The Five Year Con: A Warning from Manchester

The Five Year Con A Warning from Manchester

I found myself a single guy again at the age of 46 that was in 2014. Although I’ve never been married as I’ve never seemed to have met the right woman I had three long relationships and spent years at a time living the free life. Maybe marriage wasn’t for me and I’ve had a commitment problem I really don’t know. I’m 55 at the moment.

In 2014 I went to Thailand on holiday with an old school friend. I met him in Bangkok and we planned to backpack around the islands. After spending a week in Bangkok we visited the Tiger Temple (now closed) the Bridge on the River Kwai and various other adventures. Then we set off to Koh Samui.

First night there we went on a drinking session where I met a beautiful Laos woman who I took back to my bungalow and had some of the best aerobics I’ve ever had. I never tipped her any money I just took her for the odd meal and some drinks. She was my first taste of Asian girls and I liked it a lot. After meeting her and as I said we were backpacking around the island I didn’t see her again. After visiting Ko Phangan we then went to Ko Tao. I met a bar girl who I bar fined for a few days. I had an enjoyable holiday in Thailand then headed back home to Manchester in the UK.

Back in Manchester The Dating Site

Back home in Manchester I thought it’s time to find a girlfriend here in England. I went on to a free dating site to try my luck. After a few weeks there didn’t seem to be much on there but then I saw a Thai woman living in the Manchester area looking for a boyfriend. ‘Sounds interesting’ I thought. I messaged her and after just a few messages she sent me her number which was unexpected as normally it takes a lot of messaging to and fro to get a number off a lady in the UK.

Soon after we chatted and she wanted to meet me straight away that evening. So we met up but to my surprise she brought her friend with her who was Vietnamese and seemed to be pushing me towards her instead. The date went quite well with the both of them and a week later they both visited my home. They seemed impressed with my house and asked me ‘Do you own this outright?’ I thought that was a bit of a cheeky question but thought maybe they are just checking if I’m financially stable for the future like Asian women do.

After that day I noticed the Thai lady seemed much more interested in me and stopped trying to push the Vietnamese girl onto me. Soon afterwards the Thai lady came and stayed over at my house where we had some good aerobics. We also started seeing each other properly and went out together for meals films and the like. Like all Thai women she was an excellent cook and owned a food place in Manchester. She would come and cook fantastic food for me. It was going very well.

Moving In

Around a month later she said ‘Why don’t you come and move in with me and rent your house out? You can get some extra money and you don’t have to pay anything towards my bills at all.’ So soon after that I moved in with her. At that point I had left my house empty just in case anything went wrong in the relationship which I thought was a wise decision to take.

Soon after this she started talking of retirement and going back to Thailand to retire and asked if I would like to go there and retire with her. I said ‘Yeah that sounds good.’

About a year later we had been living together and getting on quite well. I rented my house out which was difficult as I had spent years of hard work trying to get it really nice. It’s difficult letting strangers live in your home even though they’re paying you rent because people treat your property differently than you treat it yourself. Eventually I got my head around it and I rented out my house. I also sold many personal things and I gave some items to charity shops because I had nowhere to store them and really regretted my decision years later.

The Pickup Truck and the Land

Around 18 months later she asked me to buy a pickup truck in Thailand. She told me she would buy land to the same value as the pickup truck and we would be 50 50 all the way when we retired. We planned our visit to Thailand and would stay in her hotel she owned there this was about 18 months into the relationship.

So convinced it was the right thing to do I bought a brand new Toyota pickup truck over there which cost about 20000 English pounds and she bought a plot of land for approximately the same value.

When I got to Thailand I wondered if I’d made a mistake as I didn’t really like it that much. It was too much of a culture shock as it wasn’t a tourist area and was totally different from when I’d visited as a tourist years earlier. I also regretted that I had purchased the pickup truck.

It also transpired that she had a 23 year old son who couldn’t speak any English at all and obviously I couldn’t speak Thai. I tried to be friends with him but found it difficult as we couldn’t communicate. He seemed to be massively spoiled by his mother and she wouldn’t hear a bad word against him however true it might be. She actually thought the sun shone out of his backside.

In the end I had an exciting holiday in Thailand and drove the new pickup truck around the northern mountains of Thailand towards Burma. We went to lots of different places in Northern Thailand.

The Warnings

For the next four years we lived together in England above her food shop near Manchester which was a successful business and she made a lot of money from while I worked full time elsewhere.

One day around this time a guy at work warned me. He said ‘You know you can’t own land or property in Thailand don’t you?’ I said I didn’t know that. He warned me again everything would be in the Thai person’s name if anything is purchased together.

We would visit Thailand around three or four weeks every Christmas and she would plan the future. She was planning to build a house there. She said it would cost around 800000 Baht to build a big four bedroomed house in Thailand. I ended up giving her half 400000 Baht towards the house. I had already given her a new pickup truck and around 10000 towards the cost of an extra piece of land and to build some walls.

We had some great holidays over there exploring and visiting neighboring countries but I felt something wasn’t right. Sometimes I had doubts about it all.

For example a guy I know who had been going to Thailand to do Thai boxing for 30 years was over there so one day we went for a drink together. Almost as soon as I had walked away from my Thai girlfriend he said ‘I’ve been coming out here for 30 years and I’ve seen a lot of guys come here to live with Thai women and not one of them has come out of it good.’ He said this after various others had warned me about Thai women and people mysteriously falling off balconies over there. But to be fair I think it was mainly bar girls girls who worked in beer bars.

The End

By October 2018 I had been living with my Thai girlfriend for about five years approximately. It was a strenuous time as she wanted more money to build the house which was over budget. We had already booked and paid for flights and I think she knew I was having some doubts in the back of my mind.

I still remember it very well. I came home from work and sat down. She came over to me and said ‘Do you still want to build the house in Thailand?’ I responded with ‘No.’ Within seconds she took a suitcase off the top of the wardrobe packed all my clothes into it and told me to get out. This was after five years of living together. Luckily my father let me live with him for a while.

She was an incredibly likeable person by the people around her very friendly very chatty. She would buy people Christmas presents that she went to the gym with. Everyone seemed to love her. When I first met her she said she had left Thailand as a chef and went to work in Switzerland in a hotel. She then lived in Belgium for a few years as a chef. She was always calling bar girls ‘no good’ for no apparent reason. Thinking about it I think that’s what she was in the past a bar girl. She had probably got married to some unfortunate guy and he had taken her to Europe. No one will ever know the truth.

On the financial side of things she had over 30000 pounds out of me and would not return any of my belongings which amounted to a few thousand pounds on top. Some of the items were in Thailand expensive cameras mountain bikes and other items. Even when I asked for some personal things of no value to anyone she wouldn’t return any of it. It was as if she wanted to take every single thing right down to the last penny. She wasted over five years of my life just to try and get money out of me. She concocted elaborate lies just to cheat me.

I also believe that the hotel which she still owns in Chiang Mai was gained by cheating other guys out of thousands of pounds years before she met me here in the UK.

My father said it right when he said ‘She is capable of anything and she never loved you.’ To be able to pack your suitcase and throw you out on the street without a second thought after five years of living together is truly heartless.

The Lucky Escape

When I look back I think that I had a lucky escape from her and I honestly believe she never even liked me at all from day one. She looked at me like a cash cow that could be milked for all I’m worth until I had nothing left and then she could move on to the next sucker.

I would say to anyone who listens to this story this is a lesson you should take on board. It’s not all smiles and hugs there is a darker side to some of these relationships.