From a Difficult Start to a First Thailand Trip in 1990
This wouldn’t be half as bad as it was if my downfall had been spread out across quite a number of years. Just how quickly things collapsed for me is alarming to actually think about. And I hope by sharing this, some people will understand that just because you’re so sure and so certain about something, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it alone can guarantee success.
How I got to this point is something I still can’t quite understand. I don’t know if it was because I was single-minded ever since I went to Thailand for the first time, but I wanted to be able to live there. Or I don’t know if it was because I was really stupid. I don’t feel like I was stupid. I just feel like I’m a guy who thought he had finally caught a break.
Thailand represented my life’s work. Thailand represented all the sacrifice, all the times I stayed in watching TV instead of going out and having a good time, because I wanted to get to the point in time when I could make this dream a reality. And I suffered countless years of boredom and delayed gratification. While I get it, it is sensible to save money for a rainy day, to save up for retirement, I think I took it way too far, because I don’t even feel like I lived life for 25 whole years waiting until this dream finally became a reality.
I would hate to see somebody else skimping and saving, always choosing the cheapest option, never enjoying themselves, never living in the moment, and always living for the future, and have the same thing happen to them. It really is such a soul-destroying thing to happen. The worst part of it was I thought what I was doing was going to make my life better, not worse. I thought I knew what Thailand was all about. I thought I knew what the girls in Thailand were all about. And I thought that I was bound to succeed. But the speed in which everything went wrong is so alarming that I think all those years of sacrifice had taken its toll on me.
Because I felt it was finally time for me to start living life for the first time forever, really. I just thought that there was no way anything could go wrong, because I’d waited for this moment for so long. I was overconfident. I wanted to let off steam after years of hard work and hard effort. And I thought that I’d paid my way in the world doing my years of work, which meant that I was due a break. I think that’s why I did what I did and why I lost everything. Because it was like surely somebody who sacrificed decades of their life to get to this point was owed a break. Surely there was no chance anything could go wrong for me, because I’d already put in the time and the work to get there.
I thought that that time and work that I put in guaranteed that I would have my dream retirement. And I had so many dreams while I was sacrificing. It was my intention to make those dreams come true, even if it meant taking risks. The thing was I didn’t realize I was taking risks. I thought I was finally free to be able to not worry about money once in my life. What I had was meant to last forever. I thought what I had would last forever, because I spent time in Thailand countless times before, and I saw how much things cost there. But the problem was while things did cost less, it’s all the other things that you’ve spent money on that I didn’t even notice, because everything was meant to be a one-off. A one-off for this, a one-off for that. And before you know it, all these one-offs have become substantial amounts of money. And one of those one-offs I couldn’t even be classed as a normal expense. But I’ll get to that exactly, because I just wanted to enjoy my life instead of wasting it, but I ended up wasting it anyway.
2. My Journey to Thailand
My journey getting to Thailand began like I’ve heard so many times before. I was married at a young age, 22 to be precise, and that marriage lasted for 18 years, and we had two wonderful children. I thought that marriage would last forever until I found out that she was cheating on me with the landlord of the local pub. A real creep he was. And I don’t know what she saw in him. But she filed for divorce, taking both our children with her to live with him. Our eldest was 16 and the youngest 13, and the divorce was brutal. 3 months after she moved in with him, everything went wrong there and she left with the children to stay by herself, trying her best to make it up to me, saying she was sorry. But I just didn’t see it that way.
This was in 1990, a very long time ago now, but it doesn’t feel like it was that long ago. Up until then, life was quite good. I’m not going to wax lyrical about how amazing things were, because they weren’t. But we had a normal family existence, living in a middle-class area, great school for our children, and a nice house, and two okay cars. After my ex did what she did, I think she really regretted it, thinking she would have been better off staying with me. But she was always one of those sorts of people who saw what other people had and felt like she deserved that as well, even though what we had wasn’t bad at all.
About after the divorce, I was starting to feel like my head was getting back in the game, and I wanted to go away for a few weeks to give myself a bit of time for myself. Up until then, I was happy to put in effort for my family. I’ve noticed so many guys over the years who I’ve known, close friends, acquaintances, who were your typical type of man that did everything for their families. I think many guys like this have had a rough time, because although they think they’re doing what they should be doing for their families, oftentimes their wife isn’t happy enough, isn’t given enough. And I felt that was exactly what happened to me.
Thinking about myself for a change, while also knowing that my children still had a few years left before they were out on their own in the world, I thought I would go away for a few weeks before returning home and just getting my head back into things and getting to the point where my children are able to go their own way. They were first and foremost my top priority, and I wasn’t ready to take a step back and think about myself fully until they were ready to move ahead with their lives when they were able to do so.
I’ve heard other guys talking about how when they got divorced, they hated having to pay the child support payments. I really get that, because that money is going to your ex as opposed to your children. But I was lucky that my ex wasn’t so vindictive, and quite lucky that she was very apologetic about what she did. She didn’t take money from me directly. I sent money to my two children, so they were able to do things for themselves. That was very important to me, and that allowed me to give them more money knowing that that would be for them to save for themselves and use it for themselves. What I’m trying to get at is to say that I was having 2 weeks away, but I knew I would have to get back home and get back into work and push on for at least 5 years more before being able to do anything else for myself, because I wanted my children to have opportunities that I didn’t have when I was their age.
