A Long Distance Romance That Began in Thailand

Thomas Background and First Trips

Now Thomas the first time he actually landed in Thailand, he was about 60 years of age, 59, 60, something like that and he did become a regular visitor. Now background on Thomas: he was a full time taxi driver in a small market town in the UK. He made good money. The hours were flexible. He worked for a big company, but he was self employed. And the beauty of being self employed with a taxi company is you can come and go when you want to. If you don’t want to work for a month, you just tell them you’re not coming in, and they’ll accept it. Because with taxi companies in the UK, one of the things that are very difficult for them is finding drivers. They have to be licensed to the hilt, and it’s very difficult for them to keep drivers. So if they have a good driver who’s regular, as long as he lets them know, then it’s a really flexible job. And the money’s pretty good as well. I mean, it’s one of those jobs it’s not 9 to 5 but if you put the hours in, you can earn the equivalent of 100,000 baht a month, which is pretty good money.

Now Thomas, he was married, he had two children. He was very lucky because he had a council house. To anybody who’s not English, a council house is a government house. It was a three bedroom house with a front and back garden, very comfortable, very well built in the ’30s or ’40s. In the UK, if you have a council house, it’s minimal rent to the council the government and they’re pretty good houses.

Now when we had our first female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, she brought out a law or a rule she did what they call “buy your right to buy” and she sold off a lot of the government housing, which is a bone of contention these days because we don’t have enough government housing now. But in those days, if you lived in a council house, the government allowed you to buy your own house from the government, and it was cheap. And I think Thomas actually took advantage of this, and I think he paid something ridiculous I think it was 8,000 pounds he paid for the house in ’81 or ’82.

I knew Thomas very well in Pattaya. I’ve had lots of chats with him, and we discussed this. I’m just going on memory from what Thomas told me. So he paid about 8,000 pounds for his house. Those houses today we’re talking 30 years later, just over 30 years will sell anywhere in the neighborhood of 120 to 250,000 pounds, depending on the neighborhood. Bearing in mind that Thomas paid 8,000 for it, he paid it off pretty quickly. He had a little bit of savings from his taxi job, and he owned that house outright.

Now at this time, Thomas was married, as I say, he had two teenage children. Now unfortunately, Thomas’s wife was one of those English women who wanted a cake and she wanted to keep her cake and she wanted to eat it at the same time. What I mean by that is she didn’t like Thomas being out all hours of the day and night, and she was always moaning, she was always bitching about it, that he was never home. But on the other hand, she wanted money in her purse. She wanted lots of money. She had things to buy for the kids, things to buy for the house, and things to buy for herself. So she was always on Thomas’s back for extra housekeeping money.

Thomas’s Working Life and Family

Now the thing with taxi driving it’s one of those kinds of jobs where it’s not 9 to 5. You’re going to work when everybody else is taking their leisure time. So you’re going to be working on a Saturday night all night, you’re going to be working evenings, you’re going to be working Saturday afternoons picking shoppers up, and Sunday as well. You’ll take your time off when everybody else is at work. It’s just that kind of job any job like the hotel industry has similar hours.

Thomas was very hard working. He wasn’t a lazy man. He cared for his family, but he put in a lot of hours he was doing anywhere between 60 and 80 hours a week, depending on the time of year. Obviously, if it was Christmas and he needed more money, it would be 80 hours. If it was in the summer and he was taking it easy nice weather, he liked to go fishing from time to time then he might do 50, 60 hours. But as I say, his wife was always on his back. She wanted him around, but she also wanted money. Now you can’t have both. Either he goes out and works and brings home money, or he stays home and they don’t have money.

So to get to the point, to cut a long story short, she basically ended up meeting another man Thomas’s wife and she moved in with this man. And Thomas was left with the children. His house was paid for, obviously.

Now eventually, Thomas’s children grew up and they moved out. They did their own thing. I think the boy went to university and his daughter met a guy and moved in with him. Which basically meant Thomas was a free agent. So he’s living in this three bedroom house, totally paid for other than his taxes (that you have to pay in the UK), water bill, electric, that sort of thing. He had quite a lot of income now.

