Phil The Expat and Thailand Marriage Scam
Any man with a thirst for a cold beer that has frequented the expat bars in Thailand will have encountered quite a few likable characters during their travels. My old drinking friend Phil certainly fitted in quite nicely to such expat male gatherings. He had an ability to entertain others with jokes and tales of his many colorful experiences.
This is his story from my perspective, with the kind consent and assistance of his daughter in London. I believe that valuable lessons can be learned from the consequences of his decision to live out his twilight years permanently based in rural Thailand. For everyone contemplating marriage and retirement in Thailand, far out in the provinces, please give this story your close attention. To those who just have a passing interest in Thailand, I hope our writings still carry a sufficient amount of substance and interest to spark your curiosity.
Phil was born in the UK in 1941. He was married three times. Firstly, to an English lady in the 1960s, having two daughters from the first marriage. Secondly, to a Thai lady in 1985. Twins came from this marriage, a boy and a girl. His youngest daughter from his second marriage has kindly consented to this information becoming public knowledge, and I have to thank her for supporting many of the facts that are about to be revealed. Phil’s third marriage was to another Thai lady in 2001, and it’s mainly this period of his life spent in Thailand that I would like to focus upon.
Not surprisingly, after three marriages, Phil used to say that whoever came up with the phrase “marry in haste, regret at leisure” was completely right.
Fond Memories of Phil at Bangkok’s Tilac Bar
One of the joys of my nights out in Thailand was meeting up with Phil. The early happy hour at the Tilac Bar was one of his favorite times. San Miguel Light was only 69 baht in those days, and the staff would let you stack up a few happy hour drinks if required. Phil would always have a new piece of news or gossip or a few funny tales to tell.
I often thought that Phil would have made a good BBC reporter with his delightful old fashioned English southern accent. His ability to describe incidents in his life with perfect description and with humor was certainly entertaining a quality to be admired. He was one of those guys who you couldn’t help but like. All the staff in Tilac Bar seemed to like him. Most of all, he enjoyed a good old fashioned laugh with the guys, which I’m sure increased his popularity among the drinking crowds on Sukhumvit Road.
Phil’s Lock and Hotel Safe Expertise
Whilst working in the UK in his younger days, Phil had become something of an expert on locks and hotel safes. This came in handy in Thailand as he developed a nice sideline helping hotel managers catch reception staff stealing. When money went missing, Phil would assist the manager to set up a trap with a camera.
Invariably, the night staff would take one key from an empty safe box and pay a locksmith to make an impression and a spare key. Hence, three keys now available to open the safe. The next day, the thief would check in as a guest to the hotel and offer them the safety deposit box and key, then open up the box himself the next night with the spare. The staff member was smart enough to just remove small amounts of money. This could be repeated for many weeks with different boxes without the guests bothering to complain. Quite devious on the part of the culprit, but the punishments in Thailand for such wicked behavior are very severe, and Phil’s intervention helped bring them to justice. I believe Phil was also involved in other types of undercover work for the Thai authorities.
On occasions, I would meet Phil in Pattaya. Phil must have been the only foreigner in the bars that ever completed a puzzle from a tatty book he always carried with him. Whenever we went out, he seemed to know someone on the expat circuit. Others knew his nickname to be “Frugal Phil,” as he had a one lady drink policy strictly enforced. He was certainly on friendly terms with the old manager at Rawhide Bar on Soi Cowboy, where his claim to fame is that he persuaded him to nickname the bar “Rawhide” after the old TV western. I guess that’s going back many years.
A lasting impression I had was when a young dancer on Soi Cowboy with denim shorts pulled open her back pocket and asked Phil for a tip. His response was, “Change your engine oil every 6,000 miles.” Typical Phil. Whilst in Soi Cowboy, Phil did not suffer the vendors gladly and would often demand to view the work permit of the fake watch sellers. That would quickly cause alarm and send them scurrying away.
In the years that I knew Phil, I never saw him drunk and I never saw him misbehave. I’m not saying he was an angel. In any case, Bangkok doesn’t exactly lend itself to perfect behavior. In spite of that, Phil would always take the MRT back home alone every night around 9:30 p.m. whilst the party on Soi Cowboy was still in full swing.
