Stickman Readers' Submissions April 11th, 2012

A Difficult Breakup

Everything started at the end of 2010 when after a breakup with my girlfriend in the UK and no holiday for over 4 years I decided 2 weeks in Thailand with a couple of close friends was just what I needed to clear my head. So we booked tickets, a hotel
for the first two nights in Bangkok and a month later we were on a plane to the Land of Smiles. At this time I was 28 and my friends were 25 and 27. I have to say that my intentions on this holiday were never to meet a girl – I’d
been through quite a messy breakup with my girlfriend which had dragged on a while and I just wanted to have a ‘lads’ holiday.

We arrived at the hotel, showered, went to the hotel bar to have a few drinks before heading over to Lumpini Stadium to watch some Muay Thai. Afterwards we headed back to Sukhumvit and headed to a pool bar close to our hotel. There were a
fair few ladydrink girls chatting to us but I spent most of the time talking to a tiny sweet waitress whose job appeared to be just getting beers for the customers, racking up the pool balls and playing if she wasn’t too busy and the customers
asked her to. We stayed for an hour or two then my friends and I left and went to a club.

He Clinic Bangkok

The next night we went back to the same pool bar. The young waitress was there again and she played pool with us for a few hours and I asked her if she’d come and drink with me after she finished work – and she accepted. Again
I left the bar with my friends and we went to drink at RCA before I got a taxi back to meet her (with the taxi driver repeatedly trying to take me to stop at Patpong / various massage places which we realised after a couple of days was the norm!).
I met cute waitress (CW) and we went to a club for a few hours and back to my hotel – I realise this isn’t the place for adult reports but without going into detail we slept together and then sat up talking all night. The next morning
she had to leave to go to work – at this point I didn’t know anything about her and nearly offered her money as she left. Part of me wishes I had as the story may have ended there. In time I may feel different. As she left she took
my phone number and Facebook. One point I’d like to note is that she wanted to split everything 50/50, when we went to the club she matched me for every round I bought and insisted she paid her share – cynically I thought maybe she
was just in it for the long game.

That day we left Sukhumvit and went on to Khao San Road, Phuket, Phi Phi, Ko Phangan and the plan was to spend 4 of the last 5 days on Samui before flying back to Bangkok on our last night. This plan fell apart when we landed on Samui to
the worst rain I’d ever seen – literally everywhere was closed. After checking the weather reports and seeing that it was meant to be like this for another fortnight (this was early December so was quite surprising) we decided to
fly back to BKK the same day. That night we went back to the pool bar where CW worked. She was over the moon to see me but we didn’t go out again that night, rather we just chatted and I went on to a club (if you can call what appeared
to be an illegal bar upstairs in a bakery a club).

The next 4 days I spent every night with her when she left work and also the last 2 days as all the bars were closed due to elections. I had a great time, eating, drinking, bowling, going to the cinema with her but ultimately just saw it
as a little bit of a holiday romance and nothing more. After flying back to the UK we carried on chatting on Facebook and I would call her on Skype. I was starting to fall for her but I was paranoid that she wasn’t a ‘good girl’
as although she was a waitress she’d still gone home with me the first night despite not asking me for money. I messaged the husband of her friend in the UK to ask him – and he said she was a sweetheart and in the 2 years he’d
known her and had always known her to be a ‘good girl’ and that she didn’t work ‘ladydrink’. She just worked as a waitress. At this point she was working double shifts as a waitress from 10 AM – 2 AM 7 days a
week and when she got home we’d Skype till maybe 4 AM every night. I really don’t know how she managed it.

CBD bangkok

Despite the potential stigma I knew I would receive from some people I decided I wanted to see her again and try to make a go of things with her. I’d learned a lot about her;

– she worked to try and send money to her parents. She wanted to help them but said she could never work ladydrink so she would rather work double hours to try to get more money.

– Her ex boyfriend was a farang – he’d moved to Thailand to be with her, not allowed her to work, didn’t like her wearing makeup or going out without him and then broke up with her for a middle class Thai teacher –
this had a profound impact on her and left her feeling inadequate because of her poor background and education, something that would rear its head a number of times in our relationship.

– She loved Buddha, even when she was working double shifts she would still once a week not sleep so she could go and buy food to take to the temple and pray with the monks.

wonderland clinic

We kept chatting everyday – she was always home when I expected and always answered her phone to me even when she was at work. She’d loudly say “it’s my boyfriend”. I was completely confident that she was
not doing anything wrong. We had a few blips in this period – once down to cultural misunderstandings; my female friend posted on Facebook “I’m waiting to speak to you on MSN”, in Thailand apparently MSN is widely used
for video chat and she’d got a little jealous but it all sorted itself out in the end and once down to me letting my ex sleep in my spare room and deciding to be honest with CW – it would have been best to have just kept it from
her! But in the end we got through it all. Another thing to note is that during this period she never once asked me for money.

