Online Dating – Can It ‘Work’…? – Part 18

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.

Part-15 A little success ends in tragedy.

Part-16 wherein two ladies arrive for a few days, and leave within 48 hours.

Part-17 and the first potential success arrives in Hua Hin.

After a mixed, and inconclusive, couple of days and nights with Bam I turn to ‘Mai’ (not the real name) in Cha Am who expressed a desire for a test, a week ago, and I agree to meet her, two days after Bam has left but, as I’m going out the door, Bam phones…

Having frequently said, ‘I come when you want me’… she didn’t really mean that, of course, because she doesn’t want to wait, and has decided she wants to come back right away… Now… Today… and I just
refuse… It all comes down to who’s controlling whom… Obviously there’s no way she can come today, because I’m on the way to meet Mai, and maybe not tomorrow either, just to be on the safe side… and Thursday will cause
her to stay the weekend and I feel she needs to consider her son at the weekends… She says he’ll be away, on a school visit…

In the end, because she has no intention of accepting what I say, even assuming she’s actually listening to me, which appears doubtful… I tell her I’m in the market, and it’s impossible to discuss this now, and I’ll talk to her later… and even this she tries to discuss, as to what I’m buying, and am I in Tesco, etc., etc….

I arrive in Cha Am at ten to eleven, and call Mai, who quickly arrives on a moped… (1 point for punctuality). She stares in through my tinted windows… I ask what she’s staring at, and she immediately laughs… (2 out of 2…).

She parks her moped and gets in, and asks where I’m going. I tell her: Cha Am, to see a lady… and she points to some tables & chairs nearby… I request fruit juice and she has ‘coffee’, which turns out to be iced-coffee &
Ovaltine, mixed, which she now calls ‘tea’… She also has a prawn & rice dish, which she silently eats, barely acknowledging my existence apart from once saying I can talk while she’s eating… but it somehow
seems impolite for me to do this… It also seems impolite (to me) for her to be eating anyway… but it does seem she has awaited my arrival to give her breakfast…

Mai seems a jolly, unassuming soul, a bit ‘rough & ready’ – and apparently ready for whatever I might suggest… and I’m suggesting nothing, especially when she suggests she can go to Hua Hin with me now… and it occurs to me, if that was the plan, she could have got a bus and saved me the bother.

Mai has been taking care of a farang for a year or two, until he died – another one…!? After dealing with the funeral… she was on ThaiFriendly for a replacement.

She had, allegedly, been working at/near/in (whatever…) the hospital but has left to work in a cafe, where she cooks, and also waits tables… and has more friends. She seems to work from about five o’clock until about nine o’clock (four hours…!?) and, also, if she doesn’t feel like it, she needn’t bother to go in… which strikes me as someone who has no idea what she’s doing and is simply, and indolently, waiting for a ‘rich/dopey’ farang to take care of her… I can’t see her hacking away at my undergrowth…

After ‘breakfast’ she wants to show me the beach… but it’s far too hot to stroll about, so we drive to the fishing port, where there’s a nice breeze, and stroll about… and ask her about ‘our’ future…

I ask what she wants. She either doesn’t know, or won’t say… so I tell her what I want… and she seems to have only acknowledged the ‘massage’ part of the deal – house-cleaning, and gardening don’t seem to be up her
street. I directly ask, if she comes to my home in Hua Hin is she expecting to work, or have a holiday and, as ever with direct questions (and especially with ‘either/or’ questions), she replies: “When…? Today…!?”

I seem to be getting nowhere, and Mai seems totally unconcerned. In the end, having already informed her that I usually take a snooze around two or three o’clock, and find myself now, at nearly two-thirty, feeling a tad weary with this non-conversation,
she suggests I should go home… and then asks if I want her to go as well… Most of Mai’s dialogue is liberally peppered with her inimitable low, delightful, almost growly, deep-throated, chuckle, which reminds
me of someone…

I drop her back at the market, and say I’ll phone her, tomorrow. She asks if she can thus come to Hua Hin tomorrow… or today (with that laugh again)… and I repeat: “I’ll call you…!”

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Tomorrow

Mai phoned last evening to say she would come today to clean the house, stressing: “Only clean house…!” If the employee wishes to dictate terms they have to be rather special. Mai isn’t. I’m a bit late today getting under way, and also don’t put my phone on until ten o’clock, to get a message that Mai phoned earlier. She now calls and, without even a simple Hello, asks why my phone was off…? And why then didn’t I turn it on again this morning…? And why anyway didn’t I call her when I got her message…? And, what’s the matter with me…? Like an Ariston washing machine – on and on….

At this precise moment my ‘matter’ is probably being verbally attacked first thing in the morning, and tell her she gives me a headache… at which she snaps, “OK. I go back Cha Am. Goodbye…!”
and cuts me off, as I try to ask if she’s in Hua Hin already…

I’m sorry it ends like this but, I never felt confident about giving her a trial… If she hadn’t offered to come here today I wouldn’t have invited her, but neither did I expect her to just arrive… Ho hum…

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For several days I get calls from Bam who I seem to understand the first time but she still has to repeat herself ten times. When I speak she keeps interjecting (several times I tell her to just be quiet, and listen…) so I have to repeat everything ten times, and she understands the tenth time. It isn’t helped that she does have a hearing problem and uses the speaker-phone, and I get interrupted by myself.

On every call she constantly asks to return on Friday, and I stand by my guns and insist on Monday – with stubborn people I can also be totally stubborn and the Thai trick of just continually asking the same question until I agree drives me nuts. I know
I’m a different generation, and different culture, but I was brought up with the adage: ‘N – O’, means No…!’ – it may have gone out of fashion but that doesn’t mean it was
wrong.

Eventually I take a page out of The Carpetbaggers and decide, if she says Friday again, I will change to Tuesday…!

I get a message from Bam to say her son is at a scout-camp at the weekend, and can she visit me so I give her a call, and ask about the camp, and she says it ends at midday tomorrow (Friday), and the kids come home for the weekend… which means she can come to Hua Hin… so even her written messages are inaccurate…! I give my usual response and she says her son is more than capable of looking after himself at the weekends, with perhaps a little help from her ‘family’… and that it’s more important for her to be there on weekdays, to ensure he gets off to school all right…

. . . and so… I accept her offer to come tomorrow, for the weekend

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That’s all for now folks… Pip, Pip.

Hua Hin Harry

to be continued…