Can You Ever Recapture The Magic?
Can You Ever Recapture The Magic Of That First TGFE?
If you ask any man in the world what was the most memorable moment of his life, invariably he will declare witnessing the miracle of the birth of his first child. Ask a devotee of the Thailand scene and he would probably say the same. However give him
a truth serum and his answer would probably be, his first full on Thai Girl Friend Experience.
As regular Stick readers, we know that Thai girls are consummate actresses; we know it is only about money, but just for a moment suspend your sceptism, close your eyes and remember the awesome unbelievable experience of that magic first
TGFE when you were still naïve and before you got to “know too much.”
Everyone’s individual experience is different and some guys may step off the plane and plunge directly into the TGFE, but generally I believe there is a generic process we all undertake to a greater or lesser extent.
You arrive in Thailand following a divorce or similar relationship breakdown. You are only just beginning to get yourself together. As Union Hill succinctly states “emotionally and financially mutilated men do not attract woman anywhere
in the world”. You feel an old git in England is probably an old git in Thailand. Your self-esteem is at rock bottom.
You spend your first few days in Bangkok in open-mouthed wonderment. You quickly learn (or are taught) the basics and you have barfined a couple of girls from NEP or Soi Cowboy who are almost half your age. You have not had sex with any one
so young and slim for 20 years. If you are truthful you probably never had anyone so slim and exotic in your whole life.
You have just about got used to the spectacle of turning out time in the NEP and the indescribable phenomenon that is the swarm of humanity on the Nana hotel car park at 1.00 o’clock. You have seen the shows in Patpong and will never
again be able to see a ping-pong ball, razor blade or a banana in the same light. You have just managed to remove the wide-eyed open-mouthed expression that has locked your jaw for several days.
Or maybe you have gone down to Pattaya, the experience of disorientation is similar. Pattaya is the closest thing you will find to that place in the Bible where Lot’s wife was turned into pillar of salt.
About a week into your holiday you feel an unusual sensation that you only faintly recognise. Up to now sex has been your imperative but by now your lust has been somewhat assuaged. This sensation you notice is guilt, but it is only working
at your subconscious level. You are suffering the effect of years of conditioning and indoctrination by western culture and western woman.
Pleasure is a sin and sexual pleasure is not allowed until you have mown the lawn. A vaguely familiar voice within is saying, “Are you enjoying yourself? Well stop it immediately!”
We are conditioned that to have this much pleasure without responsibility or pain is decadence. Subconsciously guilt will not allow you to continue enjoying these delicious creatures and is making you seek something meaningful for you to
rationalize this pleasure. Your conditioning tells you that you should either be wearing a “hair shirt” or that you are in need of a “relationship”
You are now predisposed for the full on Thai girlfriend experience.
The first time you meet her you know she is different from the go-go girls you had been barfining to date. You meet her in one of the smaller beer bars or you may have met in a shopping mall or she is a dek-serve in a go-go bar.
She is probably not the most beautiful creature you have seen, she appears to be a “normal” nice girl and this normality is what your conditioning is urging you to seek.
But I ask you dear reader to recall those magic moments when probably for the first time in your life that you are treated like a king.
You are getting attention like you have never experienced before. She is selecting your meals, filleting your fish and almost spoon-feeding you. She is running your bath, washing you, massaging you, cleaning your ears with cotton buds and
cutting your fingernails. The look of affection she gives you, her soft arms around you and the unquestioning acquiescence to your sexual demands. You probably have your first blowjob for 20 years. You are even rediscovering the simple pleasure
of shopping.
After years of western women, you think you have died gone to heaven.
If you don’t believe we are conditioned by our culture, hands up all you who hummed a tune from Miss Saigon or an aria from Madame Butterfly at any time during the experience? I defy any man to deny that the moment your teeruk wrapped
her legs around you in the bath you did not think of Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman”.
Can you ever forget the tears at the airport, (most of them your own?) the rosy glow as you settle in for your long flight home, wondering how are you going to even begin to explain the experience to your friends back home. <To me, this is one huge embarrassment when a grown man cries over a Thai girl at the airport – Stick>
How many times did you use the phrase “she was different to the other girls “in explaining to those same friends?
I believe we can never quite repeat the open mouthed exhilarating excitement of that first TGFE. There is little doubt the emotion is not un-adjacent to real love. Unfortunately the more visits you make to the kingdom, the more we learn,
the more sceptical we become, the further you get from that magical first experience.
Recalling my own experience I met my teeruk in a quiet bar in Pattaya and as soon as I saw her I knew I was lost. Compared to the girls I had been with my first week, she was older, a little on the plump side and whilst there was no mistaking
she was pretty, it was her ordinariness that I found overwhelming. On seeing her I barfined her immediately and the following days were the most idyllic of my life. I had fallen in love and I believed she was my girlfriend. We did all the tourist
things together and had the tears at the airport. Within days of my return to the UK we began the obligatory exchange of emails.