Meeting Nong in a Bangkok Bar
It was always a sad day when I had to leave Thailand and return to work in the UK, but I kept in touch with Phil by Skype and email. Phil used to write me long emails about his life and future plans. I would have thought that staying in a nice apartment near the MRT station and going downtown drinking with friends was in itself a good enough plan for retirement. It would have suited me just fine and I must confess to being slightly envious. However, his Thai wife had other ideas.
For the purposes of the story, we’ll refer to his wife as Nong. She was 34 years his junior. Phil told me he met Nong in a bar on Sukhumvit. She claimed she’d only worked there a few days fresh from the farm. Originally from Isan, the Isan region in the north of the country, Nong led Phil to believe it was her first time dating a foreigner, and that Phil was her knight in shining armor.
He was already streetwise to the usual bar girl lies, but liked her so much that he seemed to go into a state of denial and never questioned her story. Although he had a lot of experience with the ladies from the entertainment zones, Phil was swiftly taken in by Nong’s charms a tender trap that has caught out so many. I guess we should understand that this often happens to many farang who think that his new bar girl girlfriend is special and different to the others.
Phil’s close friend Barry mentioned that he would call Phil each day and he would often begin with, “I’m going to go to jail if she keeps up with this,” referring to the latest confrontation he had suffered with his charming wife, Nong. When Barry met Nong for the first time at their apartment in Bangkok, she simply ignored him. It was actually rude behavior and a definite red flag. An early sign of worse to come was to follow.
As a side note, it actually turned out after Phil’s death that a friend of his claimed he had met and hired Nong for the night in Singapore a few years before she and Phil had met. Of course, this was never revealed whilst Phil was alive, but the friend claims it led to a very awkward encounter when the two were introduced by Phil during a chance meeting in Bangkok. This may go some way to explaining why Nong was so reluctant to ever meet or interact with any of Phil’s friends after this incident.
Anyway, back to when they first met. One thing led to another and the relationship progressed. In due course, they married and settled in Phil’s studio apartment in Bangkok. Things were seemingly fine for the first years.
Nong Pressures Phil to Move from Bangkok to Isan
In later years, in one of his emails to me, he told me that his wife had been hassling him to sell up and move from Bangkok to a home province in Isan something he wasn’t open to doing until he felt he was old enough to require constant care. Phil’s amusing response to this request was “Not in your life.”
Nong’s village was situated in a very remote location way up country, close to the Laos border. It was at least a 10-hour journey by bus from Bangkok. Phil described the family home as being nothing more than a wooden hut on legs. Unsurprisingly, Nong’s repeated request to leave Bangkok initially fell on deaf ears.
Phil was eventually persuaded when Nong told Phil that she was pregnant in 2010. Phil made a permanent move to Isan prior to the birth of their daughter in December of that year. His decision to relocate to Isan was driven by his desire to watch his child grow up. Nong refused to live in Bangkok, claiming it was unhealthy to bring up a child in the city. Phil did not want to be far away from his child. Nong had won this argument.
With the benefit of hindsight, this decision to relocate turned out to be a costly mistake and the beginning of the end.
The Painful Truth About Nong’s Child
On one of my holidays to Bangkok around 2011, Phil invited me to stay at his new place in Isan. I politely declined, not wanting a tiresome 20 hour round trip in discomfort and in the heat. We used Skype video to keep in touch, and by that time, he was proud to introduce me to his lovely baby daughter. She was a sweet little girl, and Phil took great pride in calling her “my little bundle of joy.” It was clear to everyone that the child was not his. She had absolutely no Western features not even mixed features. Phil was fully aware he was not the biological father and was the first to admit that due to his age (pushing 70 at the time), he and his wife hadn’t exactly been particularly active in that department for a while.
The child was actually the result of Nong’s second affair known to Phil. She actually fell pregnant twice during their marriage, just months apart, and neither pregnancy was fathered by Phil. The first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage after having only revealed the pregnancy to him the week or two before the loss at 14 weeks. Phil’s family believed she purposely delayed the announcement to prevent any potential discussions of having a termination, given that it was very clear it was not his child.
