How Moving to Thailand Cost Me My Savings and Marriage
I lost £350,000 in Thailand, and even having to say that out loud makes me feel sick in the pit of my stomach. Losing money was the furthest thing from my mind when I boarded that plane and set off for my new life. I thought the only way from there was up, but I couldn’t have been more wrong because the only way for me to go was down.
I’d just sold my business at home, that’s what gave me that amount of money in the first place, and my house. And I’d been to Thailand a few times on holiday. Every time I was there, I felt a deep connection and appreciation of the country and wished there was a possibility that I could live there myself. I think that’s what makes the whole thing even more difficult, because moving to Thailand was a dream of mine for such a long time. I worked towards that goal for such a long time, and I felt like I’d hit the goal when I sold my business, which gave me that capital to go and start again from scratch in Thailand. A new adventure. Understanding that it was just a catastrophic decision that tore my life to shreds is awful. At least I’m still alive. And I suppose that’s something to hold on to when it gets to the point when there is nothing else.
It wasn’t my intention to lose money in Thailand. It was my intention to make more money. I wanted to get into business in Thailand. I considered it a new challenge, a new adventure, and a continuation of the success I had at home. I expected to start in Thailand, and it was my goal within 15 years to reach a million. A million from 350,000 sounded plausible and doable and achievable. And when I admit that I never even got to 351,000, it’s just a cataclysmic devastation.
Before Thailand: The Small Cafe
If I swing it back to the business I did at home, I say “business” like I thought I was some kind of special businessman, but I wasn’t really. I had a small cafe that sold breakfasts, full English, bacon sandwiches, you know the sort. It made me good money for the business it was, but I always felt like it was just the stepping stone to something greater, to something bigger that could grow into something huge, as opposed to something that was quite limited in scope.
I picked Thailand as a place to do that from. I sold that cafe. I didn’t own the building it was operating from, but I owned the good name, and I even sold my house, which had about 50% of the mortgage on it. That was what gave me the money, and I got it all together. I felt so excited about going to Thailand because it was something new, something very different in my life. And one of my biggest dreams was being able to succeed in Thailand and contact friends at home telling them I’d succeeded and offering to bring them out there to show them my world.
It’s funny what you think about when you’re just getting set up, the visions you have. I didn’t expect what I had, where I was going to be, to end up where I am today in the slightest. I expected to be somewhere else altogether. But expectations don’t pay the bills. Expectations don’t necessarily become reality. And I found out that that was most definitely to my peril.
First Impressions of Thailand 2008
My first time in Thailand, that’s an important part of my life. I used to go away one time per year. I was always single at home. I never felt a draw to anybody. And also, I kind of felt like at home, the odds were stacked against me. Every time I did get into a relationship with somebody at home, I was the one who always had more than them. And I’m not saying I had a lot because I most definitely didn’t. I suppose in Thailand that would have been even more extreme. But I had a warped view that in Thailand you didn’t have to worry as much about things like that.
I was downright terrified at home of falling in love with someone, getting married, and them changing their mind later on, and that costing me my business and all my hard work. I was too concerned that something like that would happen that I just didn’t pursue a relationship. It’s not like I had that much money, but I wanted to be in a relationship with someone, and if they chose to not be in that relationship with me, then pure and simple, they can’t have my stuff. In Thailand, it felt everything was for me to decide when it came to a relationship and what we could do and what we couldn’t do. Again, I didn’t understand that people from all over the world had the same kind of hopes and dreams regardless of where they were from. I thought the hope and dream of a girl from Thailand who was poor was to meet a foreigner and be his world. And if she ever changed her mind, well, she would have to go right back to where she started from. That’s what I thought Thailand was all about, and what I gathered from being there from that first time.
That was back in 2008. It was an incredible experience. I spent most of that time in Pattaya. I would personally refer to it as God’s own country when I was back at home talking to my friends. When I was in Pattaya, I felt like I was in the Holy Land. I’m not trying to be facetious here. I’m deadly serious. Pattaya to me was the best place to ever come into existence. And it’s like a Eureka moment when you’re there for the first time experiencing everything you can do there. It’s like the world doesn’t make sense anymore at home, because where are all the beautiful girls in all the bars at home that I can go and spend time with? Where’s everything on me to determine the outcome of a conversation or anything else?
I want to talk about one particular time I met a girl, probably after I’d been in Thailand for less than a week the first time. And it was an experience that I still remember to this day as being the best thing to ever happen to me. It wasn’t only the girls, though. Everything felt within reach in Thailand. Everything felt like if you came in now, you could get your slice of it, and I wanted my slice.
Although I hadn’t yet come to the conclusion that I would sell my business at home and move there, that would come quite a lot later. Throughout the years since 2008, 5 years, in fact, I tried my best to get to Thailand every year, and I only missed 2012. But each time I was in Pattaya, I felt like I was home. Each time I felt like it was a bit more developed, and it was going to come to be something that could change, and it was now or never kind of thing. That’s what I’d built up in my mind, that I need to do it now. The time I was there in 2013, when I was looking at places to rent or do a business from, when you’re looking at other things as well, while it’s still affordable, it’s still a lot more than it was back in 2008. So, I’m thinking to myself, if I don’t do anything about this now, I’m never going to do it, and maybe the possibility will go soon, too. I just wanted to be in Pattaya in Thailand more than anything.
I’d managed not to meet any girls during my first times there for anything serious. I had a friend who I actually met in 2008. I kept in touch with him, and he’s from Australia. I was just talking to him one day, and he became a friend. He got romantically involved with a girl that he met a year later, in 2009, in fact. He kept in touch with her when he left, sending money for her. Again, a story as old as time. And a few years later, he found out that he wasn’t the only one sending money to her, and he wasn’t the only one that wanted to be with her. He felt like a fool because that probably cost him about $5,000. I didn’t want anything like that to happen to me. I knew that meeting a girl in Pattaya, especially in a bar, wasn’t without its risks or complications. I just thought those complications were linked to when guys left. If you’re still there, I couldn’t see how there would be any complications because she’s with you all the time, so she doesn’t have a chance to do anything else. I guess that was a huge error on my part.
