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Living in Thailand can significantly benefit mental health by offering an introvert-friendly environment, a balance of spontaneity and order, more relaxed dating dynamics, a culture of acceptance rooted in Buddhism, a lower cost of living, and genuinely friendly people.
The video explores five key ways living in Thailand positively impacts the host's mental health, emphasizing that while external circumstances can contribute to happiness, internal choices remain crucial. The host, not a licensed counselor, shares personal observations relevant to foreigners, noting that Thailand can alleviate issues like seasonal mood disorders or loneliness by offering a different environment.
Key benefits include an introvert-friendly atmosphere where individuals are not pressured to be overly outgoing or status-conscious, and a unique balance of spontaneity and order. Unlike some places with chaos, Thailand offers a sense of safety and predictability alongside the flexibility for last-minute plans and less rigid social interactions. This contrasts with the highly regulated and sometimes stressful environments found in Western countries.
Further advantages stem from dating dynamics, where the 'foreigner' aspect can create intrigue and deeper connections, and the local Buddhist culture promotes acceptance and a 'live and let live' philosophy, reducing the pressure to conform to specific religious or moral standards. The significantly lower cost of living is highlighted as a major stress reducer, alleviating financial anxieties common in Western nations, and the general friendliness and slower pace of life contribute to a more relaxed and positive social experience.
The host contrasts these benefits with experiences in the US, particularly California, detailing the high cost of living, the pressure of a 9-to-5 work culture, and the sometimes impersonal or status-driven social interactions. The video concludes by suggesting that Thailand offers a refreshing escape from the hustle and ego-driven mentality often found in Western societies, fostering contentment and a greater appreciation for life.
Living in Thailand offers significant mental health benefits for expats by providing an introvert-friendly culture, a balance of spontaneity and order, and more relaxed dating dynamics. The country's prevalent Buddhist culture fosters acceptance, while a lower cost of living reduces financial stress.
Yes, Thailand's culture is more accommodating to introverts, reducing the pressure to constantly self-promote or conform to outgoing social norms. This relaxed atmosphere allows individuals to be themselves without feeling out of place.
The significantly lower cost of living in Thailand can greatly improve mental well-being by reducing financial stress. This allows individuals to worry less about bills and expenses, freeing up mental energy and creating a more relaxed state of mind.
Dating and relationships in Thailand can be less stressful due to a lesser emphasis on status and a greater sense of intrigue with foreigners. This contrasts with the often competitive dynamics found in Western cultures, allowing for more genuine connections.
The local Buddhist culture in Thailand promotes a 'live and let live' attitude, fostering acceptance of diverse beliefs and practices. This can alleviate the pressure of conforming to specific religious or moral expectations, contributing to greater peace of mind.
Thailand's culture is more accommodating to introverts, reducing the pressure to constantly self-promote or conform to outgoing social norms. Unlike some Western countries, there's less emphasis on status and being overly outgoing. This allows individuals to feel more comfortable without the need for constant social interaction or self-validation.
A significantly lower cost of living in Thailand reduces financial stress, freeing individuals from the constant worry of bills and expenses. The generally friendly and slower-paced nature of Thai people creates a more relaxed and positive social atmosphere, contrasting with the hurried and sometimes impersonal interactions found in Western countries.
Thailand offers a unique blend of spontaneity and order, allowing for flexibility and unexpected positive experiences without sacrificing safety or predictability. While spontaneous plans are possible, the country maintains a sense of safety and predictability that contrasts with chaotic environments.
The prevalent Buddhist culture fosters a 'live and let live' attitude, promoting acceptance of diverse beliefs and practices. This reduces the pressure to conform to specific religious or moral expectations found in some other societies. It contributes to a more relaxed and accepting social environment.
Living in Thailand can be beneficial compared to the US due to a lower cost of living, less social pressure, and a more relaxed pace of life. The culture is often perceived as more accepting and less status-driven, reducing anxieties common in Western societies like the US. This environment can lead to personal growth and increased patience.
0:20 Hey YouTube, Alex here. My thoughts on mental health in Thailand. Now, before we get into it, I want to mention that I am not a licensed counselor. These are just my observations. This video will focus on commentary and discussion on mental health as it relates to foreigners, because I can't really comment on what that's like for Thai people. I can't speak Thai very well, so this is fairly broad commentary.
