A Grandfather’s Stories Inspire a Love of Thailand

One of my fondest memories of growing up was listening to the stories my grandfather told me about the time he spent in Southeast Asia. That was a long time ago, and even longer ago now that my grandfather is no longer here, but I would like to thank him for giving me a sense of wonder and the feeling that the world is much bigger than it appears on the surface.

My grandfather worked in Burma many lifetimes ago, and he always referred to it as his happy place. Times were very different then because he was part of the colonial administrative system, but he was also involved with things in Thailand. Thailand was its own sovereign country, and my grandfather saw that as one of its best qualities because it had stayed free.

I was never sure whether all his stories were true. Whenever he noticed me doubting something, he would stop, look me dead in the eye, and say, “This is exactly as it happened.”

When you are ten years old, you have no point of reference for a story like that. You let your imagination run wild, but reality is always different from what you picture.

One thing my grandfather instilled in me was a love of experience, adventure, and stepping outside my comfort zone. From an early age, I knew I would have to see that part of the world for myself, and I would make it happen however I could.

My First Trip to Thailand in 1973

I turned 20 in 1973 and was still at university, wishing I were anywhere else. I had a few months of free time halfway through the year, so I decided to go to Thailand because the country had stayed in my mind ever since I heard my grandfather’s stories.

I could not have picked a worse time to visit. In October, Bangkok was experiencing protests and violent crackdowns, and I was there while it was happening, but it was a unique experience to witness.

I had visited the region before, and it felt alive to me. Everything seemed possible and within reach, so as a 20-year-old I tried to convince myself that Thailand was where I would spend my life.

I left in November after experiencing the protests, and they gave me an even stronger pull toward the country. I returned home, finished university, and wanted to go back to work and establish myself there, but life got in the way.

Life Gets in the Way

I received a good job offer and took it. Six months later, I was out one evening when I met the woman who would become my future wife, and I started falling into the pattern that everyone seemed to follow.

Looking back, I do not remember being especially happy with what I was doing. I must have been in love, but I did not feel the same excitement I had felt in Thailand, and I allowed those childhood dreams to fade.

I was not miserable or unhappy, but the memories that stayed with me were my grandfather’s stories and the time I spent in Thailand. I wondered what it would have been like to build something there and become a bridge between two very different worlds.

I even remember seeing a small piece of land for sale in the heart of Bangkok, around Sukhumvit. I might have been able to scrape together enough money to buy it, and seeing what that land is worth now makes me think my expectations about Thailand were not completely unrealistic.

Divorce Sends Me Back to Thailand

Twenty years went by, and Thailand became a lifetime away. In 1993, my wife told me she had been cheating on me for around six years, and the man she was seeing was doing the same to his wife.

It was an upsetting part of my life, but my children came to live with me because she seemed to care more about the other man. My youngest was 14, and I spent the next four years working and making sure my children could get through school.

I paid for private school and made sure I could support them if they wanted to attend university. When my youngest went to university in 1997, the house felt empty, and I started wondering whether it was time to think about myself again.

I was 44, and the financial crisis in Asia was all over the news. Watching it made me think about Thailand for the first time in years, and I soon felt an urge to return and see how the country had changed.

I had spent the previous years putting my children first, and I would make the same choice again. If I had money, my children had money, because life is for living and I never wanted them to struggle while I was comfortable.

Returning to Thailand in 1997

When I reached Thailand near the end of 1997, I felt great again. I remembered the amazement and wonder I had felt on my first trip, and the country’s affordability made the experience even more striking.

The Thai currency had fallen sharply after the crisis, although prices had not caught up yet. I felt sorry for local people and businesses that suffered, but as someone arriving from outside the country, I found it one of the best periods of my life.

When I talk about the happiest times of my life, I mean the times I spent by myself. I am not comparing those moments with the years I spent with my children, because that was a completely different kind of happiness.

I did not want to leave Thailand, but I eventually had to return home. I kept thinking about what I should have done and imagining how different my life might have been.

It would have been impossible in 1997 to imagine Thailand as it is today. The older, more distinctly Asian Bangkok was what attracted me, and I have always preferred it to the modern version, although the country has every right to develop as it chooses.

If I could use a time machine to see Thailand when my grandfather was there, that would be my dream. I have always been a dreamer, so you have to give me that.

Building a Retirement Nest Egg

When I returned home in 1997, I still intended to find a way to live in Thailand. Once I went back to work, though, those plans went onto the back burner while more pressing concerns took over.

