Thailand, Pattaya and Visa Trouble: Divorce, Scams and Hard Lessons

I wanted to share my story on how and why I recently went to Thailand. I got married right out of high school and was married for 12 years before getting divorced in 1996. After getting divorced I kind of went crazy with the United States version of freelance girls (in brackets street girls) meeting up with at least a few a week. The USA freelance girls never really tell the truth but just enough to get you to come and see them again. My funniest story was when I picked up a girl one day while it was raining. She got into my car and I commented on how wet her hair was and she replied “Oh I just got out of the shower.” She wasn’t really happy when I asked her if she got in the shower with her clothes on because they were soaked too.

Jump into 2004 and I’m now 38 years old. I got married to a girl 19 years younger than me. It started off great but then the spark went after only a couple of years. But we stayed married for 15 years and got divorced in 2019 just before the pandemic hit. I have been married for a total of 27 years to two different wives divorced twice and never had any children. Still at this point I’ve never even considered a trip to Thailand.

Now in the USA there have been measures to keep girls off the streets and the girls you can find on certain websites charge crazy high prices and the girls’ looks have now gone. I had gone to Mexico and met up with a girl (in brackets freelancer by their standards) but was not really that great. The next trip was to the Dominican Republic which I heard was a place to go for those who live in the USA. The Republic has a large freelance population. I met a couple of girls there but things were all the same with each one they ran out of steam very quickly then just begged for more money and more of a tip.

I met one girl at a club that seemed to be working for someone. The girl gave me her number secretly and told me to call her and we could meet outside the club. We exchanged one quick message but I never reached out to her to meet her again. Fast forward to six months later and I get a text from the club owner who said I owed him $600 because I met his girl outside the club and if I didn’t pay he would hunt me down and harm me and my family. I replied to him that I never met his girl and if he contacted me again I would report him to the authorities. I never did hear from him again.

Bangkok First Night Lessons

Now it’s summer of 2022 and most of the COVID restrictions have been removed. I was looking for a place to holiday and meet some girls. A friend of mine suggested that Thailand was where I really needed to go. He had never been there but he assured me it was what I was looking for and that it was safe. Thailand is 20 hours of flying and I wasn’t sure I could even handle being on a flight that long but I figured “Why not? I can give it a try.” So I booked my trip for March 2023 and I started doing as much research as I could.

I started doing a lot of research and all I could think of was “Have I gotten in over my head?” I’ve had a lot of experience with girls but the Thailand girls seemed to be very good at making men fall in love with them. I bought a subscription to Thai Friendly and I started talking to a few girls. A lot of girls on Thai Friendly only want to talk if you are currently there. I mostly only talked to freelance girls and got a few details from them and told them I wouldn’t waste their time and I would reach out to them when I arrived.

I went with a friend and we met an Aussie guy at a restaurant when we first got there. We made plans to go out that night and hit a few bars. Now keep in mind 20 hours of flying and a 10 hour layover and I worked a 10 hour shift right before heading to the airport. Needless to say all that caught up with me and I felt like crap for two days. I saved the first week in Bangkok and the second week in Patong.

While out at the bar the first night I saw a girl I was interested in and I was sure she was a girl and not a ladyboy but the Aussie guy seemed to think she wasn’t a lady at all only because she was a little tall. I went home alone that night mostly because I had to start recovering from the traveling. The sights sounds and smells of Thailand are amazing something you just don’t see anywhere else. The next few nights I had female company from a few other different girls and I can see why so many men go to Thailand. The girls are amazing they are very loving and very much want to make you happy. They’re a bit shy in some cases which comes across as sexy at the same time.

Patong Freelancers and Phi Phi

The girls I met up with showed me around the temples the night market and Terminal 21. None of them asked or hinted for me to buy them anything which I fully expected from watching lots of videos. The only exception was for me to buy them meals and none of them ever took advantage by ordering everything on the menu. So all in all Bangkok was amazing.

Now after my week in Patong in Phuket our hotel was a half block from Bangla Road in Patong. Our hotel has a swimming pool so we decided to relax by the pool and make our plans for the evening. I was a bit surprised at first that there were only men at the pool but after thinking about it we all went there for the same reason and our hotel was only booked by men on holiday looking for companions. I’m not much of a drinker so sitting in a bar is not really for me. While walking down Bangla Road at night there are a million things to look at and I was getting a bit annoyed at all the people pulling on you putting signs in your face and putting cell phones right up in your eyes to get you to go into their bars.

