Leaving Thailand After Losing His Life Savings
When I was flying out of Thailand about 5 years ago, knowing that I would never see the country I spent so many years of my life in ever again, it was initially a bitter pill to swallow. But I came to the understanding all too late, unfortunately, that I was never welcome in Thailand. I was returning home, hoping to find work in my later years and somehow get a visa for my wife to join me.
I felt like I gave Thailand my blood, sweat, and tears. I tried everything to fit in. I tried everything to become part of the community. Yet, I got to the point when I realized that I would always be an outsider regardless of what I did. This is very hard to come to terms with when you’ve spent over 20 years in a country.
And when I take a step back and come to terms with how I’ve got myself into such an awful financial situation, all I am really able to do is look myself in the mirror and realize that I am to blame because I did what I did without anyone holding a gun to my head, without anyone forcing me, and without anyone trying to scam me. The problem was everything felt like a scam all along.
From my very first days in Thailand as a brand new retiree at the age of 53 to the day I left 5 years ago, it didn’t feel like the passing of a normal existence. It felt like I was surrounded on every front by somebody who wanted money and money alone from me. I’m not saying that Thailand is the land of scams, although I’ve heard many people describe it as such. Because it’s one thing to have money ripped away from you by a devious person. Yet, it’s another thing to have money ripped away from you by someone with a smile on their face at the same time as doing it. To me, that’s how I find Thailand. I was tolerated, but never welcomed as an equal.
I was viewed as a money source, a walking ATM. Yet, while I actually came to terms with that very early on during my time in Thailand, I tried my best to overlook it for as long as I could. That’s what makes the whole thing quite difficult to comprehend. I felt like I was treated like that from very early on during my stay in Thailand, yet I still remained. That’s a question that I can’t answer as to why I did.
I’ve spoken to many people over the years who feel the exact same way about Thailand that I do. What we loved about Thailand when we went there originally was that it seemed to value things more than where we were from. Very minor things that meant so much to me. Yet those minor things that meant so much to me changed anyway in Thailand from something ever so small like the fact that there were no speed cameras in Thailand when I arrived, yet there were in my country. And my logic behind this was that Thailand respected the fact that there shouldn’t be speed cameras, not just the fact that they didn’t have the ability to use them yet.
The Small Things That Made Thailand Appealing
That’s a bad example. I know it’s a bad example, but it’s just one of the tiny things that attracted me to Thailand in the first place.
Meeting a Thai Woman in 2002
The main thing that attracted me to Thailand though was 3 years prior to my retirement, I met a Thai girl who was working at a bar. She was 21 years old, two kids, and she was the love of my life up until then. I thought she saw me how I saw myself and that again was a mistake that leaves me shaking my head even today. 2002 then was when I met her. That was my first trip to Thailand and I was going there just to see if it was going to be somewhere that I could see myself retiring to because if it was, that meant I could bring forward retirement by about 10 years.
As soon as I arrived in Thailand, I felt a connection to the country that’s quite hard to describe. It felt like it was there for the taking in a way. And you have to remember at this point that the West was still moving forwards how we’d expect the West to move forwards. And Thailand seemed like a different world. And it was that different world that I loved. Bangkok back then was similar to how it is today. Apart from it was a lot less developed, a lot less malls, a lot less high rises, a lot cheaper prices. So I guess it wasn’t anything like the Bangkok of today.
One reason that I loved it though was that it seemed to be for a specific sort of person. It seemed to be for the person who missed the dominant ways of the West. At least that’s how I felt because it gave us from the West an easier go of things, which is why people retire there in the first place. Anyone who says that they retire to Thailand for any other reason than it makes their money stretch further, they’re lying.
2002. The whole way I fell in love with the country of Thailand, the people, the culture, and everything that everybody else says that they fall in love with about Thailand. The people, though, I quickly came to learn. But at this point, I’d already committed that while the people are so friendly and kind towards you and will help you if they can, the smile that you see on their face will often be superficial and fake. And it’s like they’re smiling while looking down on you while looking up to you at the same time. That was a little later though that I learned that after living there. But at this moment in time when I’m there in 2002, I have no idea that this is the case at all. And I’m just mesmerized by how fantastic the country is.
Like many guys who fall in love with Bangkok and the amazing nightlife there, I had to go and see Pattaya with my own eyes. And that’s when things started to make more sense. Guys that I ran into who were already living there said it was like they were living in a dream world. They were living somewhere where their wildest dreams could come true. And at the same time, they could do anything they wanted to do. And everything seemed to be tolerated in a different way than things were tolerated when I left. There was a lot more social cohesion in Thailand back then. There was a lot more understanding and respect between the local population and the tourists and expats because it was something that had been developed over countless decades. This would change in Thailand, and it would be one of the things that I hated the most. But I would still be in Thailand if I didn’t lose all my money.
Meeting Her in a Pattaya Bar on Soi
Soi was where I met her. Back then they just had a few bars down that street and it wasn’t as hectic as it is today. And I thought long and hard how I was meant to describe it when I met her because I’ve heard other guys say the same thing as me. I do listen to lots of stories to see if they match mine, and what happened to me is quite different to what happened to many people. When I met her, I guess I reacted like many people do when they meet a girl in a bar in Thailand.
