My Thailand Retirement Mistake and the Six Million Baht House Loss
The way I see it, in Thailand, things are deliberately set up against foreigners. But the problem is, as a foreigner, this isn’t something that you find out until it’s already too late. I personally had never been to Thailand until I reached 61 back in 2015, and my reason for being in Thailand was to see if all the fuss about it being the perfect retirement destination actually had some merit.
I’d retired the year earlier after working in the local council in my town, back at home, and I really liked my job. I worked in the local planning department and in a way I felt like it was my duty to preserve what we had in the area while allowing for sensible growth. I felt like I made a huge difference to where I was from. I loved where I was from. I was proud of where I was from and it was always my intention to live there for the rest of my life.
However, a nasty divorce 10 years prior saw my financial standing too far away from retirement levels, and it was always my plan to retire at 60. That divorce changed my future outlook. It took me a few years to get over it, but I didn’t make the decision to seek retirement out of my home country until it became clear that I couldn’t afford retirement at home.
My initial thought was to retire to Spain or at least somewhere in Europe. And it was when I was in Spain researching suitable retirement locations that I was speaking to a man doing exactly the same thing as me. He was also looking for a place to retire, also seeking destinations further afield. He already talked about places he’d been and Thailand was on the list. He said it was very high on his list. That piqued my interest to go and see for myself what Thailand was about because I’d already finished work and I needed to find my place as quickly as I could.
Up until coming to the realization that I couldn’t afford retirement at home, I was always a homebird, loved my country and still do. One thing that attracted me to Thailand, at least based on what this guy told me, was that I should be able to hold on to my love of home and take advantage of the fact that my home was better than Thailand, which in turn would give me a better time in Thailand and allow me to do the things that I wouldn’t be able to do at home. Also, do the things I wouldn’t be able to do at other places around Europe. He made Thailand sound so fantastic and the thought of being able to use where I was from to my advantage that was the thing that made the idea of thinking about Thailand turn into more than just an idea.
I returned back home from Spain at the start of 2015, having not made any decisions about my retirement yet, and I booked a ticket to Thailand for a few weeks’ time to go and check it out.
First Impressions of Thailand
Three things happened when I got to Thailand. The first, I really felt like it was the perfect place for me to retire. Second, there were lots of things that you could do in Thailand that really appealed to me. Thirdly, it made me think for the first time since my divorce that not only would I be able to meet somebody else, not only would she be a lot younger and more beautiful than my ex wife, she would also look up to me and do as I please.
This is what I thought when I arrived in Thailand. This is what I expected Thailand was for. And while I look back at that moment of my life and shake my head because it was clear that I was very wrong and all the opinions I was developing in that short space of time I was in Thailand for the first time were opinions that made sense to me because of everything I saw around me, yet opinions that didn’t actually hold true to what was going on. There was a huge disconnect between my understanding of Thailand and the real Thailand. And it was that disconnect that completely ruined me.
I have been quite wary about sharing my story because of concerns about how people might react to my story or to the opinions that they might hold about me. While I am comfortable sharing my story thanks to your input, I wouldn’t be sharing this if I didn’t understand that there were many people around the time that I was in Thailand who appeared to think exactly the same way as me.
It was clear that in Thailand there were things that you could do that you couldn’t do at home. It was clear that those things you could do made Thailand what Thailand was. And it was also clear that the way it appeared to be really seemed to be set up purely for the benefit of people like me. I wasn’t going into Thailand big headed or thinking I was better than anybody else. But when I arrived in Thailand, the surface feel of the country felt like it was set up purely for that.
Understanding the Thailand Bar Scene
Having not had a relationship or even spent time with a woman since my ex wife, investigating the bar scene of Thailand became one of the things that made Thailand as good as it was. The street I was staying on in Bangkok was just like any other street. There were a few hotels, there were a few condo buildings, a few restaurants, a few bars, and every place seemed to serve its purpose and fit in amazingly with the surroundings.
I want to describe exactly how I was feeling about things at the time because this is, I guess, where I made the mistake. I went into the hotel. I’d paid for that. I had access to the room and that was exactly like you would expect it to be. The first time I went into a restaurant, which just so happened to be the restaurant across the street from my hotel, you were given a menu, and you could order any food you wanted on the menu, as well as a drink, which I did. I paid my money, and in return, I got a great meal. I’d actually ordered one too many drinks though one extra beer but they’d already opened it and I didn’t want to drink it, but I didn’t want to waste it either. So, I thought I’d take it back to my hotel. I put it in the fridge and it remained there throughout the rest of my time in Bangkok. And when I was checking out of that hotel, I opened the fridge and it was there, probably stale. I didn’t want to drink it, but I paid for it and it was there.