The Decision to Move
When I left in 2013, that was when I decided to put in motion the plan I had to move to Thailand, get there as soon as I could to live. I felt like it was now or never. I thought I could raise enough money from my house and from my business to be able to have a really good go of things in Thailand. I did think if I waited too much longer, I wouldn’t have the chance. So, I rushed forward with my plans regardless of if it made me feel a little bit uncomfortable.
I was 52 in 2013. I felt very old when I turned 50. And I felt like my life hadn’t really gone according to plan because I did expect by the time I was 50, I would have been retired for 10 years already, just living life, kicking back on a beach somewhere. But I guess many people have those same dreams, and hardly ever does it come to reality for most of them.
It took me about 6 months to get to the point where I didn’t have a house, didn’t have a business, didn’t have a place to live, didn’t have a car to drive, and I only had money in the bank. About 6 months to get there, and that was at the start of 2014. £350,000 felt like a fortune, more than 10 million baht, considerably more than that, more than 15 even. And as I’ve already said, it was my goal to hit a million pounds by being successful in Thailand. And I thought because I had success at home, I was one of the people who would be able to make that a reality in Thailand.
I didn’t even know what business I was going to do. But I had hundreds of ideas. I wasn’t short of ideas. I just wasn’t sure exactly what I would do, but I knew that would be something that would come to me when the time came.
I even treated myself to a business class ticket. I felt like a businessman after selling my business, and I was going to be a businessman in Thailand. So, it only felt right that I treated myself as such. I’d never flown business before, and it was an experience like no other. Definitely recommended if you have a bit of extra money, although I did feel when I got off the plane that it was a waste of money because everybody else got there at the same time that I did. When you’re actually on it, though, it’s worth it. I doubt I would ever do it again regardless of how much money I earned, that’s what I was telling myself at the time because that money could be put to better use. As a once-in-a-lifetime, though, I felt it was good.
Arriving in Pattaya The Plan Goes Out the Window
I had a very strict plan. First things first would be to get a taxi to Pattaya, spend no longer than a week in a hotel finding a place to live, and spend no longer than 6 months thinking about what the business I wanted to do would be. And I promised myself at the end of those 6 months I would have a plan. It didn’t have to be concrete yet, but I needed a plan and a way forward. It was really exciting to actually be there to live as opposed to just holiday. And I often wondered what it would feel like. You know, exactly the same thing. If you’re in Pattaya, or anywhere in Thailand, for that matter, when you’re on holiday and you run into someone and they say they live there, you look at them in a few ways at once. On the one hand, you look at them with a sense of admiration and wonder, as if to say, “How did you make something like that a reality?” You would look at them like they figured out life entirely, and you want to be them. On the other hand, you look at them with envy and jealousy because you knew in a few days’ time you were going to be getting on a plane, leaving where you wanted to be, and they would still be there living the life that you wanted to live, but that was still somewhere far away from you.
I’m not going to hide away from the fact that I couldn’t wait to run into someone who was in Pattaya on a holiday and have a conversation with them about how I was living there, knowing they had to go back home. That was one of the things I was most looking forward to, in a bit of a twisted way. I followed my plan quite closely. I mean that I was getting in a taxi straight away when I arrived in Thailand and going to Pattaya. I guess that was the only bit of the plan that I followed. I found myself going a bit wild for a whole month in a hotel instead of a week. And it was like I knew what I was there for. I knew what the plan was, but I just couldn’t remove myself from holiday mode for a whole month. Each day was pretty much identical to the last. I would wake up late, around 1:00 p.m., crash by the pool for an hour or so with a few beers I bought from 7-Eleven the night before, kind of just get myself ready for going out.
I was paying for a really nice hotel because it was only meant to be for a week, which was in budget. But paying for a whole month was quite ridiculous because of the amount of money I was spending. I just kept telling myself that this is a life I’m working towards. I wanted to allow myself to live it for a whole month. I mean, did I really? I don’t know. I’m just coming up with the excuses here. But I wanted to somehow allow myself to enjoy this life and tell myself with all the hard work you’ve done and what you’re here to do, everything you’re here to build, this is what you’ll be able to do every day if you play your cards right and things go well. I would then leave the hotel around 4:00 or 5:00 p.m., have breakfast, although it was more like dinner, then I’d hit the bars. Usually, if I met a girl I liked, then anything was on the cards. To say I was spending a lot of money wouldn’t really be accurately describing how crazy I was. I was going so crazy. And I guess I spent nearly 10 grand in that first month just doing everything I wanted to do.
Each time I was out, it was like, “Okay, you’re getting it out of your system, and you know what you’re here for, and you will be able to calm down soon, but just enjoy yourself until you feel like you don’t need to.” I was on such a high, though. And when that month came to an end, I told myself, well, find yourself somewhere to live and then give yourself another month to enjoy yourself. So, you’re transitioning slowly towards living there normally as opposed to in this holiday mode that I’m somehow unable to get myself out of. So, I’m in a hotel for month one. Month two, I’m living in my own place. Then another month, I’m ready to start. That’s what I told myself.
Buying a Condo
But, as I said, I was on such a huge high that I made a very bad decision. I’d contacted an agent that I’d seen recommended online to show me around a few units to rent. I was interested kind of in between Pattaya and Jomtien, you know, when you go up that very steep hill and then kind of back down again, and they have lots of condos around there. You can see the ocean. You’re not right in Pattaya, but you’re not right in Jomtien either. I wanted to live there with a condo with a view of the ocean with a balcony, and I saw a few very nice units.
