I moved to Chonburi!
It’s a beach city about an hour outside of Bangkok, and it is a totally different pace of life.
As someone who has often been plucked out of one situation by the universe and placed into a far better one, I should not be surprised that I now find myself in my dream scenario here in Thailand.
After the stress of (what I guess were) the holidays, having to pick up and move all my stuff to the other side of the country and not knowing where I was headed, I did hit a point of feeling like I was on the wrong path being here.
I felt like it took so much for me to get here, only for something like this to happen, and I allowed a small part of myself to feel defeated. Not the wolf I feed, per se, but the thought was there.
I’m glad I held on, because now I feel incredibly grateful for all of it, even the parts that felt really challenging to get through at the time. Without going through that pain, I would not have the same appreciation for all the amazing things I’ve already been blessed with in 2020.
So this is going to be a post about my gratitude…
I’m Grateful for Reunions and New Friends!
After leaving Sukhothai, I headed straight to Hua Hin to sort everything out. Had I been there alone, just staying in hostels the whole time without anyone to talk to, I would have lost it.
Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. Since being in Thailand in general, I have made some amazing friendships. I’ve found communities of people who genuinely care everywhere I go. I was lucky to have the support of my HH friends, and also to make a deeper connection in the form of Roxie (pictured below), who let me stay on her floor and chatted about everything you could think of with me.
I really admire her life here, her dedication to living in Thailand for good, her fashion sense (/general aesthetic) and the fact that she’s also vegetarian! I will get to that later, but I’ve made the switch due to another bad experience I had in Sukhothai (so much happened at once).
Just having people to hang out with that understand my weirdness and love me for it was a blessing in itself.
I hope what happened to me doesn’t happen to anyone else, but at the same time it was such an opportunity for me to appreciate the people I’ve had the chance to meet.
During our adventures we had some delicious local food (but also falafel, a proper cup of English tea, lots of smoothie bowls (!), dim sum, fried ice cream, and the most amazing vegan food), sent off lanterns at the beach, explored some truly glorious street art, did some shopping, and so on. I became even closer to Hua Hin than I was after the month I spent there the first time around, and that was totally worth everything.
I’m Grateful for the Newfound Focus on my Health
…but more importantly the ability I have here in Chonburi to be able to stay healthy.
On Christmas Day, I ate something that gave me food poisoning until New Years. After that meal, I wasn’t able to eat anything at all without getting super bloated and feeling sick, even smoothies. I had to take some medication I brought from home; it’s common for travelers to experience this at least once because our digestive systems aren’t used to the food.
Anyway, after a total cleanse for about 4 days, I realized my body just doesn’t want meat. I’ve also been weary of it since coming to Thailand because there is a lot of mysterious street meat/I’ve just become more conscious of my impact on the world overall since arriving. I was fortunate to come to this conclusion in Hua Hin (it is truly impossible to be vegetarian in Sukhothai), and also while spending time with Roxie, who obviously knew a lot of good local spots.
I’m really lucky because there are a ton of pescetarian options here. My school also provides lunch, and makes a separate vegetarian lunch (there are three teachers who don’t eat meat).
There is also a gym and a pool in my condo complex, which is amazing. I was trying to run outside in Sukhothai, but it happened to be right during trash burning season, and I wasn’t trying to inhale that.
Feeling physically better is making an enormous difference in every aspect of my life- it makes me laugh that this switch happened by a force of nature literally as soon as the decades changed, but I’m also not surprised.
I’m Grateful that I learned more about myself and what I want
During my TESOL course, we could share our preferences about where we wanted to be placed. At the time, and I think this is right for where I was, I just said “put me anywhere!”
I really didn’t have a preference. I thought that I’d end up where I needed to be, and I did. Part of me now realizes that because I had that perspective from the beginning, what I needed was to first be shown what I don’t want.
This is a pivotal time in my life. I’ve spent 7 years of my twenties in a serious relationship with a lot of stability, which was lovely, but I never had the ability (or the necessity) to decide what I wanted my perfect life to be like. Now I do, and I realized that some things are important to me. I like the hustle and bustle of a city. I like having options to keep myself mentally and physically healthy. I like doing stuff and traveling on the weekends. None of these things were super available to me where I was.
I was also in a pretty traumatizing work situation that required me to take a step back and remind myself who I am. I needed to remind myself that I don’t deserve to be belittled and mistreated, and when I acknowledged that from within, the situation went away all together.
Today was my first day at my new school, and I was terrified. The second I got there though, I realized that it’s all good. They encourage the teachers to be happy and comfortable and work from that space.
Through this, I realized something paradoxical.
I am so used to learning through hard situations, that sometimes I can be too welcoming of them, and that’s not always what’s best for me. I’m grateful that I was tough enough to get through this, but I’m also grateful that it taught me that I deserve more comfort. Just because I can handle hard things, doesn’t mean that I should have to take abuse or feel insecure about my living situation.
This has been a learning experience and a half. I cannot explain how good it feels to be chilling in my new apartment right now, drinking tea and listening to lo-fi music after having spent the week on someone’s floor not knowing what was going to happen.
I guess, the summary of this whole post is that I have a new appreciation for everything around me. I am so grateful to be in Thailand and growing in the ways that I am. I’m so grateful for all the things, big and small, that make this life magic.
Lunar Liv 