The Trip To Thailand That Changed Everything

I feel like the world’s biggest idiot after everything that happened to me. It’s not only that I feel like an idiot, it’s just that I thought there was no chance that what I was doing would have had such a detrimental effect on my ability to live the life I’d always hoped to live. Things didn’t start that way, though, did they? I think that’s the saddest thing of all.

It’s not like when we do these things, we expect everything to go wrong and to lose everything. We expect our lives to be made better because of the decisions we made, not worse. And look at me trying to justify myself before I have even told you what happened. If I don’t find any justification in what I did, then there’s hardly any point continuing anymore, and I might as well be as frank as I can be.

Sometimes I feel like I might as well not have even been born after everything that happened, because my life was just one long drawn out struggle after the other. I was born into a very poor family – a great family – but we were always the ones that people looked at and felt sorry for. And we would look at those who seemed to be getting on in life and wondered what it must feel like to not have any worry about where your next meal came from.

Okay, things weren’t that bad all the time. That was a very difficult patch that we went through. But for most of my childhood, I don’t remember having the time to go out and play with friends like many people I knew did. Because while they were going on their bikes, I didn’t have one. While they were going out to drink, when we got a bit older, I couldn’t afford it. And they really made me resent my situation, although I didn’t pin the blame on anybody for this.

I left school as soon as I could to start work. And when I left home, that was the first time I could take a step back and start thinking about the future as opposed to why the present felt so bad. I landed a job more by luck than management that allowed me to at least take care of myself and get the bills paid.

The thing I had going for me at the time was that even though I didn’t earn a lot of money, I was able to buy a house in my area for £3,500 – not understanding that it was this decision that would allow me to eventually semi-retire. Although we’re talking about many, many decades into the future, my life just continued from there.

Early Life and Regret

Nothing remarkable happened. A few relationships, a marriage, a failed marriage, no kids. And by the time I was 50 – I’ve skipped quite a lot here, we’re talking about 30 whole years – I looked back on my life with a huge sense of regret because I hadn’t really done anything apart from just exist. It wasn’t like I was just existing, though. I saw other people who were existing who could do just that – exist. But for me, in order to exist, I had to grind. I had to work hard. And I was definitely no stranger to hard work. But it does take its toll on you after a while when it gets to the point that you’re just grinding away and you don’t feel like you’re putting anything away for an eventual point in the future when you can take a step back.

The Trip That Changed Everything

50 was a big year for me. I suppose it’s the same for everyone. But it was when I was 50 that a close friend of mine started talking about wanting to go to visit Thailand. I’d never spent much time thinking about countries so far away like Thailand before, but he said he’d heard lots of things about how fun it was. Lots of things about how it could make guys like us feel like we were more than we were. And after his incessant talking about Thailand for what felt like months on end, I agreed to go with him for 2 weeks.

It was those two weeks that would change my life. They would change my life considerably – to start with for the better – taking me to a point when I didn’t realize just how happy you could be. But the flip side was it took me so far away from that happiness and beneath any form of sadness that I’d experienced in my life up until then. Thailand pulled me up, told me what life was all about, but then it spat me out again on the other side – a former shadow of myself and a broken and hollow man.

We hear this all the time because it’s a real issue. And I bring it back to the point that it happens to guys like me who could never catch a break at home, who saw people above us catching breaks and living great lives. And this just wasn’t available to us. Thailand made what those people had at home available to us. And I think that’s why so many people end up in such tragic situations just like I did – because we feel that we’re finally at one with ourselves in a place where we recognize ourselves for who we know we are deep down.

Yet the whole thing is just a facade. It’s all fake. It’s heartbreaking. And I would hate anybody to go through what I went through after listening to my story, because if they do, there’s no excuse. So you have been warned.

First Impressions of Thailand

I turned 50 in the year 2009. I don’t know if anyone listening who is already over 50 had the same feeling as I had, but when I hit that age, it was like, what has all my life been for up until now? I kind of expected by that age I would already be taking a step back. I expected to be married with a family, but there I was, single, alone, and in need of some excitement.

