Keith Stuart lived a life few could imagine. He hitchhiked across continents, sailed oceans as a pirate and, without a dime in his pocket, circled the globe twice as a “rock and roll” bagpiper. At 31, after 17 years of heavy drinking and drug abuse, he was certain his life was ending. Instead, it became the turning point: he found faith in Jesus.

Decades later, he has put his remarkable story into print. Around The World On 50 Cents tells of his journey from Bermuda to Pattaya, a city on Thailand’s eastern Gulf where he eventually settled after becoming a Christian.

By then, painting churches had become part of his ministry and it was while busy at work that he met his wife, Pui, a single mother who had been cleaning the church for free.

The two married in 1999 and created Pattaya Fellowship Church, a ministry that takes in homeless children, providing them with food, schooling, and a safe place to live.

“We got involved with a lot of ministry work — helping a lot of churches, a lot of missionaries. And then I built a house. I built a big house because as a traveller, I spent a lot of time living with people for free and so, once I built my house, it was always ‘anybody’s welcome’,” Mr Stuart said.

His hope is that Around The World On 50 Cents inspires others to pursue adventures and provides funding so he can continue his missionary work in Thailand.

As work he previously relied on, painting homes on visits to Bermuda, has dried up, Mr Stuart is now leaning on his faith.

“I've got a couple friends in Bermuda that send me money. But that’s not much,” he said. “Every year, I would leave and go back to Bermuda and I would work for two months painting.

“For the last few years I’ve been painting the graveyard at St John’s Church, but I’ve lost that job now. I trust God for the money. I don’t know where it’s coming from. Hopefully my book will sell.”

His wanderlust began sometime around 1978 when he was living in Haight-Ashbury, a neighbourhood in San Francisco, California that was then a mecca for “hippies, artists and musicians seeking alternative lifestyles”.

While there Mr Stuart got the idea that he would hitchhike around the world with the 50 cents he had in his pocket, the clothes on his back “and a million dollar smile”.

“My main currency was my storytelling. I was always telling stories and people, if they were interested in my stories, I told them they would have to buy me another drink to get more stories.

“So I would get the stories going, and then hopefully, as it got later, you would take me home,” he said.

“I would travel for months without any money. The only reason I came back to Bermuda was because there was so much money to be made. I would get tired of being broke, never knowing where I’m going to sleep.”

His first trip to Thailand was on the recommendation of sailors he met while working on the Arctic Ocean.

The warm climate and the cheap cost of living appealed to him.

Mr Stuart would work as a painter, bartender and musician during Bermuda’s tourist season and then fly back to Asia where he would “live like a king for four months; like a rock star”.

Drugs and alcohol were constant in those years. Trapped in a cycle of addiction, Mr Stuart was certain that his alcoholism would end his life early.

“I knew I could get to the top. I knew I could have a great business, a beautiful wife, big house — I could have it all, but the booze was going to take it all from me,” he said.

“I didn't want to be an old drunk guy living in the bushes and dying in the bushes. So I was just going to do everything. I was going to climb mountains.

“I was going to do jungle explorations, sail oceans — and I did all of that. I was one of those rock stars going 180 miles an hour until you crash and burn. That was my life. And I was cool with that.”

Involved in drug smuggling with his older brother, Charley, Mr Stuart was shaken when he died at 29 because of his criminal activities.

Soon after, he left the business but his health declined and, at his lowest, he planned to drink himself to death.

His late brother, Bruce, the artist, intervened.

“He came to me and said, ‘God told me to tell you, you don’t have to die’.”

That moment marked a turning point. Mr Stuart embraced Christianity and began the long process of physical, emotional, and spiritual healing that ultimately took him back to performing.

His father, an accomplished piper and founder of the Bermuda Pipe Band, had passed on his skills. Once he became sober, Mr Stuart began travelling with his pipes.

“I travelled many years without any instruments with me, because I always figured I'd get drunk and lose them. In the mid 80s, I started to travel with my bagpipes and my life as a traveller changed. All of a sudden, I had a place to stay and food,” he said.

“At first my stories were my currency. Later on, I realised bagpipes were a lot more efficient. You want to get people from the cocktail bar into the dining room? Send in the bagpipers.”

His talent opened doors from England to Amsterdam, where he learnt to win over even the toughest crowds in red-light bars.

Settling in Thailand, his life took on new meaning. First he adopted his wife’s son and daughter and then as a family, they opened their home to children in need.

Almost immediately 15 boys showed up — some moved in, some “were just over all the time”.

“We adopted these boys, and then the girls started to show up, and they were desperate, looking for a home. Unfortunately, it's really terrible here, there are very sad situations,” Mr Stuart said.

Called “Sin City”, Pattaya earned the nickname because of its infamous nightlife and red-light district.

Pattaya Fellowship Church provides support, education, and food to people in need. During the Covid-19 pandemic, they distributed over 100,000 meals.

“This city grew on prostitution. There were no families,” Mr Stuart said. “All of a sudden we realised we had a church. We didn’t plan to have a church.

“We started the church with teenage boys, and then the girls started to come, and then the romances and the next thing I had a church of young families.”

Many of the girls had had bad experiences with fathers and stepfathers. For them, Mr Stuart became “this father figure”.

He wrote Around The World On 50 Cents after years of encouragement from friends and admirers of his unconventional life.

On accepting the challenge he quickly realised the difficulty of condensing a lifetime of exploits into a single volume.

“I had 90,000 words, but 68 years of adventure,” he laughed.

According to Mr Stuart, the book is more than a travelogue — it’s an invitation for others to embark on journeys of their own.

“People think, ‘When I get a lot of money, I’m going to [travel].’ I just did it, and the money came,” he says. “The big theme of my book is: you’ve read my book, now go out and write your book. Make your own adventure.”

• Around The World On 50 Cents is available in local bookstores and onAmazon.com