A Seniors Battle with Bureaucracy and Corruption In Thailand
My wife passed away from cancer in her 40s. My two kids were aged four and eight in 1997. I took care of them by myself assisted by my good neighbors and three of my late wife’s sons from her first marriage. I am now 80 years old with a Filipino girlfriend aged 42. As such I could easily talk to your viewers about age gap relationships.
Over the years you have read out six of my stories regarding my trips to Thailand and the Philippines. Just to remind you I am the guy who related the sad saga of my Filipino girlfriend being denied entry to Israel. She was sent home after being held in custody at Tel Aviv airport for 9 hours in September 2025. In total she was in transit for 40 hours. The authorities gave a written explanation that actually said nothing.
The pain and anguish are still with me after eight months as I continue my battle against the immigration authorities. The stress it brought me caused me to ignore taking care of my own health. I will explain this in a moment. I was wrongly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes 20 years ago when I was 60. That meant 20 years of the wrong medication and a total waste of money.
Peter like many of your viewers in their 50s 60s and 70s and maybe even like me in their 80s we all know how much it costs to enjoy Bangkok Chiang Mai Phuket and Pattaya. Over the age of 70 and 80 the increased price of travel insurance adds an additional expense. Apart from that extra cost I endured emotional stress when my Filipino girlfriend was denied entry into Israel. As you get older this is something you can do well without.
Like other senior citizens I am looking for peace and quiet at my age. I want a quiet happy life without conflict. I am sure that this is why Thailand absorbed 40 million tourists in the year before the pandemic. Both Thailand and farangs benefited. Thailand’s economy grew in leaps and bounds as farangs flocked into the country and had a great time. It was a win win situation I think.
But I cannot remember that I did not even tell you something in my original story a few months ago. That denial of entry to Israel was her second attempt to visit me. The first was 12 days prior to that. I had previously bought her the first ticket and travel insurance. I had checked everything I needed to do before purchasing the ticket regarding entry requirements to Israel. But when inviting a guest to visit you at home in the West who checks exit requirements from her own country?
I state categorically that the Philippines is the most corrupt country I know. Maybe I do not know enough. She too went by the book. I instructed her to check out everything required to fly to me at the Israel Embassy in Manila at the relevant Filipino office in Manila and on Google. She had never flown abroad before. She was a complete novice.
On September 2 2025 she arrived at Manila Departure passport control with her flight ticket travel insurance and all her documents in hand. She was denied exit. They said she was lacking documentation. They said that her insurance was incomplete. They convinced her to buy new travel insurance. Had she been a frequent flyer she would have sailed through with a backhander. Believe me I know. To paraphrase a well known movie giant ‘Hello I’m Michael Caine.’
I’m going to tell you something many people do not know but I know about Filipino corruption from past experiences after living for weeks at a time in the Philippines. During election times vans promoting roam the streets with loudspeakers blaring out how great the local candidates are. They then stop their lackeys and supporters get out of the vans and hand cash to the people in the streets. This is just one example of many I’ve witnessed.
Did any of your viewers see videos of Imelda Marcos campaigning for her son to replace the then president? She was handing out fresh bills left right and center to the local population who had flocked around her in the streets of Manila. A great example of a dying democracy.
There is another side too not of offering bribes to Filipinos but of ripping off farangs in the Philippines. The regular Western tourist vacationing in a three or four star hotel is immune to this side of the Philippines. In that country everybody and I literally mean everybody is trying to con you out of your money. As one of your viewers have that privilege to rant and rave it does not go against YouTube policy. You Peter on the other hand have to bear in mind their guidelines.
This is where I say that I have never come across this behavior in Thailand. Fortunately for me I’ve always been met with honesty and friendship in Thailand. Although your stories I know other farangs have been deceived out of their hard earned cash.
Story Two The Psychology of Love Addiction and Bar Girls
I am a student in Singapore studying for a PhD in psychology. I am far from being an expert but at least my studies have made me read through some of the greatest works in history. Your channel stories have given me plenty of research material which has mainly confirmed my disturbing conclusions. I suspect the ideas expressed will not be very popular with your viewers. I will try and keep things short and simple to help non native English speakers.
The first thing I have learned concerns why men choose the type of women they do. You may think it is all about physical attraction but it goes much deeper than this into patterns formed in childhood. We are attracted more than anything else to familiar women which is the type of women we were around at a young age. This could be your mother a sister a carer or a babysitter even a teacher. What is more it is more about what a woman feels like more than what she looks like.
If we were brought up by a woman who was never there for us and any love or affection was conditional on our behavior the kind of woman we are attracted to will often have the same characteristics. Distant moody selfish detached. What we think of as love is actually anxiety. We never know where we stand. We worry if three days go by without a text message.