For a start, back then, it’s very important to say, and I think anyone needs to say it for what it is, there were no smartphones. There was none of this incandescent greed that there seems to be today in Thailand. And when you met a girl, it was as if you were meeting someone from a completely different place. Now, if you meet a girl, of course, you’re meeting someone from a very different place. But you don’t really have an excuse to let anything bad happen to you in Thailand today because of all the guys that have gone before you who have had things happen to them. But when I met her, she was just a sweet, innocent looking, frightfully poor, incredibly beautiful girl from the backwaters of Isan.
I remember walking into her bar. She was just chatting to another girl because there was nothing else for them to do. When I went into bars years later and the smartphone reared its ugly head, you would walk in and the girls would be on the phone. They could be chatting to a guy sending them money from a different country. They could be watching a video from a different country, wishing they were there and wishing that they had what was being shown in the video. So, it really was better back then than it is today if you were interested in getting into a relationship with a bar girl.
Also, I would think that many negatives came along with it because I was blind to the situation about what was actually going on because I thought in Thailand because everyone seemed to say it was I thought in Thailand money was the most important thing. I’ve heard other people say that in Thailand it seems like greed has been blown out of proportion. The constant want, want that the people seem to have developed somehow over the past few years is quite disgusting to witness. But back then it felt so much different.
Just chatting to her in the bar was an incredible experience. She didn’t speak great English, but she didn’t need to. She showed me pictures of her kids, but instead of bringing them up on a smartphone, she took them out of her purse, actual printed pictures, and she seemed to be very proud of them. Talking about how they were being taken care of by her parents up in the village. I always used to like to refer to that part of Thailand as Nakhon Nowhere because that’s really what it felt like. And it was the usual case to other girls that I’d spoken to on that trip to Thailand as well that she was working there to help support her kids and her family. I know, how different.
I went with her that evening, and while I had just turned 50 at this moment in time, it only felt right that the two of us were meant for each other. She stayed with me for the rest of my trip to Thailand, and when I was due to return home, I’d already decided that I would retire there when I could, and I expected to have her as my wife.
Losing $25,000 in a Long Distance Betrayal
Before I left, I did the usual stupid things that many guys did. I agreed to help her financially so she could stop working in the bar, and I would go back for a month every year until retirement. She could wait for me, and she could be what kept me going while I was working back at home. Over the next 3 years, I sent her the equivalent of about $25,000. I thought she was living in her village with her family, which is what we agreed to. There was no video calling. You have to understand that. And it was expensive to make long distance calls because many of these cheap packages hadn’t arrived yet. So when we spoke, it was brief and it was daily, but we couldn’t have the same kind of interaction as we would have had if it was 10 years into the future when this happened.
Aside from that, I saw her once a year two more years actually, in 2003 and 2004 for a month at a time. And during 2004, I proposed to her, asking her to get married. And then in 2005, we could get married and start living together full time. When I finally arrived back in 2005, so excited to be getting married to her I was sending her money every single month up until then but when I called her when she didn’t come to meet me at the airport, as agreed, she said she’d met someone else about a year ago and she was living with him instead.
So during the whole of 2004, I was sending money to her every single month. I’d seen her for a month, and I found out that when I got back in 2005 to retire, that she’d still been taking my money. She was still seeing me when she was with this other guy. And she did it so blatantly as if there was nothing wrong with it. I saw that as being one of the most despicable things I’d ever seen. And I should have thanked my lucky stars that it only cost me $25,000. And it should have also told me that under no circumstances should I ever entertain trying to get into another relationship like that because of what had just happened with this girl who I was meant to be getting married to.
To think about how despicable she was as a person. To not have any problem with taking money from multiple people, it really does sicken you. Because one of the things I loved so much about Thailand at that time was that I thought or that might be the wrong word to use, maybe not thought, but I knew, which is even stronger that she didn’t really want anything apart from to be taken care of. I thought that she looked at things like, “Well, I’m from Thailand. I’ve got to be happy being taken care of because I can’t make my own money. I shouldn’t want anything other than to be taken care of.” And I suppose that’s what you get when you walk into a place like that and see all those girls there. It’s like they wouldn’t be there if they didn’t look up to you as being their saviors. They wouldn’t be there if they didn’t respect you for helping them have better lives.
It’s like you want a better life at our expense, not understanding that I have to have a better life because of what I’ve done with my life. That you should have to forget everything about that. I’m not trying to be as blatant though by saying these things, but I felt like I would give and she should give in return. But it was like I was the one giving and she was the one taking and there was nothing else to go with that.
I guess when things changed in Thailand considerably in terms of you know the different sorts of people coming to Thailand, the conversations I had with her and conversations I had with other girls around this time all those girls, every single one of them, and I’m not exaggerating here, were the most racist people you would ever hear. The way the girls around this time described people from anywhere where the people didn’t look like I did they were so open to describe these people like they didn’t like them at all. So many times, and I bet anyone who has been to Thailand around that time would confirm this. So many times I was in the presence of a bar girl in the mid 2000s and they didn’t have anything nice to say about any of the very few people that they saw coming from countries like that. And I guess as the time went on, more and more people were coming from there. Yet all these racist things that these girls spoke to me about and many guys that I knew it’s like, “What about your opinions? I thought you didn’t like them.” So what’s this all about? What about how you described that person before when we walked past in terms of the smell? You said that, but that’s when you realized that it was only about the money all along.
Recognizing the Betrayal
If only I’d have known it was about the money all along when I found out what happened with this girl that was meant to be my wife, I guess I wouldn’t have done even more incredibly stupid things. I am not racist, by the way, not remotely. But these girls were the most racist people I’d ever heard speaking all these hideous things. Yet that’s why I think they’re huge hypocrites for being so open with things today.
