My First Thailand Trip in 2002 and the Relationships That Followed
I thought I knew Thailand. Yet, those two small miscalculations leave me in the position I’m in today. I’m in a position of hopelessness, a position of being ripped away from where I meant to be because of the actions of others, and an understanding that the world I grew up in, the world that people near and dear to me sacrificed for, is already lost.
For the first 45 years of my life, nothing ever went according to plan. And I wasn’t able to be the person I was meant to be. Far from it, in fact. I was a shadow of my real self at home. And Thailand really managed to help me get out of my shell. What you could do in Thailand, you can still do in Thailand today. Nothing has changed on that front. But I just completely misunderstood everything that went along with it. And I hope this goes to show that while on the surface, things appear to be friendly and kind, behind the surface, things are not the same at all. It’s all a facade in Thailand. Every single thing, all a facade.
I know some people will turn their nose up at me and say I brought everything on myself, but I disagree. I do know that there will be quite a lot of people I would call them the silent majority who won’t dare to chime in with their opinions for fear of other people calling them out as being stupid. I’m prepared for any kind of negative comment that comes my way because I understand that that’s the best way for people to make themselves feel better.
All I would say to them is direct your angry comments where they’re warranted, not at me, but at Thailand for allowing what happened to me to happen in the first place and for being so disingenuous and so despicable for serving up paradise on a plate, yet never giving you a fork to prod into that paradise that you’re seeing. It’s like you can see it, you can taste it, smell it, yet never actually get a piece of it. Because those pieces of it that you’re thinking you’re getting aren’t pieces that want to be got. My life was destroyed in Thailand. My life is still destroyed today because of Thailand. And I wish I never went.
It kind of reminds me of the time when I was a small boy. It always used to be a treat for our family to go and get fish and chips. The best way for me to describe Thailand would be like saying that I went with my family as a small boy to go and get fish and chips and just so happened to find the best fish and chip shop in the country, which also just so happened to be by far the cheapest fish and chip shop in the country. It would be like building your whole life around this fish and chip shop, only for them to one day decide that they’re going to put the prices up, reduce the quality, and no longer sell fish and chips at all, but sell steamed radishes instead. Then they’d be angry when you ask them what they think they’re doing. I guess that’s probably not the best analogy at all, but I’m clutching at straws here because I’m really depressed, really desperate, and I know that my life will never be the same again.
The Beginning 2002
“How do you fancy going to Thailand?” That’s how it began for me. A conversation with my friend who had been to Thailand before and who was hankering after another trip. We used to meet up in the pub a few days a week. That was my only social life to speak about, and I’d already come to terms with the fact that I was invisible to the women at home. So having him as a friend he really was the only friend I had.
Our pub was in a really beautiful part of the country, and that’s what I think makes this even worse. Yet again, that’s where I came from, and on the surface, it’s incredibly beautiful. I loved the countryside and the buildings around my area, yet I didn’t love the people, the rules, and the regulations.
I still go to that pub today, although usually I can only make it there once a month at best because of my severe lack of finances. I still sit on the same stool at the bar and make it my monthly event. It’s about a 20-minute drive into the wilderness up over the moorland in North Yorkshire. And from where I live, I could walk there in 2 and a half hours, which is something I try to do often. No drink driving at home, which is fair enough, and you’re going to hate me for this. But one of the things I loved about Thailand was the ability to just pay a small amount of money to get out of things that on the surface were very minor things. So hate away. The way Thailand had things was brilliant. I am not saying drink driving is brilliant, but what I am saying is that there should be some middle ground between where I was from and Thailand. I guess that can come later.
“What do you want to go to Thailand for?” I answered my friend. He’d spoken about Thailand before and he’d made a few references to what you could do there, but it wasn’t something that we spent a lot of time speaking about. His answer was he needs a holiday. He needs some sun and he wants to let off some steam. Because in Thailand, there were thousands of really beautiful girls that look up to people like us as being providers and saviors and the sort of people they wish they could be, but they can’t because they weren’t lucky enough. What I know today, I know that’s not accurate his description, that is. But his description sounded so implausible that I almost felt like I had to go simply to prove him wrong.
I was self-employed, so I could pretty much go where I wanted when I wanted. Not that I had a lot of money, but I had the ability to take a break at short notice. “I’ll think about it,” I told him.
That day I’d walked up to the pub back when I went to the pub very often and we decided to have a few more drinks each because I was getting quite excited about the thoughts of Thailand. Although I was still trying not to show that I was keen because I didn’t believe what my friend was saying was possible. A few pints later and a delicious rack of lamb with mint sauce, and I was walking back over the moorland to my house, unable to shift the thought of Thailand and what it was like out of my mind.
