How I Left England and Rebuilt My Life in Thailand

You’re right, I apologize. Here is the same text broken down into much smaller paragraphs, with

tags around every 2-4 sentences. No words have been changed, added, or removed.

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A Life-Changing Decision

When I arrived in Thailand, I did make some very stupid mistakes.

I’m not going to deny that it was difficult.

I’m not going to deny that the videos made by YouTubers exalting Thailand only share half of it.

And I’m also not going to deny that I don’t regret anything.

I wanted to open by saying that because Thailand really gave me something which my own country, England, couldn’t.

It gave me a sense of freedom.

It gave me a sense that I could be myself without worrying about accidentally sharing my own opinions.

It didn’t have to be this way really.

I shouldn’t be in Thailand now working unsociable hours.

But I am.

But this is the life I live and it’s still so much better than the life I left behind.

The Moment That Changed Everything

I think it’s only right to say where this all started for me.

And it was a few years ago when I witnessed my neighbor, a little old lady, being walked in handcuffs out of her house.

Bless her, she’d just started to post online for the first time.

I was the one who helped her start her first account on Facebook a few years before this happened.

I saw the post.

It was innocent enough, but I’m scared to repeat it.

To see her before me escorted out of the house that she’d lived in her whole life.

The house that was left to her by her father, her father who fought in World War II to stop this very situation unfolding in front of me from happening made me feel sick as to what my country had become.

It made me embarrassed to be British.

The police in inverted commas who escorted her out seemed like the Gestapo erect with excitement at the powers they held to belittle the very people that they were meant to protect.

It completely made me rethink the opinions I held on superior orders.

I would have once thought that a lowly officer following the orders of the leader could be excused for their actions, that they were doing as they were told but not now.

Those people are complicit in the rape of justice and should themselves be brought to justice when this lunacy comes to an end where they were prepared to escort a little old lady from her house for wrong think.

It’s sick and I knew I needed to get away.

The Financial Struggle at Home

One of the problems I was facing was the lack of finances.

I felt bled dry by the political elite for allowing our country to fall to such abhorrent lows.

Why was it that only two miles away from my house that I had to sweat for in the daily grind, working a job I hated mind, there was a hotel full of migrants paid for with the tax that mother government was stealing from me on a monthly basis.

I don’t envy those that stay behind fighting for justice, those that face arrest on a daily basis for thinking that their country is for them.

that I couldn’t take the constant threat of arrest anymore.

I’d had enough.

I was going to Thailand.

My lack of finances were quite extreme.

The job I worked was menial, dull, and boring.

Yet, it wasn’t just the degradation of going through that on a daily basis.

It was knowing that I was paying large amounts of tax that went for things that benefited the lives of people who weren’t even from the country that I was from.

All I had was about £30,000.

And even amongst my friends, that was a lot.

But that was through sacrifice and dedication of being able to work for a long time in order to save that money.

I started looking online at the possibility of working online.

Many people I saw on the internet talked about how they escaped from where they were from and how they started to find a job that they could do on the internet.

The thing was, I didn’t care what it was.

I didn’t care how little it would be paid.

All I cared about was feeling like I could be at one with myself as opposed to being scared to open my mouth.

I was honestly fearful that the leader’s goons could come barging through my door at any time.

I mean, I was fearful of this fact, but I never actually posted anything online that I wanted to post because of this very fear.

I thought this was England.

I’m sure free speech originated from our fine shores.

Yet what we had left was nothing more than a pick and choose version of free speech where it’s only free as long as it doesn’t offend.

The very notion that someone else can say something and the opinions they hold mean I’m not allowed to say what I want to say, that offends me.

So why is someone allowed to say that?

two-tier policing, the rape of justice, and the understanding that if I didn’t escape, I would end up doing something that I would regret.

I thought I was meant to be English.

It was a scam.

An Apology to America

Before I get to what happened to me in Thailand and how I survived there, there is something that I really need to get off my chest, which I think is very important to say.

So, please hear me out.

I feel that from the bottom of my heart, I need to apologize to anyone and everyone from the country of America.

I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry.

And I’ve got tears in my eyes as I’m saying this.

I used to think that people from your country were uncouth, uncultured, and unsophisticated.

But I was wrong.

Let me repeat, I was wrong.

Please picture me now.

I’m on my knees and I’m begging for forgiveness for what I thought we had.

The god-given right to freedom of speech, to freely express yourself without fear of arrest and persecution by a power that hates us.

You’ve got to cherish it and hold on to it and never let it go.

Because if you do, get ready to bow down to a power that wants to remove you from the picture altogether.

The very fact that I have to say this, the very fact that I have these feelings and opinions just goes to show how let down I felt in my own country.

And it was at the end of 2022 when I put my plan in action.

Arriving in Thailand: A New Beginning

I’d never been to Thailand before, but I’d watched videos about it, and I wasn’t expecting to go there and have the god-given right to free speech that I expected to have at home.

There are things you can’t say in Thailand, and I get that, and that’s fine, but it’s not my country.

Thailand’s not my country, so it doesn’t matter.

England is meant to be a democracy.

It’s meant to be a place where people are free to disagree with each other without fear of persecution and arrest.

Yet, that’s not what it is.

But the fact that I felt that I had to leave, it was the antithesis, I think, of my generation.

It was a coming of age and an understanding that life isn’t always what you think it is.

I was free though when I walked through Heathrow airport with my passport and a smile.

The only hope that I had when I was leaving, the only dream that I had was that whatever happened, as long as I didn’t have to return, that’s all I thought about.

I’m someone who kind of understands that although we have people who are trying their best to write all the wrongs going on at home.

I don’t believe that anything is going to change.

It’s just going to continue to get worse because we’ve already had so many freedoms removed from us.

So, would I return to the country?

Would I return if it became normal?

Maybe.

But I don’t believe that that’s going to happen.

So, I hoped that when I boarded that plane and the plane took off, I hope that I would never have to set foot on that soil again.

That soil that once was so sacred to me, it once meant something to me.

I think what the biggest problem is is that when you get to Thailand, you understand that what Thai people have in Thailand is all I wanted in my own country.

That’s all.

I didn’t want anything else.