0:41 I think the first question that a lot of people wonder is, will living in Thailand make you happy? I think it depends on the cause of your unhappiness. But I can say that for those who are unhappy due to circumstances that really can be changed through living in Thailand, if it's something more specifically, if it's an external circumstance type of thing, I think that you still need to choose to be happy on the inside.
1:10 For example, if the weather is terrible a large chunk of the year, you struggle with seasonal mood issues that seem to only really happen when it's cold and rainy in your home country. Maybe half the year it's cold and rainy or cold and snowy, the other half it's nice. But for half the year, you feel unhappy. Well, Thailand doesn't really get snow in any of the major cities that I know about.
1:34 Additionally, I would say if you're somebody that may feel lonely in the West, in the case that you've moved around a lot for work, like I have, I've lived in a lot of different places, I've interacted with a lot of different people. There's no really one place that feels like home. Back in the US, I really conceptualize it as more like a few places that I feel like I'm at home, but certainly being in one of those places means that I cannot be in the other places.
2:00 Thailand feels like because the places are more distinct in some ways, you have an easier time kind of deciding. And I think it may be part of it is that when you're in work mode back in the US, at least for me, I'm willing to go anywhere for work. I'm not really picky, I just want to be productive and earn money. But here, because I am in quasi-vacation mode, I have more time to think about where I want to live.
2:22 I choose to live in Chiang Mai. I find that living in Chiang Mai is overall very good for my mental well-being. You might be wondering, what are five reasons that I feel a better sense of well-being, or things that really help me to feel good, less depressed than I tend to feel at times back home?
2:42 Well, I would say number one is that I'm an introvert. Right? I am somebody who recharges from spending time alone. In the US, it's a very outgoing culture. I would say even introverted people have pressure to operate in an outgoing way if you want to have a successful career, if you want to get a new job. You really have to be out there promoting yourself.
3:04 Here in Thailand, I don't really feel that same kind of pressure that I feel back home. I don't really feel the need to shill. I don't really feel the need to constantly sort of negotiate or vie for status or sell myself in the same way that I do back home.
3:21 I feel like if you're an introvert, you're quiet back home. If you're not in the right circles, like I have friends that are introverts, but if you're not in the right circles, people are going to regard you as kind of strange, or perhaps socially awkward, or with dislike or distrust.
3:36 It doesn't even mention things like spam calls that you seem to get a lot consistently, getting bombarded with spam physical mail, like junk mail. Also, just seeing advertisements everywhere. One issue I have with the US is that pharmaceuticals are so heavily advertised. I'm not an anti-pharma or pro-pharma guy overall, I find the advertising to be really just over the top.
4:01 You don't get that to the same extent here, in part because you probably don't speak the local language. Contrast that with here, where I rarely get spam messages. Like I said, I can't understand very many of the advertisements. A lot of the times, Thai people want to help, they want to be helpful, they want to help you.
4:18 And this is different than in the US, where Americans are a mixed bag. Like it's hard for me to say Americans will do this or Americans will do that, because America is a multicultural society, right? It's not a place where there's one way of doing things or one way of thinking about things.
4:33 And contrast this in the US, where people a lot of the times, if you need to interact with them in a business context, they're trying to negotiate so hard and push so hard. A lot of the times, you're just saying no back and forth.
4:47 Something that comes to mind is the South Park episode where they call, I think it's the phone company or the cable company, the personnel is mocking them and laughing, and oh, you need help. Ah ha. Here, it just feels so much more flexible. There's this sense of spontaneity, and that's going to be my next point.
5:34 More on the introvert-friendly bit. So I've talked to expats online that have gone as far as to say, in 15 years of living in Thailand, they've never had a Thai person come up to them trying to sell them something or direct them to do something different or tell them that they can't be there.
5:48 Contrast this with the US, where on a fairly consistent basis, unfortunately, the government is constantly having to regulate behavior. So like in San Francisco, they don't want people to sit in a certain place, they put up physical barriers because just telling people not to sit there isn't going to work.
6:06 Another example, well, you know, you interact occasionally with deranged homeless people in California, and they'll tell you, hey, you can't stand here, you can't film here. I want to exist in this major city, in this public place, with no one around me, basically like I want to be in a city of a million people and get the resources that you can get in a city of 8 million people in the metro areas, as is the case in the Bay Area.
