How I Lost Everything After 10 Years Living In Thailand

In an ideal world, I would still be living in Thailand, enjoying myself, having a great life, and continuing the retirement that I always thought I deserved. Instead, I’m living in an ex-council flat in the rough end of town, not knowing how my life came to this. I’d never lived somewhere like where I’m living now before in my life. And it’s a very awful experience because it feels like I’ve just gone downhill. Downhill ever since I hit retirement. I suppose when I did retire, I didn’t retire like most people do. I didn’t retire and not do anything. I retired and thought I could make my retirement better by doing things. And Thailand just seemed like the place that fit in for somebody like me. Life now is not what I want it to be. And that’s being as truthful as I can. Life now is awful. Life now is everything that I didn’t think it would be. Some days I just look around my town, especially where I’m living, and think, how did I end up here? I even have ideas. Maybe I’m just going to save up and buy a camper van or a caravan and take that to a more scenic part of the country and live like that. I don’t know if that’s going to be a good idea.

I just don’t like what’s become of my life and it’s really awful to have to admit it. It’s one of the things that I have to admit and I hope that by getting my story out and admitting what happened, it will give me some kind of closure as to that part of my life. Even though this went on for a while and even though I’ve been back for over a year since everything went wrong, and a year is quite a long time, I was hoping to feel better by now, hoping to come up with a solution to get me back to Thailand. Instead, I’ve just withered away. I’ve just dreamt about Thailand, hoped about Thailand, and wished I was there, yet not done anything to try to get back. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I have no idea. I do hope one day to get back to Thailand, and that’s me going in a full circle. As soon as I’ve opened up my story, I want on the one hand to escape where I’m from at the moment by getting a caravan or a camper van, but of course I really want to go back to Thailand. The camper van idea is going to be cheaper. So I suppose that’s the only reason why I’m even thinking about doing something like that. I want to talk about Thailand for me and how it played quite a large part of my life. When it played the opening part of my time in Thailand, that part of my life, that wasn’t what it became for me.

It started out all the way back in 1999 when I was there for a holiday with the lads. One of them had been working in the country for a few years and he’d just finished his job and he was back at home talking about how great it was and he wanted the lads to go with him for a look. Him and two of his best mates. I was included in that and I readily obliged although I had no idea what I was getting myself into at that moment in time. I was approximately 35 years old, working a normal job, quite a stable job, married, one child, just your typical existence from where I was from. House with a mortgage, car with a car loan, everything that was in place to just get you to tick along the motions of life to the point where retirement became a thing. Although at that point, I wasn’t even thinking about retirement. I went together with those two lads. My wife was a bit hesitant about me allowing me to go, but I didn’t for a second think I would get up to no good. I can remember the mark that Thailand left on me when I got back from that trip.

I can remember going and seeing everything that you’ve heard about through friends of friends, through stories, and through your own imagination based on how people describe it. I thought about that a lot when we were on the way wondering what it was going to be like. One of the biggest problems that I found with Thailand for me, everything was better than your wildest expectations. That never happened to me before. Up until that point in my life, everything was never as good as you thought it was going to be. Thinking about it was better than doing it. Always had been the case for me. Thailand was the only thing that was different. Thailand was the only thing where doing it was better than thinking about it. And it really left a huge mark on me. No, I didn’t cheat on my wife during that time there. Yes, we went to the bars every night. My friend, who had worked there, had actually about halfway into that holiday, sprung a surprise on us, saying he wants to introduce us to someone. He’d been hiding a girlfriend who actually became his wife, who to this day, fair play to him and to her, they are both still together now, living in England, a normal existence.

They go to Thailand as and when. Living in Thailand was something that I think wore off on them as the time went by. And I just say it again, fair play to both of them. they achieved something showing that it really is possible to be in a successful relationship with someone in Thailand. He sprung this on us and we were both probably acting very childish for our age given the fact that we’d all heard the stories about Thailand and especially back then it wasn’t like it is today. You didn’t have all these new sorts of people going to Thailand.

The sorts of people who go to Thailand today were the sorts of people that 25 years ago would never have gone and would have curled their noses up. I suppose that was one of the things that I liked about it. It was a bit edgy. It was a bit frowned upon in certain walks of life. And that was something that I suppose appealed to me. Returning back after that holiday, I got back to life. And it hadn’t grabbed hold of me to the extent that I couldn’t function anymore. I mean, I’ve heard guys say that, and I can half understand where they’re coming from. But I was married. I had my job. I had my family. And I was happy in my marriage and with my family. That’s something that is important. I was happy. And life progressed and ticked over and continued. The following year we went away on holiday. Where we went I can’t remember. And the following year after that went away on holiday too and after that and after that. By the time 2005 comes around, Thailand is but a distant memory of a land that almost as if it didn’t actually go when it was something that you know you were out of transported out of your real life somehow to Thailand and it was just something that was there.

The Divorce

Now what happened couldn’t really have happened because it just didn’t happen like anywhere else you went. And I suppose it really did feel like that, that Thailand was but a distant memory, like it wasn’t even a reality. It was just something that happened that didn’t really because it felt so different to everything else. We were quite a well-traveled family. We went to lots of different places, but nowhere ever gave that same kind of buzz that Thailand gave. Nowhere. Nowhere at all. And that’s a hand-on-heart promise. Another couple of years go by up until 2010. And unfortunately, that was when the inevitable happened for me in terms of the divorce.

Why do guys even get married in the first place? That’s something I have absolutely no idea about. And I thought about it to this day. Why? Why would you get married? So many marriages end up in divorce. And at least the guys that I know who were married, who did end up getting divorced, 99% of them, it was a choice of the wife to get divorced, never the choice of the guy. The guy was the one who was fulfilling his role, who was doing what he was meant to do. But it was always the wife. I mean, not always, but at least in the situations I knew about. Always the wife who decides that that divorce is the thing to do. It ruins the families and it ruins lives. Okay. I was at this point 46, which made things even worse because all the time that I’d been working since that Thailand trip, all those hours I’d been putting in, the overtime I’d been working and the holidays I took my family on, all of that like I was doing it for half price because of divorce and losing out on money. My wife never worked. She was stay at home. And although we only had one child and at this point she was he was 15, it was her who got custody, her who wanted money for support.

She could have worked, but she chose not to. The system is just rigged against men. It really is rigged, and it’s awful, and it’s disgusting, abhorrent, even, and all the words you want to use to describe it. I found myself in just sheer depression, not necessarily because of the divorce, because I was falling out of love with her. But I would have stuck the course because that would have been the best thing to do financially. I would have kept going. I was devastated because of my financial position. We’d just paid off the mortgage 2 years before the divorce. We’ just paid it off. All that hard work, but bang, house sold split down the middle. You don’t have enough money for a house anymore. I had about £100,000 to my name. 46 years old, give or take.

