He Lost £150,000 in Thailand and Left After His Marriage Ended
There was something that made the island of Phuket feel very special. As soon as I arrived there, I knew it was different. The sort of place that was for me. I was there at the time back in 2008 with my then wife and our two children. We always considered ourselves to be the sorts of people that went on adventurous holidays. The year prior we’d been to Zimbabwe. The year prior to that we’d been to Mexico. I loved to be able to give my children the experiences of a lifetime. And my wife seemed to appreciate that too.
Unfortunately though, that time in Phuket, although it stuck out to me as one of the best holidays I’d ever been on and the best places I’d ever been, somewhere that I thought we would go back to at some point in the future, it just so happened to coincide with the beginning of the end of my marriage. 2008 wasn’t a good year for me. We went early in the year, and by the end of the year, I was divorced, not knowing what had happened in my life. I always worked tremendously hard. I think that’s something I would like to point out and say I worked very hard in my career and my career was my own business which I really valued being able to do.
It allowed me the freedom to travel when we wanted. It allowed me the ability to work when I wanted. It put me in the point of being successful because I put in so many hours of work. So much hardship went into building that business.
And when it finally started ticking over years later, this was when our first child was born and then our second child a few years later, I was able to take a step back and reap the rewards of all the prior years of hard work. Those prior years of hard work had really taken its toll on me both mentally and physically. I suppose as a way to cope when I finished work in the morning, I might occasionally, or should I say more often than not, go out to the pub to relax and chat with friends and have a few beers coming home later on. I understand now that that was the wrong thing to do and I shouldn’t have done it.
And that’s why my wife decided to get divorced from me. Even though when we were going to Phuket, this had been on for a number of years and I felt everything was okay, it all came to a head after that. I do regret doing what I did. But at the time, that was my way to cope. That was my way to be able to produce what I was producing for my family.
I didn’t see it as a problem if I went to the pub four or five times a week to take a load off, to be able to actually function, to bring in the money and the income that my wife had grown accustomed to and to give the lives that our children were enjoying. She felt very differently about it at the time and I feel differently about it today. And that’s why we got divorced. And that’s why I found myself with half of everything I’d worked for. No drive whatsoever to do anything else. No ideas about how to get out of the rut I was in. I was really depressed and downtrodden by what had happened. And this feeling of emptiness, like I really didn’t know what to do.
Our children at that time were in their mid- teens, both quite young when we had them, but they were in their mid- teens, two years apart.
When she left, she took them with her. Fair play to her. She didn’t do anything vindictive against me. I think she always had a soft spot for me and there was no case of vindictiveness where I wasn’t able to see them or she was going to try to get even more money out of me because she already had so much. I believe that she wanted to meet somebody else who was going to give her something more stable. And unfortunately for her that didn’t go according to plan. She’s in probably just as bad state as I am today, which doesn’t really give me any happiness to admit that. She probably is wishing that she’d just stayed with me and understood that my downfall or my little negative points were just in order for me to be able to give the positives the best way I could.
Rebuilding After Divorce
What I got after that was when the divorce happened in 2008 going into 2009, what I got was not knowing what to do with myself. That’s saying it lightly. I didn’t want to continue with my business anymore because in a way I felt like she helped me to build it. I still missed her tremendously. I still loved her more than anything. And to this day, I will still call her the love of my life. But it didn’t feel right to do that. I just ticked over all the way through 2009, hitting the pub a lot harder than I should have hit it. Going to the pub probably every single day, then your day for a big portion of the day, and just spending through money, not really considering what’s going on.
Not seeing my children as much as I would have liked to have seen them because I didn’t really see myself in a fit state to be able to see them. I do still think to this day that my children still would have preferred it if we stayed together. I believe that’s what they were thought should have happened. In a way, they don’t have any negative feelings about their mother because of what she did, but they understood that I wasn’t doing anything bad, but I regret anyway what I did. That’s going back on a tangent again, and I don’t need to do that. It was all the way in 2011. At this point, I spent through quite a lot of money.
I downsized my house tremendously, and that was one thing I always did for my ex-wife. Again, I’m going to have to talk about this because it’s very relevant to my story, but one thing I always did for her was get the biggest house that we could possibly afford, which meant a mortgage, which meant monthly payments. I was the sort of person who would have just lived within his means and bought a house he could afford for cash. And that’s one thing that I did finally after pulling myself together around 2011 was buy myself a house for cash. £40,000 in my area, which was quite a reasonable house back then.
I mean, reasonable is relative, but it was something that you could live in, something that was in a safe area, and it was surrounded by nice people. Again, it was just something that I thought was the best thing to do. I could live there rent-free, mortgage-free.
And that was, I suppose, one of the things that gave me a bit of a wakeup call, as if to say, you don’t need to have all these expensive things. I just had a normal car at that point. I didn’t need a flashy car anymore because that was what my wife wanted, and I didn’t want any of it. I just wanted to make her happy. I suppose what I was getting my head around and although it took me a few years to do that was that you don’t need all these fancy things. The fancy things don’t define who you are and you could just live more within your means, spend less and end up having more at the end of the month.
Although I wasn’t earning at this point and hadn’t been ever since the divorce, probably 3 years before this. When I got myself that house and I started thinking about things, I came up with an idea and this was something that I was always interested in was to sell things on eBay. eBay was coming up at that time and I think it had been for a while and it just seemed like the sort of thing I was good at. I’d always run my own businesses. I’d always been places for my businesses and I’d always traveled for the business and traveled personally and privately too. Again, brilliant time to be had, and I’m not saying otherwise.
I thought selling things on eBay would be the best thing for me. Perhaps it was an excuse to send me to the Far East, a place I hadn’t been since Phuket. probably wouldn’t class Bet as the Far East, thinking mainly Hong Kong and parts of China where I’d been before, although I hadn’t been there for probably a decade at that point. I decided to have a look around on eBay, see what was selling, and see what’s not selling. At the time, I suppose we didn’t have the likes of Alibaba and other sites where anybody and any man and his dog, should you say, could just go online, find stuff to sell and listed.