3. First Thailand Trip in 1990
It was at the end of 1990 when I went to Thailand for the first time for 2 weeks. I don’t know why I chose Thailand, because at the time, while it was popular, it wasn’t as popular as it is today. I think I wanted to go somewhere that I hadn’t been before, and somewhere I hadn’t been with my ex, because we had done quite a lot of traveling together, both me and her, and together with our children. We’d been as far as India, Kenya, and most of Europe. And Thailand just seemed like it would be an interesting place to go. I wasn’t going for the girls, I wasn’t going for the nightlife. I was just going to get lost in a very different culture. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying that you’re not going for anything in particular and then change your mind when you’re there, because you find out things about Thailand that you didn’t realize up until you got there.
But when I was there, this is my first day we’re talking about, Thailand unlocked a piece of my mind that I didn’t even know was there. It unlocked a very different way of thinking. I saw things that were the type of things that would only happen in your dreams, things that didn’t seem to be real or plausible. But you rub your eyes and open them again and see everything that you’re seeing is real. And to say that I fell in love with the country of Thailand when I was there for the first time would be the biggest understatement the world has ever heard. All I could think about when I was there was living there, being able to stay there, being able to make this place home and live this amazing life every single day.
To anybody who’s never experienced it or never been, I mean today it is very different than it used to be. It’s a lot cleaner, less raw, and more commercialized. You’re probably not going to get the same feeling as going there today for the first time as you would a long time ago. But you can still have really exciting feelings, because Thailand is really a great country. The girls back then, I fell in love with the girls so much when I was there. And I think I held onto that vision of Thailand throughout the course of the next 25 years of my life. I held onto how I found Thailand when I went for the first time, how the girls behaved, how they talked to you, how they didn’t know anything about the outside world, how they didn’t have mobile phones in their hands all the time looking at the internet and chatting to people. Everything was so much more authentic in a way. There seemed to be a big difference between the West and the East, and it was this difference that excited me and many of the people that seemed to go to Thailand.
Those 2 weeks, and I will readily admit to falling in love with the bar scene and a number of girls when I was there, none that I kept in touch with, but it gave me something to dream about and hold onto, because my life became Thailand from then. Leaving Thailand, knowing I had to get my head completely back in the game, my children still had time before they were able to leave home, I tried to forget about Thailand, but I couldn’t. Thailand was always center stage in my mind. All I thought about was being able to go back. All I thought about was being able to be there, sitting in those bars, sitting on the beach with a beer and a girl next to me, and going to bed and waking up the following morning and being able to do the whole thing again and repeat it indefinitely until the end of time.
I changed when I went to Thailand for the first time. I became a different person. Well before I went to Thailand, it was my plan to come back home, get to work, and maybe find a new relationship, save up a little bit of money, and get back on the housing ladder because since the divorce, I’d been renting. I wanted to try and put my life back to where I wanted it to be. Now, all I thought about was getting to a point in time when I could live permanently in Thailand. That’s all I thought about, and that’s all I wanted. And it was my plan to visit again as soon as I possibly could.
4. 1995 The Second Trip
It was 1995 when I went again. My eldest had gone off to university and had nearly finished there, but my youngest had decided to leave school at 18 and enter the workforce because he was interested in getting into the trades, and he’s done very well, of which I’m extremely proud. Both my children have done very well for themselves, and I suppose I would say that they’re the only two things that I can point to in my life as being a success. Everything else has been monumental failure after monumental failure. Anytime I feel down, which is 99% of the time, I can think about them and think at least they’re okay. At least they’re in a good position, and at least they’re there and not me.
But 1995 was different because all of a sudden, I didn’t have to give my children money anymore because they were off on their own doing their own things. And up until 1995, I never considered buying another house even though I should have done. I just continued to rent because I thought eventually I would be moving to Thailand. That was a huge mistake because if I bought a house then, just by buying that house and waiting for the next 20 years, that would have given me more money than I could have saved by wanting to be in Thailand. But that’s the thing you don’t understand, is it? And looking back, you can think how stupid I was to not buy a house, but I didn’t know, and nobody would have known that house prices were going to continue to go up and get to the point of insanity and continue to get even more insane. I didn’t even think about that. So, I continued to rent, putting my money in the bank and saving money. I didn’t invest in anything. I didn’t do anything that I should have done because you have to think about it at that moment in time. We’re talking about 1995 here. There wasn’t all this information overload that we have today about what’s the best thing to do with your money. I was just a saver. Save money. And I regret doing that because I could have had so much more if I’d not been thinking about saving and Thailand. That’s the thing I’m trying to say here. It’s because I was thinking so much about Thailand, that’s why I didn’t buy a house. Yet, if I wasn’t thinking about Thailand, I would have done and bought a house, and I would have had more anyway. But I don’t understand, and perhaps I’m just struggling to come to terms with things even still, even after all this time. The mistakes I made were mistakes, and I will admit that. But at the time, you don’t think they are. You don’t know that it’s a mistake when you’re doing it because if it is, you wouldn’t do it.
In 1995, I probably had about £5,000 to my name. It was considerably less than what I had when I was together with my wife. We had a house, we had two cars, and we went away on holiday regularly. And I’d given a lot of money to my children, and they bought houses while I didn’t. But enough of that.