Men brought up by women with anger issues drama queens and intense and emotional fluctuations are very likely to be attracted to bar girls many of whom display the same chaotic behavior. This is complicated by the desire of many men to save the women. It may seem noble to act as the white knight but many psychologists see this as a dangerous behavior which leads to getting taken to the cleaners for sick buffaloes and much more.
Men exhibiting this rescuer mentality are obsessed with taking care of her problems and pandering to her every need and vulnerability. These men want to feel needed rather than wanted as it means they do not need to confront their own problems. If they really felt they were wanted it would require responsibility they are scared to take on.
Of course many also fool themselves into thinking they are loved which does nothing but lull them into a sense of false security. The process of falling in love is interesting in its own right. Thanks to MRI scans the brain pattern of a man in love is similar to that of cocaine addicts. In other words highly overstimulated and restless. However this only shows us a result and not the cause.
Freud and others all came to similar conclusions. Take the example of the man who after meeting a girl feels after just a few days that he has known her for years and that she is a soulmate he has been looking for. Kant in particular had his own theory for this very common occurrence. The man is not falling in love with a woman but falling in love with himself. Deep down in the subconscious mind our emotions we have suppressed and are not even aware of ourselves. To feel like a complete person we need to make the subconscious a conscious part of us. But this requires extreme insight and courage that most men are incapable of. So what happens is that we project a fantasy image into the girl we have just met and believe she fulfills all our requirements. Fantasy does not last very long. Reality takes its place.
In a desperate attempt to preserve the fantasy some men are prepared to pander to every desire of the object of their love even if it means falling into debt. It is addiction not love based on the anxiety of losing what he has already invested so much in when the correct decision is to walk away.
I should finish with concrete examples of three famous car crash marriages. Scott Fitzgerald was one of the greatest 20th century authors who wrote about idyllic love. Yet the woman he married Zelda Sayre was a nutter with extreme mood swings and mental health problems. Even his own friends warned him about her but he went ahead anyway. It turned him into an alcoholic and he died young. Marilyn Monroe’s first husband was a literary figure called James Dougherty. He recognized her vulnerability and thought he could rescue her but the marriage only lasted four years. The final example is Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. Amber Heard had a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder one of the biggest red flags there is. We all know what happened to them. I could say a lot more but it would make even more unpleasant reading.
Story Three From Magic Night to Phuket A Different Kind of Connection
“A month ago I met Kun in a beer bar in Nana. She came home with me and it was an almost magical night. I’ve already written about it and you have read it out on your YouTube channel. My first stop on a month long trip through Indochina was Bangkok. The next day it was time to move on and say goodbye. It was a down to earth farewell. No promises no sweet nothings but she had certainly touched my heart. I find her truly special honest and a good person.
Her story was not unusual from Isaan a child at home looking after her family and working in the beer bar with a niece. She showed me photos and everything added up. I paid in advance too and she simply stayed the whole night. I was sorry that I did not know of any way to help her in a meaningful way. We thanked each other via WhatsApp for the lovely time and that was that.
After about 6 days I received a WhatsApp message ‘Good morning my love.’ In many stories I hear on your channel farangs are reeled in through the following steps ‘I love you.’ ‘I’m looking after my sick mother.’ A photo is sent and then comes a request for money. Or contact is maintained via app messages in the hope of meeting up again on the return. She apparently followed this pattern.
I wrote that I was in Laos. She replied immediately saying that she was also in Laos to look after her sick grandmother exactly by the book. I then decided to reply as she would expect and wrote that I think Laos is a wonderful beautiful country which is true by the way. I can recommend everyone visit. Kun herself was half Lao. She was naturally delighted to hear this. The next thing that happened was of course exchanging photos. Sure enough the first photo of her was not long in coming. I sent a photo of myself back and sure enough there was the reply ‘Handsome man.’
It went on like that for about 3 weeks with a message every day. I was a bit disappointed because after our first meeting in Bangkok and that magical night together I genuinely thought she was special. Now it turned out she was just trying to reel me in. On the other hand I could not really blame her either. She does not know any better when it comes to communicating with farangs. Partly because all her colleagues in the beer bar do it that way. She does what she has to do to survive in the tough world of beer bars.
Slowly an idea began to form in my head. After our first meeting I really regretted not knowing how I could help her get ahead in a meaningful way either within or outside the beer bar scene. I started googling and consulting ChatGPT. Daily earnings in the beer bar are around 300 Baht a day. She gets around 60 Baht per lady drink with the rest coming through short time or long time. As I read on ChatGPT I thought I knew something. Kun is 29 years old. She will be able to keep working in the beer bar for another 5 years at most. After that she will be overtaken by younger girls. Who knows? Perhaps she like many others is hoping for a knight in shining armor from Europe or Australia to take her away.
