Thailand Retirement Disaster and Divorce in Isan

I’ve not been able to put to bed what happened to me in Thailand. And by opening up and getting this off my chest, maybe it will somehow bring closure over the most tragic part of my life. I don’t say that lightly because I’ve been through tragedy on more than one occasion. And this kind of feels like the culmination of a multitude of tragedies that ultimately brought my life crashing down to reality with a realization that my life will never be the same again.

Everything I thought my life was going to be, it will never be. And by trying to come to terms with this, I hope to finally be released from the spell that the country of Thailand had over me. I didn’t take the decision to move to Thailand lightly. We were going through the COVID pandemic. I was already retired, but I wasn’t living the retirement that I’d spent my life working for.

A year before the COVID pandemic, my wife, who at the time was 10 years younger than me, my wife, who had been by my side for 45 years, died and a big part of me died at the same time. I never really got over that. And living in the same house that we shared for the best years of my life, everything around me reminding me of her, I wanted to be anywhere other than where I was.

We lived in the same house for a long time. When we bought it, it was incredibly cheap, and the area was a lot more united and friendlier back then. Over the years, people left, new people moved in, and the only thing that was keeping us there were the memories we had of raising our children and the good times that we shared with friends who had long since left.

We thought we were going to live in that house forever. But when she died, I wanted to be anywhere other than there because it was too painful. And 6 months after I put the house on the market and sold it and moved into rented accommodation to start what I hoped would be a different chapter of my life and I could get over it.

Why COVID Made Retirement Feel Impossible

Then COVID happened. Then I’m trapped in the same rented house and I’m miserable and in need of some excitement in my life. I was 72 years old, but I didn’t feel a day over 50. I don’t know why my wife aged quicker than me and got sick while I just seemed to continue to feel the same and act the same.

But I didn’t feel old even though I was old. But COVID made everything worse. I was always one of those sorts of people who embraced modern technology. My first mobile phone I thought was marvelous. The first computer was like alien technology. But I found it fascinating and quickly got interested in learning how all these sorts of things worked and I marveled at just how quickly technology seemed to be progressing.

Finding Thailand Through YouTube During Lockdown

I spent a lot of time on the internet and during COVID all I did was spend time on the internet and at the insistence of my youngest daughter she told me I should join social media and put myself out there. I was still really down in the dumps about the passing of my wife. Early 2020 and I had new profiles on all the different social media platforms.

Yet, I felt a draw towards YouTube because I could watch people just like me talking about their lives, the things they liked, the things they didn’t like, and the things that happened to them. And I felt like I wasn’t alone anymore. It wasn’t just me that had been through something like this. This is just something that everybody had to go through at some point.

And YouTube really allowed me to feel like I was developing connections to all kinds of different people that in real life I would never have had a chance to get to know. I’d find myself watching a podcast followed by a guy smelting gold, then a guy restoring an old motorcycle and before long guys that were living the dream in countries all over the world.

I marveled at just how many people were able to share their lives and you felt like you were right there with them. And when I found myself one day watching a video about a guy living in the Philippines, I became a regular viewer of his. I watched all his videos and I saw one that he made a while before this when he was in Thailand.

He was walking around a mall with two other YouTubers who lived in Thailand and make videos in Thailand. So I started watching them a guy who toured around Thailand during COVID on a motorcycle and then from there you start watching guys who are living retired lives in Thailand. And that’s when I think I decided I could move to a different country as well.

When I came to the realization that there were people leading so different lives to me. I did feel less depressed. The way I tried to describe it to myself was like, you’ve had your main life, you’ve had a good life, a great wife, and a great family, and now try and do something different.

Planning a New Life in Thailand After Loss

Instead of living in the past, try to live for today and for the future. And in a way, try to live every day like it was my last, while at the same time keeping my wife’s memory alive. To start with, I’m thinking about actually being one of those people who leaves home and moves to a different country.

I’d never felt so nervous or excited at the same time before. I just wasn’t that sort of person. We didn’t really do many international holidays. And that wasn’t because we couldn’t afford it. It was because we were homebodies. Our favorite places to go were at home. Not bothered about warm weather. Just more bothered about that feeling of comfort and recognizing our surroundings.

5 years before my wife died was the last time we spent in our holiday home in Cornwall before we sold it. We gave that money to our children so they were able to buy their own places because without them they wouldn’t have had a chance to. But Cornwall was the place where we spent most of our time when we weren’t working.

But now I’m seeing all these people which I considered to be just like me. Some of them were a little bit younger than me. One guy I watched was older than me and he was full of confidence living on the other side of the world in a country that I knew nothing about. He was saying how fantastic it was, how it had made his life complete.

I’m not going to pretend to be a prude here and say that the things that people talked about didn’t excite me. I got to know the reason why many people went to Thailand. And one of the reasons for many people seemed to be to have a relationship with someone from Thailand. Yet that wasn’t what I was thinking about. I thought I was too old to have a relationship again.

And anyway, I still missed my wife tremendously. Never even thought about that. As COVID is passing and you hear about a few of your friends dying, not because of COVID, but because of old age, not being able to attend their funerals because of what was going on, and understanding that each day could actually be my last. One day it went from thinking about how exciting going to Thailand would be to thinking as soon as I can go, I’m going to go for a look to see it.

The Decision to Go to Thailand During COVID

I’d never thought about doing something like this until I saw other people living these lives. And it just seemed to be like living a normal life but in a different place. Up until then, I think that would have been the thing that stopped me from doing something like that. Thinking that life would go on in a different way.

You wouldn’t feel the same or you wouldn’t be the same person by being somewhere else. But I understood that these beliefs I had were completely false because you were who you were and you would still be who you were regardless of where you were. And when I spoke to my children when COVID is still happening that I’m going to be going to Thailand for a visit when I can.