I had met a few girls in Patong who were freelancers and everything was great. One of the girls went to Phi Phi Island with me on a day trip and we had a great time. On the last night my friend and I went to see the Fantasea show and had dinner there. The place seemed mostly for kids but the food and the show were very good with elephants and lots of other animals.

After the show I had made arrangements to meet a girl at my hotel for a little fun on my last night. Only getting to see her pictures on Thai Friendly she seemed very beautiful but she seemed very tall. I asked if she was a ladyboy and she assured me she was not. So our plans were set. She arrived on Thai Time so she was a bit late. I almost didn’t expect her to turn up because it was almost 100 a.m. when she showed up. She looked to be about 188 centimeters tall and to my surprise she had brought a girlfriend with her who was about 180 centimeters tall. Both were 100% ladies and very beautiful. I had a great last night in Patong.

Tip and the Return Plan

Now back in the USA it’s the same old thing older than middle aged overweight women who are bitter and have unrealistic expectations of the men they are looking for. It is sad to say but since my trip to Thailand I have no desire to date women here in the USA. I have been home for two months now and I’ve already booked my flight in November 2023 the Saturday after Thanksgiving and this time it will be one week in Pattaya and one week in Patong hoping to see my tall girls again. I have every intention of retiring in Thailand when the time comes. I love it there and can see myself having a great time.

One girl I’d met in Bangkok I really did click with mainly because she was just a sweet person. Her name is Tip. She is a supervisor in a hotel and has been working there for a number of years. She’s 40 years old but looks much younger. I would guess that she only meets once in a while for a little extra money since she has a full time job. We have messaged a few times since I have been home and she never mentioned money or sick buffalo or medical bills. I have some plans next April here in the USA so I asked if she could join me and she could visit the USA for three weeks. It’s not a falling in love thing but mostly we get on very well and I’d like to spend a little more time with her.

She is going to look into a travel visa but I hear they are hard to get for Thai women not very expensive but just hard to get.

No crash and burn story but I just thought it was interesting how I found my way to Thailand and how I can’t wait to return. The Land of Smiles is really just that.

Young Scot Lands in Pattaya

I’m a younger guy in his early 30s from Scotland UK. Over the past five or six years I started to get interested in traveling to Asia after watching 90 Day Fiancé one night believe it or not. I was intrigued about how traditional Asian women were portrayed. During the COVID lockdown I was still working but I found travel videos and from there branched off into many other Thailand YouTubers and started watching everything I could. At the time I was in a long term relationship and I knew I would never really get the chance to travel solo. But after watching so many Thailand videos I guess I got the bug.

My relationship sadly broke down at the start of last year 2022 so newly single and feeling sorry for myself what did I do? I booked a trip to Thailand. A whole month in Pattaya. It was my first time traveling so far away and first time solo so I was pretty apprehensive. I got my accommodation booked followed you and other YouTubers’ advice on where to stay things to be careful of and where to change money etc. and off I went. Two 7 hour flights ahead of me and feeling both excited and worried if I’d made a mistake that I’d regret.

When I arrived I had to wait around two hours to get through the lengthy immigration queue and man that heat was crazy. Being from Scotland I really wasn’t used to it. Immigration took all of 10 seconds once at the front of the queue and I headed straight for the lower floor to change some pounds to baht. I had already pre loaded an eSIM in my phone and was ready for Thailand. I had booked a pretty cheap lady taxi from the airport to Pattaya where the lady met me at arrivals. After a quick 7 Eleven visit for a well needed drink off I went to Pattaya.

Once I arrived and checked in I decided to go for a walk around the area I was staying near Soi Buakhao. Straight away I was blown away by the sheer number of bars massage shops and girls. They’re everywhere but I wasn’t complaining. I had heard that no lady is free in Pattaya and was determined to prove that wrong. I’m a pretty fit guy who frequents a gym and I was feeling pretty good from the compliments the girls gave me such a contrast to the UK. After the walkabout I went back to my hotel for a quick shower and headed back out this time towards Soi 7.

Thai Friendly and Soi Buakhao

I had been chatting to a girl from Thai Friendly who worked in a bar there and thought it was as good a place as any to start. Turns out she wasn’t 100% a lady and was in fact a ladyboy but wow was it difficult to tell at least for me anyway. She was gorgeous all the same and I’m not afraid to say it but I tried.

