How a Thailand Marriage Scam Destroyed My Retirement Savings
One big mistake. That’s how I would sum up my life up until this moment in time. A mistake. Not just one mistake, though, I suppose, but a multitude of different mistakes, one after the other, not even knowing at the time that they were mistakes until the culmination, which happened to me when I went to the country of Thailand.
My first mistake was not understanding that my own country didn’t care about me. I always considered myself a patriot suffering through low paid jobs, high taxes, and a constant urge to leave to find a place where life should be easier. I didn’t leave for a long time because I thought it was a national duty. Talk about having warped ideas as to what it meant to be from a country. I bet everyone remembers from school when you’re learning about the Second World War and those posters which used to say, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” I think I really took that to heart.
The thing was, you do what you’re meant to do, yet there’s no guarantee of a great life. So, it should be the other way around. Don’t ask what you can do for your country. Ask what your country can do for you. I thought at the very least my country gave me some weight in the world. Okay, I might not have a lot of money. I might not be as successful as I wanted to be, but at least I have my country behind me. It doesn’t work like that, especially in the modern world. And it took me until I was 53 years old to come to this understanding that there’s no point wasting my life away in a country that doesn’t care about me.
I probably made a million other catastrophic mistakes up until I was 53. Three marriages, all failures, business attempts, all failures, arrested for drink driving twice, and a host of other things. Many of the mistakes, I suppose, were reactions to what was happening to me in my life. A bad breakup due to still believing in what it meant to be a man, followed by a drunken depression and getting behind the wheel of a car. All mistakes, all stupidity.
Starting Over in Thailand at 53
And it was when I was 53 that I needed a fresh start. I’d just been divorced for the third time. My third wife was violent. She hit me on more than one occasion with a frying pan. Yet, it was always my fault as to why she was doing this. Apparently, if I had to go back to that moment in time, 53 years old, and take stock of my life up until then, it was just an unmitigated disaster. But one thing that happened around this time was that I received an inheritance from my mother. Up until then, she was the only person that was able to keep me on the straight and narrow. She was the only one who made life worth living. And to lose her, on the one hand, untied the shackles that attached me to that part of the country where I was from, yet on the other hand made me understand that life is finite. There’s no point in doing this anymore. And I might as well do something so very different and hope that at least I would still get a bit of enjoyment out of what was remaining in my life.
I feel sick knowing that this decision that I made would be the biggest mistake of it all and would nearly finish me off altogether. But I take solace in the understanding that it could have happened to anyone and on that understanding that I still have my life to lead, although not necessarily in the way I would like.
Thailand was the obvious choice for somebody with the worldview and the opinions that I held. The thought of going somewhere closer to home only made me think about the times I went to those countries with my ex wives. I wanted to go somewhere where things were different. I think the thing that attracted me to Thailand was that at the time people still held those strange beliefs about the country, about how people only went there for one thing. I liked to be the sort of person who would revel in the discomfort of others. I’m not talking about discomfort here in the sense of something bad happening to them, but just discomfort about the feelings that they hold about something that they shouldn’t.
I started to think, and this is before I even went to Thailand, that I needed to develop a different persona not just me, really, yet the me I always thought I wanted to be. And it was this inheritance that opened the possibility. Because I had never been to Thailand at this time, I wasn’t about to just go there and live there. But I did quit my job and travel to Thailand to go and see what it was actually like on the ground. This was about 16 years ago.
Why Pattaya Felt Like My Ideal Thailand
And my first reaction when I got to Thailand was it wasn’t anything like I thought. I expected it to be like people who hadn’t been and still hold opinions of the world thought it was. I was expecting to see abject poverty everywhere. Well, that was the furthest thing from the truth. I was expecting to see things done in a backwards way. Yet many of the things that seemed to be done in Thailand seemed to be more efficient than where I was from. And the pictures painted about countries such as Thailand at home by people who had no idea, I started to think, were being painted deliberately to try to discourage people from finding out just how different these places were.
My first reaction to Thailand was, imagine being from a country where being from that country sets you apart from everybody else in the country who’s not from there. Where I’m from, it doesn’t work like that. And I immediately felt a deep affinity to the country as soon as I arrived. It’s important to know that I was also thinking about the Philippines as well as Thailand. And I decided to go there as well. I was 2 weeks in Thailand, 2 weeks in the Philippines. And while I liked both countries, I ultimately decided that Thailand was the place that I preferred the most out of both of them. I’m not going to talk about my Philippines escapades during the two weeks I was there. I had a fantastic time, but that’s not what this story is about.
In Thailand, I spent the whole two weeks in Pattaya. I honestly believed this at the time, and opinions changed throughout the course of time but at that time, I thought Pattaya was God’s own country. At the time, it was exactly like I thought somewhere like that should be. Everything seemed to align with my own worldview and it seemed to be a playground for Westerners because even 16 years ago there hadn’t been an influx of people from different countries going to Pattaya and enjoying it for what it was known for. Again, this isn’t important, but it isn’t actually part of my story. It’s just opinions of why I liked Thailand in the first place.
