Journey From Chiang Mai To The Philippines

My story will be a little different from others you have received. It’s both about relationships and the wider picture. My views may be different because of my stepping off point being also from a multicultural background. I’m an expat Brit with dual nationality, Israeli, having lived here in Israel for 50 years since the age of 24.

I’m a long time widower, kids grown up, retired. I’ve had various jobs and careers, ranging from being a farmer and a business English teacher to a marketing writer and quality assurance manager in high tech. Still fit, as I am a gym junkie, pumping iron, trying hard to eat the right food, not smoking, and not drinking.

I had never ever considered visiting Thailand until nine years ago, as I was always busy with work and single handedly raising young kids. A good friend of mine, whom we will call Jane, and who is my soul sister, tried many times unsuccessfully to convince me to join her on her many trips to Thailand, as she was working in human resources bringing over male Thai workers (mainly from Isan) to work in agriculture here in Israel. But I was always very busy and refused many times.

Until nine years ago, she made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. She had accrued air miles and offered me a free ticket to join her on her next trip.

At the age of 64, fit, healthy, and virile, I flew with Jane to Bangkok. We landed at Bangkok International Airport, where she introduced me to pad Thai at the food court in the airport. We then boarded another aircraft to fly north for one hour to Chiang Mai.

That beautiful garden city was our main destination, as we had a joint expat Brit friend who owned a 16th floor condo on the banks of the River Ping, overlooking the US Consulate and with a view over the whole city. We flew to Chiang Mai and were met at the airport by another of Jane’s friends, a local Thai businessman in his forties named Charorit (we call him Rit). He took us across town to the Rim Ping condo, which had been vacated free of charge for our stay.

First Experiences With Noy

Having stayed in Chiang Mai many times, Jane knew the city and the rest of the country like the back of her hand. We are the same age and are both young at heart, adventurous, and fit.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way. Until I arrived in Thailand, it had been a long season without rain, in fact, many years. Need I say more?

My first massage was a two hour traditional Thai massage. The beautiful 42 year old masseuse spoke about three words of English. Nonetheless, I invited her out for a meal. Her name was Noy. I asked her to choose from the menu, I mimicked fish for seafood and gestured the movement of crab or lobster. When it arrived, I saw the red monster with massive outstretched claws seemingly moving towards me. Noy enjoyed her meal. She then invited me to another session of massage at another massage parlor where she worked, it was half the price I had paid in the first one.

In total, I had three traditional Thai massages with her, with no soapy fun, just traditional massages. I then progressed to full body oily massages at other establishments with other female masseuses, you know what I mean.

My soul sister Jane and I spent 10 days in Chiang Mai, covering temples, markets, elephant safari, massage, shopping, good food, and a lot more. I loved every moment with the people I met. Across the board, prices then (and still now) for food, lodging, and entertainment are about half of what I would pay in Israel.

Jane then told me, “You must see Pattaya.” We spent four days there, agreeing on a good hotel, the Pullman in North Pattaya, where they have a reasonable gym. On my last night in Pattaya, I met a wonderful lady called Yip, which led on to two more flights to visit her.

Meeting Expats In Khon Kaen

On my second trip back to the Chiang Mai condo a few months later with Jane, I invited Yip to join us. She came by bus to Bangkok from her home village near Khon Kaen in Isan, in total she had traveled about 16 hours by bus. I introduced her to Jane, and the three of us got along very well indeed.

I spent two weeks with Yip in Isan. I was booked into the Pullman Hotel in Khon Kaen, because of the gym again. That’s where I met two expat Brits.

The first was a guy in his mid 50s whom I got talking to in a bookstore while with Yip. He was a retired Londoner. His name was Bill. Bill told me he had stayed initially as a tourist in Bangkok. He had been on a baht bus, sitting shoulder to shoulder with an attractive Thai lady. They struck up a conversation. One thing led to another, and he invited her back to his hotel room. They fooled around. She asked him if she could have drinks from the minibar. He agreed. They raised their glasses and toasted each other. Two hours later, he woke up on the floor alone. She had slipped something into his drink. His wallet, cash, and credit cards had all gone, but amazingly, his genuine Rolex wristwatch was still on his wrist. That lady had mistakenly assumed that it was one of the millions of fakes sold every day to tourists in the street markets all over Thailand.

The second expat Brit I met, called Arthur, came every day to the Pullman Hotel to use the gym, where I met him. He was living permanently in Khon Kaen with his Thai girlfriend. He told me that he too had retired to Thailand to live out the good life, removed from the rat race in the UK. He had been successful in his career and had taken early retirement in his 50s. He owned his own home in Khon Kaen, played golf twice a week on the local course, and his younger Thai wife faithfully looked after him.

