Online Dating – Can It ‘Work’…? – Part 15

Part-1 outlined my basic reasons for investigating ThaiLoveLinks.

Part-2 detailed my first two meetings with tender Thai damsels.

Part-3 covers two further meetings with less tender lasses.

Part-4, in which I investigate a ‘company girl’, and take a break.

Part-5, where the ‘company girl’ gets another break.

Part-6, and I meet with two bored, and boring, ladies.

Part-7 wherein we limber up to meet three ladies in two days.

Part-8 where I fail to meet two out of three ladies, and check The Plaza.

Part-9 and I fail to meet the third lady.

Part-10 continues the search, closer to home.

Part-11 and the first actual audition in the home.

Part-12, and the local talent comes home to roost.

Part-13, and another multiple trip to Bangkok.

Part-14 My lost life to the end of 2013.

After two and a half years of this nonsense you might be wondering why I’m still bothering. Maybe I’m wondering why you’re still bothering to read this… I have no expectation that anybody might learn anything from these articles, nor that you might be overly entertained, although I have found it very amusing going through my diaries… and therein lies my motivation. Without wanting to spoil the ending I have this year (2015) managed to meet a lady who not only ‘ticks all the few boxes’ listed on my ThaiFriendly profile but lots, lots more beside. As a result I was curious to re-live the previous four years, and then thought they might fill a few of Stick’s empty pages…


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For the first two months of 2014 I check ThaiFriendly fairly regularly, have two or three dozen ‘interests’ but, after replying to them, they disappear like outer ripples on a pond… I’m clearly still doing something wrong…! At the end of February Nisa’s ‘sister’, who I met in Bangkok ten months ago, phones to say they are coming to Hua Hin tomorrow and would like to see me again. As luck would have it I am going to a wedding tomorrow – truly – which I forlornly try to explain but, however many terms I use, both Thai and English, she completely fails to understand ‘wedding’ and just keeps saying: “We come Hua Hin tomollow…” – until suggesting they might stay the night, and we can meet the day after. I’ve no idea how I managed to get away.

In March, ‘Nokk’ (not her real name), who I’ve known about eight years, and has been a very good friend to me when I’ve had the odd problem, phones to say she now needs help… It seems the wrong person is in town, and she needs to lie low for a week or so… and asks if I have a job for her… She arrives within the hour on a moto-taxi – with a backpack on her back, another on her lap, and a suitcase in each hand… God knows what the neighbours will think…

Although she works in a salon she won’t massage me, because… we are ‘friends’… which is nice to know. Within an hour she has swept and mopped the house, and is now working in the garden. I tell her which palm trees need chopping down, which she declares she has done numerous times ‘on the farm’ but I’m worried they might fall against the roof, or through a window, or on to the garden fence… We do a couple together, as I teach her my best lumberjack techniques, until it’s too hot for me, but she insists she can deal with it alone, and picks up the axe, and the tree-saw…

Incidentally… last year Nokk had a double mastectomy, and I am very worried about the strain on her chest muscles, but she says: “Mai phen rai…!”

She never stops chattering, and I don’t stop laughing. In all, she stays eight days, and is working outside 6-8 hours for six days – the garden is starting to recover, the house is cleaner, but my aching legs are still aching. She isn’t much interested in movies, preferring Thai soaps but, when I watch Buñuel’s Viridiana, in Spanish with English subs., she amazes both of us by getting drawn in, and asks me to translate… Who says Thais don’t have intellectual curiosity… HoHoHo…

In the markets she buys food-stuff for herself, and never mentions money… In the garden she is still chopping and hacking, as well as cutting the trunks into small bits that the bin-men will take away. One day I tell her to take a break and she comes inside and asks where I keep the cleaning stuff for the bathrooms. Another day she pauses, mops her brow, and sets the hose onto the car… and this goes on, non-stop, for eight days…!

I mention that the underframe of my bed seems to have collapsed and I need her help to dismantle the bed. She asks if she shouldn’t finish the garden first… She now frequently complains of ‘chest’ pains but, when I ask where, she rubs her stomach, says she’s hungry, and laughs like a drain. In fact eating is my only problem with Nokk. She ‘has’ to eat every two hours (at least), for at least half an hour each time – i.e. food… not candies (ka-nom), which are eaten in between. I find it almost obscene… She constantly says, ‘It’s Thai custom’… (a defence my ex. always used) but later admits many of her Thai friends also deride her for it. She is certainly a worse nibbler than any other Thai I’ve known.