It took me a few months to get over that. I was expecting to be married to her, but the thing that hurt the most was the thought of her using my money while she wasn’t being respectful of me or herself. That was the thing that hurt the most. And I would have gladly paid another $25,000 if that meant I could get my $25,000 back that I’d given to her, even if it meant I had to lose it all because it didn’t ring true to me. Thailand is always about the money. Everywhere you go, it’s money, money, money. Hardly any places care about customer service. It’s always about money first. And when you understand what Thailand‘s like and you start thinking the same way as Thailand does, you could be forgiven for not understanding such disgusting behavior by a girl like that.
Retiring to Pattaya in 2005
I’d moved to Pattaya for retirement though in 2005. And while it took a bit of getting over the shocking betrayal by this girl who I didn’t think had any business doing what she did, I was happy to be there and I was more than happy by the fact that I never needed to work another day in my life. I’d chosen to live in Pattaya mainly because I didn’t trust Bangkok. I saw many parts of Bangkok change over a few years and I didn’t want to live around massive change. I was okay with the fact that change happens. I’m not like those guys who get angry about change, but I want to have some form of consistency in my life and I want to rest in the knowledge that where I was living would remain recognizable throughout the passing of not that much time.
It felt amazing when I got my retirement visa and even more amazing when I rented my first place and amazing again to be able to wake up with a completely open day where I could do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it. I should say how much I was retiring with. I had £400,000. I’m Australian but spent most of my life in the UK where I never bothered to get citizenship. £400,000 invested in a high interest savings account at the time was giving me £20,000 a year, which at that point in time was 1.4 million baht a year. Damn, that’s painful to write down. Why guys choose to retire to Thailand today, I have no idea. It’s not worth the hassle, pain, and degradation for anyone, even in the slightest anymore.
But with my retirement visa, I settled into the knowledge that I could just remain in Thailand forever. And I loved Thailand. I’m not trying to say that I didn’t love Thailand. I loved how I thought Thailand was when I moved there. Yet, when I look at what I thought Thailand was and compare it to what Thailand actually was, I couldn’t have been more wrong with my interpretation of things.
If I hadn’t done anything stupid from this moment, what would have happened is my income would have dropped substantially because the interest rates went down and my money would be worth less and less every single year. And while I would have still been able to live in Thailand, I wouldn’t have been able to live like I did when I got there because £20,000 then was enough to just do anything you wanted to do. But what I wanted to do, and I still don’t know why I did, was take things more seriously with a girl that I met in 2006.
Meeting Her on Walking Street
I may get some stick in the comments though when I talk about this relationship that I was trying to get into. I met her at a bar on Walking Street. I didn’t go to Walking Street very often, but she was stood outside one of the bars and she looked so out of place and uncomfortable. She just had a bikini on and a little number on her bikini and she was holding a sign next to a few other girls that looked great as well. The sign said “cheap beer” and damn, beer was cheap then. I was just walking up Walking Street, funnily enough, and I just saw her and the first thing I could think of saying was, “Do you want to get a drink inside?” I wanted to speak to her. So, she handed the sign to another girl, grabbed my hand, and walked into the bar.
She had really high heels on that she didn’t appear to be very comfortable in. She was even struggling to walk, and she didn’t appear to be like all the other girls around. She seemed like she didn’t want to be there, yet she was there. As I would find out that evening, to support her two kids. Why she had two kids at her age, I don’t know. But as I’d heard so many times before, she went on to talk about “Thai man no good.” And I never stopped to think what she meant by that or what any girl meant by that. But now I actually understand and it sends a shiver down my spine to think about it because nobody’s looked at it this way before.
Many of us guys back then would hear the same things all the time. “Thai man no good.” And we’re thinking that she’s referring to every single Thai man that has ever existed. But what they’re actually referring to are the Thai men from their village who don’t have a pot to piss in and who are pathetic wastes of space, completely unable to better their own lives. Please note that is a very broad generalization. I’ve met some Thai guys over the years who have come from places like that and who have built fantastic lives for themselves and their families through hard work and effort. But the girls are not referring to these Thai guys when they say “Thai man no good.” They’re referring to basically their own male equivalents. If “Thai man no good,” that means “Thai lady no good” because you allowed yourself to be spoiled for such a Thai man. That means that you are the equivalent otherwise you wouldn’t have gone near them. If you ever hear a Thai girl say “Thai man no good,” I would run away from that because this is not an accurate thing to say and they’re only referring to their own equivalence in life, which by the way is a very definition that means they’re no good as well.
I think it was actually a year of me being in Thailand when I met her, so I can’t remember dates exactly, but I had met quite a number of girls across that time, but never felt a deep connection to anyone like I did to her. And I felt that connection as soon as I saw her. At this point, I’m actually spending less money than my income, and I’m really happy with the way things are going. I’m going out nearly every single day, and my money is going up, not down. Again, that was Thailand 20 years ago.
But she was something special at least to me because there were many guys walking past her that evening who didn’t give her a second look. But after we’d been in her bar for, I would say, a few hours a few drinks each, a cheap bill we left together. Only this time, it wasn’t just for a bit of fun. It was actually because I wanted to spend time with her and get to know her. From that moment on, I suppose I was in love with her. And you can fall in love with someone very quickly and not know why. And I suppose that was me all over. Before long, I paid her out of the bar, and she’d just moved in with me, and we were living an amazing existence.