I went together with my friend in December of that year to Thailand. That was when the high season was meant to be and when things were meant to be crazy and wild, busy and exciting – all the descriptive words you can imagine using to talk about the place. I was half hesitant when we boarded the plane. You know the feeling when you board at the front and you walk through the business class seating and see all those guys there, many in suits, many in expensive clothes, and you think that this for them is just normal – a normal everyday event flying halfway around the world. They could probably do it in their sleep, I thought. But for me, this was a life-changing experience.

Making our way to our seats at the back of the plane, and then it’s that sense of release when you take off, knowing that you’re going somewhere unlike anywhere you’ve been before. Expecting the worst in a way, but hoping for the best.

Hours later, the air hostess came around and gave us a little white card to fill out – the arrival card. I’d never filled in an arrival card before, and I even stood up from my seat and went to speak to another hostess to ask if I was doing it properly. I had visions that if I did it wrong, I’d be hauled off to an immigration detention center, still thinking that by going to Thailand, we were risking everything in case we accidentally got caught up doing something dreadful. Your mind really can play tricks on you.

Once you get to Thailand proper after you leave the airport, you’re greeted by something unlike anything you could even imagine. And the feelings you have range from sheer excitement, wonder, and intrigue to also having newfound feelings of abundance for a change – as opposed to living to your means.

The Feeling of Abundance

I need to explain that here because this is one of the most important things that made me love Thailand as much as I did when I got there. It’s because I always had the mindset of frugality, of being careful, making your money stretch as far as it could because things at home were expensive. Everything was more expensive at home. Yet when you get to Thailand, the same person who had left England and arrived in Thailand could actually have feelings of abundance for once.

I could look in my wallet if I wanted something and see enough money to be able to buy it or do it. And I was never able to do that at home. I’m trying to say here that I don’t even know if it was Thailand that I loved so much or if it was just the fact that I was able to do things that up until that point in my life I would have had no chance of being able to do.

Thailand gave me the ability to be the guys from home who got by without much care in the world. And all of a sudden, the thought of going back home and continuing on with that life were thoughts that terrified me. I wanted to be who I wanted to be. And that was the guy who had found himself in Thailand.

Leaving his hotel after checking in and having a shower, walking to experience exactly what Thailand nightlife had to offer with my friend by my side who had convinced me to go there in the first place. We felt like we were in our early 20s again – when life felt like it was there for the taking as opposed to being suffered through. I’d arrived in Thailand and it changed me.

Those first two weeks in Thailand went by all too fast. They were the best two weeks of my life up until that moment in time, and no other two weeks came ever close to comparing. That first night going crazy in Bangkok, preceding nights doing the same thing and finding and falling in love with the amazing city of Pattaya. I felt like I was amongst friends when I was there, and I owed my friend so much for convincing me to go in the first place.

He liked it equally as much as I did. And when we were leaving, we were both talking about feeling like we needed to be there and live there. And I was already thinking – after I’d spoken to a guy I met who told me he taught English, who said he wasn’t qualified to do that but he just wanted to stay in Thailand and that was what he was able to do – I was thinking I could do the same thing. Why not? All of a sudden, life had meaning.

Becoming an English Teacher

Getting back home, I immediately started researching teaching in Thailand. And you have to understand, for a guy like me who had never been that way inclined before, I was convinced that I didn’t need to be good at teaching. I didn’t need to be good at it at all because I was English and I spoke English. And from what everyone told me, that was all that mattered.

At the time, 2009, if you earned a salary as a teacher in Thailand, while it wasn’t a lot of money, it was still enough for you to live quite similar to how you would live on holiday because of the affordability difference. And it was a thought that I could actually do this that kept me going throughout the weeks and months that I was back, continuously researching. While my friend managed to put Thailand to the back of his mind and got on with life, six months after returning, I was flying back to Thailand with the hopes of being able to land a job as an English teacher.

I started to feel so out of place at home. I found a few places that would be able to help me get the right qualifications, and it really did appear that I would be able to find a job easily. I arrived in Thailand in 2010 with about £15,000 savings, 51 years old, and my house that I bought all those years ago that I rented out to give me some kind of income that I should be able to live on while I was looking for a job.