All three of them said to me, “Go and enjoy yourself and have a good time and be careful.” While I took on board everything that they said, all those three things, only two of them were things I actually did. I went, I enjoyed myself. I had a good time. But I guess I wasn’t careful. I wasn’t careful like I should have been because I was spending so much time watching about different countries.

I wasn’t just watching about Thailand either. There were other places I was interested in as well. But I felt like the guys I was watching in Thailand were similar to who I was. Different but quite similar. And I think that was the reason why I chose Thailand. By the end of 2020, you were able to go to Thailand with quarantine and I started to think about taking that route, although it would have meant spending 14 days in a hotel with multiple tests.

Everything was so up in the air and I’d already decided I wanted to go for a look and I didn’t know if I would have had to have waited a month or 5 years at that time. So, I decided to follow all the rules that were in place and tried to get to Thailand during COVID, even if it meant having to go through the quarantine process.

Getting a Thailand Visa During the Pandemic

The more I watched videos, the more I wanted to be there, and I didn’t want to wait anymore. I was going into things with the mantra that at that moment I was already 70 odd. And while I felt fit and healthy and I had no health conditions, I was aware that that could change at the drop of a hat, and if I waited a few more years, anything could happen.

So, I was going to actually take it upon myself to do what I needed to do to be able to get to Thailand when I could. I found all the processes in order to go through this to be quite strenuous but doable. I got the insurance, the visa, everything was in place. And it was also with the help of people who made videos about doing the same thing that allowed me the confidence to actually do it myself.

I don’t think I would have dared to have gone and done that if I hadn’t seen other people doing it. And I just thought it would be something exciting and different. And being an old romantic, I thought something I would be able to tell my wife all about when I got the chance to see her again on the other side.

In a way, I was trying to keep my wife’s memory alive, which is what makes this even harder because what hurts more than anything that actually happened is the fact that I feel like I let my wife down. I feel like what I did in a way disrespects my wife’s memory. And I know technically it doesn’t, but that’s what it feels like.

Feeling Guilty About Leaving My Wife’s Memory Behind

But things happened that I regret and that I’m not proud of. My children were quite concerned about the prospect of me going to Thailand during COVID. They thought I would go when everything had gone back to normal, but I wanted to get there and there was no time to waste, no time like the present, as they say. I don’t know if anybody else at a similar age to me has felt that way.

While I still even today worry about my children, but there seemed to be a kind of gradual shift where all I did was worry about my children and want them to be okay in their lives. While that has remained the same when they get older and turn into adults and have their own lives, that worry seems to change whereby now they’re worrying about me.

And that felt very strange because it wasn’t like that when they were younger. I tried to tell them that I was 70 odd years old. I’ve lived longer than they have and been through things more than they have. But I suppose it’s just something I could be proud of, the fact that they actually cared. I was having second thoughts when I was on the way to the airport.

And I will say exactly what I told myself when I arrived at the airport, thinking I should return home. I just said to myself, “You’ve had a good life. If the worst comes to the worst and everything goes wrong and you don’t even make it back, you’ve had a good life. So go and enjoy yourself.”

Arriving in Thailand During Quarantine

It was a weird experience on the airplane. Everybody wearing masks, some seats left empty, but when we got to Thailand, although everybody was wearing protective clothing when we got off the plane, they were all welcoming and friendly. I just followed all the procedures that I was meant to do, sat down on a chair, waited my turn, and got taken to my hotel, shown to the room, and that was where I was going to spend the next 14 days.

I was used to spending time alone and not going out anyway, so this really wasn’t different. And the fact that there was a great view of Bangkok out of the window made everything better because I’ve never seen anything like it. And I imagine what it would be like to actually go and leave the hotel eventually and walk on those streets.

They were just there yet still out of reach. I did all the tests at the regular intervals, no problems there. And when I’d finally done those 14 days, I really thought it was all worth it. I booked myself a hotel that wasn’t in the quarantine program for the 14 days after that and then from there I would take things as they came.

I had planned to spend about 3 months in Thailand and then return home. And I wanted to take things as they came and not book everything until I knew exactly where I wanted to be or what I wanted to do. The thing that sticks out the most to me during quarantine was that I actually was so excited about being in Thailand that I didn’t feel like I was trapped like I expected to.

Leaving Quarantine and Carrying Too Much Luggage

I was still able to access the internet, which was okay. I was still able to exist, which was okay. And I actually quite enjoyed it, which was unexpected because I expected to want to be anywhere but that hotel room. It was a relief to finally be able to leave. Stepping out onto those streets, which was the first time actually on the streets of Thailand.

It was mesmerizing because all that thinking and all that planning, this is what it amounted to. I’d never been somewhere as hot as Thailand before. And that hit me. And I had overpacked with a huge suitcase in a small bag, and that was a bad idea. I should have paid attention to what people said about how traveling light is always the best option because I couldn’t walk around with all my things.

It was simply too heavy. So that was a regret. But I got transportation to the hotel that I booked. Two weeks to just settle into Bangkok and then from there I would be able to do as I pleased for the next 2 months. And I couldn’t wait to actually go and live Thailand like I’d seen everybody else do.

I got to that hotel, checked in, took my things up to the room with the help of the guy who worked there, and immediately I was impressed about how considerate and kind the people seemed to be. I know they were doing their jobs. They didn’t seem to complain when they were doing it. They didn’t seem to wish they were doing something else. They were just diligently going through the motions of their life. It kind of reminded me of how I used to work and people of my age bracket used to work when we just got on with things and didn’t complain.

But I also have to stress that I understand that when I used to work, what I earned, although not a lot of money, was still able to afford a good life and a house. And I really feel sorry for the younger generation who simply don’t have the same kind of opportunities as people like me did. So, I really wanted to get that out there.

My First Bangkok Night Out During COVID

But I’m in Thailand. I’m free and clear. And the world was my oyster. It started out so great. It really did. I’d arrived when most places were open. While Thailand went through stages of opening places and closing places, I was able to go and do pretty much anything at that moment in time. That first day was an introduction to Thailand, and it was a wonderful introduction.