Building a Life Together in Pattaya
I never felt shy walking around the streets of Pattaya, holding her hand, and some people would say, “Well, you were old enough to be her grandfather, but so what?” I don’t understand why people have to make a fuss about it. I was with her because I loved her. She was with me. Well, that’s the thing. I thought she looked up to me and respected me. I thought she loved me in a different way to how she would love someone of her own age. But I still thought that there was genuine love and respect there, which is why I was getting so serious with her so quickly.
She was really happy with 10,000 baht a month. I mean, that to her was a lot of money back then. And again, that’s why I would encourage anyone thinking about moving to Thailand today. If you’re interested in this sort of relationship, it’s going to cost you such a large amount more money and you’re going to get something far worse in return. So, that would be something I would say. But on my income, 10,000 baht was nothing. And it felt great just to be able to wake up and she was there. To be able to go out for lunch together, go out for drinks together, go to watch a film together, and go away together. I felt like we were inseparable, and when she was with me, she never seemed that she was with me for any other reason than we were both in love with each other.
Again, though, I have to talk about the comments because I’ve seen comments saying, “How could anyone think that anyone as young as that would love you when you’re that age?” Why not? I don’t understand why. Why is that such a big thing? I thought that she respected maturity. Of course, the money side of things and being able to be taken care of perhaps not an attraction that she had for me in the sense that I had for her but she had an attraction to not having to stand on Walking Street in a bikini holding a sign saying “cheap beer.” She had an attraction to the fact that she was never shouted at. She was never bullied and never hit her. She was never not loved and cherished like the special gem that she was. I would really honestly say to anyone who leaves comments on stories, tell me what I’ve done here that you think is wrong. Because up until this point, I’m really happy. She seems to be really happy, and my money is going up.
When you’re so convinced that you love someone and they love you, I actually thought she loved me more than I loved her because there were thousands of her everywhere, which I could have had easier than she could have found someone else like me to look after her. So, I thought it would only be the right thing that she loved me more. But when you’re convinced that there’s so much love there, that’s why things, I suppose, go wrong. And when they go wrong, they go wrong fast.
But did I learn my lesson? Guys never learn our lessons that way. At least I didn’t.
Marriage Sin Sod and the Slow Drain of Savings
What happened between 2007 when we got married and 2009 again should have told me everything that I needed to know about the mentality of people in Thailand, about the insatiable greed for money over and above their station in life, for that lack of respect for the providers of money. I just didn’t see it. It started out as I said when we got married in March 2007. That was the first time I had to dip into my savings to pay sin sod to her family. And I have to tell you how I felt about it. I was very happy to pay that amount of money because I thought I was paying money to the family and that meant that I would be respected as being the one in charge because I paid for it. It didn’t make sense. Didn’t make sense any other way and it still doesn’t make sense any other way. Why do you pay this money if in return you’re not going to get complete control over the relationship? I wouldn’t have wanted control if I didn’t have to pay for it. That’s what I thought the whole thing was for. I’m not just going to give you money for no reason and they get nothing in return. I thought I was getting my wife in return and this financial figure was to be like, “Well, I’m now in charge. You’ve taken this money. I’m in charge.” So, that was a huge mistake that I made even without thinking about it.
By the end of 2007, I had already given her about a million baht because she wanted to open a salon with her friend, a typical business that I’ve seen many girls try over the years. And all that money just disintegrated in a very short space of time, and I was left scratching my head. I’d agreed to give her this money in return for not having to give her an allowance anymore. I was giving her 10,000 a month before, but this million baht was to be, so I never needed to give money to her again. But of course, as soon as that’s lost, I’m giving her allowance. And now she’s expecting 12,000. I’m blind to the situation. I’m blind to her greed. I’m blind to who she is as a person. But that was a painful pill to swallow because my income’s going down as well now because I’m eating into principal.
But the worst thing was I made the foolish mistake to build a house in her village. We went to visit on a few occasions and on one of those visits we were just talking about our life in Pattaya. I think we were both saying that it was nice to get away for a change. It’s nice to be somewhere different and peaceful. And before I know it, a house is being constructed in the village because we were planning to spend half our time there and half our time in Pattaya. I knew I couldn’t own it, but the idea was that I could afford it because my income was still good and I wasn’t spending it yet, and it would also be good for her kids as well. And I thought if I did something that was good for her kids, she would be even more kind and grateful towards me. Yet, when I found out that she wasn’t, I still didn’t put two and two together and understand that Thailand was really to blame for all this, for not teaching the poorest among them to be grateful to people who look after them.
How could you not be grateful to be taken care of, to be pulled out of the depths of poverty by someone who loved you unconditionally, gave you things, and made your life better? How could you not be grateful to them? But I quickly found out that she wasn’t when we were in the house around halfway through 2008, and things are not looking good in terms of money anymore and the pound. But I found out that she never ended the relationship with that guy. She had two kids with this Thai man that was “no good.” She was still carrying on with him. And again, I thought that she was just a bad example of a Thai girl, not a characteristic of a whole people. But this has happened to me twice now, only this time I’ve lost about £120,000 for everything I’ve done in such a short amount of time.
I was madly in love with her, only to discover that she had no sense of understanding of her place in the world. Luckily, we weren’t married on paper, but all of a sudden, although I hadn’t spent as much money on certain things, I’m now at about £300,000. My income I hadn’t spent all of it throughout that time but I’d lost £100,000 to this girl who I loved so much and who was meant to love me, but who didn’t love me. All she loved was money that I could give her. Yet, I thought that because I was giving her money, because she couldn’t get it herself, I thought she thought that was the most important thing that she would never do anything to hurt me. But I was wrong.
