Lost My Business in Thailand After Investing My Life Savings

I never really thought it would come to this, but here I am anyway. Thailand, a country that I loved so much, became a country that I despised more than anywhere else. I guess that’s why I’m writing this in the first place. But while I went and fell in love with the country or a particular part of the country and found myself successfully living there for a number of years, it’s when I made a decision that seemed to be the opposite of what many people do that caused me no end of hurt and aggravation. And it’s not because I failed. What happened made me so angry with Thailand and the lack of protection afforded to people looking to do business there turned me off the country altogether.

Like many people, I’m also from the UK, but I was very fortunate that my father was from Ireland, which meant I was still eligible for an EU passport. In turn, that meant that when everything came crashing down for me in Thailand, I didn’t need to go back to the UK. Instead, I find myself living in a very old camper van on a piece of land that I purchased in the middle of Portugal many years ago for a few thousand.

Thailand seems to have a way about the place and I often heard it described like Marmite. You either love it or you hate it. There never seemed to be anyone in the middle ground. When I went there originally as a lowly tourist, I fell in love with it. Thailand became everything that mattered to me. I spoke to lots of people who had the same feelings, yet I spoke to other people who couldn’t wait to leave. The middle ground sort of people just floated by without any regard for the fact that they were even in Thailand. So, Marmite really is the best way to describe Thailand.

A Grand Tour of Asia

Being a tourist in the early 2000s was a unique experience. I was making my way to Japan. I had always wanted to go there. And that’s when I thought I would eventually find myself living one day. There was something about the culture that I was interested in, the food, the cars, and of course, the Pokémon trading card game that even today I still find myself enjoying.

My intention was to spend 2 weeks in Turkey, more specifically in Istanbul. I was interested in the history of that place when it used to be Constantinople. Then I was going to do two weeks in India. I love India. It was one of those places that I felt right at home in straight away. I just loved how chaotic the streets were. How you could be in the middle of the biggest city in the country and there were cows walking down the street. The food of course there is amazing. You cannot beat Indian food, especially Indian food in India. And if I was ever financially sound enough, I would probably have a go at moving to India. But that’s only a dream at the moment.

After India, it was 2 weeks in Thailand. And it was those two weeks that made me forget about everywhere else I’d been so far and put all those ideas to bed and concentrate on the fact that Thailand seemed to be the best place in the world. The thing I didn’t like about Thailand to start with though compared to countries like Turkey and India was I found the local food to be the biggest letdown of the country. You get used to it over time and some dishes you find you really enjoy. But coming from the UK where bread and dairy was so important to a country like Thailand where that was not part of an everyday staple, I wasn’t one of those people who could really enjoy a plate of pad grapow and describe it as the best dish I’d ever eaten. I wasn’t there though for the food and everything else about Thailand was everything I’d always been looking for in a country.

I did leave for Japan and I had amazing time there as well. But out of everywhere I went, Thailand always stuck in my mind. India as well, but Thailand had more to it. It had more under the surface that I still wanted to explore and learn about. And I left from that whole two-month getaway with the idea that I needed to get myself back to Thailand as quickly as possible.

Life Gets in the Way

As is often the case, life got in the way. I got married, got a job, got promoted, got promoted again, got divorced, got really depressed, lost my job, we had to sell our house and split the money down the middle. I had about £90,000 in cash. And this was 2011. I was 42. And at that point of my life, when the thought of finding another job and going through the grind all over again, working my way up another company to get to the point where I could finally make a respectable amount of money, that sounded like the last thing I wanted to do.

I thought back to the time I was in Thailand and how I’d seen people who talked about how they lived there, how they worked there teaching, or how some of them were retired. Well, I didn’t have enough money to retire. Far from it. I thought I could go and have a go at living there with the money I had. The worst thing was meant to happen was I would have to return home and start again. It would have been annoying, but at least I would have had a go at a life experience that many people could have only dreamed of. That was my idea going in. I didn’t think too much about it. Just do it. And if things go according to plan, even better.

In 2011, I still didn’t really have a big disdain for my own country. While it seemed to be moving away from how it used to be, it was witnessing over the years since I left what seemed to be a constant deterioration in terms of public services. People seemed to earn less money on average than they used to do, even though things were getting more expensive. And when things were going good in Thailand for me, and I was witnessing this from afar, I was quite upbeat about the fact that I wasn’t there anymore.

