Learn Thai And Keep Your Eyes Open And Maybe This Won’t Happen To You

I’ve known Stick now for just over a year and even though his advice sometimes might seem harsh it is 99% of the time accurate and should be taken note of, just like some of the other input given by some of the long term expats that live / have lived here in Thailand.

I do write here sometimes, but this time I’m Mr. Anonymous because I feel stupid that this happened to me. And If I’d listened to more advice maybe this wouldn’t have happened to me.

Just a brief history on me and my partner.

I met this person in April last year when I got struck down with a bad case of food poisoning and the hotel that I was staying sent me to the hospital that was about ½ km down the road. The doctor told me I was suffering from a sever case of food poisoning and he would prescribe some medication for me, he also advised me that it would be wise to take some blood samples to see if I was ok and that I’d be given a booster shot and this would bring my energy level back up real quickly. So I agreed and he called in a nurse to take the samples. I was pleasantly surprised that this nurse spoke English quite well. After taking the samples she asked me where I was from and where I was staying, so I told her. She accompanied me back down to where I could take a taxi back to my hotel, I thanked her for her help and left.

I went back to the hotel and slept all day. At about 5 PM I get a phone call from reception telling me the nurse from the hospital was here just to check up on me. So I went down stairs and she gave me the once over and said I looked much better (didn’t really feel like it though) and then she left. I did thank her for coming over and she said that’s fine, it's my job.

For the next 2 days she’d pop in after work to see how I was going and by the 3rd day I was over most of it and felt much better.

I wanted to repay the kindness shown to me and asked her if she’d like to go out for dinner as a way of me saying thanks for her checking up on me. She agreed and we went out. Over dinner we chatted and I told her what I was doing in Thailand and my plans for the future (which were to come over in the next few months and stay for a few years). She told me she’d always wanted to work overseas but her English wasn’t good enough, as she wanted to learn how Westerners were cared for in hospitals. I asked her if she worked on the weekends as it was Thursday night and she told me no she didn’t. I told her that I was going to Rayong for the weekend and I’d like her to come along to be my interpreter and I’d pay her and she could stay in a separate room at the hotel. She said she’d think about it so I dropped it and we just chit-chatted the rest of the night.

The next afternoon she come over and said if I still wanted her to come along then she’d come but wanted a separate room. So we went to Rayong and she did good job being both interpreter and also giving a bit of a guide tour of the place. For the next few weeks we saw more and more of each other. Then it was time for me to go back home and I promised to keep in touch.

Well we kept in contact while I was back in my country and when I came back became a couple and a few months later moved in together and a bit later I asked her to marry me!

Now I don’t have a lot of money and she always knew this but was quite happy to marry me as she told me she just wanted someone to care for her and have a family.

Being a nurse, she wanted me to have some test done to see if we could have children. This is where we had a few problems. It turns out I suffer from a genetic disorder and cannot have children. The Doctors told me it was like having a vasectomy at birth. So this did create a few problems but I thought we had worked this through and maybe could just adopt a child later, as she really wanted to be a mom.

Now fast forward to March this year and after much deep thinking and seeing that my ability to support her would always be hard and given the fact that I couldn’t give her a child, I told her that it was for the best that we should separate. She cried but understood that maybe this was for the best and we could stay friends.

She asked if she could still stay at my place to save some money and promised that by the time I went back to my country in a few months time for business she’d be able to move out. So I let her stay and she sleeps on a small bed and does her own thing.

Below is real-time.

These are emails sent between Stick and Myself.

Thursday 14th May

<Me>

Stick, Sorry for not sending the stories I promised. But my personal life at this time is shit, to put it bluntly. I have just found out accidentally that ***(her name) has had a secret boyfriend from Australia for the last 3 1/2 months and is at this time away with him somewhere in Thailand. She had told me she was going away for a week to attend a conference as part of her job at the hospital, so believed her.

But I saw one of her co-workers that works with her at the hospital Sunday. I came home and checked her email (I had created this email for her some 6 months ago and knew the password but when you trust someone you don’t go checking up on them) and there it was, everything right before my eyes! I felt sick to the core.

I tried to ring her and she won't answer her phone so I have to wait for her to contact me! I cannot believe I was so blind.

Just one question, I gave her a 2 baht gold necklace as an engagement present. Should I ask for it back or just walk away from all of this and put it down to experience.

<Stickman's Reply>

I am very sorry to hear about this. Not good at all.

FYI, if you give something to a Thai woman as part of an official engagement gift and then she goes off with another guy then she is BOUND BY LAW TO RETURN IT TO YOU. Given that your finances are tight, I would ask for it back.

Saturday 16th May

Yesterday afternoon as I was coming home from work I stopped at the local fruit & veggie market near where I live to buy some stuff. I saw one of *** friends boyfriend there and he speaks English quite well. I said hello to him and chit chatted a bit. Now when I first met him about 6 months ago he was always very polite to me. But over the last few months it was like he didn't want to be around me and would hardly talk to me. I mentioned this to *** and she just told me that he'd had a crush on her and was just jealous, so just let it go at that.

As I was leaving I couldn't stop myself from asking him why he was so jealous of me, as I had always tried to be polite to him! He just looked at me like a stunned mullet and asked what I meant. So I told him. He said your wrong! He said we should talk so we went and had a few beers at his place. This is where bombshell number 2 was dropped on me! He told me ***'s close friends knew what was going on, but they were speaking in Thai as they knew I didn't understand a word that was said. He said he felt bad for me and had told his girlfriend that this was wrong but was told to not say anything.

Maybe what happened would have been more discreet if I’d understood Thai and I might have had some clue about what was going on. So I'm going to take up an offer of one of my students that I’ve just finished teaching. She still wants to learn English but has little money and asked me if I'd teach her some more and she'd help me learn Thai.

So when I got home I rang her and told her that if she still wanted to do this then we start when I come back from my trip back to my country.

So it's a long road ahead. At this time life’s pretty hard for me. There’s going to be a lot of readjusting to be done. Both emotionally and in the practical sense.

But maybe by year's end I’ll know some Thai, enough hopefully to get by and have a small conversation. I'm not fooling myself. I know it's going to be hard, but I have to give it a go.

Since she has been gone for a week and I’ve had problems at my place that she would normally fix as she speaks Thai I now realize how vulnerable I am. But I am lucky that there are a few Thais here that speak a little bit of English

So korp kun krup, Stickman.