Days T1-5: Recovery in the Land of Smiles

August 11, 2024

Day 1

Bangkok has a unique way of bringing healing order out of chaos. It's hard to explain, but any Thai regulars will know exactly what I'm talking about.

The first thing that happened after getting off the plane was just relaxing and letting the fact sink in that I was in the Land of Smiles. All would be well from this point on. After slowly unpacking, the jumbled mess of items slowly resembled something of a structure. Unfortuntaely, two small transformers I bought in Dubai went POOF up in smoke. Apparently those expensive items were of cheap quality due to poor capacitors. As a result, the resistance went up and they couldn't handle the power supply. Chucking them, I would resolve to buy new ones later.

With the very limited electronics that I did have, I charged what was possible. Then I noticed two auxiliary phones had kicked the bucket. One was a cheap phone I got in Laos last year and had used it mainly for a Thai SIM. But it would no longer charge properly. This really sucks since I had used it to digitize yearbooks before going to the more professional scanner route this trip. All is not lost, the files can still be transfered. The other cheap phone I got in Canada a year and a half ago and it was time to throw it away without replacing it.

So the first night in Bangkok I got as far as the 7-11, about a 1km walk, grabbed some grub, ate some street food and called it a night.

Day 2

The next day was getting more productive. Trying to adjust to the time zone difference, I made it into the city for the first of five sessions of talk therapy. Dr. Mason was the same guy I saw last year and I can't speak highly enough of him. This time we negotiated a package deal and I found a way to chip away further at the midlife crisis fully without deviating too much towards other topics. His speciality is on ADHD and addictions, and while not a perfect fit, his background is highly relevant to the problem.

His schedule is jam packed and you have to book months in advance which I was smarter to do this trip. He runs a "secret" office near the BTS station and is flooded with clients coming in one after the other. He works all day talking people through problems, and not always offering solutions. It's just the kind of walking through the problem that really helps and he has a master talent for this. He gets rave review from everyone and is making cash hand over fist with his business that he deserves.

We got the ball rolling for sure. Even before seeing him, this trip with all the others had made substantial progress. It seemed that the midlife crisis had evolved into a solvable problem. Still extremely complex, for sure, but I wasn't really seeing this as a crisis anymore. That in itself was a game changer. With the right mix of creativity and strategic planning, I could beat this.

He essentially posed this scenario: imagine a role reversal. Suppose you were born in the US with a stable job and you married a woman who immigrated. She loved it at first and stayed nearly 20 years. But as the political climate soured and the polarization deepened with the culture wars, the emergence of Trump supporters vs. woke lefists, etc.. she realized the politics were increasingly toxic and the place was no longer liveable. She began to hate the US, but she had top skills and talent. What's more, she wasn't like those mere talkers who say "If Trumps wins the election I am leaving the US" She was actually determined to follow through on that with actions. He went on to say, "If you're the husband of this woman, what would you do?" I said without hestitation, "I would help her out and support her to find a solution, including leaving with her."

Then he said to me, "You see what I'm saying? That's what it's about. And yet your wife isn't exactly on board with helping you leave China. Seems to me she's rather selfish. But I don't know her, you do. That's just my perspective. But hopefully you can see why I posed this role reversal"

Day 3

While the scenario above is admitedly fiction, it has a lot of basis in reality. We talked about similar topics at a social event the next day. During this trip, I have lost count of the number of US citizens who all say the same thing: the politics are out of control. They neither support Trump nor the radical left, and yet they all left the country because of the polarization.

The dots were then connected in a profound way: what is happening in China and Russia is a mirror image of the polarization in the US. Replace Trump with Xi and Putin, you have similar dyamics with the culture wars. For everyone who can't stand those two leaders, you have those who ardently support them. The obvious difference is that those who disagree with Xi or Putin cannot exactly voice that out loud.

Here's the thing: regardless of what country it is in question, the best and the brightest all want to leave. Where all these people converge is in places like Bangkok and Dubai, and they get along magnificently.

But first things first, it was time to do a fitness class then eat some delicious recovery food.

By the time it was done, I felt the soothing vibes of Bangkok help me slow down and get increasingly creative. Yes it was 6pm on a Friday night with absolutely insane traffic (long weekend holiday) and took forever to get back to the guesthouse with local transport but none of that really mattered. Nobody was stressing out about the traffic, and neither was I. This provided more time for the creative juices to continue flowing.