When Phil challenged his wife about the true father of the first baby, Nong claimed that she went to a private hospital to be artificially inseminated. A likely story. The things Thai bar girls say to save face. Being the amateur detective, Phil went to the hospital to check their records of attendance. And of course, the response came back, “Maybe no.”
With Nong’s lies disclosed, she was eventually forced to admit she was pregnant by another man and that the father was a man in her village who just lived within spitting distance of her own family home. When that pregnancy was lost, Nong swore she would never do this again. Phil naively believed her.
Three months later, she was pregnant again and openly admitted the father was the same man. Apparently, he was doing a kind deed by helping her to replace the lost child.
The Suspected Thai Bar Girl Marriage Scam
The stress and the worry of this with family back in London was increasing. There is of course a limit on the amount of help and advice anybody can provide so many miles away in the UK. But they urged Phil to leave Nong and return to either Bangkok or London. He refused, claiming he still loved Nong despite everything. Phil thought the baby would bring them closer together.
At this point, Phil’s family became convinced he was the victim of a very common bar girl scam in Thailand. They believed that the biological father of Nong’s child the Thai father was actually her Thai husband, i.e., they married in a Buddhist ceremony only (not a legal one), most likely prior to Nong meeting Phil. A religious wedding ceremony in place of a civil marriage is common practice in rural Thailand where civil marriages are deemed to be far too expensive.
In this type of scam, the Thai husband actively encourages their wife to work in the bars of Bangkok and find an older farang to marry in order to have a stable source of income for them and their extended family. He then doesn’t have to work and has a number of mistresses to keep him company. Totally devious, selfish, and dishonest behavior. Nonetheless, it does happen. So, buyer beware.
Friends and family raised this theory with Phil, but he remained stubborn. He decided to stick by Nong. He truly believed that in return, she would take good care of him until he died. The devious behavior on her part did not stop with other men.
Unauthorized Bank Card Transactions Reveal Financial Betrayal
It goes without saying that money is often at the heart of marital problems, and Phil noticed that several unauthorized transactions were appearing on his UK bank card. Over the years, he was smart enough to drip feed money from this UK account into his Thai bank account. He allowed his wife access only as and when needed.
When he saw a suspicious transaction, he called his bank to investigate, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out who the culprit was. Phil canceled the card but kept it safely in his wallet while hiding his replacement card in a secret compartment in his bag. Quite clever because whenever his wife tried to use a canceled card, it obviously wouldn’t work, and she couldn’t exactly mention it to Phil without giving the game away.
Nevertheless, it is always a sad state of affairs when trust is removed from a relationship. Once it’s gone, it’s a slippery slope. Sadly, from that point onwards, things would go rapidly downhill for our old friend.
Phil’s Final Illness and Hospital Treatment in Isan
I think it was around early 2014 when I received an email from one of Phil’s drinking friends to say that Phil was very ill, located way up there in the Isan wilderness, suffering with several serious medical afflictions. I remember all Phil’s friends at the time begging him to return to Bangkok where the medical facilities are first class. Apparently, Phil’s health deterioration was very rapid.
Phil would have known the importance of seeking professional help quickly. Maybe he did realize just how ill he was. His uncaring wife being who she was didn’t help either. They lived a couple of hours travel from a major provincial hospital, and she didn’t want the hassle or expense of having to go there.
After plenty of badgering from Phil’s family and friends, Nong caved under pressure and agreed to make the journey to hospital. The doctors scratched their heads with uncertainty and failed to diagnose his ailments. They did not know how to help him. At a second hospital, the doctors falsely claimed his condition was caused by a broken hip and said he needed to pay 100,000 baht for an operation. When a farang needs medical treatment, it’s all about the money. Much precious time was wasted.
Eventually, they moved Phil to a third hospital in Ubon Ratchathani. Here, the doctors were much more efficient and honest. They told him he had no broken hip and immediately diagnosed him with acute pneumonia, sepsis, and hypoxia. Unfortunately, Phil arrived at this hospital far too late. His son and daughter examined various options to fly him down to Bangkok for treatment, but the doctors advised his condition was so severe that he wouldn’t survive the trip. It’s all desperately sad.
