Englishman Marries a Pattaya Bar Girl and Faces Heartbreak
David wasn’t an old guy. He was only about 32 or 33 years old. He had a small apartment above a shop. He bought it and had a mortgage on it, but it wasn’t a huge mortgage. He had managed to save quite a bit.
He was single. He had had one or two serious girlfriends, but they had never worked out for whatever reason. At this time, he was on his own. He was quite popular with his workmates. He was a nice guy, a simple kind of guy.
When I say simple, I don’t mean he was stupid. He was just one of those guys who was easy to take to. If you met him, you didn’t think anything bad or anything good, he was just a nice guy.
The First Trip to Thailand: A Holiday with a Friend
David and a friend decided that they wanted to take a holiday together. They hadn’t done any research as such. They just decided they wanted to go to a hot country. It could have been Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand, or Indonesia.
But for whatever reason, they decided they were going to go to Thailand. They decided to stay a night in Bangkok and then head down to Pattaya. The reason they were going to Pattaya was that they had done very little research. They just knew that Pattaya wasn’t too far from Bangkok, a couple of hours in a taxi, and they wanted to hang around a beach.
They were going to take quite a long time off, about three weeks each. The hotel they chose was on Soi 8. For anybody who hasn’t been to Pattaya, Soi 8 is towards the other end of the beach. It’s not really where all the action is, but they were staying there.
As you walk into Soi 8, there’s a hotel on the left called the East Inn. It has a little convenience store on the corner. It’s a budget hotel, and David and his friend weren’t really party people or big drinkers.
If you come out of the East Inn on Soi 8, it’s just bar after bar after bar. There must be three to five hundred girls working in those bars. In the evening, they decided they would go out and have a bit of fun and see what it was all about.
They didn’t really have too much experience with the girls. They were both saying “go,” and they thought, “Let’s go out, have a few drinks, and see what it’s all about.” They were newbies, so really wet behind the ears. Anything could happen.
David Meets Dao: A Chance Encounter
When they went out, the first bar they went into was literally right in front of the East Inn. David‘s friend, Mark, got chatting to a girl at that bar.
David was getting a little bit bored. Mark bought a couple of drinks. Don’t forget, this was all new to them, so the fact that a young lady was speaking to him was very thrilling. He didn’t really want to pull himself away.
David said to him, “Look, I’ll tell you what. I’m getting a bit bored in this bar. I’m going to walk up the street and see what else is about.”
David walked up the street. He stopped in one of the bars along the way, had a drink, and moved on to another one. Eventually, he got up to a cluster of bars. The noise is deafening at night; they all compete to have the loudest music. It is absolutely full of girls.
He ended up at the bar in one of these cluster bars. He got himself a beer; he wasn’t a spirit drinker, and ended up playing one of those games, Connect Four, with one of the girls. That girl just happened to be Dao, which he didn’t know at the time.
Dao’s Background: A Typical Working Girl in Pattaya
A little bit of background on Dao. She was a typical working girl in Pattaya. She came from Isaan. I don’t know exactly which town, probably somewhere around Khon Kaen.
She had come down to Pattaya a few years before. She had been married, the usual story: a drunk husband who got a bit violent when he was drunk. She had to get away. She had a kid up in Isaan maybe one or two, I don’t know.
She was working, but she wasn’t a “rock star.” What I mean by that is she was about 30, so she had had a child. She couldn’t really put on a bikini and jump on a go go bar like the younger girls do. The real stunners who are quite young work in the top gogo bars on Walking Street.
She was a working girl, working in a beer bar, making her money from drinks and from customers.
David’s Naivety: Taking Everything at Face Value
David was totally naive. He had never heard anything about the scene. He had seen various bits and bobs about Thailand, but nothing specific. He takes everything at face value. He’s not stupid, but anything he’s told, he has no reason to disbelieve.
He struck up a conversation with Dao while playing Connect Four. He bought a few drinks, and as it happened, he quite enjoyed himself. He wasn’t particularly thinking he was going to take a girl back to the hotel. He was just happy talking to Dao.
Eventually, David‘s friend wandered up and joined him, and he got speaking to another girl in the same bar. To cut a long story short, David spent most of the evening with Dao, playing these games and buying her drinks.
Of course, Dao was really happy. She was with this guy who didn’t know the score. He bought something like six, seven, eight drinks, not knowing the system in Thailand. If you buy a lady a drink, she gets a commission off that drink. He didn’t know anything other than that. He was prepared to listen to Dao and believe anything she told him, which was great for Dao.