The agent said when we were in one building that there’s a condo for sale in there if you want to have a look. It’s a one-bedroom, but it’s on a high floor with a good view, a great view, in fact. The reason I said yes to having a look was because I was thinking maybe in the future I’ll be buying my very own condo. So, let’s go and have a look and see what’s available and what it’s like.
Perhaps it was because I was in such a happy frame of mind. I was in such a good mood, such a good mindset, so happy that I was there, so many dreams and things that I thought were going to happen. But when I looked at that condo and it was just exactly like the condo I thought I was going to be living in, I told myself it’s about £80,000. Just buy it. So I found myself spending another month in that same hotel while I arranged to buy this condo. Going wild at the same time, just partying and celebrating the fact that I’m getting a condo, thinking, “No way I’m going to have my own place in Thailand.” It felt like I’d made it. And I hadn’t even done anything yet apart from blow money.
Another wild month in Pattaya, taking things even further than the last time because I was celebrating what I thought was my success even though I hadn’t even started trying to make anything yet. When I moved into that condo, it was like I had to celebrate for another month. In fact, I was living in my own place that belonged to me. I had the paperwork for it, called the Chanote in Thailand. My name was printed on the back of it. They had a little percentage as to how much of the overall property I owned in terms of the communal area and the land it was on. I really felt like probably the happiest I’d ever been in my life. Just like knowing I had my own place in Thailand made me happy. I had visions of being successful and maybe having a huge portfolio of rental properties all over Thailand. It was like this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a landlord. Everything kind of fit into place.
And it was so amazing that by doing what I was doing, it felt like it pointed me in the right direction of the business that I wanted to be involved with. At least at that moment in time, I was in a very happy place. Too happy, because I didn’t have enough money to back up what I was doing. I felt I did. And I felt because I had been successful before, I was bound to be successful again. And it’s really cruel how you can have such happiness and such excitement and such hopes for the future, yet none of those hopes and dreams that you have come close to becoming reality. It’s cruel, and it’s just the world over for many people.
I’d been living in my condo for a month, still living in holiday mode. And I’d heard about holiday mode before, but I convinced myself I was in celebration mode. That first month, what should have been a week, that was holiday mode. The second month was celebrating the fact that I’m going to be buying a property and I’m going to become a property owner in Pattaya in God’s own country. And the third month was celebrating being a property owner in Pattaya. I didn’t pay any attention to the fact that I’d spent £80,000 on this condo and about £25,000 going absolutely insane in Pattaya for those first 3 months I was there. Totaled, that was nearly a third of everything I had just gone just like that. I didn’t consider the condo to be gone because it was an investment and I could live there, and the other money was just establishing myself. So I was very happy to be in that position.
More Delays and Justifications
After the month of celebration, I even had it on my calendar. This is your day to stop this. This is your day to start building more things. I did manage to calm down. If I look back, I always think I was very, very good at planning things. That was what I was very good at doing. But sticking to a plan was something it seemed I couldn’t do. It’s pointless having a great plan and spending so many hours of your time thinking about this plan, and then when it’s time to put this plan into fruition, you come up with another plan that involves spending a bit more time doing what you really want to be doing. Telling yourself, though, that I have got this plan in place, but it doesn’t matter what I’m doing now because the plan will happen soon.
What did I find myself doing? I put a different version of the plan I had into motion. I told myself for the next month, you can’t just give it up completely because you won’t know what you’re working towards. But what you do need to do is start waking up earlier, no later than 9:00 a.m. Give yourself the whole day until 6:00 p.m. thinking about what you really want to do in terms of your business, which is what I was there for really, to build an empire, I thought. And I was starting to gravitate towards being interested in becoming a landlord and owning a big rental portfolio. I told myself then that by 6:00 p.m. I would be allowed to go wild, as long as I was still able to wake up at 9:00 the following day. Give yourself a month doing that, and I thought that sounded fair.
I even put it on the calendar again, after this month it’s time to settle down completely. I even had the foresight to tell myself allow yourself when a normal week comes, 2 days a week to go wild, but for this month you can do it every day. I just hoped I would automatically not want to go out. And again, during that month, I’m not really focusing on what I should be doing. I was just aimlessly browsing on the computer, looking at the internet, and reading forums, thinking I was basically being a sensible guy, looking into things, but I wasn’t actually doing anything productive. Mainly, though, I was just watching the clock tick away until it was time for me to go out and enjoy Pattaya.
I think it’s so important to say this because I’ve met people who went to Thailand with the best of intentions, really clever people who had success in their lives before, but Thailand got the better of them. Thailand became their addiction that they couldn’t shift. And I suppose I was getting addicted to the nightlife of Pattaya, and I didn’t really put anything into place at all during that month, apart from just to spend less time out. So at least I spent a bit less money.
When that month came to an end, I found myself for the next month just waiting for the days I’d allocated myself, sticking to the plan, but I’m focused on going out as opposed to on this business that I was there to do. My money is draining away, not substantially, and I still had the bulk of it left, but I’m just living in my mind, I suppose, what I’m hoping my life will be like eventually. Because doing what I was doing when I was out in the bars all the time, that was what I wanted to be able to do, yet without having to worry about money. That was my goal. That was my dream.
Meeting Someone
The problem was, probably 3 months went by. That was all I was thinking about. Yet nothing’s happened. Now I’m going out more than I should be. When it kind of dawned on me that I’m not moving anywhere and I’m getting addicted here, I need to do something about it. Instead of doing something sensible, I did something even worse.
By this point, I guess I had the telephone numbers of at least 20 different girls that I’d spent time with. Each one of them I could have spent the rest of my life with. They were just breathtaking, the girls in Thailand. I mean, breathtaking doesn’t do them justice. And each time I was with a girl, I pictured what life with her would be like, because it felt so great to be able to be in a relationship with someone in their early 20s who seemed to want to be in a relationship with me. At that point, though, I was so focused on just enjoying myself, I wasn’t even thinking about getting into a relationship. But now I thought to myself, maybe a relationship would help me to calm down, help me to get out of this party mode and this holiday mindset, and give me something to hold on to that would allow me to concentrate to build a business the way I wanted to.
