Thailand Expat Dream and the Cost of Change
The Thailand expat dream has just about come to an end. It sends shivers down my spine to even have to say those words because I dedicated so many years to the country of Thailand, yet nothing of use has come of it.
I’ve been in relationships along the way. I’ve done some incredibly stupid things. I’ve lost money on a number of occasions to different girls that I met in different bars in both Bangkok and Pattaya. But I was always safe in the knowledge that Thailand would remain what Thailand was when I first arrived. How wrong I was.
I feel like I have to share my story because I’m starting to get even more angry at the amount of these liberal minded, left leaning idiots who are somehow deciding that Thailand is meant for them. This is just one of at least 50 reasons I have why if you’ve been considering moving to Thailand or retiring to Thailand you should do yourself a favor right now and not even bother.
The amount of time I’ve thought about this, the amount of time I’ve dedicated to coming up with my own opinions about what Thailand is actually like, I think I have the perfect analogy. I guess I’m no exception on that front. But I was still able to live in Thailand until I came to the conclusion that Thailand is basically the same as the girls that work in the bars. Thailand will sell itself short every single day of the week. And instead of saying twice on Sunday, I’m going to say twice every single day and then probably another thousand times after that as well. Just as the girls in the bars seem to have no self respect well, I think you know what I’m trying to say.
If you’re from the West like me, we couldn’t have what we had in our own countries anymore. So that’s why we went to Thailand. It seems to be though that Thailand seems to value money over and above anything else. And it’s got to the point where Thailand isn’t even worth it anymore with the prices that you have to pay for certain things that you might want to do.
What Attracted Me to Thailand
What attracted me to Thailand was how affordable it was. The prices, the beautiful girls, the bars, and the fact that there seemed to be a very real disconnect between where I was from and the country of Thailand. So much so that you’re prepared to overlook every other nonsensical thing that you had to do in Thailand in order to stay there in the first place. The word that comes to mind is hypocrisy. Blatant hypocrisy.
Thailand had it so good. It was amazing. It was amazing because it was so much worse than where I was from in terms of many things, but better in the things that mattered the most. I was from England like many of the guys I hear stories about. I don’t know if it was because our country has fallen to such a level that so many people from England decide that we need to go and find an escape somewhere where we can still live with some form of self respect. At home, we can’t do that anymore, can we?
I will get to everything that happened to me. And while I did as I said make so many stupid mistakes, so many stupid decisions along the way, the decisions I made and the money I lost doing what I did was only marginal in comparison to what I had. But now if you were to do the same things, the amount of money you would have to lose to do it while at the same time having to share, and I suppose I have to be very delicate here while you have to share the sort of thing that before you might have to share with someone from your own country, now you have to share with somebody from a country who when I went to Thailand at first didn’t even go there.
When people from tourist destinations start to become tourists. Now, I have no problem with this, but I have a problem with my own country for letting it happen in the first place because we had the power to stop it, but we didn’t. We let it happen. And because of that, I suppose we deserve everything that’s coming our way.
Moving to Thailand 1993
I moved to Thailand originally in the 1990s 1993 to be precise and it was like a completely different world to what it is today. To say it was better is simply stating the obvious. It was so much better in every single way. First, to start off, we didn’t have the internet everywhere. Thailand was still a magical, mysterious destination that many people didn’t go to. And my country still held some weight in the world, which meant that you could go there and have such a different time than you can today. The world was so much bigger back then.
And while I expected things to remain similar throughout the years, I did expect some form of change. I honestly believe that there has been a deliberate and malicious attack on the West that’s been going on for the better part of the last 30 to 40 years. There seems to be some kind of cabal again, this is just my opinion who is doing everything to try to ruin the West at the expense of its peoples, its values, and its culture.
When I moved to Thailand, I didn’t hold such strong opinions about where I was from, but I just fell in love with the country of Thailand. I had no plans to live there when I went for a visit. I had no plans to do that at all, and I have to say that. But when I actually went for that visit, I was 40 years old. I was working. I was doing well for myself. But as soon as I touched down in Thailand, it felt like I didn’t even need to work anymore because what I had, based on how things were at the time, was more than enough for me to be able to live in Thailand off a few investments.
I actually visited a year prior to 1993, and that’s when I came to the conclusion that Thailand was such a good place. They didn’t have the BTS Skytrain, didn’t have as many high rise buildings, and a beer in downtown Bangkok was so cheap, it might as well have been free. The people in Thailand, who throughout time have remained incredibly friendly and nice and I have nothing against the people there but they were so happy with so much less. And there weren’t as many ways for people to see how we had things in the West, and in turn want what we had in the West, yet at the same time not value people from the West. It’s like they wanted their cake, they wanted to eat their cake, and the moment somebody wanted even a small sliver of their cake, they didn’t want to share it.