All I wanted at home was the ability to be English in England.

Just the same as someone being Thai in Thailand or Japanese in Japan or Indian in India or Korean in Korea or Chinese in China or Burmese in Burma or Vietnamese in Vietnam or French in France.

Oh wait, I don’t think that last one works, does it?

But why is it that we can’t be English in England yet every other normal country in the world?

You can be who you are from your country.

It’s disgusting.

But I was in Thailand and I knew I would never be Thai because I’d learned that from all the videos I’d watched.

I didn’t care about that.

But one thing I did think was that I was no longer beholden to a fascist state.

I know full well that’s going to be some liberal nut job calling me a hypocrite.

No, you have no idea what you’re talking about.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have people go to England and live.

But what I’m saying is that it should be how things are in Thailand.

I can stay in Thailand, but I’m not Thai.

I can stay in Thailand, but I can’t own land.

I can stay in Thailand, but I can’t take part in protests or political ideals.

I’m a foreigner in Thailand, and my visa says so.

Why is it that when someone comes to our country, we have to give them all these things?

Why do we have to give them things?

So, not only do they have the benefits of what we have in England, they can still hold on to the citizenship from somewhere else, yet we only have one.

So, no, you have no idea what you’re talking about saying that someone who was leaving England for that reason is a hypocrite because it’s completely the opposite.

I will never be Thai.

I would like you to try to convince me otherwise.

The thing was though, I was no longer beholden to a country that hated me and all the people that I grew up with.

On that counterless state where my parents worked boring jobs, but at least they had enough to save and put food on the table for us.

Yet now it doesn’t work like that because we don’t have that anymore.

We work and we work and we work, but we don’t have anything left over because of the complete rape of the country by the political elite who have no interest in doing what’s good for us.

And again, I’m sorry for dragging on and on about this, but I’m passionate and I’m even more passionate because when I arrived in Thailand at the end of 2022, things started out great.

I mean, Milgate couldn’t have been better.

That is often the case.

Things get better and better and worse and worse and then better again.

So, if you think about it, what’s the option?

Try to make something work here or return home.

At that point, returning home was nothing I wanted to do.

I would probably have rather not existed in my current form than go home.

Though, I had to pull myself together.

And I don’t regret anything.

First Impressions of Thailand

It was November, the start of what they call high season in Thailand when I arrived in 2022.

I’d watched so many videos made by guys that live there that I felt like I knew the lay of the land at least a little bit.

I took my 30 grand in cash with me.

I know you’re not meant to take that much out of the country, but part of me just didn’t want to go to the bank and transfer it.

I mean, I didn’t even have a Thai bank account set up, so I couldn’t have done that.

But I hated the fact that from when I was younger, when you could just go into the bank and put money in the bank without any questions.

Now, they had to ask all these questions that they had no business asking.

What do you want to do that for?

Where did you get that money from?

Mind your own business?

Fascism again.

But I need to move forward, I think, and talk about Thailand here because this is meant to be an encouragement to anybody that you can do this, too.

I’d watched so many guys, people who lived in Bangkok, people who lived in Pattaya, people who lived in Phuket, and people who lived in Chiang Mai.

And there were so many of them.

And they all seemed to have their own unique take on the country, unique perspective on things.

And what their biggest mistake I found was watching many of them was that they’d only been there for a short amount of time.

So they seemed to have those rose-colored glasses on as to what Thailand was really like.

Everything seemed to be positivity only, positive this, positive that.

Not willing to share the negative side of the country, which we talked about so briefly, but kind of loosely thrown in as being a non-issue.

They said you couldn’t just go to Thailand and get a job.

But it’s how you interpret the way people say things, isn’t it?

What I thought they meant by you can’t go to Thailand and just get a job was that you can’t just arrive and get a job.

But if you stay there and establish yourself, then you can.

Again, I was completely incorrectly reading into things because people tend to hear something that someone says or read something that someone writes and even though the language is plain as day, they interpret it in the way that they want to interpret it.

So, I made some mistakes there.

I did see a few channels that were prepared to share the negative side of Thailand.

Usually guys that had been there for a bit longer than everyone else and who had been through the ups and downs.

But I again tried to turn my nose up at them as being negative nancies.

It’s important to know every side of things when you’re moving to Thailand.

And again, this story that I’m sharing is meant to be an encouragement for people to move there.

mainly if you’re from Europe.

I would say if you’re from the States, then you have your freedoms and you don’t perhaps need to suffer earning little money to escape tyranny, but that’s beside the point.

I didn’t know though where I wanted to live when I got to Thailand.

I didn’t even know really how I would feel when I was there.

But luckily, when I landed in Bangkok, just on a normal visa exempt entry, I felt at home immediately.

I knew which place I had to go to where all the tourists and expats hung around and I made my way there to a hotel I booked.

I stayed in a hotel in Sukhumvit.

I booked it for seven nights and I didn’t think I need to go into too much detail about that because it’s irrelevant.

But my first week was getting to know the country, how it felt to be there, what was different, what was the same, and nothing was the same as home.

Straight off, I felt amazing to be there.

I think I should say how old I was at the time, 55 years old.

So, it wasn’t like I was a spring chicken.

I lived most of my life already.

And to know that I still had a lot of work to do, a lot of money to be made in order to live was disappointing, especially when I ran into a few retired guys who were my age who didn’t need to work a day in their lives again.

But I only have myself and my own life choices and the country I’m from to blame for that.

So, there’s no point even trying to complain.

I’m not complaining.

They deserved it.

They worked hard.

So, fair play to them.

That week in Bangkok was amazing.

The city was great.

I went to many different places in the city and tried to pick a place where I could see myself living.

I had to go and see more places for myself though based on everyone I’d watched.

Flying next down to Phuket.

And immediately I didn’t like Phuket.

I mean, in terms of the actual place, it was good, but everything there seemed to be a lot more expensive.

And also, there seemed to be lots of people from other different countries there.

And I know I’m probably going to get stick for that, but I don’t have any problem with people or anyone going anywhere from anywhere, but certain people from certain places seem to all congregate together and behave in a very different way than everybody else.

And there’s only three nationalities that I can think of that do that, but that’s not for me to say.

