I Lost Everything After Retiring in Thailand

My Thailand retirement started off on rocky grounds. Nothing major happened, but as a guy who had never been to Thailand before, who had decided to retire there based on what I thought was accurate information, I was excited to go and witness what it was going to be like going to some of those famous bars around Bangkok.

I’d been in Thailand for 2 days, just getting used to what it was like in comparison to where I was from. And that’s when I decided to go out for my first evening in Nana Plaza. It was just as wild as everybody said it was.

There were bars on multiple floors, girls absolutely everywhere, and some guys that appeared to be guys who had been there and done that countless times and knew exactly what to do, and a few other guys like me who had never been and were quite nervous.

I walked into a bar on the ground floor to start with. It was one of the most awesome experiences I’d ever had. ordering a drink, looking at the girls, and imagining what my retirement was going to be like because this was on my front door.

I went to another bar, then another, and in that place, I’m chatting to a girl for the first time who came down from the stage to talk to me. I bought her a drink and was quite alarmed about how close she was getting to me, taking my hand and putting it on hers, and it was a good experience.

I left that place after having a great time and went into yet another bar. The same thing happened there and I was getting a little bit more drunk and a girl came and sat next to me and I got her a drink as well.

I talked to her for a long time and I ended up taking her with me. The lights go out, everything seems good and I was in for a huge shock when I discovered that this wasn’t actually a lady at all.

I thought I would have been able to tell the difference, but obviously I couldn’t. And that was the shock of a lifetime. I asked her to leave and made sure there were no problems to go along with that.

But I was very shocked. I guess I was just another newbie who had no idea what he was doing. When I spoke to other guys about that, most of them just laughed at me saying, “How on earth did you not know the difference?”

The reason I’m saying that is because I became ultra paranoid. Yet it didn’t make much difference. I did have a few girls get quite angry with me for asking them if they were actually girls.

Apparently, I was just doing it all wrong according to other people, but I didn’t know. But it was one of those things that you learned the hard way. Other than that, being in Thailand, starting out this new chapter of my life, it was an incredible experience.

I had chosen Thailand simply because it was a place where I understood my money would stretch a lot further. I didn’t have a lot. I had enough to live a respectable retirement in Thailand.

It took quite a lot of getting used to the country. I was just expecting it to be a cheaper and a little bit more backwards version of where I was from, but this couldn’t have been further from the truth.

Lots of things appeared to be more modern, yet certain things seemed to be a bit out of date. But for the most part, I relished in just how easy it was to do certain things, such as how you could rent a place to live in without having to go through a whole application process like you did at home.

You find a place you want to live. How much is it? Here’s the money. And in you move. I loved how easy that was, and I found a great place to live in Bangkok.

Only small, but it was just what I was looking for. My retirement seemed to get off to a great start other than that first thing. Apart from that one little incident that shocked me quite a lot, everything else was going amazingly, and I couldn’t wait to see what the next years of my life would look like.

Settling In and Meeting Someone New

After about 3 months of living in Thailand, I started to feel like I knew my way around. I knew how things worked there. I started to feel very comfortable and also happy that I’d made the decision to retire there.

because I chose Thailand. The reason being, as I’ve already mentioned, that my money would stretch further there. I was pleasantly surprised about just how far my money was able to stretch in the early days.

Everything seemed to be a lot more affordable than where I was from, and that allowed me to be able to go out a lot more than I ever was able to at home. It didn’t feel like you had to hold back in Thailand like you would at home.

And that really was one of the things I loved most about Thailand in the early days of living there. It wasn’t too long after and I’m starting to settle down, starting to feel like I’m actually living there as opposed to just being there for a short amount of time, probably 5 months after arriving in the country, that I actually met a girl that I really liked.

She was a girl and she was quite a bit younger than I was. But the way that she was being the one who seemed to be pursuing the relationship while I was the one taking a step back, I really liked that because it was nothing like I was used to.

At the time, I didn’t know about the intricacies of dating in Thailand. I didn’t know because I had never been before and I was just there for retirement. Because of that, I didn’t know that meeting a girl in a bar was something that was frowned upon.

I didn’t know it was what many people would describe as being a bad thing to do because I didn’t see it for what it was when I was there. I kind of just thought that the reason for the bars was to bring people together.

Perhaps a guy like me from where I was from who was looking for something not available at home and a girl like she was from looking for something that wasn’t available to her at home. I knew there were lots of temporary things that happened between people, but I really didn’t think that these were just like testing the waters to see if you actually like this girl or not.

I had it all wrong and I will admit to that, but I didn’t have it all wrong deliberately. I just saw it that way and believed that it was like that. That’s why when I started to like this girl even more after I’d seen her for quite a few times.

I wondered if she’d be interested to go away with me for a week. I hadn’t left Bangkok ever since I’d arrived in the country, and I wanted to go and see more of the country because I’d heard that there were some incredible beaches.

When she said yes, it wasn’t like the first thing she said was talking about how much she would need for this. It was about how you’d expect a response to be from someone who actually liked you.

So when she said yes in a way that came across to me like it would be something she would love to do, I took that as a very good sign and went with her to a cement only a few hours south of Bangkok. At the end of that break, we both decided that we liked each other a lot.

I mean, I really liked her and I thought the next step of the relationship would be for her to move in with me and she said that would be something she would love to do more than anything. My retirement seemed to be coming together so well.

Not only have I found that the country I live in is indeed very affordable, not only is it fun and exciting, I’m now very fortunate enough to get into a serious relationship with someone and she’s moving in with me. When I retired, I was 55 years old, a long way from getting any kind of pension, but I had investments that gave me about $1,500 a month.