I’m going to skip ahead of it and talk about Brexit before I talk about what happened in Thailand. Just to say that when that happened, I was heartbroken. I never thought that our country would fall so low. In my opinion, you are free to disagree. I think you’re free to disagree still in England, but I don’t know if you actually are. That was when I took advantage of my father being Irish. I never wanted to go back to England, but I still hold out a deep-down love of the country that I left behind in 2011. I hope one day to return to some kind of normal equilibrium, but I don’t hold out much hope. That’s not what this story is about, though. So, although I really appreciate the stories on your channel, because they seem to let people share their opinions, and you’re not shy to keep them in the story.

The One-Way Ticket Mistake

Thailand, it is then. And I made the mistake that other people have made before. I booked myself a one-way ticket, arrived at the airport, and they said, “Where’s your return ticket?” I told him I was moving there full-time, and they said, “You need a return ticket cuz you don’t have a visa.” I nearly had a heart attack. A return ticket was going to cost hundreds of pounds, but they did say I could just book a cheap one-way ticket out of the country, so I did that. Luckily, the disaster was averted. I’ve heard that before and it seems to be something that many people get wrong. So, I think it’s worthwhile talking about so that people listening who want to go to Thailand don’t make the same mistake and book a one-way ticket without a visa.

Finding Work as a Teacher

It was my intention once I was there to hit the ground running. While I’ve listened to lots of stories and there seems to be a common theme amongst guys meeting girls in bars, I had never stepped foot in a bar when I was in Thailand the first time and I never stepped foot in a bar during my time in Thailand when I was living there. That was not something that appealed to me in the slightest. I need to say that because I thought that by not going and mixing with that sort of crowd, I would be one step closer to realizing my dream of living in the country permanently. I guess it didn’t work like that, but the bars were definitely places that I would never spend any of my time in. I’m not trying to come across like I’m better than anyone else. Please don’t take it that way. And if you enjoy the bars in Thailand, then that’s great. Enjoy yourself. But I didn’t, and that wasn’t for me, and it was never going to be for me.

In Bangkok, the first thing I did was contact an agency about getting work as a teacher. I know getting work as a teacher in Thailand is very cliché, but it seemed to be the most logical first step once I was there. If I could get myself a job just to cover my basic living expenses, while at the same time learning more about the country, the culture, and other opportunities that I could do, that way, I didn’t expect to have to dip into my savings. I didn’t have any sort of degree, so I was quickly told that while getting a job was probably going to be extremely easy, don’t expect to get legal papers to work as an English teacher. They said you’re probably going to be okay. There’s a 99.9% chance. If you’re not, it’s tough luck, but don’t worry about it is basically what they said.

They did find me a job. It was 20,000 baht a month, but there was free accommodation on site and it was in a little town north of Bangkok called Sing Buri. I’d never heard of it before, but I was quickly told that it was approximately 2 hours north of Bangkok. That didn’t sound too bad. Perhaps I could go into Bangkok at the weekends, although I wouldn’t be able to go very often on 20,000 baht salary. I asked if they had anywhere in Bangkok, and at the moment they didn’t. They said maybe in a few months, but this is the one that was available at the time. It didn’t feel like a lot of money. I mean, it wasn’t a lot of money. It was under £400 a month at the exchange rate at the time. But it had accommodation and they did confirm it had air conditioning and I didn’t need to pay for the electric bill. So, I thought, you know what, let’s take it. Let’s embrace the opportunity and make the most of it. It was going to be a unique experience. And it did feel like while I really wanted to be in the big city, going somewhere like that could be an adventure and it’s not necessarily going to have to last forever.

Life in Sing Buri

I never considered it before, but I went for it. It was starting the following week, so I had about 3 days to acclimatize to being in Thailand before getting on the bus to Sing Buri. Arriving there, it was such a sense of exhilaration like I never felt before. Of course, when I was in Thailand last time, I was just in the tourist areas. I was in the tourist areas of all the countries that I went to. Yet, here I was right in the heart of actual Thailand. And it felt amazing. It felt like I was a special breed of foreigner who saw something that most of the other foreigners never saw.

And I was actually met at the bus station by a person from the school who was going to take me there. It was a Thai teacher, a woman who seemed to be about 5 years younger than me, and I’d have guessed that was her age. Don’t think anything is going to happen between us. That never did. But she came to pick me up on a motorcycle, telling me she was the only one in the school that spoke even a word of English, and I had to jump on the back without a helmet. I didn’t really mind, though. Everyone else in the town who was on a motorbike seemed to not have helmets on as well, whereas in Bangkok, everyone seemed to use them. It seemed to be that while the laws in this part of the country were exactly the same as they were in Bangkok, they weren’t enforced quite as strictly. That was something that I learned very early on in Thailand.