It was the scariest thing I’d ever done. I was doing something that I never thought I would do, but I just got it in me that I needed to do it. I wanted to do it, and there was no point holding back and convincing myself otherwise. If I did that, I would always regret not giving it a go. That’s what I told myself. If you don’t do this, you’re going to look back when you’re older and you’re going to regret it immensely that you didn’t even try.

Yet, what happened instead was the exact opposite of that. I would find out that I would regret making that decision because it was that decision that made my life so much more difficult and so much worse than I ever thought it would be. This time there is no end in sight or any hope of reprieve.

The Roulette Wheel

If I look back, I kind of think about it like I had got to the point in life when I needed a change. I mean I really did need a change. And it feels like I went to the casino with absolutely everything I had and I had to choose either red or black on the roulette wheel. If I chose right, I would have the best life ever and my wildest dreams would come true. Yet if I chose wrong, I would lose everything.

When the roulette wheel starts to spin, the little ball is placed in there. Time stands still for a second. All these hopes that you have as you’ve let your imagination run wild ever since you thought about doing this. It’s racing. Your heart’s beating a mile a minute. And then the roulette wheel slows and the ball starts to jump. But it doesn’t land on red or black. It lands on the green. Zero. But on this roulette wheel, that was worse than being wrong. That was being wrong knowing that you’re never going to have another chance ever again.

As soon as I touched down in Bangkok, I was electrified with hopes of the future. I’d already made contact with a few places that I wanted to actually look at on the ground, see if they were above board, and if what they said online was true. One place that I went to only 4 days after arriving seemed to be legit. They were going to help me get a certificate that would allow me to teach English, and if I passed, they would also help me to find a job.

I was hoping to work in Pattaya. That’s where I really wanted to be, but I was also open to working in Bangkok or another famous city. Thailand really was my oyster, and teaching English was going to be the thing that allowed me to stay there. I started doing this course which involved going back into the classroom for the first time in decades.

I felt a bit out of place because the other guys that were doing this course were younger than I was, but I didn’t mind. And at the time I thought I must be some kind of inspiration – because look at this guy here trying to change his life for the better and have another go of things. That’s how I felt.

The Job Offer in Khon Kaen

The course passed by, and at the same time as doing that I was enjoying the nightlife in Bangkok because I couldn’t not. My days during that month that the course happened were some of the best ever. Waking up early, go for a swim in the pool at the hotel I was staying at, go and get the breakfast buffet. I was splurging a bit for that first month. Then I’d head to the place around 8:00 a.m. Lunchtime I would speak to the other people that were there and learn what their stories were and the reason for them being there.

About 4 days before the course was due to end, I was already informed that I was going to pass and I’d done a great job. They came to me and said that there was a posting of a job available to start on the following Monday – working the day after my course ended. But the thing was, it wasn’t in Pattaya. It wasn’t in Bangkok. And it wasn’t in any of the other major tourist cities. It was in a city called Khon Kaen in a part of the country known as Isan.

It was going to be paid approximately 30,000 baht a month, and there was even accommodation provided on site if I wanted it. But I was told it wouldn’t be like I would expect, so I should probably find somewhere to rent for myself for only 4 or 5,000 baht.

Initially, I was hesitant about taking this position because I didn’t know anything about that city. I thought about hanging on for a bit and waiting for a job somewhere where I wanted to be, but I decided to just go for it and see where it took me. It was a very fateful decision, but at that time, one I took with an enormous amount of excitement. It was like what I planned had actually come true. I’d actually moved to Thailand. I’d actually completed a course that could see me getting a job to teach English. And not only that, I’d been offered a job and I’d accepted a job. And now I was going to be able to work in Thailand.

The funny thing was, though, they weren’t even going to give me a visa or work permit to work there. Yet it was at a government school. So, how do you make that one up? You can’t. But I guess it was just Thailand. One of those things that we love about Thailand are the little things like that.

