Why Did I Even Choose Thailand?

That’s a question I ask myself all the time. Thailand was meant to be an escape, a place where I could reinvent myself in retirement and a place where I could finally start enjoying myself. The weather helped as well. I’m not much of a cold weather person. I much prefer hot weather, and bright sunny skies also make you feel better about yourself.

I suppose the other reason for choosing Thailand was that it was meant to be a lot more affordable than where I came from. And while I personally found this to be true in some instances. For example, if you’re renting an apartment or house, this is going to be more affordable. The things that I moved to Thailand for, I found, were not actually as cheap.

But I often do think to myself, why did I even go to Thailand in the first place? If I could have my time again and change things, I would. But I can’t, and it’s just something I have to live with.

Never Visiting Thailand First Was My Biggest Mistake

Before I retired to Thailand, I had never visited. I had watched lots of videos about Thailand and felt that with the amount of research that I did into Thailand and all the videos I watched, I felt like I knew what I was getting myself into.

But that’s a big difference between watching a video about a place and actually going there yourself, which I suppose might be obvious for some people. But I just expected to get the same feelings I got watching a video. I expected to get those in Thailand, but that didn’t really happen.

I think like many people who choose to go to Thailand, I was looking for excitement and adventure, something to make up for the fact that at home, life was never really something I looked forward to living.

The Life I Was Escaping

Most of my friends were in the same position. Waking up earlier than you want to wake up. Going somewhere you don’t want to go. Doing something you don’t want to do when you’re there. Then having the right to be able to pay your bills with what you’ve earned and not have anything left over. That seems to be such an unfair way of having to live. But I wasn’t fortunate, and I made the best of my situation.

My situation might be quite typical. I was married until she decided I wasn’t going to be married anymore. I had no say in the matter. No say in the fact that she took the kids and no say in the fact that I had to send money for the kids every single month.

When your wife does that and you’re feeling like you can’t trust anybody again, how can you trust anybody when the person that you dedicated your life to does that to you? It’s very hard. And I struggled on for years just working to survive and cover these obligations that I now found myself with. That’s not how to live.

So if we go back to the question why did I even go to Thailand? I suppose this was why. To escape the mundane and do something different. Do something different finally in my life. And I’d been waiting for that for years. So that’s why I went to Thailand.

Retiring in Thailand with the Bare Minimum

I guess it took me until I was 60 to have enough money to be able to retire. And I didn’t have as much as I would have liked. I had two choices: retire at 60 and accept what I had, or work for an extra 5 years and maybe have a little bit more saved up. But when you get to that age, time goes by so quickly, and the remainder of your life, or at least a portion of your life that you’re able to enjoy, still goes away so quickly.

So I decided to retire with the bare minimum just to be able to actually do it. I retired with approximately £200,000 in savings and £800 a month in income.

Looking back, I think I was taking a risk with that amount of money. But it was now or never, and I just decided to go for it. And if things didn’t work out, at least I tried.

Falling in Love in Thailand

I never expected things to go as badly as they did. I never expected to do things that I promised myself I wouldn’t do. You know, things like falling in love with someone in Thailand. That was something I never thought I would do, but it kind of just happened.

And during the best part of that, I felt like I was the happiest I’d been.

First Impressions of Bangkok Were an Anticlimax

I want to take it back to the time I arrived in Thailand. As I said, I’d never even been to Thailand before; I’d never been to Asia before. In fact, I’d only ever been to Europe. But I expected it to feel like the same feelings I got when I watched videos about Thailand. That was the first mistake that I made. The first mistake was not going to visit first.

Because when I arrived and went to my hotel and took my first walk around Bangkok, although I’d seen the streets so many times before in videos of people actually walking them, I will have to be honest and say it did feel like an anticlimax.

For a start, just watching videos, you can’t tell how hot it actually is. It’s disturbingly hot. You walk for 100 meters and you’re already dripping. Also, the quality of the pavements or sidewalks is not perfect. And if you’re not great on your feet, you might find yourself tripping up over loose paving slabs.

Other than that, I did like the Thailand I found. It felt so different to where I was from and what I was used to.