I could also tell how to plan her own future in a systematic way and that this is more fulfilling than living from day to day. Set a goal not too far in the future say 4 years and work towards it step by step. If she is hoping for a relationship with a foreigner I can tell her what to look out for. Many foreigners have to work hard to appear rich for two or three weeks longer in Nana. In real life they are not. In Europe the girls face the same problems that you Peter have described for pensioners in Europe who decide to live in Thailand. Social isolation boredom no friends and so on. The man is at work all day while the woman stays home alone. Without qualifications the best you can hope for is a job as a cleaner or they end up in the well known sauna club circuit.
Nine out of 10 marriages to a foreign partner end in divorce. That does not mean you should not consider it. In 10% of cases it does work out. But you do need to be careful and above all ask the right questions and make clear agreements in advance. How much money will be sent to the family? Will he pay for a driving license and provide a car because fellow countrymen do not just live around the corner? You will probably have to drive them or go to the temple. How often each year you can go back to visit your family. If there is a significant age difference it is also important to discuss openly what you both expect. A woman from Taiwan once told me that Asian women like to have older men because he is more stable.
That may well be true but with too large an age gap there is a good chance the woman will eventually end up looking after you in your old age. That is fine but you do need to know what you are getting into beforehand.
As I was on holiday I would have loved to take her with me which was also true. She wrote back saying she thought it was a shame too. And then I suggested we go to Phuket together for a few days as soon as I was back in Bangkok. I thought that was a good idea so I could have a quiet chat with her. And besides I had never been there before. She thought it was a brilliant idea and sent me her ID so I could book.
I did have one condition. I told her I wanted to take her because I wanted to get to know her better and because I thought she was a good person. Of course I will pay the bar fine and make sure you do not lose out financially by coming along for those 5 days. But it is not work. I’m not a client. I am not paying for your company if you know what I mean. I also said because in the bar you always have to do what the customer wants we will turn it around in Phuket. We will do what you want. It is your holiday.
I do not know if she fully understood all of this but she wrote back saying she was fine with it and that she could take time off. Her ID card confirmed that everything she had told me earlier was true. Age place of birth name and so on all correct. That really put me at ease. She is genuinely honest.
The evening before we left she came to my hotel. We had a bite to eat and a chat. I said ‘We have seen each other without clothes on so we have got nothing to hide. I want to get to know you better. I hope we will be honest with each other when we ask questions. Of course you can say you do not want to answer. The same goes for me.’ I started by telling her something about myself and then asked if she would like to say something too. She told me about her childhood showed me photos and explained how she had ended up in Bangkok. She told me what she earned and that she was roughly in line with what I had read online earlier.
After a bit of aerobics we went to bed as we had to get up early and off we went. It was the second time she had flown so it was not entirely new to her. What was new though was the coral business lounge with complimentary chair massages. Communicating with each other was more complicated than I had thought. During our first meeting in Bangkok our communication had mainly consisted of aerobics. During my travels we had mainly communicated via WhatsApp. Now we really had to talk. That was very different because her English and my Thai are very limited. So we used the translation app a lot. That is very tiring.
Story Four The Faces That Changed A Supernatural Experience in Phuket
I’ve been watching your channel for years and I’m a big fan of the stories. A couple of years ago I submitted a story that received a lot of criticism from viewers. But that’s okay. Sometimes criticism is another form of learning from our past mistakes.
Today I want to share a story about someone I was deeply in love with in Phuket. What I’m about to say may sound unbelievable like something out of a movie. Honestly I didn’t believe it myself at first even while experiencing it. But I saw these things with my own eyes and maybe someone out there has gone through something similar. Before I begin I want to make it clear that I have a deep respect for Buddhism Thai culture and its beliefs. I admire the peace and discipline behind it. To many outsiders discovering it for the first time it can feel beautiful and profound. But what if there is also a darker side that few people talk about?
Years ago someone told me about a sacred Buddhist tattoo on women’s backs tattoos believed to carry spiritual power. According to what I was told some people believe these blessings can bring fortune protection money and success but only if the person follows strict rules offerings diets and spiritual practices. If those rules are broken the consequences can supposedly become severe. Many Thai people understand the meanings behind these tattoos far more deeply than foreigners do.