Planning the First Thailand Trip
This was in 2002. So that should give you some understanding of how big a part of my life Thailand was. Because as of today, the end of 2025, that’s nearly 25 years Thailand has been dead front and center in my mind. I know what I know now the fact that I most likely will never return. Not necessarily because I won’t be able to save money for that. I mean, it would be hard, but I could probably scrape together enough for a few weeks. But mainly because I believe Thailand is nothing more than a fugazi. It’s an illusion. It’s a fantasy. It’s disingenuous. An almost despicable kind of place that shows you the world, shows you everything that you’ve ever dreamed of, yet never allows you to fully take hold of your slice of it. Then it will remove everything you love about the country with a straight face.
The biggest mistake of all was the girls in Thailand, because I always used to think about things and picture myself being in somebody else’s position. What would I do if I was in a position like that? When I answer myself with what I would do, it doesn’t even come close to what is accurately happening over there in Thailand. Let me just say this. I didn’t think I was a walking ATM. I thought I was a person with feelings. But in Thailand, I was just a walking white man with a bit of money in his pocket. Money that everybody wanted to take from me for providing as poor and easy service as possible. And that pains me to say because it didn’t have to be like that. And worse of all, I didn’t realize it was like that until it was already far too late.
When I returned home that day, I was kind of all over the place. Part of me didn’t believe what my friend had said about Thailand, so I was trying to come up with excuses not to go, but part of me was thinking I could afford it. And what happens if it really is like he said it was? I just got on with the rest of the day. Suppose I did like a drink, so I opened up a can of beer and turned on the TV. It was a Sunday after all, so it was a day to relax. I remember the phone ringing later that evening, my friend asking me if I’d come to a decision yet. I’d actually stopped thinking about it, but he had dragged me off the sofa back when I only had a house phone as I resisted the urge to get a mobile phone until the very end. But I could just hear it in his voice like there was something there that was hidden. Something at the back of his voice that in a way was trying to signal to me that I would be stupid if I just didn’t go. With that, I said okay to shut him up. Told him I’d meet him at the pub on Wednesday to talk about it and got back to the TV.
I don’t know if it was fate. I don’t believe in fate. But I switched on the travel channel and it wasn’t Thailand they were talking about. They were talking about India. I’d been to India before and loved it there and thought back to that time, and it really was a case of me going to India and thinking it was better than I thought it was going to be. That made me settle into the idea that I was going to go to Thailand. So, let’s work it out on Wednesday.
It really amazes me what I can remember. I have a vivid memory of that time as if it was yesterday. I can see myself as if I’m outside my own body looking at myself sitting on the sofa thinking about Thailand. Had a few more drinks, walked the 5 minutes to the local Chinese takeaway, returned home, and got on with life, thinking about Thailand in a way that I never thought about a country before.
I was on a big job on the Monday, and the day flew by. The same on Tuesday and Wednesday, and I drove up to the pub, arriving at 6:00 p.m., which was always the time we met on weekdays. My friend was there looking very impatient. It was arranged then that we would be going to Thailand together in 2 weeks’ time. My friend was going to book the tickets and I was going to give him the money back, and based on what he said about his last visit, there was no point booking hotels or anything. Just get there and sort it out on the ground. He kept talking about how cheap things were in Thailand in terms of going out, in terms of the hotels and everything. And he said booking a hotel was pointless. I even remember him saying only idiots book hotels in advance to go to Thailand. And I looked at him like, “Here we go,” while trying to give him his own sense of importance.
Getting Ready to Leave for Thailand
After that, I just put Thailand to the back of my mind. Walked up to the pub the next Sunday and again I have to keep talking about that because that’s the only thing that gives me any pleasure today. That simple walk up over the moorland to the pub. And I just pray that I’m still able to walk and that my end comes suddenly because having this simple pleasure removed from me would be the cruelest thing of all.
The day before we were due to fly, we were going to be flying from Manchester Airport, stopping over halfway in one of the Middle East countries. My friend called me saying he forgot to tell me, “Make sure you don’t exchange any money at home because you’re going to get a very bad rate. Take pounds to Thailand and exchange it there.” I told him it was already too late. I’ve already changed 500 quid. And I remember that sound he made like, “Oh no, you’ve just lost a fortune there.” He said, “Don’t change anymore.” Then we agreed to meet up at the train station in the morning, which we did. Fast forward a bit, he was right about that. I got about 25% less than I should have done if I just changed pounds in Thailand. But it was a mistake I would only make once.
We got to the airport and that’s when I could sense how excited my friend was. I mean, I was excited as well. I hadn’t been away for a long time, and it was one of those cases of going to have an early morning beer, getting ready for a long flight, and then another long flight after that. And we were both pretty drunk before we boarded the plane. A pretty uneventful flight, and then the stopover. Now, this I can’t remember which airline it was, but it was one of the Middle East ones. We were there for a few hours, got on the other plane, took off, and then you know you’re going to be landing in Thailand next. We whiled away the hours the best we could, which for my friend and I meant partaking in all the alcohol that you could get on long-haul flights. And that meant we arrived in Thailand drunk. If you’re listening to this now and you’ve been on holiday, that’s how you arrive, isn’t it? You’re there for fun. You’re there to party and to have a good time.