Obviously living on his own, he didn’t want to stay home and watch TV, and because of his age, there’s not a lot to do in the UK. It’s not like you can go out nightclubbing or party the guy’s nearly 60. So what does he do, especially in the winter? He worked. Because he’s working long hours just so he didn’t have to stay at home. He managed to accumulate quite a bit of money. And he was starting to get lonely, and he wanted to meet somebody.

He’d been to some of these singles clubs in the UK. I’ve never been to one, but from what I gather from other people speaking to them, the women at these singles clubs divorce clubs they’re there to meet other divorced men and women. But from what the stories are being told, they’ve just all got a chip on their shoulder. They all hate men. They’ve all been hard done by. And from all accounts, by what I hear, they’re pretty much all bitter, bitter women. And Thomas wasn’t interested in this. He wasn’t just after a leg over, as it were. He was looking for a relationship and maybe just some fun, but the women of these clubs weren’t for him basically.

Thomas Becomes Free to Travel

So Thomas, in his free time, he did surf the internet. He put things into a phrase in Google like “where are the best places in the world to meet women?” somebody who’s 60, the best way to meet a woman them sort of phrases. And as always, Thailand comes to the top of the list when women are involved.

First Trip to Thailand

He decided to take a holiday. Thomas decided to book a holiday. He was quite a frugal man, and basically he travelled via Dubai. So instead of having a direct flight which would normally cost about 500 pounds or 400 pound back then, he stopped off for a few hours in Dubai and he saved himself about 100 pounds. I think he went for three weeks the first time. Touched down in Bangkok, did the normal Soi Cowboy, Nana Plaza. But as he was there for three weeks, he’d done his research before he came out, and he decided to head down to Pattaya because he’d read what fun it is down there. And you know, age doesn’t really matter if you’ve been to Pattaya you know what I mean, or if you live in Pattaya.

So anyway, Thomas headed down this is his first trip to Thailand he’s headed down to Pattaya. He can’t believe it. He gets down there and he’s like a kid in a candy shop. Girls everywhere. I think last count there was something like 25,000 working girls in Pattaya. He’s never seen anything like this in his life.

Now obviously he’s not Barry he’s got a few quid, a few pounds in his pocket so he’s not really too stingy. He can afford to buy drinks, he can afford to go out. He doesn’t stay in a large hotel read books into I think he actually stayed in a room above a go go bar actually, 4 or 500 baht a night. But anyway, Thomas is in Pattaya. His first few nights there, his first trip, and he’s having a whale of a time.

He goes down to Walking Street. He gets scammed a couple of times with drinks and girls. It’s his first trip it’s to be expected. He makes a few mistakes. Nothing serious he doesn’t get in trouble with the police, he doesn’t get robbed. But he makes a few small mistakes, and he ends up paying for it. But he’s a quick learner, Thomas, and once bitten, twice shy. But he’s decided Thomas has decided that he loves Pattaya. It’s a great place to be. He’s 60 years of age. He could be any age in the UK he’s basically got no life: he works and watches TV. Here he’s a handsome man. He walks down the street, everybody wants to know him. So he loves it why wouldn’t you love it, especially if he’d never been there before?

So Thomas takes advantage of the situation in Pattaya bar fining girls from all over the place, you know and he’s thoroughly enjoying himself. Now eventually, the day comes he does have to head back up to Bangkok for a night before he takes his flight back to the UK. Comes back to the UK, he works throughout the winter, and he can’t stop thinking about Pattaya. He’s had a thoroughly good time. And as I say, he’s not particularly poor. He drives his taxi, he’s got flexible hours, he’s earning the equivalent of 100,000 baht a month. He’s not entirely saving the majority of that because he’s got no mortgage he owns his house outright so he’s not rich by a long shot, but he’s doing okay financially.

Now Thomas decides he’s going to be a regular. He’s going to book a flight back I think it was February he went back on his second trip. He’s decided he’s going to be a regular. He loves it. It’s his sort of town. He doesn’t know anywhere else in the world he could have so much fun. So he books it, he goes back to Pattaya a second time. He does exactly what he did the first time. He goes out and parties. He stays in a smaller style hotel to save money he’s quite frugal, as I say and he’s bar fining here, there, and everywhere. He’s anywhere between Soi 6 and Walking Street. He’s out every night. He’s taken the “rocket fuel” let’s keep it clean for YouTube but the tablets that help guys who are a bit older, if that makes sense (if you can read between the lines). So he’s taking his rocket fuel, he’s out every night, and he’s having a thoroughly good good time.