A few years ago I met a bar girl in Phuket and I completely fell for her. She was young beautiful funny affectionate and incredibly charming. The more time I spent with her the more attached I became. We eventually entered into a relationship. She had no visible tattoos at first everything seemed normal. But over time I started noticing strange things about her. Sometimes her personality would suddenly feel different. I brushed it off as mood swings emotions or just normal relationship behavior.
But then I began noticing changes in her face. At first one day she would look one way the next slightly different. At first I blamed makeup lighting or my imagination. Anyone who has spent time in Thailand knows how transformative makeup can be. But then things became harder to explain.
One night we were being intimate in the room. The room was very dark with a slight shine from outside. After my eyes adjusted to the darkness I could see her in black and white. She was on top of me and suddenly I felt like I was with a different person. She moved differently sounded different and even felt different. She looked like a completely different woman. I remember freezing for a second because something felt deeply wrong. I assumed it was the darkness and the drinks we had earlier that night. I thought maybe my mind was playing tricks on me. After a while I changed positions and saw her face more clearly again. Suddenly everything felt normal. She looked like the woman I knew and loved. I never mentioned it to her but the experience stayed in the back of my mind.
A few days later we were walking through the mall near Patong Beach holding hands and shopping. I turned to say something to her and for a brief moment her face looked completely different again. Not like the woman from the other night in our room but like an entirely different person. I even mentioned it to her. She laughed brushed it off and quickly changed the subject. Moments later she looked normal again. I ignored it.
Months later during one of our arguments it happened again but this time it terrified me. Her face changed into something ugly and aggressive. Not feminine at all but almost like an angry overweight man staring at me with rage. Before anyone jumps to conclusion she is 100% a woman and not a ladyboy. But this face was masculine and full of rage. I left the room to calm down but I could not shake what I had just seen. When I returned we apologized ate together and everything went back to normal.
Then came the moment that changed everything. One night I was holding her in my lap while sitting on the bed. I used to call her my baby chick. As I held her against my chest her face suddenly changed again but this time into someone incredibly innocent and sweet looking. It was another woman’s face entirely soft and gentle. I pulled her slightly away from me and asked what was happening. She immediately noticed my reaction and asked what was wrong. I finally told her everything. I said she might think I was crazy but I kept seeing different faces when I looked at her.
Instead of denying it she became serious. She held my hand and said ‘Look I’ll tell you something but you cannot freak out or think any less of me.’ Then she told me what I was seeing was real. According to her multiple spirits or Buddhist entities lived inside her just as they had her grandmother. She said her grandmother believed she had been chosen since birth and that these spiritual entities protected her guided her and provided for her. She claimed she sometimes had no control over what happened and would later realize she had done things she could not fully remember. Almost as if she had been possessed. She insisted these spirits were not evil but powerful protectors.
I did not know what to believe but there was one face I saw three separate times that truly terrified me. It had a huge unnatural smile wild eyes an expression filled with cruelty and mockery. Every time I saw that face I felt pure fear in my chest like it wanted to hurt me in ways I cannot explain. I am not proud of how I reacted during those moments. I panicked. My instinct was simply to get away from her and break whatever thought I was seeing. I kept telling myself ‘I want to talk to you not whoever that is.’ After a few moments her face would slowly return to normal and she would become the person I knew again.
To this day I still do not know whether what I experienced was psychological spiritual or simply my mind trying to process something I could not understand. I never told my family or friends because I knew they would laugh at me or think I was insane. I researched online for months Buddhism possession stories spiritual beliefs psychology and even AI discussions trying to find someone who had experienced something similar. But I found almost nothing.
Story Five The Clinic Scam A Lesson in Buyer Beware
I’d like to tell you about another part of my scammer girlfriend. As my relationship with May was slowly drawing to an end it’s strange how the mind works. Sometimes even though you know you’re being taken for a ride you still carry on to try to be some sort of rescue hero. Maybe I’ve just got a soft heart and I’ve had to learn the hard way.
My girlfriend and I must have been together for around 3 months I guess. And between jobs in Australia I had a good four weeks to kill time in Pattaya. I could drink every day. I used to see older expats drinking every day and drinking hard but I knew eventually I had to go back to work. And it is thankfully easy enough for me to stop. So no problem. A lot of the time I like to stay away from the alcohol as I could feel myself getting depressed and anxiety setting in quite often.
I would usually ask my girlfriend May what she wanted to do today as it was getting a bit annoying spending every minute of every day together and having thoughts in the back of my mind about her true genuine feelings. I chose to ignore these and just went with the flow realizing it wasn’t going to last forever. One morning she asked me if I wanted to go to the clinic to check everything in the downstairs department. She said we could both go and her friend told her about a good clinic near Walking Street. None of us had any symptoms or anything but on this occasion it was something to do but boy did it cost me a fortune.
