A One Way Ticket to Thailand
I’d done that plane journey seven times before this one. Each of those seven times was me going to Thailand for the holiday of a lifetime. And holidays of a lifetime I most definitely had. This time was different. I’d just turned 42 and I was flying on a one way ticket to Thailand as opposed to a return ticket because I’d been recruited for a position out there.
This was back in the year 2005. I was a teacher a fully qualified teacher and I’d landed a job at an international school in Bangkok. It was going to be something different. It was going to be the point in my life where I could start thinking about enjoying myself for a change. Back at home, I always felt teachers were underpaid. I felt teachers were underappreciated for the work that they were doing. But I won’t disregard any of my new opinions which lead me to think that perhaps as a teacher, instead of actually teaching the kids, I was unwittingly brainwashing them to become like robots. Do as you’re told and not as you please. That’s completely irrelevant to my story. But I was very proud of the fact that I landed this job in Bangkok. It was a professional gig. I had the proper visa and would be getting a work permit.
The salary at the time was not great in comparison to what I was earning at home, but we all know back then the cost of living in Thailand was considerably less than it is today. I was going to be paid 90,000 baht and I knew from my experiences in the country that I could quite literally do pretty much what I wanted with that amount of money.
Arriving for Good
It feels so different when you’re landing in Thailand with no return ticket booked. You walk through the airport and you don’t think to yourself, “In a week or in 2 weeks or however long you’re there, I’ll be back going in the wrong direction.” I was there to stay. I was there forever. And sometimes I actually had to think about it and pinch myself to actually understand that yes indeed, I am here and I’m there to live in Thailand.
I was picked up at the airport by the school. They’d paid for my first week’s hotel, which was quite close to the school not in the center of the city, about 10 km out of the area where I used to stay as a tourist. The BTS didn’t extend as far as it does today. So, when I spent time looking at the map, I decided I wouldn’t live in the area I would want to. I would rather stay close to the school because I have to go there more than I would want to go out. So, that’s what I thought at the time.
Everything went according to plan. I stayed the first week in a hotel. I spent that week actually understanding that yes, this is real. The school is real. They’re processing my work permit application and I can actually live in Thailand. I found a place to rent about 10 minutes’ walk away from the school. I learned that by the time you get there, it was only a 10 minute walk away, yet you get sticky by the time you get there. I started to have a change of clothes at school but again, that’s irrelevant.
I found myself just getting really stuck into life in Thailand in a way I hadn’t expected to. I mean, I hoped I would. I thought I would, but I expected something to go wrong somewhere because dreams don’t usually come true for somebody like me.
Settling In
To start with, I limited myself to one night out per week. I loved the Bangkok nights. As a tourist, that was one of the things that made Thailand more than just another holiday destination. It was the difference compared to how my life was at home. At home, I would go out, but it wasn’t the same. It couldn’t be the same because home just didn’t have what Bangkok had. I had my favorite places to go to, but occasionally I would try new places out. The bars were my places. The girls were a dream, but they were also real at the same time.
I knew my way around the bars, having been to Thailand on a number of occasions. And as many of the guys do that moved to Thailand, I found myself meeting a girl in a bar that I liked more than all the other girls that I’d met in bars. And the relationship with her commenced. She was 20 and she became my life after I’d been in Thailand for around 3 months. I always thought of myself as being young for my age at 42. I mean, when I was in Thailand, I really did. I was young for my age. I still had a full head of hair at the time and I still felt exactly like I felt when I was in my early 20s. I expected my mind to change as I got older. I expected my wants and desires to change as I got older, but if anything, they remained the same and sometimes got stronger throughout the passing of time.
The Perfect Girlfriend
When she moved in with me, working became even more fun. I always loved my job. I thought I was making a difference. I thought I was helping people. I thought I was setting people up for a life in the future, their lives in the future, because that’s exactly how I was brought up. I mean this is skipping ahead quite considerably but I never took a step back to think about the fact that if I had a child, I couldn’t afford to send my child to this school that I was working at. That should have told me everything I needed to know about the fact that perhaps I wasn’t as important as I thought I was as a teacher.
But we got very serious together. She was very adventurous, very sweet, and she made me feel young again, even though I wasn’t that old yet. I never once got back home from work and she wasn’t there. I never once caught her doing anything that she shouldn’t have been doing. She behaved and acted exactly like you would want your girlfriend to behave. Faithful, honest, truthful, and in return, I was exactly the same.
She was happy with an allowance to start with of only 200 baht a day. That was so she could go and have lunch when I was working. Sometimes when we’d meet up for lunch, and because she was only 20, she didn’t have any kids and she wasn’t expected to support her family because they didn’t really need support. I thought I found my perfect girl and it did seem that way for a very long time as life kind of got better and we progressed together while doing things that were amazing moving out of Thailand together, saving for the future together, and hoping to one day retire in Thailand in her hometown, an area that I hadn’t yet been to at this point in time. But that would change, and I would go soon and also fall in love with that area.
About a whole year goes by since we moved in together. Work’s going great, and I asked her to marry me.
Discovering Rural Thailand
I hadn’t yet been to her town, but she went once every two weeks when we were together, just to go and see her family. Going up there was a unique experience. It was surreal to see something so different than Bangkok. I hadn’t really been anywhere else in Thailand other than Bangkok. And that included the times I was there on holiday. You know, even when I was working, I hadn’t left the city. I kind of felt like it had everything that I wanted right there. This would change as we would visit a few places as part of our honeymoon.