I went next to a place called Hua Hin.

There was a guy I watched who lives there, and I felt reasonably good in the town, and I marked it as a potential place I could live.

From there, up to Chiang Mai.

A few guys I watched up there as well, but for me, it was too isolated.

It was too out of the way, not really connected to other parts of the country as easily.

I mean, it’s only a 1-hour plane ride from Bangkok, so I’m not talking in terms of that.

But everywhere else seemed to be a one or two-hour drive from each other in terms of, you know, Bangkok to Hua Hin or Bangkok to Pattaya.

So, I wrote that place off.

Then I went to Pattaya.

Most of the people I watched live there.

They were all there making videos and I immediately decided I loved it there as well.

Again, I was noticing kind of a phenomenon of people from those three places that I mentioned, which I won’t mention, kind of outnumbering everyone else by a significant amount.

The reason I talk about that is because many people that I watched, many of the guys who had been in Thailand for a long time, you know, who had been there over 10 years or over 15 years, they said that the dynamics in Thailand had changed perhaps just as it had at home.

But it wasn’t as abrasive as it was at home because all these people there, including me, were just there not to take over, not to become part of the country, just to be in the country.

So while you notice these people, it’s not like a big negative, but I could be in a bar for example in Pattaya and you hear people talking English and you hear speaking someone speaking German or Italian or Japanese or Korean or whatever and you don’t feel any sort of threat or intimidation by people like that because it’s just normal.

Then you can hear someone speaking in a different language, really rough and harsh.

And I don’t know if it’s just a particular stereotype based on, you know, the Cold War or whatever, but it just felt like Thailand didn’t really care about anything.

Thailand didn’t pick sides.

But it didn’t need to pick sides because it’s not giving any of these people free reign to become part of the country.

So, I think that’s my input on this thing because I’ve heard it talked about time and time again by so many people on YouTube.

I believe from my very limited experience that is across three years, not even three years, there are three nationalities which I believe perhaps many of the old school expats tend to claim are the ones that changed Thailand in terms of the tourist and expat scene more than anywhere else.

No point saying which ones they are because if you’ve been to Thailand, you get it.

You probably know.

And no, this is not me saying anything bad about anyone.

This is just me pointing out for anybody considering moving to Thailand, which I’m hoping to encourage.

I’m hoping for people to move there because it’s great.

Perhaps you’re in Thailand thinking that you’re from a particular country and you’re going to be given more precedence or more weight in things based on the fact that you consider your country to be ahead in terms of many things to these other countries.

But that’s not how it works.

So, you really need to understand that.

It’s just an observation from a new expat.

I am a new expat, just under 3 years.

And if you hear a guy on the internet saying, “I’ve lived in Thailand for 5 years. I know everything about it.” Don’t listen to him.

I’d say only listen and take on board the opinions who have been in the country for at least 10, probably more than that, because I found that the only good information I got was on the ground in the country by people who had been there longest.

It already understood Thailand in a way.

But again, I’m getting ahead of myself with this.

I don’t think I am, though.

I’m just trying to give my opinion of Thailand.

And because I’ve only been there for 3 years, you can take it for what it is.

But I think I have the best opinions for someone being there for just 3 years.

And my opinion is listen to guys who have been there a lot longer and don’t make the mistakes that I made.

I don’t have enough experience to tell you to go or not go.

But I do have enough experience to tell you what happened to me and why I’m still here and why I’m still loving it even though I’ve got no money.

I think that’s what I’m trying to get across.

Even though it might have been rather long-winded, I came to the conclusion that Pattaya was the place I would begin my Thailand life.

Setting Up in Pattaya

I found it quite hard to get a bank account opened up, so I had to use the service of an agent.

But I felt comfortable when I managed to do that and I changed all my pounds into baht.

Throughout the time going around to the different parts of the country, I was staying in hotels that probably averaged $15 to $20 per night.

And I was eating food for the day totaling not more than $10.

I was on a low budget and I tried to keep everything as sensible as I could because I didn’t know when I’d find any work even though I was expecting to find online work because I had already done the research and knew it was possible.

I was hoping to be able to get some form of a better visa to stay in Thailand because at the moment I was just there on a visa exempt.

I found a Muay Thai gym in Pattaya that did a year package.

Think the equivalent of $2,000 or thereabouts.

And that gave me the possibility of getting the education visa to go along with it, which would involve a bit of hump hopping around to different countries, sorting out the visa, and then it should be the best option.

At the time, I felt that was a better choice than learning the language because maybe it would give me the chance to run into other expats who were interested in the keep fit side of things, which I was.

So, that was my first major investment in Thailand.

I think I spent about $3,000 in total for all of that, including the initial visa and having to go and get it and the transportation costs associated with it.

All in, it didn’t really feel like it was too bad.

I found a condo to rent, which was $300 a month.

And since I moved to Thailand, I started to use dollars in terms of the work that I do.

I’m paid in dollars, so I just switch between dollars and baht.

After speaking to many guys from England who used to be in Thailand in the past, saying how bad the pound has deteriorated over the course of the last two decades, it is yet another reason to be embarrassed to be British.

I don’t want to go off on another tangent about that, but as someone who’s British, I think it should be my government’s job and sole focus to do everything in its power to give British people the best chance, not only at home, but in every other country they visit or choose to live in.

But that’s beside the point.

If I was from any other country, I would think that that was my government’s job as well.

So, I’m not saying that I don’t want anybody else to have as good time as I do.

I just think our governments should work for us as opposed to everyone else.

Kind of like how the government in Thailand works.

How strange.

The government in Thailand seems to work for Thai people.

Who would have guessed?

Anyway, sorry, but moving into that place for 300 a month, needed a $600 deposit, and I guess I’ve spent $5,000 at this point, and I’m set up in a place to live.

I’ve got my visa, and that’s when I cracked open my laptop and started looking for online opportunities.

The Struggle to Find Online Work

I knew that based on the fact that I didn’t really have many skills in terms of what profession I did, that it would be quite hard to find anything well-paying.

I worked very menial and boring jobs throughout my life, but I did have skills when it came to the ability to speak English.

I joined a number of those freelance websites, made a profile on all of those.