The next day I woke up pretty late after a heavy night on the booze and headed for Soi Buakhao again. I wanted to shop around as it were and just wander about and see what was going on. I didn’t get very far when a pretty stunning girl let’s call her Bee sat outside a bar and asked me where I was going and if she could come. I ended up in her bar buying her drinks and playing pool the usual stuff I suppose. I fell into the bar girl trap somewhat because I ended up spending around a week with her bar fining her every morning to keep her around. She’d only been in her bar for a month or so she said but given her relative inexperience and the fact that she was only 21 I had no real reason to doubt that.

In any case I wasn’t really too fussed because I wasn’t looking for anything serious. I ended up meeting quite a few friends from her bar who I’m still in touch with.

Soi Six Butterfly Mistake

Fast forward a week or so and a friend had told me to try Soi 6. So I did. I lost count of the number of times I was grabbed there but what an experience. I met several girls who all wanted my Line ID wanted to meet me after they finished and go to Walking Street. I ended up bar fining a couple which I managed to haggle down to 1000 baht. Two of the girls apparently fell in love with me and were relentlessly messaging and would storm out of their bars over to me anytime I went down Soi 6. One of them will call her Om actually turned up at my hotel after she finished one night. Never once did either ask for any money from me. I wasn’t fully aware of telling girls “you’re a butterfly.

After a week of Soi 6 madness I decided to let the heat die down a bit and go for another wander. This time around Second Road I think it was I stumbled down a small soi and found a bar with again hotties accosting me. I gave in and went for a drink. It was close to closing time and one of the girls Jay wanted to come with me. I agreed. All the while Bee had been messaging and calling me non stop. After a bit of fun I decided to go meet Bee and figure I should give her the “I’m a butterfly” chat. Well Jay just so happened to live on Soi Buakhao so wanted to walk with me. Being a drunken idiot I agreed and we walked towards Soi Buakhao. Jay kept asking where her soi was. She told me it wasn’t far and was the next right turn.

I was conscious that we were getting closer to Bee’s bar but from what I had heard and understood Jay would be going down a soi before Bee’s bar. All good. Well she didn’t.

Bee was outside of her bar with her friends and a friend of mine. They all saw me. Her friend immediately ran towards me shouting and screaming all sorts of stuff in Thai. I honestly thought I was about to get a smack in the face. Poor Jay looked pretty horrified at what was happening and was also the brunt of whatever was said in Thai. I assume it wasn’t very pleasant. I felt pretty bad. I’m an idiot I know being drunk did not help matters. Thankfully my friend was able to hold them both back whilst I made good my escape.

Pattaya Lesson Learned

I had apparently failed to realize that Thai girls assume you are theirs unless otherwise stated and it’s a mistake I certainly won’t make again. I suppose I didn’t help myself by spending so much time with her. From now on unless I’m looking for someone serious I make sure to be clear that I’m a butterfly. I don’t want to get on the bad side of Thai girls. Needless to say I avoided that bar for the remainder of my stay.

For any newcomers to Pattaya or any other place in Thailand I suppose they should be aware of telling girls they’re a butterfly unless they are after just one girl. It will save many headaches and heartaches. Also another thing I would say I learned was to withdraw a week or a few days’ worth of money from an ATM. I made the stupid mistake of withdrawing £100 to £200 a day and of course the £5 ATM fee soon added up. I’m all set for my next trip back in Pattaya and I honestly can’t wait. I’ve decided to give up everything in the UK and move out to Thailand as soon as I can.

Swedish Retiree Visa Plan

My story in Southeast Asia goes back to early 1970s but I think it is easier to take them in reverse order and the memory will gradually come back to me. I’m a 70 year old Swedish guy but most Asian girls guess that I’m between 47 and 52. They usually do not believe me so I have to take out my French driving license to prove my age. Usually they get a shock when they see it. I don’t go to the gym but I eat healthy and I try to walk at least 10000 steps a day.

For tax reasons I have been a French taxpayer since September 2016 so I reduced my tax for my Swedish pension from 33% to 3.4% that’s why hundreds of thousands of Swedes moved to the Riviera when they retire. When the pandemic started in early 2020 my daughter who lives in Vancouver Canada said “Dad you have to leave China now.” To make a long story short I spent two and a half years in France which was like living in a prison. The only good thing I can say about France is that the cheese and the wine is great and the speeding and parking tickets and personal tax is very low. It is also very fast to get over to the UK via the Euro tunnel.

My initial plan was to get back to China as soon as they opened the borders again but for reasons I would explain in my next story it was not realistic. I decided to move to Thailand. So well before Christmas last year I applied for an e visa of the OA type from the Thai Embassy in Paris. Yes you have to apply from the country of residence. I warn everybody who can avoid it do not apply for a Thai visa from France.