It was like it was in the transition phase of the country’s history where Western tourists and Western things were still prevalent, yet they weren’t the be all and end all for Thailand anymore which they were perhaps 10 years before this but there was still that inkling there that on an overall scale Thailand still looked up to the West, but they didn’t really, but that’s how it felt because there weren’t so many people from other countries like there are today. I don’t have any problems with anybody going anywhere and enjoying Thailand. I wish I could, but I can’t because of what happened to me. But what I’m trying to say is when you arrive and it’s one way and then it becomes what it is today, you understand all along that I was doomed to failure because I had Thailand all wrong.
When I was there for the first time, if someone said in 16 years’ time people from all different kinds of countries would be coming here I mean, there were still people before from those countries but just in normal amounts but if someone would have said to me that at the time they would be able to go into a bar and be treated like somebody just like me by the girls there, that would have completely shattered the illusion that I had and would have saved me all the heartache that happened. What I’m trying to say is that if I went to Thailand today, I wouldn’t have done the same thing because I would have been able to see it and understood it for what it actually was, not what I thought it was. Yet you couldn’t see it for what it was at the time because at the time it was aligned to how I saw the world. So I hope that goes some way to describe why I got myself into such a dreadful situation to start with.
Those two weeks that I spent in Pattaya were the best two weeks I’d ever had. I’m not going to go into too much detail apart from to say that I didn’t realize life could be as good as it was. The two weeks I had in the Philippines just after were great, but not at the same level. And I returned home now feeling confident that I could completely write off my own country as a place I don’t even want to spend even a second more than I need to, completely burn the bridges, and reinvent myself as a Thailand expat.
Why I Chose to Settle in Pattaya
I wanted to live in Pattaya more than anything because I had nothing holding me back and I had a good amount of money in the bank.
Moving to Thailand with 400000 Pounds
One day I’m out with my friends having a beer, and the next time we meet up I tell them that I’m going to be moving to Thailand and I’m never coming back. I did have three really close friends who were just like I was at that moment in time. They were all stuck in marriages that they all seemed to want to get out of, and I could see them finding Thailand just like me. And I told them it was only a matter of time and they would understand. The reason I talk about my friends is because it’s them who I owe my life to. Without them, I wouldn’t have been able to cope after what happened. I wouldn’t have been able to even return home. And as much as I didn’t think that was going to happen, I do owe them everything. The thing that digs a bit though is two of them who when everything was great did get divorced and go and see me in Thailand. Two of them are living in Thailand because they can, while I can’t, and that hurts. So life is what you make it. I think that’s what I would say.
I couldn’t believe how happy I was though. I didn’t think to the past anymore about all the things that had gone wrong in my life. I didn’t think about my past marriages that failed. I didn’t think about anything. All I was thinking about was I wonder how fantastic my life will be in a few years’ time. The sad thing was I had about £400,000, which at the time was a lot of money in Thailand, and I thought it would last forever.
When I decided that I would move to Thailand, which was about 3 months after returning from my first time there, it was full steam ahead. I never owned my own house, so I didn’t have to go through the process of selling that. But I just wound everything down that I had at home and started putting together a plan that I would do in Thailand. I got a non immigrant visa from the embassy. The plan was to extend that for retirement, find a place to live in Pattaya, and live every single day like it was my last. Every single day in a way to make up for all the days that I’d wasted in my life. At the age I was at, that was a lot of days wasted. Thousands and thousands of wasted days. And if I thought that I had at most 10,000 days left, wasted 20,000, that means for every single day I live, I need to cram in 3 days of living to get my whole life back. That’s exactly what I was going to do. And that’s exactly what I started off doing.
And when I arrived back in Thailand, this time for good, I was a new person entirely. I was a new man. And life started to be good. That’s the thing I want to really emphasize. Life finally started to make sense. Waking up in the morning finally filled me with excitement as opposed to dread. And getting out of bed as soon as I wake up because I knew life was going to be great that day. Perhaps that set me up for the failure which was to come my way.
Life started off great for me in Pattaya. I was living like I was there on a constant holiday. And after about 3 months of doing that, I understood that I couldn’t continue doing that indefinitely because although it was cheap, it wasn’t so cheap that I had enough money to be able to do that indefinitely as much as I wanted to.
The thing I liked the most during those first 3 months was I felt very different to how I used to feel at home. At home, I always felt like I was the one who had to pursue a relationship. I was the one who had to be forward. I was the one who had to make an effort. Yet in Thailand, it was exactly the opposite of that. I know what went along with this in terms of finances and money, yet it was a breath of fresh air to be able to feel like you were being pursued as opposed to having to pursue. I quickly fell into this, what I could only describe as being an overinflated sense of importance, and the bars became my world.
Building a Life Beyond Pattaya Bars
It was about after 3 months though when I understood that I needed to take a bit of a step back and instead of going daily I limited myself to twice a week. The other 5 days I found that I was a little bit lost. I tried to make friends with other expats and I had a bit of success, but 5 days of the week I was bored, knowing that I needed to save money if I wanted my money to last.