And I joined some online teaching websites and made a profile on those as well.

I spent 8 hours a day looking at every opportunity that came my way.

How I saw it was if I work a job, usually I work 8 hours a day.

So, I need to put those 8 hours into looking for work, and that was something I committed to and stuck to just like I would do at home.

I like to go out once or twice a week, and I got my out days to Wednesdays and Saturdays to start with.

Most of the other days I was eating out, but we’re talking about cheap, tight street food where you can get a meal and some water for $1.50.

So, the days when I stayed in, I was spending very marginal amounts of money.

The days when I went out, I would spend maybe a 1,000 baht or $30.

So, it wasn’t like I was spending a lot.

It took me about a month before I landed my first position.

It was actually a very poorly paid one, but it was something and I thought it would gain me positive feedback on the freelance website.

It was one of those where you apply for jobs, you get a job, and when it ends, you give feedback to the employer and they give feedback to you.

And this is one I just happened to find.

And I was working together mostly with people who were from the Philippines.

It was only $3 an hour, but it was $3 an hour.

And if that meant I did 10 hours, it was only $30, but it could nearly cover both of my expenses.

So I took it, thinking I could find something else later.

I did expect to be able to find something better because $150 a week wasn’t exactly going to keep me very long, but it would make my money last longer and it should give me feedback, which is what I wanted.

I started that and yes, it was extremely menial.

I always considered myself to not be stupid in terms of my mental capacity, yet often doesn’t translate to being able to make a lot of money because perhaps I wasn’t that way inclined.

So sitting there and having to answer incoming calls repetitively minute after minute was difficult to do without feeling bored.

But when I looked out of my condo window and thought, I’m in Thailand and this is going to keep me in Thailand longer.

I’m doing it.

So I persevered.

Those were long hours.

In the first two weeks, I did 50-hour weeks and I made $300 in two weeks.

But it was $300 and I was spending any other time that I had available trying to apply for more.

The Job That Almost Worked

But it was then I was actually approached by someone through the freelance site saying that they were looking for people who had an English accent from England who were living overseas to work for their client base of companies who did business in England.

Basically, they needed English accents for English companies who didn’t want to pay the going rate for people at home.

I responded to this request, but they wanted me to go out of the freelance site and I felt a bit uncomfortable about it, but I took on board the information that they shared and agreed to the meeting with them.

I took an hour off the job I was doing just so I could speak to them about it.

And then right there and then I was offered a position to start in 3 weeks time together with about 40 other people who were also living in Thailand as well as other countries in the region.

It was going to be paid £800 for the month, which wasn’t a fortune.

But if I considered my rent at $300, my other bills on top of that, and if I worked out the visa, and I only ate cheap food, it might be enough to stretch, and I could always be on the lookout for other things.

It would involve, of course, working UK hours, which meant starting at 3 or 4 p.m. and working till late, but I didn’t mind that.

if this can keep me in Thailand more than anything else, which is what I wanted to do.

So, I accepted it.

And I know I bet there’s someone going to be saying, “You said you were paid in dollars, and I am, but let me get to that.”

But I was pretty happy to think that I had this lined up.

So, I quit the old job that I was currently doing because it only paid such a small amount of money, and I actually wanted to start my own YouTube channel, and I thought that would give me 3 weeks to be able to get some content together.

I started walking around Pattaya during those three weeks making videos about myself and pointing the camera at myself and around and I just never had the courage to upload them.

That was a big regret because I think that could have been a small portion of income for me, but I was just too self-conscious to actually start uploading.

So, I didn’t bother and deleted all the videos I’d made and wasted those 3 weeks.

I did start that job though, the one paying £800.

We did a week’s training.

There was a guy in England who worked for the company and he showed us all the training material and went through all the calls you had to do.

Lots of other people there as well on this Zoom call.

And the following week, I started answering calls.

It wasn’t as boring as the other one, but it was still a bit boring, but what did I expect?

I was in Thailand and I wanted to stay there and I was willing to do anything to stay there.

So when that week came to an end, I actually felt quite proud of myself that I’d actually worked a week.

And that money that I earned had covered my whole week’s living expenses.

I’m able to go out and eat a nice meal.

I’m able to sustain myself.

I’m able to do everything.

I mean, nice meal.

I’m talking about cheap Thai street food.

But I enjoyed it.

$150.

I loved it.

I even had an occasional beer.

Could afford it.

And it was within the money I earned.

So that first week I felt so alive and proud of myself that I had managed to do that and made enough money to live for a week.

The Crushing Blow

I joined a call on Monday to talk about that week and then they said, “Oh, we don’t need you this week. Come back next week.”

Then everything that I was happy about and proud of just stopped.

They spoke to each person individually and they just said that this happens from time to time.

It’s very rare, but it does happen occasionally.

So we don’t need you this week.

What happened to the £800 a month?

What happened to a stable position which they told me that I would have in that first meeting?

What I said was I wanted stability.

I wanted something that would last.

I wanted something that as long as I did the job properly, as long as I was successful at the job, as long as I hit any form of targets that came by, I wanted to be able to be available for that job and that job available for me as long as I needed it.

But no, we don’t need you this week.

Come back next week.

I hit a low point then I was really depressed Monday evening thinking that I was going to be working and I keep saying working in Thailand.

I’m working online.

So if you’re concerned you’re not going to have a work permit to do that cuz you don’t need one.

It’s fine.

You can do it.

You just can’t come to Thailand and work for a Thai company and take a job away from a local.

But if you’re working in your own room, yeah, you can do that.

So don’t be concerned there.

What happened though in that situation was I decided that I was going to go out and get very drunk because I wanted to kind of relax a bit because I’d always been stressed about work.

Stressed about finding something to do.

So happy that I found something to do and then this.

I wasn’t going to be able to work for a whole week.

Therefore, I’m not going to be paid and I’m going to be out of pocket.

While I still had the bulk of the money I went with left, I didn’t want to eat into that.

But I don’t know.

I hadn’t had a girlfriend yet, and you know what Pattaya is all about.

I’d been and I’d made videos walking down some of those streets.

