My Tinder Romance with a Thai Woman

I’ve never told this story to anyone before because it’s just too embarrassing. When I met this girl in Thailand, I thought I had found someone completely different from the usual stories you hear about. Instead, I ignored every red flag in front of me, got myself deeper and deeper into the situation, and even ended up dealing with her ex-boyfriend.

Looking back now, the whole thing should have been obvious from the start. This pretty much started after I had just come out of a relationship with a Thai woman. There was nothing exactly wrong with her. Our relationship wasn’t toxic at all, it was just very boring.

She had two kids that lived with her, so most of our evenings together involved being with them as well, so we didn’t go out much or get much time together. After that, I wanted a change, something a bit more exciting and less dull. By this point I had been living in Thailand about three years full time, so I think I was ready for some excitement, just not the type that was about to happen to me.

I was living in Pattaya at the time, well, just outside central Pattaya. The problem with that was I was looking for a relationship and you know what girls in Pattaya are like. No disrespect to anyone there, but it’s hard to find a woman there who is looking for something serious. So instead of going out to try and meet a girl, I signed up to a bunch of popular dating apps at the time and started searching outside of Pattaya. Although I had never been anywhere in Isan, a few of my friends had girlfriends and wives from there and they swore that Isan girls were the most faithful and sweetest girls in Thailand.

Finding Her Online

Though, I have met a lot of girls in Pattaya that originally come from Isan and they haven’t exactly turned out to be the most trustworthy girls, if you know what I mean, but whatever, worth a shot. I started chatting with this one girl online who was from Isan and still lived there. We talked for weeks, did a lot of video calls and she turned out to be a really sweet girl. She surprisingly spoke English at a decent level and from what I knew about her she was a decent girl.

We agreed that I would travel there, I would get a hotel and we would meet up. Depending on how it went on the first night we would plan the rest of my time there after that. I headed up from Pattaya to Isan to meet her not too far from her place.

The plan was that I would check into the hotel, then she would get her brother to drop her off later and we would go out to this fancy restaurant that she had been talking about. But once I got there I was a bag of nerves. She was stunning from the video calls and pictures that I had seen. I think I was punching a bit above my weight so I gave myself a bit of Dutch courage while I waited for her.

Our First Week Together

She finally showed up wearing this black skirt, and honestly she looked even better in real life than on video calls. It was surprising that a stunner like that hadn’t made her way to Pattaya or Bangkok, but I was happy she wasn’t one of them. She gave me a hug inside the room and was instantly chatty. She wasn’t shy at all, and then we went out to where this restaurant was.

She had chosen a really fancy restaurant, something that I wasn’t used to and right from the jump I was crazy attracted to her, like I was hooked instantly and I think she could see that. We sat there chatting and really getting to know each other properly. She even told me that she had finished university so that was a good start. The plan was actually for me to stay there for two days and then go back to Pattaya, but we ended up staying together the whole week.

She even took me to her family home and I ate with her parents. It wasn’t anything like when a girl takes a farang home just to rinse him. At that point we weren’t anything other than friends so none of her family tried it on with me. I had a great time with her, really, really good. I had the best week I’d had in Thailand so far and Pattaya just didn’t sound that exciting anymore now.

I really didn’t want to leave to be honest. I wanted to stay there with her and she said she wanted me to as well. But still, I went back to Pattaya because I had a few things to sort out there and we carried on talking and video calling.

Moving to Isan

After a couple of weeks I just straight up asked her how she would feel if I moved to be closer to her and we had a go at being in a relationship with each other. I work remotely, so it wouldn’t be a problem for me and I was over Pattaya already. Nothing about the place appealed to me and I wasn’t interested in the nightlife anymore. Yeah, Isan is boring compared to Pattaya, but I just felt like I had something with this girl that I simply couldn’t just leave.

She said she wanted me to move there with her but in a city close by, not actually her town. She said this was because there would be more for us to do and places to go. She managed to find me a nice place that I could rent for three months at a time and then either renew the contract or find somewhere else. Although I was completely crazy about this girl, this seemed like a good idea. I didn’t want to sign a 12-month contract and two months into it it turns out we don’t work out, then I’m stuck with this condo.

