My Thailand Journey from Hope to Betrayal

I would like to say that my Thailand journey began a very long time ago. I was at university in London and I became close friends with a girl from Thailand who was studying there as well. She was from an extremely wealthy family, spoke just as good English as I did, and originally she was a very close friend of a girlfriend of mine.

When that relationship I had came to an end, I still remained good friends with the girl from Thailand. Although it was never an attraction kind of friendship, I was going through lots of girlfriends at the time. It was just an interest in the way she talked about her country, yet in the way it also made it feel similar to how I would describe my own country.

For all intents and purposes, she could have been a girl from England. Yet, some of the things she did talk about Thailand really made me interested to learn more.

This was in the early 1980s, by the way, and throughout university, she was always a friend of mine. I left and went one way, and throughout the next few years, we did talk from time to time and met up occasionally. I did that with quite a few of my friends when I was at university and when I left.

And even today, my closest friend was from that time. But I’m trying to say that this wasn’t just a special friend. It was one of many friends.

And I did all these things because that was what it was, a friend. I’m just trying to get across how important that was. This wasn’t a relationship.

I guess I was around 27 and we were having a get-together. Six friends from university and we’d all got our jobs back in London. And then she announced to us she was actually getting married back in Thailand.

She’d been working at a bank in the UK. Great job, made a lot of money, but she was moving back to Thailand because she was going to get married. She invited our friend group to the wedding.

And I thought that sounded like an amazing idea.

So that’s how I went to Thailand originally, just to go to a friend’s wedding. I can’t remember how old I was exactly, but it was 1989. That was my first introduction to Thailand.

And while I was only a guest at her wedding, I was introduced to a side of Thailand that not many people saw. The level of wealth that her family had was obscene in comparison to what you saw out of the window of the taxi when you were going from the airport to your hotel. I mean, absolutely obscene wealth.

I didn’t speak to anyone else in her family or anything like that, but they were just so incredibly wealthy. It made you wonder why they even bothered going to university and getting a job in the first place because they had so much money she didn’t need to. I’m not saying I had anything wrong with how much money they had.

But people who had money like that in England didn’t seem to be able to be as loud or as brash about it. They didn’t seem to be as out of reach when it came to doing things. It was clear that some people in Thailand were pretty dodgy.

Yet, money talked. The way she described it was, “If you’ve got a lot of money in Thailand, it’s a lot better than having a lot of money in England because you can just do what you want. “

But while I was only at the wedding, I went to the party afterwards. I was still there for a week and I had my time available to meet up, taking a bit of the country in. I think it’s worth pointing out my first time there because that wedding and being introduced to that part of Thailand when I’m on my own time, I found myself going to famous places that people talk about.

Khao San Road, Soi Cowboy, Patpong , you know, all the typical places that Western tourists would go, even though they just want to check it out just to say they’ve been. The two worlds seem to be so out of place, yet they were so perfectly balanced for each other.

Thailand needed both sides for it to make sense. And I just loved that I got the opportunity to see both sides of Thailand when I was there.

Life Back Home and the Divorce

Life just continued for me then. I got married myself a few years later in 1991. I was 29 when I got married and by this point I was starting to lose touch with my old university friend and Thailand was the furthest thing from my mind.

It was an interesting experience getting married. It felt it was just a natural step that you needed to take in life. But it also felt like you were saying goodbye to all the dreams you had before.

Now it was time to do what was expected of you as opposed to continuing to dream big. It lasted 10 years. We actually went to Thailand about 5 years into the marriage to Phuket for a holiday.

We had a child about a year after getting married.

Then when he was 11, I was away on business. I returned home earlier than expected. I arrived home, opened the house door, and what greeted me was the shock of a lifetime.

My wife was there, and so was this other man. She told me that he was the one she wanted to marry all along, but her family didn’t approve. I was the safer choice because I had a more stable job and more money.

So, that was a particularly difficult time. Got divorced when I was 39 in 2001. Goodbye years of hard work and effort.

Hello, regular child support payments. Because even though she was the one that cheated on me throughout the entirety of our marriage, my son stayed with her. He was only 11 as well, and that was a long slog of life ahead of me, completely out of my control as well.

And it’s a warning to anyone, I suppose, not to put yourself in a position where you’re going to be paying for someone and benefiting someone else, even though they’re the one that hurt you.

It’s so difficult to picture now because it was an awful time of my life. But I had to get on with it, and there’s nothing I could have done. I had some good news about 3 years later.

My ex, much to the disappointment of her family, got heavily involved with that man who was in my house when I returned early from that business trip. He was into drugs and all kinds of things and she got caught up in that world. So 3 years later, I actually won custody of my son and that was a very rare thing.

But it was clear that I worked hard, made good money and was stable and she was just the exact opposite of that. So, I guess that takes us to 2005. My son’s 14 and he’s living with me, and I’m not even thinking about getting into another relationship anytime soon because my son is the most important thing.

The Freedom to Roam

What I am thinking is that when my son goes to university himself, I’d made enough money to be able to pay for that for him. I wanted to do something very different for myself, though. I didn’t want to get into another relationship at home, and I was actually thinking about leaving England and doing something different altogether.

I’d saved up some money over the years and I was in a position to go and try something new and exciting. I didn’t know what that was going to be, but it just needed to be something. It could have been going to Thailand, for example, or it could have also meant going on a cruise for a year.

My mind was racing with ideas about how I wanted some time to myself after the ups and downs of my life.

2009 was when my son turned 18 and he got into a great university. He leaves home about to take on the world for himself. His own experiences and troubles to shape his life just like is said for everyone else.

I’m very proud of how he’s turned out. I need to throw that in there. A great job, great money, great house, great family, everything you could want.

So, I was thankful that he managed to achieve that. But in 2009, that’s when it felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulder. It wasn’t a weight that I disliked or didn’t want to be there because I loved my son.

I loved him so much that I was prepared to put in extra hours at work, prepared to work hard, seek promotion where possible. But now I didn’t need to do that anymore. I was able to take a step back and start thinking about doing something fun for a change.

I guess I probably had my house still and still owed a lot of money on it, but I also guess I had about 400,000 pounds in cash through years of work. And I started thinking about what I was going to do. The ideas I had arranged so dramatically , like I’d said , it’s quite difficult to determine what the best thing to actually do was.

There’s so many things you can do. Part of me was thinking, why don’t I move to the south of France or Spain and buy a little apartment there? And then from there, think about what to do.

I actually decided I was going to go to Thailand again. That would be my third time there. And that stretched over the course of many decades.

I’d have been there in the 80s, the early 2000s, and now 2009. So, it just seemed like it was the perfect place for me to go to take stock of my life and decide where I wanted to take things next. What I didn’t want to do was continue working in a job like I’d had ever since I left university.

Although I was paid well, it wasn’t about the money. It was about the monotony of it. The day after day sameness that wears you down over time.

Thailand was where I decided to go and Thailand is where I flew at the end of 2009 with no plans, no ideas where this would lead to. But I was open to everything that came my way. I was open to living life.

But the possibility of returning to England was always there. I never hated England. I mean, I love being from England and I love living there.

So Thailand was never meant to be an escape from England. It was just meant to be a brief interval where I thought about things to do. But what it became was so much more than that.

Thailand became my life, my world even. And Thailand would cause me some kind of downfall. I think it’s only right to say though that Thailand itself didn’t cause my downfall.

My decisions were my decisions alone. Coupled together with something that happened to me in Thailand to cause it. Anyway, Thailand is an amazing country and I still do love it.

And it’s not me trying to say anything bad about the country itself because it’s great.

I don’t know how anyone else feels when they get to that age where all the commitments that they’ve had throughout their life are no longer commitments. I was a free agent, able to do anything I wanted. And I think it was that newfound freedom that attracted me so much to Thailand.

It also got me a bit carried away, I suppose, doing things that I never would have done before going there. It’s not like I’m trying to make up for lost time because I didn’t think my time was lost up until then. My son was my life up until he left for university, and I enjoyed every single day that went along with that.

But what I did during that time wouldn’t have been my first choice of things to do before it happened. I wouldn’t have decided to go down the path that I did, but it just happened. And you’re happy and you let it happen like that.

So, I don’t know what I’m trying to say here really.

Arriving in Thailand in 2009

Getting there in 2009. Single, money in the bank, someone living in my house paying me rent, which is just about covering the mortgage. Now it’s time to live a little.

Unfortunately, I did some silly things, but I’m not going to say no one does. Everyone does silly things. And I did enjoy the nightlife because I had all the intention in the world to enjoy the nightlife.

But I didn’t expect it to be like it was for me.

I entered the country on a visa-exempt 30-day stamp in my passport. And where those first 30 days went, I can’t even say. Bangkok was like a playground for someone like me.

It was like the place where you went to let off years of pressure that had built up over your life. You could completely unwind. And those 30 days, or what I can remember of them, the little bits here and there, they were some of the best times of my life , only if you’re talking about things related to myself and not my son, of course, because seeing him and where he is today is far better, but that’s related to him.

I’m talking about just myself. I don’t want to mix up the two and make you think me spending 30 days in the bars of Bangkok is better than something so much more important. I’m just trying to paint the most accurate picture I can.

I do remember getting that 30 days extended for another 15 days and after that I had to leave the country before I could return. I think that 15 days I calmed down a lot. I took stock of things.

I decided that I wanted to spend more time in Thailand. It only seemed to make sense that I got a better visa to stay in the country and I was in my 50s so I could get a retirement visa. I went to a different country to do that and extended it in Thailand.

I think I could have actually got it in Thailand, but I’m not really sure. But it did give me time to go and spend a bit of time in Cambodia where I went to get the visa. I’m not sure if you can get them there today or not.