We got married in a very traditional Thai ceremony, registered the marriage, and it felt quite odd in a way because here I was married in 2006. It was from there that I visited a few other locations in Thailand I’d never been. Koh Samui was the first port of call, then Phi Phi Island, and that’s when you realize that Thailand is so much more than Bangkok. I knew of the beaches, but I never felt a draw to them. But it was nice to see.
In terms of the ceremony for the wedding, that was great. I really felt again another draw to that part of Thailand. The rural nature of it, the scenic wonder, and the feeling like it was something different than Bangkok again because it really was. It was then already that we started harboring the ideas of retiring there one day. This was going to be a long time coming, maybe even 20 years. But I did see the appeal of living in a house and having a house on a big plot of land, a swimming pool, an outside barbecue, and everything that you dream about having in your dream house. Yet in Thailand, it was attainable. Whereas at home, for a teacher like me, it most definitely wasn’t.
The next 2 years go by without incident. We were trying for a child, but it just never really happened. This was across the next 2 years up until 2008 where we took our first overseas trip to the neighboring country of Cambodia.
The Cambodia Opportunity
For some reason, when we were in Phnom Penh, I was shocked about how amazing it was and how much I actually loved it there. My wife was quite indifferent to it. She didn’t love it or hate it, but I knew that there were teaching opportunities there just as there were in Thailand. So, I thought when I saw a posting that I’d just apply for it just for the sake of it to see what would happen. Didn’t hear anything until we got back to Thailand. I’m working as normal. My wife’s still going up to see her family every 2 weeks. That was just her thing.
But I heard back from that school in Cambodia that they would like me to go and work there. I was really excited to get that opportunity, thinking about living in Cambodia instead because I really loved it when I was there. I was a bit hesitant to tell my wife, thinking that she might not be too keen on the idea. We’d always talked about retiring up to her village when the time was right, but I still had a lot of years left of work. I had money saved up from home, probably about $100,000, and that was it at the time. And I was hoping to be able to save $1,000 a month, which I was doing ever since I arrived in Thailand. With that too, it made sense that retirement should be able to happen when I reached about 60.
When I raised the possibility of moving to Cambodia with my wife, she just said it was up to me. She would go, and that made me happy. Because the salary was slightly more in Cambodia I mean, I can’t give you the name of the school, but it was a very good one. We decided we would go there with the understanding that my wife could return to Thailand once a month to go and visit her family. I was happy to accept that. Return flights to Phnom Penh from Bangkok were very cheap. And the bus ride from Bangkok to Khon Kaen, where she was from, also very cheap. And I was happy for her to have three or four days a month in Thailand seeing her family. I’d have to pay for that. It was acceptable.
But I would be doing different things again moving to Cambodia and living while knowing that the idea was to retire in the future to Thailand. Everything was up in the air in a very good way. Maybe I’d get another job in Thailand in a few years. Who knows what would happen? Everything was take it as it comes. Enjoy the day while still planning for the future. At the end of 2008, we got our business visas from the embassy in Bangkok and we flew to Phnom Penh to start life there.
I was still hoping we’d have a child together. We talked about it a lot, but it hadn’t happened yet and I was starting to feel if I get much older, then, you know, I would be too old to have a child. So, I was hoping and waiting and seeing.
Life in Cambodia
As part of the package I had in Cambodia that included accommodation I’d found out during the research that I was doing that something of a similar quality to what we had in Thailand was actually considerably more expensive in Cambodia because they had such a small choice of places to rent in comparison to Thailand. So, as part of the package, we had this great place to live in and more money than I earned in Thailand. It was a very serious position. It wasn’t just teaching. It involved a lot more things on top and it was more stressful than my role in Bangkok. But we still had our evenings out and weekends together to enjoy this new country that we were in.
I found Cambodia to be very different to Thailand. I used to hear people describe Cambodia as being the new Thailand or how Thailand used to be a certain number of years ago. And while I can sort of understand why people held those opinions, I can’t really say that I agree with them. Cambodia has a very different past to Thailand, so you will find the people to be quite different to how they are. I personally found them more welcoming, more down to earth, and also a bit less money focused. They seemed to be less greedy in a way and greed is the wrong word to use but that was just my understanding and the only word I can possibly use to accurately describe it. Like they were happy with less. Not less because they valued themselves less. No, just happy with the knowledge that their country had come out of a very difficult time and was actually looking to the future and things were looking better for them.
I still liked to go out to the bars as well, but my wife always went with me. She was never trying to limit my enjoyment of that. And the fact that we went together and had good times together at places like that, it made me feel very happy.
By 2010, I was still working there and I’d saved up another bit of money. And it was at that moment that we decided that we would start thinking about retirement in the future and start putting things in order. I still thought it was going to be 10 years away. But throughout the time we were in Cambodia and my wife had visited Thailand every month, I’d been once. We’d already spent some of my savings, about $20,000, on quite a large plot of land in her village. I allowed my wife to sort out the purchase of this going into her name and it was going to be the location of our future house as well as everything else that I wanted around there. I’d saved more money about 100,000 I had left after spending that. So I had saved, worked hard, and got this land from it, and it felt great that this was part of our future retirement.