In 1995, I went to Thailand again. This time for a month, just to give myself a bit of a pat on the back to say good job with the kids. Now, focus on Thailand. Focus on the future, and go and spend a month in the place I would give the next 20 years of my life building savings to be able to get to. That month that I spent in 1995 was worth every single penny that I spent on it. Thailand was still up-and-coming back then. The guys that went then seemed to be adventurous, and I met one guy who would become a lifelong friend. I fell in love probably three or four times to different girls when I was there. Girls I met in Bangkok and one that I met in Pattaya. Again, I didn’t keep in touch with them, but I could have done. But that would have been an even bigger disaster.
This was before there was the skytrain in Bangkok, and the cityscape was still like the Thailand of old. And I think if I could do anything with my life at all, even something that is physically impossible, it would be to go back to that moment in time in 1995, freeze Thailand as it was in 1995, then I could go back home and work and start working harder, work as hard as I could, and save money as quickly as I could, and when I had enough, finally move to Thailand permanently. And then, Thailand can unfreeze, and I can begin my perfect life from 1995 like Thailand. But the sad thing was, as time goes on, the Thailand I fell in love with, while still there and amazing, was moving further away from me even though I was saving money. And in 1995, I saw a bar for sale in Bangkok, and I thought I’d love to be able to buy that. The money that I ended up saving, I would have been able to have bought that bar outright including the building and the land it was on. Okay, I’m not Thai, but that’s beside the point. So, I think if I could have anything, genie-in-a-bottle style wish, that would be what I would wish for. But I’m not saying that I don’t dislike Thailand today. I’m not saying that. It was just so much easier then because things felt like they were within reach. Also, you have to understand for guys like me who were there in the 1990s, that’s the Thailand we found originally. That’s the Thailand that we held onto, and that’s the prices of things that we expected to remain somewhat similar. And when we finally made it back for retirement a long time into the future, we still had these old visions of what Thailand was like back when we fell in love with it, and we based our decisions on the old Thailand and not the new Thailand because the old Thailand is what meant so much to us. I hope that goes some way to explain why I did some of the things I did.
5. 1998 The Financial Crisis
When I returned home in 1995, I was solely focused on being able to move to Thailand as quickly as I could. I wanted to have a bar. I wanted to have a wife from Thailand. I wanted everything about my life to be Thailand. And I was just very thankful that I didn’t fall in love with a girl and be one of those guys that sent money to her because that would have taken me even longer to get to the point in time when I could live there. I had a few friends over the years go to Thailand, meet girls, and bring them back home with them. And that seemed like it would be such a great thing to do. Yet many times when, and I say many like it’s a lot, I’m talking about two friends here, but both times they went to Thailand, fell in love, lived with her in Thailand for a few months, and everything was great. Yet when they brought her back to England, they said she changed. She wasn’t the same as she was in Thailand, and that kind of removed the allure anyway because if Thailand, it felt more exciting and special. Yet in England, they said it felt quite strange because they had their wife from Thailand with them, yet Thailand wasn’t around them, and they said it didn’t really gel properly for them. I don’t know if that’s an experience that many people had because it’s only two friends, but I do know that they did seem to regret what they did, and both of them got divorced from their Thai wives.
One of the problems I was facing was I wanted to be able to visit Thailand regularly. However, based on the job I was doing at the time, if I visited Thailand once a year, I would never have been able to save enough money to be able to get to Thailand to live. I thought I would be able to save about £10,000 per year if I really made sacrifices. I thought about doing extra jobs. I thought about applying for more jobs and trying to make more money, and I decided I would go to Thailand every 3 years as a way to keep a small connection to the country in order though to be able to allow me to save money quickly. I was hoping to be able to get there within 10 years. That was the dream.
I kept to my plan. I went back in 1998, which just so happened to be the financial crisis, and I was there when the baht plummeted in value overnight, and things just became so much cheaper immediately. And it was one of the best moments of my life because all of a sudden, everything around you is so much cheaper. Prices were increased quickly though, yet I think that was Thailand‘s golden age for expats around 1998 until about 2005. The thing was, I wasn’t in the country being able to live and take advantage of this because I was saving to be able to be there. Saving, missing out on the best time of Thailand, just wanting to be there. Yet by the time I was there, I’d already missed the boat in terms of how much of an advantage you would have by living during those years I mentioned. Yet I still pictured Thailand the same way as it had been before when I’d been there to visit those times. And the reason I have to keep saying that is because I feel like this is what caused me to do the things I did because I thought Thailand is just going to go through this bumpy phase at the moment. Surely it’s going to go back to where it was, and then I’ll be able to catch up. But this was just wishful thinking.
6. 2014 The Dream Becomes Reality
2014 was when I threw in the towel at home. I’d saved and saved and sacrificed and sacrificed. Had great times in Thailand when I was there. Lots of girlfriends that I fell in love with so many times, but nothing serious because that could wait until I was living there. I really wanted a serious relationship, but I held off having one because I wanted to save that for Thailand. I think the sad thing was, I knew that I would be able to find someone who was younger than me. And one reason that I don’t like the comments about saying that she’s too young for you and those types of things that you hear about, I really don’t like that because when I went to Thailand originally, I was 40 years old. 40 years old. And I was having girlfriends that were around 25 to 26, which to me is a perfect age gap between men and women, about 14 or 15 years. You have to understand though that I can’t freeze time like I said before. I can’t do that. In the next 25 years of my life, I’d put everything else on hold to get to the point where I could move to Thailand, and Thailand wasn’t freezing for me, and I couldn’t freeze my age at 40, which is what I would have done if I could.