So I packed up whatever I had in Pattaya and made my way to Isan to start the first three months in the new condo. For those three months we basically lived in the apartment I’d rented. We just hung out all day talking heaps, messing around, having fun. I was never bored once, and it was one of the best times I’d had with anyone. We did go out a few times but that was mainly to go for drinks and food at restaurants. We didn’t really do much exploring or anything like that.

The Phuket Trip Begins

Then, after three months she said she fancied going somewhere else in Thailand for a trip, so we started planning. She told me she had never been to Phuket and wanted to see it. I really wasn’t interested in going there but as I’d never been before and she wanted to, we booked a week there. Before we went to Phuket, she did ask me for 20,000 baht so she could give it to her mom to help out with the family as my girl wouldn’t be there to help.

I thought it was a bit of a strange request but she promised to pay me back and if it meant I could take her to Phuket then whatever, 20,000 baht is not a lot of money. That’s when everything started going sideways. When we got to Phuket, all she wanted to do was party, and I don’t mean just at night, it was like all day.

I suggested the beach, going out for meals, taking a tour around the place but no, she just wanted to go out to the bars every night. I am not a jealous person but as I’ve already said this girl was stunning so every time we went out she would have guys looking at her and trying to talk to her, which got pretty annoying, especially when I was sat right next to her.

The Night She Disappeared

One night we went out and she ended up talking with this Thai girl at the bar who then came and sat with us. The two of them were just talking and laughing away in Thai while I was sat there like a little lost dog watching other guys stare at them. I started to feel a bit awkward like I was the third wheel and I was getting really bored. It was after midnight and I told her that I was tired and wanted to go back to the room.

I thought she would have told the girl she was with and me and my girl would have left but nope, she said that I could go back and she would join later once she had finished drinking with her new friend. I was pretty shocked she just said that straight up, so I left the bar and headed back to the room by myself. I went to the room and fell asleep, woke up about 4am and she still wasn’t back, no messages, no missed calls, nothing.

It got to around 8am and she still wasn’t back. My anger slowly turned into worry because I couldn’t get in contact with her either. Then about 9am I was outside the front of the hotel smoking and she pulled up on the back of a taxi bike. She still looked hammered, makeup everywhere on her face, hair a mess, like she had been dragged through a field or something. Of course I thought the worst like any guy would and felt like she had spent the night with someone else, so we ended up having our first argument.

I told her to tell me the truth. We weren’t technically in a relationship, so I told her to tell me what happened so we could move forward and forget about it. She completely denied anything happened, saying that after I left her and her friend went to a nightclub and then back to her friend’s place with some more Thai girls and just drank all night. Of course I did not believe a single word she said, but I was still hooked on everything about this girl that I stupidly chose to look the other way and pretend I didn’t know what had actually happened.

I mean she could have been telling the truth but I’m 99.99% sure what she told me was complete lies. I tried to carry on as normal, trying to look like I was having fun while we were out together but it kept lingering in the back of my mind what she would do if I’m not around. And on top of that she was a massive flirt. I would always catch her smiling and talking with other guys, even when I was literally right there. It’s not like she tried to hide it.

Her Ex-Boyfriend Appears

Then if that couldn’t get any worse, one day while we were by the hotel pool hungover and having a day just relaxing, some guy walked in and my girl shot up and they just stared at each other. It turns out it was her ex-boyfriend that she had apparently already broken up with but he hadn’t taken it so well. I had so many questions. First, she told me she had never been to Phuket and that’s exactly why we were here. Did she know he was still here? How did he know which hotel we were at? Just so many questions.

She claimed that she did not know he was there and that someone must have seen her and told him. She said that they still do online work together and have some kind of business selling stuff. I asked why she is still doing this if they have broken up and she said it’s just to keep the peace and it’s extra income for her. He was literally sat on the other side of the pool from us. He didn’t care that she was with me and he kept looking. My girl said that she will have to talk to him soon to tell him to back off and talk about work.

This is where things went from bad to worse. She did go and talk to him and when she came back to the room she told me he got the picture and will back away in terms of relationships, but they still need to talk because they work together. Now on most nights she would have to go to his room to discuss work and what is happening with the business.

I don’t know what was going through her head. She must have actually believed that I would be fine with her going to the room of her ex to discuss work, or that I would even believe that. When I would ask about her and his business she would be very vague and not really tell me much. All I knew was that it was selling stuff online, that’s about it.

