Reflecting on a Month of Ordinary Days in Chiang Mai
Akiko here…after a short blog hiatus, I’m back with a reflection of retired life in Chiang Mai before we head back out on the travel road again!
Chiang Mai in northern Thailand is known for temples, markets, elephants, and mountains, but you won’t find much of that in this blog.
Within six weeks of my retirement day, we sold our house and cars, got rid of all of our belongings, said goodbye to family and friends, and launched ourselves into full-time nomadic life. Five months of jet setting later, we arrived in Chiang Mai hoping for something we hadn’t had much of yet: a chance to slow down.
Sounds great, right?
Even though I was excited to spend a month in one place, I spent much of the first week feeling like I should be doing more, seeing more, experiencing more. Catching a cold didn’t help. While I rested and napped, I continued to feel guilty about “wasting” precious time in Thailand.
But as the month unfolded, I realized that maybe Chiang Mai wasn’t asking me to do more.
Maybe it was asking me to do less.
Settling Into a Comforting Rhythm
By the second week, the city no longer felt like a destination. It felt like life.
Our days settled into a comforting rhythm: morning walks, grocery shopping, hanging laundry, sweeping floors, appointments and errands. We wandered night markets, sampled Thai and Western restaurants, hunted for happy hour deals, and ordered food through Grab (similar but waaaaay faster and cheaper than Door Dash, Uber Eats, etc.) when we felt lazy. We cooked familiar comfort foods, binged TV shows, read books, exercised, enjoyed the pool, and treated ourselves to Thai massages.
For the first time in months, we had an mailing address so packages arrived from Lazada (Thai Amazon). Good thing because it took over 2 weeks plus several Thai customs office trips to receive contact lenses shipped from the US. I purchased new glasses with frames designed for flat Asian faces and Bama visited a physician from the reputable, world-class Bangkok Hospital for a routine medication review—for about $80.
None of these were postcard moments. They were life moments.
And maybe that’s what made this month so meaningful.
Confronting a New Identity: Retired
For most of my life, I measured my worth through productivity, accomplishment, and being busy. So far, retirement hasn’t given me much time to confront what happens when all of that disappears until now.
One of the hardest adjustments hasn’t been financial or logistical. It’s learning how to exist without needing to justify every hour of the day.
I now have entire stretches of unscheduled time. Time that once would have been filled with endless meetings, deadlines, projects, and obligations. Being a “boss lady”.
The inner voice needs an accounting, What did you actually DO today?
For further laughs about this affliction, feel free to read My Thailand Facebook post’s “To The Corporate Warrior Who Can’t Sit Still for 30 Seconds”.
Let It All Go, See What Stays
Instead of filling every moment, I decided to “Let it all go. See what stays.”
At first, it was practical. I digital decluttered—files I saved for “someday”, forgotten subscriptions, unused apps, and recurring charges. Hundreds of dollars disappearing each month for things we barely used, recouped.
Then the decluttering became something larger.
What happens if I let go of old patterns? Old expectations? Identities that no longer serve me? Can I stop measuring myself by what I accomplish? Can I accept the changing body that comes with menopause? Can I appreciate being the observer of ordinary life buzzing around me? Can I simply BE retired?
No answers yet, but sitting on the daybed of our ninth-floor condo, looking out over Chiang Mai, I find myself curious to discover what emerges when letting go, embracing being a nobody, and retire in equanimity.
How’s Bama Mike?
As for Bama Mike, he’s had a few years of practice BEING retired. Whether in Overland Park or Chiang Mai, he remains completely unfazed. No existential crisis required. 😎 He is my retirement mentor and the calm to my meno-induced emo swings.
Chiang Mai: Not Our First Time
Don’t worry. We’ve done all the tourist experiences in Chiang Mai before so we didn’t feel like we were missing out.
Our most recent trip to Chiang Mai was in November 2024. When our high school friend Travis passed away unexpectedly, a group of us were determined to bring part of his soul to lay rest in the mountains of northern Thailand—his favorite place on earth—without ever pausing to wonder how exactly we’d accomplish this! We did eventually figure it out, largely due to connecting with Travis’s amazing Thai friend, Gai, who went above and beyond to arrange everything.
Before leaving Chiang Mai, we were able to meet up with Gai again, and we introduced him to Texas BBQ while he took us to a few more temples that we had never visited in Chiang Mai! We also made another friend that Gai brought with him. Brian—a Filipino teaching English in rural Thailand schools for over 13 years!
Here’s a few of our prior Facebook blog posts from November 2024:
Mae Hong Son Coming Up!
Next stop: the Mae Hong Son Loop, one of Thailand’s most scenic mountain drives. Stay tuned.
