Divorce and the First Trip to Thailand

I had no idea it was possible to feel as bad as I feel right now. I still miss my wife every single day and have been missing her for the past 2 years. I often wonder what she’s doing, who she’s with, and if she thinks about me. I honestly think I didn’t really do anything wrong. I didn’t make any stupid decisions really. I just had a few unfortunate events happen in my life that caused everything to go wrong for me. And that’s why I believe that this is as difficult as it actually is.

Many people say that life is like a roller coaster. I get that. Yet, I wouldn’t agree in the slightest. For me at least, it’s like I haven’t experienced the highs. Or when I was experiencing them, I didn’t realize that those were the actual highs of my life. I thought there were still so many fantastic and amazing things left to come.

I guess some people are going to judge me and think I’m just like everybody else who lost his money in Thailand, but I don’t believe I’m the same. The thing is, I really loved my wife. I really respected her. She was my world, and she loved me. I actually think she still loves me today. But it was just circumstances and situations out of both of our controls that meant we can’t be together. And I still hold out hope that she will come to her senses and we can be together again. I have around 18 months to wait. And I’ll tell you why. And it’s just a question of hoping and praying that when the time comes, everything will get back to the way it was.

Before Thailand: The Divorce

I think it’s very important for me to actually take a step back to even before Thailand was such a big part of my life. In fact, back to when Thailand wasn’t even any part of my life, and talk about the chain of events that saw me going to Thailand in the first place. I had just turned 50. Anyone who has hit that age will know exactly what it feels like.

About 6 months before turning 50, life was perfect until it wasn’t. My wife of 29 years was carrying on with another guy, which is so destroying in itself. What made that worse was when I returned home from a business trip I’d been on to Germany slightly earlier than normal, I noticed a car parked up outside my house. Well, our house, if you will, and that wasn’t a car I’d seen before. I just thought perhaps one of our friends had bought a new one, or it was something else. But when I walked in and found out what was actually going on, that was when life wasn’t perfect anymore.

I believe there is a special place in hell reserved for people like my ex-wife. It’s one thing to cheat on your husband who was out working to provide for you. Thank God our youngest had left home a year before this, otherwise that would have made it worse. But it’s one thing to cheat on your husband, but to do it in his house that he paid for, in the place where he spends his time together with you, it’s only a revolting person that would consider doing something like that.

Naturally, it was my fault. According to her, I shouldn’t have arrived home early. And because I didn’t spend enough time with her, I wasn’t there when she needed me. And she’s saying that at the same time as sitting on this expensive massage chair that she decided that we needed that I was out working to pay for. It’s like you can’t have everything. You expect me to be around all the time, yet you also expect everything that you want.

But I’m getting lost on a bit of a tangent here, and this isn’t important. But it was finding her in that very compromising position in my own house that brought on the divorce soon after. But when I did hit 50, I was hitting 50 with a lot less money, no idea whatsoever what was going to happen in the future, and no desire to continue doing what I was doing indefinitely. I felt like everything that I’d done up until then was for nothing. All that hard work, all that suffering, all that pain in order to try to provide for my wife and my kids. And that’s what I got in return.

I quit my job because of it. I couldn’t be bothered anymore after losing all that to her. It felt like if I continued to work as hard as I was working, even if it was just for myself, even by the time I reached 60, I wouldn’t have enough to just live the retirement I expected. And I was in a huge mess.

My Mate and the First Trip to Thailand

About a year passed, still a huge mess, still not working. Luckily, I had some money available to me because at least I got half of everything I worked for. And it was around this time that a friend of mine had decided he wanted to go to Thailand. He begged me and begged me to go with him, saying it would take my mind off things by going there and it might make me start to feel better. But I just couldn’t bring myself to go, so I didn’t.

2 weeks later, he returned a completely different man. He called me stupid for not going with him. He told me if I went to Thailand, I would like it. And if I went to Thailand, I might start picturing life in a very different way altogether. He was my best friend, still is my best friend, probably the only person in my life who has been a constant throughout the whole course of my life. Best friends since early teens. And I guess he would talk the same way about me.

But the way he talked about Thailand, the things you could do there, how you could feel young again, how you were noticed and recognized and you wouldn’t be treated in such a bad way like my ex treated me, I felt like that was everything I needed to hold on to to actually go myself. My mate said if I was going, he is going to go again. He was self-employed, always had been, and could take time off work when he wanted to.