But I suppose everybody would have done that. Everybody would freeze their age, work and save, and then enjoy it at a young age. But I kind of felt like it didn’t really matter because when I finally got to Thailand, at which point I was 64 years old, get there to live, I knew that I would still be able to find my dream girl at around 25 or 26 because those were the sorts of girls I was interested in all those years ago. The difference being I had to save and sacrifice to be able to get to that moment. I really don’t like it when people complain about the age differences because what choice do we have? I couldn’t live in the country I wanted to live in for 25 years. Therefore, if there’s an extra 25 years in the age difference between myself and my future partner, that’s not my fault. That’s just the fault of the fact that I wasn’t able to work and save the amount of money I would want to do in Thailand. Because if I could, then there wouldn’t have been a possibility for me to do that anyway. I don’t know. I’m probably talking nonsense here. But it was a catch-22 situation. I held out on the fact that when I was able to finally retire, I would be able to have my dream girl and my dream wife. So, if I can’t have her right now, I will be able to have her later. And that’s why those years of sacrifice were worthwhile. At least I thought so because I knew that when I could retire, I could have what I’d missed out on before. Perhaps I am just trying to justify everything that I did. Perhaps I’m just trying to make myself appear anything other than a delusional old fool. But I don’t think so. I think many guys have been in similar positions to me. Worked hard and sacrificed. Thought that saving money in the bank instead of buying a house would be better for me.
There I was, finally in 2014, living in Thailand. About £250,000 that I’d managed to save up. And that represented everything that I’d done over the past decades of my life. I was very proud of myself. But also, I was quite bitter because when I found myself in Thailand in 2014, it wasn’t like the Thailand I went to originally, which is what I sacrificed my life for. It was a lot more modern, a lot more developed, a lot more globalized. But it was still Thailand. I was still there. And I was going to be there for the rest of my life. Sadly, I didn’t even make it over a year. That’s how badly things went for me. All that sacrifice was for nothing.
I can remember when I arrived in Thailand in 2014, 64 years old. I’d managed to keep myself quite fit and healthy. One of the things I liked to do to keep myself occupied over the years was to go for long walks, exercise, and anything that I could do that didn’t require me spending any money. So, I didn’t feel like I was 64, like you saw some of the guys who seemed to already be struggling on their feet. I hadn’t been to Thailand since 2010. I was going to be going in 2013 for a visit, but I reckoned if I didn’t, I could retire 6 months earlier. So, that’s why I didn’t go for that year. But I noticed some very big changes in Bangkok between 2010 and 2014. Bangkok was always a city I planned to live in. I wanted to do something there. I wanted to be part of the city. But when I arrived in 2014, I felt like it had just gone a little bit too far away from the Bangkok that I fell in love with all those years ago in 1990. I knew that Thailand had so much more to offer than Bangkok. I’d been to many parts of the country and I thought that Pattaya would still be able to offer me what Bangkok of old did, yet without being the big city feel and all the other things that went along with living in a capital city.
After spending a week in Bangkok, going to a lot of the places that I used to go to, realizing that many of them were no longer there anymore, I was a bit deflated because I’d waited for this moment for so long. Yet I waited for something that didn’t wait for me. At least that’s how it felt. I sacrificed for something that didn’t sacrifice for me. And I know that’s the same for everyone and things change. And you can’t hold a place in time and wait for a moment in time when you can get enough money together to be there. But I was a little bit hurt because I wasn’t able to live the Thailand that I fell in love with because I was saving to be able to be there. When I got there, it had changed. But I wasn’t overly upset about it. I just knew that I could live in Pattaya instead because that just felt the same as it always had.
When I transferred all my money into Thailand, I’d opened up a bank account when I was there my first time and I always transferred in little bits of money every now and then over the years just to know I’ve got money in Thailand. And it made me feel good. When I transferred the bulk of it in, that was when I felt like my mission, in a way, was 100% complete. Here I am. My dream has come true. I’m living in paradise and I’ve got enough money to be able to do what I wanted to do.
7. Meeting Her
I’d missed out on having a relationship for such a long time that I was very excited at the prospect of finally being able to meet someone. And Thailand didn’t disappoint. Pattaya didn’t disappoint. I found myself a great place to live right in the middle of Pattaya. I was able to walk not only 10 minutes to my favorite bars, even less time to the beach. And retirement started out like a dream. Three weeks after moving into that place, I met the most incredible girl I’d ever seen. I’d seen so many girls over the years of going to Thailand that I’d had strong feelings over. But she was different in a way because I knew I didn’t have to leave. Therefore, I think I allowed myself to develop even stronger feelings because of that idea. I didn’t need to leave.
I met her in a great little bar. I’d rather not say exactly which bar or which street it was on, but it was one of the streets just off Beach Road. She was 27 and she was perfect in every single way. She was what I dreamed about as being my girlfriend ever since 1990. And now the fact that I’d met her and it was real and we moved really quickly. A week later, she was living with me. A month later, we’re engaged to get married. And a month later from then, I found myself going together with her up to her village in Isaan to meet her family and get married. We’d spoken on the phone to her family and they arranged a party. And when it was the day to go, we went. We went a few days before just so I could acclimatize to the area because I heard from other guys who had done similar things that it was very different to the likes of Bangkok and Pattaya.
