A Tale of Isaan And Dating Agencies

Ahh, the internet is a wonderful thing. More dating sites than you can shake a stick at and the girls love them, especially in Isaan. If you live overseas it’s the easiest way to meet the girl of your dreams right?…maybe not.

Firstly many of the girls on the popular dating sites are there courtesy of the boundless number of agencies that hail from many of the bigger cities and towns around the region.

Most girls in Isaan cannot even type let alone use a computer. Agencies basically have a captive audience and they know it. The agencies hire local women to “recruit” the girls from the many small villages that dot the countryside
and they are not short of takers. Lured as they are by rich farangs who have little or no knowledge of Thailand and the subtleties of the proud Thai culture. Many on their first visit here have never heard of dowry – sin sod.

So your initial contact on the dating site comes from a “friend” they will try and avoid saying they are an agency at all costs. The usual line is “she’s an old friend, I’ve known her since we were at school”
“we no like Thai men, I just want to help my friend get a good western husband who love and take care of her”.

The game commences and your girl sits in front of the webcam while the friend does the chat. Believe me they are so, so good when it comes to the chat. You’ll feel like a movie star but the sting comes a little later. You’ve
got to be hooked first and usually that’s not hard.

The agency involvement is preparing a few standard emails and a few hours' web chat. Also when you come to visit they will show you round but mostly at your expense.

What about the agencies? Well they do charge fees. The fee is paid by the farang, not the girls. The farang generally will not know (unless the girl tells him) as this is paid by the parents back to the agency from the sin sod. In
my experience the fee was never less than 100,000 baht. The agency sure as hell will not mention anything. It’s a very good little earner and as long as farangs come here with more money than sense and their brains located about 6 inches
below the navel life is good. The agencies, well they don’t mind one bit and care even less.

Here are a couple of stories I heard first hand about girls in an agency working out of Isaan.

One girl married an Aussie sailor and he took her back to Oz. They lived there for less than 6 months because she left him to go back to Thailand as she missed her Thai boyfriend too much.

Another girl about 23 years old, quite a lovely thing, smart and intelligent, she had never worked in her life. She was encouraged by her poor farming family to marry a wealthy Danish businessman who was 60 years old and in poor health. The
family had somehow accrued huge debts and the sin sod was 2 million baht, sufficient to wipe the debt out. Now the thing was this girl much preferred women to men and while in Thailand she spent most of her time with her girlfriends until
the time came to make her move to Denmark. Strange thing was apparently the Danish guy knew she was gay and it didn’t bother him, but he asked that she stop sleeping with girls after they were married.

An English guy came over and married an Isaan girl within 3 days of meeting. She was quite pretty but could speak not one word of English. He spends half the year in the UK looking after his business and comes back to Thailand for the other
half. I believe they are still married.

Another guy married a girl in good faith here in Thailand, paid the sin sod only for the girl to promptly leave him to go back to her Thai husband.

The villages in Isaan have made a cottage industry from selling, yeah I think this is the right word here, their daughters to the highest bidders. The daughters go along with it because it is a way out of their existence and because of their
sense of duty to their parents and their family, money is everything here. Do they love you – very unlikely.

They will stay as long as they have money to send back home and in some cases as long as they can bear to be with you. If there is no money to send back home then the chances are they will be off like a shot and prepare for next farang who clicks web
chat on one the old internet dating sites.

Sadly my marriage to an internet girl failed due mainly to requests for money covered by lies which came from the family via my wife which I refused to fulfil. I wanted to and did help whenever I could, but conned no thank you. And no I did
not pay the agency fee.

Stickman's thoughts:

Many don't realise this but if you pay a sin sot and the girl does a runner then the law is most definitely on your side and you CAN get it back – that is assuming it has not been spent.