She had initially met him in a bar, she was a bar girl in Pattaya. So it shows you that once in a blue moon, you can take the girl out of the bar, and maybe you can remove the bar from the girl. Fat chance.

A Tragic Story From Manchester

One of Arthur’s stories to me goes like this. A retired guy in his 70s from Manchester had found his perfect girl in Khon Kaen. Within a short space of time, he had fallen head over heels in love with a mid 30ish year old beauty. Arthur was completely under her spell, and she knew it. He married her, built her a new family home for herself, his wife, and her kids, and opened joint bank accounts. Due to the age gap of about 30 to 40 years, she played on his emotions and had convinced him to either change his will or start a life insurance policy with her as the sole or main beneficiary. You can now guess where this is going.

Thailand can be both heaven and hell. It depends on who you are, what you are looking for, and the people you meet. But it is a developing country that is highly money motivated, where the majority of people work hard for very little money. There is also much poverty and corruption. The police can take extreme measures, it’s really not a good idea to upset the police in Thailand unless you are very, very rich.

Back to Arthur and his wife. A few weeks after all his money and assets were documented as being left to his wife, he was found dead in the street, and no witnesses could be located as to what happened.

Giving Back To A Hill Tribe Village

The last of many experiences I want to tell you is completely different. It concerns Rit, my local Chiang Mai businessman friend. This was a unique experience that only locals can treat a foreign visitor to, it displays the amazing character of the Thai people.

Rit is in his mid 40s and maintains strong contact with his ex classmates from high school. As a class of about 30, they had adopted a small hill tribe of a very poor village in the extreme north of the country. This tribe lives high up on the sides of Thailand’s highest mountain, which is in Chiang Mai province but a long way from the city. Their village is located about 1,300 meters above sea level.

Twice a year, Rit’s class get together, raise money, and donate their own money to make a fun day for the whole village. On one of my trips, Rit invited me to join them. We set out one early morning from Chiang Mai city in a convoy of six cars and drove for almost two hours to the base of the mountain. We parked the cars and exchanged them for rented jeeps and SUVs. We drove up steep winding tracks that only four wheel drive vehicles could cope with, near cloud level.

We arrived at the site. There were a handful of primitive buildings consisting of corrugated iron roofs and one central open construction supported by wooden pillars, this was the equivalent of their community village hall. All the tribe was there to greet us, turned out smartly in traditional Thai dress.

We stopped the jeeps and unloaded many large plastic bags of second hand clothes, crates of soft drinks, coolers with ice cream, chocolate, all different types of food and canned goods, and a loudspeaker, a laptop with a microphone.

We then set up our facility under the corrugated roof of the open village hall. While Thai music was playing, all the Thai ladies, some of them holding babies in their arms, stood and formed lines in front of the three folding tables that we had set up. One by one, these young and old women, teenage mothers among them, quietly came to the tables where I and two of Rit’s female classmates held up second hand clothes for them to choose as they wanted for themselves and their families. We stretched out jackets, skirts, and tops so that the villagers could measure themselves against each article of clothing.

Helping A Poor Village

It was such a wonderful feeling to be able to help these poor people. A good friend of mine had always said that it is better to give than to receive. I felt so privileged to be part of Rit’s group. I literally had tears in my eyes.

Music And A Philippines Future

Following the clothes distribution, all the food and goodies were given out. Then I and one of Rit’s female classmates stood in front of the little children on the slightly raised balcony to the tune of Western pop music.

Last but not least, I can add that Rit’s mum was born and raised in the Philippines. She was a widow about 10 years older than me and a self made, highly successful businesswoman. Following my Thai adventure, via a dating site, I planned my first visit to the Philippines. I made contact with a nice lady, so I went to the Philippines, and I am still alive today, age 75. I have made seven trips over the last eight years to the Philippines, but that’s a whole different story.

First Night In Chiang Mai

This is a story about my first night in Thailand. It was Christmas Eve 2019 in Chiang Mai. I checked into an Airbnb that I had booked online on my first trip to Thailand. At around 900 p.m., I left my Airbnb and headed down to the old town in Chiang Mai. I was heading towards a bar complex that I had found on Google Maps. Walking through the streets of the old town was great, the buildings reminded me of Japan.

I arrived at a beer bar complex at about 1100 p.m. I went into a bar called Zoe in Yellow. It was packed on this night, and all the girls were wearing Santa costumes, along with quite a few young Western customers. A few beers later, I was in the crowd for a girl to introduce myself to. An absolutely stunning girl in a gold dress joined the crowd. She was beautiful, very innocent looking. The dress was conservative, showed no cleavage and not too short. This was exactly what I was looking for.

