I Retired to Thailand With £300000 Then Lost Almost Everything
I was from the United Kingdom and I moved to Thailand in 2016. I spent the years before that traveling around different countries in Southeast Asia. I wanted to find the one that I liked the most. I think that’s what many people do when you’re looking to retire in a different country. I thought I was being smart by not just choosing the place and moving there sight unseen. I thought I would dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s and come to the best decision possible for my retirement. I quickly found out that I preferred Thailand to all the other countries in the region.
For budget reasons, I was only considering Southeast Asia. There were countries in Europe that I enjoyed that I used to holiday in in the past, but they were too expensive. My reason for choosing a country in Southeast Asia was purely down to how much money I had. I worked at the same company for over 30 years. I had accumulated savings, including the money I sold my house for, of about £300,000. And added to that, I had a pension that paid me £1,000 a month. I would have preferred to have more, but who wouldn’t? I was realistic with my situation and based on the research I had done, I thought this would be more than enough to finally be able to retire in Thailand.
I was very close to working for an extra 2 years to save up even more money. But when I realized that I’d only have an extra 10 or 15,000 saved up for an extra two years work, I didn’t really see any point in sacrificing those years just for that bit extra money. I didn’t think it would make much difference. So I finally pulled the plug and left my job.
Life Before Thailand
I had a previous marriage that broke down 10 years before I retired and I tried dating again and even got into quite a serious relationship with someone about my age. But I didn’t see that coming to anything. The problem was being in a relationship always was that she wanted different things to me. She worked as well, but her dreams were different. My life was focused on retirement and starting to live life and hers was focused on getting a bigger house and burning more money to get it and just very different dreams to my own. So we decided to part ways and I spent the past 5 years completely single saving and just waiting for the day I could retire. That’s all I thought about.
And if money was no object, I don’t think I would have chosen Southeast Asia. I’m not saying that I didn’t like Thailand. I loved Thailand and lots of things about it. But I would have preferred to move somewhere closer to home and a bit more close to what I was used to.
Choosing Bangkok
When I was in Thailand doing my research, it was very difficult to know where the best place to move would be. My intention was to use my £1,000 a month income and spend £1,000 a month out of my savings. I didn’t expect to live to 96, which is when the money would have finally run out. £2,000 a month living in Thailand was meant to give me a better life than I would have at home.
I decided I wanted to live in Bangkok. There was something about the city that really drew me in. how busy it was, how crazy it was. And I liked the combination of the new modern and vibrant version of the city as well as the old school version of the city that you could find going out of the main tourist areas. I knew I wanted to live along the BTS route. In an ideal world, I planned to rent somewhere close to Nana. Some people say that’s not the real Thailand, that it’s too westernized, but that’s what I was looking for. I didn’t want to go completely local. I wanted some of the creature comforts that I was used to from back at home. These were non-negotiables, and that’s why I was looking at Nana.
I wanted a two-bedroom unit. I still had hobbies, and one of them was gaming, and I wanted to use a spare bedroom for that. I thought 15,000 baht per month would be the perfect budget, but I couldn’t find anywhere around Nana for that amount. That was when my first compromise came. I moved to a condo in Bang Na. It was still close to the BTS, but it was quite a lot of stations away from where I wanted to be. I wasn’t expecting the place to be flashy or fancy or luxurious, just a basic place. But the fact I couldn’t find such a place in Nana or even in Asok I failed, was a big disappointment. I signed a one-year contract for my condo and paid two months upfront deposit. So far so good.
After I had my condo, the next thing I needed was to buy things for it. It was mainly furnished. It had the bed, the kitchen, the table, wardrobes, and everything like that. But it didn’t have a TV, and I needed to buy plates and dishes and everything that you would need. I spent close to 100,000 baht getting everything I needed as well as a very good quality office desk and chair for my gaming. The place had a fridge which was great and a washing machine but I still had to buy a lot of things but I had budgeted for that and it wasn’t a concern.
The Retirement Visa Process
I’d only been in Thailand for 2 weeks and I’d already found my place to live and the next thing on the list was the visa. I didn’t have a Thai bank account yet and I needed that to deposit the money for my retirement visa. I found it funny that you could go into multiple branches of the same bank and they wouldn’t open an account for you. But if you go to the right branch, they will. So I managed to open a Bangkok Bank account after a whole lot of stress and effort and I transferred in the 800,000 baht that I would need. This would be locked in the account and I wouldn’t be able to touch it as long as I wanted the visa. I was on the path for the visa which I got a few months later and that really reduced the stress levels and once you’ve got the condo and your visa, you’re pretty much good to go and just start living in Thailand indefinitely as long as the money doesn’t run out.