As soon as you walk off the plane, you do kind of sober up a bit automatically, knowing that you’re going to be walking through immigration. This was at the old airport back in 2002. And the reason I say that is because when you find yourself going to the new airport which I believed opened in 2006, I could be wrong there but when you find yourself there instead, it’s not like the old one. It’s a lot more modern, a lot more like it could be in any other country anywhere in the world, whereas the old airport had this distinctly Thailand feel. And it was that distinctly Thailand feel that would grab hold of you and not want to let go. It was like you were entering a different world. And this world was everything like you would want a world to be. But you weren’t aware at the time that this world that you were entering was so quickly moving away from how you found it into something that you were leaving behind at home.
After I got over the excitement of arrival, I’m not going to pretend I wasn’t a little bit nervous walking through customs just in case someone had planted something on me. Of course, there was nothing to worry about, and this was just one of the scare tactics I found that was used at home to stop people discovering just how much better places in the world could be.
If I just take a bit of a step back, you can see I mean, I can see that it was like the first time I saw Thailand one way, and now I see Thailand a different way. And the thing that made everything go wrong, which of course I’m going to get to, was that middle ground between the Thailand I fell in love with and the Thailand of today. It’s so vast. But if anything, those scare tactics made Thailand even better. Because the people that found Thailand weren’t like the people that find Thailand today. They were adventurous people who sought out different experiences without having to watch other people have those experiences on screen first before they’re comfortable to go for themselves.
What Thailand Means Now
It really makes me feel sick to my stomach seeing the sorts of people calling themselves expats in Thailand today. And just allow me to get this off my chest because I have the perfect example of this which I hope should give clarification for people who have never been to Thailand. I want people to understand what it’s like to hopefully warn people that Thailand is only moving closer to what many people are leaving the West from in the first place.
Now, I’m not American, but I have had a few American friends over the years in Thailand before I had to leave Thailand, which wasn’t all that long ago. One guy explained it to me perfectly. If you are American, I’m sure you’ve heard of the phenomenon at the moment with many people leaving California for places like Texas. The people leaving California who are responsible for the decline of California by their own voting habits and opinions don’t like California anymore and move to places like Texas, taking their ideas with them. Yet they don’t understand that it’s their ideas that caused the problems in the first place. I think that’s the perfect analogy for what’s going in Thailand.
I would say before COVID maybe around 2015 to 2016 is a good time to talk about. The people that went to Thailand for the most part were the sorts of people who didn’t like how things worked in their own country anymore. They didn’t like the government overreach. They didn’t like all the rules and the regulations, and they liked how things were more open and free where you could not do what you want, but pretty much do what you wanted and get away with it. Since then, and especially after COVID, it’s like the people who have caused our countries to decline to such degrees by their voting habits and opinions they are now coming to Thailand, and you see it in videos all the time. And it’s like, what are you doing in Thailand? Aren’t you aware that you’re the people ruining Thailand for the people who love Thailand the way it was? So, I hope that goes some way to understand the decline of Thailand.
Honestly, though, it does help me to come to terms with the fact about what happened to me because I do turn on YouTube all the time and then I’ll be recommended a video by someone saying they just moved to Thailand. And I look at them thinking, if somebody like you is moving to Thailand, then Thailand is already lost. Thailand most definitely is already lost because it shouldn’t attract people like that in the slightest. It should attract people like me who arrived in 2002 not knowing that after the taxi ride to the hotel we were staying at on the corner of Sukhumvit Soi 13 that I would be in for one of the most amazing nights I’d ever had in my life. And that was only the start of it.
The First Night
We left the hotel at around 6:00 p.m. So it was rather early. My friend was right about not needing to book a hotel. And I can’t remember how much we paid, but it was about 9 quid. That’s right. £9 for a hotel in the center of Bangkok. Sukhumvit Road was buzzing. I really promise this will be the last time I talk about how much better Thailand was back then, but my last time around that area, you were seeing all kinds of different people from different countries. Whereas, when I was there first, it was nothing like that. It really felt like it was set up for people from the West because that’s what I saw on the ground. There was nothing to indicate that this isn’t how it was going to be forever.
I remember spending about £30 that night. That’s how much I used to spend in the pub for a few pints and a meal. Yet that night, I had way more beers than I can remember. A really nice meal. And I woke up the following morning, obviously not remembering that much because there was a girl with me. She left not long after. I remember being in a bit of a daze. I did take a look in my wallet. I remember how much money I had and how much money I had left now. And I only spent 30 quid for the whole night for absolutely everything. If you add the hotel on top, we were talking about less than 40 quid for a night out, including a hotel and including everything that happened in the center of the capital city.