Meeting My Thai Girlfriend in a Pattaya Bar
I think that’s why when I met a girl in a bar during one of my two days a week that I allowed myself and I actually liked her, I think that was the reason why I rushed into the relationship with her because the thought of having her with me all the time I wouldn’t feel lonely anymore and it made perfect sense. Little did I know that this relationship would be based on a lie. But not only that, a lie so sickening that it wouldn’t even be something you would have considered as being a remote possibility. Because of that, I wasn’t able to do anything. And some people might just think of me as yet another stupid foreigner who went to Thailand and lost all his money. But I don’t think that’s the case because what happened to me wasn’t the same as what happened to other people. What happens to other people is quite typical. You meet a girl in a bar, feel like you love her, and more often than not, you feel that she loves you. They start staying together and something will happen and they will lose everything. I guess that could describe what happened to me, but it was different. And you will understand why when I tell you what happened. But the thing is, I didn’t know what the problem was until it was already too late. So, let me run through what happened and let me tell you one simple thing that you would need to do to make sure this doesn’t happen to you.
She was 24 years old and she became my reason to no longer spend an excessive amount of time in the bars because I had her. It was hardly any time at all until she moved in with me. She told me where she was from, told me she had a kid, and I believed everything she said. She was just perfect because as soon as she started living with me, I agreed to give her 10,000 baht at the start of every month so she could send a bit to her kid and also be able to buy things that she needed during the month. Other than that, at least to start with, she never really asked for anything. I’ve heard stories where a girl starts living with a guy and before long she’s wanting a new phone and a motorcycle and a bag and all kinds of things. She wasn’t like that. She just seemed to want company. She just seemed to want to be taken care of and respected, and that’s exactly what I was prepared to do.
My life changed considerably when she moved in with me because all of a sudden I felt like out of all my failed relationships in the past, this one felt like it was the most real of all. Perhaps when I talk about real, I mean real in the sense that I felt like this is what a relationship was meant to be. At home, all those failed relationships, they never felt like what I thought a relationship was. But this felt to be the most real, the best relationship I’d ever had. And it was because I was having these feelings that I fell really hard for this girl.
She was never really the type who would speak to friends all the time. When I met her in the bar, she was speaking to the other girls, but they seemed to be not in the same kind of circle as the rest of them. It was like all these girls were together in a way, and she was just keeping herself to herself. I liked that about her and thought that she wasn’t in the bar by choice. She wasn’t there to scam money out of guys. She was just there because she didn’t have a better idea of what to do. I really relished that because when she moved in with me, she’s not going out to see friends all the time. I mean, she never goes out to see anyone. She never gets incoming calls from people because one of my rules was we both have to have our phones on full volume. So, we know if someone calls, but she never received calls. Apart from the odd time when she made a call to her family. She never spoke to her family for a very long time though, maybe less than a minute, just a quick hello.
And it always fascinated me because when she was speaking with her family, she was speaking in a completely different language to Thai. I’d heard about it from other people. In the Isan region of Thailand, they speak a different language entirely, more closely related to Laotian. I’m not knowing anything about the Thai language because I had zero ability to speak it. But I could clearly tell the difference, and it did appear that she must be speaking this language. I didn’t ask her. It just appeared that that was the case. Although as far as I was concerned, she could have been speaking gibberish.
It was amazing though to have what I considered a perfect girlfriend. She was so loving and affectionate and caring and wanting to please. And as long as she had her 10,000 baht, she was happy. This relationship continued like this for quite a number of months, mainly spending our time in Pattaya, leaving occasionally to go to a few different places not too far away, and I asked her to marry me. She said she would be delighted to marry me.
Discovering My Thai Girlfriend Was Still Married
But that’s when she dropped a bit of a bombshell, which I wasn’t prepared for, saying that she was still legally married to another guy, the father of her kid, and she’s been trying to get the divorce from him for a long time, but he’s refusing to do so because he wants to be difficult. So, we were engaged to get married, but she was still married. I didn’t know this up until then, and I accepted it and just hoped something would get arranged so she could get a divorce.
I guess it was quite a lot more time that went by could have been up to 3 months and although we had spoken about marriage before, we hadn’t raised it since, and there seemed to be no rush on her part because she hadn’t once spoken to her ex about the divorce. When I brought it up again after all this time, she said it’s difficult. He won’t agree easily, and she just said it will happen when it happens. She wasn’t forcing anything. She wasn’t trying to get me to do anything, but it was me who said to her, “What about if we give him a little bit of money, then he will agree to divorce and then we can be free to marry? Would that work?” She didn’t jump all over it, saying, “That’s the best idea ever.” She just said, “Maybe. I will try to find out.”
