A Retiring Attitude

I will continue to suggest answers to Citylife's This is Thailand questions, and I will still maintain my website, retire2thailand.com, and its accompanying blog (updated a couple of times a month).

By | Thu 27 Jan 2011

This will be my final Retiring Attitude column. I am retiring.

I was a bit shocked when I checked and saw that my first column was way back in March of 2006. That’s longer than I have ever worked at any one place. I would like to thank Pim and James, my editors, and all the staff at Chiang Mai Citylife, for allowing me the freedom to share my musings on retiring to Thailand. I leave them with sadness and best wishes for the future of Citylife, an important pillar of the Thai business and expat community in Chiang Mai.

But I haven’t lost interest in writing about retiring to Thailand. I will continue to suggest answers to Citylife’s This is Thailand questions, and I will still maintain my website, retire2thailand.com, and its accompanying blog (updated a couple of times a month). And I have compiled most of my retirement columns in an eBook called Retired Life in Thailand (ebooksinthailand.com).

As I have always stressed, retirement doesn’t mean you stop working. It just means you start doing new stuff. So, I am going to move on to other endeavours like planting mushrooms, and saving endangered mountain tortoises, and planting more trees in my Oxygen Garden, and learning to play the piano, and Skyping my new granddaughter. The third book in my Professional English for Thailand series (includes: Hotel, Office, and Hospital English) will come out next month as will a book I wrote for Thais, Going to America – A Survival Guide for Thais Moving to the U.S. (translated into Thai), both from Silkworm Books. And I just started a new book as a fun way to help expats learn to read Thai called, A Field Guide to Reading Thai Roadside Signs. So I am going to keep busy, as all of us expats should.

I usually end my columns with ‘Hugh’s advice for the month’. So let me end with some thoughts and advice about how to have a happy retirement here in Thailand.

Eschew complaining. It’s a waste of energy. Learn Thai. You are never too old. Get regular checkups. Thailand’s medical services are excellent. Do something you have never done before. It will renew your mind. Maintain relationships with friends and family back home. Skype and Facebook are great tools for this. Wake up every day with the thought, ‘It’s a brand new morning. Anything is possible.’

Thanks for listening. I will miss you all.