I wasn’t rich, but that’s why I was in Thailand in the first place.

The Joint Bank Account Disaster

When she moved in, things got off to a fantastic start. I found that she was just happy to spend her time with me. Things went well for a number of months and I thought it was time to take things up a notch and we got married.

Because we were going out regularly all the time, this is after 3 months of being married or sometimes we went out alone and brought things back for each other. I thought the best step would be to open a joint bank account that we both had access to so we could both pay for the bills for the condo and everything just like you do in every normal marriage.

When I was married a long time ago at home we had joint bank accounts and everyone I knew had joint bank accounts. So I just thought this was the next stage. I also thought the best thing to do would be to put a year’s living expenses inside the bank and also the money I had for my visa which was separate.

I told her about my visa and what it entailed and that made sense to me. So in this bank account, not even knowing that my visa money at the time should have been in my own account, but I found out that later, but there was 800,000 and I transferred in which came out of my investments about 600,000, so 1.4 million.

The idea was to use 600,000 to live for the year while my investments were topped up by the income they generated. Then it would always be the case of having a certain amount of money in Thailand to cover any eventuality. We went to open the account.

The money was deposited and everything seemed to be perfect. I told her what the account was for. If you need to buy anything, then use this account.

This way, I won’t have to give you an allowance because the money was there for both of us to use. I only meant you could buy anything. Buy something to do with food or necessities.

That’s what I was using it for. And if we went out or we went out together, then we could use this account together in terms of working out what the finances were that we could both use together. We didn’t have the bank connected to the internet.

This was a little bit before that was as widespread as it is today. But she had the ATM card and I had the bank book. If I wanted to take out money, I would go to the bank.

If she wanted to take out, she could use the ATM. I’m thinking when I said to her, “You can take out what you need to buy things that you need.” Perhaps I misunderstood what the word need means.

Need means necessities. And I usually I mean when this was arranged, I took the money I would use for a month, about 20,000 baht out. I told her to pay for the condo and the other bills and use the account.

When it came time for me to take money out the following month though, I was expecting to see the vast majority of the money there. However, there was only 350,000 baht left.

I actually got very angry with the bank thinking they had made a mistake, but they told me no, the ATM card withdrawals had happened, so you better go and speak to your wife about it. She was angry with me.

She had withdrawn this money, saying I told her she could use it for what she needed it for, not understanding what I meant by that, because some of this money had gone to pay for some family’s debt. Some of it had gone to pay for a secondhand truck for her father.

And some of it, she said, went on a new phone and a new bag and other things which were not necessities. She’d spent over a million baht in a month. When I started to lay into her, saying this is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen in my life, she blamed me, saying I told her to use the money for what she needed it for.

Not understanding what I meant by that, because need means food, monthly essentials, that’s it. But to her, need meant looking after her family. I never wanted to see her ever again after that after finding this out.

The problem was I was married to her. I told her I wanted a divorce because I was so furious. So what that meant, I had to pay her what was left in the account just so she would agree to get divorced from me easily.

That whole incident should have been my Thailand lesson that meant I didn’t do anything so stupid again. But I still failed to understand how she thought that was acceptable. But she did, and it happened, and I lost probably 10% of what I had in a very short amount of time.

The sad thing about it though was I didn’t really learn my lesson. I started to think that it might have been a miscommunication. At least then now I know it wasn’t.

I started to think it was me not explaining things properly and perhaps she just didn’t understand. I thought if I was more careful and more specific about things, then it wouldn’t happen again.

So instead of thinking perhaps it’s not a good idea to try and find another relationship in Thailand, perhaps it’s better to stay single, I thought if I meet somebody else, maybe I would have more luck with them. One thing that I did decide on was that I wouldn’t go to the bars as a place to meet someone else.

The problem was I was so happy when I was with her. And now I’m single again, divorced, and quite a lot lighter in terms of how much money I’ve got. My income has dropped from about 1,500 a month to closer to 1,400, just under, in fact.

And that was really upsetting because I hadn’t expected to lose all that money so quickly. I wish I would have known that there were many people who fell for things like this and that it wasn’t a miscommunication at all.

She just deliberately took that money because it was available and she thought she was entitled to it. I wish I’d seen that and understood it. I wish I’d spoken to people who had experiences and I could be convinced out of what I plan to do next because of what I did next would mean I would lose everything.

Another problem I faced was while I’m starting to make friends with expats and going out to meet them occasionally for drinks, these were all guys who were at that time happily married to Thais. When you’re talking to guys who are in the stages of a good part of their relationship, you’re only going to hear about the positive things that have happened to them.

Yet, I really needed to learn about negative things, but I didn’t. And as much as I wish I could go back and change things, I can’t. So, the thing I’m mainly trying to get across here is mix with people who are going to tell you the good and the bad, not just the good.

Because I kind of thought that because I’m speaking to all these people and they all seem to have positive times, that means that the law of averages say that I’m probably going to be okay next time.

The Dating Site and a New Beginning

Unfortunately, I was very wrong by that. And many of those guys that I spoke to went through bad times eventually themselves as well. And I really was a fool.

I decided to join a dating site because I thought that would give me a better chance of meeting someone who didn’t work in a bar. I still didn’t think of the bars as a negative. I just wanted to broaden my horizons, find someone who perhaps had a bit more worldly knowledge and someone who I could hold deeper conversations with.

With my first Thai wife, all I could talk to her about was food and whereabouts we were going to go. We could never have a proper conversation, and I was thinking it would be a good idea to find someone who had a better command of English, because there was absolutely no chance I would ever be able to speak Thai.

