In today's video, I'm going to tell you why Thailand, let's go!
What is going on youtube?! Greetings from my quarantine hotel here in bangkok. You can see
my room here in the background i actually wanted to film this the other way here let me show you
so you could see like the windows and the beautiful view i have of bangkok but it kind of
washes out my face because it's so bright it's early in the morning here in bangkok so you'll
just have to watch the video this way i'm on day 12 of my 14 day quarantine so i have two days and
a wake up before i'm paroled i'm super excited about that one of the most common questions i'm
getting right now is why Thailand so i'm going to answer that question in this video and also a lot
of you have asked me about food here in quarantine so if you stick around to the end of the video
i'll show you a sample of breakfast dinner and lunch spoiler alert it ain't that great all
right so let's jump into this why Thailand now so that's a fair question but it's really a two-part
question why Thailand and then why thailand now so let me share my history with thailand first
to give you some background in context on how i came to my decision to come to thailand now
okay so let's talk some history so i've been coming to thailand since 1998 for those that don't
know i was in the u.s navy for 20 years my first duty station was hawaii i lived there from 1994
to 1998 but i wasn't on a ship so i didn't go anywhere i'd never even been out of the united
states so in 1998 the navy decided to transfer me to italy on the way to italy they gave me 63 days
of leave i don't know what they were thinking but and i don't even remember how it happened
but somehow it happened i decided this would be a great opportunity to travel overseas i had a bunch
of navy buddies that had traveled the world so i asked them hey where should i go and everybody
said the same thing they said dude you need to go to thailand so this was all like pre-internet
travel so i went to a travel agency and i booked a 30-day backpack trip i started in phuket then i
went to patia and then i went to chiang rai not chiang mai chiang rai during that trip
i fell in love with thailand and i kind of put it on a pedestal since it was the first country
i ever visited outside the united states so i went to italy for two years after that thailand
trip and then i was stationed in hawaii again but this time i was on a navy ship for those that
don't know navy ships home ported in the pacific will usually stop into thailand a couple times
on the way into the arabian gulf and then on the way out of the arabian gulf i've been to thailand
probably 20 30 times on board navy ships i also used my leave from the navy to take a couple trips
to thailand for vacation over the years in 2019 i quit my job to travel the world with that program
called remote year you live in a different country every month for 12 months one of the countries
i lived in was thailand i lived in the city of chiang mai for 30 days so as you can see i've got
a 23 year history visiting thailand i've visited this country more than i've visited any country
in the world and that's been intentional i just love the place okay so why thailand so about six
months ago i made the decision primarily driven by kovid that i wanted a few different home bases
throughout the world and thailand is the place i chose for my home base in asia for a couple
different reasons number one i love the people in the culture they call it the land of smiles
i don't know what it is but everyone in thailand is friendly i don't know if it's the buddhist
culture but they're welcoming thai people are just really fun to be around and i just love the deep
rich history of the country reason number two i love the food it's some of the best in the world
my top three food choices are italian mexican and thai you just can't beat the food here in thailand
and that's one of the primary reasons i travel reason number three thailand is super super safe
i've traveled all over the world i've been to many countries and there's only one other place that i
feel maybe a little bit more safe than i feel in thailand and that's japan but i'm in bangkok right
now you could walk around at bangkok at three o'clock in the morning and have no worries i love
being in a country where i feel safe that's really important to me especially for a country i'm going
to use as a home base reason number four i kind of mentioned this earlier but it's super affordable
everything is pretty affordable in thailand lodging is affordable food's affordable
transportation's affordable i can hop on a flight from thailand to malaysia or vietnam or indonesia
for like 20 so it's really affordable to travel around this area using thailand as a home base
there are other places in asia that are affordable there are other places that have good food there
are other places that have great people and culture there are other places that are safe
but thailand is the best combination of all of those things for me and it's a place i feel
very comfortable in my only issue with thailand in the past was the visa which can be a little bit of
a moving target if you're familiar with thailand at all i decided to get the thai elite visa which
solved that problem for me i'm not going to go too in depth on that in this video if you want
to know about the thai elite visa you want me to do a video on it make sure you comment below and
i'll do that in the future so once i made that financial commitment to a long-term visa here
in thailand i started researching how i was going to get over here during the pandemic okay so that
brings me to why thailand now so i booked my stuff for thailand about five months ago way before they
had this spike in covet cases they were one of the better countries in handling kovitt earlier
so it was kind of a no-brainer to come here when i booked it five months ago as my departure day
got closer the situation started to get a little bit worse in thailand and i had to make a decision
last minute whether or not i was gonna come here i decided to go ahead and come and here's why reason
number one i've had covet and i'm fully vaccinated i'm pretty low risk to myself and to others
thailand has you download this little app called thailand plus and they classify a person by their
wrist level i'm assuming they're going to use this in the future to decide whether you can travel
on airplanes and from province to province thailand classifies me at the lowest risk level
which is very low risk reason number two i'm okay with being in lockdown i've mentioned
this in other videos i'm an introvert a bit of a loner so being on lockdown doesn't really impact
my mental health very much i know i'll be able to at least get outside some get some fresh air
walk around a little bit so i'm not really worried about it currently bangkok's lockdown
consists of a curfew from 9 00 pm to 4 a.m i get up at 5 a.m and i go to sleep between 9 and 10
p.m so really that only impacts the night life obviously the restaurants are closed you
can only do delivery but the grocery stores are open things like that are open you can
walk around go for a walk and things like that so i'm perfectly fine with writing this thing out on
lockdown if i have to also i'm going to be working on my new youtube channel called dividend nomad
shameless plug here i'm gonna document me building a passive income source from zero to hopefully one
day completely funding my travel lifestyle so go check out i'll put a link up here somewhere
to my new channel called dividend nomad if you're interested in that make sure you subscribe to that
channel okay reason number three thailand isn't a short-term thing for me i've already mentioned i
have a 20-year visa it's a long-term play for me i'm gonna be in thailand for a while i don't mind
hunkering down in thailand it's not like i'm gonna miss out on anything because i'm only on
vacation here for a short time and my final reason if and when we're allowed to move in country this
is a once in a lifetime chance to see the beauty of thailand without having to fight with other
tourists to see it like i mentioned before i've been coming to thailand since 1998. i was in
thailand before the tsunami i was in thailand after the tsunami i remember people saying
thailand's never going to be the same especially phuket phuket is never going to be the same
and it did change a little bit but it came back with gusto and i think this situation even though
it's much bigger than the tsunami i think the same thing is going to happen thailand's going
to come back with a bang after this pandemic ends i mean some people disagree with that but i think
that people are just dying to come back over here and i kind of want to
see thailand without all those people okay so there you have it that's why thailand now
i know you wanted to see some food so let me show you here's a little sample of the breakfast
not that great it kind of reminds me of something i got when i was a kid in a cafeteria same thing
with lunch here and they don't give you a lot of food which is fine i'm trying to lose some
weight and here's dinner not much better like i said food hasn't been that great but it is
what it is pretty soon i'll be enjoying amazing thai food thanks for watching see you next week
i've been on the road i've been doing shows now we ain't stake remember sleeping on the floor
we stealing at the gas station when the time's cold in the kitchen hostile trying
to flip it off the stove rocking fake js praying that nobody knows watch them take
my dog away was way too hard to stay composed fight to see the light of day all the blood on
my clothes i was tired every day green light is time to go i don't wanna live life faster