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Photo: One of the beautiful girls of Thailand What's On This Page? |
Thailand - Girls Page 1Ten second Internet surfers' guide Last updated: 4th July 2008 Thailand is a country where outsiders are told what they want to hear, shown what they want to see, and made to believe what they want to believe. The illusion can last a very long time but eventually the truth will be revealed if you stay the distance. It doesn't make Thailand a bad place but it makes it a very different place to how it appears on first impressions. This is never more true than when dealing with Thai females. The chances of meeting an educated, beautiful, young girl who loves you for what you are in Thailand are about the same as anywhere else in the world. However, there are plentiful opportunities to meet poor, uneducated, beautiful, young girls who are willing to be with you in return for financial support. It's an arrangement that can work but it doesn't really form a great basis for a relationship, which after all, we normally base on trust and mutual respect. Simply put, it's a gamble. Thailand is not the dream ticket for foreign men that it appears to be when they first step into the famous Land of Smiles. It's a land full of opportunity but one that is also fraught with risk. Some men do very well, but others don't and there can be an awful lot to lose. When playing with fire, there is a chance that you may get your fingers burnt. Read, learn, listen. Plenty of other Western men have already been down the same path and there is a lot you can learn from them. Be aware that the value system in Thailand is completely different to your value system in the Western world. For this reason, it is of the utmost importance to get to grips with the language and culture so you can start looking at the world from the same perspective as Thais do. Not doing this is the single biggest reason why foreign men fail in relationships with Thai girls. OK, that was more than 10 seconds. Sorry.
Last updated: 18th February 2008
So what can I add? Why should I even bother writing about items of a personal nature that are quite embarrassing and which will possibly cause controversy by touching on highly emotive subjects such as the sex industry and basic human needs for love, companionship and sex? And just why has so much been written about Thai girls? Why not girls from other countries? Further, why do foreign men have such a problem with Thai girls when the situation is very clear to all Thai men? Would I have written about English girls had I written a similar web site about England? The answer is that I wouldn't have done but, as far as I'm aware, there aren't tens of thousands of single men going to England each year to meet English girls. That isn't the case in Thailand where a huge proportion of visitors are single males and they go specifically for one reason and one reason alone. OK, so men go to Thailand to meet Thai girls but wouldn't one short page have been enough? Why write so much about the subject? The answer is because what you see on the surface is far removed from the truth. The usual reaction of men visiting Thailand for the first time is to walk around beaming from ear to ear like Cheshire cats. Initially it seems to be the paradise they always dreamed of. However, a number of men have written to me who have ventured into relationships with Thai women and more often than not there have been problems. Some men have admitted to crying uncontrollably over problems their Thai girlfriends. Some have been scammed, while others have been set up to be scammed but managed to get out before losing any money. There is the opportunity to meet wonderful girls in Thailand but dealing with Thai females can be a minefield. The foreign men who arrive looking for them are often vulnerable from a combination of loneliness and sexual frustration. These are extremely powerful forces that need to be satisfied quickly but rushing the process is the first mistake. Thai girls are very tough emotionally, they are very good at reading people, and they have a huge advantage being on home turf.
Nothing I write about here should be taken very seriously. You need to find out the truth for yourself but maybe a certain pattern of behaviour I write about might strike a chord. Personally, I wouldn't consider getting involved with any girl other than a Thai girl. I think the overall combination of beauty, behaviour, character, charm, and the Thai sense of fun is unbeatable. However, I am a lot more aware of the pitfalls now than when I first arrived. Interestingly, almost all of the problems I have experienced personally with Thai girls came within the first year of moving to Thailand (most, in fact, within the first six months). I had spent vacation time in Thailand before that but I was still pretty clueless, having spent my vacations in tourist hotspots where all the wrong kind of Thai girls congregate. As with everything else in life, there is nothing to beat experience and now I can spot the telltale signs if something isn't quite right very quickly. My reaction then is just to walk away. Also, and I cannot emphasise this enough, there is no better way to filter out bad Thai girls from good ones than by being able to speak to them in their own language. Even if you aren't fluent, there are so many nuances in the language that can reveal an awful lot about them but it just doesn't happen when Thai girls speak English, especially if they only speak 'bar English'.