I thought that would be the thing that would pull me away from the nightlife scene and bring me more towards focusing on building a life with my girlfriend and maybe future wife, maybe even helping me stay clear of the side of Thailand that I was struggling to stay clear of. All those girls that I talked about, I met in different bars across the city. And I wasn’t about to rush into anything and commit to any of those girls anytime soon. And again, I somehow managed to justify with myself that I needed to go out a lot more in order to get to the point where I met the perfect girl and then I could settle down.
It’s amazing how you’re able to justify things with yourself. It was like everything I was telling myself was forcing me to live the lifestyle I wanted to live. Ever since I’d cut back, I was looking for an excuse not to. And now my excuse was, I need to find someone to be in a relationship with because that’s what’s going to help me to stop doing this. But in the meantime, I’m going to focus on doing this as much as I can until that’s the case. So now I’m going out all the time again.
As I’m writing this, I’m scratching my head with amazement that I spent 6 months doing that until I finally found a girl who I’d spent time with, quite a lot of time, quite a number of dates outside the bar, and came to the conclusion that this girl was the perfect girl for me. At this moment in time, I was happy. I felt like I was doing something that had a goal inside, a target inside. So, while I’m spending all this money that I shouldn’t be spending, I guess I probably spent, and this hurts to talk about, maybe over £50,000 ever since I’d been in Thailand, and that didn’t include my condo, I just thought that that was an investment into my future in Thailand. And I thought this was a way to secure my life, to be with someone who could help me avoid that lifestyle and also to wake up with in the morning, have someone to spend time with so I didn’t need to go out. When evening comes around, instead of wanting to go out, I can just hang out with my girlfriend because she’s with me.
It really is quite alarming how you are able to justify these things with yourself. It’s like so far away from what you should be doing. And that’s what I was doing, justifying continuing the lifestyle I was continuing with until I met a girl. Now I met one, though, it felt real.
The Relationship
I guess I’d spent time with her for about 3 months when I felt like I actually loved her, as opposed to like, which I hadn’t felt before since then. I didn’t see her every day, far from it. And of course, I knew what she was doing when I wasn’t seeing her. But I was seeing other people, too. Trying to work that out, so I didn’t mind. When I thought I like her, I want to spend time with her, I asked how she would feel about going on a nice date somewhere. I mean, a few days’ date, go to the beach and spend a bit of time there. She said she would love to go. Of course, there were things that went along with that for her to go with me. For example, she wasn’t working, so I needed to step in to fill that void. But I took her to Koh Samui for a few days just to see how things would feel away from the craziness of Pattaya. And it felt great. And at the end of that time, I thought I would put it to her. You want to be my girlfriend? We were only meant to be in Samui for 2 days, but that was extended to three, then four. And it was on day four I told her my feelings, told her how much I liked her, and wanted to see if this could be something permanent for us. And how would she feel about becoming my girlfriend and we could live together. She told me she feels exactly the same way about me. She wanted to say something from when we met, she said, but she felt like she wasn’t sure if I liked her. But she said that would be amazing. She’d love to move in with me and be my girlfriend. And that made me the happiest guy in the world.
To celebrate, I found that I went to spend a lot of money, way too much money, on a nice resort for another week on Samui. I extended our stay there just to say, “This is really time to live in the moment and enjoy ourselves in luxury for a week and picture us being able to do this in the future when the business that I want to do has succeeded and we can do this all the time.” This was like the starting point of our journey together. We wanted to start it off in the right way. Again, it pains me to admit to the fact that that probably cost me an extra £45,000. If I look back at it, it’s plain as day that I was doing absolutely everything I could to not actually put anything in motion to start a business and to make more money. I was always putting things off and doing something extra while saying “later, later” all the time. It’s very easy to look back in hindsight at the things you do and say, “Why did I do that?” But we did spend that week together. And then we did return to Pattaya, and she moved into my place. Where she was living before was just in a room that she shared with a number of other girls on top of the bar where she worked. And I went to help her take her things. And I loved the conversation she was having with the girls that worked there. And some of them would talk to me. “You take care of her now. She very happy to meet you.” You know, all the things they say. It was like she was having a send-off out of the bar to be with her knight in shining armor, which is who I thought I was for her.
I didn’t tell her what my plan was from there, but it was to settle down, to not go out, and that’s why I was with her. I’m here to take myself away from the bars because I have things to work on and to focus on. I didn’t tell her that. I just thought that was quite obvious. Otherwise, why would I be doing this in the first place? So, she moves in. I told her it was my condo, and she marveled at that fact, saying other guys she’d spent time with in the past never had their own condos. And that made me feel like a really big man because I owned my own condo. Felt like I was able to show that I had a very good thing going on here, and I was a good provider, and I was successful before, and I wanted to be successful again.
The first day she moved in, again, I found that we went out to a really nice restaurant to celebrate the fact that we were now living together, spending more money on that. And for some reason, she said, “Let’s go for a drink in the bar.” Then I went to the bar with her where she worked to celebrate the fact that she wasn’t working there anymore. I was paying for a drink for her, and it was just a normal-priced drink. It wasn’t extra because she didn’t work there. That felt very amazing, and it felt good to be able to be there with her. I bet you know where this is going. I mean, over the next few weeks, we would wake up together in the morning, which was great. I’d go to my computer, and instead of actually looking into something, I’d just be clicking around aimlessly, pretending I was doing something, convincing myself I was. And when she’d wake up, which was a lot later than me, usually around 2 or 3 p.m., she would get ready and go and get some food, bring it back, and eat it together, usually on the balcony. I’d give her money, and she’d go out to buy the food with that, and then come back. And it felt good. Then I’d get back on the computer, clicking away again, aimlessly, not really doing anything, but feeling like I was somehow making progress. I always had it in my mind that something’s going to happen soon. You just need to happen across it. I didn’t want to force anything. I felt like something needed to fall into my lap, and that’s why I spent so much time doing basically nothing.