And apparently getting it in Laos would have been easier, but I was interested to check out what Phnom Penh was like. When I was there, I can remember it feeling quite similar. This is in 2009 or 2010 early on, I can’t remember, but it felt like how Thailand felt when I was there a long time ago.

I’ve heard other people describe it and try to make comparisons. And while it did feel like that, you got similar feelings. Cambodia is definitely its own unique place with its own unique history.

I enjoyed my time there and I had been a few more times throughout the years of being in Thailand.

But now I had my visa. I went back to Thailand in Bangkok and I was in a position where I could extend the visa because I’d already deposited the money in the bank in order to get it. Back in Thailand, I decided to calm down a bit.

I still enjoy things in the nightlife, and that’s okay, but don’t enjoy it so much that you can hardly remember it. That was when I went to learn more about the country by going to different cities that I’d heard people rave about, yet I’d never been to myself. I really fell in love with Chiang Rai right up in the north.

That would become one of my favorite places in the whole country. But the reason that I didn’t live there was because it was so isolated where it was. There is the airport there, and you can fly to Bangkok.

Of course, you can, but it always felt like you were one extra step away from going somewhere else.

Bangkok was a city I really loved, but it didn’t feel like somewhere I wanted to spend more time or live. And at this point, I’m still not thinking I’m going to be living in Thailand permanently. I’m just going to be taking things as they came.

A retirement visa because it was the easiest one, not necessarily because I was planning on retirement. I didn’t know yet.

Finding a Home in Pattaya

I guess it’s quite a common move to say that I did find myself renting a place in Pattaya initially on a six-month lease. It wasn’t like Pattaya was my favorite place in Thailand. Far from it.

It was just so convenient to get to Bangkok. It was so convenient to go a little bit further down south to Koh Samet and Koh Chang. And it was where it was located in the country as well as all the western conveniences that attracted me to the city.

The nightlife did have a big draw as well, but the nightlife wasn’t there. I would have still chosen it as being the place to live because of its convenience. I was tempted by Hua Hin, although I chose Pattaya.

I’d say we’re roughly 2010 at the moment. I can’t remember which month, and I have got enough money that could last me a very long time. And I’m looking all the time for different things to do in terms of making a bit of extra money online.

It was a lot less common back then, but the jobs that I did and the things I did, I don’t really need to say what they were. That’s not important. I was able to find things quite early on and just do little bits of projects online and make some extra money.

It was mainly just to keep myself occupied. And throughout the whole of 2010, while still enjoying the nightlife two or three times a week, I was doing projects for people in my specialty. And if anything, that was enough for me to live on.

So at that time I wasn’t even using my savings.

A Friend’s Wedding in Surin

2011 was when things changed for me because a close friend of mine who was living in Pattaya was going to be getting married to a girl he met from Surin. He invited me to go with him and I relished the opportunity to go and see what a village wedding in Thailand was going to be like. He’d met her in one of the bars and he’d already been up to visit the family quite a few times and said it was really great up there.

He said it might be right up my street and he knew I was interested in experiencing different parts of the country and I was excited to go and see what it was all about.

I can remember the drive to get there. I didn’t have a car, but my friend did, and his wife had gone up on the bus a week before, so it was just me and him, and we were going to be stopping off for a few days at different cities along the way. He called it his bachelor party, although it was only me and him.

First stop was Korat , probably going to see it on the map as Nakhon Ratchasima. That was my first introduction to Isaan and it was the exact opposite of everything I expected it to be. When you hear people talking about Isaan and that’s where most of the girls are from that work in the bars, you picture it very differently than it actually is, especially the cities.

And it was a really great city and I could have seen myself spending more time. We did a night after that in Buriram and that’s another amazing place in Thailand. I think Thailand has worked itself up maintaining Bangkok as the be-all and end-all of the country.

Yet, there are so many other places that are equally as fantastic. And what I’m trying to say is that I could have seen myself living in either of those cities. And I liked them.

As much as I liked Pattaya, mainly just for the western conveniences, I could get what I needed most of the time from these cities as well. It didn’t feel like it would have been much of a sacrifice to have lived in either of them.

When we got to Surin, his fiancée came to meet us where we spent a night in the city and after that drove to her village. That’s when Thailand takes a turn. Almost as if you feel like you’re driving back in time.

That’s the way I’ve always described it to people. You can be in a modern city with great infrastructure, great roads, malls, and shopping centers. And the further you drive away, it does feel like you’re going back in time to how things used to be.

While the roads are still equally as good, equally as modern, and by this time in 2011, the electric infrastructure in the village and things like that were very good, it was just the way that things felt different. It was like they were living decades in the past, yet with modern conveniences around you. And that’s how I felt village life was when we finally got there.

This was the day before the wedding.

And just on the outskirts of the village was a hotel. It wasn’t like a hotel you’d expect it to be. It was just some guy who had built some small buildings on his land that he rented out at 400 baht a day.

Those didn’t have air conditioning, but there’s nothing more than a few beers at night before a wedding that can’t help you to sleep. The reason I’m saying this is because I felt a draw to that part of Thailand because it was different worlds , different to everything I knew before. Combining different worlds all in one.

What do I actually mean by that? Modern infrastructure. 7-Eleven close by, 20 minutes into town where you’ve got big shops where you can buy lots of things that you need.

And okay, you’re not going to be able to get some things that you can get in Bangkok or Pattaya, but there is still a big selection. You’ve also got this laidback and peaceful environment surrounded by rice fields and temples everywhere. It’s like living in the model world in the past and I just loved it.

I mean, I really loved it.

The wedding was an interesting experience. I think they had the whole village there. My friend was just going through all the motions expected of him and he had such an open mind that even things to certain western people and how difficult it would have been for them, for him he was just loving it.

And it lasted the whole day. The thing that I remember the most was the really beautiful Thai women, I guess in their early 20s, who were singing and dancing on a stage that had been hired out for the event. It didn’t seem like it was the type of thing you’d expect at a wedding, but you could tell how excited the older guys in the village were because they seemed to be getting really into it.

Most of them were completely hammered by 2:00 p. m. and they were still dancing at 11 p.

m. And they just welcome you into the village and their culture with open arms. They make you feel so welcome and the people are some of the kindest and nicest you’ll ever see.

It does make you feel, though, after things happen to you , is this just a surface-level thing or does it run deep? It’s difficult to know really.

After his wedding, I left down to Bangkok myself because he had to spend a few more days there. He was going off to Malaysia with his wife. Unfortunately, his marriage only lasted 3 years.

He lost a load of money, but he didn’t build a house, so I guess that’s his only salvation. He’s been married two more times since then. The last marriage seems to be going okay, but he has so much money that he could afford to keep losing it all the time, and it wouldn’t affect his life.

Meeting My Future Wife

Back down in Bangkok, I spent a few days there and all I could think about was that part of Thailand I just left and how much I loved it. Returning to Pattaya a few days later, back to my place, I did start getting back into life. But I was always thinking about how great it would be to live somewhere like that.

I had a few girlfriends since being in Thailand, but I met someone that I thought could be more than just a girlfriend. I don’t mind saying that. Yes, I met her in a bar and she was actually from Korat, the first place I stopped off on the way to my friend’s wedding.

I talked about how I was there and how much I liked it. And she said that she liked it as well. Her village was only half an hour from the city, but she’d been there lots of times and she was just in Pattaya because it was easier for her to make money there.

She was in her mid-30s, so she wasn’t as young as some girls were, and I wasn’t one of these guys who was interested in someone younger than my son. Mid-30s for her, 50s for me seemed like it was acceptable and wouldn’t cause any friction if we decided to take things further. She did have two children from a relationship she had back in the village a long time ago, and she’d been working in Pattaya in the bars for 12 years, but the fact she was prepared to tell me the truth about things as opposed to try to hide it like lots of the other girls seem to do, I thought that was her being open and honest about who she really was.

She’d worked in a few bars over the course of 12 years. And she said she nearly got married to someone about 6 years before. He was from Austria and he even went back to where she was from.

He promised they would get married. He returned home and she never heard from him again. She said she spent about a whole year with him.

And I could tell by the way she spoke to me how it was her dream just to be able to stop working in the bar and have a husband. At least that’s the way I read it. I never wanted to judge people for what they did in the past.

I don’t think anyone can judge anyone because everyone has done things that they’re not proud of or that they didn’t want to do if they had their time again. So, the fact that she did that for 12 years, I didn’t care.

We moved quite quickly in the relationship. It just felt like we were meant for each other. At least in the early days, it did.

And after 3 months, I’m already up in the village meeting the family. The village was very similar to the one I went to with my friend when he got married. And again, I felt a really strong draw and connection to the place.

I could see myself living there. And at this point, I’d already decided I didn’t want to leave Thailand, and I’d cut my spending back because I didn’t want to run out of money. It was never my plan to stay in Thailand, and it just became where I stayed.

I thought I would get bored and want to return home and do more work. But I’m finding I’m making little bits of money online when I’m doing projects for people. And although I’ve spent quite a lot of money out of my savings since I’ve been in Thailand, I still had most of it left and my mortgage is still being paid off at home.

So things seem to be progressing well for me. We’re visiting the family. I’m even introduced to her children.

And I could tell that she was at the point in her life where she’d had enough of working in the bar. I mean, who could blame her? She’d been doing it for a long time.

And I admired her in one way because she was able to provide for her children who were being looked after by her parents. And she was able to look after her parents at the same time, so they didn’t need to go and work in the fields like many people in the village did. Her mom was well taken care of.