The Shocking Cost of Thailand’s Tourist Areas

But I quickly found, even on my first day there, that it was going to be a struggle to live on £800 a month. I suppose when I got there, I was in the tourist area. I was staying in a hotel and I was going to restaurants in that area. I was shocked beyond belief at just how much things cost there. The idea that Thailand was cheap had been drummed into my mind so many times by so many people. I was quite upset to find out that at least in this fun and exciting area, things were far from cheap.

It was never my plan to live in Bangkok. Bangkok is just the airport you arrive at. So, I knew I had to spend some time there and see it for the first time. Around Sukhumvit, it’s not as cheap as you think, and you could easily spend £100 there in a night.

So, if you’ve only got £800 for the whole month, including rent and everything, it’s not going to go very far. And that was something that I suppose deep down I was expecting, but I was hoping the people who told me it was cheap were going to be right.

Why Bangkok Street Food Wasn’t for Me

I explored other parts of Bangkok, went for street food, and indeed you can find cheap street food. But this is very different to the food I was used to at home. And I never got into street food. It was just one of those things where you ate, went a little bit out of your comfort zone, and were full. It was never actually delicious.

I never really understood the attitude towards Thai food as being so fantastic. It was okay and edible, but it wasn’t as delicious as most of the other world cuisines such as Italian, French, Mexican, Indian, Arabic, and the list goes on.

Why Pattaya Felt More Like It

After my time in Bangkok, I only spent three or four days there, but that was enough for me to know I didn’t want to live there. I went down to Pattaya. Pattaya was a place I wanted to go the most. It was the place where I was expecting to retire and spend all my time. I was hoping it was going to be cheaper than Bangkok, and that I could get a condo that at the minimum had air conditioning, a pool, and a gym, and was close to the beach. I didn’t need it to be big or flashy. As long as those requirements were met, I’d be happy.

Pattaya did not let me down. When I got there, I immediately liked it so much more than Bangkok. It was smaller for a start and a lot easier to get from one side to the other. It had the beach and a nice breeze coming off the beach sometimes. And because it had the beach, you felt different in yourself.

I don’t know if any other people have similar feelings, but I was feeling like I’m next to the beach and because of that, I’m able to relax more and put my head down more and just feel more retired. That was the best way I could describe it.

Finding a Condo in Pattaya

It didn’t take long to find a condo. I spent the first few days in a hotel, but I knew I really needed to get a place to live for budget reasons. And I found somewhere for 6,000 baht. It wasn’t the type of place you’d dream about living in. It didn’t have fantastic sea views. It was just a small studio room, but it did have a pool with it, which was okay, and a gym. I tried to keep myself in shape as best I could, so I did a lot of treadmill exercises (mainly walking), and I wanted to get into swimming, so I was happy to be able to find that in the condo I rented.

I got my visa arranged, so that was good.

When the Thailand Retirement Novelty Wears Off

I didn’t know how to describe this, but when you’re retiring somewhere like Thailand, when you go from feeling like you’re in this new and exciting place, feeling like you’re on holiday, and you’re changing, and the feelings you have are all excited and new. How long does it take until that becomes normal?

For me, it was six months of living my retired life in Thailand until things started to just feel normal and the novelty of being in Thailand actually started to wear off. Part of me didn’t want the novelty to wear off because the novelty meant only spending a small amount of money every month wasn’t a chore because I was living somewhere so different. But after six months, it did get quite boring not being able to just go down to the bar anytime you wanted to, and not being able to do certain things that you wanted to do because it was down to budget.

I did have my savings on top of my income, but that was meant for an emergency and I didn’t want to eat into it.

Meeting a Woman from Nong Khai

At this point in time, I hadn’t met any girls. I’d been to the bars as often as I could, not as often as I would have liked, because I could have seen myself living full time during the day at the bars. But when I did go to the bars, it was fun and entertaining, but I knew I didn’t want to have a relationship with any bar girls because that’s just something that you weren’t meant to do.

All that changed when I met a wonderful girl from Nong Khai in a bar. She was everything I was looking for. Mid-30s, seemingly intelligent, with a great sense of humor and personality. Her English seemed to be better than most of the other girls that I had a chance to speak to. She even had a bit of an English accent, and I found out later that she actually lived in England with her English husband, but they’d got divorced.

