They built a home in Thailand after their US property was flooded in a hurricane

By Tamara Hardingham-Gill, CNN

(CNN) — With his retirement fast approaching, Jim Dolan, from the US, felt as though his future was more or less mapped out.

He and his wife Som Dolan would build a house in her native country, Thailand, and split their time between the Southeast Asian destination and the States.

But the couple ended up leaving the US for good after their home in Houston was severely flooded during Hurricane Harvey, a Category 4 storm that hit Texas in 2017.

“Our finances were such that we couldn’t live what was thought to be our dream life,” Jim Dolan, who previously worked for NASA, tells CNN Travel.

Virtual romance

He hadn’t ever really envisioned being based in Thailand permanently. In fact, Jim Dolan – originally from Worcester, Massachusetts – hadn’t even visited the country before meeting his future wife, from Bangkok, online in 2006.

“We got to know each other, virtually at first,” he says. “And we visited together a number of times before we decided that we were soulmates.”

The pair later got engaged, and Som Dolan moved to the US on a fiancée visa.

“I was not ready to leave the United States at that point,” Jim Dolan explains. “I had a good job and a good career. So I wanted to bring her there. “

The couple tied the knot that same year and quickly began building a life in the US together.

“The first couple of years were kind of challenging to me, because of the language,” admits Som Dolan, who speaks both Thai and English, but had only used English for work purposes previously.

“It was very hard for me to understand because the people speak very fast.”

It took several years for Som Dolan, who previously worked in IT, to find her feet career-wise, and she briefly worked as a waitress in a Thai restaurant, and as her husband’s assistant.

“I had a good job (in Thailand,)” she says. “When I moved here, it was hard for me to find a job where I could use my experience.”

The Dolans spent 10 years living in the US together and had been looking forward to “a dual Thailand and US kind of lifestyle” in the future.

However, that all changed after a series of financial setbacks. Jim Dolan explains that he lost “a lot of money in the stock market in the financial crash in 2009.”

Although he says he was able to recover much of this in the following years, the damage inflicted on their home after Hurricane Harvey devastated the Texas Gulf Coast resulted in another financial blow.

Financial woes

“We had to rebuild our house in Houston while still living in it,” he says. “Think of trying to change a tire on a race car while the car is going round the track. It was a challenge.”

The couple didn’t have flood insurance, something Jim Dolan describes as a “regrettable decision.”

Needless to say, the repair work cost them a considerable amount of money, and the Dolans realized that they wouldn’t be able to afford to live as comfortably as they’d hoped if they remained in the US.

The pair, who sold their home in Houston and moved to Washington, DC in 2019, soon began looking into the prospect of relocating to Thailand permanently.

“It was not a hard choice to make,” says Jim Dolan. “I had traveled to Thailand a number of times, I really liked being here.

“I like the food. I like the culture. I love the climate. It’s a beautiful country. And obviously, Som is a native here. So she’s very comfortable here.

“And it’s so much more affordable than the United States. It was ultimately a pretty easy decision.”

When the global Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, the Dolans decided to bring forward their plan to build a house in Thailand.

“It was right around the time that I was just approaching retirement age,” explains Jim Dolan. “And so we just decided to make the move at that time. We had enough money to build a house, and we were ready to do it.”

The couple then bought some land “sight unseen” in Sam Roi Yot, located in the province of Prachuap Khiri Khan, for around $50,000.

Big move

Jim Dolan explains that they deliberately chose the area in the Gulf of Thailand as its position meant that they were less likely to be badly impacted by a natural disaster again.

“There’s no risk of earthquakes or tsunamis on this side of the peninsula,” he says, explaining that while they hadn’t been to Sam Roi Yot before, the couple were familiar with the area, which is about 240 kilometers (150 miles) south of the capital, Bangkok.

“So we don’t have to worry about that. We don’t have fires. We don’t have hurricanes.”

Jim Dolan was able to obtain a Thailand Marriage Visa, which currently requires applicants to have at least 400,000THB (around $11,000) in a Thai bank account or a monthly income of no less than 40,000THB (about $1,100).

Once they had their affairs in order, the Dolans packed up their lives in the US, shipping some of their belongings over in a container, while taking a “few necessary things to make our lives a little more comfortable.”

In October 2020, they left the US for Thailand – the couple were given special visas due to the travel restrictions in place at the time.

After undergoing a mandatory quarantine period, the Dolans briefly stayed with one of Som Dolan’s relatives in Bangkok, before renting a home to live in while their house was being built.

According to Jim Dolan, one of the biggest challenges of the relocation was the process of transporting their beloved pugs Morgan and Gwennie.

