The Undercover Thai Freelancer
Now I’ve been binging on your videos lately from my Condo on Soi 21 directly next to Terminal 21 in Bangkok, and they’ve helped me get over a tremendous bruise to my ego.
I decided to share my story of my first few months in Thailand.
I’m a 54-year-old African-American, although when I came to Thailand, I was still 53.
A Two-Month Adventure in Thailand
I planned my trip from Beverly Hills in January of 2023 to visit Thailand for the first time and stay two months.
I planned on being in Bangkok for the first month and then traveling to Pattaya for the second, to attend the first-ever Rolling Loud music festival along with Songkran, which is actually my birthday on April 15th.
I rented Airbnbs beforehand for the entire trip, including a pool villa in Pattaya for the week of my birthday, the festival, and Songkran.
Trading Stocks by Day, Exploring Thailand by Night
I’ve owned restaurants in my past and constantly day trade to make a living, so I had means to plan ahead.
I spent my first week pretty much shopping and enjoying street food, along with a few night spots along Khao San Road, and really didn’t venture into beer bars or Go-Go’s as it’s really not my thing.
I have no problem with the adult entertainment venues in Thailand, and I’ve often visited massage parlors in the states as well as the occasional high-end dinner date.
The truth is, I came to Thailand to experience the food culture and islands more than the women.
I also talked to a neighbor of mine back in Los Angeles to join me for a week and attend the festival as well.
We split the cost of the pool villa and each brought VIP tickets to the three-day event.
I was going to be here for five weeks before him and figured I’d have a good lay of the land by the time he got to Thailand.
Nightlife Encounters on Soi 11
I arrived the last day of February, and a week later, myself and another guy I met from Los Angeles decided to venture to Soi 11 and visit a popular nightclub.
This was my first time seeing freelancers everywhere walking the streets.
When we got to the club, it was kind of empty as it was Tuesday at around 10:30 PM.
Even in this thin crowd, I spotted the first woman I wanted to meet since arriving in town.
She was with a friend and they were drinking wine.
The first thing my friend said was, “I think they’re freelancers.” Being naive at the time, I said, “I hope not,” as I sent them each another glass of wine.
When they came over to thank us, the first thing I asked the one I was interested in before I asked her name was, “Are you working?” She said with a straight face, “No.” She said her name was Dang, and she was 44.
As I thought, “Wow, she’s a good age and still pretty cute.” I told her I was in town for a couple of months and that I would be attending the music festival.
She got excited and said she would also be going to the festival.
The connection seemed instantaneous.
At the same time, I looked over my shoulder to see my friend had his arms wrapped firmly around the other girl, and they were already lip-locked.
I continued my conversation as if I had seen nothing.
Dang and I exchanged WhatsApp info, and she said she had to get up for work and would be leaving shortly.
She actually left abruptly without so much as a goodbye, and when we got downstairs, her friend informed us she was probably halfway home, as she suddenly had no affection left for my friend.
Now that we were on the street, he summed it up as her probably having a man somewhere nearby because this was like a night and day change in five minutes, as far as he was concerned.
I would later find out that she lives less than 100 meters away on Soi 11 with another African-American guy.
Cultural Misunderstandings with Dang
I text Dang that she hadn’t said goodbye, and she texted back that it was nice meeting me also and added, “No judgment please.” For some reason, the next day, she sent a selfie and began telling me about her office work, helping Thai women that had married foreigners get their visas to travel to Europe, mostly England.
She added the day after, she sent me a video of her lunch, a beef soup, around noon, with a caption, “Lunch with co-workers.” I sent back a picture of me in the gym at around 11 PM that night.
That night, I got a call from Dang, cursing me out royally for not saying, “Enjoy your lunch,” when she sent the video of her meal.
There were a lot of F-bombs dropped from her over the next hour as I sat wondering, “Does this girl like me this much that this matters?” Anyway, “Sorry” isn’t in a woman’s vocabulary in the west, so I accepted and let bygones be bygones.
I had never forgotten that one part of the conversation though, with those two absurd questions.
A Weekend in Pattaya
She then invited me to Pattaya for the weekend, saying she had a home there and spent every weekend.
I accepted.
We arrived at her house, and I saw she also had a small car, and I admit I was impressed.
It was a two-bedroom, two-bathroom home and a nice plot with a few mango trees as well.