I thought that must have been a bit of a downfall for her to be married and living in England with her husband and then having to go back to the bar to work. But she said that her husband was a bad man and she was hoping to find someone who would treat her better than he did. She told me early on everything that had happened to her. Apparently, her old husband used to beat her, and she had to escape from that situation.

I found myself feeling sorry for her, and I wanted to spend more time with her.

The Knife Edge of a Thailand Relationship

From that moment I met her, I think my time in Thailand was on a knife edge. A series of decisions I made from that moment on probably meant I was responsible for ruining my life. And looking back, I don’t know why I did what I did. I desperately want to have my time again, but I know that’s not possible. But at the time, I thought I was doing what was right.

She made me feel young again. She made me feel like I was back to being in my mid 30s. And I suppose what I really wanted was someone to make me feel loved. Since my ex left me, I’d been so wary of women in general and so worried about loving someone again because of what had happened when she left me. I think I sort of forgot about what it felt like to have a relationship, to love someone and feel loved in return.

And although I had only known her for a week, even then I started to feel like a part of me was complete again as opposed to being hollow.

Why Do Men Feel They Need a Partner?

Why is it that men feel like they need to have a partner? I’d lived on my own for a long time since my wife left, and my first months in Thailand had been on my own and I was okay. But as soon as I met her, I was better than okay. I was complete.

I’m embarrassed to say that I asked her to marry me after knowing her for only a month. She was still working in the bar when I asked her, but I told her that I really wanted to spend my life with her. I wanted her to stop working in the bar and I wanted her to come and live with me.

I didn’t know how she would react. But if I think about it, I really jumped the gun. I really didn’t make the best decision by doing that. But I’d been to see her every single day for the whole month. And she actually said that she would marry me. I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was doing something that would make me happy and content finally.

The Happiest I’d Ever Been in Thailand

But when she moved in with me for the first couple of weeks, that was the happiest I’d been in my life up until that point. I forgot what it felt like to wake up in the morning and have someone there, to be able to go places with someone and have shared experiences. It really was a great time in my retirement and my life.

I suppose everything went downhill from there, but I was desperately trying to cling on to what I thought I had and what I didn’t want to lose, and that was difficult.

Going to Nong Khai to Get Married

After a month, we went to Nong Khai. That is a town in Isan, which is opposite Vientiane in Laos. This was to get married. I had heard that you have to go to the family’s village to get married and have a party. And our marriage was no different.

When we were there, the first thing I found out was that she had children. I didn’t even know that she had children before I asked her to marry me. I just guessed that she wouldn’t have children. I don’t know why I thought that. It just seemed to be what I believed. These children weren’t from her English husband. They were from her old Thai husband before that. He was also a bad man, she said. But she had two children and they were 12 and 14. They lived with her parents.

I think that’s so common in Thailand that it’s quite hard to fathom. Poor girls from Isan go to Bangkok and leave their kids with their parents. It’s very common.

Paying Sin Sod in Thailand

At this point, I’m doting on her. I’m trying to do everything I can to make her happy. And at this point, I’m eating into my savings in order to be able to have this marriage and to do things together with her that I wouldn’t have done by myself. That’s where it becomes crazy. I’m doing things and spending money that I wouldn’t spend even for myself. And it’s my money and I was able to spend it for her. And I don’t know why I did that.

She seemed to be happy in her village, happy around her kids, and things that she used to do with her family. At that moment, I felt like I was making the right decision.

I must say, though, I’m embarrassed that I did pay for a dowry known as sin sod in Thailand. I handed over 200,000 baht to her family, as well as some gold that I bought. They seemed happy enough with that. And we did the thing where you tie the string around your wrist and all the other traditions that go along with that. We even had some monks come and give us blessings, along with other traditional Thai customs. And then the same day we went to register the marriage.

I’m still really happy with my decision at this point, and I now had a wife and I felt like my retirement was now complete.

Back to Pattaya as the Cracks Appear

We went back down to Pattaya a few days after this and started living as a married couple, which felt amazing. I was expecting my life to now be a lot more affordable than it was before. I didn’t need to go out anymore really. I could just spend time with my wife.

