The Thai Agency Girl Who Bought Me Dinner
I started traveling to Thailand about 15 years ago, when I did not have the resources we have now. I made my share of mistakes. I have many stories from my experiences, but most of them are the usual ones involving bar girls, freelancers, go-go girls, tuk tuks, taxis, and massage shops.
Meeting Eureka and Her Friend
Having been divorced twice, I’m done with long-term relationships. On one of my trips to Thailand in early 2018, I bar fined a girl in Pattaya. She went by the name of Eureka. We had fun, but it was not mind blowing. She told me she would not be there as she had a contract for a few days. She then asked me if I would like to see her friend.
I thought this was a bit odd, but I decided to meet her friend. She explained that her friend worked for an agency and I would need to contact the agency directly to meet her. Despite the yellow flag this raised, I went online and made an appointment. The fee to meet her for a short time was a little more than a bar girl when you added the bar fine, but her looks really caught my eye and I wanted to meet her.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that she looked exactly like her pictures. Honestly, I was not expecting that. Our time behind closed doors was great, and I asked her if she would spend the night with me. After negotiating a reasonable rate, she agreed but said she needed to deposit the money as that is how they are tracked.
About an hour went by and I started thinking she was not coming back. However, I noticed she had left her backpack in my room. Tuk returned about 90 minutes later with a large amount of takeaway food. It was a wonderful spread of seafood, chicken, vegetables, and pork. This was a first for me. Never before had I had a girl buy me a meal.
The Ongoing Connection
I kept in touch with her through LINE about once or twice a month after returning home to America. About 9 months later, I found myself heading back to Thailand. I asked Tuk if she would like to spend the night with me, and she asked me to schedule the date through her agency. I booked an overnight date and paid more than I should have, but she was worth it to me.
This pattern continued whenever I visited Thailand. Fast forward to March 2020, and my planned trip to Thailand was only 3 days away. Shortly after, Tuk messaged me online telling me not to go and said she was heading back home to Isan. A few weeks later, I messaged Tuk and got nothing back. By then, I assumed she was with one of her many farang boyfriends or sponsors she probably had. I’m not naive. A girl this pretty, fluent in English in her early 30s with a sparkling personality would almost certainly have one or two more sponsors.
The Current Arrangement
In August 2024, my neighbor Bobby asked if I wanted to meet him in Thailand around February 2025. Without hesitation, I said yes. I made my travel plans and decided to contact Tuk. She replied the next day and agreed to meet me in Bangkok, go to Hua Hin, and then spend a few days in Pattaya. As usual, we negotiated a price based on what I had already given her, factoring that into the total.
I knowingly broke the 3-day rule this time, but I felt comfortable with my holiday girlfriend arrangement with Tuk. We both enjoyed each other’s company, and in typical Thai girlfriend fashion, she talked me into letting her stay with me for the rest of the 5 days I was in Thailand (for a price, of course), even though we had originally agreed to 10 days.
Although Tuk denies having any boyfriends or sponsors, she openly admits her lifestyle as a girl for hire. She is different in the sense that she tells me upfront in a polite and honest way that everything between her and me is about money.
This story is still ongoing. I’m sure her goal will be to talk me into letting her stay with me the entire time like an idiot. It will probably happen.
Peter’s Funny Story About Agency Girls
They all sprung up when the internet kind of boomed. I remember I was sitting in a cafe with an outdoor area on Sukhumvit, I think it was around Sukhumvit Soi 15. There was a girl sitting at a table in front of me and she had four phones just sitting on the table in front of her. Every minute or so she’d check each phone. I couldn’t figure out what it was, and it finally kind of hit me in the head like a rock. She was with four different agencies and she was sitting there waiting for an agency to call to send her to a client. It’s amazing really when you think about it.
Story Two: Understanding Thai Culture, Respect, Not Flirtation
Thailand is a big, beautiful, safe, warm country. Many of its women are beautiful, too. I moved here from the US when I was 63. That was two and a half years ago.
Thailand can teach you a lot about yourself, but you’re going to think it’s about the girls. You lived in a very different culture before you got here. Whether you’re an expert or a vacationer, that makes it hard to separate flirtation from culture.
Respect is Built Into the Culture
Thais, even toddlers, are taught to show respect to older people. When I say older, a 20-year-old Thai bar girl will address her 22-year-old coworker as ‘P’ (which basically means older sister) out of respect. Long before you got here, the default social posture was respect. Even during brutal boxing matches, the combatants are constantly touching gloves and wai-ing each other. After the bout, they hug like siblings, both bloodied. The language even has a polite modifier, ‘kha’ or ‘khrap,’ to soften the end of a sentence.
The gestures you sometimes assume are flirtatious are them doing their job well in a very face-based society and also done by men in the same jobs. You just don’t notice it when the uniformed security guards and hotel front desk guys do it. Plus, you’re around way more women than men.
The Misconceptions About Thai Women
The other misconception is that all these single women divorced unfaithful Thai men to become eligible to date farangs, or that they’re all dying to meet expats and be finally saved by you. If that were the case, how did 71 million Thais get born? Who do single Thai men date? Very few Thai women have ever dated a Western man.
Bangkok has a population of what, 11 million? Look at the couples in the coffee shops and on the BTS and MRT. Watch the couples on the soap operas. Ask Thai men if they think women here are submissive and traditional. You’re projecting Western baselines on a culture rooted in respect.
Advice for Expats
If you have alcohol issues or fetishize Asian women or move here without hobbies or remote responsibilities, this isn’t a good fit. You’re going to find hours of free time a day, cheap beer, and young girls with complex priorities: geography, distance, families (including their parents and their own children).
