Online Dating – Can It ‘Work’…? – Part 9
Part-1 outlined my basic reasons for investigating ThaiLoveLinks.
Part-2 detailed my first two meetings with tender Thai damsels.
Part-3 covers two further meetings with less tender lasses.
Part-4, in which I investigate a ‘company girl’, and take a break.
Part-5, where the ‘company girl’ gets another break.
Part-6, and I meet with two bored, and boring, ladies.
Part-7 wherein we limber up to meet three ladies in two days.
Part-8 where I fail to meet two out of three ladies, and check The Plaza.
The morning after the miserable day before… I keep smiling because if I’m going to have problems with any lady I would far rather have them, and escape, before a lot of time and effort has been expended. Do you remember my old friend I refer to as Miss Esso. Last Autumn I was unable to see her because her boyfriend was arriving the next day. She recently told me he was going home yesterday (or early this morning), and she often goes to the airport with him… and maybe she’s in town at this minute…
I send a message asking her whereabouts, as I’m in Bangkok, and she replies: “Hello i am stay in Hua Hin. i’m ok now?”. I let her know I’ll be home tomorrow… just in case…
__________________________________
After a quick breakfast I make my way to MBK arriving a little early, at ten to eleven and quickly find a very convenient Coffee World. Immediately, Phet phones… to say the traffic is very heavy and she expects to be half an hour late… I realise this probably means another hour but, unlike all the others, at least she does call to warn me…
I have a walk around but my feet start to give out, and there seems to be just nowhere in MBK for tired customers to rest their weary bones… so I sit just inside the entrance to KFC where nobody bothers me, and wait…
At eleven-forty Phet phones. She isn’t too easy to hear but she seems to say she’s in Pratunam which is about half an hour away… so how far has she travelled in the last forty-five minutes, when she then reckoned she was half an hour away…!?
At ten to twelve Phet phones again and repeats she’s still in Pratunam… I hope she’s not expecting me to go over there…! Instead I send an SMS saying: I’m in MBK… so why are you in Pratunam…!? and go for another walk… wondering how much longer I should give her… It takes her another half hour (and now eighty minutes late…) to phone again, wanting to know where I am… I try not to do an impression of Sir Alec, in The Lady Killers (“Major, Major, Major. CONTROL yourself…!”) and say: “MBK…!” but she wants to know where, exactly – it’s a big place… But I am not screwed to the floor. I am strolling around. And, anyway, where exactly I am is of no concern to her until she actually gets here… and I now decide she’s got until just twelve-thirty to make it…!
At twelve-fifteen Phet phones again… and again wants to know where I am, almost as if she’s pretending she’s really here already and is looking for me. Then I get an SMS from Power Buy (in Hua Hin) to say my toaster is repaired, and is ready and waiting… I bet it hasn’t been waiting as long as I have…! At twelve-twenty Phet seems to make one final stab, at… something… and phones to ask where I am. Wanting to be kind, even though she won’t tell me where she now is, I say: at the 1st Floor Information Desk – wherever she might be in the building it cannot take her more than 5-10 minutes to get here, even if she dawdles and, being 90 minutes late already, she has no reason to be dawdling…!
At twelve-thirty I give her the benefit of the doubt… At twelve-forty I depart… Five minutes later she phones… to ask where I am. I say I’ve gone home. Unable to understand this she replies that she’s at the Information Desk, and where am I. I say I’ve left, gone, vanished, done a bunk, scarpered… gone fishing, gone missing, gone Pete Tong, Gone With the Wind, GONE HOME…! and she seems to be somewhat flabbergasted. In the ensuing silence I say goodbye, and switch off…! and enter a nearby restaurant.
