Setting up a life a life abroad – is it as hard as everyone thinks?

When Kirsty secured a teaching job in Bangkok we were faced with a task we had never experienced before, setting up a home together. Before travelling Kirsty had been working hard at University and I had been living with friends and working my way to the top (or not). I’m not sure if it was more difficult setting up a new home in a completely different country or not. There was certainly a lot more things we had to think about….. even buying and setting up mobile phones!

The first step was of course finding somewhere to live for the year.

Everybody gets excited when they’re in the market for something new, whether it be a new car or the latest gadget and it’s the same with finding somewhere to live. Sure enough you might spend a few days viewing places that make you seriously consider buying a cardboard box and setting up outside the 7/11 but it’s all worth it once you find the perfect place.

There were a few key issues when choosing where to live:
• Location: We didn’t want to be in a tourist-dominated area. Thailand is a bit like party central for us Brits and a year surrounded by drunks didn’t really appeal.
• Transport Links: Getting to and from the airport for our intended regular getaways needed to be simple. Even just getting around Bangkok itself can be a challenge so we wanted somewhere with sufficient transport options.
• Local Amenities: Everybody needs a local shop to grab those little daily bits or a place to get something quick to eat.

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Anybody who has been to Thailand will know that the local amenities point is not really an issue. Somewhere quick to eat? The curbs are full of street vendors and there is a 7/11 pretty much every other building. Despite that, it was important to us to know what was in the area and that they’d be plenty to do should we not fancy the hussle and bussle of central Bangkok.

We found the perfect place for us in a lovely 21st floor apartment in Pin Klao. Kirst had gone to view the building without me and saw two flats one too small and one that was two bedrooms (a little bigger than we needed). When we came to look together a new 2 bedroomed place had come onto the market. The minute Kirsty walked into to the flat she refused to look anywhere else! Despite getting a little bit knocked off the rent it was probably still a little more than we should have been paying.

The next step was sorting out how Kirsty would be paid for her teaching job, the rent for that fancy apartment wasn’t going to pay itself. We had looked into a couple of different options including setting up an international banking account. This would have been good if we needed to transfer money back to England for any reason but wasn’t so much for the day to day running, we needed to pay for our rent in Baht after all!

We ended up setting up a Thai bank account, which is a lot harder than it is here. Kirsty had to take a special letter from her employer to ask for special permission, after lots of questions and photocopying we had a Thai bank account. Unfortunately for us it did mean that we could have easy 100% access to all our hard earned cash.

I think if we did again we would probably set up an offshore savings account too, this would allow us to send money back to England and keep it in a savings account so it wouldn’t even tempt us. It’s also good to have one so if you travel to a different country you get a better exchange rate.

Overall we found it incredibly easy to set up our life in Thailand, much easier than I’d ever anticipated and within weeks we were settled into our new life getting itchy feet for another adventure.