6:34 You just don't have that in Thailand. You don't have people coming up to you saying, hey, you need to do this, hey, you need to do that, hey, you're breaking the rules, hey, get out of my way. I never see road rage here. I've ever seen road rage where it's very common in the US, whether you live in a small town or you live in a big city.
6:54 As an aside from that, I was showing a friend of mine a video of Thailand, and this was in Bangkok, actually. And they noticed, wow, it's really quiet, a city of 20 million people. And I explained, yeah, I mean, people here are simply not as loud as Americans. They're more considerate of the people around them. It's a collectivist society as opposed to an individualistic society. People are much more oriented toward group happiness as opposed to individual happiness.
7:21 What a beautiful home. With that, that's established that Thailand is introvert-friendly. And I'll move on to my next point. I mentioned before about spontaneity, and I think that when it comes to spontaneity, a lot of people feel like, well, I want a predictable life. What isn't commonly talked about is the balance.
7:36 In my mind, people need a mixture of predictability and excitement. I mean, as an example, look at the people in jail. Presumably, their lives are fairly predictable. Everything is controlled. Those people are not happy. So even though they have that predictable factor, they don't have the spontaneity.
7:55 So spontaneity, what does it mean to experience spontaneity? And why is that good for our mental health? And how can I contrast that? So there's some countries where you have spontaneity, but you have no order. Thailand has both.
8:11 Well, some countries, they have that sense of spontaneity, but you don't really get much sense of order. I'm not going to name specific countries, but certainly you could probably think of some. Thailand is not one of those places. Thailand has both a sense of order and also a feeling of spontaneity.
8:25 It's a place where if I order food, I know it's not going to come tomorrow. It's probably going to come in a reasonable amount of time. I know if I go to a pharmacy, for example, they're not going to say, oh, sorry sir, we don't have Tylenol. So you do have some sense of order here. It does feel very safe. I can walk around at any hour. I know that I'm not going to get mugged, I'm not going to get robbed.
8:49 Initially, when I started making this video, I thought that it was just going to be about the spontaneity, but it's spontaneity mixed with a sense of order. I mean, there's places in the United States that you can go that feel spontaneous, right? That are bad areas. You don't know what kind of terrible thing is going to happen to you depending on what time of day you visit some of these places.
9:10 Those are spontaneous places, but they're not orderly places. In Thailand, I feel like I could walk around at any hour of any day, anywhere in any city, and not run into any issues. I've walked around Bangkok 1, 2, 3, 4 AM, same in Chiang Mai. I've never had an issue taking cabs at all hours. It's just a very safe place.
9:28 Now, back in the US, now back in the US, we can talk about that sense of order that you have, right? There's this predictability to life back home where you can roughly imagine what every day and what every week is like. You have limited time, you're in a hurry, you're trying to plan. You want to make it on time for work, you need to go to the grocery store. There's all these different things that you have to do that really take away from the predictability.
9:57 That take away from the spontaneity of your experience. For me, when I get extremely bored, I do tend to get depressed. I do tend to be unhappy because I feel like, oh wow, getting up to do it all over again. There's no wiggle room. I need to be at my desk at 8:00. I need to take my one-hour lunch. I'll get off at 5:00 and start preparing dinner if I worked from home, or I'll have to get on the train and ride home.
10:25 It's a very formulaic experience. It's very repetitive. I think for some creative people, it just feels stifling. Now, some of the love for spontaneity in Thailand does come from the fact that back home in the US, aside from all of what I mentioned as far as...
10:43 From all of what I mentioned as far as rules and orderliness, in Thailand, we typically aren't working a 9 to 5. Some choose to do investments while they're here, or they have some cash savings built up that they're going to live off while they spend some time here. Certainly, there is a difference. If you were a person that had to work here, you might feel like it's not so relaxing after all when it comes to spontaneity.
11:10 I noticed that when you go out, you don't really know exactly what's going to happen. Sometimes I get invited out for stuff last minute, and it's a lot of fun to just go have fun like that. I feel like that's a little bit harder in the US. People have work schedules, a lot of my friends have responsibilities, they have homes, they have vehicles, they have a lot of things that they have to take care of that necessitate them making plans in advance.
11:35 Which is fine. I mean, everybody wants to have a nice life. I don't blame them at all for that. But you do get the sense here that things are just more flexible. If somebody gives you a certain time and they're a bit late, oh well. My pen Ry to add to the discussion about spontaneity, you feel like when you are here, anything can happen.