Not only was it so cheap, it was the best night I ever had in my life. If I had to take every single other night out I had up until that moment, they wouldn’t have all added together come close to that amazing time I had in Bangkok that night. And while I’m gathering my thoughts, trying to pinch myself, wondering if I would wake up from this dream because surely this was a dream. It couldn’t be real. There was a knock on the door. It was my friend, and I could tell by the look on his face that he knew I was about to say thank you, and I did. But what I didn’t know was just how much better things were going to get from there during the two weeks we were in Thailand.
Three more nights in Bangkok. Three more amazing experiences before we were going down to Pattaya. Apparently, this was like Bangkok on steroids and even cheaper. How could it be cheaper than this? It didn’t make sense. The four nights and four days that I spent in Bangkok in 2002, doing everything I wanted every second of the day, eating what I wanted, drinking what I wanted, and also having a girlfriend each day 150 quid. When I left Thailand, you couldn’t even do that for one day in Bangkok anymore, not including the hotel and meal. And while I know prices go up, it’s not necessarily the prices going up that I have an issue with. It just goes to show that that particular time that I arrived in Thailand was the pinnacle of Thailand affordability. Instead of understanding that fact, I always thought things would go back to where they should be over the years, celebrating every single piece of bad news to come out of Thailand, hoping that that would do something to devalue the currency. But it always went the wrong way.
Pattaya was even better than Bangkok. And I’m not an emotional sort of person, but seeing what has happened to Pattaya today all those other nationalities going there who weren’t there when I was there first it’s like rubbing salt in the wound. Let me clarify that, though, first. I have no issue with people from any country going to Thailand and enjoying it. The issue that I have is that I feel that the part of Bangkok that I went to first and that I fell in love with, and Pattaya they were very western-focused areas. If you went anywhere else in Thailand, that was a Thailand-focused area. I didn’t expect that the areas so near and dear to my heart would become anything more than what they were. How I found them. I kind of thought if people came from other countries, surely they’d make their own areas for tourists from those countries. I didn’t realize they would come to our areas and change them away from how I found them. This is not anything against people from anywhere. I’m not having problems with people, but it just feels very disingenuous for Thailand to let someone fall in love with something and not keep it similar throughout the passage of time. Because from that moment on, those fantastic nights I had in Pattaya, I felt like that was my place in the world and I was going to be moving there one day. If I would have known that things would have changed, I would never have moved there because I was moving to the Thailand that I found, not to the Thailand that I didn’t know was going to rear its ugly head decades in the future.
Leaving Thailand, I was a changed man. All I could think about after arriving back home was the dream to go back to Thailand as soon as I could. I wanted to live in Thailand. I spoke to a few people who were living in Thailand when I was there. And that became my mission. I decided I would go to Thailand once a year until I could move there.
The Twist Meeting Someone
And here’s where my story takes a bit of a twist about a decade twist. Because when I was there the year after, this time by myself, as my friend had met someone at home and was engaged, therefore couldn’t go to Thailand anymore, I actually met a girl in one of the bars along Walking Street. I wouldn’t want to meet a girl in a bar along Walking Street today. Let me tell you that. But back then, I loved that street and every single thing about it. I guess I was 46. The girl I met was 22. And what differed with this experience in comparison to the ones I had the year before and the five I had before I met her that year was that I actually wanted to spend more time with her and get to know her a bit. I felt like she was a person I’d been waiting for my whole life. I felt like we jelled together and I felt like we were made for each other. And this was only after I just met her.
The following morning, instead of how it usually went, I asked her to spend more time with me, and she spent every day with me. By the end of the holiday, I had decided that I wanted to be with her. I wasn’t close to being able to move to Thailand. So, I just thought, let’s keep in touch for a bit. Let’s see how I feel when I’m at home, and if things feel like I want them to feel, then let’s see how things progress, and I’ll try and get her back home with me. I wasn’t expecting that when I arrived in Thailand in 2003. I wasn’t expecting to fall in love with a girl. Up until that point, just enjoying the bars for what they were every night something different was what I was most interested in. But everything changed, and leaving was a very difficult thing to have to do because I felt like I was being removed from this love of my life who I had been very fortunate enough to have met.
I called her every day before video calls this was, and it was costing me a lot of money. We had an agreement that she would stop working in the bar and go and live back with her family while I was trying to work out what to do. Whether she did that or not is completely irrelevant. But as the days are going by, all I can think about is her and somehow getting her back with me. And I guess it was a few months later when I just said to myself one day, go back there, get married to her and get her a visa. I wasn’t able to function properly because I wanted to be with her so badly. So after I asked her over the phone to marry me, saying, “Let’s get a visa for you to come and live with me,” when she said yes, I went and booked a ticket to go to Thailand for a few days’ time. I booked to stay there for a whole month, make sure we could arrange everything that needed arranging, and I also did a little bit of research into what I would need to get married in Thailand. So I got all the documentation together for that.
