I Moved to Thailand for Love and Lost Nearly 1 Million Baht
I arrived in Thailand just after the end of the global pandemic, surviving on YouTube videos and the dream of a different life. I knew that I needed to do something different. I’d worked all my life and had just turned 52. And while I didn’t have enough money to retire, I thought I’d have a go at moving to Thailand and living a completely different life. My intention was to spend a few years enjoying life, getting to know the country, and looking for some kind of business to make a bit of money so that I didn’t need to eat into my savings.
A few years later, things have not gone according to plan, and I’m very close to having to leave Thailand once and for all and head back home to start work again. But I’m not quite there yet. After being single all my life and being very unpopular with the ladies back at home, I never expected to get drawn into the ways of Thailand so easily. I’d heard all the stories, read all the warnings about what can go wrong, and thought I knew different. Turns out I didn’t.
A Life of Loneliness Back Home
I’d worked as a manager at a local supermarket close to Manchester in the UK. The salary wasn’t great, but I always saw it as a means to an end. And when COVID hit, that end became a lot sooner. I tried desperately to find love in England, going on all the dating sites, putting my best self forward, and apart from having an odd date every now and then, I was very unlucky in love. Perhaps it started from my school days when I was already the uncool one, hanging out by myself at lunch break, watching the more popular kids mingling, having girlfriends, and looking like they’re having a good time. The same went after I left school. I could just never talk to girls and at around 25 resigned myself to the fact that I will always be alone.
The next few decades passed, working in the supermarket where I progressed all the way to manager, but it felt like such a hollow life. Not exactly a dream existence. It was around this time that I learned about Thailand. COVID put an end to anything outdoors and I got hooked on watching people living in different countries. Things seemed so different, so exciting, and I actually started to get excited about life for the first time in decades. I also watched content from people living in the Philippines, and I was tempted to go there as well. What about Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos? All these places seemed to me like a dream. Perhaps I would have a chance to fulfill a goal of mine, which was to meet someone that could be my partner. Like I said, I did watch videos about warnings of what can go wrong in places like this, but I tried to put these aside because at the end of the day, I was desperate and in need of company.
As soon as the restrictions were lifted, I got myself a retirement visa from the embassy and flew to Thailand on a one-way ticket. I don’t want to say how much savings I had, but no, it wasn’t enough for me to live out my life. Far from it. That’s why I wanted to get into some kind of business to supplement my way in the country. What I was going to do or how I was going to do it, I had no idea. I just knew that I needed a different existence. I had no intention whatsoever to return to my old life in England.
First Impressions: A Fish Out of Water
When I got to Thailand, my initial feeling was like I had made a huge mistake. It wasn’t anything like I expected it to be. It was hot, humid, and everything seemed so different. I don’t really know what I was expecting. I’ve been to places like Spain a few times, but never been to Asia or anywhere too far away from home. Remember my first day in Bangkok? I think that’s probably where everyone stays for their first few days. I felt like a fish out of water and was seriously considering returning home. Chalking it up as experience, but not for me. Needless to say, I didn’t return home, but I was so very close.
I spent my first few weeks in Thailand just there acclimatizing to how different it was to back home. I know many people talk about the sheer excitement they got on their first arrival. This wasn’t something I experienced at all. It was more like a nervous dread that I was doing something I shouldn’t be doing, that I had no place thinking I was able to do. I was staying in a quite cheap hotel around the Ratchada area of Bangkok. It was close to the underground which allowed for easy transport all over the city. I can remember on my first day when I checked into the hotel. The receptionist lady was like no one I’d ever seen. She even smiled at me as well. Not something I’d experienced much of in England.
A few weeks went by and I was still not sure of myself. What was I doing here? Should I try to explore more or should I just maybe go home? But it was around this time that I got speaking to someone who said they moved to Thailand just before COVID. They said that it took them a while to get used to the place, but now they were in their element and loving every single day in the country. Their advice was to travel around to go to a few distant places, get to know Thailand, and then make a decision from there. I was always a shy sort and at the time was worried that I may get into some trouble just traveling around Thailand. Was it safe to do something like this or was it dangerous? The guy I was speaking to told me how safe Thailand was and this would be the least of my worries. Laughing, he said, “Just be careful of the girls.”
Chiang Mai and the Burmese Girl
So with this in mind, I left Bangkok after a few weeks and headed north to Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai had a whole different feeling. The atmosphere to Bangkok was different and the place seemed a lot more laid-back and just easier to get by. I stayed close to the river and on my first night in Chiang Mai visited a bar for the first time. The bar was on the famous Loi Kroh Road, nestled in the Boxing Stadium bar complex. I can remember walking in, ordering a drink, and being surrounded by some really nice girls. One girl I got talking to said she was from Myanmar and had lived in Thailand since she was young. She seemed to be speaking in Thai with everyone, and I marveled at her ability to speak multiple languages.