You had to actually be on the ground and actually go in person to look for things to sell. That was what excited me. Maybe it was an excuse to go traveling. Maybe it was something to get me out of the country. Bear in mind, I still had quite good money at this point because I’d made a lot of money. Even after the divorce at that point, as well as my house and other small personal items to my name, I probably had a couple of hundred,000 just sat there. Blown through maybe a hundred,000 in the 3 years since the divorce.
And I suppose that included the house, too. So, it wasn’t too bad. 40,000 of that went on the house. Spent 60 in 3 years. But it was time to go and spread the wings. Time to go and see more of the world again. get back into that because I missed it. And I remember flying business class to Hong Kong, going to see the sorts of things that I would be able to buy. I was interested in toys and games, mainly little remote control helicopters and remote control drones. Not the sorts of drones you have today, but the sorts of things that people would buy. It was still a time when eBay was a possibility for things like that.
You could still do it. Now it’s a lot harder than it is because everybody can just find everything without having to bat an eyelid and actually travel anywhere. At the time, it just felt really exciting to be able to go. Getting to Hong Kong and going back to that hotel I stayed at when I went traveling before I even got married was a memorable experience. It was bittersweet on the one front because it was no longer part of us, was it? It had been given back to China. That was very upsetting. One thing that really, you know, I’d heard other guys talk about this too. Not many because not many seem to talk about Hong Kong, but I’ve heard it said, “It feels so great when you go through Hong Kong immigration and get stamped in for six months as a British passport holder, but everyone else doesn’t get that.” That felt like it was right and that’s how it should be.
I was thinking, “Well, you only need to leave once a year and you could stay here. Why don’t you live here?” But not really considering it.
I was there to find things. I had a few meetings arranged and throughout my time in Hong Kong there for a week, I traveled around and found a supplier of these toys and games that I believed would sell. huge shipping containers would need to be bought of this stuff, get it back, and there was probably a profit margin to be had. I already had my eBay account listed at this point, and I must admit, I had been to a few local auctions around my area, buying things in bulk that were perhaps not, you know, the kind of discontinued models, things like vacuum cleaners and things that were all the rage at the time.
Something I was quite successful at, and this was going to be the next step, next step to building something even bigger. I’d already placed an order for some stuff from two factories, in fact, different things. About £15,000 I invested. It was what I thought when something could potentially double the money. Okay, I’d paid for the plane tickets, paid for all of that, but it was going to profit to be made. And also, it was fun and adventurous at the same time, and that was counting so much for me. It was important. And after that week in Hong Kong, I had no plans. My return flight was in another week’s time, and I had plans to go to China and look there and return to Hong Kong before going home.
But I don’t know what it was. I suppose a decision that was a very fateful one. I decided on a whim to fly to Thailand for a week. I hadn’t been to Thailand since we’d been to Phuket. The time I was there and how fantastic it was. And telling myself I should just go back. There was something drawing me to go back. Fly to Bangkok, spend a few days there, then go down to Phuket, 5 days, rekindle your love of the island. In a way, that was when my marriage was on its downhill spiral and I can put myself back into a positive mindset because I was already feeling positive at this point. I thought that would really be the icing on the cake to get me to the point of let’s get back on track.
And I went and followed that plan.
Bangkok didn’t really actually spend any time in Bangkok previously with my family because it wasn’t the sort of place that seemed to be what we did. We went to luxury resorts and Bangkok although had luxury places, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying it doesn’t, but it was a big city and that’s not the places we usually went. That’s why I enjoyed those two days I spent in Bangkok. You know, it’s very cliche thing to say that it changed me, but it really did. I did one big city tour, paid a guide to show me around, and I was noticing as we walked around certain areas that drove past certain areas and lots of things I could potentially buy in Thailand to to sell on eBay.
Lots of things from jewelry to anything. Although it was not really the sorts of things I was selling at that moment in time, it did seem like it could be a place to come back and explore more for that side of things. I don’t want to wax lyrical about my first night in Bangkok because I’d had a few good nights in Hong Kong and experience that side of things. I thought because I was there and because I was single and because I was by myself, I might as well go and check out some of the famous nightlife scenes. I headed to Pat Pong, which back then, I suppose it was still in decline back then, but not like today.
That’s where I went. fun and interesting experience. Let’s just leave it at that. Did things happen? Yes, they did. Did it become everything? No, it didn’t. But it was something available in Thailand that you felt like you had to go and look at. Something I thought I would go and seek out in Phuket, too, just to see what like it was like there.
Starting Again Through eBay
Back down in Phuket, I immediately felt how I felt before. And I was a little bit concerned that I might enter another depression because it would take me back to the memories I had with my family. But if anything, it did the exact opposite of that. In a way, it broke that last bond of depression and put me back on track. I felt like I was now 100% healed, looking forward to going back home, seeing my children, selling these things that were already on their way home because they were shipped by the factory, and not really thinking much more about Thailand then. I suppose that was when in my hotel in Phuket, I left it, walked into a small restaurant close by, and whether it was fate or the exact opposite of fate, because fate should only be something good, but there was a girl sat there having something to eat.
When I say restaurant, it was very local, very Thai style. And I was loving the rustic kind of rudimentary nature of how certain things were in Thailand. You had the really fancy tourist side of things, luxury resorts, luxury hotels, and luxury restaurants where we always used to go, but you had the Thai side of things, too. A little roadside place, plastic tables, and the condiments right in the middle of the table. You go and order your noodles from the lady working at the front. She brings them over, and you put the condiments in yourself. But there was a girl sat there having some noodles.
She looked very dressed up and very beautiful. Quite a bit of makeup on, but not overly excessive makeup because that was never something that attracted me or appealed to me. I preferred natural. But she looked very beautiful. Small dress on and it looked like she was about to have a night on the town. I didn’t really put two and two together considering we were very close to Bangla Road. That was probably where she was going to end up. That’s where she worked in one of the bars there. I just felt this urge to say something to her and I did. How are you? What are you doing? And obvious having something to eat.