The bars were similar. You bought things in there and they became yours. Yet, when it came to the girls that worked in the bars, I thought the deal was the same as everything else. The bar where the girls worked was right next door to a restaurant. And eating in that restaurant, as well as tourists, they also appeared to be expats. Expats who were together with their partners and sometimes with their kids. What I’m trying to get at is this was right next to a bar and the bar was just like an integral part of the street and the city. I’m not saying that I believe that you could go into a bar and meet someone and because you were paying they belonged to you. But what I am saying is that if you met someone in a bar and you were in Thailand and you thought that the bar was the same kind of place as all the other places on the street, then why would this be any different?
The understanding I gathered from this, and I need to be clear again, wasn’t that you were gaining ownership of a person because that’s ridiculous, but you were gaining control of a relationship because of the financial things that you could bring to it if you wanted to even be in a relationship. I had to talk about this because this is where my mind was. This is the only thing that made sense to me. And I thought Thailand was perfect.
I was still angry after my divorce. One of the reasons I hadn’t tried again at home was because of fear of another divorce, a woman deciding she doesn’t like me or deciding she’s changed her mind. I was fearful of that and I didn’t want it to happen again. I thought in Thailand with the way that the bars were set up, something like that wouldn’t happen because this wasn’t two people meeting in a normal way. This was a person using money to meet. Therefore, that should mean that there is a considerable amount more respect given towards the one with the money. That’s basically where my mind was at the time as I was leaving Bangkok to go to Hua Hin.
Discovering Hua Hin
The reason I was going to Hua Hin was because I’d heard it was a very popular place for retirees, and that immediately appeared to be the case when I got there. I spent a fantastic week in Bangkok and it was the bars that made Thailand as good as it was and also the time I spent with two girls that I met as well. Hua Hin also had a nightlife area which I was thankful for and I immediately felt like it was a perfect little town for retirement. The fact that it was right on the coast was a huge positive. The beach was okay. It wasn’t as good as beaches I would go to well into the future some of the more idyllic places but it was good enough if you wanted to just have a walk on the beach or have a drink by the beach. The town didn’t appear to be too big, but it wasn’t too small either. And I thought if I did retire to Thailand, Hua Hin most likely would be the place I would base myself.
I only had a week there and then I was returning home. And how Hua Hin appeared to be set up seemed to be exactly the same as what I experienced in Bangkok. The hotels, restaurants, bars, and other venues all within the same area. It wasn’t like the bars were hidden and separate from everything else. It wasn’t like you would think something like that would be. And the more you see things like this, and the more you experience things like this, the more your opinions start to cement based on what you’re seeing around you.
I spent one of those days in Hua Hin looking at the sorts of places I could get within my retirement budget. I looked at cars because I thought getting a car would be something I would do just because I was so used to having a car at home. And I was shocked about how expensive second hand cars seem to be. But it’s just one of those things you learn about Thailand and how it’s different to home.
Meeting My Girlfriend in Hua Hin
It was my second-to-last day in Hua Hin. And while I had met a few girls a few days before this and had a great time with them, it was on this second to last night when I met another girl who felt more than something temporary. She felt like the sort of person I could spend the rest of my life with. It was how she spoke and how she behaved around me and the things she did and the things she was willing to do. I think that’s the most important thing to say. It was the things that she was willing to do doing them in a way that made it appear it was what made her who she was that made me feel like she could be mine.
Again, I have to be clear based on what I’ve said. I kind of thought that that’s what the bars were for. I had nothing to tell me anything to the contrary of this and that’s just how I saw it. You might go and meet a girl and things don’t click, but that’s fine. She can wait for someone else. She might not be lucky. That’s fine, too. But if you meet the right one, it really felt like it was my decision, my call, and my choice as to what would happen between me and her. If I liked her and I wanted a relationship with her, I could have that in return for supporting her financially. On the opposite side of that, though, it wasn’t that I was trying to be demeaning or had warped ideas about things or that I treated people badly. It was that I honestly thought that’s how the girls wanted things to be.
I thought they didn’t want to have a normal life. I thought they didn’t want to have a normal job. I’d seen even more beautiful girls working in 7-Eleven. Yet, why are some girls working in the bars? It was clear that it wasn’t by force that girls seemed to be working in bars. It seemed that that’s just who they were and what they wanted to do. You could go as far as calling many of them lazy for not wanting to get a proper job, or you could also go as far as calling many of them greedy for believing they’re entitled to a lot more money than they would earn by working at a normal job.
I thought because that’s what they were doing, they were sacrificing who they were in return for what they could get from somebody like me. In return, I wouldn’t need to sacrifice anything or ever have a concern about anything ever going wrong because she would always put me first based on where we met. I guess how I thought about things and how things appeared to be it was a recipe for disaster because that girl that I met excited me and I was even more excited thinking what a life with her would be like. I was thinking of no stress, no worry, no heartache, no concern nothing that could take away from my retirement. I was thinking of the perfect retirement.