But again, I didn’t learn my stupid lesson because I’m a stupid man. So, I’ve now lost a lot of money. To make matters worse, of course, the pound has gone down considerably in value, and I didn’t transfer all my money in like I should have done, but I’ve got 300,000. The interest rates have gone down considerably, so I’m not getting 5% anymore. And I managed to find an investment that I could put my money in, but it wasn’t a huge risk and I was only getting about 400,000 baht a year now in income. That had gone from 1.4 million to 400,000 in a very small amount of time. And my actual money is worth considerably less than it was when I went to Thailand. And now my retirement, while still possible, is nowhere near as good as it should have been if things had just remained the same.
The Rising Cost of Life in Thailand
One thing that I expected, which I guess I probably shouldn’t have expected, I did expect things in Thailand to be reduced in price to keep the tourists coming, to keep the main tourists coming because I thought that Thailand respected the fact that it was a cheap destination. You always used to hear it throughout the years on the news and you might be reading the Bangkok Post or The Nation “Thai government looking for quality tourists over quantity” but you didn’t actually believe them when they said that. Thailand was meant to be a cheap destination, and that’s what Thailand was. It didn’t really make sense if Thailand was going to become more expensive because you’d go somewhere else instead. At least that’s how I always felt. If I was rich enough, I wouldn’t have gone to Thailand. I’d have gone somewhere else entirely different. So I thought Thailand understood that and respected the fact that, you know, they are meant to be a cheap country. That’s what the attraction to Thailand is. It was a very one sided view, I guess, but that’s how I found Thailand and nothing had ever told me otherwise.
Drinking Through the Dark Years
Because of all this, though, I would say around 2009 till 2013 4 years I just started drinking heavily in my room most days. Sangsom, soda water, Coke. By midday you’re already drunk, and the days merge together, and you don’t have to spend a lot of money because when you’re drunk, things are more fun than they actually are. I’m clinging on to the hope that things will go back to how they were when I arrived. Yet, that’s not likely going to happen. But you do think it will. It was there before, so why can’t it be there now? And that’s one thing that still angers me today. Because if I’d have known that Thailand would never have gone back to how it was when I moved there, I’d have probably left in 2013 when I decided I needed to pull myself together and stop drinking and maybe leave Thailand and go live somewhere else altogether have a fresh start. Except that retirement hasn’t gone the way I expected it to through absolutely no fault of my own. You know, if I’d lost what I’d lost and things remained the same, I would have still had more than enough money to live a fantastic life. But now things are out of my control situations out of my control. That’s why I’m in this position, and I need to get over it. I couldn’t get over it for so long. But by 2013, I decided that if I don’t get over it, I’m just going to drink myself to an early grave. And I didn’t want to do that.
So close to the end of 2013, I left Pattaya for good. I wasn’t going to miss it. It served its purpose. It’s a great city, great things to do there. Being close to the ocean was fantastic and one of the things I loved about it the most. The bars were amazing. But I needed to get out to see more of Thailand. I needed to learn more about Thailand. And stupidly to try and find a real girl who loved and respected me for me. I still thought it was possible. I still didn’t realize that there was a mentality in Thailand where what I expected and wanted was not possible. I was just a stupid farang and nothing more.
I hate that word when people are described like that. Why is it that in Thailand people can describe us the way they want yet we can’t describe other people the way we want? It’s just so one sided, and Thailand has it so good. But I went initially to Bangkok. I spent a few months there, but I was really glad that I didn’t commit to Bangkok when I was thinking about where to live because I wasn’t liking how expensive Bangkok had become in such a short amount of time and how toned down everything seemed to be in comparison to how it was before. I know I’m one of those guys complaining about change, but I kind of think like I went to Thailand at the worst time imaginable because everything got worse for people like me from then. But that’s one of those things. You can’t change it.
Three months in Bangkok. I then went down to Phuket to try it there. I had a reasonable time, but I just didn’t click with Phuket, and I only spent two months there. And I was just thinking about giving up everything as a bad job and going back to Pattaya when someone recommended Hua Hin. I’d heard of it. I’d never been. So I thought I’d go and have a look and then make my way back to Pattaya with my tail between my legs and find another place to rent there.
Finding Peace in Hua Hin
When I got to Hua Hin, I quickly felt that this was a place that I could get used to living in very quickly. They had the bar areas, but it wasn’t as much as in Pattaya. They had the ocean, but the beach wasn’t much of anything. Little bit further down south, you could have nicer beaches. But it had this vibe there, which was completely unlike any of the other places I’d ever been in Thailand. They had a reasonably large expat scene, which meant you could buy things that you might want if you were craving something in particular an abundance of good restaurants. Whereas I couldn’t go out to eat all the time because of my money problems with what had happened with Thailand and the value of my currency and the fact I’d lost 25% of my money because a malicious girl basically scammed it out of me.
I was happy though to rent somewhere, find somewhere reasonably nice to live, and maybe if I’m lucky enough, I might be able to meet a real girl, and if I could, I could finally relax and be happy. I rented a small house about a 10 minute drive away from the middle of the city. I bought myself a motorcycle my first mode of transport that I owned in Thailand and it was the first house that I’d lived in, I suppose, apart from a few months I’d spent in the one I built, only to discover the sickening truth about that girl, whose behavior I still struggled to understand.