But I had bitten off a lot more than I could chew. I think I did rush into things too quickly. Way too quickly, in fact, because we can’t have been back for very long, and she’s already starting to go out in the evening with friends, and I’m having to pay for it. I’m finding she is going out at least two times a week. We never discussed this before we got married, but she just said that’s what she used to do before we met and she doesn’t want to let her friends down by not going.

Sometimes she did ask me to go as well, and we’d go to a barbecue place called moo krata in Thai. Really fun places to go and have dinner and some beers, but her friends would join us, and again I’d be required to pay for everybody. And her friends were all still working in the bar.

The Bar Friends Problem

This was the biggest shock for me, something I would never have expected or anticipated. My wife worked in a bar when we met. I married her and she stopped working there. I expected her to immediately cease contact with any of the other girls that used to work in the bar. I thought she would be embarrassed about her time in the bar. I was embarrassed that I met her in the bar.

But when we went to meet up with her friends who worked in the same bar, they knew I’d met her there and they’d seen other people with her. And I really expected her to completely separate that part of her life. I expected her to never speak to anybody ever again who worked in the bar. I don’t know how she could be friends with people who worked in the bar. And the fact that she continued to speak to them and go out with them and me occasionally, and then I’d be expected to pay. I felt that really undersold the fact that she used to work in a bar.

Perhaps I wanted her to feel shy about what she used to do. But she was so open about it. She didn’t care that people knew. She didn’t care about anything. But I did care, and that was something I struggled with a lot.

Spending Too Much Money in Thailand

I was trying not to think about the fact that I was spending too much money. Again, if we talk about the fact that she worked in a bar, I thought the fact that she worked in a bar meant that she wouldn’t want anything from me because she’d escaped from the bar. She’d been saved from the bar by me. And I thought that was enough for her. I didn’t expect her to want a lot of things from me. As long as she was being taken care of, I thought for her that would have been enough.

I didn’t expect that I would be sending money for her children after we’d been married for only a month. I knew I shouldn’t have been doing it. I knew I shouldn’t have been sending that money because I couldn’t afford it and it was coming out of my savings. But I did it anyway, even though I didn’t want to.

And I think lots of guys find themselves in that position doing things they don’t want to do, knowing that it will have to come to an end at some point. But why do we wait until we’re already ruined financially before we stop? That’s a difficult question that I still ask myself.

You Can Never Win

But now I find myself sending money to her children every month, and then a month later she wants an allowance as well. I’ve got two choices. I say yes and she’s happy and therefore I can be happy. Or I say no and she’s unhappy and therefore I can’t be happy.

And that’s another thing that’s important to clarify. You can never win when you’re in a relationship as a man. You can win and get her happiness, but it’s going to cost you money. And you can win and it’s not going to cost you money, but you’re not going to get her happiness and then you can’t be happy as well. That is not the right way to do things. It’s no way to live.

And I just thought that if I married someone who was poor and who worked in a bar, she would really appreciate the fact that I helped her out of the bar and helped her lead a more dignified life. In return, all I wanted was loyalty and for her to not want anything other than to be taken care of.

My Money Was Gone in Thailand

But at this point, I’m spending half of my actual income on her and her children. By the time we’ve paid for rent and utilities and a bit of transportation around Pattaya when we want to go somewhere, all my money is gone. Everything else was coming out of my savings, probably to the tune of £1,500 a month. So much for a cheap retirement in Thailand. It wasn’t as cheap as it was meant to be. It was nowhere near as cheap as I was expecting it to be based on things I’d watched.

And that’s the problem. You need to go in person to actually discover. The life I was living, doing what I wanted to do, mostly taking care of my wife to the level where she was happy around me, was costing me around £2,300 a month. And bear in mind, we’re not running a car and we don’t have a fancy place. We’ve just got a cheap condo. And I’m still spending that amount of money.

It was really starting to upset me, and we’d only been together for a few months.

The Thailand Relationship Felt Like a Drug

But I think it’s like a drug. That’s the best way to describe being in a relationship. No matter how bad it is for you, you keep doing it more and more, knowing that you shouldn’t, but you’re not able to help it. And that’s very difficult. Because in a way, I was addicted to being with her.

