Phuket is Thailand's largest island, in the south of the country, and one of its most internationally known destinations for beaches and nightlife. It shares with Pattaya and Koh Samui that same profile of a city built around tourism, with a huge community of foreigners who decided to stay after a holiday. Stories set here tend to mix that relaxed island atmosphere with big life decisions: who stays, who leaves, and what happens to a relationship once the return ticket runs out. It's also, like Bangkok or Pattaya, a place where it pays to stay alert to a possible scam.
A 46-year-old Dane met Bun, a 26-year-old Thai translator, and they talked daily for seven months before meeting in person. They spent a month together between Bangkok and Pattaya with no red flags at all. Weeks after he got home, she vanished, and pre-wedding photos on Facebook were the last clue.
After a separation, a 41-year-old Belgian tried south east Asian dating sites and ran into scam after scam, starting with a Filipino woman who always had a new family emergency. He then met a Thai woman who never asked him for anything, and married her on her fifth visit to Europe.
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.
In 2009, 30 years old and out of work after the crash, a British plasterer from Nottinghamshire landed in Bangkok on his way to Australia. A 24-year-old waitress, a month of island-hopping and years of cheap flights later, he ended up living in Phuket: first at her travel shop, then running a bar on Bangla Road. Never a work permit.
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.
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.