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Homesick for Someplace Far from Home
The town's grown a bit since I left, but not that much. It's essentially the same place it's always been. By contrast, I seem to have been replaced by an alien pod. I can barely even remember my old self well enough to make a comparison. I vaguely recall my previous existence in the US revolving around my rock band and a social life pursued in smoky clubs, but that doesn't seem to mean a lot now. Not after all the experiences I had in Japan and all over SE Asia. Long story short: I've changed. Perhaps most significantly, I'm a lot more married than I used to be, and I've returned to the US with a Thai wife in tow. This poor girl has been burdened with the responsibility of maintaining my sanity, since I don't believe I have the resources to maintain it myself - not in the face of the excruciating levels of stultifying normality that now fill my horizon.
Instead, I now make do with vicarious weirdness: watching my wife as she enters her new life in the US. Not quite as entertaining as dealing with weirdness first hand but good for a laugh or three. Though it doesn't help me while she's at work and I'm in my home office writing. So as a sort of catharsis, I thought I'd sit down and enumerate the good and bad points of my new life back in the US. Let's start off with the bad. In no particular order. 1 Credit. It's not something I really thought of or planned for, but one of the surprises awaiting me on my return is the fact that I no longer exist in the US, financially speaking. Despite the fact that I maintained a bank account here, a lack of activity has lead them to assume that I am economically comatose. So while last year I could (and did) walk into a Thai Honda dealer and drive away in a new, 90% financed car the same morning, it took two weeks to accomplish that feat in the US. In fact, I couldn't get a car loan against the vehicle itself. I had to take the loan against cash in the bank. I could have just paid cash for the car, I guess, but the bank manager convinced me to take the loan instead, "to establish credit". The same went for a new credit card. Visa gave me a $500 limit as long as I leave $500 in the bank. For big purchases, I'll have to use my Thai credit card, I guess. Thai banks trust me with a few thousand. 2 The weather. It sucks, of course. I don't really need to go into detail on that, except to say that as a form of exercise, snorkeling in warm tropical seas beats running through half-frozen forests every time. 3 The driving. Now, I never liked sharing the Thai roads with corrupt cops, homicidal bus drivers, drunk hicks in pickups, amphetamine-crazed taxi drivers and motorbikes buzzing around traffic lights like swarms of Africanized bees. Yet when my mood was right, I could really enjoy the whole Road Warrior aspect of driving in Thailand. Here in the US, it's a lot safer and more relaxing, but I have to keep reminding myself that the cops have radar and that they're driving cruisers that can go at least as fast as I can, and it would cost a good bit more than a $5 bribe if I got pulled over. I sure miss flying along those windy, cop-less coastal roads by the Andaman Sea. 4 Everybody speaks English. Yes, I'm listing this as a bad thing. Like the guy in the Twilight Zone episode who could suddenly read minds and then went insane because he couldn't shut out the voices, I can now understand every stupid conversation at every table in a restaurant, and in every lame TV advertisement. It was so easy to tune out evil verbosity that didn't concern me when it was in Thai. Ignorance really was bliss.