Getting Closer: Dao Works Her Magic
Getting on for just after midnight, Dao had worked her magic a little bit. These girls are very clever, and they can suss you out quite quickly. She discovered that David was a newbie, pretty much willing to listen to anything. She figured if she played her cards right, she was onto a winner.
Dao persuaded David to meet up with her the next day on the pretense that she was going to show him around Pattaya. She had a little motorbike and was going to pick him up at his hotel. She had a spare helmet. She was going to take him around Pattaya and take him for lunch; she wouldn’t be paying, though. He agreed and went back to his hotel chuffed. He said to his friend, “I’m onto a winner here. I’ve met a real nice girl, and she’s going to pick me up tomorrow on her motorbike and take me out.”
Of course, David thinks he’s won the jackpot. He’s not thinking about anything else.
The next day, Dao turns up at the hotel quite early, about half past 11. They went around Pattaya for the day and had lunch. At the end of the day, Dao said, “Just make sure you come to my bar tonight because I want to see you. I think we’re getting on quite well.” David wasn’t going anywhere else now. He hooked up with Dao again, going to her bar every night and buying seven, eight, nine drinks. Dao was loving it because she didn’t have to put herself about. This guy was turning up at the bar, sitting down, playing games, and believing everything she said.
This went on for a week or so. They started meeting up more and more, and it got a little bit more serious. Eventually, David did manage to take Dao back to his hotel, and a relationship developed. They got very, very close.
For David, this was something else. He hadn’t been with a lady in the UK for a long, long time, and he was now hooked on Dao. I wouldn’t say he was in love with her, but he liked her a lot.
Back to Reality: David Returns to the UK
Eventually, David‘s holiday had to come to an end. He found himself back in the taxi on the way to Bangkok and eventually back to the UK, where he went back to work.
He had arranged to keep in touch with Dao. He didn’t really know what his future plans were going to be, but he didn’t want to lose contact with her. Unfortunately for David, he didn’t realize what it was all about in Thailand.
Dao had told him the truth up to a point. She said she’d come down from Isaan, she was single, she had a child, and she needed to make money. But where the story got a little bit dishonest was what she told David about her work.
She said she was in her bar every night, customers came in, they played games, they liked the company of the girls, they would buy her drinks, she would make commission, and she would go home to her own room after that. She never ever went with a customer. That’s what she sold David.
David had no reason to disbelieve her. But in reality, she was going with customers, and that’s where she made her real money.
Returning to Thailand: David Goes Back Alone
When he was back in the UK, he decided he wanted to keep in touch with her. He got a LINE or WhatsApp and would contact her regularly. Sometimes he couldn’t get hold of her because she had gone off with a customer, but he wasn’t suspicious at all.
She would come back online and say, “Oh, I had to go and visit somebody” or “I had a sick friend,” and he just took it at face value.
The day came where David decided to go back to Thailand about three or four months had gone by. This time, he decided to go on his own. He knew exactly what he was going to do: fly to Bangkok, have one night on his own, then straight down to Pattaya to spend his entire vacation with Dao.
He spent two weeks with her. She did say to him at one point, “Look, if you want me to not work and spend time with you, we can do that, but you need to compensate the bar.”
He didn’t know the score. As far as he was concerned, it made sense. He bar fined her for a few nights. They didn’t do anything spectacular David just loved her company, and Dao was just making the most of it. She got a few presents out of him: a nice handbag, a few designer t shirts.
David had plenty of money, especially when he came on vacation. Anything Dao said, he believed. He bought presents and paid for everything. Dao was really happy; she knew she was onto a winner, and David was happy as well.
Taking Stock: Where We Are in the Story
Let’s just take a breather for a second and evaluate where we are in the story.
We have David and Dao together. David is on his second visit to Pattaya. He’s wet behind the ears and doesn’t know what’s going on, but on the other side of the coin, he is very, very happy with the way the relationship has developed with Dao.
She hasn’t done anything to raise any suspicions. He hasn’t seen her talking with other guys or leaving the bar with other guys. Nobody has told him anything about her. She appears to be a decent girl who just works in the bar for drinks, and he is very happy with her company. On top of that, she’s beautiful.
As far as Dao is concerned, David is a nice guy. She knows he has a good job, she knows he is single, she knows he has his own apartment in the UK. She also knows that if she plays it cool nice and easy, slow, potentially she could reel in a husband: fairly young, handsome, and pretty well off. Not rich obviously, but a pretty good catch for a bar girl.
Falling in Love: David Proposes
David goes back to the UK again, then comes back to Pattaya. This goes on about half a dozen times. Eventually, he does fall in love with Dao.