Last updated: 22nd November 2008
The young Greek lads were only too aware of this and so they would take advantage of the situation. You'd see them hanging around the tourist bars and discos each evening with their slicked-back black hair, swarthy good looks, and white shirts with a packet of Marlboro in the top pocket. Once the girls had got a few glasses of Ouzo inside them and had lost their inhibitions (if they had any inhibitions in the first place) the Greek lads would move in and it was like shooting fish in a barrel. As a percentage of the entire Greek male population, the vast majority weren't interested. A few may have been attracted to foreign looking girls. A few may have considered marriage to, for example, a Swedish girl as being a way to a better life, and then there were those who just took advantage of the situation. They knew that throughout the summer thousands of loose, drunken girls would arrive and it was easy to have sex with them. After that they didn't want to know and it wasn't unusual to hear the girls crying the morning after the night before. The situation in Thailand with Thai girls is very similar. Thai girls know only too well that thousands of single foreign men arrive each year wanting to get to know Thai girls better, and they know exactly where to find them. As a percentage of the entire Thai female population, the vast majority aren't interested. A few are genuinely attracted to foreign men (though not many in my experience). A few aren't necessarily attracted to, but may consider marriage to a foreign man as being a way to a better life (mainly from the poorer north and northeast regions), and there are the girls who are only there to take advantage of the easy pickings (the tourist resorts are full of these type of Thai girls). The only difference between Thai girls trying to take advantage and the Greek boys from my youth who were trying to take advantage is what they seek from the tourists. The Greek lads wanted sex whereas the Thai girls offer sex but what they really want is money. Do you understand Thai girls well enough to be able to tell what individual girls are looking for from a foreign man? If not, Thailand can be a hazardous place for a single foreign man.
Last updated: 1st November 2008
When I began writing these pages I foolishly used only one category to try to describe all Thai girls but that was a dumb thing to do. On the one hand you can find girls in Thailand who dance on the top of bar counters flashing parts of their bodies to men and who will happily go off to have sex with those men. On the other hand, the levels of conservatism among many Thai girls is frankly ridiculous in the 21st century. I have met more virgins here than anywhere else in my life; I cannot get anywhere near the girls I would really like to get to know better; and some are even terrified of being seen alone in public with a foreign men because of the way people will gossip. It is therefore possible that you may find some of what I have written confusing and contradictory. This is because I have tried to describe very different types of Thai girl under a single heading. If you go to Thailand looking to get involved with Thai girls this is important to realise, and depending where you go - and how you go about meeting girls - this will determine the type of Thai girls you will meet. As a result of describing conservative Thai girls, foreign men have written to me to tell me I'm wrong. I'm not wrong and their e-mails only tell me that those particular men can have no experience of Thailand outside of tourists resorts. If I were to describe the behaviour of Thai girls who work in bars in tourists resorts as being representative of all Thai girls, my respectable Thai female friends would be absolutely horrified. I hope that by making this clear it will help to avoid any confusion. The bar girls who sell their bodies in Thailand aren't necessarily bad. They were born into a very unfair society in which there is no hope for many poor people of having a better life. As soon as they enter the world their lives are set out and for many it means working in rice fields for Bt150 a day or doing menial work for Bt5,000 a month. For that reason I cannot blame the girls for wanting to try to get themselves out of the poverty trap but to do so they have had to turn their backs on Thai society and traditional Thai values. Once they have crossed that line many become quite mercenary and will stop at nothing in the pursuit of money. It is possible that such girls can make good partners but there are many risks involved and foreign men unfamiliar with Thailand are most at risk.