I felt like I was on top of the world when we got the bus up there. I felt like I was part of a secret club that many guys who went to Thailand dreamed of being able to join but never could. But now I’d managed to join it and I was part of that club of people who lived in Thailand. And not only that, we’re going to be married in Thailand. My fiance had three kids. I was a bit hesitant at first because they were still quite young. But she insisted that they would always live with her parents. And it was just a question of being able to support them, which she was doing and I would need to do instead because she was no longer working in the bar.
We agreed everything with her family in terms of the dowry. It wasn’t a very big one because she did have kids. But it was a token amount and I felt proud to be able to give this money as a way to say that I’m here and I’m able to support your daughter and I’m very grateful that I have the ability to do so. I don’t know what I was thinking because at this moment in time, I’m spending money hand over fist. But I just think that these were all one-off expenses. Everything that came up when we were with her family, I just considered them to be one-offs, not understanding that there could be 1 million one-offs. But I felt grateful after we had the ceremony. It probably cost me about £10,000 for absolutely everything. But it was worth it and we were now married. Her younger brother, who was around 15, I actually bought him a motorcycle, which cost me a bit more money. But it felt good to be able to show the family that I was serious. Show them that I cared and that I was someone who really respected how they did things and I wanted to fit in.
So far, I think my retirement is getting off to an absolutely amazing start. Not even 3 months in the country and I’m already married. I felt like my first dream had been ticked off the bucket list. I had my perfect wife and it was just like I’d always pictured it being. I was on such a high. Such a high after all that sacrifice that I felt like I could do nothing wrong. I felt like I could do no wrong. I felt nothing would ever go wrong. And I guess that’s just really naive thinking because it’s like I’ve done all this hard work. Therefore, regardless of what happens, I’m owed a good time.
And after we got married, we went back to Pattaya and we were just living a normal life. I’m having a really good time, but I’m not having as good a time as I was when I was on holiday all that time ago. And that’s the life I wanted to live when I was there. When we went out, I’m noticing that we might spend more than I had budgeted for. When we went out five times or six times in a month, perhaps I’m spending double what I budgeted for. And that was in the first 2 months after we’d been back in Pattaya. While I’m having a good time, I want to be out and about and doing things absolutely all the time. I want to wake up in the morning. I want to go out for breakfast.
I want to go for a walk and then maybe return home for a few hours. Then go out for lunch, then return home again and go out for drinks in the evening and dinner and more drinks after and go home again. I wanted that to be my daily existence. And the thing was, if I had the money I had right now in 1990 when I first went to Thailand and also in 1998 and 1999, I would have been able to have that sort of existence that I dreamed about having for such a long time. The problem was with the budget that I had, I simply couldn’t do this in Thailand anymore because Thailand had moved away from this extremely cheap destination that it used to be. And while I’m having a very good time and I’m not miserable, I do feel like there’s so much more to life than moderation. I’m also having to give money to my wife because she’s no longer working. And I guess I wasn’t ready to just settle down and enjoy a peaceful retirement. I wanted to make up for all those years that I’d sacrificed. I wanted to enjoy every single day moving forwards in my life as a way to make up for all the days where I’d not done anything just so I could be there. That’s all I really wanted.
8. The Bar Dream
I think that was why when we were out one evening, we went to a street that we didn’t go to very often just for a change of scenery. We walked into a bar, had a few drinks, and enjoyed a game of pool or two. We left and went to another one and did the same thing there. After that, there was a restaurant right next to that bar we went in and we had an okay meal. I’m wishing I can do this every day, but I know it’s only once or twice a week thing. But after we left that restaurant and continued walking further up the street, there was a huge sign outside a bar saying “For Sale.” I looked around at all the other bars on that street. Some of them you could clearly see were owned by foreign guys and they were sitting there in their bar. They were able to live this existence that I wanted to live every single day and be paid money for it at the same time. When I saw that sign, I had a brand new wave of excitement rush over me like this could be something I could do. I thought back to the time when I saw that bar for sale in Bangkok and wished I could have had it then. Perhaps now was finally the time.
My wife used to work in a bar, so she knows how bars work. I’ve drunk in bars before for such a long time and that’s been a huge part of my Thailand journey. So imagine if we had our own bar, then I would be able to live like I wanted to live every single day. And not only that, make money from it, too. We returned home that evening and I did feel like I had something to hold on to, something to think about and dream about as opposed to not having anything. And I started to feel really excited again. I think that’s another important thing to say. When you’re busy working and saving money for an eventual goal that’s so far in the future, the thought of that goal and the thought of that future is what keeps you going. It’s what pushes you through the hard times. It’s what you hold on to that gives you the excitement that you crave. I think what I found after I got over the fact that I was living in Thailand and it was great and I am having a good time. It wasn’t just as exciting as the thought of doing it was. Thinking about everything is always perfect. Nothing can go wrong. Your wife would never nag. Everything would be still cheap. Your money would last for a thousand years. Yet living, you’re bound by reality. But now I’ve got something else to be excited about. The thought of having my own bar in such a great place with my wife who I thought would be able to bring all this together because of her experience in the bar. And although I’m still having a good time at this moment, I felt like I had a brand new lease on life just thinking about this.
