My first real Thai GF was a girl I will call Pot, which is not her real name. Pot is pretty good with English and is married to a hi-so Thai man and I do not wish to cause her to lose face. BTW, all Thai girls have nicknames that are usually 3 or 4 letters long, hence the name Pot. My apologies to all the Pot's out there.
I met Pot, quite by accident. I arrived in Bangkok late on Friday night and was booked into the Westin Hotel on Sukhumvit. I was meeting Pai for pool on Saturday afternoon and I thought I would spend a quiet night in the hotel. However my ADHD kicked in and around about 10 pm I started to get bored and went for a walk. I had no destination, but luck, karma, fate, or whatever intervened and I stumbled onto Soi Cowboy, for the first time, which is one of the favorite red light districts in Bangkok.
My initial impression was of sensory overload! I walked fairly quickly, the length of Cowboy, which is about 200 meters. Now that 200 meters will have about 50 bars and over 1000 beautiful Thai girls parading their assets outside the bars. I was intrigued, but also a bit intimidated by Cowboy at that moment in time. I turned around and walked a bit more slowly, attempting to take in the show.
As I neared the end of Cowboy I was corralled by a middle aged greeter by the name of Sa. Sa used to be a bar girl, but time had run its course and she was now too old and chubby to attract farangs and had become a greeter. Her job was to try to get the shy, retiring kind of guys into the bars where the sharks could work their magic. I was not keen on going inside, but there was a bevy of girls sitting outside waiting for someone to buy them a beer. Sa pointed out a girl who was a Thai-Chinese mix (I was to find out later, 75/25) who seemed uninterested in the whole scene. That fit with me so I let Sa steer me over to Pot's table and I sat down and Sa introduced us and ordered 3 beers (1 for each of us). Sa left us alone and I tried to strike up a conversation.
It turns out that Pot was not all that keen on farangs and preferred Japanese men for a variety of reasons I would learn about over the next couple of years. Sa arrived back with the beers and livened up the conversation a lot. English competency is directly related to how long the girl has been in the bar. Sa told me Pot had just started working the bar 3 weeks ago and was having a difficult time adjusting. Of course I did not believe Sa as most Thai girls will spin the same yarn about being new to the bar scene. Bar girls know that farangs prefer their Thai girls with low mileage and would prefer a Star Trek girl (go where no man has gone before) but then again, you could always get struck by lightning or win the lottery.
Pot's sister-in-law joined us at the table and another beer was procured and her sister (who had considerable bar time) teased her about pretending to like the job and put her arm around me and proceeded to act as if I was the only farang on the planet. Definitely a good bar girl which Pot was not, and would never be. Not sure why, but after a couple of beers I asked Pot to spend the night with me and she disappeared to change. Thai girls always dress very conservatively when they leave the red light district. It is all about 'face' and getting past the security at the higher class hotels. I was surprised at the change in her. She even smiled ... somewhat :-)
We walked the short distance to the Westin and security asked Pot to register at the front desk. They do this in case the bar girl rips off the farang during the night. Thai girls always have their identity card with them. Good things on it are their age (keep you out of jail), their picture (make sure you have the right girl), the ID # so you can always have something to track them down, and most importantly, their sex, in case you want to avoid the LBE (Lady Boy Experience).
I won't bore you with the details other than to say the night was an eye opener to me. Pot became my first TGF and I would fly to Bangkok every other weekend to be with her. In between, she worked the bar and the more attached I got to her , the less I wanted her working the bar, although she seldom went with anyone and preferred to get Japanese guys to buy her drinks. The Japanese guys all said she looked Japanese and many spoke Thai.
I decided after 3 weekends that I would buy Pot's contract. Buying her contract means that I no longer had to bar fine her and If I ditch her, she can always return to her job at the same bar. Little did I know that it also means she could work the bar whenever she wanted to and there was no pressure to go with 'customers' which is what bar girls call the customers. I remember the night I bought her contract. I never realized that it resulted in much status for Pot, cost me 10,000 Baht, and the mama-sans presented Pot and I with a bottle of our choice for the evening. It was a very memorable evening.
At that time, I was half in Bangkok and half in Vancouver, which meant that I would spend 2 months in Bangkok and then 2 months in Vancouver. I had a software contract in Vancouver I used it to fund my lifestyle. I decided to for go couch surfing and get an apartment in Bangkok for Pot and I. Pot had been sharing a room above Cowboy with 5 other bar girls. I thought I was doing her a favor, which I was, kind of, when I was in town. However, when I was in Canada, she missed company (afraid of ghosts, as most Thais are!) and would sleep in her old room above Cowboy with her friends. I gave her enough money so that she did not have to work the bar, but the first time I left for Canada Pot worked the bar. My buddies ratted her out and when I came back to Bangkok, I confronted her.
I have since come to realize this is normal behaviour. Most bar girls do not believe you are coming back. I remember the first time we flew out of Bangkok to Malaysia. Pot did not want to go and eventually I discovered she was afraid I was going to sell her. In the LOS, it is not all that unusual for their own mother to sell them. Enough said.
Pot was what I would refer to as Thai Thai. She is a very traditional Thai girl. All things being equal, she wanted to marry a Thai man who would treat her right, meaning not cheat or box her, and have some children to look after her in her old age.
Pot and I ended up parting, as she did not like that I had my Russian friends in my life, and would leave her for 2 months at a time. She would not post any pics of us on her Facebook page and when I asked her why she said she would when we got married. She did not want to lose face if I ditched her.
Pot was 32 when I met her. She had left school at 15 and at 16 was working 12 hour days, 2 weeks at a time (with 2 days off) in Western Digital, and later Fujitsu clean rooms assembling hard drives. She did this for 15 years until at 31 she had saved enough money to buy a truck for her parents back in the village. She put about 200,000 Baht down and was paying 10,000 Baht a month and was having problems making ends meet. Her overtime kept her afloat. Eventually fatigue and her sister in-law persuaded her to try the bars. I met her before she became 'hardened', of which I will speak more of in later posts.
The sister in-law had a Japanese boyfriend working in Bangkok who decided to go back to Japan. Before he left he gave her 500,000 Baht which the sister-in-law used to leave the bar trade (she was getting on in age and was over 35) and she purchased a Hair Salon on the other side of Bangkok. Bangkok is huge (over 12 million people) and that meant that Pot (who decide to work at the salon) would go live with her and see me only on the weekends.
That was the beginning of the end as I was all alone in Bangkok 5 days a weeks and soon GF#2 and GF#3 appeared on the scene.
Part 4 will discuss how Pot followed her dream, one very crazy Thai massage girl, and Thavorn came into my life
TTYL
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