From Farm Boy to Retired at 31 Finding Love in Northern Thailand
I grew up poor on a farm in British Columbia and was working since I was 10 years old, which lit a fire in me to never have to live like that again. With years of 80-hour weeks, huge risks, and some losses, I managed to retire at 31 with high seven figures in cash and investments. Not a new Ferrari or a Rolex collection and 25-meter yacht lifestyle, but one where I would never need to worry again.
Soon after retiring, I had a really bad accident and ended up getting a mid six figure insurance payout and decided to take my thrashed body to a warm climate to spend a year or so relaxing. I ended up in northern Thailand in a small town, and wandering through the market, I spotted a stunningly gorgeous, obviously half Thai lady, 5’10”, maybe 125 lbs. Gorgeous smile. If you want a reference to look up on Google images, she is almost identical to Victoria’s Secret model Lily Aldridge from back in the day.
I walked around the other side of the stalls to spy on her from another side, but she had spotted me not hard to spot in Thailand, as I am 6’4″ and was waiting for me to come around the other side. She gave me a wonderful smile, in perfect English, said hello, and commented on my shirt with Vancouver on it.
It turns out her mother was Thai and her father was from Vancouver, and she was born and raised in Vancouver as well. When she was 9 years old, her father died of a heart attack. So she and her mother moved back to northern Thailand, and she had just gotten over taking care of her mother who was fighting cancer for several years and had passed away a couple of months before. She had no close relatives and was trying to eke out a meager living selling in the market.
She had never had a boyfriend, obviously had no idea how to be a girlfriend, but caught on quickly. She’s not into any sort of drama, no games, no spending money foolishly or the usual female stuff. She eventually figured out that I was much more than I pretended to be, but is still frugal. She does not want me to buy her expensive bags and clothes as she would rather make them for herself. She does not have an email, so no social media, and does not want or need a cell phone.
We have never had a fight in the last 15 years. For being genuinely sweet, honest, and caring, and who loves aerobics very regularly, she gets to live a soft life in a nice house with a swimming pool, spa, and hot tub for skinny dips, her own craft room to do whatever she wants, a nice garden to play around in, and travel. After 15 years, she still weighs 125 lbs and somehow still looks under 30.
A Lasting Life Together
I never imagined I would find anyone like her after dating entitled Vancouver women.
Story Two The Vietnam Vet’s Advice How to Handle Family Money Requests
On my first trip to Thailand in 2004, I was in my mid 20s and had just finished graduate school in the US. I was in the Stumble Inn bar near the corner of Soi 3 on Sukhumvit. An American seated next to me heard me order a beer and realized right away that I was American. He was from Chicago, and I lived in New York at the time.
At various bars, I had already spoken with expats from Western Europe, and from them I learned about the problem of a woman’s friends and family trying to access as much of a Western man’s money as possible after he marries a Thai woman. So I asked him how he handled all the Thais that knew his wife begging him for money.
He explained to me that he was on disability pay from the US military and his pension from the government was only $1,200 a month, a small income for an American. He said that all his wife’s family and friends asked him for money after they got married, and it created a lot of conflict in the marriage.
He said to solve the problem, he gave his wife access to the account where he received his disability pay and provided her with pay statements. He told his wife, “Look, $1,200 is all we have coming in each month. You decide how we spend the money.”
After he did that, his wife gave her parents a small payment of about $200 each month from his account, and she told everyone else to get lost. She bought all the household items, and he worked in the garden every day planting and harvesting many of the crops they ate.
He said that his wife was a former bar girl, but by agreement with her, he was allowed to travel alone to Bangkok and stay by himself once a year. I was surprised she would let him do that since she was a former bar girl herself and knew all the Bangkok temptations.
A Different Kind of Family Budget
At the end of the conversation, he asked me to guess how old he was. I told him that he was about 38, even though I thought he looked 35. I’m not kidding. When he replied back to me that he was 61, he told me he served in the US Army during the Vietnam War and got injured early on. He was medically retired from the army and decided to live in Thailand with his disability pay that he had been receiving since the 1960s.
I was in absolute shock. I almost thought he was lying as he really did look like he was in his 30s. He had blue eyes, light brown hair, and looked like he avoided the sun. He told me he wore a big hat and a long sleeve shirt while farming like the Thais do.
The Advice
If you marry a poor woman from Thailand or any other country, have all or a portion of your income go into an account and give your wife access to it. Tell her that it is all the income you have. With AI or a photo editing app, you can even generate fake pay or retirement statements and tell her to deal with her friends and relatives asking for money, explaining she should decide who gets what after the bills are paid.
Story Three The Girl from the Airport An Unexpected Night in Bangkok
About 10 years ago, I walked through customs on what was then my seventh or eighth trip to Thailand. As I received my luggage and headed to the taxi stand, I saw a cute brunette standing at the end of the queue messing with her phone. She stared at me, and I thought nothing of it. As people stare at me often in Asia because I’m very tall, I said to myself, “This could be interesting.” And I walked over to her and started a conversation.