But I wasn’t about to rush into it and just jump into it immediately. I needed to take a step back and actually understand that yes, this was going to work if I did it. I thought about it for a whole week without even telling my wife that I was thinking about it. Just wondering if the excitement would fade, but it never did. And after that week, I thought I must feel something here. So perhaps let’s go and find out more about it. I told my wife that there was a bar for sale and I was thinking about maybe buying it together. What do you think? She said that could be one of the best things ever. She said people that own bars could make a lot of money. And the thing was I wasn’t even thinking about making a lot of money. I was just thinking about being able to live that life every day. The money side of it hadn’t really crossed my mind. I mean, it had. You had wild dreams that maybe all of a sudden you can make so much money that you don’t know what to do with it. But that wasn’t the reason for thinking about it. The reason was to be able to live the life that I’d waited so long to be able to live. And now that I was living it, I didn’t want to compromise. I wanted to be able to live it every day.
I got my wife to call the number and inquire as to how much it was. It was currently closed. There was nobody running the bar at the moment and the price was 5 million baht. This was to take over the lease for everything in the bar and also the goodwill of the bar even though it hadn’t been running for a few months. We’re talking about a very famous street in Pattaya, so it felt like it was a reasonable amount of money. It would be just under half of what I had in the bank, but I saw it as being really good buy. As I write this, I can’t believe I was even considering this as an option, let alone as a certainty. But after we found out what the price was, I sat on it for a few more days making sure I still had strong feelings for it. And if I did, I would continue. A few days later, I contacted a lawyer and went to meet them so they could tell me everything I would need to do to make sure I was legal and doing everything the right way. I was told it would take the formation of a company. I would need to change from my retirement visa to a marriage visa with a work permit. He did say the marriage visa was a lot easier with a work permit than a business visa and that was the benefit of being married. We would need two Thai staff on the books because I was married. If I wasn’t married, we would have needed four. It was going to cost about 100,000 baht for me to set up the company and get to the point of being legal. I didn’t think that was too bad of an investment for peace of mind. And I also could have a work permit, which is something I never intended to have. I just wanted to be a guy who sits in the bar and lives that life while the bar operated around me. But I thought it was sensible to do everything the legal way.
I had the lawyer look over the books of the bar, but apparently they’d been closed and not running for a few months. The old owner had left. I was told that the old owner had left because he had other commitments back in his own country and I took that as gospel. Not that there were any problems with the bar or not that he wasn’t making as much money as I expected it to. And again, as long as I could live that life and it could run itself, that was good enough for me.
9. The Bar Opens
About 6 weeks after seeing that “for sale” sign, we’d pulled the trigger, formed the company, purchased the bar, taken over the lease, and I now had a marriage extension and a work permit and I felt like I was on top of the world. If I’d have known that within less than a year, I would have lost absolutely everything, I guess I probably would have thought twice about buying that place.
And it became apparent almost immediately that I’d made a bad decision because for a start, we needed to find girls to work there, which I thought was going to be very easy. While there were thousands of girls working all over Pattaya, getting them to come and work in your bar was something that needed doing and it wasn’t a formality. My wife was very happy with how things were going, though. She’d come a long way from working in a bar to now owning a bar and she tried to find people to work. The lease payment was very expensive because we were in a prime location in a very popular area. So that’s going out for the first month, which was a big hit. And at that moment, we hadn’t even found anyone to work there. My wife then suggested that we pay girls to come and work there. Give them money to stop working somewhere else and come and work with us. So I embraced that idea and because my wife told me that this was very common. I mean, I had learned later that it wasn’t. But usually, if you give the girls like 25,000 baht each, they’ll come and work for you. I’d never heard of it before and since later I’d never heard of it as well. But I agreed and we got 10 girls to work there during the second month of being open, but it cost 250,000 baht.
At the end of month two, we were now operating properly and I spent another million baht during that month just putting everything right that were wrong with the place. The mirror had a crack in it, so that was replaced. One of the poles on stage was wobbly, so that was fixed. And the bar needed replacing entirely as well as a few other things that I did just to make it perfect.
Month three, we were full steam ahead. I was just playing a background role. Seeing people coming into the bar and my wife was managing the girls that worked there, kind of acting like the mamasan. And I was full of admiration for both myself and my wife because now we were living this life every single day. And I thought I would be able to live like this for the rest of my life because that’s all I wanted to do.
The Bar Starts Losing Money
Then we got to the end of month three and we made a huge loss, about 400,000 baht. My wife, when she got the girls to work there, said that they could come on a salary, which wasn’t typical. And they were getting a ridiculously high salary as well and that money had to come from me. And they were also getting drinks on top, so I’m not sure what my wife was thinking here. But that was a lot of money that we lost. The lease payment was also huge and that was another big hit. But we were bringing in money, but all that money was going out at quite an alarming rate and I wasn’t expecting that. Again, I think what I was doing was paying so close attention to how it made me feel, to how it made me be able to live the life I wanted to live. But when it came to the financial side of things or the business side of things, that was left to my wife because I didn’t want to deal with that. I’m retired. I just want to be here. I want to be in a bar surrounded by girls, surrounded by people on holiday while I’m living there. So after that month and we lost all that money, I was really shocked.
So we had to say to the girls, okay, you can’t have a salary, but you can have money just for drinks. And then they were upset because they were promised this even though no other bar would ever do anything like that. Why my wife didn’t know? Because that’s not how it worked in the bar she worked in or any of the other bars. So why did my wife think it was a good idea? And also, why didn’t I think it was a bad idea and push against it? It’s because I wasn’t paying close attention to it and I was just focused on the life side of things, the life I wanted to live. And the bar was just meant to give me the ability to live that life as long as I didn’t lose money. But we lost money.