Thomas’s First Journey Through Dubai

Now Thomas at this time, he’s no longer a newbie. He’d been learning Thai. He wasn’t a fluent speaker not a long way from being a fluent speaker I wouldn’t even say he could speak very, very good. I knew Thomas, I heard him speaking Thai. It wasn’t too bad, considering he had only been out there half a dozen times. He could ask, he could barter on the market, he could order most of his food in Thai, he could tell a taxi to go left, right, stop. He could speak enough Thai to get by.

Now when he came out on this last time I’m talking about now, not the last time he came to Thailand, but the last time in this particular stretch of the story he’d been out half a dozen, so it’s either his 6th or 7th time. Now at this point, he was speaking a little bit of Thai, and he was starting to get bored with the short time experiences let’s put it that way. And to anybody who hasn’t been out there regularly, I mean, if you go out there for two weeks once a year, you’re gonna look at this video and think, “Well, you know, the guy needs to mix more water with his drinks. How can you get bored in Pattaya?” But believe me, you can. I lived there for a number of years, and as I mentioned in one of my other videos, there was a time I didn’t go out to the bars for about 8 months. I just got totally bored with it. You do come back into it, but anyway.

Thomas was in this situation now. He was going out and doing his thing, but he was putting a lot more thought into it. And he was starting to think more longer term. He was thinking, you know, he liked the lifestyle out there. He was getting a little bit bored with the short term experiences, and he started thinking about maybe laying out some plans for longer periods of time in Thailand, especially Pattaya. He thought about maybe getting a room. He could certainly afford to keep a small room on the go all the time. I mean, if he was paying 5,000 baht for a room with air conditioning and a small bathroom toilet, shower room on the side they have these, they look like cupboards, when you go away you just lock it over the door handle, nobody else can get in. So he could certainly afford to go back to the UK, drive his taxi, make money, and keep his apartment or his room he could keep that full time. And this was a way he was starting to think.

Now he was kind of thinking he wouldn’t mind getting into a relationship with a nice Thai girl. He was getting a bit fed up of the short term experiences as I said, I’m going to repeat that too many times but basically he wanted something a bit more substantial out of Thailand now. And when he went out, he was putting a lot of thought into this. He’d actually read on the internet he went back on Google and he was typing things like “how do you meet proper Thai girls, nice Thai girls, decent Thai girls” and he wanted a girlfriend basically.

Now Thomas is quite a wise guy. He wasn’t going to try and get a permanent girlfriend out of a go go bar or another beer bar because he wasn’t stupid. He’d seen other people’s relationships. There’s an old saying: you can take the girl out of the bar, but you can’t take the bar out of the girl. And that’s absolutely true. I’ve never really known a relationship to work out with a girl from a bar and a guy who’s tried to develop a relationship. It always kind of goes wrong. I don’t want to sound totally negative, but that’s my own personal experience. I haven’t known any of those relationships to actually work.

Thomas Discovers Pattaya

So with this, as I say, Thomas he’s not a stupid man he’s decided he wants to find himself a girlfriend. So unfortunately, he makes a classic mistake which a lot of foreigners make when they’re in Thailand. They’re clever enough to realize if they take a girl from a go go bar or a beer bar or that kind of establishment that kind of venue then, you know, nine times out of ten let’s say ten times out of ten it doesn’t work. So he made a classic mistake a lot of foreigners make: when they’ve been there a few times, or they go there to live and they’ve been there three months, they learn a little bit of the language, they make this mistake where they think if they meet a girl outside of those kind of entertainment venues, then 100% of the time they’re good Thai girls.

Meeting Ploy

So Thomas went round a few shops and malls and tried to chat up these girls. And eventually he came across one of the older shopping malls in Pattaya stand about halfway down the Beach Road, it’s called Mike Shopping Mall. It was one of the first. It’s nothing special now. But he was in there, and he met a girl turned out later her name is Ploy. And they have these kind of stalls in the middle of the mall. It wasn’t a glass fronted shop, it was just an open stall. And she was selling T shirts. It wasn’t her store, but she was there. She was selling these T shirts, and she was a cashier, she was a salesgirl she was everything. Boss said, “Bring her there in the morning and leave her there all day and come and collect the money at night.”

