{"id":1264930,"date":"2025-04-07T02:35:35","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T02:35:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/?p=1264930"},"modified":"2025-04-07T02:35:35","modified_gmt":"2025-04-07T02:35:35","slug":"the-white-lotus-and-the-awkward-truth-behind-an-hbo-punchline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/the-white-lotus-and-the-awkward-truth-behind-an-hbo-punchline\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The White Lotus\u2019 And The Awkward Truth Behind An HBO Punchline"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It\u2019s 10 a.m. in Thailand, and Sam\u2019s just returned home from the immigration office in Pattaya, where he renewed his tourist visa to extend what\u2019s become a 19-month stay in the country. Thirty-nine years old and hailing from Sydney, Australia, Sam is one of many single adult men who move to countries like Thailand in search of a better life than the one they had back home. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThat\u2019s why people come here,\u201d Sam tells me, \u201cbecause we feel special, particularly males.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Or, in the parlance of HBO\u2019s hit dark comedy, \u201cThe White Lotus,\u201d Sam is a \u201closer back home.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The third season of the globetrotting anthology series about rich people behaving poorly at a luxury chain of hotels and resorts takes place in Thailand. In the very first episode, one white female character who\u2019s moved to the country with her older partner explains the concept to a newly arrived hotel guest.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cYou\u2019ll notice a lot of bald white guys in Thailand,\u201d she says, as the camera pans across a table of smooth, hairless heads. \u201cThe locals call them LBHs. Losers back home.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sam isn\u2019t bald. There\u2019s a tousle of light brown hair (and a receding hairline) hidden beneath the black baseball cap that covers his head when we connect via Google<\/a> Meet. But while he might not fit the description to a tee, Sam readily admits to being a \u201closer back home.\u201d He even published a YouTube video titled \u201cLBH – I was a LOSER BACK HOME<\/a>,\u201d in which he attempts to debunk the stereotype.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It\u2019s that video that brings me to Sam\u2019s YouTube page, Gone Adrift<\/a>, which chronicles his life as a white guy in Thailand. A few weeks later, we\u2019re chatting from opposite sides of the planet. Sam declines to reveal his last name, explaining that even his small modicum of online success has earned him some haters and stalkers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cSome level of anonymity and distance from the audience is pretty important,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s psychos out there, bro.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He\u2019s otherwise an extremely open book, talking candidly about the painful personal reasons he moved in the first place and his own fraught experience searching for love in a place like Thailand. This isn\u2019t a huge surprise. After all, Sam\u2019s turned both his travel adventures and his dating life into fodder for a YouTube channel, which makes enough money most months to fund his modest lifestyle. He\u2019s no stranger to talking openly into the camera, even if that means sharing personal and sometimes unflattering stories.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sam\u2019s situation isn\u2019t particularly unique, either. Plenty of white men move to countries like Thailand in search of romance and cheap luxuries. It\u2019s not a new trend, but it\u2019s seemingly accelerated in recent years, fueled by social media influencers and enabled by a five-year digital nomad visa<\/a> introduced by the Thai government in 2024. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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What is<\/em> unique about Sam, however, is his willingness to share both the good and the bad of his \u201closer back home\u201d lifestyle \u2014 many of his videos explore the darker side of life in Thailand, including poverty and violence \u2014 which all comes together to reveal an eternal truth: Real life is never as simple or glamorous as social media (or HBO) make it seem.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Leaving Australia<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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Before moving to Thailand to become a YouTuber, Sam was a social worker in Sydney, Australia, where he focused on guiding people through the country\u2019s welfare system. For the final stretch of his career, he focused on at-risk teenagers. It was rewarding work, but eventually, it started to wear him down.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cAfter seven years of super intense stuff every day, I was just cooked, totally burnt out,\u201d he said. \u201cYou bottle it up and then it all has to come out at some point.\u201d He\u2019d lose his temper at the smallest thing, like somebody else cutting in front of him in traffic. \u201cI\u2019d become such an angry, toxic person in my personal life. When I\u2019d go out drinking on the weekends, it all came out.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sam realized something was wrong. Then, an opportunity presented itself. A close friend moved to Bangkok, and Sam booked a vacation to visit. It wasn\u2019t his first trip to Thailand, but this time, something clicked. He made a major life decision.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI decided, I\u2019m done. I\u2019m going home to sell everything, and I\u2019m moving here,\u201d Sam said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Uprooting A Life<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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Not everyone is in a position to sell all their earthly possessions and move over 4,000 miles from home to start fresh. But Sam was in a somewhat privileged position. He was 37 years old; he had no spouse, no kids and no mortgage. Some might consider those details and see a loser, but in the moment, it was an advantage.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cLegally, I wasn\u2019t tied to anything,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That doesn\u2019t mean it was easy. It took 13 weeks to pack up the things he wanted to keep and get rid of everything else. He filmed the entire process and published it on YouTube, priming the algorithm for his Thailand adventures. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sam excitedly titled one of those videos, \u201cMy LAST Week in Australia! (I\u2019m leaving for THAILAND)<\/a>,\u201d but in real life, walking away from his life in Sydney was surprisingly difficult. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI struggled through that,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t want to sound like I idolized possessions, but every time you say goodbye to that couch or that movie poster that you\u2019ve had on your wall, it eats you a little bit. I\u2019m selling all the shit I love.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Ironically, if it wasn\u2019t for his anger management issues at the time, Sam doubts he would have been able to go through with such a huge life decision. He was only able to push through the discomfort and fear by harnessing his frustrations with his own life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI weaponized that anger and I turned it into a mission,\u201d he said, \u201cand that mission was to move to Thailand.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Ultimately, Sam knows he made the right decision. \u201cNineteen months later, I don\u2019t have tantrums in the street anymore. I don\u2019t yell at people. I\u2019m such a happier person.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018A Huge Cultural Shock\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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A vacation in Thailand is nothing like the real thing. You stay in a hotel surrounded by English-speaking staff and readily available Western food. If you\u2019re anything like Sam was back then, you\u2019re also drunk for much of the trip and throwing money around in the way only a tourist traveling through a developing country can.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sam didn\u2019t realize this at the time, but when he moved to Thailand, it quickly became clear that the 10 weeks he\u2019d spent in the country (divided between five separate trips) amounted to \u201cjack shit.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Before, he\u2019d only seen tourist Thailand. Now, he was seeing the real thing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe first four weeks were profound,\u201d Sam said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He still recalls the moment he got off the plane. Reality set in as he realized he\u2019d be staying in Thailand, \u201cpotentially forever.\u201d Throwing his money around was no longer an option, especially since Sam wasn\u2019t showing up with a fat bank account to live off of. He was going to try to get by on the meager salary of an up-and-coming YouTuber \u2014 in a recent video, Sam reveals he earned $1,126 Australian dollars (or $710 in U.S. currency) that month, nearly half of which goes to his rent.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But beyond his financial struggles, Sam also encountered a cultural barrier beyond anything he could have imagined. Thailand is one of the few countries in the world that was never colonized by Western forces. So unlike other neighboring countries where American culture is often dominant, most people in Thailand \u201ccouldn\u2019t give two shits\u201d about Hollywood movies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThey listen to Thai music, they watch Thai TV shows, and they eat Thai food,\u201d Sam said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That\u2019s particularly true in Pattaya, a smaller coastal city about 100 miles south of Bangkok, where Sam chose to live. Once a fishing village, Pattaya has become a tourist town full of hotels and high-rises. Many of the Thai people who live there come from even smaller villages and farming communities. They don\u2019t speak English and have no frame of reference for Western culture. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That\u2019s not particularly surprising. This is Thailand, after all, not Miami Beach, but it still came as a shock for Sam.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s very foreign, and that takes a toll,\u201d he said. \u201cThose first few weeks were tough, man. I felt a base level of anxiety at all times.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018Pay Your Way To Being Popular With Pretty Girls\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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The underlying assumption of the whole \u201cLoser Back Home\u201d conceit is that moving to another country where you stand out and your money goes a lot further makes it easier to meet women. There\u2019s even a subculture of young men who travel the world for that exact reason, calling themselves \u201cPassport Bros<\/a>.\u201d Sam doesn\u2019t deny there\u2019s some truth to the myth, but adds that there\u2019s a more complex explanation hidden beneath the surface.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Jon Gries as Gary aka Greg aka a “loser back home” on HBO’s “The White Lotus.”<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
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\u201cThe only reason you stand out is because you are also foreign to them as a white dude and they can\u2019t gauge how wealthy you are,\u201d he said, noting that it\u2019s not that these women are gold diggers. \u201cYou might have funds, and you might be worth marrying.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But that\u2019s all beneath the surface. For a certain type of Westerner who\u2019s just arrived in Thailand, it can feel like paradise. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt seems like fantasy land,\u201d Sam said. \u201cSay you\u2019ve just had a nasty divorce and you\u2019re miserable and you come here and there\u2019s a whole culture of people that are excited to see you. They\u2019re happy and polite, and they want to drink with you and go on dates with you. Yeah, that\u2019s a good feeling, but there\u2019s way more to it than that.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That is, of course, an oversimplified view of any country or group of people. The attributes Sam describes are what a lot of single white men go looking for when trying to date Thai women.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In his experience, many Thai people are deeply impoverished and in serious debt. In that situation, marrying a rich white guy might be the only solution. \u201cYou might be able to help their whole family and pay some hospital bills.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sam experienced this for himself soon after he moved to Thailand. About 10 weeks later, he went on a Tinder date with a Thai woman named Lele and instantly fell in love. Lele was different from most of the Thai women he\u2019d met. She spoke English and owned an apartment and a car. \u201cThose three things are quite unusual here,\u201d Sam said. She was a year older than him and \u201cgorgeous.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But on their second date, Lele revealed the truth behind the fantasy. Her sister had married a Western man who murdered her and then apparently killed himself in prison<\/a>. Afterward, she became financially responsible for her orphaned nephews, who were still living with their grandmother in a small farming village. She\u2019s also inherited the apartment, which was falling apart.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cSay you\u2019ve just had a nasty divorce and you\u2019re miserable and you come here and there\u2019s a whole culture of people that are excited to see you. They\u2019re happy and polite, and they want to drink with you and go on dates with you. Yeah, that\u2019s a good feeling, but there\u2019s way more to it than that.\u201d<\/p>\n