Another mistake I made was not knowing that just because you meet someone on a dating site that the person you’re meeting on that dating site could also work in a bar or a massage place or a place where I was trying to avoid meeting people. I just assumed that if you wanted to meet a bar girl, you’d go to a bar.

If you wanted to meet a non-bar girl, you’d use a dating site. So, probably I didn’t do things properly and just assumed incorrectly that when I got a message from a girl and she looked to be my type of girl, I jumped at the possibility of going to meet her for a date to see where this would take us.

Perhaps I should have questioned that she was a lot younger than I was, but I just thought that that was how things were in Thailand. I thought she was just a normal girl who didn’t work in a bar. And when I learned that she did, I was already hooked.

We arranged to meet up at a little Japanese restaurant not too far away from the Asok BTS station. I’d been on two dates before I went on this one with girls that reached out to me on the dating site, but I didn’t feel much when I met them.

But as soon as she walked in, and she was about 20 minutes late, I noticed her straight away. I didn’t want to come across as being a sleaze, but as soon as she opened the door to the place, I was sitting on the table with a view of the door.

I felt that she really brightened up the room the way she came in like nobody else did. She seemed to be really elegant and she had a really nice dress on and my first impressions were that she looks nothing like a bar girl. She noticed me sat on the table because I kind of sat up straight a bit just to say, “Here I am.”

and I hoped that she would get this good first impression about me, too. I was older than her, but I was confident that that was just how things worked in Thailand. It didn’t seem to make sense that I was wrong because you saw older guys with younger girls all the time and not just foreign guys with younger girls.

You would regularly see older Thai guys with younger girls all the time. And it just did appear to be part of the culture and part of the country. And I respected Thailand for that.

That’s the thing. I really respected Thailand for allowing us older guys to have a second go at life and the fact that she was interested in me and she was that beautiful. I was just thankful for Thailand really that this was a possibility.

She came and sat down and the way she smiled, it was like a really genuine smile. And although her English wasn’t to a level where we could hold deep conversations, we could still speak about things that I couldn’t do with my previous wife.

I told her what happened about my previous wife who I met in Thailand and she seemed to react like she was so sorry that that happened to me. She would never do something like that. And she said some Thai girls will try to get money out of you but she was different.

She just said she was looking for someone who she could spend her life with. She said she worked at a place close by. Of course, there was no way when she said a place close by I would have guessed that she actually meant Soi Cowboy, but she really seemed to be a normal girl.

We had a great meal in there. Always loved Japanese food and I could tell it was one of her favorites. She picked the place out and I paid the bill and we left and went for a drink at quite an upmarket swanky style bar not too far away.

And I felt that the conversation that we had was effortless. I was very interested in meeting up with her again, but it was her who said, “If it’s not too late yet for you, probably 9:00 p.m. it was, why don’t we go for a few more drinks somewhere else?”

So that’s exactly what we did. We spent a few more hours talking about our lives. At 25, she had one child from a town in Isan called Buriram. And she happened to be from the same town that my other wife was from.

My old wife that is. She said she worked hard, helped to support her family, and it was just like the usual tale. Although, when she said she worked hard, I thought she meant she worked in an office close by.

I should have known that there was probably something going on here about the fact that she worked in a bar or something because after we had those drinks, she said she’d love to go back to my place with me. I wasn’t about to decline that.

I just thought she really liked me, not that she was a bar girl who was trying to take a different approach for her new mark. It wasn’t that she wanted any money from me, though, when we woke up the following morning.

It was just that I thought she really liked me because normal girls don’t do that unless they really like people. So, I took that as a huge win that I found someone real and genuine and who deep down really liked me.

I kept seeing her regularly. And if I actually think about it though, the thing that upsets me the most was although I saw her maybe three times a week for the next month, the other four days she was in the bar meeting other guys and doing whatever it is that girls do in the bars that I was seeing her as a non-bar girl and she didn’t want anything from me.

That’s the thing that I think is most alarming. She wasn’t getting anything out of me. I was footing the bill for the meals when we went out because that was expected.

I knew I would do that. But in terms of direct financial assistance or any other means of monetary benefit for herself, he wasn’t getting anything out of me. I actually saw this and felt a huge sense of admiration and respect for her and love for her because she worked so hard and she didn’t want anything from me.

I thought I was very fortunate to have met her. That’s all I’m trying to say here. And I saw my previous relationship as an investment to make sure this one goes right.

The Confession

And I would say we’d been seeing each other for a couple of months. No sign that she was a bar girl, but I felt like I actually wanted to have this relationship become one where we both lived with each other. She was very happy when I asked her if she wanted to take the relationship a bit further, saying how happy she would be to move in.

I talked about her working situation because I never saw her in the daytime before, only in the evenings, and I used to ask her, “Have you had a good day at work?” And she just basically gave fake answers. But now we’ve decided to live together, she said she had something to tell me.

We were speaking on the phone and we were just talking about things after we’d already got this sorted out. We’d spoken about it in person, agreed that this was going to happen and I’m at my place and she calls me and said she had something to say. Can we meet up?

I had no idea what she wanted to say. Maybe she changed her mind. Maybe she wanted to finish the relationship. And that’s the thing that I was thinking about when I went to go and meet her.

I was so worried that she was going to tell me that she wanted to break off the relationship and that she didn’t want to see me anymore that when she actually said when we sat down and she looked very serious, she said, “I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t think I would like you as much as I did.