The good, the bad, and the ugly Last updated: 4th July 2008
There are some negative comments throughout these pages about Thai girls but it has been such a long time since I had any problems personally that I can't remember when the last time was. I have Thai girl friends (not girlfriends) who invite me out to dinner, pick me up in their cars, take me out somewhere pleasant, and then insist on paying before taking me home again. And is there a catch? No. Others have given enormous amounts of their time to help me with visas, work permits, driving licences, and other bureaucratic problems. Present - and even past - female students turn up with gifts at Christmas and other holidays. As I write, I have just recovered from a bout of food poisoning. While I was confined to my room, I had girl friends delivering food to my room and calling to see if I needed anything because they were concerned. On the occasion of another food poisoning incident a few years ago, the hospital admitted me overnight. My girlfriend at the time automatically made herself comfortable on the couch in my hospital room so I wouldn't be alone. This is fairly normal behaviour for Thai girls. They make wonderful carers and when you are sick there is nothing like having one around. However, most of my Thai girl friends are from southern Thailand which is one of the more prosperous regions of the country. They have had the benefit of a decent education and most have fairly decent jobs. They don't earn a fortune but they aren't greedy and make enough for their needs. This isn't always the case though. Thai society is very inequitable and many people, if they weren't born into the right families, just don't get a chance in life to make a decent living. For many rural girls, the only way for them and their families to escape the poverty trap is to get money from foreign men visiting Thailand. This is why virtually all Thai girls who make themselves available to tourists in tourist areas of Thailand come from the poorer north and northeast regions. This in itself doesn't make them bad girls but there can be some deception involved in order to get what they want. The men they meet also get what they want initially and sometimes this arrangement is quite satisfactory but if the men don't realise what is happening and, as a result, have wrong expectations there can be problems. It is certainly not impossible to make a relationship work with a bar girl or massage girl but it can be problematic. So, does this mean that all girls in Thailand are good girls? And are the ones who seem a bit problematic just victims of circumstances who can be redeemed if given a chance? Well, no.
I mentioned above that I haven't had any problems with Thai girls for a long time (several years, in fact). Thai women who prey on foreigners for easy money like foreign men who are new to the country and don't understand anything about Thailand. They seem to have the ability to find them in a similar way that sharks locate injured fish in a huge ocean. All of the negative stuff on these pages comes from my memories as a tourist or newbie expat, from experiences related to me by e-mail correspondents, or from media stories. I occasionally run into scheming Thai girls who think I am a tourist but talking to them in Thai normally puts paid to any schemes they had planned. Like other foreigners who have lived in Thailand for a while, the difference between good, bad and ugly Thai girls soon starts to become clear but these pages aren't intended for foreigners who have lived in Thailand for a while. The target audience for this site has always been people looking to visit Thailand for the first time or those who have visited and are now considering making a long term or permanent move. Thai girls can make a Western man feel pretty wonderful but a degree of caution is required. On my last visit to Phuket I saw a guy sitting at a Patong bar looking lonely and lost, clutching desperately on to his bottle of Singha beer. Without being cruel, let's just say he was the kind of guy that a Western girl would never get involved with. Just as I walked past, I saw a bar girl walk over and massage his shoulders. The poor guy had probably never experienced anything like this before in his life. His eyes glazed over and right at that moment that girl could probably have got him to agree to anything while he was in such ecstasy. "Yeah, you want me to sign my house over to you. Where's the pen?" Maybe she was a fantastic girl and maybe she was just working in a Patong bar because she was a victim of circumstances and needed to support her family? Or maybe she wasn't? Who knows? The point of the story is that all Thai girls can make a man feel great but their motives for doing so can vary immensely. Take your time and don't make any hasty decisions. As the Thais would say, "Mai dtong reep." No need to hurry. There really isn't.