And when I started to picture what he was talking about, I had everything in my mind exactly like he was saying. I just felt like if I didn’t go to Thailand, I would be stupid. About a month after he returned, I was headed there myself, and he was joining me. And just the way he acted when we were on the way to the airport, the way he acted when we were checking in and on the plane, everything, it was like he was a child again. And instead of waiting for Christmas, he was somehow flying towards Christmas. But apparently, according to him, it was Christmas every single day in Thailand.

He could hardly contain his excitement when we arrived in Bangkok. I was worn out after sitting on those cramped seats for all that time. But he basically convinced me that by the time we arrived at the hotel we were staying in Sukhumvit, I would be wide awake, and the thought of having a rest or falling asleep would be the last thing on my mind. He wasn’t wrong about that.

The First Night

We were out that night, and it was exactly like my mate said it was. But the thing was, all the pictures that I’d built up about how I expected it to be based on how he described it were nothing like it actually was. And the thing is, I’ve heard this so many times before, but the thing is, it’s true. For those people who really love Thailand, it far exceeds your wildest expectations when you get there. I mean, it did back then.

And that night was kind of like thinking back to my ex-wife and thinking, “Thank you so much for cheating on me. Thank you so much for being such a disgusting human being. It’s because you were like that. It’s because you did the things that you did, which were shocking and disgusting. But that’s why I’m in Thailand witnessing these things and experiencing these things.”

I was definitely sold. I really was. We had a great 3 days in Bangkok and then next to Pattaya for a week before going back to Bangkok for another 4 days. And Pattaya was great as well. I must say, though, I preferred Bangkok. But at the time, this was 2009. I’m not saying Pattaya wasn’t good. It was. But Bangkok was a place where I felt like I belonged in a way. Although I couldn’t quite answer the question as to why I felt like I belonged there.

Those two weeks that I spent in Thailand when I was 50 years old, aside from all the fantastic times I spent with my children, when we went on holiday together, when we just spent time together as a family, aside from those times, there was nothing in my life that even came close to the experience I had in Thailand. And returning home was almost like returning to jail after you’d escaped jail, only you knew that you could escape again, and it would just be a question of working out how.

The Decision to Move

At 50 and after the divorce, I had the grand total of approximately £270,000. I was still renting a place. I was going to buy somewhere else. I just hadn’t been bothered to go and look. I just couldn’t be bothered to do anything before I went to Thailand. I was just existing, feeling sorry for myself, wishing I was back in my old life like I should have been. But now when I returned, I felt like I had a new purpose entirely, a new whole focus to think about, a whole life to envisage, and I started feeling happy again.

When I happened to run into my ex about 2 weeks after returning from Thailand, she said she was sorry about things. It didn’t work out with the other guy, and she felt bad about everything, but she’d like to go out sometime and maybe see if we could try and patch things up. I just looked at her like, “In what world are you living in?” And although it might have been hurtful, I just told her, “I’ve been to Thailand, and unfortunately Thailand can give me things that you can’t give me. You already hurt me, and there’s no chance.” And since then, I don’t think I’ve seen her for a very long time.

But the only thing that was going through my mind when I was back, this was 3 months since I was back, the only thing that was going through my mind and that I was thinking about was Thailand. I spent time with three amazing girls in Thailand, and I fell in love with all of them. Not serious love, but I just felt great to be able to be with someone who would make me feel young again. I felt great being with someone that I felt if I ever got into a relationship with them, they would need me more than I would need them. And that was what I feel went wrong with my first marriage.

One problem, though, I’m living. I’m not working at this moment in time. My money is going down quite fast. I’m starting to think to myself, wouldn’t it just be better if I went to Thailand and my money would go down there instead? Yet it would go down slower, and then maybe that would be a better life path.

I went back to Thailand again for 2 weeks just to see how I would feel. My mate went with me as well. He’d been talking and thinking about Thailand ever since we got back from that last time, but it was like we were going for round two. Part of me hoped I wouldn’t like it as much because the thing that I was most concerned about was loving the place and not knowing how to make sure I could spend all my time there as opposed to a little bit. But that didn’t happen. I loved it just the same as the first time, as did my mate.

And when we returned home, I’d already decided I was going to move to Thailand. That was it. There was nothing that was going to change that. I could tell my mate wanted to move as well, but he was still working at his business, and he had something to be at home for. I didn’t have anything to be there for.

Preparing to Move to Thailand

It took me around six to seven months to build up the courage to actually move there. I’m not going to say it was easy to just pack everything in and leave. But when it finally came time to go to Thailand, this was 2011. And I was going permanently. I was 52 at that point, pretty much the same amount of money as I had before, around 270 grand. And I was going with the intention to spend the rest of my life in Thailand, find the new love of my life, settle down together with her, and enjoy the rest of my life. I felt like I earned the right to enjoy my life. So, that’s what I was going to do.

