From Thailand Travels to Marriage Betrayal and Divorce

I don’t really know where to begin when it comes to telling my story. Lots of ups and downs, and unfortunately, it does end with ultimate betrayal.

Thailand Becomes a Habit

Thailand started out as being a place where I went to visit often. The first time I went was in 2012 and I was 32 years old. I was single and working a good job in England. And when I arrived in Thailand in 2012, something really spoke to me. I’d always felt there was something missing to my life at home. And Thailand, in a way, seemed to fill that void. I loved my first time in Thailand. I traveled as a backpacker, touring a lot of the country, and I vowed that I would return at some point.

One year later, in fact, in 2013, I was back in Thailand. That time, I didn’t take the backpacker route, but I traveled around to some of the main tourist areas of Thailand, and I stayed in nicer hotels and generally spent a bit more money.

Falling for Bangkok

From the time that I spent in Thailand, although I loved everywhere I went, there was something special about the city of Bangkok. I really loved it. The contrast between the different parts of the city. How I did it was to spend a few days in a hotel in one area, then a few days in a hotel in another, and I kept repeating that so I could get to know as much about Bangkok as possible. And I have to reiterate that although I traveled quite a lot of places in Thailand, some places were not on the tourist map. Bangkok was always a place where I finished and started my holidays.

2014 rolled around and I went back to Thailand once again for another month. That time I hired a motorbike and drove around all through northeastern Thailand. I wanted to see parts of Thailand that are not on the typical tourist route. I loved everything about that trip and I’d been to Thailand for a month every year from 2012 to 2014.

Saving for the Dream

When I was in England, all I did was work. I was lucky to have a job that paid me an above average salary. And because of that, all the money I didn’t spend on my holidays to Thailand, I saved and put it into a house. It was only a small house, but I didn’t have a mortgage, and that made a big difference. I didn’t have many friends in England. I was always happy with my own company, and that was the case on my first three trips to Thailand. I didn’t meet people and speak to people, and I tried to pick up bits and pieces of Thai language when I could, but I never really developed a connection with anybody.

It was always my plan to continue to save and invest the money and when I had enough income to be able to travel full time. That’s what I wanted to do. I was still quite a way away from being able to do that, but it was a dream that I always had in the back of my mind.

2015 The Trip That Changed Everything

All that changed on my trip to Thailand in 2015. I was there for a month again. And it would have been my fourth time in Thailand. I don’t know what it was about Thailand that kept me going back. There were lots of other places I wanted to visit, lots of other countries I wanted to explore and discover. But since I went to Thailand, I almost felt like I didn’t want to risk my yearly holiday going somewhere else that was unproven to me. I wanted to go somewhere that I knew I would love and that I knew a lot about. What I’m trying to say is I knew Thailand was something different, so I continued to go back there year on year.

For my 2015 trip, I planned to hire a motorbike and do some more touring around. By this point, I’d spent a lot of time in Bangkok. I did a tour throughout northeastern Thailand, which in Thailand is known as Isan, and I’d done a lot of the islands and places further down south. But I hadn’t yet been to northern Thailand, and I’d heard that they had some of the best driving roads.

Northern Thailand A New Adventure

So, when I got to Thailand in 2015, I landed in Bangkok, as is typical, and I spent a few days in the city, just remembering what I loved about it so much. I wasn’t one of the guys that only went to Thailand and spent time drinking in the bars, although I did like that part of Thailand. I thought it was fun and entertaining. I also liked to do non typical tourist things, so I would say I was somewhat in between.

I had a flight booked up to Chiang Rai right in the north of Thailand for a few days’ time. So I enjoyed myself in Bangkok and when I got to Chiang Rai, I was blown away about how different it felt to other parts of Thailand. It was a lot more mountainous up there and I felt more scenic. I loved my time in Isan, but it was so flat there. Flat plains that stretched on for miles. Very different to what I was seeing up in the north.

Chiang Rai isn’t the main city in the north. That’s Chiang Mai. But I wanted to start up in Chiang Rai and go all the way to the Burmese border and then from there try to do a full circle going through Mae Hong Son into Pai and then to the main town Mae Hong Son and round the loop into Chiang Mai and back up to Chiang Rai. I had three weeks for this trip so I didn’t need to rush, and I planned it out on Google Maps.