Last updated: 15th July 2007
I don't believe I am naïve but I understand what has happened and I can understand why I may come across as being somewhat naïve. After moving to Thailand, I quickly became irritated with the constant grins and raised eyebrows whenever I mentioned to anyone where I was living. For many foreigners - apparently - the whole country of Thailand is no different to a Roman orgy. The truth is that not all Thai girls are as promiscuous as some foreigners may think. In trying to emphasise this point I have probably tipped the balance a little too far the other way, to the point where it sounds as if the country is made up of celibate nuns - and that is certainly not the case. There is an awful lot of sexual activity in Thailand and that is the number one reason why there are so many single male tourists and expats in the country. For starters, there are huge regional differences across the country regarding social and sexual behaviour. Girls from the poorer northern and northeastern regions are much more likely to engage in loose sexual behaviour as a way of earning money to support their families. Girls from wealthier backgrounds in the central and southern regions are less likely to do so. For one, the money isn't as important and secondly, it wouldn't be good for their reputations. From what I have observed, the same stigma doesn't apply in Isaan where girls sending money back to support their families are thought highly of, no matter how they earn it (and it is no secret to anyone how they earn it). The south also has a lot of Chinese and Muslim Thais whose attitudes are a little different to many pure ethnic Buddhist Thais, especially those from poor backgrounds. I live in a very conservative area of the south and my observations are based mainly on what I see around me. I work on a large university campus with thousands of young, attractive female students but does this mean that phone numbers are constantly slipped into my pocket for illicit trysts? No. I live near a large private hospital which rents out three entire floors of my apartment building for the staff (mainly nurses). The apartment building is full of nurses but is there a constant stream of male visitors to their rooms or do I hear nurses knocking at my door in the middle of the night? Unfortunately, no.
Therefore, my comments on conservatism are based on my personal experiences with normal girls. But does this mean that the conservative area I live in is akin to living in a Roman Catholic convent? Of course not. This is Thailand where sex is easily available everywhere. Within five minutes I can be at the local bath and massage establishment and within 10 minutes I can be soaking in a warm bubble bath with a naked Thai girl. I don't but I could. The honest reason why I don't go to this particular place, which is very conspicuous, is because it's a small town where everyone knows everyone else and people gossip incessantly. If I was seen making a visit, word would probably get back to my employer and I could find myself out of work very quickly with no reason given. That's just another example of Thai conservatism and conflicting values. These huge bathhouse brothels are there for the world to see; everyone knows what goes on, and Thais from polite levels of society constantly joke about making visits, but to actually do so - and to be seen to be doing so - would not go down at all well. The town is also loaded with massage parlours but massage is the only service on offer at many of them. However, this doesn't mean that 'extra' services aren't available with particular girls or at particular places if you know where to go. By the way, you will almost certainly not meet a local girl at any local brothel or borderline massage parlour. The girls mainly come from north and northeast Thailand, and a few from Burma and mainland China. It's not to say that southern girls don't enter the sex industry but they are unlikely to do so in their home town. Does living in a conservative area mean that 'good' girls will never engage in quick flings with farang or Thai men? Of course not. They are all different. Some will do it for money, some to satisfy a high sex drive, or some just out of interest. Things do happen with girls who aren't out-and-out hookers but there is usually a clear motive. One extremely pretty girl I met was about to get married and I regarded her as a good girl but she was actually quite a naughty girl. Her motive though was purely money. Her family had a lot of debt and she was targeting farangs to help repay the bank loans. I was invited to her wedding where I stayed with one of her neighbours who was a divorced mother. I was put into the girl's bed while she slept elsewhere but she joined me during the night. Her motive was different. She wasn't after money but was just lonely and in need of some male intimacy. Many of the girls I know who I regard as 'good' girls have little sexual experience - if any - but are at an age (around 30) where women are supposedly at their sexual peak. They have physical needs just like the rest of us. The lifestyle magazines they read are full of articles about sex and they are naturally curious. The virgin girl I mentioned above who wouldn't let me anywhere near her sends me frequent e-mails containing highly erotic images of naked Asian girls. Many Thai girls brought up in highly conservative families must be extremely frustrated as a result of the conflict between what they have been taught about upholding traditional values and wanting to explore their own sexuality. Many will say no but some will offer little resistance if pushed (provided everything is done discreetly and they are sure they won't be found out). What about casual acquaintances on the street that lead to sexual encounters? Where I live, this is very unusual but whenever I go to Bangkok it always happens - meeting them on the street, that is, and not necessarily sexual encounters. Bangkok is different to the rest of the country. Thais living in Bangkok have a lot more foreign influence than 'upcountry' Thais, and foreign notions of promiscuity - that are gradually breaking down traditional Thai values - are stronger there. Also, many people living and working in Bangkok are not originally from Bangkok. Thais are very aware of their reputation and will not step out of line in their home town where they are well known but will act more liberally when living somewhere else where they are fairly anonymous.