Because I was over 50, I was able to arrange a non-immigrant visa, which I could extend for being a retiree. That made the whole process and the decision to move to Thailand that bit easier, knowing I would be able to stay there if I wanted to. And it was my plan to live in Bangkok.

Three Years of Looking for Love

I did really hope to meet a girl, though. I really wanted to meet a girl that would be my forever wife, one that wouldn’t cheat on me or do what my ex did. But I wasn’t about to rush into that. I had a lot of living to do first, a lot of Thailand to explore first. And I had the idea I really wanted to settle myself into Thailand completely before committing to anything. I know it’s one thing to go somewhere for 2 weeks and then to not be there for a long time and to spend another two weeks there. Those two weeks can sort of cloud your judgment to reality. I didn’t want to have my judgment clouded. So, I wanted to ease my way into living in Thailand step by step.

What I’m trying to say is that I didn’t want to meet someone, fall in love, and then get trapped in that relationship when there was so much more of Thailand available that I hadn’t experienced yet. I had to play my cards right. I had to be patient, and that’s what I was going to do. I felt like I was on top of the world when I got to Bangkok to live.

Everything felt real when I found myself a place to rent. I’d made the conscious decision not to rent somewhere in the area where I would stay if I was there on holiday. I wasn’t going to rent somewhere to live on Soi 8, for example. I knew I needed to separate myself from the holiday side of things and the real life side of things. So, with that in mind, I decided to live in Ekkamai. I felt like that was a great part of the city, very convenient to get to places you wanted to get to. They also had the major cineplex there if you wanted to go and watch a film. The bus station was just opposite from there if you wanted to go to Pattaya, for example. And it was the place that I felt best for just normal day-to-day life.

When I moved into that condo, that’s when everything felt real and almost like you’ve got to be very careful here because this is real life now, not me touring around Thailand anymore. I knew I wasn’t able to just go out and eat at any restaurant I wanted to eat at or drink at any bar I wanted to drink at because I had a budget to work with.

Bangkok was such an amazing place to be back then. I mean, it still is. At least it was when I was last there. But one thing I can guarantee you, anybody thinking about living in Bangkok or in Thailand, when you’re living there as opposed to just holidaying there, it’s a very different experience altogether. You know, when you’re there on holiday, you’ll wake up in the morning and you’ll decide, should I wake up now or should I go back to sleep? Should I watch something and lounge around for a few hours and then go out for breakfast? Then you might go for a beer, an early morning beer after having the breakfast, and then lunch, back to another bar, then watch a film, maybe back to the bars again. And that was just the holiday that Thailand gave me. Now I knew I couldn’t do that because my money would run out too quickly.

But I was finding the time was getting quite bored after living in that condo for around 6 months. I was going to the bars occasionally. I was meeting girls occasionally, but I hadn’t met a girl that really gave me that feeling like she was the one for me. Because of what happened with my ex-wife, I wanted to make sure I found the right one. I wanted it to be real love, and I was prepared to wait.

Lessons from Three Years in Thailand

Over the course of the next three whole years, I spent slightly more than I should have done, probably around 50% more than I should have done, but I wasn’t overly concerned, and I actually had three relationships that all came to an end. Each one of those girls I met in a different bar in a different part of Bangkok. And each time the relationship started out great. All three of those relationships gave me the feeling like I wanted to spend the rest of my life with these girls. And while yes, they worked in the bar beforehand, I guess I was one of the sorts of people who thought that it was a dream of one of the girls to not work in the bar, and somebody who would take them out of the bar would be the person that they looked up to the most. I still held on to those beliefs after each of those relationships ended. I just thought they weren’t the right ones.

And I guess if I look back at those, I wasn’t thinking straight. I pointed to the wrong reasons as to why these relationships didn’t work instead of pointing to what I should have done. What I mean by that is instead of thinking, well, they work in a bar, they’re in their early 20s, they have their lives in front of them, and they’re just trying to make some money, I was thinking because they come from a poor family, they don’t have any other prospects. It’s their dream to have someone come in and sweep them off their feet. I wanted to be the one to sweep them off their feet. When it became clear, though, in each of those relationships that this wasn’t the case, instead of thinking to myself, okay, this isn’t realistic or not a true representation of how things actually work, I just thought they were the wrong girls. They didn’t have the right attitude. They didn’t have the right understanding. I just thought it was a matter of time until I found someone else.

