Time To Leave?

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Thailand is a funny country. Before you finally decide to stay and live here you probably loved it and hated it, sometimes both at the same time. I know I did. If you have read some of my earlier submissions you will know that I came to stay here by accident. I was on my way back to the UK. But fate has a funny way of throwing a spanner in the works when you least expect it. (Read how I came here: A World Traveler Comes To Thailand:)

To be honest, I didn’t give it much thought at first. I was having a good time, so why think about leaving? I had a reasonably good job doing what I am good at. I was learning a new culture and language. And I had women up the kazoo. Hey! What more could a man ask for?

After I left my second job in a PR firm, a job I hated so much it was a relief to leave, I was at a loose end. I found work with a small company teaching business English and writing, but it wasn’t really what I wanted to do. I was seriously contemplating leaving Thailand and resuming my trek to the homeland when fate stepped in once again. I met a girl.

She came from a very good family that also happened to be very rich. Her father had owned a lot of property around Chinatown before he died. When the eldest son took over he cashed it all in and started a pencil factory. The business grew quickly and they were exporting pencils to Japan, Germany and many other countries.

I didn’t know all this when I first met her. She hardly spoke any English and my Thai wasn’t that good. But we hit it off and within a few months she decided to move in with me...after we were married.

We moved out to a house in Ramkhamhaeng University for a while, but then we moved out to Lard Prao Road where we rented a beautiful old Thai-style house with lots of big mango trees in the garden. That was just before the wet season. By then I was teaching English to private students to cover our expenses while I mulled over what to do. I was in no hurry. I had a good nest egg saved up, and I was getting to know my new wife better.

Then the wet season came along and we found out that our house was in the lowest part of our soi. The place was flooded about 2 feet deep for more than 3 months. My friends would come over and we’d sit on the balcony upstairs and drop fishing lines over the side. We caught some large fish and the wife cooked them up. Delicious!

I found work with a Chinese businessman for a while and he invited us to move into the brand new apartment block he had built in his large tennis court complex at Lard Prao. This is where we met The Tennis Club Ghost.

Meanwhile, I was pondering what to do. I had already worked for a couple of English schools and seen how well they were doing. The teachers were poorly paid of course, an average of 50 to 70 baht an hour, but the school owners were doing very well. So I decided to open my own school and become an exploiter of the proletariat!

My wife started searching for business premises and soon found a beautiful large ‘log cabin’ home in Soi Nailert off Ploenchit Road. There’s a big condominium sitting on the site these days, but back then the house had a huge garden and heaps of rooms. We converted most of the house into an office and classrooms, opened our doors after spending about 35,000 baht on rent and furniture, and within one year we had cleared over 1 million baht profit. Now this was in the early 1980’s, so that was good money back then.

We hired unqualified teachers from English-speaking countries, and even let some of them rent one of the many rooms in the house if they had nowhere else to live. You can read about the adventures of one poor chap at that time: (Fall In Love With a Bargirl?

So far, my wife and I had been married two years and we had already moved four times. This was to be the pattern throughout our marriage. I lost count of the times we moved, but after we set up the first English school we moved at least once a year. Our poor students were chasing us all over the place.

I’d come home one evening, and the wife would announce we were moving once again. She had many different reasons, but the most common one was that she was worried about ghosts! There was no arguing with this, so I just shrugged my shoulders, told her to get on with it and she packed and moved us. We lived in so many places along Sukhumvit Road that I got to know all the sois intimately. At one stage we lived in Soi 22, and you can read about this place in The Cartoon Teacher.

Finally, after being married for about 10 years and suffering through a bad personal tragedy, we agreed to call it quits. By then, we had both been through too much together and every day we woke up the pain started all over again. The best solution was to break up and start new lives without each other. Despite this, it was all very friendly. We had both started seeing other people after the tragedy, so two years later breaking up was not a tough decision.

I gave her most of our stuff. I didn’t need it. After a couple of year’s separation we went to the local Amphur (government) office and got divorced. The cost? A mere 10 baht. We went outside, kissed each other goodbye and I didn’t see her for many years afterwards.

After the divorce I was planning on finally resuming my trip to the UK. Silly me. Fate intervened again and I met and fell in love with another Thai girl; this time, a bargirl. Oh man! Will I never learn?

THE NEXT GIRL

I’m going to fess up here and give you one of my pseudonyms in this story about my TBGF: (Knife Attacks And Murderers)

By the time she had finished with me I was totally wrung out emotionally. I couldn’t think straight. My life was a mess. Once again I started thinking about getting out of Thailand, but not too seriously. I was very accustomed to living here already.

I retreated to a small house out in Nonthaburi, cutting off all ties with any Western friends and lay low to lick my wounds. I got a job in a country bar out on Chaeng Wattana Road singing every night for over a year. I started having fun again, expanding my circle of Thai friends, and meeting a different type of foreigner than one meets in Sukhumvit. These were guys who were married to Thais and living in the ‘burbs, or they were professionals working on contract in Thai corporations.