Dao, because she knows David sees her very regularly and spends a lot of money on airfares, knows 100% that she is the one. She is not taking any chances. If she sees a guy that she has been with before, she won’t even say hello. Normally, if a Thai girl sees one of her other customers, she will smile, say hello, and then tell the guy she is with, “Oh, he’s just a friend.” But because of the situation with David, she wasn’t going to take even the smallest chance. She ignored all the guys she knew.
At this time, David wanted to arrange to take Dao back to the UK for a couple of weeks’ vacation. It was quite difficult to get her a visa even in those days I’m talking about 15 or 16 years ago but he did manage to sort it out in the end. He arranged everything, paid for all the visas and the airfare. He came to Thailand, met Dao, and took her back on the flight. Eventually, she went back to Thailand. On this occasion, he had to send her on her own because he was committed to work. She had had a good time, with lots of presents for her family and child, and headed back to Thailand.
Now, David is really in love at this time, and he has decided that he is going to propose to her the next time he goes over there.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t know the score as far as the bars or gogo bars go. He is totally, totally naive, taking Dao at face value. He has done the right thing as far as he’s concerned. In his mind, Dao loves him, he loves Dao, they should get married. She is going to be happy in the UK, and he is going to be happy because he has got himself a new wife. Why not?
He books himself several months later, buys a real nice ring from a jeweller, something like £5,000, and heads back over to Thailand. He asks Dao to marry him in the bar in front of all the girls. Obviously, she started crying. She accepted, and everybody was screaming and shouting, and the drinks were flowing.
The Marriage: Moving to the UK
Eventually, the day came. He married her. Dao came back to the UK. They got married in a real simple ceremony at a registry office, not a church. There was one witness I think it was David‘s brother. It was a very small ceremony.
They decided that they weren’t going to go on an expensive honeymoon abroad because Dao had just come from abroad, and David had been going to Thailand for God knows how long now. David decided he would take two or three weeks off work, and they would just spend the time together, relax, and get to know each other even more.
They were now married, living in David‘s apartment. The honeymoon comes to an end. David goes back to work, and as far as Dave is concerned, everything is good. He has Dao. They have the visa. She can stay as long as she wants. From his side, it’s all good.
He has a good job and is paying for everything for her. Obviously, she has to send money back to her family. The figure they came up with was about 15,000 baht a month. Dao said, “Look, if I leave the bar, I’m coming to marry you. I won’t be working. I can’t just abandon my family and let them starve. You will have to help me.”
This was worked out before the wedding. David set up a direct debit that went to her village. Dao was pretty happy, and her family were looked after in that way.
The Reality of Loneliness: Dao Isolated in the UK
Dao wasn’t working in the UK. In the UK, a man will go to work, the lady stays at home, cleans the house, goes shopping, and might look after children. This wasn’t the case with Dao. She was in a foreign country. She didn’t know anybody. She didn’t really speak the language well. The only contact she had as far as human contact was David. When David left the apartment in the morning at about 8 o’clock, that was it. She was on her own all day. For about a month, it wasn’t too bad because she went out and wandered around the town centre. It was quite interesting for her. She was looking around thinking, “Wow, I’m in the UK.”
But one thing that did come as a bit of a surprise to Dao and it was a very pleasant surprise was that she was getting a lot of attention from the guys. This was something she hadn’t experienced since her youth, since she was about 17 or 18. When she was out and about on her own, van drivers were slowing down and winking at her, beeping their horns. She would be walking through the town centre, and guys would be craning their necks to look at her. They would smile at her. They thought she was Chinese sometimes and would try to say hello in Chinese. She was getting a lot of attention, and she liked it.
Dao has been in the UK for about two months now. She is getting very, very bored and very, very lonely. She is always on the phone talking to the girls online.
You have to remember the two different environments. Picture Pattaya. Think about Dao‘s day. She will wake up, probably share a room with half a dozen girls. She is surrounded by girls all speaking her language. They go to the bar, clean the bar, tidy the bar, do a bit of washing but they are doing it as a group. They gossip all the way, talking about last night’s guys, who is going to come in tonight. They order food, sit around, eat together, put their makeup on, still gossiping. It’s like a chicken coop they are all squawking.. Eventually, the bar opens, and it’s radar time, seeing who they can focus in on. They are always with people. At the end of the night, they are either going to go off with a guy or walk with one of their friends, and then they do exactly the same the next day.
