Finding My Thai Lady

I work in a hospital in Belgium. It is about a 15-minute walk between the main building and the building that houses the neonatal intensive care unit. Over the past years, I have used that spare time to read the readers’ submissions of Stickman’s’ site. They were always interesting and educational. I sometimes need to travel abroad on medical missions and one of those missions took me to Thailand. So, I was on a plane going from Chiang Mai to Bangkok. A pretty Thai lady occupied the seat beside me. Of course, we got talking and luckily her English was pretty good. She works for the Thai government and often flies between cities in Thailand. At the end of the flight, we exchanged email addresses.

In the year that followed we communicated often via email. About 10 months later, she asked me if I would be interested in meeting her again. I learned in the meantime that she was widowed in her 20s and raised 2 sons all on her own. Her parents were no longer alive and she managed to send her sons to university, the youngest one still being at Chulalongkorn in Bangkok. Quite impressive, I thought. So, of course, I would like to see her again and we made arrangements to do so. We met at a hotel in Bangkok, separate rooms. And we spent 2 weeks where she was my tour guide and dinner companion. It was a lovely time. I could sense that something was growing between us. But I did not want to push it, knowing well how decent Thai women go about relationships. The goodbye at Sawwanapoom was painful, to say the least, but we promised to meet again.

So the next year we got together again and planned to go to the lovely Island of Ko Lipe. It is basically a one-street island where, in order to get on land, you have to get your feet wet because there are no harbour facilities whatsoever. It was a perfect place and there our relationship blossomed and we became a couple. I had been in a (friendly) divorce, where my ex-wife and me both kind of agreed that it was time our paths separated. We have 2 lovely daughters who are both independent and working. I was very much supported by the fact that my daughters understood and agreed with my new situation.

This year we will tour Laos and Cambodia together. Again she will be my guide, and she speaks both Lao and Khmer languages. She planned the whole tour and if I myself had done this, it would have been four times more expensive.

I pay for all of our travel expenses. With one son still at Chulalongkorn, and on a government salary, my lady has to be careful with her finances. Yet, she has never asked me for any money.

Having read all the love stories of people in Thailand, I consider myself to be lucky. Our difference in age is about 10 years, which I find to be ideal. In five years time, I plan to retire and marry her. We would live in Bangkok.

I wrote my story to show people that there are probably a lot of good decent ladies in the land of smiles. And you know, even now, when we walk around in Bangkok, we do not hold hands, or kiss in public. This kind of behaviour is strange to me as a foreigner, but it is part of the Thai culture. It is very important, I think to try to understand the culture of the country of your companion. I have been studying Thai for a 2 years now, and easy it is not. But it is so rewarding to see the smiles of the Thai when you make an effort to communicate with them in their own language.

To all you guys out there looking for love in Thailand, I would say: go for it! Thai ladies are indeed among the most fascinating, loving, helpful and beautiful women in the world. But, as often mentioned on this site, do not search for them in the bargirl environment. I understand the plight of the bargirls and do certainly not condemn them for it. They are making a living in the only way they can. Like all of us, they want to escape poverty. But the chances of them making good spouses are rather slim. Their profession damages them.

To finish, I’d like to thank Mr. Stickman for the goldmine of information that he provided all of us on Thailand. I hope to have made a small contribution to it here.

Stick‘s thoughts:

Very nice story and well done on meeting a lady who sounds like she really is a keeper!

The author cannot be contacted.