Not at nighttime because I felt very uncomfortable pointing the camera at the girls at nighttime, but I’d walk down them in the day and saying, “You could be here.”

I didn’t upload them though, so yeah, let’s forget that.

But I decided I was going to go and have a few beers.

I walked from my place about 15 minutes to Second Road and I was walking along there and they had that big really big complex of bars quite close to the central shopping center just on the opposite side of the road and I thought this looks like a reasonable place.

So I walked in, had a beer.

I’m really stressed about the fact that I shouldn’t be there.

I should be sitting on my laptop answering calls, making money, but I needed to just cool down for a bit, relax, and go mad, I think, is the best thing to say.

and I had my beer and another one and a few girls approached asking if I wanted them to sit with me and I politely declined.

I left that bar and went to another one.

Had a few more drinks and I’m starting to get a little bit drunk because, you know, I tried to save my budget and not spend too much on drink because I did like a drink and I did like a party.

But I went from bar to bar until I was drunk and I did spend time with one of the girls and it was great.

I made it back to my place afterwards, probably midnight or close to, stumbled in and went to bed and woke up in the morning and thought, “Wow, I’ve just had an absolutely amazing time last night.

Never mind about the job.

You know, next Monday I’ll start again.

It’s not going to do any harm if I just went out every night, few more nights, is it?”

So, I did.

And I think I spent $3,000 during that week.

That could have been just under 10% of what I had left at the time.

spent all that going crazy around Pattaya thinking live a little, get it off your chest and then you know on Monday start working and you can put it all behind you.

The problem was on the Monday we had a call again and they said oh we don’t need you this week either come back next week and that’s when I really got quite angry with them and said well why didn’t you tell me this was a possibility then I could have used my time to look for something else.

They didn’t tell anyone though and many people these were guys and girls working from this part of the world.

All everyone was left in limbo not understanding that they could have been looking for something else to do holding off waiting for this and then they did it again.

But they said we absolutely promise that next week you can start again.

Don’t worry about it because it’s freelance work.

You’re not paid when the company decides you can’t work.

You’re only paid when you do work.

So again, I was really angry and stressed, but I had such a good time the week before.

I thought, well, what’s one more week, so I spent probably the same again, another $3,000 for a week, just really enjoying myself.

And then I waited for Monday.

This time it was worse.

They said, “We’re so sorry. We don’t need any of you anymore at all.”

Apparently they had some changes and they didn’t think it was going to happen like this.

Thought it was going to be fixed, but it wasn’t.

we’re really sorry and that was it.

So, I didn’t have that job anymore and I just spent a lot of money going crazy in Pattaya.

You have to picture this from my perspective because I felt stifled at home for as long as I can remember.

I felt like I wasn’t able to be the person I wanted to be because of fear of persecution, fear that I’m not allowed to say anything that I want to say.

Now my newfound sense of freedom in Thailand in a way was bottled up and I wanted to hold on to it and I was holding on to it and then if the bottle was overflowing to the point and it was full of carbon dioxide in a fizzy drink and it’s been shaken and shaken and shaken and eventually if the pressure gets too much the top blows off and that’s what happened to me during those two weeks.

Then finding out this news I went into a huge state of insanity.

That’s one of the big negatives that you will face if you leave behind the comfort of where you’re from and you start to do freelance work.

You’ve got absolutely no recourse if anything happens.

They let not just me down, but so many people down, some who didn’t have anything to their name.

There were guys who were going and who were there with nothing.

If they didn’t have that money, they would really struggle.

So me having a little bit of money, even though it wasn’t a lot and it was going down quickly, if I didn’t have it, it would have been a very bad situation for me because I wouldn’t have been able to do anything.

The Emergency Plan

I think it was around now that I came up with an idea which I thought was quite sensible.

It actually played into my hands a bit.

I thought I needed to take things on a year-by-year basis, not month by month, just in terms of the place I was living at.

I thought if I paid for a year in advance, if I bought as many cheap items as I could in terms of packs of noodles, in terms of bottles of water, in terms of essentials like toothpaste and other things like that, if I really stock up on that, then if it gets to the point where I don’t have any money, maybe save enough for visa eventualities.

But if it gets to the point where I have 3 months of not earning anything, I can still survive.

That was an idea that I came up with, and it was very fortuitous.

I spoke to the landlord of the place I was renting and said, “Is there any way I can pay for a whole year in advance and you can give me a discount?”

He said, “Yes, 15% discount.”

So, I saved money there and paid for a whole year in the condo up front.

And I did exactly what I thought I was going to do.

I went to Makro and bought hundreds of packs of those really cheap noodles.

Hundreds of them.

Hundreds of bottles of water stacked up in the condo.

And while it wasn’t the most healthy of things in terms of the noodles, I couldn’t stock up on vegetables for obvious reasons.

It was something there to sustain me if anything ever went wrong or if there was time when I didn’t earn any money.

I don’t know why, but I felt a lot more comfortable about that.

And after that incident where I was told that I wouldn’t be needed at the job anymore, I knew I needed to start looking for more things to do.

in terms of what I went to time one with like $30,000 which might have been $40,000 give or take quite a few thousand because I don’t want to get the calculator out but I think I had about $20,000 left at this moment and that was after I paid for a year in advance at the place I lived in and stocked up on all those essential items that meant I could basically live without spending anything for a very long time.

Finding Success in Online Teaching

I hit that freelance website really hard.

Also, I was trying to find out more about teaching English online because I’d met a few people that had done that.

And that sounded a lot more up my street than doing the calls.

The calls were endless.

It was monotonous.

It was same after same.

But teaching is different because you’d be meeting people one-on-one and you could have conversations with them.

You could get to know different people.

Each lesson would be different in a way because everyone would have a different ability.

Everyone would have different stories to tell when they’re learning.

But I really tried my best to find online work teaching English.

I was trying to cut back as well in terms of going out.

And while I’d spent a number of weeks going mad and spending way too much money, I think I was really hooked on that type of lifestyle, but I knew it wasn’t sustainable.

I could have probably spent all my money in 3 months and that just couldn’t happen.

I allowed myself one night a week though and it took me 3 weeks before I find something else to do.

I couldn’t do anything with the teaching yet.