The Holiday Gets Worse

Again, there was this one night she didn’t come back to the room at all clearly stayed over there. Same old excuses: had to work late into the night, all that BS. I always knew deep down this whole thing was dodgy as hell but I was so hooked on her I was listening to her pathetic excuses and telling myself that it must be true. In my head I’d keep coming up with reasons why she wasn’t as bad as my gut was telling me she was. Surely nobody would go with their ex while their current kinda boyfriend is in the same hotel, right?

We even ended up extending two extra weeks at the hotel because she wanted to get as much work done as possible before we left. Now this is just pathetic and cringe for me. I have taken some girl to Phuket for a holiday and she is spending most of the time with another guy, just apparently working. I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed but you don’t have to be to know that they weren’t just working. Working together was just an excuse for her to spend time with him.

If you think things couldn’t get any worse and awkward for me, she started staying over at his place a few nights a week, always with the same line about having to work and how complicated it all was. She did tell me that she would understand if I went back to Pattaya and left her there because we weren’t spending much time together. Her saying that was just an extra kick in the teeth and for some strange reason I wanted to stay just to see how this turned out.

Any other girl I would have walked away on the first night but like I said, something about her just kept me hooked in. I did ask her straight: do you want me to stay with you? Is this really what you want? Do you want him? Do you want me to leave? You know, basic questions but questions I needed answers to. She doubled down again and told me she doesn’t want me to leave. She wanted me to stay and she still wanted to work something out relationship wise.

I did try to explain to her and get her to understand how I feel that she is spending most of our holiday with another man. Like, how do you think that makes me feel? All she would do is just apologise and tell me I don’t understand the position she is in and that she can’t just walk away easily from the business that she started with her ex. Her words and answers to my questions were basically just Thai manipulation.

She said she couldn’t risk losing her cut from the business but she swore up and down that nothing was going on between them anymore. but I just pushed it all aside because I couldn’t get enough of her. I don’t even know how to explain it properly. I knew I should be walking away from this complete mess and that I was being completely played but I just couldn’t. I really couldn’t leave. The hold she had over me was unreal.

Returning to Isan

Anyway after three weeks in Phuket, which in my opinion was a complete nightmare, we headed back to our place in Isan. Just before leaving she asked me for another 20,000 baht because she needed to invest in something for the business she was doing. She told me she would make it back in a couple of weeks and give it back to me.

She said after she has paid that she will not have to deal with her ex much because he will be able to focus on the business himself. Again a stupid move by me but if it means having him off our back then I will pay it. Once we got back, her phone would be constantly going off and she would always be texting someone, obviously him.

Then he called her one night going crazy at her. He completely lost it screaming down the phone and I could hear stuff getting smashed in the background. I could hear him yelling about me saying that she shouldn’t be with me, she should be with him instead and that if she doesn’t go back to Phuket he would come to my place because he knew where I lived.

I don’t know if that part is true that he actually knew where I lived because obviously I never told him but I wasn’t sure if my girl did. Right after she hung up on him she went as white as a ghost, completely pale.

I sat her down and said, right, tell me everything about what is going on or I am leaving. I want to know the whole truth, what your plan was, what your feelings are, what happened in Phuket, everything. I just wanted to know the truth because right then I was just wasting my time and getting myself into something that I should be walking away from.

The Truth Comes Out

It turned out she was playing both of us the whole time. This guy had always been her actual boyfriend. They had been together for years. He had just gone back to his home country for six months to earn some cash.

So with no cash, stuck at home by herself, and just wanting a bit of fun while he was away, she jumped on Tinder and that’s how she came across me. One of his friends had seen us out in Phuket and sent a picture of us together to him. He then booked a flight without telling her. How he found out which hotel we were staying at is beyond me but clearly he must have had someone watching us.

She fed him this story that she was just doing some business stuff with me, swore she wasn’t with me or anything, but said she could make a ton of cash working with me. She didn’t want me finding out she had a boyfriend because I was into her and she figured she could string me along to get the money. Basically everything she was telling me about him she was telling him the exact same about me.

She spun this story to me that the guy was a bad person, that she wanted to get away from him but she was stuck because of the business since she got a share of the profits from it. The business side of things that she told me about with this guy might have been true. She says it’s true, but she told me so many lies it’s hard to believe her. At least now I knew 100% that this guy was actually her boyfriend and not her ex.

She told me that even though we had only known each other a few months that she loved me and really did want to try and have a relationship with me living in Isan. But she also loved him and she was totally torn about what to do. In all honesty my head was totally smashed. I was crazy about this girl but all of this was mental.