But I knew after 2 months that I’d made a very bad decision and I should not stay with her anymore. I still had a chance to escape from it. She didn’t know I had savings. She knew I had a small income every month, but that was it. She didn’t even have to know anything. That’s another thing that many people get wrong.

I think you get to a point in your relationship when you know it should finish. You know it’s not in your best interest to continue, and you know deep down that you don’t want to continue with the relationship, but you still find yourself there losing money for the feeling and the addiction that you get from her. It’s a weird situation, but that’s how I found myself. And I didn’t know what to do to fix it and still save my retirement.

If I continued down this path, within a few years, things wouldn’t go well for me. But I’m just loving the feeling I get when I’m with her. And that is the feeling I get when I’m with her and when she is being the person I want her to be. And she’s only being the person I want her to be when she’s getting something out of me.

And the only way I can keep this feeling is by recklessly losing money that I wasn’t in a position to lose if I wanted to be able to stay permanently in Thailand.

Letting Things Continue

As you can guess, I decided to let things continue. I always had it in the back of my mind that something all of a sudden would happen and make everything okay. I was just waiting for a moment, but it never came. Of course, it’s not going to come. But I am happy in this moment in time, as happy as I can be, with the situation I found myself in. But although I was happy, I did know, as I had already said, that I shouldn’t be in this relationship because it was going to ruin me, and ruin me fast.

We’d only been married for 3 months, and I’m starting to think like I made a big error. I’m starting to pick up on the fact that this girl doesn’t actually love me at all. It was purely a marriage of convenience for her. And the way she acts around me is good in one sense, but deep down I’m starting to understand that for her it’s nothing more than a marriage of convenience.

Even knowing that, I still clung on because of how she made me feel. It became a necessity for me, even though that meant doing crazy and stupid and irresponsible things.

The Bar Party After Marriage

She told me one night around this time that there was a party at the bar she used to work at, and she wanted to go there. I couldn’t believe she said that. In my mind, she should have been embarrassed about the fact she worked at the bar. She should have been trying to distance herself from that part of her life. But she wanted to go to that party.

I couldn’t even say no to her because that would have changed her, and she would have sulked and I wouldn’t have had a good evening anyway. I asked her if I could go as well. She said it was fine. But when we turned up at the bar, I felt so cheap and disgusting and embarrassed. Embarrassed that I went to a bar with my wife where she used to work, and all the negative connotations that went along with that.

I had a dreadful time, but she was getting as drunk as she could and dancing around as though she didn’t realize that she was married and should behave in a more appropriate way now. I left early and went back home, and she came back in the early hours of the morning more drunk than I’d ever seen her before. I didn’t think it was a way to behave for a girl in her mid 30s with two children going out and getting drunk like that.

But I couldn’t do anything about it. I still at this point liked being with her, although I did know I’d made a mistake and should not have got married and never got involved with her in the first place. I tried to make the best out of a bad situation.

Another Party and More Spending

But the day after, she had a massive hangover and lay down on the bed all day. When the evening came around, she said she was going out again. There was another party happening, and she asked me to go. I couldn’t think of anything worse at this point than to go back to that bar, but I let her go and she came back blind drunk again.

The next day, it’s time to send money up to her children. And I find myself doing it even though it feels worse than anything. I thought I was sending money to her children so that she would be staying with me and doing what I wanted her to do in return, which wasn’t much. Maybe watch a movie together, go for a walk together, go out for a meal together. You know, basic things that married couples do.

But she wanted her cake and she wanted to eat it. Not only that, she wanted chocolate sprinkles on top as well. But I still put up with it.

The Condo Complaint in Pattaya

A few days later, and she’s complaining about the condo where we live. “It’s too small,” she says, and we need a bigger one. I did see the place where she was living before she moved in with me. It didn’t have air conditioning, and she shared it with two other girls. It was a shocking place, and the place she was living in with me was better in every way. But she was still complaining about it, saying, “We’re married and we need a nicer place.”

And I was too weak to say no. And that day, we found ourselves looking at different condos for rent. And I put my downfall in the back of my mind, knowing that I’m spending money I shouldn’t be spending. And we found somewhere that’s double the price. It even had a sea view one bedroom, small kitchen area. But I did like it, but I knew I shouldn’t have been spending the money on it. I just found myself doing it and thinking, “Never mind.”