Now she spoke some English. It wasn’t bad, actually. Thomas said hello to her, struck up a conversation, and she was very friendly. She spoke to Thomas a little bit shy. Thomas didn’t go too far on the first time. He left with a smile on his face, and he went off.

Now he went back that evening actually, he was going to go back the following day, but in Thailand, the shops tend to stay open quite late 8, 10 o’clock, even midnight. So this was about 7 o’clock. He’d seen her in the day, and he decided to go back and see her again. His plan was to go back the next day to not be too obvious, but he couldn’t wait he liked her, put it that way. And he went back about 7 o’clock. She was there. And he did ask the question. He said, “What time do you finish tonight?” She said, “I finish at half past 7. My boss will be here. I’ll be 5 minutes.” And he asked her outright: “Would you like to come out to dinner?” And she accepted.

Now I’m not going to go into all the nitty gritty of it. We’ve all taken ladies out for dinner. We know how it works. You don’t need to be told from me how it works. But he took her out to dinner almost on the seafront a very nice beachfront restaurant. A little bit of a marker for Ploy she probably didn’t eat in these kind of places too regular but Thomas would have done anyway. Had dinner, it was very successful. I wasn’t sat there with him, so I can’t tell you the whole conversation. But I did speak to Thomas on several more occasions, and he told me that it went very well.

Now as I said I’m going to just say this point again one of the classic mistakes that foreigners make is if they meet a girl who doesn’t work in an entertainment venue, they’ll automatically think that she’s a good girl, she’s not a working girl. And this unfortunately isn’t always the case.

Now a real decent Thai girl from a proper good Thai family and her family are living in the town she’s not going to go out with a Western foreigner who’s five times her weight. She’s not going to go out with a Westerner who’s five decades older in age. She’s not going to be speaking fluent English and working in a small stall in a shopping mall. If she speaks fluent English very good English she’s going to have a very good job with a Thai company. And a Thai girl from a decent family is not going to meet a foreigner she just wouldn’t do it. I mean, even if she had a Thai boyfriend, normally they go out with their family chaperones there’s always somebody in tow. And 100% a decent Thai girl from a decent Thai family would not sleep with a foreigner or a Thai man unless they were maybe engaged and even then it’s not guaranteed for the guy.

Meeting Ploy at Mike Shopping Mall

So basically what I’m trying to say here, I guess, is you know, I’m not trying to be negative or put Thai women down but you can’t assume that if you meet a Thai girl in a shop, or she works in a restaurant, or any of those sort of places, you can’t assume that she’s automatically straight as a die, because they’re not. And what you’ll find is a lot of them do have regular jobs, but their incomes are very, very low. And you’ll find a lot of them work part time. So they don’t actually work in a go go bar, they don’t work in a fixed bar, but they might hang around on the beach. And they don’t mind if they don’t get a customer they’ll go and speak to a friend but if they meet the right man and he’s willing to give her 1,000 baht, then it’s a bonus. And you’ll find a lot of them do that. So they’ll have a regular job, or they’ll be at college wherever it is, and they’ll do a little bit of this on the side. Now obviously, if they can meet somebody and have a kind of full time relationship, that is a bonus. So just set that in the background there, so you know what that side of things is all about. If you live in Thailand or you’re a regular visitor, you’ll know what I’m telling you now is true. You might not agree with all of it, but this video is just my personal experience and my own opinions. They’re not chiseled in stone. You can make your own mind up.

Now Thomas at this point, he’d come to Pattaya for a month on this occasion, and he’d only been there about three or four days when he met Ploy. So he had a good three weeks to spend time with her. Now he really liked Ploy a lot. I don’t know how long it was until trying to keep it polite until he got very close to her, if you know what I mean. But he had three weeks’ holiday ahead of him with Ploy, and he didn’t want her to work basically. He wanted to spend every minute of the day with her take her to the beach, take a golf cart and take her wherever, hiking in the mountains, I don’t know. But Ploy agreed not to work, but she said she takes care of her family. And Thomas told me at the time when we discussed this, Thomas told me that he’d agreed to give Ploy at that time we’re going back a decade or so ago, two decades he’d agreed to give Ploy 15,000 baht a month not to work.