The Motorcycle Journey

After a night in Chiang Rai, I went to pick up the bike that I’d arranged to hire. It was a Honda CRF250. Great for off roading, but it had road tires on it because I was going to be on the road most of the way. I drove up to the Burmese border at Mae Sai. They had a big gate and the border crossing was there and you could see traffic from Burma coming into Thailand. There was a small river that separated the two countries, and I started from there having a look around the market before jumping on the bike with the aim to get to the Sri Lanna National Park in Chiang Mai province. I wasn’t going to be in the city of Chiang Mai that was going to be at the end of the trip. But I made it there and found a place to stay. It was only basic.

The next day I drove to Pai. There’s something very different about Pai. It was very hippified, but I enjoyed spending a few days there and seeing some of the sights. And over the next week and a half, I spent time in Mae Hong Son town. I did lots of sightseeing around there, including going to the Chinese village and lots of other places. And it was just so stunningly beautiful, that part of Thailand. Very different to anywhere I’d seen before.

I drove a bit further and stayed in another small town called Mae Sariang, just taking in the culture. Then I finally made it to Chiang Mai city. I had 5 days in Chiang Mai before having to return the bike in Chiang Rai.

A Chance Encounter

I hadn’t really spoken to many people on the whole trip, and I was feeling a bit lonely and feeling like I wanted some company for a change. So, I headed to some of the bars in Chiang Mai. One of the things I liked about it was that it wasn’t as in your face as places like Bangkok and Pattaya. Very laid back and chill. And I did some bar hopping on my first night in Chiang Mai.

If I’d have known that the time I spent bar hopping would have changed the course and direction of my whole life, I may have decided against it. But we can’t look back. But in one of those bars, I met a girl that would end up becoming my wife. How these things happen is difficult to understand. It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t the idea. But I kind of just clicked with this girl and I spent my whole time in Chiang Mai with her.

She was from Isan but had some family living up in Chiang Mai, which is why she was there. It was great to tell her that “Oh, I know where you come from. I’ve been there on a motorbike trip” and I could picture what it was like. I’d driven through lots of small villages, and when she described where she came from and how she lived, I knew exactly what she was talking about.

The Beginning of Something

When the time came for me to return the bike to Chiang Rai, she went on the back, and we drove up to Chiang Rai together. She even flew with me to Bangkok, where I had 3 days before I needed to return home to work.

I’d done my best up until that point to try and stay clear of a serious relationship. I’d seen my parents get divorced, and that wreaked havoc on their finances. But it was still my goal to be able to retire early with nothing more than the dream to travel. But all of a sudden, my future plans became entwined with this girl that I met.

We spent three wonderful days in Bangkok, but I had to return home and back to work, and she had to go back up to Chiang Mai to continue with her life. So I paid for the plane ticket and took her to the airport. I went to the other airport not long after and flew home. And this time I wasn’t thinking about what a fantastic trip I had like on the other times I visited. I was thinking: what can I do to be able to spend more time with this girl that I met?

She was 27, didn’t have any children, and I just felt like she was perfect in almost every single way.

The Shock News

As soon as I arrived in England, I called her and we talked about how much we missed each other and everything along those lines. And over the next few weeks, we were speaking to each other almost every single day. And she was all I thought about.

One day, we were speaking. I’d been back for about a month, and she dropped something on me that was a huge shock. She was pregnant. Completely out of the blue. But when I thought about it, it did make sense. But it was the last thing that I thought was going to happen. Everything she said was true. I knew she was telling the truth. She showed me the results from the hospital and everything like that. She wasn’t trying to scam me at least yet and I quickly had to decide what I was going to do.

The Decision to Move

The beauty of saving most of everything I earned meant I could take a change of direction if I needed to. And one day at work, I was just thinking about things and thought: why don’t I rent out my house and go to Thailand and see how things go? Maybe it won’t go right and I can come back and get a new job. I wouldn’t have had an issue getting another job. But if things did go well, I might just live permanently in Thailand.

