How Divorce and Singapore Led to a Lost Life in Thailand
If you’re looking for a blueprint for how to destroy your life, listen to my story and do what I did. I didn’t even like Thailand. I think it’s very important to be honest here. I didn’t fall in love with Thailand like so many guys seem to say they do. Why that’s important to me is because even though I didn’t love the country, I still ended up losing pretty much every single thing I ever worked for in my life. And that’s very difficult to have to admit.
My story doesn’t follow the same tune that most guys do, although the ending does see me in a very bad place. No money and no hope to ever regain my status.
Life Before: The Divorce
How I found myself in Thailand to start with was mainly due to events that had happened during the previous year. I used to work for a bank back at home in the UK. I wasn’t an investment banker or a trader, so I didn’t make huge money, but I did quite well. I was married, two kids, and life seemed to be everything I thought it would be when I was younger. This was quite a while ago now, but I suppose this is where my story starts because in 2011, I got divorced. I was putting in a lot of hours at work, not necessarily because I wanted to and I loved spending time in the office, mainly due to the fact that I had a vision to be able to retire by the age of 50.
I wanted to be able to put my children through university, and I wanted to be able to get to the point in time where I could take a step back and enjoy myself. I bet many people have been in the same situation. Might be a Sunday. You might go out with your family for Sunday lunch, maybe go and do some activities together, but in the back of your mind, you’re always aware that come Monday morning, you’ve got to be up at the crack of dawn, commuting to work, and the stressful environment that goes along with working at a place like that. For me, it meant I could never really relax.
When the divorce happened, it made me think everything I’d done before was for nothing. I wouldn’t call that fair because I was still able to see my children. I was still able to follow the dreams I had to be able to put them through university, although that would come later. But one thing that the divorce did for me was make me understand that when it comes to planning your own future, if you have to involve anybody else in the question, then those plans could change without you having any say in the matter. By 2012, I was just getting over the divorce, but I never did. I hated being at work. I mean, I really hated it because I wasn’t going back home to my family. I was going back home to be alone. I started applying for jobs in different countries. The bank I worked for had branches all over the world, and I thought it was a bit of a long shot, but I was in the field where people did go and work overseas. I was hoping originally that I’d land a job in New York, too far away from home, I thought, just far enough. Enough, though, to make me feel like I was starting afresh.
Ultimately, though, I was offered a position at the bank’s office in Singapore. Singapore was the furthest thing from my mind when I came up with the idea to leave the UK. But after I did a bit of investigation into what it would be like to live there, I thought this opportunity was too good to miss, and I might as well grab it with both hands. If the worst came to the worst, I would just leave, chalking it up to a great experience in a part of the world I’d never been to before. After the divorce, we sold our house.
The proceeds were split, and that took a huge hit on my mental health because I felt that for every amount of money that I paid off the mortgage, the work that went into getting that money quite literally was taking away weeks and months off my life thanks to all the stress that went along with working in a position like that. But as soon as I accepted this job offer in Singapore, I started to feel a bit better, knowing that I was going to have a different experience. I was going to be able to do different things, and I could start to rebuild my life after it felt to me like everything had just collapsed all around me.
About halfway through 2012, I was flying to Singapore, a newfound lease on life and the hope that I could start saving money to be able to get to my dream of retiring at the age of 50. That wasn’t looking possible because I was going to be turning 50 in 2015, and I’d just taken a huge hit to everything I had. But even still, that was the goal. And based on what I was going to be paid and on the fact that I was going to be put up in accommodation that I didn’t need to pay for myself, if I saved really hard, maybe it would be possible. It wouldn’t be anywhere near as much as I hoped to retire with, but it should still be enough just to take a step back and try to enjoy myself once and for all. I don’t think I ever enjoyed myself in the truest sense of the meaning for as long as I could remember.
Life in Singapore
Singapore was a shock on the senses. The furthest I’d been from the UK was the States. I’d always ventured to the west, never to the east. And I think the furthest east I ever went was Greece, which wasn’t exactly that far. The first thing I noticed about Singapore was it wasn’t like I thought it was going to be. Just how modern it was, how clean it was. Although, what people said about there being no rubbish anywhere was a bit of a stretch because it was just like everywhere else. The thing I really found attractive about Singapore was just how efficient it was. It put to shame everything that I was used to back at home, and it really felt like it was a country moving in the right direction, whereas back at home, the country was moving in the wrong direction.
And I fit in immediately. It was just like this country seemed to align with my own vision of how a country should be. And it actually made me start thinking about my own country in a very different way. Only 50 years before this moment, where I was standing in Singapore looked absolutely nothing like it did then. Stand outside the office where I used to work back at home, pretty much all the infrastructure in terms of the buildings and the roads were pretty much identical to what they were like 50 years ago. That really gives you a very big mental shift as to understand that the world is moving away from what we held dear. It was moving to a more Asian-focused place, and just my take on being in Singapore for only a couple of days, this is how I felt.