The First Months of Retirement
I really enjoyed my first few months of retirement in Thailand. I was staying well within my budget and I even made some friends with other expats who were doing the same as me. When you move to a place like Bangkok, I think it’s different than if you moved somewhere like Spain, for example. If you move to the south of Spain as an English person, most of the other expats there are going to be English and other Europeans as well. But what I liked about Bangkok was that it was different. You were meeting people from all different countries, from all different walks of life. And I thought that was one of the best things about Thailand.
But I knew that I couldn’t keep just going out all the time and meeting people and spending money. But mostly I would spend a lot of time gaming, something I really like to do. I’d also go for walks in the park in the evenings and go out to eat street food or go for a nice meal when I felt like it. And the first 3 months was everything that I pictured retirement would be. I hadn’t left Bangkok, but one of the things I was planning to do as part of my retirement was to do trips to different parts of Thailand every 3 or 4 months, see what it was like, and use that time to have a holiday. I hadn’t been anywhere apart from Bangkok when I went to look at Thailand as a place to retire. Bangkok was the only place I went to. So, I was excited to go and see some different places.
A Trip to Pattaya
The first place I went was Pattaya. I was not the type of person that liked visiting the girly bars, but very occasionally I would go in there, have some drinks, and just have conversations with some of the girls. When I got to Pattaya, my first reaction was, “Why didn’t I move here instead?” I signed my lease on the condo for one year in Bangkok, and I didn’t want to lose the deposit on that. But Pattaya, I quickly found, would have been a better stretch for my budget. It also had the benefit of being close to the sea and also the benefits of having more expats similar to me who were retiring single from their countries. I thought it would be a good place to meet like-minded people and build even more friendships.
It hadn’t even crossed my mind that I would meet somebody in Thailand. I knew what was available in Thailand, and should I ever have the urge, it was there if I needed, but the thought of getting into a serious relationship with someone, I completely thought was a non-starter. I’d been in Pattaya for a little over a week. I had no plans when to return to Bangkok and I went into one of the more nondescript bars and went inside. I was in the mood for some fun, but I ended up with more than that.
Meeting Her
I met a girl in one of the bars and we kind of hit it off straight away. I didn’t think for a second before I walked into the bar that that’s what I would be doing, but we talked and laughed and I bought drinks for her and we decided to take things further. She left in the morning and it wasn’t like all the other experiences that I had. Well, you just go on with your day and not think anything about it. What are you going to do? Have breakfast? But this time it was more like, “Oh, I wonder what time she’s going to start work so I can go and see her again this evening.”
I went back that evening and it just so happened to be her only day off of the month. So, I had to wait for the next day to see her. The way she greeted me when she saw me returning to the bar, it was just the way that any man would want to be greeted. I think she could sense that I liked her, and she was playing on that as best she could. I found myself spending more time with her, and before I knew it, I’d been in Pattaya for over 2 weeks, and I really wanted to return to Bangkok to start to stop paying for hotels. On a whim, I asked her if she’d like to go with me to Bangkok. She could always return to Pattaya whenever she needed to, but I told her I lived there and I needed to go home.
The next day, she was in a taxi with me on the way to Bangkok. She had a bag with lots of things in it, and I’d never stopped to think, am I taking things too far? I was just happy at that particular moment in time. A bit about her. She was 42. She was the oldest of any of the girls that I had met in the bars before. So, I took that as being in my favor. I just thought that because she was 42, her chances of meeting somebody else were a lot slimmer than they would have been if she was 24. And the fact she was behaving around me in such a nice way, I thought I’d found a great girl.
Living Together in Bangkok
When we got to my condo in Bangkok, she quickly made herself at home. But then, I quickly realized, what was I meant to do now? I didn’t think about what would happen when she was there, but she started to behave like my girlfriend. She even changed her telephone number so that she couldn’t be contacted by anybody else. I thought that was a sign of respect, but I wasn’t expecting things to go so quickly with her so fast.
She’d been staying with me in Bangkok for about a week, and I was enjoying the time I was spending with her. But there was a split second when I thought perhaps I played this game long enough and I should just pay for a taxi for her to return to Pattaya. But I found myself getting sucked into being in a sort of relationship and her being there made me feel better than when she wasn’t. It wasn’t love straight away. I don’t think it was even lust. I think it was just down to having some company to spend evening with and do things with.