The hotel I was staying at was right in what many people said was the main area, and how I found Thailand was very different to how many people will find it because there was hardly anybody there. I went first to go and have a meal and a beer. Had not had a drink for two whole weeks because that wasn’t allowed in quarantine.

And I liked the odd tipple every now and then. While I’m walking from my hotel to look for a restaurant, I couldn’t recall the day when I felt as excited as this. I felt alive, difficult to put my finger on, but I had a great meal. It was very affordable, wonderful wait staff, and I left there and went for a walk around. I knew what many people went to Thailand for, aside from the culture and the food, and the food was something I couldn’t handle, at least the spicy stuff.

But there were famous bars and nightlife areas. I hadn’t been to a bar other than my local pub for forever really. I liked going to my local, but that was about it. When I saw some of the bars in the distance after I turned onto a street, I thought I would go in and see what they were like. The streets were very quiet, not the usual throng of tourists that I saw later on during my time in Thailand, but there were still bars open, at least at this time, and I walked in and ordered a beer.

I had a girl come over to me who was in her 20s, and please know, I wasn’t one of those guys who would ever have considered anything like that. But even knowing that that was totally on the cards and possible kind of made me understand that I was somewhere very different to where I was from and what I was used to.

Choosing Phuket After My First Bangkok Visit

It felt good though to be able to have conversations. Felt good to be able to speak to people for a change because I’d been stuck at home for so long and stuck in quarantine for so long. Now I could actually speak to people. That was good. During those two weeks that I spent in Bangkok, I went out regularly and spoke to many people and had a great time.

Because I was in Thailand, I was asking people that I spoke to, “Where would you recommend going for someone who’s never been to Thailand before to see some of the best parts of Thailand?” And lots of people recommended lots of different places. Phuket, however, was very famous and the top of the list of all the recommendations, and I was advised I could go there for great beaches and a more relaxed kind of vibe.

So, that’s where I decided to go. I flew there from Bangkok after having two amazing weeks there. And while my wife was still front and center in my mind, I was able to let go ever so slightly and get on with the business of living and enjoying myself as opposed to yearning for times gone by. I booked into a nice hotel in a good area in Phuket and when I arrived, I really enjoyed it.

Just how different it was to Bangkok. That was the first thing. It was night and day different. And my first day there was quite similar to my first day out of quarantine. Going out for a meal and going for a drink. I was loving everything about Thailand. Starting to think that I wanted to live in Thailand as a retiree.

Starting to think that there’s no point ever returning home. I could just get my children to end the rented house contract, put things in storage for me, and then give it up.

The Massage That Changed Everything

I’d been in Phuket for around 5 days. I was happy, content, and thankful that I’d taken the plunge and gone to Thailand. That was the day though that I actually met someone, and there was just something about her that made me feel alive again. I’d been for a walk.

That was something I was doing a lot of in Thailand. I mean, it was very pleasant to be able to walk in the hot temperature, something I didn’t think I would like, as long as you had sun cream on. I like to go for a massage at the end of the day because, well, you could have massages all the time. They were so cheap.

This time though, I went for a massage and the girl that was doing the massage. And I say girl loosely here because she was 41. She just made me pique my attention a bit when I saw her and spoke to her. And when she asked me when I was leaving if I wanted to get a drink that evening, I just went with it and said yes. I hadn’t expected to meet someone when I was in Thailand.

I knew something like that was possible, but I thought I was too old. 70 odd years old, like I said, but I didn’t feel too old. I just felt like I was when I was 50. Even still though, she was 41, which was a lot younger than I was, but I didn’t feel like I was too bad because she wasn’t 20. I left that massage place around 4 p.m.

and went back to my hotel feeling a bit nervous about going and meeting up with her for a drink and maybe a meal. I didn’t know what I was going to say or how to act because I’d not done that ever in my life. I was with my wife from a young age and that was it. And I just thought I would try and put on a face like I’d been there and done that countless times before and just see where the night took us.

Our First Evening Together in Phuket

She had told me where to meet at 8:00 p.m. I found it on the map and made my way there and she was already waiting. I sat down at the table that she’d selected, ordered some drinks, and before I know it, we’d already spent 2 hours on this date, and I’m engrossed in the conversation with her. Even though her English wasn’t great, it was good enough and we could understand each other.

And she even taught me a few words in Thai. The fact that she was talking to me and the fact that she seemed to be genuinely interested in me, that made me let my guard down a bit. But just being with her was effortless and it was fun as well. I was getting quite hungry and asked if she wanted to go and get something to eat.

The place where we were at had food, but they had to stop selling at that time, so it was too late to order. So, we needed to find somewhere that was still serving food. It was really quite interesting though, the same time as everything else that’s going on because when you leave that place and go somewhere else, there’s hardly anybody on the streets.

It’s so quiet, eerie, because all the usual tourists that should have been there weren’t. And I felt quite fortunate to have been able to experience Thailand in such a unique way. We eventually found a place to eat, place that sold Italian food, and went in and I ordered my all time favorite, lasagna.

While it wasn’t as good as the one my wife used to make, it was still good. And she had some pasta dish, whatever it was, very spicy with seafood, which wasn’t to my taste, but she seemed to enjoy it. After that meal, it was getting quite late, and I was feeling quite tired, and I felt really great that I’d had a chance to spend time with her and get to know her a bit.

A Second Date Made the Connection Feel Real

I asked if she wanted to meet up tomorrow as well. I’d be happy to take you out again. We agreed we would meet up same time the following day, and we parted ways. It felt like a normal date. Nothing about it felt like it was anything other than a normal date. And when I was walking back to my hotel, anyone who saw me with that smile on my face, well, I bet they thought I was all up to all kinds of things.