I felt like I’d already made my mind up about her an hour after I met her, and she worked in a bar along Soi Bintabaht. We went out first to have something to eat, and I felt the conversation was effortless, and her English was actually quite good in comparison to many of the other girls I’d spoken to. She was 31 years old, and in bar girl terms, that appeared to be getting on a bit about half my age. I thought that was a perfect Thailand compromise. We went for a few drinks after having that meal, and she returned with me to the hotel.
The following day, we went together for a nice breakfast at a little beachside place. We just hung out, went for a few drinks in the daytime, spent a few hours in the hotel, a meal in the evening where she started talking about perhaps what we had was real. I felt what we had was real. And the way she spoke and behaved when I was telling her this, it really appeared like she felt exactly the same way.
Deciding to Retire in Thailand
I’d already decided by now that I was going to retire in Thailand and I wouldn’t need to be back at home for very long because ever since my divorce, I didn’t own my own house and it would just be a question of going back and putting my affairs in order. It might only take a couple of weeks, no time at all. When I told her that that was my plan and had already decided that I’d chosen her, it seemed like she was so happy in a way like she’d won the lottery. Not literally, but like everything she’d been through in the bars to get to the point of meeting me was now worth it for her.
Talking about everything she went through while working in the bars. She’d been working there for 5 years, and I understood exactly what that meant. I wasn’t naive. 5 years, that’s over 1,500 days that she worked there, with not very many days off. So, the numbers can wreak havoc with your head if you let them. And they were in my head as we were talking about things. But it was a sacrifice that I thought worth making because it wasn’t like your normal typical relationship because of where we met. I was prepared to accept everything that she’d done by working at a place like that in return for total control and not having to worry about stress, not having to worry about her ever getting angry with me or shouting at me or doing anything negative towards me.
I didn’t think that she was wired that way. Or even if she was, I thought that by doing what she’d done, she was already numb enough not to be argumentative and combative and angry and opinionated and greedy. If she wanted to be like that, why go work in a bar? It made no sense. I gave her some money before I was going to go back, telling her to stop working at the bar and I would be back as soon as I could. We exchanged contact details and I really felt like we were both madly in love with each other. Not in the traditional sense that’s very important. I wasn’t looking for a traditional relationship with a traditional love front and center. I was looking for a different kind of love. The love of excitement, the love of the chance to live a stress-free life with a beautiful girl.
Returning to Thailand Together
I left her in Hua Hin, flew back home, did everything that I needed to do over the course of 3 weeks, got a retirement visa, and flew to Thailand to begin my retirement with her. It really was very quick how Thailand took a hold of me, because up until I went, I thought I would be searching for the perfect retirement place for a considerable amount of time longer than I was. But Thailand ticked all the boxes and offered things that other countries just didn’t seem to offer.
I’d retired with an okay monthly income, which I should get indefinitely, and I also had about £200,000 cash. I didn’t know what I was going to do with that money yet, but I was open to anything. And I must admit, even at this point, I didn’t even know that foreigners weren’t allowed to own land in Thailand. Coming from where I was from, anybody can own anything. That seems to be the case around Europe as well. I didn’t know Asia was the anomaly. When I did find out later on about that, in a way, I was already committed to Thailand, so I couldn’t change my mind. But I felt like it was quite a strange thing. It wasn’t like things in Thailand were so cheap that people were going to come in and buy everything. I found prices for certain things to be more than you’d expect based on where we were. But again, that’s beside the point and I guess not relevant.
Returning to Thailand, I kept having to pinch myself asking if this was actually real. Had I just committed so quickly to Thailand after being there for only 2 weeks? After all the thoughts and plans about retirement that I’d spent so much time thinking about, the final decision came very quickly. Arriving in Bangkok, I was slightly apprehensive that I would get there and just not feel the same as I did when I got there first. But I needn’t have worried. Arriving in Thailand made me even more certain that this was the perfect place for somebody like me to retire, and I’d been speaking to that girl ever since returning home. I couldn’t wait to get to Hua Hin to see her again.
I don’t know what she did when I wasn’t there. I would like to believe that she did what she said she would, which would have been to just wait around for me, not to go out for drinks, not to go out to see friends that still worked in the same world where she used to work, and really prepare herself for me both physically and mentally. I guess that was another place where I made a serious lack of judgment, believing that those three weeks that I was out of Thailand, she would have been using them to better herself for me before my return. I was having these opinions purely because of what was going on. I gave her some money. She appeared to like money just like everybody else, I suppose, but her ways of getting money were such that I thought she liked me more than the money. Again, nothing else would make sense other than that to me.