The way that she spoke to me and her English was reasonably okay. The way she seemed to not be shy, it should have been a sign that yes, she did work in one of the bars. And she said she was about to go to work, too. Again, not putting two and two together. I asked where you work. Then she said Bangla Road. And okay, I knew what Bangla Road was. Again, I still, however, didn’t put two and two together. I just had my noodle sitting next to her and just talking. I don’t know how it was. It just happened naturally. and she said, “I need to go to work now.” And I asked her then, “What do you do?” Then she said she worked in a bar.
And oh, I suppose that’s when it clicked. I didn’t meet her in a bar, though, which made me think that it wasn’t unnecessarily like going into a bar and meeting her. And therefore, that was how it was. It felt like I’d met her and it happened the way it did. I met her out of that world. I don’t know what it was. I just felt something for her. Can’t say anything other than that. Can’t help how I feel.
Can’t help what I was doing. It’s something you really can’t help, but I felt something for her. and I did and I asked her which bar she worked in and she told me and I told her I’d go and see her later on. She said great, she leaves and I wasn’t ready to go there yet, but I was thinking perhaps not. You could get some bit carried away. That’s not something you might actually want to do. That’s what I was telling myself. But instead of taking my own advice, I went for a beer somewhere else and I found myself walking to her bar going in and she was there. She recognized me, got her a drink and we’re talking together and before I know it, we’re leaving the bar.
You would say if things turned out right that the rest is history, but the rest well was history until a different history happened, which isn’t really the most exciting thing to have to acknowledge, but that’s how it was. I felt like we were an item from the following morning already because I had a few more days left in Phuket before returning home. Didn’t really want to go home. I mean, I wanted to because I had lots of exciting things to do there, but I wanted to spend more time with her and get to know her more. I found myself over the rest of those days just doing exactly that. She took me all around the island of Phuket together.
She had a motorcycle allowed me to drive it for some of the time and she was driving too and that was an experience that you would never even consider doing anywhere else. Getting on a motorcycle like that and driving through that ridiculously dangerous traffic on those ridiculously dangerous roads with a helmet on, but not the sort of helmet that would make any positive effect if you were to fall off the bike. You really are taking your life in your own hands. But it makes you feel that in Thailand, adventure is possible and you can skirt around the rules somewhat in order to live a life that doesn’t hammer at you every time in order to behave in a particular way that you’re meant to behave.
I suppose that was something that Thailand gave to me, a feeling like I could be a bit of a rebel. A feeling like I could let my rebellious side let loose and everybody could do that. And it wasn’t like it was frowned upon. It was just something you did. It came with negatives because when I was there, I even saw a guy, a foreign guy, fall off his motorcycle and he wasn’t even well enough to be able to get off the street. Now, you could tell he was okay because he was talking. But even still, you see that and you don’t think I better get off the bike and not bother. You think how awful. But it was just an adrenaline rush.
Your experiences together and she’s showing you around. And I was feeling this huge connection to her as if she was a person who I could see myself spending more time with as more time went by. At this point, a few months before, I’d turned 45 years old and I found out she was 29. It wasn’t like the gap between us was too extreme or perverse like some people might say. It was just something that felt quite natural and normal. It was something about her. That’s all I can say, something about her. The problem was I was due to return home. But remember, I was financially okay. I didn’t have the regret that I can’t be with her.
It was always the case of I suppose this is how I’m wired. If I can afford to do something, not doing it doesn’t feel as bad than if I couldn’t afford to do something. I could have afforded to have stayed more with her, so leaving wasn’t as bad. I think that’s how I would have liked to have said it. For some guys, I suppose they couldn’t have afforded to stay, and that’s what makes it bad, because you’re being ripped away against your own will. I wasn’t being ripped away against my will. I was going because I had things to do, and I was going to keep in touch with her. I was planning on that.
Although I felt this big connection to her and we both professed the fact that we really seemed to like each other, I didn’t think to tell her to stop working or anything like that because that was what she did. Who cares?
I didn’t. I wasn’t approved. I wasn’t really devastated by the thought of her working in a bar because you work in a bar doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s love there, does there? That’s how I felt. I didn’t care. I suppose it was something I should have cared about, but I didn’t. Never mind. I left back home and the first thing I did was go and see my children. hadn’t seen them for a long time and they remarked how I looked like I was in a better mood and I was back to my old self. That gave me a bit of confidence that I should start seeing them more because I hadn’t really seen them a lot after the divorce because of how bad I was feeling in the downward spiral I was in.
I was excited for those things to arrive that I was going to sell. I’d already been to the auction when I’d been back to sell a few things making £50 here, £100 there. Not a lot, but nothing to write home about. But I was so excited for those things to come and get stuck into that. I was speaking to her regularly as time went by. I was probably daily speaking to her and she agreed and she said, “I mean, I know you’re going to come back, but I’d already told her I’d come back and I told her work for myself and I’m financially independent in that way.” So, I didn’t really have any set times. Probably come back in 4 months.
Think that was the plan. It was going to take a month for that stuff to arrive, five or so weeks or something. Get rid of that, then I was going to go more. That was the plan. She told me, and we hadn’t really discussed prior to this, she said she’s still working, but she doesn’t want me to send any money, but she’s not going to leave the bar. That’s exactly what she said. And I thought, “Well, up to you.” I thought that was probably something that they all say, and whether she did or not, who knows? Again, who cares? That’s by the buy. But we kept in touch regularly, and I’m feeling more like I’m missing her.
I’m feeling like I want to be with her. That stuff I was selling arrived as planned. And there was an awful lot of stuff. Awful lot. Awful lot of work, too. probably 15 16 hour a day work just listing it posting packaging and I managed to get it all shifted in two months and after taking into consideration the plane tickets and the time in Phuket and everything I’d done since I’d left in order to do that I made £11,000 profit which I couldn’t really complain about £11,000 and a paid for week in Hong Kong and a paid for week in Phuket. Not only that I’d met a girl and I felt like I was back. I’d always managed to make my own money.