Arriving in Khon Kaen

That weekend after the course had finished and after I had a fantastic blowout on the Friday around Bangkok, on the Saturday I made my way to the bus station, got a bus up to Khon Kaen to begin what I hoped would be the chapter of my life that I would enjoy the most. I really hoped it would. I banked everything on this. I put everything on it. And at that moment in time, life was brilliant.

That bus journey made me see more of Thailand in the nine or so hours that it took to get there than I’d seen throughout the month I’d been doing the course and the two weeks that I’d been on holiday before. When you get out of the big city, Thailand changes. Even back then, you could notice the changes immediately. I kind of felt as soon as you passed Rangsit and continued heading north, the surroundings change, the buildings change, and you went to what could only be described as being in Thailand proper.

When we made it to Khon Kaen on Saturday evening, I checked into a hotel in the middle of the city. I booked it for a week just so I could not commit to renting somewhere until I spent a week at the school and made sure it was like I thought it was going to be. I’d already spoken to the person at the school who was going to introduce me and help me when I got there on the Monday.

Being in Thailand, of course, I love the nightlife. That’s one of the things that appealed to me more than anything. But I didn’t expect there to be any kind of nightlife in Khon Kaen that was targeted to foreigners. But because the city was not that big – I mean, it was big, but you could see all of it if you spent a good hour just walking around – that’s exactly what I did. When I left the hotel and just walked and walked, I didn’t see any other foreigners, and I was loving that feeling. It was like I had found a special code to Thailand. I was somewhere very different where people didn’t go.

Then, almost like it was pre-ordained, I happened upon a street and saw four or five other foreigners walking around. I just discovered that there was a really small expat bar scene in Khon Kaen. For anyone who doesn’t know, I’m referring to the area around Pratu Samran Road.

I can remember making my way into that first bar in Khon Kaen, thinking this was probably where a lot of my evenings were going to be spent if things went well with work. It wasn’t anything great to look at, but then again, neither were the bars I liked in Bangkok and Pattaya. It had an open front, a rather used pool table near the back, and the typical music that you heard all the time at bars. There were a few girls on stools near the doorway, half of them watching the street, just talking amongst themselves. And when I walked in, they called out, “Hello, welcome.”

Meeting Her

I had a great time in that bar. There were five girls working in there but no customers at the moment, and I got quite close to one girl, having a number of drinks together with her. But other than that, nothing else happened, and I left quite content in the fact that while I wasn’t in my preferred city that I expected to be in, I was somewhere that still had fun and excitement on every corner.

I walked back to my hotel, feeling this huge sense of relief. And I think relief is the only word that I could use to describe how I was feeling. It was like I took a huge risk by quitting my job and moving to Thailand, trying to do something different, trying to get my happiness. And it felt like everything was playing out in front of me exactly like I wanted it to. I couldn’t point to anything that was going on that gave me any cause for concern or cause for alarm.

Monday came around. The school looked great – bigger than I’d imagined it to be. There was no buildup at all. I was thrown in right at the deep end and had my first class that very day. I think I did okay. The way the students said, “Hello, teacher” – I must admit, I did enjoy it and feel like I could do this for a while. I felt like I really had fallen on my feet.

Over the course of the next month, I was loving my new life, working hard at the school and going out to the bars in the evening. But I hadn’t met anyone I really liked yet – until I met her.

I remember one evening after a long day at the school, I left my apartment that I found and walked along the same road I always walked along, and I made my way back to the same area around Pratu Samran Road because by then I counted it as my favorite place. I went into one of the bars I’d started to go to more often. I was already quite familiar with the girls in there, which I liked. It was very quiet – no other customers – but I said hi to the girls and noticed there was another girl in there who I’d not seen before.

She looked more like someone who was there to see friends, and she was laughing with them, and it was clear she knew them well. I sat at the bar like I usually did and ordered a beer. And after a while, one of the girls who worked there came over and started talking to me. Even though she’d talked to me before, asked the same questions, she asked them again every time. And I never got bored of it – about the school and other things like that. And I was answering like I always did, but my eyes kept going over to that other girl because there was something about her that intrigued me.

The Girl at the Bar

She was standing at the other side of the bar, leaning on it, talking to some of the other girls. And she wasn’t dressed like the others. It was more like normal clothes for going out, not the type of clothes you saw on the girls who worked every night. She looked amazing, though – just my type.

