience: it creeps up on me when I remember I am an out of place farang, but the more I learn from mistakes of living in Bangkok, the more culturally rich I become.