When ‘Paradise’ Isn’t Enough: Why I’m Leaving Thailand After 15 Years

When ‘Paradise’ Isn’t Enough: Why I’m Leaving Thailand After 15 Years
Trading beaches for balance: from island life in Thailand to new beginnings in Spain.|©iStock/Hydromet

I’m writing this from a small Thai island I’ve called home for nearly 15 years, listening to the low whir of the aircon and the trill of cicadas after the rain. My six-year-old son is freckled and bronzed, as comfortable in the water as most kids are on a playground. By most people’s standards, I’ve been living the dream: a tropical life in the Gulf of Thailand, where palm trees lean over the road and the school run takes us past fishing boats and jungle-green hills.

And yet, as I plan our family’s next chapter—a move to Valencia, Spain, at the start of 2026—I know it’s time to leave this version of “paradise” behind. Thailand gave me my 20s and 30s, my career, my marriage, my son. And yet somewhere along the way, I found myself staying not because it was still right, but because leaving felt impossible.

Recognizing that moment matters. It’s the point where the life you built stops reflecting the life you actually need, and where choosing a new chapter becomes an act of care, not escape.

If you’ve ever felt that shift, you’ll understand the journey that follows.

This is my story.

The Unlikely Path That Led Me Abroad

Ferry ride with Koh Phangan in the background.
Ferry ride with Koh Phangan in the background.|©Kaila Krayewski

I grew up in small towns and cities around Toronto until I was 10, when my family moved to Vancouver Island. My dad opened a fitness club there, and it gave me my first job. But even then, in that safe little corner of the Pacific Northwest, I knew I wouldn’t stay. Living abroad felt like destiny, a simple fact of my life I hadn’t lived yet.

After high school, I moved to Ottawa to study journalism, fully expecting my degree to carry me somewhere far from Canada. So when my university boyfriend asked whether I wanted to teach English in Japan with him after we graduated, I didn’t hesitate. It felt like the doorway was finally opening.

Fast-forward three weeks into our arrival in Japan: single, newly dumped, living on the southern tip of a tiny farming island famous for its onions, and wondering what on earth I had just gotten myself into.

Japan and I… didn’t quite fit. I spent that year feeling like a caged zoo animal. Cars would literally stop in the middle of the road so drivers could stare at me, not because I was dazzling, but because many of them had never seen a gaijin (foreigner) before. It was isolating, fascinating, surreal, and clarifying. I wasn’t built for that level of scrutiny.

Thailand, on the other hand—a place I’d fallen in love with on a family vacation—was much more my style. Bangkok was international, wild, and electric in all the right ways. And back then? Blissfully cheap.

So at 26, I packed up and moved to the Big Mango with all the gusto of a small-town Canadian girl convinced she’d finally found her Asian New York City, a place where she could live out her Carrie Bradshaw fantasies.

And oh, did I live them.

Those 2.5 years in Bangkok were some of the best of my life. I shared a high-rise apartment in the dead center of the city with my gorgeous German best friend. I’d landed my dream job as a luxury travel magazine editor. We flitted between press events, restaurant openings, and rooftop bars—rarely paying for anything. It felt like the city belonged to us.

Then, one Thai New Year, on vacation in Koh Phi Phi, I met a handsome Scottish boy celebrating his 21st birthday on a whirlwind trip around Thailand. He came to see me again in Bangkok before flying home… and four weeks later, he was back, having sold his entire life to move in with me.

I didn’t know at the time he’d never move out again.

A beach day on Koh Phangan for Kaila, Fraser, and their son—island life at its best.
A beach day on Koh Phangan for Kaila, Fraser, and their son—island life at its best.|©Kaila Krayewski

After nearly a year working on a boat on the outskirts of Bangkok for a wage that barely covered his transportation, Fraser was offered a job doing western carpentry on Koh Phangan, the same island I’d been pining for since visiting with my parents years earlier. By then, the magazine had folded, and I was freelancing remotely, which meant I could follow the work… and the tugging feeling in my chest that the island might hold something for us.

So we packed our bags, boarded the night train and ferry, and arrived on Koh Phangan with no idea that we’d still be here nearly 15 years later—married, with a child, a thriving business, a beautiful villa we’ve just finished (and are now selling), and a burning desire to be, well… anywhere else.

When Paradise Stopped Being Practical

When we first arrived on Koh Phangan, we were young, broke, and having the time of our lives. A friend handed me the keys to her beach bar the week we moved over, and we spent our days exactly the way you’d imagine two 20-somethings on a Thai island would: barefoot, sunburnt, hopping between raves, beach volleyball, longtail boats, and fire shows. We woke up to water buffalo staring through our windows. We kept bathing suits in our scooter seats because you never knew when you’d end up at the beach. It was glorious and unforgettable.