I’m sorry because you said you didn’t want to meet a girl that worked in a bar, but I do work in a bar on Soi Cowboy.” I should have taken that as deceit. She lied to me about what she did for the first few months to make me fall for her.

But I didn’t actually feel bad. And the reason I didn’t feel bad was because I thought she was going to tell me that she didn’t want to stay with me anymore. And this was although quite painful to listen to because I didn’t meet her there.

I didn’t see her when she was living in that world. I only saw her when she was with me. So I felt quite relieved actually that she didn’t tell me she wanted to end the relationship.

as long as she stopped working in the bar, then you can come and live with me and we can be together and we can be happy together. She seemed to be very pleased and relieved that that’s what I said and that’s how I felt.

And she said, “Do I want to go and have a look at the bar?” I just said, “No, I would rather keep things separately, but as soon as you move in, let’s just forget about that.” The more I think about it, the more I think she planned that all along.

Get me to fall for her. Get me to really love her. tell me she has something to say and put it across in a way like she doesn’t want this relationship to last and she doesn’t want the relationship to continue anymore, but instead she can spring this on to me that she used to work in a bar and I will be okay with it because at least I can still have the relationship.

She was very clever at that and although I didn’t want to find a bar girl for a new girlfriend, I had done although it wasn’t the same as actually meeting her there.

Living Together and the Money Requests Begin

But when she moved in, I was very happy. Although I only got about $1,400 a month in income to live on, she’s never asked me for money up until now. Not once has she asked for anything from me up until that moment.

I didn’t expect her to start asking for money when she moved in, but I should have known she would have because where else would she get money from because she’s not working anymore. Her asking for money would lead me to taking and making a lot more ridiculous decisions in order just to try to stay with her.

And the thought of something like this happening to anybody else really upset me. So that’s why it’s important to say what happened. As soon as she moved in, I felt like it was the best decision.

She moved in at the start of a month, exactly on the first, and after a few days, it felt like we’d been together for years and years. I was able to stick within budget because I was never really the go out sort.

I mean, I was when I was in Thailand, but not excessively. And she just seemed to be happy to do what I wanted to do. I would ask her, “What would you like to do today?” and she would just say, “Up to you.

Whatever you want, I will do. I want you happy. I really love you and I want you to be happy.” I really loved that about her because I thought that was exactly what she wanted to do.

If I said, “Today, I’m happy to just kick back, watch a series from beginning to end.” She would sit beside me, go and get me a drink from the fridge, she’d cook something at lunchtime, and it was a perfect relationship.

This lasted for the whole month. It was like a dream. I would say this was any man’s dream to be able to have such a wonderful girl be your girlfriend who loved you, who respected you, and who wanted to do what you wanted to do, and who just seemed to want to please.

At the end of the month, I had incredibly strong feelings for her. I couldn’t imagine my life in the future without her in it. I was starting to think about getting married to her, maybe moving to a slightly bigger place because I could afford that and it would have been within budget.

I was starting to think about what the future would bring because I found someone who I finally felt that I was looking for. I didn’t take a step back to think that what I was looking for was completely unrealistic and basically impossible.

I wanted a girl who was a lot younger than I was to want to do what I wanted to do at all times and appear to be happy to do that. I wanted that. But the problem was she gave that to me for the first month that we were together.

and she made me so attracted to her that when at the end of the month pretty much like clockwork I would guess he said you know I’m not working anymore right most of the time I have to send money to my family every month I don’t want any money for me but I need to send 10,000 back for my family because they look after my child and if I don’t send it they will have a problem with me and the only way I can get that money is if I go back to work in the bar she said she didn’t want to go back to work in the bar but she’s thinking about looking for another job

She wants to find another job so she can send this money to her family. She loved me. She said she didn’t want to make my life difficult. She wanted our relationship to be a strong one and last for a long time, last forever.

She said, “So, she’s saying she’s going to get a job.” She said she even had an interview arranged at a local office just to work as a receptionist. She said it was for 6 days a week starting at 8:00 a.m. until 7:00 p.m.

She wasn’t sure if she would be offered the job, but she needs to try and find it, send money for her family. What I’m saying is she didn’t directly say to me, “Can you give me 10,000 baht a month?” But she pretty much might as well have done.

And at the time, I didn’t see her actually talking the way she did as asking me. I didn’t even think the thought of getting any money from me crossed her mind. That’s how well she managed to play me.

When I said to her, “I’ll give you the money. It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” We all know that that was her plan all along. It’s pretty obvious that that was her plan all along.

Yet I said that to her, she seemed to be so grateful and so thankful for that and display a side of her that looked like she wasn’t expecting this at all. But thank you so much. That was how she got me to agree to 10,000 baht a month without even asking, making me feel like it was my idea to give her this money.

Damn, she was good at it. But the problem was she was good at everything else, too. What she was giving me at this time, I felt like I would have been stupid not to agree to give her that money because I really didn’t want to lose her.

After I agreed to this, as I’ve heard in lots of other stories, lots of other guys saying what happened to them, she though didn’t change straight away. Most people seem to look back and acknowledge a change in their girl once they’ve agreed to give her some money, but she didn’t change.

She behaved exactly the same way as she did during the first month for the next three whole months. What would you like to do today? Up to you. Watch a series. Okay.

And then she’s bringing me drinks from the fridge. She’s cooking and she’s doting on me. She’s romantic. She’s sweet. She’s everything exactly the same as she was before.

And if I have to give her 10,000 a month, which means that she doesn’t have to work, I don’t have a problem. I saw it as 10,000 a month to be able to spend night and day with the girl of my dreams because she needed that money for her family and she was willing to work for it.

