Rawai, Phuket, Thailand

Never before have I swum in a sea that I’d describe as hot. Warm, yes. Eye-wateringly frigid, definitely. But the sea off the south coast of Phuket, Thailand, is genuinely hot. It seems odd to surface after a duckdive and feel the 85 F air to be cooler than the water I’m swimming in.

Just a little way from my swimming spot is a tropical-style bar and restaurant called the Paradise Beach Bar. There, I meet with a fortunate expat named Jack Taylor. He points to the next table, which overlooks a pure white-sand beach studded with house-sized rock outcrops and those ever-picturesque leaning palm trees angled across the water’s edge. “That table,” Jack tells me, “is what I call ‘my office.’”

I can think of many worse places to work from. We eat dishes of chicken with cashew nut, fried Thai-style, and sip on bottles of Tiger beer as the sun dips behind a horizon flecked with the running lights of pleasure yachts and long-tail fishing boats alike. I met a bunch of very content expats across the Southeast Asian nirvana that is Thailand. Read all about them in upcoming issues.

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