Now as soon as he told me that, my eyes went up in the air my eyes were rolling around. I didn’t want to burst his promise. As I say, he was a pretty decent chap. But I did try to kind of tell him, and I said, “Look Thomas, it doesn’t work like that in Thailand. If you meet a nice girl, you don’t pay 15,000 baht a month for her to stay with you. It just doesn’t work like that.” But he’d already been bitten by the love bug, and he wasn’t gonna be told by anybody. And so he had his three weeks with Ploy, had a good time, and that was it basically. He went back to the UK.

Now we have Skype, obviously, and WhatsApp and Line social media apps so these days it’s very, very easy and it’s very cheap to stay in contact from anywhere around the world. And that’s exactly what Thomas implemented. He was on Skype every night. She was in her room. She did seem to go back at the same time every night, so that’s a fairly good sign, I suppose. But he Skyped most nights, and he was working, saving his money, and every time he saw her on Skype, he just wanted to go back. And eventually he did.

Now from this point on, Thomas went back probably another half a dozen times. And during this half a dozen times, he did the same thing. There were no more girly bars, there were no more short time experiences. He went straight down to Pattaya. And by the way, Ploy wasn’t from Pattaya she didn’t have any family in Pattaya. She’d gone down there to work. I don’t know how she ended up in Mike Shopping Mall selling T shirts or shoes or whatever it was. But just to let you know, her family was not living in Pattaya quite an important part of the story.

And so the following six times, as I say, Thomas same sort of thing. He’d stay one night in Bangkok because it’s a 12 hour flight out of London to Bangkok if you go direct, longer if you stop off in the Middle East, and then you’ve got I’ve done it for years, it’s 18 hours door to door from when I leave my front door to check into my hotel in Bangkok. Very, very tiring. And the older you get, the more tiring it becomes. So basically what Thomas would do, he’d fly over, he’d have a night he’d check into a small hotel on Sukhumvit somewhere, I think it was the Majestic or something like that and he’d have a night in Nana Plaza. But basically he was looking forward to seeing Ploy. He’d book a taxi next day down to Pattaya, and he spent the whole two weeks, three weeks, a month, however long he was there, with Ploy. And they were basically a couple.

Thomas and Ploy’s Relationship

Now obviously, after seeing her the equivalent time of sort of five, six months because he’d been going over six, seven times, spent all his time with Ploy she appeared to be a real nice girl. Bearing in mind, he hadn’t picked her up in a go go bar or a regular bar, so he took her on face value that she was a good Thai girl. And without being negative I’m not saying she was a bad girl I’m just saying she wanted 15,000 baht a month to stay with him. You make your own mind up.

Planning a Future Together

So eventually, Thomas gave it some more thought, and he was thinking about his life. He was about 60, 61 at this point. He had plenty of money. He didn’t have any financial issues. As I said earlier, he wasn’t rich, but he was doing well. He could come and go with his taxi job. But he’d been with Ploy for five or six months. He liked her a lot. He didn’t necessarily want to bring her back to the UK because, as I say, Thomas was quite a clever guy. And one thing he did realize to bring a Thai girl out of that environment and bring her back to a small, sleepy market town in the UK it wouldn’t take long for her to get bored, and who knows what’s going to happen then. So he was quite wise like that. And quite rightly, he decided any long term relationship with Ploy was not going to be in the UK maybe a visitor, yes but he wasn’t going to try and set up home and be happy families with Ploy in the UK. He just didn’t think it’d work. And I tended to agree with him.

So he was thinking more and more Thomas was thinking more and more how could he make a long term relationship with Ploy? And he was thinking about coming out to Thailand. Now it was pretty easy to get long term visas back then retirement visas, work permits. There’s all sorts of agents everywhere. It’s all about money. If you can pay the fee, you’ll get what you want, especially back then. It was a little bit more lax than it is today, but you could basically stay as long as you wanted as long as you could fund your trips.

Now Thomas had decided he might want to he didn’t have to, because of his job. The great thing about what he was doing back in the UK he didn’t have to go along and say, “I’m giving notice, I don’t want to work for you anymore.” He could say, “I’m going away for six months, I’m going away for three months, I’m going away for a year.” And as long as he kept his badges up, the taxi company would have him back overnight. He could go back after six months, “I want to drive,” check his badges, away he’d go. So it was great for that.