The school where I was working was about 20 minutes away from the town of Sing Buri. It was quite remote. It was a government school and that’s why it wasn’t paid very much money. But although you’re in Thailand, you’re in a different version of Thailand where the rules are interpreted differently. I’m not saying that everything was good about this, but you’d see people at a local restaurant getting absolutely drunk beyond belief. yet they would get in their car and just drive away like it was nothing. I didn’t like that. But the police would be at the table next to them watching them do it and they didn’t care. I wasn’t sure how it was in Bangkok, but it did seem like when you were at a place like that, it was more free in a way and I embraced it. Although I would never even consider drink driving.

When I was shown the accommodation, I had one of those wide-eyed kind of stares to think, “Okay, this will do.” But I was really thinking, damn, it didn’t even have a proper bathroom. It was one of those Thai style squat toilets, and it didn’t have hot water for the shower. They did have air conditioning, though. That was purely put in just for the fact that they thought foreigners would need it. But the last foreigner left quite a few months ago, and I was a person that they just managed to find. It took them a while. The mattress was, I’m not quite sure what it was, but it wasn’t very comfortable. So, I went to buy myself a mattress, bedding, and things I needed, and I made it comfortable for what it was. Although, I didn’t get used to that squat toilet.

Getting cracking to work after arriving in Thailand only a week before. No proper visa, no work permit, nothing but a 30-day exempt. I didn’t know what I would do next. After that, it would be a question of leaving the country, getting a 60-day tourist visa, extending that, and if I was still there and happy, I would consider my options about what better visa I would be able to get.

I remember my first day actually teaching. I wouldn’t say I was a natural, but it didn’t seem to matter. As long as I was speaking English, that was good enough. The Thai staff were so kind and nice. They made me feel welcome. Because I had a place to live and I didn’t really have any bills to pay, I found that although I had to mess around with the visa and things in terms of living, 20,000 baht a month was actually something that would be okay. The local restaurant served food for 30 baht. They sold beer as well and perhaps they were making a few baht profit on it for one beer. A bar in Bangkok wouldn’t do that, would they? So, I was starting to understand you could live on less money. When I said bar, I’m talking about any sort of bar, but not that sort of bar that people go to Thailand for. I’d like to go for a drink like everyone does, but not to a place like there. There’s a difference and you know it. So, from here on forwards, if I’m talking about a bar, it’s about a bar where you go for a drink and nothing else.

The first few weeks go by and I am really enjoying myself. My savings at home are still exactly the same as they were when I left, and I’m not spending a lot of money, but I am learning about a part of the country that I never thought I would ever learn about. I was really enjoying my time there.

I bought a motorcycle to look around, and I loved the way I got the license for the motorcycle as well. I remember going there to do the test, and one of the teachers went with me. It was the woman who spoke English. And I needed to mess around getting some paperwork from immigration. And after that, I went to do the test. I’d heard people talking about it and how they did it today and they had to do a test on the computer, like a theory sort of test. But I didn’t have to do that. All I needed to do was prove that I could tell the difference between red, orange, and green. And even though it was a motorcycle license I was going for, I had to prove that my reactions were good enough in terms of pressing what seemed to be some kind of toy accelerator and brake from a car. It was really weird. But as soon as I did that, they said, “Congratulations.” and an hour later I had the license in my hand. That’s another thing that I really loved. The fact that you didn’t have to wait and have it sent off in the post and receive it weeks later. They printed it for me and gave it to me right in front of me. Why was that so much more efficient than how things were done in England?

Moving to Nong Khai

That job just kind of continued. I think I did it for about a year until that point. And up until then, I felt happy but also starting to feel that I wanted to do more. I was in regular contact with the agency who’d helped me to find a job. They were the ones who paid my salary and I was told about another opportunity at a school up in Nong Khai on the border with Laos. The salary was slightly more and it was the same kind of deal in terms of the living accommodation, but that would have been paying me 23,000 a month. I didn’t take the job for the salary. It was just to find a different part of the country and learn more about it and see what it was like. I’d never been there before, so I went down to Bangkok first and then up to Nong Khai. I’d been to Bangkok a few times during my time in Sing Buri, but I was a lot more drawn to the rural side of Thailand. That was what I was interested in at that time, and I developed a stronger love of it the more I was there. I wasn’t there because I met a girl who came from there. I was there to work, and I loved it.

