My First Thai Bar Girl

The 26th of May 2011 was when the Thailand seed was firmly planted in my mind. And before I tell you why this happened, I bet nobody could guess the reason. I was 46 years old in 2011, admittedly feeling well past my prime. And that evening, I was out on a date with a woman who was a similar age to me. This happened back in my town in the UK, and it wasn’t an unusual event. I went on a number of dates since getting divorced a few years earlier, yet nothing ever came of those dates, and this date was no exception.

One thing that the date did do for me was allow me to develop a fascination with Thailand, a country that up until that point I’d never really paid close attention to. This fascination that I developed came from the fact that my date and I went to watch The Hangover Part Two. I’m not really sure what the intention of that film was, but it did make me think that Thailand appeared to be the best place in the world, and I felt like I just had to go and see what it was all about for myself.

I’m not going to say I was overwhelmed with the feeling that I needed to go to Thailand. That wasn’t the case. We all watch films and see something in those films that excites us and makes us interested to find out more. But where this differed for me was that I was actually interested in finding out a lot more. And I started to do my own research about Thailand, wondering what I would find out.

If I look back at that moment in time, I thought that what was shown in The Hangover Part Two and how Thailand was depicted in that film was how people celebrated Thailand as being. What I mean by this is that the film seemed to show Thailand as being a little bit backwards, a little bit dodgy, a little bit rundown, a little bit in the past and a little bit less developed. Yet, the most important thing was that Thailand appeared to be a place to go to party and have a great time. The most exciting thing was the fact that you only needed to spend a small amount of money. What I’m trying to say is everything that I saw in the film, I thought that was what Thailand was. Not that I’m saying that any opinions I had at the time were right or wrong, but it just looked so amazing.

When I was doing research, by research I mean just spending a bit of time browsing the internet and going on forums, everything that I saw pointed towards the fact that what I saw in the film was indeed true, and I never found out that there was another side of Thailand. Why this is important to me is because what attracted me to Thailand was that film. I even bought it on DVD when it was released and as I mentioned nothing came of that date. I found that I wasn’t going on any more dates after that because I kept thinking that I wanted to go to Thailand and see what it was like.

Where I was from at home was so dry. It was so uninspiring, so bland and boring, and nothing exciting ever happened. The thought of going to Thailand never left my mind after watching that film. It wouldn’t be until 2013 when I would finally go on that trip to Thailand for the first time to see exactly what it was like. It was the end of the year and I could remember it like it was yesterday. But what I didn’t know was just how much Thailand would change my life. Unfortunately, when everything came to a head, my life would never be the same again. And it wouldn’t be the same again because I lost everything that I had. And it happened across the space of around 5 years.

First Trip to Thailand 2013

I think everyone remembers their first time in Thailand. And I can promise you that I’m no different. Parts of that trip are a bit of a daze to this day, but other parts stand out as being some of the highlights of my life up until that moment. One thing that I find very fascinating is just how people describe their first experience in Thailand because I’ve often heard people describe their first experiences in a way that closely resembles how I feel about my own.

From everything that I had researched, there were two or three places that I wanted to visit in Thailand not different from so many other people. I knew I had to check out Bangkok because that was where the film that got me interested in Thailand was mainly set, and I wanted to go to that really tall building where the bar was just to say I’d been. I also was interested in going to the bars shown in the movie and just going to all the bars because that just seemed to be what Thailand was all about. I think that’s what excited me the most. I felt that Thailand was set up purely as an entertainment country, a place where you would go to meet girls, a place where you would go to meet people who you wouldn’t be able to meet at home. As I understand today, that’s not a very accurate understanding of Thailand. When you spend your time trying to reaffirm your own understanding by searching for things that align with how you think about something, you will often find information that says what you’re expecting is the case.

Aside from Bangkok, I was excited to go to Pattaya. Apparently, that was Party Central with loads of bars all over the city. You’ve got the beach close by as well as the islands in the distance. All kinds of amazing things. And I was also in two minds about whether I should go to Phuket. Apparently, Phuket was the place where you went for that idyllic Thailand lifestyle, although I was more interested in the old, the rundown, and the backwards and the cheap.

That’s the first time I’ve mentioned the word cheap. Maybe it’s not actually but I’m not going to lie and say that my understanding that Thailand was in essence extremely cheap was the most exciting thing for me. I never had a lot of money. I always worked hard. I saved and I saved and I paid off my mortgage as the years went by, but I never had any money spare. That was the main reason I was interested in Thailand. Aside from everything that I learned about it, the fact that I felt my money could go a long way. The fact that I felt like if I met a girl who came from a less privileged background, I would be able to show her the world and she would be able to be my rock. Someone who wouldn’t just want, want, and nag, nag, nag like my relationship experiences at home. She wouldn’t have the financial backing to be able to do that.

Arriving in Bangkok

These were all the thoughts going through my mind as I made it to my hotel in Bangkok. I did stay quite close to that big building in The Hangover where the bar was where they went at the end. Very close to the Yaowarat area in Bangkok known as Chinatown. In hindsight, it perhaps wasn’t the best location for someone interested in the nightlife. But on my first night I was there, I did manage to walk to Patpong with the help of a map, and it was still quite an exciting nightlife area back then, as opposed to what it’s become today, or so I’m told.

That night, that first night, Thailand went from being a fascination, an interest, and a country I could see myself spending time in and getting to know, to being a country where nothing else mattered apart from being in that country. I was quite shocked about everything else I saw in Thailand that wasn’t just a party side of things. All the modernity, all the efficiency that you saw in how certain things operated. And I thought Thailand was perfect because it had the best of everything all in one country. I bet you can gather that my first day in Bangkok was one of the best days I’d had in my life up until that moment that I was there.