This was also when I learned how the Thais party. It was different, and I might write a submission about it one day. But this one is about deciding to leave Thailand, so let’s try and get to the point real soon, eh?

Finally, with my head back together and my wallet intact, I started considering my future again. By then I had decided to stay here. I couldn’t think of any other country I have ever visited that matched Thailand even half way. I had a nice home in a quiet suburb, a lovely maid who did a great job and never caused me any problems. (She finally married one of my friends and they now have a cute little girl.)

So there I was, having fun with the occasional girl but not looking for anything serious. I should have known. When you are least expecting it that bastard Fate smacks you in the head and off you go on the roller coaster again.

This time, I was wandering through Central Lard Prao just before Xmas, drooling over all the beautiful girls behind the makeup and perfume counters. I’ll tell you fellas, if you want to meet non-bar girls, that’s the place. Of course, I wasn’t planning on what happened next. I strolled past a perfume counter and this stunning beauty with a short pixie-style haircut looked up at me. Our eyes met and we exchanged smiles. I kept going, but after I had taken about 5 steps I stopped and thought, “Whoa there, Marc! Where do you think you are going?”

So I turned around and went back to chat with her. She didn’t speak a word of English, so I had to dust off my Thai. Soon we were both having a good time getting to know each other. However, as she was at work I had to cut it short. We exchanged phone numbers and I promised to pick her up after she finished that evening.

Well, one thing led to another and now after seven years of marriage we have two beautiful daughters. And that’s what got me thinking about getting out of Thailand once again. My eldest daughter is almost seven. She’s started primary school, and I have to admit it’s very good. But I was wondering what the future will hold for us here. With all the recent political turmoil and the negative attentions of the xenophobic Toxin government, I was beginning to think we might be better off back in Australia.

Now, I had immigrated there when I was 6 years old, completed my education there, joined the Royal Australian Air Force, worked and paid my taxes, and even voted. As far as I knew, I was an Australian. So when I left on my British passport I didn’t give it a thought. All my family lived there. I could go back any time, right?

Wrong!

It turns out that despite my long history in the country, I have been away for so long that I’m no longer welcome. I have to immigrate there. Even the Aussie embassy people I spoke to were a bit surprised when I started asking about immigrating. They heard my accent and asked why I thought I had to immigrate. I have to tell you that they were very helpful, and always polite.

Anyway, I did a lot of research before deciding what category I should try to immigrate under. At first my old mum and I thought we could try the “Carer” visa. But after she visited the public health service down there they told her she was not sick or weak enough to warrant having her eldest son return to look after her in her declining years.

OK, so what was next?

I tried to get a job by firing off my resume to about 60 companies. I have a pretty impressive resume, but it seems there is something against hiring men my age when they can have a young kid with no experience for less money. I guess they never heard that you get what you pay for. Oh well.

Finally, I tried to apply under the “Remaining Relative” category. Now this was looking pretty good. I was the only remaining relative living outside Australia. All my family in Australia are naturalized Aussies. I was a shoo-in.

Unfortunately, if you are married they will only allow you to immigrate under this category if your spouse has no other family anywhere as well. As my wife has umpteen dozen relatives scattered all over Thailand, the embassy told me I would have a difficult time convincing Aussie immigration they should let us in. It seems that by applying for this type of visa I am including all my wife’s family in the application as well, even though none of them want to go with us (at least, not right now).

So here I am. A stranger in a strange land. I suppose I could go back to the UK, but as I haven’t lived there since I was 6 I doubt I would be very comfortable there. I would have to start a new life with only a couple of relatives I hardly know who would probably not be much help in an emergency.

Which brings me to the point of this long saga. If you are young (under 45 years old), you have only recently arrived and you are considering staying here, you’d better be very sure this is where you want to spend your last days.

Remember, the Thai government doesn’t give you any support whatsoever. You won’t get social security. There’s no free medical. You don’t get pensioner discounts; In fact, you don’t even get a pension. Your kids won’t get any free schooling here, not even if you send them to a government school. The government school fees aren’t much, but there’s still no free schooling here. So, unless you have an independent income from overseas and can afford to support yourself and anyone you decide to hitch up with, you should consider your options very carefully.

If you can’t possibly support you and yours forever here, then stay around for a while, have all the fun you can, and then hightail it back home where you will be looked after for all time. If you have kids, or plan to with your Thai sweetheart, this advice is even more imperative. At least back home your kids will have all the benefits you had. Here? Well, you will have to decide. Good luck!

This is a curious situation. I know Marc personally and can attest to the fact that he is an Aussie. He's got the accent and he even looks like an Aussie. It is a weird situation indeed.

And I entirely agree with the point about being careful about the decision to stay on in Thailand. We all have different reasons for living in Thailand and they're not always apparent. Personally, my reason for staying here is most unusual and despite having something of a profile, pretty much no-one knows what it is. Ahhh, it's a funny old life!