In the Land of Smells, there’s never a shortage of suckers

I’m over-wintering (with my wife) in the Land of Smells (LoS). I love a couple of months a year here. You can go running along the seafront or do 40-50 lengths of the pool in the morning, the food is unbelieveble (and cheap), the array of vegetables, herbs and spices in my local market is wonderful and the best entertainment of all can be had by watching the local girls relieving foreigners (farang) of large quantities of money.

This seems to happen on two main levels:

Level 1 – Step 1: Girl gets farang to buy her a drink in the bar where she works. For every �2 drink, the girl gets �1. Step 2: Get farang to take girl for ‘short time (one sex sesssion) – cost �15 to �30. Step 3: Get farang to take girl for ‘long time’ (from one night to several days) price subject to negotiation.

Level 1 is fairly straightforward and in general you get what you pay for unless you’re an idiot and mistakenly take a ladyboy. Then you’ll probably get your drink spiked and wake up a few hours later with a sore head and all your possessions gone without ever finding out that your ‘girl’ probably had more between ‘her’ legs than you ever imagined. It’s at Level 2 that things get a bit more creative.

Level 2 – Step 1: Girl tells farang a sad story “mama sick need medicine”, “papa no work hurt leg”, “buffalo die hit by big car” or whatever. So farang gives girl some money to pay for whatever disaster she has invented. Step 2: Girl tells farang “me no want work bar. Family no money. Me want find farang good heart”. She then looks at him with pleading eyes and adds “many farang no good, hab bad heart”.�Either the farang believes the girl’s story or else he just can’t stand the thought that, after he has gone home, his lovely little girl will be sexually abused by 10-15 huge, fat, sweaty, 150-200 kilo, tattooed sex tourists a week.

So he offers to send her money every month if she gives up her bar work. She agrees and they have a tearful farewell at the airport. Stupid farang then sends money every month while girl goes back to bar to find another willing victim.

(Please note, I am not making any moral judgements on the girls. There is a great difference between growing up in the UK where, if you are too lazy or stupid to work, you can get �25,000 a year for necessities like booze, fags, flat-screen TVs, Playstations and a holiday in Benidorm and growing up in a country where, if you don’t work you don’t eat. In fact, as a former salesman myself, I often watch the girls’ sales techniques with admiration)

But then there’s an impressive refinement of Level 2 extraction of money. Step 3: Farang misses girl so much that he agrees to pay for a house to be built in her village (cost �25,000 to �30,000) where they can both eventually live happily ever after. Unfortunately, in the LoS foreigners cannot own land and cannot own 50% or more of a property. So, to make things easier for the farang, the girl offers to put the property 60% in her name and 40% in the name of the farang, “no plobrem, you me same same, sell house I give you money, sure sure, me good girl”.

Perhaps some readers can already guess where this is going to end?

Sometimes the girls here refer to farang men as “kwai” (water buffalo) because they’re usually big, fat and smelly like water buffalo and easily as stupid.

I often read about men getting fleeced here by the ‘love of their lives’ who is usually less than half their age and certainly less than half their weight. And yesterday I met a real live example. He’s Spanish, from Barcelona. Though he’s not the usual sweaty, tattooed, shaven-headed lard-lump. In fact, he’s only 35 years old and quite good looking. But he now spends most days begging for a few baht outside my local 7Eleven.

A few years ago, he met a lovely 19-year-old girl in a bar in the appropriately named Bangkok. She quickly moved through Level 1 steps 1, 2 and 3. Then she took him to Level 2. He was soon sending her over �1,000 a month – quite a lot of money even in Europe, a fortune here where it’s equivalent to about �50,000 a year tax-free in spending power.

Then came the house in her village where they would both live happily ever after – only �28,000 and with 5 bedrooms and a swimming pool:

Oh, and to deal with the legal issues of ownership, the girl’s mother kindly offered to let the house be put 60% in her name and 40% in the Spaniard’s name, “no plobrem, we no cheat you, we good people, we Buddha good heart”. So, once the house was ready he moved from Spain to the LoS to be with his beloved. But as he was no longer earning money, he wasn’t contributing the �1,000 a month to the family budget that they had come to expect. So they threw him out, contacted the local police and for a generous contribution to the ‘police pension fund’ had a local copper warn the guy that he’d be thrown in prison if he ever returned to the village.

I didn’t check this, but I imagine to make payments for building the house easier he probably set up a joint bank account with the girl� “no plobrem, we no cheat you, we believe Buddha, hab to be good in life for next life” and she helpfully emptied the account before he was thrown out of the home he had paid for.

Thus, he spends his time begging for enough money to survive.

There’s a old Yiddish saying “when a man’s penis stands up, his brains go into the ground”. From what I’ve observed here, I can vouch for the accuracy of this statement.