My first day at the new job was interesting. There were quite a lot of expats working there, and we were paid well. This is one of the reasons why this makes everything so much worse for me. Because if I had been sensible, even if I’d only been 20% sensible, I would have still had a good amount of money to retire with. But it was like I just couldn’t control myself when I got to Singapore. And perhaps I was trying to fix things that I didn’t even know were broken in my life. I quickly started to gravitate towards Geylang. Numerous places there where you could go and meet girls, not in the traditional way. Places where you could go for a drink, great options for different variations of food, and I was paying out a lot of money every day for everything that I got up to. I wasn’t really saving anything, although I should have been given how much I was being paid.
There was one colleague from work who in the early stages I spoke to occasionally, but one day he invited me out. We talked a lot ever since I started working the job. And you know when you hold your own personal beliefs about the world, somebody else holds their own personal beliefs about the world, yet you’re not 100% comfortable sharing how you feel because you don’t know how the other person will react. With this guy, it was like we both held pretty much identical worldviews. And it was just a slow giving over of more beliefs that you have which were reaffirmed by the other person, which made you start to feel comfortable actually talking at length about the state of the world and the state of where we were both from and the state of why everything seemed to be in such a decline back at home. This was about 3 months after I started working in Singapore. We went out together, and he took me to a place that I didn’t even know existed up until then. This was a place called Orchard Towers, known quite eloquently as the “four floors of”, and you know what word comes next. And that really was quite a shock because it made what I was enjoying in Geylang look quite tame. The other guy I was with was a sight to behold, as was I, and I suppose you could say that based on all the other guys that were there as well. But for me, I was like a kid in a candy store, and for him it was like a seasoned professional showing his prodigy the ropes.
Now before we go further, I do want to tip my hat in appreciation for that place. And it sickens me to understand that as of today, as far as I’m aware at least, the licenses of all the nightlife establishments were not extended. I think as of 2023, although that’s just information I’ve heard as I haven’t been back for a long time. I guess it’s not just Thailand that likes to remove the very fabric of its society in search of modernity and the sanitized version of what it even means to be a country in that part of the world. One thing that I found from the countless evenings I’d enjoyed around Geylang since I arrived in Singapore was that any girls that you might meet were usually not local Singaporeans. I met girls from Vietnam, some from the Philippines and other countries in the region, and of course girls from Thailand. That makeup seemed to be pretty similar in Orchard Towers. Although this was perhaps not an accurate representation of what it was like, but at least in my experience, I met more girls from Thailand than anywhere else on that first night when I went to Orchard Towers. It was a pretty wild time.
And I know this might come across as a guy who likes to go out to places like that, but I was very bitter and jaded after my divorce. And I wanted to make up for all that lost time where I should have been enjoying myself, but instead I was putting my family first. And this place was just like heaven. I hadn’t even put two and two together and thought Thailand is only a few hours’ flight north, because when you’re in Singapore, things are considerably more expensive than other countries close by. But when you’re paid quite good money, when you’re being put up in accommodation that you’re not paying for, you don’t really notice that the amount of money you’re paying is an amount that if you saved across the course of a month, you might have got an extra £1,000 or £2,000 available to you in your savings instead of spending it all enjoying this very nightlife that I felt actually made Singapore as good as it was. We were out on a Sunday night, and we both arrived at the office the following day, and it was like we had our own little secret. Not many of the other guys in the office tended to go to places like that, or if they did, they didn’t tell anybody. I think most of them had families, and we went out together occasionally from there. He became a good friend.
The First Trip to Thailand
About 3 months after my first visit to Orchard Towers, he said to me he’s going to take his annual leave in a few months’ time and he is going to Thailand. As he put it, he’s going straight to the source, and he asked me if I would like to go with him. I’d never considered going to Thailand before, but I’d met girls from Thailand in Singapore. Going to Thailand itself was never something I considered, but I thought, why not? I hadn’t taken any annual leave yet at all, so let’s take it at the same time and let’s go to Thailand for 2 weeks. That was arranged, I think, for about a month’s time. It wasn’t like I was that excited to be going, and it kind of just slipped my mind entirely until about a few days before we were going to go, and we started talking about it. He was saying he can’t wait to go. He said he goes there every year. It’s his dream to live there in the future, and he told me I’m going to love it.
