Provided by Duncan Forgan
- Duncan Forgan left his hometown in Scotland and moved to Asia 15 years ago.
- He’s raising his son in Bangkok and realizes they’ll never share the same sense of belonging.
- Still, Forgan credits Bangkok for giving him freedoms he would never have found at home.
It was the bagpipe guitars that did it.
One moment, I was minding my own business, listening to a Scottish pop playlist in the back of a cab on my way to the airport in Bangkok. Next, I was a bubbling mess.
By the time we reached Suvarnabhumi Airport, I was undone by the bombastic strains of “In a Big Country,” a 1983 hit from my Fife brethren Big Country, which gave way to “Sunshine on Leith” by The Proclaimers — a lovelorn ode to my old university stomping ground in Edinburgh.
There’s nothing like a sudden hit of nostalgia to remind you just how far you’ve come. I’ve spent much of the past 15 years in Asia, long enough for Bangkok to feel as familiar as the smell of wet leaves on a Scottish pavement.
Yet a song or a whiff of rain can unmoor me completely, a reminder that part of me is still wandering the drizzle-soaked cobbles of Scotland’s capital.
I’m no flag-waving Scot. At best, I’m a small-n nationalist. I’ve never cooked haggis, stumble over “Flower of Scotland,” and struggle to tell the difference between single malts. But I still feel the pull of home. It shapes my humor, politics, and even my aversion to self-promotion.
You can take the boy out of Fife, but you can’t take Fife out of the boy.
Provided by Duncan Forgan
Where am I from?
Long-term expat life loosens your grip on geography without erasing what lies beneath. It’s a classic duality: knowing you’re onto a good thing while wrestling with the unshackling of old moorings. Thailand’s heat, the traffic, and the cross-cultural misunderstandings are irritations, but beneath them lie deeper questions of identity.
After long enough abroad, you stop being from anywhere. You’ve missed every wedding and funeral, and when you go back, you no longer fit. Your accent drifts, your references expire, and you hover in between — too Scottish to be local, too foreign to be fully Scottish.
It’s one thing to carry that rootlessness yourself; another to raise a child with a sense of belonging when your own compass won’t stay still.
My son Alexander was born in Bangkok. He has a Scottish-sounding name, a UK passport, and a passing familiarity with artery-clogging pastries from summer trips to the mothership. But his home is here: tropical, urban, and, dare I say it, somewhat sheltered.
Provided by Duncan Forgan
Scotland is a place he visits for a few fleeting weeks each year, where people talk like me but faster, and where it rains in July.
I can’t teach him the bagpipes or the anthem, but I try to give him a basic grasp of his roots through classic Scottish literature and vintage music clips from Teenage Fanclub, Orange Juice, and The Skids.
Such tutelage only goes so far.
Playing it forward
When I say home, he thinks of Bangkok; when I say the beach, he thinks of Hua Hin, not Elie or St Andrews. I cannot fault him. I built this life, but there is a sting in realizing I may have left something vital behind.
Provided by Duncan Forgan
When we’re back in Scotland, he loves it — the long evenings, the freedom to run without dodging motorbikes. But it fades fast. A few weeks later, we’re under tropical skies again, and Scotland becomes a postcard, somewhere his dad gets misty-eyed about. The ache sharpens with each departure, especially as my parents age and the years accelerate.
I wouldn’t trade this life — not yet anyway.
Bangkok is chaotic, infuriating, exhilarating. It’s given me freedoms I’d never have found at home. But the road back grows less defined each year.
Alexander’s Scottishness won’t be mine, and that’s fine. He’ll piece his Caledonian identity together from memories, stories, humor, and love for his grandparents.
Provided by Duncan Forgan
On that flight, I listened to “In a Big Country” again. “Dreams stay with you, like a lover’s voice across the mountainside.” Stuart Adamson’s lyrics are about endurance and carrying the essence of where you came from, even when you’ve gone far.
Maybe that’s enough: to keep the accent alive, tell the stories, and pass along the stubborn optimism that somehow survives the Scottish climate.
Next time we’re home, we’ll hit the Highlands, that playlist blaring full blast in our rental car. He may not get the full significance of the lyrics. But one day, when he’s far away and those bagpipe guitars kick in, perhaps he’ll feel it too — that tug toward the place that made him, even if it has never quite been home.
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