Big C Spending Spree

The condo was fully furnished, but it didn’t have bedding and a washing basket and other small things that you need. So, we went to Big C to buy everything. I’d set a budget in my mind of 5,000 baht for everything, and I knew we wouldn’t go over it. But then she starts wanting other things as well needing this and needing that. And we spent 15,000 baht. And just like that, I’ve spent 10,000 baht more than I wanted to spend, even though I didn’t want to do it.

Why am I doing these things I don’t want to do? I’m trying to get to the bottom of that, but I still don’t understand. We stood at the cash register and I’m doing things I don’t want to do, and I only have myself to blame.

All I Wanted Was a Film with My Wife

But we take everything back to the new condo. I get it set up, and all I wanted to do because at this time it was early evening was order some food and watch a film together, relax. But she said she wanted to go out to celebrate the new condo, and she expected me to go as well. But when I told her I was tired, she decided to go herself. And she comes back drunk again, straight to bed, and wakes up with a hangover in the morning.

That’s one thing that I didn’t understand. Did she not just see that the previous day we’d moved into a more expensive condo because she wanted that? And we’d spent 10,000 baht more on things for the condo than I expected or wanted to spend because of her. And in return, all I wanted to do was watch a film and relax and spend the night with her. But she couldn’t even do that. She went out with her friends.

Lending Money to Friends

To add to the indignity of the situation, she said that the money that I gave her as her monthly allowance she had to lend to her friend. So, she didn’t have any money, and she asked me to replace it. And I’d get it back when her friend paid it back which of course never happened.

I’m wanting to get out of the relationship at this point. But when she starts talking about buying a motorcycle that would help us drive around Pattaya more easily, I didn’t tell her no. I didn’t say, “I don’t want to do that. I want to divorce you.” I didn’t say that. We just went out and bought a bike. And I’m digging myself deeper and deeper into this hole.

I don’t understand why I did what I did, but things like this just keep going on.

Three Years of Financial Destruction

And for the next year, I spent so much of my savings. It was either cut my losses and run, and maybe I could still stay in Thailand or continue doing things like I was doing and pray for a miracle.

I was too weak. That’s the truth. I was too weak, and I allowed things to continue, and money was going out of the door all the time. She was going out regularly with friends, and I started to get an understanding that she was actually doing things that she shouldn’t have been doing when she went out. And I still took it. I took it all the way until my savings had completely dried up.

It took three years, and I’d lost every single last penny that I had. I just hoped that she would stay with me.

The Day My Savings Dried Up

But when I couldn’t afford to give her her allowance and send money to her children, you could see I was serious. She didn’t feel bad for me. She didn’t feel sorry for me that I’d lost my savings to her. She just went back to work in the bar that same day.

I knew I did expect that. I knew I expected something like this to happen. But I just couldn’t stop myself spending money when I was with her. No matter how badly I didn’t want to, I couldn’t stop myself. And that’s a sign of weakness.

I still had my £800 a month. But in 3 years, I’d eaten through all my savings. I had a wife who treated me way worse than my English wife ever did. But she knew exactly how to get what she wanted out of me, even if it meant doing things that I would never do under any circumstances.

That’s my story.

Where I Am Now in Thailand

I’m now living in Thailand on £800 a month with no emergency savings, no backup plan, no medical insurance, no nothing. And I’m not too far away from being 70. I try to keep myself fit and active, but the decisions I made looking back, I regret immensely.

But I wanted to tell my story because although I knew that I was being stupid and I shouldn’t have been doing it, it did at the time and feel like a drug. I was addicted. I was addicted to the feelings she gave me to the point where I lost everything because of it.

I know how people feel who are addicted to substances. They don’t want to be, but they can’t help it. And that was how I was with her.

I think she still works at the bar now. She’ll be 40 soon as well, and I suppose that’s the best place for her.

The Saddest Thing of All

As for me, I just hope that when my time finally does come, it’s sudden. I can’t afford to pay for any emergencies. I take every day as they come now.

But the saddest thing of all is: if I did get some more money somehow from somewhere, the first thing I would be doing is going to see her again to get that feeling back.

And that’s the truth.

(DONE)