I didn’t really love Thailand. Like I said right at the start, I was so used to Singapore and how things were there, and in Thailand, it just felt really backwards in comparison. I would come to the understanding later on in time that Singapore wasn’t really the best example of what Southeast Asia was like. Singapore was light years ahead of everywhere else in the region. Although later on I would understand that Malaysia, at least in certain parts of it, felt a little bit more like Singapore than anywhere else in the region did. But Thailand just felt like some kind of regional backwater. And this was in 2015. Many people might disagree with me on this, but I was looking at this from the perspective of a guy whose first time in Asia was Singapore and built his understanding of what this part of the world was like on Singapore. Granted, the airport in Thailand was very modern and new. Lots of the infrastructure in terms of the public transportation was modern, and it wasn’t dirty or run down like the Underground I used to have to use in London before I moved to Singapore. But it was just that feeling when you’re walking around Bangkok that they still have such a long way to go. You could be walking on the street on the pavement, and then you step on a paving stone that isn’t set properly. It’s got water underneath it, and the water shoots up all over your leg, destroying your shoes and trousers if you have those on instead of shorts. You’ll be walking down as well under pavement, and it might be very narrow on one of the small sois that they have. And for some reason, someone thought it was a good idea to park a streetlight right in the middle of the pavement, making navigating past it very difficult. And it made me think, what happens if you’re disabled in a wheelchair? You’d have absolutely no chance to be able to navigate around outside. These were just the first little impressions I had when we left the hotel in Bangkok.
The guy I was with, though, he clearly loved it. I made references to all these little things that I was noticing, and he just said, “Singapore’s the odd one out. This is real life here, and everything will make sense soon.” I didn’t really know what he meant by that, but he was alluding to the nightlife which we were going to be partaking in that evening. And he most definitely wasn’t wrong. I mean, it made what you were able to do in Singapore look pointless. It made what was available in Singapore look like a censored version of what it really was in Thailand. And not only that, what you could pay in Thailand for a good night out was so much more affordable than Singapore if you actually sat down and worked it out. This was one thing I like to do, always messing around with the numbers in my head. But if you went out in Singapore three times a week for a week, that would be more expensive than going out in Singapore one time a week for 3 weeks, then paying for a plane ticket to Bangkok, a reasonable hotel in Bangkok for a week, and going out every single day for that week around Bangkok. All of a sudden, it was just what you could do in Thailand and the price it cost to do it, that made me completely overlook the fact that I didn’t like the country of Thailand, that I did like what was available there, what you could do there, and the fact that it was so close to Singapore.
That first night in Bangkok, I guess I spent the equivalent of about 200 quid. I was spending considerably more than that for a night out in Singapore, but in Thailand, that included the hotel, the meal, beers, more beers, and whatever else might come along with that. In Singapore, for the same amount, you could forget the hotel and the meal and add a bit more on top of everything else. And that really made me quite excited because given the fact that I think the return plane tickets at the time were less than 100 quid, I mean, that’s what the economy would have been, but the guy I was with insisted we fly business, which was more expensive, but 100 quid for a plane ticket return? It could have been one way, I don’t remember. But even still, it was very cheap. That made me think, why don’t I just fly to Thailand every Friday and fly back every Monday morning if there are flights that can get me back in time, and just really take each weekend to the next level? I asked that guy I was with, “Why don’t we go every weekend?” And he just said he’d never thought about it, but he was starting to think it was a good idea, too. I’ve just done a reread of what I’ve written so far, and I might be coming across as a not very nice person, a guy who likes to frequent the bars, a guy who likes to spend time with the girls from the bars. But that’s not who I was first and foremost. I was just a guy who was, as I’ve already mentioned, extremely bitter about the fact that I dedicated decades of my life to my ex-wife and to my children. I’d had everything I’d worked for taken away from me. Some of it because of the divorce, and some of it I willingly gave to my children so that they would be able to get a good head start in the world. And instead of having a couple of million pounds that I should have had if I saved everything I was working for if I was still married, I didn’t have anywhere close to that.
And I was leaning on things that gave me that immediate sense of excitement, that immediate sense of comfort. And that just so happened to start with the places around Geylang in Singapore, then onto Orchard Towers, and now Thailand, where everything was just taken up one extra notch. But it was like you were measuring things in Thailand on a completely different scale altogether. It was like the scale didn’t go to a high enough number if you had to use the same one as you would use in Singapore. I was just, if I’m thinking about it hard, doing everything I could to fill that void that I still felt after everything went wrong with my marriage and my family. That’s the only way I could describe it. I wasn’t some sick, twisted individual. I was just someone seeking a release, seeking happiness in the moment. And the thing I was starting to be happy again was because of what I was doing. I felt like I was starting to be myself again. And Thailand had given me this newfound lease on life that everything that I want, which at that time I didn’t even know what I wanted, but it was there. I was just happy in that moment. I was getting everything I thought I needed in Thailand. Although I can’t explain why. It was only a small part of Thailand, too. So, feel free to judge. But if you understand where I’m coming from, then that’s probably better.