She had two children from a previous relationship. They lived in Chaiyaphum with her aging parents. And I’ve heard it in stories on your channel before how this works. And it was the same situation for me. I had to replace the money she was sending to her family. If you’re going to get married in Thailand, or if you’re even going to have a girlfriend in Thailand and she comes from the northeast of the country and has children with a previous relationship, it’s going to be expected that you’re going to be the one that has to pay for that if you want a relationship with her. It’s as simple as that. And I did know this to be the case, but I thought it was an investment in order to be able to be with her.
I knew from speaking to other expats that had Thai girlfriends or wives, but most of them gave an allowance every month to them and it made sense. If we take things back to when I was married to my wife back in England all those years ago, we both worked. We had a joint bank account where both our salaries were paid in and we both used to use that money to pay for our lives together. But my new girlfriend, who I don’t want to name, I had my bank account. It wasn’t a joint bank account and therefore she had no access to my money. So it was only right and it made sense that I give her an allowance. 20,000 baht per month is what we agreed on. And this made up just under 25% of my monthly budget and I thought that was acceptable.
A Perfect Day in Retirement
I want you to picture a typical day how we were living and how easy it was for me to get so invested in this new way of life that I found myself in. Before I met her, I thought I would remain single, but we’d wake up in the morning around 9:00 a.m. She’d make breakfast for me. I was a big lover of a cooked breakfast, and I’d sit on the sofa watching the news. I’d often turn my head to the left and look out of the balcony doors over the view of Bangkok, just reminding me where I was and how lucky I was to be there. I’d finish watching the news, then I’d spend an hour or two gaming. And during that time, she’d either be cleaning or doing some shopping for the food we needed or just other activities.
We’d then go out for lunch. Sometimes we’d go for cheap local street food. Other times we’d go to the mall and eat there or to a local nicer place. Each day was different. Then in the afternoon, I’d have a siesta. We might go watch a film together and maybe go to the driving range to play golf. Lots of different things that we would do. Not that she could play golf, but it was fun watching her. And in the evenings, we’d go out for a meal. What we ate was fully dependent on how we felt. Sometimes it was cheap street food again. Sometimes it was something else. And then two or three nights a week, we might go to a bar and have a few drinks and just chat. Other times, we’d spend it in the condo watching a film, or I’d do other hobbies that I had aside from gaming. What I’m trying to say is that in that moment, life was perfect and I didn’t want for anything. This went on for ages.
I found myself losing touch with my expat friends that I’d made earlier on because I was spending so much time with my girlfriend. She never went out. I think she was too old to be in the party scene and she just seemed happy to stay at home. But she did regularly speak to her children on the phone and to her parents who were starting to age.
The Marriage Proposal
And out of the blue one day, she told me that she was having a great time with me. She told me she loved me, but she said that she doesn’t have any security in the relationship with me. Initially, I didn’t know what she meant, but she said that she’s staying with me and I provided her with an allowance and we were able to live together like a normal couple. But she said, “If I ever got bored of her, what would she get out of it, she’d have nothing to show for all the time she was spending with me?” I think the way she told me this made sense. What would happen if something happened to me? She wouldn’t have anything, and I’d been with her nearly 6 to 8 months at this point, and it didn’t look like we were going to end things soon. I asked her what she wanted. What would it take to make her feel comfortable? And she said, “Just getting married. That way I could commit to her and she would be able to commit to me.”
I wish I ran for the hills, but I was enjoying the life too much and I went ahead. This was nothing romantic, just more of a marriage of convenience for her and a commitment proof from me. With all that, it was required for us to go to Chaiyaphum to have the wedding. There was no talk of sin sod, which is the dowry that you have to pay to the Thai wife’s family. But in our case, she was 42 and already had children. So I just had to pay for the ceremony. More saving face for the family than anything else. But I was happy to do it.
The Swedish Man’s House
It was a very different place than Bangkok. Bangkok was westernized, internationalized, commercialized, and just about every other word you could imagine to describe Bangkok in that way. Whereas I found myself now in rural Thailand. The Thailand that still looks like it looked 50 years ago. Apart from the 7-Eleven at the end of the street, there was something about it that really attracted me. It seemed to be a more laid-back place, more peaceful. I understood why so many people wanted to move to somewhere like this. It looked so good.