I spoke to my mom about this and told her what my plans were, and she was fully supportive of me and told me to go for it. “You only live once,” she said. So that gave me the confidence to actually think I might as well just do it.

I gave my work the required notice and finished out everything amicably, and I flew to Thailand wondering if this was actually the right thing to do.

Starting a Life in Bangkok

She came to meet me at the airport and we spent some time in Bangkok. I went with her to the hospital to check up on the pregnancy, and things were moving along as expected. She was saying that she was upset because she was pregnant and she wasn’t married, and she hadn’t told her family yet. Where she came from, they were still very traditional. So, if she dropped it on them that she was pregnant without any partner to marry, that wouldn’t look good on her. They’d put up with it and accept it, but they wouldn’t be happy.

We kind of just ended up together because of the pregnancy. And I did have strong feelings for her. I’m not really sure what her feelings to me were looking back, but at the time I thought she had feelings for me. And I thought if we are having a child together, let’s get married. I wanted to do the right thing.

Fast forward to the point where she’d already given birth. We were already married and we were living in Thailand, more specifically in Bangkok. The income I was getting from my property wasn’t really enough to live on, but it was nearly enough. So, I was only spending little bits out of my savings every month, and it wasn’t causing me too much of a concern. I started looking to do work remotely. Back then, it wasn’t as common for people to work remotely, but in my line of work, it was quite easy to find freelance work to do. And we settled down to living in Bangkok.

If I thought about that trip in 2015 that a year later I would be living full time in Bangkok, and I’d be married and have a child I would never have guessed. But at that moment in my life, I really thought I was happy.

The School Dilemma

Time goes on and our child is growing up and getting older, and it’s going to be time for them to go to school before long. We went to look around at different schools in Bangkok. We looked at international schools, but I felt like they were too expensive for what they were. In England, when we turn 16, we do GCSEs. And when I did mine, I didn’t really try that hard if I’m being perfectly honest, but I still got nearly perfect grades in all of them. When I looked at some of the really expensive international schools in Bangkok, they did IGCSE (the “I” standing for international). And when you looked at the grades that some of the children were getting there for paying all this money, they were doing far worse than I did, and I didn’t even try. So, I didn’t really think it was going to be a worthwhile investment for an international school.

We looked at private schools that were bilingual studying in English and Thai. But I had a friend, one of my only friends in Thailand, who worked at one of them, and he just said the only reason for him being there as an English teacher was so that they could charge more money to the parents for the school. Children were not meant to fail because the parents were paying. So it wasn’t really like typical schools that you still have.

We also looked at government schools, but I did not like that at government schools children had to cut their hair in a specific way. I felt that was degrading, and you could point out which children went to government schools and which children didn’t. Usually the children of government schools were poorer. So the fact they cut their hair in a specific way made them stand out, and I was dead against that.

Moving Back to England

With all that in mind, we ultimately decided to move back to England for our child’s schooling. As much as I was loving living in Bangkok by this point, I was earning good money working freelance in my industry, plus I had my property rental I would have been happy to stay on living in Bangkok because I was happy there and my wife was happy there and my child seemed happy as well. But the decision was made based on their education and their future prospects that we would go and live in England.

My wife had never even left Thailand before, but she was all for the idea of moving to England. She had friends who were there who lived with their husbands, and she thought that everything about it sounded fantastic.

The Visa Ordeal

We had to apply for a spouse visa for her. That was one of the most arduous tasks I ever had to undertake. But I was lucky because I had a house we could live in and I could prove that my income was high enough based on what I was earning working freelance as all the money went into an English bank. I could prove everything, and she was granted a spouse visa about 3 months after we decided that we wanted to move to England. The whole process included having to get TB screening and all kinds of other things. And the paperwork was at least 3 inches thick. But it was done, and we could go and live in England.

I had slight apprehensions when we boarded the plane leaving Thailand. I was worried that my wife wasn’t going to like England. It was very different to Thailand. And for someone who had not left Thailand before, it was going to be a very big shock to the system.