The World Before Thailand Changed
It seems like globalization and internationalization have done nothing for the benefit of the West and only something for the benefit of everywhere else in the world who want what the West has to give yet who don’t want to give anything back to the West in terms of a mutual understanding of what their own country is meant to be.
My first visit I spent most of my time in Bangkok. It was like a Eureka moment in my life. This is what being from the West is meant to be about. This is what we in the West have sacrificed so much for. This is what life is meant to be. Again, I apologize for going off on a tangent, but to witness your own country going so far away from what it was meant to be, while at the same time witnessing the country that you escaped to again going so far away from what it was meant to be it really does destroy everything that you hold dear.
What I’m trying to say is that both countries have gone in the exact opposite directions to how I wish they would have gone. The exact opposite. England has gone the wrong way, and Thailand has gone the exact wrong way. You wouldn’t have thought that would have been the case back in the early 1990s.
Discovering Pattaya
When I was visiting in 1992 in Bangkok, I spent all that time in those amazing bars. Beers as cheap as anything. Girls innocent of the ways of the Western world. There was such a lack of greed and desire over and above what was available in their own country at the time. But it was when I went to Pattaya a city I fell in love with even more than Bangkok it was everything a guy from the West like me who still valued the West as being the pinnacle of civilization could want. Everything I could want.
1993, I moved there with about a million pounds. Most of which, I will admit, came from my family, but about 30% of it was from me working hard ever since I left school at the age of 16. I decided that I wanted to live in Pattaya, which was nothing like it is today. And it was my intention to just live, just exist in a place that was everything I wanted.
It’s not like the exchange rate was brilliant back then. If I recall, it was just under 40 baht to the pound, but things were so cheap that it didn’t really matter. If I recall again it was a long time ago now but I was paying about a pound for a small beer. The place I rented was £150 a month, and the landscape was so different. There were very, very few high rise condominium buildings. Walking Street wasn’t like it is today. I suppose Walking Street got better before it got far, far worse over the years.
And when I moved there, after being there for 3 months, at this point I was just going in and out of the country on tourist visas without concern because they didn’t care. I always believed that if you’ve been doing something and they change the rules, you should be allowed to continue doing that. Only new people shouldn’t be allowed to come. But no, they didn’t do that. But that didn’t affect me. So I suppose it’s not important.
First Marriage
It was actually around this time that I met this incredibly stunning Thai girl in one of the bars. It was so different. You didn’t walk into a bar and all the girls were staring at their smartphones. They had no idea what things were like where I was from. Now a simple Google or a simple YouTube search they can see what the ways of the world are and in turn they want them as well.
Now you have to bear in mind that all I wanted was what England could give me. So in turn, I thought that all somebody in Thailand would want was what Thailand could give them. I wasn’t necessarily meaning that I felt like I was superior to anybody. That’s definitely not the case here. What I’m trying to say is that England offered me something because I was English. I thought that was the same way that people felt from countries where they were from. And at the time, that’s all they could feel because that’s all they knew. It didn’t feel anywhere near as transactional. It felt more open. It felt more fun. And it also felt a lot more in your face and rough around the edges which is the thing that attracted me the most.
This girl I met was 22 years old. And again, it was a different ball game then than it is today. I wanted to go and get something to eat with her, and I think the bar fine I paid was 100 baht. Of course, things go up in price over time, but now they’ve gone up beyond what makes sense based on where we are. From there, I just found myself falling for this girl the more I stayed with her. She was from Sisaket Province in northeastern Thailand a place known as Isan.
And after we’d been together for approximately 6 months, I decided that I wanted to get married to her. I don’t know if it was love in the true sense, but I was thinking mainly this could be great because I could get a marriage visa which would allow me to stay in the country without having to jump through hoops. We got married in a ceremony up in her province, and I guess there were still the same traditions that they have today, but back then they seemed to be so much more important than they are today.
A Thai Wedding and a New Life
Sin sod which is a dowry that guys have to pay to the family was expected from me, but the amount was so marginal that it didn’t matter. I think it was the equivalent of about £1,000 that they wanted, and when they saw that money, it was like the most money they’d ever seen. Today I hear figures bandied about of a million baht that some guys are paying for girls that work in bars, and it’s like these guys are the problem with Thailand. These guys have ruined Thailand because they don’t know how crazy they are for paying such obscene figures.
The ceremony itself was really entertaining. I did respect Thai culture considerably. I thought Thai culture was great. I loved Thailand. I’m not saying anything negative against the country of Thailand here. But it was because I had that love of Thailand in the way that they did things that I expected that they would do things their way continuously. But what I found over the years was they still want to do things their way, but they want all the Western benefits that go along with that. Yet, in my opinion, if you want the Western benefits that go along with everything, then surely you have to give some extra respect or special requirements to people from the West. Again, the cake and eat it sort of thing. But that’s what I’m mainly trying to say.