I didn’t get that far yet.

I was trying but my profile still wasn’t getting any traction.

But I found another job which again wasn’t paid a lot of money.

I think this one was $200 a week, barely enough to live on.

But then I’m thinking I’ve already paid for my rent up front.

If needs be, I’ve got emergency supplies, so take it and enjoy it for what it was.

I started doing that, did it for a whole month.

Then I’m going out once a week.

And yes, I’m still dipping in terms of money.

Have God.

But money’s coming in and I’m persevering with the teaching.

And then I get a request to teach.

Somebody wants to do a test lesson with me.

And I was so happy because I’d been waiting for that to happen.

If that went right, I could get a good review and then that could hopefully snowball into more and more students.

It went really well.

They started learning with me on a regular basis and that was $10 an hour, which I thought was amazing.

After that lesson though, the first one that is, I went out to celebrate and that was when I met a girlfriend.

She was working in one of the bars and I knew, you know, you shouldn’t meet people there, but I thought she was great.

It was quite an awkward situation though with the fact that she was working in the bar and I explained my financial situation to her quite clearly and I thought she took that on board.

But I didn’t really like the fact that, you know, when I was working, answering calls, she was working at the bar.

But we did consider each other boyfriend and girlfriend.

I couldn’t get her to stop working at the bar there and then though because I couldn’t afford to pay for her and she couldn’t get another job because she had no qualifications.

She was 35 though I’m not wanting you to think she was in her 20s because she wasn’t.

It was about 2 weeks after I met her when I got another student, another two and then another one and then about a month after another.

and I’m getting great reviews and I’m building a portfolio of lessons and I’m really enjoying the teaching side of things a lot more than the calling side of things because I’m still doing both at this point.

Everything together, I was averaging $350 a week and I’m absolutely delighted because while it’s not a lot of money, it is enough to live in Thailand.

The First Girlfriend Mistake

And that’s when I started getting very serious with my girlfriend.

I know there’s going to be lots of people saying you met her in a bar or whatever.

I did meet a girl in a bar.

I didn’t care about that.

But I felt confident enough to actually get her to move in with me because at this point we’re a number of months into 2023 and I’m making enough money at the moment to support both of us.

She was or I thought she was fully aware of my financial situation.

She didn’t say anything when I told her that this is how much money I’ve got and I can’t spend any more money.

I thought, you know, you absolutely spell it out plain as day.

This is how it is.

Nothing else can change about that.

And because she said that’s fine and she agreed, she was living with me in my place.

It was quite difficult though because we’ve got bottles of water and noodles stacked up at one end and I was working and teaching and it was only a studio unit.

So, she was there at the same time.

But in a way, it made it even easier to do the work I was doing because she was there and I had company.

I was trying my best to completely forget about my old life back in England.

Occasionally though, you get a message from a friend saying, “Something’s happened.”

And then you get really depressed thinking about the state of your own country.

I’d already escaped.

I’d become free.

I didn’t want to be there anymore, and I didn’t have to be.

But when you’re reading the news about other people who have been jailed for online posts, people who can’t freely express themselves through fear of persecution, police officers taking the knee, and violent mobs vandalizing things and getting away with it, historical places being desecrated while these liberal vandals get absolutely no repercussions for doing anything wrong.

People getting away with shoplifting, people stabbing people on the street, people doing all kinds of awful things.

And then here I am in Thailand where things like this just don’t happen anywhere near to the scale that they do in England.

I’d never seen one violent incident since I’d been in Pattaya.

I know they happen because you saw them on the news, but try stealing something from a shop in Thailand and see how far that gets you.

It’s not going to get you very far because you don’t steal, basically.

So, as much as I’m trying to completely forget about what’s going on there, I still do get really depressed when I get a message from a friend or I just happen to find myself reading the news.

But most of the time, I’m able to just pick myself up and get out of it, get back into work and see my girlfriend with me there.

And I feel very fortunate to be in that position where I’m able to earn enough money to actually live in Thailand.

And I’ve still got under half of the money that I had left.

I think my girlfriend was living with me for approximately 3 months and I thought we were really serious.

I had a few more students and I was very close to being able to completely give up on the calling side of my work because I made more from the teaching and I enjoyed it so much more and I felt I was able to do a better job of that.

But I know in terms of a relationship such as that, it was a mistake.

A really big mistake because she said, “I know you told me not to say this, but I really need some help this month.”

Before, I just thought she’d got to the point where she just didn’t want to work in the bar.

And she already had one grown-up kid, so she didn’t need to support him.

Yeah, around 35 with a grown-up kid at 20.

But that’s what it was.

She said she really needed help with something.

Don’t want to say what it was cuz it’s embarrassing to admit to, but because she’s not asked before, because it was a one-off, I gave her 50,000 baht telling her that this has actually come from my credit card and I don’t have any more left on my credit card, thinking that there’s no way she’s going to be able to ask for more.

I’d heard stories online that guys had talked about, but I was in this position, and I allowed myself to continue to be in this position, even though I knew perhaps I shouldn’t have.

As a relationship progressed, I’m getting more students, and I’m really happy about that.

And when I got to making $300 a week just from teaching, that’s when I stopped my calling job.

The problem I faced now was that gave me a little bit of a dip in terms of salary while I looked for more students.

But over and above, I would say 6 months, while I was getting more and more in terms of students and averaging more money, I’d somehow lost about $10,000 to my girlfriend.

But lots of little minor things that just kept coming up for some reason.

I just continued to accept them.

It was a huge mistake.

And after I saw that, now I had about $8,000 or something left in the bank.

Even though I’d probably be earning 400 a week, which was enough to live an okay life in Thailand even today.

Jeez, eating up my savings.

and I’m just allowing it to happen.

When she asked after that and I got angry and upset saying, “No, this is wrong. We’re meant to be a couple. We’re meant to be together and you’re not meant to be taking any money from me because you’re making my life more difficult. Then in turn, you’re going to make your life more difficult in the future.”

We had a big argument and she walked out.

I didn’t yet though understand the dynamics of a relationship like that.

I really liked her, feeling like I started to love her, thinking about marriage.

yet I’m telling her eventually the money will run out and you’re not going to be able to get anything from me.