We were only in Bangkok for a week. After the first night, we went around together. We kind of just spent the rest of that time apart. Not really a place to go and hang out with friends all the time because you’re going to be doing other things by yourself, meeting people, living in the moment. And I must have met quite a few girls during that week. Each one probably more beautiful than the last. And if anything, they seemed to be very different to the girls from Thailand who I saw working in Singapore. The girls who were there in Singapore seemed to be a lot more, and I don’t know if this is the right word to describe it, but a lot more business-focused, a lot more money-oriented, a lot more rough around the edges. While the girls that were in Thailand seemed to be sweeter, more innocent, with substantially worse understanding of what was available out in the world, and that made everything even better. I can remember when we were flying out of Thailand, and I felt like I found a place where I could just be me in the moment. That was. And it was when I was in Thailand when I completely forgot about all the negative things that had happened back at home. In Singapore, they were always there in the back of my mind. Yet in Thailand, they weren’t there anymore. And I think that’s important.
The Weekend Warrior
I found myself in two minds back in Singapore. It was only 2 or 3 days after being back when I was out in the evening again. Although it just wasn’t enjoyable after being in Thailand. It was like everything was turned down, wasn’t in your face. It was very expensive for a lot worse experience. The price of beer was insane. The environment was not as fun. And that’s one thing that Thailand did for me. It made me not enjoy going out in Singapore anymore. I mean, I still went and enjoyed it, but just not the same. I asked the guy how would he enjoy Singapore after being in Thailand. He just said he likes everything. It was obvious, though, if I look back that I was just searching for that instant gratification, searching to feel better about things, and he was just okay. Never been married, no desire to be married, no family, only about himself.
And I guess I was just conflicted because in order to feel better, I was drawn to the nighttime experiences. But now the nighttime experience in Singapore didn’t live up to the expectation. And I’m struggling really to get back into that good frame of mind that I found myself in when I got to Singapore in the first place. It’s like I forgot why I was there. I was there to start with to heal after my life came crashing down at home. I was there for different experiences, and I was there to broaden my horizons. But now all these things I was there to do, it was like I couldn’t do them anymore because I knew there was so much better available not far away.
I guess we’re probably in 2013 at this point. Been back in Singapore around a month, still going out but not getting any enjoyment the same. And the most difficult thing to admit to is the fact that I was just spending pretty much everything I was earning. I shouldn’t have been doing that. After being back for a month, I decided I was going to take the weekend approach. Fly to Thailand after work on Fridays and return back on Monday mornings before work.
But what actually happened was flying to Thailand Friday evening and then returning to Singapore Sunday evening. I still had two nights there. And I’m finding this is costing me about the same as going out in Singapore for two nights anyway, although you’ve got the flights, two flights, in fact. That was something I did pretty much without fail throughout the whole of 2013. I mean, not every weekend, but most.
What makes this really annoying, though, as I’ve already alluded to, is how much money I’m spending. After the divorce, after giving money to my children, after everything, I said I should have had a fortune, but I didn’t. I guess I had around 250 grand. Ever since I started working, I could have probably been putting away four or five grand a month. But I’m not putting any money away. And if anything, at the start of 2013, I’ve got a little bit less than I started with when I moved there. That’s how much money I’d been spending going wild and living in the moment, trying to get over things.
The thing was, things got so much worse. So much worse from there. It’s like, as I said, if you want the blueprint to how to destroy your life, do what I did. That would be the only way to put it.
The Breaking Point
By the end of 2013, I’m starting to tell myself, you really need to calm down. You need to start putting money away for retirement. You need to start thinking about the future for a change. That was my New Year’s resolution at the end of 2013. Get your head back in the game. Focus on trying to save a bit more money. And then I was thinking about retiring in Thailand with just enough money to be able to live a life I wanted to live.
The weeks are going by into 2014. But as every day goes by, I’m spiraling back into my old depressive ways. It’s like I have an empty mind, and all it’s focusing on is the past. My family, my ex-wife, my old life, everything that I was in Singapore to get away from and forget about is now coming back to me when I take a step back and try to not release the hold that the nightlife has on me.
To start with in Singapore and then in Thailand, it’s like I want to be there, do that every day, and that makes me feel better. That’s why this is so cruel. I knew what I was doing was detrimental to my future, probably to my health, probably to my mental well-being and everything about me. I know what I was doing was a negative. But in the moment, I didn’t care about that because in the moment I was happy and content, just looking forward to the next nighttime adventure whenever it was.
