Marry a Thai bar girl?
Posted: Tuesday, July 11, 2006
by Marc Holt
http://holtww.com
Over the years Thailand
has attracted its share of interesting characters, and I've met many of
them. Not just farungs, but Thais too. There are plenty of stories to
tell, so sit back, read on and share their pain, sorrows and laughter
with me. We'll start off with the sad story of Wally.
How many times have you heard horror stories about men
who come to Thailand, fall in love with a bar girl and marry them?
There may be the odd successful marriage. But I cant honestly say I've
heard of one, no matter what some guys claim. This is the story of
Wally, who married a prime example of the sisterhood.
Soon after I arrived in Thailand I set up an English
school and started recruiting teachers. Wally arrived for an interview
with his friend Charley. Although they had no background in teaching,
that was no problem. If you spoke English in those days you were
capable of teaching it. So I hired them, gave them some training in
teaching techniques and set them up with their first student groups.
My wife and I had rented a large log cabin house in
Soi Lertsin, off Ploenchit Road, to set up the school. We also lived
there. We had a couple of spare rooms downstairs so we offered them to
Wally and Charley. They had just been traveling around and had nowhere
to live, so they moved in.
Wally was 6 foot 2 tall, and very shy about it. There
was something sad about him. He walked hunched over, trying to hide his
height. And his forlorn eyes looked out on the world in a mixture of
surprise and sadness. But after teaching for a few weeks he started to
open up and enjoy his job, and his life.
About
3 months later my wife and I hosted a party for all our students and
teachers. She invited a lot of her girl friends from the government
office where she worked, and that's when Wally met Noi. It wasn't hard
to see why he fell so hard. She was a stunner, with long hair framing a
beautiful face. Her body was pretty good too.
Being a very polite young lady, she talked pleasantly
with Wally at the party, and you could see him falling with a bang.
After that she started calling around to see my wife more often than
she used to. Hmmm, thought I. Could it be?
Looking on from the sidelines, it soon became clear
that Noi was just interested in a friendship with Wally. But Wally
began screwing up the courage to ask her out anyway. It took him 3
months, but he finally got around to it one evening after class.
To everyone's surprise she agreed. They set a time and
place, and then Noi told him where to pick her and her friend up. In
those days (and maybe even today), nice Thai girls never went out alone
with a man, particularly a farung, on the first date.
Well, off they went. Wally had a great time and came
home euphoric. He thought Noi was wonderful. He told us how charming
and how much fun she was. Id never seen him so animated. And so it went
for a few more months.
Meanwhile, Wally and Charley left our school and went
to work at AUA. They moved into an apartment building together, so I
didn't see that much of them. But they seemed to be doing well for
themselves.
It was at another party we held later that year that
things started to go wrong for Wally. We invited all our friends,
teachers and even ex-teachers. Wally and Charley were there, and Noi
and her friends too.
Wally had been working up to asking her to marry him
for a few months. He grabbed his chance during the party. Noi was very
sympathetic and soothing, but the end result was that she said No.
At first, this didn't seem to have much effect on
Wally. He just thought she was being coy. So he asked her again a few
days later. She still said No. Finally, it sank in that she wasn't in
love with him and had no intention of ever marrying him. Wally was
devastated.
One evening not long after the party I received a call
from him asking me to attend his wedding the next day. This was a big
surprise. Noi had spoken to my wife and I about Wally and we both knew
that she wasn't in love with him. So I asked Wally what had changed
Noi's mind.
Oh, I'm not marrying Noi. I'm marrying Daeng, a girl I met in the 3 Roses Bar.
Now, in those days the 3 Roses bar was in Sukhumvit
Soi 16. It was famous as one of the sleaziest, run-down bars in town.
The women working there were not famed for their beauty either.
I asked Wally how he had met Daeng, and he blithely
replied that he went there with Charlie a few nights earlier, sat down
for a drink and Daeng sat down on his lap and started making him happy.
Well, we can all imagine what that meant.
Daeng was at least 5 years older than Wally, had a kid
upcountry somewhere, and had been on the game for at least 10 years.
She was a hard-bitten whore with gold gleaming in her eyes.
Of course, that's not how Wally described her to me on
the phone, and I only found out more about her after the wedding. But
in the event, I declined to go and I advised Wally not to get married.
He was badly overreacting to Noi's rejection. But Wally went ahead, got
married, and took his bride off to live with him at his apartment.