This was in November 2003 and surprisingly we are still friends to this day. I know I will never recapture the magic of those halcyon days, but what has been fascinating is the evolution from teeruk into a real friendship in that time.
Just before I returned to LOS the following June my teeruk had informed me she had got herself a rich farang patron but she still joined me in Bangkok for the second week of my vacation. I even joked about her being my timeshare girl friend.
She had changed considerably in the intervening six months and the subservient geisha girl act had clearly gone, she admitted because I was not paying her this time she considered she was on vacation with me. In a relationship of equals everything
was more relaxed. She only laughed at my jokes if they were actually funny. Friends said we looked and acted like an old married couple.
She told me that within a couple of days of meeting me back in November she had recognised I was not going to become her long term benefactor but by then against her better judgment she had committed the cardinal sin of falling for me.
On my next visit in October 2004 she was developing the relationship with her patron and she had become serious about staying faithful to him so no intimacy occurred between us. She came up to Bangkok in my first week and we only had dinner
together. Her English had improved and she was turning into a confident and self-assured lady. She still phoned me everyday and when I ran into some difficulties in Pattaya without hesitation she drove down to lend me 20,000 baht.
On my last visit in June 2005 she invited me to stay a few days with her and I witnessed the final step in her metamorphism from teeruk to friend. She provided her 25-year-old niece as my bed partner and had coached her in my sexual preferences.
She has never asked me for money and other than that first week I have never given her any. She is honest with me, or at least what approximates for truth with a Thai girl. She is intelligent, amusing and our twice-weekly contact is now interwoven
into the fabric of my life. I am convinced I am her hobby.
To anyone who knows me it is clear that I have been somewhat smitten with this girl for some time, the question invariably asked of me is why I have never done anything about bringing her back to the UK.
Much as I care for her, for once big brain rules little head. There are a few reasons why I don’t think it would work. The first is my contention that once in the west, Asian women quickly adopt the values and expectations of their
western sisters. The other is quite shallow and probably unworthy of me but having met her mother I suspect Isaan girls do not age very well. I believe in 5 years time I would be sitting with a fat dark Asian woman with the same attitudes and
expectations of a fat white English woman but without the cultural reference points.
I am unsure how much this really matters in the scheme of things but in general an Asian girl will not understand literary allusions or appreciate the influences on our society or comprehend if I mentioned “purchasing a dead parrot
not more than half an hour ago”, cultural references taken for granted with a western educated woman. I think maybe you need occasionally to have an adult conversation, or do you?
But the principal reason is economics and that ubiquitous curse of the Thai girl: -The family.
In a situation many will recognise, she asserts, as the oldest child she is head of her family and as such responsible for the welfare of all her family members. I would have no problem supporting her wherever we live, but I am convinced
she doesn’t want to leave Thailand and the inference is I would have to take up the mantle of her current patron. I have always refused to join the institute of farang patrons on principle.
In addition to the salary she receives from her benefactor for running his business she employs at least 3 members of her family in that business. I estimate should her patron remove his support there will be a shortfall of 70,000 baht per
month required to keep them in the manner to which they have become accustomed.
Her family have as much chance of getting 70,000 baht a month off me as I have of getting a star submission from Stickman.
I firmly believe Thai women are amongst the most beautiful on the planet. They are exotic and they have grace and a femininity lacking in western women. Many western guys are fortunate and meet beautiful educated Thai women who can hold their
own with any woman in the world. I see guys like the writer Jake Needham who is married to a concert pianist; she is beautiful and probably as sophisticated as any woman in the western world. The ordinary office girls you see on the Skytrain are
undoubtedly the most delectable females you will see anywhere in the world. But mere mortals like me who only come to the Kingdom for a few weeks a year despite being professional men, will never have access to these girls. To meet “ordinary”
Thai women it is clear you need to live and work in Thailand and you really need educated Thai friends to make the necessary introductions. However the girls we do have access to in Sukhumvit and Pattaya, although not on a par with the office
girls seen on the BTS, are still wonderful creatures. I feel most of the bar girls are generally good hearted if you understand the rules of engagement and don’t expect too much. I fervently disagree with the pundits who claim the girls
of Isaan are ugly. The majority of the girls I have been with would turn heads if I walked into a town centre pub in West Bromwich, Dudley or Wolverhampton with them. I must admit most of the ladyboys would also get the same attention, particularly
in Wolverhampton!
Surprisingly I get a quite a lot of feedback from my previous submissions, mainly along the line,” your writing is crap but we always read them because we admire your honesty”.
I am also predictable and no submission of mine would be complete without an anecdote about western women and their aversion to the men who go to Thailand. However in recalling the euphoria of that magic week in November 03 I am reminded
of an incident with an English woman that had a different outcome.