Meeting Her Boyfriend

I hung around for a few more days but I stayed at a hotel instead. I’d already given up my apartment since the three months were up and we had been talking about moving in together at her place. I just needed some space to get my head straight and figure out what the hell to do next.

I probably should have just gone back to Pattaya once I left the apartment but again I decided to stick around and see what she had planned next. She was staying at her place constantly texting me saying she’s sorry and wanted to see me but I just needed a couple of days away from her. Then one morning I woke up to about 15 missed calls from her, which wasn’t normal, so I rang her back.

When the phone was picked up on the other side it was the guy. He had actually gone from Phuket all the way to her place in Isan without telling her. It seems this guy was more crazy about her than I was.

On the phone he told me he wanted to meet me face to face. Not wanting to sound like a chicken I said we can meet at my hotel but outside in public. He showed up at the hotel and I met him outside to sit down and talk.

You could tell his head was just as messed up as mine was, maybe even worse. I laid it all out for him straight and told him the truth about everything. Told him that I live in Pattaya and met her online.

After a few weeks of talking I came up there to spend some time with her and eventually we started talking about getting into a relationship. I got an apartment closer to her and then we went on holiday to Phuket and he knows the rest. You could see it upset him knowing that his girlfriend had been talking about being with me.

The Money Plan

Then he told me that he was having serious money problems and when he turned up in Pattaya and confronted her she convinced him I was loaded. She said she was working on scamming me out of cash but swore she wasn’t interested in me and was just leading me on. I don’t know if she said that to him just because she was caught with me or she really did plan on scamming me in the long run but I believed him over her.

He admitted he was okay with her doing it. They both figured they’d score a big payout from me to sort out their financial mess. The thing is though she did know that I wasn’t loaded.

She knew I make decent money from my job but I’m no better off than the average nomad that lives in Thailand. I told him that it was probably an excuse because she had practically been living with me in the apartment for a few months and hadn’t tried to rush me into anything.

I did pay for the nights out, the food and the trip to Phuket, 20,000 for her family and 20,000 for the business but I thought that was a normal amount and not exactly huge money. Either way she was very good with her words and how she acted because without a shadow of a doubt I thought she was into me as much as I was into her.

The Three of Us

Then the two of us decided to sit her down and talk to her together. She lied through her teeth right in front of both of us, twisting everything she could to make herself look less like a bad person. She just kept apologising and said that she didn’t want to talk to us both together and that she didn’t mean for it to get like this.

The other guy, I could see he was hurt from all this and it clearly bothered him a lot more than me. I actually started to feel sorry for him.

I finally said enough of all this and told them both I’ll be going back to the hotel and then back to Pattaya so I’ll be completely out of the picture. I shook his hand and wished him luck but in a way that was meant to feel like I was saying “get the hell out of there”.

Walking Away

Anyway to wrap this whole mess up, at the hotel before I was going to leave to go back to Pattaya she called me and asked me to run off with her somewhere and never look back. I just told her no. That was probably the only wise decision I made throughout this whole ordeal.

A couple of weeks after being back in Pattaya, I did text her because I couldn’t find a spare phone I had and asked if I left it at her place. We texted back and forth a couple of times. She told me her boyfriend ended up forgiving her and they got back together.

After that I wished her luck and blocked her. I haven’t heard from her or him since and I plan to keep it that way.

Counting the Cost

Just so it’s clear, she ended up getting about 50,000 baht out of me altogether. And on top of that I covered pretty much everything for the whole time we were together. I don’t class that as big money.

With how much I was into her, she could have taken me for a lot more than that. If she asked for 100,000 I probably would have given it to her. It could have turned out a hell of a lot worse if I hadn’t found out about that guy.

In a way I have to thank him. If he had never turned up in Phuket and ruined her long game plan, I would probably be knee-deep in debt right now.

What I Learned

But honestly this whole thing messed me up emotionally big time and since then I just haven’t been able to trust any woman. Which is a shame really because I’m not the player type of guy. I would genuinely like to find a real relationship.

But yeah that’s my little side quest I took from Pattaya. It was a crazy ride, a wake-up call and one hell of an experience. I know most stories are about girls that guys have met in a bar in tourist areas but my experience shows that they don’t have to be from the bar to mess with your head.