My days in Bangkok continued to get better and better. Although the area of the city I was staying in felt like a great representation of the old and new versions of Thailand all in one. If I could change anything, I would have probably stayed around Sukhumvit instead. That was where I found myself going the three nights after my first night. Spending time around Nana Plaza, Soi Cowboy, and up on Sukhumvit Soi 22 around the Phrom Phong area. There was just so much to see and do in terms of the nightlife in Bangkok. It really felt like it was never ending.

Bangkok in that short space of time to me was so much more than a city. It was an idea. It was a lifestyle. It was a place to go if you didn’t want the monotony of everyday life at home. And if I think about it now, I even started thinking about Thailand as a long term destination to live and to spend time in as a new home beyond the idea that Thailand was just a place to go on holiday. I get it that this is a touchy subject. Some people say you go to Thailand and it’s a place to go on holiday only. Some people swear by living in Thailand. And I was one of the guys leaning towards the idea that living in Thailand would be the best thing that anybody could ever do.

My last night in Bangkok, which would have been my fifth night in the country, was a night that I remember today as being one of the best nights I ever had. I was out around Phrom Phong referring to Sukhumvit Soi 22 which I already mentioned and many people who are old to Thailand will know about that bar complex that they had on Sukhumvit Soi 22 that has since been replaced by a Makro. Please understand, I’m not one of these guys who has a problem with change, though I am one of these guys who likes to reminisce about the best times of his life. And that just so happened to start for me in that bar complex on Sukhumvit Soi 22.

It was kind of like a U-shaped walkway. Bars in the middle, bars down the sides, those really old school toilets at the back. Everything just screamed the Bangkok you saw in The Hangover film. When you’re sitting down with a beer chatting to a girl, it’s not like you’re in a modern vibrant city. It’s like you’re in some Asian backwater you’ve never experienced before. Yet, you walk outside and sure enough, there are big skyscrapers and fancy malls in the distance.

Meeting the First Girl

That evening, I met a girl. It was at the bar in the center of the complex, and when I walked in, it was quite busy with a load of Japanese guys in there. So, I was thinking to myself, maybe I should just leave and go somewhere else. I didn’t do that. I ordered a drink and a few more, and I started talking to this girl who, in the early stages, just appeared to be the same as the girls I’d been speaking to on the previous nights I was out around Bangkok.

However, she said something to me that made me think that perhaps this was worth taking further. Before I tell you what it is, I know now and I do know now so say what you will, but she said she’d only been working there for 2 days, and she’d only just recently moved down from her village to the bar. She said she was shy and nervous. I didn’t question the fact that her English was very good, which should have been a sign, but I just thought that this was something that happened in Thailand. You go into enough bars enough times and you will find a girl who has just started working there. And because she said that she had just started working there, I felt like that opportunity was too good to miss.

She was 20 years old, incredibly beautiful, long black hair though again everyone there seems to have long black hair unless they’ve dyed it. And I found myself having more drinks with her. I asked her if she wanted to play pool. There wasn’t a pool table in that bar, so we left Soi 22 altogether and walked down to Sukhumvit Soi 4 because I’d been playing pool there the previous nights and there was a great place to play. So we started playing.

Should I have questioned the fact that she could play pool better than me and I could play quite well? Of course I should have questioned that, but she told me she’d only been working for a few days and I ignored all the signs that this was a complete lie. Why that’s important is because I was headed to Pattaya the following day and asked if she wanted to go with me. She said she did.

It felt very strange on the one hand when I woke up in the morning and this incredibly beautiful 20-year-old was with me and I’m thinking that I found a girl who had never done anything in the bars before because she’d only just started working. I know I overlooked all the warning signs. I know I did, but at the time I didn’t know what those warning signs were and you have to allow me to say this again. But if you go into enough bars, surely there will be times when you go into these bars and the girl hasn’t been working very long. I just thought that I’d found that girl, and I didn’t want to ruin the opportunity of being with a girl who perhaps I was the first foreigner for. I’m shaking my head, but that’s beside the point.

We’d already agreed that she was going to go to Pattaya with me the night before. So when she started waking up quite a lot later than me, she seemed excited to be going. She asked if we could go and pick some things up from her place. So she left, got some stuff, came back an hour later. When I left the hotel with her, I don’t know why I did this, but I felt like I had my head held really high. I felt like when I was looking around at all the other guys with their girls, I felt like I had found one that was different. I felt like I was lucky. My girl was brand new to this and I’m taking her to Pattaya with me. Maybe something can actually come of this.

Falling in Love in Pattaya

I was your typical Thailand newbie, making all the mistakes, doing everything stupid. I didn’t care because I was having a good time and I was really liking this girl. In Pattaya, where I was going to be for another 5 days, I did find that it was like I expected it to be. Initially though, I preferred Bangkok because you had a lot of other things to do there. Pattaya was more nightlife only and everything else was an extra, whereas Bangkok was everything and nightlife was just there as well. Because I had her with me, we went to the bars together which was fun. Though it was a different experience with her.

As the days went by, I found that this girl that I believed was the most incredible girl I’d ever met. The fact that she seemed to like me, the fact that her actions pointed to the fact that she liked me, the fact that everything was exactly like I would want it to be in terms of a relationship meant I was just throwing caution to the wind. By the end of those 5 days in Pattaya, with 4 days of my holiday left and the option to go anywhere I wanted, I’d come to the decision that I wanted this girl to be mine forever. It didn’t really help the fact that she seemed to want me as well.