You might have heard it from time to time, but she was one of those people, those Thai ladies from Isaan, who liked to chew betel nut, and her mouth was the color of it , bright red , and she was also covered in gold that her daughter had bought for her over the years. It was a sight to behold. If you have thought about Thailand and have been there and have had any experience with things, they actually measure the weight of gold differently than they do in most other countries.

While in Thailand they have the Thai baht as the currency, gold is also measured in baht, as in baht weight. And if I’m not mistaken, I think it’s about 15 grams or so for one baht of gold. Two baht of gold is just under an ounce.

And in Thailand, the gold is 96. 5% pure. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that she probably had 20 baht of gold adorned all over her.

And it was, like I said, a sight to behold.

At this point, we’re not actually living together yet. She was still working in the bar, and it was a bit difficult because although I considered we were in a loving relationship, she was still working there. But after going and visiting the family and just seeing how amazing it was there, like I had with my friend, that’s when I said, “Okay, I think we can take this to the next level and we can move in together.

” The look on her face when I said that was like that’s what she’d been waiting for for a long time. And she didn’t hesitate when I asked her to move to my place. She was actually sleeping in a room above where the bar was.

It was one of those shophouses, and that’s where she slept with three other girls that worked there. And there’s something I want to say, but I don’t think I will in terms of that room situation. So, she’s living with me, and I feel like we’re developing a great connection.

I think we’re both at an age where we’re not too far apart to make this work, yet she’s not too old where she doesn’t want to have a good time anymore. And after 3 months of us living together, that was when I thought, well, it’s now or never. I had stopped doing projects online because I’m just living in the moment with my girlfriend.

And we went to different places in Thailand. And then that was when I asked her to marry me because it just felt right. We were a great match and I was very interested to spend my life with her.

I remember telling my son I was getting married and by this point he’d already finished university and got himself a good job and he flew out to experience his dad getting married in a Thai village. He’s very open-minded. And he loved it, the whole experience.

He had a few girlfriends on his Thailand trip and Thailand didn’t grab hold of him like it did many people. And he actually couldn’t wait to leave back home to work.

But now I’m married and I’m thinking that Thailand is going to be my forever country. I hadn’t made any plans about what I was going to do yet and things of that nature, but that was of the age where it felt like I really didn’t need to work if I was in Thailand. The house that I had back in the UK, the mortgage would have been paid off in around 8 years’ time.

And I can’t remember exactly if it was eight or seven or whatever it was. But once that was paid off, the rent from that would give me enough income to live in Thailand. It would have given me around 2,000 a month.

It was in London, and I bought it a long time ago when prices just continued to go insane in London. Throughout time, the prices have gone mad. But if you were lucky, like I was, and got it at a time when it wasn’t as crazy, then you were just that , lucky.

I’ve got a good friend of mine who lives on the same street as where I had the house. And he thought he was so clever because he made a lot of money on houses. And while you’ve got to be in it to win it, it was still a gamble that might not have paid off if prices hadn’t gone as crazy as they did.

I just think that I was lucky in that sense. So 8 or 9 years, my house would be paid off and then I’d have an income. So that’s why I decided that with the money I had, I could use it to build my life in Thailand.

This is when we went back to the village again. This is when we went to start thinking that this is where we wanted to live and this is where we decided we wanted to live. So the next step from there was to build somewhere.

I can’t really remember how much money I had left out of my savings. It was quite difficult because I had some in England, some in Thailand, and it was a bit in Singapore when I opened an account there because it felt like it was a good idea. Ballpark figure, I would say it was around £180,000 that I had in total.

One thing I loved about her village as well was that it was in Korat, which was only about a 5-hour drive from Pattaya and even less to Bangkok. I think it’s about 3 and a half hours to Bangkok from where the village was. And that really made a big difference for me.

When I spoke to other people who were living in Isaan, who spent time in Pattaya, some of them lived 12 hours away, some of them even a little bit longer than that. But I loved the fact that we were so close to places like that.

I bought a car, the first time owning a car in Thailand. I bought a bike and this was after our house had already been built. I spent about £70,000 on the house and a little bit extra on the land.

And although it belonged to my wife and I had no legal claim to it, we were married, serious, and in love. And when we moved into the house, everything really did feel like it was coming together so well. I was probably about 7 years away, if I’m thinking, with my head screwed on, from paying off the mortgage of my house.

So 7 years, I’ve got to make about £80,000 last. There was, of course, the risk of a tenant moving out or problems with the house. And as is usually the case, the tenant did move out and it was vacant for 6 months, which meant I had to spend £12,000 out of my savings just to pay the mortgage, which was still okay.

I also needed to do a bit of renovation work when the house was empty, and that was another £10,000. So 22,000 of that, the £80,000 meant that I had to make what was left stretch even further. I did find a new tenant though and they paid a little bit more and I was just throwing all of the money to the mortgage waiting for the time when it could be paid off.

There was no internet in the village at the time so I couldn’t really do any projects online but it was seemingly going to be okay until it wasn’t going to be okay.

The First Business Idea

Quite a few things happened after moving into the house in the village. Some of them to start with I could have written off as innocent mistakes, while other things I can’t say anything other than they were shocking revelations that I never thought for a second were possible. I don’t know which order I should describe them in really because I don’t know which ones came first and which ones came after.

There were so many things going on. But I think it’s worthwhile saying that after I had to pay the money while waiting for the new tenant and for the renovation, the idea of spending what was left didn’t feel like it was that much money. I was okay with things though and thinking like this is going to be okay, but I wasn’t 100% sure.

I really loved the village, but there were things I didn’t like , dogs that chased after you, and I was bitten once as well. But I thought the positives far outweighed the negatives. And when my wife approached me, saying that there was some land for sale adjacent to the main road, which you turned off to get to the village, how it was a great price, and we could open a shop there, which would give us more money while we were waiting for this to happen.

Instead of thinking it was a bad idea, I paid very close attention to it as being a potentially great idea. It was for sale urgently because the people needed the money and because it was in such a great spot on the main road, it could be a good investment for the future as well.

If you know anything about Thailand, you will know that having land on a big main road is important for people because they can have a business there. And also, you might see a luxury house right next to a busy main road and wonder if they’ve got that much money, why build such a great house next to a busy road? Why not in a peaceful setting?

But once you know Thailand enough, you understand that building it there is so that people can see it, even if it means it’s extremely noisy. So having this land I thought would be a good investment anyway. It would take about 30% of my money to buy it and then maybe 20% more to get the shop opened.

How it was going to work was we’d build a shop, a very cheap structure, and we were going to sell frozen meat and other foods that we could buy in bulk at Makro and portion out into smaller portions and then sell them in the shop. It made perfect sense to me and it did seem like it would be a fun thing to do as well while waiting instead of just sitting around waiting.

So, I bought it in my wife’s name and the shop was built as expected and the shop was running and it was bringing in money. Not quite as much as expected, but it was still bringing in money every month. And because we’d done that, the whole project from start to finish had taken a year.

That was a year of things moving forwards to the eventual goal. But in terms of money, it was a struggle. It was a struggle to get to where we needed to be.

I was just hoping that the time would get there eventually.

Around the same time, you hear about someone in the family who was having financial difficulties. They borrowed money from a number of different loan sharks in the area, and the interest was piling up every single day. Guys going around to the house demanding money, threatening, looking like they were going to do things.

And when it’s a family member, you sort of think, well, maybe I should help. When they approached me and say, could I borrow or could they borrow half a million baht and we’ll pay it back? I don’t know why I said yes.

Perhaps because I wanted to help them, but I did give them half a million baht, which meant now I was more reliant on the shop working. The shop started bringing more money in, just a little bit more than before. And although I don’t have much money left, we’re just scraping by, making enough money to live.

I’m not really concerned though about that because I know eventually there is something there.

I was expecting to be paid back slowly over time from the money I lent as well and because I wasn’t charging any interest, it felt fair. But they didn’t even give me one payment back. When I asked my wife why they done it like that, she just said it was normal.

She just said they’ll pay it back eventually, but they didn’t. That was a big loss right there. I’m still okay in Thailand and reasonably happy.

The shop that my wife is doing , she’s happy with that and she’s working there and she’s sharing the money that it’s bringing in with me on the one hand, so that’s okay. But money is running tight and there is still about 5 years to go until I’m going to get any income because the rent I’m getting from my house is just paying the mortgage.

The Second Business Idea

My wife comes to me with another business idea. And because the shop was working, I was very open to listening to what this idea was. I think that that’s what it was mainly.

The fact that this shop had opened and she was making money and she was always there and busy and this new idea sounded like it was all she said. It sounded like it would bring us in more income and it would be passive as well which could add an even better income than we would get eventually. The idea was to buy some land that was quite close to the place where we had the shop and there were always new businesses popping up around the area.

It was a very up-and-coming place and we could buy it and build three small shophouses next to each other on the land and she said rent each of them for 12,000 baht a month. I spent a lot of time looking at other businesses in the area and they all seemed to be doing okay. And I guesstimated how much they were making and it seemed like it would be great.

Also, it would mean we weren’t reliant on just one source of income in the future. We’d have my house income, but we’d also have the income from these shophouses, which could be a really good thing. What it meant though was I would need to remortgage my place back in the UK.

I had a lot of equity in it and I’d need to pull out about 30% of the equity in order to achieve this. On the one hand, it would mean it’s going to take a lot longer to pay it off or the payments would increase. Yet, on the other hand, it would also mean that this business should be able to pay off the extra and just give us a little bit on top, which I thought was a good idea.

I need to say that I didn’t just run into it straight away as if it was going to be the easiest thing in the world. I seriously thought about it for a number of months and one day I just decided that I wanted to go for it. It would mean remortgaging the house as I said and I wasn’t even sure it would be approved.