But island life has a rhythm—and a reality. Koh Phangan lives and breathes with tourism, especially around the Full Moon Party. Outside those five chaotic days each month, the island was eerily quiet back then. Low season brought daily monsoon rains, flooded roads, shuttered restaurants, and collective broke-ness that put everyone in a sour mood. Power cuts lasted hours, sometimes days. We once had a road dug up in front of our house and left unfinished for two years, which meant scorpions and centipedes became houseguests, and we had to rock-climb into our house daily.

And then there was the lawlessness. In your 20s, it feels like freedom. Later, when you’ve watched enough accidents, it starts to feel like risk.

Still, we stayed. Those years gave us stories, resilience, community, and a sense of possibility you don’t often find in more polished, predictable places.

Life shifted again when we had our son.

That’s when the island’s charm began to dull at the edges. We were no longer the barefoot party kids who arrived with nothing but optimism and a scooter. We were parents now, suspended between who we’d been and who we were becoming, living in the echo of our old lives.

And once you settle down, the cracks widen. The remoteness that once felt romantic started to feel isolating. The 68-day wait for a parcel stopped being funny. Power cuts weren’t an adventure; they were a disruption to nap schedules and work calls. When the internet went down for months because the one repairman on the island was too busy, it stopped being quirky and started being exhausting.

Soaking in the place they called home for nearly 15 years, after deciding it was time to move on.
Soaking in the place they called home for nearly 15 years, after deciding it was time to move on.|©Kaila Krayewski

Slowly, we found ourselves craving the very systems and structures we’d once been so thrilled to escape: reliable healthcare, working postal services, predictable infrastructure, a sense of security that doesn’t shift with the phases of the moon.

And then life delivered its hardest lessons.

I lost both of my parents while living abroad—first my dad, then, at the start of this year, my mom. Distance stretched each loss into something sharper and heavier. My father passed years ago after a long illness, and I made it home for the painful parts. With my mother, it was different. I said goodbye to her last January through a screen while she lay in a coma in Mexico, thousands of miles from my small house on a Thai island.

Grief reshapes everything. It rearranged my priorities. It magnified the distance. It made the world feel both vast and painfully small.

And so, standing in the wreckage of losing both parents from afar, that question I’d been whispering to myself for years became a scream:

Is this still the right place for our family?

Europe Beckons

Me in Valencia on my first scouting trip—sunny skies and instant connection.
Me in Valencia on my first scouting trip—sunny skies and instant connection. |©Kaila Krayewski

That’s when I discovered Valencia. I’d been done with island life for a while, but it wasn’t until my son, still tiny then, told me he didn’t like living here anymore that something inside me finally shifted. You can ignore your own burnout for years. It hits differently coming from a child.

So I started looking for a place where we could grow into the next stage.

Valencia kept standing out. Warm without being punishing, beside the sea, full of parks and bike paths and long, golden afternoons. Big enough for culture but small enough that you can cross the city on foot. And after a decade and a half of living inside systems that required improvisation on a daily basis, the idea of living somewhere with reliable systems like healthcare, transport, and basic infrastructure felt almost luxurious.

And when I finally visited, Valencia felt strangely familiar, like a version of the life I’d been craving but hadn’t had the vocabulary to articulate. Kids zipped through the Turia Gardens, a massive green ribbon carved through the heart of the city, while parents lingered over coffee. Orange trees lined the sidewalks as casually as street lamps. The city felt cared for. Welcoming.

We planned to move last September, but the year unfolded differently. We’ve trudged through most of the year in the muck of grief. Fraser has been working nonstop to position our property development company so he can consult from abroad. And the visa process comes with a particularly fun set of hoops that will send us up to Bangkok in early 2026 for criminal record checks, both Thai and Canadian. I haven’t lived in Canada in over two decades, but bureaucracy doesn’t care about that.

It’s been a long year.

But the momentum is finally there. The path is clear. If all goes smoothly, we’ll arrive in Valencia in the first quarter of 2026. Our son will join a school with green fields instead of monsoon-flooded roads. Fraser will divide his time between Spain and Thailand. I’ll keep writing, hopefully with more stability and far fewer power cuts.

Koh Phangan shaped us. It gave us adventure, resilience, friendships, a business, and the kind of memories you only make in far-flung places where nothing works the way it’s supposed to. But Valencia offers something we’ve never had abroad: the chance to build a life that’s not held together by improvisation. A life with roots and great stories.

It feels like the right next chapter—and the first one we’re choosing not out of escape or survival, but out of hope.

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