It was at this time that I felt a calm come over me like I never felt before. The conversation with this girl was effortless and my self-consciousness seemed to fade away almost immediately. I talked to this girl for hours, bought her a lot of drinks, and I was feeling like I was on top of the world. She could tell that I liked her and asked if I wanted to go with her. Of course, I wanted this, but I felt like it was too soon. I’d never experienced anything like this in my whole life. Perhaps I should err on the side of caution and not jump straight in at the deep end. I ordered another drink, one for her, and she kept trying to persuade me. Needless to say, I succumbed and went with her out of the bar. I had no idea what I was doing, but I followed her lead and had a wonderful time.
I suppose I better put into the story now that I was not totally inexperienced, but my relationship with women was severely limited, but not completely non-existent. I can remember waking up the following morning feeling like everything had fallen into place. I definitely thought I made the right decision to move to Thailand. She’d already left, and I was so tempted to go back to the same bar to see her again that same night, but realized that perhaps this wouldn’t be the best idea. I had all the time in the world.
Exploring Phuket and Hua Hin
I spent another few weeks in Chiang Mai before deciding to go down south to Phuket. I fell in love with Phuket the moment I arrived. Everywhere I went in Thailand, I seemed to like the beaches were splendid, but it felt a little more expensive than up north in Chiang Mai. I reckoned that my money would not go as far here. But I was loving the beach and being by the sea. So, after spending a week in Phuket, I decided to head up north a bit to Hua Hin.
I felt like I fit in straight away in that place. There seemed to be so many foreign expats living in the city. It had the beach, albeit not as beautiful as the one in Phuket, but the pricing was a lot more like Chiang Mai, so my money would go a lot further here if I chose to stay. I was thinking about the Burmese girl from up in Chiang Mai. So, I think it was my third night in Hua Hin. I went down the famous Soi Bintabaht to check out the bars there. I went in one feeling like I knew the ropes completely. sat down, ordered a drink, and got caught talking to a girl that I liked the look of. A similar experience ensued to the one that I had in Chiang Mai, and I was beginning to think maybe I could actually find someone to settle down with.
Pattaya: The Girl Who Seemed Perfect
After a few weeks in Hua Hin, my next place to visit was Pattaya. I knew this place was meant to be wild, but many foreigners live there, so maybe I could get a lot of the home comforts that I was missing. When I got to Pattaya, I was quickly taken aback by just how many girls there were all over the place. There were endless bars, endless foreigners in the bars, and lots of western-style restaurants and other things that I thought I could start to like.
I ended up staying in Pattaya for a month, and in the time I met someone at one of the bars. This was different to the girls I’d met before. I really liked her, and I felt like she liked me as well. I know, perhaps I wasn’t thinking straight, but I felt like I was falling in love. The girl I had met was in her early 30s, had been working in Pattaya for about 4 years. She told me about how she had a child back in her hometown when she was very young, and how her Thai husband had left her with a child. She wasn’t able to make money in her hometown, so left her child with her family and came to work in Pattaya. And yes, I did think back to the videos I watched warning about things like this, but I thought she was different and I thought I knew what I was doing.
I was due to leave Pattaya soon and head up to Chiang Mai for another visit there. And I asked her if she wanted to join me. I knew I would need to give her some money as she wouldn’t be able to work, but I didn’t care about this. I wanted to spend time with her to see if we could potentially be a match. She agreed and we set off to Chiang Mai together.
The little things that she did, such as holding my hand when we walked around, laughing at my jokes, and acting like a real partner, sucked me in big time. And I had the best few weeks of my life in Chiang Mai. She was like the perfect girl in every way. Never needy, never wanting too much, and happy to be in my company and me in hers. When the trip to Chiang Mai was due to come to an end, I had no plans and she was due to go back to work in Pattaya. I didn’t want this to happen, so asked her what it would take for her to stop working and to move in with me. Quite matter-of-factly, she said about 15,000 baht per month. Not sure if I’m ready to move in yet or anything like that. Just a figure. I should have seen this for what it was, but I felt like I loved her and 15,000 baht wasn’t a lot of money. She said she needed to send this back home to help her family.
I hadn’t yet rented a place to live and had been spending time in hotels, but I felt like I had a girlfriend now that it was time to put down some roots. I wanted to rent a place in Bangkok, but she said we should stay in Pattaya. So, without much thought, I agreed. When we got back to Pattaya, I went condo hunting with her and we rented a great little condo with a pool and gym for only 12,000 baht per month. I couldn’t quite believe it was so cheap. I felt like my life was finally coming together. And I was living in paradise, had a beautiful girlfriend, was getting ready for the rest of my life.
The Dream of a Business
A few weeks after we settled in, I talked with my girl about my desire to open a business and try to make a bit of money. I could have lasted probably 10 years without making any money, but this wasn’t going to be enough. She was over the moon when I talked about this and suggested a lot of ideas. Open a bar, a restaurant, or something else catering to the tourists that go to Pattaya. I wasn’t fond of the idea of a bar, but a small restaurant seemed like a good idea. We spent an awfully long time looking for the perfect place to open a restaurant, but were unable to find a suitable location. So, we scrapped the idea. I even thought of a laundromat, a bike rental place, and all sorts of ideas. It was then that she suggested something. Why don’t we go to her hometown and open a business there? She had some land that was paid for, so there were many options to choose from. I jumped at the idea and the next week we were traveling up to her hometown which was Roi Et, a small town in Isan.