It turns out that she was from a town in New Jersey and had been living in China for a year teaching English. Let’s call her Rachel. We talked for a while online, and I realized soon that she wanted to share my cab ride into Bangkok partly so she could get a free ride and partly to continue the conversation with me.
It turns out that she was in Bangkok to meet her boyfriend, who was a British guy who taught English in the same town that she did in China. Her boyfriend had flown back to the UK, but he was meeting her in Bangkok the next night. So she had that night and the next day free.
She told me that her boyfriend had paid for a hotel room for the both of them for four nights in an area of Bangkok far from the tourist areas. She asked me if I wanted to hang out with her that night. I said yes. She then asked me if she could add me on Facebook. I knew she was sending a picture of us to her family and friending me on Facebook as a safety precaution since she didn’t know me that well.
I told her that I needed to go to my hotel first to take a shower since I had been traveling for more than 25 hours. She agreed. While checking into the hotel, there was an awkward moment when the receptionist asked my friend for her passport, thinking she would stay with me. I told the receptionist that it wasn’t necessary.
We entered my room with a nice view and king size bed. She threw down her things, took off her shoes, and lay on the bed. I took my backpack with passport and wallet to the bathroom with me, as well as a change of clothes, while she lay on the bed and used her phone.
A Risky Change of Plans
I came out of the bathroom shirtless, and she stood up and gave me a hug. I wanted to know what kind of night it would be, so I slowly kissed her. She didn’t rebuff me and kissed me back.
After dinner, she told me that she wanted to watch me have aerobics with a Thai bar girl. I told her that I would never have aerobics in front of someone else because it would feel awkward. She said that she would agree to place her phone in view and not pick it up. I told her it would still be awkward. I told her that the only way I would do it is if she herself participated turning it into a threesome. She said that she liked me, but she had a boyfriend coming the next day and she would feel guilty.
The End of the Night
By this time, it was 2:00 a.m., and she asked me to help her get back to her hotel. We grabbed her bags and stopped a cab on Sukhumvit. We drove for about 30 minutes to get to her hotel. The driver let us out by some dimly lit alley and told us the hotel was down there. I’m not kidding when I tell you it took 15 minutes to find her hotel it was a tiny, nondescript hotel.
When we found it, she was a little embarrassed. It was really a worn-down two star dump. Carpets from the 1980s in the lobby. It smelled of cigarette smoke, and everything in the building looked at least 30 years old.
I walked up to her hotel room with her. She hugged me again and then said she had to go to the bathroom. When she got out, I was standing away from the bed, looking out the window into the dimly lit alley. She came to meet me at the window, and we started kissing. In less than a few minutes, we were undressing each other, and we ended up having aerobics that night. Instead of waking up in the DoubleTree, I spent the night with her in that dingy hotel room in the alley.
In the morning, we showered, and I took her to breakfast and coffee just a few hours before her boyfriend was scheduled to arrive from the UK.
Travel Tips from the Author
Here are my travel tips. Number one: stay in a good quality hotel. I always stay in a four-star or five-star hotel. Outside the US and UK, they are much cheaper, often a third of the price.
Two: I travel with two wallets. One stays in a safe and has all my credit and debit cards. The other has one form of government ID (but not my passport) and two to three times the cash I think I’ll spend that day.
Three: Never be led anywhere in the world. The person leading you will always appear to be non-threatening an older woman or man or a young pretty girl but they can lead you to some very bad situations.
Four: Put yourself in the shoes of the person you’ll be dealing with. If you were born in a life of poverty, consider how you might feel or what you might be tempted to do when dealing with a wealthy foreigner.
Five: Bargain for services and things that might cost you serious money over time. Everything is negotiable. If I’m not happy with the price of anything anywhere in the world, I just decline or walk away often the person selling will lower their price.
Story Four The Irishman the Bar and the Patient Scam
A few years ago, I was in Pattaya and bumped into an Irishman, and we became friends. We drank in a little bar in Soi Honey which was frequented by many expats, mainly Irish like my friend Frank. Although only in his early 40s, he said he didn’t need to work and was looking for a solid investment in Thailand to give him a modest return and interest to occupy his time.
A week or so later, he said, “I’ve got it. I’m opening an Irish themed bar called Mrs. Brown’s Boys” after the comedy series so popular back home. (Just to note I’ve changed the name of the person and the name of the bar so that if the guy’s still around, he can’t be identified.)
His friends, especially the Irish ones, thought it a great idea and promised to support him when it opened. Over the next couple of months, we stayed in touch, and he had met a local lady. They found large premises in Soi Honey, and he arranged to buy and renovate it into his bar.
His girlfriend lived a few miles away with her mother, but he was comfortable because he didn’t have any talk about a sick mother needing medical assistance. She said she had sufficient money from a previous marriage and no kids, so she didn’t need his money just an income from a job which made Frank more relaxed that he wasn’t getting involved with a scammer.