But I’d been paying off my mortgage every single month without fail ever since I got the house. And I had income going into my bank from the work I did, although I hadn’t done that in a while. I applied and I was able to show that while I did have an income from the house and the other bits of work I did and because of that it was approved and I took £100,000 out.

It meant though that the length of time was actually going to be the same but instead of the payment being one thing, it was going to be quite a lot more. The idea was though that the income from the shophouses should cover the remainder of the extra payment. And then during the same amount of time frame as we would have otherwise had, we should get to the point where not only do we have the income from my house in the UK, which will be paid off, we’d have the income from the three shophouses, which would also be fully paid off.

It seemed to make perfect sense because when you did the maths and you worked it out based on the figures that she gave me and based on what I thought was a reasonable amount of money, it didn’t feel like it was the type of risk that many people think it is. I didn’t even think it was a risk. I mean, there were risks there , risks in everything , but I thought it was a calculated risk.

It would obviously be very good if it worked, giving us an extra 36,000 baht a month on top of the £2,000 a month income. So, what would that be? Around 120 to 130,000 baht a month at the time depending on the exchange rate and that would make a big difference to our income in the future and make retirement even better.

That was why I agreed to do it because the figures made it appear that although we’d still be waiting a long time , like I said, around 5 years, I can’t remember exactly , until everything was paid off, when it was paid off, we’d be better off. And it would be a difficult 5 years in the meantime, but after that, it would all be worth it. I didn’t feel like it was some harebrained scheme.

I didn’t think it was just a shot in the dark sort of idea. I thought it was a really good idea, and I couldn’t wait to try to do it.

But getting that remortgage, the money landed in my bank, transferred it to Thailand, and we put an offer in on that land. It was priced quite high, but it was for sale for a while, so we got it for 20% less than they wanted. So, I thought that was good, and I was pleased with it.

Then the shophouses were ready very quickly. They weren’t these big three or four-story ones that you see in places like Bangkok, just two stories. A room downstairs with a bathroom at the back, and upstairs, two small bedrooms and a bathroom.

It would be perfect for someone who wanted to run a business from each of them, and they could do all kinds of things. Enough room to have a restaurant if they wanted one of those. Any kind of business that would fit into it, and the rent, she thought, would be around 12,000 baht a month each.

It seemed to be plausible. Going into it, I was really excited. It was a new project to stick my teeth into, and I could tell my wife was really happy as well.

When we had the land, we found a builder to do the work for us. It didn’t take long. All in, the cost was around £90,000.

So, there was a £10,000 buffer there, which I thought was a good thing to have. When they were built, it was really exciting. We had these three shophouses, and we had our shop, which we could see from them.

It was on good land that I thought would only go up in value in the future. And we bought some rent signs outside. And immediately someone came and said they wanted to rent the one on the right-hand side.

The same day. The same day they wanted it and they agreed to the 12,000 baht a month price just like my wife said and they moved in that same day. I couldn’t believe it was that quick.

It was just a guy who seemed to be from the local area. I didn’t pick up on anything at all. I need to say that.

But he moved his stuff in and a few weeks later he’s got his business there. He’s selling motorcycles and doing motorcycle repairs.

The Unraveling

Everything did take a turn for the worse from there, though. For a start, we were struggling to find people to come and rent the other ones. And when people did come for a look and we told them the price, they looked like that’s way more than expected.

They were expecting it to be 3 or 4,000 baht range. And even that they thought was expensive. Quite a few people said the same thing.

So, I’m not sure why this guy just gladly took it at 12,000 baht and moved in straight away. At this point, he’s been in for a month, and we’ve had people looking at the others, but without much luck, and it’s time for him to pay. Then he doesn’t pay.

My wife goes around to see him and comes back a few hours later saying, “Well, don’t worry. He’ll pay soon. “ So, I didn’t worry.

Then more time goes by , another few weeks , and he doesn’t pay again, and we’re not getting anyone to look at the other ones. My wife goes around again and says, “He’s going to pay. Don’t worry.

” And I was starting to worry though because what she said was going to happen didn’t happen. We should have had them all rented out. We found that person immediately yet he’s not paying.

So I didn’t know what was going on. After that guy had been there for 2 months and he still hadn’t paid, and my wife’s going all the time to try and make sure he does. I’m spending time at home by myself just worrying because the finances are quite tight.

She’s spending a lot of time in the shop, so it’s not like we spent much time together as we did when we first met. I might see her in the morning and then I’ll be at home in the daytime or I’d be going out looking at things, minding my own business during the day and I’d see her in the evenings. So, it wasn’t unusual that she wasn’t spending time with me because it just wasn’t like that when we were there in the village.

I suggested we reduce the price to the other two to 10,000 and we did that. And another month goes by and no one’s taking that either. And this guy is still not paying.

I told my wife to kick him out. So my wife goes around to talk and says, “Don’t worry, he’s going to pay soon. He’s just waiting for his business to pick up.

” And well, he didn’t pay ever. And after we put the price down to 8,000 and no one took that, we went as low as 5,000. And that was as low as we were prepared to go.

That’s when people came in and said, “We’ll give you four. “ It turns out that the rental of 12,000 in an area like that was completely unrealistic. I just thought it sounded reasonable for the fact that people could run businesses from there.

And then that’s when that guy moved in, so it did sound to be going off to a great start. We did get people into one of the other ones at 4,500, but the other one just remained empty.

And after another month of this guy not paying, my wife said she was going round to have another look to see what was going on. I told her okay. And then she left the house and I called out, “Hang on, I’ll go with you.

” But she didn’t hear. So she sets off in the car and I go on the bike and follow. I actually stopped off to buy a drink and I probably spent 10 minutes there and that was when I got back on the bike expecting her to be talking to this guy, but she wasn’t talking to this guy.

Something else was going on. And then that’s when you realized that everything you thought that was happening in your life, everything you thought was going on, was not true at all. I confronted my wife.

I was furious, shouting at the top of my voice, “What are you doing? “ And the guy comes out, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to get into too much detail as to exactly what happened.

But I eventually found out that this was the father of her children, and they’d been in a relationship basically all the time, and he was just prepared to accept what she did because he didn’t want to work. He made a bit of money fixing bikes and selling them, but he wasn’t paying rent because it belonged to his wife , but she was my wife. I mean, we were married in the village, but we didn’t do any of the legal stuff.

That was when I found out that she was actually legally married to this guy. The thing that hurt the most was that her family didn’t really know what was going on either. The thing that shocked me was when she told me she was married.

She said she married this guy in secret. The family just knew about the relationship to start with and that it was going on, and they knew he was the father of her children, but they thought that she wasn’t together with him anymore. They didn’t even know that they married legally.

They didn’t know any of this was going on. And they didn’t have a normal wedding ceremony in the village. So, all of a sudden, that’s what happened.

My wife was actually his wife. The whole time I’ve been living there. And then I’m thinking about all the time she went round to go and visit to see where the money was in rent.

All the times that I wasn’t with her, was she with him? And yeah, of course, that was it. Big loss on the house.

Just taken out that mortgage on my house in England and I’ve got a little bit of money in the bank but the rent I’m getting isn’t enough to cover the mortgage and I don’t have enough to cover myself even close to. So it was a situation where I either sell my house and get the rest of the equity out of it which would have probably been enough for me to live in Thailand as a single retiree in Pattaya or go back to England get another job and put myself in a position in the future that’s going to be better. That’s what I did.

I left Thailand completely destroyed about that. Even today, I still can’t work out how she did that and how she kept it a secret so well and how she was so loving around me and how she was so affectionate and kind and nice. Yet, she had that secret.

And the way she explained it was she just loved him and she’d always loved him. But she said she loved me, too. He was prepared to accept it.

“Why aren’t you? “ she said, as if she was going to expect me to give her any kind of answer to such a ridiculous question.

So, that’s what happened. Multiple more years working back in England, but I did get the mortgage paid off. My house is worth considerably more than it was before.

So, I’m glad I didn’t sell it. And I’m in a good position today. But that was just a setback , a huge setback, in fact.

And I hadn’t been back to Thailand since. I have actually retired to Malaysia on the “My Second Home” program, and it’s a great country, but it doesn’t have the nightlife of Thailand. I’m paranoid, though, about the nightlife of Thailand now because it can lead to places that you would never imagine things could lead to.

I often do think about what she’s doing today. Did she move him into the house that I built? Did the kids move in?

I mean, the kids always stayed with her family when I was there. I don’t know what happened and I don’t really care. I mean, I care because what I was doing, I expected to be able to have around 40% extra income just by doing what we did.

It was meant to turn into something good. So, that’s why I did it. I didn’t do it thinking that it was a big risk.

But even if she didn’t do what she did and we only rented them for 4,500 baht a month each, which seemed to be more realistic, it wouldn’t have been enough to cover the extra mortgage payments anyway. So, I don’t know what I would have done if that happened. This is not really a Thailand problem.

This is a people problem. There are people like that all over the world. So, just because this happened in Thailand, I don’t think it’s a Thailand issue.

I mean, perhaps things like this happen in Thailand far more than they would elsewhere, but I wouldn’t have walked into a similar establishment in Spain, for example, and do the same thing, would I? And that’s the thing I still struggle with. There are places , well, not the same anywhere close really, but similar kind of places in Spain , but you wouldn’t even consider entering a place like that.

You wouldn’t even consider speaking to someone like that, let alone anything else, let alone marriage. But in Thailand, this seemed to be some kind of strange phenomena. I would call it when guys don’t seem to mind about it.

