Udon Thani may have been the place of my birth but it is not a place I have ever called home. Yes, I feel Thailand as home to me as much as Britian, but I have never been able to reconcile my feelings with the city of my childhood. The city itself is neither large nor small yet the surrounding province is vast and in the eyes of a child, desolate. I spent most of my childhood in my bedroom watching behind the scenes of “Lord of the Rings” dreaming of one day owning a video camera or playing video games well into the early hours. A big difference to my time in Wales where I would spend the summers in the forests digging fox holes and building log cabins or at the park and field playing football or rollerblading. It was difficult as a child to call Udon home, and difficult as a teen to call Wales the same.
It’s not that I didn’t go out, my father would often take me biking around Nongprajak Park or on his errant journeys teaching things a ten-year-old really had no call to know. When I visited my mother’s family in the “village” it was alien, and I felt as though I had been dropped into the Middle Ages. However, it wasn’t too long before this disconnect followed me back to blighty.
Perhaps I resented the place, for not being my little cottage in Wales up against the mountainside but soon that safe haven was gone and Wales ended up just as alien. In adulthood I only ever came back the once, at twenty-five to see how it had changed. I was far from impressed (it was no Chiang Mai or Bangkok) and took a flight to Koh Samui shortly after. That was a mere month before I went to Japan and most likely the driving force behind me going. I have always felt that no matter where I am, I am out of place. There are times I have felt as though I was an adequate visitor, in my time at Ikebukuro, Tokyo or on my visits to Siam, Bangkok but as for home, I don’t think I really have one.
This time around I have been back here since 2022, coming up to two years. I had hoped it to be a home for me. In many ways I feel it as desolate and alien as ever. There have been times that I have gone to Bangkok and I miss it. The slower pace and my house and the office. When coming back from a job (especially those further afield) coming back is most definitely a good feeling. So, what am I missing for this to not be considered a home? Perhaps I am lacking a vivid image of a future here, or perhaps I still want to run away from my past.
Whatever the case may be, I am proud of just how much I have immersed myself into this world over the past year or so, I have pushed beyond my comfort zone and taken the place for what it is. I have explored back alleys, forests, jungles, lakes, mountains. I have met people from all walks of life, a few elephants and many, many cats.