For the first 3 months in 2014, I didn’t go to Thailand once. Didn’t go out in Singapore once. The guy who I was friendly with was still going out. We were speaking in the office, maybe go for a meal together and a beer, but nothing more than that. He just couldn’t understand why I was allowing myself to be so depressed by not enjoying myself in the way that could make me feel better. What are you meant to do when you’re in a position like that? You know you can get immediate happiness and immediate gratification. And you know how to make yourself feel better. But you also know that what you want to do to make yourself feel better, the things that you want to do so badly, are going to have a detrimental effect on your future in terms of how much money you have. And also you know that you might not be able to stop again if you get back into that position.
I never thought about this really, but perhaps I was just hoping that my ex-wife would call me telling me she made a mistake. She wants to try and have another go, and she’s really sorry. Perhaps that’s why for those 3 months in 2014, I did take a step back, because that was the only thing that I could hold on to. That hope that she would do that made the feelings I was having, that depression, it made it bearable because I really held on to it.
When one of my children told me that she had remarried, that was when I went back into the nightlife scene. Only this time, round two would take everything to the next level and make everything I did in round one look normal.
The Spiral
That news that my ex had remarried hit me like a sledgehammer. Deep down, I should have known that the chance of us getting back together was not going to happen. But even still, she was the love of my life. She was what I gave my life for. The early stages of my life, my 20s and my 30s, I gave for her and our family to try and give us a good life. As I write this many years later, if I found out that she divorced this guy that she’s still with, and she came to me and said that she would like to have another go, I wouldn’t think twice. I would overlook everything she’s done, everything she did to me, everything that went wrong for me because of her, and I would have another go with her. And I guess that should tell you everything you need to know about my life. My first night out, though, when I found out this, I didn’t even go into work. I was out early, straight to Orchard Towers, going crazy in a few of the places there. This was on a Thursday night as well, and I didn’t go into work on the Friday. I just flew to Thailand. I told work I was ill. Never called in ill before, so I thought I’d get back there on Monday. Now, what I’m about to say next, maybe not exactly as it happened because my memory of the next few days kind of has missing patches in it. There are big stretches of time during that time that I have no recollection of at all. So I would just say what I think happened. I remember flying Friday morning to Thailand. That was my first time there for 3 or 4 months. I remember getting stamped into the country, getting in a taxi, and checking into the Westin Grande in Asok. That was a place I stayed pretty much every time I went to Bangkok. Not exactly cheap, but I was earning good money and I wasn’t thinking about the future. I guess it was around midday when I made it to the hotel. I remember reaching for the mini bar, downing three small bottles of whatever liquor they had in it along with a can of beer, then just went out to drink.
From that moment, I don’t really remember anything, but it was quite obvious by the scene in the hotel room the following morning that I’d been out to a bar, probably more than one, and spent time with a girl, which wasn’t uncommon. But this time, it seemed different. I had a screaming headache, and the girl was with me. That was very uncommon. In fact, I never remember waking up like that before. Usually, going out at nighttime with me would not roll over to the following day. That was the way I liked it. But obviously, I was so out of it that things happened that I would never have let happen before. I remember grabbing some water. I must have had the foresight to go and buy a couple of one-liter bottles from the 7-Eleven. And I just downed a whole liter with a few paracetamols and went back to sleep. I did feel a bit better when I woke a few hours later, but the girl was still there, still asleep. I can remember thinking to myself, “I’ve got two choices, really. You can stop this craziness now, pull yourself together, get over the past, or you can keep going, and who knows what’s going to happen.” Thinking about the fact that I hadn’t been into work for 2 days, I should be back at work on the Monday, and I did tell myself, no more. This is crazy. Then that girl woke up. I must have said all kinds of things the night before, and she said, I mean, the first thing she said when she woke up was, “When do you want to go to Phuket?” I didn’t know what she meant. I looked at her very strangely, and she said the night before we talked about things and we agreed the following day we were going to go to Phuket together for a week. I definitely didn’t remember that. The first thing I said was, “I’ve got to go back to work tomorrow.” That was a Sunday. I needed to fly back to Singapore. And she said that I told her that I was going to quit. I definitely didn’t remember saying that.