Nong Khai was even better. Perhaps because it was on the border with Laos. It felt like it was the connector of worlds even though I was quite away from the border in the area where the school was. I was though still able to go and ride my motorcycle to the Mekong River and look at Laos in the distance.

I hadn’t had a girlfriend yet in Thailand, but I did meet someone in Nong Khai after I’d been there for only 2 weeks. She was a teacher at the school I worked at. She was the English teacher or the Thai teacher who taught English and we just hit it off right away. I was 43, I think, at this time, and she was 36. And she was really great. I thought it was weird, though, because she never had a husband before. She never had any children. I mean, I never had any children, but it seemed to be more rare in Thailand, especially for a girl of her age. She used to talk about how she was passionate about teaching and how it had consumed her life. I thought it was really admirable that she dedicated her life to that because even though I was paid very badly, she was paid even worse than me. She was getting about 12,000 baht, which is not a lot of money in Thailand, especially for an experienced teacher of 15 years.

We got serious very quickly and it felt like it was a match made in heaven and I was very happy with the fact that I was living in Thailand. At this point, I had got myself an education visa. I got that when I moved to Nong Khai. I was getting bored of leaving the country for tourist visas. I’d already done that four times and luckily back then it was easy to do, a lot more so than today. But I got that education visa. There was a language school I was able to use close to where I worked. So that was good. And I’m thinking that my decision to move to Thailand is the best decision I’ve ever made. I’m not making a lot of money, but I’m not eating into my savings at all really. Maybe the odd few hundred here and there, but I still had the £90,000 I left with, and that was something I thought was great. The teaching salary I was on was just enough to live, not enough to save anything. And it wasn’t enough to do anything other than just survive. I survived well and I enjoyed myself. But when you’re at the stage when going to KFC is considered an amazing treat, then you start to think, well, as much as I’m enjoying this, I need to start thinking more about the future. Perhaps thinking about the future is when things started to go wrong for me. I never had any issues living in the present, but thinking about the future made me take risks, made me do things I wouldn’t have done if my future wasn’t already set in stone.

A Relationship Ends

I’d been at that school for around a year, probably a bit longer. My relationship was getting very serious. But it was then that I started to think, okay, I’ve spent a lot of time in Thailand, nearly 2 years. I’m loving being here. I’ve learned a lot about the country and the culture. I love everything about it. But I started to think then about the future. It’s okay, I thought, to have a few years doing something different and enjoying yourself. But I wasn’t prepared for what would happen later on in life. I was in love with this girl. We were living together. It was great. But when I told her that I think we should move to the city somewhere and I was talking about Bangkok, we could find better jobs and make more money, get our own place, and then we could pay that off over the next 10 years. Then we could have somewhere to live when we’re older. This is all everything I’m talking about and thinking. She just didn’t see it that way, though. She wanted to stay where we were. She said, “Why don’t we have our own place here?” But I didn’t want to commit to living there for the rest of my life. I loved being there. I loved almost everything about it, but I didn’t see my future being there. She didn’t see her future in Bangkok. So, we came to the difficult decision to break up and I left Nong Khai down to Bangkok where I didn’t have a job lined up, but I could use a little bit of my savings for the first time to do something a bit different.

I really didn’t want to have another year at this school and not have anything to show for it at the end. And as much as I enjoyed it, and while they offered me an extra 2,000 baht if I stayed, that’s not really going to make any difference to my future. Think about it. That would have been 24,000 extra a year. Over 10 years, 240,000 baht. Not exactly a lot of money, less than £5,000.

Back in Bangkok

Back in Bangkok, I was in regular contact with the agency looking for opportunities, but nothing really came up. I contacted other agencies and there were jobs opening up, but it was just more of the same, more of what I’d already done. And while the salary in Bangkok was more, you’d be left with pretty much the same at the end of the month because things there are more expensive. I spent 6 months looking for jobs, I was hoping for something close to 50,000 baht, and that would have been enough for me to put away 10 or 15,000 a month. I thought that would give me a reasonable amount of savings moving into the future. I just couldn’t find anything like that though. So after a while I just decided that you know what working at a school is not going to be for me. Then I started looking for other jobs. I quickly realized that finding anything else in Thailand was like finding a needle in a haystack. So after being in Bangkok for I guess as long as 6 months and not really finding any jobs apart from more of the same, I decided to completely forget the idea of working for someone else in Thailand and I would try to do something for myself. I didn’t know what to do or where to do it, but I sat down and gave myself a small budget to cover living expenses while I was doing something. And from there, I would know how much money I had in order to invest.