6 Cost. Obviously, things are more expensive here than in the Third World. Two bedroom apartment here: $630/month. Two bedroom house on the island of Phuket: $300/month. Dinner and drinks for two in a local restaurant here: $30. In Thailand: $10. Then there was the cost of obtaining my wife's visa, sending boxes to the US and, of course, airline tickets. I'd list a figure but I'm trying not to think about it. Let's just say, "ouch!" and leave it at that. OK, enough of the bad. Now, the good: 1 My wife. I'll say right now that whatever else is good about being back in America, she is a large portion of it. It is such a blast to watch her deal with all the new stuff that is coming at her every day. She's being a real champ, and I am amazed at how well she is adapting. In some ways she is happier here than she was in Thailand. Culturally, she is in heaven. She loves how direct and honest people are here and she's really blossoming with the new sense of social freedom. No one cares which part of Thailand she came from. No one cares that she's married to a White guy. Maybe someone cares that I'm twelve years her senior, but they'd never be so rude as to fuss about it. English is the only real difficulty for her, but she's working on that. Professionally she's doing wonderfully. With the help of a fellow Isaan woman we met in a Thai restaurant, she has landed a pretty good job with decent pay and benefits (insurance for me too - yahoo!). She's really enchanted with how straightforward her new bosses are. She's amazed that an 8-hour day is the norm and that when the whistle blows, she is expected to drop everything and head home. Her friend has taken her under wing and, as my wife has a strong work ethic, everyone else on the job adores her. It's an interesting study to see which bits of my culture appeal to her. For some reason she is completely fascinated by the dozen or so reality courtroom shows that plague daytime TV here. She loves to watch how the judges rule on all these bizarre small-claims cases. She records the shows while she's at work and watches them back to back in the evenings. Judge Judy is her favorite, followed by Judge Maria Lopez and Judge Mathis. She also loves Jerry Springer and World Wrestling Federation Smack Down. 2 Transparency. Every bit of business I've had to deal with - apartment rental, utilities, car purchase, insurance, bank accounts, health checks - has been clear and above-board with no big surprises. In most cases there was a good chunk of paperwork, but even that was to our advantage in a way. We have a paper trail for everything, and in case something goes wrong we just yank out the paperwork to show the difference between what was promised and what was delivered. Very refreshing after the murky and corrupt world of Thai business dealings. I'm even kind of looking forward to getting my first speeding ticket from an honest cop. It'll be a lot more than a $5 bribe, but I'll pay it with pleasure. Heck, maybe I'll even take it to court and my wife can enjoy a real courtroom experience. 3 Nothing's gone wrong. Everything has gone smoothly and to the letter. On the whole, the transition has pretty much been a breeze, really. A breeze that blew away a chunk of my savings, but that was to be expected. Everything just works the way it's supposed to and as long as one keeps an eye to the fine print, there are no unpleasant surprises. So far, anyway.
5 Nature. I love to walk in the woods, climb up mountains, jump in streams and paddle across lakes. Of course Thailand has lots of nature and I spent a lot of time under the warm Andaman waves, but my wife always dissuaded me from taking long walks through the forest primeval. She was worried that I'd run into cobras, kraits, scorpions, spiders, leeches and glue-huffing hillbillies with homemade rifles. Here in the US, my little hometown has won national awards for its extensive park system. Despite the cold, we've been having a blast walking around the trails and parks. We even have a pretty impressive waterfall in a forest not five minutes from city center. The other day we took a drive into a nearby national forest and my wife oohed and aahed over the giant trees and the lack of encroachment on public parks by rich Thais building hotels anywhere they like. 6 My wife. I said it before and I'll say it again. My beautiful Isaan wife. She really makes this move back to the US possible for me. I couldn't have done it without her. She is my link back to Asia, as well as a new pair of eyes through which to see my old home. It would really be deathly boring coming back without her. In fact, if it wasn't for her, I couldn't possibly consider staying permanently. Whatever America has or does not have for me, my home life is pretty great, thanks to her. So we have six bad points and six good points, which speaks to the fact that I am still very ambivalent about my return to the US. I'll probably adjust. The weather is getting steadily warmer and I am looking forward to one of the glorious summers we always have in the Northwest. Not to mention the serious gloating time I'll get when my wife breaks out her bikinis.
Jeffrey Studebaker has been (in no particular order) a SE Asian correspondent for a Singaporean travel magazine, a teacher, consultant and translator in Japan, a guitarist with the band, Swoon 23 in every city of the US of A, a coffee roaster in Seattle, a bike messenger in Portland, a marine fire system repairman in Seattle, an osteoporosis clinic researcher in Providence, a mental ward counsellor on the night shift in Portland, a brief success in New York, and he has now returned to the US after nearly a decade in Asia to pursue a publishing career.
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Two
months ago, I returned to the US after living in Asia for almost a
decade. Specifically, I returned to the small northwestern college
town where I grew up. 
Yes, after a couple months here, I'm beginning to feel withdrawal
symptoms from my life in Asia. For example, I'm used to seeing at least
one significantly weird thing per day. That doesn't happen here or,
if it does, the weirdness is buried beneath sedimentary layers of irony,
and I'm not used to digging for it.
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