I traveled from New York to North Carolina to try out the local food scene and explore some real estate.
After 3 years in Thailand, I moved back to New York. It didn't feel like home anymore, so I took off again.
16.05.2024 - 02:31 / insider.com
As I tucked into a bowl of wisp-thin Thai rice noodles studded with bok choy and sprinkled with fried garlic, all I could do was wax poetic about Buffalo wings.
Plastic spoon in one hand, chopsticks in the other, I described my hometown's finest fare, which included hot, buttery chicken wings. My favorite basket always came from a local dive bar in Western New York, 15 miles from Niagara Falls.
Throughout the three years I lived in Thailand, a few Chang beers or a familiar Garth Brooks song about friends in low places would often prompt me to crave a seat at that bar, 8,533 miles across the ocean, with wings on one side and Reuben fries on the other.
After three years of teaching English, working at summer camps in the far north of Thailand, and spending long weekends exploring the country by train, I moved back to Buffalo. I was excited to bathe my eager tastebuds in all the Frank's hot sauce and meaty wings and wash it down with an ice-cold Loganberry soda.
But for some reason, everything was different. The old classic dishes didn't offer the culinary homecoming I'd been hoping for. Instead, I got horrid stomach cramps and acute nausea. The Buffalo wing mythology no longer held up. More importantly, I didn't feel like I was home.
After breaking up with my long-term boyfriend, crashing my car, and quitting my job — in that order — I moved to Koh Samui. I told everyone I'd be back in six months.
But six months passed on the tropical island in the Gulf of Thailand, and instead of heading home, I made a visa run to the Thai-Laos border to stay for longer. It would be my first of many, extending my initial six months to three years.
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I was hooked on the steamy weather, the beaches with water the color of blue topaz, and the food. The ice-cold pineapples tasted as sweet as sponge candy (a treat from Buffalo similar to toffee). Lunch usually included spicy som tom with sour tamarind, peanuts, and shrimp, along with coconut water straight from the shell — always served with a little spoon to dig out the creamy flesh.
Fresh Thai food and the tropical climate did come with a few tradeoffs. Spiders, as big as softballs, would plop in front of me and scuttle away to some dark corner of my bathroom as I shrieked and swatted to no avail. Cockroaches were similarly supersized, and some could fly. Packs of stray dogs and lumbering monitor lizards shared urban space, even taking refuge in air-conditioned 7-11s during the most sweltering days.
Thai transportation wasn't always reliable or safe, including rickety trains that often ran late. Sometimes you'd hear horror stories about them derailing. Once, I heard an unsubstantiated and harrowing rumor about a monkey that climbed up a train toilet and
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