And it was one of those experiences in Thailand that I have spoken to many guys about who feel the same. You’re in two extremely different feeling modes at the time. On the one hand, you’re the happiest you’ve been for such a long time. You find your happy place. You found your girl. You found the place you want to live. You’re excited. Everything is like your life has been taken up to levels you didn’t know existed. That’s half of it. Yet, the other half of it is the understanding that you don’t live there. Getting a visa for your girl to go home is extremely difficult because you’ve only just met her and you don’t have enough money to live where you want to be. It’s like you’ve got everything you want right there on one side, but everything you can’t do on the other side. It’s like everything will be perfect if you could just follow your dreams and stay in Thailand, but you can’t do that because you don’t have enough money.

That was where I was at the time. I didn’t have enough money. Those last four days that I spent together with her in Bangkok, I went from not having enough money to live in Thailand to having more than enough money to live in Thailand. I want to say that one more time because I really want to make a point of this. Those last four days that I spent with her in Bangkok in 2013, I started out as not having enough money to live in Thailand. At the end of those four days, I had more than enough money to live in Thailand. Yet, what changed? Where did that extra money come from? There wasn’t any extra money. What I had was the same. What changed was me being able to convince myself that what I had was enough. Only because the thought of not doing that was a thought worse than death. That’s what Thailand did to me. That’s what she did to me. And from that moment on, nothing mattered more than her and Thailand. I can’t believe that was me, but it was.

The day before I was due to go back home, I was a nervous wreck. The thought of being separated from this girl who I believed had completed me as a person was so awful that I didn’t even want to think about it. I knew that getting a visa for her to go home with me was going to be very difficult. We’d hardly known each other long, and we weren’t married, so it would have been hard. What I did know, based on research I’d done before even going to Thailand, was that there were certain visas you could use to stay in Thailand. If I was married to her, for example, I would only need to put some money in the bank and I would be able to extend my visa every year. When I turned 50, which would happen in a few years, I could get a visa based on that. The hurdle of actually living in Thailand was one that could be crossed very easily with a marginal amount of money.

I was of the mind, though, on that last day that whatever happened, I needed to be with this girl because not only was she the most beautiful girl that I’d ever seen and spent time with, it was also a girl who hadn’t been tainted by the bar for very long. The fact that she’d only just started working there made me feel like this was an opportunity that guys who go to Thailand over and over again would never get for themselves. I just felt really lucky and also really excited about what the future held.

Planning a Life in Thailand

I guess it’s important to say that what I convinced myself was enough to live in Thailand was what I could sell my house for. I still had a bit of a mortgage on it, but I could raise about £130,000 from that. I had about £50,000 in savings. I probably had personal effects such as my car and other items that if they all added up and I got rid of absolutely everything, could have topped out at about £210,000. I didn’t think that was enough money to live in Thailand, but I convinced myself it was. And all that mattered to me was being with this girl because she was everything I’d always wanted.

All those failed dates I’d been on, my failed marriage, everything. I’m not saying anything negative about the women I went on dates with or my ex wife, but when I looked at them and they looked at my new girlfriend as I was already calling her that it felt like looking at the most beautiful, most colorful bird in the world and comparing them to a walrus. That was what we were talking about here. And it was that that perhaps made me overconfident and overexcited about this potential new life.

We both talked about what we wanted with our lives moving forwards. And she just seemed to want someone to look after her and to take care of her, and in return she would be a traditional wife. I think every guy wants a traditional wife and I was no different. We both agreed that she would leave Bangkok and go and stay with her family. I would support her financially while working out exactly what to do.

How many times have guys done this? Gone to Thailand, fallen in love, and changed their lives because of it. I was about to do that, and in my mind, I was changing my life for the better. I didn’t see any problem with it. We spent an incredible last night together. We went to a really tall building. The name eludes me now, but you got off the BTS at the Chit Lom station, walked for maybe 20 minutes, and they had the very tall building there with a revolving observation deck at the top. They had a restaurant up there. Like I say, the name eludes me completely, but that’s where we went. We had a beautiful buffet meal and a view out over Bangkok. And I’m looking at her, then looking at the view of Bangkok, then looking back at her and thinking, “This is where I belong. This is where I’m meant to be.”

All thoughts of caution had left my mind, and this is what my life was going to be like moving forwards. We went out and in true Hangover 2 fashion went to the rooftop bar featured in the film and stayed up as late as possible so the inevitable of the next day didn’t have to come. When it did come, although I was sure I would see her again very soon and we would keep in touch, it still felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest as I had to say goodbye to her. I left her with £5,000 just to make sure she had enough. Looking back, I know that was an absolutely insane amount of money to hand over. I didn’t think anything about it. I just wanted to make sure that she knew that I was serious and that I wanted her to be okay.

Well, I left early and she was going to be checking out of the hotel we stayed in together herself. I fully expected that she would do exactly what she said she would, which was to go back to stay with her family while we worked things out. Why wouldn’t I have expected that? When I got in the taxi to the airport, I felt like I was being taken away from my happy place, like I was being taken away from the place that had eluded me throughout the course of my life. I promised myself I would be back soon.

Leaving Thailand

My feelings just got worse, though, as the time progressed. Arriving at the airport was an even worse feeling. Checking in for the flight was yet again a worse feeling, and going through immigration and getting stamped out of the country was worse by orders of magnitude than the previous feeling. Boarding the plane, taking off and landing back home each thing was taking me further away from Thailand and from the girl of my dreams.