I saw her speaking to her family a few times over the next week, and she didn’t say anything to me. As if she was waiting for me to ask, and I did ask, and said, “Have you found anything?” She said, “Yes, he will agree, but I didn’t tell you because he wants too much money, so I didn’t think there was any point even telling you about it.” “What do you mean by too much money?” She went on to talk about how somebody had told him that she was now with a foreigner and he doesn’t want to make it easy, so he wants a million baht. From the time I’d been in Thailand, I’d probably already spent close to 2 million baht. If I’d spent this as well, I’d have already spent £100,000 out of my £400,000. Although we weren’t spending as much money now as we did when I first arrived, it should have been everything I needed to know for me to say to her, I know what the game is and it’s definitely not going to be played out the way you think it is. But I didn’t say that.
I said, if we pay this money I’m saying to her “we” because I believe that we’re a couple and we’re doing things together but if we pay this money, can we do it at the same time when you go and get divorced and when they sign and everything’s good, I will pay then? She said it would be very difficult to do it that way because it would have to be up where she was from and she wasn’t comfortable with me being introduced to the family yet until she was divorced from him and before we were properly engaged and had already got everything in place. I didn’t agree there and then, but the more I thought about it, I just thought it was an investment. I thought it was an investment in our futures. I thought that would save her from her ex and I thought that would give me the ability to get married. So, I gave her a million baht to give to her ex to get divorced.
I already looked into the rules in Thailand about how to get a divorce and it should be very easy. You go to the district office and an hour later you should walk out again divorced. So, it was just a waiting game for her to go up to wherever she was from. She just told me she was from Isan. She didn’t tell me which part of the country yet, and I didn’t push because I didn’t really know. I just thought that that was a place in Thailand where people were from.
Paying for Her Divorce from a Thai Husband
After I gave her that money, it was about a week later when she said she’d already got a time to go up and she would need to be gone for a few weeks. She told me that where she was from there was very bad phone signal, so it would be difficult to keep in touch regularly, but she would call me as and when she could. That made perfect sense to me because that’s how you pictured Thailand, isn’t it? Before you even arrived. A very up and coming style place where things were still a bit out of date and not done like they were at home.
But when the time came for her to go, she left Pattaya and I was just waiting for her to come back so we could get married. She called me a few hours later saying she was just about to get on the bus. She’ll call me when she gets there. I don’t know if I’m not remembering things correctly or if at the time it was actually different to how I remember it, but I do distinctly remember hearing an announcement in English and a particular country’s name as though she was potentially at the airport and not at the bus station, but it didn’t register with me. It’s just a long time later when you’re thinking through all these things that could have been a moment that should have registered, but it didn’t.
She called me about 10 hours later. She said the phone signal was so bad she had to go and borrow a different style of phone, which was why the number hadn’t shown up the same way. But I didn’t mind. I’d heard from her, and she said she’d call again soon, as soon as she can. And she hopes to see me in a few weeks when we could get married. I was actually quite happy to have those two weeks to myself. Not to live the single life again, but just to go out and have a few good times in the bars because I hadn’t been to them for such a long time now that I was with her.
I had a great time for the first week. She called me twice during that week saying things are progressing and the appointments are for the week after. She called me the week after though, saying that she went to the district office with her ex and there were some fees that she wasn’t aware of. She didn’t really explain them exactly, and also there was something to do with her ex’s family who weren’t happy about this, and she said something along the lines that they need to agree as well and they want some money too. I’d already given a million baht, but his parents wanted half a million baht. And she said she was very sorry, but she can’t do anything about it. And she’s already given the million to her ex, so she can’t get that back anyway. It was like I was forced into a corner. That’s how I felt. And I transferred that money to her Thai bank account, half a million baht for her ex’s parents, so they would agree, too. I feel sick as I admit to this because it’s embarrassing. That’s exactly what I did.
She said she will call me again soon and she should be back in less than a week. I didn’t hear from her in terms of her calling me, but she arrived back in a week, just saying that the phone problems and she was sorry about that and she couldn’t call, but there was a bit of a problem. Although her ex and parents had both got the money, they were now saying that they wanted custody of her kid and apparently her kid was living with her parents and she wasn’t going to accept that. I was furious for obvious reasons because I’d given her a lot of money for her to get out of that marriage and now everything seemed to be held up by her ex and his parents. I wasn’t angry with her. She was upset and I actually consoled her, saying we’ll get this sorted out. But thinking about her ex, I wanted to cause him harm. I just told her we will get everything sorted out. Don’t worry about it. I was consoling and comforting her even though I’d given her 1.5 million baht to give to her ex and she was still married to him and we weren’t free to get married. I just think I had the power dynamic all wrong.
She did say she was going to be speaking to her family soon and she was hoping that her family would arrange things and she could keep custody of her kid. What happened over the next month was me giving a little bit of money to her parents, 200,000 baht, because they said they needed some kind of legal representation in order to take her ex to court. And I also agreed to give her 300,000 baht so that she could go back again and try to give them a little bit more to take things over the line. It was as if I had the sole intention of getting married to her, but I wasn’t seeing reason. I just thought that she was in a fight of her life, a fight to be able to keep custody of her kid, a fight to be able to get out of that marriage that she said had destroyed her life, and a fight to make sure that we could get married and be together.
