My New Wife

My first trip to Thailand…I had always wanted to visit Thailand, ever since friends had shown me pictures and told stories of their adventures on R&R in Bangkok and Pattaya. I'd had a fascination with Asian culture as long as I could remember and with my appetite whetted by the pics and stories, a hunger for a trip there began in 1966, soon after my graduation from high school.

I was drafted into the the army in November 1968, the biggest draft month of the biggest draft year the US had ever had. Luckily for me I wasn't sent to Vietnam like most of my fellow soldiers…the Army had other plans for me…I was sent to Fort
Benning Georgia for on the job training in Data Processing [as it was called back then] operating various IBM machines that I had used as a clerk for the railroad.

My type of job was always filled in ‘Nam by soldiers that volunteered because the work had to be air-conditioned so it kept them out of combat to a large extent.

Well, as it turned out the Army wasn't to be my vehicle to exotic Southeast Asia. Instead I met the love of my life and started a family.

Almost 40 years later with two grown daughters and very happily divorced for 15 years; I was in the arrival hall at Don Muang.

Thanks to Stick’s site and several others, I walked out into the hot wet blanket of night a far wiser and incredibly more well informed visitor than the millions that had come before me. It was 9 PM and the 24 hour trip from the States had seemed
like a walk around the block. The adrenalin was dripping in full force.

After a short and enjoyable ride, thanks to one of several interesting taxi drivers I was to meet during the following month, I was finally standing wide eyed in the lobby of the famed Nana Hotel. Friday night 1030 PM April first 2005. In retrospect I'm
pretty sure that it could be no other date for me to arrive. April Fools Day.

While checking in, I was pretty sure that almost every young Thai beauty in the place was eyeing me up as their next meal…fresh meat. Room 316…I'll never forget that number. A quick freshen up and I was heading for NEP…tunnel vision kept me
from seeing much on the short trip to whichever gogo bar I landed in but a short 30 minutes later I was back in 316 exercising with beautiful 25 year old Mon [the only real name I'll use…your first is very special] Two thousand baht and
12 hours later I was in the shower readying myself for round two of what was to be the adventure of my life.

As I would be wandering around on my own, I had wisely decided not to drink any alcohol. After all I had had several bouts with a drinking problem during the past 30 years. So several hours later, after the fifth or was it the sixth Heineken, I forget
now, I was helping two, count 'em, two beautiful young ladies to the now famed den of iniquity, room 316.

Little did I know then that one of those beauties was to be my ‘broken rule # one'. Yep, I fell in love with a bargirl. I will spare you all the reasons. Let's just say that she stirred something in me that I thought had been long dead.

There had been several women since my divorce and even a few relationships but absolutely nothing like what I felt for Lek, Nok, Tik, Orn or whatever her name is…

We have talked every day since my return and I am in the process of obtaining a fiancée visa for her. We will have very many things to discuss and spend the allotted three months really getting to know one another. I am not going into this blindly,
I know that with the cultural and religious differences we will have many obstacles in our way. My youngest daughter is single, 27 and she is very much like me…very liberal and free thinking. She has no problem at all with my new found love,
whatever makes me happy.

My oldest is 33, married and Mother of one, with another on the way in September. She is very protective of me and in theory and practice has not approved of my escapades…and surprisingly is ok with my decision to take a wife [even if she is 25]…of course the fact that I haven't told her about it might have influenced her opinion about that greatly.

Stickman's thoughts:

I wonder what the 33 year old daughter will think when she finds out?