I’d always managed to do things and now it just felt like well let’s get back and let’s do it again and buy more stuff. I told her I was going and I said to her, I need to go to Hong Kong. Far, do you want to go with me? I’ll go to Phuket first, spend a few days there, then we’ll fly to Hong Kong together, then go back to Phuket and then I’ll go and see how things take it from there. She said absolutely, she’d love to go and she didn’t need a visa to go there, which made things easier. Surely had a passport, she said, which was easy. It just seemed like a very exciting thing to be able to do.
spend more time with her, take her out of her natural environment, give her an experience she’s never had before, and to see how things progress between us. I was feeling like I wanted to see her again, and I was missing her, but I was feeling like I needed her or couldn’t live without her. That’s not the strong as feelings were at that time. That wasn’t it.
Just like I wanted to see her. I was never that sort of guy, I suppose, too. Never desperate. I didn’t need a girl, I suppose, because I could meet a girl at home quite easily. I didn’t necessarily need just a girl in Thailand because I could have it at home. What I’m trying to say is, ever since I got divorced, I’d had women in the area approaching me, wanting to meet me, and you might spend a bit of time with one of them, but you didn’t feel anything from that. If anything, they were just a different version of your ex-wife. And I suppose that’s what really attracted me to her in Phuket was she was a different variation of my ex-wife.
That wasn’t the case at all. She was something altogether different, entirely different, more exciting, and different in every way. Every girl in Thailand would have been different because of the fact that it was Thailand. Although I probably had four or five casual flings since the divorce before I even left for Hong Kong in 2011, it didn’t feel the same. That’s what I’m trying to say. I’m not trying to say I was desperate. I wasn’t. I wasn’t anything to do with that. It was just the excitement of it. I went to Phuket as planned. Spent a night in Bangkok having a bit of a blowout again in Pat Pong.
Never went to any of the places that other guys talked about such as Soi Cowboy or Nana Plaza. Never went there and I regret that. It would have been fun to see them, but again, not my world. Would have been fun to see. Had a good time though. But the next time down to Phuket and she was there waiting for me at the airport. The way she greeted me, it was like we’d been apart for years and we’d been together for years. The way it was like she was happy to see me. I couldn’t believe it really because I was happy to see her, too. But it was like the excitement was coming from her more than me. That gave me a warm fuzzy feeling, I think he could say.
And I love saying that. Who cares what I felt like? But it really felt like that. We spent two wonderful days in Phuket, rekindling where we left off. It did feel like it was rekindling where we left off. It felt like we were moving ahead with things together. It felt in a way that we hadn’t moved ahead with things before. And I think that’s probably accurate. It was like we were becoming even more serious even more quickly. We even went to her bar the last night before we were due to go to Hong Kong. We went to her bar and it was like the people in the bar knew who I was, knew that she was speaking to me.
I think many people have the bars wrong. Some girls, okay, they’re out to get as much money as they can, but they don’t care how the guy feels. I get that and I believe that’s somewhat true. But also, it’s possible for girls to have feelings for guys, isn’t it? Of course it is. The way that they were talking about me, I mean, those are the other girls that worked in the bar. It’s like I told something to her, which was just a small and minor thing.
But the fact that they’re saying that she was telling me her them these things, it was like picking up on a very specific thing I was saying to her when we were speaking on the phone, and she was actually telling them what I was saying, as if she’d actually took it on board. To me, it was nothing. But it did give me that sense that she’d been working in the bar. Yes. And I didn’t care about that because I wasn’t desperate, but it’s like I was a part of her life and she was sharing me with other people in a way which made me feel like she actually had strong feelings. The following day, we headed up to Bangkok and flew to Hong Kong.
And she was so excited. She’d never been on an airplane before, 29 years old. She had a child as well, which again, I suppose some people will hate me for this, but if a guy has children, it’s not the same as if a girl has children, is it? because of all the bodily connotations that go along with it and things, but that was just how it was. She was excited and happy and we touched down in Hong Kong and go to that same hotel I stayed at before. It was quite expensive and I don’t think she really understood what expensive meant until she went to Hong Kong and she was quite taken aback. Went back to that factory and while I could have spoken to them and ordered more stuff over the phone, I wanted to go there in person because that was the part of the fun of it.
Ordered more stuff this time, even more than before. Exciting that this trip is being paid for and then some. and I was good at it. I suppose it’s a bit of a foreshadowing, isn’t it? This was all happening and we spent this week together in Hong Kong. And it was during that week when I just felt like I’d met the girl that I wanted to be with. That was how it was. I’d come to that conclusion. She was who I wanted to be with. I didn’t want anybody else. Didn’t need anybody else. I wanted this to be something that could be a continuation. I didn’t want to not be with her. At this point, I wasn’t even thinking about living in Thailand yet.
I was thinking about getting married and getting her home with me because I had no qualms with where I was from. I didn’t feel like I needed to escape because I was quite financially sound. Didn’t really need to leave. Didn’t feel like it was something I wanted to do, but I hadn’t made any decisions yet. I think it was the first time that we seemed to say that we loved each other, which was really one of those moments that you remember. I’m not the sloppy sort of guy, so don’t think I am. I’m not pathetic either, so don’t think I am, too. I just felt like we were going back to Thailand. We were going to be spending about 5 days in Phuket before I was going to go home.
But I felt the urge to ask her to marry me. It was quite a sudden thing, but she agreed and she agreed to be with me. Let’s take things from there. I told her I’ll come back to Thailand in a few months time to get married and follow that path. Once that stuff had gone again, it’s going to be a lot more hard work. 3 or 4 months of really hard work for me, but it’s going to pay out. It’s going to work and everything is going to go according to plan. So, after that, we’ll get married.
Engagement and Meeting Her Family
When we were engaged, though, she said to me that she wants to leave the bar. She doesn’t want to be there anymore. She feels a bit uncomfortable. I understood where she was coming from, although I would have not really had any problems if she just stayed working there for the time being, but she said she wanted to leave. She wanted to go and be in her hometown, spend some time with the family. She asked if I could give her a bit of money in order to be able to do that. And I said, “Of course I can. I didn’t mind, but again, it was her idea to do that. I didn’t mind either way because again, it just didn’t really phase me.