So Thomas was discussing with Ploy various schemes they could come up with to let Thomas stay in Thailand long term. But obviously, although he wasn’t a poor man, he did need to think about bringing in an income. Obviously, if he was going to go out there and test the waters, stay out there, and if it worked out with Ploy and he decided to stay out there full time, then he definitely would need an income.

But he decided that he was going to need some kind of a business. He wouldn’t be able to work there. He didn’t really want to open a little beer bar. He’d seen horror stories of guys who had fallen in love with girls, opening beer bars, and within sort of two or three months, all the money had gone. That’s not what I mean, it’s not exactly what Pattaya needs another beer bar, you know. So he decided that that wasn’t what he wanted to do.

Now if you’re not familiar with Pattaya, just let you know a little bit of the lay of the land. Pattaya has several different areas of interest. Now the main area was the Beach Road it goes from the Dolphin Roundabout on Second Road all that, you’ll come down all along the beach, you’ll get to Walking Street. If you’re in a baht bus, it will turn left there, back up to Second Road, and you’ll do it again. It’s like a shoebox. And that’s one area of Pattaya. Then you’ve got North Pattaya so if you went along Second Road, you get to the Dolphin Roundabout, goes straight over instead of turning left back down to the beach, that’ll take you up to Na Kluea, which is quite nice, some nice sois up there with some nice apartments. But a lot of foreigners don’t kind of head over that way.

Planning a Future in Thailand

Now another area where you do get a lot of foreigners there, but not everybody knows about the area, is a place called Jomtien. It’s about ten minutes away in a baht bus. This is a more quieter part of Pattaya. But the great thing about it is it’s only ten minutes away from the action. So you’ll get a lot of older foreign guys who stay there in plenty of hotels and restaurants. They’ll stay in Jomtien, and when they want to be in the action, they’ll jump in the back of a baht bus 10 baht they can go to Walking Street and hang out down there and, you know, fill their boots, as it were.

Now Ploy and Thomas used to hang out in Jomtien. I didn’t actually know where Ploy lived I think she lived more central Pattaya I never did find out where she lived. So Thomas always stayed in a hotel on the beach. He changed hotels, it wasn’t the same hotel. But what he used to do he was with Ploy near enough full time. When he was there, she kind of lived with him in his room. And many times when they weren’t doing kind of activities, like you know, golf cart tours or something like that, they’d head over to Jomtien and they’d sit in the chairs you rent them for about a day. You can sit there all day and dip your feet in the water. It’s very pleasant. I’ve done it myself many, many times.

But it was during one of these trips to Jomtien Thomas used to rent a motorcycle, one of these little Honda Clicks or Waves you could basically ride up and down the seafront in Jomtien. It’s a very long beach. And one of these days, Thomas and Ploy they’re on the bike and they were looking for somewhere new to eat. It was lunchtime. They wanted to find somewhere they just wanted to go somewhere different. They jumped on the bike, they headed down the Jomtien Beach Road. About a quarter of the way down there, not too far, they turned off the Beach Road. They’d seen a restaurant, and they went to have a meal in this restaurant.

Now opposite this little Thai restaurant, there was a sign in Thai that said “For Lease.” It was a guesthouse. Ploy translated it for Thomas. Just to let you know to cut the story short basically what it was, it was a house with four bedrooms four double rooms and there was a shopfront downstairs, and you could have a bar there, you could have a restaurant there, whatever. Now from what I understand, to get in there I don’t know if it was key money or the lease I don’t think you actually purchase the building but to get in there it was something like a couple of million baht, which in those days was about 50,000 pounds, $60,000 US dollars.

Now Ploy said to Thomas, “Wouldn’t it be great if we had that place? We could have a small restaurant downstairs. We can have a bar in the evening. There’s four rooms we could live in one of the rooms, and we could let the other three rooms out.” And Thomas didn’t really give it a lot of thought. However, as time went on, Thomas was still thinking about how he could make money long term, and he kind of started thinking about this guesthouse. And he went back there on his own. He asked around, he spoke to the agent about it, he went inside, he had a look, and he kind of liked the idea of taking over this small establishment. As I say, four bedrooms him and Ploy could live in one. There’s a shopfront downstairs they could open a restaurant or a bar for very small money. He could have fitted it out, and he could have even had another business he could have put a few motorbikes at the front to rent to tourists. And so he was coming around to that idea. He didn’t think of a better idea.

