The Plan

My plan when I left University at 26 years old was to get a job in engineering construction, travel around the world as a single guy, then at the age of 35 or so, find a nice girl with kids already and settle down to a normal family life….that was the
plan.

I met a girl in my last year at university and even though it was totally against my plan, she persuaded me to get married and made all sorts of promises about what a wonderful life we would have together. This I have come to realize was the biggest single
mistake of my entire life. One year later our first son was born, we had a big house, a huge mortgage and although I still had my job traveling around the world building power stations I lived frugally, making sure my wife had all the material
things she needed. Two more kids and nine years of marriage later, my wife came out with those words from the films “I don’t love you anymore”, she moved her lesbian friend in and told me to find another girlfriend. I made
various attempts to save our marriage but she was determined we split up, sold our house while I was working in South Africa and bought another in her own name to live with the kids and ‘Tina’. The solicitor said basically there
is little I could do as any court would allocate her the house anyway and really I was best just getting divorced, paying maintenance as calculated by the CSA and starting again. Great, here I am 36 years old with no house, no family and no savings.
My company offered me a three-year contract in Malaysia so off I went to start again. I dabbled with some of the local Malay women but the Islam thing is just too much of a pain. I started to look on the Internet and the Thai ladies looked especially
appealing.

The first girl I met through Friendfinder, was 32, had a 14-year-old daughter and owned a small coconut farm near Hua Hin. We did the usual e-mail thing, and then exchanged telephone numbers. I booked two weeks holiday from work packed everything on my
motorcycle and rode the 1000 km to meet her in a hotel. She was already there, checked in with her cousin Geng who spoke excellent English and was to be our translator for the days I was there. I knew nothing of farang / Thai relationships at
this stage but had I known about Stick's column I would have started to be very suspicious at this point. We slept together the first night and she told me I was the first since her daughter was born 14 years ago…..and I believed it. Six
months of bliss followed with her traveling to Malaysia once per month, she never asked for money and I phoned her everyday. I have found my dream partner….or so I thought. One day on the phone she said she wanted to start a business so we could
have a “future” and could I lend her 50,000 baht. I started to chat with a few mates who had spent a lot of time in Asia. Their advice was all the same…she was cleverer than the average girl and had obviously spent a lot of
time setting this up but it had all the hallmarks of a scam. That was the end of that, which was fairly easy as she lived 1,000 km away. She phoned up almost every day for 2 weeks, tantrums, tears the usual. Anyway being the fool that I am I rang
up 6 months later to see if she was ok. She got all emotional on the phone and told me she was diagnosed with Leukemia. (Again, if only I had known about Stick's site then). I booked a few days off work and flew to Bangkok to meet her. She
looked sad but not particularly unhealthy. She had a plastic bag full of pills, which she took after each meal, carefully laying them out on dinner plate… there must have been 7 or 8 taken after each meal and I felt really sorry for her.
I had to go back to work so I gave her a few thousand Baht and paid the hotel for the rest of the week. When I got back to Malaysia, I gave the company doctor a list of the medication she was taking….vitamin pills, mild antibiotics, sore throat
remedies, herbal remedies, slimming pills, but nothing that would be prescribed for leukemia…I had been scammed, but what an elaborate effort she put in to make 10,000 baht and a week in a hotel, was it really worth it? My trust of all
women started to evaporate at this point. Are there any nice girls out there? Around this time I started to frequent Songkla just across the border from Malaysia. There are a handful of beer bars catering for the expat community, and rather than
look for that someone special I decided to ‘put it about a bit’ and just have a good time. Provided ‘extra safe’ nodders are used on all occasions there should be no problem and at 300 baht bar fine and 1,000 for long
time this seemed the cheaper option without any of the hassles a steady girl brings. I told a couple of my mates about my weekends in Songkla and before long there was 4 or 5 of us piling across the border for a weekend of beer, parties and debauchery.
Despite all of our efforts to persuade him otherwise one of the guys married a bargirl…and I could write another story about how that has turned out over the last two years but not here.

I started to feel a bit lonely in Malaysia and wondered what it would be like if I brought my favorite bargirl from Songkla to live here. I had started to learn Thai by this stage and could converse on a basic level. Next trip to Songkla and I made her
an offer…come and live with me and I will take care of you and send 5,000 baht home to the folks (she was from Nontaburi near BKK). Now I know some of the guys were paying their tirak between 10,000 and 20,000 per month and
thought I was on to a real bargain here, but as I was to find out later there is no such thing as a free lunch. She came with all her bags and really did put a lot of effort into it. After about 6 months I had to go to Taiwan for 3 weeks on a
breakdown job so I arranged the flight with a stop over in BKK so I could take her back home. I agreed to stay at her family home for one night but when I arrived there………gees they were poor. I thought I had been transported
back in time 1,000 years; they lived in a wooden shack on stilts with a corrugated iron fence around. I bought her mother a fridge as a present (that’s what my girl said she wanted) and I was treated as a celebrity for the evening (nothing
to do with the huge amounts of food and beer I had bought of course). During the course of the evening whilst drinking warm Singha the family around me started talking about ‘our future’?? That’s right, it appeared that because
we had been living together and ‘saving money’, marriage was inevitable.

The details of this relationships demise are irrelevant, suffice to say it ended on a very sour note but again luckily, without physical violence as I live 1,500 km from BKK and despite threats of her turning up on my doorstep it didn’t happen.

I had now given up any thoughts of having a permanent or even semi permanent girlfriend. A crowd of Thai girls had descended on my little town of Lumut in Malaysia hunting the expat construction workers. As I had two spare bedrooms, me being the kind
soul that I am offered 4 of them accommodation at no cost providing they cook and keep the house tidy. As you can imagine that offer was taken up enthusiastically and I spent the last 3 months of my Malaysian contract living with 4 attractive
Thai girls, my grasp of the language came on in leaps and bounds. (I found out later that some of the phrases I picked up are not normally used in public) and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.

All good things come to an end I am working now in Hong Kong. I don’t think I am the marrying type and my complete distrust of all women has made me very cynical of the whole marriage partner thing. I love Thailand; I love the Thai women and have
had the best times of my life there. I will go back at least twice per year and head straight for my favorite bar in BKK, Pattaya, Chiang Mai or Songkla. I will buy drinks for the girls, chat with them all night, give a few hundred baht tip and
if one takes my fancy negotiate a price for a day or two and take her out. This approach has worked for me in the past, the girl gets some money, I get some company, the bar owner gets the barfine and everyone is happy. None of this ‘I
miss you / I love you” nonsense. The only downside is the STD factor but I like motorcycles, aren’t they dangerous? Just have to wear a helmet every time.

I am 42 now and have a small sailing yacht moored up in Malaysia, Phuket is 5 days sailing through some of the most beautiful coastline in the world. I don’t own a house in the UK or anywhere else and intend spending the rest of my working life
here in Asia and all my holidays living on my boat. I like chatting to bargirls, and I do like the non-commitment this lifestyle has. I don’t want a long-term relationship with a non-bargirl, raising her expectations of marriage only to
be let down with all the misery and nastiness these endings have. I would never marry a bargirl after reading the contributions on this site and seeing the misery others have gone through in my last 4 years in Asia.

I don’t plan ahead too far but 15 years from now I see myself semi retired, 57 years old, cruising the waters of the Malaccan straights, picking up part time construction jobs in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. No stress, no hassle, no major
bills. Social life will be chatting to expats, fellow sailors and….bargirls, but maybe try and seek out the older 35+ models… That’s the plan anyway.

Stickman’s thoughts:

Good luck chasing your dream.