I guess that’s still how I feel. I still believe that there are genuine girls out there working in the bars. I really do believe that because I met one and I fell in love with her.

Meeting My Wife

At this point, I think we’re already in 2014. I’d been very patient. I had played my cards right. I’d held my old feelings close to my chest. And now I’d met this girl who I met in a bar on Sukhumvit Soi 7/1. And we stayed together for the first couple of weeks into the first month. And it was nothing that she did that resembled anything that those other girls did. I really felt like what I was looking for was right here with her. And I honestly believed that what we have together could still be real again. I hope one day it will be.

I’ve heard lots of stories where guys say and try to justify meeting a girl in a bar. There’s no point me going on about the same thing. But I just don’t understand how anybody can look at a girl working at a bar in Thailand and compare her to a girl doing something similar in a western country. It’s night and day different. It’s so different. And to say otherwise just says that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Yes, I met her in a bar. Yes, I fell in love with her. And yes, she loved me. I can guarantee it.

The thing was, I actually really did love this girl. She was 22. She wasn’t even from Isaan like most of the girls I’d met before. She was from a place called Chonburi Province, which was south of Bangkok, past Hua Hin in that direction. I’d been as far as Hua Hin when I was exploring Thailand, but I’d never been down there. But she just really was everything that I dreamed of finding in a girl in Thailand. I felt this way after I’d been with her for only a week, although I knew that was too soon. But when I was still feeling that way after 3 months, and at this point I hadn’t given her any money at all, apart from just enough money to replace the income she was losing by not working in the bar, I didn’t give her anything extra. And I couldn’t believe that she was with me for all the right reasons.

Those other three girls I talked about, they weren’t with me for the right reasons. They always wanted extra things or something new here or something new there. But with her, it was like all she wanted was to be with me. She had a child of her own, 5 years old. And the way she talked about her son was that everything that she was doing in her life was for him. And now she had found and met me. She called me the nicest guy she’d ever met in her life. Called herself the luckiest girl in the world. But it was like we could be a family together. She said it was her dream to have her son grow up with a loving family environment. Was never her dream for her son to be looked after by her parents and for her to go and work in a bar. I just felt like I was fulfilling her dream. I thought I was her dream. She was my dream.

Building a Life Together

After living together for about 6 months and after spending a lot of money going to a few nice places with her just to see how things felt not in Bangkok, we both decided that we were meant to be together. We loved each other. And if we want to spend the rest of our lives with each other, the best thing to do would be to get married. After getting married, we could live a happy family life together. Everything sounded so perfect and so amazing.

If I think about that moment in time, it was very amazing. We were perfect together. We were in love. We were like two peas in a pod. And life was amazing. I couldn’t believe I was going to be getting married again. While I had hoped this would happen, while I expected it to, when it was happening, that’s when it felt real and exciting and fun.

I did what was expected of me and went together with her to meet her family and also her son. It would have been my first time seeing them. It was very fun going there. Nothing like anything I’d heard stories about guys going to Isaan to meet their girlfriends’ or wives’ families. We were going down south, and where the family’s house was was only a 15-minute walk away from this deserted beach. They lived in a very poor village, wasn’t in the main town or close to anything touristy, but they were just really down-to-earth people. They seemed to live a basic existence. Her father was a farmer. Her mother did some knitting and she sold what she knitted to people. And she had a younger brother who was 15 who was just going to school and seemed to be working hard. His English was quite good given the fact that he just went to a normal school. And of course her son was there. Her son was being looked after by her parents, very customary in Thailand, one of the things that happens a lot. And the father was nowhere to be seen. Apparently he just left one day and that was it. And she knew someone who worked in a bar in Bangkok, and that was how she went to do that. And that was sort of all she could do to give her money to support her son. But now she had me.

I could tell she was just happy. I paid the money for the sin sod as expected. I didn’t give a lot of money, probably only 50,000 baht. It was just a token amount to show my respect and appreciation.

Perfect Years

The whole year after we were married, things didn’t really change at all. I was expecting to do something to move somewhere else for her son to live with us, but we kind of just stayed in the same place that I’d rented in Ekkamai. And we went away together once every three months to a different part of Thailand and just generally lived without much idea of what’s going to come next. We were so amazing in each other’s company. At this point, we never argued. We never fell out. Nothing ever happened that was alarming or concerning to me. I was just on cloud nine.

I never went out by myself. Not once at this point. My wife would occasionally go out to see friends. I didn’t care if she was seeing friends because she was at that age where that was fine. She never went back to the bar to meet her friends there. Although if it was a birthday, she would sometimes go, and I would go with her. But if she went to see friends, that would be very rare, maybe once every 2 weeks.