11:55 As an example of spontaneity, yesterday last night, a friend of mine contacted me saying, 'Hey, I happen to be in your neighborhood.' And that's really common here in Thailand, for friends to just hit you up and come hang out. It's a wonderful experience that's harder to replicate back home. A lot of people have schedules that they need to follow closely and they're really busy with getting chores done after work.
12:16 Things often need to be planned in advance a bit. But here, you do have that sense that like, 'Oh wow, a friend of mine might hit me up,' or maybe I'll hit a friend up after work and we'll just get together on random notice. That kind of thing can really brighten your day.
12:31 Contrast this with back home, where most days after work, I'm just kind of watching TV, watching Netflix, watching some YouTube on my laptop and not really feeling as outgoing. It's, I'm so busy with work and so tired from work, I really don't feel like I have a lot of energy to do much after work except for to just kind of veg out.
12:50 I'd say number three is definitely dating in relationships. Pivoting from the spontaneity factor, talking about friendship in Thailand, I think the dating is more interesting in Thailand because you have that foreign exchange student factor in a way. I recognize I'm not personally a student here in Thailand, but I remember in my high school and even at college, we would have students from other countries and they would have this cool factor when it came to dating.
13:12 Everybody was interested to get to know them, to learn about the country that they're from. In my high school, I remember there was a guy from the UK, there was also a guy from Germany. That intrigue is similar to what happens here when you're coming from another country and you're coming to live here in Thailand. Naturally, to a local person, there's some intrigue.
13:31 There's this, 'Wow, I wonder what they're like. I wonder what their home country is like. I wonder what kind of TV shows they like to watch. I wonder what kind of hobbies they have.' There's this reason to engage. Where in the US, if somebody tells me broadly where they're from and what their job is, like I automatically know a lot about them.
13:50 Okay, they're an engineer from Massachusetts. Okay, well, they probably work for a military company or a technology company or an academic institution. They studied mechanical engineering or software engineering or whatever for four years, then they went to graduate school for a couple of years. That kind of thing.
14:06 But here, there's this mystery, right? When it comes to getting to know Thai people, and I think also for Thai people getting to know us, there's this really intriguing feeling that you get that really makes it positive. There's a lot of excitement, and you don't know exactly how things are going to go.
14:25 I'd also say that a lot of relationships back home have pressure from various stressors that are not as common. I think that in the US, we're very status-driven on average, and people are looking to upgrade every aspect of their life. And that applies to some extent to some relationships. Now, not all relationships are like this, not everybody is like this.
14:46 I think a lot of people have probably seen a relationship end because one person felt like they could do better, which is really short-term thinking. I'm not going to get into why that's an issue, but certainly, it affects mental health and mental well-being for people. Like when they have relationship issues, certainly feels very much in American culture.
15:07 There's people have an easier time just like kind of walking away. And I'm not sure if it's just me. Let me know what you think down in the comments. I'm not really sure like all the causes for it. I mean, I think of living, having the latest shiny new toys, having such a high standard of living back in the States contributes to this.
15:22 But it doesn't seem as much the case here. I mean, I've been out and I've noticed a lot of Thai women totally focused on their man. I've noticed that even in relationships in the US, once again, not all dynamics are like this, many are. The couple competes with one another, they are interested to outdo each other in terms of earnings, they're interested to get a promotion, they're interested to have some kind of career advancement.
15:45 And there's this like push and pull where here, I feel like that's less the case. At least the women that I've dated haven't really been all that worried about it. As long as I'm employed and have a career path, I'm not just like totally aimless, it's not going to be this one-upsmanship game right that you have a lot of the times back in the US.
16:05 And certainly, once again, these are not blanket statements to appeal to everybody, but I noticed just generally speaking, some of these things are an issue back in the States. One thing to add to that, and this goes back to what I said earlier in the video about outgoing culture, I found in the States a lot of the times people being more outgoing, that there's more pressure when you're in a relationship, you're trying to date.
16:23 To go out and to spend a lot of time at a bar, nightlife scene, going to clubs, going to Florida to the beach, doing these kinds of things. Nashville, where I'm from, going to Broadway. Here, there's not as much of that. The number of the women that I've dated are comfortable with going out to a movie, going out to a nice meal, chilling out, not really this, 'We need to party it up, de-stress from the weekend.'