The problem from there was, instead of settling down, she would say at 6:00 or 7:00 p.m., “Where do you want to go out this evening?” Instead of saying, “Well, I’m with you because I don’t want to really go out,” I would say to her, “Where would you like to go?” Then we’d find ourselves going to the bars, going to eat, going to different places. And it’s like nothing has changed at all since before I was with her. Only this time, I’m spending even more money because I want to keep her in this level of happiness because she blows my mind every single day when I’m with her. I can’t believe how stupid I must sound, because that wasn’t the idea at all. It was like I’m just spending so much money. And because I’m in Thailand and my reason for being in Thailand is to do something, I always think I’ll get there eventually. Something should fall into my lap, and something should work, and everything will be good. So, I just allowed myself to continue spending an insane amount of money, probably ever since we’d been together for 6 months. And I’m looking for another reason as to how to get out of this, settle down, and start doing what I was in Thailand to do, which was to build an empire.
After those six months, I hadn’t even spoken to her that I want to go out less. I was just living in the moment so much, and she was just so happy, that that’s why I pushed myself towards making sure that stayed like that.
The Engagement
I did ask her to marry me after 6 months, thinking if we were married that would help us to settle down. And she agreed to get married. Again, I felt like the luckiest guy in the world because I was there with this stunning girl, 23 years old, who seemed to love me unconditionally. I mean, that’s the sad thing. I actually thought she did love me unconditionally, just like I loved her. I know it’s crazy because she didn’t, but it felt like that. And now she was agreeing to get married to me. That was all I needed to hear from her to understand that now finally, when we were a married couple, we would be able to settle down.
I don’t know why I wasn’t strong enough to tell her I wanted to settle down. I mean, I could have done, but I just felt like that would shatter the illusion of what we had. This illusion that we were living in was the best life ever. Instead of trying to work and find something to do and make more money to make sure that I could continue living this life, because this is a life I really wanted to live forever, I’m just living it in the moment, knowing that as every day goes by, the ability to live this lifestyle in the future is getting harder and harder because more and more money is being wasted. The thing is, at the time I wasn’t even concerned. I kept convincing myself that everything’s going to be good eventually. Everything is going to come good, and that’s why I pushed towards getting married. I thought that would be what would allow us to settle down.
I even thought about having kids with her, because that would definitely help us to settle down. I thought that would be something we could discuss after we were married.
The Village and Sin Sod
When we went to her village to meet the family to get married, I was very alarmed about just how different it was to Pattaya. Since I’d been going to Thailand, I’d never been north of Bangkok before. I’d been to Pattaya, been to a few of the other islands, of course, Samui where I went with her, but never north of Bangkok. So, that was a first for me. One thing I noticed straight away when we were there, staying in the family’s house as well, they actually had quite a large house. Although it wasn’t a great house, there were still a few holes in the walls, the wood wasn’t joined together properly, and it wasn’t air-conditioned. The bathroom wasn’t much to go by, no hot water, no flushing toilet or anything like that. But the thing that struck me was that everything. And again, when I was on my computer, even there, aimlessly looking away at different things, thinking about what to do. But here, she didn’t say, “Let’s go out.” Usually, that was around 6:00 or 7:00 when she would say that. And then at 8, when we were in the family’s house, I went to her saying, “Shall we go and get a drink? Do you want to go out and have something to eat?” She just said, “No, she’s already cooked with the family, and there’s not really anywhere close by”, in terms of a bar, she’s talking about. Granted, we could have gone to a local restaurant and had a drink there, but it wouldn’t have been anything like I was used to in Pattaya. I just thought when she’s here, she’s a very different person. In the village, she’s not the party animal anymore. She doesn’t want to go out. She’s just okay to talk with her family and spend time not doing anything. It was a very different side of her. And I just thought maybe if we spend time here, at that moment in time, we were just arranging the wedding because she said her family were very superstitious. So everything had to be on the right day, and they were just discussing with monks at the time what the right day would be, which turned out to be in about 3 and a half months’ time. We spent about 5 days in the village, and in that time it felt like I expected to feel in Pattaya, just living a normal life without feeling the need to go out and do things in the evenings all the time. I expected when we got back to Pattaya that things would be very similar because she will have already calmed down, now that we were engaged, now that the family knew we were getting married and we had a date booked for the wedding. I thought when we get back to Pattaya, things are finally going to be different now. It was like I was wanting her to be the one to say to me, “I don’t want to go out tonight. I don’t really want to go out anymore – one time per week is fine.” I wanted everything to be her idea so that she would remain this vision of the perfect girl that I was now engaged to. And I did expect that was going to happen when we got back to Pattaya.
