I retrained at 41 in a country whose language I did not speak, and the flat decided half of it
I worked in logistics in Hamburg for fourteen years. My partner got a posting to Hua Hin, we agreed on two years, and I used the time to retrain as a remote UX researcher. I want to write about the boring half of that, because the courses are the part everyone talks about and the setup is the part that actually decided whether it worked.
Studying at 41 with a time difference is a scheduling problem before it is an intellectual one. My cohort was mostly European, so my live sessions were evening here. That sounds fine until you realise it means the flat has to be usable at 21:00, quiet, with air conditioning you can run for four hours without the bill becoming a topic in the household.
Things I got wrong at first:
I took a place with the desk area open to the living room. Fine for work, impossible for a two hour seminar where I have to speak.
I underestimated how loud rain is on the wrong kind of roof. Twice I had to leave a session because I could not hear the tutor.
Internet. Two providers in the same building can be completely different. Ask the neighbours, not the landlord, and test it during an evening, not at eleven in the morning when nobody is streaming.
What I would tell anyone doing something similar: pick the flat around the hours you will actually be studying, not around the view. I compared districts and building types on https://thailand-real.estate/de/ before the second move, mostly to understand what the same money buys when you step back from the beach, and it turned out that one street inland was quieter, cheaper and had the better connection.
I finished the certification in March. The flat was genuinely half of it.