So, I didn’t have to give it to her. But I felt like I was in debt to her by her not working and giving her this money was just to help her. Those three months were probably the best time of my life together with her.

And there was nothing that gave me any cause for concern that this wasn’t actually who she was, that this wouldn’t last forever. There was nothing that made me think that that would be the case.

The Proposal and the Family Visit

So I asked her to marry me after we’d been living together for 4 months. And she said that I made her the happiest girl in the world. When I asked her to marry me, I did it in a very traditional kind of way.

We went out to a nice restaurant and I even got down on one knee. I know it’s stupid to admit to, but in my mid-50s, I got down on one knee in a restaurant in plain view of everybody else to a 25-year-old former bar girl who I thought was the best thing to ever happen to me.

How she managed to actually shed a tear of happiness when she agreed to marry me. I don’t know if that was something she’d practiced or if at the time she actually did hold a few feelings for me, but she actually shed a tear thinking that she was so happy.

I felt so fortunate because I just expected how she was with me for the first 4 months would remain the same throughout the course of our entire lives through our marriage. I’m not talking about physical things here.

Of course, this was very good, but she always just seemed to want to please. She always just seemed to be happy just to be able to support her family and to be with me who I considered as part of her family as well. She was the perfect girl in every single way.

Not once from when we stayed together had she ever screamed at me, shouted at me, or even raised her voice at me. Not once did I do something and she said, “I don’t like it when you do that,” or, “I don’t like that. Why you do that?”

Not once did she ever take a dig at me, complain about anything that I did, complain about any of the habits that to me were normal that to someone else might not have been. And not once did she do any of those things for four whole months.

And she shed a tear when I asked her to marry me. So, as far as I’m concerned, I found the perfect girl, and I can’t wait to get married to her and continue this life. I don’t have much money at this time.

My income is very low, but I’m living within the income I’m getting, and I’m having the best time of my life because I’m with her. The reason I want to keep going on about this is because if at that moment in time there was a choice, I would have given my life for her because that’s how much I loved her.

I mean, my actual life here. I would have given my life to save her because I thought she cared about me. I mean, I suppose I did give my life for her.

Not my actual life, but everything I worked for in my life. though she was just so incredibly good at being my perfect girl. I had no idea what was to come.

I didn’t go into detail about my first marriage in Thailand because I wanted to talk about this one because this is the one that matters the most. But just as the first time it was a question of going to be introduced to her family up in Buriram.

I’d been before when I got married before. I’d been through a similar process and I remembered a few bits about it. The plan was though, we wanted to go up and spend a bit of time in the city first, just a few days, have a look around together, treat it as a bit of a break, and then we can go to the family’s house and get all the formalities arranged for the wedding.

I knew what it would entail because I’d done it before. Just to let you know, for my first marriage, I gave a 100,000 baht to her family for sin sod, so I was expecting something similar this time. But those few days we spent in Buriram were great.

went to a great little restaurant by the water. Went to check out some of the famous sites there. As I’ve already known from my previous time there, I’m finding that things that we do in Buriram, while quite similar to the things we do in Bangkok in terms of the types of restaurants we’re going to, the types of things we’re doing, it is considerably cheaper than Bangkok.

And if anything, when you’re somewhere like that, you feel like you’re a bit different to all the other foreigners who are in central Bangkok around all the other foreigners. You feel like you’re in Thailand proper. And I liked it there and I could clearly see that she liked being there as well.

The way she spoke in the Isan dialect, she felt at home there and I understood why. After those few great days, we went to see the family. Great people, at least I thought they were.

She was from a family that were quite poor. My first wife was from a family that were also quite poor, but she wasn’t as poor as my soon-to-be wife. You could really tell the difference.

And while they had a house, it wasn’t a great house, they had a bit of land that they did some farming on, and they were able to survive without going hungry, the children could go to school, they had hospitals available, and it wasn’t as bad as many people seem to picture Thailand.

And I’ve heard that so many times, seen it in so many comments. When you say poor, it’s not poor like you think because these people can still live and exist. And I think that’s important to say.

What I had though for me wasn’t a lot I suppose and for many people it wouldn’t be but for them I guess it would have been. The family’s house was made of basic concrete and I find it quite shocking that the roof was made of asbestos tile.

The reason I found that out was because there were a few tiles not on the roof. Not tiles but big sheet type things leaned up against the side of the house and I just took a look at it because I was interested and I saw on the back asbestos. So I just hope they didn’t break them.

Her mother and father lived together with her child as well as her younger sister who was 16. And her youngest sister spoke a bit of English as well. Not brilliant, but okay.

And I just wondered, was she destined for the bars of Bangkok? I hope not. But I don’t think the family knew exactly that she worked in a bar. I’m talking about my wife here, my soon-to-be wife.

They just knew she worked in Bangkok and met foreigners. While they might be able to put two and two together, it wasn’t like they sent her to work there. I think that’s a very big misconception.

Perhaps a very marginal amount of families will send their daughters to work in Bangkok. Maybe one in 10,000. But I don’t think people have it right when they say the family send them to work there.

The girl goes to work in Bangkok and maybe finds herself in a bar. Most families wouldn’t do that because it wasn’t like they were so poor that they actually needed to. We were going to be staying in Buriram for just over a week.

few days in the city and then the plan was to stay in the family’s house. But we decided when we got there that the best thing to do would be to stay at a hotel in the city, probably 20 minutes away, and we could rent a motorcycle to go back and forth because there wasn’t really enough room in the house if I was there.