The months went by and I heard the occasional rumor
from Wallys friends about his life, but Wally never called me. They
told me tales that at that time I found hard to believe. How Daeng was
driving Wally to work long hours so that she could build and furnish a
house in her village. How she wouldn't let him out of her sight unless
it was to send him off to work, sometimes 18 hours a day. How she took
all his money as soon as he walked in the door. And so on. It's a sad
but familiar story to us old timers these days.
The next time I heard from Wally was when he called up
to say he'd just become the father of a daughter. I congratulated him
and asked how life was. He said everything was fine, so I wished him
luck.
Not long after that Wally called again to ask me to go
to his apartment and help him unlock his apartment door. As he had
moved to an apartment just around the corner from my place I walked
over. It turned out that he hadn't locked himself out, as I had
thought. Daeng had locked him in with a huge padlock on the outside of
the door. There was no way I could get that off, so I called the
landlord and he cut it off. We walked into a bare room, with Wally
standing there in his underwear.
What's going on? I asked him. Where's Daeng and the baby?
It turned out that Daeng, had got everything she
wanted out of Wally, including a house, furniture, and a substantial
amount of money in her bank account. She'd also got a kid, but this
didn't seem to bother her much. She had sent it off to her village soon
after it was born to join the first one. She had gone back to work part
time at the 3 Roses bar while Wally was out working.
When she realized that Wally had worked himself into
near exhaustion and that he wasn't going be much more use to her she
took everything from the room, leaving him in his underwear. She took
all his clothes as well as everything else she could carry off and then
just disappeared. We found out later on that she had returned to her
village to live on the fruits of her marriage to Wally.
The landlord decided to call the police because Wally
owed him 3 months rent. At that stage Wally assured me that he would
sort it out. So I left. One thing Id learned by then was to avoid
contact with the police as much as possible, particularly if the affair
has nothing to do with me.
It turned out that as well as owing rent, Wally had
overstayed his visa by 3 months and he would have to pay a 100 Baht a
day fine or go to immigration jail. Wally didn't have enough money, so
the police arranged for him to pay part of the rent he owed, and then
they carted him off to immigration jail.
Now, if you've never seen the immigration jail out the
back of the immigration office in Soi Suan Phlu, you cannot possibly
imagine how bad it is. It's a single long room without any partitions
or even a toilet. You have to squat over an Asian toilet in full view
of everyone in the room. The room itself is crowded with all sorts of
people, including some who have been there for years. No one has helped
them get out because they are either crazy and no one knows what to do
with them, or they don't know anyone to help them. Each inmate lays
claim to a small space for his sleeping mat and few possessions. There
is hardly room to move. The heat, flies and stench are terrible.
I didn't realize Wally had been carted off to jail,.
It wasn't until I got a call from him a month later that I found out.
He asked me to go and help him get out.
When I arrived I couldn't believe how bad Wally
looked. He was gaunt, hollow eyed and obviously losing it. But he was
still lucid and able to tell me his tale. He needed enough money to get
out of jail, about 30,000 Baht, so that he could go to his wife's
village and persuade her to come back to Bangkok with him and the baby.
Looking at Wally, it was hard to imagine how he would
live if he did accomplish his goal. It was also obvious that his mental
state was very fragile. I suggested paying his fine, buying him an air
ticket and putting him on a plane to Australia instead. He refused, and
even after an hour of explaining that this would be the best way for
him to get himself together he still insisted on getting out to try
retrieve his wife and daughter.
I told him to think about my offer and left him there,
thinking he'd ring me up in a day or 2 to accept. It took him another 4
weeks before he changed his mind, and then he called Charley up.
Charley finally persuaded him to get on a plane for Sydney.
When Wally arrived home, he went to stay with his
sister. She took him in and the next morning went off to work. When she
came home that night, she found Wally squatting naked in the shower,
staring blankly at the wall. He didn't even recognize his sister. So,
she called the medics and Wally finished up spending a few years in a
mental institution.
So much for marrying a bar girl.
How is Wally today? I don't know for sure, but I heard
he had got religion and become a born again Christian. I've never seen
him up here again and I hope I never do. Some people just aren't built
to survive in the Bangkok jungle.