But I was just for once living in the present and not the past. And I couldn’t wait to meet up with her the following day, too. I felt like I could get along well with her. The way we spoke about things and what we talked about, it really was interesting to get such a different perspective on the world than the perspective I had. I was loving it on every level.

There’s nothing really more than I can say apart from the fact that I was loving it so much. I went to bed that evening feeling like I was on top of the world. I could hardly sleep. Woke up really early, maybe 5:00 a.m. before it was even light, and went for a walk on the beach. And I was blown away about how much better I was feeling about things.

I was paying close attention to the news in Thailand because there were times when places were closed and places were opened again and then places were closed. So, I knew that could become a situation when certain places wouldn’t be opening. And I was just so open minded to things that I planned to take each day as it came.

I met up with her again that evening, even more effortless than the first time, more drinks and a great Thai meal that she insisted I try. I managed to find some dishes that I liked, cooked without the spice. And I was just about ready to ask her if she wanted to meet up the following day as well, around 11 p.m.

Dating During Thailand’s COVID Restrictions

But she just held on to my arm and pulled me a bit closer to herself and said, “It’s too early. Let’s go for another drink.” I was tired, but I thought, okay, so that’s what we did. Spent another hour, maybe a bit longer, together, and then I wasn’t expecting anything to happen, but it kind of just did. She was the one who made it happen, I would say.

And I was the one who was just going along with it. Before anyone says anything, there was no transactionality behind this. It felt like a real, genuine meeting, and we were two real, genuine people who liked each other. I’d never been as nervous in my life because my wife had always been my one and only.

And this was how I could only describe as being a very strange experience, but it was mesmerizing and fantastic at the same time. One thing I did think though, perhaps this would reignite my old fashioned views because now things felt extremely serious whereas before it had felt casual. And perhaps that is my old fashioned mentality that made me think like that because to anybody else it might have been casual.

But after that I’m thinking that I need to take the next step. What comes next? What am I going to do when the time comes to leave Phuket? All these things are coming up and I don’t really know how to deal with these things other than do what I think I meant to do. I wanted her to be happy and she seemed to be happy with me.

The Miscalculation About Money

And while I knew she worked at a massage place, when I had a massage, it was just a massage. This was just a massage shop, not one of the other massage shops that Thailand is known for. When she told me how much money she earned, it didn’t seem like a lot. I always thought that I didn’t have much money. I probably had about £250,000 from the sale of my house that was sat there waiting to buy a new house until COVID happened and I came to Thailand.

I had my pension as well as my pension from work and that totaled about £2,500 on a monthly basis which wasn’t dreadful. Our holiday home in Cornwall, we’d sold that for half a million. Shared that money between our children so they could buy their own places. But that’s where the bulk of my money went and it was money well spent.

But I’m thinking how much I get on a monthly basis compared to what she’s working for is considerably different. She might have been getting at that moment in time during COVID when it was quiet. 10% of what I was getting. And instead of me thinking that her views and opinions about money are different to mine, how she will do certain things and think about certain things would be different to how I did, I actually saw the fact that she only earned a bit of money as the fact that she only earned a little bit of money. I thought her opinions and ideas about money would be the same as mine, which was a huge miscalculation. I mean, that was the biggest miscalculation I could have made.

Perhaps never having anything made people different when the possibility of having something came their way and they wouldn’t understand how to manage it properly and do things properly. Yet, I didn’t think like that because I just thought she was like me from a different country earning less money. I thought her understanding of money and everything along those lines was quite aligned with my own because I just thought that’s how everyone was. Like I said, a huge miscalculation.

With me being who I was, I now started feeling like I already had something very serious going on with this girl that I met. The next morning when I woke up, I was really thinking now I better get my acting gear and show her that I’m serious as well. I thought she’d just shown me how serious she was. And now it was my turn. She was about to leave and go to work and I told her she might as well stay a bit longer because she earned a small amount of money.

I knew I would be able to help her there. And I found her just staying with me. The days are going by in Phuket and it was going to be time to leave soon. She’s been with me all the time now and I feel like we’re an item. When I met her, I liked her, but I didn’t think anything serious was going to happen. But now I felt like we were meant to be together.

How Our Thailand Relationship Grew Quickly

I guess I’d been in Phuket for around 3 weeks, still over a month left in Thailand that I planned on. And I just found her being with me and it felt great. It was like we were old friends at the same time as being boyfriend and girlfriend. And I tried to forget about the fact that I was older than her. I tried to forget about the fact that I wasn’t in Thailand for this.

And I tried to forget about the fact that my wife was still the most important person to have ever existed in my life. Yet, I felt like I earned a bit of time to myself. And now I’d found her. It was going to be fate. And it was like it was fate. I’d planned to go back to Bangkok. And I asked her to join me, which she did.

And it just turned into a time when quite a few places were closed in Thailand. So, we weren’t able to go out often and we were kind of staying in a hotel going for a bit of a look around, but we couldn’t go for a drink because it was closed and restaurants opened, but there were restrictions in place.

So, while I was in Thailand and happy to be there with her, I wasn’t able to experience everything that Thailand had to offer. The thing that was happening though throughout this time, and this was increasing 10 fold every single day that I was with her, was that I was starting to feel like she made my life complete. I’m starting to feel like this is the relationship that could take me out of depression, take me out of the past, and let me start living in the present for a change and actually think about something positive as opposed to something negative.

She was marvelous, and I was very quick to let her know how I felt after we spent around a week in Bangkok. It was difficult to know where else to go after that, but we decided to go to Chiang Mai. And although we couldn’t experience certain parts of it, there were many things we could still do.

We rented a car and went to stay in a hotel up in the mountains. It was weird how certain things were open and certain things weren’t. But it was her who wanted to go to Chiang Mai and I went along with it. And I’m glad that we did because it was a very beautiful part of the country.

