He Sold EVERYTHING to Move to Thailand for Her

Six months after I sold my house, sold my car, and said goodbye to everyone that I knew in Canada, I was sitting alone in a bar in Pattaya watching another man leave with the woman I’d moved to Thailand for. And the worst part: nobody back home knew how I really met her.

You can call me Dean. I was 53 when I met Jib in Pattaya. She was 35 and working in a bar. I’m not going to dress it up. That is where we met.

She sat with me one night. We got talking and I ended up spending most of my three-week holiday with her.

When I went back to Canada, we stayed in contact: video calls every day, messages every morning. I came back to Thailand 4 months later. By then, she had stopped working at the bar, at least as far as I knew. And that is when things became serious.

There was one problem. I was embarrassed to tell anyone how we had met. My family already thought that I’d lost my mind getting involved with a woman in Thailand.

I changed the story. I told everyone I’d met Jib in a coffee shop. I said she had a normal job and came from a hard-working family in Isaan. And the lie got bigger every time somebody asked about her. Eventually, even my closest friends believed it.

Eighteen months later, I decided I was moving to Thailand permanently. I sold my house, sold my car, and got rid of furniture I’d owned for 20 years.

My daughter thought I was making a huge mistake. One of my closest mates actually asked me to wait another year. I didn’t listen.

At my leaving party, everyone was talking about my new life. I remember standing there thinking they simply didn’t understand. And I thought I knew better.

Living With Jib Near Her Family in Isaan

Jib and I rented a house near her family in Isaan. For the first couple of months, it was brilliant. Then reality arrived.

Jib didn’t work. I didn’t expect her to, but I hadn’t realized how bored she would become. During the day, she was constantly on her phone. At night, she wanted to go out.

At first, it was once a week, then three nights, then sometimes four. She’d go drinking with friends and come home at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, sometimes later.

Obviously, this made me annoyed. She told me that I was trying to control her.

The ridiculous thing was that I was becoming bored, too. I didn’t speak much Thai, didn’t know many foreigners locally, and had absolutely nothing to do.

Eventually, I started riding into town and drinking at a couple of foreign-owned bars just to have people to talk to.

There we were. I’d moved halfway around the world to be with Jib, and we were spending most evenings in completely different places.

Investing 1.4 Million Baht in a Pattaya Restaurant

After one particularly bad argument, we decided the problem was where we lived. Jib suggested Pattaya. She knew the city. There were more foreigners, more things for both of us to do.

Then she found a restaurant business for sale: a small restaurant downstairs and living accommodation upstairs.

She said we could work together. It would give her responsibility and give me something to focus on. I convinced myself this was exactly what we both needed.

Between taking over the business, equipment, deposit, renovations, and working capital, I put nearly 1.4 million baht into it.

For about six weeks, it actually worked. We were busy. Jib was there every day. I was helping with customers and suppliers. For the first time since I’d moved to Thailand, we felt like a couple again.

Jib’s Nights Out With Her Old Bar Friends

Then women from Jib’s old life started appearing. At first, they’d come into the restaurant to eat. Then they’d stay drinking after closing. I recognized a couple of them from the bar where I’d originally met Jib.

Before long, Jib started going out with them after we’d closed. She’d tell me she was going out for one drink. One drink became 3:00 a.m., then 5:00 a.m., and one morning she didn’t come home until nearly 8:00 in the morning. She told me that she’d slept in her friend’s room because she was too drunk to drive.

We had a massive argument. She screamed that she’d given up years of her life for me, and now I wanted to keep her locked inside a restaurant.

Things got worse. She stopped helping properly during the day because she’d been out all night. Staff started complaining. Customers noticed the atmosphere.

Then one of our Thai waitresses quietly asked if she could speak to me. She told me Jib had been meeting a Thai guy at a nightclub. I confronted Jib. She denied everything.

Discovering Jib’s Relationships With Three Men

Two weeks later, I saw messages on the restaurant’s tablet. Jib had logged into her account and forgotten to sign out.

There wasn’t one man; there were three. One was the Thai guy from the nightclub. Another was a younger Thai man she’d apparently known before she met me. And the third was a foreigner.

And that one hurt differently. He had eaten in our restaurant. I’d served him beer. I’d sat talking to him. And he knew Jib was my girlfriend. And judging by their messages, they had been sleeping together.

I completely lost it. I told Jib it was finished. She didn’t cry. She didn’t apologize.

She looked at me and said something I’ll never forget. “You brought me back to Pattaya. What do you think happened?”

That sentence destroyed me because part of me knew exactly what she meant.

I had taken a woman I had met in Pattaya, moved her away from that life, and watched her become miserable in Isaan. And then I’d spent nearly 1.4 million baht putting her right back in the middle of it.

Leaving the Restaurant and Moving Into a Pattaya Hotel

But the nightmare wasn’t finished. The restaurant was in her name. The lease was in her name. Most of the equipment I’d paid for had invoices in the business name.

I hadn’t bought myself a new life. I’d financed a business I couldn’t simply pick up and take with me.

I moved into a cheap hotel. For nearly 3 weeks, I didn’t tell anybody back home.

My daughter would video call and ask how the restaurant was going. I would turn the camera towards a blank hotel wall and tell her everything was fine.

Telling the truth meant admitting all of it: how I’d really met Jib, why I’d lied about the coffee shop, why my friends had been worried, why I had sold everything, and why less than a year after leaving Canada for my dream life in Thailand, I was living out of two suitcases in a Pattaya hotel.

Telling My Daughter the Truth About Jib

Eventually, I called my daughter. I told her everything. There was a long silence. Then she said, “Dad, why did you think you had to lie to us?”

That question hurt more than finding the messages because I realized I’d spent years protecting a story that wasn’t real.

I eventually walked away from the restaurant. I did recover some money by selling what I could prove I’d personally bought, but nowhere near what I had put in. Jib kept the business.

The last time I saw her was about 4 months later. I was walking past the restaurant. She was sitting outside drinking with two of the women she’d known from her bar days. There was a foreign bloke sitting beside her, not the one I had caught her with, a different one.

I kept walking. I didn’t care anymore. I’d finally told my family the truth, and strangely enough, that was the first time since moving to Thailand that I stopped feeling like I had something to hide.

I didn’t lose everything when Jib cheated on me. I’d started losing it much earlier, the moment I invented that coffee shop.