My Thai Story Read online

  Table of Contents

  Introduction.

  Chapter 1. In love with Thailand

  Chapter 2. My history

  Chapter 3. Decision re Retirement

  Chapter 4. Internet Connection

  Chapter 5. Jee what I know about her.

  Chapter 6. Holiday in April

  Chapter 7. Change of plan

  Chapter 8. Keep in touch

  Chapter 9. Getting to know you

  Chapter 10. Booked trip (9th to 27th travel to Udon on 16th)

  Chapter 11. Snow to 92f

  Chapter 12. Patong/mobile phone/change plan

  Chapter 13. Trip to Udon Thani (12th)

  Chapter 14. Meeting Jee and family

  Chapter 15. First day/ culture shock.

  Chapter 16. Songkran (13th)

  Chapter 17. Songkran 2nd day 14th

  Chapter 18. Songkran 3rdday 15th

  Chapter 19. Money tree

  Chapter 20. Falling in love with everything/ speedboat/ rafts/ water falls/ Jee mobile phone calls.

  Chapter 21. Mosquitoes/ language/change of plans/ eating/ rivers and more temples jee nun/ inside of house/decorating Sak’s

  Chapter 22. Fish/ pond release

  Chapter 23. Udon Thani city and eating out

  Chapter 24. Needing time to think (18th)

  Chapter 25. Explaining why Jee not go Patong, maybe go Chiang Mai.

  Chapter 26. Buying a ring (20th)

  Chapter 27. My new family buy me a church

  Chapter 28. Farewell party (21st) banana leaf tree

  Chapter 29. Airport farewell

  Chapter 30. Back to Phuket (22nd) Read book, lonely bars, fall out with Nut

  Chapter 31. What are you doing here?

  Chapter 32. Last day heartache.

  Chapter 33. Back to England (27th)

  Chapter 34. Decision already made

  Chapter 35. Missing Jee and her family, compare to Irish. Toilets, Eating, craic and sanuk

  Chapter 36. House for sale (12th May)

  Chapter 37. Keeping in contact.22nd May. Jee loses job living back with sister, contact getting less by internet.

  Chapter 38. My hopes and dreams

  Chapter 39. Contact Bangkok book 4th june reply next submit synopsis, takes all day, further reply on 6th now wait two weeks. Monday 9th June offered co publishing contract. Jee tells me no money going to work in bkk.

  Chapter 40. Jee job interview at bank fri 13th June

  Chapter 41. Is this the end?

  Chapter 42. More questions then answers.

  Chapter 43. This feels very bad.

  Chapter 44. Please let this be a good chapter.

  Chapter 45. Regaining Contact

  Chapter 46. What’s next?

  Chapter 47. 2008 ends

  Chapter 48. Thought you should know

  Chapter 49. The Last Chapter

  My Thai Story

  2nd edition 2012; ebook

  Text by

  Guy Lilburne

  eISBN 978-616-222-063-0

  Published by www.bangkokbooks.com

  E-mail: [email protected]

  Text & cover page Copyright© Guy Lilburne

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, copied, stored or transmitted in any form without prior written permission from the publisher.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to www.bangkokbooks.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  Introduction.

  This might be an unusual book because I’m writing it as it happens to me in real time, for the most part, so as you read this even I don’t know how it turns out, but I just want to get my thoughts and feelings down now before I forget them or my impressions change with time and hindsight.

  For too long now I’ve waited for my life to get better, but it never has so I’ve decided to change my life instead of just waiting for it to happen to me. I’m about to take life changing decisions and in a way I’m taking a big gamble. Looking at it another way, I’m so fed up with my life the way it is, what have I got to lose? If I don’t do this now then I may never do it and live as I always have with regrets and dreams of what might have been. Maybe one day I’ll read back over these writings myself, to see at what point it all went wrong, or hopefully at what point I realised it was all going to turn out just fine.

  I’m hoping that this will be a story of leaving my job as a Police Detective and settling down in Thailand, a country that I have fallen in love with. Hopefully I will find the happiness and the peace of mind that has always eluded me.

  There are no shortages of beautiful women in Thailand and I’m hoping to find love as well. If I don’t then I will settle for spending my days living in a tropical climate, learning Thai, playing guitar and finding some kind of spiritual enlightenment and soul searching. So I guess here, today, my journey starts.

  It’s January 2008.

  Chapter 1. In love with Thailand

  I first went to Thailand in May 2006 with my then girlfriend. We stayed at Karon Beach and later at The Holiday Inn Patong. It was the start of the rainy season and as the taxi took us from Phuket Airport to Karon Beach it was throwing it down. My girlfriend was from India but working as a Doctor in England and she didn’t seem so amazed by it all, but to me this was the most foreign and exotic place that I had ever been to and in spite of the rain I was taking in all the sights and loving it.

  Karon Beach was a quiet area and after going into Patong Beach on our first night to see some Thai boxing at my girlfriend’s insistence, we moved the next day because she liked all the bright lights and markets and the hustle and bustle of Patong.