I would have probably been able to stay there if they had air conditioning, but I would have had trouble sleeping because there was none of it. Very basic, though. Basic bathroom facilities, as you’d expect, they would be.

an outside bathroom, bucket for a shower, squat toilet, no proper flush facility, just rural Thailand style. We talked at length about how we were going to get married, what it would entail, and I was informed that they were looking for 500,000 baht in sin sod.

That seemed to be quite a lot. I knew I would have to pay something, but I thought that that was too much. I wanted to try and negotiate and come up with a more realistic figure, but I had to take a bit of a step back and think, how could I negotiate without looking like I was disrespecting my fiancée and her family.

I didn’t want to point to the fact of her having a child. Didn’t want to point to the fact that he wasn’t exactly new, but I just said I was of the understanding that it was going to be about 100,000 baht. That’s how much I paid last time.

Is there some way we can meet in the middle? I just said my investments are currently tied up and if I paid 500,000 we might be short for a year but I could do 300,000 if that would be okay. I said that to her.

She spoke to her parents and immediately almost a second after I spoke they had nodded their heads like really quickly and yes she said yes. I think they started off high expecting me to come down to a much smaller figure and stupidly I said 300,000 and if I’d said 100,000 they’d have probably accepted that.

If I’d said 50,000 they’d have probably accepted that. So, that was a big mistake, but I didn’t really mind because I thought it was worthwhile. I wanted to be in their good books.

I wanted them to respect me and think of me as part of their family. So, this was agreed to. When I got married for the first time, it was quite a drawn out process.

We had to come back later, but they just said we can do it very soon. They said in about 10 days. So while I expected to go to Bangkok for a few weeks or even a few months before this was going to happen, we actually extended our stay in Buriram.

The ceremony I felt was really special. Felt like it was even more special than the first marriage I had because at least at this time I thought I knew exactly who I was marrying. I knew exactly who she was, what she wanted and what made her happy.

I thought I was what made her happy. But when that was done and after we registered the marriage, which we did in Buriram, I was just excited to begin what I thought would be the best and the last chapter of my life and I wanted it to last as long as possible.

I had spent that bit of money giving to her family as well as paying for the wedding itself, which meant that my income had dipped a bit more because I had to take that out of my investments. I didn’t have any other money.

So, we’re now talking about probably $1,300 a month, maybe slightly more, but closer to $1,300 than $1,400. But based on what we were spending, even though I was giving her 10,000 baht a month, which was approximately $300, it was still enough to live.

After we were married, we went back to Bangkok. We did have a week away together, but we didn’t spend a lot of money. I wanted to go somewhere and have a special time for a honeymoon, and we went to a very beautiful place, but we didn’t spend a lot.

Like I said, we didn’t spend a lot because she didn’t want me to spend a lot. We got back to Bangkok and up until this point, she had been the same all the time. She’s not once said anything other than we’ve already talked about.

Everything was perfect.

The Business Proposal

And when she came to me this time, I’m not saying she came to me in a different way. I’m not saying she was angry or anything. She came to me in the way she’d always been with me, not like she was angry about anything or like I was doing anything wrong.

Kind of like she was upset about things. Now that we were married, she feels like as married couples, they’re meant to make a bit more money. She wants to make sure I will be okay when I’m older.

She’s concerned about our future. And she just said she’s so happy to be married, but she wants to make sure that our marriage can last forever. She thinks if we continue the way we’re doing things now, she said it will be good for a long time.

She said maybe 5 years, but what happens when I get a bit older and maybe I’m not able to do things as well anymore? She wants to be able to look after me. She said she wants to be able to care for me in my old age and it’s expensive.

I was approaching 60, but not yet. And while this could have happened later, I mean, I was already starting to have an issue with one of my legs. Not a big issue, but I couldn’t walk like I used to.

No chance of running and walking up steps was a bit of a chore, but I felt good about myself. The thing was though, the way she talked about this, I felt really special that she cared and loved me so much that she worried about our future.

And it wasn’t like she was asking for anything when she was talking about this. She was just saying she’s thinking now that we’re married about things and what we can do together so that we can have the best marriage and the best future.

She didn’t share any ideas yet, but she was so grateful, she said, to have met me and to have got married to me that the thought of not being able to stay with me made her feel bad. So the way she feels now that we’re married is she wants to be able to do something to help.

I just said, “Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. Let me know what you have and any ideas because I’m really interested to know.” I wasn’t expecting her to say what she said.

Coming up with an idea that would involve me taking all my money out of my investments and doing something with that which was meant to improve our existence. I wasn’t expecting that and she never said that directly.

She said something that sounded like it was going to be amazing, something that she felt passionate about, something she felt would be good for both our futures. She didn’t say, “I want any money for this.”

She just said, “This is what I’m thinking about doing, but I don’t know how to do it yet.” Her idea, though, she said after a while, this is a few weeks later, and nothing’s changing anywhere else.

She just said she thinks she wants to spend a little bit of time in Buriram. She’s found a small place in the city. Only small, she said. But if she can get a loan from the bank to get this place, then she could open a restaurant from downstairs.

A restaurant? I didn’t know that restaurant was one of the go-to ideas that people seem to have and that guys tend to invest in and lose their money in. But she said she’s going to go to the bank to see if she can get a loan cuz she wants to try to buy this place.

It was 2.5 million baht. Spend a little bit turning it into a restaurant and then once that’s up and running with a great chef, she said he wants to look at doing something else. In terms of how much she was talking about dollar-wise, that would have been just under half of what I had.

And I didn’t offer it up straight away. I was just interested to know how this would work. When she said she wanted to spend a bit of time in Buriram, she meant by herself.