That week in Pattaya I became conscious that the combined effect of excessive drinking, smoking, horizontal activity and use of pharmaceutical aids would probably lead to my untimely demise if I did not balance it with some daily exercise
routine. So each afternoon I would take a swim in the hotel pool. Thai girls are like cats and seem to have an aversion to water and swimming, so my afternoon swims allowed my little teeruk a few hours freedom to do whatever Thai girls do. My
guess is they indulge their favourite pastime, which is sleeping!
On the first afternoon I gained an unexpected swim companion in the form of a pretty little 16 year old English girl, who joined me in order to escape the unwelcome attentions of a group of ageing lotharios with ill fitting dentures and unconvincing
toupees. Our mutual Black Country origins and my having sons of a similar age provided the pretext for conversation. She was quite chatty and during the course of a lengthy discussion explained that she was on vacation with her mother and grandfather.
She said she was enjoying her holiday despite not having many people her own age to socialise with. She was however concerned that her mother had not had any men speak to her since arriving in Pattaya and could not understand it.
I was tempted to enlighten her about the preferences of men in Pattaya but her youth and sweet temperament prevented me. When she suggested that I was a nice man and maybe I could have a chat with her mother I only just managed to contain
the urge to scream out, “Please God No! She is probably the typical fat arsed, assertive and opinionated harridan that I have come here to escape from”.
But I didn’t, instead I said “ok”.
By way of explanation remember that week I was in the middle of my first TGF experience; I was walking on clouds and deliriously happy. With an hour to kill, I thought, what could it hurt to bring a little sunshine to a fellow human being?
So after drying off we went to the café area of the hotel ordered a coffee and I was introduced to the aforesaid mother.
She was as I expected, and then some! Late thirties, large boned and wide hipped with a terrifying countenance, however she gave me a big smile on being introduced and it became apparent that what her daughter had said was correct. As I engaged
her in conversation she appeared genuinely pleased, if not relieved to have ANY human contact even with a worthless creature like me.
For all my many faults I am quite charming and amusing when pushed. We discussed a variety of subjects from literature to local politics but enquiries regarding her job were deflected although she admitted it was something to do with social
work and the law.
It was clear she was like many English women, a very assertive character but on this occasion she was intelligent enough to recognise the situation, to bite her lip and suspended a natural tendency to make the cutting remark. She even laughed
at my jokes. She worked very hard at being pleasant company.
After an hour I left to rejoin my teeruk. This routine of a coffee and chat together after my swim was repeated for a couple of days until I returned to Bangkok. I began to suspect that I had probably made a friend.
The resonance of this story occurred some months later. At the time my eldest son was having a few problems. He was involved in drink and soccer related violence and had been arrested so many times I felt we had a season ticket at the local
magistrates court. On one occasion we were in court and it did not look good, he looked destined to be sent down. When the magistrate mentioned custodial sentence pending a report from the youth offending team my heart sank.
At that point the youth offending officer entered the court, I recognised her as my pal from the hotel in Pattaya. She settled in her chair looked around the court and on seeing me gave me a smile of recognition.
When the court recessed she came to me and greeted me like a long lost friend. She took me aside and explained it didn’t look good for my son but she would make her recommendations to the court not to give him a custodial sentence.
The magistrate’s subsequent sentencing gave him a big fine, community service and a year’s probation, but thankfully no prison. I was so relieved my son was not going down and so grateful for my friend’s intervention
I almost regretted not giving her a shagging when I was in Pattaya.
Later when court finished my friend explained she was leaving the district but would ensure her best probation officer would deal with my son's subsequent processing. I thanked her for her help and as she said her goodbyes she flashed
me a wink and said “I shall not be going to Thailand again, it will be India next time”.
I am not sure if my afternoon chats had any effect on her or if her report influenced the magistrates but why let the facts spoil a good story?
I am also not sure what the moral of this story is because it never made any difference to the way I react to farang women whilst in LOS. I avoid them like the plague. I do not want to waste a second on women, who back in UK, view me as something
under their shoe. The gratuitous rudeness and rejections I experience in England certainly do not incline me to feeling sympathy for farang woman and for the obvious lack of attention they get when in the Kingdom.
I recognise that of the men in their late forties and early fifties who submit stories to Stick, there are two distinct groups. The first group are good looking, trim and do not have any problem at all attracting western women, then there
is the other group who tell the truth. I am clearly amongst the latter and I admit the only female affection I receive is when I am in the Kingdom.
When I come to Thailand now I no longer have the full on TGFE. I do however still rent a girlfriend, for a few days at a time for daytime activities, usually an older, experienced, sensible girl who knows the score and knows how to look after
me. I continue to barfine younger girls from the go-go bars in the evenings.
My philosophy has changed, I certainly do not feel the need to rationalise these encounters anymore. In acknowledging the transitory nature of both my libido and the Bangkok scene, I am intent on enjoying it while it lasts.
I have not ruled out having another TGFE in the future but the main stipulation is that she is must be an orphan.
Stickman's thoughts:
Nice story.