I loved the way they did things in Thailand. I loved the family side of things. I loved everything about it. But they weren’t carrying around iPhones. Most of them weren’t flying around on airplanes or driving cars. I mean, lots of people did, but not as many as today. And now that I was married, I did manage to get my marriage extension. And I believe at the time I only had to put 200,000 baht in the bank instead of 400,000. Not that I would have had any issue doing the 400.
I spent most of my time with her just going out to the bars, going out to eat, and just living what I considered to be the sort of life that someone like me should be able to live.
The First Wife’s Betrayal
After about, I guess, 18 months of being in this position having the time of my life, spending less money than I’m getting in from my investments while doing every single thing that I want to do every single day my wife fell pregnant. I’d never had kids before, so this was going to be something new for both of us. At least that’s what I thought. And when we found out that she was pregnant, we decided that we needed to cut back a bit on our daily activities and start thinking about the future a bit more.
It was actually my wife’s idea to go up and live in her village for the time being. Maybe we could build ourselves a house there, live a good life, and every two or three months we could go away for a week to different parts of the country. We went up and looked into how much it would cost to get a reasonable house built. And at the time, it was so much more affordable than it is today. I think it was going to cost me about £20,000 for a three bedroom place. It wouldn’t be luxury, but it would be a decent place to live. It would be a base in the countryside in her village, and I was quite happy to go ahead with this. Aside from that, I also bought a car for the first time in Thailand because up there it was a lot more difficult to get around.
Back then, it was very, very different. Lots of the roads around where we were building the house were still dirt tracks. 7 Eleven didn’t go that far, and the electric supply was nowhere near as stable as it is today.
Now, when I say Thailand was better before, those bits of Thailand perhaps weren’t as good as they are today, but they were small prices to pay for living in such a cheap place where people were still not aware of how things happened in the rest of the world. I would go back in time any day of the week. If it meant I had to drive on dirt tracks and the electric went off regularly, I would go back for that because everything else was so much better.
A Marriage Ends in Betrayal
We started building this house, and we were living about half an hour away in the city when this was going ahead. And unfortunately, we found out that my wife had a miscarriage, and we were both very devastated by that. We continued to push ahead with the house, thinking that we would try again for another child. And just about when the house was ready, she hadn’t yet fallen pregnant. What I found out, though, was that she’d been hiding a child from me that I knew nothing about. When I met her, she said she’d never had a serious relationship before. She shared she’d never had kids. And the child that was meant to be her sister’s child that I saw when we got married was actually hers.
What came next was quick and a swift divorce. All in in that sense, I lost about £40,000 to her. But the idea of her having a child with somebody else was something that I wasn’t prepared to accept. I still don’t understand that. I actually would go as far as saying it should be illegal unless the old partner has passed away. But if a woman has a child with somebody else, she shouldn’t be allowed to get married again because it’s completely degrading for the male party. It’s humiliating. And that was where I drew the line as far as I was concerned in terms of our marriage.
She could have lied about lots of things and I’d have been angry and just got over it. But you can’t lie about something like that. You cannot lie about that. When I see guys in Thailand some guys that I actually respect in serious relationships with girls who have kids with other guys, I just shake my head in despair. How can you think that that is remotely acceptable? I don’t know. I guess I’m just old fashioned that way. Or it is what it is.
So, that was our marriage out of the way. Marriage one: £40,000 loss. No big deal because a lot of that money came from my income that I got from my investments. So, it wasn’t coming out of my principal. And back down in Pattaya, I started my old lifestyle again going out, enjoying myself, and having casual relationships until the time came when I might see someone who I wanted to take things further with.
I guess this takes us to about the end of 1995. You’ll have to forgive me if the dates don’t line up properly. I could be out by a few years. Not about to sit down and calculate exactly when all this happened because it’s not that important. But I’d say we were at the end of 1995.
Back to the Single Life
I spent a few months in Pattaya after that, and I was a bit disappointed about what had happened with my ex wife. I’d have to go back onto tourist visas again. That wasn’t as much of an issue. I decided to go and spend some time in Bangkok for a change of scenery. I moved to a place along Sukhumvit Soi 4 which was great, and that became my favorite part of the city. I used to also really love it around Patpong, but by the time I left Thailand decades later, that place was a shadow of what it used to be.
And I used to really envy the guys who basically owned that whole street. Wasn’t it the case that the original family member that purchased it was from China or something and it was just basically farmland on the outskirts of the city? Talk about being in the right place at the right time and having the most fortuitous run of events that could ever come your way to get to the point where all of a sudden you’re a multi millionaire because your great great grandfather bought some farmland. I did envy them.