On the morning of the eighth day Nokk declares she’s bored… Everything has been either chopped, hacked, sawn, swept, mopped, and/or repaired, and I can find nothing else to entertain her. After an hour chatting on her phone she announces she’s off, to find work… A friend has recommended a new salon for her to try.

Half an hour later she has packed, the same ‘taxista’ has returned and, after a wonderful long hug, she has gone… and still money hasn’t been mentioned… and I miss her already. Later I phone, thank her, and apologise… that I don’t keep money in the house… but she did leave rather suddenly. “Mai phen rai…!” she laughingly snaps at me, “Everyone know you miser…! Take care. Phone me you want me back.”


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The following day I have my peace & quiet back, and I find it almost boring. Being able to move about freely in my small kitchen doesn’t seem right… and then… tragedy strikes… While all on my own, and about to butter my breakfast toast, the butter dish flies out of my hand, up into the window frame, bouncing back onto the table edge, where it breaks into three large and heavy pieces, with jagged edges, one of which nearly cuts off my big toe… and half a pound of New Zealand’s finest failed to soften the blow.

Unwilling to move, because of the shards of glass everywhere, it slowly dawns on me there is a large pool of blood establishing a claim to the floor tiles around my foot…

I have a very deep gash at the base of my big toe… and the blood is pouring out… and all I know is, I need to staunch the flow, and get to hospital before I pass out from loss of blood…!

I wrap a tea-towel around the bloody member and drag myself to the bedroom, don shirt and trousers, limp bloodily to the spare room for what little cash I have, then across the lounge for the keys, and back again for my phone… and thence to the car… by which time the tea-towel is a sodden mess, and drops off. In the car I have another, which replaces the first, allowing me to open the main gate, drive the car out, walk back to close the gate, and return to the car – the porch and ‘drive’ look as if someone has been attacked by an axe-maniac.

At Hua Hin General I drive into the ambulance-bay. A Thai ‘jobs-worth’ approaches with a sort of: ‘Oi…! You can’t leave that there ‘ere…!’ look on his face… Two more also rush forth, shaking their heads, waving their hands, and crying: “Mai-ow! Mai-ow!” meaning: ‘I carn’t let yer park ‘ere Mate. It’s more than me job’s werf…!’

I open the door, point first to my foot, and then to a nearby bank of over fifty wheelchairs – if they ever need all these at the same time the hospital will be gridlocked…! Two of them rush to get a wheelchair. One also grabs a gurney, and crashes it into the wheelchair… “Mai tong…!” the first one shouts.

They get me into my carriage, with the sodden tea-towel dripping all the way to A&E, leaving the third guy year-old park the car. Inside, a lady rushes forward, wraps a blood-pressure band around my arm, and asks for my passport, and marvels that I’ve just driven ten kilometres on my own… A doctor asks if the dish was clean, and do I think I need an anti-tetanus injection. Presumably he doesn’t think so. I mention the butter. He smiles, distracting me while someone else is painfully jabbing needles into my foot. After a brief while he says: “OK… All done…” and I have seven stitches holding my toe on.

Including medicines – 760 ฿, all in. I was expecting about three times as much. I collect the pills, and call Nokk… who thinks I’m joking, and refuses to stop laughing but, much as I don’t like to lumber someone else with my mess, the floors of the house involve ‘walking-work’ to clean, and the front yard will be even harder, and the one thing I’m not too good at just now is walking.

I pick her up, bring her home, and try to help her to clean up the mess – but she keeps telling me to sit down, because I’m weary… She also makes ham omelettes, because she’s hungry… then helps me change the dressing, which is bleeding profusely again. Nokk regales me with stories of her new salon-life. Later I run her home… and promise to get to the bank as soon as I can… I make tea, and watch an old Polish film, Kanal, which is as black, bleak, and grim, as I feel. Nokk phones twice a day, to see if I’m still alive.

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That’s all for now folks… Pip, Pip.

Hua Hin Harry

to be continued…