So he went along to Ploy and said he’d like to do it. So they went to a solicitor’s. And Thomas just thought it’d be a case of handing over the money, signing the deeds, and they move in. Now unfortunately, in Thailand it isn’t that simple. Foreigners are not allowed to own more than I think it’s 49% of property. So I don’t know how it worked with his shop I mean, I might get comments saying “you’re totally wrong, it doesn’t work like that” but for the sake of this story, he couldn’t just give the money and have everything in his name. So that’s what I’m trying to say to you. So basically he was stuck.

Selling the House and Moving

Then the solicitor had a bright idea and said, “Well, why don’t you put 51% or all of it in your girlfriend’s name? And you can both work there, you can both live there. As long as you’ve got a visa, you’re fine. If something happens in the future, you can sell it, split the money, or do whatever you want to do.”

Now as far as Thomas was concerned, Ploy was a good girl. He’d met her in a shopping mall. He’d been with her for several months. She hadn’t done anything to raise her suspicions. And the 15,000 baht a month he thought was pretty normal and it was reasonable because she needed to send money to her family. He didn’t see anything wrong with it. He unfortunately didn’t have enough experience in Thailand to realize that a regular Thai girl wouldn’t do that. So he didn’t see any reason why not.

Now he had to fund this. The only way he could fund it would be to go back and sell his house which is what he did. Basically he went back to the UK, put his house on the market. Now those ex council houses government houses sell quite quickly for several reasons. One, they’re small but they’re well laid out. They normally have three bedrooms, a nice sized garden, they’re very well built, and they’re not overly expensive. And I think Thomas sold his for somewhere in the neighborhood of 130,000 pounds. He came, he sent the money to Ploy’s account, and he went back over to Thailand. And they did buy or they did take the lease on they did manage to open this small guesthouse, bar, whatever you want to call it.

The Guesthouse

So we’re now in the situation where Thomas has sold his house. He’s come over to Thailand full time for now. They’ve got the venue. They’ve got the establishment. They’ve turned the four rooms into guest rooms well, three of them are guest rooms and one of them Thomas and Ploy are going to live in. They’ve got to that stage. They’ve paid local tradesmen to develop the downstairs area into a bar. Plus, Ploy managed to bring in one of her friends they had a small Thai kitchen. You know what it’s like it’s sat at the back. It doesn’t necessarily have to be indoors a gas burner, two flames, a wok, a Thai person can cook a gourmet meal for 100 people. It’s amazing what they can do. So they had this small Thai kitchen, they had the bar. It was open. It was in a fairly decent location along Jomtien. It wasn’t in a real busy, busy area, but Thomas thought he could get it going. He knew how to use Facebook, he knew how to do online promotion. He had friends in the UK that were now starting to come over, and he thought he could make a go of it.

So they managed to get the whole place up and running, and they started getting customers in, and it was going quite well. They weren’t going to become rich overnight, but they were having guests. All the rooms were full. I think they were charging for 500 baht a night, renting the rooms out. They were having people come in and have drinks earlier in the evening. They were doing a dozen meals at dinner time and lunchtime throughout the day they were doing snacks. So it was okay. It was okay. Thomas was happy. He was with Ploy. He could see the money coming in, and they were doing okay.

Now Thomas hadn’t totally tied up all his affairs in the UK, so he had to go back. And now, bearing in mind everything the Pattaya end is in Ploy’s name at this point, Ploy was having a frequent visitor to the let’s call it the bar. She was having a young man that was a visitor who was apparently a brother. That’s how the story went. Now this brother would come down, he’d stay in one of the rooms they didn’t charge him anything. He’d drink there, he’d go back to wherever he came from. But apparently, he was Ploy’s brother. That’s what Thomas thought. If you asked me, I won’t say anything at this point. But anyway, he noticed Ploy’s brother was hanging around, and he had to go back to the UK and tie up his affairs. I mean, he’d sold his house, he’d transferred the money over, they’d bought the property, and it was going quite well. But he had some other things to do. Because it was starting to go well, obviously he was going to stay in Thailand, so he had to tie everything up. He went back to the UK.