We did the night bus from her town down to Pattaya, getting there by 5:00 a.m. We both got on the back of a motorcycle taxi each to take us to my place, crashed for a few hours, and I woke up and got on the computer. I was starting at that moment in time to put together a plan for a business that I’d been thinking about for ages. It was a company that would take people on a tour around all the best bars, like a pub crawl type of thing. I thought people would pay for a service where if they’ve never been to Pattaya before, if they’re a bit uncomfortable because it’s nothing like they’ve seen before, they would pay for a guided tour of all the main bars, learn about all the tricks that the girls talk about, learn about the pitfalls, just have an introductory experience to the bars of Pattaya so that when you go out on your own, you don’t make the same stupid mistakes that many guys did. At the time, I didn’t even realize that I was one of those guys who was making all those stupid mistakes. I just thought I was different because I wasn’t stupid. The other guys were stupid. I was just enjoying myself, not stupidly so. So, this is what I was thinking about, and I was just working on that. I guess I wasn’t really doing much work. Maybe if I was in front of the computer for 5 or 6 hours, maybe I would put down a few hundred words into a document about what this plan was, and then I’d just be looking around aimlessly again. I know it’s so stupid. I mean, it’s crazy what I did, but it just goes to show how you can be blinded by everything that you want to be doing right there, knowing that you need to do something and doing a little bit, telling yourself that’s enough. You’ve done something, so at least you’re a little bit closer. So that first day we’re back, when my girlfriend asked me, “Where do you want to go out to eat today?” Instead of saying, “No, I want to calm down now that we’re engaged. I want to make sure that when we’re married, we settle down,” I just said, “It’s up to you. Where would you like to go?” She chose a restaurant on Beach Road, which I happily agreed to go to with her, ignoring the fact that the bill was going to be around 2,000 baht because she always liked to order the most expensive dish on the menu. We then would go to see her friends in the bar where she worked, and she would sometimes insist on me buying drinks for the girls who were her friends, which cost money, and that night would end up costing me 10,000 baht. I was very happy to be doing these things. That’s exactly what I would have liked to have been doing anyway, but I just wouldn’t have wanted to do it yet. I didn’t want to go out yet. I wanted to watch a film with her. That’s what I wanted to do. Thinking eventually we’ll be able to do what she wants to do all the time, and we won’t have to cut back. It was just the money side of things. That’s it. The thing was, I’m still doing that now, though. Even though we’re engaged, we haven’t changed anything. Then I started to convince myself that when we are married, it’s finally going to calm down.
I guess you just can’t fix stupid. But at the time, I didn’t even know I was being stupid. I just thought I was playing a waiting game, and now was the time to go crazy because we weren’t married yet, and when we are married then we can settle down. I just kept putting things off. I decided then that there’s no point even thinking about the business until we’re married. Come what may, though, I might as well just get this out of our system together. I’m not even telling my girlfriend that when we are married, I’m expecting to stop doing this completely. I just thought that was obvious. When we were married, we shouldn’t be going to the bars anymore. I mean, we can go out occasionally, but we shouldn’t be going to these sorts of places. To admit to the fact that I probably spent 10,000 baht every single day for those 3 and a half months while we were waiting to get married, that’s probably what I spent. Over a million baht. I can’t believe I did that. But when it was finally time to get married, I was feeling relieved because I’d spent all that money. I can’t even think about how much I had left at this time, but I’m actually thinking that it was less than half of what I arrived in Thailand with. And I always told myself, I’ve got my condo, and that’s worth money. So, I just thought that when we were married, things would finally be better. I was in for a very nasty shock when we went to get married. We talked about the wedding at length. I knew I was going to be paying for that, and that was around £5,000 just for the wedding. But one thing that wasn’t discussed before was sin sod. I’d heard about that. I’d heard lots of guys talking about it, about how it’s outdated, yet how they’ve paid it, and how many people didn’t pay it. And I just thought that what we had in terms of our relationship, that this wasn’t even going to be something required of me. I knew that she was younger than me. She’d never been married before, but she had a kid. It didn’t make sense to me that I would be paying sin sod because I saw that what we had in terms of our relationship as being a proper relationship. I saw that we were both in love. I thought she loved me. And the thing is, she told me that she loved me all the time. When we woke up in the morning, she told me she loved me, and she probably told me the same thing another five times that day. I thought that because our relationship was real, I wouldn’t need to pay it. What I mean by that is if a guy who perhaps was a similar age to me met a girl who was similar age to her, perhaps what they had wasn’t real, perhaps it was a financial thing that was happening there. And in that case, I could understand why the family would want sin sod. Whether I was just so far gone away from what was really taking place here or just delusional, I will never know.
But when we arrived about a week before the wedding, because she wanted to stay there for a bit, and I was informed that the family expected a million baht, I had to ask my girlfriend if they were joking because I didn’t think that what we had was a transactional relationship. I told her I thought what we had was real, and she just said, “It is, but this is Thai custom. This is what everybody does. This is what they need.” I said, “Is there any way we can do 750,000 instead?” And when she turned and spoke to her mother and father and only one second later she looked at me and said yes, that’s fine. I didn’t notice the smiles on their faces as being like, “Why didn’t he come down to 100,000 baht instead?” They’d have probably taken that. They just guessed that because they started at a million, I thought 750,000 was a lowball offer. I guess they played it well, because I probably could have got away with a lot less. But it was agreed, and I had to pay it. Quite close to £20,000 there just for that. And that kind of put a sour mood for the rest of the day. Again, I woke up in the morning telling myself, “Don’t worry about it. Once you get back to Pattaya, you can finally do what you want to do. Put in motion the business you want to do,” because I thought it was a good idea, and my wife will just be my wife because now that we were married, I should have more say in the things we do together and the places we go. I’d never expected that we would go back to Pattaya and things would continue the same way. That was the furthest thing from my mind, but that was based on nothing other than what I wanted to happen, not based on actual reality. So, I guess I was just really delusional. After I got over that, the wedding continued. My wife now seemed to be happy. Her family seemed to be happy, and the whole village seemed to be happy as everyone seemed to get drunk off my dime. But that just felt like we had an even deeper connection with each other now, and it was now my responsibility to look after her. Because I paid sin sod, that made me feel like I had a say in what happened in the relationship now. Whereas before, when we were together not married, she had more say in the amount of things we did. It wouldn’t have made sense to me to pay all that money to her family and then for her to not move closer towards what I wanted to do. The thing was, I hadn’t even told her what I wanted to do yet, which was to spend as little money as possible, concentrate on building a business, and have her there with me all the time, making me the happiest version of myself without taking anything from me. That’s what I wanted, but perhaps that was unrealistic.
