My MBP 15'' wont boot - battery or not?

Hello everyone.

It has now been 2 months since my MBP quit on me and I'll try to go through my troubleshooting process and history:

Before it died

Last summer I bought extra ram and a SSD for my MBP. It worked like a charm and I had no issues whatsoever.

Later - I was traveling through Myanmar this fall and at one point I found a cafe that actually had internet and a single plug I could use to charger my laptop with. I plugged in my original charger and heard a small 'clonck' inside the transformer. My computer was not connected to the charger when it happened.

My next stop on the trip was Hong Kong and I decided to find a new charger there. I bought a fake charger and it worked like a charm.

The day it died

I was in mid/end November, about three weeks later, while I was traveling through Vietnam. I was working, well knowing, my MBP would run out of power at any moment, but I decided I had worked enough and as it went out, I closed it and drank a few beers instead.

Three days later I had to get some work done again and I when I plugged in the charger it had a very faint orange color. Before I googled anything I kicked myself for buying a cheaper copy adapter.

My troubleshooting

I found the closest authorized store was about 300 KM south of me and when I finally reached the city a couple of days later, there were about 15-20 stores that looked 'legit'. Mind you that by the word legit regarding Asia - it would not have been in Europe or America. Anyway, I trust I found the actual store, since everyone else had quite cheap adapters and the one I bought was about the same as back home.

When I finally plugged it in, the same faint dim light came on, so I googled it.

I found a bunch of people having the same problem and everyone saying it helped unplugging and/or removing the battery and putting everything back together again. This did not work.

Then I had a few articles saying I should remove the battery from the case and connect the MBP to the adapter. The articles mentioned the motherboard now would run by itself and I could tell by the running coolers. Nothing of this sort happened and when I put it back together, it was bright green for a moment and then it went back to being faint green and on to faint orange.

Bested by this issue and no guide seemed to work, I wrote on a few different foras online. No one had an answer, except: "Your battery is ruined", "Change it".

Now home again

Since then I've been working out of an iPad, which was complicated. I decided, hoping for a miracle, to connect my MBP to the power adapter and hope to boot it. It went directly to a bright orange and seemed to charge. I gave it 2 min. before trying to boot it, but nothing happened and it doesn't even give the slightest sound.

My mate told me to take out the battery and leave it for a few days to make sure it was 100% empty and then try again. I did so, still no change.

Battery or Not?

I decided it was the battery and I am about to order a new. However, I pressed the small "check your battery charge level bottom" or whatever you want to call that tiny bottom. It started out with just 1 green dot and having one blinking, I checked again a bit later and it was on 3 with 1 blinking, indicating it was charging.

Now it is almost full - yet still no sign of life from my old MBP.

I am kind of hoping it is the battery, since that it probably the easiest and cheapest to change. Does anyone here know if it is or if it is something else (more serious) that could be wrong?

Thank you for reading and for your suggestions!

I'm sorry for the long post!