At our wedding celebration, we had all the village coming to visit. Everyone eating on my dime. But that’s just part and parcel of getting married there. If two Thai people get married, it’s just the same. and the husband has to pay for everything. It’s normal and expected. But a guy from Sweden came as well and his Thai wife. He lived in the village in a house that he built and he was a very friendly guy and seemed to be really enjoying his retirement. He told me that he happily would let me look at his house and I was intrigued to see what kind of living conditions he had. I was picturing a shack with a corrugated tin roof and things being bodged together so at least he could have air conditioning inside. But when we arrived at his house, I was taken aback by just how great it looked.
It was a four-bedroom, two-storied house, and each bedroom had its own en-suite bathroom. He had a proper western kitchen, a beautiful living room, swimming pool, and an outdoor sitting area. I couldn’t believe just how amazing this house looked. And I cheekily asked him how much it cost to build. For everything, he said, including the furniture and the pool and just about everything I could see in the house, he said it was 5 million baht, which was under £120,000. And I thought he was joking. But he wasn’t joking. That’s how much it cost to build things like that in this part of Thailand. and he did tell me the land was 300,000 baht extra, but that seemed like only a bit of money on top. He said it was the best decision he ever made to move to the village. He met his wife in Pattaya, came up to marry, liked it so much, and decided to stay. I could see why. His living conditions were so different to what I was living in Bangkok.
When I asked him about it, anything he needed, he said he could just go to the Makro. He also said Khon Kaen wasn’t too far away and there are some big malls there and other things to do. So anytime he was bored, he could go there. He could also fly from there to Bangkok and then onto other parts of Thailand. And he said that it was the best thing he ever did. My biggest question was how did you secure yourself? And he said it belonged to his Thai wife, but they hadn’t had any problems. They’d been living there now for 8 years. and his wife seemed as happy as he did. He just said, “If something happens, something happens. I don’t want to live my life always worried about the future and about something that might happen when it hasn’t yet.” I thought that remarkable of him, but I also assumed based on his mannerisms and the way he carried himself that the amount of money he spent on the house was only a fraction of his worldly assets. So if the worst came to the worst, he’d be able to write it off, and it wouldn’t cause him any concerns. But it hadn’t made me think.
Building the Dream House
My now wife loved being in the village. She looked so at home there, so happy, and the fact that she could be close to her children made her light up. And she was even happier around me when she was there. She even said it was her dream to live there one day. And one of the reasons she worked in the bar was to try to save money. But the problem was, every time she had spare money, she ended up giving it to her family. And then she didn’t have any spare money anymore.
We returned to Bangkok and when I walked into the condo, although it was in quite a good location, not too far from BTS Bang Na, looking out to all the different parts of Bangkok, it wasn’t really much. It was a two-bedroom unit. The second bedroom could have had a bed in it, but I asked them to remove it when I moved in so I could set up my games room. But, as you say in England, there was no room to swing a cat. The kitchen was boring, so close to the living room with no dividing wall, so anytime you cooked, the whole place smelled, and even with the extractor fan on, the master bedroom had just enough room to walk around the bed if you shuffled along walking sideways. It was nothing to write home about, and it was costing 15,000 baht a month.
After I had seen everything that I’d seen in the village and the Swedish guy’s house and seeing how differently it was there, that was when I first started to think perhaps I’d be happier somewhere else. I didn’t bring it up to her. In a way, I wanted it to come from her to see if she was serious. But one day, we were out having dinner, and the conversation turned to how eventually she hoped to be able to live in her village again. We were married now and we were very serious in our relationship. I know I had savings. The time I was eating into them to the tune of £1,000 a month and I had my £1,000 a month income. One thing that was abundantly clear was that it was a lot cheaper to be able to live in the village than in Bangkok. £1,000 a month would be more than enough to live there, so dipping into the savings to build a house shouldn’t cause much problems.
We thought about it and thought about it for weeks and weeks and we did find ourselves getting bored of the routine in Bangkok and we just sort of came to the decision out of nowhere that we were going to build a house. I can’t remember when it changed for us living in Bangkok to then we’re going to build a house in Chaiyaphum. But it kind of just happened and after that we decided we would do it and 6 months later the house was built. My first big error was thinking we needed something far bigger than we actually did. The Swedish guy was living by himself with his Thai wife, and they had a big house, so I just thought it was only right for my wife that she had the same. All I wanted was a nice bedroom, a games room, a proper kitchen, and a nice living room. But somehow we ended up with a four-bedroom, two-story house. We budgeted 3 million baht. But when all was said and done, I’d somehow managed to spend 6 million baht. That was just under £150,000, and the amount had eaten into my savings for other things. By this point, I didn’t even have £150,000 in savings left, just under, but I still had my income, and we were now living somewhere that was cheaper than Bangkok.