The safety and respect and recognition of seniority here is a beautiful thing if you take it for what it is and don’t assume you’re here to save anyone. Use the year-round warm weather, low-cost food, and lovely view from your condo balcony to save yourself your pension, your health as you age, and your sanity.
The best, most genuine women like to be seen as a companion, not an escape hatch, just like you want to be seen as a lover, not as an ATM machine.
If you’re an older guy, sometimes you’ll be in a department store and a younger girl will pass you and she’ll duck down very, very politely. There is this politeness towards older people which is very, very nice. We seem to have lost it in the West.
Story Three: The Department Store Misunderstanding: A Taboo Broken?
Back in Bangkok after 6 years, I stayed for a week, but it was more or less impossible to have a serious conversation with people there because they are not used to speaking English. I was very happy when I met a young sales assistant in a department store who had studied my language from my home country. She was a young girl with skin problems on her face, but the fact that she spoke my mother language at university level made everything else irrelevant.
She helped me place an online order through the department store for a shirt that could only be ordered online. The next day, I returned and left an envelope for her along with my business card, but she had already finished her shift for the day. I wrote that I would like to meet her for coffee or lunch as I had many questions about Thailand and it would also be a good opportunity to practice my mother language.
She never replied.
Two weeks later, I went shopping again at the same department store. Another sales girl told me she would call Tip. However, unexpectedly, an unknown girl appeared who could also speak my home language. She mentioned that one of her parents came from my country. She said she would handle the matter for Tip.
Finally, Tip appeared with an angry expression and was accompanied by the two other girls. There were three of them, and they told me they would listen to my issue. I felt like I was being questioned by a group of police officers. They told me this was not the place to leave a message like that.
I was left wondering which taboo I might have broken in their view. I was simply happy to have met someone who spoke my language in a foreign country.
Yeah, he never did find out. It is strange. You’ve got to be very, very careful. You can’t talk to normal girls in offices, department stores, malls in the same manner that you would in an entertainment center. You could say something very innocently which really insults the girl. You’ve just got to tread very delicately when you’re talking to regular Thai people.
Story Four: The Taxi Kidnapping Attempt, Bangkok 1989
why do I keep returning to Asia after so many tours in 35 years of doing so? Well, I’m not a drinker, nor do I do substances. One thing is simply the need to escape from my usual commitments and daily work routine a few times a year where I have no real responsibilities to perform or expectations to maintain.
The Sinister Taxi Ride
The year was 1989. Two weeks before leaving for Thailand, I happened to be reading the Japan Times newspaper. I read an article warning travelers to be aware of going to Thailand as some people had simply disappeared between arriving at the airport and going to their accommodation. Bodies were found, and other times no one ever turned up. Police suspected a taxi gang were operating this sinister operation.
Two weeks later, my plane touched down in Bangkok. As soon as the doors opened to let me out of the airport, the senses were intensely engulfed in the Bangkok groove. A combo of smells, heat, and emissions that smack you right in the face. I loved it.
I got in the taxi and told him to go to the Malaysian Hotel. Around 10 minutes in, the driver took an off ramp road. I asked him what he was doing. He replied, ‘Shortcut.’ I gave him the benefit of the doubt for a few minutes until I just knew we were heading away from the general direction of where I should be going. The streets were getting narrower and the lights dimmer. I said in a strong voice to turn around and get back on the freeway. He stopped communicating altogether.
In an instant, I knew something bad was about to go down very soon if I didn’t do something. As the article I had read a few weeks earlier flashed through my mind, I shook his shoulders firmly and asked him to stop. He didn’t answer and tried to pull my hand away. I then grabbed him in a rear-naked choke and slowly squeezed. He slammed the brakes on and came to a stop. I put the pressure on until he went unconscious.
Adrenaline pumping, I quickly grabbed my suitcase, carry on, and ran like a man possessed. I made it to the hotel totally exhausted and absolutely relieved.
Peter’s Response
The the thing about the guy following with a second key and opening the boot I’m not saying the guy’s lying, but I kind of find that hard to believe. If you’re sitting in the back seat and somebody opens the boot and relieves you of your suitcase and slams the boot, you’re going to hear it, aren’t you?
The other part of the story where he was led away into the night where something bad was going to happen to him I’ve never heard about this happening in all the years. I first stepped onto Thai soil in 1991. I came to work here in 1994. I’ve never ever heard of people disappearing like this. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but I haven’t heard of it.
I can pretty much say these days Thailand is an extremely safe place to visit. When you come through the airport, everything’s CCTV. You have to take a ticket which matches the taxi you get in. That just does not happen. Full stop.
Story Five: The Davao Night Market Bombing, A Week Later
Another dangerous experience was not in Thailand, but the Philippines. It still haunts me to this day.
A few years earlier, I was contracted to teach a special branch of the police group on certain criminals twice a year for a few years, which were conducted in Manila. Little did I know I would have my own horrid event a few years on.
Late August 2016, I was in Davao City visiting my girlfriend. We had a nice dinner with her friend and her friend’s Australian boyfriend, and it was decided that we should visit the Saturday Night Market. We walked around, ate some food, and enjoyed a lovely massage under the stars by a group that permanently leased the spot.
The next day I flew back to Australia. One week to the day on September the 3rd, a bomb wrapped in a package went off at the night market which was placed in the massage station right where we had been a week earlier. It killed 14 people, including the girl who had done my massage. It shook me to the core, and I shed a tear for those poor people whom I had a minor interaction with only days before.
I want to conclude that despite the above bad experience, I hope the readers do not get turned off travel. Remember, most of my trips were awesome. I felt completely safe as long as you are mindful, respectful, and use common sense. If you do like a drink and have had too much, please organize a safe passage home because walking the back streets drunk is a very dangerous move.
I dedicate this to the memory of the poor people who lost their lives in Davao that fateful night.