The Proposal and Marriage

It’s coming closer to the point when I’m meant to be returning home. But the thing is, I don’t want to go home. I want to stay where I am with her. And I guess it was because my traditional self was screaming at me that I needed to make this more official. And that’s why I asked her to marry me when we were in Chiang Mai. I had about 2 weeks of my time in Thailand left.

I thought to myself, if she agreed to get married, then I would just stay in Thailand. I had the rented house at home with my things in it, but I knew that I could get my children to go in and take the things out of that and put it in storage. It might be difficult with all the closures and things that were happening, but it would be doable.

Other than that, there wasn’t really anything stopping me. So, when she agreed to get married to me, I’d already planned what to do when the time was right. I called up my children and told them what my plan was. I told them I’d met someone and that I was going to be staying in Thailand. And while they did, they feel a bit apprehensive about what I told them.

They just said, “As long as you’re happy and what you’re doing is right, then that’s the main thing.” They were always very supportive of me and they just wanted me to be happy. And I couldn’t remember the last time I was as happy as I was then. We decided that we would go and get married in her hometown. It was from a place called Nong Khai, which is on the border with the country of Laos, and the plan would be to go there and get married.

I’d already looked into the possibility of getting a retirement visa, which I was able to do, it seemed, so things could fall well into place. We spent another week in Chiang Mai before going to her hometown, and that was a very different part of Thailand yet again that I’d not seen, and it was quite different to the other places, and again, somewhere just as interesting.

We were able to have a ceremony Thai style. Her family and the village showed up and there was no exchange of money for obvious reasons given the fact that we were both older. But one thing that I was interested in was getting to know more about her hometown. I found it fascinating to stand in Thailand looking over the Mekong River into Laos and understanding that these were two different countries with different laws and different everything.

The Border Trip and Missing Marriage Paperwork

And there was something about border areas that filled me with a sense of anticipation. And it made you wonder what life was like on the other side of the border. Now that we had the marriage ceremony, I wanted to make everything official. So, we went to the district office in her hometown to register the marriage.

Yet, unfortunately, I didn’t bring any of the paperwork that I needed. There were things that I didn’t even have in Thailand, so I would need to arrange to get those sent to me. Then, I would need to get something from my embassy. I asked my children to help send those things, which they did, and they sent them to a hotel we stayed at in Bangkok as we returned there.

And about 3 weeks later, when those arrived, we were married. And she actually changed her name to mine. I felt a lot more comfortable now that we were married. I did feel quite guilty that we were spending so much time together when we weren’t married because I was very traditionally minded because that was just how things were when I was younger.

Now that we were married, though, I felt better. I felt more at peace with myself and I couldn’t believe that I’d met and got married to someone in such a short amount of time because it wasn’t what was on the cards at all when I went to Thailand. But I couldn’t have been happier. I was already 73 in 2021.

Things still slow in Thailand with COVID and things look bad around the world. And because we were married, I thought it was my responsibility to get us a marital home that we could share together. I will admit to not even understanding the laws of Thailand when it came to land ownership back then. But I quickly found out but didn’t think twice about the fact that I wouldn’t be able to own the house because I wasn’t interested in a condominium.

Building the Dream House in Thailand

We looked at places in Bangkok, but they just seemed to be generic detached houses one after the other after the other after the other in the most of the housing complexes we went to look at. They were all quite a long way from downtown Bangkok, which would have meant needing a car. I didn’t really want to live somewhere like that.

We remembered that we liked Chiang Mai and we thought that could be a good option as a place to live. Maybe have a house there. That would be easiest to get to downtown Chiang Mai and just more of a laid back and relaxing environment. We decided to go back up there for a look.

We looked around at some of the housing estates that they had, and while it was preferable to Bangkok, it still wasn’t like what I had in mind. I was hoping to be able to find a house with quite a sizable garden. Yet, it appeared that most of the houses that you saw there were barely a meter between the house and the boundary wall, and there wasn’t much room to do anything in the gardens.

When we saw a house with a big garden, it was priced so much more than a house with a small garden because of how land worked there. And while the houses themselves were nice, it wasn’t how I’d pictured it. I kind of pictured our old holiday home in Cornwall, which was a detached house on a large piece of land, and you could walk from one side of the garden to the other, not just do one step.

And it appeared that things like that in Thailand were very expensive and actually quite hard to find. That was when I made the fateful decision to go back to her hometown to look at the possibility of constructing a house there. The idea being that because where she was from was outside of the city, it wasn’t one of the main cities in Thailand, we should be able to get a lot bigger piece of land, quite similar to what I had in mind, and we could build a house on it to our own specifications.

Why My Thai Wife’s Hometown Felt Like Home

While you’re thinking about this, I need to picture how me and her are with each other. I’m feeling the best I’ve felt ever since my wife died. I’m feeling like coming to Thailand is the best thing I’ve ever done. And I’m feeling like being able to be with her, I’m the luckiest man alive. She seems to be equally as happy as I am.

And I’m not paying any attention to the fact that I’m in my 70s and she’s in her early 40s because there was no talk about the fact that there was this age gap between us. I didn’t think it was the same as going for someone who was half her age because that would have been different than this was. We were both adults, both well into adulthood.

Therefore, I just didn’t see it like I would have done if I’d have seen someone 20 years younger than me with someone 20 years younger than her. That would have been like someone who was 50 with a 20 year old. That would have been different because she’d just become an adult, but my wife had been an adult for over 20 years.

So, it was like when we both got older, although there’s a gap there, the gap and the numbers are actually different. Perhaps I’m just saying that to try to convince myself that could be the case. When we got to her hometown, we went to look at land for sale around her family’s village. And what she said was 100% true. For the same price as a house that we saw in Chiang Mai, which was the house and the land, we could have land 10 times bigger than that and build our own house, and still it would have been cheaper.