I did discuss with my wife beforehand when the house was ready, it’s just for us. Are you expecting your family to move in? Well, if you are, that’s not right. I asked her what she was expecting here. I’d heard of stories of guys building houses and then all of a sudden the wife’s family moves in completely unannounced and unexpectedly. I didn’t want that to happen. I was happy for her children to move in, but I didn’t want her parents moving in. And I made that clear to her before we started building. She said, “Of course, they want to live in their own house. They want to be independent.”
The Family Invasion
But guess what happened two weeks after the house was built? The day after the monks came round and splashed water about the place for good luck. Her parents moved in. When I told my wife that this wasn’t part of the agreement, she said she was sorry, but they came and she couldn’t stop them. I didn’t speak a word of Thai, so I just had to take her word for it. But if she was blaming her parents, I think she was just trying to say basically, you can’t do anything about it and it’s not my fault, so don’t talk about it. That’s what it felt like. But I felt really let down that her parents moved in. Her children were 15 and 17. And the reason I told them that they could move in is I expected them to move out and find their own place when they turned 18.
Moving into the house and all this happening around me, I was still happy at this point and content with my wife and we’ve been in the house for about 6 months and then COVID hit. When that did happen, other family members who were working in Bangkok came back to the village and then we had her sister, her sister’s husband and their two children moving into our house. I was disgusted that my wife let this happen. I told her I didn’t want them there. I didn’t want her parents there. her children were fine, but no, she just let them in. Of course, everyone was using the air conditioners in the bedrooms and not offering to pay anything towards the electric bill, and some months it was coming to over 8,000 baht. When I raised this with my wife, she just said, “That’s what people do in Thailand.”
But with her sister, her husband, and children being there, life all of a sudden became a nightmare. Things started to happen that I was not expecting. I had no idea really about Thai culture, but all my food was going missing. All my drinks were going missing. People were going into my games room and playing on games and leaving them turned on. One day, I went into my games room and one of the PlayStation controllers was completely broken. But one of the most annoying things during that time was when the air conditioning broke in the bedroom that her sister was occupying. They came to me saying it was broke and expected me to fix it. I just couldn’t believe how downright rude they were, just expecting me to pay money so I could pay money for their comfort. They didn’t even have air conditioning where they lived in Bangkok.
This was the first time that me and my wife started to quarrel, and we quarreled endlessly. I gave her an ultimatum. I want your sister, brother-in-law, and their children out of this house in a month. The only problem was I didn’t have anything really to threaten her with other than saying I’ll stop your allowance. But she didn’t take that very well when I said that and say that they needed to help because they lost their jobs. But how was that my problem? The house I had built for me and my wife to live in and for her children until they turned 18. I did agree to that upfront. After only being built for not long, it looked like it was 10 years old. People left rubbish all over the place and just generally behaved in a way that you would expect people that came from a poor village to behave. But my wife never behaved like that because she’d seen how other people lived. So it was very draining throughout the entirety of COVID. I wasn’t enjoying myself and I was paying for the privilege of having other people living in the house that I should have been in by myself.
But they finally did move out when the restrictions lifted. That was a blessing. But then sadly her father passed away which meant there was no way her mother was going to leave the house now. She was there for good. Her eldest child was now 20 and showed absolutely no signs of leaving the house. I complained like mad to my wife, saying, “Why is he not leaving and getting a job? He’s 20 years old.” But my wife was still behaving like he was a small teenager still cooking for him, cleaning up after him, and doing all this. And I was starting to get really cross because I was paying for it.
I made a big mistake. I said to her, I’m happy to pay for a one-year lease for him so he can move out anywhere in Thailand he wants to, but he’s not living here anymore. So, it was put to him and he said, “Fine, he’ll go and live in Bangkok.” So, I gave him 100,000 baht and told him to go get himself sorted out, but he was back a few months later with no money left and no sign of getting a lease in a place. And the problem was his mom wouldn’t do anything about it. So, that was really annoying.
I went round to visit the Swedish guy quite a few times and he always seemed so happy to be there. Nobody else was living in his house and I asked him what the secret was and he looked at me and said there wasn’t one, just luck. It looked like he’d been lucky and I hadn’t because her family were ruining my life.