Phil passed away on the 15th of May, 2014 with his twins by his side.
The Cold-Hearted Widow After Phil’s Death
His wife was not present when Phil passed away, despite being the first one notified when he went into cardiac arrest and being just minutes from the hospital. I am told that Nong barely visited Phil during his stay. And when she did, it would only be for a matter of minutes before heading off.
Instead, her brother with whom Phil had formed a close bond and I’m told is actually a decent man took grip of the reality of the situation. Nong’s brother stayed by his side 24/7 in the final days, and to this day his kind actions are still appreciated by Phil’s family. A special mention here should also go out to Barry. He kindly made a 6 hour journey from his home in Isan to give Phil some books and moral support. A generous act of charity that was testimony to their close friendship.
When Nong eventually arrived at the hospital following the death of Phil, her manner was completely lacking of emotion. It’s hard to understand the mind of this heartless woman that has recently experienced such a close family death. It’s very puzzling that it is possible for a woman to have such a cold hearted indifference to a husband that cared so much for her and her daughter, lacking in sympathy.
To add insult to injury, she was quick to disappear after the visit. This was because it’s suspected by the family she didn’t want to be responsible for any hospital fees or funeral costs. In fact, I’m told that she refused to attend the funeral up until one of the local Thais gave her a humiliating dressing down for being such a bad wife. She agreed to attend not because she cared for Phil, but simply because she didn’t want to lose face. She arrived late to the funeral, stayed for a matter of minutes, and kept her distance.
The Hospital Bill Con Attempt
The story of this bad behavior doesn’t quite finish there. She also tried to con Phil’s children into giving her money for what she claimed were outstanding hospital bills. Phil’s younger daughter was not so easily taken in by this request and found it odd that a Thai hospital would continue to treat a patient without regular or even upfront payments.
She duly requested to see evidence of these bills, and his wife sent a stack of documents in Thai which indeed looked like bills. Unfortunately for Nong, Phil’s daughter was one step ahead and asked a Thai friend to translate them. And it turns out they were receipts not invoices. The hospital bills had already been paid in full with Phil’s bank card. It might be noted Nong was simply trying to con her way into getting some extra pocket money out of the family. What a piece of work.
Lessons from Phil’s Thai Marriage and Retirement
It’s fair to say that Phil’s family back in England view this woman with the utmost contempt. They wish it to be known to others the dangers of becoming entangled with ladies that work in the entertainment zones of Thailand.
The saddest part of all of this is that Phil was an extremely intelligent man in all other respects, but simply turned a blind eye to Nong’s questionable character because he didn’t want to die alone. The irony is she wasn’t there for him at the end when he needed her the most. We all cannot help but wonder whether he would still be here if he had been with someone who truly loved him, instead of a younger bar girl who was rubbing her hands and waiting to inherit his money.
In conclusion, I’ve often thought about how it’s possible for a relatively uneducated Thai country bar girl to take advantage of a very well educated foreigner. Why do so many well educated men come to Thailand and find themselves in a similar situation? Maybe the intense heat distorts the thinking.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be so judgmental. After all, it’s not a level playing field. The Thai bar girl has many advantages. It’s her country, her culture, her language, her family, and her friends to use as a backup in any dispute. It’s a rigged game with one winner. In the grand scheme of things, all decisions and planning are mostly on her terms.
In any cross cultural marriage, it’s a tough job to keep a relationship alive. I would say that getting involved in a similar relationship is similar to rolling the dice against long odds something like going into a casino and putting your life savings onto a roulette wheel, hoping that the ball will land on your chosen number.
It’s rumored that Nong now has since had another child with her old Thai husband, conceived just one month after Phil’s death. In another twist of irony, we also heard she had since returned to Bangkok once more to her old job, gainfully re-employed in the oldest profession in the world.
A Toast to Phil’s Memory at Tilac Bar
Each year on the anniversary of Phil’s death, Phil’s old drinking friends in Bangkok place a bottle of San Miguel Light his favorite drink on the back table at the Tilac Bar. It’s left on the table unopened in remembrance. The dancing girls don’t go anywhere near it. They are afraid of his ghost. Farewell, my old friend. It was great to know you.