And because of that, the way she presented it was like because it would be cheaper to do it like that, indicating that she’d prefer to do it with me. I just left her to think about her idea, see what would happen when she went to the bank.

And I felt fortunate that I had someone that cared about me so much. At least I thought. It quickly became clear that she wasn’t going to be able to secure a loan from the bank and she felt very deflated when she found that out.

She went to a few banks. She said she did. I didn’t go with her. And everywhere declined, saying that she didn’t have any credit history, so therefore it wouldn’t be possible to lend her the money.

She just said, “Never mind. I’ll try and think of something else.” I really thought that was a good idea. That’s what she said. “But I’ll think of something else that doesn’t need as much money.”

Whether it was by design on her part, which I think most definitely it was, or just because I was stupid and I didn’t really understand what I was doing, I just thought we both love each other. She wants to do something with her life.

She’s of the age where she still wants to do things. She wants to make sure we’re both okay in the future. I don’t have a big income now. So, what about if I just take my investments and invest them together with her and we can live on that instead?

Give her some control. Give her some security. That shouldn’t be a problem because she seems to know what she’s doing. It was by design, but I was the one who offered.

It was apparent that she wasn’t going to get money from somewhere else. And the thing was, she was never asking for me to give her the money. She was never changing trying to get me to do things.

She was always the same throughout the whole of our relationship. I said, “Why don’t we go together up to Buriram and look exactly what you’re talking about and let’s see if we can do this together.” She knew what my income was, knew how much I had that provided this income, and perhaps she knew what her target was, but she couldn’t try and get anything above this, but I’m sure that it was her idea to get the money out of my control into her control.

But at the time, I didn’t see it that way. I just saw it as someone who wanted to better our lives. I thought she wanted to make both our lives better, and if that in turn meant making her family’s lives better as well, I didn’t see any problem with that.

So, we went up to have a look. The place that she said she found when we arrived had unfortunately, she already said, been sold, so we can’t look at that place. But, we can have a look around at other things.

Another thing that I think about today, was there even a place that she said she had in mind before, or was it just a shot in the dark to try to get to this position that we were now in? After we’d spent about a week there, we both decided that it was exactly what we wanted to do.

This is where we wanted to live and we’re going to take my investments, reinvest them here, and that should mean that we can make more money. It would be better for me, better for her, and better for everybody.

The Shop House Purchase

I cashed in all my investments, every last one of them, around $230,000 in total, and I transferred it straight to Thailand. It felt great when the money hit the account. Felt like we could start building our life together from here.

That was the thing, I think, that appealed to me the most. Everything I had was from my past life’s work, my whole life’s work, that it was just me. I wanted what we had to be what we had together.

So that was why it felt good. And I didn’t even consider that there was any risk involved with it. I didn’t think I was taking a risk.

I didn’t think she was manipulating me or controlling me in order to get this. I didn’t think that. I just thought I was solidifying our future. Now that the money was in Thailand, we were quickly looking around for things to do.

We knew the income that we needed to replace. And because we weren’t able to do this restaurant, we would need to find something else. The thing that she always seemed to be interested in the most was being able to buy a place, do a business from the downstairs area, and maybe live upstairs if it was a two or three story.

We spent quite a long time looking at different things. And the thing that I’m most regretful for, the thing that I hate myself for the most is the fact that when she’s talking to me about things, she’s doing exactly like she’s always done. We’re not having any problems, never have any issues, but she’s always saying how much certain things can make, how much you can make by doing a certain business or what you can do by that business over there.

I believed her 100%. What I’m saying is she would point out businesses and tell me how much they made on average because she said she knew about them. Maybe they might make a bit less or a bit more, but yeah, if we had something like this, we could make a 100,000 a month.

She seemed to be really interested in business. She seemed to be interested in that kind of world. And it was quite difficult for me personally to actually enter because I didn’t speak the language.

Again, I didn’t take a step back and think, why didn’t she do this before? Why did she go work in a bar? And I just thought it was because of a lack of finances, that she was held back by not being able to have money to do this.

Not that she wasn’t clever enough. I think I made the mistake, though. I mean, I did. But the thing is though, I’m so excited about the thought of us both doing something and really unlocking her potential.

I wanted to unlock her potential and we’re going to build something that maybe can give us 2 or $2,500 a month income, nearly double the old one. I’m not thinking that anything is going to go wrong. I’m not thinking anything bad could happen.

She was just very good at playing me the way she wanted to. Sometimes I think perhaps she was real all along and it was just a stupid decision and me not understanding what she was saying. Perhaps that might be true.

Perhaps it wasn’t malicious. But if that was the case, things wouldn’t have ended the way they did. So, I’ll leave it for you to decide.

We were renting a small place while we were looking around trying to spend as little money as possible. She’s always helping me to save money at this time because we don’t have an income coming in and she’s not asking for anything.

We’re looking for a business and the money needs to go into that. So, that’s what we focus on. Eventually, we found a shop house in a very good part of town.

It was newly constructed, quite big, four-story. Because it was in such a good location, it seemed to be perfect place to run a business from downstairs and we could live upstairs. A great building, great location.

It was priced at 5 million baht. It was an empty shell, no air conditioning or anything inside. had bathrooms, but they would need a bit of upgrading. A completely empty shell.

But there was a lot of foot traffic walking past, always people walking past. And because of the location, my wife said that this could be the best choice. If we bought this, spent a bit of money making a restaurant downstairs, making a place for us to live upstairs.

If we invest a total of about $200,000 into this, we could be completely set up. With a little bit of money left over, we could buy a car because we would need that. She said we should make about $2,000 a month in profit, which seemed great.