When I arrived in Bangkok, I was shaking with excitement that I was back so quickly and she was going to be meeting me at that same hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 13 the following day. She did meet me, which was great, and over the next week we were already married. Then I started looking into the visa process, and I actually took on an agent to help because I just couldn’t deal with the mountains of red tape that needed pushing through. It was clear that I would have to leave Thailand first. I had all the documentation. I made enough money. I had a place to live. We had proof. We were married, so she should get the visa. We spent an incredible few weeks after getting married together. The application was put in about 5 days before I left. And about 3 weeks after I returned home, I got a call that the visa had been approved and she could join me at home. I decided to send her the money for the ticket because I didn’t want to go there and back. And about 10 days later, I was driving to the airport to pick her up. That was probably one of the best moments of my life up until then. Not only had I been to Thailand and found the country that I loved so much that I wanted to retire in one day, I’d also found the love of my life in one of my favorite places in the world a bar in Thailand. And I thought my life was now complete.
The Marriage and the Years Away
I call the next 12 years of my life my “hiatus moment.” What I mean by that is everything that I fell in love with in Thailand, although it was no longer front and center of my mind, in a way I felt like Thailand had already served its purpose by allowing me the opportunity to meet this incredible girl who became my wife and the love of my life. At the time, that was because I believed that she loved me just as much as I loved her, and that she actually made my life complete. We’d always talked about the dream to retire to Thailand one day. Firstly, we needed to save enough money, and also the plan was to visit Thailand as often as we could. The first few years together were amazing. We didn’t go to Thailand, and she was always exactly like you would want a wife to be.
We went next to Thailand in 2005 for 2 weeks. Had a great time. That was the first time I actually went to visit her family, which was a different experience as I’d never been to that part of the country before. Thailand in 2005 was pretty much the same as it was when I left. And that’s when we started thinking about where we would live in the future. We started thinking about having a house in her village because it really was such a peaceful, tranquil location. And I couldn’t think of anywhere else as perfect to live in. 2006 and 2007 passed and we didn’t go to Thailand. And life was amazing. It really was amazing. I’m managing to save money. I’m coming home after work, still doing the same business as I was before, and she’s always there waiting, always seemingly happy and always like I thought she would remain forever.
2008 we did go to Thailand again, and that year I was shocked because my currency had gone down in value so much and things were already creeping up in price in Thailand, but nothing alarming yet. Why I remember that year so well is because when we returned which would have actually been in 2009 because we were there for the New Year only a month after returning to the UK, she said she wanted to do something. She was a bit bored of just staying at home all the time. And granted, she had been doing that for the whole amount of time since we’d been together. If we went out, we would go out together. If I went to work, I went alone. She was in the house. It worked perfectly for me, and that’s how we probably should have remained. But as soon as she said she wanted to do something, and I wanted to help her with that, we both thought it would be a good idea for her to get a job at a local Thai restaurant.
I’m only going to say this once, but under no circumstances if you get married to someone from Thailand, allow her to work in your country at your local Thai restaurant, because the people that work there filled my wife with all kinds of crazy ideas. And over the next about 7 years, give or take, our relationship slowly and methodically deteriorated. Up until the point that by 2015 she was hardly ever coming home, cheating on me regularly, and it was clear that we needed to get a divorce. The relationship wasn’t the same ever since she went to work in that Thai restaurant. Now one thing that I am proud of about myself is that I protected my stuff. So I was very fortunate not to lose anything to her. Everything I saved was in a bank account I opened in the Isle of Man that she wasn’t aware of. This was my idea that was going to be the bank I would use when I moved to Thailand in the future. And although I had my house, I had that long before we were married. So, I didn’t really lose anything to her apart from the money I spent when I was with her. What I did lose was my understanding of what a relationship was meant to be. And again, I should have understood what happened as being a warning sign that all people were the same. But I decided that she was just brainwashed by unscrupulous Thai people who worked in the Thai restaurant. And if I met another girl or if I spent time with other girls in Thailand and didn’t do the stupid thing of taking them to my country, this wouldn’t be a concern again.
That relationship left me bitter and jaded because I thought I gave her a better life. I did give her a better life. I took her out of a bar back to my country, and she had a nice place to live. She had a car to drive. I paid for her to get a license to drive in the UK. I did everything I could to make her happy. Yet what she did in return was change as soon as she started working at that Thai restaurant.