Just a complete overarching feeling that I don’t belong there anymore. What’s it for? What have I done all that for? It felt like it was for nothing. I was completely bewildered about what had happened to my life, not knowing how to get back on track or what to do to put things right. It was just a very dreadful situation. And of course, what happens then when you’re still continuing to work because you can’t stop working? I’m going into work and again, this was at that time after the divorce and you get your paycheck at the end of the month and after taxes, national insurance, child support payments, and I’d pay the rent on the place I’m living in and other bills. There’s nothing left whatsoever. I’m not putting any money away at all into anything. That to me was a fine line that I wasn’t prepared to cross. And I said to myself, if I do this for a few more months and I try to make a few changes, try to put a few things in place to at least save a little bit, cuz that was what the aim of the game was, not just to work to live. If I couldn’t pull it off, I’m going to change things quickly.

A few months later, when I just got to the end of each month with nothing left, thinking to the fact that my ex-wife, who was with my child, was getting money out of me, not having to work every day. She might not have anything left at the end of the month, too. But she didn’t do anything for it, so she didn’t need anything left. It was a point in my life where I just said to myself, “Enough is enough. I’d had enough and I’m not prepared to do this anymore.” And I quit my job, saying to myself, “What do you think you’re doing? It’s not acceptable to work for nothing. I should be saving at least £500 a month, which wouldn’t be a lot, but I should be saving something, or have a mortgage and paying off the house. I didn’t have anything like that. I could have got a mortgage, I suppose, but I didn’t want one then. I didn’t want to commit right then to start again working for another 25 years all the way up until maybe 70 years old before I could finally pay off another house. I just wasn’t doing it. When I quit that job, it was obviously all hell to pay with my ex-wife, who started complaining and doing all kinds of things to try to get money out of me. Just a vindictive evil woman. That’s the only way you could describe her as being. I just kept telling myself, “What can I do? What can I do?”

Returning To Thailand And Finding A New Life

I believe it was around a few months after quitting my job, 9 years since I’d been to Thailand, or probably a bit longer than that. And I did tell myself, you’ve got to go and see what it’s like again. and I could probably afford to go on a Thailand trip for a few weeks because I remembered how happy I was when I was there. I didn’t have any connections at home now that would stop me from doing other things, too. And I reckoned with myself that I had enough money where I could spend a month in Thailand and I would still have £100,000 left at the end of it. Then I could decide what to do from there. I was thinking about all kinds of things. Moving somewhere in Europe just felt like a comfortable bed. somewhere, maybe the Algarve in Portugal or Benidorm in Spain, or somewhere where I could take myself out of where I was from because I didn’t want to be there anymore and reinvent myself, maybe go and work as a bartender. Might not have made a lot of money, but I could have afforded a cheap place to live somewhere without a mortgage. That’s what my mind was thinking about at the time. Not really thinking about moving to Thailand.

I don’t know why I wasn’t because as soon as I got back to Thailand that time, it just hit me that this is the place I remember it being. It is everything that I remembered it as. And it was like you go somewhere for a second time, usually it’s not as good as it was the first time. Usually it’s a let down and what you remembered is not the same as it was. This time it was better than how I remembered it being. Again, that’s the only time in my life when I’d done something one time and thought about it for months and years. And all of the times going by, you’re thinking about it and remembering it, thinking about how fantastic it was and all the bundled things you’ve thought about together, giving it the best time of your life. reminiscing about it, reliving those moments in your mind time and time again and it’s something that really allows you to enjoy yourself in your own mind when you’re not enjoying yourself. Perhaps you’re at work and it’s a bad day and you think back to Thailand, that’s fun. Nothing ever is as good as remembering it though, is it? Never.

Apart from now at 40 odd years old and nothing ever happened like that, you arrive in Thailand and it was better than you remembered it being. That just told me something must be real about Thailand. Perhaps Thailand could be the answer that you’ve been looking for. It’s been there secretly waiting for you, subconsciously saying to you, “What about it?” Thailand at that moment in time for me felt so far away. It felt so alien to me in a good way. I knew that I could move to Europe because at the time we were part of the EU when you could just move there, no questions asked. I didn’t know about Thailand and living somewhere like that. I thought in order to move somewhere like that, you had to be like my friend was who lived there before.

You had to get a job there. you had to be offered a job there to be able to move. I didn’t know about things such as retirement visas, marriage visas, and all the other visas that would allow people to just live there. Okay, I wasn’t at retirement age yet to get that visa, but I didn’t know anything about it. I just thought it was too difficult or it wouldn’t be possible. And I suppose that’s why I didn’t think. But it was my time there, my first night. And I want to talk about that first night back in Thailand because I remembered my favorite place that I went to that first time, a little bar, which had some amazing times in, amusing times, too. That was in a place called Pat Pong, 1999. They had those shows and those wild little situations that you saw, and I thought back to then, and I wanted to go. Unfortunately, that place had closed down. Something else had taken its place. It wasn’t a huge letdown because they had so many other places around and I just found myself walking around that evening around Pat Pong thinking how great it was and also thinking what about the other places that you went to too.

Nana Plaza was a place that I really loved and that was actually closer to where my hotel was. I’d even walked past it to get to the BTS station that got me to Pat Pong. I thought I’d go there instead and have a good time there. I walked into Nana Plaza. They didn’t have all the security guards that they have today, which seemed to be a bit offputting. At least that’s what I’ve seen on videos because I haven’t been back in a year because of what’s happened and everything like that. Walked in and I walked up to the second floor. Don’t know why I walked all the way up, but it seemed let’s just get as far away as possible from real life out on the street. I think that’s what it was. Real life is on the street outside and heaven is inside. You can get closer to heaven by going as far away as possible from the entrance. And I know that’s how I thought, but I don’t know if anyone else would feel the same way.

I went to the furthest bar away from the entrance and I felt in a really organic natural way when a girl starts talking to me that this was grain stunner of a girl in her early 20ies and we’re talking and chatting and it was just effortless and fun and enjoyable and before I know it we’re leaving the bar and before I know it Thailand has become that bit better because something like that’s possible. Something like that’s a reality. It’s a case which I’ve heard other guys talk about thinking my ex-wife didn’t behave in a way like this and she was married to me and she got so much out of me.

