SG man cuts ties with friends after they repeatedly joked he should foot the bill on Bali trip: ‘It felt like they were targeting me’

SINGAPORE: A local man shared on social media that he ended up cutting off all three of his friends during their Bali trip after they kept joking that he should pay for everything because “his family is rich.”

In a post on the r/asksg subreddit, the man explained that the four of them had gone on a five-day trip to Bali, with him paying for the villa upfront on the understanding that his three friends would later reimburse him for their respective shares.

A second friend was also tasked with paying for the group’s other expenses, including food, transport and activities. Again, the plan was for everyone to split the costs evenly and reimburse the friend who had paid upfront.

However, he was taken aback when his friends repeatedly prodded him to pay for various expenses during the first three days of the trip.

“Before the trip we never talked about finances, etc., but suddenly when we were there, things like, ‘Eh, since your family is rich, can you pay for this?’ come up.”

“The first time I laughed it off, but they seemed to jokingly mention it over and over again, which I got annoyed and told them to stop, in which they replied sometime along the lines of, ‘We were just joking, everything here so cheap anyways, not like you will bankrupt or something.’

Fed up, the man told them he had had “enough” of the jokes before returning to the villa on his own, packing his belongings and booking a room at another villa, where he spent the rest of the trip by himself.

“There were many subtle things they did that had already ticked me off within these 3 days that felt like the 3 of them were targeting me?” he wrote.

“The last 2 days, though I kinda felt bad, I managed to still do some shopping and activities on my own there. I even booked a new flight to avoid seeing them, as I’ve already made up my mind to cut off all contact with them.”

They made up false narratives about me

After the incident, the man said he received messages from other friends who followed the three men on Instagram.

Through them, he learnt that the trio had apparently been ranting about him on their Instagram Stories, claiming that he had ruined the entire trip and allegedly spreading false information that he had not paid for anything during the first three days.

However, he argued that the amount he had yet to reimburse the second friend, who had been tasked with covering the group’s other expenses, was far less than what he had already paid upfront for the villa.

“I did pay for the villa first (which they didn’t pay back anything for), which was way more than whatever my share was, so monetarily wise, I 100% forked out more.”

Caught between cutting his losses and confronting his former friends, he asked fellow Singaporeans how they would handle the situation.

“If y’all were in my situation, what would you do? Ignore them for the rest of my life or confront them about the false information spread and ask them to pay me back instead for the villa? After calculations, they each owe me about 200 SGD+, totalling about 600 SGD+ (including tix for certain activities we did in the first 3 days).”

‘Take the loss and cut them off’

Overwhelmingly, commenters agreed that he should fight back by posting evidence that he had paid for the villa.

One told him, “Make it public. Shame them into paying you back. Then unfriend them.”

Another agreed, saying, “They slandered you in public, aka IG stories; you gotta show the evidence and ask them to pay you back in public as well. Post in stories and mention them. If they already blocked you, mention your mutual friends so they can repost the story or something.”

Others, however, felt he should simply let the matter go and take it as a lesson.

One wrote, “Honestly, S$600 is a pretty cheap price to find out three people aren’t actually your friends. Take the loss, cut them off, and enjoy never having to deal with their bulls*** again. I believe a lot of people, myself included, only found out what certain ‘friends’ were really like much later and ended up paying a much higher price for that lesson.”

In other news, a foreigner working in Singapore says he feels increasingly excluded at work as colleagues frequently switch from English to Mandarin during meetings, leaving him and other non-Mandarin-speaking employees struggling to follow the discussions.

The man raised the issue on the r/askSingapore forum on Tuesday (Aug 18), saying, “Most of my company are from the same country (Mainland) and speak the same language (Mandarin). A small number of us are foreigners who don’t. I don’t expect to be part of every social thing, but the pattern has become hard to ignore.”

Read more: Foreign worker feels excluded after colleagues repeatedly switch to Mandarin at work: ‘Is this something people just accept here?’