So, I don’t know.

I need to make sure that she doesn’t ask for money so we can stay together longer, but it’s like for her when the money’s finished, she’ll just leave anyway and move on.

So, that was a huge mistake down to $8,000 and all that money I just lost to her, which was stupid.

It was really stupid and something that you shouldn’t do if you go to Thailand because it’s not worth it.

The positives though, I was earning $400 a week.

Very proud of myself that I was still able to sustain myself in the country.

The Second Girlfriend Mistake

The thing was though, I didn’t learn my lesson.

I still hadn’t come to the understanding of exactly how things worked in relationships with bar girls.

I mean, I knew how they worked from everything that I’d watched and listened to.

Yet, these were the relationships that other people were talking about.

This wasn’t the relationship I was in.

So, when I met another girl again, I thought if I meet someone that’s older this time, 42, that’s probably more likely to make things easier for me.

Not sure when this was.

Wasn’t that long ago, actually, maybe start of 2024.

And I stayed with her throughout the whole year.

Got to the point where I was making an average of $450 a week.

But somehow that $8,000 had kind of just withered away to nothing.

And at the end of 2024, I had no savings.

and I was solely reliant on my teaching income.

I had to use some of that money for my visa as well.

I wanted to get the DTV, but I didn’t have the financial backing for that.

So, yeah, another failed relationship when she asked for something and I physically couldn’t give it to her.

And that was when it twigged with me.

Don’t do it again.

I was really depressed about that though because I actually loved her.

I thought we made a great couple and I thought we’d be together for a long time.

I was engaged to get married to her until my money ran out and everything went wrong.

So yeah, I did have a little bit of a depressive phase and I lost a few students at that time.

And it wasn’t as bad, but I wasn’t earning as much money anymore.

And you still have to picture my condo.

We’ve still got all these emergency noodles and emergency water there.

And I’m starting to pay monthly again at this point.

So I think I need to get some money and pay for a year in advance, but I just didn’t get around to it.

That takes us to around 2025.

This year, I really considered that this year would be my make or break year.

Everything just seemed to be getting so much worse at home in terms of everything you see on the news.

And I’m not talking about the fabricated news that you shouldn’t watch because it’s all false and everything that I’m hearing on the ground from people who are still there is what’s real.

I started having friends, friends who had no money, talking about wanting to leave.

I even had a friend of mine move out to Thailand in February this year.

He moved here with £3,000.

He was all gone in a month and he kind of just disappeared.

He was quite a close friend as well and I couldn’t contact him and his family can’t contact him and nobody knows where he is.

So, he could be anywhere and that was difficult to come to terms with because he felt like moving to Thailand with only £3,000 was better than staying at home.

That should tell anybody in England all they need to know.

It’s okay if you’re from a nice place and you’ve got a bit of financial backing or you don’t have to live in places that have been destroyed.

You don’t see what people like me had to see on a daily basis.

You don’t live with fear of attack or other things.

And it just seemed to be getting worse and worse.

And I was thankful I wasn’t there.

And I knew that I needed to get out of this defensive phrase that I was in to ensure that I didn’t need to go back there.

At this point in time, probably about 6 months ago, I had no money in the bank because of the situation with my girlfriend that I was really serious with, and I’d lost a few students because of it, because of being depressed and worrying about life really.

And there was no alternative to Thailand for me.

Going back to England was a huge no.

I really couldn’t have handled it.

So, I tried my best to put my head back in the game and really double down on the teaching.

I was though making enough money to live $300 a week.

You see videos all the time on YouTube, people saying you can’t live on $1,000 a month in Thailand anymore.

But you can.

You can’t though live on this amount of money and go out for a great night out or go and eat a nice meal because you can’t go that far with it.

Sometimes a good night out could cost you $150 depending what you want to do.

I still understood though that one bad month and I’m in a bad situation.

So, I really put my head into it and started knuckling down and I managed to get more students and I built it up to a stage where I was earning about $600 a week.

I think this was in May.

That was my best month in May.

I made $2,400, just over, actually, in the month of May.

And I put some of that into the bank to save, and it felt great to have a small pot.

It wasn’t a large one.

The Third Girlfriend and the Final Lesson

But then in May, something else happened because I met another girl.

But this time, I didn’t meet her in a bar.

I’d stopped going to the bars altogether because they were places where you could lose so much money.

They were fun to go to if you knew what they were there for and took them for what they were, just places for entertainment and a good time.

A drink and maybe a game of pool game of connect four chatting and talking and anything else you might want.

But it wasn’t anything more than that and I knew that by now.

But I met this girl on a dating site.

I really thought she was going to be the one when we met up.

I splurged a bit and we went to a nice restaurant for a first date and then we spent time together over a few weeks and I’m really really falling for her.

I’d say probably more than the two girls I’d met before.

I feel like I found someone.

She says that she works as a receptionist in the hotel.

She was very well presented, age appropriate for me, which was important.

She was 40 and yeah, I really fell for her and felt I’d found someone.

I told her all about my position, how precarious it was, but I’m really getting my head in the game.

And last month, I increased my bank balance and I’m very proud of myself and things are going great.

And she just seemed to be supportive of the fact that I’m doing that and wanted to get to know me more.

After about a month of seeing her and things got quite serious, everything just went wrong though because she asked for some money.

She asked for some money from a farm problem.

After every single thing that I spoke to her about, every single thing that I said, all the time that she was there with me and I was there with her, she still asked for money from me.

And although I had very strong feelings for her, although I really felt a deep connection with her, like I hadn’t really felt with anybody, I knew that I couldn’t give her money because she would ask again and again, and it would be a never-ending drain on my hard work and effort, which I couldn’t afford.

So, I just had to tell her, “Sorry, I can’t give you any money. And if you’re going to ask, then we can’t see each other anymore.

I kind of hoped she’d thought, “Oh, okay. I won’t ask. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. I know the situation, so I shouldn’t have asked.”

But did she say that?

No.

She said, “Oh, don’t worry about it then. Have a good life.”

And off she went.

I was quite upset about things in June.

Spent some of the money going on those dates with her, and now I didn’t have those savings left.