As far as I was concerned, that land should have belonged to me, but it didn’t. And I went along with it. But Patpong back then was far better than today. I think today it’s dreadful. Well, I mean, I haven’t been there since I left Thailand. But it’s not on how it was allowed to change from being great to being so bad. But I kept up a similar routine, just enjoying myself all throughout the next year up until, I would say, the start of 1997.
Second Marriage
That’s when I met another girl who, as coincidence would have it, was also from Sisaket Province. I don’t know what it was why I seemed to be attracted to girls from there. The one thing that I knew though was I was certain that I wasn’t going to be building another house. I mean, I was certain at the time, but things can change as they often do. But I wasn’t expecting them to. I got quite serious with her quite quickly. I don’t know what it is when you decide to go from a casual relationship to something more serious, but I only have had that feeling with a few girls along the way, and she was most definitely one of them.
The exchange rate was starting to get a bit better around this time as well. Starting to get over 40 baht to the pound, which felt great. Again, everything’s going in my favor in this regard. Everything is getting better for somebody from the UK in Thailand because the pound’s getting stronger or should we say that the baht was getting weaker. I loved it when the baht got weaker. Regardless of the emotional turmoil that it had on anybody else, I didn’t care. The weaker baht, the more I had.
When they floated the baht in July 1997 and all of a sudden we were getting 10 baht extra for every single pound, again, I was so excited because things were all of a sudden 20% cheaper overnight. And then we had the Asian financial crisis. The Asian financial crisis was the best thing that has ever happened during my lifetime, bar none. By January 1998, we were getting 80 baht to the pound. Things obviously were slightly put up in price, but at this point I was paying a pound for a beer a few years ago. Now I was paying 50 pence. Now it was like this amazing playground that had just got a huge discount. And I guess this filled my head with a sense of confirmation bias about the opinions that I already held so dear.
It was because of this the huge devaluation of the baht that I was actually okay with building another house up in my girlfriend’s (soon to be wife’s) village because we were engaged, about to be married. Because it was going to cost such a marginal amount of money, I didn’t even miss it. We got married again. It helped with the visa situation, which was one of the most important things to me, and I spent a bit more money this time. But what we ended up with was something so much more substantial than my last house that I built. And I think it was about £30,000. Another car because the last one belonged to my old wife but this time I purchased it in my own name.
After the Asian Financial Crisis
And sorry to skip ahead a bit, but ever since that day I mean those few months when things started to get worse for the pound every single news event that has come out in Thailand, every single thing that has happened, all I’ve ever waited for is some catastrophe to befall the country so that the baht would plummet in value. What I waited for never came.
One thing that I also found great about Thailand was that they manufactured so many things in the country. It wasn’t like they imported a lot. So certain items didn’t need to be increased because everything came from within the country. So they were able to do it within their own currency. That was one of the best things about Thailand. Things just became so much cheaper. And while there was price gouging by people, I suppose that was to be expected it didn’t make much difference, at least initially.
But now I’m living with my new wife in her village again. We’ve got a very big house, and I’m far, far richer than I was before for not having to do anything. And I thought that was warranted because of how the world should work in my own mind.
The Second Wife’s Betrayal
I spent the next 3 years living up there, which took us to the year 2000. I was going away by myself every 2 months for 2 weeks at a time. My wife went with me originally, but after a while she decided that she preferred to stay in the village because I’d given her about £10,000 to start a business that she wanted to do, and she was quite serious about it. I felt this was the best way to live at the time. 6 weeks up in the village kind of resting and recuperating, and 2 weeks going absolutely mental from Bangkok to Pattaya and any other place that took my fancy.
I also at this point started visiting other countries. I went to Cambodia for the first time, and back then it was something else altogether. I went to Vietnam, and that was different to today, and I would maybe go as far as saying that Vietnam has improved but I will get to that later. We also went to the Philippines as well, and I liked quite a lot of things about the Philippines at the time, but I felt Thailand had the best things and the Philippines sort of lagged behind a bit.
If I could change anything I did, I probably would have gone to the Philippines around this time and lived there permanently instead because I feel like while the Philippines has gone up in price like Thailand has, lots of bits about the Philippines are still years behind Thailand. Thailand seems to have increased in levels of development far beyond what the Philippines has. So that was one of my biggest life regrets not seeing the writing on the wall.
It was around the year 2000. I think it was closer to 2001 actually, but I can’t remember exactly. I returned from one of my two week trips a little bit earlier than planned. I didn’t carry around a mobile phone or anything, and it was so much better. So much better not being contactable at every single second of the day or night. I know you can turn your phone off if you want to, but it’s not the same. The very fact that it’s there means it’s difficult to do that.