There’s love and there’s whatever else goes along with that. I were very laid-back in that regard and I suppose very liberal in that mindset too. You would say I didn’t care. It was just what she wanted to do. She even said to me before we go back, can you go and see my family? I want them to know that you’re serious. She went on to say how she’d met this other guy before. Can’t remember where he was from somewhere in Europe and she got serious with him and he was going to get married and went up to see the family and everything was going okay and it didn’t play out according to plan. But she wanted the family to meet me and I don’t know what it was.
maybe to get some kind of approval if to say yes he’s okay. I agreed to do it. We left Phuket a bit early, went up to Mukdahan, where she was from, right on the Laotian border. It was a very interesting place. Although I didn’t see the appeal of living somewhere like that. I don’t get why anybody would want to live in rural Thailand. I really don’t get it. We went up there and it was a very humbling experience considering the limited means by which those people lived. They were respectful. They were happy. That’s what people say, isn’t it?
They just seemed to be happy getting on with their lot in life as if that’s what they’re just destined to do. It was okay. We met the family and I was going to be leaving myself down to Bangkok, flying home and leaving her there. We parted ways and in a way it was a very exciting time because the plan was to go back and get married soon and take things from there. Maybe get her a visa to go home with me and take things from there. That’s all it was. Over the next probably 3 months, I followed the same path as before. Made about the same amount of money as before. again, even though I had more stuff.
One of the problems as things like this happen is if you do things and you’re in business like I am, once you start doing something, more people do it, margins decrease, and it was a lot of extra work for about the same amount of money. Then I’m starting to remember back to Thailand. What about finding things in Thailand to sell? Perhaps they could go find things in Thailand, an excuse to be able to spend even more time there with her as opposed to just a bit of time. Get married, spend a few months there, and really taking stock of things and finding things to sell in that country that might work.
I felt like I was good at it and I felt like it was the sort of thing that I was going to do and I didn’t need to go to Hong Kong again because of the profit margins. I went to see my children, told them that I was going to be getting married, told them I was happy again and everything like that. They seemed to be happy that that was the case. Talking about their mother though, never went to see her, but they were saying how miserable she was and how she wished she was still with me. She tried to meet this other person and things didn’t go right. It was as if she was always wanting something a little bit better than she had.
I think that was what my ex-wife was like in a nutshell. Always wanting something just that bit more. When she couldn’t get that just bit more, it was a regret. Wish I’d done this and I wish I’d done that. I didn’t feel happy or sad to hear that. Although it was a bittersweet moment because if things had just stayed the way they were, would have probably had a lot more money. I’d have probably continued making more money. And although I made what in a couple of months £11,000 or something like that in about 3 months, including the trips I’d taken, £11,000 profit, I made a lot more than that before.
and we could have continued to do that.
But I was going to Thailand. I was going to be looking into things in the deep end, finding something that could set me up. Order stuff, send it home, and that was the idea. What happened when I made it back to Thailand, though, the first thing we did, we met up in Bangkok, and we got married, and we were going to be going up to have the village ceremony after we’d been married. I knew everything that that was involved, and I’d already agreed to it, and I didn’t care. Probably going to cost me all in about 5,000 or 6,000. Not a fortune. It never mind. What happened after that? I mean, the paper marriage was spending a bit of time going around Bangkok looking at factories that sold anything from jewelry to ornaments to all kinds of different things in between.
But then I’m looking online at the things that sell and looking at what you can buy them for. And you’re doing the sums and it’s already, I suppose, a losing battle. Although people were selling things and seem to be doing okay and doing well, I think it was about a month of going around and looking at all the things that I could sell. Then it was like I don’t know if I saw anything in it. looking at what I used to sell before and no profit in that and you could make something but it just seemed like everybody had jumped on the bandwagon and everything was taking over and everyone wanted a piece of it and then I kind of lost interest.
I suppose you’ve got to be first and you’ve got to be first always but you can’t maintain being first and I think it was during that month of getting married before the village ceremony which was arranged for a very auspicious date apparently. I kind of came to the conclusion that perhaps eBay wasn’t going to be the thing anymore and something else is going to be the thing. Most of that time was spent in Bangkok. Again, we weren’t really going out to the bars. We were just living quite close to the riverside. That was the area that I liked the most in Bangkok by the river up to Chinatown around the old historic quarters.
Just felt like the sort of place where I wanted to base myself. After that, we went up to get the village ceremony out of the way. Very quaint experience. I said £6,000 it cost me. Didn’t phase me. She seemed to be happy, the family be happy, and that meant a lot to me because I wanted her to be happy. Now, what happened then? I mean, kept saying, “What happened this?
What happened that?” It’s a progression, isn’t it? It’s a case of, “Well, how now we’re married and we’ve got this out of the way. eBay is not going to be the thing for me anymore.” I don’t think it is because it just felt like a losing battle, like a never-ending front of change and difficulties. I didn’t want that grind anymore. I was coming to the conclusion, and this was actually when we were in Malaysia when I went to get a visa that would allow me to stay longer in Thailand. That was when the thoughts were, what do we do? Do I get her back home with me or do I live in Thailand? That was the first time I was even considering living in Thailand.
She was basically just saying up to you. She didn’t care as long as she was with me. That’s all that mattered and that’s who she was as a person. Very laid-back, very wanting to please. She was very, I would say, outgoing in a way to be the best version of herself to make me happy. And I felt like that really was the case. And I wanted her happy, too, because she made me happy. So that’s all that matters, just being happy with each other. It didn’t really cross my mind what the best idea was, but the ultimate decision was let’s go back to the UK together. I’ll show her that she can experience it and we can take things from there.
I looked into the visa process and it was going to be a huge slog and but I mean I had a house, I had enough money in the bank, so it was just going to be dotting the eyes and crossing the tees. It might take a few months, but I could find someone to help me do it so I don’t have to submit the paperwork myself and something that I have a pet peeve of. I hate paperwork. In Bangkok, after I got that visa, and that’s what we did, it took about 4 months from getting everything for the visa to be approved. She was able to now live in the UK, and we went to the UK together and took on that stage of life.