Meeting My Wife

When I was coming up with ideas, that was when I met another girl who I fell in love with, even more than the one before. I didn’t think it was possible, but I did. I met her in a club, and it wasn’t one of those sorts of clubs, and we just talked with each other. I found out that she worked as a receptionist, she said. And from then on, we just kind of stayed with each other. She was always going to my place and staying over. And in the days, she’d get up and go to work. Then she just stayed. I did believe everything she told me. So I might as well tell you now that after we were together for quite a number of years, I found out that she was never actually a receptionist and she used to work in a bar, the places that I avoided at all cost. But she did. She worked in Nana. I didn’t know that at the time, so I just continued getting to know her more. It was weird though because in the morning she’d be going to work. She had clothes on like she was going to the office, but years later I would learn that she never actually went to the office. So I don’t know what she was doing or where she got money to pay for things. When she moved in, she wasn’t relying on me to look after her. Although when we went out, I was the one paying. I didn’t give her money directly. Anyway, I found that out a lot later on. I was just feeling so happy in the moment that I met her. I’d completely gotten over my ex from back in Nong Khai. And I think because of what happened with my ex, I wanted to seal the deal with this girl quicker to make sure that I wouldn’t spend 2 years with her and then it could all go wrong. That’s why we got married after 6 months.

The Salon Business Plan

At this point, I’d allocated 40,000 baht a month out of my savings to live on, and I’d just got my head stuck into all the different things I’m thinking about in terms of what to do to make a living. We lived together after getting married for about 4 months. I’m still thinking about what to do. I’ve got lots of ideas, but I’m not feeling anything really. And it was actually my wife who came up with an idea that I thought could be the answer for me to be able to stay in Thailand. I was hesitant initially when she came to me with the idea, but the more I looked into it, the more I thought about it, the more I thought that perhaps this could be something worth doing.

Her idea was to open a salon. She said her friend had worked in a salon and she was looking at starting her own, something like a hair spa to cut hair, doing nails in a beauty salon type of thing. And she came to me saying that we could have someone who already knows how to do it, who was professional, and who had done it for years. She was also very interested in learning how to do that as well and I would be able to invest and just manage the business. The thing that attracted me to this was the fact that I would be very hands off. I wouldn’t really need to actually be the person to deal with the customers. I wouldn’t need to market the business. I would just be in the background there making sure that everything ran smoothly. That was what I was thinking.

Once we had this idea, I put a business plan together. I wanted to work everything out exactly how it was going to work. I didn’t just randomly rent a place, put everything in it and open. I didn’t do that. I spent an awful lot of time thinking exactly about what to do, how could we make it work, how I could get a work permit, and how much we were going to charge for our services. I worked everything out. I also spent time going to other places that did similar things, how many people seemed to go through the door on an hourly basis, what prices did they charge, and what were the price variations between different parts of the city. The more I looked into it, the more I felt like this could be a really good idea.

I knew it would need to bring an income for me, my wife, and also her friend who was going to be the one who did the majority of the work. My wife would learn all the time and get up to speed, and then we could bring someone else on board when things started to progress. I wanted 50,000 baht a month for my income, my wife 20,000, and 25 for the member of staff. That’s what we needed in terms of income for ourselves. and then we would need the premises, electric, and other bits and pieces that went along with operating the business. Plus, we would need an investment to get everything set up. I worked out that would be about £10,000. So, I didn’t feel like it was a lot given the amount of savings I had.

And then I worked out that we would need to bring in 140,000 baht a month to pay for the rent, the electric, and all the costs that went along with it, the materials and things. And it didn’t seem too bad. 140,000 baht divided by 30 on average that was how much we needed to bring in a day which was 4,700. And I’m just doing this off the top of my head at the moment. So that’s a rough estimation of what it was. That didn’t seem to be like it was a lot of money for a business to bring in. If a hair wash and hair spa was 1,500 baht and we did two of those a day and then you did some basic washes and haircuts and maybe two or three nails being done, that would be enough to bring in that money and pay all our wages and the costs. The more I looked into it, the more excited I came about the idea. I mean, I was really excited about it because when I went and looked at other shops that seemed to be doing similar things, it was very rare that they would be empty with no one inside. They always seem to have people there. And if we open 10 hours a day, that’s going to mean that if anything, I was being too conservative with my estimates.