Day 4

The next day was sleeping in, then spending an entire afternoon updating the budget. Rather than just enter transactions and get a sense of how much this trip cost (especially Dubai which was the priciest), I wanted to get ahead of the game for once.

One such creative idea came about on a local bus ride.

I recalled a financial guru I follow who takes things to the extreme: he cuts up all his credit cards and calls it a plasectomy. While extreme to be sure, it forces you to use cash, debit cards, or available funds. Not wanting to go that far, I modified his idea by pre-loading credit cards with available funds. So that way they function as debit cards. When they reach $0 or start drawing a balance, they can no longer be used.

In this way, I would be planning with limited funds in mind, not the supposedly bottomless credit limit which is nothing but a trap.

Immensely satisfied with that, I set off for another social event but of course it took three hours in the Bangkok traffic on Saturday afternoon. What I found most astonishing is that nobody seemed to mind. If this was any other country in the world, people would be seething. Yet the bus conductors and passengers were just chatting away without a care in the world. Sometimes it would take over 10 minutes just to get through a traffic light.

But what did it matter, I got there. Once there, everyone was so friendly and talkative I hardly got a break. There was one interesting person after another. Highlights included an ex-military black guy who explained the political situation in the US above better than I could. Added to the mix, he described a harrowing story where his aunt passed away due to the abysmal healthcare. This was in LA of all places. The doctors prescibed a jumble of medications and disregarderd any side effects from mixing them together. As he explained to me, it is similar when you mix random chemicals and they might inadvartently cause an explosion. In the case of his aunt, she got third degree internal skin burns and died due to that. He is still on a lawsuit with them over that.

He went on to say, "The healthcare in the US is absolute shit. Even you have insurance and can afford it, the doctors will pull these stunts. They look at you like you're crazy if you research the side effects and tell them this might happen with the medication. It's not even comparable how much better the healthcare is in Thailand. No wonder people go on medical tourism here."

We switched topics and he later talked about the necessity of releasing all this negative emotion and getting it out in some way. Many of his colleagues are also ex-military and they suffer from extreme PTSD. One such guy he was with in Colombia went on an absolute rampage for over a week, and he stuck with him and listened to him go on and on.

I tried to explain how I'm going through a midlife crisis and stopping at nothing to talk this out nonstop, and speak to both professionals and just anyone who will listen. He said, "This is *exactly* what I'm talking about brother, and you're doing it perfectly. Keep at it. You would not believe how many similar people like you have these sorts of issues yet say nothing. That destroys them from the inside like what happened with my aunt. Keep talking this out and don't stop"

Next was a guy nearby with his wife who is a financial advisor listening in and we introduced ourselves. He said, "If you're thinking of moving to Singapore, I would think twice. We got out because of how expensive it is. Unless the school pays your accomodation and transport, it's not worth it. Why not Bangkok? Tons of schools here, I know many principals of them." He gave me his card then explained more of what he does as financial advising. When I explained how I trade he said, "Well I guess I don't need to advise you, you already know what's happening. Most of my time was spent this week trying to talk people out of a cliff when the market volatility soared and people wanted to sell their portfolios. But you know just as as well as I do, it is not timing the market, it is time in the market."

I tried to explain my investing strategy in more detail and he said, "You know there's a name for that: core and satellite. Google that, you'll see what I'm talking about." Later I did just that. I had no idea it was called this. This guy knows what he's doing. He's a genuine advisor, not one who peddles whole life insurance.

After that it was several more people including a woman I bumped into who regularly attends events in Shanghai and happened to be in town. What a shockingly small world. Then a German teacher who explained how the Thai parents are very ambitious and with well behaved kids who want to get ahead overseas. I said, "You know it's very interesting, this is extremely similar to Chinese parents. The country may have its problems, but those who want to succeed will stop at nothing and their kids are some of the best behaved I have seen."

He said, "Thailand is the same, the parents don't mess around here either. Why not get a job here man? You keep talking about everywhere else except Bangkok and for some reason you have no interest in applying for jobs here yet you visit all the time."