The girl sitting with me saw where my eyes were going and she smiled like I’d somehow been caught. And she said, “You like her? You keep looking.” I felt a bit stupid and embarrassed, but I laughed it off and I asked who she was. The girl told me that she was a friend, that she didn’t work in the bar, but she came a lot. She had a foreign husband who had built a house in her village not far from Khon Kaen, and that sometimes she came into the city when she was having problems because she needed to talk to friends.

Her Story

After a small while, the girl who was sitting with me shouted over to her in Thai. And then this other girl turned her head towards me and walked over. She came and sat down on the stool next to mine. And when she spoke, her English was better than I expected – not perfect, but much better than most of the girls in there. She introduced herself and asked my name, where I was from, what I was doing in Khon Kaen. And when I told her I was teaching, she didn’t seem surprised, saying, “Many foreign people come to Thailand to teach.”

She told me straight away that she had a foreign husband, that she met in Pattaya 3 years ago when she was 21, and that they had a house together in her village about 20 minutes away. She started to tell me that things weren’t good with him – that he always complained about the village, about the family, about Thailand, that he was never happy.

She didn’t say anything about money, didn’t say anything about how the house had been paid for or who had invested in what. She just spoke about how he behaved, the sorts of words he used, the way he was when he was with her. And she painted a picture of a man who had come to Thailand and decided to take out all his frustration on the person closest to him.

You have to remember that I wasn’t someone who had spent a long time in Thailand. I’d been once for 2 weeks and decided I wanted to move there. I did a month’s course learning to teach English and I’d been teaching for just over a month. That was my sole experience in Thailand. She was 24 years old when she was talking to me. She got married young. Her husband was 62.

The furthest thing from my mind was that the guy she was married to had invested all his money into the house – other things for her as well – and now he was running short of funds. Because of that, he was a “bad man.” That was the furthest thing from my mind, but ultimately that would be what I would think was the case later on.

I sat there listening, and the more she spoke, the more I believed her version of things. I mean, I hadn’t heard his side of things and I didn’t care about that. I just felt how awful a guy like that must be to behave like this. And I actually started to feel angry at this guy I’d never met because I kept thinking about my own life – about how I had come to Thailand and found the place to be the thing that made my life feel better than it was, a lot better. And I couldn’t understand how somebody could have anything bad to say about where he was or the girl he was with.

The Warning Signs

That night, nothing happened between us apart from talking. I bought her a few drinks and after a few hours of being lost in the conversation with her, I left and went back to my apartment, unable to get the thought of her out of my head. I was hooked on her, but I didn’t expect to ever have a chance with her. I felt like she was out of my league really. She wasn’t a bar girl. When she said she used to work in Pattaya and that’s where she met her husband, I didn’t actually think she worked in a bar in Pattaya. Although it is pretty obvious if you think about it.

Getting Closer

After that night, she became part of many of my evenings. Most times I went into that bar, she now seemed to be there – sometimes already sitting with the staff when I arrived, sometimes coming in a little later. And the girls would look at me and smile when I arrived and she was there. We talked about all kinds of different things – about my classes, about her family in the village, about the weather, about the school holidays. But mixed in with those normal conversations were always these little pieces about her husband – about how he was shouting again, about how he had said he was bored with the village, about how he was saying that maybe he would go back to his own country for good.

Each time she told me one of these things, it made my opinion of him even worse and my feelings for her even stronger, because I kept seeing her as this person who had done nothing wrong apart from marry the wrong man. And I felt like I was the only one really listening to her.

A few weeks later when I was at school, she sent me a message asking if I wanted to meet her that evening – but not at the bar. I didn’t even hesitate for a second. I just said yes. We met in a different part of the city, a lot more local area, and we sat there and she opened up a lot more to me than she did before.

She said that when they had first got together, he had promised her a really good life, that he had said he would be happy in the village, that he would take care of her and her family, and that they had built a house together and started a small business. At first, she thought it was all going to be everything she’d hoped it was going to be.