Thailand Could Be The Answer

This girl has just done things that my wife should have done but never did. And it was a moment where I thought to myself, perhaps you really need to look into Thailand. Perhaps you need to find out how to live here. If you don’t, you’re going to be missing out on moments like this that you could live at infinitum. You could live like this forever. It was a moment in time when my two worlds drifted apart. My old life back at home, working, a job, family, divorce, boring, same old, same old nonsense every single day. Nothing to write home about, nothing to be excited about or anything. Drifting into this new life where excitement was on every corner, where adventure was anywhere you sorted out, where normal life was more fun than the best days you had at home. That’s what Thailand was. Normal life, I felt, was going into a bar, meeting a girl, leaving the bar, having something to eat, doing all these things that you couldn’t do at home. You just went out to eat at home and it was nothing. But here you could do it with different girls. It was a moment when I said to myself, Thailand could be the answer that you’ve been looking for. How? I didn’t know. I had no idea.

But I thought about that over the course of the next week that I was there month in total. No idea I was going to spend any time apart from anywhere than Bangkok. I would leave Bangkok, but that comes later. I thought surely there are agencies and firms that help foreigners live in a place like this. Perhaps I could do some research and find one out, go and talk to them and actually point me in the right direction as to what to do. Surely, it must be possible. Again, this is quite a long time ago now. And I suppose that’s showing you how big a part Thailand played in my life. A huge part, just over 20 years, in fact. I followed my own advice myself, having a couple more wonderful nights, going to different places that I hadn’t been before, seeing different bar areas and different things.

One thing I loved about Bangkok at that time, there were lots of different sorts of bars depending on your mood. You had the wild go- go places like Soy Cowboy. You had the beer bars that were dotted around in a less you’re in-your-face kind of way. You had the more intimate style places. You had the old school places, the newer places, and everything in between that catered to any sort of guy and the mood he was in at the time. I loved all of them. It was a mood determining thing depending on which bar you went to. It was just a moment in time when life stood still for me. The first few weeks out of that month I was going to be in Thailand, life stood still and it had meaning. Life could be exciting and give me something that was change and different. Life could be what I wanted it to be. And it was. It was my time in my life that I remember very fondly today. True to my word to myself, I sought out an agency and they explained the visa options and it appealed to me. Like when you’re 50, you could just move there with a retirement visa. I was 45 at the time, so 5 years away. Can’t remember exactly, but probably sent a shiver down my side as if to say you can’t wait 5 years.

But even thinking that 5 years isn’t that long. Then there’s the marriage visa. If you’re married, you can put a bit of money in the bank and just stay. That excited me. The thought of getting married again, that was something that made me think all those girls, perhaps you could marry any one of them, and they’d be grateful to be with someone like you, and they’d love being with someone like you. That excited me, too. It was a question of not actually knowing which visa to go for. They mentioned something called an education visa. Learn Thai, get a visa to do that. A lot easier back then than it is today.

That was something that I piqued my interest a bit thinking I could do it. And I found myself thinking about things, promising when I got back home, I would think about things even more and I would put a plan in place and I would move to Thailand and I would try to make it work because that’s all that mattered. I should talk about the time after two weeks in Bangkok. I did head to a place called Pattaya because people kept talking about it. To be honest, I understood what it was for people and how great it was and it was a bit cheaper than certain places in Bangkok. Bit more bars, a bit more going on. But the thing I found out about Pattaya was it just didn’t have the big city feel. Bangkok felt like it was the center of the universe. I suppose that’s how I felt. Pattaya felt like it was this little backwater away from the center of the universe and I wasn’t interested in that. I wanted to be right in the center. I wasn’t interested being a bit away from it. And that’s how it felt to me. I loved Bangkok. Although Pattaya was a place that I had strong feelings for too and a place I really respected and loved. The fact that it existed was great.

I didn’t have the idea though that that’s where I would want to live. I was still thinking Bangkok and I hadn’t been anywhere else yet. I guess that would come a lot later too. Even still, I’m just getting to the point where I’m deciding that this is what I want to do. I got back home full of enthusiasm and full of excitement. the thoughts of going and moving to Thailand as soon as possible. But as is often the case, life gets in the way. It just does. There’s no point arguing against it. Life got in the way. And you find yourself when you’re back thinking, I better apply for another job just so I can say I’ve done it. Then you apply for it and you get it and it’s a bit more salary than before and you think, “Go on, I’ll work this job and I’ll do it for a bit, maybe a year, save up a bit, extra few thousand, then go to Thailand again and I’ll move.” 10 that goes on and before you know it, you haven’t been to Thailand again once and it’s 5 years later and you’ve turned 50 and it’s around 2014 or the end of that year.

The Decision To Move To Thailand

I suppose when you actually wake up in the morning of your 50th birthday realizing you’ve just turned 50 thinking, how has this happened? How has all that time gone? You’ve given money to your ex-wife that you shouldn’t have been giving and that money that you should have saved. You’ve built things up and of course now your child is old enough where you don’t need to pay any more money and that gives you a sense of relief because there’s no big payments anymore. It also gives you a sense of not knowing how all that time has gone without understanding what you’ve done to allow it to go. Just gone all that time. 50 years old, bang, and you’ve missed out on 5 years living in Thailand. It could have happened, but I didn’t do it. And that was a huge regret. Also, when you turn 50, those realizations are telling you you need to go back. I was still working so I could only get two weeks off work. But I went back at that year and again a brilliant time. It was amazing. This is Thailand. This is great. I could live here. I promised myself this time don’t leave anywhere apart from Bangkok and spend time there. 2 weeks and I promised myself I would go back home and I would finally put the idea in place.

But I didn’t. I didn’t put anything in place and were back again the year after and the year after. And I think it was 2015 when I went back again promising I would put something in place when I got back. I can promise you that time that this was different. It was 2015. I was 52 years old or thereabouts. That time it was like all the other times that I’d spent in Thailand. It was wonderful. Best time of my life enjoying the bars. Mainly Soy Cowboy cuz I love that place. Also, soy 4, soy 22, all the soy brilliant, beautiful places. I just picture how the times I was having and how great they were. As is the case with many guys, I found myself meeting a girl in 2015 like I did on every other trip. I met a number of goals, but for whatever reason, my mind told me that this girl was a one in a billion, not a million, a billion. She was the sort of girl that decisions need to be made for. She was incredibly modest, incredibly shy, and introverted, and just felt like the sort of girl who needed someone to look after her.