Month four wasn’t as bad, but we still lost 250,000 baht. And I don’t really understand what’s going on. I actually spoke to the owner of a bar a few bars down from me who was also from England asking if he’s going through a difficult time. And he said he wasn’t really making money, but he’s not losing money, either. The one thing he did say was how much he spent for his lease payments every month and they were considerably less than what we were spending. The payments in our bar were ludicrous in comparison to his. And I understood now if we were paying similar to him, perhaps we wouldn’t have lost anywhere near as much money the first 2 months. But now I’m finding I’m not actually enjoying the life that it’s meant to give me anyway. I’m too focused now on trying to turn this around.
But month five, we lost about the same as we did in month four. And because of that, my wife suggested that we need to do something else to try and make some more money. I fully agreed with that because now what we needed to do was get to a point where we could at least break even. And we thought long and hard about what the best thing to do would be. And we decided if we bought a lot of motorcycles, we could rent those out and kind of kill two birds with one stone outside the bar. I spent about 2 million baht on a range of motorcycles and hoped that this should allow us to break even. The problem was, though, it didn’t help that we’d just come out of high season, literally just come out of high season and we lost money then. And now we’re in low season, everything is just going from bad to worse.
As I write this, I feel like the biggest idiot ever because I can’t believe I spent all that money on those motorcycles. But I was so focused on being able to live that life that I wasn’t seeking reason. It was like, “If I can’t live this life, I’m going to go down fighting.”
10. The Final Blow
In month six, while we had a few people renting motorcycles, we’d lost another load of money. Even though I still had hopes that things could turn around from here, we received a call from the landlord saying they wanted their building back because the lease was just about to come to an end. I didn’t really understand that because I thought we were taking over the lease. I mean, we did take over the lease, but it seemed like there was only 6 months left on it when we bought the place and there was no agreement in place from the lease that meant we could extend it if we wanted to. I later find out this is why the guy who owned it before left. Yet, he still took a lot of money from me knowing full well that the lease couldn’t be extended. So, who’s worse? Me for being stupid and not understanding anything about Thailand or business or how to run a bar? Or was he more cruel than I was because he knew I wouldn’t be able to extend the lease yet he’d still take money from me? Maybe it’s a combination of the two.
When I called my lawyer and asked them why they didn’t tell me about this, that’s when I realized that all he’d done for me was form the company and look at the books. The actual lease, I was just given a bit of paper by the agent that the guy used to sell the bar. It was in Thai. I didn’t read it, so I didn’t think to have anyone else read it. I asked my wife to have a look at it, “Does this look okay?” And she said, “Yes.” But we had a month left in the bar, a load of motorcycles, and I’m going to have to find somewhere to put them. I’m still not panicking yet because I think we’ll just find a place and just rent motorcycles instead.
At the end of month six, having to close the bar was absolutely insane if I think about it really. Absolutely crazy that I’d thrown a million baht into it not that long ago, and I had no recourse. Although I could take out the pool tables and all the things that were in there. It was quite a big place. We’re talking about a stage where girls would be and the side area where there were pool tables. So, we emptied out, quickly rented a building a little bit out of the main area that was cheaper so we could store the motorcycles there as well as everything from the bar. And the idea was to sell everything from the bar and continue renting the motorcycles. This new place we rented, people would still walk past but it wasn’t in the main area. Still, it was an amount of money that had to go out every month. And while we started off with 20 motorcycles, only 16 actually arrived there. They all belonged to my wife and she said four of them she’d sent back to her family to use, “And I hope you don’t mind.” I did, but I’m too focused on trying to get rid of all the bad stuff that we had. We sold it all for pennies on the dollar, and because we’re in low season, we’re not really getting much money from the motorcycles. We’re spending a lot of money just trying to maintain things.
And when we got to about 2 months later, all I had in the bank was about 1 million baht. That’s when I thought, “It’s now or never.” I started finally thinking though that what I’ve done was really stupid, but up until then, I didn’t think it was. I just thought I was solidifying myself in Thailand, not getting to a point where I could lose everything. At this point, my wife hates me. I think I was just getting so angry and upset all the time from now because I can’t believe what’s happened. Even when we had to leave the bar, I was still okay. Things will come good. But now I was starting to think that they weren’t going to. I’m blowing through money left, right, and center. And about 2 months, if that, into having this new place where we rent motorcycles from, we had a huge argument like we’d never had before and she stormed out. She then cheated on me. She said she couldn’t take me anymore, and now my life is just collapsing so quickly.
I decided all we could do was sell all the motorcycles. We’d already got rid of everything from the bar. If we sold these, then it would be a question of consolidating everything we had and just trying to push forward. My wife said we’ll sell them, but she said she doesn’t want to stay with me anymore. So, we’ll sell the motorcycles and we’ll have to split the money in the middle. I think that was when it hit me even harder than anything else that I’d done because I now knew I couldn’t have been more stupid. Everything I’d done together with my wife, I didn’t think of the consequences. I didn’t think anything could go wrong. I didn’t think anything other than the fact that I just wanted to live the Thailand that I dreamed about for the past 25 years. Wanting to live that version of Thailand every single day had blinded me to reality. Blinded me to the fact that a business can succeed and fail. But I had it in my mind somehow that I couldn’t fail because I’d given so many years to this dream. Therefore, I hadn’t even entertained failure as a remote possibility.