So, I just showed up about 5 days earlier than expected to our house, and my wife was there with this other guy, and that was the end of the marriage. We got divorced, and I actually had to give her some money to get divorced, which was annoying, and that was about £5,000. So, that relationship probably all in I lost £50,000 on it, including the house and everything.
And you’d have thought I’d have learned my lesson given that I’m approaching about £80,000 lost in total now. But I’m not very good at learning my lesson, I don’t think.
Buying a Condo in Pattaya
And in 2001, I didn’t have a marriage extension anymore, and I went back to tourist visas. Before I was getting these in different countries, but I wasn’t doing anything in these countries when I was there other than getting the visas. Now, for the time exploring these countries, I decided to spend a few months out of Thailand. But I quickly missed it. And by the end of 2001, I was living permanently back in Thailand back down in Pattaya.
And I’m already noticing some uncomfortable changes happening in the city. But they were changes that I felt were normal with the passage of time. These were normal changes that I was happy to accept. I was happy to go along with them. For example, if you get married to your wife when she’s 25, she changes gradually until she’s 35 in terms of appearance, for example. But these are gradual, normal changes.
Now, I liken the changes today that happened in Thailand after this was like you married your wife when she was 25, and by the time she was 35, she somehow changed into a ladyboy instead of being a lady. And “ladyboy” is not an offensive term in Thailand, by the way. So don’t think it is. But that’s basically what I’m trying to say here.
I wasn’t aware of what was to come. So, I actually bought a place to live in Pattaya at the time for myself. It was a brand new condo that had just gone up, and I snapped up a unit for about a million baht. It was only small, but it was just somewhere to use as a base, and I had a year going completely wild again.
The Love of My Life
I can’t remember when it was, but around this time, I met another girl that I wanted to get serious with. I wanted to get married to her after I knew her for about 3 months, but I had some stipulations. For a start, I’m not going to go up to your village to get married there. I’m not going to be paying any money to the family. And I’m not going to be building a house. Those are my steadfast rules, and I wasn’t going to break them.
She was probably the love of my life. She was 20 when we met. I was getting older not quite yet 50 but the way she acted around me, everything about her was perfect. She wasn’t greedy. She didn’t over want. She didn’t show like she needed things that she didn’t need. She was just happy to be taken care of. That’s the only truth.
We got married. I got back into a marriage extension, and life went by brilliantly. We were living in my small condo in Pattaya. And when I went away for a few weeks at a time, I was taking her with me which I wouldn’t have wanted to do with both my ex wives after I’d taken them occasionally. I took her all over Southeast Asia. I felt like I broadened her horizons in a way. And I also felt in terms of how things worked that because I was Western if I marry someone, then again, respected by association she was with me. Therefore, the opinions that I had would also mean that my wife should be respected in the same way because she was with me.
This marriage lasted all the way up until 2006 the best 5 years of my life. I’m so happy. And also, I need to state that everything that I’ve said so far in terms of how I think and feel I held none of these opinions back then. Okay, that’s a lie. I still at the time believed that the Asian financial crisis was the best thing to ever happen because it was. I’m talking in terms of me personally because that’s what my life was about.
Grief and the Years That Followed
But everything else in terms of how things went wrong, how my own country has fallen I mean, I always thought my country had fallen, but I didn’t realize it would go to such lows as today. Everything my opinions got stronger and stronger as everything just got worse and worse in terms of what it was meant to be to be from the West. So, I’m not as bitter or as angry as I became at least then. I’m happy. In fact, I’m really happy even though I’ve lost close to £100,000 nearly at this point to two failed marriages that I can survive. I can exist. It hasn’t caused me any hardship. So, I think I needed to get that out of the way.
But it was in August 2006 that my wife the love of my life died. She was visiting her family, bitten by a mosquito dengue fever dead. One of the worst things that ever happened in my life. And I went into a depression that lasted all the way to 2008. I was drinking heavily every day. Well, I used to go out often and go to the bars all the time. I always paced myself. I didn’t overdrink. I might have had a few beers and then either a Coke or a water. I didn’t drink excessively because that just wasn’t in my nature. But after my wife died, I did go into a huge depression, and 2 years of spending so much money. Even at the time, you could still get beers for less than a pound. I went through about £40,000 on every single thing that Pattaya had to offer. Gone.
I spent £40,000 across two years in Pattaya from 2006 approximately I would say to the end of 2008, probably longer than 2 years. But for that £40,000, I was out every single day in the bars, drinking heavily every single day, eating out every single day, and having casual relationships as often as I wanted a casual relationship. That was Thailand at that point in time. £40,000 two years going wild every single day of every single week, every single month. I must also say that that didn’t include other basic living expenses on top of that which I would have spent anyway. This was on top of water, electric, insurance, visa, and other bills that you had to pay.