Based on everything I thought and expected and even thought I knew, anybody who understands that perhaps I was wrong may think that I deserved everything that happened to me later or may think that it was my fault. But I think that points out their own prejudices and their own ideas and how hypocritical they are.
When I finally did see her again in Hua Hin, I felt from the moment that I did see her that life was going to be perfect. It’s scary to think how bad things got and how when I started to understand things that I didn’t understand before, how wrong I was, it made things so much worse. Things started out amazingly, though. When she met me at the hotel I booked into, it was like we could start off exactly where we met the last time. It felt exactly like I imagined it would feel, and before long, we were discussing looking for a place to rent where we could begin our lives away from the hotel. She seemed so happy to see me. I was so happy to see her. And if I look back, I guess I was rushing into things with her. I’d only met her for 2 days, left for 3 weeks, come back, and she’s living with me. But I didn’t think there was anything for me to worry about or concern myself with because of the connotations of how we met. That was why I was happy to overlook everything about her past. Because her present and her future was mine, even if it meant having to accept lots of things that you usually wouldn’t want to accept.
The Revelation About Her Child
She’d been living with me for about a month and everything’s going brilliantly, but she did spring onto me a little bit of news that made me feel quite angry. She said she had a child. He was 5 years old. He was living with her parents in the village where she came from. And I really had to think to myself, why hadn’t she talked about this before? I would have thought that would have been one of the first things she would have said to someone, but now I’d already committed to her and I decided I wanted to be with her. In a way, I also felt like I’d sacrificed for her, which I was prepared to do. But knowing everything that went along with having a child and the changes and effects that that would have happened to her because of that, it did feel like she withheld key information that I could have used to make more informed decisions about what to do. I guess I felt I was just in way too deep. I didn’t think a girl like her would lie about something because I didn’t think a girl like that would have a bad bone in her body or a negative thing to do to anybody based on the fact that she’d already given over who she was. She’d already given over her ability to pick and choose what to do by going to work in a bar. So, I was a bit conflicted, but ultimately decided that it was just one negative about her that I would have to accept.
I already cared for her. We’d already at this point found a place to live, and I already felt like my retirement had got off to a great start with her in it. And the thought of changing that retirement and trying again just didn’t enter my mind. I think I always liked stability. I always liked to know what was happening in my life. All the way back during my working years, I liked to have a schedule planned out. I liked to know what I was doing on certain days. And with her, I felt like I did know what I was doing all the time. Perhaps I didn’t have actual plans in place, such as “tomorrow, I’m doing this” or “in a week I’m doing that.” But what I did have was the ability to be able to do what I wanted when I wanted, and she would just go along with that. It wouldn’t have been like she was just going along with it, though. It would have been, in my mind, like she wanted to do exactly what I wanted to do all the time. And that’s why I overlooked her child.
Aside from that though, everything else was perfect and I’m not really noticing the days pass by because living with her was effortless. I loved the way she would treat me like a man should be treated, like a provider should be treated. I love the way she seemed to put my feelings and desires in front of her own feelings and desires because I always thought I was putting her financial requirements and her financial obligations in front of my interests on that front as well. So I was sacrificing and compromising because I was having to give her money. I just thought the opposite of that was true as well. She was sacrificing because she received said money. That’s why this is so important to my story. And why I feel so upset about things because the more we’re staying together, the more in love I am with her. The more days go by, the more thoughts of not being with her makes me upset. It was those feelings I was having for her. The feelings I was having when I was with her that some people might say allowed me to let my guard down. Although I didn’t really have a guard up because I didn’t think there was anything to guard against.
We’d been living together for about 6 months, and aside from her raising her child, nothing else had happened that was negative. Nothing else happened where she put me in a bad mood or made me feel worse in a moment because of something she did. Everything she did made me feel better about myself and happier and content. And under no circumstances would I have expected somebody to have been able to put on an act or put on a show for over 6 months.
Buying a House
The place we were living in was a nice condo, quite close to the city, but it was only small. Though, after we’d been together for about 6 months, I felt like I wanted to have my own place. As I already mentioned before, I had no idea that as a foreigner, I wasn’t allowed to own land in Thailand. You would think that would have been something I would have found out about and understood before, but I didn’t. And we actually went to look at a house. It was only then, after I was told that I finally understood this insane part of Thailand. The house we looked at was perfect in every way, exactly like what I was looking for in terms of what I was spending at this moment. My income was more than enough for us to be able to cover our lifestyle, whatever we did. And it was my savings which were just sitting there that I wanted to use.