There I was listening to her talking about how he had built a house and invested in a business – the common traits of a guy losing everything in Thailand. But I didn’t see it like that. I saw it as him being unappreciative of the fact that he had such an amazing wife, and it was his fault that everything went wrong. I guess that’s how unknowledgeable I was of situations like that.

I remember sitting across from her listening to all of this and feeling that guilt again because I knew she was still married and yet there I was spending time with her outside the bar, letting her tell me things that were not really meant for me. But in a way, I felt like she was confiding in me – like she was opening up to me in a way that she wouldn’t open up to anybody else. I thought she saw something in me. That’s the thing. I really thought she saw something in me, and that was why she was confiding in me.

She Becomes Free

A few weeks later, I went into the bar one evening, and I knew something was different as soon as I saw her. She was sitting with the girls, but she looked a little different than she did most of the time – like she had something that she wanted to get off her chest, something she wanted to say. When she saw me, she came over, sat down next to me and told me straight away that he’d gone. Her husband had gone back to his country and they’d already signed the divorce papers and that she was now free.

Again, I didn’t stop to think that that guy had invested all his money in that house in her village and she basically got all of it. I just thought he must have really been bad when she told me she got divorced. I didn’t feel for that guy at all. I felt happy for her. I told her I liked her and would like to see if we could get on together.

When I said that, she actually moved the bar stool closer to mine and put her hand on my lap and said she’d been thinking about me all the time. And now this was over, she was hoping I would feel like that because she feels the same way about me. She said she hopes she can finally be happy now. That was everything I needed to hear.

I found myself leaving the bar with her that evening. She didn’t even work there, but we were leaving together and we went back to my place. It was like all this stuff that I’d been dreaming about had actually come true. She got a divorce and now she was available to be with me. I just didn’t know what I was doing. I was very stupid. I felt bad for her. I looked at her ex as being the devil, the guy who had destroyed her life – not understanding that it was the exact other way round.

The Warning I Ignored

From there, we just started spending more and more time together. We didn’t really meet in the bar anymore. And over the next months, I probably spent three or four evenings a week with her, and it became everything I looked forward to, and it felt like we were getting really serious.

I remember talking to another expat in one of the other bars on the same street on one of the evenings when we weren’t spending time together. He was an older guy who had been in the area for a long time, and I’d chatted with him before. I told him that I’d met a Thai girl who had been married to a foreigner, that they had a house in a village close by and they had just divorced, and that now I was seeing her. And I told him how happy I was in my current position.

When I told him that, he looked at me for a moment and said that the foreigner she had been married to had come to Thailand with a lot of money compared to most, that he’d bought that land in the village, built a house on it, invested more in a business for the family, and everything was in her name. Then over the few years that they were together, the money all went, the business failed, and he had to leave.

Apparently, he was part of the friend circle with this guy. He’d been friendly with this guy. And because he ran out of money, that was the only reason he had to leave – because she had it all. That’s what I was told. He said the guy had run out of money after building the house and investing in the business. That things had gone badly between them. That there had been arguments and shouting and all the things that she told me, but that from the outside it looked very much like he had been cleaned out and didn’t have anything left to keep him there. In the end he had no choice but to go home and start again from nothing.

Hearing that should have stopped me dead. It should have made me go quiet and think hard about everything I’d been told because here I was with two very different pictures of the same story. One from her and one from someone who had watched it all from the side. I chose to ignore it. There was nothing that made me think that she was a person like that. The way she acted around me, the way she did things with me, the way we spent time together – there was nothing to make me think that she was somebody that would do that to anybody else. She looked innocent.

That was one of those moments in life when you’re being given a warning and you should use that warning to your advantage. Yet you only realize how important that warning was when everything has already fallen apart.

Marriage and Building a Life

We had a really strong whirlwind romance during the three months since she got divorced. By the end of it, we were seeing each other every single day. I desperately wanted to be with her. I felt like she was a perfect girl in every single way. And that was when I asked her how she would feel about moving into my apartment.

After she’d been living with me for a number of months, that was the first time I felt like I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. I was guaranteed of that fact. And we discussed the possibility of getting married. Because of that, we went to go and see her family. That was my first time going there.