The Unraveling of the Dream

The first thing I did when I got back was call her to make sure she was okay and that she’d made it back to her family. Okay. She said she’d actually stayed in Bangkok for a little bit longer because it was a friend’s birthday and she was going to be going back in a few days. To start with, I didn’t mind too much. But as the next few days went by, while I was busily going into work, while also speaking to estate agents to come and value my house so I could get it listed as quickly as possible, and while I was looking through all my things about what I could sell, my excitement about Thailand didn’t wane, but the understanding that this girl perhaps didn’t share the same feelings for me that I had for her was starting to come out as the days went by.

Sometimes I would call her and she didn’t answer. Other times I would call her and there would be background noise which meant that she wasn’t there where she said she was. There were times I called her and she answered quite calmly, but you could hear something off in her voice like she’d only answered because I’d called so many times and maybe she felt like she had to. When I heard a sound in the background, which I believed although I could be wrong was someone speaking Japanese, or it could have been a different language, that was when I felt like perhaps she’d answered the phone when she was in someone else’s company.

As much as I tried to dig and find out what was happening, after I’d been back for a month, I felt like she’d not even done what she said she was going to do. And I kept asking her, she kept saying she was there, and I kept believing her all the way up to the point where I even sent her a few thousand more. I’m wishing I could go back and change that because I sent her £2,000 more, even though all those warning signs were coming my way that she wasn’t doing what we agreed. But I felt so drawn to her that it was like I didn’t care.

When I called her a week later, that was when there was absolutely nothing left to the imagination. It was undeniable that she hadn’t kept her word because her phone was answered by another guy. He was speaking English, but I don’t know where he was from. Perhaps he just answered thinking it was one of her friends and it was just a joke, just playing around. As soon as I heard that, that was when the illusion of her was shattered, and I was about £7,000 worse off. I mean, I was £7,000 worse off since I’d met her.

What it should have done was teach me the lesson that I’d made a mistake by thinking I could meet a girl in a bar and everything would be good. I’d made a mistake believing that she’d only just started working there. Although it hurt and it made me feel distraught to find out that she wasn’t going to be my traditional wife, which I thought all along would be the case, if anything, it made me understand that that was why I needed to move to Thailand even more seriously than before. It wouldn’t have been a problem, I told myself, if I was still in Thailand with her, because she wouldn’t have been able to do anything because I would have been there with her all the time.

Instead of saying to myself that if I was there with her and she wouldn’t do that, it wouldn’t be because she cared. It would be because she didn’t think it would be a good idea because she would lose out on what I would give her. I just saw it as, okay, if I was there, it wouldn’t have happened. Never mind. And I got over it.

The Decision to Move

That was the moment which I look back at and tell myself, why did I still continue with the idea to move to Thailand? Why didn’t I stop? Why didn’t I take a step back and think that she’d played me so well and she’d lied to me about everything that made me do what I did? I’d committed to her, saying I was going to sell my house to move to Thailand to be with her, to do everything for her. I’d given her money and she still did what she did. That should have been everything I needed to see, to say that, okay, Thailand can be a place to go and have a good time and to go on holiday, yet not a place to live.

What I did instead of doing what I should have done was feel even more convinced to do what I shouldn’t have done. It was the exact opposite. What happened was me deciding that, okay, she was just one of the bad ones. She lied to me, never mind. But there are thousands of other girls equally as beautiful as her. And if I was there, everything would be good. I continued with my plan to move to Thailand, regardless of the fact that I’d just been played.

It didn’t take me very long to get over that girl. Although it was a few weeks of feeling upset, because it was more the illusion that she’d created about herself that I was upset about, not exactly her. The idea that I’d found a brand new bar girl was what felt exciting. That was what made me upset more than anything else. It was a real thing.

The weeks passed. My house got listed for sale. I slowly started selling lots of personal effects. I had a huge DVD collection. Wasn’t worth a lot of money, but I had so many that it was still a couple of hundred for that. I had a few coins that I sold a few thousand for all of them. A motorcycle, which was a treasured item that I’d had a long time I got a few thousand for that. I knew I was going to sell my car eventually. It was just a case of slowly getting rid of everything while continuing to work, waiting for an offer on my house. And once that was confirmed, the whole thing would move faster.

It was about halfway through 2014 when I was finally in a position to move to Thailand, and I had about £200,000. Not quite as much as I expected to have, but I was still confident it was enough. I was also, because I wasn’t yet 50, open to the idea that maybe I could find something to do over there in Thailand. Maybe get a job as a teacher because I had a degree and therefore I should be able to get a job with a work permit as a teacher because I had all the paperwork. The thought process was never that I would make a lot of money from teaching. It was something to keep me occupied, something to keep me grounded, and something to keep me from getting carried away, because I’d heard about people getting carried away in Thailand, and I just didn’t want that to be me. Keeping myself grounded was the idea. Although, I guess I ended up living two polar opposite lives once I got to Thailand. I did things that I don’t believe any sane individual would do. That was yet to come.

I wasn’t yet 50, but I couldn’t get a retirement visa anyway. So, I entered the country on a visa exempt with an onward ticket booked to a neighboring country, open to any idea that came my way.

Arriving in Thailand for Good

When I arrived in Thailand, I was only going to be in Bangkok for a few days. There was something that pushed me to go back to the bar where I’d met that girl, just to see if she was there, because part of me felt like I wanted to spend a bit more time with her. Not because I wanted to take anything further than that, but because I wanted it to feel like I was the one who changed the plans, not her. I went back on my first night in Bangkok, and she was there. It wasn’t awkward. We spent time together, and she was saying she didn’t think I was serious. She was sorry about everything, and I went along with it, telling her not to worry about it, and that we should just move forward and get past everything. We spent the night together. Then in the morning, I told her I wasn’t interested, and that was that. The reason that felt important to me at the time was because we talked before and she said she wasn’t interested in money. So, in my head, it made me feel like I’d lost £7,000 to her, but I got the last laugh. At least that’s the way I saw it.

