The Way To A Thai Girl’s Heart

Last year, I wrote a couple of items which Stickman published called “The Online Dating Game”, in which I wrote about my limited experiences in this field. After a few months, I abandoned Internet dating as a plan to find a
permanent relationship for a number of reasons. Mainly I got fed up with the Filipina scammers, but on a couple of occasions, I felt I might have said the wrong thing unintentionally, and caused offence to the person I was writing to.

This worried me, as I often think that most Thais have enough problems to think about without being offended by some remark that a stranger might make to them on the Internet. If anybody wants to get a flavour of what I am talking about,
in the second item that I wrote on this, I referred to “Tiny Girl”, who I believe to be a perfectly respectable girl, to whom I said something to. She had sent me the nicest introduction instead of the usual “Hi” that
was so prevalent, and had clearly read my profile and understood the message I was sending.

If my recollection is correct, she was about 1.45 metres and 35 kilos. I replied to her by commenting that she might be embarrassed to be seen with me, as I am 1.83 metres and 90 kilos as well as the age difference of at least 25 years. To
be honest with you, there was this thing going through my mind, of waking up in bed alongside somebody with the physique of an adolescent schoolgirl, which gave me the horrors.

After hitting the send button, I reviewed her message to me, and started to have doubts about what I had written. I expected that soon I would receive a message from her saying, that the issues I had raised were not a problem for her. I saw
over the next few days that she was online several times, but didn’t reply to me. Eventually, I wrote again reinterpreting my earlier message in a more favourable light. The truth of the matter was that she had struck a nerve with me, in
that she appeared to understand what I was saying in my profile, and had wanted to meet me. I had come to the conclusion that most replies and messages I had received people could not be bothered to read the profile and were taking a scattergun
approach in the hope they got lucky.

After several more attempts on my part, including one where I asked for her forgiveness for causing offence and telling her how badly I felt, she eventually replied “Good luck for you”.

For several weeks, I carried on scouring the site, but with decreasing enthusiasm. I recalled the words of William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, “I shall pass this way but once, and if I can do any good, let me do it now, for I may
never pass this way again”. I think these are great words to live by, but I am not that good a man, so instead of doing any good, I try to make sure that any harm I do is limited. I came to the conclusion that if I could upset this girl,
whom I really think is almost certainly a very nice girl, as well as having great dignity; I should not be on dating websites. I deleted my profile, but not before I sent Tiny Girl one last message telling her why I had done this and giving her
my e-mail address. I never did get a reply.

Currently, I am with a girl that I met in a bar in Pattaya, and this is day 15 together. Most of the girls I have met down this avenue have never made it to day three. She was living in a rooming house, where she had met Lek, who is one of
those characters that you make friends with very easily, and look out for on your next trip just to have a laugh and a joke and give her a few hundred baht. She is not the most attractive of women, but it doesn’t always have to be about
sex. The girl had been working as a waitress in a restaurant, when Lek suggested that she should try her luck in the bar. By the time I met her, her career had lasted a whole ten minutes.

Immediately I started talking to her, I had a sense that there was something different about her. Her eyes lit up when she talked, and her English was very good for a Thai. Probably the second best I had come across. She was clearly intelligent
as well. She knew where Ireland was, as well as Holland and Iceland, which are the usual mistakes that Thai girls make when I mention Ireland.

I am not going to bother you with a blow by blow account of our time together, but will mention that I talked to her about online dating, and she mentioned she was on this too, but on a different site. I now keep thinking to myself, that
if I had met her online, would it have gone any further? Perhaps the girl I was looking for all the time, was always there, but if we had met through this medium, would I have been able to pick up the signals?

Notwithstanding the idiosyncrasies of Online Dating, something I discovered a long time ago in Thailand was that the way to a Thai girl’s heart is through her Teddy Bear. There have been times when I have picked up a girl in a bar,
and you can tell from the body language, that the lady is going through the motions. Suddenly the Teddy Bear Man pulls his barrow past the bar. I wait a few seconds until he is out of sight, than I grab her arm, and pull her out of the bar and
start to run after him. I can see she is surprised and has no idea what is going on until we catch up with the vendor, at which stage I ask her “Which one you like”?

Surprisingly, most girls choose something mid priced, so when I tell them that I don’t like it, they look cheated. I then select the biggest one I can find, and say “I think this better”. The reaction is amazing, and
from going through the motions, the eyes now have warmth and a sparkle to them.