The sort of girl who needed someone to be there for her, to cherish her, to love her, and to give her things that other people weren’t able to give. I think that’s the thing for me. It was like, I saw this girl in a bar usually and she’s all full of energy and she’s been there, done that, and she’s got a wall built up in front of her so as to not get disappointed and to perhaps go through what she has to go through during her daily life. Something she does. I think it’s fair. If she wants to build that wall, if she needs a wall in place to be able to get through the day, that’s fine. But this girl, it’s like there wasn’t a wall there yet. It was like she didn’t know what was to come. Like she’d only been working in the bar for a very short amount of time.

I think what she had the first thing that happened when I walked into this bar which happened to be right at the end of soy 4 if anyone who’s been there can remember you’ve got that left turning that takes you towards soy 8 they had four or five bars in a row along there along that road that takes you to soy they have that cut through to that street although those bars aren’t there yet the same way but it’s also next to that condominium building just behind there they’ve got that condominium building I don’t know what it’s called but they’ve got the condo on that street and it’s just next to there I’m just trying to tell you exactly where it was because it’s played a huge part of my life. I walked into one of those bars and I’m chatting to a girl and another girl walks in. And oh, new lady, they said. What do you mean, new lady? She just worked one week. That was interesting. It wasn’t the fact that she’d only not worked there for very long that appealed to me.

It was just how she looked and her mannerisms and the way she behaved that actually got me speaking to her and getting drinks for her. Although she’d only worked for a short amount of time, the fact that her English wasn’t that bad was a really big thing for me. I could understand how that was the case. She hadn’t had much time to practice though, which was a great thing, too. And it was like she’d not been through this rodeo many times. Like with other girls, they’re seasoned professionals, but she wasn’t. And it was just how she seemed to be in need of love and attention and in need of being, I don’t know, good old savior complex kicking back in. And I suppose at my age, 53, I believe, with her being 22, found out she had a child, find a bit shocking given how calm her demeanor was and how lacking her knowledge seemed to be, for a lack of a better word, to how less worldly the other girls were. I just found myself being so attracted to her. Really, really attracted to this girl. The good thing about it was it was only my second night there. I’d met this girl and we’re leaving together. And I’m not thinking like I did with other girls, like what’s this going to be like? I’m thinking about what if I ask her to actually go somewhere with me? I hadn’t really been anywhere apart from Bangkok and Pattaya before.

What happens if I want to take her out of Bangkok? Let’s go to the beach. Let’s go and spend a bit of time together. And it was like she was interested in something like that, too. The way she was behaving around me, it was like she’d felt something for me. It was like I was someone who she hadn’t met before and I was this guy who could sweep her off her feet. It really felt like that. And I’m having to tell you like it was. And some people would say that’s not possible. It’s just an act, a game, and you were being played. Perhaps they’re correct, but I didn’t see it that way at the time. I just saw it as what you’ve said to yourself every single time you’re in Thailand. I’m feeling like if things go right with this girl, then I’d be stupid not to do something about it. And it was her that made me come to that decision that I needed to do move to Thailand more than anything else. And I needed to, not because I wanted to, I needed to.

Falling In Love And Staying In Thailand

That evening, and this is the first time I ever did this, I went and took her to a really nice hotel right next to Asok BTS station where they had this buffet meal. Never been in before. Always walked past and saw the sign outside and thought that’s a bit expensive, but I’d love to go there sometime to eat the delicious food. I think it was 2,800 Thai Baht plus per person. Quite expensive for Thailand. I mean, really expensive, in fact. And I suppose it’s not that expensive given the sorts of food it was. Lobster and prime rib and all this delicious food. I thought I wanted to take her there. First night, hadn’t spent much time with her. I was thinking I wanted to show myself in the best light. I wanted her to know that I was serious. And it’s strange what the mind does and how the mind plays tricks on you. But I’m telling myself that under no circumstances should you miss out on the chance to be with this girl because you’ve met someone not only that hasn’t worked in the bar for very long, but who seems to be exactly like you’d always wanted a girl to be and not had.

Might spend time with a girl and she’s everything in terms of appearance and behavior like you want, but not demeanor. Demeanor was something that I always paid close attention to. Most of the girls were the same, weren’t they? They were always like they’d been around the block. They’d been there, done that. Wall up, a guard around them to guard off from things that could go wrong. She didn’t have any of that. She was just there. She was just, I suppose, the sort of girl who would have had a wall built up around her if she continued doing what she was doing. But I wasn’t allowed, but I wasn’t going to allow that to happen. I remember taking her to this restaurant and she was in awe of it because she’d just come down from Ean. She’d never seen something like this. She was living, I found out, a bit later on, with three fans in a very tiny apartment in Onut. Really tiny with no air conditioning. Why don’t you spend an extra thousand Thai Baht a month between you for air conditioning? Well, we’re saving 1,000 Thai Baht, 330 Thai Baht each, and it was a different world entirely. The thoughts of taking her there and how she’d see it. Nobody took me place like this before, she said.

I like, and it was amusing how she was attempting to tackle some of the food as if she’d never eaten it before. She was a sight to behold, but who cared? She managed to behave with a sense of grace and a sense of elegance, even though she felt so out of place in a place like that. I just felt so great to be able to take her there, as crazy as it might sound. Then we head back to the hotel I was staying in in a situation of complete I don’t know. It’s like you’re welcoming her to the world in a way. It’s like she’s everything. Whether she’s just playing the game or not, I didn’t know. Whether she was playing it really, really well or not, because I didn’t know that’s the thing, and I was oblivious to that fact, which could have been the case, or it was exactly like I thought it was. I would probably tend to think that she was playing the game really, really, really well because she was understanding how it made me feel and how it made me behave in a way like every other guy wants to behave. They want their own girl. They want their own wife. They want their own girl who hasn’t been there, done that because it’s wrong, isn’t it? But we can’t have that.

But she was behaving like that was the case. Okay, she had a child which obviously meant certain things happened. It just wasn’t like she’d spent time with any other girl in Thailand before. It was just different hand on heart different. And it really is the truth. The following morning, I wanted to make sure she was okay. And I said it was great meeting you. So, I gave her 10,000 Thai Baht. Never done that before. And she was so grateful.

But I said to her, “I really want to go somewhere with you.” Thankful that I had just under 2 weeks left of my time there. I said, “How about we go to Koh Samui together? I’d never been there before.” I told her I was heading down there and I’d love for her to go. I also said I’d happily give her another 20,000 Thai Baht if she went and we can go for a few days. She said she’d be delighted to go with me and she needs to go and tell the bar first. She said she’ll go and tell them this evening when they opened and well I asked if she could call. She said no. It didn’t matter though and I said we’ll go too. So we spent the day together. She stayed with me for the day and we’re spending a lot of time in the hotel and we go out for something to eat again taking her to a nice restaurant and showing her what I felt was the world. I felt like I really was showing her things she’d never seen and she was really loving me because of that. Again, this is just me and my behavior and my understanding of what was going on. That evening, we went to the bar together, spoke to the mamaan, and it was arranged. You can take her, look after her. Be careful. She’s a new girl. She doesn’t know things.