Coming on the end of the year, though, it was obvious that I was spending too much money. In fact, I remember at the end of 2016 having £120,000 in my bank and thinking, “This is alarming. We need to do something about this.” Because life was perfect, and I wanted life to remain perfect forever. My wife, though, she was perfect. And I’m sorry for saying perfect so much, because she was. And life was great. It was all the little things that she did that mattered so much to me. The way she’d always bring me a drink if I asked for one. The way she would cook for me, wash clothes. And yes, I was giving her that monthly allowance because she wasn’t working in the bar anymore. She was with me, and that was okay.

I need to reiterate, though, that not once since I started being with her had I given her extra money. She’d never asked for anything for the family, never asked for anything extra. No emergencies, nothing had come up that made her want more money from me. She had what she had, and that was enough. It was only 25,000 baht a month, too. Wasn’t like some of these guys giving their wives obscene amounts of money. She just had what she would have earned if she was working. And I can’t believe how happy I was at that moment in time.

But the thing was, when I knew that I only had 120,000 left, it was nowhere near enough to see me out. And also, it wouldn’t be enough for my wife as well. I was starting to think about what happens when something happens to me. I’m older than my wife. I want to make sure if something happens to me, she’s going to be okay as well and doesn’t need to do anything that she doesn’t want to do. I think it was the thought of my wife that pushed me towards trying to do something quicker than perhaps I should have done. Even though it wasn’t that quick, I just really wanted to make sure that everything was going to be good for us.

We both decided that 2017 was going to be the year when something big would change. We wouldn’t just continue living in the same place indefinitely. Her son was getting older, and we’d not really spent any time with him since we were married, and I wanted her to be able to have him as part of her life.

The Move to Chonburi

We decided to make a visit to the family around the start of 2017. We’d been in 2016, but it was only a very brief stopover when we were going to a different place a bit further down south, but this time we were going to go and spend a whole month there in a cheap hotel close by. One thing that really struck me about the place where she was from, Chonburi, was that they had these amazing beaches, all these great things, but it was untouched by tourists for some reason. A bit up north you had Hua Hin, which was tourist and expat central, and down south you’d find yourself getting to Samui, and it was packed there. But for some reason this place was just devoid of all people. I actually thought that was a huge positive about the place because everything was cheaper and easier and not thronging with people. And they did seem to have a few tourists passing by in certain areas, and you could walk along these deserted beaches all by yourself. A beautiful day, beautiful beach, and you’d be in the height of high season. When I started thinking that this place is up and coming, this place is really going to take off soon because it’s just as beautiful as everywhere else in Thailand with beaches, the fact it’s not popular now made no sense to me.

The hotel we decided to stay at was a bit of a drive from her family’s house. We were staying quite close to the beach, but I just felt like when we were there that perhaps this would be a better place for us to live. My wife always seemed happy there, going to be able to be close to her family and her son. And I was even happier there than I was in Bangkok. This was after spending only a week there at the start of 2017.

I don’t think I could do what other guys do and go and live somewhere in Isaan. This was nothing like that. I mean, I’d never been to anywhere in Isaan, but where my wife was from was kind of like a picture-perfect postcard Thailand. And I was thinking about going to Bangkok and just moving here. What I was paying in rent in Bangkok, I quickly found we could rent a bigger house for less money. We already had a car, so we could get about easily. So maybe this would be the cause of something that would give inspiration for us to find out what next to do.

I always had it in the back of my mind that we needed to get more money coming in at some point, whatever it was that we needed to do, because eventually we would have problems as I’ve already discussed. And it felt like being somewhere like that, it would be a lot easier and more fun to start with, a lot easier to run something, and you wouldn’t have the constant pressure of trying to keep up with what everyone else is doing in Bangkok around you because you’re in a lot more peaceful location.

After we’d been there for 2 weeks, we were sat at a little beachside bar. Picture a beachside bar in Thailand in any of the main tourist parts of Thailand, where you might be spending 150 baht or more for a small beer. Here they were normally priced Thai prices, 60 baht I think I was paying for this small beer that I was drinking that day, and I think that was what made me realize that my money would go a lot further here anyway, and it’s a beautiful part of the country.

Planning the Move to Chonburi

We’d spoken about it between each other a few times about what we were going to do but never anything serious, though, but I put it to her. How would you feel about leaving Bangkok altogether and moving and living here? We could rent a house. Then we could look and think about what we could do to start bringing in some money. Let’s do something together. Let’s build something together. And your son can finally come and live with us.