I’d calculated for retirement I would need about 60,000 baht to live on. That would take into account the fact that we had our own place to live. We’d have our own car without a loan on it. And it wouldn’t include my insurance payments on top, though. That would be extra. That’s what my figure was, and that’s what I was working for. I felt like we were working together towards this goal.
Building a Retirement Life in Cambodia
My wife always used to cherish her visits back to Thailand, back to see her family, and in a way, I thought that was making our relationship stronger because we had 3 days a month apart. I could go out and enjoy the bars not doing anything with any of the girls, so that was something I wouldn’t do but I could go out and drink and I could go out without any sort of curfew and just let my hair down. She could do the same I mean, go see her family, spend time with her family, talking and eating the food she likes together with her family without having any sort of curfew from me. And I thought that was strengthening the relationship we had.
Still, we were trying for a child. I hadn’t thought to go and see a doctor. I just hoped it would happen. And I did think, you know, maybe a few more years, if nothing happens, then it’s not meant to be. But we still tried and we still hoped.
I loved Cambodia, but I suppose I did harbor secret ambitions to remain permanently in Cambodia, retire there, and live there in the future. I knew that wasn’t the agreement that I had with my wife. The agreement was we would retire back to her village when we were older. And I kind of just knew that that was the case. Anytime I thought about remaining in Cambodia, I would just stop thinking about it and understand that this wasn’t on the cards for me.
We did, when I had time from work, explore a lot more of the country of Cambodia. We also went to other neighboring countries, and that made me love Cambodia even more. Vietnam and Laos were interesting places, but they didn’t signal to me like Cambodia did, or Thailand even. I love Thailand as well. But I’m very happy with my life and the position of my life in 2010, 2011, and it was 2012 when I think I’d saved another $30,000 from very hard work. We decided we would start on the construction of our retirement house, expecting that when 2020 came around, I’d have enough money to be able to live.
The First Hint of Something Wrong
It was going to be a slow process in terms of the construction. We would start building the boundary wall first, take it slow, and then step by step, we will get to the point when it would be ready. It wasn’t like it was all at once, and it made things easier because my wife was going every month to see family and she could keep an eye on things. I was happy to know that in a way it felt like we were ticking off one of the things we needed to do on our life list. We still hadn’t managed to have a child yet and I had given up on that.
But I think it was 2012 at the end or it could have been something different can’t remember exactly when. But my wife was visiting her family and checking on the progress of I think this would have been the boundary wall, not the actual house but I noticed in the drawer next to our bed. We had drawers on both sides of the bed. I never thought to look in my wife’s drawer, but for whatever reason, I was looking for something. Don’t know what it was I was looking for, but I opened that drawer and rummaged around, and underneath some things, there was a small box of medicine all in Thai. I had no idea what it was. And I didn’t pay any attention to it really. It was just as I reminisce, as I find out about things, this was actually something that could have been a key indicator as to why we hadn’t had a child yet. But I didn’t think much of it. I can just remember seeing it and thinking, “Oh, what’s that?” Putting it back. It’s all entirely in Thai. No English. So, I didn’t think much of it. I was planning to ask my wife when she got back, but I kind of just forgot about it and we moved ahead.
I would understand later that those were contraceptive pills. You can buy them over the counter in Thailand. And while I wish I dug a bit deeper when I saw them you know, I could have asked a question I could have asked my wife what it was, but I didn’t. And life moved ahead.
The Move to Hong Kong
At the start of 2013, I was very happy with my life, my job, my wife, and the fact I was living in Cambodia, which was a country I felt a deep affinity with. I wasn’t really looking for another job. I had a few salary increases throughout my time so far at the job in Cambodia, but from time to time I did like to apply for positions that I saw advertised just to know, you know, I could have them if I wanted one. This is when I applied for a position in Hong Kong. It was going to be paid considerably more than I was being paid in Cambodia. Plus, there would be accommodation allowances as well. I’d been to Hong Kong once before, and I did love it there, although I never had plans to live there. The reason I applied was, you know, just to see. Wasn’t thinking I was going to be wanted, but they did want me.
Part of me was a little bit disappointed because I knew that the amount of money that they were going to give me would make the job and make what we had a huge difference to our retirement plans, and also it would be an amount of money that would improve retirement. It was because of that that I decided to take it.
When I did accept that position, after we’d been there for 3 months my wife went with me I decided we might as well just get the whole house built out of the way for retirement. I think I was so focused on the future, very focused on my retirement as opposed to living in the present. I did live in the present a lot together with my wife. We had great times, but I was always hyperfixated on the future goals and targets. I spent $100,000 together with what I spent on the boundary wall and on the land. I didn’t really have much savings left, maybe 10,000 maximum. So, it would be a hard slog of saving and hard work to get to the point when we could live in our house.
My wife supervised the build and actually spent 5 months at the start of 2013 in Thailand, and I went back two times to go and see the progress and to see how she was. I don’t know what it was about Hong Kong. I liked it there, but I didn’t feel like I wanted to live there. I mean, I was putting up with it and accepting it for what it was, but it wouldn’t have been by choice. If I could have had that same position, even if it was paid a little bit less, back in Thailand, I would have gone for it. But I couldn’t get anything close to what I was being paid here. So, I made the best of the situation.