Be careful. You have to be nice to her. Everything that they would say to try to make you understand that you’re having something different than most guys can have. It was like it was being forced down my throat in a way. This is different. Be careful with her. She’s new. She needs taken care of. She needs cherishing. And I was there to do that anyway because that’s what I wanted to do anyway. And it felt great that they were actually saying that. It’s crazy how I was being just so drawn in, remarkably drawn in, so totally drawn into this situation. And the thing is, I was finding myself in this thing. And it was just the moment in my life where I was thinking, now it’s time to do something about it. No more excuses to not do what you want to do. Do it. It’s time. And I could actually move to Thailand. I could do it. We left down to Koh Samui together, went to Bangkok airport, flew to Koh Samui on Bangkok Airways, and landed. and it was a very scenic island. Of course, I had splurged and spent for a luxury resort to show her the world because I wanted her to see it and experience it.

The Time We Spent In Koh Samui

Even thinking that I didn’t want to leave Thailand and be away from her, I was already thinking that. This is after I just met her. Crazy. That’s how it goes. And it’s as if I wanted to just be with her and that was it and nothing else mattered. I think we spent 5 days in Koh Samui. Great, beautiful time. During those 5 days, she had her phone completely turned off and I had my phone phoned off too. And although I didn’t really get called in Thailand anyway, it was just like we were with each other. It was like the outside world didn’t exist. It was like she was showing me things about Thailand that I hadn’t seen before. We went to a temple and she was doing the Y and the bowing to the monks and ringing the bells and things that they did in Thailand. And I was following suit, trying to blend in and to fit in. She was grateful of that. It was like that was a big part of her life. She was a bit superstitious, but she was doing these things that I felt a girl who wasn’t serious. And a girl who had been around the clock many times wouldn’t have opened up and wanted to show me the cultural side of things that mattered to her because she was trying to draw a gap between her real life and her bar life.

But she wasn’t that. It was like there was no gap between her real life and her bar life. It was like her bar life wasn’t even her life because she’d only just been working for less than a week. It was like that’s what it was. I was so drawn to that and she’s showing me these things and I’m loving it and it’s like I’m fell in love with her. No point trying to say otherwise. I completely fell in love with her to the point that I’m going to move to Thailand now. I’m in my 50s. I can get a retirement visa. I could marry her. I could get a marriage visa. And I’m going to do everything to make this a possibility. And whatever that needs to be, it needs to be. Bit older than before, about £120,000. Seeing guys move to Thailand at this point time and time again, knowing it was possible, knowing it’s real and I could make it work, I could retire, might need to do something on the side, but who cares? I wanted to be with her. The big thing was though, she appeared to want to be with me equally as much. She knew when I was going back and she kept saying, dropping little hints, I don’t want you to go back. I don’t want you to go this. I don’t want to go to the bar. I want to be with you.

I hate working in the bar. I’m scared to go there. That was one of the things that really struck me. I can even hear her saying that today. She said she was scared to go back to the bar. She said it wasn’t fun. She didn’t like it and she didn’t want to do it. She met me and she wants to be with me and she’s just pushing all this on to me and I’m, you could either say, folding for it or it’s a genuine thing. At the time it felt so genuine because if it didn’t, I wouldn’t have done what I did. When we left Koh Samui back up to Bangkok, probably just under a week left, we spent all that time together, too. every waking moment we were together and it was like we were two people who had met each other who were actually meant to be with each other. If I actually do look at myself in the mirror and say to myself, you were 52 or 53 years old and she was 22, she was 30 years younger than you. How were you thinking that such a connection was being built? But it felt like it was. It did. It was everything to me. Absolutely everything. A day before I’m due to go back, I was due to go back to work in about 3 days time. I just thought to myself, why don’t you just stay? I could stay.

Why don’t I tell my work I’m quitting? Okay, you got a few possessions in the house you’ve got, but it was a rented house. Who cares? I don’t throw it all away. What did I have in there that was of any value? Then I was thinking, I suppose I had a few possessions of pictures with my child when he was younger. What else did I have? Few ornaments. What else? A TV. What else? Well, nothing really. I could just call my son and I could say to him, “Can you go to my house? Can you take all the personal possessions that are important? You can post them to me in Thailand.

Here’s some money. He’ll do that. everything else. You can either keep it, throw it away, sell it, or do what you want with it. I called him and said that very thing and he said he would. I told him I post the key, which I did, and that was that out of the way. I had my money, which was in a savings account at that point, and not getting much interest, but it was some I could access that and I could transfer that anywhere I wanted. So, I didn’t need to go back. That was what it was. I didn’t need to. And I just said to myself, I’m not going back. That’s it. Enough is enough. Life is mine and I want my own life. And when I told her I wasn’t going back, she just seemed to be the happiest I’d ever seen her. What do you mean you’re not going back? And I told her, “No, I’m going to live here. It’s it. I’m going to be with you.” And it was decided I was going to live in Thailand. I wasn’t even going to go back home because I didn’t need to. Enough really was enough. Life really was mine. I wanted my own life and I wanted her. And that was it. And I made the decision. And I just did it. I pulled the trigger.

As soon as that decision was made, when I put the phone down after speaking to my son and I said to myself, “You’ve just done it.” I could go back now and that was it. But it felt like there was no going back. It felt like this is the best thing I’d ever done. It felt like that. And I can even enjoy the thoughts of how it felt when I was doing it even to this day. And that’s really saying something. When I did that, I can actually, if I go and I put my mind in a very specific place, if I close my eyes tightly and I block out the world from around me, I can feel good about that decision that I made at the time because it was the best decision I’d ever made in my life. The happiest decision I’d ever made in my life, too. And that’s how it was. It was great. I told her I’m staying. What do you want to do? And she said, “What do you want to do?” And I just said, “Anything you want?” And she said, “Can we go to Chiang Mai?” That felt very random, but I thought, “Why not? Let’s go there.” She said she wanted to go and see a friend in Mai who had a husband from England, too. Maybe we can go and see them because you live here now. Maybe you can have friend.