Now strangely, after he’d been in the UK for about a week, he’d been Skyping Ploy as usual. She’d been talking to him. “Everything’s going well. My brother’s here helping me out at the moment. Don’t worry, you do what you got to do, and then I’ll be here waiting for you in Pattaya.”

Now about five or six days went by. For some reason, Thomas contacted Ploy by Skype as he always does, same sort of time and no answer. She didn’t pick up. Very strange. First time she’s not picked up actually. Tried again an hour later nothing. An hour later nothing. Didn’t really think too much of it. Probably thought, well, she’s busy in the bar and she must be tied up. I’ll try tomorrow.

So he tried early in the day it was morning in the UK when he tried, which would have been about 2 o’clock in the afternoon in Thailand no answer. Again in the evening no answer. Just couldn’t get hold of her. Called her mobile on WhatsApp, Line no answer. So he thought, well, I’ll call her Thai number it’s going to cost, but I need to speak to her. Rang, rang, rang nothing, no answer.

Opening the Thailand Guesthouse

So he’s starting to get a little bit let’s not say suspicious, but he’s starting to get a little bit anxious that’s a good word. He was getting anxious. What’s happening? Has she been in an accident? Has somebody done something to her? Has anything else happened?

So basically, Thomas had pretty much finished what he had to do. He booked the first available flight, and he headed out to Pattaya. And when he got to his bar, there was something about it. He looked different. He couldn’t understand what it was, but there was something he could put his finger on. Ploy was in there, but the “brother” along with a couple of friends now they refused to let Thomas into the building. They basically told him, “If you don’t disappear, you’re going to be in a lot of bother.”

And to cut a long story short, what happened was the brother wasn’t the brother it was Ploy’s long term boyfriend or husband. She’d invited him down. He’d put the thought into her brain and said, “Why don’t we take over? We don’t need this Thomas guy. It’s all in your name.” And that’s what they did. They basically cut Thomas out of the whole story.

Now Thomas, as you can imagine, he was absolutely devastated gutted beyond belief. He checked into a hotel on the 12th floor on Pattaya Beach Road later that day. He had nowhere else to stay. He obviously couldn’t stay there. He knew he put two and two together he realized what had happened. He sold his house, which was every penny he had in the world, and he bought this establishment with Ploy. He probably had ten thousand pounds left to his name that was all. Yes, he could go back to the UK and work, but his savings he plowed all into this bar. And now Ploy basically kicked him out, and she was living with a Thai boyfriend. Even though she was a so called nice girl from a shopping mall.

Now unfortunately, at this point, Thomas took a decision that I wouldn’t have taken. I would have got back on a plane to the UK. I would have rented myself a small apartment. I would have worked a hundred hours a week just to take my mind off things, and I would have started again. Unfortunately, Thomas was too devastated. He didn’t take this decision.

What he did decide to do was join the Pattaya Flying Club. And if you’ve never heard of the Pattaya Flying Club, it’s nothing to do with aviation. It’s basically when guys Western guys in particular come to Pattaya, they blow their money, they have all their money stolen by a girlfriend or something like that, and they end up in Pattaya with absolutely nothing potless, penniless. They’ve got nothing else they can do. They don’t even have the money for a ticket. So they die. They take a dive off a balcony, and they basically kill themselves.

Life in the Thailand Guesthouse

And this is what happened. He joined the Pattaya Flying Club. He drank half a bottle of whiskey, left his balcony, and that was the end of Thomas.

At this point, I don’t know I was very sad to hear what happened to Thomas. But it’s not the first time I’ve heard a story like this. I knew Thomas very well. He was a very nice man, very trusting, very decent guy. By everybody else’s standards, Ploy pretty much wound him around her finger. She was left with this bar with a Thai boyfriend. They must have been very, very happy. And I don’t know I didn’t go to the bar and find out what happened to Ploy and her boyfriend. I wasn’t interested at all. I was just very sad to lose a very good friend. Thomas, as I say, he was a great guy. He didn’t deserve that. But unfortunately, he took a very bad decision. As I say, I wouldn’t have taken a decision like that. And this is something that happens quite often in Pattaya.