As I sit down Phet phones again and, rather forlornly, asks where I am… I repeat myself – she still cannot believe she’s hearing this and passes the phone to a guy at the Information Desk who speaks a little English… I tell him I’ve gone home which doesn’t seem to make any sense to him either – why should it…? “Klap ban… Gone home… Klap ban ley-oh…!” and I hear him incredulously repeat this to Phet… There is a very long pause… I hang on, like a judge who has just passed a sentence of hanging, to see if there is anything more the accused has to say… Eventually a much quieter Phet says hello… and I ask if she understands. She says yes, but only seems to understand that I’ve left the building, because I ask if she knows why and, amazingly (but not for a Thai woman…!) she admits, no. Soooo… I tell her I was very much looking forward to meeting her and I had arrived at ten-thirty, because I didn’t want to be late… because I’m a nice guy… whereas she has arrived at 12-45… nearly two hours late… and doesn’t understand why I’m not happy… I tell her it’s because she’s not a nice person…! and then add I don’t want to ‘know’ her…
After a brief silence she turns her phone off… And I feel terrible…!
It’s like when you smack a child and it hurts you more than the child… I could be back there in five minutes or so but… as I’ve been obliged to acknowledge before, as soon as it seems to be wrong, it’s wrong…! And it ain’t gonna get better.
I eat my meal, while espying four young, hi-so ka-toey trying to cook ‘suki’, which is very amusing… but… I do not smile much…!
__________________________________
Ruminations on Phet…
She lives in a suburb in northern Bangkok… It might take her an hour to reach MBK from there – maybe longer if the traffic is bad… but it always is… So… to meet me at eleven o’clock she should have left home by at least ten o’clock, and preferably nine-thirty if she wanted to be nice, make a good impression, and arrive a little early… In this case, if she did the right thing (which of course is so unlikely as not to need questioning…) it took her about three hours to travel less than 15 kilometres… The 220 kilometres from Hua Hin, including the heavy traffic in the city takes two and a half hours or so. There simply is no way she left home at ten o’clock…! Indeed, I even suspect that when she first phoned at five to eleven she might have just woken up… and has been lying through her teeth ever since…!
If she had rushed, and left home by eleven-thirty, she could have arrived at a quarter to one… I used to live in Nonthaburi and regularly made the trip into town. It fits… so why did she say, at eleven o’clock, she would arrive at eleven-thirty…? It was a silly subterfuge… but… she was still nearly two hours late… and seemed to have no understanding why I was not happy… Even when she said she was in Pratunam it took her over an hour to arrive… I have done that little trip several times in about twenty minutes…! but these ladies, when they first set out to deceive, have no idea that I know so much… and yet neither do they even seem to care…
Remember, it is only (normally) necessary to accept the excuse, not believe it… but this attitude of Phet today shows so little respect for me (and even for herself…) that there is simply no way any relationship could come of it… I was never previously able to ascertain where she worked, nor why two of her photos showed her in a pharmacy, but not apparently working there. I can only assume she’s not what she claims to be…
Perhaps when she first phoned she was in a hotel bathroom, and didn’t want to dash off until she’d been paid – and tipped.
Nevertheless it’s a frustrating experience… I come to Bangkok for three days (two nights) to meet three ladies, and don’t get even a glimpse of anybody…! What is wrong with this…? [Don’t answer that…!]
I get the Skytrain back to Nana and Coffee World where I sit and muse a bit, and recall Peter O’Toole (about to attack, in Lawrence of Arabia), “No prisoners...!”
After a long snooze I take a stroll around the Plaza again, waste a little time in Spanky’s – the ‘shows’ leave me cold, and I wonder who exactly they’re aimed at, or whether they do it for themselves… Do guys actually turn up at show-time intentionally…? Please let me know. I peer through the curtains of a few other bars, but I’m not in the mood for blatant flesh and get myself along to Subway, where I treat myself to a ‘12-inch’… I think, for lunch…! But it doesn’t make me feel any better.
__________________________________
The next day I return home and, in the evening, bump into my Miss Esso, demurely strutting her stuff. I ask why she didn’t call. She smiles wickedly and says she always thinks “You have lady…” and prefers me to call her. We have a light supper together and return home. It is the best end to these three days I could have imagined. I ask after her ‘boyfriend’ and she grins, and snaps: “Give me 20,000 a month and I leave him now…!” I enquire if perhaps he’s only giving her 18,000 and, still grinning wickedly, she says he gives her 25,000/month, but she loves me much more… LOL 5555…
__________________________________
That’s all for now folks… Pip, Pip.
Hua Hin Harry
to be continued…