16:48 So I don't know if it's just people are not as stressed out here. I don't know if it's people manage their stress in different ways, but I found that that's something that's really nice about being here when it comes to dating. It's that you don't really have that same pressure to go out to nightlife, to participate in overwhelming experiences.
17:06 Even, I mean, I would just say even like to add to that, if you're getting older or feeling older like I am, I get tired more easily. Sometimes I just don't want to go out, like I want to just come back and chill and not really be doing a whole lot of stuff. And that just seems to be more okay here. Where back in the US, I think at times people like, 'Why don't you want to go out? Why don't you want to go do this? Why don't you want to go do that?'
17:27 And for me, as an introvert, I like to just chill out. I'm not always interested, not very often interested in spending a ton of money and a ton of time around people that, while I get along with my friends, I don't know about the people at that scene or that spot. They're a random collection of people. I'm sure many of them are great people.
17:47 But I know I'm going to enjoy time on my own. I know I'm going to enjoy time with my significant other. I know I'm going to enjoy time with friends. I can't really speak for as many people outside that group. And I know some people would say, 'Well, that's how you make new friends.' As you get out, you meet more people.
18:00 But I'm cautious, right? When I was younger, I didn't really have as much of a filter for the people that I spent time around. I made some poor choices in who I built relationships with, and I'm a lot more cautious now as an adult. Try to be a lot more conscious about who I choose to let into my life.
18:16 Four, when it comes to mental health and why I feel mentally healthier in Thailand, I'd say that the number four reason is really the way Thai people practice Buddhism. And this is very different than where I'm from. I'm from the Southern United States, and the vast majority of people in the Southern US, especially outside of the major cities, are conservative Christians.
18:37 This isn't a slander against that or push back against that. Often, there's a component to fit in. You have to join one of those groups, that it's not sufficient to have your own private faith or private practice of spirituality, that to actually go be a part of that. And if you're not, you're an outsider.
18:56 I mean, growing up where I grew up in the South, we had a preacher on each side of us, in front and back, to the left and to the right. And they didn't get along and or talk to each other, not because they had some real difference, but because they belonged to different faiths. They were pastors of different churches each of them, and didn't really see eye to eye, even though they're all Christians.
19:15 There's a very specific way that they interpret things such that you're either for us or against us. And that dynamic doesn't exist here in Thailand. People are very much live and let live. As long as you don't hurt anyone, people don't really care what you do. I've never had a Thai person come up to me asking me where I go to church.
19:33 I've never had a Thai person come up to me asking me what faith am I, what religion am I. People really just mind their own business when it comes to that. Now, if you do go to a...
19:42 It comes to that. Now, if you do go to a Buddhist temple here in Thailand, expect that it's possible you interact with monks or potentially other people as well. But it's, once again, still a very calm experience. It's not this, 'Okay, you need to be dressed a certain way, you need to meet us at this location on Sunday, we're going to talk and sing about this for an hour, then we're going to do this other thing for an hour.' I mean, it goes back into that regimented kind of way. I know that temples close at night, but it's not one of those things where you, it's not a high-demand belief system, it's not a high-expectation belief system. It's very, very easy to mesh with for me.
20:22 I don't feel like it's, I feel more at home here than I do where I'm from. Outside of the cities, right in the Southeast, outside of the cities, it feels foreign and alien to me in a lot of ways. Whereas here, I just feel like I fit in. Nobody bothers me, nobody's trying to push me, nobody's trying to set up outside of the mall to push people into joining their faith. It's just so refreshing to not have that.
20:47 It's just you don't have that aggressive morality here. You don't get flack and pushback if you tell people, 'Hey, I'm not super religious,' or, 'Hey, I'm Buddhist.' I mean, I've had people back in the States tell me that I'm unethical because I'm not a Christian person. I've had people tell me they don't believe that non-Christians are capable of happiness or joy. And so there's this invalidation that you experience.
21:09 And even if you're happy or fine or content when you're young, like not as much now for me, I'm pretty solidified in who I am. But when you're young, you really wonder at times, is there something wrong with me that I don't believe the way that these people believe? I don't see things exactly the way they see things. For the sake of the video, I'm not an atheist either, but I'm not a Christian either. I'm open to people of all backgrounds. Following my videos, I definitely am open-minded and I want to include everyone.
