Dont Make This Online Dating Mistake In Thailand

If you plan to live in Thailand or even visit, you might be interested in dating and that’s understandable. Thai women are very kind and beautiful, and the dating culture can contrast sharply with the dating culture in Western countries.

The topic of “passport bros” has become pretty mainstream in Western countries. These are men who are disinterested or disillusioned with dating in Western countries and prefer to find a partner in a more traditional non-Western country like Thailand. But you need to avoid making one key mistake.

The Mistake: Chatting Too Long Before Meeting

Chatting for too long before meeting, especially from your home country. Don’t get me wrong long-distance dating is possible, but it’s difficult.

If you started talking to somebody online, there’s a good chance they are talking to many other people. You’re probably somewhere in a list of “hellos” and “good mornings.” This is what can happen in the online dating world, and you need to meet to see if you actually have a connection.

You can see how this can be particularly challenging if you’re texting from your home country. You can’t actually meet people. People develop online personalities which can be very different from their real-world personality. This is even more true when you have language and cultural barriers communicating online using Google Translate versus sitting down and having a real conversation.

And of course, the pervasive FaceApps that can make people look very different online and in real life. You don’t want to spend a lot of time and energy building an online connection and then realize that they are totally different when you actually meet. And this is true for everybody man or woman, foreigner or Thai person.

I’ve actually met people here who had long-distance relationships for several years and never met. They went through multiple breakups and never actually did meet. The goal of online dating should be to meet up relatively quickly and see if you have a real-life connection.

The Risks of Chatting Too Long Online

But there are also risks for talking too long online.

Thailand has Facebook groups where women will post pictures of the men that they are talking to. These are private groups, but they are huge hundreds of thousands of people are in them. If you’re chatting for a long time with somebody from a dating app while you’re in your home country, there’s a good chance that you’ll get posted in that group.

Women normally post your picture to see if anybody else is talking to you, if you’re married, if you’re in a relationship, or any other information about you. It’s much more likely that you’ll get posted in the group if you’re chatting with women while you’re still in your home country. The reason is that many guys use these dating apps to try to set up as many dates as they can for what you would call “holiday girlfriends.” ThaiFriendly I’m looking at you.

These Facebook groups popped up as a response to that, so that women can check out the guys that are contacting them from these apps to see if they are the guys looking for their holiday girlfriends. Fair enough. But if that’s not you, you want to avoid getting posted in these groups, particularly by somebody that you never actually met and may have no real-world connection with.

And if you’re one of the guys talking to many women from dating apps like ThaiFriendly and they suddenly disappear now you know why.

Online Dating Scams and Hustles

But that isn’t the only risk. Online dating also has a lot of hustles and scams, especially if you’re chatting from your home country. This isn’t unique to Thailand. Scammers and hustlers love the online dating world. It’s relatively anonymous, and it’s easy to contact hundreds or even thousands of potential victims. A single hustler or scammer can message thousands of people per day.

So when you’re chatting online, the statistical odds of encountering a hustle or scam are very high. This is true for every country, but it’s even more true for Thailand, which is one of the most visited tourist countries in the world and somewhat famous among the Passport Bro types. This means that you’re very likely to encounter a lot of hustles in the online dating world here.

And a lot of the time, the scams aren’t even actually based in Thailand they’re just using Thailand to lure in victims. You might be slowly drawn into an OnlyFans online sales funnel. In that case, you’re probably just talking to a guy in a call center that is not a joke. Or you might get asked for money, and in that case, there’s a good chance that you’re in a Nigerian scam. These are the romance scams, and they’re quite famous in Thailand for targeting both foreigners and Thai women, and they’re very effective. We see news stories about them here all the time.

The reality is that online dating just has a lot more hustles and scams, and this is only going to become more pervasive with things like AI face apps.

To avoid these outright scams, you can arrange a FaceTime call, but it’s definitely much better to arrange an actual meetup as it gives both people a chance to decide if they want to continue talking.

How to Arrange the First Date

So what kind of meetup should you arrange? I’d recommend that you arrange a very low-commitment, quick meetup in a public space such as a mall. Often you’ll notice and both people will notice if you have a connection within the first couple of minutes, and you can decide if you want to continue the date.

If you notice that you have no connection within a minute or two, you don’t want to be stuck for hours in a painfully awkward date. Nobody really wants that except perhaps the semi-professional daters that you’ll also encounter. These are people that go on dates because they want to check out the latest expensive restaurant or skybar for free or on your dime.

And of course, this is not unique to Thailand. This is simply a reality of online dating here and everywhere.

So my recommendation is to pick the location, make it a low-commitment and inexpensive place, and simply meet and see if there is an actual connection. This way, you’ll avoid the long and awkward date, and you’ll quickly get rid of any of the semi-professional daters who are just looking for a free meal at a skybar.

And that one actually happened to a friend of mine recently. He arranged a date. He didn’t choose the location, and she picked to go to the W Bar. And when he arrived, she actually brought a friend. And he’s a nice guy, so he ended up paying for dinner for both of them, and then they left. So this is actually something that happens, and it’s very specific to the online dating world because it’s just easy to do.

So make sure that date is a low-commitment and inexpensive date first. And if you actually feel a connection, you feel that the person is genuine, you can then plan a nice date for the second date.