However, she was surrounded by six of her girlfriends who were dancing together in a group. They were all enjoying themselves, but they seemed not interested by any of the readers around them in the bar.

Now, I should tell you that I have never introduced myself to a Thai girl before. I have always met girls through Tinder and other online apps. Furthermore, I dance like a five legged donkey, and I’m a little shy. I don’t really like the company of large groups. The idea of approaching a group of six or seven girls who are minding their own business and trying to strike up a conversation with one of them was just too daunting for me. I just could not get up the nerve to say hello.

A Wrong Choice After Closing

A little after Zoe in Yellow closed, I left a little bit disappointed. I eventually found myself entering a nightclub called Spicy. Inside, it was completely packed, and I could barely move. Anyway, I saw a girl standing nearby. She wasn’t a stunner, but she was pretty, nowhere near as beautiful as the girl in the gold dress, but she was nice. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. I went over to the girl and just said, “Hi.” She said hi back to me, and we began chatting.

I quickly became aware that she was very happy with lots of physical contact. Clearly, this was a girl who was used to being picked up by Western readers, she certainly wasn’t shy, that’s for sure. As time passed, she insisted that I buy her and her friends a round of drinks, which I happily did. I was on holiday and had plenty of holiday spending money.

A little later, the three of us left the club, which had been very dark inside, and to my dismay, as we got outside under the streetlights, I see that my pretty girl has more facial hair than me. It goes without saying that I was very disappointed. But as I was very drunk by now and quite tired, I wasn’t in the mood to find another girl, so I decided to stick with this one.

The friend then drove the three of us on her scooter to get some food and some more drinks, which, of course, I paid for. After we were finished eating, the friend then drove me back to my Airbnb, where I was in for more disappointment. This girl decided that she didn’t want to stay with me, and they just drove off into the night.

Which leads me into my next mistake, which was not accepting that the night had been lost and I should have just called it a day and gone to bed. One more thing I should add at this point in the story is that I very rarely drink, and at this point I was the most drunk that I’d been for years, so you can guess that mistakes are going to be coming thick and fast.

The Karaoke Scam

I decided to get a taxi and told the driver to take me to a place where I could get a girl. The driver promptly took me to a karaoke venue on the outskirts of town. No doubt he received a fat commission for delivering a drunk foreigner to the venue.

I stumbled inside and was led to a room where I could choose a girl to join me. They asked me if I wanted something to drink and a snack. I said yes. They promptly brought in several drinks and plates of food without even asking me what I wanted or giving me a menu. I wasn’t really enjoying the karaoke, I just wanted to take the girl back to my place. So after about 30 minutes, I asked for the bill, which was brought to me by a man who placed the bill on the table and then stood guarding the door so that I could not leave.

At this point, even my drunk brain knew something was wrong. Sure enough, I looked at the bill. It was for 20,000 baht (about 500 pounds at the time). I knew that I had been scammed, 500 baht for a few drinks and some snacks.

Now here comes my biggest mistake. I picked up the bill, ripped it up, and threw it on the floor. Walked over to the Thai man guarding the door, threw him across the room, and opened the door, whereupon I was charged by about eight Thai men who easily pushed me to the floor, kicking and punching me while I was down. Even the girl that I had been sitting with joined in, stomping on me. It’s interesting to note that wherever you are in the world, when men fight, there is an unwritten rule not to hit each other in the privates. Women, however, seem to have no such inhibition, and it became clear that this girl was making it her intention to prevent me from having any biological children in the future.

Paying For The Mistake

Luckily for me, Thais are very small and light, and I’m used to playing rugby with men twice their size and getting battered and bruised. Their punching and kicking didn’t do much damage, and I was able to dodge the girl’s stomping and keep my bits intact.

Surprisingly, at this point I made a good decision. I apologized and paid the bill. The Thais went back to being calm very quickly after this, like nothing had happened. I guess they are used to getting payment by force.

Anyway, I made my way back outside and took a tuk tuk back to my Airbnb, where I made my final mistake of the night. I wasn’t carrying any small banknotes. I only had a 1,000 baht banknote left, and, surprise, surprise, the tuk tuk driver didn’t have any change. I guess I should have gotten the driver to take me to a 7 Eleven where I could buy something and get change, but I just wanted the night to come to an end. So I gave him the 1,000 baht note and went to bed.