I immediately felt a lot more relaxed there than I did in Pattaya because, as I said, it wasn’t as in your face. It was popular with tourists, but it wasn’t overly popular. And one of the things that I didn’t envy local people who came from places like Pattaya I didn’t envy them even remotely was the fact that there was a constant flow of tourists coming to your city. It would be okay if it was your business to make money from tourists. That would be acceptable. But imagine if you were just a normal person that lived there trying to get on with your life and there was a constant flow of tourists clogging up the roads, increasing the prices of things, and everything else that went along with it. But then again and now how I actually feel you could also say, imagine if there were no tourists there. All the exciting things that were there wouldn’t be there. There wouldn’t be the malls. There wouldn’t be anything. It would just be like any other Thai city. So, I think locals in Pattaya have no business complaining about tourists because they want the money that comes from it. Again, money, but they don’t want anything else. Hypocrites. But there you go.
I think people going to Thailand is very different though than people going to my country and I call Australia my country, by the way, even though I didn’t live there much but my country allowing people there is so different to Thailand because we already have our things there already. We don’t need more. Yet Thailand needed Westerners because if they didn’t have Westerners, they’d still be riding around on their buffaloes. Anyway, that’s beside the point. What I was meaning was that in Hua Hin, it didn’t feel as if you were constantly fighting against all the tourists that were there to get the best seats somehow or to go somewhere and have to queue up, for example. And I really cherished that about the city.
Also, living in a house as opposed to a condo made a big difference to me. Well, I didn’t have much of a garden to go with it just being able to have a barbecue once in a while, even if it was by myself lighting up the grill, cooking a steak and a few sausages, cracking open some beers, and watching something, and just passing the time, not spending a lot of money. I couldn’t do that in Pattaya. While I guess I could have rented a house on the outskirts of Pattaya, it just didn’t feel like it was right. But it felt so right in Hua Hin.
Throughout the whole of 2014, I’m sticking to my budget. I’m not having the best time in the world by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m sticking to budget. And that was something that was very important because I needed my money to last. I do allow myself once or twice a month down the splendid street of Soi Bintabaht. Allow myself to spend time with the girls and chat to the girls, and even that was a lot less in your face than it was in Pattaya. I really felt like the girls that go to Pattaya are the girls that have the least amount of self respect. It’s as if they don’t care about anything whatsoever other than money. Yet, I didn’t really feel like that in the early stages of my time in Pattaya, by the way. But it felt more like the girls could be a lot more choosy and picky in Hua Hin. Now, that’s how I saw it at the time. If I actually stop and think about it, every single time that I went to a bar down that street throughout the whole of 2014, if I liked a girl there, there was never an instance even once where I was declined. So, my idea that they were more picky could have been a complete fallacy that I made up to make myself feel better. And I guess it probably was. It is great though to be there.
Meeting the Massage Girl on Poon Suk Road
2015 comes around again. Things are getting worse in terms of my income through no fault of my own. But 2015 will be the year where there was a decision that I needed to make. There were only two choices. One would lead to me continuing to live a normal retirement, maybe a bit upset that I don’t have as much money as I should have, or the other would see me taking a path to complete devastation. I didn’t know that that path that would take me to devastation would take me to devastation, because if I did, I wouldn’t have gone down it.
If you have been to Hua Hin, you may know Poon Suk Road. I often used to walk down this road to get around the city. I had a few drinks and chatted to a few girls along Soi Bintabaht, and I was walking to a restaurant that I went to occasionally that served Danish food. I hadn’t been many times, but I quite liked it. But it involved having to walk down Poon Suk Road. There were many massage places down that road, but they weren’t the same as the ones in Pattaya where you might have 10 girls sat outside. Some of these ones there might only be one or two girls sat outside. And it was a very nondescript building that you couldn’t even tell was a massage place.
I was walking down this road and I approached this massage place and there was a girl there asking if I wanted a massage. I didn’t want a massage, but what I did want was to actually go and get a drink with this girl and talk to her because she was just everything that I thought a Thai girl should be. It was one of those massage places where extra things could happen. And when she said, “Do you want a massage?” And I stopped and said, “No, how about a drink?” I hoped she would say yes, and she did. So, I paid money to the massage place because she wouldn’t be working. And about 2 minutes after seeing her, she was holding my hand and walking down the road. And I didn’t stop to think, “What am I doing here?” I was just thinking, “This is why Thailand is the best country in the world.”
We didn’t go to that Danish place because well we went for some drinks instead. There was a place I like to go to that wasn’t right there in the middle of the city. It was about a 15 minute walk away, which was a lot more local style. And I told her where I was going and said, “I’m walking. Are you okay?” She said, “Yes.” She’s really talkative, by the way. She’s chatting to me. She’s talking about all kinds of things and laughing and saying she hadn’t been out of the massage place for at least 2 weeks. And it was weird. I’d probably already had about six small beers in the bars along Soi Bintabaht before I ran into her. So, I don’t know if that gave me more courage to actually approach, talk to her, and ask her so directly, but she was I don’t know what it was about her. She was special.
We arrived at that place, ordered some drinks, and ordered some food as well. It was only Thai food at this place, but she was happy with that. And, you know, it felt so strange because I didn’t even have a conversation with her before we were walking hand in hand. It was just so matter of fact, yet it felt so natural at the same time. We both got very drunk and I actually took her back to my house that I was renting. That was a huge thing that you’re not meant to do. Don’t take anyone back to your actual place where you live so soon. But I did, and luckily it didn’t matter. Nothing happened that was bad at least yet.