I can’t for the life of me remember exactly when this was, but a few years after my story began, when I’d been to Phuket myself, maybe 2014, maybe 2013, something around those times. It was an experience to behold, though, showing her around where I was from. She didn’t really dislike it, but she didn’t like it either. I think she was very indifferent to it.
She definitely didn’t like the cold. Of course she didn’t. But she got used to it. But it felt quite strange in a way introducing her to my children, and my children were very respectful and seemed to like her, which was important to me. But again, it’s a question of now, well, I need to make more money. I had probably, after everything, made a bit, lost a bit, done a bit, done a bit of this and a bit of that, maybe a couple of hundred,000, still had the house, and what am I going to do? I was drawn back to eBay, but I just felt like it had been done to death. I just didn’t know how to do anything with that anymore.
And I started thinking about my old business, but I was out of that game for a few years, and things had moved on. And there were different regulations in place that you had to adapt to, specific kinds of tests and things that had changed in the years since I’d done it. Everything that I looked at doing, there was always some stumbling block in the way as to how I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t like we were spending through a lot of money because we didn’t have much stuff to pay for. I had my paid for house. Bills weren’t expensive cuz it was only a small house. Go to the pub, have a couple of beers, and that was it.
Eating out a few times a week, not a lot of money, and things just ticked over for a good while. It was the idea, after nothing had really fallen into place, though, that why don’t we just go and live in Thailand instead. I could get a marriage visa. I had enough money in the bank to do that. And at the time, thinking, don’t quite have enough money to last forever in Thailand. Let’s do something in Thailand instead. But do what? I didn’t know. I didn’t really know. But it was the idea we kept coming back to.
Marriage and the Decision to Move to Thailand
It was about 2015 when we actually did move to Thailand and I was thinking about what to do. Really thinking about that, not knowing what to do. She wasn’t knowing what to do as well, but it was like we wanted to do something. It was a good position to be in. Having the financial ability to do something, yet not the best position to be in, not having any idea what to do. Of course, we were both drawn to Phuket. That’s where she worked before. That’s where I fell in love with and my visions of Thailand. It was a paradise. It really was paradise, I found, and still is paradise today. I get it. Some people will say it’s not necessarily the same as it used to be, at least when I went first, because of the demographic shifts and the expense and things like that that have pushed it away from being the Thailand of old to the Thailand of new.
Some people will say that, and I might tend to agree, but back then, 2015, it was still somewhat similar to how it was when I first arrived.
After getting back to Thailand, I got my visa arranged over the first few months, and we rented a place in Phuket. only small, but it was all we needed. It was then that we started thinking about what was next. What are we going to do? It wasn’t a huge rush or a huge sense of urgency that would need us to be able to do something quickly, but we needed something soon, but we had enough money to last for a while. But it felt like an inevitability that money would run out eventually. One thing I always felt in Thailand was I always felt the time was of essence in Thailand, like you need to do something quickly.
You need to get things sorted out because you don’t have anything to fall back on. I’m probably not going to end up with an old age pension because although I’d worked for myself, I’d paid in, but I hadn’t paid in as much as I would have needed to have done. And I left when I was younger, and it was a different situation, so I might not even end up with a pension. I hadn’t paid into a private pension either. So, I didn’t have any money that was going to be coming to me at a certain age. If we just lived and existed and spent, for example, £10,000 a year, that might get me to my 70s.
But then what what happens when the money runs out? I did rent out my house which had gone up in value quite a bit and I was quite fortunate in that phase because the house was in paid £40,000 for it and it was probably worth double that at this time. It had gone up quite considerably and that was rented out for £425 a month. I remember that exactly because it’s exactly what the benefits in my area would pay. So that’s what I could rent it for, £425. I’ll get to that later, I suppose. Don’t want to give it away, but it was a bit of income coming in. I suppose we spent the first 6 months just living the honeymoon phase of living in Thailand and it was great.
Never fell out, never had a bad word to say to each other. Never really had any issues with money because although I gave her a little bit of money so she could send that to her family as and when she needed to, it wasn’t an amount of money that made any difference or I didn’t feel like it did. About £300 a month, that’s what she got. She was able to go and eat the food she wanted and things of that nature, which seemed to go according to plan and it was good enough for me. But we kept coming back to the idea that we need to do something.
But what I thought, I don’t know. It wasn’t urgent, but knowing that the longer we leave it, the less money we’ll have to invest and the more risky things might have to be. But it was one day when I was going for a walk, something I did very often, and I’d walked past this place time and time again. But I walked past it this time, and there was now a rent sign outside. It used to be a massage shop, but now it had a few boards outside for rent. I thought it was interesting. It was in a good location. Not that I wanted to do a massage place, but it was the building that was for rent. After I did a bit of research and I looked into it, they didn’t want any key money to take it over.
It was just a rent. The rental price was about twice as much as I was paying for the place we were living in. It was a shophouse, though, and we went to look at it. On the top floor, they had living quarters, so we could live there, too.
And then, it’s a thing. Why don’t we do something from the downstairs in terms of a business? But the thing was, what business? I had no idea. We kept thinking about lots of different things ever since we moved there. Could we open a bar, a restaurant, a hotel, a motorcycle rental shop, a laundry? All things that tourists would use on a daily basis. It seemed to be like it was in a place that was a good area with a good footfall. So that was something that was something to be considered. But in terms of what the business was going to be, though, that was still up in the air. We decided though to take this place on because it wasn’t going to be too much out of pocket to take it on.
And although it was double the rent we were paying, it was something that had premises downstairs and it was something that we could spend a bit of time thinking about and find out about what to do. So we rented it and started racking our brains.
The Motorcycle Rental Business
What we decided to do, again, something that I was interested in, was just a motorcycle rental shop. It seemed to be an easy thing to do. Invest money in bikes, rent them out, and have a guy who can fix them. Let’s try it. Everything was done through her because I just didn’t want to go through the stress of starting a business and getting a work permit. I had my marriage visa, and that was good enough. All in in this investment, I’ll say in pounds was about 50,000. A lot of bikes, computer systems, a website, and everything was in place.