I did love parts of Hong Kong that you don’t really envision if you just hear “Hong Kong.” The small islands and areas around where you see local villages they’re very different to the big city and Kowloon. I really liked it there. Like they’re steeped in time. Going places like that at weekends helped me to get out of the craziness of the city. I was doing this mainly by myself throughout the first month because my wife was supervising how things were going with the house in her village.
Building a Home in Thailand from Hong Kong
In June 2013, that’s when it was ready and I flew to Thailand to go and have a look at it. It was an incredible build. Four bedrooms. We had the boundary wall in place, and it was fully ready to be furnished. It still needed air conditioning units installing, but the bathroom and kitchen were already in place. I’d gone for a full western kitchen, and I thought or I was hoping at this point, within only 5 years’ time, I’d be living there full time with my wife. I probably had the ability to save about $25,000 a year when I was working in Hong Kong. Plus, it was around this time I had a family member die and I received a $75,000 inheritance. That made a big difference to our future plans.
I wasn’t yet ready to furnish the house because 5 years was a long time. We had the bones there, which was great. We could stay there with basic furniture when we went, but we weren’t going to live there now, so there’s no point investing in expensive furniture that can come later.
Throughout the rest of 2013 and 2014, life in Hong Kong was great, but I’m missing Southeast Asia. I miss how things are there. Hong Kong is very modern and very western in a sense, yet very eastern at the same time. And I felt fortunate that I was able to be there, and my wife loved it there, but she was going back to Thailand quite regularly probably spending a week a month in Thailand and that added up in terms of expenditure. But it was one of those things that we agreed to. It also gave me time alone to be able to do things I wanted to do.
At the end of 2014, I can remember very well that was when I had $150,000. I actually made a small investment in something. It had gone up and I cashed out and it felt great. $150,000 because I was targeting $300,000 for retirement.
More Investments
I made a very big mistake here though when my wife came back from Thailand. We’d given up trying to have kids now, but she came back from Thailand saying that she wants me to go to Thailand next time because there’s something in the village. There’s some land for sale and she thinks it would be a good investment if we bought it. She wasn’t talking about doing anything with it. It was just a good piece of land in the village, quite big, good price, and maybe we could buy it and in the future if we needed to sell it, we could sell it probably for a lot more a big profit because the prices around that area were going up considerably. I was hoping to go and have a look.
It was going to be at the end of 2014 when I was going to go to Thailand for 2 weeks anyway to spend time there. We had plans to go to Phuket. I’d never been there yet. And we spent a week there and we could have a week in our house. That’s exactly what we did. And we went to look at this land and it was quite a large plot. 20 rai. If you want the acreage amount, maybe seven. That’s just a guess. I’m not able to work it out exactly now. But it seemed like it was a good investment because they’d just paved the road next to it whereas before it was a dirt track. It was a two lane road as well. So I agreed to invest $50,000 into this land with the understanding it would act as part of our retirement. And by the time retirement comes, we might be able to sell it for $70,000. It was exciting thinking that we were building something in Thailand. All this hard work, all this effort, you could actually see where it was. You could see where this effort was going. You could see where all this work was going. And that made it more palatable going back to Hong Kong to get back to work.
We went back together and I think everything’s great. I never really had any big arguments with my wife. We have the usual couple arguments that everybody has, but most of the time we’re just happy. My wife is still going every month to Thailand and I started going every 3 months together with her. We would go up and look at the house, spend time there, and we were always getting it maintained and cleaned on a weekly basis so it was spotless every time we went.
It was that time in 2015 3 months into 2015 when we were in the village and my wife starts talking about the possibility of retiring soon. “How about if we start investing more here? Like we could buy some tractors and we can rent those out. We can start using some money to make money.” I had around 100,000 or something like that at the time. Can’t remember exactly, but I felt like it could be a good idea. I agreed to spend 30,000 on a few tractors and my wife had a friend this guy who was able to look after them and sort everything out in terms of the money and maintenance and other things. So, I happily went ahead with it.
At this moment, I’m thinking that the land that I had put $50,000 into I’m thinking it’s basically the same as money in the bank for me, but it’s just increasing in value. The tractors I’m thinking are going to be income. They’re going to be paying me back first, and once it’s paid back, the income can be shared. This is what we’d agreed to.
The Village Business and New Investments
More months go by and they say it was the end of 2015 when we took the plunge and decided to furnish the house. That was $30,000 there on everything that we could possibly want. Went for great quality. This included landscaping and everything you could think of, and it was great.
I’m still getting money back from the tractors as promised and everything’s good. Saving more money and I thought 2018 is when I was going to be able to retire. That was what the plan was. And it was exciting. It was really exciting to be there knowing that it’s only 2 years left and I could be living there permanently with my wife.
At that moment, I don’t know exactly how much money I had. Probably 50,000 with another 100,000 on top, plus the income from the tractors, plus the land. That’s going to be perfect. My wife was getting quite involved with things in the village though in the tractor business and also purchased some other farm machinery to rent out. So yeah, probably didn’t have 50,000 cash probably had 30 because I spent 20 on that. It’s because of things like this though that my memory doesn’t serve me exactly right. So, I could be off, but only slightly.