Areas with lots of resident expats and foreign tourists are different yet again because the big farang presence attracts a lot of Isaan prostitutes and what goes on in those places isn't exactly representative of normal behaviour in Thailand. These places are exceptions though. The bottom line is that it is impossible to make sweeping generalisations about an entire country and whatever anyone says, there will always be contradictions. Just as I know where to find a girl to have sex with within 10 minutes from where I live, I also know girls in their 30's who have never been touched. I don't believe I'm naïve and neither do I walk around with my eyes closed in Thailand. The only point I have ever wanted to make is that not all Thai girls are the same and not all fit the typical foreign stereotype. If I made this point a little too strongly and misled anyone, I apologise. The more I began to think about this subject, the more it started to intrigue me. Thailand can be a confusing and contradictory place for foreigners. In tourist areas such as Nana Plaza, Pattaya or Patong beach in Phuket there are thousands of scantily-clad prostitutes (mostly from Isaan) working in bars every evening who will spend the night in a man's hotel room for very little money. Yet, the majority of the female staff working in many of those same hotels would never dream of doing such a thing, and neither would many other respectable Thai girls. There are regular moral crusades and public outcries in the Thai media about so-called Coyote girls, actresses appearing in public with revealing dresses, girls wearing 'spaghetti-strap' tops at Songkran, etc. etc. etc. My oft-mentioned virginal Thai female friend had a boyfriend for two-and-a-half years but all he was ever allowed to do was kiss her on the cheek. After 30 months of aching balls he went looking elsewhere for his fun, got caught, and as a result she dumped him. He certainly wasn't getting his leg over but a group of my male students told me they were looking for girlfriends in order not to have to pay for sex. Obviously then, some girls do, even if my friend and her friends don't. So, what is the real situation? I can be fooled for a short time - and I'm happy to be proven wrong - but after almost four years in Thailand I was convinced the wool could not have been pulled over my eyes for that length of time. I needed to ask a Thai but obviously I couldn't really ask one of my female friends about such a sensitive subject. I went to see a male friend of mine. He's a businessman, restaurant and bar owner, as well as being a local radio DJ. He's married but has had quite a colourful past and - mainly due to his DJ'ing activities - is quite popular with the girls. What he told me basically confirmed my own thoughts but what surprised me a little was that he actually gave me some statistics. I don't know if these were off the top of his head or from some kind of an official Thai sexual behaviour study. His first point was that the Isaan region is a law unto itself. The vast majority of poor Isaan girls have but one priority in life and that is to provide for their families. Due to many social and cultural factors which I won't go into here, the only way they can earn enough money to do that is by getting money from foreigners through either marriage or sexual services. This one fact explains a hell of a lot about sexual behaviour in Thailand. The Isaan region is huge and accounts for about one-third of the country's population. Because of the poverty in the region there has been massive economic migration to other areas of Thailand. Whatever happens among Isaan natives, therefore, makes a huge impact on the rest of Thailand. For most (not all) Isaan girls, foreign men are purely a source of revenue to support their families and they will do whatever is necessary to secure that income, even if it means marrying or having sex with men who utterly repulse them.
He also told me that the number of students studying together involved in a sexual relationship is higher - around 40%. This is student-to-student monogamous sex and not university girls selling their bodies to outsiders to buy clothes and mobiles phones. Obviously, students studying together - and often living together - form very close bonds and many study in different provinces to where they come from, thus their parents aren't aware of what is going on. They probably wouldn't behave the same way if they were near their home towns. On to the subject of young Thai males and my 20 year-old male students are so full of hormones you can smell the testosterone in the air. (I was the same at their age.) With my friend's estimate of only 15% of girls being up for a bit of pre-marital hanky panky, I asked what the young lads do to relieve their sexual tension. Apart from the obvious tried-and-tested methods (some involving the use of water melons or banana skins) there are lots of paid-for sex services available in Thailand. Sex was available, he told me, for Bt200. I know of a few Bt500 places (that are quite disgusting) but wasn't aware that the rates went that low. So, there you have it. That completes my findings for the time being but it is a subject I intend to find out more about and I will publish any interesting findings here.