I sold my Swedish registered Saab to a guy in Paris and got the same money I paid for it in Sweden three years earlier. I booked my flight from Paris to Bangkok with Thai Air on the 23rd of January. I brought the required health insurance for Thailand got the health certificate resigned from my apartment etc. I thought I was set to go. But no the staff at the Thai Embassy in Paris said that I have been staying for too long in France. Why make it easy when you can make it difficult?

Paris Airport Visa Panic

Less than one week before I was leaving they contacted me and said that in France we do not accept a monthly income equal of 65000 baht plus you must have at least equivalent of 800000 baht in your bank account. I did not have that kind of money. So I got a bit desperate and sent an email to the Thai Embassy in Stockholm with a copy to the Thai Embassy in Paris asking if my e visa application could be transferred to Stockholm. That made the Thais in Paris wake up. They contacted me and said if I could have my Swedish bank write an official letter stating my monthly income converted into Euro they would grant me the visa. I fixed that in three days and thought everything was okay.

Of course my visa was not okay. I stayed overnight at a hotel near the CDG airport in Paris. While I was waiting for the shuttle bus to the airport a nice Thai girl from the embassy called me and said “I’m sorry but my boss wants to see your criminal record from France as well.” Normally for OA visas a criminal record from the country of your citizenship is enough. I said “I have no internet now and I must catch the bus.” The girl from the embassy kept calling me every 30 minutes. Finally I had checked in and found a bar to sit down and hooked up to the super slow airport internet. I had the girl from the embassy on my phone all the time and she guided me through the procedure to download my criminal record from France.

Finally it was finished and she was satisfied but it was only one hour before my flight was leaving. The girl said “We don’t have time to issue a visa in one hour. So please check your email when you have landed in Bangkok.” I checked my email and my visa was there to my relief. By the way the girl at the embassy said that I am the only one ever that got an OA visa from the embassy in France because of my income.

When I arrived at the immigration counter in Bangkok I just showed the e visa on my phone and everything was fine. The lady at the airport immigration took the time to explain to me how the visa worked. I was a bit tired after the trip so she had to explain several times. She said I did not have to do anything until next year and if I left the kingdom before the visa expired and returned before the day of expiry I could stay another year without having to apply again.

TM30 and Ninety Day Report

I thought that was the end of the visa business. But no there’s more. Last week I casually watched a YouTube video about Thai visas. It showed that you have to report to the immigration after every 90 days. I thought that was strange as the immigration lady at the airport had said that I did not have to do anything until next year. I checked on the Thai immigration website and apparently it was correct. So I went to the immigration last Friday and spent all afternoon there for nothing. They did not accept my rental contract. Come back home I met the landlady and also another foreign tenant a foreign girl that has been living in Thailand for about eight years so she knows how to handle things with the immigration.

She told the landlady that she just had to fill in and sign a TM30 form and give it to me and she only had to do it once. The landlady promised to do it during the weekend and give it to me today.

When I had not received it by 1000 a.m. this morning I called the landlady who hardly understands or speaks any English. She said she sent a photo by Line I could print it out. I sent back a message translated to Thai by Google Translate “Does not the immigration require your original signature on the document?” Then she called back again and said she’d send a signed signature from my Line and I could print it out. After she said that I literally exploded into a rage and shouted loud to her on the telephone. She should have reported my stay to immigration four months ago after I moved in. I heard nothing for about an hour but then I got a screenshot showing she had reported my stay online. So obviously it helped to get angry with her.

I went to the immigration to report my 90 day stay and everything went smoothly except they charged me 2000 baht for reporting one month late. That made me very annoyed as the immigration officer at the airport had said that I did not have to do anything until next year. I also think they normally staple some kind of a slip on the passport page with a stamp on it therefore it was impossible for me to know that I had to do the 90 day report. Next time I can report the 90 days online.

OA Visa Confusion

First a little follow up from my last story. I don’t want any more problems with Thai immigration so I want to be 100% sure that I can stay two years in Thailand on a one year OA visa. A Swedish friend in Hua Hin had confirmed it but I wanted more reassurance. So I asked the lady at the immigration who handled my 90 day report. Her English was so bad so I don’t even think she understood my question. So I searched the internet and there is absolutely no way you can find the exact information on how the OA visa works. So I asked in a Thai Swedish forum.

