In three seconds she went from fine to screaming at me through the streets of Chiang Mai. Her cousin explained why.

I'm Finnish, 56 years old, divorced for a good while now, and I met a massage girl called Joy on a previous trip to Pattaya, a small place a couple of streets back from the beach that a friend had recommended. Over time I became a repeat customer, always going back to the same place whenever I was in town, always asking for her if she had a slot free that afternoon.

Bit by bit, between sessions, we started talking about more than the usual, about our lives, where we were from, her family in Chonburi and mine in Helsinki, until one day we decided to do a five-day trip together to Koh Chang, something that felt like a fairly big step at the time for what had until then been a customer and masseuse relationship. It was great, honestly, much better than I expected.

She insisted on renting a scooter to get around the island, which wasn't exactly my comfort zone, especially on the steep turns of the mountain roads climbing up towards the west side, the engine groaning on every incline and me gripping the seat harder than I'd like to admit. But somehow we made it work, stopping at nearly empty beaches only visible from the road, eating cut fruit we bought from roadside stalls, and I ended up enjoying the freedom of covering the island at our own pace, stopping wherever we fancied without depending on anyone else.

She also looked after me really well when I picked up a stomach bug halfway through the trip, one of those bouts that leave you flat with no energy for anything. She went out on her own to get simple food, rice soup and water, so we could rest up and watch a movie in the room with the air conditioning cranked, not complaining once about having to change our plans for the day. Good times, the kind you remember fondly afterwards, even knowing how it would all end up later.

That was February 2020, and we all know what happened next.

She was stuck at home with nobody to talk to during the worst months, with massage places shut for long stretches and no steady income, and I was working from home too, holed up in Helsinki with a lot of sudden free time, so we kept in regular contact on Line throughout the whole pandemic. Messages almost daily, photos of whatever each of us was cooking, the odd video call when our schedules lined up. Genuinely nice to have someone to chat to during that strange, isolating period, never quite knowing when travel would open back up again.

When things started opening back up in October 2022, we planned a trip to Chiang Mai and up into the hill villages, something quite different from what we usually did together. We hired a local driver to take us along the narrow, winding roads climbing to the mountain villages. Fascinating to see the terraced hillsides climbing up the slopes, scenery that looked nothing like what we knew from the coast, low fog covering the valleys in the morning and kids waving from the doorways of wooden houses. Even so, after a full day of that, exhausted and with our legs stiff from so many hours in the van, we headed back to Chiang Mai earlier than planned.

Found a massage place near the hotel, a small, homely spot Joy found genuinely funny for how similar it was to her own, had a meal next door that turned out pretty decent, few drinks with the ladies there who sat with us for a while, then Joy wanted to go dancing, with that sudden burst of energy that took her some nights.

She was already fairly drunk by this point, whisky and soda she kept ordering more and more often, but seemed fine, upbeat and in good spirits, laughing at her own jokes more than usual. We found a nearby nightclub, but it was quiet that night and, instead of a DJ, an acoustic band had come on playing slow covers of well-known songs, which wasn't what she was after for that evening. We decided to leave and find somewhere else with more atmosphere.

Walking out she said let's go back to the massage place. I said fine but I'm hungry so let's eat first before deciding on anything else.

She went from perfectly fine to absolutely unhinged in about three seconds flat, with no transition I could detect in between, like a switch had flipped somewhere inside her. Yelling, waving her arms, calling me the number one BS guy over and over, louder and louder with people on the street starting to look over, nothing I said doing anything at all to calm her down.

I kept calm, said nothing, just focused on getting back to the hotel as quickly as possible while she screamed at me the entire way through the streets of Chiang Mai, with people turning to stare as we passed.

Back at the hotel she packed her bags in a rush, throwing clothes in without even folding them, demanded money, which turned out to be less than I was planning to give her anyway before any of this started, and left still shouting down the corridor, slamming the door hard enough to echo through the whole floor. I locked the door and felt nothing but relief, an enormous weight off my shoulders I hadn't even fully realised I'd been carrying.

Next morning I texted to check she was okay. No reply. Texted again at the airport, waiting for the flight. Still no reply. Just before boarding she messaged saying she was already back in Pattaya. No idea how she got there so fast, but I deleted the message without replying and got on the plane.

A couple of days later walking down Soi Diana I spotted her on a scooter coming straight towards me. Pulled my cap down over my eyes and braced myself for the worst. She rode straight past right next to me without a glance.

I knew her cousin separately, someone I'd met by chance months earlier in Pattaya, and caught up with her a few times that trip without the subject ever coming up in conversation. On a later visit, with a bit more trust built up between us, I asked the cousin directly if she knew what had happened in Chiang Mai that night.

She told me the version Joy had shared, which had no resemblance whatsoever to what actually happened that night. I didn't bother correcting all of it, just mentioned in passing that Joy had been quite drunk that night.

The cousin's face changed immediately, going from surprise to something close to embarrassment. She apologised several times and said Joy is bad when drinking, goes completely crazy and loses it over the smallest thing, and that she herself doesn't go out with her when she's drinking anymore, as a precaution, after living through it firsthand more than once.

Last time she did, she told me, Joy tried to start fights with other Thai girls on Walking Street for no apparent reason, screaming at them in the middle of the street until a couple of security guards had to step in to separate them.

That explained everything that had happened that night in Chiang Mai, every detail suddenly clicking into place like pieces of a puzzle that had made no sense until then. Still friends with the cousin, who takes me around on her scooter to the quieter spots around Pratumnak Hill and Khao Talo whenever I'm in Pattaya, away from the noise of the main streets. A decent outcome, honestly, from what was at the time an otherwise memorable evening.