I was expecting my wife to jump off her seat and hug me and say it’s the best thing she ever heard. While she didn’t do that, she did say she’d be happy to do it. But if I look back at that moment, I don’t think she was as excited about it as I thought she was going to be. But she said she would like to do it, and that was all I needed to hear, regardless of if she wasn’t as enthused about it as I thought she was going to be.

We had two weeks left. I’d already paid for the hotel, but then we’d go back to Bangkok, make sure this was exactly what we wanted to do, and we could pack everything in and just move to Chonburi and do something different altogether. That’s exactly what we did. Those two weeks that we spent after that, if anything, made me more convinced that this was the right thing to do. And my wife did seem to be very happy about the prospect of doing this as well.

I really loved, though, when my wife always seemed to be really appreciative of the fact that we were together and able to do things together and that we loved each other. And she always said how she was happy that we were together, happy she’d met me, and happy that she didn’t have to work in the bar anymore. I always tried to keep the conversations about the bar and the past as open as possible. I didn’t want to hide anything or not know anything about anything. I wanted to be there for her and accept everything she did, not try to make her feel bad about herself. And I think that went a long way for her to love me as much as I think she did.

Back in Bangkok, I immediately felt it was the right decision to leave. Although I do love Bangkok, I think Bangkok is the best city in the world, and you’re not going to be able to beat it. Even if you add all the other cities in the world together, I felt Bangkok was the best. But for my position in life, the fact I had a great wife, the fact she was from a beautiful part of the country, the fact that that place was far cheaper and nicer than Bangkok and we could do something there, it was like everything was stacked up against Bangkok at that moment of our lives.

Life in Chonburi

We managed to find a house that was cheaper than the tiny condo we were renting in Bangkok, and we moved in. Life did change quite considerably then because when you’re living somewhere like that, you don’t just walk out of your condo, jump on the skytrain, and go anywhere you want. You’ve got to jump in the car, drive somewhere, and you’re driving past countryside and the beaches. And in my opinion, it’s a different life. Very different to city life. City life wears you down after a while. At least it did for me. And I was loving our new life.

We were visiting her family weekly at this point, and I asked my wife, “I thought your son was going to come and live with us.” Now, it’s not that I wanted that to happen. I just wanted my wife to be as happy as possible, and I thought that would make her happy. But there always seemed to be some reason why it wasn’t going to happen now and it would be later. So, I just left it and thought nothing about it.

One problem is, though, I’m thinking about things to do. I want to do something to make money. I want to bring enough money for us to live together. That’s all I’m bothered about, just enough to live. Yet, while I might be thinking that at the start of February 2017, when May 2017 comes around and I was still thinking about it, it was like thinking about things is what consumed my whole being at that moment in time, yet nothing’s actually happening. Money is draining away, but you’ve still got a decent amount of it left. And you always think it’s going to happen eventually. I mean, you hope something’s going to come up eventually, and then before you know it, it’s August and September, and then December, and 2018 comes around. You’ve got even less money and nowhere closer to knowing what to do.

Then you start thinking, what am I meant to do to actually make something happen? Perhaps I wasn’t trying hard enough. Perhaps I was thinking about it, but I was thinking about it more in terms of enjoyment and pleasure opposed to a serious business. And I was just happy living the life I was living. We had a really great little routine together for ourselves, not spending too much money. We’d go out together twice a week. My wife would go out by herself once a week with friends, and I would go out myself that same day. It was like we had each other all the time, but we had a bit of time apart. And I think that made the relationship even stronger.

Searching for Work in Thailand

One thing that happened around this time was I was speaking to my son. I told you I had kids, and I speak to them regularly. Of course I do because they’re my kids. But I was telling him I wanted to do something, but I didn’t know what to do. And he just raised, “Why don’t you look online to see if you can find work online? You want to make some money? That could be the easiest option. You don’t have to spend any money or invest any money, just try that.” He gave me the name of a couple of websites for me to check out doing this freelance work.

I thought I would spend a bit of time looking into it. And while I had an initial sense of excitement about this, what it actually did was distract me for 3 months while I applied for all these jobs, and I was offered things being paid like $3 an hour. So that wasn’t something I was going to do, and I started regretting wasting all that time. That was until I eventually found something, would you believe? It wasn’t without a lot of hard work and effort to find it. But because I spoke fluent English, being from England, I found a company that needed people to do their customer support for them, and they needed a fluent English accent, and they wanted to pay people less than they would pay them if they were in England. And if I accepted that, I would have a job.