We never even got legally married. We just did the wedding ceremony because that seemed to be good enough for her, and it was fine with me. But when we got back to Pattaya, I think that was the first time I told her, “Now we’re married. I want to settle down. I want to concentrate on building a business, and maybe we can just go out once a week or twice a week instead. We really need to focus on this now we’re married.” She said that was fine. She understands. Don’t worry about it at all. Because we arrived back that time quite late in the evening, we didn’t go out. Went to bed, and I thought, “This is the start of great things to come.” The following day, I was working on a document, just typing away, somehow feeling like I was busy putting this idea I had a little bit closer, thinking about building a website for that business at that moment in time. And she came after she woke up saying she wanted to go out for lunch. Can we go for lunch? I told her I really wanted to concentrate on what I was doing. She said, “No problem. She’ll go herself.” She went out and came back with food for both of us, and that was great. I told her when she was back, “I don’t really want to go out this evening. Let’s just take it easy.” And again, she said that’s fine. And it seemed to be until it was about 8:00 p.m. She seemed to be very bored, restless, and said she really wanted to go out. She said, “If we can go out tonight, then tomorrow we can stay in together.” So, we went out. I spent another load of money, and she didn’t keep her promise, and we went out the following day and the following day. That was when I felt like I was actually losing control of the situation completely. And if I didn’t do something about it soon, things wouldn’t turn out well. I guess I was just so weak, too weak to be able to tell her exactly what we can do and what we can’t do, because I needed her to be the version of her that I wanted her to be to make me the happiest. And it was as if when she was behaving exactly like I liked her to behave, I didn’t see sense and reason. And I was just throwing money away left, right, and center, hoping that this would settle down. It was clear that getting married hadn’t changed anything at all.
And that was the moment when I started thinking that perhaps leaving Pattaya could be the best option altogether. Even thinking if we went to live up in the village and do something there instead, there’s nowhere close by where we can go and spend money. So perhaps this could be the only thing to do. To be honest, I didn’t really like the village. I mean, I liked it, but nowhere near as much as Pattaya. But I felt like if we were living there, I could get stuck into something, and she couldn’t come to me and say she wanted to go out because there was nowhere to go.
The Plan to Move to the Village
We’d only been back in Pattaya for a week, and I asked her how she would feel about going and living in the village. I told her I was getting a bit bored of Pattaya as it was too busy for me, which was a lie, but I just wanted that version of her. I wanted who she was when she was in the village. I wanted that version of her in Pattaya, but she couldn’t be like that in Pattaya. So perhaps this would just be the best compromise.
I thought I would be able to rent out my condo. Based on what other condos rented for, the one I had should have got me around 17 to 18,000 baht per month. And then I had an epiphany. I still had enough money left to buy one more condo, pretty much identical to the one I had. Enough money to even build ourselves a house. Enough money to buy a car. Enough money for my visa money, which I had, a retirement visa. No need to do any business. And have our income coming from two rental condos. All of a sudden, it felt like everything fit into place. And my wife seemed very keen on the idea of having our own house in the village, saying she loves it there, admitting that when she’s there, she’s able to relax more and she doesn’t want to go out. But when she’s in Pattaya, there are too many friends around, so much to do, and she wants to do that. She was a party animal. I suppose she was in her early 20s, so she had every right to be.
It was about 10 months later, I would say, when we had a house built in her village. Another condo was bought. Stupidly, the condo that we bought went into my wife’s name. The building had already hit its foreign quota. In Thailand, only 49% of the area of the condominium building can belong to foreigners. And this condo was perfect, though. It seemed such a great buy, such a great investment that it was too good to miss. So, instead of looking for a condo in a building that hadn’t hit the foreign quota, we bought this in my wife’s name. The house we built was a single-story 3-bedroom house. The car we bought was a Honda City. I had 800,000 baht visa money and probably another 500,000 baht cash.
We contacted a number of agents in Pattaya. Both the condos were listed, and we were living in our house. We were expecting an income of about 36,000 baht from this, and I thought that would be enough for the basics. And then after that, there would be something to do in the village that didn’t take a big investment just to make a bit extra to keep ourselves occupied. I did think back to my original idea, how I wanted to build an empire, how I wanted to make a lot of money and do business. And I must admit I did shake my head and think, “How have I ended up doing this?” But I did think I secured my time in Thailand for the foreseeable future. I thought I’d secured my retirement, and I thought everything was going to be good from there.
One of the problems, though, was that in the village, now that we had this car, my wife is using it all the time, going absolutely everywhere, asking for money from me to go places, and I’m just staying in the house. It’s nowhere near as much money as in Pattaya, though, but it’s still more than it should be.
The Collapse
After 3 months of moving into the house, we hadn’t found a tenant for either of the condos, which was a bit alarming. But I was just expecting once someone moved into both of them, that would be great. About a month later, someone moved into one of them. 2 months after that, someone into the other. So, we had the income coming in, and I guess that income was enough to cover the lifestyle, but it was just a very relaxed one. I thought everything was good, and it seemed to be. I was very happy. After 6 months, the person moved out of the first one. It was only a six-month contract, but I just hoped they would have extended it. But they didn’t, and that was empty again. Same thing happened to the other one, and now that’s empty, and now we go back to not having any income at all. It’s like we need this to be occupied all the time. Okay, it might take a few months to find someone, but they need to stay there. And when we found people again, we’d had many months of nobody inside either of them, and then someone moves out after 2 months. Granted, we could keep the deposit, but it wasn’t stable enough.
