The Wall in My Head Is Thicker Than the Real One

Two years ago, if I’d told my friends they’d be living in a pool villa in Bang Saray, they’d have laughed it off. Today they have coffee by the pool every morning. This post is the part of that day that doesn’t fit into the numbers I laid out in my villa cost guide.

The Weight of “This Isn’t Possible for Me”

While filming the villa tour, I noticed something: once I put the camera down, my friends told me “we didn’t know this was possible until we saw it.” They’d spent years living an ordinary life in Turkey — rent, traffic, work hours. The idea of moving to Thailand had always been there, but it always got filed under “not realistic.” The visa looked complicated, it felt like it would mean cutting professional ties, and there was always the question of what family would think.

Here’s the thing: some of those constraints are genuinely real. Visas exist, jobs exist, family exists — ignoring those would be irresponsible. But the thickness of the “not possible” wall in our heads is usually greater than the thickness of the wall that’s actually there. The villa rents for 40,000 THB, the electricity bill is 2,124 THB — those aren’t hypotheticals, they’re real numbers off a real bill sitting in my hand. What was saying “not possible” wasn’t the numbers. It was our own heads.

Why Does the Wall Get So Thick?

I think there are three reasons. First, habit — spending years in the same city, on the same routine, makes any other arrangement feel unreal. Second, lack of information — people usually know their own budget but have no idea what things actually cost “there,” so their mind defaults to the most expensive possible scenario. Third, and the sneakiest one — an unquestioned belief that “a life like that isn’t for someone like me.” Put those three together, and a genuinely surmountable obstacle turns into an unclimbable wall.

This Isn’t a “Drop Everything” Post

To be clear: this isn’t a call to abandon your life and move. Your visa, your job, your family — those are real. What I’d suggest instead: when you’re deciding, decide using real numbers, not your worst-case imagination. Before I saw the actual bills, I always assumed living there had to be expensive. Seeing the real figures changed my mind. Yours might change too — or it might not — but at least you’ll be deciding with real information instead of an assumption.