The circumstances in which a person is born pretty much dictate how they will live for the rest of their life. It's not fair and it's not nice but it's the reality of Thai society. A girl born into a small village community in a poor area of the country, regardless of how clever she is, doesn't have many options in life. Working in the fields is back-breaking work and pays very little. The same applies to construction work which many Thai females do for a living. There are lots of menial jobs available throughout the country which also pay very little and involve a lot of hard work. Despite certain politicians' claims to be helping the poor, this is dubious. Real help would involve a huge investment in education and the setting up of businesses in rural Thailand in order to break the poverty trap. This isn't happening.
They make enormous sacrifices so they can earn money to take care of their families. They live a long way from where they come from, share squalid accommodation with other girls to keep their living expenses down, and many leave children in the care of their parents. There are powerful cultural reasons for doing this. People can't look to the state to support them in old age or if they don't work. Parents rely on their children to support them later in life and the cultural concept of bhun-khun reinforces this support. Bhun-khun is the debt of gratitude Thais owe their mothers for bringing them into the world and nurturing them and it can never be repaid. Repaying this debt continues for as long as the mother lives.
Last updated: 1st March 2008
During my working life in the UK I worked with a young lad who was the kind of guy that every girl dreams of. He was tall, dark, athletic, very handsome, and a with a great personality that made him equally as popular with male friends as with the girls. He had a girlfriend who was forever messing him around and one day while he was moaning about her yet again, I asked him why he didn't just dump her, knowing that he could click his fingers and get just about any girl he wanted. He pondered the question momentarily and replied quite earnestly, "She's got great tits." There was a bit of a stunned silence among his group of male colleagues but then a series of nods and a kind of silent agreement that this response was justification enough for not dumping her. Sometimes I feel quite ashamed and embarrassed about being a male regarding the way I think and act at times, and what motivates me to do so. It is thus consoling to know that I am not the only one and that it is actually a problem of genetic programming which affects a part of the brain which then overrides all logical thought processes. I've corresponded with a couple of men who have had big problems with Thai girls and then split up with them. However, once bitten, they could not resist the urge to go back to Thailand for more punishment. On both occasions, while trying to continue our e-mail correspondence at an adult level, they gave me details about their new girls. On each occasion (and certainly without any prompting from me) they both mentioned fairly early on in the correspondence - pertaining to the girl's attributes - her breast size. I was trying to advise and therefore details of family and job background were interesting to me but this was a case of a little too much information. The message I read between the lines was who cares what baggage she might come with or what grief she might cause me later, provided she has great tits? Just like my old work colleague. Shortly after arriving in Thailand, I got mixed up with a girl who was very wrong for me for lots of different reasons and the relationship fizzled out fairly quickly but one of the things I was most upset about was that she had just about the most perfectly shaped pair of breasts I have ever seen in my life. As a male of the species, I am only too aware of the attraction of a young, pert pair of Thai breasts but in a country where there are so many potential pitfalls when getting involved with the local girls, it can pay not to be quite so narrowly focused. Difficult, I know ...
Last updated: 5th January 2009 Not Thailand, somewhere else in Southeast Asia, but this classic clip is always good for a laugh. The movie 'Full Metal Jacket' was set in Vietnam but much of it was filmed in Beckton, very close to where I grew up in East London. The closest I ever got to seeing anything like this in Thailand was in Pattaya many years ago when the US Navy - who were doing exercises in the region - rolled into town for a spot of R&R. The girls were certainly happy at seeing the sailors arrive. Girls like this only exist in the tackier tourist resorts of Thailand. In the rest of conservative Thailand, including the more upmarket tourist resorts, you never see this kind of thing (although the appearance and behaviour of some of the ladyboys can be quite outrageous at times). Take it away Nancy ...
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