What I did next, I still don’t know why I did it. I can remember thinking, how did I say all these things and agree to do these things that I shouldn’t be doing. And instead of pulling myself together and actually getting my head straight, I just reached for the mini bar again, 11:00 in the morning, give or take. And the girl that was with me said, “Can I have some, too?” So, she did. We left the hotel, went for some food and obviously more alcohol. And I do remember going to the airport together with her, together with all my stuff. Not that I had a lot of stuff with me, but I remember doing that, flying to Phuket with her, because in the moment I felt happy. I thought I’d get back to Singapore the following day. I don’t really remember too much after that until Sunday came around and it’s midday. I was supposed to fly back to Singapore from Bangkok in a few hours’ time. The girl still with me, and I just decided I was going to spend a few more days there till my work, I was still unwell. I got back to Singapore on the Wednesday, back to the office on the Thursday, and I just couldn’t believe what I was doing. I did try to tell myself that was a close call. Don’t let yourself get carried away again, because if you do, you could end up losing this job, and then what? I think at this moment I was pretty much got away with the fact that I’d gone wild in Thailand for just under a week, saying I was unwell. I did get away with it, and I still don’t really know exactly everything I did during that time in Thailand because so much of it is a blur. Now I’m starting to get upset by the fact that everything that used to make me feel better is making my position in life even worse. And now I’m finding that it’s not making me feel better, apart from in the moment. I don’t look forward to going out at night anymore. I don’t look forward to going to Thailand the next time whenever it is I would go. I’m finding I’m getting into a really bad state, and going out is only a temporary fix.
I did everything I could to get my head back in the game. I tried everything. But it was quite clear that not only was I addicted to the nightlife scene, it seemed I was addicted to drink. Now going out and drinking and spending time with the girls, it’s not giving me the same thrill anymore. It’s not giving me that same level of enjoyment anymore. But it’s the only thing I can do to feel like my life is worth continuing. I suppose this was a point I should have tried to seek some kind of help, but I just pushed through those feelings throughout much of 2014, allowing myself to go out occasionally, but only in Singapore. Didn’t go back to Thailand when I was invited by that guy. I just tried to slowly build myself back up into a better mental state. I was drinking very heavily, though. But this was in the evenings at home, not going out, really trying to have one less beer per day. When you’re starting at an enormous amount, and then you go down by one and then another, you think you’re making progress. I thought I was making progress.
But when you’re not even drunk after having three or four beers, you’re always looking to grab the next one. I felt like I was getting better, though. I felt like I was starting to feel better. And even at this moment, I was still feeling so bad about my divorce and what happened with my family. I never got over that. And I’m still not over it today. It only took one little incident that saw me going crazy again, though. That was when one of my children told me that my ex, who was of a similar age to me, was pregnant and was going to be having another child. Forgetting the fact that both our children were already adults and she was way too old to be doing this, she was still able to. But that was another sucker punch. I hadn’t had any time off work all year. So I decided to book time off and go to Thailand for a week just to kind of let my hair down. Probably telling myself, though, that I was going for the culture and the beaches and the food, and not the nightlife and the girls. That wasn’t a promise that I kept to myself.
Again, what I remember is getting to Thailand, going to the same hotel. Lots of the time is a blank in my mind, but I do remember not going back to Singapore, claiming I was unwell again. This is going on, and I’m just going out at night spending so much money. Nowhere near as much as I would be spending in Singapore, but I’m just going at it every single night, regardless of the fact that I should be at work. I just thought I need to do this. This is what’s making me feel better. Not understanding that this is what’s making me feel a lot worse. I didn’t show up to work for 8 days, eight working days, that is. And when I did, I was politely informed that my position is no longer required and I have a month left. That should have been everything I needed to hear to tell me that I’m losing control of my own life. I’m going back into those ways, those addictions. This should have been a wake-up call that told me to go back to the UK, get your head straight, and work out what you’re going to do.
The Move to Thailand
Things were made worse, though, when I didn’t have a drink for a few days. That made me jittery and nervous, thinking about all the money that I’d spent since I’d been in Singapore. I’d not saved any of this salary that I had, and I should have a lot more money by now. Didn’t have enough to retire. I tried to tell myself with what I had, I could go and live in Thailand. Why don’t I do that? Going back home to the UK was something I didn’t want to do. I didn’t want to get another job because I felt like I would lose that one as well. I don’t know what it was. But the thought of moving and living in Thailand, even though I didn’t really like the country, just what you could do there, that made me calm. Like perhaps in Thailand, I could get my head straight. Maybe I could do something there. I don’t need a lot of money.
I just need to be happy and in the right frame of mind and content, as opposed to always thinking about the past. I was always reaching for a drink to make me feel better. And I thought maybe Thailand could get me out of this. So that’s what I did. That was at some point in 2015 when I flew to Thailand with the idea that I would live there, semi-retired, tried to get my head straight and try to get off the alcohol and stop feeling sorry for myself. That was the thing. I was just feeling so sorry for myself. And if I look back, I really had no right to be feeling sorry for myself because my life wasn’t that bad. I just regretted everything that happened. All the money I spent doing things I wouldn’t have done if I was with my family. All the money I spent doing things that I didn’t really want to do, just trying to escape other feelings. And it was like if I get to Thailand, I could get myself sorted.