Moving to Thailand for Good 2017
After we got divorced, I looked at what I had, which was my house and the money I saved all the years, and I just thought to myself, why don’t I just move to Thailand? The thought of being single at home while my ex-wife was around the local area not single was an extremely offensive thing to have to think about. So, I knew I needed to do something about that because I was the man, and therefore, I should be the one doing more of that than she would. That was the thing that made me the most embarrassed and shy about things thinking about her out there doing things that she shouldn’t be doing while I wasn’t. So, after I got over that divorce and the understanding that I just lost the love of my life because she wasn’t the person I married, I started putting a plan together to move to Thailand permanently. Under no circumstances, I told myself, would I ever get into a relationship again. But while I didn’t expect the same thing to happen because I wouldn’t be taking another girl home with me, I thought having multiple relationships would be the best answer. I was still of the mind that in Thailand I was respected and seen as a provider. What happened to me with my wife at home only happened because she was there. In Thailand, something like that would never happen. And that’s what I convinced myself as I was putting the plan in order.
Things kind of just happened and time’s moving by and I’m just going through the motions of life. Going to work still, putting in hard work, trying to save a little bit more money and wanting to be in Thailand, but not pulling the trigger. It was only in 2017 when I pulled the trigger at last. I moved to Thailand full-time. I sold my house and everything that I had was put in that bank account that I mentioned, and it totaled about £300,000. I was already over 50 and I felt no different to how I felt when I went to Thailand first. Inside I felt no different to how I felt when I was 20. Although looking in the mirror, you could tell that a lot of things had changed. It was my plan to live in Pattaya, take it easy and just allow myself to enjoy the bars because up until that point in time, the bars made my life complete. I still had the same opinions about the bars that I had when I first went. That the people that worked there, while there to make money, were mainly there to make the people who went to the bars have a good time and enjoy themselves. I didn’t know if it was because I was completely stupid or if it was just because that’s how I hoped things were. But I still believed the girls that worked in the bars did so because, aside from making money, they could also make people able to be the people they thought they were.
I always thought I was the sort of guy at home that would have multiple girlfriends. Always having a different girl calling me, coming around to my place. I thought that was who I was. And even though that’s who I thought I was, I still got married because it just seemed like the most sensible thing to do at the time. Now, there was no chance I was going to hold back and do what you were meant to do. I was going to be doing what I was meant to be doing all along. And the beauty of that was Thailand offered me that ability. And I couldn’t wait to get back there and start living my life.
I guess you could say this is when my life started going downhill quickly. The amount of things I did which I look back and shake my head on don’t bear thinking about. But every time I did something that I looked back at as being very stupid, at the time I was able to justify it because I thought what I was doing was ultimately in my best interests. And I’ll get into that now.
I think it was March 2017 when I arrived in Thailand as a new retiree. I rented an affordable place in Pattaya, gave myself a budget to spend, and to start with, things were going great. You remember I said I would never get into another relationship. I made that mistake almost straight away, spending about 10 months with a girl because I thought she was different. Finding out at the start of 2018 that she wasn’t different and she’d had over £10,000 out of me, which would have been fine if in return for that £10,000, she gave up who she was as a person for me. But she wanted to be who she was and do the things she wanted to do at my expense. And it never worked out. It really was like I’m not learning my lesson that just because she worked in a bar doesn’t mean that she’s willing to give up who she is as a person in return for money. I thought that’s how it worked. I thought it was the whole picture. But when that one ended, that’s when I kind of decided, okay, just do what you want. Be the guy you always wanted to be and be the ladies’ man I’d always known myself to be but just never had a chance to be because of circumstances in my life out of my control.
I probably went to the bars ever since that relationship ended every single day for the next 6 months without fail. I convinced myself that the amount of money I was spending didn’t matter, but it was allowing me to be the person I always should be. It felt great to wake up in the morning and you’d have three messages on the phone from different girls that wanted to meet you. And I was thinking that they actually wanted to meet me. I felt like a ladies’ man. Yet, did they want to meet me or did they want money? Because they wanted money, but I didn’t see it like that. I just saw it as them wanting me. They hadn’t been to the UK and been brainwashed by people in the UK. Therefore, surely they want me because wanting me is better for me. And that’s what I thought Thailand was about. I would meet one girl at noon, go for dinner with another girl at 6:00, then I’d go to the bars and just enjoy myself. It was like I’d been waiting to move to Thailand for so long, I’d done things that stop me from moving to Thailand such as getting married yet now I was there, I was going to take advantage of that.
The Cost of the Thailand Dream
And this is why I think it’s important to share my story. Because I see so many guys doing the same things, not understanding that when push comes to shove, not one of those girls that you believed that you’ve improved the lives of by helping them financially will step in and help you in your moment of need. That was my biggest mistake of all. I thought by spending time with so many different girls over the years that at least a few of them would step in and help me if anything ever went wrong. I somehow convinced myself that that was going to happen.
