The Most Emotional Stories from Thailand
A widower for ten years, I promised a stranger I'd come back. That's how I met Newt.
A 64-year-old New Zealander widower recounts his last three nights in Koh Samui with Newt, a woman he met by chance after keeping a promise made to another girl on the street. No drama, no requests, just company at exactly the right moment.
Seven months of video calls every night, and she never asked me for anything. Then I saw her pre-wedding photos with another man.
A 46-year-old Dane met Bun, a 26-year-old Thai translator, and they talked daily for seven months before meeting in person. They spent a month together between Bangkok and Pattaya with no red flags at all. Weeks after he got home, she vanished, and pre-wedding photos on Facebook were the last clue.
Her mother wanted a $35,000 dowry and $2,000 a month just to prove I was serious. I still don't know if I dodged a bullet.
A 50-year-old Australian met Mali in Bangkok, a highly educated woman he spoke to every day for months. When she finally told her mother about the relationship, her mother demanded a $35,000 dowry and $2,000 a month. The story of a breakup nobody considers normal, not even Thai people themselves.
We shared a room with separate beds and her family wouldn't let me pay for a single meal. My last night, she chose to sleep somewhere else.
After seeing plenty of bar scams in Thailand, a Swedish man was introduced online to a woman from Isaan looking for something serious. Months of daily calls and a visit to her family later, the relationship never quite came together. It wasn't the love story he hoped for, and it wasn't a scam either.
The lockdown wiped out the businesses she'd spent twenty years building. She never once stopped calling me every morning and every night.
On a group tour of Thailand in 2019, an Irishman met a divorced woman running several small businesses on Koh Samui. Lockdown forced her to move back to Isaan, but they never stopped talking every single day. Years later, he's planning to propose on his next visit.
For a few hours I felt like the most interesting man in the room. It took me a while to understand why.
For a few hours, a 62-year-old American felt like the most interesting man in the room. It took him a while to see what was really behind it.
I have been married nine years and have three kids. And for the first time, I do not know if I should stay.
A Canadian sailor has been married nine years to a woman from Pattaya and has three kids. Now he faces the hardest question of his life: stay or leave.
He was 70 years old and his wife had died. His daughter booked him a flight to Thailand.
At 70 he became a widower after forty-three years of marriage. His daughter booked him a flight to Koh Samui that gave him back what he thought was lost.
Six hundred thousand baht. Eighteen months. And a 29-year-old American I never met.
A retired teacher thought he was building a future with Lek. Eighteen months and six hundred thousand baht later, he learned who he was really funding.
A 28-year-old Thai nurse and the 71-year-old German who came to Chiang Mai to die
A 71-year-old German man came to Chiang Mai looking for a quiet place to die. A 28-year-old Thai nurse gave him back his will to live instead.