The problem with that, though, was that by going to Thailand with these plans to retire, it didn’t make things better. In fact, it made things considerably worse. Since going to Thailand for the first time, and the amount of times I’ve been since that first time was considerable, I only ever spent time in Bangkok and very occasionally Phuket. Just given the fact that I was usually only there for a short amount of time, it made no sense to go further than that. But now, because I didn’t have a job, because I was free to keep my own time, it was my first time going to Pattaya. I found you can do things with all the best of intentions. I promised myself when I was in Thailand, I would get back on the straight and narrow.
I would settle down. I would stop drinking excessively and mixing with the girls. But why did I promise myself something that I wouldn’t do? Why was I going to Thailand then if I wasn’t going to do this? It was like if I was going to keep these promises I had with myself, I would be torturing myself in order to do that. Because all I needed to do to make myself feel better in the moment was to go out, have a few drinks, and go to the bars. I think to myself, was this me not going to Thailand to try and make myself better, but going to Thailand using the excuse that I was going to make myself feel better? Yet, deep down, I was going to Thailand to kind of have one last hurrah.
Almost as soon as I got to Pattaya, I just felt like I was home, even more so than how I felt when I was in Bangkok. I looked at my financial position, looked at my age, and I probably, if I had been sensible, I could have seen out my life. But it’s almost as if that was too easy. I couldn’t do that because what would I have left to complain about? What would I have left to make myself feel bad about? It seemed like I was doing everything the exact opposite of what I should have been doing. At the time, you don’t understand that. At the time, you don’t think that. And as soon as I was in Pattaya, it always starts the same way. You might as well go out the first night you’re here just to see what it’s like because you’ve never been out in Pattaya before. Then when you wake up in the morning thinking back to the night before and how you felt so happy to be living in the moment, you convince yourself, I might as well just go and do it again for another night. I might as well continue to go out until I get bored of this. And when I do get bored of it, I’ll automatically feel exactly how I want to feel, and then I can just get on with the business of trying to rebuild my life.
I should have had a very frank conversation with myself after I’d been in Thailand for about 2 months. I spent all that time in Pattaya, every single night going out in Pattaya, spending a lot of money. Yet, when it hit me that when I arrived in Thailand, I’d only been stamped in for 30 days. I hadn’t been to extend that for 15 days, and I was overstaying by that point at just under 30 days. That should have told me that I really need to pull myself together quickly. But in the moment, it made me feel excited, like I was living on the edge. And perhaps I wasn’t only just addicted to going out and drinking and meeting the girls. Perhaps I was also addicted to living in a constant state of discomfort. I don’t know. But I knew I needed to leave the country and try to come back in. Sort out a proper visa if I wanted to stay there. I managed to get away with paying a fine at the border. I got a tourist visa from Laos. I managed to get back into Thailand, and I made my way back down to Pattaya. I was still living in a hotel.
The Final Attempt at Stability
At this moment in time, I was in two minds. I spent such a lot of money since I’d been in Thailand, but I still had most of my money left. I was thinking I have two choices, I mean, I had three choices if I think about it really. The first one was just to stop doing what I was doing and try to pull myself together. The second one was to continue what I was doing in moderation. The third one was to still perhaps actually meet a girl, settle down with her, as opposed to going out all the time. I decided that maybe meeting someone, having a partner, and being in a relationship would help me to calm down. I’d met so many girls, I knew it was going to be easy for me to find a girl to stay with. Somehow convinced myself this was going to be the best idea. About 2 months after being back in Pattaya, I had a live-in girlfriend for the first time since I had my wife. And for the first couple of months that we were living together, I’m finding that I’m drinking less. I am settling down.
I wouldn’t say I loved her, but I liked her. And this feels like everything I needed to be able to get my life back on track. This all changed, though, when it was one of her friend’s birthdays, one of her friends that worked at the bar where she used to work, and she asked if we could go, and I said yes. Again, I just went wild, because the following morning when I woke up, she wasn’t there. Someone else was. And that was that relationship over. And it only took one night of excess to lose control, lose my mind. And if I look back, it looks like my mind was trying to sabotage my own life. Why would it do that? I don’t know. But that’s what it felt like. As if my mind was telling me to do things that’s not good for me to do. I want nothing more than to go back in time and change everything that happened from that moment. Because if I’d been strong enough, if I’d been sensible enough, there was a chance I could have just pulled myself together and been okay.
The thing was, though, after that relationship collapsed, even though I didn’t love her, I felt like I was just destined to be alone. I was destined to always live in the past, and I was destined to never be happy. I looked at what made me happy at that moment, and that was to lose myself in drink and everything that was available in Pattaya, and I went completely wild. From that moment, there was only one way for my life to go. Not up towards better things. Not even sideways, just existing, but down. Down even lower than I thought it was possible to go. And I’m shaking my head, asking myself, why did I do such stupid things? I don’t know why I did them. But at the time, I know exactly why, because in the moment, it made me feel happy. It made me feel better about things, and I suppose that’s why I did what I did.
