The Story Of John
I was sad to read the story of Mai Pen Rai. Her guy was definitely not a well balanced farang. I emailed Mai Pen Rai and for what it’s worth, I told her that she was lucky that he was with the Filipina because he will eventually do the same to her. If he can’t keep his tackle inside his pants with other women when he claims to love someone then he isn’t worth a pinch of s**t.
So we come to the story of John. John was an older farang guy who worked for a salary, by no means wealthy, but comfortable. He separated & divorced his wife years earlier. I don’t know that story, but for him at least, there was no one else in the equation. He lost a lot but got on with his life. If I might indulge myself, there’s an old joke here, what’s the difference between a woman and a cyclone? (Hurricane to our American readers) None, they’re both warm and wet when they’re coming and when they leave they take the house!
Anyway, John got to chatting and, being well over 21, didn’t have a hope finding a suitable woman for him here. Here being Australia by the way. I believe he chatted a while and had a few possibilities. He eventually settled on Lek from Bangkok. I understand they chatted for up to two years before they met in person, but don’t quote me.
John took a trip over to Bangkok and met her and had a couple of weeks there. John’s an older honorable kind of guy so of course we didn’t get any details. During this trip John and his lady decided to get married.
John is actually a workmate of a friend of ours who often calls in and loves to travel to Thailand. Around this time we first met John. After having been through the sin sod stuff and all the associated stuff myself, I advised him to put a price limit on the sin sod and wedding as a single amount. Unfortunately, this he didn’t do. John wandered off to get married a while later and we saw him when he got back. Well, he said they told him the sin sod was 300,000 and not to worry about the wedding as they (the family) would take care of that. Now I ain’t Albert Einstein but I knew that her family weren’t going to pay for the wedding! Actually he had told us this before he left and I had warned him to limit the cost. I told our mutual friend that he was gonna get done over. Our friend told us that he transferred the sin sod 2 weeks before he went to get married. As expected, when he got there he was handed the bill for the wedding as well.
He told us that he would spend two weeks there and then come back and she would follow 6 months later after getting a spouse visa. I told our mutual friend that I had big reservations about him handing over the sin sod, getting married then waiting six months for her. She was at least 20 years younger than him. Also, an Australian spouse visa out of Bangkok, if done right can be processed in as little as 6 to 8 weeks. Our mutual friend said that he had reservations also.
When the six months were up it turned out that my sister in law had decided to come for a visit. When John heard of this he asked if perhaps my sister in law and John’s wife could travel out together as Lek had never travelled outside of Thailand before. A few calls were made and John’s wife would travel out with my sister in law.
John and a friend travelled 5 hours to pick up the girls and we eagerly awaited their arrival. It was great to see the sister in law and we all had lunch together. Lek however didn’t look very happy.
The following weekend we invited John & Lek over for a barbeque and they accepted. I ducked outside for a smoke and John followed me out. I asked him how it was going with a smile on my face. John’s face fell and he said she was missing Thailand and wanted to go home! After they left my Thai wife and I couldn’t believe it. She hadn’t really given it a chance and most Thais who come out here love the life. I started to smell something fishy.
John said that if she wanted to go home so quickly then she could pay her own airfare. In the meantime my wife told me that they hadn’t slept together since she arrived. Fishy number two in my books. After two or three weeks she flew home. John kept up contact with her.
In the meantime, sister in law mentioned that at Suwannaphum before they flew out there was a younger guy there with her and she assumed it was her brother. In hindsight she said that he didn’t look comfortable when they were all taking photos together. We didn’t say anything to John at the time because she was here with him and we didn’t know any different.
After a few weeks John came around very upset. He said he had kept asking Lek why she had gone back to Thailand so quickly and, being fairly with it, kept asking her if there was anyone else. She constantly denied it. Eventually he rang one of her friends and then the truth came out. Her friend told him that after they married she went back to work in her factory. At some stage a younger guy started work there and they started an affair together. Her family up in the Northeast knew nothing also. We suspect that her friends gave her a hard time over the affair and that she travelled out to Australia to satisfy her critics and then decided she didn’t like it and went home. John was devastated. In defence of good Thais, her parents had 100,000 of the sin sod left and so transferred it back to him. He told us the parents had no knowledge of her affair. Last time we saw him, he was going to ring the parents to tell them as they had a little English.
After a few months John went to the Philippines to meet another girl he had chatted with earlier. Apparently it went off well. Alas for John, I’m told immigration only allow you to sponsor one spouse every five years. If Lek had come clean with him before he made the visa he might have had a shot at happiness.
Draw your own conclusions, dear reader.
Stickman's thoughts:
It's good to hear that the family actually made the effort to return some of the sin sod to him. This story really does show that when there are age differences and cultural differences and language difficulties and you don't know them that well you really are up against it!