Not to mention around this time 2018 into 2019 before COVID I am noticing that the Thailand that I fell in love with is disappearing at such a rapid speed. The prices are going up, yet what you’re getting isn’t changing. The girls are now spending more time on their phones as opposed to in the moment. They’re a lot more distant when you’re in the bars. And that should have told me everything I needed to know. “Okay, you’ve spent a lot of money. You can still salvage your retirement.” The thing was when COVID happened and places started getting closed down, that was the time that reconvinced me Thailand was the same as it’s always been. And it was COVID that would be the cause of my ultimate downfall.
COVID The False Hope
During COVID, I’m having girls calling me all the time. Girls are calling me because they don’t have any money. The price of things go back down to where it used to be. Things start to make sense again, finally, in Thailand. What I think is going to happen because of COVID is that Thailand will understand that it needs to keep things at this level because if something else goes wrong, they’re not going to have enough people there to pay the insane prices that were starting to happen in Thailand. Well, before COVID, I was spending too much money. I was nearly over the bars for good. I really was. I was over them because it just didn’t feel the same as it did when I was there first. When the price of things get to a certain level, it no longer feels like it’s fun anymore. It’s not about affordability, but about the very fact that you’re paying a certain amount for something, and it gets to the point where you can feel it. Whereas, when it’s only a small amount of money, you can’t feel it. Therefore, it doesn’t feel like you’re paying for anything at all.
I had an incredible time during COVID. It was one of the best times of my life. I probably had 25 to 30 girls who I spent time with during COVID, and the girls appeared grateful again. It felt like I was back in 2002 when I went for the first time. It felt like the world had finally realigned back into a sensible position. And while I was spending money, and my money is going down, I was always one of those guys who would pay the absolute cheapest I could for anything, even if it meant making people uncomfortable or upset. Heavy bargaining all the way. So, I was able to not spend that much money too quickly. During COVID, though, I spent even less. I’m not saying that it was the best time ever because of all the bad things that happened to other people. I’m upset about what happened to so many people. I’m saying it was the best time ever because in Thailand, I felt like I was finally able to get what I wanted for the price it was meant to be. Food, drink, and everything. And I thought that this would last. I thought after COVID there will be something to keep everything at this level because this level made sense. Anything more than this doesn’t, and I was enjoying myself so much that if it didn’t happen like that and I was wrong, I wouldn’t know how to extricate myself from the situation.
By 2022, I guess I had about half of my money left that I arrived in Thailand with. With what I had left, I thought that was more than enough for the rest of my life. And I was so deep in that lifestyle, so in tune with the idea that I really was this ladies’ man, that I struggled when things opened again. And just how quickly prices were put back up. One thing that you will find in Thailand if you spend a lot of time there is how things tend to work in a way the exact opposite of what we’re used to. No people are going in somewhere at home? Okay, let’s put the prices down to try to coax more people in. In Thailand, it doesn’t work like that. Less people? Let’s put the prices up to make up for what we’ve lost because of less people. It’s a mentality that I’ve only ever seen in Thailand.
But what made things worse was that after COVID, all of a sudden many people who had been working remotely for the first time in their lives, working at home, having spent time online watching YouTube and people making videos about places like Thailand these very people who up until then would never have been the sorts of people to move to Thailand are now coming to Thailand. This shouldn’t be a problem, you would think, but these people who had never been to Thailand before are happily paying over the odds for things. And now places are getting away with charging a lot more, and girls are expecting a lot more than they expected before. That was why I decided it would be better to actually get into a relationship again. I couldn’t afford to continue with the lifestyle I was living anymore.
The Final Relationship
So, I decided that the best thing to do would be to get serious with the girl that I liked the most, who always said she loved me and said she wished I would settle down with her. She said that was her dream. I’d known her since 2018. She always called me the guy that she wished would settle down with her. And knowing what I know now, I know it was all a facade and it wasn’t true. But it made me feel good. I didn’t think somebody like her would lie to somebody like me because I still had that vision of Thailand that I went to first where somebody like her would look at me with a lot more respect.
When I told her that I’m ready to settle down and I want to be with you now we’re not talking about some 20-something-year-old here either. We’re talking about a 38-year-old who had been working in Pattaya for a long time and who was ready to stop working like that. I didn’t love her yet. I wasn’t infatuated with her. It was either her or I lose all my money in the bars because I just hated the fact that the prices were so out of whack with reality, yet I was still paying them because if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be in the bars and I would just regret my whole life ever since I went to Thailand first. So I was in a very difficult mental state. If I look back, it was like I was just pushing myself towards destruction. Yet at the same time thinking what I was doing was going to be the thing that saved me when all it did was make things go wrong quicker.