I did have the wherewithal to find a proper visa to be able to stay in the country, though. I wasn’t out of touch with reality so much that I didn’t even have a visa. But from that moment on, my life revolved around the bars, the girls, Pattaya, and drink. It was like I built a wall in my mind that I couldn’t see past. This wall separated where I was at the moment and the future. And it was like I completely overlooked the fact that the future was going to happen. Like I overlooked the fact that if I continue doing everything I’m doing on this side of the wall, when it comes time, that moment in time where I need to climb over the wall and move forward, it’s not going to be anything left for me to continue. But that wall was built, and thoughts of the future, thoughts of what’s going to happen in the future, never even entered my mind. I was just living day to day.
When I arrived in Thailand after losing my job in Singapore, I guess I probably had about the same amount of savings as I had when I moved to Singapore in the first place. That alone should have sent alarm bells ringing in my head, because if I’d done what I should have done, instead of having 250 grand, I should have probably had 400 at that point and still had a good time, still enjoyed myself in moderation. I guess moderation was something I wasn’t able to do. When you’re spending 10,000 baht every day and you’re living in a hotel as opposed to finding a proper place to live, £250,000 can go very quickly. Even though at the time I knew that the money is going to run out, it was like a hurdle that I would have to cross when the time came. In the moment, it didn’t matter, because in the moment, this was the only thing that I felt could actually keep me going in the first place.
By the start of 2019, I had no money left. I spent every last penny that I ever had to my name in Thailand. I really shake my head as I’m thinking about this because not only is it stupid, it’s also embarrassing. I also understand how this will look. People will shake their head and say, “How did you manage to do something so stupid? How did you throw your life away like that?” But if you’ve never been in that kind of mental state or that kind of frame of mind that I was in at the time, it’s easy to judge. It’s easy to ask what should seem pretty basic questions. But until you’ve been through what I went through, until you’ve been in that position, I would say take a bit of a step back from judging and understand that it is what I was doing, knowing what the outcome was going to be. But when you’re doing it, it was like the outcome seems so far away that you can overlook it in the meantime because you’re happy in the meantime, or at least you think you are. One of the problems was, now I was pretty much dependent on Pattaya, the beer, the bars, and the girls. Everything that was what my life was. If I could have just done that until the day I died, that probably would have been better for me. But to have been dependent on all those things, knowing that when the money runs out, I’m going to have to leave and be ripped away from them and not have anything to replace them, that was the thing that hurt the most.
The Return Home
I can remember returning back to the UK. Can remember my son letting me stay in his place, looking at me like, “How did you let yourself go like this?” All I could say, all I could point to, was that I missed his mom. I missed my ex-wife. And I allowed the vices of Southeast Asia to get the better of me as a way to escape the anguish I was feeling. When I first got involved with that lifestyle in Singapore, I didn’t even know that I was using that as an escape from my old life. I didn’t know that in the slightest. I suppose I should have recognized that fact that I lost my job because of this, but this was a very destructive thing to do. It was like I didn’t care. I just wanted to go until I couldn’t.
Then those years I spent in Pattaya spending my life savings trying to escape from my own life. I’m in a better position today mentally. Very fortunate that my son was able to get a fantastic job. He earns even more than I used to earn at my peak. And he likes to say that he helped me out because I helped him to go to university without him having to pay, with things to help him get set up in life. And I owe my son my life, really, because without him, and also my daughter who helped as well, but without them, I wouldn’t be where I am today, which is in a better place. I haven’t had a drink since I returned to the UK. Haven’t had any thoughts to go back to Thailand or anywhere in that region. And I am healed, I like to think.
Although, as I said, I still wish I could be with my ex. I think by telling my story, I’m doing so as a way to tell other guys out there that if bad things happen to you at home, as much as an instant fix might make you feel better, as much as Thailand can make you feel better with what you can do there, how much further your money goes there, and how you feel seen there, if what you’re doing there in the first place is to heal from the scars of your old life, perhaps it might feel like you’re being healed and things are getting better and you’re moving forwards.
However, I’d be very careful with that understanding. What I have since come to the conclusion of, what I’ve since worked out, is that you’re not fixing the scars from your previous life. You’re creating new wounds and new scars that will later come back to haunt you. These scars can often be harder to heal because when you understand where you are and in what position you’re now in, you’re a lot older than you were before, and it’s harder to rebuild.
I’m lucky. I had great children who helped me get back on my feet. But if I didn’t have that, it scares me to think where I might be today.
If you’re going to Thailand, go to Thailand not to heal. Go to Thailand when you’re already okay. Otherwise, what happened to me could happen to you, too.