On the way up she told me all the things I needed to know about her family, how to say hello in a polite way and any other things she thought necessary to tell me. When we arrived at the place, it was like nowhere else in Thailand I’d been. But it felt like it had a charm. The place was so laid-back. My initial reaction was, “What can we do here to make money?” But she told me how much cheaper it was to live in a place like this. We wouldn’t need to make as much. Her family seemed very genuine to start with. They seemed to treat me with respect and I the same to them.
We spent a few weeks in Roi Et and she showed me the land. It was right on the big road but quite far away from the town. And she brought up so many different ideas that we could do. The one that struck a chord with me was the idea to open a shop. A shop that sells things like animal feed, fertilizer, and other farm things. If you’ve been to Thailand, more specifically rural Thailand, you’ll know exactly what type of shop I’m talking about. She reckoned it would cost about a million baht to build a small shop, stock it, and have a room at the back where we could live temporarily. It all sounded like a plan to me.
We went back to Pattaya to think about things, but when we were back, I couldn’t help but feel the urge to go back to Roi Et and start this business. It seemed like the right thing to do, and it wouldn’t cost me all my savings, and maybe we could start making enough money to get by in rural Thailand. So, we gave up the condo in Pattaya. I bought a car, a secondhand pickup for around 350,000 baht. I did manage to buy this in my own name. We then loaded the pickup with the stuff we bought for the condo and headed to our new life. No part of me thought like I was rushing into things. I haven’t known this girl for too long, but she seemed like she was perfect. Never asked for anything more than our agreement and seemed to be a really genuine person. And to this day, she still is.
The Shop That Never Worked
When we got to Roi Et, the first thing we did was rent a small place in town. I can’t believe it was even cheaper than I was expecting. We found a place for 5,000 baht per month. How was this even possible? It was about a 25-minute drive to her home village. And after settling into the new town, we put the plans together for the business we wanted to start. She even showed me the land paper to show that it was in her name. I didn’t understand the Thai on it, but it did seem to match up to the Thai on her ID card, so I was happy with what I saw.
After going around a few of the shops that were doing the same thing, I thought we could make about 30,000 baht per month based on everything she told me. Wasn’t a fortune, but it was something to get us on the way. We could do something else after this was up and running successfully. At least that was the aim. So, we found someone to build a shop. This wasn’t anything fancy. It was just a bog standard concrete block structure with a metal tin roof. And the room at the back where we could stay was similar, but it had air conditioning and other creature comforts. It was all we needed. It only took 6 weeks to construct and it was ready to go. And then it was time to stock the shop. We went to a wholesaler and bought a big selection of things to sell. And all in for the construction and the stock, we’d spent about 1.2 million baht. So, not too far from budget. I was excited to see how things were going to go. This was my dream coming alive in front of me.
But as you can guess, things didn’t go according to plan. We sold hardly anything in the first month. Maybe 3,000 baht worth of stuff was sold for which we made a profit of about 500 baht. So much for the 30,000 we expected. Of course, it was early days and I didn’t think much of it. But driving around, I noticed there were so many shops doing the same thing. We did visit some shops before, like I said, to ascertain whether it was going to be a good idea. But it was in my mind that these were the only shops doing it. It seemed this was not true at all. A few months went by and we were simply not making any money, and living in the room at the back was getting a bit much. I had visions of making decent money to build a house, but I was still eating into savings, which was not my idea at all.
I must say that we never really fell out much. She didn’t change negatively after the place was built and she was trying to make the place work. But after another 3 months, so all in probably six or seven months, I decided it was simply not going to work. She said maybe we could turn it into something else. Try to do something else instead. And I did think for a moment about making a restaurant there, but I decided against it. The difference this time being that there are so many stories that you share is that she didn’t try to take the place and leave me. She genuinely wanted to help me and make the place work. But ultimately, we decided to sell everything in the shop to claw back the money or some money. We didn’t make any money on the stuff that we sold, but we did manage to get rid of and get back around 300,000 baht. Ultimately, we decided to move back to Pattaya.
Lessons Learned
I’m still with my girl now, but I regret immensely trusting her judgment when it came to starting a business. My money is going down, and in about 5 years, I will have completely run out. And I’m thinking every single day about what to do to try to make some money. I suppose my story isn’t one of ultimate disaster, but it is a cautionary tale about getting involved too deeply in Thailand. I lost nearly 1 million baht because I trusted my Thai girl knew what she was doing. I should have had a bit more sense, but we often go back to Roi Et and see the place empty. And I must admit sometimes I am tempted to try something else from there, but looking around the empty rice fields in all directions, it’s just not the right location.
We live as cheaply as possible now and she’s okay with that. But I do worry what would happen if the money were to run out. Would that be the end of us? So to anyone listening to this, my advice would be don’t get involved too deeply with your Thai partner. Chances are you’re going to end up losing money and being in a worse position than if you did nothing at all. That is exactly what happened to me. We tried to go into business and I lost money. I asked her about renting the place out. Maybe somebody else could do a business from it. And she said that maybe we could get 1,000 baht per month. So hardly worth it.