We became an item in 2023. She moved into my place. I actually started feeling good about myself that I didn’t need the bars anymore. One thing, though, was I was still walking past the bars anytime I went to the shop based on where we were living. And every time I looked at them, I felt a rage bubbling inside me. But it was like the bars existed in appearance. They were there. There were girls in them. There was beer to buy inside them. But the actual bars of Thailand had long since gone. Those real bars that were meant to be dirt cheap. Although I’m happy in my personal life and I think that I’m starting to love this girl that I’m with, I think it would be best if we left Pattaya and moved to Thailand. No, that’s not a typing mistake, and I will say it again. Around that time, I thought it would be the best thing for us to do to leave Pattaya and move to Thailand instead. But it was like Pattaya no longer was part of Thailand. You could leave Pattaya and prices all of a sudden felt normal again. So why was it that in Pattaya they weren’t?
I don’t enjoy any of what happened next, so I’m just going to get it out of the way as quickly as I can. We never got married, although we did have a village ceremony, and I decided that the best thing for me to do would be to live in her village because it still felt like Thailand. The closest town to where she was from had a big supermarket where I could buy everything I liked in bulk and put it in the chest freezer that I bought in the house that I decided to build on her land, and I just thought it would be the perfect place to see out my days. I invested heavily into the house, and everything was going well throughout the whole of 2023 and halfway into 2024 when she said she wanted a little bit of money to do a business. I had just about enough money to see me out at this point. I was good with that. I was in a happy place for once in my life because although I wasn’t living my dream because Thailand had removed my dream I was still living in Thailand with this girl who I will say that I loved at this point and thought loved me.
She had managed to convince me to give her some money, saying that she wanted to do this business. I don’t even want to say what it was because it’s so stupid that I even thought about investing in it. But what happened was a big loss of money, more loss of money, even more loss of money, and then finding out that this girl who I was with actually had a secret partner in the village all along that she was spending time with. The business that she wanted to do, that she took money from me to do, was just a way for her to get out of the house more often. When all that came to a head and I only had about 30 grand left thinking before that it didn’t really matter because my wife would provide enough money with the business I wasn’t spending a lot of money anyway because I didn’t need to. But now all of a sudden, I didn’t have a place to live, didn’t have a partner, and all I could think about doing was going back to Pattaya, a completely broken man, hoping for a miracle.
I was hoping that I would go into the first bar and normalization would have returned, but it hadn’t. I knew that wasn’t likely, but I just hung on to that, although I shouldn’t have done. Not long after, I returned home broke and destitute with no money at all. Angry with the world, angry with Thailand for changing, angry with the girls in Thailand for wanting more, but most of all, angry that I felt like I gave my life for a dream. I gave my life for a vision of what I thought Thailand was, only to discover that that wasn’t what Thailand was at all. That’s what made the whole thing worse losing all my money in a country that I didn’t really understand until it was already too late.
What Thailand Taught Me
What I would say to anybody is be careful with what you wish for. My first time in Thailand was the best that Thailand ever was. My second time in Thailand was the second best that Thailand ever was. But as the years went by, on the surface, Thailand appeared to be getting better. Yet, for people like me, Thailand got worse and continuously got worse and will only get worse from here. If you want to go to Thailand, go for it. But if you want to go to Thailand and experience Thailand, then I would say go somewhere else. If you think of Thailand, not as the name of a country, but as an idea, go somewhere where you can live that idea.
That’s where I would like to end it. I will admit that I was wrong about absolutely everything that I thought. It’s not easy to admit you’re wrong, but it’s obvious I was wrong. I just happened to arrive in Thailand for the first time at a time that was the most opportune moment for somebody from where I was from to arrive there. All the cards lined up perfectly to make it the cheapest, most exciting place you could ever wish to visit or live in. I just expected it to stay somewhat similar, but it didn’t. And I believe that’s what caused me to ruin my life.
Thailand is an idea, not a country. Thailand is a lifestyle. It was a vision of what the world should be. It wasn’t a country, although it was. I’m not saying it wasn’t. I’m just saying that if someone said “Thailand” to me after I’d been there for that first time, I wouldn’t say it’s a country in Southeast Asia. I would say it’s a lifestyle that you could live in your dreams, yet it’s real. I made the mistake of believing that the country of Thailand respected the fact that it gave people this lifestyle because that’s why they were giving people that lifestyle. If you’re giving me this lifestyle, why am I wrong to believe that I can continuously enjoy this lifestyle throughout the entirety of my life? That’s why I loved the girls in Thailand so much because at home I could never have had a girl like I had in Thailand, and I took that to the extreme. I became a ladies’ man in Pattaya, and when that became unfeasible, I settled down thinking I was doing the right thing only to discover that I wasn’t doing the right thing and the girl I was doing it with had her own dreams.
Be careful if you’re going to Thailand. They’ll take your money, promise you the world, and deliver nothing instead.