I didn’t really know how much to expect things costing in Thailand. But when I looked at the houses and how much they were, I was quite shocked, comparing them to what similar houses would have cost at home. We’d been looking for a few days, and then we saw quite a large piece of land, 10 rai in total, and it was priced at 200,000 baht per rai.

And to me, that seemed quite reasonable for what it was. I didn’t really have anything to compare it to. It was just something about the land that made me feel like this could be great. I’d already contacted the equivalent of a solicitor in Bangkok, talking about what I was hoping to do. I was still of the mind, how things were at home.

Buying Land and Choosing a Thai House Design

Anytime you wanted to do anything, you would have a solicitor help you. And I sent them a copy of the land paper and asked them to make sure it was good, which they did, and they said it was. I decided quite quickly that we would buy this. It would be the equivalent of just under £50,000 for the land, which did seem like a lot of money, but for that big of a piece of land and the house we could have on it and the other things we could have on it, thought it was worth it.

So, we got it and it became my wife’s only a few days after we decided. I know that that was a very big step to take. I had to transfer that money into the country and I was just thinking that this is the place that I would spend the rest of my life because I was really happy being there and being with her. When it came to the house, we’d been introduced by another foreigner who lived in the adjoining village to the company that he used to build his house.

His house was gigantic, and I didn’t think we needed anything as substantial as that, but it did appear to be very good quality and built to a very high standard. So, we contacted that company and went to speak to them and looked at the plans for lots of houses. And I guess when you’re doing something like that, you can get very carried away if you’re not careful.

While the plan was to spend perhaps £60 to £70,000, we chose a sale that was going to cost £120,000. Looking back, that was a crazy amount of money to spend for something like that in a place like that for just the two of us. But this included a few changes that I wanted making, such as a western kitchen and a proper western style bathroom and a few things that cost a bit more.

It also included air conditioning in every room, but I would need to spend a little bit more money to furnish it. I even toyed with the idea of having some of my furniture sent over, which was in storage, but that seemed like it would be a very bad thing to do, so I didn’t. When the house was being built, we rented a place not too far away, and life was good again, and I was happy again.

And I spent my time thinking about what it would be like living in the house, and how great it would be. I wasn’t concerned about how much I was spending because I had my income at £2,500 a month, which was more than enough to be able to live very well. So, I wanted to make sure that our place to live was comfortable and as nice as possible.

The Pickup Truck and the True Cost of Retirement in Thailand

I spent £20,000 on a brand new pickup. I’d never driven a pickup before, but I actually quite liked the one we had. I would say it was around the end of 2021 when the house was finally built. Tourism hadn’t yet fully opened up in Thailand, but there were schemes in place where things were easier. And when it was built, probably another £20,000 was spent on furniture.

Looking back, how much money I spent was insane. The house was way too big, completely unnecessary, but it was done. Probably spent about £210,000. I did say to myself that that was money that I was going to buy a house with anyway. Yet, it would have been at home. But I built one here instead because this was my new home and I’m going to be living here.

So that’s how I saw it and I didn’t get concerned about anything because it didn’t matter. It was a house that I had to live in for the rest of my life. We moved in in 2022. It was a fantastic experience. We had a lot of monks come to bless the place. We had a party where her family came and some of her friends and I felt like I was part of the village and part of the community and part of the family.

I could only see my life getting better from there, not worse. But I guess I wasn’t understanding of the country of Thailand enough to have done what I did as quickly as I did. I guess the opinions that I had when I met her and stayed with her originally didn’t line up to how things actually were. It’s not like I’ve heard many guys say, though, because I’m paying for everything, that means that everything has to be my way.

That’s not the case at all, and I don’t agree with guys who say it. I just thought though that we were on a very similar wavelength. Yet the wavelength that we were on was very different and what she thought about things was different to what I thought about things. But you don’t see these differences early on in a relationship because you’re not living in your own place.

You’re not at the place where she’s from and see the things that she does.

The Ghost and the Monk in Our Thai Village

And the first thing that shocked me, which wasn’t a big negative straight away, but it still shocked me and made me take a step back, only happened a week after moving in. There was a strange noise that evening, just like a banging sound, nothing alarming or concerning, but that made her sit up in bed, a look of real seriousness and fear on her face, and she said that it was a ghost.

I thought she was joking, but I could tell she wasn’t. And I told her not to be silly. There’s no ghosts, but she was sure that she’d heard one. Being the loving husband that I was, I told her I’d go and have a look around. And I came back and told her no ghost. And I think that actually made her feel more comfortable.

And I don’t know why, but it did. The following morning, she said, “We’re going to go and see a monk.” We had the monks bless the house already when we got married and when we moved in, but she took me to this temple that was actually in a bit of a jungle, quite a long way away. And a monk comes to us, they do their cultural norms, whatever it is that you would call it, and she handed over some money to the monk.

It was a thousand baht and she puts this down and the monk picked it up and then they started talking for a while and the monk handed over this to me. It looked like a piece of wood. And after this had finished, my wife said to me, “Now everything should be okay. The monk has given us this object, so the house should be okay.”

I thought it was quite quaint, but I couldn’t understand how she seemed to believe what the monk said, and that was the most important thing in the world to her. After that little thing happened, things got back to normal for a few days. Then something else happened which really took me by surprise. The people who owned the adjoining land grew corn, animal feed corn, and I thought that seemed interesting.

The First Shock of Village Life in Thailand

That was until they set the whole thing on fire after they’d harvested it and the smoke and ash was coming over our land in our house and I couldn’t even stay inside the place because it was full of smoke. I was really upset by that, but my wife just said that’s one of the things that happens.

I didn’t know that something like that would happen. And while it was only going to be for a day, it was still a day where we couldn’t even stay in the house. And you go in the house and even the clothes in the drawers in the wardrobe smelt of smoke and needed washing again. It wasn’t anything to give me any cause for alarm, but just little things that I wasn’t expecting that you learn about the more you’re there.