Finding a Location

We looked all over Bangkok at the place we wanted to start the business. I was interested in the main Sukhumvit area, but it quickly became apparent that to rent somewhere there would be very expensive. One thing that my wife kept coming back to was then if we had somewhere there, it would be very close to some of the bar areas. then we could make even more money because that would mean that the girls that worked in the bars would come and use our place. They might have more disposable income than other people and because of that it might be worth spending a little bit more money on a place in a great location. As much as I didn’t like the bars, and at this point I had no idea that my wife used to work in one, I started to come round to the idea. Not only because it was convenient and in a great area, also because it would allow us to live in a similar area. Bear in mind that there is an awful lot more to that part of Bangkok than the bars, and I like being there. It felt like I was in an area where everything was happening. And that’s when I agreed that yes, we could find somewhere here. we’ll spend some more money, but ultimately it’s going to mean that we’re going to make more money.

So, we began looking for somewhere to rent around Asok. We quickly found out that it was a lot more expensive. I was hoping to find somewhere for 25,000 baht at a maximum. Yet, after looking carefully and seeing a few options that were in the best area, we found one that was extremely rundown for 45,000 a month. The reason it was that price was because it needed completely gutting and renovating. So because of that and because it was in such a good place, I started to do the sums. I worked out that to get the place into a great condition, it would cost considerably more than I had originally bargained for, approximately £30,000. I was quite hesitant thinking about spending all that money, but that also didn’t include the actual equipment that we would need, hair dryers, and everything else that went along with it. But it should mean we would get more people going. I didn’t jump at it straight away, but I spoke to my wife about it. I spoke to the person who was going to be working there, and I got to the decision that it seemed like it was too good to miss. I paid a few thousand to set up a company, registered it at the place we rented, and gave a two-month deposit and signed a 3-year lease. And after about 2 months, the building had been rented by our company. I’d managed to get a work permit, and we got this person signed on as a staff member, and everything seemed to be looking good for the first step. From there, it was a question of finding someone to do the work. We got a number of quotes and it was going to be, as I said, a £30,000 mark to get it to the level we wanted it. That would also have included rooms upstairs. So, if we get more staff in the future, they could have stayed there. A few months later, the transformation was complete. You could hardly tell it was the same building, but it did feel bad in the way that I was investing all that money into someone else’s building and I was just renting it. But that’s what everyone else seemed to do. Buying somewhere like that was going to be an impossibility. But I didn’t actually bargain on the fact that by me improving the building, something negative would happen later down the line.

I spent another £15,000 on all the equipment that we needed. And because I was using savings for quite a few months, and I didn’t know what else to do, I had about £30,000 left. I put half of that into the business to pay for the running costs during the first number of months, thinking that I would never need to touch any more of my savings because there wouldn’t be much left.

The Business Takes Off

And we opened and the business was an immediate success. We opened about 3 months after signing the lease and people were coming in regularly. Lots of the girls that worked in the bars around there were going in and before long we had more staff working. They were moving in upstairs and living there. and we had three full-time employees plus my wife and me. When I say it was a success, it wasn’t making a fortune. It was just making enough to pay all the staff. I was getting 60,000 baht as a salary, which I was more than happy with, and my wife was getting the 25,000. If we combined both those incomes, we were making quite good money. At least it was for me. All the bills are being paid, and I thought it was a great decision to take that risk. I’m adding to my savings at about 10,000 baht a month. And over the first year, I was in a better position than I was when we started. I couldn’t believe just how well it was going. And then I started thinking about opening in another location. We never got there, but during that first year, while I’m incredibly happy with the business, there were little signs of things that I’m just trying to ignore.

For a start, I wasn’t in the business all that often. I was someone who was in the background managing it, keeping the finances in order. So, I didn’t spend that much time there. Sometimes though, when I was there and my wife was there, somebody would come in to have their haircut or whatever it was they were doing. And sometimes they would say hi to my wife as if they knew each other. They were speaking in Thai and I didn’t really know what was going on. And to start with, I didn’t think it was any problem. But the more it went on, the more I found myself spending more time there just to see. We were very close to some of the really main bar areas in Bangkok. And because of that, the girls that worked there were coming in and they were ones who seemed to know my wife. Not most of them, but some of them did. And after that, during the first year, that was when I put it to my wife like, “How do you know all these people?” She just said, “Oh, I used to work there before I worked in reception.” She said it quite hesitantly as if she didn’t really want to talk about it. And then that was when I found out that she used to work in the bar. Did she even work as a receptionist? I will never know. But the situation of the matter was she used to work in a bar before I was with her. And I would have done anything to have had a wife who didn’t work in a bar. I never visited a bar like that. I had no interest in visiting a bar like that. And I had no intention of ever meeting someone who worked in a bar. But here I was with a wife who did. It was one of those well I can’t do anything about it now kind of things. And I just put my head down and tried to forget about it. Although it was always at the back of my mind that she used to do that. I wasn’t about to make a problem out of it, though. I just had to keep it to myself.