How I didn’t think to myself, that’s all my money. Literally all my money and absolutely nothing left over and she’s going to own everything. She’s going to have full control. I didn’t think like that.

I just thought this was the answer to our future. I even thought maybe once this does well, we can buy the one next door. I’m thinking big future, not self-preserve.

So, we decided that we would buy this together in her name and do everything like she said would be a good idea because it seemed to me like it would. We’d just be selling normal Thai food like the restaurants you see everywhere for local people.

Cheap dishes, small profit per dish, but a lot of dishes served. We pulled the trigger and did it. And about 2 months after we bought it, it was all ready to go.

Downstairs for the restaurant, upstairs for living, and we had a car which went into my wife’s possession. and we had enough money in the bank to live for a whole year without needing to make anything. So I thought my future together with her was secured.

The Restaurant Fails

It was a hive of activity when we opened. She got two people to help. One was a good chef according to her and another who I don’t really know what she did but she said that these people were needed.

I was expecting there to be a phase of getting the word out that we were open and what we did, but I was expecting within a few weeks that we would be really busy because that’s what she said would happen. The thing was though, although we were getting people coming in, often times people would walk past our place to go to the more established places, which weren’t too far away, but we are getting people in.

They would comment that the food was good. But during the first month, it didn’t really make much money. The worst part was though at the end of the month and I’m thinking we might have made 10,000 back but at least we’ve made something.

But my wife said after she took her 10,000 and we paid 10,000 for the chef and 8,000 for the other staff. We don’t have enough to give the other staff 8,000. We only got in 20,000 she said and that was quite alarming because that meant I actually had to pay 8,000 baht out of pocket for this other person.

She was still taking her money though. For her it wasn’t as alarming. But the problem was this went on for a while and I’m paying staff out of pocket.

Sometimes it’s a little bit for the chef as well, but my wife’s always getting 10,000. After 3 months, what was meant to be a year’s living expenses in the bank is now only enough for me to live 6 months because of all the extra expenses that are coming up.

And that was when I actually started to really panic. Up until then, I wasn’t concerned. I wasn’t worried. I was just completely focused on how happy my wife made me feel and how great she was with me and how ambitious and driven she seemed to be that I failed to actually think about my own self and protecting myself.

And now I was really concerned having such a small amount of money left. Coming to this realization that I was living in a fantasy world, I was blinded by how great I felt when I was with her, that everything I had was under her control. It wasn’t making as much money as she said it would.

And it was when I started to panic that my wife, who had always been exactly the same from when we met up until this very moment. That was when I saw a side of her that I’d never seen before.

She was starting to get short with me, starting to shout at me. Starting to say, “I’m trying.” Starting to say, “Why do you want to rely on me?” That’s when I started to get angry, saying, “You told me you wanted me to rely on you, and I did everything that you wanted to do.

Now, if this doesn’t work in 6 months, I don’t have anything left. Plus, I had my insurance payment coming soon, and I knew I had to pay that. It was expensive, so now I don’t even have that much money.

I suggested we sell the car to get some money back, but she said we need it for the business. My wife never touched me again after that. She was my perfect wife until it became clear that she had everything out of me that she could get, and then she wasn’t my perfect wife anymore.

I suggested all kinds of things, selling the car, like I said, but that was a no mortgaging the place because now we have it. hopefully she could get something from it, but no. Even firing the staff and working there together, we can’t do that because she needs help.

I just hoped that it would pick up and she would get back to how she was. But it didn’t and she didn’t. And when I came to the realization that I actually had no money left whatsoever and no control over any of this, and the fact that she’s no longer my perfect wife, right at the most convenient moment for her, that’s when I realized that I think she’d played me all along.

to go from such a long time of never having anything wrong to all of a sudden she’s like a different person. I still held out hope though. I said to her, “I’ve got no money left. I need you to look after me.”

I held out hope that she would say I will, but she just said, “I think you should leave.” I didn’t leave straight away. I stayed on with no money. That is surviving on very cheap food that I could get together from the restaurant below.

But when it came time to renew my visa, I didn’t have that money in the bank anymore. I couldn’t do it. and I didn’t have enough money to pay an agent to use the gray area method.

I could either overstay the visa and hope she would change knowing full well she wouldn’t or I could leave. With literally no money and a visa expiring in a few days time and a wife who had got everything out of me and was my perfect wife no more. I knew the game was up and she’d won.

I somehow got together enough money for a plane ticket flew home and I tried to call my wife but she never answered. She’d managed to play me and get everything out of me and be my perfect wife until the last moment.

I don’t know how she could be so calculating, but she was. And then I had the difficult task of trying to rebuild my life. I survive now, but that’s pretty much all I do.

I never got the chance to be able to save again. Never got the chance to be able to think about retirement again. Never got the chance to do anything again.

It was like she had a spell over me. It was like she could read me like a book and knew exactly what I liked and what I wanted and what I loved. and she wanted everything I had.

She got everything I had. But the thing that makes it more difficult for me to accept is that I offered everything I had to her. She didn’t even have to ask for it. I mean, she did, but not directly.

And that’s basically how I destroyed my life in Thailand. I’m not somebody who should give advice, but one thing that is obvious is that you should never give up control of what you have to anyone, especially to someone that you have strong feelings for because you don’t actually know if they have feelings for you.

I hate my life as it is and I will continue to because I’ve got no hope of ever having any dreams come true again. I thought my dreams were coming true when I was with her. Problem was that those dreams became a nightmare when she had got everything out of me that I had.

I really hate myself because of what happened. I really, really hate myself.