Bangkok is Thailand's capital and, for most of the foreigners in these stories, the first city they set foot in. It's chaotic, sprawling, and full of contrasts: skyscrapers next to night markets, temples next to bars. Many of the relationships documented here begin in that mix, between business trips that ran longer than planned and tourists who came for a few days and ended up sorting out a visa for the long term. It's also, unfortunately, the setting for more than one scam in Thailand, so these pages include both genuine love stories and necessary warnings.
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.
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.
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.
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, 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.
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.
A British man arrived in Bangkok carrying every prejudice about Thai women intact. What he found instead was a woman who did not need saving at all.