This was a very disappointing, painful, and expensive first night in Thailand. But at least I learned a lot from it, and I hope your viewers will too.

Virtual Pattaya And Ploy

I am a 38 year old from Australia, and I work nights on a tech support help desk from home, so my lifestyle is very relaxed. I was set to have my first international solo trip to Thailand in June 2020. Like most, I had to cancel this trip in October/November 2020 due to what’s going on around the world currently. I began living a virtual Thai life on YouTube, watching vloggers go around Thailand to all the places I wanted to go, and promised myself that I would get to over the next few years.

During my time on YouTube, I found live streams from Pattaya, in particular, streams from Soi 6. I proceeded to buy the girls drinks and started a regular interaction with one particular girl. After about three days of regular drink buying and flirtation teasing on the stream chat, she found me on Facebook and added me. When she finished working at the bar at 200 a.m., she would text me. This went on for two or three days before we had our first phone call.

We then started a regular relationship, calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend. Her nickname is Ploy. She told me that she started working in the bar in March 2019.

I knew what she did, and I knew that if customers came into the bar, she would possibly go with them. Luckily, though, this was November/December with what’s going on right now, the bar was always very empty, and even to the point of them having the doors closed and only conducting live streams.

Ploy told me that her first boyfriend was a Thai guy who she was with for two years. He had cheated on her the whole time. She said she hated cheating and would be honest to me always, and this included telling me anytime she went with a customer (not in detail, just mentioning it). As we got closer and closer, she said she would not go with customers anymore and would only make money from drinks. She said she didn’t feel right being with other men and having such strong feelings for me.

She even put up a Facebook post about this. It said something like (and bear in mind she wrote it in English) “I promised myself that if I ever find a good Western man, I should be totally faithful and never go with anybody else.” She posted that and sent it to him. So I won’t give an opinion here, you can form your own opinions.

The Relationship Escalates

Also, I could see most of the time if she was in the bar on the stream and how long she went with each customer for drinks, because I work from home and I don’t have much of a social life. I was able to have very long calls with her, 8 to 15 hours. We spoke every night, keeping the video calls going while we both had a shower. We even set the phones up beside our beds so we could sleep together.

We did have a few fights when I asked her about leaving the bar, also when I asked her about being with customers and if there was any chance she would stop if the right man was in her life. Like many bar girls in your stories, the only reason she works in the bar is she is looking after the family. After a lot of chatting and expressing how we feel for each other, she agreed to leave the bar and go back to her family, and she would go back to school. I agreed to support her with 4,000 baht a week. When she got back home, she told me the school was closed at the moment.

She also found out that her mother was five to six months pregnant from her Thai boyfriend, which her mother had not told her about prior to getting home. While she was home for a few weeks, it was amazing, we could chat a lot, and she never got drunk. But because there was nothing for her to do in the village, she got bored and didn’t look at her own happy self. She would also spend a lot of her days playing poker with some older men and her mother, about a 10 minute bike ride away from the farm. Luckily enough, she was good and would not lose that often, only about 30 or 40 baht a day.

She was very jealous of me in regards to friends I had on Facebook and that I was still in touch with my ex (whom I broke up with five years earlier, who lives in South Africa, 12,000 kilometers away). Ploy got so jealous at one stage that she refused to take my call and blocked me on Facebook for a day. I was so upset. Then she unblocked me, but she was very distant.

Without her telling me, I could tell that she had a lot of pressure from her mother, most probably telling her to go back to the bar and bring in more money for the family than what I could provide. I told her I would increase the amount of money I sent her to 5,000 baht per week, making it 20,000 baht a month. Yeah. But that would be the max I could manage. But if I support her with 5,000 baht, I won’t be able to come over to visit as soon as I’d like because I won’t be saving as much money.

The Breakup And Thailand Plan

Long story short, we broke up in February this year. She went back to the bar a week later. We still have a little bit of contact, but I said I cannot be your boyfriend if you are still working in the bar. It’s very difficult to have a long distance relationship. My emotions could not handle her going off with customers, even just readers touching her in the bar that I could see made me crazy angry.

She said if we are together, she would never go with customers, and I am the first man she would give the bar up for. She still puts posts on her Facebook page that say she misses me and she is very upset. Although there are so many horror stories of Western readers and bar girls that go on, I feel with the amount of contact that we have had, I believe what she tells me. I guess time will tell in the future.

I told her I am looking to take my tech support job and move to Thailand in the next 8 to 12 months if my employer allows me to do so, as all I need to do is log on to a laptop through VPN. I said that when I do, we will definitely meet up. I guess if I live in Thailand, who knows what is possible, right?