Settling In

When we finally touched down at Manchester airport, I think she was too tired to have any genuine impressions of England straight away. My mom picked us up at the airport. That was the first time she’d seen her grandchild, and it was a great experience for us all. My wife seemed happy enough, and we went back to my mom’s house. There we settled ourselves, and she dropped us off at my house. I had given the tenants who were renting the place plenty of notice, and they moved out about a month before our arrival. My mom had set up the house really nicely for us, which was much appreciated.

And then just like that, we were now living in England. We didn’t do anything on the first day. My wife was too tired from the flight. But the day after, I took her shopping to an English supermarket and I showed her around the town where I grew up. And I wanted her to feel as welcome and as settled as possible. I even took her to a Thai supermarket. Like most Thai people, she really loved som tam the papaya salad with fermented fish. And the local Thai supermarket had a proper Thai papaya. Not quite the same price as you would pay in Thailand it was 20 quid for this papaya. And the fermented fish that she wanted to put in was also 20 quid. And she couldn’t find the small crabs that they put in this salad in Thailand. But I thought I was making her happy, and I felt she appreciated it, although she had to prepare it herself.

Life in England The Early Years

When we got to England, it was at the start of summer, around June, and our child would be starting school in September. I was fortunate enough to have a house in an area that was connected to a very nice infant and junior school. If you went 5 miles in another direction, the school those children went to wasn’t as good. So, we were lucky there, and we registered for them to go to the school. They would be starting off in nursery, and I actually felt at that moment like I’d made the correct decision by moving my family to live in England. I thought it was the best for our child’s future, and also I would be able to start working full time again as opposed to doing freelance work, hopefully with the aim of being able to make more money.

We used to talk about the future, and the plan was to eventually retire in Thailand as soon as our child left home and went to university. But that was still 15 years away. But we did think that in the meantime, we could save money and then we could go and buy something in Thailand that could be added to our retirement dream, and we could visit Thailand as often as we could.

I floated my CV around and was offered a job very quickly. We bought a car. My wife had a Thai driver’s license, but she couldn’t convert that to an English one, and it took her a very long time to pass the English test, but she did eventually. And when the time came around for our child to start nursery school, I thought that we were happy and content with what we had. It did appear that way, and we just got into a normal basic routine. I’d drop off our child at nursery on the way to work, and my wife would pick them up when they finished, and I’d be home 2 or 3 hours after that.

On the weekends, we just did what normal families did. Sometimes we’d drive to one of the closest cities such as Manchester or a bit further to Liverpool and have a look around. Sometimes we’d just go to the park. Normal family life. I was working as hard as I could to try and save as much money as I possibly could with the ultimate dream of retiring to Thailand when the time came. And life was going great for the first two or three years.

Building a House in Isan

During those three years, we’d saved enough money to buy a place in Thailand. During the summer holidays, I took a month off work. I’d saved up holidays all year, and I tried to convince them to give me a little bit of extra time off if I worked at different times. And they were very flexible for me to do that, as long as I had a computer available at all times when I was in Thailand to catch up on any important emails. That was perfect for me.

Although we planned to visit Thailand yearly, this was going to be our first time since we moved to England that we would be returning. And we all couldn’t wait to get there. Touching down in Bangkok, feeling like you’re at home, and seeing the smile on your wife’s face when she can go and eat all the Thai food that she could dream about for a very cheap price. Our child also liked Thailand, and we spent the first few days in Bangkok. I did look around and think, “Should we still be living here really?” But I wasn’t really regretting the decision I made at least yet. And I was happy with the fact that we were living in England because I thought that was the best for our child.

A few good days in Bangkok, then we went up to her village area. That’s where we got married. I don’t want to say which part of Isan it was, but her family were happy to see us and happy to see their grandchild. And during that trip, my wife was gifted a piece of land in the village close to everybody else in her family. Was this a sign? We had often talked about building a place in the village. So when we would retire, we would be able to spend time there. But we didn’t want to live there full time. We wanted to be able to go and visit any time we wanted and have somewhere nice to stay.