That was when I was starting to get very concerned about things, because that 500,000 I had was basically gone at that point, and I’m starting to eat into my retirement visa money. My wife isn’t letting up when I tell her to calm down because this is all we’ve got left. If anything, telling her to calm down makes her go even crazier, and we start falling out with each other. “You tell me have problem like this”, that was a thing she used to say all the time. And I told her I didn’t want this to happen. We need people in both those condos basically all the time. Maybe we can have one month a year when each condo isn’t occupied. But that wasn’t the case. It was nearly half the time. Now the problem is we’re arguing about things, and we’re only arguing because there isn’t enough money there for me to be able to give my wife what she has become accustomed to getting. And it was like everything changed between us, and it was all down to money. I should have known, but I didn’t know. And from there it was quite a quick collapse.
One day I woke up in the morning, and my wife wasn’t there. So, I called her. She said she set off very early on the bus to Pattaya to see friends. And I begged her to come back, but she said no. She said she was a bit bored and wanted to see friends. I just thought, though, I can’t go because it was going to cost me a fortune. If I went, I know that I would see my wife, promise her everything, we’ll be okay, spend a fortune on nice meals and drinks for her and her friends in the bars, paying for all of that. And I knew I would return back to the village with her, maybe 100,000 baht lighter, which was out of my retirement visa money. So, I didn’t follow her. Then I’m calling her, and she’s not answering. And at night time, if she does answer, she’s obviously with friends and very drunk. I’m thinking this is not a good sign. Eventually, I had to go down to Pattaya to see her. She just said, when I had a moment with her and she wasn’t drunk or out in a hotel that I was paying for, which I didn’t really have the money to pay for, she just said that I changed. She can’t believe I changed after we moved to the village. Everything was good before, but now it’s not. Because of that, she doesn’t want to go back to the village and live there. She said she can’t do that. If I want to, I can, but she can’t.
It was clear that she didn’t want to be with me anymore when she knew the money had nearly gone. I didn’t know what to do about it. I think she kind of made my mind up for me when I found out that since she was in Pattaya and I was in the village, she’d had four different guys. I think that was the time that told me that I’d been stupid. Not only did I not have any money left, I had the money in one condo, the other one belonged to her, the house belonged to her. We weren’t even legally married. That was when everything came crashing down for me. And it was like a sucker punch. I had somehow blown through all my money in Thailand, not even doing a business, which is what I expected to do when I got there. Somehow trying to get to a point in time where my wife would act and behave in the way I hoped she would, but that wasn’t going to happen. I should have known, but I didn’t. And every single thing I did since I moved to Thailand was putting off what I wanted to do, focusing on the moment, convincing myself that later will be okay. Convincing myself that if I did this, that would be better in the future. If I did this for 6 months, eventually this will get better. It was just crazy. But that’s what I did.
And we weren’t together anymore, though. I even bought that car in her name. And I just said to her, “I want the money back from the car and the condo.” And she just looked at me like, “Come and take it.” She didn’t say that, but she might as well have done. I said to her, “Please, I really need this money back. It’s everything I have,” but it was obvious that she didn’t need to give it back to me because I’d willingly handed it over to her to buy these things. We weren’t legally married, so I had no claim over it. And that’s when I went into my downward spiral because things got a bit worse. I mean, a lot worse. At that moment in time, there was no tenant in the condo I had. I did have a bit of my retirement money left, my retirement visa money, that is, probably enough where if I were sensible, I could have lasted for 2 years on it. I mean, very sensible, living in my own condo, trying to salvage something. But instead of trying to salvage things, I just went into crazy mode, blew through nearly all of that retirement money in a few months, and had about 100,000 baht in the bank plus my condo, which was worth around £80,000.
I thought if I sell this condo for an absolute knockdown price, so I can get rid of it very quickly, I’ll just go back home, reestablish myself, and that should be okay. It will be soul-destroying, losing all that money, but I’d have a little bit. I approached an agent saying I desperately needed to sell my condo. I mean, I wanted to sell it tomorrow if possible. I said I was prepared to take considerably less than it was worth just to get money out of it. So, I left it with them. I put it for sale for the equivalent of £65,000 based on the agent’s advice, hoping for something. And at this moment, I wasn’t going out because I only had that tiny bit of money left. I was just surviving on Sang Som and Mama noodles. When it didn’t sell in a month, I put it down to £60,000. Another month, down to £50,000. And I managed to sell it for the equivalent of £43,000 when I was down to my last, basically nothing. And when that money hit my account, instead of returning home like I should have done, I just went wild. Kind of hoping that by going wild and having an amazing time one night, then maybe the following morning I would feel better about things, see sense, and go home. But that never happened until I had no money left. And I was flying home with nothing, literally nothing, to start all over again.
The Aftermath
I haven’t got over that ever since then, really. And it goes to show that even with all the best plans, all the best hopes, things can still go wrong when you find yourself doing things that you wouldn’t usually do. The feelings I felt when I was with her, the feelings I felt when I was out in the bars, those were the best feelings in the world. And I lost my identity. I lost who I was by being drawn to this. Every single thing I tried to do to somehow get on the straight and narrow to move forwards in the right direction, every time this happened, I allowed myself to spend more money in the meantime waiting for this time. That continued up until the point when moving to the village seemed like the only suitable thing. The problem with that, though, was it wasn’t, because that just made things worse.
When I returned home, I had a friend put me up, lent me a bit of money so I could rent a place. I got a job, and I was in a much worse position than when I left. Thailand to me is an amazing country. I wish I was there now. But some people just can’t handle it. And obviously, I was someone who just couldn’t handle life in Thailand. There were too many temptations everywhere. Everything was too perfect. And the only thing that would have made my time in Thailand successful would have been if I arrived in Thailand and I had enough money to be able to live the way I wanted to live every single day for the rest of my life.
I didn’t have enough money to do that. And I guess I was doomed to failure even before I boarded that plane and sat in business class. I was doomed to failure even before then. If I could have told myself what would have happened, I would have stopped myself. But I didn’t know. Be careful, and don’t let what happened to me happen to you.