Thailand was still Thailand back then. Thailand was still affordable. Thailand was still cheap. Thailand still offered you what you went to Thailand for.
The Financial Crisis Changes Everything
And then the global financial crisis hit, and Western currencies started to tank especially the pound. And I suppose it served me right for celebrating the Asian financial crisis so much. Of course, to me it was different because it was from the end of 2008. That’s when I noticed Thailand’s steady decline. It started off steady, and then it increased rapidly. But I was always expecting things to change back to how they were meant to be. I thought it was just a moment of madness a moment when things shifted at least 100% in the wrong direction. And it really did feel like it was only a matter of time before things went back to some kind of equilibrium.
It was because of the devaluation of the pound that I managed to pull myself out of that depression after my wife died. And it was quite shocking to witness. I kind of expected I mean, I still held firm beliefs about my own country, about how it valued its people, its own citizens. I still thought that they would step in and understand that something like this happening wasn’t good for our country or people. I was still a proud Englishman through and through in England’s green and pleasant land, as they say. I should point out that I’m proud to be English. I mean, I was. And I respect people from America, for example, who are proud to be American. Germany, who are proud to be German. I think we’re all from the same ilk, if you will.
So, by the end of 2008, getting around 50 baht to the pound, it almost feels like some kind of sick joke. Because not only is this happening, I’m noticing that things in Thailand that were meant to be cheap things that you went to Thailand for because they were cheap they’re starting to creep up in price ever so marginally to start with. But it was as if the tide had turned. It was as if there was some puppet master from above controlling the world whose sole purpose was to ruin it for the very people who built it. That’s how it was starting to feel.
But again, I was thinking actually I was expecting equilibrium to come back before it was too late. What I didn’t expect was the huge influx of people from lots of different countries starting to go to Thailand who hadn’t been before and witnessed what it was like. They hadn’t seen how cheap things used to be. And they’re going in with a completely different worldview, a completely different mindset to Thailand. And I feel like Thailand was taking advantage of that fact.
The Cost of a Changing Thailand
What I would have done is understand that there were so many people who had helped Thailand throughout the past decades. But it was as if Thailand was okay to just throw them all under the bus in search of the mighty baht. And I still struggle to understand how this was acceptable to anybody, really, because that’s not how the world was meant to work.
But it didn’t. And I was starting to really not like Pattaya at all all the way back around 2013. Bangkok as well. In fact, Bangkok was far worse than Pattaya was in terms of price gouging. And then you noticed the disgusting practice at many restaurants the “plus plus” on the end of bills that never used to happen in Thailand. That wasn’t a Thailand thing. And now they’re adding 10% service charge and 7% VAT on something that’s already priced more than it should be based on where you were.
You might think, well, things go up in price. But at this point, you could go and have a basic Thai meal for 30 baht. If you calculated how much pork there was in that, for example, maybe the equivalent of one pork steak. So why was the pork steak in a Western restaurant 300 baht? It should have been 100. And again, it’s not about affordability. It’s about the very picture of Thailand held by so many people. It was ruinous to many guys that I knew who were living there on small budgets. I knew guys who were teachers earning 30,000 a month who went out every single day to drink because they could afford it. Now they’re struggling to even exist on basic Thai food that they didn’t go to Thailand for in the first place.
People say, “Move with the times.” People say things change, okay? If things change, then we should be able to go back in time, remove every single Western benefit that Thailand had ever taken advantage of, and then you can do it your way. But surely you should compromise to some extent to the benefit of the people who have been there from the very beginning. I hope I am coming across clearly because I know so many people who feel as strongly as I do, but they’re not as prepared to share their opinions. So, it really is a difficult one the more you think about it.
Moving to Udon Thani
It was because of how things were changing so considerably all the way back in 2013 that when I met a girl that I started to get serious with, I decided to completely leave Pattaya and Bangkok and go and move up to Udon Thani where she was from. And while I said I would never build a house again, I did in her village. And this time it cost me £80,000. And I gave her some money for a business that she wanted to do because she wanted to keep herself occupied, and I was okay with it. So all in, it was about £100,000 into that relationship.
Instead of going away as often as I used to do, I’m spending a lot more time there because I still see the Thailand that I loved and the Thailand that I moved to at places like that. That’s why I think many guys move to rural Thailand especially guys that have been in Thailand for such a long time because they see more of what they loved about Thailand there than they do in places like Bangkok and Pattaya, which are basically changing so considerably in terms of absolutely everything that they’re struggling mentally to come to terms with how bad it’s become.