When we arrived, the house itself was substantial. It was a big four-bedroom detached house, a big wall around it, landscaped gardens, and it looked like it cost a lot of money. She told me it was about 5 million baht for everything that we saw. And there was also a car parked up there that she said was hers, but she lets her father use it – a big four-wheel drive Isuzu thing. And she also showed me the other land that she had.

After seeing the family and being introduced to everyone that was locally involved, we both decided that we wanted to get married badly. And this isn’t like any of the other descriptions I’ve heard of getting married in a village. We did have a reasonably big party, but there was no exchange of money or anything like that because this was just her second marriage to a foreigner. The first one was the big one. This one was the real one – that’s how I liked to think about it at the time. This one was the real one after she understood that the first one wasn’t great.

I would say maybe six or seven months since I moved to Khon Kaen, I was now married to this incredible girl. I was working a job I enjoyed. My money was more than enough to cover my lifestyle, and I didn’t think that there was anything that could go wrong.

Just how quickly things did go wrong – and when they finally went wrong and there was no recourse – that was when I remembered back to the conversation I had with that guy telling me about the other side of the story. The one I chose to ignore. But for me, it was too late.

Selling the House and Investing Everything

After we got married, we spent a few months living in my place, and I was more happy than I’d ever been. Being able to return home after work and have your dream girl there waiting for you, really happy to see you, wanting to please you at every single second that she could – she completely blew me away.

I was starting to think long and hard about the future. And I will say that after those months had gone by, we’re living in this small apartment. And I thought about the house that her family were now living in. I did think maybe we should get our own place and I would be able to do things better than he did.

I need to be clear that I’m not giving her any money. I’m paying for our living expenses, but I’m not giving her any money and she’s not asking for money from me. She said she doesn’t want to be that type of girl. She just wants to be happy with someone. And she was really happy with me.

What happened over the course of the next year was just that I sold my house at home and poured 80% of the money into a house that went into my wife’s name. I bought a car with a little bit more of it and also had some loose cash available for my extension of stay based on marriage, which I was eligible for. And I didn’t for one second have any cause for concern over the course of that year because I was so happy.

We didn’t build a house in the village, but we did build a house that was about 10 minutes from the village and 10 minutes from the city. It was more suitable for me to be able to get to work and also an area where it didn’t seem too remote. I remember the first morning waking up in the house, my wife being there, everything being good. I’m going to school, teaching, coming back, and just thinking moving to Thailand was the best decision I ever made. It’s really made my life better, and I’m in a better place because of it, and I couldn’t be happier.

The Business and The Warning Signs

Where our house was located was close to a big road. We were set back from it, but we had a small frontage of land at the front that could be used for something. Because my wife wasn’t working, she said she would like to do something from the front of the land in terms of a business so she could help. I get it – you’ve heard all this before – but she seemed adamant that she wanted to do this thing. She said she did things well before when she did it with her ex, but he didn’t let her do it properly, and now she felt like she had me. Things could finally be good for both of us.

With that, I used what I had left to let her open a small shop at the front of the land. It was in an area where some people didn’t want to travel to the city to do a lot of shopping. So we had quite a lot of stuff in there for sale that people bought, and she could be quite popular.

I didn’t stop for a second and think I’m fully invested in this and all I’ve got is my teaching salary. Everything was in her name. Everything was invested in her name. I had my teaching salary and I was happy. I was extremely happy. Didn’t think anything could go wrong – until I lost my job.

The Collapse

It came out of nowhere. I was doing a good job. Everything was going well. And then they just told me, unfortunately, we can’t afford to pay you anymore. They had to cut back. And with that, I was out of work with nothing. It came all of a sudden. I wasn’t expecting it. My wife hadn’t even fully set up the shop when it happened. And also I have to say that I used my visa money for the shop, thinking I would replace it before the next renewal. But no. All of a sudden, job lost and maybe enough money to live for 2 months – and that was it.