The house was about 6 million baht. It was a single-story 4 bedroom detached house on a good-sized plot of land. It had an okay pool and it was set up exactly like I always wanted a house to be. That was the first time after I understood I couldn’t own it personally that I thought my girlfriend owning it would be the solution that I needed because I was just in so deep to what I thought was going on with this relationship, to what I thought the bars in Thailand were for, to what I thought a girl that worked in a bar was for, that I thought buying a house in her name would be the solution.
Guys say that they believe that the girl they met in a bar was an extension of who he was. You might not like that, but to me that makes perfect sense. It’s not like we think that she belongs to us or she’s ours in terms of ownership, but it’s like if she wanted to do what she did, if she wanted to go and work in a bar and spend time with guys like that and now she doesn’t need to, surely that means she’s already given up who she is as a person. It goes back to how the bars are presented in the first place. They’re not in some part of the city that you have to find out about or some part of the city that’s hidden away. It was like they were an integral part of the street they were on and it really did feel like a bar had the purpose of a shop.
Why I’m saying this is because when we found the house we looked at and I decided I wanted to buy it, the thought was if we did find a house we wanted it would belong to her but I wouldn’t have any concern about anything negative happening at any point in the future because she was basically an extension of me. Why wouldn’t I have thought like that? She was getting money from me. What was I giving her that money for if this wasn’t the case?
Looking at Condos and Houses
I also spent a little bit of time looking at condos to buy because I found out that as a foreigner, I was able to own a condo. But that takes me right back to the very start of my story where I said that Thailand seems to be set up to be so anti foreigner. Because while you would think buying a condo would make sense, you then find out that a condo would cost considerably more than a house with land and the condo was a fraction of the size. It made you think that a condo was just some kind of sick joke that only an idiot would buy. The house we looked at was 6 million baht. The land parcel was big enough to park two or three cars. It had a pool. It had a boundary wall. And yes, I couldn’t own it, but it was 6 million baht. I thought for 6 million baht, I should be able to get a condo that was bigger than the house because it didn’t have land with it. You had to share communal facilities with people such as the pool and the gym. And if you’re doing that, you have to put up with all of this, then the 6 million baht condo should be huge. Finding out that a 6 million baht condo wasn’t even 80 square meters makes you think, okay, I can’t have a condo.
Around this time though, I’m so happy with my girlfriend. I’m considering marriage in the future. Although I was never somebody who felt that you needed to get married. Marriage or a committed long-term relationship was in essence the same thing. So I was under the impression that I wouldn’t need to get married to have a committed relationship. After I found out that getting a condo was going to be way too expensive in comparison to how much houses were, I decided against getting a condo. And we spent a bit of time looking at other houses around Hua Hin that might fit the bill. We weren’t rushing into anything. We weren’t needing to buy something soon. I was happy to wait if it was a month or 6 months or even a year. I didn’t care how long. I just wanted to make sure that we found the right place. The reason I say this is the one we looked at first, which we nearly bought, somebody actually bought it first. And that gave us time to take a step back and plan carefully what we were actually going to do.
We went away around this time to Bangkok. That was my first time going anywhere with her out of Hua Hin. And in a way, this made me feel an even stronger connection to her. I am giving her a little bit of money because she’s not working anymore. This I have accepted. But in a way, and I don’t want to come across as being a not very nice person by saying this, but the way I saw it was, as I’ve already talked about, believing that because she worked in a bar, and because the bars were next to other normal places, it appeared that a bar was the same as a shop. If you went to a shop to buy a car, okay, you need to continuously fill the car with fuel, unless it’s one of these modern electric things, which I have no interest in. You need to continuously fill the car with fuel or it’s not going to work. And I thought this was the same. I had my girlfriend and yes, she needs to have money. She needs to be able to go out and buy things that she needs. She needs to be able to support her son because she couldn’t expect her family to financially support her son given how poor they were. But the way that things were going and the way I’m thinking about things, giving her money wasn’t me giving her money. That was me making sure she could sustain the commitments that she had in her life that allowed her to give herself to me.
We also, aside from going to Bangkok, went down to Phuket as well. I’d never been there before, and I had a few friends go and say that they thought it was the best place in Thailand. While it was a nice place, I didn’t think too much of it. But another reason for going to Bangkok and Phuket was just to confirm that Hua Hin was the place I liked the most. And it was. If I was going to invest in something, I did know that perhaps selling a place in the future wasn’t like it was at home. It might take a long time to sell a house. While I didn’t want to ever have to sell it, I wanted it to be in the right place. So, this issue never came about. I quickly decided that Hua Hin was the right place. And after that trip, we returned there and began hunting for our perfect house together.