I now understand that many people seem to do similar work to that in Thailand. If you’re from an English-speaking country, you can find these menial things. It’s not going to pay you a lot of money, but it’ll pay you enough money to stay in Thailand. I can’t remember exactly when I started doing that, but had a guess I would say halfway through 2018. It was under £1,000 a month, and after I’d given my wife her salary, paid for the rent and utilities, I was still out of pocket by all the other living expenses such as food, but money wasn’t going down anywhere near as fast. I felt like this could be something I could do for four or 5 years while we waited to just happen across something that we thought would be amazing that we could do.

I think that’s a big mistake that I made. I just thought that because I wanted something so badly, because I wanted something to work so badly, I wanted us to do our own thing so badly, I thought by wanting it hard enough, by dreaming hard enough, that it would somehow come into fruition by itself. But I guess that was just wishful thinking. Everything’s perfect with my wife, though. I have to keep saying that. We’re happy together, always doing everything together. She’s my dream wife and has been ever since we’ve met. And as far as I was aware, I think she felt the same way about me.

The Beach Bar Gamble

I did that job for just under two years. I would have continued to do it. However, I wasn’t required anymore when the pandemic happened. Now, because of this pandemic, I’m not able to do that anymore. We kind of just cut back all our spending and didn’t do as much while I tried to find something else. I couldn’t find anything else online. Not at all. And while my money had gone down since the last time, the fact I had that job, it hadn’t gone down as much.

About a year into the pandemic, I had enough to do something. And we found something that we thought finally was a brilliant idea that we could get ready for when the pandemic ended and Thailand opened again. There was a little place for sale right on the beach where the hotel was that we stayed at. It was only cheap, only small, but we thought it could be ours. If we got this, again, it was only cheap, very small place, and just set back off the beach. It wasn’t in a main tourist area, but we could afford it. We could open a restaurant and a bar from that location. It was only a million baht, which was to take over the lease. And I suppose that was a huge mistake because at a place like that, you shouldn’t need to spend money to take over a lease. I just guess I made a mistake there as I thought I’d heard other people doing it in places like Pattaya or Bangkok. Perhaps I just thought it was normal.

I guess that may be one of the big negatives about my wife. She had no idea if something like this was normal or not. If somebody who was Thai told her something, she would believe them without questioning anything. So, we got this place, spent about the same amount of money again renovating it and getting it ready for when the country opened normally and everything got back to normal. We didn’t have to wait long for that. About 4 months after it was ready, the borders were officially opened and everybody could come in without any restrictions, and it was exciting. We were close to a number of hotels. Granted, as I’ve said, it was not a very popular place, but the rent we were paying on this place was marginal. And I forgot to mention, we even gave up the house and were living in this place as well. But the rent we were paying was only slightly more than we were paying before. So, we needed to pay rent anyway.

Unfortunately, as is often the case when you’re full of dreams and hope, things don’t work out. And it was pretty much straight away a monumental failure. We were getting people in, but just nowhere near enough. And while it covered the rent and my wife’s salary, it didn’t really cover anything else on top. And quickly, it became clear that it wasn’t going to work. And it was very alarming.

This was the moment in time when I really started to worry more than I’d worried before. And my wife still needed taken care of in the same way. She is behaving in the same way, but I was getting desperate. I was trying to find more work online. As much as I didn’t want to do something like that, felt it was my only option. So, I started looking for that. At my age, I felt like I was too old for it. But I did manage to find something, doing more calling, but I was too stressed with everything else going on. I just didn’t do it well. And when that stopped and about 3 months go by, that’s the moment in time when it was now or never.

The reason I say that is because although I was married, I was still on the retirement extension from the first time I had it. And that was the only money I had left. The 800,000 baht sat in the bank for that extension. That was it. Nothing else to my name. And we had all the expenses of this place that we had. But my wife was still normal with me. I think everything’s fine between us, and we both come to the decision together to cut our losses before we lose anymore. I’ll give my wife that. She saw it wasn’t working, and she wouldn’t want me to throw more money away into this pit of money. And we gave it up, calling it a bad loss. At least we tried. We still have each other. That’s the main thing.

The Descent

I felt like I was free of that now to try to find more online work, anything to do with calling, because that was the only thing I was able to do. That ridiculous business we tried, though, I mean, it was just a mistake. I did find something. Again, I did. But the problem was it wasn’t enough for everything. And while I may be acting the big man in front of my wife like everything’s okay, when it came time to renew my visa, I actually had to pay one of those agents 20,000 baht to do it the wrong way because I didn’t have the money in the bank. I didn’t even tell my wife about that. I just hoped things would come good.

