Newest Stories
I promised her I was serious. I didn't tell her I already had a wife and three kids waiting at home in Ireland.
Conor, a 44-year-old from Ireland, spent months video-calling Ning, a 26-year-old from Samut Sakhon, before meeting her in person. The relationship survived a pregnancy scare and a confession he'd been hiding from the start: he was married with three kids. What he discovered about her afterward changed everything.
At 60, I flew to a village in Isaan for a wedding that wasn't mine, and for a few hours it felt like it was.
I was 60 when Kop, 37 years younger than me, brought me to her cousin's wedding in a village in Isaan. I met her parents, slept apart from her out of respect for her family's rules, and watched a full traditional Thai wedding, dowry included, feeling for a few hours like part of a family I barely knew.
I asked her to give back every baht I'd sent her. She didn't say a word, she just opened her banking app.
At 52 I flew to Thailand to meet Chompoo, my Messenger girlfriend, in person, more suspicious than excited. Between money requests, a gold bracelet, and an itemised bill for picking me up at the airport, I nearly booked a flight back to Auckland. One simple test, asking for my money back, changed everything I thought about her.
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 spent my student loan on a week of heartbreak in Bangkok. I went back nine more times, and on one of those trips I met my wife.
In 2005, heartbroken and with a student loan installment just paid out, I spent a week in Bangkok trying to drink the pain away. I went back nine more times in my early twenties. On one of those trips, in Koh Samui, I met the woman I now live with in England, and with whom I have two daughters.
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.
In Phuket, my girlfriend's younger sister looked at me and asked why her sister found me first
Ryan, a 38-year-old American, has been living in Phuket with his Thai girlfriend for almost a year when her younger sister asks him a question that leaves him speechless: why did her sister find him first. Behind the question is something he never expected to learn about this family.
At 55, I Wasn't Looking for Someone Younger. I Was Looking for Someone Honest.
At 55, after a quiet divorce, a man opens a profile on TrueMatchAsia with no real expectations. There he meets a 27-year-old Thai woman he talks to almost daily for months, until he flies to Bangkok to meet her in person. A story about what actually holds a relationship together when nobody's watching the numbers.
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.
He almost sent 400,000 baht. The only good decision he made was not to.
A 41-year-old British man went in two weeks from a Soi 4 fling to talking dowry and house renovations. He almost sent 400,000 baht. He did not.
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.