Yet in any other country, there’s no way they would do it. So, don’t do it in Thailand as well. And that’s all I’d say.

I can remember it like it was yesterday , not the first meeting with her, but this was about the fifth time I was back in her bar, having the time of my life with this girl that I felt a real connection to. I should point out also that I was going back to her bar against my better judgment on multiple occasions. But no matter how hard I tried to convince myself to not go, I just couldn’t help it, feeling like I needed to explore where things would go with her.

It started like any other time in the bar with her. I’m ordering drinks for myself, ordering drinks for her. And while at this point I’d spent quite a lot of time with her, and it also felt like we were starting to get to know each other, she started trying to push me to buy drinks for some of the other girls in the bar as well.

I never understood girls that did this, and it appeared that these girls already had drinks and had them a few minutes before she asked me. Of course, I declined because I wasn’t there to buy random drinks for random girls that I wasn’t speaking to. It was okay buying the girl I wanted to be with drinks, but definitely no one else.

I noticed a slight change in her behavior when I said no, but it wasn’t enough to force her away from me, and she was still smiling and talking to me like she had every other time I’d seen her before. As usual, when I was with her, the plan was to leave and go get something to eat, and then we would see where things went from there. I felt like I’d had enough drinks.

She seemed like she was ready to leave as well, so I asked for the bill.

When the bill came, it was obvious that they’d overcharged me considerably , not just a little bit of an overcharge, either. The bill was at least 3,000 baht more than it should have been. And of course, I asked them what was going on.

Every time they give you a drink, they put the little bill into the container in front of you. And when I ordered drinks for me and for her, the bill was put there like every other time, so I didn’t notice any additions. When it came time to pay, and they gave me the inflated bill, they showed me all the bills, and it became quite clear that they’d put lots of different drinks on for girls that I didn’t agree to buy.

I was very angry about the situation. Things like that had happened to me before , something known as bill padding in Thailand. Yet the time that this happened felt like it was a betrayal because I was with this girl and I’d already spent quite a lot of time with her and I thought we were getting to know each other.

I was hurt, but after complaining they did remove the drinks and we went about the night the same way as we would otherwise have done. Why I’m saying this? Because for some reason I didn’t see that as a huge warning sign to be taken care of.

I continued the relationship with this bar girl all the way to us getting married. And what happened next, though, was even worse than that.

And if I look back at that one event, I really only have a bit of myself to blame. Notice how I only will say a bit , because I don’t really think I’m to blame, but I’m looking for things that I should have known about before doing what I did.

The Job Offer

I think my reason for being in Thailand is quite different to many of the stories that I’ve heard before. This was back in 2015 and I was sitting at my job back at home during a lunch break and I was browsing job postings in my field. I’m a software engineer by trade and I noticed a job advertisement for somebody that basically did what I did for a BOI company in Thailand.

If anyone is unfamiliar with the term BOI, it stands for Board of Investment. And the rules behind working for a company like that are different than they are for a normal company in Thailand. There isn’t the same Thai staff to foreigner quotas that need to be met.

And the companies that fall under this are able to employ professionals from different countries easier than normal companies can.

This company seemed to be quite new and I was interested in what their vision was , what it said on their website anyway. And before the end of the lunch break, I quickly sent off my resume and a quick cover letter, thinking it would be fun to imagine working somewhere like Thailand. I was paid well for what I did.

I didn’t really have any problems with where I lived, but I didn’t have any connections to where I was living. Maybe I was bored and lonely. I don’t know.

But something about the idea of working overseas did start to interest me.

After I sent my resume, I just got back to work as normal. But when I woke up in the morning and noticed that there was an email inviting me for an interview over video, that was already so much more than I expected after sending in that application. What happened next was a series of interviews and me being offered a job at the company’s office in Bangkok.

I want to dispel the myth straight away that foreigners can’t get jobs in Thailand. They can, although generally only doing something where it’s hard to find people qualified enough in Thailand to do. I was offered the position and I was going to be paid a salary of around $6,000 a month and they would pay for my relocation to Thailand.

While the salary was slightly less than I was being paid at the time, I thought the opportunity was too good to miss. So, I went for it. And 6 weeks later, I was boarding a plane to Thailand, about to start a very different chapter of my life.

First Impressions of Bangkok

When I got off the plane at Suvarnabhumi Airport, I remember the feeling of walking through the jet bridge, thinking how surreal it felt. I was actually in Thailand. I was actually doing something that only a few months ago would have only been a dream.

I’d never been to Asia before, so I didn’t know what to expect. The furthest I got was Europe, and I still had visions about Asia being a dangerous place.

When I got through immigration and collected my bags, there was this really pretty Thai girl from the company that had hired me holding up a sign with my name on it. I was expecting this, but actually seeing it felt so odd, given that I wasn’t used to that sort of treatment. She helped me get to the hotel that the company was paying for.

And during the drive, I was just staring out of the window as Bangkok was flying past. It struck me that everything was in English as well as Thai in terms of the road signs, which I wasn’t expecting, given I used to enjoy doing research about Japan, which for some reason I expected Thailand to be like.

I arrived on a Friday morning, which was good because it meant that I had the whole weekend to take as much of Bangkok in as possible before starting work, and I needed time to adjust to just how different things were there. Truthfully, I was always lonely back at home. I didn’t really have many friends, and I’d just spent my weekends watching football or playing video games.

I’d heard about the bars in Bangkok. Everyone who’d been to Thailand seemed to go on about them. And they said you had to go and see what they were like, even if you don’t take anything further.

That first Friday, I walked from my hotel to where I’d heard the bars were located. And the first place I went to was called Nana Plaza, and it most definitely was nothing like I’d ever seen before. I loved the bars straight away.

I was drawn to the energy and the chaos and also the fact that people actually wanted to talk to you, which was nothing like the pubs back at home where everyone just seemed to stick to their own group. I wasn’t an old guy either. I was only 29 and still felt young enough to be able to enjoy myself with girls in my own age bracket, and that made a big difference.

I went back to the bars on Saturday night and also Sunday night as well. I went to Soi Cowboy, which was a bit different to Nana, but it still had the same idea about it. And by Sunday night, I was thinking, “This really was as good as I expected it to be and better.

It was a complete U-turn from my boring life back at home. ”

Starting the New Job

I was really invigorated when I went into the office on Monday morning. It was only a short walk away from the Chit Lom BTS station, and it was very close to the Central World Mall. The office was really high up on the 25th floor of a modern building, and when I walked in, I was quite impressed, as it was nothing like offices I’d worked at before.

I was given a seat right next to the window, which was the perfect location for me, as looking at that view alone filled me with an immense amount of motivation. There were about 50 people altogether working there, a mix of Thais and also other foreigners, and the whole environment was nothing like I expected. It was much better.

I met my manager who was from America and he told me he’d been in Thailand for around 10 years. He showed me around the office and introduced me to the rest of the team. And the company was growing fast and everyone there seemed to be excited about being part of something brand new and different.

The Thai staff all spoke English extremely well and always seemed to be smiling and asking if I needed help with one thing or another. Even on that first day, I felt like I’d made the right choice taking the job. It was like this was just what I needed at that stage of my life.

The first few days passed by and I used those mostly to get up to speed, understand the systems they were using and also tried to figure out how things were done there. I was really good at my job. I always had been.

And I could see straight away that there were room for improvements and I could make those work. Already by the end of the first week, I’d fixed a few minor issues that had been bothering the team for a few months, and my manager was really impressed. I can remember walking out of the office that first Friday evening and taking the BTS back towards Nana, where my hotel was located, and I was feeling really upbeat about my future in Thailand.

It didn’t seem like I was just another employee. I could see that they valued what I was able to bring to the table, and things were great.

I was being paid a good salary. The work was interesting. And Bangkok was an amazing city that I was only just starting to discover.

I went back to the bars again that Friday night to celebrate my first week at my new job. And that’s when I started to become a regular at a few places I liked the most. Before long, the girls started remembering me from the previous weekend, and I liked that feeling of being recognized, as if it really did make me feel like I belonged there.

When I was back home, I could go to the same pub all the time and nobody would even remember. In Thailand, after just a little bit of time there, the girls were waving me over and that made Thailand even better. I spent my second weekend in Bangkok looking for a condo to rent as the company was only paying for my hotel for the first 2 weeks.

I wanted somewhere as close as possible to a BTS station so I could get to work easily. And after looking at a few different options, I chose a really nice one-bedroom condo in a place called Thong Lo. The rent was 20,000 baht per month, which to me seemed like great value for what and where it was.

The building was very modern and it had a decent pool and a gym. And the best part was it was only a 5-minute walk to the BTS station. I found out straight away that I could save a big portion of my salary because I was finding things so much cheaper compared to back home.

I was earning a salary of $6,000 a month, which was the equivalent of about 200,000 baht at the exchange rate at the time. So, even after my rent and other living expenses, I expected to be able to save over half of it.

I moved into that condo on the very Sunday and immediately went exploring around the area. Right next to the BTS station in Thong Lo, there was an open-air Thai restaurant. It was just a local place with those blue tables and chairs at the front.

And my first time there, I had pork with rice and a beer Chang. And everything only cost me just over $5. The food was really good, and I found it so much better than any of the Thai food that I’d had back at home.

The place would be somewhere I would eat at often, sometimes days in a row after I’d finished work. And it didn’t take me long to get into life in Bangkok. Work hard during the day, a great dinner at that restaurant at night or somewhere similar, and then I’d usually have a beer or two at one of the bars.

I definitely wasn’t going crazy or anything like that. I was just enjoying my new life. The condo where I lived was nice, too.