Going To Chiang Mai

I thought what a nice thing for her to say. It was so random though. I was expecting her to say she wanted to go to the hotel or she wanted to go for something to eat. But no, can we go to Chiang Mai? Yes, of course. So, let’s go. All of a sudden, 4 hours earlier, you’re dreading the thought of flying back home the following day. Now, you’re going to the airport, but to a different airport because you’re going to be flying to Chiang Mai with your girlfriend, who you had fallen in love with, who you’re going to be with for the rest of your life. That’s how much life can change in an instant. And it had changed for me. And I really was on my way. I felt about £120,000. And I’ll say that again.

That was what it was. We flew up to Chiang Mai and she gets the phone out, calls her a friend, let’s meet up. And we went to meet up with her friend from the same village who worked in Chiang Mai. She met this guy who happened to be her husband now. And I felt like he was just a typical expat. He said to me, “How long are you in Thailand for?” And I said, “Forever.” He said, “Great. How long have you been here?” I asked him. He’d been here for a long time. Told him I’d been here for 2 weeks and how I changed my mind to go back. And he looked at me and just nodded his head as if to say, “You’ve got it, haven’t you? That’s exactly what happened to me.” He made that decision about 20 years ago. I suppose that filled me with a huge amount of confidence that I was doing the right thing. If any doubts that was still in my mind had actually gone completely because of that. And that’s how I found myself in Chiang Mai and we’re staying in a nice hotel. Again, I was very well aware now that I was on a limited amount of money, but it didn’t matter. I thought for the time being, you’ve got £120,000, you could spend 20 and still have a £100,000. And that’s where my mind was.

It was such a level of happiness that I’d never felt before. We were staying in a nice hotel, met up with a friend a few more times. It was just interesting. Went around together, rented a motorcycle, went up to Doi Suthep, looking at the view of the city, and it just felt great, although not a patch on Bangkok. She said she liked it. She wanted to go. She’d never been to Chiang Mai before. Thank you very much for taking me. After a few days or probably a week, where do you want to go now? Then she said it was up to you. I didn’t know where to go, so let’s go back to Bangkok. We did. went back to Bangkok, stayed in a hotel a few days later. We’d actually rented a place in Onut after I’d been to see where she used to live and that happened to be only about 500 meters away from where she used to rent before with her two friends. Now we had a proper place together. Proper place, air conditioning and everything, the works and life began. I’d already extended my time in the country at this point and I decided it’s only early days, but I wanted to marry her. Then I could get myself a visa to live there. Don’t need a retirement visa, just get married, put 400,000 in the bank.

and I asked her and she said yes. Wasn’t very romantic though. But a couple of days later we were already married. It was so easily. I had my paperwork, went to the embassy and got that paperwork that was translated by an agent. And a couple of days later, just like that, it was we were married and it was fantastic. Then I went together with her to Lao to get myself a marriage visa, a non-immigrant visa, should I say, and I could extend that when I got back. And then I felt like I really was on the way, like I’d just done the world my own favor by actually doing what I’d done. and everything had come into line. This was 2016, I think, just turned over because I went for new year 2015 and the world had fallen into place. Everything felt right from there. It was 9 years until I was back living where I am at the moment as I opened up my story with 9 years. I’m going to go through exactly what happened with you because it’s like to go from what was the happiest and most enjoyable time of my life through the highs and the lows and the ups and the downs of a life that I thought was going according to plan to be where I am today is awful. But it just goes to show you can have the best things in the world. You can have everything. You can have everything you’ve wanted. But if you don’t have the money, you can’t have it forever. Things go wrong and you’ll find things out. That’s what happened. But that wasn’t yet. Life was still good at that moment. Life was still wonderful.

Marriage And The Life We Built

After getting married and settling in, I’d got that visa extended. That was the moment in time. And this is something we talked about ever since getting married. We need to go and have a party with the family cuz if we do get married, we need to be able to go and visit them. and she couldn’t meet like visit with me if we weren’t married because they’d have a problem in the village. Just the typical sorts of things that you’ve heard about and it just goes to show in Thailand and I suppose in Isan where she was from Nong Khai very up in the north that that’s how things worked. It was how it was and I was prepared to go along with that. I was prepared to go up there. The thing was I was banking on was the fact I wasn’t going to get to Nongai and fall head over heels in love with rural Thailand. I never pictured myself doing that before. At this point I’d heard of guys moving to rural Thailand. A number of guys who had done it built houses and started living great lives with their wives. But I’d never considered that would be something I would do. I suppose you can’t consider things until you know what it’s like. But I fell in love with it. I felt so much love in that area.

And I found it was peaceful. The people around were so friendly, welcoming, warm, and allowing you to enter their lives. They were just down to earth sorts of people. They didn’t seem to be on the go all the time. They didn’t seem to want everything. They were just happy with their lot in life. I was really appealing to that. I was really attracted to it. And I wanted people to be in a position where I was happy with my lot in life, too. And at that moment, I was. I was really happy with what I had. And I’m finding that I’m in just in love with the place. I spent quite a lot for the traditional Thai ceremony, including sins, which I was paying. And I was happy to. Even though some guy says it’s a scam, I was happy to because it made her happy.

If she was happy, she was making me happy. And that was the most important thing. It probably will make you shake your head when I admit to spending £15,000 including the wedding, the party, and the band and the girls that were dancing around on stage, which was a bit strange given that it was a wedding. But that was that a lot of money. Way too much than I should have spent. But I didn’t care because I felt like I was now welcome as part of the family, like I was part of the team, like I was it. I didn’t feel like I was necessarily a guy who was going to be a financial supporter of the family. That wasn’t something I considered. But I was now a part of the family, welcomed, and it was great. And she was thankful. She was just like she’d always been. Never. Not like she’d not been since we’d met. I met her child, too, which was strange because she was still only four years old. It was weird.

Really was. But she spent most of the time with her parents. Didn’t spend any time with us really. So, it wasn’t like her child would spend time with us at all. She was just a sweet child. Can’t say anything about her. She knew nothing. When we’re leaving Nong Khai after that, I’ve just felt this huge connection to Thailand, to rural Thailand, and to her. We’re back in our rented place and we’re thinking suppose at this point I am approaching £100,000 and I haven’t been there for very long at all. But I had got the big things out of the way. I thought the most important thing out of the way. I’ve got the big things like that and now I’m married and I’m welcomed in the family. I’m part of it. Got £100,000. What could go wrong?

The worst words. What could go wrong? 2016. Happy and content. I think throughout that whole year 2016 we just lived not really doing much of an extravagant life. had our own routines throughout that time, throughout that year. I was just happy as I’d always been. Every day was just as good as the days before when I was with her. And she was just behaving like she’d always behaved. It was like I found a real one. I’d found a girl who was real and wanted to please and wanted to be the same as she’d always been. When we met and we went up to Nonai throughout that year a few times, never thinking about living there. Always thinking about how great it was and how I loved it there and how fantastic it was. But it never really crossed my mind that we could actually live there. Not at all. I mean, it really didn’t.