I booked tickets to go to Thailand in July 2011 and just before we put in an application for her to come for a holiday to the UK – we submitted everything we could; a letter from me, letter from my letting agent, transcripts of all
our Facebook chats, evidence from Skype of all our calls, a letter from her employer saying she could take time off – even with all this we weren’t confident as I’d only been to Thailand once before and we’d not taken
any photos together. About 5 days into my 10 day trip we were at the Grand Palace and she got a text message saying her passport was ready to collect. That’s how it works, you have to get there and see your passport to see whether the visa
has been approved or declined. We got a taxi immediately back to the hotel and I went to our room while she carried on to go collect her passport. To our surprise it had been approved. We immediately went and bought her a plane ticket to come
back with me to the UK, booking it for 3 months with the option to change the date if we chose to.

She came to the UK and it was amazing. She loved it and despite initial reservations (especially from female members) my family loved her. She was an angel with everyone including my grandparents and my 3 year old nephew who adored her. Two
months in we decided to change the date of the plane ticket so that she could stay for as much of the full 6 months as possible. It turned out the booking agency had made a mistake, the date couldn’t be changed – the Thai lady had
made a mistake and the airline weren’t willing to be flexible. When I said to CW she should complain when she went back she said there was no point and said something she often said when I complained about things that were unfair there
“This is Thailand”. At the end of the 3 months she few back during the terrible floods. The plan was that I was going to go out there for Christmas, however looking at the costs of another holiday (probably well over £2k all
in) to see her for 2 weeks we decided she should fly back over here and spend another 2.5 months here when the only real cost would be flights which worked out at about £600 return.

We had a great Christmas – much to her dismay CW didn’t get to see snow but she got to decorate a Christmas tree and get presents to open with my family, something she’d never experienced before. When it came to the time
for her to go home everyone was heart broken but we’d started to discuss marriage so that she could come over here permanently. This is when things started to go a little wrong and there are regrets that will probably stay with me a very
long time. When she went back she went back to work in a bar – the same owner but a different bar as the pool bar had taken a real dive in customers since the floods and the owner had cut wages to 4,000 baht a month. With it being so quiet
there was no option for tips and it simply wasn’t enough to live on. At this stage I have no idea why I didn’t ask her to go and stay with her parents, sending her 10,000 baht a month for 3 months until I went there would have been
easy for me but I still had the stubborn mindset of not wanting to be the farang sending his Thai girlfriend money.

To give a little background to what is about to unfold I’ll also have to give an idea of the only problems we ever had while we were in the UK. From time to time she would become very withdrawn and eventually tell me that I needed
to find someone else. She was just a poor girl, a stupid girl (she left school at around 12 or 14 I believe) and that she had nothing and that I would be better off with an English girl. It was typical low self esteem and was largely down to things
her farang ex had said to her – especially as he was breaking up with her.

So she went back to the bar as a waitress and things were the same as before, skyping on a night and making plans about what we were going to do next. Occasionally she would go out with her friends for a few drinks so we’d speak later
but everything was good. Then one night we were on the phone, she was a little tipsy but nothing serious and we were chatting as usual. All of a sudden there is a loud bang on the door and a guy shouting in Thai. I told her to ignore it but she
said it was okay and it was a guy she knew from work and that someone had let him in. She opened the door and he was shouting at her while she told him in English and Thai that she was on the phone to her boyfriend and kept repeating my name to
him. He grabbed the phone and shouted at me and then put the phone down.

I called back a few times but no answer. I spoke to CW the next morning and she said everything was okay. He’d just been drunk and she and her friend in the next room had got rid of him. The week carried on as normal with us speaking
each night. On the Friday evening (4 days after the Thai incident) we were speaking and she was ‘off’ – definitely not the same as before. After asking her what was wrong for a while she then broke down and told me this guy
had forced her to have sex with her. She then proceeded to cry like nothing I’ve ever heard for the next 15 minutes. We then spoke for another hour or so at which point I’d found the Thai translation for rape and asked her if that
was what happened. She said so and I told her she needed to go to the police. She said she couldn’t as this guy has a wife and baby and she can’t make the baby grow up without a dad.

The next few days were a nightmare. She didn’t answer her phone too much and when she did she kept telling me it was her fault and that even rape was cheating and that I should find someone else. This guy also continued to follow her
and tell her that he only did it because he loved her and it was ‘the only way he could have her’. Since that point (2 weeks ago) we have now broken up, and she is of the belief that this guy has done nothing wrong (he was drunk
and he loves her so it’s okay) and that we can’t be together because she is a cheat and a bad girl. She also said she wants to give me back all the money I’ve spent on her and let me go on my way.

On conclusion I don’t really know why I wrote this – I thought maybe it would make me feel better to get it down in words. Some people may say she’s lying but I can’t see the angle. It’s not money, it’s
not cheating – I’m 6000 miles way, there’s no reason I would ever know. Breaking up with anyone is hard but when you know that there is a good chance that the other person will have a hard life of crap jobs and no money it
makes it even harder.



Stickman's
thoughts:


This is a really tough one and I feel for you and cannot imagine how helpless you feel. This being Thailand one does wonder whether you got the full version. It sounds to me like there is some (probably important) details missing…

nana plaza