The day came and we both headed slowly to the clinic. I let my girlfriend do the talking as she had organized this whole scam through her friend who was probably getting a cut of my cash too. After talking to the reception in Singaraja my girlfriend asked me what I wanted to check. I said ‘Just check everything blood urine etc.’ As I presumed it was only costing 300 Baht because I’d seen other clinics advertising this checkup at this rate. The doctor took me through to a small room and asked me if I had any symptoms to which I replied ‘No I just want a full checkup. Thanks.’ He then proceeded to do a blood check urine test and swab and then asked me to sit in the waiting room for the results.
Very conveniently the waiting room was just out of sight of where the doctor was looking under a microscope. I sat with my girlfriend who was also waiting in the seating area as she was finished first. After around 10 minutes the doctor said all checks were done and handed a piece of paper to the receptionist with our results and the bill. What it actually said on that piece of paper was probably very different from the final price and results. Though looking back it probably said what they were going to spend my cash on after they had scammed me.
The receptionist said ‘Results for blood okay and swab okay but you have a little blood in your urine.’ I was quite shocked but was wondering if it was serious or not. The receptionist called for the doctor to come and he conveniently brought a swab screen and about a dozen tiny spots of blood spread out over the glass microscope test thing. I thought ‘Well that’s not very good is it?’ and spoke to my girlfriend about it. She said ‘You will need medicine.’ To which I replied rolling my eyes ‘Yeah probably.’
The receptionist proceeded to type up the bill. And I couldn’t believe it when she finished bashing as many numbers into a calculator as possible and then turned it around to me to see it came to 8800 Baht. Please remember how much of a learning curve this was for me. Looking back I’m also disgusted with myself and I learned the hard lesson on that day. I paid the lady over the counter took my medicine which was a rainbow of colors and around 20 to 30 tablets. Once she handed them over she told me that I had to come back next week to take another test and see if things had improved. She didn’t write on the bag what the medicine was I had. And there was no price on the bag either.
I paid up and being very annoyed at this point I left the clinic and began to think I’ll just take these pills and see what happens. They probably were just a bunch of vitamins and harmless to me. But here was me thinking I genuinely had blood in my urine and needed help.
A week passed and we headed back to the clinic. My girlfriend was probably secretly rubbing her hands together in anticipation of yet another huge payday. On entering the clinic I was met with several big smiles. They must have been thinking ‘Here comes the sucker again.’ I tried to remind them that I was in for a retest for urine after taking all those pills for the last week. But soon enough my girlfriend stepped in to remind them what I was here for. I walked through and I did a urine sample and the doctor asked me to sit again while he examined my sample hidden around the corner. I remember saying to my girlfriend ‘I hope this doesn’t cost a fortune again.’ 5 minutes later the doctor asked me to come into the back room and look through the lens of the microscope.
Lo and behold there was little specks of blood and it was exactly 50% less spots on the glass than the last time.
Looking back this was obviously a setup and everyone was in on it except me. I find it unbelievable the lengths that my girlfriend and the clinic staff went to simply to scam me out of money. And I’m sure they went home to their families with a clear conscience. I can just imagine the kinds of comments that will be left by viewers after listening to this story. And I don’t blame them because yet again I paid the clinic another 8000 Baht and unbelievably was told that I would need to come back for yet another test. They must have thought the cash cow was ready to be milked dry on a weekly basis. I genuinely thought at the time that I must have some issues with my blood as a respectable business would never scam someone.
Right. Fast forward and I returned to the clinic a week later. Same procedure and everything happened the same as it did on the first and the second visits. The doctor once again asked me to come and have a look through the microscope. This time I see just two small specks of blood on the glass. The penny finally dropped and I thought to myself ‘This can’t be right. I have no symptoms and I feel fine.’ Anyway being very naive back then I gave them the benefit of the doubt and I paid another 6000 Baht as I appeared to be improving and once again thought to myself a clinic would not try to scam anyone. They are professionals. Well I got that right anyway. But as it happens they were professionals but professional scammers.
I left the clinic and was cursing under my breath. I said to my girlfriend ‘This has all been a load of nonsense and I’ve been set up by you.’ I then said to my so called girlfriend ‘I want to go to another clinic and see what they say. Get the same test and just see what the results are.’ We went to Soi Buakhao and I went to a clinic to get the test again. I told them the whole story and showed them the medicine. To which the doctor replied ‘There isn’t a name on the medication and I can’t tell you what they are.’ He then told me to return in 20 minutes. No prizes for guessing correctly. No signs of any blood and I was A1.