Dang told me she had been married for 10 years to a British guy, and he bought and built the home.
Knowing what I know now, I’ve already ignored a half a dozen red flags.
She rudely exited the night we met, cursed me out, questioned my worth, lived in Pattaya for 20 years, has a wealthy ex-husband who bought a house and a car.
The fact is when asked if I could afford her, my ego kicked in and I thought to myself, “I’m going to sleep with this woman as much as possible but spend as little as possible.” Needless to say, we participated in bedroom fun that first night in Pattaya and all weekend in that house.
Love and Disagreements With A Thai Girl
When we got back to Bangkok, the honeymoon was over.
I was staying in the Saturn area of Bangkok, and Dang stayed on Soi 13, a block away from where we had met.
She came to see me but found it inconvenient getting to work in the morning.
The next few days were like a tug of war.
We had passionate interactions and more passionate disagreements.
I wanted to explore Thai Cuisine and street food.
Dang preferred proper restaurants.
My determination to make sure she didn’t get what she wanted out of me was always a source of disagreement.
While I told her of some of the things she said the night she drunkly cursed me out, I always admitted the part that mattered most to me where she showed me her true gold digging motives.
Trust and Desire with Dang
By the time my neighbor arrived the first week of April, Dang and I had grown seemingly close.
Even though I would never trust her, in her own way, though she was an asset when it came to navigating all things Thailand for my friend and myself.
My friend started looking at Tinder and made plenty of connections in Bangkok and Pattaya.
The second day of Rolling Loud, he ran into a girl he had matched with, and they ended up spending the night together.
Dang and I had the pool villa to ourselves that night and got into another fight as I went through her phone and discovered a handful of men were getting good morning, my love, and good night texts.
All of my suspicions were confirmed at this point, but my ego told me I was sleeping with this woman too much to care that these other idiots were sponsoring her because I knew I never would.
Songkran Surprises
The next day was Songkran, April 15th, my birthday, and Dang bought me a cake and plenty of booze, along with a super soaker to participate in the festivities.
We went to Second Road, and my friend and I ventured down Soi 6, and I had a blast with our water guns while Dang and her friend waited for us.
I have to say I’ve never had as much fun as I had going on Soi 6 from one end to the other.
Dang told us Songkran didn’t end until the 19th in Pattaya, so my friend, who was leaving the 16th, changed his ticket until the 20th.
Dang, the Undercover Thai Freelancer
That Sunday, the 16th, Dang’s friend was having a film party at her restaurant on Beach Road, and we all attended.
My friend brought the girl he had spent the night with a couple of nights before with him, and surprisingly, I happened to catch her coming out of the bathroom with another guy.
It was obvious what they had been doing while he was on the street.
Once I told him what I’d seen, the evening was over.
Dang and I drove them back to his hotel, and I watched her pack her things to ensure nothing went wrong and she might make something up.
When we got downstairs, she claimed she lost her phone and wasted another 20 minutes of our time.
Dang let her use her phone.
I couldn’t understand why she cared after what this girl had just done.
When my friend left town a few days later, we traveled to Surin in Isan so Dang could visit her family.
I stayed in a hotel nearby and met no one yet.
In the weeks that followed, I was asked to do all kinds of things for these people I wasn’t good enough to meet.
In one story, a tire came off a moving lorry and struck her father’s parked truck.
In another, her niece needed a new laptop. Despite everything I saw in her phone, Dang was constantly trying to hustle me.
I was constantly making sure she didn’t.
I did, however, rent a condo on Soi 21 next to Terminal 21 to be close to her work, and by mid-May, Dang and I had had enough of trying to outwit each other and parted ways for good.
I had a 23,000 Baht room and was being asked for thirty thousand baht allowance, and every two weeks, we’d argue and I’d been apart for at least four days.
I know others were being serviced.
Dang was an undercover freelancer, and those are the most dangerous kind as they sleep with you in front and give you the true girlfriend experience.
Make no mistakes, the entrepreneurial freelancer that has a day job outnumbers them all.
I was given meals, laundry done, birthday presents, and had access to a house when she was in Bangkok and I was in Pattaya, and it was all part of the game to make sponsor number who knows.
As you can imagine, that was when I decided to walk away from Dang for good, and I’m much wiser these days.