We do go away from time to time, though. We do go away together. But everywhere we go, something has become worse. Something has changed. And every time one of my favorite places has been removed, something else takes its place, and everything’s 50% more expensive than it used to be. It’s not like you’re getting better quality. It’s not like you’re getting better service. Things are just considerably more expensive both in terms of the currency in Thailand and the fact that you’ve lost so much in the devaluation of your own currency. You get to the point where you don’t even recognize what you fell in love with about the country because all these rapid changes are happening.
And the changes aren’t benefiting the people who were there to help out with all the people working in all those industries for all those decades before. What’s going to happen to all these people who have committed sometimes decades of their lives to the country, sometimes all their money to the country, sometimes their ability to earn more money in their own country and everything? So many people have committed so much, yet they got nothing. They get nothing in return.
The Visa Insanity
And by 2017, I got to the point where I didn’t leave the village for an entire year apart from to go to immigration to extend my marriage visa. The insanely offensive visa restrictions placed on foreigners in Thailand. It takes me back to the cake and eat it scenario yet again. I just don’t get it. Well, I have no issue with having to do a visa to live in a country. There should come a point when you’ve spent a certain amount of time in a country that you can just stay there. Okay? You don’t have to give me citizenship. You don’t have to give me the right to own land. You don’t have to give me pretty much anything. Just don’t make me renew my visa every year and have to queue with people who have been there for 6 months and do the stupid 90 day report all the time.
I was okay with doing those things in the early days because it was one of those things that you had to do to have the advantage of being somewhere so amazing. Now things are changing so considerably. Things are getting so much worse I mean so much worse if you didn’t experience it, it’s difficult to even picture. But you’re still making me do these incredibly degrading things while you’ve made your own country a thousand times worse than it was. It makes you understand that everything that you held dear was for nothing at all.
So during 2017, I spent all my time in the village, not really doing anything apart from existing, starting to get more angry about everything that’s happening. And again, it’s not about my inability to pay for everything. At this point, my investments have grown considerably in value, and my income is quite considerable. But in my mind, it was about value. Thailand no longer offered value for all the hoops you had to jump through to be there anymore. And this was all the way back in 2017. The writing was on the wall all that time ago, and many guys are only just starting to say these types of things now. I know what it was like for decades, and because of that, that makes the whole thing so much worse.
A Last Look at Pattaya and Bangkok
In 2018, I did decide that I needed a bit of time away. So I went down to Pattaya. And while I could recognize absolutely everything in terms of the streets, the road signs, lots of the bars I couldn’t recognize anything else in terms of the attitude of the girls, the prices, the expectations, the greed, the greed, the greed, the greed, the greed. And I’ll say it again the downright greed. I lasted a week there before going to Bangkok, and things there were even worse.
But I could still stay in the same hotel I stayed in 20 years ago. Now it was 860 baht instead of 800 baht. What was wrong with that? Nothing at all. That’s how things should have changed. I put that down to the fact though that there were so many new hotels showing up that they weren’t able to raise their prices. But I could still do that. I could still go and have a plate of street food for 50 baht instead of 35 baht. So that was marginal. I could still go to buy a bottle of Coke from 7 Eleven that was only maybe two baht more expensive than it used to be. Yet a beer in a bar was nearly three times the price of what I used to pay if you worked out what your currency was in the expense.
One of my favorite restaurants that I used to go to that served Western food I was now spending 1,000 baht for a meal and two beers. One meal and two beers. And while that might not sound like a lot of money to many people and it’s not a lot of money it’s a lot for Thailand because those are not Thailand prices. So, I only lasted 3 days in Bangkok before driving back up to the village.
And I said to my wife, “What’s happening to Thailand?” Now, we’re in a situation where in the village, every single person seems to have a car or pickup. That’s actually a bit of an exaggeration, but when I built that first house all those years ago, nobody in the village had a car or pickup. Maybe one or two people out of hundreds and hundreds. Now, I would say 70% of people had a pickup. Well, that’s great for everybody else. It’s not great for people who had those things originally, is it? Everybody seems to want more than they used to want. And I don’t. All I want is what I had before. And I can still have what I had before, but it’s not worth it anymore based on the fact that everybody else can have it too. And the fact that it’s so expensive now, it feels like you’re being robbed.
Well, you could still live very affordably if you wanted to. The moment you wanted anything more than normally, it felt like you were being robbed.
Leaving Thailand for Good
It was at the end of 2018 when I’d had enough of Thailand altogether. I couldn’t take it anymore. It got to the point and after I’d seen lots of videos about what Thailand is today even then, it got to the point where I knew it wasn’t going to go back to where it should be. It wasn’t going to go back to an equilibrium. The equilibrium was going to change to a point I didn’t recognize anymore. But seeing what it’s like today through videos, I am so thankful that I made the decision to leave Thailand at the end of 2018 because I find it depressing to see what’s been allowed to happen to that once great place.