Now imagine you are in that environment as a Thai girl, and all of a sudden you are in an apartment. You only know your husband. He is gone to work, and you have now got the next 8 to 12 hours alone. Nobody to talk to. You don’t know anybody. You are isolated.
What are you going to do? The first thing you are going to do is get online, get on WhatsApp, and start trying to contact your friends in Thailand. undefined
Back to Old Habits: Dao Returns to Her Old Ways
Another thing you have to understand about Thai bar girls is that when it comes to income, it doesn’t matter what they earn, it’s never enough. If there is an opportunity to earn more, they will go out and get it. Dao, living in the UK, was getting a lot of attention. Eventually, the day came when somebody did approach her, asked her where she came from, what she did. One thing led to another, and she told the guy she met that her husband was not very nice to her. She lied. She said, “I’m living with this guy who brought me from Thailand, and he doesn’t give me any money.” This was totally false. David was looking after her real nice, and she could have had a nice life with him.
The guy had been to Thailand before and knew the score. He offered, in a roundabout way, to give her money to send back to her family but of course, he would want something back in return. Dao, being a professional, had no problem at all. Off she went with this guy and made, I think, about £100. Good money.
When it was all done and dusted, she went back to the apartment. David came home from work and didn’t know anything. He wouldn’t have suspected anything.
But Dao realized something. She thought, “Hang on a minute. I’m now in a position where I have David. I can tell him whatever I want, and he will believe it. He is not suspicious of me. I can do pretty much what I want, and as long as I’m not blatant about it, I am going to get away with it. I have just been with someone for an hour and made 4,000 baht. Fantastic.” She met this guy again on several occasions. She would meet him in town, and he had a friend with him, and she would get talking to his friend. Before long, the whole town knew everybody except her husband David that there was this Thai girl available, and if you did it in the right way and slipped her £100, you could pretty much have a nice afternoon or a nice early evening.
There’s an old saying in Thailand, and it’s absolutely true: You can take the girl out of the bar, but you can’t take the bar out of the girl.
That’s what is happening. She has got that mentality. She sees an opportunity to make money, and she ignores the fact that she is actually married to David, a great guy who is totally honest and looking after her. She ignores that. She just sees pounds, dollars, baht in front of her. If she has got a chance to make it, she will do it.
The Inevitable Discovery: David Finds Out the Truth
After about six months, the inevitable happened. David, as naive as he was, was with a friend. His friend being a real friend didn’t want to upset David, but on the other hand, he didn’t want David to be treated as a doormat.
He turned to David one day and said, “How is Dao getting on in the UK? What does she do all day? Are you sure she is staying at home all day?” He basically put a load of hints down.
David ended up following her one day with a friend, and he pretty much found out what was going on. As naive as David had been in Thailand, he wasn’t going to put up with it. He is a decent guy. He had provided everything for Dao, and she had gone to the UK and prostituted herself.
He went back to his apartment and packed her bags. She turned up, and he said, “You’re out.” She tried to play dumb, said she didn’t know anything about it, but it was too late by then.
The Aftermath: Heartbreak and Moving On
David was absolutely gutted, heartbroken, shattered. Don’t forget, Dao was his wife now. He was in love with her. As far as he was concerned, he had a wife, and everything was good. The last thing he expected was for his wife to turn out to be a prostitute, which she had been already, but obviously he didn’t know.
Dao did leave. She had no choice. David carried on as he had been before he went to Thailand. He was too devastated. He became a bit of a recluse for about a year. He was almost suicidal, but he didn’t go that far. He kept his job and his apartment and eventually got over it.
And what happened with Dao? Same as always happens. She hooked up with one of those lowlifes she had been hanging around with in town, moved in with him, stayed with him for a few months, and did the same to him. It goes like a daisy chain until it comes to the end when nobody will take her in.
In this case, Dao went back to Thailand. I have heard that Dao is back in Soi 8. That was the relationship between David and Dao. It didn’t work out, surprise, surprise; it normally doesn’t.
A Final Warning: Bar Girls vs. Respectable Thai Women
Let it be a warning to you. If you have never been there before and you are thinking of hooking up with somebody seriously, remember that most Thai girls in Thailand are decent and very, very respectable.
If you want to meet a Thai girl to have as a wife, go to an agency. You will find that the girls are totally different from the bar girls. They don’t speak English most of the time. They are a little bit more simple in the way they think, but they are very respectful girls.
Most Thai girls are very, very decent, respectable ladies. Guys get the wrong idea because they hit the bars when they get to Thailand, but that is a very, very small percentage of Thai girls. There are a lot of nice girls in Thailand.
If you were looking for a wife, then I would suggest an agency.