21:34 But I also have to be honest with everybody and really share that it's a boost to my mental health to be here because I don't have the experience, my way of doing things or my belief systems are invalid. Yeah, I just think for a lot of you that maybe feel like you're tired of dealing with pushy people in the West, pushy people back home, that's something that's just really nice and really refreshing about being here. And I just love it.
21:58 Five, I'm saving this kind of obvious one for last, but it's cost of living. In the United States, cost of living is higher than it's ever been. Inflation just seems to keep ticking up. The price of rent, physical goods, services, everything. Whereas here in Thailand, it's much more reasonable. I think when it comes to mental health, part of why so many people struggle with mental health back in the States is the cost of living is worrying. Like, how am I going to make my rent payment? How am I going to make my car payment? How am I going to afford groceries? How am I going to pay for this? Pay for that?
22:30 Pay for that. Oh, I've got a ticket now, how am I going to pay for this? Oh, there's some kind of health issue that came up. There's all these things, bills-wise, that are constantly like knocking at your door. Back home, I remember I used to every Sunday try to go through and scrape and find any bills that I maybe forgot about to try to make sure I paid them so that I wasn't delinquent on what I needed to pay.
22:49 That's very different than here in Thailand. And we'll come back to cost of living a little bit later in this conversation. But for me, I have a few bills here in Thailand. I have rent, I have food, I have my cell phone bill, I have electric bill, I have water bill. And that's basically the main five. Other than that, there's not really bills, many bills that I get every month.
23:10 And it's, it's just so refreshing to not constantly be paranoid, 'Okay, did I forget about this? Did I pay the toll road fee? Did I get my tags updated? Did I do this? Did I do that?' It's just this like cycle of having to stay on top of things. And then also the price of those things going up.
23:25 Now, of course, this is particularly true when it comes to major cities. And so I lived in the Bay Area of California before I came here to Thailand. And some people would say, 'Oh, we just move somewhere cheaper.' But they would never acknowledge that I had a lot of opportunity in the Bay Area and still do that I don't have elsewhere in my field. The technology field, the salaries and opportunity are greater in the Bay Area than anywhere else.
23:48 So this idea that I'm going to still have a high earning potential but move to Fargo, North Dakota, or Pierre, South Dakota, is just unrealistic. It's just not practical. I know there are some remote roles that pay well. There are also a lot of roles that are not remote, and many of those roles that are not remote are in the Bay Area.
24:07 In the Bay Area, if you're not familiar, it has some of the highest cost of living in the world. You can easily pay $2,500 a month for a one-bedroom apartment, $3,000 a month for a one-bedroom apartment. I personally lived in a boarding house and paid around $1,000 per month. This included a room for myself, but the showers and bathrooms are shared. The building did not have a kitchen, so the expectation was you can do some light stuff in a microwave, but you're having to also spend extra to eat at restaurants or get takeout.
24:36 And so that certainly can make what seems like an affordable arrangement relative to the area cost more than what you expect, because food is also can be quite pricey in the Bay Area. To contrast that, for my studio here in Chiang Mai, I pay about $250 a month. It's a much newer building, almost 100 years younger than the building I was living in in the Bay Area.
24:57 Food here is wonderful. There's a ton of Asian food. I will say the Bay Area has Thailand in general beat when it comes to Tex-Mex or Mexican Hispanic food. But it's much more accessible for me to have a lot of the things that I like to have, such as sushi. Sushi is much cheaper here in Thailand than in Northern California, probably, I would say half the price, maybe a third of the price, depending on where you go.
25:18 For transportation in the Bay Area, I own my own vehicle. I paid about $100, by the end, $115 a month for a parking space. That did not include registration, that did not include gasoline. That didn't even include security, as my car window was smashed at the cost of $180 to replace it. I knew I was leaving that two weeks before I left the Bay Area, my car window was smashed. It was just like, wow, I couldn't ask for a better sign to head out of here for a while.
25:46 For a paid-off car, for parking, for insurance, and gasoline to drive a few weekends a month, you're talking easily $250 a month. That doesn't include if I had needed to make payments on the car. That doesn't include registration, which is very expensive in California. These costs can really add up.