But now my wife doesn’t want me anymore. As much as I tried to change her mind, she’s not having it. And I thought there was no point fighting it anymore after about a month of really trying to get her to change her mind. We did get divorced and sold the motorcycles. We didn’t get as much as we should for them. I got about 600,000 baht and she got about 600,000 baht. With that, I probably had about 1.5 million baht in total after starting out closer to 15 million. And we’re about 9 months after opening the bar. And that was devastating because I waited what I felt like my whole life to get to where I was, and now I only had 1.5 million baht left. The thought of returning home though, that hadn’t crossed my mind. I just thought I would be able to pull myself together, get back onto the retirement visa. I had enough money in the bank for that. But the problem was, in my late 60s, now nearly 66, I don’t want to work again because I’ve done that for so long. I just thought there must be something I could do to try to get back on track, but I didn’t know what I could do. I was due my state pension in a year or so, so I knew I had that. But I wanted to get my money back. I wanted it back and I didn’t know what to do to get it.
A Month to Think
I thought what I would do would be spend a month just taking it easy. Maybe leave Pattaya, stay in a nice place even if it cost me some money. I should be able to think of something to do. And as stupid as it might sound, I went and stayed in a luxury five-star resort in Phuket for a whole month just thinking about how to fix this problem because when I got the state pension, it wouldn’t be able to give me the life that I wanted anyway, which was the life I could have had on the amount of money I had when I first went to Thailand. The problem was that month I spent in Phuket made things worse. I was just so desperate, so upset, and not really myself.
11. The Worst Decision
Somehow, I convinced myself that the only way I will be able to fix this and get my money back. I wanted it all back. And the mind can play very irrational things when it’s faced with the horror of the situation I found myself in. I’d heard about the fact that along the border in Cambodia, they had casinos. I wasn’t expecting to go and lose all my money, but I thought I could risk a little bit of it. Maybe 100,000 baht and it might, if I’m lucky, be able to turn that into a million, and that would have made a big difference. I know that sounds so stupid, but I wasn’t thinking straight. And after I spent that time in Phuket, I went to go and see what these casinos were all about. I took 100,000 baht with me, and I thought there was a chance I might lose it, but I thought there was also a small chance, and it was worth taking, that I might make more. I promised myself if I lost that, I would not keep going.
But I broke that promise to myself, and when I left, I lost 1.1 million baht, which was nearly everything I had. That’s when I broke down in tears realizing what a mess I’d made. People do stupid things when they’re pushed into a corner, and I felt like I was pushed into a corner, and I wasn’t going to gamble all my money away. I had a limit of 100,000 baht, and that was it. But no matter how hard I tried to stop myself from keeping going, I couldn’t. Just thinking I’ll get lucky. I need to get lucky. I’ve given my life for this new life that I want to be living. So, if there’s any fairness in the world, I will get lucky. But I didn’t because, of course, I wouldn’t.
Returning back to my place in Pattaya after all that money I spent in Phuket and after gambling that money away, that was when I hit rock bottom. I still had a bit of money, but all I could think about was just going and drinking and spending time with the girls because I felt like my life was over. If I just hung on, I could have waited and got my pension, which would have been enough to live on. But now I didn’t have enough money left until I could get my pension, and it was all my fault. The thing was though, when I got to the position of not having anything left, the thought of having a pension just to be able to live was good enough for me. But the problem was when I still had a bit of money left, all I thought about was that the pension is not enough money for me to live the way I want to live. So, I need to do something about it and get some money back, and that’s why I made mistakes. I spent what I had left in the bars across about a month’s time. I was so out of it that I didn’t really know what I was doing. But when I finally, quite literally, and I mean literally, had zero money left, I thought about the worst. Then knew how that would make my sons feel, so I actually, embarrassingly, had to call up my sons and tell them what had happened to me and that I’d lost everything. “Can you give me some money for a plane journey home?” Which they willingly did. My youngest son put me up at his place. He was very successful, had already paid off his mortgage on his house, and that was worth half a million pounds. He had his family and he was having a great life. And there was his stupid old man arriving back from Thailand completely broke after losing all the money he’d worked for for the past 25 years, saving hard for, and it’s all gone in about a year.
It took me a long time to get over that. A really long time to get over it. Because the more time went by, the more I realized it was all my fault, and I was the cause of this because I wanted to live a lifestyle that I couldn’t afford. I couldn’t afford to live the lifestyle I wanted, so I did things that meant I couldn’t even live a semblance of that lifestyle. I got my pension the year after, moved out of my son’s place to my own place, and I’ve never been back to Thailand since, although I spend an awful lot of time consuming content from Thailand because Thailand still plays a big part of my life. I don’t think I will ever get over it. I mean, I think about it all the time, and how easy would it have been if I could have my go again. I would have invested in a house instead of renting, which meant that over the course of the same time, I’d have probably had three times the amount when I finally retired. I would never have had the idea to open a bar or motorcycles or getting married to a girl who could have been my daughter.
I have come to terms with the understanding that the things I did were because I had put Thailand on a pedestal. Thailand was the place that was meant to give me the life I’d always dreamed of, the life that I sacrificed for. I did the things I did because I thought that the amount of sacrifice that I put in over the years meant that I was due a good time. I thought a good time was guaranteed and I made some crazy mistakes and I had a very incorrect way of thinking about things. My life didn’t go according to plan, but that’s okay.
I hope that no one else is in for the same kind of heartache that I had to live with, because to go to such highs and then to such lows in such an incredibly short amount of time, there are no other words that you can use to describe it other than brutal.