The thing was though, the tractor business and the things we bought was bringing in about 15,000 baht a month. That was 15,000. That was a quarter of what I was expecting my monthly retirement budget to be. Because my wife was getting more involved with it by the end of 2015 or beginning of 2016, I’m starting to think that 2 years left to retirement isn’t that bad. So, what happens if my wife just stays in the village to manage the business there? I could start investing more money into the business and save more money and in 2 years’ time I can join her there to live. Everything seemed to be coming together perfectly.
Things in the village were going well. My job was doing well, and I thought my relationship was going even better. I knew I would be able to go back to Thailand quite regularly throughout those next two years. So, I wasn’t too concerned about not being together with my wife. Although, I missed her a lot. It wasn’t meant to be that bad because it wasn’t like I was in my own country. I think that’s one of the things that was different. I’ve heard so many guys talking about how bad it feels when they’re in a relationship with a girl from Thailand and they have to go back to their own country to work. When I think about that, I fully understand it. The thought of me at the time having to go back to my own country to work that would have filled me with dread and fear and sent me into a depression. But I wasn’t going home. I was going to Hong Kong to work. And it was because of that that it didn’t feel anywhere near as bad as it would have felt if I was going home. So perhaps that’s why even though my wife could have been with me in Hong Kong, perhaps that’s why I didn’t think too much about it because I wasn’t being defeated by having to go home. I was going to Hong Kong to make more money for our relationship, to make what we had now even better for the retirement I dreamt of in the future.
The Final Investment Before the Collapse
Throughout most of 2016, after I paid for my living expenses, I was saving half and sending half of the money back to Thailand to my wife so she could invest it in more things because the business seemed to be doing okay. I was still getting money back on one hand for the first tractors and farm equipment, but putting more money in for other things that she wanted to do. Throughout 2016, I probably sent her $15,000. That was on top of what I gave her for living expenses. I’m really heavily invested in the village now, but I’m happy to be heavily invested in the village because that’s where I want to be in retirement.
I kind of came to terms with the fact that we weren’t going to have kids. My wife was already 30 at this point and I was in my early 50s. Bit of an age gap there, but I didn’t feel it was excessive. It just seemed to be the kind of natural age gap, I think, between someone from where I was from and someone from Thailand. I was happy with it. And my wife seemed to be happy with it as well, which was very important to me because I wanted her to be happy with things.
I went back to Thailand three times in 2016, and every time I go back, there seems to be a hive of activity going on in the village. Our house is looking as good as ever, very well taken care of. The farm machinery that she’s got is being rented out, and the guy that she’s got working for her seems to be doing a very good job. The land had been appraised for more than we bought it for at least that’s what she said had happened. And it did seem that everything was just moving a lot better, closer to retirement than I even thought it could have been.
At the end of 2016, thinking I’ve only got a year left, I plan to go to Thailand three more times during 2017 while my wife was still working with the business, building things up for us. It was great, though, thinking I’m going to be retired under 55, living with my wife in a part of Thailand that I loved. I’d spoken to my wife so many times about our plans. We came up with everything together, talked about what I wanted when retirement came, and she knew what the plan was to retire at the start of 2018.
By the end of 2017, though, there had been a few small issues with the business. It wasn’t anything that gave me any cause for alarm nothing too serious but one of the tractors had crashed and had been written off, which meant a reduction in income. And one of the other pieces of farm machinery needed heavy maintenance, which was going to cost money. And it was because of that that I took the unfortunate decision to extend my stay for another 6 months into 2018. I wasn’t thinking anything other than the fact that I’m building this business with my wife. I’m going to be there soon, so what’s another 6 months?
The Bombshell
About 3 months into 2018, my wife actually came to Hong Kong. She hadn’t been for a very long time, and I was excited to see her. I wasn’t expecting to find out what I did find out when she was there, though. She was pregnant. It was obviously not mine, and she knew that it wasn’t. Obviously, she couldn’t claim it was mine. And I think she had to come up with something as to why this happened, and she wanted to talk to me in person about it.
I was really excited to see her until she knocks on the door and I open it and she’s in floods of tears saying she has something to tell me. We walked inside the apartment and I can tell there must be something wrong. And initially I was thinking there’s something wrong with her. Something bad had happened. I mean, it was a bad thing, but I wasn’t expecting her to say that she was pregnant. She said that she had an accident when someone got married and she really regretted it. She got very drunk with her friends and it happened, but she wanted to tell me because she didn’t know what else to do about it.
My world collapsed when I found that out. The first thing I said was, “Are you sure it was just a one off sort of thing? Can you not get an abortion and I’ll forgive you one time? If it’s only one time, and I’ll go back to Thailand, and you know, I’ll go to a bar and do the same thing, then we can be even.” That was what I actually said, thinking that it was the only thing that made any sense. But she said that she didn’t want to do that because she couldn’t bring herself to have an abortion. So she said it’s one of those things. What would have happened if she had, I don’t know. It was really difficult for me to actually get my head around the fact that she was telling me that she was pregnant and it wasn’t mine.