I felt like it was a reasonable idea. Good place, good location. Let’s start this business and take it from there. To start with, things went okay. We weren’t making a lot of money, but awaking something. We were covering the rent, covering what I gave her, and it was going okay on that front, but it was, but I don’t know, very underwhelming. I think that was the thing. It was very underwhelming.
It felt like we’ve got this, but every time things go wrong. I mean, that’s one thing I suppose was one of the big negatives. Things seem to go wrong all the time. All the time. Someone had dented the bike, someone crashed, someone did this, someone did that, someone didn’t pay, someone didn’t return the bike on time. Things you would never think would happen. You think people would just rent it and bring it back. But so many people didn’t.
These are tourists, by the way, not Thai people. It was just a never-ending struggle and stressful situation of constant chasing after things, constant trying to put things back into place, constant trying to fix things. It just wasn’t something that either of us were enjoying at all. Because of that, and as crazy as it sounds, we decided to end that after only 6 months. And although we made a bit of money from it, we had to get rid of all the bikes and get rid of everything. And it came in at about a 20,000 loss over 6 months. That was a very humbling experience because I’d never really lost money before.
The thing that made me think was I’d never lost money before and I need to prove myself here.
I need to actually prove that I can make money and Thailand isn’t different to where I’m from. That was the biggest mistake of all was having that loss and not accepting it for what it was. Perhaps telling myself Thailand is a different beast entirely. You need to be careful. What made me do that instead was just to dive in even deeper and try to come up with something else that could be even better and actually make money as opposed to lose money. I think from there it was just downhill, a downhill race to the bottom because almost straight away after that I just felt like we needed to do something quickly.
There was no waiting around. There was no time to plan, no time to think.
Taking Over a Bar and Losing Money
So I took over a bar. This time I had to get a work permit because I needed to work there. So I took this over. My wife was working there too. Not working like a bar girl. That’s very important. And I took over the bar. It just seemed like something that could get me the money back that I’d lost and make more. Guys seemed to be making money at bars. And I thought I’d been successful before. Now, I had one mistake in Thailand and I thought this could be actually the thing that would get that money back. Plus, I could start making more money and I could live like that and be someone who actually worked and made money in Thailand.
Let’s do it. This time it took a bit of an investment into actually taking over some key money. So, we paid that and we took it over. I think when we had that place for a few months when there was a bit of tension feeling happening between my wife and I because we were always busy, but I didn’t care at that point. I love being busy. I love that. But it was like we were drifting apart because of the time we were spent working. As painful as this is, and this is going on for a couple of months of us drifting apart, I was in the back of the bar. Can’t remember what I was doing. And she was out front.
Number of other girls there.
It wasn’t like she was alone. I will admit I was already quite drunk at that point. That’s a mistake. Don’t get drunk in your own bar, but she was drunk, too. I suppose that’s an excuse that you would like to say. I came back out after whatever I was doing again. Still can’t remember what it was. And she wasn’t there. Where’s she gone? She’s gone somewhere. I don’t know how to say this because it’s very embarrassing, but apparently there was a guy who came into the bar and she was drunk and as if she’d forgotten that I was her husband in the back. She’d left the bar with this guy and she came back the following morning looking very sheepish.
“I’m sorry I was drunk. I was drunk,” she kept saying, and it was very embarrassing, mainly because all the other staff in the bar knew exactly what had happened. And I cared a lot. I was devastated. But I wasn’t about to throw everything away because of it. I believed it could have just been a mistake. She was very drunk. It was a one-off, an awful situation. Let’s just progress. Let’s forget about it. Although it haunted me, it was just like it was, and I couldn’t do anything about it.
So, we had to continue, which we did. The problem is, we’re losing money, hand over fist. Hand over fist, losing money. I put in 2 million baht in key money to take this place over. I’d already lost money before, and I suppose instead of throwing in the towel and admitting defeat on this one, and then putting in, you know, a bit more to a halt to it and saying stop, I lost more money, about £80,000. That should tell you everything you need to know about Thailand. I continued for another 6 months hoping to turn things around, hoping to get through high season and make some money, but it didn’t work at all.
Throughout this time, my wife and I are just drifting apart because of the stress and the strain of things and because of all of it. It’s a humbling experience. When it got to the point when I was about £100,000 out of the pocket, that’s when I’d lost in my Thailand ventures. That’s what we decided to close the bar. We had no choice. Okay, we had £100,000 left, but we had, you know, my house being rented out, but again, this was on 2016, 2017. It’s one of the situations like, okay, we’ve still got some money left. Perhaps the best thing to do, she still had the ability to go to the UK at this point, would have been, we can make money in the UK, so let’s go there.
Can’t make money in Thailand. You can’t do that. I’d always told myself I’d been successful in England, go back. Perhaps that’s what we should have done. Should have overlooked everything that she’d done. I think the reason I didn’t want to go back was because of that incident at the bar when she really cheated on me. I didn’t feel like I wanted to take her back there. Perhaps that was why.
I was really on tenterhooks at that point because I’d burnt through all that money trying to fix things and being unsuccessful. I just felt like your third time’s a charm. One more chance. One more chance to do something. What’s it going to be? I have no idea. The thing that really stung me the most was the fact I felt like I was living in paradise. It really was paradise. It’s such a beautiful, beautiful place. I have my wife and okay, that negative thing had happened and it was awful. We had drifted apart a bit and we weren’t really the same as we were to start with, although we were okay together and happy.
It wasn’t like before though. Wasn’t like we were in love anymore. And I think I suppose that’s how it would feel. Unfortunately, and I’ll have to say it as it is, it was probably a month after we’d lost the bar. We decided to get rid of that and not throw any more money down the drain when she was out with friends and she cheated on me again. What was I meant to do? I could divorce her and that would be it. Or I could accept it. I had no choice. So, I chose to. The sad thing is I chose to accept it and I chose to dive head first into something which was the most stupid thing of all. We decided based on her idea to invest some money into a family business that was operational that needed some more investment up in her hometown.
