A widower for ten years, I promised a stranger I'd come back. That's how I met Newt.

I'm a New Zealander, 64 years old, and I've been a widower for almost ten years now. My wife died of cancer fairly fast, only eight months from diagnosis to the end, and since then I travel alone a couple of times a year because staying home through a whole New Zealand winter drags me down more than I'd like to admit. I'm not a drinker, never liked partying, and on every trip to Thailand over the years I've walked straight through the bar areas of Bangkok, of Phuket, of Koh Samui, without ever stopping. I always just kept moving, head down, a polite smile for the girls calling out from the doorways, but never once stopping.

This last trip was fifteen days on Koh Samui, a quiet November, and for the first nine nights nothing changed. I ate dinner alone, almost always at the same couple of restaurants near the hotel where the staff already recognised me, walked along Chaweng in the evenings to get some exercise in, went back to the room to read with the air conditioning on full blast, and felt no urge whatsoever to walk into any of those places with the neon lights and music that's always a bit too loud for my taste. I'd done that same walk dozens of times over the years on different trips, always a spectator from the pavement, never a customer.

On the tenth night, on my way to dinner, I passed a bar with its front wide open onto the street and high stools along the counter, and a girl ran out and grabbed my arm to pull me inside, laughing, insisting in a mix of Thai and English. She wasn't my type, honestly, and I was pretty hungry after the whole walk, so I kept going, though I did promise her, half joking, pointing at my watch and then my stomach, that I'd stop by on the way back.

I spent most of dinner turning it over in my head, my curry going mostly untouched, wondering whether I should just take a different street back and save myself the awkwardness of having to explain that I'd changed my mind. It wasn't even about desire, it was more a matter of silly principles a man carries around his whole life. In the end I decided a promise is a promise, even one made to a stranger on the street on some random Tuesday, and I asked for the bill before I'd even finished my coffee.

I went back to the bar and the girl who'd stopped me was nowhere to be seen. I sat down anyway, ordered a beer, and after a few minutes a woman came over and asked if she could join me.

She wasn't dressed like she worked there, jeans and a plain blouse, nothing flashy about her at all. Her name was Newt.

We talked, her English fairly limited and with plenty of help from Google Translate, passing the phone back and forth every few sentences, about her life in southern Thailand, a town I didn't recognise the name of the first time she said it. She told me about her son, who stayed with his grandmother while she worked, about her mother, who had health problems I never fully understood, and about how she'd lost her job at a textile factory a few months earlier, something to do with a plant closure she described with a mix of resignation and embarrassment that struck me as completely genuine. She was beautiful and, above all, good company, the kind of person time slips away with before you notice two hours have gone by.

Three beers later, a personal record for me since I usually stop at one, she suggested going for coffee. I paid the bar tab, and that's when I had the bar fine system explained to me for the very first time in my life, the fee for taking her out for the night.

We walked out hand in hand and I felt about ten feet tall. The coffee shop she knew was closed at that hour, so we ended up back at my hotel together instead.

When she left I gave her money for the taxi and a generous tip for her company. She smiled and told me, in her broken English, that it was for her family.

I went back the second night. I was greeted like a returning hero, she was cuddled up against me almost immediately, as if she were my longtime girlfriend and not someone I'd known for barely twenty-four hours. I paid her bar fine early that night, and this time we actually made it to the coffee shop, where I made the rookie mistake of paying her directly across the table, in plain view of everyone, something I later understood is considered bad form in this world.

The second night was better than the first, more relaxed, more comfortable, less concerned with the formalities and more focused on just being together. She told me a bit more about her ex-husband, her son's father, who according to her had gone to work in Malaysia years back and barely sent money or asked after the boy anymore. I don't know how much of that was true and how much was the version she told customers, and at some point in the evening I decided I didn't much care which one it was.

On the last night my stomach was fairly upset, something that had happened to me a couple of times on the trip already, but I went anyway because I wanted to say goodbye properly. She ran out of the bar the second she saw me and hugged me just like that first night. I took her to a seafood restaurant she knew, a beautiful spot right by the water with wooden tables and lanterns hanging overhead.

I could barely manage a bowl of soup, my stomach wouldn't allow for anything more, while she watched me with a mix of teasing and real concern, asking every couple of minutes if I was alright, if I wanted to head back to the hotel already, if I needed some medicine she could pick up from the pharmacy on the corner. She ordered one rice dish and one meat dish, nothing excessive, almost shy about choosing, as if she didn't want to ask for too much in front of me, and she ate slowly, looking out at the sea most of the time while I tried not to dwell too much on how rough I felt. I was feeling pretty bad so I gave her some money to help her out and told her I'd come back to see her next time I was in Thailand, not entirely sure whether that was a real promise or just a kind way of saying goodbye, the same doubt I'd had with the first girl nine nights earlier, except this time I meant it.

Half an hour after getting back to my room, already with the air conditioning on and thinking about heading straight to bed, there was a knock at the door. She'd come back, still in the same clothes from dinner, no warning at all. We spent one last night together, talking more than anything else since I still wasn't feeling well, and when it came time for her to leave in the morning she cried, genuinely, no performance about it, her face buried against my shoulder for a good while before she let go. I wasn't far off doing the same myself, if I'm honest, which wasn't something I expected at all from an encounter that had started as nothing more than a courtesy to a stranger on a street in Chaweng.

We never swapped phone numbers, she never asked for mine and I never offered mine, something I rather regret now, looking back. She never asked me for anything beyond what I offered her of my own free will, not once across three nights, not a new phone, not a motorbike, not money for some invented sick relative.

Three nights, no drama, wonderful company. I'd been on the bench for ten years, so to speak, never even considering dating anyone since the funeral, and she was exactly what I needed at exactly the right moment, not a week before and not a week after.

I've thought about those three nights a lot since getting home, more than I'd care to admit in front of my own kids if they ever asked. It's not that I regret any of it, it's more that I'm surprised by how little it took to feel accompanied after so long alone, and how grateful I still am for something as simple as someone sitting with me a while without my having asked for it.

I'm not a deluded old man. I know exactly what this is and what it isn't, and I don't need anyone explaining it to me or warning me about it. I'm only sharing my experience because I believe you can have a genuinely lovely time with someone, even while paying for that time, as long as you never forget exactly what it is you're living through and what it isn't.

I'm going back to Thailand in November. I'll be looking for Newt.