I paid off my mortgage in 2000, completed one rental property in 2005, and completed a second in 2010. At 57, I took stock and thought, I have enough money to retire now.

The two rental properties brought in about £1,200 a month, and renting out my main house could have added another £800. I decided to leave work and spend a month in Thailand to see whether I could live there, 13 years after my previous visit.

Bangkok had changed enormously, and the exchange rate was much worse than before. I still loved the city, but I also wanted to see more of Thailand, so I visited Pattaya, Phuket, and Chiang Mai.

Pattaya was not my kind of place, and Phuket did not appeal to me either. I liked Chiang Mai, but I kept returning to Bangkok because it was the city that had given me so much happiness over the years.

Finally Moving to Thailand

After returning home, I spent a long time deciding whether moving halfway around the world was the right thing to do. In 2012, at 59, I finally told myself that if I did not go then, I never would.

At the end of that year, I had a retirement visa stamped in my passport, a one-way ticket, and three houses being rented out. The income was around £2,000 a month, and I also had emergency savings.

I was excited to be moving, but I was not as knowledgeable about Thailand as I imagined. I had visited three times during very different periods of the country’s history, and I mistook that shared history for a real understanding of the country.

On each visit, I had met a girl, and I still thought about them. At home, I would never have entered an establishment like that, but in Thailand it felt normal, and I had a weakness for the women I met there.

I rented a condo on Sukhumvit Soi 13, close to the hotel where I had stayed in 1997. At that time, it still felt like the Bangkok I remembered, and £2,000 a month was enough for the life I wanted.

That changed faster than I expected. I began to realize that if £2,000 no longer allowed me to go out and enjoy Bangkok, then it was no longer the city I had moved there to experience.

Life in Bangkok from 2012 to 2016

Throughout 2012 and most of 2013, I lived in the same condo and enjoyed my life. I met one girl, but it lasted only a month, and I was grateful to be in Bangkok after waiting so many years.

In 2014, I met another woman at one of the bars I liked. I was 60 and she was 24, but the age difference did not feel unusual to me in Thailand, where I had seen similar relationships every time I visited.

I asked her to move in, and she lived with me for three months. When I discovered she had hidden important things from me, I ended the relationship because I could not continue supporting someone who was not the person I thought she was.

By then, my favorite places had raised their prices. A nice meal that had cost about 500 baht when I arrived could now cost 750 after VAT and a service charge, and I felt Bangkok slipping away from me.

In 2016, I decided the situation was unsustainable. I could still live there, but I was no longer living the life I had imagined, so I left Bangkok and moved to Chiang Mai.

Chiang Mai felt closer to the Thailand I remembered. My £2,000 a month went further there, and I found an older condo for £200 a month within walking distance of the bars and restaurants I liked.

Meeting Minnie

I met a girl in one of the bars on Loi Kroh Road who was unlike anyone I had seen in Thailand before. Many women working in Chiang Mai’s bars came from the north, and Minnie was from a town about half an hour away.

She had bleached blonde hair almost down to her lower back, tattoos, and a lip piercing. Something about her appearance mesmerized me, and I felt that moving to Chiang Mai had been the best decision I could have made.

The fourth time I met her, she invited me back to her place. It was a tiny studio apartment without air conditioning, but I noticed a metal spoon that had clearly been used for drugs.

When I asked her about it, she said, “Only occasionally. I don’t do it often.” I told myself I could overlook it because she made me feel amazing.

She was 22, much younger than me, but I treated the relationship as normal because that was how life in Thailand felt to me. By the end of 2016, we were married.

I had not known her long, and I had abandoned every rule I once had about relationships. I knew she had not stopped using drugs, but I was so caught up in my feelings that I did not seem to care.

Buying a House in Chiang Mai

When 2017 began, I did whatever my wife asked without thinking. She said she could not escape her old lifestyle while we lived close to her friends, so we looked for a house on the outskirts of Chiang Mai.

We found a housing development with attractive properties, and I suggested looking at the houses for sale even though I did not intend to buy one. Four months later, one of those houses belonged to my wife.

I sold one of my investment properties at home to pay for it. It was a beautiful house, my wife was happy, and I convinced myself that we had found our forever home.

Because my income had fallen, we could not go out as often, but we did not need to because we were living away from the city. I was happy to stay home with my wife, who still felt like my dream.

The Birthday Party

A few months after we moved in, my wife asked if we could throw a party for her birthday. Friends from the bar where she had worked came, along with other friends, and I felt out of place among so many people in their twenties.