Unfortunately, close to the end of 2023, all my money, apart from a tiny bit, maybe a plane ticket and a bit for my wife to look after herself while I was getting something sorted out, but aside from that, nothing left. To start with, my wife was very supportive. I was still doing calling work and told her how much I earned, and she said, “Why don’t we go to Bangkok and she can get a job?” I felt really proud in that moment that she wanted to help me to help both of us get through this difficult time. So, we did. We went back to Bangkok together, where she got a job. Because of that, I was able to stop giving my wife money, which meant that I was earning enough to pay the rent and very basic living expenses.

Yet, after we’d been in Bangkok for not that long, and my wife had a job, and call me naive, and I guess I was, but she’d gone to work in a bar. I was working during the night times because of what I was doing, and she said she was going to do a nighttime job as well. I guess I was just so stupid for not understanding what she was doing. When I found out, it destroyed me. She said things to me like, “I don’t have a choice. What do you think I can do? You say we not have any money left and we need money. I can’t do anything else.”

For about a month, I will admit to fully knowing that my wife was going to work in the bar every day and coming back very late drunk. She was very crazy when she was drunk, and she told me everything she did. Now, if I fast forward a bit, my mate, the guy I talked to you about originally, who was responsible for me going to Thailand, how he talks about it to me, it’s like, “She’s doing that on purpose to try to make you feel as bad as possible because she doesn’t love you, never did love you, and knows the game’s up, and she’s going to hurt you as much as possible.” I don’t see it that way, and I can’t see it that way. I see it as we were together, we were in love, she was doing what she could do to help me stay in Thailand, to be with her, because we loved each other. That’s how I still see it. But my mate tells me I’m stupid for thinking like that.

When it was clear, though, that I couldn’t continue doing what I was doing forever, we sat down and talked and said, “I’ll go to England, try to sort something out, and we can keep in touch. We can still be husband and wife. We can still love each other, and I will hope to see you soon.” When I left, she was still working in the bar. When I got home, I called her, and she never tried to hide anything. I was very devastated about things because I missed her more than anything. I missed her more than life itself.

And as the months are going by, she’s doing everything in the same way. I think perhaps she was hoping I would be able to go back soon. I was making money now. I had to get another job. So, of course, I was sending money for her every month, anytime I could, so she could do less of what she was doing. I was doing that because I loved her.

Returning to England

It was around 5 months after I’d been back when she told me she’d met someone else. And then she doesn’t want me anymore. That was very heartbreaking for me. I never expected that to happen. I mean, not in a million years did I expect her to say she would find someone else. But the problem I was having was I didn’t really have any money. I was staying at my mate’s house, and I found some work which I was doing. Most of that money was going to her to help her out. Yet now, I just didn’t know what to do.

Ever since then, I found my own place to live. I’m working, and I shouldn’t be working at my age, but I am. And I try to call her all the time, but she never answers. And I just think if she knew that I always thought about her and missed her, I think she would come to her senses and understand that she’d be better off with me.

I haven’t spoken to her for a long time now, a very long time. And I do hope that when I get my pension, which I believe I’m entitled to in a few years’ time, I will be able to go to Thailand and hope to be able to see her again. If I can see her again and I can have my pension, which won’t be a lot of money, but it would be enough for us to both live on. I just hope that whatever she’s done in the meantime will have been out of her system.

I still honestly believe that she loves me. If you’re listening to this or reading this, you don’t know what I felt when I was with her. You don’t know how she behaved when she was with me. You don’t know anything. I know how it felt. It felt real. And I’ve been in relationships before when it didn’t feel real, but this did. I believe that she was just doing what was best for her in terms of her financial future and that of her family. She put her family in front of her own happiness. And if I can show her that I can step in and be the guy she wants to be, I still hope that there’s a chance that this is going to happen.

I know how many people would react to this, but I don’t care. I’m in a really bad mental state at the moment because of what happened. I’m still living it every day. I still miss my wife. I still love her. And yes, I did stupid things by trying things I shouldn’t have done. I spent more money than I should have spent. But in the moment, I was happy. A real happiness that you can’t fake.

The only thing I would say to anybody thinking about going to Thailand is make sure you have enough money to do it. If you think you’ve got enough money, picture all the worst-case scenarios. I didn’t picture any worst-case scenarios. I just pictured the perfect life together with my wife. I hope to one day be able to live it again. Whatever she’s done when I’m not with her, I don’t care. I just hope she will forgive me for not being able to be with her like I should have.