It was those unmistakable bagpipe-inspired guitars that undid me completely. In one fleeting instant, everything shifted. Only a moment earlier, I had been quietly minding my own business in the back of a taxi, inching through Bangkok traffic on the way to the airport, half-absorbed in a Scottish pop playlist streaming through my headphones. Then, suddenly, my composure crumbled. What began as casual listening spiraled into a wave of emotion so potent it took me by surprise—nostalgia, pride, and a strange kind of longing all tangled together.
By the time we finally pulled up to Suvarnabhumi Airport, I was thoroughly undone. The rousing chorus of “In a Big Country,” that triumphant anthem from my fellow Fifers, Big Country, had unleashed something deep inside me. The song’s bombastic energy—those guitars that mimic the wail of bagpipes—conjured decades of memory in an instant. Before I could catch my breath, the next track, The Proclaimers’ “Sunshine on Leith,” began. It was an unabashedly sentimental ode to love and belonging, and to the beloved city of Edinburgh—a place that once formed the backdrop of my university days and youthful wanderings. Within minutes, I had been transported thousands of miles away, back to cobbled streets, student pubs, and rain-spattered pavements that felt very far from the humid air of Thailand.
Nostalgia, I’ve realized, can be ruthless in its timing. It creeps up without warning and reminds you, with disarming clarity, of just how far you’ve traveled—both literally and figuratively. For the past fifteen years, I’ve made my home in Asia, long enough that the chaos of Bangkok—the smell of sizzling street food mingling with exhaust fumes—has become comforting in its own peculiar way, as familiar as the damp scent of wet leaves on a Scottish pavement after rainfall. Yet beneath that sense of belonging lies an undercurrent of displacement. A chance melody or even the faint aroma of monsoon rain on concrete can unmoor me entirely, reconnecting me to the version of myself that once roamed the drizzle-drenched alleyways of Edinburgh’s Old Town.
I’ve never been one for national displays or romanticized patriotism. My Scottishness lives quietly rather than loudly; at best, I might describe myself as a gentle nationalist—a person with a lingering affection for home rather than a fervent pride. I’ve never attempted to cook haggis, mangle the words to “Flower of Scotland,” or convincingly differentiate between the more obscure single malts. And yet, Scotland exerts a gravitational pull that I can’t ignore. It informs my humor, inflects my politics, and even explains my instinctive suspicion of boastfulness. That childhood adage rings truer the longer I live abroad: you can extract the boy from Fife, but you cannot wholly extract Fife from the boy. I still ache for its crisp air, its coastal golf courses edged by wind and sea, and the modest charm of its people.
Expatriate life, especially when stretched over a decade and a half, does curious things to your sense of place. Slowly, your geographical identity begins to blur. You become both from everywhere and from nowhere, your internal compass recalibrated by experience. Bangkok’s chaos exhilarates and exhausts in equal measure—the traffic that seems to breathe, the humidity that clings to skin, the moments of cultural misunderstanding that provoke laughter one day and quiet frustration the next. Beneath those daily irritations simmer questions far more profound: who am I now, and to what place do I truly belong?
After enough years abroad, those ties that once felt unbreakable begin to loosen. You find yourself missing the endless cycle of weddings, funerals, and weekends spent with old friends. The place you once called home reshapes itself in your absence, so that, when you do return, it feels subtly estranged. Your accent wavers and softens. Your references lose their immediacy. You hover awkwardly between worlds—too Scottish to ever be Thai, yet somehow too foreign to blend seamlessly back into Scotland. It is one thing to live with that duality personally, quite another to raise a child within it, especially when your own sense of direction drifts like a compass needle seeking magnetic north.
My son, Alexander, entered this world in Bangkok, the city that has come to define so much of our family’s story. His name bears the cadence of Scotland, and his passport marks him as British, yet his daily experience is rooted firmly in Asia. To him, Scotland exists primarily as a collection of fleeting images: summer holidays filled with rich pastries and bracing winds, a few familiar voices that mirror mine but move faster, and a drizzle that seems never-ending even in July. I cannot teach him the pipes or instill in him an instinct for the national anthem, but I do what I can. We read the words of Scottish poets, watch faded music clips of Teenage Fanclub, Orange Juice, and The Skids, and talk—whenever he asks—about where his family once came from. Still, I recognize the limits of these efforts; culture transmitted across continents can only ever be partial, softened at the edges by distance.
When I mention home, Alexander thinks of Bangkok’s skyline, the street markets, and the monsoon-slick streets, not the grey stone spires of Edinburgh. When I say “beach,” he imagines Hua Hin’s golden sand rather than the brisk waters of Elie or St Andrews. And I cannot blame him for that. After all, this life is the one I have built for us—a life rich in freedom, discovery, and possibility—but every choice carries its shadow. Sometimes I wonder if I have left something essential behind in exchange for what I’ve gained.
During our annual trips to Scotland, he blossoms. He revels in the pure oxygen, the space to run without the looming buzz of motorbikes, the long summer evenings that stretch lazily past ten. Yet, all too quickly, those sensations dissolve. A few weeks later, Bangkok reclaims us—the tropical sun, the densest of traffic, the beautiful madness—and Scotland fades into a postcard realm, something his father gets sentimental about when the right song drifts through the speakers. The pang of departure grows sharper each year, especially as my parents age and time insists on moving ever faster.
And yet, I have no desire to trade this life, not yet at least. Bangkok teems with contradictions: it is both exasperating and mesmerizing, a place that can infuriate you in the morning and astonish you by evening. It has afforded me liberties, creative and personal, that I might never have found had I stayed home. Still, with every passing year, the path back feels more indistinct, as though the map itself has begun to fade.
Alexander’s Scottishness will inevitably differ from mine, but that divergence no longer troubles me as it once might have. He will assemble his own version of belonging—a mosaic of anecdotes, familial memories, humor inherited from his grandparents, and affection passed down in understated gestures. Perhaps that is what identity becomes in the modern, restless world: a collection of fragments stitched together by love.
On the flight that day, as the engines hummed and the plane lifted above the sprawl of Bangkok, I replayed “In a Big Country.” Those words about holding on to dreams that stay with you, echoing across distance and time, seemed written for anyone who has ever ventured far from home. They are reminders that endurance is bound not only by geography, but by memory—by carrying the essence of where you began, even as you transform into someone new.
Maybe that is all one can hope to pass forward: the music, the stories, the laughter, and the resilient optimism that persists in spite of drizzle and distance alike. Next time we go back to Scotland, we’ll take that journey north into the Highlands, the playlist blaring through the car speakers. My son might not yet grasp the full significance of the lyrics or the surge of emotion that accompanies those opening chords. But someday, perhaps when he finds himself far from wherever he calls home, and those bagpipe guitars rise again, he will feel it too—a tender tug toward the place that made him who he is, even if it was a place he never fully inhabited.
Sourse: https://www.businessinsider.com/raising-kids-abroad-bangkok-thailand-expat-living-asia-dad-son-2025-10