But then in the morning, I was kind of thinking that this girl that I’ve been waiting for all this time, she could be the girl that I have been waiting for. But already in 2015, I hadn’t had a relationship for a very long time, apart from the occasional fling. And again, even though I’ve been wrong every single time before this, I’m thinking that she’s looking at me like someone who can help her not have to work at a massage place and not only a massage place that does massages. I thought that the very fact that she didn’t need to do that would be enough to never have to do anything bad to me. But things happened that were even worse than what happened to me before twice before but I’m still doing the same thing. I just didn’t get Thailand at that time. I really didn’t understand what Thailand was all about. I had a very one sided view of Thailand, which was if you allow foreigners to go to your country en masse as tourists, and you provide services for those tourists and expats who are living there, you’re doing so in such a way to make the tourist and expat feel like they’re special and like you who are providing this service to them wish you could be them. Don’t act that way if it’s not true. But I wasn’t expecting anything bad.
The Seven Eleven Test
Yet because this was the morning after I’d met her she was 33, by the way, three kids she was actually from Chon Buri, further down to the south. I did think I was very lucky to have met her. She wanted to leave to go back to the massage place, and I told her it would be better if she’d just stayed a bit longer. Of course, I had to make sure I replaced any income that she would have earned by being there. But I was okay with that even though I was struggling by the fact that now 10,000 baht was a big portion of my income whereas before it was only a marginal amount of it. Now 10,000 baht wasn’t a good amount of money anymore. Apparently, 15,000 baht was more like it.
I always liked to do what I called the 7 Eleven comparison. No bar girl or massage girl or any girl who worked like that or who met someone in a situation like that should ever value themselves more than a normal girl would earn working in 7 Eleven. I mean, that’s what I think today and I wish I thought that before. But I did think that this girl that I met who was 33 years old with three kids was worth more than a normal girl that worked in 7 Eleven at the time because I had probably spent a few days with her and I’d already felt like I wanted this to be real. I wanted a real relationship with her. So it was 15,000 baht a month that I was giving to her, which meant that after rent and insurance and food and everything else that I needed to pay for, I had about minus 10,000 baht left, which of course was coming out of my savings, which I was worried about.
One thing that I would say to any guy in the entire world who is moving to Thailand or a similar country: if you find yourself spending any of your principal when you shouldn’t be spending it because it needs to last and it needs to provide your income, if you do find yourself doing that, don’t think it’s a good idea to invest a lot of money into something with the idea of not having to eat into your principal anymore because what you’ve invested in is providing you with an income instead. Too many times I’ve heard this happen to guys where they started eating into their principal and then they made the decision to invest that money into their girlfriend’s village, for example build a house, start a business on the understanding that because they’ve done that, they’re going to be getting an income coming in to support them. But from my experience, 19 times out of 20 this will fail.
And unfortunately, I was one of those guys in the 19 who after she’d been living with me for 6 months, I felt serious with her, my money’s going down quite a lot when she brought up the prospect of moving down to the place where she was from not too far from the beach, a very beautiful location we could have a good time there and we could have a business. I jumped all over the idea because I thought that would be my savior. I thought that the thing that would ultimately destroy my life would be the thing that actually saved my retirement. But I got it all wrong. I got it the wrong way round.
Building a Guest House in Chon Buri
Because by the end of 2015, we were married legally this time on paper. And we were seriously talking about moving to Chon Buri, building a house close to her family’s land she already owned it and starting a small tourist business because they had incredibly beautiful beaches there. Yet tourism wasn’t popular in that part of Thailand yet. And after I’d been there a few times, I couldn’t understand why. We didn’t decide straight away, though. It was halfway through 2016 where I came to the decision after watching about £10,000 disappear that wasn’t meant to disappear because I didn’t have a big enough income I thought if I didn’t do something soon, all my money would be lost quickly and there wouldn’t be anything I could do. That was the logic I was thinking with at the time. I need to spend an absolute fortune to save money as opposed to trying to cut back and maybe losing £10,000 a year thinking that “never mind, I’ll be okay, I’ll probably die before my money runs out.” But I wasn’t thinking that, and many guys and most guys don’t think like that because I’ve heard this so many times before.
Halfway through 2016 I mean, I do really love this girl, by the way. She’s not just there for convenience. I would say I was head over heels for her and I would do anything for her. But we set off to Chon Buri in a car that I had just bought because I’d been to visit a few times, including when we got married, and it was apparent that we would need that. I had everything sent down that I’d already bought, like my motorcycle, and all that was sent down there, and we stayed in a small hotel for 500 baht a night while we spoke to a company to help us get a house built.
At this point, I transferred all my money to Thailand, getting a very bad exchange rate, but at least it wasn’t as bad as it got. And I used about a third of that on the land and the house and everything inside the house, which would mean that I no longer had rent to pay, which I suppose was the biggest benefit. Now, I would say in terms of money, I probably had about 7 million Thai baht. If I’d transferred all my money to Thailand originally, I’d have got 24 25 million baht. But that’s just one of those things. If I was careful though with what I spend half a million a year that would see me for 14 years. And at this point, I’d have been in my mid to late 70s, which was a bit of a concern because you never know what’s going to happen. What I’m trying to say is I shouldn’t have done anything.