Main problem, though, was going to the monk became a very regular thing. Over the next few months, she probably went five times, each time giving money to the monk, and it was always for things that didn’t make sense to me. He wanted to buy a lottery ticket, though she would go to the monk to get the right numbers.

Yet, when it didn’t win, it wasn’t because the monk was wrong. It was because she didn’t believe it enough. It hadn’t rained for a few days, so she went to the monk asking for rain because her family needed it for the crop that they were growing. And I hadn’t seen any of this side of her when we were together up until the point when we moved in.

She’s not changing when we’re put together. She’s not doing anything bad to me, but I feel like I’m really out of place because the things she’s doing are things that I don’t understand and never will understand. I’m the one who is giving her the money to be able to give to the monk. And I just didn’t believe what she was doing.

I read an article in the Bangkok Post about a jet setting monk who took loads of money from people in a situation like this, and this is what I felt like was happening here. Yet, I couldn’t say that. She didn’t like it. I did say perhaps you need to stop giving money to the monks and going to see them all the time.

Why My Wife Began Visiting the Monk So Often

But then she would get defensive saying that this is who she is and it’s part of her culture and it’s very important to her. She hadn’t showed this side of her even once when we started out together. But now it appears that this is very important to her. It didn’t scare me away. It just made me feel like I didn’t know her like I thought I did.

This is not even too long after we moved into the house, too. Been to see the monk lots of times. And one time, I guess it was 3 months after we moved in. She went to see him again and came back looking like she’d actually seen a ghost. Monks say, “Have bad luck. Need to make good luck.” Those words, I quote, verbatim.

Apparently, if we didn’t want bad luck, we would have to go to the monk and he would have to perform a ritual. And if you made a donation, then that would make things better. I didn’t mind, but I wasn’t liking what was going on because it was alien to me, and it kind of felt like witchcraft in a way.

Not that it was, but it might as well have been. That’s what I’m trying to say here. So, I went with her, had this blessing, and she felt better. The thing was, though, the monk said, “Now that the bad luck was gone, you’re going to have very good luck. So, you should open a business because you’re going to make a lot of money.”

My wife had paid the monk, or should I say donated to the monk, 10,000 baht. He performed some kind of blessing and now we would have good luck. So we should open a business because we can make a lot of money. Would you believe that? She did. And she was adamant that we needed to do something because the monk said it would work. She didn’t say what business the monk said we should do.

She just said a business. Monks say we make money a lot. We do business. We looking what do again? Words quoted verbatim. And I’m getting a little bit bored about this constantly because it was never there up until we moved to her hometown. From that moment on, my wife spent all her time thinking about what she could do.

The Monk’s Promise of Good Luck and Business

She didn’t want to lose the opportunity the monk said was available to her. I thought it was best if I just went along with everything she wanted to do because if I didn’t, she would get upset, and if I did, what’s the worst that could happen? Lose some money? But at that time, and again, this is at the time, I just thought I was going to spend all that money for a house anyway at home.

But now, we’ve already got a house and land and a car, and there’s still money left over. So, I wouldn’t have had that anyway if I bought a house at home. And that’s what I was thinking about. I wasn’t concerned that I should be saving this because I didn’t expect to have it anyway. I just thought I would allow her to have a go. I think that it would be okay if she tried something and if it didn’t work then she’ll stop going to the monk and forget about it.

But the problem is that’s not how it happened. I don’t want to go through all the things that she tried because she tried a lot of things. Things that you wouldn’t even be able to make a lot of money from even if you succeeded at them because of the nature of it. But the first one I will say was a street food cart.

She wanted to buy it, make street food and sell it around the village. Didn’t cost a lot to buy, but you needed a motorcycle to attach it to and probably £100,000 baht. Just two and a bit thousand that cost. She got bored after less than a week and said, “Maybe you should stop now.” The monk was wrong. But she said she went to the monk and he told her that she chose the wrong thing.

What did he tell you to do then? He didn’t say. He said if you choose the right thing, you will make a lot of money. Basically, you could say that to anybody, and if they did make money, it was because the monk said they were going to be lucky. But if you didn’t make money, it was because you chose the wrong business. I tried to explain to her that that was the wrong way round and she had it completely backwards.

If she made money, it’s because she picked something that was good and it worked. If it didn’t make money, it was because the monk didn’t know what he was talking about, but she just wouldn’t have it. It’s starting to have a strain on our relationship, which I was very saddened about.

How the Monk’s Advice Began Blaming Me

I wasn’t yet thinking things could get even worse, but it was as if ever since she thought we had a ghost. Her life was about the monk and following his advice and donating to his cause. She tried quite a lot of other things. I’m spending the money I have because I just want her to finally rid herself of these beliefs, thinking eventually she will because nothing was working.

But after I’d spent probably £20,000 on lots of different things for her to try over about 6 months, she was now changing the way she behaved with me. One day, which really hurt me, she said she’d been to see the monk, and the monk said that it’s because I don’t believe that’s why everything’s not working properly.

I couldn’t understand how she would believe that, but she was starting to blame me because the monk said I didn’t believe properly. I just had to tell her, “I believe. Don’t worry about it.” I tried to pretend like I did. And while she appeared to believe me, and I spent another 3 months with her doing more things.

And when none of those worked, apparently the monk said I was lying when I said I believed her and I couldn’t win. This is getting to the point of completely consuming her life. Many of the people in the village don’t seem to be as concerned about what the monk says. Some of them do, but she seems to be trapped in the belief that the monk said he’s going to make a lot of money if she does a business.

Because I don’t believe it’s not working, she believes the monk instead. And the fact that it’s all nonsense doesn’t matter to her. I keep giving her money to try and show her that I’m supporting her, but it’s getting to the point where I’m only going to have my income and no extra money on top. And I told her once this has gone, we’ve got the income and we can have a good life, but we can’t keep spending money for things.