  I loved Patong as well. There were thousands of beautiful girls everywhere you looked. I liked the beaches and the big ‘Otop’ market that sold clothes and gifts to the tourists. I liked all the roadside food stalls that filled the air with the smell of barbeque food. I liked seeing the pretty girls riding side saddle on the back of motor bikes and applying their make up as they went. I liked the bikes that had been converted to travelling BBQ’s and left a trail of cooking smoke in the air as they drove past. I liked seeing the amazing Lady Boys dancing at some of the bars on Bangla Road.

  I liked talking to the bar girls and playing Connect Four and Jackpot. I liked seeing the shows and taking the tours. I thought the surrounding area was beautiful, but best of all I really liked the way Thai people seemed to smile so easily and readily and the way they greeted you with such an endearing and graceful Wai which is the famous Thai greeting whereby they put the palms of the hands together in prayer like fashion held up to the chest and the head bows, nearly always accompanied with the charming ‘Sawadee Ka’ (welcome).

  I loved the three weeks that we were there, and one day while we were swimming in the warm sea I told my girlfriend that I would love to live here. The place had stolen my heart.

  By April 2007 I had split up with my girlfriend and in September I was back in Patong again, this time with my twenty year old son Tom, who also happens to be my best friend.

  It was a very different sort of holiday because as I didn’t have a girlfriend in tow, I was a target for any girl wherever we went. I have to say that Tom is as tall as me so at 6’ 1” with his blonde hair, slim build and good looks the girls just loved him and Tom loved the attention. He’s not short of confidence and has a cheeky charm, so he was never left alone.

  We enjoyed touri
ng around the bars and talking with the girls, but we weren’t there to buy the favours of bar girls and we never did, although we made friends with a few of them and they often ended up telling me of their own stories and how and why they ended up working in the bars.

  Most days Tom stayed around the pool or the beach, but I travelled around quite a bit. I just like exploring and I thought that Phuket was just beautiful with some of the most exquisite beaches that I’ve ever seen, and I found some beautiful temples to visit.

  We were there for four weeks and probably had the best holiday that we had ever had.

  Chapter 2. My history

  The only reason I’m including this short chapter is so that you can understand how I’ve ended up where I have on the highway of life.

  I’m forty seven years old as I’m writing this. I joined the Police twenty six years ago, three of which were served in uniform, the rest as a Detective in various squads. I drifted into a marriage the same year that I joined the Police in 1982, but it was always a very rocky and unhappy union. We did however have two children, a girl and a boy.

  In 1996, I started divorce proceedings that were very bitter and very expensive. This was the time I first started drinking to any great extent and it frightened me, but I got custody of my kids and after being homeless for six months, I managed to get my house back and the drinking stopped completely. I suddenly found myself as a single parent of two kids then aged twelve and nine, and of course I was still a full time Police Detective. The kids grew up ok; my daughter got a good job and has since bought her own house. My son has never really worked since leaving school five years ago and basically lives off me. I love him to bits and he’s my best friend, but he is lazy. For the last two years he has been threatening to join the Army but I think he is waiting for world peace to break out before he takes on such a risky job.

  In 2003 I started a relationship with an Indian Doctor working in England. In 2006 she became pregnant and moved into my house.

  My second daughter was born in October 2006.

  My girlfriend and Tom hated each other and their relationship deteriorated to the point when in April 2007 my girlfriend gave me an ultimatum, it was either Tom or her. I couldn’t bring myself to kick my son out and so she left with our six month old baby.

  Since that time she has made it very difficult for me to have regular contact with my little girl and the CSA have crippled me financially, I guess like many other separated fathers, I have to pay a lot more then I can afford. I started drinking heavily again and hated myself for it.

  So here I am, stuck in a rut, working for nothing in a job that is sucking the very soul out of me. I just want to be happy and I always hoped that my life would get better, so far, it hasn’t.

  Chapter 3. Decision re Retirement

  Work had been getting me down for the last couple of years. Seriously getting me down and I was feeling the stress. When my girlfriend left in 2007 I felt that my life had fallen apart. Now an emotional and financial wreck I’ve started drinking to escape he daily misery of life.

  One day in January 2008 while I was losing myself in a bottle of brandy and thinking about drinking myself to death, it just came to me like a lightening flash through my drunken haze. I loved Thailand; I could meet a nice girl and give up work, sell up and move out. I had nothing to live for here. The thought got lost somewhere amongst the intoxication, but the next day I remembered it, and now being sober, I’m thinking ‘why not?’

  Chapter 4. Internet Connection

  So that’s it, now I have a plan, I’m going to live in Thailand. There are a lot of things I’ve got to sort out. I know eventually I’ll need visas and somewhere to live but I also think I need a Thai girlfriend.

  There is a reason for this. If I just head off over to Thailand by myself I just know that I’ll find somewhere near a beach and the bars and I’ll get drunk twice a day until I die or until my money runs out. If I want to carry on drinking myself to death I can do that here, or even get a cheap flight and lose myself in Spain. If I could find a nice Thai girl, she might just be the saviour of me.

