Curtis Nickel is enjoying a brief trip back to Guthrie County.
By Rich Wicks | Times Vedette
For most anyone who has moved away, coming back home can be a special joy. But, for some, that is a much longer trip than others. Curtis Nickel, a 1983 graduate of Guthrie Center High School, recently came back to visit family, and he took the time to tell the story of where life has taken him.
Nickel is a U.S. Navy veteran who now lives in Thailand.
“I work in the oil and gas industry, driving what they call a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) in the water,” Nickel said. “We do underwater construction, and we do the inspections on drill rigs. We do a lot of pipeline inspections.”
On this homecoming trip, Nickel has been able to visit his parents (Janet Clark and Wayne Nickel) and his sister (Alicia Ciesielski), but he’ll soon be heading back to Thailand. Moving there was not something Nickel had planned.
“I’ve been working in the Gulf of Thailand for the last five years. Prior to that, I was working worldwide,” Nickel said. “As far as how I got to Thailand, I was working in Cypress, and some people from Thailand came and worked on the boat I was on, and they said I should come to Thailand, so I did. That was in 2013.”
When Nickel is working, he is out at sea for weeks at a time, working shifts on a “12 hours on, 12 hours off” rotation. But he says he enjoys the job and has adjusted well to life in Thailand, although there were numerous challenges.
“It’s nice, but I had to get used to driving on the opposite side of the road,” Nickel said. “And the food is different — the spiciness of the food.”
The biggest challenge for Nickel was the language.
“The communication is the hardest part, but most people there speak English to some extent,” Nickel said. “I’m not fluent, but I’ve I studied the alphabet. There are four different consonants and 33 vowels. I can recognize them.”
Nickel also had to adjust to an urban setting, living in a city with a population of 1.2 million.
“Everybody drives a motorbike or a scooter over there,” he said.
Nickel says he has enjoyed the climate in Thailand.
“Thailand is warm year-round. I usually golf about three days a week, even though my score doesn’t reflect that,” Nickel said.