We decided to use the money that I’d saved up over the past few years to build a house. We wouldn’t be there when it was being built, but we could tell them exactly how we wanted it, and we could appoint someone to look after the build for us. We spent a few days in Isan getting everything sorted with the house. We found a builder, looked at their previous work that looked great, and it was decided. So, we signed the contract. I wasn’t able to transfer the money straight away, but as soon as I returned to England, I would be able to do it.

For the rest of the holiday, we just went down to Phuket. I wanted some beach relaxation time, and Phuket was my favorite place to go to the beach in Thailand. We had a wonderful time there. We looked around at some condos in Phuket and for a second I thought maybe it would have been better to buy a cheap condo instead of build. But we’d already committed to it, and I reckon that in a few more years maybe we’ll be able to do just that. Just get everything in place ready for when we retired.

The Boredom Sets In

We had a great time in Phuket and returned to England and back into life. But at this point, after having been back for 6 months, my wife said she was starting to get really bored. She wasn’t working, but her visa gave her the possibility to work. But she didn’t need to work because my income was good enough to support the family without her working. But I could tell she was looking bored and miserable. When I came home from work, she’d just be sulking in the corner saying she wants to do something as well.

I almost wished that her visa did not give her the possibility to work. If I look back at everything just like the visa that I had when I was in Thailand, I wasn’t allowed to just go and get a job in Thailand even though I had a marriage visa when we lived there before moving to England. But we decided that she could go and look for a job just to keep her busy and not bored. It was still many years away until we could make it back to retire there.

6 months after being back, the house that we wanted to build was already built in the village and it looked great. We had pictures of it and we couldn’t wait to be able to see it when we went to visit next time. That was step one out of our retirement plan, getting a house in her village. We didn’t really take that one off the list, so I felt like we were making great progress.

The Thai Restaurant Job

It was around this time that she got a job as well. She got a job at the local Thai restaurant. I can’t stress how bad of an idea this actually was if I look back at everything that happened after this, but at the time I was really happy for her. She seemed to have a purpose and she could also make friends with other Thai people in similar positions.

She started off just working the lunch shift. She wasn’t paid a lot of money, just slightly over minimum wage, but if she compared that to how much she could make in Thailand, she was happy. She didn’t have to pay for any of the bills, so anything she made was purely for her to spend at her will, and that was fine with me. She was always back from work when I returned from work in the evening, and she was still able to pick our child up from school. So far, so good.

Until she said she wanted to start working the evening shifts instead. She was having a great time doing the job and making friends, but I didn’t really like the sound of the idea of her working in the evenings. I wanted that to be our family time. But I finally relented and she started working five evenings a week. Now we could not really see each other the same as before, because that was going to be our life.

She Started to Change

Life seemed to change very dramatically when she started to do this. I’d wake up, take our child to school, go to work all day, and then she would pick our child up from school, wait for me to return in the evening, and then she’d go off and do four or five hours working at the restaurant during the evening shift. The reason she said she wanted to do this was because it paid slightly more money and she would be able to get more tips, something along those lines.

All of a sudden, I wasn’t really enjoying myself very much anymore because my wife wasn’t there in the evenings, and I was spending time alone with our child. That in itself wasn’t a big cause for concern because she was earning money, which in turn would make our retirement to Thailand better when the time came. But I did notice her starting to become more distant. When we were together at the weekends, she would always be on the phone to some Thai person that she’d met at the restaurant. She’d always be chatting with them, and she started going out with them in the daytime when I was at work before she needed to go to work herself.

She almost changed into a different person overnight when she started working at the Thai restaurant. I didn’t know what to do about it. I just wanted my wife back, but she was now a lot more demanding, more distant, and more I think the right word to use would be emboldened to misbehave.

All I thought about was doing the best for our child and for our ultimate retirement in Thailand. The months were going on and that would come at some point, but all of a sudden her main interest was going to work. And then after work she’d come back straight away. But then she wouldn’t. She was hanging out with other people that worked at the restaurant after work.

The Red Flags Multiply

I think they were a bad influence on her because one night she didn’t come back until the early hours of the morning. She’d been at a casino gambling with some friends. Another night she’d come back and just slump down on the bed drunk because she’d been drinking with friends. And I’m starting to get concerned about what she’s doing.