Then the drugs appeared, and I was terrified because I did not want to be involved in anything like that in Thailand. I became angry, and my wife, who may already have been under the influence, became angry with me.

She said, “We’re going to go and have the party somewhere else.” After I shouted at her in front of her friends, she left with them, and I sat there thinking that the evening had gone badly.

She came home the next morning, but we did not talk about it. I could have escaped then, but I loved her and forgave her instead.

A week later, I discovered she had never stopped using drugs. She hid it by going out while I slept or visiting friends when I was away, until one night I woke up and found her unconscious on the sofa.

I paid for her to seek help because I thought I could move her past the addiction. I had never known anyone in that situation before, and I could not understand how I had failed to see it for so long.

The Debts

Using my emergency money for treatment left me short, but by the end of 2017 my wife appeared to be clean. She seemed different, and then I discovered that she had debts.

Two men came to our door asking for her, and one said she owed a million baht. My wife looked as if she had seen a ghost, and she admitted that she had borrowed money and stopped making repayments six months earlier.

I asked why she had hidden the debt from me. She said she was too ashamed to talk about it, but I knew she could not solve the problem without help.

I asked whether she could report the lenders for charging illegal interest. She replied, “It doesn’t work like that. Maybe on the surface it appears like you should be able to do that, but these need to be paid.”

What did this idiot do? Me, that is. I felt proud that she was no longer using drugs, so I took a large cash advance on my credit card and paid the debt for her.

I did not realize I was stepping onto a slippery slope. My monthly income was no longer enough for our lifestyle, so I sold my other investment property, paid down the credit card, and used the remaining money as income.

After paying the debt, I had about £120,000 left. I thought spending £10,000 a year plus the rent from my main house would give me a better existence than I would otherwise have had, even though selling another house made me uncomfortable.

The Café

The only thing I had not considered was that my wife might lose control again. After one night out for a friend’s birthday, she returned to her old habits, and within six months things had become terrible.

I told her, “If I pay for you to get help again, if you do it again, that’s it. I want what’s best for you, what’s best for me, and what’s best for both of us, but this is the last time.” She said she understood.

When she was not using drugs, I could see that she did not want to use them, but addiction took away her control. I spent another large amount of money on treatment, even though it was supposed to cover a year’s living expenses.

My wife said she had always wanted to open a café selling coffee, cakes, and other things. Stupidly, I invested another large amount of money in it, hoping it would become a turning point in her life and our relationship.

One day, she failed to come home from the shop, so I went to see what was happening. She was there with friends and using drugs again, and although I was furious and heartbroken, I knew anger would not help her.

Eventually, I learned that she could not be helped by anything I did. We argued, but there was no physical violence, and when I discovered she had been intimate with one of her friends, I understood that I could not change her.

Nothing improved, and I realized I had fallen in love with my idea of the perfect girl rather than with the person she really was. I would never have chosen someone with her lifestyle at home, but I had convinced myself that she wanted to become the person I imagined.

By then, I had spent almost everything. About £50,000 remained, and I kept asking myself where all the money had gone, because it had gone straight to her in attempts to help.

I knew the marriage was over, but I still felt sorry for her after the divorce. I gave her 300,000 baht and hoped she would be okay, while she kept the house I had bought for her.

The Aftermath

When we were no longer together, the gravity of the situation finally hit me. I still had my old house and some money, but I no longer had enough to live in Thailand.

I gave the tenants notice and moved back into the house when they left. I have lived there ever since, and although I will receive my pension in a few years, the allure of Thailand had disappeared.

I cannot believe what I did or how one relationship turned me into someone who made decisions I would never have considered before. I loved her, or perhaps I loved the person I wanted her to be, but she was her own person.

I would not be surprised if she had already lost the house or used it as collateral to borrow more money. If that happened, there is nothing I can do about it.

I am thankful that I did not allow myself to reach zero. I still had about half of what I owned when I moved to Thailand, I could live in my house, and I did not need to work again.

I often wonder what would have happened if Bangkok had not changed so quickly. Perhaps I would still be living there and this would never have happened, but there is no use dwelling on it.

My biggest mistake was loving that woman, marrying her, and ignoring what I knew from the first week. I sold houses, paid for treatment, and let her go out alone even though the risks were obvious.

I am paying for those mistakes because I am no longer in Thailand. At least I did not lose everything, and losing my ability to stay there is not as bad as losing my ability to retire.