Stickman Readers' Submissions January 31st, 2007

Moral Dilemma, The Conclusion

This was split into 2 submissions but I never got around to posting the first part.

December 29th 2006

The final date has been set for the wedding between Lek and Len. The Thai wedding ceremony will take place on Sunday February 4th 2007. That leaves little time for me to take action to present Len with the facts relating to his future wife.

He Clinic Bangkok

January 4th 2007

It’s that first day back at work following the New Year break and that’s where my hope of a simpler solution then a confrontation with Len was realized.

In my work email I have an email from Len’s brother (Bill). Bill has been traveling in Asia on a sabbatical between University and taking that first step into the world of the employed. Bill is currently in the Philippines but will be on his way
to Thailand for the wedding, he will arrive in Thailand on January 11th to do the tourist stuff before his brother arrives. Len has passed my email to Bill so we can meet up for a beer and I can introduce him to Len's fiancé Lek. Len
has not told Lek of Bill's early arrival, it’s a surprise for her and opportunity knocks for me.

CBD bangkok

So keeping this information of Bill's pending arrival from the wife I hatch a plan. I will palm the wife off at the appropriate time with it as a surprise for Lek. I knew that my wife is bad at keeping secrets from family so I thought I would surprise
her as well. That should put my wife in the clear of any involvement.

So this was the plan. I was not available to meet Bill until the 13th January, Bill will be amusing himself until then. Since he does not know Lek there was little chance of them meeting up. If they did that would have put pay to this. On the 13th the
wife and myself would meet Bill then surprise Lek (the waitress) at the bar she works in. First stop, I needed to meet up with a colleague of mine, John, who had just arrived in town and will be waiting at a designated watering hole.

John agreed to bar fine Lek the night of the 13th. John, on his getting to know Lek, would decide to get their picture taken together by one of the camera toting Thais that prowl Walking Street. This is just to gather the additional evidence that he would
feel obliged in his guilt ridden state to pass to Bill. My wife does not know John so she cannot be implicated in the underhand planning of this event. This was all going to appear to be a very unfortunate coincidence.

So if all the ducks align, my wife, Bill and myself would arrive at the designated watering hole to meet John. Not unusual for John he would be with his latest picking from the tree of Pattaya, just unfortunately for Lek she would be the apple of his
eye that night.

wonderland clinic

My alternative, direct confrontation with Len when he arrives in Thailand, I am not overly enthusiastic about that. As many readers suggest he will believe Lek over me and I will be subject to all the fall out that follows.

So at this point it would hopefully be exit stage left for me and the dealing with Len and his future bride passed to Bill. Blood is thicker then water and all that. I’d take John off and buy him a few beers and leave Bill and Lek to get aquatinted.
The wife, well I’d see what happens, but plead complete ignorance of the completely chance encounter. The wife strongly believes if you do bad to someone you get your just reward. I will cling to that as my reprieve.

January 13th 2007

This is how it all went down.

The wife and me headed off to collect Bill form his hotel at 8:30pm. Introductions were made and we were off to surprise Lek, though first stop was to meet with John. The wife at this point realizes that I had left the mobiles in the car (very forgetful
of me). She decided she needed her phone so I passed her the keys to the car and said we would go and meet John and she could catch us at the bar.

I had arranged to meet John between 8:30 and 9pm. The bar in question was about the same distance as the car and Thais walk slowly. I was guaranteed to get to the bar before my wife got to the phone. Just had to hope John would be on time.

As we walked into the bar John spotted me and called me over, perfect. He was with Lek and they were seated at a small table consuming a couple of beers. Anyway Bill by the look on his face seemed to recognize Lek or see a familiarity. Good memory from
a photo. His fear was obviously confirmed on his introduction, Lek beaming and Bill just looking on in confused shock. It was about this time Lek’s phone rang, she answered, 10 seconds into the call her expression a beaming white smile
turned to one of horror. Need to talk to my wife about surprising people, can be fun, obviously not this occasion.

I won’t go into the details of this but to cut a long story short Bill walked out of the bar, I had to go and retrieve him closely pursued by Lek. My wife arrived to help calm the situation. Eventually Bill and Lek sat down to talk presided over
by my wife. John and myself headed to another bar just to make ourselves scarce. We met up with the wife later and got the rundown over a few cool ones.

The discussion between Bill and Lek resulted in the following.

Option presented to Lek

  1. Lek was to break it off with Len. She could use whatever excuses she wanted (save face) but it had to end or Bill would be telling all.
  2. Lek could come clean with Len. If she really loves him she had to come clean so Len would know all the facts and could make an informed decision on what he wanted to do with his future.
  3. If Lek tried to go ahead with the wedding without either of the above conditions being met Bill would tell all to Len.

Bill gave Lek two days to take some action before he would.

The conclusion.

Well I’m going to a wedding in February. Lek went for option 2 and confessed all to Len. I don’t know the full details and don’t care to. Len forgave Lek but put some conditions on her. Lek has now left Pattaya and moved home (first
sensible thing Len insisted on). The wedding will be a Thai ceremony but there will be no signing of names until later when Len moves to Thailand assuming he can secure a job. I guess this will protect him to some degree; she will have no claim
on anything he owns since a Thai ceremony has no legal representation. The sin sot (cash and gold) will be returned to Len after the wedding for his safe keeping until such a time he finally moves to Thailand and Len feels Lek is being true and
they legalize / register the marriage. The family had already agreed to return the sin sot to Lek so there should be no face issue.

Is this a good thing? I have no idea, everything is out in the open and I have not been implicated in exposing this and my life is again happy. The wife is convinced it was Lek's bad karma and at no point so far has even suspected my involvement.

Will it work in the long term? I’ll be a skeptic and say possibly as long as Len can find work away from the farang influence, away from Pattaya and the other equivalent areas (get the girl away from the scene and all that). They are both young
and Lek has not been in the industry that long, just over 4 months when she met Len but one could argue to add the best part of another year to that while Len was being duped. Only time will tell. Hopefully Len will not be as blind as before and
will open his eyes and Lek has learnt her lesson and genuinely wants a better life. Lek has no kids by an absent Thai male that Len needs to consider. Her family is fairly self sufficient with their farm so hopefully that will reduce the eventual
burden on Len.

I have already given Len and Lek a copy of "Thailand Fever" about six months ago. Len now needs to get Lek to read it. Why is it so hard to get the Thai part of a relationship to read this excellent book? Could it be because it’s not
a comic or one of those stupid glossy magazines they love (recommend to the author, republish with lots of cartoons and glossy pics on the Thai pages, may save a few relationships). I had to almost leave before my girlfriend at the time, now wife,
would read it. Once she did the resulting gain of understanding between us was priceless.

I will now watch from a distance and be available for a beer if it all goes south. I still need to talk with Len over a beer some time very soon, at least now I can discuss it with a clear conscience with both parties having the same information.

January 18th 2007

Update. Hot off the press. John spotted Lek in Pattaya last night. She is supposed to be upcountry. I give up, not my problem now. My skeptical statement earlier in this submission has just flown out the window. I’ll stand by with the beer and
tissues. Think I should boycott the wedding.

Stickman's thoughts:

I was about to say that your conniving plan might have worked, and the slow steps they were taking were well thought out. That was Stick being overly kind and giving the benefit of the doubt. With the events of the 18th in mind, she is a woman of highly questionable virtue and he would be a fool to do anything other than leave her.


nana plaza