After that, I felt like I had no purpose being in Bangkok anymore. So, I went to Pattaya, which was where I planned to live. Checked into a really cheap hotel, but it had everything great. And I spent time getting to know which part of the city I would like to live in, which part I felt was convenient to go out and have a good time, yet far enough back so that you’re not in that life all the time. I found a place to rent around Pratumnak, which to me was the perfect place to live. From there, that’s when I felt like my life actually began. I can remember being so happy and so excited that my life all of a sudden had meaning. My life all of a sudden was exciting.

I set the plan in motion to find a job as a teacher not because I wanted to make a lot of money. Like I said, it was just to have a purpose and to have something to ground me. It didn’t take me very long to find a place where I could study to get a TEFL certificate, which along with my degree should allow me to get a job.

About 3 months after arriving in Pattaya, I’d accomplished a lot. I’d found a nice place to live. I’d got myself a TEFL certificate. I’d landed a job at a private school that wasn’t paying a lot, but it was providing me with a better visa and a work permit. And I felt like I was set up in Thailand. My teaching salary covered my rent and my bills and insurance and a little on top. My savings provided an income which paid for everything else. I felt like I’d made it. I really felt like I was a Thailand success story before I’d even had a chance to be successful.

One thing that was missing though was company someone to share it with. And although I was spending time in the bars once or twice a week and meeting girls, I wasn’t like some of these guys who got so drawn into that world that they can’t do anything other than that. I was liking it. I was loving it. I was meeting girls and having a good time. But I hadn’t met anybody that I felt so good about like that girl from Bangkok until I did.

A New Girl

I’d just finished work one Friday. I was really getting into it and there were a few great guys who were teachers as well that I got along with. I was still in the reasonably early stages there and I hadn’t gone further than having a few beers with them around the school where we worked. Nothing further than that. That night I was out by myself as normal. I’d managed to separate life and holiday mode quite well and I felt very proud about that because I’d seen many guys implode around me getting so drawn into the bars that they couldn’t do anything else. I was going twice a week and that was great. Friday was the main night, then any other night when I wanted to.

That Friday I was out as normal around Soi Buakhao. I like to vary it based on the places I went from Soi Buakhao to Soi 6, occasionally Soi 7/8 and the sois around Soi 13 and Walking Street. There were so many places to go. That’s what I’m trying to say. When I was out that night on Soi Buakhao, I met a girl which wasn’t uncommon. What was uncommon was feeling like she had some kind of gravitational force pulling me in. It was everything I would have wanted in a girl and then some. 23 years old and she said she hadn’t been working in Pattaya for very long. However, ever since my experience with the girl I met in Bangkok, I didn’t pay close attention to that.

What was different about her was that although I’d met lots of girls and spent time with them occasionally, with her it went from spending time together to the next day coming and saying, “How would you like to go somewhere today because it’s Saturday, I’m not working.” She said that sounded great. So we went. Can’t remember where we went. Some place with nice gardens and trees to look at. Took about half an hour to get there on the motorcycle that I’d bought I did something I’d never used to do before. She stayed with me that night as well. Then she actually came back to my place, which I’d never done before. Usually, I would never have even thought of doing that, though I liked her so much, so it felt like the next step, even though it was only the second day I’d met her.

She stayed with me throughout the Sunday as well, and I told her I was working on the Monday. So, the plan was for her to leave on the Monday morning when I was leaving. When that time did come and I made it to work on the Monday, I found myself sending her messages saying it was great to meet her. She was responding with a cheeky smile. It was a really exciting time because I felt like I’d met a girl who was exactly what I was looking for. I told her I’d like to see her that evening after work and that she could come to my place, and she did. I knew I had to pay the bar fine because she was meant to be working, but that was a minor inconvenience that I was prepared to accept just to see if she was going to be right for me. I felt she was, and she stayed with me for the whole week.

This next part is where things take a bit of a turn. She was very open with me about the fact that she had a boyfriend who wasn’t really a boyfriend, though he thought he was, and he wasn’t living in Thailand and he was visiting Thailand soon. The idea was that they were going to meet up for a week and he’d been sending money for her. She was open about this from when I told her I actually liked her. I knew what went on with girls who worked in the bars. It was the same as me spending time with other girls, too, so never mind.

I didn’t expect to like her as much as I did. And the fact I was starting to like her made me think I didn’t really want her to do that. She made it clear that it was something she would do because she would get good money. She was open about that money and about everything. That made me accept it as painful as it was. It felt awful when she had to go and meet him. She went to Bangkok to meet him and it happened to coincide with one of the school holidays. It was great being a foreign teacher because you didn’t have to do all the nonsense the Thai teachers had to do. Many of them had to go in during the holidays and they were paid far less than I was. And I felt really guilty because they were committed and did their jobs well. For me, I could get paid more although it wasn’t a lot and not have to do all of that. I had free time and I was feeling really upset because my girl had gone to see that guy.

Two Relationships

It was insane that I even thought about sticking around with her after that. I know it was. I shouldn’t have done it, though. It was like I felt like it was a proper relationship or a candidate for a proper relationship. Occasionally, if you’re in a relationship at home, perhaps you’re in the early stages and you’re seeing other people who are both worth it. So, I told myself I just had to accept it.