I didn't tell him it is because the pay supposedly sucks, but maybe this needs to be be fact checked.

Admitedly I had been raving about Dubai nonstop to pretty much everyone at the event and realized it was excessive on my part. On that note, with someone else this evolved into a conversation that explained why I never saw any locals in Dubai. It's because those families are the richest and they essentially live off the oil wealth and don't need to work. I'm almost certain it is the same in Qatar. It is the expats who comprise about 80% of the population and basically keep the city running, more or less servants to the locals. The expats don't really complain as they love it and are making a killing. But the locals for whatever reason choose not to mix and their elite families host their own private events. Amazingly, the guy I was with explained how he had gotten invited to one of these. He described the abundance of alcohol in a way that was shocking.

Moving on, a guy standing around started a conversation and this led to how there was no food at these events. He was right in the sense that only popcorn was seen to this point. I said, "Yeah it kind of sucks. My strategy is to get a meal before and pre-load with drinks at the convenience store. I'm basically a cheap Charlie and don't want to pay those bar prices. The last white wine I got cost 260 baht. So after one of those, no more, just beer. It's the cheapest thing on the menu. I broke 1000 baht at the beginning and want to use the rest of it to get back home using taxis and buses. I learned the hard way from last time not to carry around 1000 baht bills. When it's all dark in the taxi you can't see the difference between 100 baht and 1000 baht bills, it is a very costly mistake."

On that note, I recalled that on the way to the social event, a taxi driver had ripped me off by not using the meter and resorted to bargaining. I negotiated but still paid way too much. That, and spending the rest of the money on food and pre-drinks meant I had zero baht going into the event. There was a Thai bank card on hand and I wanted to take out another 3000 baht but forgot the PIN number twice. If I got the number wrong the third time it would be game over and a six hour walk back home, not to mention a shitty mood at the event dreading all this. It was an unthinkable scenario, so I had to guess correctly. Amazingly I did out and out spat 3000 baht. Given this success I was not about to waste it or take out any more 1000 baht bills.

Anyways, after all that talk, the guy bounced. Immediately after he did, the servers emerged with one appetizer after another. It was enough to make another meal.

Towards the end of the night, I circled back to one of the guys I met at the beginning. This time he introduced me to a woman from Moscow and we got talking. The main topic was the drug laws in China vs. Canada and how my home city of Vancouver has become a disgrace with all the homeless people and drugs. I had to admit that China's strict drug laws were at least doing something right to prevent that from happening.

I asked her, "So what's it like in Russia?" She said quite similar actually. As we talked more it became apparent that she was highly educated and had left the country a long time ago to settle in Thailand. I dared not ask why. Regardless of what she thought about the war in Ukraine, we'll never know, nor does it really matter. The way I see it, there are tons of interesting and smart people from Russia. They're not all slobs living in Batumi. One of the best life coaches I ever met came from Russia. Just because their leader is a madman doesn't mean to write off the entire country. Anything can change. Another way to look at it, Japan committed mass atrocities in WWII yet now they are one of our strongest allies.

After all that it was time to finally bounce and I got back mainly using local buses.

Day 5

The next day more sleeping in and another social event that was off the charts. Bangkok was really knocking it out of the park! Wouldn't you know it, I met another couple from Singapore. The wife was a teacher who quit because it was too expensive and also tried to talk me out of moving there. She basically said, just like the last guy, "I would think twice about this. The fact that you speak English and are good at math doesn't differentiate you from the locals. If you find work there it won't pay very well relative to the insane costs."

Afterwards, I spent hours afterwards updating the budget and the second session of talk therapy with Dr. Mason. This was more or less continuing the theme of the first one. We didn't really circle onto any immediate solutions, but what I found most remarkable was his conversational style and line of questioning. It made the entire hour absolutely fly by. Never before had I experienced anything like this. Probably the key line he said was, "If I was in your shoes, I would be doing exactly what you're doing. It's not selfish to put yourself first"

He also told me flat out, "You're too passive. But don't worry about it, you're well aware of this problem and the codependent tendencies it produces. You're miles ahead of most people by recognizing this and doing something about it. We'll go into this more next time."

And then it was time to spend more hours updating the budget, planning to at least February of 2025 before heading back on the local buses.

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	0
Comment on this entry	Comment	0