Trying to Save Her with Two Million Baht
I would come to the understanding later on that some people might refer to me as having a savior complex. I would agree with that statement. I felt like I was trying to be a savior. I liked the feeling that I had of being in control of things, at least how I felt. And it made me feel excited to think about having someone completely reliant on me. So, I am overlooking the fact that this money needs to be saved. This money is for the future because all I want to do is save her from her ex and his family because the way she described them, the things they did to her when she was with them, the physical attacks that she suffered from them, the abuse she suffered I wanted to save her from that. And I didn’t see sense or reason.
She returned two weeks later saying that she thinks everything’s going to be okay now. She’s already appointed someone to help in terms of a lawyer, that is. And because it has to go through the courts, she said it could take upwards of a year. But don’t worry about it because things are looking good now. I had already invested 2 million baht into this. And I was furious that it was going to take this long given the fact that she’d already handed over the money and they didn’t do what they said they would do. But she said that the lawyer said that everything will be fine and it will work out eventually because we have all the proof, but it will just take time.
Coming to the understanding, though, that I’m going to have to wait a year to get married to her. Plus, I’ve already spent over £100,000 and I’ve only got £300,000 left, which really annoyed me because I expected that money to last for at least 5 years for £100,000, but it was barely one.
Building a Future on Land and False Promises
When she’s with me though, she’s my dream. She doesn’t change the longer we stay together. She’s exactly what I was looking for in all my other relationships that all went wrong. I really started to think that Thailand was the answer to all the problems in my life because it felt like the solution was playing out right in front of me. And apart from this thing that was hanging over us, which I just hoped would eventually get out of the way and we could move forwards together, everything else was perfect.
After a bit more time passes, I’m starting to think that I’m spending a little bit too much money. And if I want to make sure I’ll be okay forever, we need to cut back on spending. The problem I faced was always that when you wake up in the morning, those amazing feelings that I had to start off when I lived there, knowing I could go and do what I wanted to do. Now though, I’m waking up in the morning knowing that we can go out and have a great time because everything that we like to do is just outside the window. Yet having to hold back even though you’re there is quite hard and makes for not the most fun time.
She always tries to help me save money, though. That’s one of the confusing things. When I would say, after being bored for all day, “Let’s go out for something to eat,” she would say, “It’s okay. I’ll just go and buy some street food and bring it back and we can eat here together and save money.” It seemed like she was trying to help me save money. And she could see that I was concerned about how much I was spending, probably also to do with the money I gave her, so we would be free to divorce. So, I really respected that she was willing to sacrifice doing fun things to help us both.
The thing was though, I’m starting to get a little bit depressed because to me, Thailand is a place where you’re meant to go out to eat every day. That’s what Thailand is for. If you’re just waking up as normal, you might go out to do something, but you return home and cook food and eat at home. I felt like that kind of defeated the purpose of Thailand. Not to mention, I’m living in a small one bedroom condo. It’s not big enough. You can hardly swing a cat in. And while they did have cooking facilities, it wasn’t like a proper kitchen. But I tried to cut back a bit, and she helped me so much. But I’m not enjoying myself properly. And I suggested moving somewhere else where things outside the window are still fun and enjoyable, but not as expensive. She was very supportive, saying wherever I was, she would be happy. She said she was only in Pattaya because she wanted to make money. But now she was with me, she felt she had someone who was taking care of her and she didn’t care where she lived.
I had spoken to quite a few other expats who discussed how they were in similar boats. They started out living in Pattaya. They met a girl and now they spend 3 months a year in Pattaya or however long and the rest in a house that they built in the village where their wife was from. I asked her how she would feel about this. She said it would be amazing, but we can’t really do that now until she’s divorced and we could get married. So, I would be okay in the village. She said where she was from was extremely traditional. Her parents don’t know that I’m with her. And that’s one of the reasons why she had to give that money to her ex and his parents so they wouldn’t tell her parents. She said as soon as she was divorced, then we could get married properly. Then we could go look at doing that. Again, it just seemed like it was going to be a waiting game. And I saw what she said and it made sense, and I just tried to get on with the business of not spending too much money in Pattaya.
When you’re in a position like that, you don’t take a step back and actually think about things for how they are. You don’t think: here is a girl who’s been working in a bar in Pattaya who got up to all kinds of things, saying that her family wouldn’t approve if they knew we were together. But what did her family think was happening if she was in Pattaya? Surely they must put two and two together. And I did ask her this after a few more months had passed and nothing’s happened, and she just said, “They think I’m working at an office in Bangkok.” So I just left it at that.