We go back to the bar and pay the bill, and the first thing she wants to do now, is to go back to her bar, and “Show friends”. I try to wind her up by saying no, and she them tells me that she needs to go to the bar so that
Teddy can be locked away securely for the night. I tell her, “Teddy safe in my room. We go now”. She is still happy, but really wants to go to her bar, so she can show off. I then add, “But first we go to your bar”.
Yes, she is happy. As we walk along the Soi, she is carrying the toy which is almost as big as herself, and getting admiring or envious glances from the bargirls who are touting for their own establishments. We go back to the room after another
hour or so of drinking, and I get my reward from a very happy girl.

My favourite night out in Pattaya, is Monday night at the Blues Factory. I love the music, and happen to think Mary, who fronts Mary and the Blues Machine, is the best act I have ever seen in Thailand. The attraction of Mondays is it is Ladies
Night, and they have a several raffles of soft toys, with the big prize at the end of the night. I have taken several girls there, and for quite a few of them, the lack of Hip-Hop is apparent, and you can tell they are not enjoying the music.
Then the raffle starts, and they become changed personalities and start to enjoy themselves.

On one previous occasion, we won the top prize, but usually they win a couple of the more modest prizes, which makes them happy. If they don’t win the top prize, I commiserate with them, and tell them, “I not lucky for you”,
which they contradict vehemently. All the time, I am looking for the Teddy Bear vendor, to make sure the evening ends with a big bang for both of us. Once they have the new bear which I have bought, it is “I need to go my bar”, and
I play my little game with them.

I shouldn’t be surprised but I am, the girl that Lek introduced me to, never had a cuddly toy until she was aged 17. As I said, there was something about this girl that I noticed straight away that I felt comfortable with that led
me to believe that she was different from all the other girls I met, so buying a Teddy Bear was not going to be on the agenda. While I was talking to her, the Teddy Bear man, pulled past, and she yelped, “Scoobydoo” referring to
one of the toys on the barrow.

I waited for him to circle past again, and told her I would be back in a minute. I caught up with the vendor, and asked about the toy, as I couldn’t see it. The reason was that it was one of the smallest toys he had. I bought this,
and noticed a giant Garfield toy. I bought that too, but asked the vendor to give me a minute to show her the first toy before he brought the other in as a second surprise. Cut a long story short, she was suitably impressed TWICE.

A couple of days later, I am off to Chiang Mai and she agrees to come with me. There I surprise her with Pink Panther. Back to Pattaya, and it’s time for the England-Germany game. I now buy a baby’s England football strip, and
I dress up Pink Panther so that we can all watch the match together. As we all know, the game was a disaster, and several of the patrons in the bar, are calling for Pink Panther to be brought on as a sub. Say no more.

Monday night comes around, so it is off to the Blues Factory. One thing I have learned to improve the odds, is that when the waiter serves you a drink, it helps if you buy them a drink too. Every time you buy a drink, you are given one ticket.
As people leave the bar, they leave their tickets in the checkbin. As a gesture of appreciation, the waiters then scoop up these tickets and give them to the customers who look after them.

Now before you try this at home, I should warn you that economically, it would be cheaper to buy the bears in the first place, but as well as owning the Teddy Bear, I have found that Thai girls appreciate these a lot more when they win them,
because Thai girls like to feel lucky, so if you can give them a toy, and make them feel lucky too, you are firing on all cylinders.

With a little help from my friends, the waiters, she wins five prizes, including the big one. Now it’s off to her former bar to show off. I say “former”, because I felt so good with this girl, that I asked her to stop
work as soon as she agreed to go to Chiang Mai with me. It is possible to argue that this was the shortest career of a bar-girl on record, but it didn’t stop her boss trying to extract a 5,000 THB “Stop work fee”, which I
refused to pay, but that’s another story.

While we are the bar, we see a girl that we both know who has just had a baby with a Farang, I am going to suggest that she might give one of the prizes to the girl for her baby, and then think better of it. After a few minutes, she whispers
to me asking if it is ok to give a toy to this girl for her baby? Yet another reason to remind me why I feel so good with this girl.

As I look around my hotel room, there are now seven teddy bears sharing with the two of us. I have this occasional fear that the cleaner is going to report to the Police about this man who keeps buying teddy bears, and they should investigate
as a possible paedophile.

My girl is sleeping as I write this, and every so often I take a look over at her, and enjoying the feeling she gives me when I see her. Whether we will stay together, I don’t know, but for the first time, I don’t want to go
home, and also for the first time, I have no doubts where I am going for my next holiday.

If things don’t work out, at least I know the way to a Thai girl’s heart is through her teddy bear. Of course, I could always suffer a psychotic episode if we do split up: “If you leave me, the Teddy Bear gets it”.