Something to do with, and I can’t remember exactly what it was, something to do with actually buying off farmers and selling it on. Something her cousin or someone like that was doing. Can you invest a million bat into this and then we’re going to get 50% of the profits? It just seemed like everything was explained to me. We went up to have a look. Everything was explained to me. This is going to work according to plan and it should go according to plan. So, I went for it stupidly because, of course, I never saw any money back again. After 6 months of not getting any of that money back and spending other money, trying other little ideas that I was doing all the time, nothing was working.
When I hadn’t got any money back, that’s when my wife and I are getting even more afraid in terms of the relationship. Angry all the time, shouting, I want this back. What’s going on? It didn’t work. Everything’s going wrong. It was then when the inevitable happened and we just chose not to be with each other anymore and it was awful. At this point, I probably had through other things I tried. I tried so many things. I tried eBay again, even all kinds of things to make money in Thailand, but I was down to about £50,000. That was when we got the divorce.
The Final Investment, Divorce and Leaving Thailand
After that, I’m sitting there still in paradise thinking, how have I just lost all that money? I’d never lost money in my life before. I’d done so many ventures at home. I’d occasionally buy a car and sell it and make a profit. You do all kinds of things and I’d never lost money. Everything just seemed to work at home, but nothing seemed to work in Thailand. Nothing at all.
And there I was, £50,000 after losing 150,000, trying things when nothing had worked. A wife who had cheated on me and we were now divorced and I was divorced for a second time. It was as if what I was building in Thailand wasn’t actually real. It was like it didn’t have foundations to it. It was like it was fake. It was like I was pouring good money after bad into things and lots of things that didn’t make sense to do because Thailand doesn’t work the same as home. You think that because you’ve been successful at home, you can be successful in Thailand.
But it was a very humbling experience because not only had I lost all that money, I was now not a married man anymore and I’d accepted the indignity of my wife cheating on me a few times, which was something that you should never accept, but I had felt like I had no choice. But there I am with not much money, not knowing what to do. The thing was though, I didn’t want to be in Thailand anymore. That was a certain. I felt like I completely lost paradise. Paradise was lost. What’s the point in staying in Phuket although it did feel like paradise and it was a place I love so much.
The place I felt this connection to. Everything I was building. It felt like it was building not in the right way. As if to say, I don’t know. Don’t know the right words to describe it, the right words to use. But it wasn’t like anything was being built at all. It was like trying to build and it all went wrong.
I decided then, because I just couldn’t face going home at that moment to fly to Hong Kong, spend a bit of time there, getting my head together. It was then, when I was there, that I gave the tenants of my house notice that I needed to move back in. And about 3 months later, after admitting defeat, I flew back home, back into my house, back into that life.
Lessons from Losing Money in Thailand
A couple more years of complete misery and complete depression, COVID happens, and it’s awful. Not knowing what to do. I decided a couple of years ago at this point, you need to try something else. You need to do something else. You need to put yourself back together. Pull yourself back together. Cuz my children were grown up at this point and you know what’s happened and everything they’re saying and trying to say to you. What am I meant to say? You don’t really know what you’re meant to say to them about things because you don’t know how to behave. I didn’t know what to do. But I started to tell myself that I really at this moment needed to pull myself back together.
While I don’t really want to give away exactly what I’m doing now, I started something about 3 years ago and I’m making money again. Why did that work? Why? I have no idea, but it did. I’m not making a fortune, but I’m making okay money.
I’ve still got my house, which is worth over £100,000 now, which is okay. And I can just say after 3 years of hard work, I bought my second house, and that’s rented out. I’m considering moving back to Southeast Asia, although I have no intention of going to Thailand. No thank you. I want to retire now. I want to live the peaceful life, and I want to be okay. I just wanted to share this because I consider myself to be a successful guy. Always have been a successful guy. Always managed to make money. Okay, I’ve lost money along the way in terms of my first divorce, in terms of that. But in my home country, I tried something and I would make money.
I’m not saying that happened every single time, but making money just seemed to happen. It just seemed to be what happened as a natural. It was effortless. It just came with what you did. As soon as I went to Thailand, as soon as I got involved with Thailand, everything went wrong.
Nothing went right. Everything had something happening that didn’t make sense to me, that didn’t go according to plan. I wanted to share that because if you are in the same position as me, if you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re a guy who’s made money in his life, don’t necessarily think you can do the same in Thailand because I couldn’t. I got married in Thailand. I fell in love and I lost a lot of money trying businesses with her. I tried out that and found out that they’re all the same. She was cheating on me. Probably had been for a long time. Even when I left the first time when she said she was still working in the bar, saying she wasn’t going to leave the bar, she was probably going with guys all the time.
I mean, I said I didn’t care, but of course, I probably would have done. But I believed that she wasn’t doing what she was actually probably doing. It was her who had ideas that invested and went wrong. And me, too. I had ideas that went wrong, too. Ultimately, from my take on this, I would say to anybody, if you’re wanting to go to Thailand, go to Thailand with enough money already. Don’t go to try to make money there because from my experience, making money in Thailand is impossible.
It just didn’t work for me. Now, it’s not impossible because some people do it. But for me, all that happened is losing money. I lost money that I earned somewhere else. And it took me years to get back on track and get my head back in the game. What are my big weaknesses? If something bad goes wrong, it takes me a very long time to get over it. As soon as I got over it, I started making more money again. I’m in a position now where I am able to retire. It’s not going to be the life that I would have had if I suppose I stayed with the love of my life, who was my first wife. We’d have probably had maybe six or seven times more than we have now.
Probably even more than that, and we’d be living the high life. But that didn’t happen. If I’d not lost that money in Thailand, I’d be living a better life now. But that didn’t happen, too. But at least I’m able to retire.
The last thing I want to say to anybody is if you’re going to Thailand, go with enough money. I mean, I’ve said that already. Don’t go to try to make money there because for me, everything went wrong. And the chances are if you try something like that too, it might go wrong for you too. While there are people making money in Thailand now who are successful, how many people are successful to how many people fail? I would tend to think that so many more fail, but you don’t necessarily hear about them all the time. I failed in Thailand. I really did fail. And if that means that somebody else doesn’t fail, maybe it will not have been worth nothing in the end.
I don’t know what I’m saying here. Just be careful in Thailand. Be very careful in Thailand.
