Advice on Winning Over a Freelance Escort

Australian guy here, mid forties, divorced 3-4 years ago from a western woman. Been reading your site for ages, long before my first trip to Bangkok. Yours, and other somewhat similar sites provided me with a great deal of background information and I think has helped me to scrape the surface of some parts of Thai culture and by so doing not fall into some easily made mistakes that I would otherwise have made given the difference in culture.

Having said that, and unbelievable as it seems to me, I've gotten entangled with a Thai freelance "escort" lady and despite all my background research and "knowledge" have to be honest with myself, I've formed a crush on her. I'm fairly well travelled, have been through some of Asia, Middle East, USA, etc, and generally find that once I get a foundation understanding of a different culture I can blend in without a lot of angst on my behalf. Language is difficult for me in Thailand, oddly, in a way it never was in the Middle East, but anyway, I'm confident in gaining some language over the medium term.

Anyway, I've read hundreds of posts across the net, "My Thai bar-girl is different", blah, blah. You see the pattern emerging, but whilst intellectually I read and understand, I can see why these guys post such things – it *does* feel like my girl is different, or at least *wants* to move on from the scene. I'm looking for some early stage relationship advice and since you offer this, and without a doubt have an absolute ton of experience I hope you can give me some pointers. If I'm to pursue my current line of thinking I'm certainly also going to want to ask you for some of your professional background information services too. I've read enough to understand that for my own well-being I will reach a point, if things develop, to need to know what my girl fills her day with when I'm not there and whether the things she tells me, which come across as absolute truths, really are the truth.

I don't know what's useful for you to know to give me any advice at all. Chances are that my case is so generic that early generic advice relating to Thai working girls and Farangs would be sufficient, but I'll add some detail in case its important:

– I've seen her for a bit over two weeks, roughly two blocks of a week each. I don't live in Thailand and had to fly back for the second meet 2 months after the first. I'll be seeing her again in two weeks time (end of March).

– 32 years old.

– Comes from Saraburi, north north east of Bangkok

– Previously married for 5 years when young to a Thai guy. Didn't work out, but no children I'm aware of (and I have asked).

– Had at least one long term relationship with an older Asian guy who wasn't Thai and she lived with him in Singapore for several years, possibly 2-3. Something happened here which is not clear to me, but anyway, that LTR ended and she moved back to Thailand.

– A bit fuzzy for me on detail, but assume she was around mid twenties at this point, I don't know how young she was when she married – could have been 16-17, or maybe as late as 20 something. Seems to have engaged in factory or other menial type work for a time, don't know how long. 10 hour days, 6 days a week. She's vehemently not going back to this type of work.

– From roughly mid twenties then, things get pretty cloudy. Personally, I think she left factory work and started in massage parlours or similar. Maybe she worked bars for a while I just don't know. I do know she's tried to pick up work at Farang populated clubs, but her take on that was that she wasn't particularly successful. She has got some relatively small tattoos on her back (relatively small compared to others I've seen. She can cover them up with an evening dress). These are for "protection" apparently. I don't know anything about that, but I'm told by mates of mine who live in Pattaya that tattoos are a pretty sure sign that she's worked the bar at some point in her life.

– Speaks "bar girl" quality English. She's not rough though and understands that some words are rough or vulgar and doesn't use them.

– She's now a freelancer who seems to gain her business primary through a few different escort agencies. Impossible for me to tell if these are simply fronts for the same "boss", probably so – but anyway, has pictures up on the web on several different sites. She tells me she's been doing the web thing for about a year, I make it nearly two given some web surfing and looking at web page date stamps. Clearly she's progressed in the industry to a point where she is now high visibility. You'd know, I'm sure, that the standard Thai escort web sites offer services at comparatively absurdly high prices. The split is 60:40, 60% to the escort, 40% to the "house", pretty standard I think. Seems to get her fair share of 'short time' work and seems to know most of the dive hotels in the Sukhumvit area as well as many of the 5 stars in the central Bangkok area as well.