We tried so long to have kids and never had kids before. And I don’t know what the situation was. Maybe I was just wrong in the head. But I’d been with my wife for 12 years, and I was in love with her, just the same as I was when I met her. And her explanation if it indeed was a one off accident we’d wanted kids for a long time. So, would I be a mess for just accepting it for what it was and getting along with it? I was very angry, though. I’m not saying I didn’t care. Of course, I cared. I was furious. But I had to be pragmatic in the fact that I invested a lot of money into the village. That was where the retirement was. My house was there. The land was there. The business was there. Everything was there. So I had to be pragmatic and think for a second that my only choice is to just move ahead. We always wanted kids. So it is a bad situation. But I have to accept it.
After I had calmed down and we spoke more about things, my wife is telling me how sorry she is. And I’m sort of coming to the conclusion that there’s nothing I can do about it. Either accept it or lose everything. I just told her it’s very bad. I’m really angry. I don’t like you right now, but I still love you and I think we can push through it. I didn’t really notice the look on my wife’s face when I said that as if to say, “What do you mean?” She just said, “Okay, thank you.” But if I think about it, I think she was actually hoping for me to end the relationship based on what I found out later. But I didn’t want to do that as it was a bad situation. And I thought, you know, I’ll have to accept it.
The Pregnancy Bombshell and Broken Trust
I should have taken a step back though from sending more money for the business because she left and I’m coming to terms with this realization that I’m going to be bringing up a child anyway even though it’s not mine because I’m so heavily invested. I think that’s why I still spent more money for the business and by the point I was meant to retire, I moved back to Thailand after quitting my job. I had about $40,000 cash, but we had the land and the business. And the business at this moment was supposedly bringing in 25,000 baht a month. And we had a house to live in with no rent.
While at the time I said it, I thought I was joking. When I flew to Thailand, I spent a week in Bangkok and I hit the bars and I hit them hard. It did in a way make me feel better about the situation with my wife being pregnant because it just felt like we were evening in a way. But of course, it was very different because there would be a 20 year period where we wouldn’t be able to live the retirement that we planned for. So, what she did was definitely far worse.
My wife came to see me in Bangkok. You could definitely tell that she was pregnant now and that made everything so much worse. And she was still very apologetic about things and she brought more bad news though problems with the business. I told her, “I’ve quit my job. I can’t invest any more money.” And she said that she had to sell some of the tractors to pay for problems. And that was alarming. Then I raised the possibility of selling this land because according to her own words, it had gone up and was worth a lot more money now. She said she can’t do that because she had to borrow money on it. She said she needed to buy a pickup for the farm something she hadn’t even spoken to me about before. So, she borrowed money on the land to buy that. And she just said, “Let’s go there together. Let’s start working through things.”
When she said that, I was really upset. This retirement started to feel like it was on rocky grounds now. Started to feel like perhaps it’s not going to be as plain sailing as I thought it was going to be. I told her to go back by herself. I wanted to spend a few more days in Bangkok to get my head straight.
The Pharmacy Discovery
Whether it was just a coincidence or not, one morning after having a number of drinks the night before, I had a bad headache. So, I went to a pharmacy. I usually buy headache pills or Tylenol from 7 Eleven, but I just went into a pharmacy because there was one closer to the hotel I was staying at than a 7 Eleven. So, so be it. I walked in and asked them for some pills. And you know, in pharmacies, they have the glass counters and all the medicines inside. And I noticed out of the corner of my eye this little orange packet. It looked remarkably similar to the one I saw back in Cambodia in my wife’s drawer. Remarkably similar. And I just asked, you know, “What’s this for?” The guy told me it’s contraceptive medicine. I asked him if I could actually have a look at it just to make sure. He handed it to me and I’m looking at it and yeah, it was exactly the same.
That definitely made me take a little bit of a step back and think, why did she have that when we were trying for a child? It was one of those moments in time where okay, she’s pregnant now with someone else but with me, when we were meant to be trying for her to get pregnant, she was taking this and not telling me. So, is there something else going on here? And it hit me like a brick. I actually bought that medicine so I could have it to show my wife.
I just didn’t feel like going up to the village at that moment. So, I told her, “I’m going to be staying in Bangkok for a few weeks, and I want you to come back down.” She said she was very busy sorting things out many problems, she said, and many bad things happening in terms of having to sell things and pay money back on the land. And she said, “Can you send some more money to help?” I told her, “I can’t do that now. I want you to come to Bangkok first.” It appeared to her that getting more money out of me was going to be on the condition of her coming to Bangkok. So, she came very quickly as you would expect her to.
I was staying in a hotel on Sukhumvit Soi. And she came to the hotel, walked inside, and I had that medicine on the bed. “What’s this?” I asked her. She explained what it was. She obviously knew what it was. And I said, “I found something that looked exactly like this in your bedside drawer when we were living in Cambodia. Can you explain to me what’s going on?” She just said, “Oh, I’ve never taken that before.” But I kept pushing. “I saw this exact thing and I didn’t think anything of it at the time because why would I? It’s in Thai. But I saw this exact thing in Cambodia. So what does that mean? You were taking this throughout the whole time we were staying together and then you stopped when you were not with me. Then you get pregnant.”