The Rental Rooms Disaster
Then I probably did the most stupid thing ever. Even with her family living the house, I was only spending about £1,000 a month. And I had my savings, it would probably cost closer to £130,000 at this point. And I thought instead of keeping this in money, I might make some money out of it every month. I was thinking about things to do. I thought about investing in a condominium in Bangkok and renting it out, but my wife didn’t like the sound of that idea. I then thought about building on the rest of the land that we had some small rooms that we could rent out. The land we had was about 2,000 square meters, so it was a good-size plot, and it wasn’t that far away from the city of Chaiyaphum. If we could build small individual self-contained rooms and bathrooms, we could build 10 of them, and we could rent them out for 2,000 baht a month each. That could be a good idea. So we looked into it and worked everything out and my wife thought it was a good idea as well. So we spent 2 million baht building 10 rooms. I thought we could do Airbnb and do all kinds of things with them and this was just after COVID.
It took a few months and they were already built. My wife said she had people lined up to move in to three of them and she had them moved in. For some reason, she didn’t take a security deposit or any money up front from them, just saying they will pay after a month. And of course, none of them did. Then her sister and husband came back with their children and moved into two of them. Needless to say, he didn’t work at all. And you would never get money out of any of them. Needless to say, it didn’t work at all. And we never got money out of any of them and just used them basically to help people out. And this was the point when I finally understood that my wife did not have my best interests at heart and she was just doing the Thai thing and I just wasted more money. When I think about doing that, I just can’t believe it. But I did it and I had to live with it.
I had less than £100,000 left now, and I’m firmly regretting my decision to build a house in her village. Her children are showing no sign of moving out. her elderly mother there all the time sleeping in the living room and the rooms that we built which were meant to provide an income were being left to ruin at the hands of other family members and people who took them and didn’t pay it was unbelievable but I still clung to the vision of seeing out my life there and I just wrote off everything that my wife did as being part of Thai culture and something I had to accept if I wanted to remain.
The Holiday and the Loan Scheme
But she had a great way of knowing when I was upset about things and doing something that would make me very happy, which in turn would make me do more stupid things. Like, she said that she’d been saving up some money. Not sure where she was saving it from. Maybe just the allowance I was giving her. She said she wanted to treat me to a week’s holiday by the beach, just me and her. And that’s what she did. I forgot all about the problems that we were facing with her family. And I just remembered about what it was like being with her. And I was happy again. But that was because we weren’t in the village. But we were talking about different ideas and she was saying eventually her children will move out, telling me not to worry about things and eventually people will start paying for the rooms that we built. And she’s telling me not to worry.
At the end of that trip, that’s when she hit me with an idea that she had. She knew I had some savings left over and she knew I was wanting to use this money to improve my income and put it to something so I couldn’t continue to waste it. And that’s when she told me the possibility of lending money to people in the village. Initially, I didn’t like the idea. It sounded very illegal, but she said lots of people do it. If somebody wants to borrow some money, they’ll come to her, borrow it from her, and then they’ll pay it back with interest. I was very cautious, but she found me at a time when I was at my happiest. We were at the end of this amazing trip that we’d spent together. We had an amazing time, and she’d paid for it. So, I was a very soft target and told her I’d happily let her try with a million baht. I was thinking if she could make 150,000 baht out of that, 15% a year interest, which is the legal limit, that would be okay.
But I think it’s only right to say that was another incredibly stupid mistake I made. And if I look back now, how she managed to get that out of me, I was just downright manipulated. She got me down to my most primal form and took money off me. That’s the only way I can look at it now. But it didn’t feel like that at the time. Let’s just say she lost that money and money went down over the next year. So many problems with the house and her family and the failed business ideas. and my stupidity for allowing all this to happen.
The End: Returning to England
At the start of 2023, I had to leave. We had to get divorced. I left everything behind and I returned to England. Everything just went so wrong so quickly. And she was a master manipulator. I returned to England with £30,000. That was it. I still had my £1,000 a month and also a state pension at this point. But what I had is not enough to live the retirement I planned for. so many stupid decisions being manipulated and taken advantage of by a Thai lady who puts her family first and who knew just how to get what she wanted out of me.
I was told that I could have taken her to court and tried to get something. But I just didn’t know where to begin. And I thought that would cost a lot of money, too. And if I lost that, I’d be down to nothing.
But this was my Thailand retirement story. I lost nearly everything to the hands of a Thai lady that worked in a bar. And it’s embarrassing to admit, but that’s what happened. Don’t be another statistic. It’s not worth it.