At the time I didn’t realize it, but I heard it from other people who were married to Thai ladies that as soon as they got involved with other Thai people in England, they change. I spoke to one man who brought his wife back from Thailand to England and everything was going great for them. He was retired and didn’t need to work, but she was bored and wanted to get a job. She wanted to get one at the local Thai restaurant, and 6 months later they were divorced because she found somebody else.

That wasn’t what I wanted to hear, and I was getting worried. I just wanted everything to go back to how it was. I wouldn’t mind if she just went to work and came back again, but she was hanging out more and more with the people who also worked there and their friends and friends of their friends. All the Thai people seemed to want to spend time with each other. And I didn’t know what to do about it at all.

In fact, at one point, I even thought about saying, “Let’s just move back to Thailand right now. Get it out of the way and send our child to school there.” But after careful thought, I didn’t want that. I wanted them to study in England. I thought it was best for them.

The Ultimate Betrayal

But the months were going on and on, and she was just becoming like a different person. Up until that point, when she started working, she was great. But she had so many people around her who were a very bad influence on her. And I started to think like she was doing even more than just going out with friends.

One day she came back very late in the nighttime and I could tell something had happened. I knew something was wrong. I don’t want to say how I knew, but I knew. There was visible proof of what she had done and I was distraught. I started suffering at work. I didn’t want to go. They could tell I was not getting along okay. And every time I spoke to my wife about it, she just said, “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” But when your wife comes home drunk and it’s obvious she’s been doing something that she shouldn’t have been doing, it makes you question everything you’ve done up until that point.

A month later, I found out she was pregnant. Only I knew it couldn’t have been mine because we hadn’t done anything for a long time. I was always asleep by the time she got back from work. And even at the weekends over the past month, she was going out with friends and leaving me to look after our child by myself.

That’s when she admitted it. She’d been going out with her friends getting drunk and she met somebody else, and it was his.

You can imagine how badly I took that. It was completely unexpected, and I just wished I could go back to before she started to work, when I felt like we were really a happy family and we were both concentrating and thinking hard about the future and what we wanted to do. Then all of a sudden she’s pregnant to somebody else and coming back and sleeping next to me.

Protecting Myself

At this point I’m very worried. We just built a house on her land in the village. We were married, and I had a house in England, and I didn’t want to lose that. And I was thinking about how to protect what I had at this point. I knew I didn’t want to stay with her anymore because of what she did. But I pretended like everything was fine. And I must admit that she did get an abortion. But I was disgusted with her. I couldn’t believe that my wife that I loved so much had just done this.

I was thinking about a plan that I could put together in order to protect what I had. But I knew how one sided things were in England against men. I played on with things as though everything was fine. And she was still distant, but she was apologetic about what she did. But I don’t think she meant it because she still kept going out with these friends of hers. These are the people I blame for ruining our relationship.

But I decided to put my house on the market and sell it. It was quite difficult to do this behind her back, but I arranged for viewings when she was at work. I need to point out though that when I was living in Thailand, I was very interested in looking into all the rules and regulations about how me as a foreigner can do things in Thailand. But she had absolutely no clue how things worked in England. I don’t even think she knew how things worked in Thailand. No idea whatsoever, and she had no interest to learn. All she wanted to do, it seemed, was go out with her friends. But her complete lack of interest did work in my favor.

Two months later, I had an offer on the house which I accepted. And by this point, she was spending more and more time with friends, and it was just me by myself with our child. She turned from being a great mother into a dreadful mother. I don’t know what it was, but whatever she was doing where she went to work caused her to change beyond belief. It was clear. I thought that she had somebody else perhaps the guy that made her pregnant but all I was interested in now was protecting my savings.

The house sale went through and I told her we were moving house. She asked why. I just said I wanted to move to a bigger place to see if it would make things work better. I rented somewhere that was quite close by. It was bigger, but I had no intention to rent for a long time. And I did this in a way to show her I was trying to make things work between us. Maybe a different house would work. I told her I bought it, but I didn’t. And all the other money I transferred to my mom.

