Thailand Scam Stories
Five years, a house in Chiang Mai, a pickup truck and £30,000. She had my case packed in seconds.
A Mancunian recounts how five years with a Thai woman who claimed to own a hotel in Chiang Mai ended with over £30,000 lost on land, a house and a pickup truck, and a suitcase packed within seconds the night he said no.
She told me once she has a man's heart, she can get anything from him. I fell for it anyway.
A 52-year-old American looks back on his ten-month relationship with Tan, a Phuket bar girl who was honest from day one about how it worked. Knowing exactly what he was getting into, he fell anyway, until she told him she was marrying someone else.
She called it being her boyfriend. Over time I realised I was actually her sponsor, one of several.
A recently retired American looks back on his relationship with a Thai woman he met in Hong Kong. What began as a romance with visits to Bangkok turned into a growing list of monthly payments, until he discovered he wasn't the only man supporting her.
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.
She showed up at my hotel unannounced, and that night I paid the bill for her whole crew. It was the first of many red flags I ignored.
On his first trip to Thailand, a 34-year-old Frenchman met two women: a genuine massage-shop worker and a Patong bar owner who started asking him for money for everything, food, petrol, even the pool table rental. The story of how he told one from the other.
I paid for her whole day out in Pattaya. Half an hour before midnight, her Canadian boyfriend showed up.
On New Year's Eve 2023, a 44-year-old Dutchman spent the whole day with a bar girl in Pattaya, covering food, pool and beers at a Soi 7 beer bar. Half an hour before midnight, her supposed Canadian boyfriend turned up. Months later he found out the same setup kept repeating with other foreigners.
The bill said 6,000 baht, no breakdown. The real one was 2,194, and she was already gone.
Before a trip to Bangkok, I met up with a woman from a dating app. She said it was her birthday and took me to her favorite restaurant. The bill came with no breakdown: 6,000 baht. When I asked for an itemized version, she got up and vanished. The real bill, from the kitchen, was less than half that.
Before flying to Bangkok, I bought a fake Rolex for forty dollars in New York. It turned out to be the smartest decision of the whole trip.
Freshly divorced, I flew to Bangkok with a fake forty-dollar Rolex bought on a New York layover. Between bar nights and a reserved woman who set one strange condition for seeing her again, the trip left me two nights I'll never forget, a lesson in misplaced trust, and no plans to bring the real watch next time.
I'd been going to Thailand for fifteen years and thought I knew it all. One game of pool in Pattaya proved me wrong.
At 39, an Australian who considered himself a seasoned Thailand traveller met a girl over a game of pool in a Pattaya bar. Ten perfect days, a golf tournament in Indonesia, visits to her family in Isaan. All good until six months of distance for work uncovered that the Scottish boyfriend she said she'd left had never actually gone anywhere.
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.