It was fully furnished with a big bed, but the kitchen facilities weren’t great. But I never needed to cook anyway. I remember giving my mom a call that weekend and telling her how things were going and how well they were going.

And while she seemed to be a bit worried about me being so far from home, she could tell I was loving it and there was really nothing to worry about. I’d never felt more independent or more alive than I did during those first weeks in Bangkok. The way everything was so new and exciting, from the food to the people, but mainly just how different the way of life was.

And I was saving money as well, which I struggled to do before. And I was enjoying my job, loving Bangkok, and I really felt like I didn’t want for anything. I felt like I was settling into work really well, and I was definitely very good at the job I was doing.

My first tasks were just fixing problems that had been around for a long time. And after that, it was then implementing brand new systems that should have the effect of making things run a lot smoother.

Work Colleagues versus the Bars

I will admit, though, that I wasn’t feeling a huge connection to my work colleagues who always seemed to be going out together after work. It wasn’t like they didn’t invite me. They did invite me along, but they always wanted to go to those trendy rooftop bars or really expensive restaurants that just didn’t sit right with me and it just wasn’t my scene.

I went with them sometimes and one time I remember going to a very expensive place in Phrom Phong. It was one of those Japanese restaurants where a meal costs a lot more than most Thai people seem to earn for working a whole week. I struggled to enjoy places like that where a beer cost 300 baht plus service and VAT.

I felt so out of place because everyone in the office was paid very well. They were always talking about the weekend trips that they took to the islands or how they went to some trendy event somewhere in Bangkok. And I was never able to contribute anything because it just wasn’t who I was.

Part of me felt like that because the company paid great wages , a lot better than most local companies would , the Thai people working there felt like they were a cut above people who worked at other places. I’m not saying anything bad about them, though. That’s just how I felt.

I will readily admit to being a lot more drawn to the bars where the girls worked because I liked the experience of being able to talk to them. I found that they were a lot more down to earth, a lot more real somehow.

And even though I knew that they were working and that was their job, it didn’t feel forced or fake. I’m not saying my colleagues were not nice , they were. But it seemed like they had their own interests and all their interests seemed to align.

So, after the first few nights going out with them, I started to decline their offers. I didn’t really care, though. I was enjoying myself so much, and that was what mattered.

I’d much rather spend an evening in a bar by myself, chatting to a girl, even if I had to buy drinks for her, than I was to be sitting in some overly expensive, flashy, out-of-place bar or restaurant trying to pretend that I was some kind of big shot. Those sanitized places , it was like they were meant for places like London and New York. As if it wasn’t an actual authentic Thailand experience.

And Thailand to me, it wasn’t that. It was everything other than that.

At the end of the day, I was there to do a job, not to join a social club. And because I was doing the job well, that was all that mattered.

The Promotion

After I’d been at the job for only around a month, I could tell that I was already becoming a very valued member of the team and I was already implementing new systems and suggesting improvements and they were actually getting implemented. I must have been doing a very good job because I was called into my manager’s office , that American guy , and to start with, I thought I must have done something wrong. But as soon as I walked in, I could tell that nothing was wrong.

He was full of smiles and told me how impressed he was with the work I was doing. And just like that, he offered me the lead role with extra responsibilities. I will be responsible for making sure the rest of the development team worked under me.

And I was very excited about that because my salary went up to $8,000 a month. That was around 260,000 baht at the time. And that was more money than I’d ever earned before.

Making that extra money was great, but it was also the recognition of it because back at home when I was doing my old job, I’d been there for 3 years and I never felt like I got any kind of recognition or anything other than my standard salary. I felt like this company valued me and the rest of the team. And the fact that that happened just one month after joining , that’s exactly how you’re meant to treat your staff if you want to get the best out of them.

I honestly believe that’s the best way to do things because now I felt like I wanted to give 110% all the time and that was something that I never did at my old job.

The team that were there were there to work under me. They were a mix of Thai and foreign developers. They were all good at their jobs, but they needed someone to coordinate and guide the projects along successfully.

I was very good at that and I always had been. I could see the big picture and I was able to break it down into more manageable tasks and spread them out accordingly.

Making that extra money as well meant that I could save even more. And then I could start actually thinking about the future and what I would be able to do at a certain point when I’d saved up a certain amount , maybe even buying a place or investing in something else. When I spoke to my mom that night and told her the good news, she was finally starting to think that moving to Thailand was a good idea and it was working out really well for me.

Earning great money at 29, living in a really exciting city, and I felt like my career was taking off. In a way, it felt like I was finally becoming the person that I was always meant to be. I wasn’t just another small cog in the machine, but I was someone who was able to make a difference to the company that I worked for.

Meeting Her

That Friday after work, I definitely deserved a huge celebration. Not just going for a few beers at one of my usual places, but a huge and fantastic night out. It only seemed fitting that I went to Soi Cowboy to celebrate after work on that Friday.

But I didn’t want to go into any of the big bars. I just wanted to go into one of the smaller ones down the street. It was a lot more quiet, a lot more relaxed, and I actually just took a seat on a couch area in the corner.

It was still quite early on, so the bar was empty, except for a few of the girls that were working there. And the one that stood out was behind the bar, and she caught my eye almost immediately. I always preferred the girls that looked more natural as opposed to the girls that seemed to use heavy makeup.

But I wasn’t planning on speaking to any girls as of yet, which is why I took a seat on the couch away from everyone. But she called me over and cheekily asked for a drink, and I just walked over to the bar. I wasn’t feeling it, though, in terms of buying her a drink straight away because I was just getting ready for the night.

But I did say to her, “Let’s flip for it for a joke,” thinking she’d probably back down. But she actually took me up on the offer straight away and pulled out a 10-baht coin and told me to choose heads or tails. So I chose tails, and it was tails.

And she was just about to open me a brand new beer Chang on her. Before she had a chance to do that, I actually felt really bad and said, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll buy it and I’ll buy one for you as well.

” That’s how it all started. Tossing a coin over who buys who a drink, even though she was working there, and it was my job to buy one for her. I’d only planned to spend under an hour in that bar, but I think I was there for a total of 6 hours just talking to her.

I found out that she was from a place called Samut Prakan. And I told her I was working in Bangkok, and the first thing she said was, “Teacher,” and I just said, “Definitely not. “ We left the bar together going back to my place in a taxi because the BTS had already closed for the night and it felt like a really great experience.

And I remember waking up the following morning and she was next to me and it really did feel like it wasn’t just your typical meeting a girl in a bar sort of thing. I felt great that morning and she got ready and left and she didn’t want anything from me but she did say, “Come back and see me again. “ I tried to give her some money, but she just said, “Don’t worry about it.

” And she left with a really sweet smile, and I will admit to being very puzzled, but also extremely happy.

Then I had the worst shock of my life when I found out that the previous night I hadn’t exactly played things as safely as you should. I was always usually extremely careful about that sort of thing, but now I was worried beyond belief. My mind was racing through every single one of all the worst things that might have happened.

But I also really liked her more than any other girl I’d met in Thailand or back home for that matter. It was a very weird feeling. Insane panic and dread.

Yet also, I like this girl. As if something just clicked and you can’t describe why you have these feelings. I shifted between happiness and worry, wondering if I’d caught anything.

And while the rational, more logical part of my brain was telling me that the odds were incredibly low, everything should be okay, there’s always that niggling worry that something dreadful could have happened. It would be months before I would know anything. So, I did feel like I was stuck in some kind of limbo of not knowing what was actually going on.

But, like I said, I go back to thinking about her again and then I don’t worry as much. It was weird. I know why I was an idiot for doing that.

I will admit to that. But the only thing that made me feel better was the thought of seeing her again. And by that Saturday, I had decided that I would go back to her bar that night because I wanted to see her and see if it felt just as good as it did when I saw her the day before.

Or had I just imagined the whole thing? I will say that later I found out that there were no issues at all. I’d been lucky.

But I think it was that worry that I had that sort of forced me back to her, even though I did like her. But would I have gone back if I wasn’t worried? I still don’t really know how to answer that question.

I went back to her bar on the Saturday and as soon as I saw her, all my fears completely died down. I felt like I didn’t need to worry and that I would probably be okay and should just enjoy myself. She also seemed quite happy to see me again, and she actually gave me a hug when I walked in, and we seemed to just pick up right from where we left the night before.

From then on, I started going to see her often. Sometimes I would go every night in a row after work and it started to become a regular thing. It was enough so that the other girls there knew me and knew exactly what and who I was there for.

We just sit together and drink and talk about things and we were getting to know each other in a really good way. It really felt like we were getting to know each other. I liked her and she liked me and it was about the whole picture, not just the typical sort of things that people do when they go to places like that.

The Bill Padding Incident

That took us to the following weekend, which was the night that I mentioned right at the start of my story when the bar tried to overcharge me around 3,000 baht, adding to the bill lots of drinks that I hadn’t ordered for myself or for her. Like I said, I guess it was about the fifth time I’d been back to her bar, and I really did think that we had something special going on. When I saw all those extra drinks added to my bill , these were drinks for girls that I’d never talked to , I was actually more hurt than I was angry.

She just sat there looking very uncomfortable when I argued with the mamasan about the inflated bill and they did remove the drinks that I didn’t agree to pay for after I complained. But it felt sort of like the damage had already been done. I did think to myself if she would allow them to do that to me, I should probably just walk away and forget about the whole thing.

Maybe she was even in on it and was going to take a cut. And it was a massive red flag and I would have been an idiot if I completely ignored it. She could see I was upset about it and she actually apologized saying that she didn’t know that they were going to do that.