The Cost of Waiting for Her Divorce
She had to go back up after we had that conversation about her family thinking she’s working in an office, but she had to go back up for a few weeks for something to do with the divorce process. That’s what she said. So I had another two weeks by myself in Pattaya. I spoke to her I think it was three times when she was there that time. She was just saying things are moving slowly and she can’t wait to get back to be with me. The first week she was gone, I was just spending not too much money, hardly ever going out, and I’m having a very bad time. I’m really starting to have a bad time because I’m trying to be sensible with what money I’ve got. It was when the second week started that I just thought, “I don’t care. I need to get out and live Pattaya.” And that one day rolled into two and into three. And by the time she came back, I had gone wild. I spent far too much money in the bars across seven days, and I did and I will admit to cheating on her at least five times. But I just wanted to live Thailand because I was in Thailand. It’s not like I didn’t have any money. I didn’t care if I’d spent a few thousand that I shouldn’t have spent, but I did have a great time. It was even better when she was back.
She said things were progressing, and she bought some pictures with her. She brought pictures of her kid, and you could see that she really loved her kid, which is understandable. And she brought some pictures of the family, and she even had a picture of this piece of land, saying this is something that we could have when we’re finally able to get married and move there. It was just a normal plot of land. It didn’t seem too big. Rice fields next to it, a mountain in the distance, and just lush and green and peaceful. If you’re living there, how she described it to me, you can go out regularly. And while you might not have what you have in places like Pattaya, they do have good restaurants within 10 to 20 minutes, which are a fraction of the price that you will pay in Pattaya. You could go out every day and spend what we spend living in Pattaya by not going out every day, but you don’t have to sacrifice by being there. It really appealed to me because that’s what I was in Thailand for in the first place.
When she was showing me this picture of the land, she said, “Guess how much?” I had no idea. I guessed 2 million baht. That’s what I would have guessed it would have cost, but she said, “No, it’s only 1.2 million.” I didn’t know that that was actually a lot more than it should have been. I just thought because I thought it was more that it was a steal. And I said, “I can’t wait to be able to go and have a look with you and choose some.” She said she couldn’t wait to do that as well. And we just continued until she had to go back yet again. She spent a week there this time. Came back. Things are still progressing. Things are getting closer. Still a number of months away, but she can’t wait to finally get this behind her.
She said she had a bit of bad news, though. That land that she showed me the picture of had unfortunately already been sold. I said, “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure we’ll be able to find more when we get there.” And she said, “I’m sure we will. There’s also another piece of land. It looks amazing, but this one’s 2 million. It’s very difficult to find land as cheap as the other one,” she said. And I said, “We can look at it when the time comes.” Only a week later, she’s speaking to her family and she said to me that that land that was 2 million they’ve drastically reduced the price to 1.5 million. It’s a really good buy now because it was twice the size of the one that had already sold for 1.2 million, and it’s probably not going to be available much longer. She didn’t ask me to buy it, but I offered. I’d seen the picture of it. It looked great. Amazing views. And I just said, “What about if we just buy it now and then we have it ready so when things are ready, we can already have the land?” To start with, she said, “It’s okay. We can wait.” It was like she wasn’t too keen. She said it might be better to buy it when the time is right, but we probably will have to spend more money because deals like that don’t come up very often. It was like she was trying to tell me not to while giving me reasons to do so at the same time. And I insisted, “It’s okay. Let’s just buy it.” So, we did.
She said she would need to go back because the land would need transferring to her and I wouldn’t be able to go yet. But if I didn’t have a problem with that, she wouldn’t mind. I thought it was a good idea. Let’s just start getting things ready because I wanted to leave Pattaya. But if I went to Bangkok, it would just be the same anyway. If I went anywhere else in the country similar to where I was, it would be the same. So, I wanted to start thinking about the future together with her in a place like that. And it just seemed like it would be one more thing out of the way that we needed to do. I gave her the money and she left again. She called me in 3 days’ time saying everything’s okay, but we need to pay the transfer costs another 200,000 baht. I didn’t know that that was more than it would have been, and it seemed to be one of those things you needed to pay for, so I sent her that money, too.
She said she had some news as well about the divorce. It’s probably going to be six more months until it finally gets resolved. Then she comes back to Pattaya. I’m happy in the knowledge that we’re moving closer to the life we’ll be able to live together. I’m starting to actually spend a little bit too much money in Pattaya now. Going out a lot more than before because I’m kind of counting down to 6 months where we won’t be able to do this anymore. So if we spend a little bit of extra money now, it doesn’t really matter. Probably another big mistake. I mean, a huge mistake. But I’m spending on a monthly basis about £5,000 thinking it’s only 6 months.
Building a House Before We Were Married
One thing we did do was spend time looking at houses for sale in Pattaya. Not because we wanted to buy one in Pattaya, just to look at the type of house style that we like, give us ideas for what our house would look like. I’m thinking about having a house, being married to her, and that’s all I’m thinking about. She’s going back regularly every month, and I think it was a few months after this when she came back with a brochure of a company that built houses this brochure and she went on to talk about how this company is offering special prices until the end of the year 10% less than they normally charge. She just said it was very unfortunate that things are still dragging on because we could have taken advantage of this and saved some money. I thought the same. We’d looked at houses in and around Pattaya and been to companies that built houses in Pattaya. The type of house we were looking for was going to be the equivalent of £100,000 or close enough. I’d got it in my head that as soon as we’re living there and the house is built, my cost of living is going to plummet to a very marginal amount of money while at the same time still being able to go out all the time and have a good time. So having less money wasn’t concerning to me because I’d spoken to other guys that had done similar things gone and built in a different part of the country and spent time in Pattaya as well. They all seemed to reaffirm the fact that in a place like that it’s so cheap to live and you can still not be bored there. And I’m loosening up to the fact that I might be spending a bit too much money in the present.