What I did to make myself feel better was go to the bars again. Whether it was just something that happened the way it did purely to play with me or mess with my head, I met a girl that I liked just as much as her and we exchanged contact details. We spent time together. Because my other girl wasn’t available, I felt like the only way to make myself feel better was to get this girl to stay with me throughout the whole time my other girl wasn’t with me. We actually went together to Koh Samet a very close by island and a very beautiful one. I’d heard many guys talking about it and I’m no different. So, we went there together and I found that I was liking her. It was like I liked both of these girls and I guess that’s when I allowed my ego to get the better of me. That’s when I allowed my temptations and my desires to get the better of me. And I made some stupid decisions that on the surface were innocent enough, but really did nothing apart from set me up for disaster.

That week I spent with the new girl on Koh Samet just got better and better. Even though I knew my other girl was seeing that guy and I felt terrible about it and I missed her more than I wanted to admit, it helped that I wasn’t alone and it helped that this new girl was right there with me. My other girl and I had even arranged a time to call in the evenings, and she was open about what she was doing and didn’t try to hide anything. It was like she was trying to tell me that she loved me and wanted me, but she couldn’t turn down the thousands of dollars that this American guy was going to give her. And at the time, I understood that. She always said she didn’t like him and didn’t want to spend time with him, but that it was something she needed to do.

One day though, I didn’t even call her at the arranged time because I was enjoying myself so much on the island with this new girl. It had only been 3 days since we arrived, so I told myself it wasn’t a big deal. By the end of that week, I can’t even remember if my other girl had another week lined up with that American guy, but I’d already decided that I didn’t want to be alone, and I felt like I’d fallen for the girl I’d been on Koh Samet with as well. She was only 20 and she wasn’t lying to me about how long she’d been working there. Ever since what happened with that girl I met in Bangkok, I started telling girls that I wanted to know exactly everything about them. And if they told me things that might be embarrassing for them or uncomfortable for me, I took it as a good sign because at least they were being honest. With this girl, I felt like she was truthful.

And on the way back to Pattaya, I realized I wanted her to be with me for another week. I couldn’t go back to my place because that wouldn’t work because my other girl was staying there when she was with me. So, we spent that week in a hotel instead. At that point, I hadn’t even told the Koh Samet girl that I worked as a teacher. And part of me felt like I still had a few levers to pull if I needed to change things.

After that week in the hotel, with my other girl about to be available again, I made a decision that still makes me shake my head now. I told myself I loved them both equally. I even said to this girl, “I’m going to be living in Pattaya now and I want to find a place to rent and we can live together.” I told her I had a lot going on with work and that I traveled a lot and I had to leave all the time, but that if she wanted to be with me, then I would be with her as often as I could and we’d see where things went from there. She wasn’t enthusiastic about it in the way that I was, but she said she’d love to spend more time with me. And of course, it came with the stipulation that I would need to support her with money because she wouldn’t be working something that happens to all the guys out there. I agreed to give her 15,000 baht.

Juggling Multiple Relationships

And somehow in the 3 days before my first girl was going to be available again, I rented a cheap place in Pattaya for about 10,000 baht a month. I’d agreed to give this other girl 15,000 a month. And I told her I’d see her as much as possible as long as we kept in touch and as long as she didn’t go and spend time with anybody else. And she said she wouldn’t. I can’t believe I did that, but I did. We spent three nights together in that new place. Then I told her I had to leave and that I was hoping to come back soon. And I went back to my other place, which was a little bit more expensive. And my first girl was already waiting for me. She had cash literal cash $8,000 in her hand. And she showed it to me and told me she was sorry. I understood that it had been worth it for her in her mind. And she even gave me $1,000 in cash and said, “Let’s just be okay together.” I said, “Okay.” She told me she would continue contacting that guy, but she wouldn’t see him again and she would just take his money. I didn’t really feel bad. I told myself it wasn’t my problem, so he should have known.

That was when I turned into this guy who thought he could juggle multiple relationships. Even though I didn’t have the money to back it up, I convinced myself that things would carry on until eventually I loved one girl more than the other. We’d get married and we’d live happily ever after. As cliché as that sounds, from then on, my life came together. Although many people would say I was an idiot, I didn’t think I was because I started to feel like I actually deserved this life and that I’d actually earned it. I felt I wasn’t doing anything wrong.

Things progressed this way for quite a long time and I wasn’t really paying close attention to how much money I was spending because I was just too happy and I knew if I checked it, it would hit me hard. The way I worked it out was by telling my old girl who I did really love, but felt bad about because she’d gone to see that American guy that I had a second job at the weekends somewhere to the north of Thailand. I didn’t even say where. I just said it was quite a long way away, and it would be very difficult if we went together. Every Friday, I was going to have to leave Pattaya, go and do this job, make a bit more money, then I’d be back on Monday morning, and I’d see her after work on Monday. She didn’t appear to mind. I didn’t mind because that meant I had the weekend free to stay with the other girl.

I really started feeling like I was the man. It started feeling like I was the most important person in the relationship and like these girls who were in the relationships were there for my benefit and not for theirs. Everything started making me feel like I was a different person because I was doing things and getting away with things that, although it was costing me so much money, made me feel like I was on top of the world.

When I took a step back, probably just under a year after this began, it was mainly because I was just tired of moving between different places all the time and lying. It wasn’t that I had a problem with lying. It was that I had a problem with always feeling like I had to be on my toes and I could never make a mistake.

I think the thing that should have told me what I needed to know was the fact that both these girls didn’t care if I left for a few days. They just said, “Go.” They said they didn’t mind and they said they would wait. I always thought that they would wait. And the agreement was that under no circumstances would either of them go back to the bars, go drinking, or do anything that they shouldn’t. This was the agreement. And in my head, this is why we loved each other. I wasn’t able to check because when I was with one girl, I couldn’t just call the other. So, it was like I had to trust that everything would be fine.