26:04 Here in Thailand, I don't own a motorbike, but I could just walk a lot of places. And if I want to take a Grab taxi or I want to take a Bolt taxi, it's relatively affordable. It's a few dollars. I'd say everything averaged out, I spend probably like $50 bucks a month on transportation, if that. That's including flights back and forth to Bangkok. That's including songthaews occasionally here in Chiang Mai around the city, I'll take those for like a dollar.
26:31 Contrast this to the Bay Area, where a one-way bus ticket in the Bay Area is like $2.25, $2.50. On the subway, like if you take BART, you can spend just to go from the airport to your place like $10. And if you're going to SFO from the East Bay, $20. It's certainly a lot more expensive.
26:49 Now, of course, the Bay Area does not have the hot weather that you have here in Thailand. It's much cooler, much drier. But certainly when it comes to cost of living and mental health, a lot of people seem stressed out in the Bay Area. Not everybody, certainly some people are very fortunate, they've made really prudent decisions, eventually they get promotions, they are able to save and accrue more money. But a lot of people are struggling with the high cost of living.
27:11 I mean, I remember I met this woman, I think she was from Texas, and we met in San Francisco, just like ran into each other at a burrito shop. And we were talking about, 'Oh, where are you from?' I was like, 'Ah, I'm from the South, I'm from Tennessee.' 'Oh, really? I'm from Texas.' And she was like, 'It's so expensive here.' And I was like, 'Yep.' She's like, 'I love it though.' And it's true, true. I love it too. Like I love Northern California, I love San Francisco.
27:31 You do feel like you're in hustle mode a lot of the times. I mean, you're working long hours to pay the rent. They're definitely getting high expectations from companies. They're paying you such large salaries, equity, bonuses, health insurance, all these things are not free. And there's an expectation, a trade-off for that.
27:49 In Northern California, I definitely felt my mental health suffering at times because I would be so exhausted from working so hard, not wanting to turn it off, wanting to perform for my employer, wanting to give it my all. Yeah, that's just something that if you live in New York City or you live in California, very high cost of living areas, places like London or Paris, Auckland, New Zealand, or Sydney, Australia, you know that living in those areas comes with a lot of stress for a lot of people that are not the elite of the elite, that don't have the money to basically enjoy themselves.
28:24 And you know what? I'll throw in a sixth one, a bonus bit. I think that people here are really friendly, and that's good for my mental health. Back in Northern California, people are in such a rush, people are in such a hurry, they're trying to get ahead, they're trying to get from point A to point B. It's very much like Manhattan or New York City in that it's a high cost of living area. A lot of people have really important jobs, they're making really important decisions that affect...
28:45 Really important decisions that affect millions of people, whether they're at a tech company or a defense company, whatever they're doing is really impactful. That can definitely create people having a brisk attitude, like, 'Hey, look, I've got to go, I don't have time to hang out,' etcetera, etcetera. And the culture here is a lot slower. People just have more free time; they're easier going, they're not in such a rush.
29:08 I think that it's just a beautiful thing, and it really provides contrast for that ego-driven mentality that we sometimes have in places like the barrio, where we're just trying to get ahead. We're in a rush, we're trying to be successful, perform, and move up. Here, people seem to be more content, happier with what they have.
29:25 You see it in the smiles. I occasionally make eye contact with somebody, and if they're not nervous or shy, typically they'll smile back at me. Sometimes I'll catch them making a joke, and I'll start laughing, and then they make me kind of start laughing because they realize, 'Oh, wow, Frank understands what I'm saying.' I will laugh and smile even if I don't know what they're saying, just because it is infectious when you are here in Thailand.
29:45 This celebration of life mentality and attitude is unlike anywhere else I've ever been in the world. The people are just lovely to be around. Thank you for watching. I hope this video has been helpful to you.
30:01 This video has covered why I feel like my mental health benefits from being in Thailand. Let me know what you think down in the comments. Have you been to Thailand? Have you been to Southeast Asia? How did it impact your mental health to be down here? Did you feel happier here?
30:14 I'm happy to get into as well some of the negative impacts on mental health in another video, just to discuss some of the pitfalls that people run into, how to handle freedom, how to handle the night, how to handle that responsibility. But thanks so much for watching. Give us a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel if you haven't already, and I will see you next time.
Follow the journey through expat life, travel experiences, and the realities of living abroad while exploring different places, cultures, and everyday life overseas.