  I don’t want a bar girl, I have met many and even made friends with quite a lot. I’ve listened to their stories and experiences and I can understand why they do what they do. I know a lot of Farang (foreigner) do settle down with bar girls and other sex workers. I have no idea of how many of these relationships survive or how long they survive for but I just know that it’s not for me. I had been a Detective in the Vice Squad for four years in England, I have to say that some of the most interesting and honest people that I have ever met have been sex workers (we don’t call them prostitutes anymore), but I could never love someone that has already been loved by so many before me, that’s probably the nicest way to say it.

  So I’ve got the idea of putting up a profile on a Thai dating site. I still have four years to go until I retire in 2012 but I don‘t want to stay here anymore. I don‘t want to do another four years, the thought of it makes me feel ill, but at least I now have a plan and there is a light at the end of my dark tunnel of life. Now my life is going to change and I am going to make sure that it does. I’m going to escape to a whole new life in a whole new country.

  I have other things to sort out first. My son Tom is still living at home with me. He is nearly twenty one years old and has only ever worked for a few weeks in two or three jobs since leaving school five years ago. He spends most of his day in bed usually getting up at the crack of dinner time and gets his money off me. He has been telling me for over two years that he is joining the Army but it never happens.

  Although he is going for selection again sometime in July, I can‘t get too excited about it because he has already been through Army selection three times.

  Today I went in to Tom’s room and woke him up. I’ve told him that I can’t afford to carry on living here and that I can’t afford to carry on supporting him. I’ve told him that I plan to sell my house, give up my job and go and live in Thailand and so he is served notice that he may soon find himself homeless and without my financial support.

  I’ve advised him to put his Army career back on track. He made some grunting noises and went back to sleep, but at least I’ve told him and I really wish he’d sort his life out.

  I’ve started to look at houses for sale in Thailand. I am aware that a farang cannot own land in Thailand and houses are bought in your Thai wife’s name. Farangs can own condominiums so I’m looking at these as well, seeing that I haven’t got a Thai wife yet. I’m looking at information regarding Visa’s and it all seems very confusing.

  It seems an enormous task to realise my dream on this first sober morning and I don’t really know how to do it or how to prioritise everything, I just hope that my dream is enough to carry me through, at least in these early stages until my plan starts to take some sort of shape or direction. I do find myself getting distracted and looking at Thai themed videos on ‘You Tube’ and photos of Thailand and the cost of flights to Thailand. I find all sorts of internet sites about all things Thai. It’s all very interesting but I’m still sitting here in England. I’m still a Police Detective and I’m still miserable and broke.

  Internet dating, that’s what I was going to look at, somehow something tells me this is an integral part of my plan, but I don’t really know why, it just seems that it is. A quick search on Google brings up lots of sites and I’ve spent a lot of the day clicking onto most of them. It all becomes much of a much ness and after looking at so many pretty smiling faces, and a few ugly ones, I can’t tell the difference anymore and how can you pick a partner from a photo. Now I have doubts that this might not work, I can’t even decide which dating site I’m going to join.

  I’m worrying about it, how do I know that people will tell the truth about themselves? I’m sure many don’t, and how can you know the difference? This suddenly seems like a risky business to me and how much should I disclose about myself? If I advertise myself as a drunken washed up Police Detective,
falling into depression, divorced with two grown up kids and a fifteen month old baby, who I never get to see, from another failed relationship, will it get the response that I’m hoping for?

  This is going to take some thinking about, I don’t want to mislead anyone but I don’t want to tell them what a state I’m in either because nobody would want me, and I wouldn’t blame them.

  I don’t know why I’ve chosen this particular site, but www.thaikisses.com has become my Thai dating site. I can pay about £20 and have one month’s membership, which would allow me to make about eighty contacts. That sounds like enough to me and a month might just be long enough. I’ve clicked my way through it and put up a very bland profile which doesn’t tell any lies. It reads;

  ‘I’m just a nice Guy who wants a happy life I guess. I’m looking for a lovely person to share it with. I want to go and live in Thailand, a wonderful and beautiful country.’

  Ok I might have exaggerated the ‘nice guy’ bit, but I have to give myself a fighting chance in the game of love. I’ve clicked through the tick boxes of height, eye, hair colour, age, interests and things like that, and finally I’ve put some pretty awful photos of myself on. I’ve looked at the finished profile. It’s not very inspiring. Who am I kidding? I look ugly and I sound boring, even I don’t like myself, but I can’t be bothered to change anything so I’ve clicked the submission button and that’s it, my profile on a dating site and one months membership so I can actually contact people. How fantastic it would be to meet someone lovely and go and settle down in Phuket.

  Maybe we could even run a bar or a guesthouse or something. I’ve allowed myself to get excited about it again and have started clicking through the Thai girls profiles. I’ve sent out a few simple ‘hello’ type messages, but not many. I’ve been on the computer for hours and I need a drink. Anyway now I have something to celebrate, I have a plan and I’ve already put it into action. I’ll try making some more contacts tomorrow I have a whole month.