No money to my name.

depressed because of yet another failed relationship when it came to my understanding that it did appear that the only thing anyone really wanted out of me was money.

Yet, although I was upset, I actually spent a tiny bit of money going away for 3 days to a very, very cheap resort on a nearby island.

I just wanted to clear my head and think about things.

And although I was depressed and upset about the fact that something had gone wrong yet again with someone that I actually felt a really strong connection to, but I started to think, “No, you’ve got no excuse to feel bad about things.

You’re fortunate you’re able to work online teaching from the country that you’re in.”

I thought back to my old life, how I never had any money there anyway, even though I earned more and I still had a bit left over.

But I’d never managed to save a lot of money.

The bit I had was from years of work, decades even.

I didn’t have to watch what was going on around me and feel so depressed anymore.

Didn’t have to feel angry about the fact that my country was slowly and meticulously being irreparably damaged and changed by a political elite who absolutely hate people like me.

Those three days away really made me understand that, okay, perhaps in Thailand I don’t have enough money to have a relationship.

Or maybe I do, but Pattaya is probably not the place to meet someone.

I decided there and then that once I got back to Pattaya, I would somehow think about moving to a different part of the country that was not connected to tourists, not a tourist area, and an area where many expats don’t live.

I didn’t know where yet or where to think about, but I also considered this would likely be cheaper for me.

I hadn’t eaten one bag of those cheap emergency noodles, so I thought, you know what? I’m going to give those away to charity.

Do my good deed for once, as well as all the water.

And while it wasn’t a lot, I mean, there were hundreds of bags of noodles.

But give them away, do something good, and understand that if I work hard and try hard, I should get to the point where perhaps, you know, I can’t be free in terms of never needing to work, but I can teach online.

I was doing good at it, and I was still getting distracted by everything else going on around me in terms of wanting to have a relationship.

I needed to get away from that, and it could come later.

Save money first and look for somewhere else to live.

A New Beginning in Khon Kaen

Those three days away were the best thing that I ever did, I think, in Thailand.

And that was June of this year.

When I made it back to Pattaya, I knew I needed to arrange to get those things given to charity first.

So, I contacted an organization and they came and took it.

And it felt great, even though it wasn’t a lot, but it was something.

Then, I went to the gym I was using for my visa.

It still had time on that.

It was going to be difficult because I would need to think of, you know, a new visa situation because I didn’t have enough for the DTV visa yet.

I still had time on the visa, so I would just not go to the school and get away with 3 months and hopefully something will happen after that.

And then I started thinking about where to move to.

I’m really active looking for extra students and I’m picking up extra ones every now and then.

And I actually, after watching a number of videos and vlogs, decided on the city of Khon Kaen.

I’d never been there before.

I’d only seen videos about it, but this was in Isan.

It was not known for being very popular with expats and hardly ever many foreign tourists would go there.

And I thought that I could immerse myself, maybe start to learn the language, find a cheap place to live and try to start putting money in the bank.

I moved there at the end of June of this year and it was one of the best decisions I made.

I mean, the best was leaving that tyrannical state behind once and for all.

That was the best decision I ever made.

But this was the second best decision I made because it felt so different to Pattaya.

I didn’t feel like I was a glorified tourist anymore.

I didn’t feel like everybody was out to get me and get money out of me anymore because it’s not like that there.

It’s just a normal city where normal people live.

And I felt so fortunate that I actually took those three days away that actually got me there in the first place.

I was in such a positive state of mind that I was just really working as hard as I could, finding students, working hard, doing the best I could.

And over the remainder of that 90 days that I had on the visa, which takes us to September, I managed to save enough money for a new one-year education course, which would give me a visa to go with it.

So, I used all my savings for that.

And yeah, as of now, I’ve got nothing in my bank.

But I’m living a great life, at least for me.

I get not everybody would want to live like this, but for me it’s great.

I’m living in a part of Thailand that I would never have even considered before.

At the moment, I’m making approximately $500 a week.

I’m doing a lot of work.

I’m really working hard, but my hourly rate has gone up quite considerably since it started at $10, so things are going well.

Aside from my visa, which I had to spend money on, I mean, I spent $1,000 a month.

Now, next month, I’m going to be able to save $1,000 a month.

And then hopefully, I’ll be able to continue to do that for years to come.

My journey wasn’t without its struggles, and it’s still not completed yet because it would only take the two websites that I used to teach on to go down.

It would only take something like that for me to be left with nothing.

But I don’t think that’s going to happen because I’ve established myself and I work hard.

A Message to Those Thinking of Leaving

If you’re thinking about doing something similar to this, if you’re thinking about escaping where you’re from, especially Europe because of all the freedoms that are being removed from us on a daily basis, then I would just say go for it.

If I take it back to the start, I couldn’t believe it though when my neighbor had to go through that.

She was back 5 hours later.

She was crying and upset, not being able to understand what had happened.

And I do think, what would happen if my country returned to normal?

What would happen?

What would I do?

Would I go back again?

I might, but under no circumstances would I ever go back there.

Often thinking that I would rather not go anywhere at all.

Under no circumstances would I go back there until I can say what I want with no consequence.

If I can’t say what I want with no consequence, then I can’t go back.

Just as anybody should be able to say anything negative towards me, I should be able to say something negative towards anybody else that I want to.

I should be able to be part of my country, but I’m not because I’m not wanted as part of my country.

People like me are branded as far right, but I never considered myself to be far right.

I just considered myself to be from a country that hates me.

I just considered myself to be from a country that isn’t like most of the other countries in the world.

And I want to belong somewhere.

That’s what I’m trying to say really.

I feel like I belong in Thailand as an outsider more than I felt like I belonged at home.

Someone who was from there and who was born and raised there.

Feeling more welcome in Thailand as an outsider, as someone who has to continuously go through visa struggles, who will never be part of the country, feeling more welcome here than I did at home.

That should tell you everything you need to know because money isn’t everything.

The ability to be free and at one with yourself is so much more important than that.

If you’re thinking about it, go for it because it changed my life for the better.

But it wasn’t without its many ups and downs and struggles along the way and of course all the stupid and ridiculous things I did.

But I learned my lesson, didn’t I?