Choosing a House in Hua Hin
My budget was about 6 million baht, give or take 100,000 baht. It was always my plan in retirement to have my own place. I had my income, as I said, which meant that my savings weren’t needed to provide an income. They were just there to be able to give me my dream place. And we began looking for something similar to the place we’d seen before. The things that I placed importance on were it had to be a good size. It had to have a modern layout. I liked an open plan kitchen into the living room. I liked big spaces. And I liked it to be a particular shape, perhaps like an L shape with the pool in the middle. We looked at lots of places that were way out of budget. I saw places that were 15 to 20 million baht. And it left me scratching my head thinking, if I had that money to buy a house, why would I buy one in Thailand? I could just buy something at home for the same price. Granted, it wouldn’t have been as nice, but still, I could have just done that. I thought the idea of Thailand was that it was cheap.
Even still, the houses we looked at within budget were still amazing. We narrowed the choice down to three houses that we’d seen, all roughly the same price. Let’s call it 6 million, give or take 100,000 here or there. All quite close to Hua Hin. The furthest was about 15 minutes away from the city in terms of driving and it was a fairly quick question of deciding which one we wanted. One thing that I paid very close attention to and this was based on the advice of other expats that I’d spoken to and a few friends of mine that I’d made since I moved there was that you have to be so careful in Thailand. If you buy a house in the wrong place and the neighbor next to you or the neighbor opposite you or behind you or any of them, if they are a particular way inclined, they could make your life a living hell. Some people like to play music. Some people have loud dogs and some people don’t care about their dogs. The loud noise is in your face all the time. Or it could be if you chose the wrong place.
When we found these places, what I did was spend about a week driving to each one of them, just milling around for a few hours at a time, perhaps in the morning between 6:00 and 10:00, seeing what that was like. Then in the afternoons and the evenings. And sure enough, one of the houses, which just so happened to be my favorite, the neighbor situation would have driven me to drink or more drink than I was drinking, because at this time I was drinking a lot anyway. Why? Because it was my retirement, and I was there to have a good time. We had to write that house off as not being worth it. And before long, we selected which house we wanted. 6.1 million baht about 75% of my savings. It was fully furnished, so we didn’t need to buy anything, although there were a few things that I didn’t like that I would have wanted to have changed, but that was okay. I thought it wasn’t a bad price. The same kind of house at home would have cost considerably more, and I decided to buy it.
Moving Into the House
I was so in love with my girlfriend, she might as well have been my wife as far as I was concerned. We didn’t get married, but it felt like we were married in every other way. I was in love with her or was I in love with who I thought she was? Was I in love with the fact that I thought she was the perfect girl who was perfect for me? I don’t know. I always thought number one, she didn’t have to work in the bar anymore, and number two, she was getting free money. So, I just had it all wrong, I guess. But we bought it in her name. I didn’t get a lease. I didn’t get anything to protect me because it just didn’t make sense. Why would she value herself more than me? She used to work in a bar for God’s sake. I keep having to say that she used to work in a bar. How could she value herself like someone who didn’t work in a bar? Anyway, we had this house. It was great. It was beautiful. And we moved in.
And it was that moment in my life where I felt like everything had come together so well and there was nothing that could go wrong. My girlfriend really took pride in making the house as beautiful as possible when we moved in to make sure everything was clean. She got some flowers to put on the table and she really made it feel like a home. Without her, I would have felt like it was a house that I was living in and it wasn’t a home. So, I really have to give it to her that she was good at that. We went out to celebrate our new house. And at this point in time, there’s nothing giving me any indication I’ve made a huge error or a huge mistake, or nothing indicating that what I’ve done and what I think is so wrong.
From there, we just got on with the business of living life like we would want to live life. We would do similar things every day. Getting up at around a similar time, leaving the house together, going out for something to eat, maybe spending time at the beach, maybe going to a resort at the weekend. And life just came together so well. My girlfriend is still behaving exactly like you’d want her to behave. She’s not doing anything that she shouldn’t be doing. But if I think back to that moment, Although I bought a house and it went into my girlfriend’s name, whatever I wanted to do with it with regards to what it would be like in the future would be my say and my say alone. In a way, it seemed to appear like she felt that she owned it. I know technically she did own it. On paper, she did, but I thought she was more of a custodian, more of a curator, more of owning it in name only. And I would have thought she would have felt dirty thinking it was hers. I thought she reveled in the fact that she wasn’t able to own something like that, that she wasn’t able to have something like that herself, that she had to give up herself over to me to be able to have it. I really did think she reveled in that fact. That’s what made me as excited as I was about the relationship and about what we had.