– Sam, who moved to Thailand 19 months ago<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\u201cThat\u2019s an unexpected gem that you might not get in the West on date No. 2,\u201d Sam said. \u201c\u2018By the way, there\u2019s all this trauma and tragedy in my family history, and I\u2019m the only one in the entire family that\u2019s doing anything about it. Do you want to go on a third date?\u2019 And I was like, \u2018Fuck yeah, I\u2019m all in.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sam quickly got very involved, traveling to Lele\u2019s hometown to meet her family and working nonstop to fix up the apartment. He documented all of this on his YouTube channel, and his followers donated several thousand dollars to help out. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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However, Sam also admits that sharing this story online helped him, too. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Sam<\/div>\n
Sam creates YouTube content on his search for love in Thailand.<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s very hard to get started on YouTube,\u201d he said. \u201cI told the tragic story of this family, and it tracked really well with the audience.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But that only lasted for so long. Eventually, Sam\u2019s YouTube audience stopped caring. \u201cYou can\u2019t just keep flogging that same story,\u201d he said. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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At a certain point, he realized that the relationship had to end as well. Sam didn\u2019t have enough money to solve Lele\u2019s problems, and he figured that by stepping aside, his girlfriend might be able to meet someone else who could. At least, that was his logic for breaking up.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI could only provide love or financial support, not both,\u201d he recalled with a grimace. \u201cBecause if you want financial support, then I\u2019m working seven days a week on YouTube. If you want love, I\u2019ve got no time to do any work. So it\u2019s one or the other, buddy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sam says he has no regrets about the relationship. He\u2019s proud of the help he was able to provide. Then again, a look at his YouTube page might suggest he\u2019s doing just fine. Among the recent videos he\u2019s posted about his finances and his thoughts on \u201cThe White Lotus,\u201d there\u2019s an obvious pattern: parties, alcohol and beautiful young Thai women.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Is this the reality of Sam\u2019s life? Of course not, but over the last 19 months, he\u2019s learned what works on YouTube and what doesn\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI\u2019ve done a string of expos\u00e9s and sad stories,\u201d he said about his early YouTube content after moving to Thailand. \u201cThose videos track terribly. They don\u2019t trend well at all.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Instead, people want to see \u201chappy stuff\u201d \u2014 pretty girls, beautiful beaches, delicious food, etc. Sam knows he\u2019s feeding into the fantasy of life in Thailand that so many Westerners have in their heads. YouTube is primarily for entertainment, he argued, and that means his videos need to be entertaining, even if they don\u2019t always reflect real life.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Sam<\/div>\n
Sam explains why he left Australia for Thailand.<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
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\u201cI never set out to mislead,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t tell any lies. If the people watching these videos listen in and do some thinking and don\u2019t just follow what\u2019s being seen, then they\u2019ll be able to unpack an accurate picture of life as an expat in Thailand.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018I Live A Pretty Simple Life\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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Sam\u2019s life in Pattaya isn\u2019t glamorous, and while moving to Thailand helped cure his anger issues, it\u2019s posed a new type of mental challenge: loneliness. He still doesn\u2019t speak much Thai, which makes it almost impossible to get to know his neighbors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s so easy to communicate with someone from a culture that you\u2019ve grown up in,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s harder here.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Still, when I ask if he\u2019d do it all over again, or if he\u2019d encourage someone else to move to Thailand, Sam doesn\u2019t hesitate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cAbsolutely do it,\u201d he said, before adding a very personal caveat. \u201cWhat you should not do is come here with the intention of surviving off YouTube revenue as your sole income source, because the likelihood of that working is like one in a hundred.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThailand\u2019s a bit tough,\u201d he continued. \u201cThere are a lot of people who have retired here on a pension from their country, and they\u2019re living very simple lives. I live a pretty simple life. I eat simple food and do simple activities \u2014 low-budget stuff in line with my monthly earnings, which are not big yet, but maybe one day. It\u2019s slowly growing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.celebrity.land \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 O artigo anterior foi obtido e traduzido do site internacional da celebrity.land \u2019 <\/em> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s 10 a.m. in Thailand, and Sam\u2019s just returned home from the immigration office in Pattaya, where he renewed his tourist visa to extend what\u2019s become a 19-month stay in the country. Thirty-nine years old and hailing from Sydney, Australia, Sam is one of many single adult men who move to countries like Thailand in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1264931,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1264930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fofocas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1264930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1264931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1264930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1264930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1264930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}