The business was going well in the first year, and in the second year, it was doing even better. I was paying myself 70,000 a month at that time and putting into my savings 20,000. I couldn’t believe that it was going as well it was, and I was really happy that I’d taken the plunge. During that second year, that’s when my wife fell pregnant. I just had to accept that she lied about her past when we met. But it was one of those things and we just moved on and we were okay with each other.

Into the third year, the business is still going well. I’m keeping my salary at the same amount and we have a healthy baby. That meant my wife was spending a bit less time at the business, which was fine because we had a family. The business was going well and the staff were doing a good job. We had issues from time to time with people not showing up to work, but we had enough staff that we were able to manage though when that happened. It wasn’t a situation like if someone didn’t show up, the business couldn’t operate. And I felt like by the end of the year three, we were doing really well. I mean, I was really happy until the time came to renew the lease.

The Lease Renewal Disaster

I thought that renewing the lease was just a formality. I expected to just call the owner, say, “We want to renew and get another 3 years at the same price.” That didn’t happen. The building was in a far better condition now, and the business was making good money. And in Thailand, the owner had absolutely no legal obligation to sign a renewal. I remember going to meet them and they said, “We’re not going to renew the lease. We want the building back.” And I sat there across from them and said, “Well, I’ve invested all that money into the business and I need to renew the lease.” I thought it was a formality. And he just said, “No, you’ve had it for 3 years and then the 3 years is up.” If I pay a little bit more money, can we rent it then? and he came back and said 120,000 a month to renew it. That would have basically meant my salary going extra in rent. So, it wasn’t going to work. Plus, any bad months would have been really bad. So, no matter what I said, no matter how much I pleaded with them to see reason, they didn’t. I even offered them 80,000 a month in rent and hoped they would accept it, but it wasn’t going to happen. It had no legal standing. Our company had no legal standing. Regardless of what I felt, regardless of how angry I was, regardless of how upset I was, if they didn’t want to renew the lease, they didn’t have to.

I guess I should have looked into that beforehand because I had no idea that it worked like that. I thought that if you have a company who signs a three-year lease, the reason that it’s only 3 years is because, fair enough, the owner can renegotiate after 3 years. But I didn’t think it was possible that they could just put the rent up nearly three times, maybe 10%. I thought there should be laws in place to protect businesses in this situation, and they weren’t. Business gone. It was still a month remaining on the lease, and it was my intention because there was absolutely nothing that I could do to remove every single improvement I made. When I contacted someone for advice with regards to this, that’s when you start to understand that in Thailand, you’re completely effed. According to what I was told, anything that was added to the building that was a permanent fixture automatically belonged to the landlord. How the hell did that work? That didn’t make any sense to me. I thought I wanted to rip out everything I put in, including the ceilings and the wiring and everything. I wanted to remove everything that I put in. But apparently, when the lease came to an end, that just automatically reverted to the landlord. Even air conditioning units weren’t allowed to be removed according to the strict letter of the law. Yet things like desks or chairs and equipment that could be removed. But I didn’t understand how insane the law was in Thailand in that sense. I put 1.5 million baht into the business just to improve the building so that I could get it to the state where I could lease it until I didn’t want the lease anymore. But it didn’t work like that and there was absolutely zero protections in place for tenants. I did learn that some people have clauses in their leases that say that the tenant has the right of first refusal when it comes to renewal or certain things can be removed. Yet, I wasn’t advised of that when I used the company to form my company and also to help me with the lease. My lease said absolutely nothing that gave me any protections. Yet, I just assumed that these sort of protections were part of the law because how would that work otherwise for anybody? I’d spent a lot of money on it and I had no automatic right to renew and when the time comes up it was gone. Granted, if the landlord needed to increase the rents, that would have been acceptable up to a certain percentage. But I was just finding out that the money I spent on the building was for their benefit and their benefit alone. And I hated them and couldn’t think about what to do.

