Online Dating – Can It ‘Work’…? – Part 14
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.
Part-9 and I fail to meet the third lady.
Part-10 continues the search, closer to home.
Part-11 and the first actual audition in the home.
Part-12, and the local talent comes home to roost.
Part-13, and another multiple trip to Bangkok.
After a very tiring day, a visa-run to Kampuchea, and then to MBK to meet Nisa, I retire from the fray…
Back in the hotel I shower, and snooze for a couple of hours. At ten o’clock I phone Paa, as she hasn’t called about meeting tomorrow, which I’m obviously not expecting to happen. She bluntly announces she has to work OT tomorrow, and also take care of her daughters (can one do both… or is this two excuses for the price of one; take my pick…?), and I tell her I understand… I can be so agreeable when my tongue is in my cheek… She says she doesn’t feel like going into Bangkok tomorrow (What does that matter, she’s working isn’t she, or is this a third excuse for me to ‘accept’…?), and I say, “Mai phen rai. But I think you’re lazy.” Well, they always tell me what I am…! She snaps back that she isn’t… just that the traffic is heavy… and I continue mumbling, “Mai phen rai,” after every silly comment she makes, while looking for a convenient opportunity to say, Goodbye… and she goes on and on about her Austrian boyfriend, “Him a shit guy”, and how she moved her life to Chiang Mai for him (Does she really think I give a damn…?), and now she’s come back (I’m sure he’s glad of that…!) to take care of her daughters, because she has two daughters… and, feeling this might go on for ever, I interject: “I understand… mai phen rai… Bye...” and blow me down if she doesn’t cut me off before I finish the last word… and I burst out laughing – like a drain. She must have been ready and waiting to zap me. She probably thinks I’m a ‘shit-guy’ as well… What a waste of space… Am I surprised…? Not – a – bit…! Am I disappointed…? What do you think…?
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I wander slowly down to The Plaza and decide to check one of the ka-toey-only bars which Stick has been mentioning for a few weeks, but there isn’t much of a welcome. I tour each floor, find my favourites over-crowded and smoky and end up at Casanova… where I am quickly approached by a couple of too-large ‘ladies’ who, when I decline to buy either of them a drink, are soon replaced by ‘No.33’ who is only 22 – so she says…! – but is very amusing to chat with, especially when she ‘explains’ to me that ‘Casanova’ is English for ‘ka-toey’… I wonder what Don Juan is in Thai…
I never eat in fast-food chains but, on my occasional trips to Bangkok, and nocturnal strolls around Nana, I often get a yen for a ‘6-inch’… so I wander off to Subway… A few weeks ago [NB: in 2013] Stick commented they were adding ‘VAT’ to bills and picking up extra tips in the process… so I order a standard 129 ฿ number and offer the correct money as the girl is ringing it up… having said: “138”. I say nothing, as if I’ve not heard (or understood, as she speaks Thai to me), and slowly gather up my stuff, as she presents me with the receipt for 129 ฿, and gives me an odd look…
It has been an exhausting weekend. Before turning in I put my phone on and have a message that Nisa tried to call while I was out. I send a ‘thank you’ message and finally, at ten past one, after twenty-one hours, happily keel over.
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Back home, the following day, I get a ‘ping’ from Nisa – that’s when a lady calls, lets it ring just once and cuts off. This is to let you know she’d like to speak to you, but she’s not going to pay. If it’s a friend, who I know isn’t rich, I comply. At other times I either ignore them, or jokingly ‘ping’ them back. Then ‘Big-Sis’ calls, but I don’t answer… If I’m unable to communicate with any of these ladies, trying to create a relationship via a go-between is never likely to work… When I was married, my wife, whenever she had a ‘problem’ with me (i.e. she didn’t understand me and assumed this must be my fault), she would ‘phone a friend’… who spoke better English than her.
I never knew these people – my wife never introduced me to her friends because she feared I would go off with them – there’s trust for you…! Without saying anything, she would just hand me the phone, and I was expected to listen, and learn. On the first two occasions I listened, learned very little (partly because the word ‘compromise’ was never heard…), thanked them politely, and returned the phone to my wife, who had a big grin, thinking she had ‘won’… but never realising I wasn’t even playing.
On the third occasion, instead of taking the phone, but so that her friend could hear, I asked who it was. Naturally my wife didn’t deign to answer, and continued to just silently thrust the phone at me, as I smiled and politely asked who it was… until she virtually threw the phone at me (still silent, because she knew her friend would hear her) and it dropped to the floor… I picked it up, and heard the friend saying: “I don’t think you understand Thai lady.” Something of an understatement, I would have thought…! but it’s invariably said by a Thai lady who equally doesn’t understand farang men – but will doesn’t realise it, and never will… I listened briefly, and icy-coldly, without offering any dutiful grunts of agreement, until her phone must have been frozen to her hand, when she asked if I minded her explaining things to me. I curtly replied I didn’t have a clue who she was, suggested she was talking to the wrong person, and returned the phone to my wife. After listening for a few seconds my wife put the phone down – her face as black as a really cross person’s face can be, when observed in a coal-cellar…!