When I found out though that the house that we’re looking at in around Pattaya with a budget of £100,000 this was just the house, by the way, not the land when I found out that we could build an equivalent house up where she was from for £80,000 instead, and now there’s this 10% offer on until the end of the year, it’s upsetting to admit, but I thought it only made sense that we were to build it now and take advantage of that offer because it was only going to be a few more months when we could actually get married and move there. I was thinking we’ll be able to move there straight away instead of having to wait for the house to be built. We might as well get everything ready so we can be free to move, which would also mean that I can spend a little bit more money in the meantime because of it.
I asked her if she thought this would be a good idea to start with. She said she would rather wait and do it later so that we can do it there and watch the construction. I was the one forcing this or she was the one to allow me to feel like I was forcing it because I just said I want to be able to move there as soon as we can. So why don’t we take advantage of this offer and go for it? I’m not just a really stupid guy. I loved her unconditionally. And in terms of on a day to day basis, she never really asked for anything. So it seemed to me the best thing that we could do. Let’s just get this built, ready to move in. And she agreed to go back and start the process. I’m not thinking that I’m doing anything stupid here. I’m just thinking I’m preparing us for both our future married life together.
Money was going to be paid in installments. I was going to be receiving pictures, and sure enough, I paid the first installment. I see the foundation going in, and that continued for 3 or 4 months, and I’m always seeing pictures of the house going up. It only took 3 or 4 months to build, and I had photographic evidence of the build, and it looked fantastic, and I couldn’t wait to move in. It wasn’t furnished yet, but we decided that we would furnish it together when we did move in. When I say I had photographic evidence, she showed me a picture of her standing outside the house, so it had been built. I’m starting to get very excited now because it was only a few months from when the divorce was meant to be finalized, and I can’t wait to move in and cut back on how much money I’m spending because I did start to think that I’d spent too much.
If I add everything up, I spent way more than half of what I had, and I was continuing to spend a lot on a monthly basis on the understanding that I wouldn’t be able to do that soon anyway, so I might as well do it now. I probably wasn’t very financially literate. I mean, that’s a huge understatement. I wasn’t financially literate. I never really had any money in my life up until I had this money. So, perhaps it was easy come, easy go.
We’d spent a long time together now, though. We’d never fallen out. We’d never quarreled. Never had any disagreements. And the only time I’d ever been angry is that how long it was taking for her divorce to go through. We had our house ready. We had our land. We had each other. Now, we just needed to be able to get married.
The Final Payment to End the Divorce Delays
When it was finally time for her to go to court and hopefully get everything arranged, I was really happy until she called me up after she was meant to have finally been divorced, saying there’d been some more problems and it could be another 6 months. She was really, really sorry and she’s trying her best. She said she doesn’t want to ask me, but apparently if we pay money to the court and a little bit of money to her parents at the same time, we can get this finally out of the way once and for all. It’s too much money though, she said. So I think we should wait for 6 months. I asked her how much we were talking about. She said 1.5 million baht. I asked her, “Can you promise me if I pay this, it will be the last and you can come back, we can get married and we can move to our house and start living our lives together?” She said yes. So I sent the money to her Thai bank.
I don’t know if it was because I was already so heavily invested that the thought of not investing anymore scared me, thinking that if I don’t, I will lose everything. I think that could have been the thing that kept me going throughout this time. But after I sent that money, all I’m thinking about is, “Okay, finally, we’re going to be able to go and move up there and spend less money. I can enjoy retirement and we can live properly, finally.” Deep down, I felt sick about the amount of money I’d sent, but it was finally going to come good.
The worst part of it was I didn’t know much of anything. She said she was from Isan. I didn’t even know where. I didn’t know anything, but I just knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. She said she would call me when everything was finally arranged, and I waited patiently for her call. She didn’t call me that day or the day after or the day after, and I’m starting to expect her to show up at any minute.
If I go through how much I spent in total to get to this point, we’re talking about a considerable amount of money. I will do it in pounds because that’s what I started off with. Probably spent 60 70 80,000 on living expenses, £80,000 on the house, £25,000 on the land, £25,000 for her ex and his parents, and £10,000 on in little fees and legal fees, and another £40,000 on fees that I needed to pay up until then, totaling between £240 to £260,000. That’s how much I spent since I arrived in Thailand, and I was looking forward to not having to spend too much to live anymore.
She didn’t call again for another few days and she didn’t show up. I tried to call her number but it didn’t connect, and I knew why because of the signal problems. After another week, I’m starting to get a bit worried. I’m not thinking anything bad happened to my money. I’m just thinking perhaps she’s had some problems. A few more days and I start hitting the bars hard because I found that it calmed me down. Yet, I never heard from her again.