I’m trying to be very careful here as I’m describing things because I’m not trying to come across as a guy who thinks he’s better than everybody else or who thought his girlfriend was beneath him. Not at all. I thought I had a predefined role in the relationship and I thought she had a predefined role in the relationship. Do you think I was happy to pay for everything when we went out? Do you think I was happy to give money to her? Do you think I was happy if we went out to a restaurant and the bill came to 2,000 baht and I had to pay for it? No. I would have rather just paid for myself and she paid for herself. But this was a sacrifice that I was willing to make. It was something that I hated doing, but I thought what I got in return was a girl who thought the same way about me as I thought about her. It just goes to show that Thailand is really set up to mess with your head and to play with you and to make you believe things that aren’t real and to make you want things that aren’t real. But I guess whatever I think or whatever I would like to believe isn’t important. What is important is what actually happened.
The Turning Point
I had a friend of mine come to visit at that time. He was looking into retirement as well. And of course, I took him to the bars because he was single after coming out of a relationship, and I wanted to show him exactly what it was like. My girlfriend stayed at home and me and my friend went out together. And I could tell from his reaction how amazing he thought it all was. I mean, it was amazing. It was one of the best things about Thailand. The bars were Thailand. Anybody that says the bars aren’t Thailand shouldn’t go to Thailand because Thailand without the bars is like a car without wheels. Completely pointless. We both had a couple of drinks going from bar to bar. He met a girl he liked and went on with her. And yes, I met a girl even though my girlfriend was back at home. And yes, I took her out of the bar. But I didn’t think that was a problem because my girlfriend took money from me. Why should this be a problem? I obviously didn’t think it was a problem because I told her and I wanted to be honest with her the following day, expecting her to say never mind. Perhaps she might be a tiny bit upset and say don’t do it again and I would have just said it was a one off because my friend was with me. Instead, she started shouting at me and screaming at me. And I’m thinking, what’s going on here? She didn’t calm down until after I started shouting at her and after I got angry.
I’m trying to explain to her that she was literally holding in her hand the phone that my money paid for. In what world did she think it was acceptable to shout at me? Considering that you’re literally holding my money in your hand. You’re literally sitting on my money with the couch you’re sitting on. You’re literally drinking my money with the drink you’re holding. You’re literally eating my money with the food you’re holding, too. I told her I still love you. I did. I told her I care about you. And yes, I went and spent a little bit of time with the girl I met in a bar because my friend was here and I was drunk and I’m in Thailand. I told her I still love you. Nothing’s changed there. But she just didn’t see it the way that I thought she would. And I was absolutely furious with her. I was apoplectic because I had a week with my friend to show him around Hua Hin before he left Hua Hin to go to another part of Thailand can’t remember where he was going. And she completely destroyed that week that I had with my friend. I felt she was so unreasonable and so unrealistic about what this relationship was even meant to be. We shouted at each other for a few hours and I wasn’t backing down. And I can’t for the life of me understand why she didn’t back down. So I told her, “My friend’s here, I’m not about to destroy this time. I’ll come back in a few days after you’ve calmed down because I can’t take this. This isn’t what my retirement’s meant to be for, and this isn’t why I’m spending money.” I stormed out and went to meet up with my friend. I had to calm down before I met up with him because I didn’t want to give him any indication that my perfect girlfriend was anything other than I’d already described her as being. I told him a lie, something to do with her going to see her family and us spending a bit of time together.
I stayed at the same hotel he was staying at, and we parted like there was no tomorrow until he left. Yes, I did spend time in the bars, and yes, I spent time with the girls, and I probably wouldn’t have done that again after the first time if my girlfriend hadn’t been so unreasonable and so unrealistic and so delusional. We had spoken on the phone a few times, and based on how she spoke, although she sounded a bit upset and a bit angry, I just thought she understood who she actually was. When my friend left to go wherever it is he was going, I did return to the house and she wasn’t there originally. I called her and a few hours later she arrived and I had to say to her, pull yourself together. I’m here to retire. I’m here for peace. I’m here for an easy life. And if you want an easy life where you don’t have to work or you don’t have to go back and work in the bar, don’t you ever think about doing that again because it’s really unacceptable. I thought she was going to say sorry and understand the error of her ways, but she didn’t. She started screaming at me, saying I was the worst person she’d ever met. She hates me. She never wants to see me again. And then she said something that shocked me more than anything. She said, “You know, this is my house. You know, we’re not married. You go away. I never want to see you again.” To be honest, I started laughing at her when she said that because how on earth did she think saying something like that was acceptable.
Again, you have to look at it in another way. I worked a job in my life which I didn’t mind. I quite liked my job, but I had a boss. I had somebody that paid my salary. And if I didn’t like something that my boss did or if I didn’t like something I had to do with regards to my work, I didn’t have a hissy fit and start demanding that this wasn’t okay. I didn’t say I can’t do this and I can’t do that and I’m not doing this or that like my girlfriend seemed to be doing. It really made me understand that anyone in a successful relationship in Thailand must be putting up with a very degrading experience to be able to be in that relationship. I’m not talking about guys in a relationship where his girlfriend or his wife is a contributing factor to that relationship where perhaps he brings in X amount of money every month and she brings in X amount of money every month. Under no circumstances am I talking about something like that. I’m talking about the guys in a relationship with their girlfriend or their wife where he’s the one that brings in the money. She’s the one that spends it. And somehow she thinks that her input to the relationship or her ability to be angry when she wants or her ability to shout when she wants makes sense.