--------
First published in Big Chilli magazine, January 2003, reprinted in stickmanbangkok.com June 2006
If your a sucker in the west the east will swallow you!Yeah, sadly but true, born a sucker always a sucker. I know it sounds rude, but in Wally's case, even when friends tried to talked him out, he still refused to think or even analyze their scenario that... well... it happened, unfortunately.
reading some of the above may have just saved me a fortune..... have been in a relationship with thai girl (not a bar girl by the way)some 13months or so now...have been there 2 see her 5times and her here 2 australia once.... all was going well and i was due for a trip there again 2 days ago, however due to work commitments had 2 postpone untill mid july.... after explaining this 2 her all was fine... not 5 mins after the phone call had finished, i recieved a txt msg from her that read "why u not call me baby, please call me now"... well i was furious replyed with "it appears 2 me u may have other man. u send msg 2 wrong person, 2day u make big mistake, la gorna for u".....she txt me like 100 times telling me she was sick wit broken heart, that why i no love her anymore...and well u get the idea..... soon the truth be known, because i will be returning in july as planned, as i do have many good friends still in thailand, but must admit it has saddened me some...but life goes on theirs on the other hand remains the same every day.....
Been with my Thai girl for 3 years. She has a university degree and now works for an American multinational company 6 days a week. She is paid a pittance of a salary and still pays her fair share of the bills. She is fluent in English and never asks me for money. If anything I feel bad because I know how many girls are getting money sent to them and being taken care of and she gets almost nothing. Either way she doesn't seemed bothered and we are very happy together. It's mostly her friends that think since she has a foreign boyfriend that I buy her everything. Which isn't the case. At the end of the day if you like Thai girls, you need one that has a good family with their own money. Then you can live the dream. Otherwise forget it. She only wants one thing and when the money is gone so is she.I have a Thai girl for almost a year now. Been back to see her once and she is coming here next week on a tourist visa. I tend to disagree with the impression that all Thai girls are the same and only want you for one thing. Yes, its true i think 90% are money hungry but you need to filter out the grabage to get to the genuine girls out there. There are more than enough of cases like this in Western countries.Its little things to keep wary of, how does she talk with other men? Does she respect you? How does she talk with you? If she doesn't show you respect or the signs are there that she doesn't love you, why pursue something based on something that isn't there?One thing i have with this Thai girl is as much as i like her and she makes me happy, i always keep an open mind about the fact that that she maybe in it just for the money. And if the signs are there its best to finish the relationship now rather than get burnt later on!MarkMark, nobody said all the Thai girls wants your money, but all the Thai bar girls wants your money, which is true. Is their job, as prostitutes, after all, and they'll try to suck your wallet with any occasion. The serious Thai girls are, indeed, much more better women (IMHO) then the Europeans (where I came from), not only better wives and, well, lets not forget the sex :), but also much more warm inside. I suppose the Buddhism just makes makes better people, generally.
If you're single, do whatever, if you're married, you should know that you'll never be completely happy by making other people cry...Thai girls in general I wouldn't know but those bar girls...another thing altogether. They know precisely what they're doing and sure know how to do it well. My dad...let me just say, I never want to speak or see him ever again and so sad it just got to that point...he's now been sucked dry of all his money and his sanity...
My dad too, turned into a complete looney, I can relate to the stories told above, lost and continuing to lose all his money to a Thai bar girl...have lost all respect after what he did to our family. Some things are forgivable, but what he did isn't. Now got to a point of thinking we're all better off without him, creepy, slimy, sleazy and dirty old fart he is!
Your story is quite interesting. Maybe one day I will visit Thailand to see how those bar girls look like.
Good article, a bit extreme, even for stickman's stuff. I suppose anything's possible.
this article change my life
bcoz i was suppose to go meet my (bar) thai girl friend after week, this article make me stunning, bcoz i stayed with her since 2 months, i saw Daeng symptoms in my thai girl friend, i dont want to be 2nd wally again.
i thinking now 'i have to love myself more then anyone'
thousand thanks for this article writer/publisher.
YOU GUYS SHOULD REMEMBER THIS .
" no way.. word of advice u can never make a decent wife out of a Whoe "
This is wat i learn from my previous relation ship with a Thai girl i met in the bar !!!!! She fuked up me really good . And this girl is not only for money .... she wants SEX . She 31 years old !!!!!
Oh my god, three men in five years I know that have been duped and sucked dry of money. These guys turned into complete dicks, one even turning to selling his deceased 'supposed' mate's belongings for his fund to his Thai bargirlfriend because she wanted a mobile phone to contact her mother's cousin's sister who is suffering severe illness and a computer to Skype him though to date she has been 'too busy' to use it. Idiots.
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