But I think she did and she did seem to be actually upset about it in a way that didn’t seem fake. So I did decide to completely forget about it because I really did like her. I’m telling you the truth.

I really liked her and I think it’s important because I was also still waiting to be able to make sure that I hadn’t caught anything unpleasant. It was still a while before knowing. And somehow when I was with her, I felt less worried about it.

I get that doesn’t make any sense to anyone probably, but nothing really about that relationship I was building with her made any sense if you actually think about it, but it didn’t matter because being happy seemed to be the only thing that mattered to me. I probably saw her at least five times a week during the next 3 months. And when I finally did get my test results back and found out everything was okay, I was extremely relieved, but also very happy.

With that worry completely out of the way, I felt like I needed to take things a lot further with her and try to make the whole thing more official somehow. We’d known each other for 3 months, spent so much time together, I felt like the next step was to ask her to move in with me. And I was actually quite nervous about asking, dreading that she’d say no.

Quite ridiculous to be nervous in a situation like that when your relationship started in a bar, but you can’t help how you feel. Before I had much chance to worry about her saying no, she’d already said yes. She actually seemed to be very happy about it, and that made me very happy, too.

One thing that I hadn’t done with her was share anything about my financial position. While I didn’t have a lot of money, I was earning a good salary, and I didn’t want her to be with me for money. I did tell her that I was earning not much money.

I said I was earning in the region of about 60,000 baht every month, which was decent in comparison to many people in Thailand, but not really amazing by expat standards. I thought that if she actually wanted to be with me, thinking that I was making that and it was okay to survive, that would indicate that it was real. I helped her move her things out of the bar because she lived above the bar.

But she didn’t have many things, just a few bags with clothes and other personal items. And I can remember the first night that she was actually living there with me. I think that was the first time that I actually used the kitchen for months because we cooked dinner together and finished by watching a film on my computer and everything.

It just felt so great. After she’d quit the bar, I was giving her 15,000 baht a month to cover her own expenses. And she did seem happy with it.

I wasn’t earning 60,000 baht. I was actually earning 260,000 baht at this point, but I really felt like she didn’t need to know about that at least yet. My plan was after we’d been together for quite a while, maybe even after getting married, if it got that far, then I’d be able to tell her the truth about my salary and we could have a better life together.

I thought by doing that I was being clever and making sure that she was with me for the right reasons.

And she seemed happy with our life, going to more local restaurants, enjoying time at home, and spending quality time together at the weekends. I was definitely a lot happier than I’d ever been before. And I’d just come home from work and she was there and it made work even better than it already was.

Is it too cliché to say that my life felt complete? If it is, I’m going to say it anyway because it did feel complete. I’d been working really hard ever since I arrived in Thailand and I hadn’t actually taken any time off work at all and I did have some available allowance.

I decided to have a week together with her and go to Koh Samui. I booked us into a really nice hotel quite close to Chaweng Beach, telling her that I got a small bonus from work and I wanted to treat her and have a nice time. We flew down on Bangkok Airways and that was the first time I found out that she’d never been on a plane before.

The look on her face when we took off was one I still remember. I had a really great time with her on Koh Samui.

All the fresh seafood that you could buy. There’s some really great restaurants along the beach. You can go for a swim in the sea or the hotel pool.

And in the evenings, it was just nice to walk along the beach, stopping off at different beach bars on the way for a few drinks. We were definitely getting a lot closer to each other every single day and I was so happy and she seemed to be happy too because she was always smiling and holding my hand. It was like it was a proper thing.

One of those days we went to Lamai Beach and I found it to be nicer and even quieter than Chaweng. And while she didn’t like to spend time during the day in the sun, sitting on the beach in the evening was better for me. Anyway, I started talking about staying in Thailand long-term, maybe even buying a place to live.

And while I must stress that I never did buy a place in Thailand, when we were talking about it, she said it was a really good idea and something she’d like as well. On our last night there, we went to a really great little restaurant. And at this point, I’m actually thinking to myself that I should think about spending the rest of my life with her because I can’t picture anyone else being as good.

She most definitely wasn’t anything like the girls back at home who always seemed to want more and who seemed dissatisfied with everything like they’d somehow become something other than a girl. When we arrived back in Bangkok at the weekend before I was due to start work, it was just a normal life. It felt like we’d moved to the next level completely.

We really were a proper couple and we were actually planning the future. I was doing good at my job. I had a great girlfriend and I was living in an amazing place.

And it did really feel like nothing could go wrong. The next few months went by and I was still happy with her and I’m really happy with my job and there was nothing to say that life wasn’t coming together very well. I guess I’d probably been in Thailand for about 8 months or so.

And I will say it again, but everything was going so much better than I could have imagined when I first applied for the job during my lunch break.

New Year’s Eve and the Proposal

My work was going so well. The systems that I’d managed to implement were already saving the company a lot of time and money, and the team that was working with me seemed to respect me for doing the job I was doing. When I was at home, my girlfriend was always exactly like I would have wanted her to be.

And when we met, she already spoke quite good English, but she was actually putting in more effort to try to improve her English some more. While I was picking up bits and pieces of Thai, it was something I struggled with. We’d always be going to that restaurant close to the BTS station in Thong Lo.

But one thing that was fun was going to try and find different places , new and exciting places that we could add to the list of favorites. I started to feel like even if this job ended, I wanted to remain in Thailand forever. I wasn’t expecting the job to come to an end anytime soon because the company was growing, they were getting more clients, and my position was secure.

But even still, I was thinking 5 or 10 years in the future. I’d already managed to save up just over a million baht, which was more money than I’d ever had all in one place before. And then I was thinking in a year’s time I might have enough to buy myself a condo just like the one I was living in.

That started to feel like a very exciting possibility. I even started thinking about well into the future, maybe even having children with her in a normal family. This family and this life was meant to be in Thailand.

Most definitely not back where I was from. My girlfriend seemed to want the same things that I did. She’d always talk about wanting her own place in the future and kids.

And what I am trying to paint a picture of is a guy who moved to Thailand whose life was so much better than it was ever before with an amazing girlfriend that he could only have ever dreamt of before. Making great money and saving even better money. The future really did seem like it was only a matter of time before everything I ever wanted was actually with me.

I was really excited about going to the company’s first New Year’s party. It was a few days before actual New Year and the company was closing for a few days. It was meant to be a celebration of all the good work that had been done throughout the year and everyone seemed to be in very high spirits.

The party was at a hotel on Sukhumvit and there was an open bar, great buffet and everything was laid on really nicely. I took my girlfriend along as well and I didn’t think anything about it because I was told that other people were going to be taking their partners as well. She dressed up really nicely and I felt proud walking in there with her.

The party was going well. Everyone was drinking and chatting and my girlfriend was even mingling with some of the other partners and she seemed to be fitting right in. At one point I went to the bathroom and when I came back I saw her standing at the bar talking to my boss.

I didn’t have any reason to think anything negative about it because my boss was a very friendly guy and he was talking to everyone when it was their turn. They were just chatting. She was laughing at something he said and when I walked over, he quickly changed the subject onto work things.

The rest of the night went well. There were some speeches about how well the company had been doing and I just hoped my girlfriend wouldn’t question my salary. She seemed to have really enjoyed herself and she said that she liked meeting the people that I worked with and how they all seemed very nice.

I remember feeling really good about how the whole night had gone and it felt like she’d passed some sort of test and she was able to fit in with my work side of life. We got a taxi back home quite late that night and both of us were admittedly a bit drunk and she was being affectionate and sweet as always, telling me that I looked really handsome in my shirt. I went to bed that night thinking that everything was going really well, that I had a perfect girlfriend who could be part of both sides of my life , the work side and the personal side.

The company was closing down for 5 days over New Year and I’d already booked tickets to Phuket so we could go and celebrate properly. We flew to Phuket for New Year and we stayed in a really nice hotel quite close to Patong. If I had to compare it to Koh Samui, I would say I preferred Koh Samui, but it was still nice to go to Phuket because many people seemed to go there as their go-to beach destination in Thailand.

On New Year’s Eve, we made our way down to Patong Beach. There was a big celebration. Thousands of people everywhere, fireworks, a show, and everything was going on.

It was a very special experience, and they seemed to put on a good show. I can remember standing with her about midnight, and some people had already let off lanterns into the sky, and that was the moment that I’d been waiting for for quite a long time. I’d been planning it and thinking about it for at least a month, and we’d been to look at rings in Bangkok, but I actually hadn’t bought one yet.

When I was standing on the beach with her, and she was looking very happy, I just decided to come out with it there and then. I asked her to marry me, telling her I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. I didn’t have a ring as I said and I didn’t do it the traditional way.

I just asked her. She looked pretty shocked at first and then she actually just said yes. She’d love to marry me.

That was a great night. The new year had come in and everything seemed exciting moving forwards and we celebrated for hours. I promised her that I would let her pick out a ring once we got to Bangkok.

And the following morning while we were both nursing a hangover, she called her mother saying she was getting married. She just wanted a traditional Thai-style wedding with the family, close friends, and other locals. And I agreed with everything that she wanted because I wanted to make it a very memorable experience for her.

We returned to Bangkok. The following weekend, we went to see her family in Samut Prakan for the first time. We discussed the wedding and they all seemed to be very friendly people, so that was a good thing.

And after that, we returned to Bangkok again. I really couldn’t believe that I was so happy. I was busy at work every single day doing what needed to be done and managing the team.

And also we started working on a really big new project and if that went well could have seen me getting another big raise. That was really exciting to think about. We always had good times together in the evenings and we had a New Year’s resolution that we would start going to the gym together and try to spend a bit more time at home cooking healthier meals and just trying to build a proper life.