All up then, given some fuzziness or lack of historical knowledge on my behalf, she might have been working some parts of the sex industry for up to six or seven years. Reading your site, and having some knowledge of prostitution more generally, this is, if I'm right, a pretty long time. The generic advice from posters in forums and on your site seems to be that she has progressed well past the point of no return. Yet, she's getting older, and I think work is dropping off (given so much competition from much younger girls). I suspect this is why she's moved from whatever she was doing previously into high profile web based escorting. The per customer payment is higher which offsets the comparative lack of clientele, or, maybe I'm extrapolating that wrong and she's just 'over' seeing a lot of Johns. She did mention to me in passing, during a different conversation, that she had to see 5 separate clients during January and that this was "a lot", "too much".

Warning signals I have received, and were aware of immediately given my background research on Thai prostitutes via the web:

– Provides for her family back home. She's never asked me to intervene in that, she looks after it

– In the beginning she was very overtly money focused and many of her comments had money related connotations. This seems to have eased off completely since my second visit.

– She likes shopping, but, again, due to previous research I was prepared for this. I understand, I think, that gifts are important to Thai girls, but I keep it under control. She's now switched from this mode of thought to finding proactive ways to save me money. Having said that, I'm already well acquainted with Paragon, MBK and Terminal 21 type department stores (laugh!)

– A week after my first meet with her, which itself was a week long – and I'd returned to Australia by then, she hit me up for money to pay her rent, with the promise to pay it back to me when I returned to BKK. I was prepared for it and gently refused. This is a huge red flag right? I took it that way and got pretty annoyed. She's never done it again since. Said she borrowed money from a friend (and maybe its true, I see her lending money to her "friends" quite often). I pay her well above street rate and am happy to do so.

– She has mentioned, only once, and early on, that she wants a Farang boyfriend. I know this is common and is a red flag also. I mention it mainly because I accidentally let some comments slip, I have a crush on her and she can't help but know it, anyway, her response to my probing is that "we don't know each other for a long time and we should give time and see what happens". Now I didn't expect that I must admit. I imagined that if I gave a positive hint of a possible BF/GF relationship developing that she's be right onto that and pushing forward with the idea. This one thing is what makes me ponder if she's smart enough to play me for the long game, or if she's actually thinking genuine thoughts and, given her background, legitimately wants to be cautious.

Anyway, that's hopefully enough basic background information to make a start. I don't want to overload you further with what is already a long email.

Before I go, I should mention that she doesn't hide her work from me. I essentially know her forward schedule, she tends towards gaining several day to several week long bookings, though of course I can't know the nature or frequency of 'short time' jobs that arise – my guess would be that they are pretty frequent when she's not on a long term job – I base this assumption only on her high profile escort web site presence. She's still very attractive and passes herself off as mid-late twenties which I think she'd do easily – I know she's older because I've seen her documents. She also knows I see other ladies when I am at home in Australia – it doesn't bother her, though she always asks me about it (how many lady you see?)

My game in all this? Well, good question. I don't want to become another statistic: the foreign "boyfriend" who pays her a monthly stipend to keep her out of the business. I can see how ridiculous this would be and how impossible it would be to maintain my sanity if I actually invested emotionally via such a method. At the same time, I'm just a regular guy and we're all pretty territorial right? I see other ladies, she has her clients, I am keeping myself together even with this knowledge, but to advance from here, if we move past just a "favoured" regular client, I've got to be honest, I'd be wanting to give up my ladies at home and for her to get out of the business.

Anything you can offer, advice wise, to help me safely progress what I clearly want to be a relationship with a working Thai escort?

Cheers and thanks,

Moopere

Stickman's thoughts:

I see not a single reason why this girl is "different". She sounds typical of women in provincial / rural Thailand who grew up poor and made some bad decisions which led them in to the sex industry. They get in so deep that it becomes very hard to get out as they become used to earning far more than they could ever make through "legitimate" means.

You have spent 2 periods of 1 week with this lady? I always get lambasted when I say this but I think it is madness to be contemplating a long-term relationship with a lady who quite frankly you hardly know!