She didn’t want to admit anything. I wanted her to admit it. I wanted to hear the words coming out of her mouth that yes, she was taking it, but she wouldn’t admit it. I could tell she was lying, but she didn’t want to admit it. I just said to her, “I’m not going up to the village, and it’s going to be no more money until you tell me what the truth is.” She said, “I’ve already told you the truth.” And then she starts as you’d expect in fight or flight mode. Response: what should I say? Then she starts to get angry, saying, “You not trust me. You don’t trust me.” Everything a girl would say in a situation like that. I looked at her and said, “How can I trust you? You’re pregnant with another guy. I’m trying to overlook that fact because my retirement’s on the line. Now I’m finding out that all these investments you’ve just done and you’ve done some incredibly stupid things you’re telling me it’s making 20,000 baht a month or 25,000 baht a month on the one hand. On the other hand, you’re telling me that you’ve mortgaged land to buy a pickup and you had to sell tractors to pay money back. Doesn’t make any sense to me. There must be something going on here and you’re not telling me the truth. Then I go and buy some headache pills in the pharmacy and I see this and I recognize it, and I should have asked you what it was before, but I didn’t. So tell me the truth or there’s no more money coming.”
She didn’t want to say anything. She just said, “I go back village. You feel better. You come.” She wouldn’t say, wouldn’t admit it. So, she left. I’m sitting there struggling to come to terms with the fact that there might be something actually going on here. But how am I going to find out if she doesn’t tell me the truth? I can’t go to the village and speak to someone else because they’re not going to tell me. Most of them wouldn’t speak English anyway, so it’s not going to work. How am I going to find out?
Investigating the Finances
I was still prepared to accept and some guys will hate me for it but I was still prepared to accept the fact that she was pregnant and I would have to be responsible for the child. But perhaps I was accepting that because up until not very long ago, that land we had, I was expecting to be able to sell it and get a big portion of my money back. And part of the investments that had been made throughout the years in the village was going to give a big portion of my retirement income. But now there’s lots of things coming out and it’s making me start to think that does my wife actually have a relationship with someone else that’s been going on a long time and I was just a useful idiot who was funding the whole thing?
I wanted to know the truth but I didn’t know how I would be able to find it out. When she left I decided to contact a lawyer and tell him the situation and tell him, you know, what has happened and how can I prove it? See if there’s anything I can do about it. The first thing he said was, “You’re not wrong to think like that, because things like this happen more times than you would think.” The fact that we were married, yet the house we had belonged to my wife. Something even worse would happen, which would kind of seal my fate, and the land we bought which was mortgaged, plus the pickup she had bought and the tractor she sold. He said, “It’s going to be very difficult to get anything out of it if you were to get divorced.” He was prepared to assist me, for a fee, of course. And I had to pay him, but he would work on my behalf to try and get to the bottom of things and try to come to an understanding of things. My wife had actually only had one accident and that was it. Perhaps the medicine was from a long time ago when she hadn’t taken it and it was just one of those things you forget to throw away. That could also have been a possibility. It was the possibility I was holding on to, even though I knew it was very unlikely.
So, I left it with the lawyer. My wife was calling me quite a lot, multiple times a day for the next 3 days, but I didn’t want to answer. I was thinking perhaps she had something to say, but I wanted to hear from the lawyer first. And when he called me, he just said that there were some things to talk about. “Please come to my office.” I’m thinking, here we go. This can’t be good. So, I get there and the first thing that appears is that the land we built the house on it was actually built on land that didn’t have a proper title. It belonged to my wife’s family. So, the people I thought we were buying it from were actually in the family, so it doesn’t have a proper title. The house is built on it and it can’t be sold. So, that’s gone. You can’t have anything from it.
The other land appeared to be mortgaged. The pickup is an older one, not worth a lot of money. And the tractors aren’t there anymore. They’ve been sold. No proof that they’ve been sold, but no proof that they haven’t. That’s what he said. He said he thinks that she’s got someone else. He thinks that she’s been with someone for a very long time, perhaps even longer than she was with me, and they’ve done it in such a way whereby you can’t do anything. I asked him if he was sure. “Has she done anything illegal by this?” And he said, “Not really. No, you gave the money to her for a business. She did the business. And if she says it failed, it failed. You built a house and it’s not on a proper title, so you can’t force the sale because it doesn’t work that way. You can’t sell it. It can’t be sold. I recommend you trying to work things out with your wife and actually understand things because and I quote I think you’ve been played.” That’s what he said.
To hear a lawyer say that was quite unnerving. Plus the fact I had to hand over 25,000 baht for his work, which didn’t help. But I left thinking that perhaps the whole thing was her using me for money and nothing else. I didn’t want to believe that, though. I’d been married to her for a long time. We’d been together for 12 years. I loved her. I gave everything to her my life, my hard work, my effort everything had gone into my retirement there. And at the moment in time, I had less than $40,000 to my name. Everything was invested up there, and I’m finding out these things, and I’m struggling to come to terms with it.
I knew I had to go to the village to actually try and get to the bottom of things.
The Confrontation
I set off the following day, went on the bus, and I got a guy to take me to the village about 20 minutes away from town. I remembered where it was because I’d been so many times, so that was convenient. And I show up at the house and she’s there with a few people her family members and she looks at me and said, “Why lawyer call me?” I just said to her, “I need you to stop the act. I need to know the truth 100% because everything that I have ever worked for is here in the village. The house that we’re meant to be living in the land is meant to be worth $80,000 now. We should be able to sell it. All the farm equipment that’s meant to be bringing in 20 or 25,000 a month in income. Everything I’ve ever worked for is here, so I need to know the truth.” She just kept saying, “It’s nothing. It’s nothing.”
