Leaving Thailand: A Memoir by Steve Rosse

Back in the early ‘90s. Steve Rosse had it all. He lived in an island paradise in the south of Thailand, he had his choice of women who were attractive and acquiescent. His job as a public relations manager for an upscale resort ensured that he would eat well, drink well, and meet everyone in the world, from royalty to scalawags. As a columnist for one of Thailand’s two leading English-language newspapers, his name was widely known and his face appeared on Bangkok billboards. He had conquered the hurdles that cause most foreigners to lose sleep and gain ulcers—an extendable visa and a work permit.  With a life so idyllic, what could go wrong?

The answer to this question, Rosse tells readers in his honest, funny, and self-deprecating memoir, is summed up in one word. Everything.

In a gradual descent, he loses the woman who could have been the love of his life, marries another who becomes the scourge of it, and takes an ill-advised publicity photo that shows the Crown Prince of Denmark in close proximity to a pack of Marlboros. The fact that the Marlboros belong to Rosse’s boss and not the prince means nothing. Suddenly Rosse has no job, two children, and a wife who may be loathsome but is certainly pragmatic. Her suggestion that they move to the States removes Rosse from a place he loves to an existence in Iowa and puts him into a permanent state of culture shock and longing that he’s never recovered from.

Fortunately he has never lost his skill with words or his sense of humor. “Listen,” he says, in his opening sentence. “Let me tell you a story.” While in real life, those words would make most people run for the nearest exit, here they’re an irresistible invitation to another world. Rosse is a natural-born storyteller and Leaving Thailand is a remarkable collection of stories, some of them heartbreaking, some of them bawdy, all of them captivating.

From his welcome to Thailand, which involves an act of petty larceny after a night of serious drinking, an act of carnal knowledge with someone of dubious gender, and an act of extended bliss that leaves Rosse with a somewhat humiliating virus, right up to a poignant essay on his retirement plans that feature a house on a bluff near a temple and a massage parlor, he doesn’t miss a beat. There’s no self-pity here and no disrespect for anyone he meets, including his former wife. He tells about bar girls he has known in the Biblical sense while honoring them in some whole other sense and writes tender essays about his son that are sweet but never mawkish. He puts himself in the heart and mind of a Thai-born cafeteria lady who’s made a home in a cold country and breaks the heart of anyone who reads about his Burmese maid whose life he may have ruined with a few careless words. 

There are many books written by white men about their lives in Thailand. Leaving Thailand roams through much of their territory, expands it, and claims it. And as for its author, as he reveals himself? Let’s give him the last word on who he is--”Not bad. Not good. Just...thus.”~Janet Brown