Rai, the English adventurer in X in Provence, finds herself facing a new set of cultural phenomena when she moves countries, or rather continents, to be with her lover. Back in Europe from a long stint in Hong Kong, the extent of the culture shock she experiences comes….well, as rather a shock. 

I’ve hopped homes from one corner of the world to the other and back again several times and discovered a few things along the way. For me, moving from West to East has been infinitely easier than the reverse. Lifestyle, I admit, has had a lot to do with it and so has cultural affinity, or, if you prefer, chemistry.

A case in point: In January 2005, in the immediate wake of the great Asian tsunami, I moved from a city in northern Europe to Bangkok. The international organization I was working for at that time needed an extra pair of hands on deck in Thailand, a country that was deeply affected by this mega disaster. I gladly accepted when offered the post and so I hopped on a plane with a suitcase and a three-month sign-up in Bangkok. Relatively stress free, the move was downright, all-round magnificent and the mental medicine I’d needed at that moment.  

I’d been to Thailand half a dozen times before, mainly as a backpacker. This was different. I had abundant assistance from the office to smooth the way – with visas, flats, bank accounts, a social life and inculcation into the incalculably different culture from where I’d just come from. I left the dead-of-winter freeze for year-round summer, my favourite season. I fell in love with the massages and the mangoes and didn’t mind about the mosquitoes and the monsoons. There was no culture shock, but rather culture calm, a symbiotic fit into a fascinating land where I felt at ease even as aspects of the Thai culture will remain forever beyond my grasp. Not least because, to my  great shame, I only ever learned “taxi Thai”. 

My work contract kept being extended. In the end, the initial three months in Bangkok turned in fourteen and a half years. In the interim I had two children and I became spoiled and coddled. Wash the dishes, do the laundry, vacuum the floors? Never. The Burmese live-in helper I brought into the large house I rented in a leafy compound took care of all that so I was spared domestic drudge. I might have stayed there forever. 

But as the years rolled by I yearned to be closer to my family in Europe, plus the perennial pollution and the traffic in the Thai capital began to grate. And there were other considerations, not least politically, with Thailand a military dictatorship. Yet the thought of leaving this country (and our live-in help!) and heading back West brought angst, for I knew that emerging from my comfortable bubble and readapting back to “normality” would be brutal. 

I chose to relocate to southern Europe rather than the north for the cheaper cost of living and the sunnier skies, believing these would ease the transition. I also sought a small seaside city where it was safe and the air was clean and restorative for pollution-weary lungs. But maybe I’m a bit of a masochist, for leaving a community of neighbours and friends to begin a new life “cold” – figuratively speaking – in a place where I knew absolutely no one seems quite a mad thing to do. 

I had arrived in Thailand as part of an organization. I moved back West as a freelancer, having no one but myself to sort out mountains of bureaucracy in a language I hadn’t mastered. And the lines for anything official were long, unlike in efficient, service-minded Bangkok (where, granted, many are paid slave wages). 

The most enormous change and challenge was being the solo parent of twins, not yet tweens, who I plucked from a happy existence in Asia and plonked into a culture they had no connections with. And so we careened into quantum levels of culture shock (eventually adapting to our new environment), starting with the wholly different Mediterranean schedules of things like business hours, meal eating and bed times, and different priorities in a far more provincial context (hours away from the capital city).

Oh and six months later, barely settled into our vastly scaled-down accommodation, with my cooking skills still at a fragile stage and amid domestic chores galore, COVID literally closed our doors. Welcome back to the West.