I was really concerned, but I did think I would be able to find another job soon. And I started to look. I started to look for another job, but I wasn’t having much luck. My wife seemed to be very supportive. However, after about a month had passed with nothing, I told her we needed to sell the car. We needed to get some money for that so I could spend more time looking for another job.

And she just looked at me like, “No, we can’t sell that. I need it for my business.” When I said, “What about the other car that your father’s using?” She said, “No, he needs that. We can’t sell that. It’s very important.” When I told her I’d put all this money into the house, into the car, into everything, she just said she understood, but she’ll try her best to get this business working soon, and then we don’t need to worry.

I was quite alarmed when she wouldn’t sell the car. It was only a secondhand one, but that could have given enough to live on for a year if we sold it. But she refused, and it was hers, so I couldn’t force her. And after I couldn’t get another job after another month of looking, and I literally had nothing left, she still refused to sell the car.

And get this – she said, “Maybe you should go back home and work, and I’ll do the business, and you can come back later when things are better.” Just like that, it hit me. It was already too late. Was I just a carbon copy of what happened to her old husband? He ran out of money and that was it.

It hit me literally when she said she refused to sell the car and she told me to go home – that I’d been under her spell and she’d somehow managed to manipulate me, even though I knew the truth about what had happened before. I only knew both sides of the truth: her truth and his truth. Yet, I completely ignored his truth and focused on hers, only to find out to my peril that she wasn’t going to sell the car to help me. And she told me to go home.

The End

The thing that made me understand was that she refused to even share the same bedroom as me anymore. She just said, “When you come back with more money, everything will be better, but now I need to focus on doing this.” She didn’t tell me she wanted a divorce. She said she loved me, but she said if I can’t find a job, I will need to go and work at home. I think she knew telling me that she wanted a divorce would have made it very obvious what had happened. So she didn’t do it.

But after I spent around 3 weeks completely losing my mind, trying to find other jobs and not being able to, begging her to help me sell some things so that we could be okay for a while, she just flat out refused. And then she told me she thought I was different. “I thought you different,” she said. “I love you. I give everything for you. And now this happened like this.” But I was the one that gave everything for her, just like her old husband did. But it was all for nothing for both of us.

When I knew I had to leave, that was the cruelest part of all. I contacted the place where I took the course to see if I could find another job, but one of the problems was the job I was offered wasn’t even close to where we were. I wouldn’t have even been able to live in the house I built, and she refused to go with me anyway. It was awful. She’d used me just like she’d used him – but she’d used me after I’d seen and witnessed another guy get divorced from her.

I said goodbye to her when I had to leave on the bus, thinking I would see her again. She seemed to appear like she would wait for me. And I can remember sitting on the bus to Bangkok thinking, “How have I got into this position – to go from being so happy and content to being the exact opposite of that?” Yet even worse – it’s indescribable, it really is.

When I finally arrived back at home, I had to stay with my friend while I found a job. When I eventually found one and got back to my old ways, it was awful because I had nothing left. The worst part of it was when I called her when I was back, saying, “I’m going to find another job and I will save up. I’ll get about £10,000 and come back and try again.” She just said, “Okay, she would wait.” But a week later, she told me that she met someone else and she was going to stay with him. I found out from somebody I knew that it was a Thai guy she was with now.

What She Took

She’d somehow managed to get a house out of two people, a car out of two people, and a business out of two people. And I will admit that I was the biggest idiot because I saw it happen to someone else and I let it happen to me – because there was nothing that made me think that that was going to happen to me.

That was quite a long time ago now, and I’ve never really fully recovered because I haven’t been able to save any money to buy a new house or even have another go in Thailand, which is where I would really want to be. I love it there. I let my emotions get the better of me. If I’d stayed single, I’d have been perfectly fine. But I chose to get involved with a girl that when I met her to start with, I couldn’t have her, which made me want her even more. And what happened with her ex made me feel happy because it brought her to me.

I didn’t understand that she was just using me all along. And she took everything I had. But she didn’t, though, did she? I willingly gave it away. I offered it up thinking it would make my life together with her complete. But it did the opposite. It enriched her, put me back into poverty, and took me back to the place that I thought I would never have to go to ever again. But I did.