I asked her if she would now like me to phone a friend of mine… to explain to her, What Just Happened… and it never happened again.
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I call into my friendly bar in Hua Hin and explain last weekend’s saga. Everybody laughs loudly, and the mama-san wants to know why I choose such crazy women… I have no idea either but it is reassuring to know I’m not alone in thinking them all to be a bit loopy…
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A couple of days later Nisa phones, to ask if I’m going to Bangkok this weekend… I tell her, I’m not… but she keeps saying she’s afraid to come to Hua Hin alone (and I won’t agree to her coming with a friend, now that she knows me…), and adds, she doesn’t have the money either. I tell her she shouldn’t have bought a second phone… She does at least laugh but whether she found it amusing, or even understood me, I have no idea…
In May Nisa phones to say she’s going to Pattaya with some friends… She says she can’t come to Hua Hin because I won’t let her sister, or friends, come as well… Up to she…!
For a week or two she continues to ‘ping’ me but, eventually, she seems to get the message, and lets it ring so, after five or six rings, I answer… and she instantly switches off. Such miserly ‘control seeking’ I just do not like…! I’m sure she’s being primed by her ‘sister’, who doesn’t know any better… I wonder if Thai women ‘ping’ each other, or Thai men… or is it just us.
Eventually we do get to speak, and she manages to say she went to Pattaya with ‘the company’, and didn’t like it. She continues to want me to come to Bangkok but I just continue to invite her to Hua Hin, alone, and I will of course pay her fares. She says this coming Sunday might be possible, because Monday is a ‘holiday’ as well.
Nisa continues to ‘ping’ me several times a day before we speak again, when she passes me over to a ‘friend’ who can’t understand me either, and just cuts me off. Later Nisa calls again, and asks what went wrong with my phone… Whatever happens, as they ‘know’ they didn’t do anything, it is always someone else’s fault. She now says she misses me, and loves me, and will come to Hua Hin as soon as she has a free day… but she just said she has Sunday and Monday free…
Throughout June one or other of them phones, once or twice a week… and then once more, finally at the end of July. I have never known anyone be so persistent, especially when getting absolutely nowhere. I feel sorry for her. At heart she seems to be a nice person, although I haven’t forgotten all the ‘shopping’ she wanted to do when we first met…
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Pin, on the other hand, ‘pings’ me twice in May, before withdrawing from the fray. And Paa hasn’t been heard from again… I wonder what upset her. LOL
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By the summer of 2013 I am quite disenchanted with the whole process. Maybe I don’t have enough patience, or my criteria are too exact, or I am too fussy… or I’m simply not a guy who appeals to women. I go to the local police station and request a gun permit. Thinking this might be good for a laugh the cop asks, Why…? I tell him, Thai ladies don’t like me… The entire precinct-house, ‘laugh their bloomin’ hats off…’
For a whole month I don’t even check the site. A week later a very young ka-toey, in Hua Hin, tries to attract my attention one morning, by sending messages every ten minutes, desperate to come and see me right now…! explaining, she works in a bar all night, sleeps all morning, and needs to minister to all my needs this very minute… I head her off at the pass and, as I might one day advance towards her bar, and be recognised, I decide to be ‘nice’, and offer to speak to her tomorrow. She asks why I’m online now if I don’t want her until tomorrow…
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A very nice-sounding lady, whom I ‘messaged’ for a while before giving her a call, speaks good English but, after all the pleasantries, gets down to the details – the small-print – wanting to know everything I’ve done in Thailand in the past two decades, and will probably want to go back even further before she’s finished. Apart from being totally ridiculous I would never give such information to a stranger any more than I would give my online banking password to someone who sends an email requesting it…
Instead, in English, I retort: “I just came here to look for a housekeeper. I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition…!” If she had replied, ‘NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition…!’ I might have signed all my life savings over to her there and then but… without understanding me, and without asking me to explain, she replies: “Do you want sex…?”
Tired with the absurdity of all this, and without thinking (but recalling Billy Connolly), I reply: “Yes. And lots of it. And I want it now, if you’d like to come over. And if you come to take care of me I will want it every morning… and every afternoon… and at. . . . . .” and she cuts me off.
Well, really…! Did she expect me to be serious…? Billy Connolly, I love you…!
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A lady in Korat quite quickly accepts the position of housekeeper, and then abruptly asks if I am OK that she has two children. Apart from there being no mention of this on her profile I reply I’m perfectly fine about it – why should it bother me…? – unless she wants them to live with us… in which case I am certainly not OK with it…! and she disappears.
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A lady who seems very keen but, after asking five times, whereabouts in Thailand she lives, eventually lets on: ‘In the provinces…’ I send back: “All of them…?” and she also gives up.
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An attractive lady of 58 asks not to be sent photos of: ‘cicks’ and ‘docks’… I swear, I’m not making any of this up…! and that takes me to the end of 2013. I have to admit, for much of this time I was busy writing regular articles for another, non-Thai, web-site, which took up much of my time.
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That’s all for now folks… Pip, Pip.
Hua Hin Harry
to be continued…
