My Thai Story

Like many others, I’ve been reading your site off and on since you started. Over the last few years it became a Sunday ritual after eating my breakfast and having a cup of coffee.

On my second trip to Thailand at the age of 26, it was love at first sight with the Issan bargirl standing outside a bar with a group of other girls. This was early afternoon so they were in their street clothes, but as I looked out from the window of the Chicken Devine restaurant near the top of Patpong soi 2, I was compelled to go in that bar and try and talk to her.

She spoke no English, I had that red, bound Thai phrase book. The mamasan said she had only been working in the bar a few days. I had very limited knowledge of the bar scene and had only been introduced to it on the last night of previous trip, mostly spent on Koh Samui, a year earlier. After being explained to me what the bar fine was about, we would go out to Bobby’s Arms (I think that it was called) at the end of the road. We would sit and watch Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy films which transcends any language barriers. Oh, how we laughed. Sometimes she stayed the night with me in the cheap Khao San Road area guesthouse I was staying. Sometimes I paid the bar fine so she didn’t have to work and told her to go home.

I returned home and wrote regularly. I would get replies, in different hand writing. By this time I had heard about stories girls wanting money for sick relatives etc and other scams.

I returned to see her a few months later. She stopped working at the bar and invited me to stay with her in her room she rented in Makasan. She also introduced me to her two-year old son. For sure I was surprised but I didn’t care.

Two things happened during this trip which gave me an insight into her character.

She said her mother was sick and needed to go see her. Did I want to come? I thought, oh yea, so how much money you need, but she didn’t ask and I didn’t go. She returned after 2 days, of which in total 30 hours was spent on a bus. Nothing more was said until a couple of weeks later she was told her mum had died. Shit I thought, she wasn’t bullshiting. Then at the end of that trip I got short of money. She said she could lend me some and send it back to her later. Bloody hell, that’s not the way I’ve been told it works!

I returned again 1 year after I first met her, and to cut a long story short, we married and returned to England.

Now this was 30 years ago! We are still together with kids and grandkids. My wife has worked had all that time in a local Thai restaurant, but after spending over half her life here, she still is Thai. Yup, she doesn’t want to learn anything or have any sort of curiosity about things she doesn’t know. After all this time I still have to do things like making a doctor’s appointment for her, or filling in any forms. But that is a small price to pay to have a loyal, hardworking, funny and beautiful wife for all these years.

I’ve often wondered if the internet and sites like yours were around 30 years ago, I would have married that poor Issan bargirl. The stories of guys getting ripped of by their Thai lovely, I have seen many times in just my home town in England over the years. At the end of the day I think I just got really lucky finding my wife, but we will see what happens in the next 30 years!

I will miss reading your site and wish you all the best in the future.

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