But when the house was built around the start of 2017 and we’re living there and yes, we’re not spending anywhere near as much money as we did in Hua Hin I am still watching my money go down. And we had talked about doing something in relation to tourists because it only seemed to be a guarantee that that part of Thailand should be extremely popular with tourists because of how beautiful it was and how great the beaches were there. It should be popular, but then there was hardly anything there. So with 5 million baht of my remaining funds also because my wife convinced me that it would be the best idea ever we invested in a small guest house about 3 kilometers away from the beach. This was bought in my wife’s name, and it was for the whole building as well as the land, but it was only a 10 room small guest house and it needed a lot of work doing to it. I thought I could do a lot of the work myself covertly because I didn’t have a work permit and I wouldn’t be allowed to work there legally. But I did manage to do a lot of that, and that was all included in the 5 million baht which I thought was a good deal for what it was. If only I could have owned it, but I couldn’t.
And now I had 2 million baht left and we have the business, and at this point in order for me to live properly or how I would define as being properly all I need is to be able to use the air conditioning anytime I need to use it, to be able to do my visa when I need to do it. I had 800,000 in the bank for that which was separate completely. I needed to pay for my insurance, and I needed to pay for food and drink, and that was all I wanted. Oh, and fuel and servicing for the car.
Truthfully, the guest house didn’t do badly at all, really. 2017 and 2018, it was going well. It was covering our living expenses. We’re not making a lot of money and we’re not spending a lot of money. It’s not an amazing business, but it’s enough to live on. Because of that, I invested 1.5 million baht more. I hadn’t eaten into any of my principal since then, or added to my principal. In fact, we thought it was a good idea to invest more money into the business we could extend slightly and have four more rooms. So, I put that in thinking it was a good idea because things were going well so far. We’re not getting huge tourist numbers, but we’ve only got a small place. So, we’re lucky that it’s not doing badly. In fact, I was really happy and proud of my wife because she was working really hard at it.
Investing in the Guest House
2019, early in the year, was when we invested that money. Things are going okay. Everything is going okay, in fact. And while I don’t have much reserves, it doesn’t seem to matter. But then we had the COVID pandemic. People aren’t traveling anymore, and our guest house is sat there empty. I’ve got about half a million baht plus my visa money, and we don’t have any other money at all including any other income and that’s it. Now I know this could have happened to anyone, and it happened to so many people. It ruined many people when governments around the world decided to just lock down their countries just because they could. I think just so they could exercise power over people. But that’s what happened. And what happened through the whole of 2020 was that half a million baht went plus 200,000 baht out of my visa money that was spent.
I had so little money left that I knew I had to leave Thailand. I had to go back, try and find something to do even at my old age. And I was planning on finding a way to get my wife to be able to be with me because I couldn’t see myself returning to Thailand. I discussed this with my wife at length. We both knew it was COVID that had caused this. I felt like we both loved each other still. I mean, I loved her so much more than I’d ever loved anything. And she professed love for me when I was going to be flying back to try and salvage something with a little bit of money I had left.
And then I flew out of Thailand thinking I’d never be back, hoping amongst hope that my wife would be joining me soon. And I stayed with a friend while I found somewhere to rent. And by 2021, I was actually working again at my age. I guess I had something specialized and I was lucky because of that. Otherwise, it would have been very difficult. All I needed though was to get 6 months’ salary proof that I had that, and then I could use that for the application for the visa for my wife, who I was speaking to regularly.
But sometimes she didn’t answer. Then I found out one day that she told me that she didn’t want to go to be with me because she’d found someone else. She was with this Thai guy now. And the words she used were, “I think it’s better if we don’t stay together. I found somebody else and we’re going to stay together. And it’s better if you stay there and I stay here. Don’t try to change anything because I’ve already made up my mind.”
And it was that moment in time when I realized that in Thailand, you are not anything other than a stupid farang. She obviously never loved me or cared about me. She was obviously putting up with me being there while I was investing all that money into that business. She was obviously okay with me being there when the business was working. But now I was gone instead of following our plan and trying to get her to be with me and we could live there no, she didn’t want me anymore. She told me never to call her again. “We are still married, but I’m here, you’re there” kind of thing. “I’ve got someone else. It’s over.”
And it was that moment when I realized what Thailand was all about. You’re not welcome in Thailand for anything other than the money that you bring there. All that investment, all that hard work, all that love that I gave to her it meant absolutely nothing to her. The only thing she wanted was money. She got it. And then she just threw me out like I was nothing while I was having to leave the country that I didn’t want to leave to go and do something that I didn’t want to do with the sole idea that I wanted to be able to help her as much as I wanted to help myself. She saw things differently. I was just a useful idiot until she could throw me away.
Leaving Thailand After the Guest House Failure
And I believe that’s Thailand‘s fault for a number of reasons. For a start, for not teaching people how to behave properly around people who are actually making their lives better and helping them. Secondly, for showing just how important money and greed is in the world how money is the most important thing in Thailand, how you can disrespect yourself for money, how you can degrade yourself for money, how you can ruin your family for money. That’s what Thailand is. That’s what Thailand is all about.
And the sooner you learn it, the better it will be for you because you don’t want to end up like me and all the other guys who have fallen foul to the allure of Thailand. It’s an allure. It’s not real. It’s all fake. And I had to lose my life savings to understand that and to understand that leaving Thailand was the best thing to ever happen to me. Because if I hadn’t have left, I would still be under the fake spell that is Thailand. And ruination would only be one wrong move away.