The Trap Is Set

When I was sure everything was safe and protected, I talked to her and asked her what she really wanted to do. She said she was happy to continue doing what we were doing now. But I wasn’t having that. I asked her if she had somebody else, and she eventually did admit to seeing someone else almost every day after she’d been to work. She said he spent time with her and gave her things. And I’m thinking, what has happened to this person?

I asked her if we could try to make things work. I told her that I booked us to go for one month to Thailand to try to get things turned around. And although she had somebody else, the thought of going to Thailand well, that was too great an opportunity for her to overlook. So, she agreed to go to try to work things out with me and see if we could go back to how things were.

This was step two of my plan: get her back to Thailand and get a divorce.

The Divorce

So, we arrived in Thailand and she’s happy to be there. She’s just behaving like she used to before she started working at the job in England. But I’m not falling for it. I’m not having any of it. I contacted a lawyer almost as soon as we got to Thailand and told him of the situation. I told him I had proof of my wife’s unfaithful behavior, and they said I could take her to court and I would most likely win. But this would take a long time and we didn’t have all the time to be able to stay in Thailand. He advised offering her some money to get a divorce and maybe also dangle the fact that her visa to England was based on being married to me. If we were divorced, I could make it very difficult for her.

I actually didn’t know what the rules were in that sense. She was in England on a spouse visa. If we got divorced in Thailand, would that visa still be valid? I actually didn’t know what the rules were, but I could tell her that if I wanted her to lose the visa, I could make that happen. But if I didn’t say anything, she’d still be able to return to England. I knew she would want to return to England because of this other person that she’d met and the fact that she was earning good money now at the job well, good money for her.

So, we’re having breakfast one morning and my wife’s thinking everything’s okay. And I laid it down to her saying, “Everything that you did in England has made me realize that I don’t want to be married to you anymore. We need to get a divorce and we need to do it in Thailand.”

She starts screaming and everyone at the breakfast buffet is looking at us. I tried to calm her down. It was difficult to do that, but I told her we can either do this and make it easier for you or difficult for you. Which way do you want to do it? She said she wanted to go back to England. And I told her that your visa is based on me. And if I say we’re not doing things anymore we’re not together anymore you’re not going to be able to have the visa and you’re not going to be able to go back to England.

She believed me when I said that. I don’t know how true it was. I actually think that that’s not true, but she believed me. She had no idea what the rules were in her own country, let alone in a different one. I told her I’m prepared to give her £10,000. I’m prepared to overlook the fact that your visa is based on me and I won’t tell anybody, so you can keep the visa.

After she settled down and could see I was serious and not backing down, she took the offer. I think she must have really liked this other guy that she met. Apparently, he gave her stuff all the time. And how do you say it? You can take the girl out of the bar, but you can’t take the bar out of the girl. Even in England, it seems that’s the case. But she took this offer because she thought she had no other choice.

And we quickly went to a law firm who would act as witnesses when we got the divorce. And we went to the district office, and just like that we were divorced. The papers were signed, and everything had already been agreed. So she couldn’t get back at me and couldn’t come to me for anything. And I transferred £10,000 to her English bank account.

The best part of it was that it was agreed that our child could stay with me. She could see the benefit of this, but I said she could come and visit anytime she wanted.

I Got Off Lightly

I felt like I got off lightly. Granted, we built the house on that land, and that was just a write off. But she didn’t get half my house in England, and I don’t even think she knew she could. But that’s how I managed to protect myself from that evil woman.

My plans to retire to Thailand have completely changed. I’ve actually met somebody else and have just got married recently, but she was from England. My ex-wife does visit her child every week. I still give her that. But she did get married to that other guy and had a child with him. Turns out she really loves him. Or does she just love his money? I’m not quite sure on that.

But things don’t have to turn out dreadfully if you don’t want them to. I planned for a future with her in Thailand, but as soon as she started working at that Thai restaurant, she changed. The change was shocking to see, like a different person and she had no problems cheating on me.

I still hope to retire to a different country at some point in the future, and I hope my now wife will remain the same as she is now. We never really know what the future is going to hold, but I thought this would be a bit of a positive story for a change where the guy didn’t get completely ruined by his Thai wife.