Raising his son in Bangkok, Duncan Forgan feels too Scottish to be local — and too foreign to be fully Scottish.
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.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.