And then the guy that worked for her, who I’d seen a few times, he walks into the house but in a way as if he’s very comfortable by the fact he’s walking in. And you can tell by the look on her face like that wasn’t meant to happen right now. Then I look at him and look at her and he seems to freeze and her family quickly leave the house. And I’m left there standing, coming to the realization that perhaps this was her boyfriend. I asked her and I think she saw that there was no point denying it anymore. She said yes. She was so sorry, but she loved him before me and she loves me, but she thinks it will be better if I can stay here and she can see her boyfriend sometimes. I couldn’t believe she even said that. I looked at her like, “What? Why would I want to do something like that?”
I think she said that because she thought if I accept that, she would still be able to get money out of me. But I literally had to come to a decision: accept something as degrading as that or lose everything I’d ever worked for. I just said to her, “I just want something back. Give me some money back. I know the house we can’t sell it because you lied to me about the land and it’s on a title we can’t sell. I know that you lied to me. The other land can you sell it?” She said, “No, it’s mortgaged. No can sell.” I asked her, “What about all this farm equipment? I probably put $100,000 into farm equipment that was being rented out supposedly and money coming in which was going to be paid back to me.” She said many of this had a problem. She told me “many problem.”
I told her I’d spoken to the lawyer and all I could think about doing was saying the lawyer told me I should go to the police because you’ve stolen from me and it won’t be very good for you. Knowing that that wasn’t true because I willfully handed over money and it was for a business. It was for a business and all she needed to say was that the business didn’t work and she botched it and things went wrong. That’s not malicious. That’s stupidity. There’s a difference. At the time, I’m going to go to the police if you don’t give me any money back. If you don’t sell some of this farm equipment, she said she’ll take me to look. Most of it wasn’t there because she’d sold it. She said had to sell it to get money to pay for things.
So, we go to this land that she said was mortgaged and there was a huge building on it that hadn’t been there. She hadn’t told me about that. And I asked, “What’s this?” “We need build this for store equipment.” Where did that money come from? And she just said when she mortgaged the land, she built this as well. She hadn’t told me though. Inside though, there was only one tractor and something else which I don’t even know what it was. She said that this was all there was left. I wish I’d probed further because I’m kind of 100% sure that everything else was just kept somewhere else, so I didn’t see it. I’m not sure of it, but she said if you don’t want stay, you can take tractor. How much is this tractor? She said it was 300,000 baht. “You can have, you know, one day you go, you take tractor.” I can’t drive a tractor away. Can we sell it? I’m really thinking if I can get anything out of this, I should take it. And she said, “My boyfriend can buy from you.” That again didn’t twig in the moment like it should have done. And he said okay, I’m not acting normally. I’m just shouting and I’m angry and there are people around watching what’s going on and it’s a very difficult thing.
Confronting the Betrayal and Starting Over
But she calls her boyfriend and he comes over and she speaks to him in Thai. He goes away and 5 minutes later he comes back. 300,000 baht cash and hands it to me. “You go then. I love you. I want you stay, but I not stay. You not love me. You not accept my boyfriend. You go.” She turned it around on me then, it seemed. And I knew I had no choice because I couldn’t accept something as ridiculous as that. And it was only on the bus journey back when I’m thinking had he just given me back my money for the tractor? He probably had, but I couldn’t do anything about it. I was just destroyed.
I had a crazy few weeks in Bangkok, heavily drinking, hitting the bars every single day until I knew I couldn’t even stay in Thailand anymore because although I didn’t have nothing left maybe 30,000, 40,000 including what I got back from the tractor I’d have to do something else.
It was very fortuitous because I called up my old job in Hong Kong and told them everything had gone wrong for me. “Is the position still open if I come back for it?” And they said, “You’re lucky, but yes, if you want it, you can come back.” So, I moved back to Hong Kong, took that job, and I remain there today. I’m managing to save money not a lot but I mean, I will be able to retire again soon. I mean, I didn’t retire for the first time and I’m actually thinking about moving back to Cambodia because I loved it there. COVID was difficult. I suppose I was just lucky that I was good at the job that I did and it wasn’t just teaching got into more management style things and it was very good and I was happy of it because I was proud that I could do it.
To have to think though that everything that happened with my wife 12 years we stayed together 12 years she played me. 12 years I was just her job. And it was just one of those things that happens that shouldn’t happen, but it did. She was taking contraception so that we couldn’t have our own children, and then I found out she’s pregnant. She said it’s a one off, but no, it was her boyfriend. Then she had the audacity to say that she loved me and she wanted to stay with me and him probably just for money. I guess she knew I wouldn’t accept it and she was just trying to make it about something that it wasn’t. It was a very difficult chapter of my life. It ruined my life for such a long time.
I can’t wait to actually retire because that’s all I’ve ever wanted really. The ability to just wake up in the morning and not have to do anything other than what I want to do. That’s going to happen soon. I’ll be on my way to Cambodia soon. But I know that under no circumstances will I ever for a second consider getting into a relationship with anybody ever again. I’ve completely lost my trust and faith in other people.
If I could give my younger self any advice, any advice whatsoever, it would be don’t ever get married. Don’t ever get into a relationship. Casual, fine. Serious, no. Because it can ruin you. It ruined me and it could ruin you too.
