>>1440206Once Upon a Time, when almost nobody from this board was even born yet (late 1980s), I moved to a small city in a rural part of Thailand as an expat's kid. No tourists, no international schools, and the entire expat population of the province could fit into one hotel ballroom. So locals as a rule did not speak English.
I made some miscellaneous friends--a couple of Australian and German exchange students, and the luk khreung (Thai mom, American dad) daughter of the Thai tutor/translator assigned to us by my father's company, who was fluent in English. But it was lonely for sure, especially since we lived in a subdivision some ways out of town and I couldn't drive (got an illegal motor scooter my second year, thankfully).
More thankfully, I picked up conversational Thai pretty quickly--I have a good ear for languages, and having not much to do, I studied pretty seriously.