The Fallout

Because of all this going on, I was just so furious with those people who owned the building. There isn’t a word I could use to accurately describe my feelings towards them. As far as I was concerned, they were just lucky people who happened to have inherited a building in an amazing part of Bangkok and did absolutely nothing for it. I went in and improved it, paying my money, paying them rent at the same time every single month, and they went in and thought that they deserved it. Thai people are some of the most incredibly friendly people you will ever see. But things like that just prove that Thailand is still like the Wild West. I’ve since spoke to other people who have had issues with leases, people who have opened bars and not had clauses in the contract stating things. Yet, I just thought this was so obvious that it should just be part of the law.

All I wanted to do now, though, was remove everything I put into the business. I’m struggling now with my wife because as far as she was concerned, and one of the things that I hated so much was that she looked up to those people like they were her betters. She thought they were better than her because they were luckier than her and I hated that. When we’re in the conversation with the landlord and I’m getting furious, she’s just there saying, “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.” But of course, I’m going to worry about it. This guy is going to make more money out of me than he should have. So, that meant that my wife was on their side, and I started to hate her, too. So, we divorced pretty quickly. Now, I had a young son, and my wife and I are not together anymore. Josie sets off to the village with my son and there’s nothing I can do. We had to get rid of our staff and the indignation of that was the law said I needed to pay them severance because I had to fire them. The law seemed to protect everyone apart from people who were taking the biggest risk. It made no sense, but that’s Thailand for you. And I went from loving Thailand to hating it because of that. I tried to work things out with my wife, but I couldn’t stand the sight of her anymore after she did that with the landlord. I wanted her to be visibly angry with them. I wanted her to feel like she was on a level playing field with them, but the way she looked at them when she was talking made me feel sick. It was as though she revered them as some kind of magical creatures. She looked up at them like they were the epitome of everything right with Thailand. I just looked at them as lucky exploiters. And when it was clear that I wasn’t going to be able to stay with my wife anymore, and I had no interest, that was when we got divorced. That was when I had enough of Thailand.

The Revenge

And that was when I did as much as I could to make the building in as worse condition as possible before leaving. I will admit to it, although I would have liked to have done far worse than I did. I had an agreement to hand over the keys to the landlord in about a week’s time. All the staff had left. My wife had been divorced very quickly. We didn’t love each other anymore. In fact, I hated her. So, I was in the building by myself with a week to go. All the items, such as the chairs and sofas and everything, had been removed as quickly as I could. And I will admit to ripping out the ceilings, the toilets, the sink, and pretty much everything that I was able to do myself if I ripped it out. It wouldn’t have cost them anywhere near 1.5 million baht to put it right. Maybe 200,000 at the most. But I just hoped that they wouldn’t have any problems with me. At this point, we hadn’t even talked about what was mine and what wasn’t. I’d just taken advice from a lawyer about the situation. I hadn’t spoken to the landlord about what I was planning to do. I just hoped for the best. When the time came, I gave them the keys, went for a look around, and I just said, “Oh, I took these things cuz I found a new place. I’m putting them inside there.” And because I’d taken them out, I hadn’t made a big mess. They just said, “Fair enough.” And that was it. Then I was thinking, “Damn, I should have done a lot more.” But I was very happy that I managed to remove some of the value that I put into it, even though it wasn’t all of it. I wanted to rip up the tile floors. I wanted to remove the windows I’d put in and the doors, but I didn’t do that. I wish I did, though.

Losing My Son

After all that was done, I didn’t know what to do. I went up to my wife’s village to try and speak to her about my son. I wanted to take my son with me, but the whole family was against that. So, I was faced with the choice that I didn’t want to be faced with. I didn’t want to be in Thailand anymore. I hated everything about the way things worked there, and I needed to leave. So, I had to say goodbye to my son. I have sent him money over the years, but I’ve never seen him since then. That hurts every day. But what was I meant to do? I gambled on a business and it was going so well. And then the landlord screwed me over. The thing was, he didn’t actually screw me over. There was nothing legally that said he had to renew the lease. Nothing legally that said I was able to take things that I paid for. And I didn’t make sure that the lease said what I could do when I wanted to renew. I didn’t know anything about that. It just didn’t seem normal. Surely somebody investing in a business should be guaranteed some kind of automatic rights to make sure things can’t happen like that. But not in Thailand. You’re going to be putting money into it. Make sure you have every protection in place because if you don’t, all of a sudden, you could find that your business is no longer your business. It’s the landlord’s business. A friend of mine told me that they didn’t even open another salon like I was doing there. Don’t even know what they’re doing, but I bet they’ve probably got another person inside who’s going to improve it. Then three years come up and they’re going to get them out as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if that happened.

Be careful in Thailand doing business. Actually, don’t be careful. Just don’t do it at all. It’s not worth it.