I went to Thailand on holiday after an eleven-year breakup in Scotland. Nineteen years later, I live with twelve in-laws under one roof.

I was 32 the first time I set foot in Thailand, and it wasn't part of any plan.

I'd just come out of an eleven-year relationship in Aberdeen, the kind of breakup that leaves you not quite sure who you are outside of it. Eleven years is long enough to get used to thinking in the plural, and suddenly having to think in the singular again is stranger than anyone warns you it'll be. A mate, Craig, saw the state I was in that summer and decided I needed to get out of the house before I lost the plot completely. He booked two tickets without asking me much and told me to get on the plane and stop asking questions.

So I did.

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First stop, Bangkok. We landed at night and before I knew it we were up to our necks in the Nana scene.

I don't remember consciously deciding to walk into the first bar. It just happened, and from there we moved on to another, and another, each one louder and more neon-lit than the last. Hooked within a couple of hours, partying until four in the morning, still half cut when we ran for the airport for the flight to Koh Samui, bags barely zipped shut and Craig losing a flip-flop somewhere along the way that we never got back.

We boarded, or so we thought. Turned out we'd got on the wrong flight, one leaving from the same gate around the same time to a completely different destination. A flight attendant caught it when she checked our boarding passes, gave us a look somewhere between pity and amusement that I still remember clearly, and hustled us off with nervous laughter just before the doors closed. We sprinted half the airport, still smelling of the night before, and made it onto the right flight with the last few passengers.

That's how it all started, off the rails from day one.

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Koh Samui, by contrast, was a total surprise in the other direction.

We stayed near the Big Buddha, on the quiet side of the island, with a couple of friends who'd joined the trip. We hired scooters and spent our mornings exploring roads that didn't really lead anywhere in particular, empty beaches, the odd temple where we took our sandals off not entirely sure what to do once we were inside, food I didn't recognise but wolfed down anyway. After the chaos of Bangkok, it felt like a completely different country, even though it was only an hour's flight away.

It was there, at a small bar near where we were staying, that I met Aew.

She worked the till, not as a waitress or anything close to what people picture when they think of Thai bars, and she wasn't a bar girl in the sense people usually mean by that either. She'd finish her shift and, most nights, end up coming back with me to the bungalow. It turned into a habit for the rest of that trip, almost without either of us deciding it consciously. She started leaving a toothbrush, a change of clothes, a pair of flip-flops by the door, small things that pile up without anyone planning it.

She never once asked me for money, not even indirectly. I gave her something every time anyway, a gesture for her time, though she never turned it into a condition or seemed to expect it.

It wasn't serious. Neither of us treated it like it was, and when the trip ended we said goodbye without big promises, both of us knowing exactly what it had been.

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When that first trip ended I flew home to Scotland, but I already knew I'd be back.

Over the following years I made several more trips, each time spending more of it in Koh Samui and less anywhere else. I moved from the quiet Big Buddha side over to Chaweng, where the real party scene was: bars open late, music blasting in the street, a completely different kind of energy that at first felt like exactly what I was after.

I dated around a fair bit during that stretch. Nothing memorable. The same shallow conversations repeated with different faces, the same question about how many days I had left, the same interest that faded the second I answered. After a couple of those trips, they stopped being interesting at all.

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I started spending time at one particular bar and restaurant, a quiet one, the kind that doesn't close at three in the morning with the music cranked up, more the sort of place you sit down for dinner and end up staying for hours without noticing. That's where I met Dao.

She spoke excellent English, better than almost anyone else I'd talked to on the island up to that point, and she had a way of making me laugh that I couldn't find anywhere else, dry comments delivered without her expression changing at all. She wasn't the most striking girl in the bar, not by a long shot, but that stopped mattering pretty quickly.

Nothing happened between us for the first few weeks. She just made sure I got home safely most nights, walking me to the bungalow door and saying goodnight right there, no hint that it was going to turn into anything else.

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One week I got a proper case of food poisoning, the kind that leaves you flat on your back unable to move, cold sweats and no strength left even to get to the bathroom on your own.

Dao showed up at the bungalow that same night, and kept coming back every night for days, around two in the morning after closing the bar, just to check I was still alive and bring me water, soup, whatever I needed. She'd sit on the edge of the bed for a while, ask how I was doing in that same calm way of hers, and head off again to come back the following night. Nobody asked her to do it. She just kept showing up, night after night, until I got better.

It was during those sick days, lying there soaked in sweat, that I realised this was different from anything before it.

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When I flew back to Scotland that time, we actually kept in touch properly. I worked rotational shifts on the North Sea rigs, weeks on, weeks off, and I used every break to fly back to Koh Samui instead of staying in Aberdeen like I used to. Roughly every couple of months, for a couple of years, counting down the rotation days left before the next flight.

Over time I talked her into quitting her job at the bar. I told her I'd cover whatever she stopped earning while she figured out what she actually wanted to do with her life, without the pressure of a daily wage hanging over her. She struggled to accept it at first, she didn't like the idea of depending on me for anything, but eventually she came round. It wasn't a small decision for either of us, but it worked, and things got serious from there.

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Not long after, I landed a work contract in Thailand, not far from her hometown. From that point everything moved fast: we got married, with a full Thai wedding that Dao's family organised almost entirely themselves, monks included early in the morning and a party that ran well into the night. I understood maybe half of what was happening that day, but smiled on cue every time someone looked at me expecting a reaction, and that seemed to be enough for everyone.

After that came a longer contract in Africa, month on, month off. I spent every break at Dao's family home, in a village in Isaan, and that's where I really learned how things worked.

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We lived rent-free with her extended family for years. Twelve people under one roof, a single toilet, turns for everything, from the shower to who sat where at mealtimes. It would sound unbearable told like that, but honestly it never bothered me. I learned to wait my turn, to eat whatever was put on the table without asking what it was, to understand the rhythm of a Thai family that had been running like that for generations before I ever showed up, with her father in charge of everything without ever needing to raise his voice.

I saved up over that stretch, bit by bit, between contracts, until we bought land in Dao's name and built the house we live in now. It was a relief for everyone, honestly, more space, more toilets, though we still go for lunch at the family house most Sundays, because at this point it would feel strange not to.

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These days we've also got two young nephews we've raised almost since they were babies, sons of one of Dao's brothers who couldn't take care of them at the time. I walk them to school most mornings, and lately one of them has decided he wants to learn English with me, word by word, though he laughs more at my Scottish accent than at anything I'm actually teaching him.

My stepdaughter, the daughter Dao had before she met me, is in her final year of university, the first in the whole family to get that far, something Dao talks about with a pride she doesn't even try to hide.

Married, settled, and genuinely happy with how it all turned out. It's not the life I pictured at 32, boarding the wrong flight in Bangkok, but it's the one I've got, and I wouldn't change a thing about it.

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If anyone asks what advice I'd give someone thinking about doing something similar, I always say the same thing.

Don't go for someone too young. You need to actually be able to talk to each other, about politics, about family, about ordinary daily nonsense, not just point at things on a menu and smile.

Stay away from the party scene if you're genuinely serious about settling down long term, because that scene is built to appeal to you for two weeks, not to build a life on top of. Learn the language, even just the basics, enough to order rice without pointing. Respect the family structure, because in Thailand family isn't some abstract concept, it's twelve people sharing a toilet, and you, if you're lucky, end up being one more of them.

And never forget you're a guest in their country. That one thing, more than anything else, is what separates actually staying from just lasting a while.