Let’s embark on a journey with Akshay and Anushri as we launch our “8 Questions: Beyond Borders” series. Eight years ago, this charismatic couple relocated from India to Singapore and created an extraordinary story along the way.

Join us today as we chat with Marie, an energetic veteran marketer who relocated herself and her family to Thailand in 2020. Marie had only tentative experience with remote work before she and her husband took a leap of faith and transitioned to fully remote positions in Krabi, 7000km away from their home in Melbourne.

A new country, new work life, and an entirely new environment for their daughter, Lola — all in the middle of a global pandemic, no less! Talking to Marie, you can’t help but feel inspired by how confidently she navigated the kick-off to this new adventure.

Marie's relocation story: Finding paradise amidst the pandamic

Q: What prompted you to relocate to Thailand?

Relocating was never a work choice, it simply was a lifestyle choice.

We’d been to Thailand and Krabi a couple of times and really loved it — we often visited for my husband to attend Thai Boxing camps, a sport he is incredibly passionate about. One day, on a whim I mentioned how amazing it could be to actually relocate to Krabi, maybe just for a year or so.

We fell in love with the idea — you kind of need to take your chances with these adventures while you’re still young enough to do so! It irked me to think that I might feel like I had missed out later on in life.

Q: How did you prepare for relocating?

Once we got the OK from our employers for working remotely, we still had 18 months until the move, largely because we wanted our daughter to be at a certain stage in school before switching to a new system. Schooling was our biggest priority, and we spent most of our research making sure that our daughter would be set up in the best way possible — moving isn’t necessarily a big deal for grown-ups, but it can really disrupt a child’s life.

A really great source of information was a couple we know who had relocated from Australia to Thailand already. They clued us in on everything important. We also visited Krabi twice more before the final move to make sure everything was lined up.

We kept our house back home, we kept our cars, and we stayed at our old jobs. We did everything we could to minimise the risks connected with moving and allowed us to easily fall back to a life back home — though we did want to force ourselves to try for 12 months at least, in case we ever felt unsure. Thankfully, that never was the case!

Q: Did you face any challenges or adjustments?

Our (arguably unique) challenge was that we relocated while Australia was under complete lockdown. Leaving the country was essentially prohibited and there was a lot of back and forth on whether our Thai visa would enable us to leave on a special flight out. When we finally found out, we were only given ten days’ notice to leave! We couldn’t even say goodbye to our families, which was rough.

That being said, the actual move went incredibly well, and we didn’t encounter any challenges. Today, school is our only difficulty. Lola is twelve now, finding friend groups to fit in is complicated as you get older, and the school she is at is quite small — we’re considering other options for her to possibly switch to.

Q: How did you overcome these challenges?

Since most of our challenges were related to the pandemic, all you could really do (especially as an avid planner like me) was embrace the chaos and take things as they came. For Krabi, everything was lined up already: we had a house, we had a school for our daughter, my husband had his Muay Thai gym, etc.

Q: Were there any support systems or resources that helped you settle into the new location?

The local expats played a huge part, especially the members and owners of my husband’s gym. Covid also meant that only those staying for the long haul had remained in Krabi, and it became a really tight-knit community.

We happened to end up with a really fantastic expat couple as neighbours, who had been living here for eight years at that point and took us under their wing a little. Our daughter’s international school was also a great source of social connections.

Finding these connections, especially through a common hobby, has probably played the biggest part in making this place feel like a home. I don’t think we would have enjoyed it as much otherwise, let alone stayed for three years.

Q: What is the one thing you wish you had known before relocating?

Hardly anything, to be honest. I’ll have to credit my husband for this because he did most of the very granular research — things like the cost of electricity or the average internet speed available in homes.

That gave me the space to worry about the “broad strokes”, like our daughter’s school and our house. In the end, there wasn’t really anything that we hadn’t anticipated or that didn’t work out as planned.
 

Q: How do you like living in Krabi now? Where do you see yourself in 5 years: living there, moving back home, or moving to a different place?

I can’t say I’ve ever been as happy as I am right now, living in Krabi. It has been a great lifestyle move, it’s been a great experience as a family, and it’s laid to rest my worries of having missed my opportunity to explore and travel and go on adventures.

Though we relocated for the sake of the location, I simply cannot imagine going back to a traditional office-based 9-5 lifestyle. One of my favourite parts of having relocated is that we stuck with Australian working hours — both I and my husband start work at 6 a.m. and are done by 2 p.m. It completely transformed our day-to-day, and definitely for the better. Without a commute and having to deal with hair and makeup in the morning, I don’t even think we wake up any earlier than before.

It’s difficult to say where we’ll see ourselves in five years — it’s almost all up to Lola, and where she decides to go (and potentially study) after high school. There aren’t that many university options in our area, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she decides to go back to Australia, in which case I’m pretty confident we would too! But this is all very far off still, so we’re not too worried about it.

Q: How would you describe your hybrid working life in three words?

My words would be: connected, because I never lost touch with those back home, flexible, because there is so much I can do with my days now, and freedom, because we can travel and collect experiences in ways that previously weren’t available to us.

Q: Any parting words for us?

I know that not everybody has the option and security to keep their job and relocate, but if you do, I absolutely recommend that you give it a shot. You don’t have to uproot your entire existence, there is much less risk than most people assume. Keep everything important back home and test the waters for a bit — if it’s a good fit, it might just change your life.

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