Meeting Her Family And Building A Home

By the time we’re in 2017, maybe halfway through 2017 when we’re visiting Nong Khai again, and at this point, my money was going down, but it wasn’t going down at an alarming rate. Probably had about £90,000 halfway through 2017. So, I didn’t spend a lot of money, as you can see. She got a small allowance out of me. The rent was cheap, food was cheap, went to the beach, sometimes that was cheap. Didn’t spend a lot cuz we didn’t need to. By the time we’re in at this moment in time in 2017 and we’re in the village again visiting the family getting on with me very well and I was getting on with them. I am learning quite a lot of the local language and speaking that and that made everything a lot easier. But something that happened at that point which went from this is a place we could visit to being a serious consideration and contender for a place we could live. She had two sisters and a brother and her oldest sister had some land given by her mother and father. We were there and everyone was speaking with each other as normal and I’m understanding lots of it because I did my best to learn and to feel like I could be part of it. But I heard the talk about this land and apparently her older sister was in some financial struggles and she was saying she wanted to sell the land.

Her mother and father are saying, “Well, you can’t sell it because it’s family land. You can’t sell family land. It’s something you can’t do.” Then my wife and I are talking. Well, what about if we buy it? That’s what she said originally to me. And I thought, yeah, why not? What about if we buy this land? It was half a million Thai Baht. So let’s call it £10,000 or so for the land about over a ry size or right in a bit. And I felt it was a good price for what it was. Then it’s I’m saying to her, what are we going to do with it if we buy it? And she said we could keep it or we could start farming or we could raise it a bit and build a house on it.

It was that raise it a bit and build a house on it. That kind of stuck to me and thought, well, why don’t we just do that? I’d noticed recently in the past year that we’d been visiting a guy building a house quite close by. I’d seen him do there and he seemed to be happy with his life and everything there. That could be something we could do too. Let’s look into it. And I promised we would look into it as much as we could. We actually went to look at this land and I felt it was okay and everything checked out with the paperwork full and everything and we decided to do it. Why not? Let’s buy it and let’s think about things for a while and if we feel a draw to actually live there then we could. That was something that she was happy with.

So I ended up buying it, putting it into her name. That money went into that and it was all well and good. Then we’re back in Bangkok again thinking about what we’re going to do from there. It was just a draw. I feel a field draw to the village that no other way of life could actually match and actually saw us packing up everything in Bangkok at the start of 2018. You have to understand we’ve been together for a while at this point. Everything is okay. No problems, no secrets, no anything going wrong. Life is what I want it to be. Life is everything like I want it to be. And I can promise you that’s the case.

Nothing going wrong whatsoever all the way up to 2018. I think that must have been what gave me the confidence to go and build the house. We’re only going to be spending about a million Thai Baht on it. It’s only going to be small because we didn’t have a lot of money. And after that would be built, there would be enough money to just last. Knowing what I know now about the village, which was quite a lot because I’d spent time there, not expensive to live, tick over, build a great life, getting older, starting to feel my age at this point, mid-50s on and a bit, starting to get to the point where this could be a great place to actually have a peaceful life. So, we decided to go for it. 2018 it was when we started building. And unfortunately, a difficult situation because we needed to raise the lands and you’re meant to leave the land for a certain amount of time before you can build on it or something like that. But we wanted to build now. We ended up spending a bit of money to do this technique, which I still don’t really fully understand, to compact the land, and that cost an extra 300,000 Thai Baht, which we thought was okay, but I still haven’t really heard anything about that. So, I’m sure the guy who said he would do it just completely made it up on the spot.

Building The House And Losing Money

It was actually by the end of 2018 when the house was built. Now, if I’m looking at my finances, after I bought the land and everything, bought a cheap car. Again, I put that in her name. It just seemed like the easiest thing to do. I didn’t want to go to immigration to get a piece of paper so I could buy it. Why should I?

Now, I suppose I had about £50,000 left, which shows that you’ve spent a lot of money on the big things. But in terms of living, we don’t spend a lot at all. £50,000 2018, and I was in my mid-50s, so it should be good until, well, I don’t know how long really, but it should be good. I just thought it would. I suppose it was just happiness that I had throughout the time I was with her, and how everything was always going right, and there were never any arguments or quarrels or anything like that. I mean, we had the order one every now and then, but who doesn’t? It was just a sense of confidence that everything was so right and nothing could go wrong.

Now we had the house approaching the end of 2018, moving in and it was like the culmination of everything coming together all at once. Wonderful. It was great. Little ceremony in the house with monks coming in and okay, they were splashing water about and funnily enough, some of it landed on the TV, which was a bit not good. Didn’t care though.

Who cares? Just a little bit of water damage on the new TV, but it was blessed now. and they put the little triangular dot things on the white chalk on top of the door and it was like we were welcomed in. We had a place, hours, no mortgage, no anything and we can just live our lives. For the most part, for the first 6 months of living into 2019, life was great. It was fantastic.

Not spending too much money. Money is of course going down and I was noticing it going down, but I was thinking I could get my pension at some point and I should reach that. It’s going to come at some point. Could probably make it last. I could get to that old age pension. something I suppose I clung on to.

Learning The Truth About Family Money

It was though 2019 when I made the cardinal error, a huge error of deciding to give her some money to actually help one of the family members with their business. It was promised handon heart promised by them that I will get the money back. You will get it back. You will get it back. How many times do I need to say you will get it back? You will get the money back. The thing was it was about a million Thai Baht. So, and I’m shaking my head. Nearly half of what I had at the time. Probably just under half of what I had. But I lent it to them on the understanding that I would get it back plus half again.

It was just filling great like an extra year or two, an extra year and a half of living expenses I’m going to make by them giving me the interest on top. I would get it back. Of course, it was going to be paid back after however long it was going to be. They had 6 months where they didn’t need to pay anything. Then it should trickle in from there. To start with, true to their word, at least in the very very early stages, little bits of money weren’t paid back. Then we had COVID and apparently they couldn’t pay it back because of COVID. The thing was COVID didn’t really have any effect on their business. I believe this is just my understanding that they were using that as an excuse. All of a sudden now we’ve got COVID and I’d let this money and I wasn’t going to get it back.