The Relationship Breaks Down

This changed about a year after I’d taken on this commitment. I was with the girl I saw on the weekends and unfortunately she wasn’t feeling very well and I thought I would go out because I hadn’t really been out around Pattaya at night for a long time as I was busy with my relationships. I went out by myself on the Saturday and I was quite surprised at that because I was getting into quite a lot of different bars one after the other when I went to the bar where I met my first girl over a year ago now just under a year it might have been. There she was having a few drinks and talking to a guy. And it made me come to the conclusion that she wasn’t to be trusted. She wasn’t genuine and she wasn’t serious. And I’d just been wasting my time with her.

I didn’t even think it mattered that I had two girls at once because in my head it didn’t matter. I was paying for things. I was the one supporting them, so it didn’t matter. But she wasn’t supporting me. So, she had no business doing that. I told her I came back early because I’d quit that job. I literally told her, “I just quit my job and I came back to see you and you weren’t in the condo. Because you weren’t there, I thought I would come and see if you were here. I was hoping you weren’t, but you were.” I stormed out of the bar. There were quite a few people in. I bet I caused a scene, and I bet some of those guys were thinking, “Here’s another guy who’s in a relationship with a bar girl,” even though they probably wouldn’t admit to doing that themselves.

She came after me saying she was sorry, she wouldn’t do it again. She was lonely and bored. But I’d had enough. I didn’t want it anymore. I told her, “Take your stuff and leave.” And she did. Now I wasn’t with her anymore. That was when I understood the amount of money I’d actually spent on her. Even though she got all that money from that American guy, what I would have hoped would have happened is that she wouldn’t have taken any money from me until all that money was gone. I was still giving her the same amount anyway, regardless of the fact that she gave me that $1,000. It ended up back with her anyway. What I’m getting at is that that relationship probably cost me about £25,000. Insane, I know.

But then I found out the other relationship probably cost me about the same again, plus everything else I’d spent since I arrived. Out of the £200,000 I had, even though I’d been working as a teacher every single day, apart from weekends and holidays, I only had about £130,000 left. I really loved that lifestyle, though. That was who I was. That was who I knew I needed to be and who I deserved to be. Now she was gone.

I went back to see my other girl, thinking, “Do I believe her that she never went out and did what she shouldn’t do when I wasn’t there? Or was she just like the other one?” I chose to believe she was different and I decided to stay with her. After that, in a way, my life did start to be easier. I gave up the other condo, which saved money, and I no longer had to give an allowance to that girl. And I felt very happy to be with my main girl all the time. I was still giving her an allowance when we were together. She never went out. When I was working, because I told her that my job in Pattaya was where I would only be working now, I believe she was staying in the condo waiting for me. That was what I expected her to do because I was paying for her to not work.

We lived this life for months and months. I can’t remember exactly how long, but it could have been a year. While I was happy, I just wasn’t as happy as I was before. Everything felt more boring now. Although nowhere near as boring as life was back in the UK, it was boring based on the life I’d had before. The constant variation of two girls, the constant variation of doing different things had made me happy. I started doing that teaching to start with to have a more grounded life. And I met that girl and I loved her. But then I found out she was lying to me. I mean, I was lying to her, but that was different. Of course, it was different because she wasn’t paying for things. My new girl, though, she wasn’t paying for things either. But she wasn’t lying. At least I hoped.

Giving Up Work

I guess it was a year later when the thought of continuing to work was something I didn’t want to do. I hadn’t wasted too much money of my savings that year based on the fact I was teaching. I still spent an extra 10 to 15,000 baht out of savings, which as I say that out loud, does sound like a lot. I felt happy with my girl, the one I was staying with. But something changed around that time because I felt like I needed to go out by myself. I felt like I needed a week to myself. And because she was going to visit her family something she said she needed to do at that time before I even thought about doing something myself, I said, “Great, she could go there and I would go somewhere else,” which we did.

I went to Bangkok, spent time in the bars, spent time with lots of girls, just making sure I liked the girl I was with. And again, you have to understand in my head I was paying for things. So it didn’t matter that I had many girls, even though it would have mattered a lot if she’d had a guy other than me. I didn’t meet a girl I liked, but I loved that lifestyle. And it became a question of wanting everything, wanting the best of both worlds, wanting her for a relationship, but one or two nights a week to want to go out and wondering how I could do that without her understanding what I was doing.

When we were back in Pattaya together after we both returned, I decided I was going to quit my job. I didn’t move to Thailand for that. And although it had helped in some ways to keep me grounded, it hadn’t really because I’d still spent a lot of money, but I didn’t want to do it anymore. I was also at that age where I could get a retirement visa, which helped. I quit and then I had all this free time and we celebrated together in Pattaya and also went back to Koh Samet for a while. For about 3 months, I would say we celebrated, spending too much money, thinking we’d settle down eventually.

The thing was, when I quit that job, that was when I realized how important it was for me to be able to stay in Thailand. But I didn’t want to work. I wanted to live without working. That was when the next decision came the one that would make things worse for me later down the line. I decided the first thing to do would be to get married. That should be the first step. Then after that, we could think about what to do from there.

Marriage and Moving to the Village

Over the next 6 months, I went to where she was from a small village outside the province of Khon Kaen. We got married. I saw her family and I saw a different part of Thailand and I accepted it for what it was. We decided we were going to leave Pattaya and we were going to live there in her village in Khon Kaen. I didn’t really like where she was from. It was beautiful. It was scenic. The people were friendly, but there wasn’t anything to do.