“The dogs are difficult to move because they have a very short snout, and that makes their breathing suspect to respiratory problems and some carriers won’t deliver them,” he explains.

“So it took a lot for us to get the two dogs here.”

The couple says they found the process of building their three-bedroom home, which they designed themselves, particularly tough, stressing that achieving the result that they desired meant a lot of back and forth with builders and contractors.

“In the last four months of the building period, we had to come to visit the site every single day, to make sure that all the details would be the way that we wanted,” says Som Dolan.

The entire process took about a year and a half and cost around $300,000 “including fence, fill and landscaping.”

“It turned out to be just what we wanted, and what we had hoped for,” says Jim Dolan. “It was hard getting here. But the end result is what we wanted, and we’re happy with it.”

He goes on to state that Thailand has proven to be more affordable for them, stressing that he and his wife feel “financially comfortable” now.

“I joined a golf club for about $1,100 to play as many rounds as I want to for a year,” he says.

“There’s no way I could do that in the United States.”

He also feels that their overall quality of life has improved immensely as a result of being based in Thailand.

“It’s very natural,” says Jim Dolan. “We eat locally grown vegetables that are plentiful and really cheap. The food is great.”

When it comes to healthcare, he’s opted to pay for private medical insurance in Thailand, and finds that it provides “better benefits than my Medicare would in the United States and for much, much cheaper.”

“There are a lot of things that the average person might expect to be able to do in their retirement that are available here,” he adds.

“It’s a different culture. But it’s not a different planet… You adapt. You learn and you experience. It’s good.”

More than four years since their big move, the couple is now very settled in Sam Roi Yot, known for the Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park, and love living there.

Happy retirement

“It’s very quiet. Very peaceful. Very safe,” says Jim Dolan. “I feel safer here in Thailand than I think in any of the cities that I lived in the United States.

“I lived in Denver, Houston and Austin. And all of them have much, much higher rates of crime.”

While he and his wife are grateful to be able to live a very comfortable lifestyle in Thailand, Jim Dolan acknowledges that many Thai people “live on a very, very, very small budget” and “services and taxes are much lower” as a result.

He explains that pumps need to be incorporated into the build for certain new homes, as water pressure is “minimal” in the country, and the roads are “a little bit rougher.”

“There are many of those little kinds of issues…” he says. “The infrastructure, I think, in the United States is more sophisticated, and perhaps more reliable.

“But you pay for it. Your taxes are high. We don’t pay any property taxes here. Our tax burden is virtually zero.

“There’s no way we could have built a brand new, three-bedroom, 3,000-square-foot house, within a mile of the ocean in the United States, on what we did here.”

Although he speaks other languages, including Spanish, Jim Dolan has struggled to learn Thai, pointing out that it’s challenging “for the Western ear because it’s a tonal language.”

“Thai language is a very, very difficult language to learn,” he explains. “And I must admit, I haven’t really tried very hard because I have a built-in translator in my family.”

And while Som Dolan is thrilled to be living in her native country once again, she says that going from speaking English constantly for a decade to using both Thai and English regularly has been confusing.

“I still have to speak English all the time. All day, every day,” she says, pointing out that the majority of her husband’s friends aren’t Thai nationals, and she often finds herself acting as an interpreter.

Although Jim Dolan admits that things haven’t always been “smooth sailing,” he’s confident that relocating to Thailand was the right choice for him and his wife.

“I think she had a bigger challenge moving to the United States than I had coming here,” he says.

He’d advise anyone thinking of making a similar move to visit the country they’re hoping to relocate to first, and avoid the temptation to “up and buy a property on some remote place, halfway around the world, sight unseen.”

“We had traveled to Thailand a number of times and knew the area, knew what we were getting into,” he adds.

The Dolans haven’t been back to the US since moving to Thailand, but eventually plan to return for regular trips.

Jim Dolan is going to visit his family soon, but his wife has decided to stay behind to look after their dog Gwennie, who is nearly 15 years old – Morgan passed away in 2022.

“No one else would take care of her the way Som takes care of her,” he says. “So as long as Gwennie is still with us. I’ll be traveling back to the United States solo.”

Although he has no regrets about their move, Jim Dolan admits that there are some things that he misses about living in the US.

“I miss northeast seafood,” he says. “And I miss my siblings. They’ve lived on the East Coast for much of my life.

“All of my family members were just a drive away (before) and now it’s a big trip to visit. So that’s a bit of a sacrifice.

“But overall, I think we’re much better off here than we would have been in the United States had we stayed there.”

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