And I’m now in a quite a bad financial situation. And it was like she was using COVID as an excuse as to why her family couldn’t give me this money back. And I believe that was the first time. And it’s scary because I’d been there for a long time at this point and I’d seen lots of things and done lots of things. I believe that was the first time I actually understood the actual 100% truth that I wasn’t valued like she valued her family because I thought I was. Up until then, I was probably completely deluded. And looking back, I was extremely deluded by that. Extremely. I believed that I was first and her family was second. Now I’d found out that that’s not the case at all. her family, a first, second, third, a family, a fourth and fifth, all the way up to however many numbers you want to add.

Then somewhere right at the end, it’s me. I really didn’t think up until then that that was the case. And I suppose how well you could say she played me and she was playing me all along because she must have been because although I found out that her family was coming first, she is still a little bit apologetic saying that she was sorry that we can’t do this and we can’t do that, we can try this. It’s like she wasn’t trying to get me to run out of money and leave. But I was thinking that must have been what was happening. That’s the thing. It didn’t seem like she wanted me to run out of money. It didn’t seem like she wanted me to leave. But she’s acting and behaving in a way like that’s making it even more inevitable. And it’s like a very quick thing, isn’t it?

When everything goes from okay to not okay. Realizing I don’t have that much money left now. Realizing I don’t have enough time to get to pension age because that’s still a long time away. Realizing all these things are happening all at once. And it’s like, was this on purpose? How could it be on purpose? How could she live with me for all those years without getting anything out of me, being okay with me, being happy with me, being content with what we were doing? How could she live like that for such a long time if this was the ultimate goal? I mean, I don’t know. I just don’t get it.

Leaving Thailand And Starting Again

Now, the problem is we’re in COVID, so we’re not spending a lot of money because we can’t go out. We can’t do much of anything. I’m distinctly aware that I don’t have a lot of money left. I really don’t. And I managed to put that to the back of my mind because of COVID because that seemed like there was a bigger thing to worry about all the way up until 2022. Not spending much money and we’re just sort of ticking over thinking about things. When it was the end of 2022, I’m staring at about a million Thai Baht in total and that’s absolutely it. I’m thinking it’s now or never. We had a strained relationship at this point because of the financial stress because I was expecting another million and a half to come from her family which would get me to the point of being able to get to my pension. But that wasn’t forthcoming because of the claims of COVID and finding out about the family situation and how they were so much more important than I was to her and finding out all this that I didn’t know before. That was meaning that our relationship was extremely strained at that time. Now she didn’t cheat and she didn’t have secrets like that.

She wasn’t behaving like she used to behave though anymore. She wasn’t exciting anymore. She wasn’t as elegant. She wasn’t as outgoing. She wasn’t as exciting. I suppose that’s the only word that you can use for it. She wasn’t doing the same that she used to do. She’s sleeping in a different room, spending more time with the family and a million Thai Baht left. If I’m working this out to myself, how long do I have to make things last for until I get my pension?

Maybe have about 120,000 Thai Baht a year to spend. Could I stretch it? I mean, of course, I couldn’t. I couldn’t stretch that. Not even close. And in honesty, though, I thought to myself, I could. What I decided to do was try. Hope for the best. And for the next two and a bit years, I drifted apart from her every day, still in the house, and she’s not trying to get me to leave, but she’s spending more time with the family, being more distant, not being the same. And we’re not spending a lot of money, though. But I’m still giving her her allowance, and I’m just trying to get to pension age. But of course, I couldn’t. It was completely unrealistic. It was at the start of 2025 when all my money ran out, and I wasn’t of an age where I could get any more money from the pension. I suppose it was when my money ran out completely, when there was nothing forthcoming to her, when I found out yet again what the truth of the situation was, that she never really cared. Because instead of her saying, “I’m so sorry. I’ll wait for you. I’ll come back and you can do whatever it is to get more and I’ll wait and I’ll be here. How do you know you what you want to do?” She was like, “No, how you know money? I need money.

Family need money. Very important. Need money.” It was such an awful thing to have to listen to hear her say those words after all those years of us being together. Money, money, and money. That was all that mattered. And it was awful because I’m starting to see things that you don’t see when you have money. When you have money, you can overlook things because you don’t think it’s about money. When you don’t have money, you can’t overlook the things because it’s blatantly obvious that it’s all about the money. That was how shocking it really was. That was how debilitating it was to me. Understanding that all this time and all these things I’d done, all the behavior that she’d done with me was contingent on the fact that she was getting money. When there’s no money there and she’s not prepared to wade, she’s not prepared to say sorry. It’s not nothing. It was awful, humbling, devastating all at the same time. Yes, she was just different. She was cold. And I can’t believe I have to go back to work in a bar, she said. There she was already in her 30s or approaching 30 or however old she was. How long I’ve been with her at this time. All those years counted for nothing because there was no money now.

It was just that’s how quickly things can go wrong for you in Thailand. That’s how quickly your understanding of what’s going on can change. That’s how quickly you can understand it’s all about the money. And the fact it was all about the money, that was something that was soul destroying. Of course, I had to leave. Then I’m going back home. I don’t have anything. Now I find myself where I am today, living in this ex council flat in the part of town which I never thought I would actually live in. It’s a humbling awful experience. And again, like I said, I want to live in Thailand, but I can’t. I don’t have enough money. I’m not going to get my pension for a number of more years. I want to buy a camper van and go and live in that to get away from this area. I want to do anything other than what I’m doing now, but I don’t have the finances to do that yet. I don’t have the wherewithal to actually try to make more money because I’m not of an age to be able to do that. Thailand completely wrecked my life. Not Thailand itself. My understanding of what Thailand was and what I could do there and the relationship I thought had wrecked me. It destroyed me. It tore me to pieces and to shreds.

And although I’m able to live, that’s only a small price to pay. I think I want to leave it by saying I lived with my wife for approximately 8 or 9 years in complete ignorance and bliss to what was the most important thing to her. Complete ignorance. As soon as the money was not forthcoming anymore, that was when the actual reality became apparent. It was the reality that completely destroyed me because I couldn’t believe it. I thought she would wait for me. I’d go back, make some more money, and go again. I thought she would do that. But all of a sudden, there’s no love there. There’s no anything because there’s no money. That was the thing that destroyed me. The fact that I’d been completely blind to what was going on. I was so blind to it. The sad thing is, if I was in that position again, there would be nothing that would have given me any understanding as to actually what was going on. That’s difficult to admit. It really is. Where I am today is not where I want to be. Whether I’ll get back to Thailand again or not, I don’t know. I suppose yet again, it’s a very extremely sad thing to say. I have no idea what’s going to happen to me from now.