Within a couple of minutes I got similar replies from two people “If you have an OA visa with multiple entry every time you enter Thailand you’re allowed to stay for 12 months from that date.” That means that if you return no later than the date of expiry you can stay in Thailand two years on a one year visa. If you want to take a trip abroad during your second year in Thailand you need to apply for a re entry permit before you leave.

While searching facts about the OA visa I found something from a solicitor company I did not know before. In most places they inform you that when you reapply for the visa you either need 800000 baht deposited in a Thai bank or at least 65000 baht to be deposited per month into a Thai bank account. I think for many expats like me that would be very impractical as we all have expenses abroad for example my Thai health insurance is paid in Euro and also my tax payments. But there is an alternative you can let your embassy write a letter to confirm your monthly pension and that will be accepted.

Fake Hong Kong Girl on Thai Friendly

Last summer China had not yet opened the borders after the pandemic so I decided to go to Thailand first. I joined Thai Friendly probably the last of the Thai dating sites but I did not care. I had some good chats and video calls with a couple of ladies for some weeks when I was contacted by a girl who claimed she was living in the south of France well over 500 kilometers from where I was living. She did not look Thai actually not even Asian. She claimed she was born in Hong Kong by a Chinese mother and her father was British. She said that her parents had died in a traffic accident in Hong Kong (not a likely story) when she was 11 years old and that she grew up with an uncle in Singapore.

She said she went to school and university in Singapore and now worked for her uncle’s fashion company doing marketing in Europe. I asked her what she was doing on a tiny dating site. “A friend recommended it” she said.

Anyway we got friendly and chatted all day and sometimes very late into the night. We used WhatsApp and I could see it was connected with a French number. We also had some video calls. One evening she wrote that she had stumbled on the charging cable to her iPad when she got up to go to the bathroom and the iPad had fallen on the floor and was broken. She then sent a picture of a broken iPad. The next day she asked me if I could do her a favor as her iPad was broken she asked me if I could log into her Bitcoin account and help her to do some trading. I was hesitant at first but thought “What harm can be done by logging into her account?” So she gave me her login details and I logged into her account.

Bitcoin Profit Trap

Apparently she had deposited 20000 US dollars into her account. After following her instructions and after a few minutes she had made a profit of 20% equal to 4000 US dollars in cryptocurrency that I helped her to transfer to her crypto wallet.

How did you know you would gain 20%?” I asked. “Oh I just follow instructions from my uncle in Singapore” she replied. The next day the same procedure was repeated but instead of 20000 dollars she invested 30000 dollars. Of course I was tempted to open an account myself and she said she would help me regain the money I lost by building a house in Isan a classic mistake. So I opened a Bitcoin account and transferred the only cryptocurrency I had after the depression of Bitcoin at the time only worth about 200 US dollars. With her help I gained 20%. So the following day I had 240 dollars to invest. So of course I gained 20% again. Although I know that if something looks too good to be true and all my friends warned me I had seen with my own eyes that it had worked.

Of course she pushed me to invest more. Soon after I managed to scrape together just under 5000 dollars and transferred it to my Bitcoin account. I even used some money from a credit card. Then I did not hear from the girl for 24 hours so I got cold feet and I tried to withdraw the money. Yes you guessed it it was gone. The website was very professional and even had a customer service number that I contacted. They replied that as I had made an investment but no trading they considered it as money laundering and would inform the IRS in the States.

I said “It’s got nothing to do with me as I am only liable for tax in France and not the US.” Then they said “If you deposit a further 10000 dollars we can release your money.” So I asked for the official company name and their registration and where the head office was. I did not hear back from them for a while and they referred to a big coin company in Japan. I Googled and found an email address for the Japanese company. The following morning I had a reply in my inbox. It said “We are the only legitimate company in Japan all others with similar names are a scam. And anyway we only take investments in yen.” After reading that I was 100% sure my money was lost forever.

After the Bitcoin Scam

I informed the fake company and the girl that I was going to the police. From a friend I was informed that for frauds under 5000 dollars international fraud police will not intervene in my case it was just under. After this the girl kept bullying me via WhatsApp. As if it was not enough that she had stolen my money “How is it going with your so called police report? You can never catch me ha ha.” She kept on for quite a while. I checked up the two French telephone numbers she had been using. One was a virtual telephone number she could be anywhere in the world. Also the apartment I saw during our video calls could be anywhere in the world.

Of course she removed her profile on Thai Friendly but I saw another profile on Thai Friendly with pictures of her wearing the same bathrobe in the same bathroom now claiming that she’s in the USA.