She was adamant though that donating to the monk was very important and eventually something good would happen. Things just continued to get a lot worse because that was just a thing that consumed her. I don’t want you to picture this as her going to see the monk in the morning and coming back in the evening. It wasn’t like that.

A Typical Week Ruled by the Monk’s Advice

But perhaps, let’s just say on Monday we’d go and do some shopping, have something to eat in town. We’re talking with each other and everything’s normal and we return home, maybe watch a film in the evening and go to bed and it’s a normal day. Perhaps on Tuesday she would wake up early, go and see the monk, and I would wake up a bit later when she’d already be back.

I would go downstairs, we would talk, but if the monk had said something serious, then she would look serious, and she’d be thinking about what to do, and she would tell me about it. I would leave her to it, and then we might cook something together in the evening and go to bed, not talking about it all the time.

Wednesday might just be a normal day and Thursday might be a normal day, but Friday she goes to see the monk again, but this time it’s more serious. The monk has told her some things she needs to do. So, Saturday she’s not going to be able to spend any time with me at all to do whatever it was that she needed to do with the monk, and Sunday would be the same, and I wouldn’t see her properly until Monday.

That was typically how it was. Tried my best to get her to cut back from this because I couldn’t see anything positive coming from it. But she was adamant that she was going to be lucky and she was going to continue trying.

The Monk’s Advice and the Betrayal

I’d say it wasn’t that long later when I think she told me the actual truth. She said, “I went to see the monk today and he said, I need to think about future because you old. I need to think about future.” And I understood what she meant, but she was going about it in the wrong way. He said that the monk told her to be open to anything that happens if she thinks it could be beneficial for the future. I had no idea what she meant by that and I don’t think she knew, but I was getting really concerned about how much this was consuming her life.

She attended a big wedding in the village. I didn’t bother going at the time because I couldn’t be bothered. I didn’t feel well, so I was staying in bed. But I would end up regretting that. At this ceremony, the whole village was there. People from other villages were there and people from the big town were there. It was quite a big deal.

The village headman’s son was getting married, so that meant something there. I didn’t think this was going to be a problem. But she got very drunk that day and I found out she cheated on me. I’d never experienced anything like that before and the pain was unbearable. But what made it even worse was the fact that she told me so matter of factly that because the monk told her to be open about something that might be better for her future and she saw this as something that she should be open about.

I’d never heard anything so stupid in my whole life. I was absolutely devastated and she just didn’t care. She said, “Don’t worry. It’s no problem. It’s just for future for good luck.” And I think that was the time when I kind of thought to myself, we’re both from two so very different worlds with so very different beliefs.

What she’s doing is consuming her life. And now she’s reading into things that the monk is saying and doing ridiculous things. I was heartbroken, but she wasn’t even sorry. She just said, “Don’t worry about it.” And I couldn’t help but think back to the time when I met her and the time we spent together. All that time until we moved to the village.

The Betrayal That Ended Our Thai Marriage

She’d never once talked about a monk, never gone to see a monk, as far as I knew. But this was all that she cared about. And I spent all that time I had left after building the house and all that money giving it to her so that she could try these things because she was adamant she was going to get lucky. I just said to her after this, “Don’t you think you were lucky that we have this really nice house and we’ve got a pickup and we’ve got a good income that we can live on.

Is that not lucky?” I don’t think she saw it that way. I don’t know what she was expecting lucky to mean because if you looked at her situation and compared it to everybody else’s in the village, she could she should have considered that as being very lucky, but she didn’t see it that way. And I didn’t see her the same way as I did before.

We never really had an argument or a fallout. But from then, we just drifted apart. And I’m starting to think about my old wife again, starting to think about home and missing my children and thinking that I don’t belong somewhere like this. But it destroyed me understanding I’d spent all my money. I couldn’t buy what I should have done anymore at home, which was a new house, because I spent it all here.

I still loved my wife. I still felt like we were meant to be together. And while some days were okay, most days weren’t because she was consumed with things that I didn’t understand. The thing is, I didn’t even want to understand them. When she cheated on me one more time and tried to tell me it wasn’t a problem.

And when I left for a week to spend a bit of time by myself in Bangkok and came back hoping to put things right and get her to change her mind, they started to actually understand a little bit more as to what was going on. I don’t know exactly because no one told me, but I think that the guy she cheated on me with was her boyfriend.

Leaving Thailand After Divorce and Financial Ruin

I think she was going to the monk as a way to battle with her conscience because she’d married me out of convenience and money and wanted to be with him instead. And it was what I think was the case, although I can’t prove it, and I never could. But when I returned, she just wasn’t the same. I gave her one chance, saying, “We have the income.

We can live well together. We can have a good future, but I need you to stop doing what you’re doing.” But she said she couldn’t because it was important to her. It didn’t last much longer than that. I was 75 when we got divorced. We didn’t have a big shouting match at the end. I just came to my senses one day. I think that’s what it was.

It was fun while it lasted, but we were just different people. Way too different for this to actually be real. And I had to resign myself to the fact that I was financially ruined. I have my income though, and even if I rented a place at home, it might not be substantial. But I can live a reasonable life on what I have.

But perhaps it’s not as bad as it could have been. I left Thailand after getting divorced. Never any desires to go back. I lost £250,000 and I lost any hopes of ever feeling love again. But that’s okay. One thing it did do was it allowed me to heal from the passing of my proper wife. I’ve managed to get over that and I’ve got my children for support who helped me through the tough time when I was back. They didn’t judge.

They were just glad I was back and okay. And that’s just one of those parts of my life that I will always look at and shake my head. I will shake my head and say to myself, “How did you end up going to Thailand, meeting someone 30 years younger than you, falling in love with her, getting married, building a house, and losing all your life savings? How did you end up doing that?” And the only thing I can answer to myself is, I have no damn clue.