I thought I was happy before, but after I got engaged, it seemed to take things to another level altogether, and I felt like my life was just moving along exactly like I would have wanted it to have done. My life would never have been this good if I hadn’t gone to Thailand. We went and I let her choose out a ring and that was 80,000 baht.

It was a little bit more than I wanted to spend, but it seemed worth it just to see how happy she was when I gave it to her. I needed to sort out some documentation in order to get married, which involved going to the embassy, getting translations done. But it wasn’t that difficult, and I employed the help of an agent to do most of the things that I didn’t need to do myself.

While I was working, she was speaking to her mother, trying to organize the wedding. At least that’s what I thought she was doing. And I was just going along with everything in the heat of the moment, thinking that there was no chance that anything could ever go wrong.

Thailand had given me so much. I really felt like I owed Thailand a huge debt of gratitude. The thought of 5 years passing and getting to the point where I’m going to be married, getting to the point where I had my own place, more money saved up, and lots of other amazing things , it was exciting to think about.

The Devastating Revelation

I was at work a few days later and my boss invited me out for lunch. This wasn’t unusual as we’d usually go maybe once a week to talk about work and projects that were currently underway. But this time was very, very different.

I could tell from the moment we sat down that something was wrong. He seemed to be very uncomfortable. He kept fidgeting with his menu and not making the usual jokes that he liked to make.

Then he made me promise that I wouldn’t tell anyone what he was about to tell me, as it could make him appear in a very bad light. But he said he was doing it for me because he respected me and thought I deserved to know the truth. I panicked because I thought he was going to fire me or the company was going under or something else along those lines, but it was actually far worse than that.

He went on to talk about the New Year’s party a few weeks ago and how he’d recognized my girlfriend from a website where she was listed as an escort. He said he wasn’t judging her or me. That’s actually one of the reasons he came to Thailand himself.

He said because he really liked that kind of lifestyle and it was all he did. But he was sure it was her. When he’d spoken to her at the party, he tried to test her, mentioning the website in a roundabout way, and she’d worriedly told him not to tell me while appearing to be laughing at his jokes.

She told him something about her need to make money, and she did it sometimes, just like she used to do in the bar before we met. And now my boss knew I met my fiancée in a bar on Soi Cowboy. He said she’d begged him not to say anything because she loved me, but she needed the extra money for what I don’t know.

My boss took out his phone and showed me the actual proof. There were screenshots from the website, and it was definitely undeniable. There she was, my fiancée, with photos that were actually taken probably while I was at work.

The profile graphically described everything that left nothing to the imagination. And I felt like I was going to be sick right there in the restaurant.

My boss said that he was really sorry and he’d struggled with whether to tell me or not, but he thought I should know before I got married to her. He said I was a good guy, apparently too good for this and I deserved a lot better. He told me to take the rest of the week off, full paid leave, and to sort my head out and figure out what to do.

He said he knew it was difficult, but it’s better to find out now rather than later. I couldn’t even speak. I just nodded and left the restaurant.

After I left the restaurant, I just walked around Bangkok for hours, not knowing what to do. My head was going around in circles, and I kept replaying the conversation that I just had with my boss. I was so sad that she was doing that so blatantly behind my back, going to meet other guys while I was at work, and she’d been lying to me every day.

The thing that hurt the most was that I hadn’t told her I earned a good salary because I was going to tell her after we got married. I wanted to surprise her with the fact I was earning 260,000 a month, not 60,000 like she thought. At this point, I was giving her 15,000 baht a month, which I thought was more than enough for her because I covered the cost for everything anyway, but apparently it wasn’t enough for her.

I had no idea what else she needed to spend money for. I’d planned to tell her the truth about how much I earned after the wedding. I thought that would be the best thing to do.

But all of a sudden, she’d be able to find out that we could have a better life than we already thought. We could have good things together and that she would respect me more. I thought she was getting married to me for the right reasons, but because of that, I thought she loved me and it wasn’t about the money.

I’m quite shy to say that part of me wanted to just completely forget about it, pretend that I didn’t know anything and get married to her anyway and hope things would change. But I knew that was a really stupid thing to do because if she was doing it now, it was more the fact that she thought it was acceptable more than anything else. Even if she stopped, the fact that she happily did that, it was too much.

The biggest part of me was very angry. I felt like I wanted to confront her, even scream at her and ask her how she could even do it. I’d started to build my whole life around her and Thailand and this job.

We’d started planning our future together, what it was going to be like, and now it felt like it was all falling apart around me. I had no idea what to do, so I walked all the way to Lumphini Park and just sat there thinking about things.

A few hours later, I called my boss and thanked him for telling me the truth. I knew it probably couldn’t have been easy for him. He did say if there was anything he could do, just let him know and he’d do his best to help.

And he did say he’d been through something similar. So that’s why he was in Thailand because he didn’t want anyone to hold anything over him. And I guess it was fortunate that he was the sort of guy who liked to use websites like that all the time because if he didn’t, I probably would never have known.

After sitting in Lumphini Park for what felt like 3 hours, completely devastated about what I found out, I made my way back to the closest BTS station and took that to Thong Lo and back to the condo. I was dreading walking through the front door, having to speak with her about what I found out.

The Final Confrontation

As soon as I walked in, she saw my face. She knew something was wrong. And when I told her what I found out , what she’d been doing , I could tell she knew there was no point trying to deny it.

She was in shock that I’d found out. And even up until then, I still had some hope that it was someone else, not her. But it was her.

The first thing she said was that she was sorry and she planned to stop after we got married, going on to talk about how she needed to make more money to help her family. I just told her that’s what they all say. She said that 15,000 I was giving her wasn’t enough, but she wasn’t able to explain where the money went or what she needed it for.

She just said it wasn’t enough. I asked her to detail all her expenses, but she refused. If it wasn’t enough, according to her, it wasn’t enough and there was nothing I could do about it.

She was quite tense and a little bit angry when we were talking. And then I dropped it on her saying, “Do you know that I actually make 260,000 as a salary, not 60,000 like I told you? I did that because I wanted you to be with me for the right reasons.

I wanted you to be with me for love, not money. ” I expected her to be very sad when she heard that, but she was actually really furious, screaming at me in Thai and English, saying that I lied to her, making her think that we were poor and we could be living a lot better. She then said if I told her the truth all along, she wouldn’t have needed to do what she did.

I actually found out that she was doing that while she was working in the bar as well, but I didn’t know. That actually made the whole thing worse because it did seem there and then that she was only with me for money after all.

She was furious thinking that I should have told her how much I earned straight away because that would have been different for her. I bet it would have been different for her, but that wouldn’t have given me any sense of security or any way or reason to find out what I’d found out about her, which was very difficult to come to terms with, but I found out before things went too far. She just kept blaming me for not giving her enough money, but I wasn’t buying that.

I was giving her more money than a large portion of the population of the country earned for working a whole month, and they have expenses on top of it to pay, so I didn’t buy it. And then after we’d gone around in circles for at least 2 hours, she stormed out shouting that I was stupid and I didn’t understand the country. I didn’t understand anything apparently.

And she slammed the door and there I was alone in the condo. It really did feel like everything was closing in on me and I didn’t know what to do. After she left, I struggled on with work over the next month, but I was starting to feel like I really needed to leave Thailand altogether. She arrived back at the condo a few evenings later saying she was sorry and she wouldn’t do it again. But I knew that she was only doing that because she found out that I was earning more money than she thought and it was too obvious.

I was starting to make a few mistakes at work, sometimes very important ones. And it was lucky that they were caught by someone else because if they weren’t, it could have cost the company a lot of money. I felt like my heart just wasn’t in Bangkok anymore.

It wasn’t even in Thailand anymore. And I really did feel like my life was completely destroyed by her. Every single day in Bangkok was pure torture.

Every time I’d walk past somewhere we went together, I’d remember how happy I was when I was there with her just a few weeks before. Everything reminded me of her. And as much as I tried to get over it, I felt like what she’d done had made me feel like it was a Thailand thing, and if I continued in Thailand, the same thing would just happen to me again.

With all that, I handed in my resignation at work, just telling my boss that I was very sorry, but I couldn’t do it anymore. I really couldn’t stay in Thailand. He told me he understood, said that he’d seen it all before.

Really good guys getting destroyed by bar girls who thought that they loved them. He told me to think about it and make sure that’s what I wanted, but I already knew I did. I just wanted to go back home, back to where none of this had happened.

I did give the company a month’s notice just so they were able to find someone else to replace me and so I could help train them up to standard, which I thought was only right. I didn’t want to give the company any difficulties because of what had happened because it wasn’t really their fault. I felt like a total failure during that last month, as if I was just going through the motions on autopilot because I didn’t actually want to be there in person.

The flight home was the worst of all of it. I just sat there on the plane for the whole time wondering how everything had gone so badly wrong and how she had done that to me. I still didn’t know.

The company gave me a send-off with a business class ticket, but that didn’t really give me any shred of comfort after what had happened. I’d arrived in Thailand full of hope and dreams for what the different life could be like. I was ready to start a new life and start again, and I was looking forward to the next decades of my life.

But instead, I was leaving completely broken and destroyed. I’d saved quite a lot of money by being there, but it meant nothing. The career progress didn’t mean anything to me at all because all I could think about was how she had betrayed me the way she did.

I felt like I never wanted to see Thailand again after what had happened because in a way, Thailand had given me everything I’d ever wanted. But then it had taken it all away again without any remorse, and I felt like I would never be able to be the same person again. The girl who was supposed to be my wife and eventually the mother of my children had been doing that behind my back the whole time because I didn’t give her enough money.

And that betrayal still stays with me today.