My reason for doing it was because I just didn’t see a future in Pattaya anymore. I wanted to be with her and I still wanted to go out all the time, but it was so difficult to do that without her becoming suspicious and without paying as much money as I was because it was so expensive. The reason for leaving Pattaya was to calm down because ever since I moved to Thailand, I started drinking heavily. I was always drunk, really, and I wanted to stop that. I wanted to take a step back and enjoy life in a different way. The fact she was happy there was another reason for doing it.

I didn’t know how I expected my money to last after building a house. I just thought something would happen and something would come together because I deserved it. I was so convinced that what I was doing that I did deserve it and it was who I was that I thought after we spent some money on a house, got a car, there would be enough money left for maybe 5 years and then in those 5 years something would come good. Whatever it was, I just didn’t know what it was going to be.

We spent about £40,000 on a house, so it wasn’t a huge house, only single story, and that included the land and everything we put inside it. It was still a big pile of money out of what I had left, but I felt it was worth it. It was our future place and where I would spend the rest of my life. I got a car for about £10,000 and probably spent another 10 to 15,000 on top for other things we needed, and I was still giving her an allowance that we agreed on.

Village Life

When all that was ready and we were living there probably about 3 and a bit years since I’d moved to Thailand that was when I felt like I was settling in and I was being more sensible and careful. To start with, I thought life was great. Yet, boredom sank in so quickly, so quickly that I wasn’t expecting. Probably only a few months after moving in, I felt like a fish out of water. I was sat there twiddling my thumbs, not knowing what to do. And although I could watch TV or go on the computer, aside from that, there was nothing to do. She was just happy to go out and speak to people, sit down and gossip, which she seemed to do for hours on end. That just wasn’t something I could do because I couldn’t speak the language and I had no desire to speak the language. They didn’t even speak Thai there anyway in the village where she was from. It was more of the Isaan dialect, which would have meant if I learned Thai, I wouldn’t have been able to understand what they were saying.

Anyway, the big positive was that I wasn’t spending that much money. But as the months went by, even though I wasn’t spending that much money, I was bored senseless. That was when the next thing came. The idea to spend time in the main city of Khon Kaen, which was quite a way away from the village, but to spend a bit of time there so I didn’t lose my mind. That turned into an idea to open up a business in Khon Kaen. It was something I’d always thought about since I moved to Thailand the idea to do my own thing. I didn’t want to work for somebody else. I wanted my own thing. So, I thought, let’s do it. I never found something that interested me before, though I did when we were in Khon Kaen, just looking around the city. There was an area that had a few expat bars, and I knew there were expats living there, but I didn’t want a bar, and I was trying to stop drinking. The idea to open a small restaurant sounded like it could be good.

So, we did that. We opened a small restaurant only selling Thai food. It was something we could do together. There was a small room on top of the building. It was a shophouse and we could rent the building, spend time there as well. And hopefully the restaurant would cover the rent and give us a bit of spending money. Then we could go back and forth. We ran that restaurant for 18 months. During those 18 months, I lost all my money.

The Relationship Ends

The thing I found out that hurt more than that happened about 3 months before the inevitable came, and I still wasn’t thinking things were going to collapse until the very end. I found out that my wife was actually in a relationship with somebody in the village and had been ever since she moved to Pattaya in the first place. And that really stung. It was the last 3 months when everything fell apart when I started to come to terms with the fact that things weren’t going to work for me. I was going to run out of money and I was going to have to return home. Up until that time, even though I could see only a small amount of money in the bank, I kept thinking something good would come that eventually something would work. I was always positive-minded, and being that positive about things was why I allowed things to get as bad as they did because I convinced myself things would eventually come good, but they never did.

We got a divorce which was brutal. I managed to salvage a car which I sold and I had about 300,000 baht cash to my name and that was everything I had in the world. That was when I realized the game was up and it was the worst moment of my life. From then on, there’s nothing positive to talk about. I had to leave Thailand. And I had to go back home. I had to get another job and it took me 3 years before I could get back on the property ladder. I did it, but I ended up with a big mortgage and a big monthly payment because I could only take one out over a shorter term because of my age.

The Lesson Learned

The reason I wanted to share my story to start with was because Thailand felt like everything I’d ever dreamed my life of being, yet being able to do things there that I couldn’t do at home made me someone that I wanted to be all my life. Part of me still thinks I am that person. Part of me still wants to be that person the guy who can have two girlfriends and live between two lives, even though I know how ridiculous that sounds. Quitting my job as a teacher was because I convinced myself it was the next step to making Thailand permanent. And moving up to the village was meant to make my time in Thailand easier. But it was so boring. And living there with nothing to do, if I’m being honest, was worse than my old life before I even moved to Thailand. That’s why going to Khon Kaen and trying to start the business felt like the answer at the time because I thought it would stop me feeling bored and it would bring in a little bit of extra money to keep us going. We didn’t need a lot. We had a place to live and we had what we needed. So, in my head, it made sense, but it didn’t work. Everything cost more than expected. We didn’t sell as much as we thought we would, and we lost money. And my wife was already in a relationship with someone from the village. So, it was just lose, lose, lose.

I’ve not been back to Thailand and I don’t think I ever will. Life has never been the same again. But I still spend time watching things about Thailand because it’s still part of my life. I still see Thailand as being a big part of my life as where I’m from. If I’m not watching a video about Thailand, I’m reading news from Thailand. And I still feel connected to it even though I haven’t been for such a long time. Part of me thinks I will go back one day. But I’m terrified that I’ll fall straight back into my old ways, that I’ll love it, and that I’ll do something stupid again, because I do have money to lose now, even though it’s nowhere near what I had back then. I’m not saying anything either way. I just know Thailand still has a hold over me and there’s nothing I can do to change that.