He had no qualms about putting the property in her name in accordance with the law, as he was advised. For the next month, the bar was totally renovated, and he acquired lots of Mrs. Brown’s Boys memorabilia. As a result of word of mouth in Pattaya, the opening night was very busy, and the following weeks were the same. All looked good.
He had now been with his girlfriend for about 4 months when his girlfriend said her mother was becoming poorly and wanted to return to the family home to be with the rest of the family. Frank offered to pay for the airfare, but she said no her uncle would pick her up in a couple of days, and she didn’t need any money. Two weeks later, she said her mother had died, and she was going to the funeral. Frank offered to go, but she wanted to go alone.
Building the Bar
A week later, she returned and said she didn’t want to live where she had with her mother and wanted a place nearer to the bar. His condo was too small, so he looked for a place for both of them. They found a nice place near Beach Road, and he bought it again in her name.
Things were so good, they were together most of the time at home or in the bar, except for a couple of times a week when she told him she was seeing friends. He then proposed to her, and she accepted. The wedding was planned in a month.
He then contacted me and asked if I could come over and stay in his house and just look after the bar for a few days while he went on the honeymoon. I was happy to go, and my flight was arranged for the day after he left.
The Disaster
I arrived in Pattaya and went straight to the bar to introduce myself to the staff and get his house keys. The staff were most unhelpful, and I couldn’t get Frank on his phone to tell him what was happening. I walked out of the bar and went to the bar where I had first met him and noticed his friends were there.
They explained that 2 days previously they had been in Mrs. Brown’s Boys and had heard loud voices. It was Frank and his girlfriend. He told them that she didn’t love him and would not marry him, and that she wanted him to leave the bar. He was obviously very upset and was shouting at her when police arrived to eject him.
The following morning, there was a knock at his door. Two policemen were there to arrest him for causing a disturbance in the bar and told him to bring his passport to the police station. He was told that he would have to pay 30,000 baht fine for the bar disturbance and 20,000 baht for assaulting a policeman. No appeal pay now or go to prison until a court appearance in a few weeks. He paid, and this was noted on his passport.
He was then told the police would take him back to his house, collect his things, and drive him to the airport. He went back to Ireland, knowing he was barred from Thailand for 5 years. He was devastated to lose his money, his business, and his girlfriend. He didn’t immediately realize he’d been scammed.
Then his friend told him the policeman who had arrested him was in fact his girlfriend’s husband. He had been the victim of a patient scam.
Story Five The Sri Lankan the Aerobics Video and Being Mistaken for a Celebrity
This story didn’t happen in Thailand, but I thought I would send it as I was Thailand bound when it occurred. This occurred in the airport at Kuala Lumpur as I was awaiting my connection to BKK.
I was sitting on a row of chairs in a corridor outside of my gate when a man about the same age as me sat down in the seat next to me, despite the whole row of chairs being empty. The man started talking to me. Very soon after, a lady came over who the man said was his wife. She laid down on the row of seats, resting her head on his lap.
The man told me he was from Sri Lanka and asked me if I’d heard of Sri Lanka before. I told him I had and that I was a cricket fan. I started listing off the names of as many Sri Lankan cricketers as I could remember. He seemed impressed by this.
The man told me his kids had been on Sri Lanka’s Got Talent. He asked if I wanted to see some video footage of them. He then proceeded to play a video of two teenage boys doing tricks on Yamaha trail bikes. The video seemed to go on for way too long.
The man’s wife had gone to sleep on his lap. He put a finger on his lips as if to say, “Shh.” He then started playing an aerobics video on his phone. He was smiling at me. I thought, “Oh, great. I’m in a strict Muslim country in an airport with CCTV everywhere, and I’m watching aerobics with a Sri Lankan guy.” I had visions of being arrested and detained.
After about 30 seconds or so of watching aerobics with my new Sri Lankan friend, I saw a man walking down the corridor towards us who looked remarkably like Kim Jong-un. As that man got close to us, my new friend yelled out at him, “Hey, Rocket Man.” The man looked over. My friend said, “Yeah, you rocket man.”
The Airport Conversation
I took this as my cue to leave, as I did not want to be involved in any incident. I grabbed my carry-on bag and walked away without saying goodbye. When my gate was open, I returned to the area. There was no sign of my Sri Lankan friend or the Kim Jong-un lookalike.
A Bonus Story from Bangkok Airport
On one of my trips where I was being mistaken for Sir Anthony Hopkins, I was at Suvarnabhumi Airport on my way back to Australia. I had cleared immigration and was waiting for the gate to open. A Thai boy of probably 17 or 18 years old was looking at me strangely.
He then came over and in broken English nervously asked me if he could take a selfie with me. I said, “Sure.” After taking half a dozen selfie shots with me, he nervously asked me for my autograph. He was shaking with nervousness and excitement. It was obvious he thought I was someone famous.
I signed the back of his boarding pass “To my number one fan.” The signature I used was unreadable. To this day, I have no idea what he thought I was. I’m definitely not famous, and I look a lot more like Homer Simpson than I do Sir Anthony Hopkins.