Two weeks later was when I went to the police for the first time, saying my girlfriend’s gone missing and I’ve spent a lot of money on a house, and I even showed them a picture of the house, and they didn’t really say anything. “What’s her name?” I told them. Then they said, “What’s her full name?” That was when I realized I didn’t even know what her last name was. She’d just given me a nickname. And I was so caught up in who I thought she was and who I wanted her to be that I’d failed to even consider that she might not be who I thought she was. I didn’t know what her full name was, and they just said, “Go and find out and let us know.”
Learning the Truth at Her Pattaya Bar
The only thing I could think of doing was going back to her bar where she worked. It was the bar that I avoided ever since I’d met her because it made where I met her all too real. And I walked in and spoke to a number of the girls that worked in there when she still worked there, seeing if they knew where she was. One of them just said, “I don’t know where she’s gone. Probably gone back home to Myanmar.”
“What do you mean gone back to Myanmar? She said she was from Isan.” This girl that worked there and it was actually a number of them that worked there for quite a long time they all said she was from Myanmar. I even showed them a picture I had. “This is a house I built for her in Isan. How could she be from Myanmar?” One of them just said, “That doesn’t look like a house in Isan to me.”
I didn’t want to believe it. She spoke Thai at least in my mind just as good as everybody else that I had spoken to did. Then I’m thinking: when she’s speaking to her family, was she actually speaking in Burmese, not Laotian? And I had no idea that there was a difference. And I’m starting to come to the understanding that I probably was being scammed. An elaborate scam, and she’s not even Thai, and she’s not even in Thailand anymore. I don’t even know what her full name is, and the police aren’t interested.
I still held out hope for about a month that she would come back or call, but she didn’t. And the thing was though, instead of accepting what had happened, regardless of how awful it was and how much it had completely destroyed my life, instead of trying to get over it, holding back what I had I still had around £150,000 or thereabouts left I just went insane. It was a combination of everything. The fact that I loved her so much. The fact that I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with her. The fact that I thought we were building a future together. The fact that I would have done anything for her. The fact that I trusted her unconditionally. The fact that I thought she loved me more than anything, too. I’d already started to live the life I thought we were going to lead together. In my mind, that hurt the most, even more than the fact I just lost the money.
The thing was, now I think about it, I loved her, but I think I loved her because I thought she was mine more than a normal girlfriend would be. I didn’t even think that she would have her own ideas about things. And I’ve heard guys talk about that before. It’s not because we have some kind of sick mind. It’s just because that’s how the relationship seems to be. Granted, some of the money that I spent was on expenses, living expenses, but most of it was just an elaborate scam. And she’d concocted that to get money out of me.
Understanding that somebody I loved so much had scammed me that made it worse, and the only thing I could do was drink and hit the bars and spend time with as many girls as I could to try and numb the pain.
Losing My Money and Starting Over
This was around the time that my friends came to visit me. None of them knew what had happened, and I was too embarrassed to admit it. So, I tried to pull myself together and show them the ropes around Pattaya, and I could see that they all liked it. But they seemed to be able to control themselves where I couldn’t. The next two years were me blowing through the rest of my money in Pattaya in both a state of depression about the fact that I lost the love of my life and the fact she scammed me and took more than half of my money from me. And the only way to escape the depression was by drinking and spending time with the girls. The rest of my money went after 2 years. I went down to zero. I mean absolute zero. But I didn’t have enough money for a plane ticket home. And that’s when I had to tell my friends the truth.
One of them was just in the process of moving to Thailand himself. Still not there yet, expecting to be able to hang out together with me. But now I don’t have any money left. So I’m going to be going in the other direction because one of them lent me money for a plane ticket and put me up in their place. I’d become alcohol dependent. I’d become dependent on bar girls. And giving up the bar girls was just as difficult as having to give up the alcohol.
I was fortunate that I could spend time at my friend’s place for a considerable number of months as I tried to break the cycle and understand that no matter what happened, I would never see her again who I still considered the love of my life. I tried to convince myself that she hadn’t done it on purpose, that when she got divorced, she’d have told me that she was from Myanmar and we could have gone to live there together. I tried to convince myself that it was other people who had done bad to her that caused her to do this to me because I would never in a million years have thought that someone that I cared for so much would do that.
I’ve never really got over it. I’ve never really got back on my feet. I exist, and while I have good days and bad days, if I could do anything, it would be go back in time and not change anything I did, but change her to actually love me because that would have been everything. Also, what I would have done is briefly asked her, “Can I have a look at your ID card?” I knew what a Thai ID card looked like, and that could have saved me from everything. And I would recommend doing that if you go to Thailand and find yourself in a similar position. But I didn’t even know that girls from different countries worked in the bars in Thailand, especially because they spoke Thai, and perhaps not many do.
But I lost a lot of money because of her. Over half of it went to her and the rest I was just blowing through it trying to escape. I was stupid. I was careless. I was reckless. But most of all, I was really, really stupid.