What I’m finding out though is when it appeared that she wasn’t going to calm down and she wasn’t going to say sorry to me and I was expecting an apology from her, I thought the only thing I could do was go and speak to a lawyer and find out what my rights were because I had paid for that house with my money. Then you think back to the time you go to the land office and I had to sign some paper to say that the money was given to her and I had no say over it. Plus the fact I had no say over anything that was like that if we’d been married anyway. The lawyer told me that there was absolutely nothing I could do and I might think it best to try to make it up with her if I wanted the chance to live in the house again.
Losing the House
I did try. I mean I really did try. Not necessarily to make it up to her, but just to try to come to an agreement. “If you don’t like me because I’ve started to not like you anymore because I don’t know who you think you are but if you don’t like me and I don’t like you, perhaps we can just pretend that we like each other because why should I lose this house?” It appeared that she really didn’t like me and I need to be clear. The fact that she didn’t like me, I didn’t care about that. As long as she could act like she liked me, that wouldn’t have been a problem. It was clear that ever since I met her, she’d been acting every single second of every single day. Because if she hadn’t been acting, why would I have done the things I did? I did the things I did because when I was with her, I was happy. She made me happy and I was trying to make her happy. But it was very abundantly clear that she didn’t like me at all.
I tried to tell her, “Can I have a lease on the house and it can be yours eventually?” But she said, “No, we can’t do that.” I tried to come up with all kinds of solutions, but when it was obvious that we weren’t going to be able to stay together anymore, and it was obvious that in essence I had just bought a house worth 6 million baht and I had no say over it, that was when I understood that the bars in Thailand were nothing more than a front where scam artists plied their trade.
I used to look up to the girls that worked in the bars as being the sorts of girls that could give guys what they wanted. The sorts of girls that could give guys things that they couldn’t have at home. The sorts of girls that would give guys a chance to live a stress-free life. Like you didn’t have to concern yourself about the fickle mind of your girlfriend. Before we broke it off, one of the things she said to me, which I never really understood, she said, “How would you feel if your daughter had a man like you?” I had a daughter from my previous relationship and I said to her, “She’s got a job. She makes money. How is that the same?” “Same?” she said. Then we started shouting at each other and now I’m screaming at her. How is it the same? She has her own job, therefore it’s not the same. I even said, “You don’t have a job and you can live a life without having to work.” And I’m trying to explain to her, you know how many people there are in the world working jobs they hate on a daily basis, doing things they don’t want to do on a daily basis. And you’re not working. You’re not doing anything. So, it’s not the same. She didn’t see it that way.
And basically, I had to write it off as a loss. And it made me feel hideous. Because I have a good income now, being as truthful as I can be, I would have much rather burnt the house to the ground. So, she got nothing and burnt the rest of my savings and just continued with my income because the thought of her benefiting from me and not really doing anything other than having her own ideas about what the relationship was meant to be, even though she worked in a bar, made me not even want to be in Thailand anymore. So, I had to leave.
The only thing I could hold on to was the fact that I did have my income. I get about £3,000 a month. I still have the rest of my savings, but I don’t have enough to buy my own place. And again, Thailand is to blame because if you could have provided a condo the same size as a house, I’d have bought that instead. I don’t want to live in a damn shoebox. But that’s beside the point.
Leaving Thailand for Good
Eventually, I moved, leaving Thailand for good. And like many guys, I headed next to Cambodia because it was the next step from Thailand that was similar to Thailand that was the same price as Thailand, if not even cheaper, and it was the next best thing. I don’t think the same way about the bars anymore because I’ve had a lot of experience with girls in bars that made me understand what they’re really like. I just dreamed they were different because that would have meant that there would be no fuss or stress in my life.
I will never get into a relationship again because you can’t trust people. You can’t trust anybody. I thought that if you could trust anybody, the person you could trust is the person you’ve taken away from the bar. But it doesn’t work like that. And I think that’s the whole purpose of my story and why I even wanted to share my story just to tell people. You might think to yourself, the idea of a girl working in a bar, spending years working in a bar and everything that went along with that might make you feel disgusting. But the flip side to that is there’s not going to be any stress or worry or anything that can go wrong because of what she did. So, I’m going to accept it anyway. Don’t do that. That’s who I was. That’s what I thought and that was my life until I realized I lost all that money. Life’s good now because of my income, but it would have been even better if I still had my savings.
