Should you send money to the Thai family to keep your girl?

If you are sending money to the family of your Thai girlfriend just to keep her, many of your friends will say without hesitation “Are you crazy?” If you have never lived in Thailand and do not know anything about its culture or abject poverty in certain provinces then this is an easy and logical reaction. Your girlfriend, in this particular scenario, is working in Pattaya and when you met her and fell in love you soon found out she is supporting her family who live in a rural part of North East Thailand. The easiest way for an uneducated girl to earn money in Pattaya is to work in a bar and get bar fined every day/night and earn more money than her family have ever seen! The downside is you may well have fallen in love with a girl that has been with more guys than you can wave a stick at…

It seems the answer is to pay her enough money to leave the bar job and also pay her enough to cover her family expenses. She may have a Thai child or 2 living with her parents in her home village too. At this point if you are a fairly well off guy and of a good honest, giving nature you may feel like a white knight coming to save the day. So you visit the family in the village and they greet you with open arms. It’s a fantastic feeling knowing that you can help them in their hour of need and your girl loves you maak maak!

TIME OUT! Think about your actions and think about what is really going on. Of course they all ‘love you’ you’re about to become the new sponsor! As for your girlfriend she might love you, but how can you really tell? You have money, she doesn’t have to work if you take care of her. Also, are you the only sponsor? Thai bar girls learn quickly that their time at being bought for short and long times is limited, so they have to make as much money as possible in the time they have. Some will play the ‘sending money home to the poor family routine’ to several wealthy foreigners and end up having multiple sponsors, when all along you thought you were the one!

Not all bar girls are this dishonest, the ones that are see it purely as business, the ones that aren’t are in the minority however. How would you feel having to sleep with smelly fat foreigner’s every day? You would soon develop a thick skin and a hard attitude to the business if you are going to survive, plus when you have met so many players and guys that promise the world and never deliver you will be inclined to take what you can, when you can.

If you find out you aren’t the only foreigner paying for the new village swimming pool and get upset etc, it’s just time for your girl to find another sponsor and so, the cycle continues…. OK, how can you check if your girl is being straight with you? After all you would like to know if she is really going back to her village to see her family when you go home on business, rather than simply going back to the bar or A-Go-Go to find the next sugar daddy. The only way to know this for sure is for you to hire a private detective, who will keep an eye on her while you’re away. It is recommended that you hire a foreign detective, rather than Thai, that has Thai assistants or speaks fluent Thai.

(It is also worth knowing that traditional Thai culture requires the guy to take care of the family, whether you are Thai or foreign. So the scenario here is really just a corruption of a culturally accepted norm.)

And now for the dilemma… ‘Love’ is all about trust, if you hire a detective to check up on your girl, then you clearly do not trust her! If you just want to keep your girl for your amusement and your relationship isn’t about love and you don’t want anyone else going near her, then the private detective option probably is a good idea!

And finally, this old saying couldn’t be more true ‘A fool and his money are soon parted.’