It was a paradise. It was everything a country should have been. You had to do many things to be able to stay there that involved jumping through hoops that you shouldn’t have had to do, but it was worth doing for what you got in return. Thailand was the best country in the world up until I would say 2008. The fact that the West somehow let these dreadful things happen, the West somehow didn’t value itself enough to maintain the status quo where it should have done, and things were allowed to happen that shouldn’t have been allowed to happen.
I don’t have any problem with anybody from any country in the world. My anger is directed solely towards my country and other countries in the West for allowing this to happen in the first place. While Thailand does hold some blame in this for not respecting the decades of service that many guys like me put into the country in the understanding that at the very least we should be allowed our version of Thailand till our last days.
Dual pricing is something that I hated so much in Thailand. It’s not acceptable to charge two prices for two people. But because Thailand was willing to do that and is still willing today to engage in the practice of dual pricing, the best way to solve Thailand’s problem would be to make dual pricing a real thing in tourist locations around the country. If you can show that you were in Thailand prior to 2008, at any point in time, you get one price. If not, you don’t. There should be something in place somewhere so that the people who were there originally get some kind of marginal benefit to maintain Thailand in a way that it was meant to be.
The fact that Thailand is no longer cheap is a travesty. It’s criminal. And I have firm belief that the best thing to do for Thailand would be to set certain types of pricing for certain locations and certain activities. There should be maximum prices charged for certain people based on what they used to pay in the past. I’m not talking about inflation. Inflation is one thing, and prices can go up with inflation. But prices should not go up considerably over and above inflation. That is unacceptable. But this has happened to Thailand to such an extreme in the places that I wanted to be. It’s almost perverse.
The Cost of Saying Goodbye
Leaving Thailand was the best thing that I ever did. But when I moved to Thailand, that was also the best thing I ever did. So that should tell you all you need to know about the country. It has so much going for it. The people themselves are the friendliest people you will ever have the chance of meeting. The culture is great. The family side of things is great. So much about Thailand is fantastic. Yet, there is that sliver of Thailand that people loved so much that is changing more than everything else in Thailand is changing.
I still don’t know if I’ve got my points across properly. But to sum it up in the easiest way I possibly can: why is it that the things I loved about Thailand have gone up in price more than absolutely everything else in Thailand? The only things that have gone up so obscenely in price are the things that I loved the most. How is that acceptable?
When I left Thailand, my wife didn’t want to go with me, so we divorced. I guess I lost all in all around £250,000 in all my relationships because I was stupid. That’s on me.
Life After Thailand
I went to spend time in Vietnam. Everything is considerably cheaper there. Basically, Thailand prices from years ago are now available in Vietnam, but everything else about the place I didn’t really like. I was stuck there throughout the whole of the COVID lockdowns. And if Vietnam can comprise things accordingly and correctly, why can’t Thailand? When COVID came to an end, I didn’t even know where I wanted to be. I hadn’t been back to my own country since 1993. And I had no intention of going back because what it’s become as I’ve already said is a shadow of itself. And it’s depressing to understand that there are people in the country who actually look at what’s happened in England and think it’s a good thing. Wages haven’t kept up with inflation. Nothing good has happened in England. Something good happened in terms of Brexit, and it wasn’t done properly. Nothing was done properly, and it was ripped away from us.
After Vietnam, like I said, I had no idea where I wanted to be. There was nothing that I recognized anywhere in the world anymore. From what it was like in the ’90s when I came to the decision that England gave me the ability to live anywhere I wanted in Asia, the way I wanted to live I could be the person I wanted to be. I wasn’t able to do that anymore.
I did spend 2 months in the Philippines. As I said, I wished I’d done that. I wished I’d moved to the Philippines instead of Thailand because it’s still 10 years behind in many aspects, but it just wasn’t as good as Thailand in the ways that mattered most.
From there, I did something that I’d always thought about doing, but I never did because I actually thought it was ridiculous. I went to Malaysia not to live but I went to learn to sail because I decided I was going to live on a sailboat. I bought a sailboat in Langkawi in 2023, and now I just sail about living on my boat. It cost me £40,000. I don’t think it was an expensive one. And I still have a great income, but I can’t recognize the world. The world as I knew it has become irrevocably destroyed. There’s no two ways about it. It has. And the only people to blame are the Western politicians for allowing it to happen.
Don’t move to Thailand. I repeat do not move to Thailand. You will be sorely disappointed. Unless you’re prepared to pay over the odds for things, then you might like it.
