"After Awhile Your Approach Changes"

[zanemay]

Here's a summary for anyone who thinks this should be a Trip Report because it's long. You can just read these first few lines and get the gist. The Phases I have been through with ladies in Thailand:

 

PHASE ONE - I WANT A NORMAL, NON-WORKING LADY

PHASE TWO - THE GO-GO BARS, ETC.

PHASE THREE - REGULAR GIRLFRIENDS

MY LIFE AS AN OUT-OF-CONTROL 57 YEAR-OLD TEENAGER

THE FULL CIRCLE - I ONLY WANT THE ?REAL THING? AGAIN

TWO MONTHS LATER. BROKEN AND DISAPPOINTED

BACK TO 100% BUTTERFLY

 

* * * * *

 

"After awhile," he said, "your approach changes." He was a crusty old expat, several years in Malaysia. Back in Thailand now, looking over the wildlife at the Soi 7 Beer Garden.

 

That was two years ago and I was a newbie living on Soi 11. The old fellow was pushing 70 and had been living in Kuala Lamphur for quite awhile. He told me he liked the women there. An expat in Asia for twenty years, he had come back to live in Thailand.

 

I had been chatting up a bird. (I've been over here long enough now that I have adopted some cutesy British language!) If you've been into the Beer Garden you've seen her. Heavy in all the right places, she had promised me a good time. A REALLY good time, compliments of some extraordinary oral skills. Before going to the hotel, however, I had to make a run to Foodland. I left her sitting at the bar next to old guy. Twenty minutes later, as I was walking back in, they were leaving. She told me she would go with me another time. He gave me a guileless nod showing no remorse at all. (Blimey! Ee knicked me bird!)

 

I was on my second trip to the Kingdom at that time and hungry for insight. I wanted to ask him what he meant - ?After awhile your approach changes? - but he was gone. How had his approach changed? I didn't mind too much that he had taken the lady - she was always there. But I really wanted to hear from an old hand. A few months before I had talked with an expat while on my maiden voyage. To a fellow whose knowledge was limited to the Lonely Planet guidebook, the things he had told me were fascinating. That was the first time I had seen the possibilities!

 

Oddly enough, the next day I came across him eating in the little restaurant where I went for breakfast. I approached, but he was terse, had no time for greenhorns. He told me he had to go.

 

But if his approach changed in the same way that mine has, I probably wouldn't have been able to take it all in anyway. At this point I have spent a total of twenty months in Thailand and I have been through a lot of classic phases with the women.

 

PHASE ONE - I WANT A NORMAL, NON-WORKING LADY

 

On my very first trip I wasn't into the girls. I didn't know there was a Nana Plaza, neither the real thing nor the dot com. I was a tourist on another jaunt. Europe, Canada, Ireland, Mexico - this time it was Thailand. I kept bumping into girls, but I wasn't going to be buying anything from them. If I was going to go with a girl, I wanted a "real" girl. After about a month of celibacy, I went to Phuket and met the cutest little bespectacled cook. After talking with her for awhile she intimated that she sometimes went with farang. "Sometimes they give me 1,000. Sometimes more." I had thought I was talking to a "nice" girl. My defenses kicked in. I said I would talk with her some other time and I left.

 

A couple of evenings later, waking up alone from my afternoon nap, I thought of Nu. My whole body "thought" of her. I put on long pants, good shoes and a presentable shirt and marched over to her little roadside som tom shop. I asked her to dinner. Later we had the greatest time in my room. She was very sweet, but had definitely "supplemented" her restaurant income before.

 

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is rarely apparent in Thailand. My "good" girl was REALLY good - a doll, an angel and a sweetheart. But she certainly wasn't "good" in the sense of being a Good Thai Girl. She owned the restaurant AND a bar next to it (and the land under them) and she had a long and eventful history which included living in Europe for awhile. Even though she wasn?t the ?real? girlfriend I might have wanted, it was because of my time with her, and the little bit of my heart she managed to pry away, that I took my leave of Phase One.

 

PHASE TWO - THE GO-GO BARS, ETC.

 

On my next trip a few months later, I stayed in Bangkok for about a month and then went to Phuket looking for Nu. Her family was running the restaurant/shophouse. Her bar was idle. They told me she was working in England. Disappointed, I went back to the big city.

 

By this time I had discovered Stickman and nanaplaza.com. Stickman said to learn Thai: "If you meet someone who has lived in the country a long time and they don't speak Thai, be wary. Something is off." There is a certain amount of truth in that, and at the time it influenced me to enroll for thirty hours of instruction at the Thong Lo Language School. I wasn't a disciplined student, though, because I had also discovered the joy of sex in Thailand.

 

I was a newbie with the ladies. What did I do? I did something I would NEVER do now - I went straight to the Rawhide Bar in Soi Cowboy, was moved by a girl who jumped into my lap and was very, very affectionate. I paid the 500 baht bar fine. I had a good time. A few days later I went to Long Gun and paid another bar fine. I read Soongmak's guide to BJ bars and followed it. I was having fun and money was flying out of my pockets. Day for day that was my most expensive time in Thailand. Living in BKK, paying Go-Go Bar bar fines, and handing over a 1,000+ baht for all nighters.

 

It was right about then that that I met old Mr. Your-Approach-Changes. And it happened that on that very day, my approach took a big turn, because after he left with the lady I thought I would be taking, I stepped over to talk with a thirty-three year old I had taken once before. She had been wonderfully charming, but had "sa-moked" not so great. Now she told me that she hadn't been well before and she liked to sa-moke. I liked Noi very much and took her again and she convinced me. She was a great, fun girl and an oral champion. This bumped me into the next phase.

 

PHASE THREE - REGULAR GIRLFRIENDS

 

This phase lasted for about six months as it evolved. I had two core girlfriends - Noi in Bangkok and An in Pattaya. I was drawn to Noi because she "loved" me. Her love was demanding though. When I was in BKK I had to spend all my time with her. The first time I asked for a little overnight break after five long days together, she cried big, alligator tears, sure that I didn?t love her and wanted to find someone else. So she followed me around as I played pool every night. We went to movies, took day trips and spent a weekend in Ayutthya. When we parted after a few days I would give her thousands of baht which she took without a thank you.

 

I was drawn to An because she was perfect. She was easy to get along with, gave me everything she had to give, never mentioned money and she loved me. It is strange that this bar lady who has seen so much traffic actually did love me. We never spent quite so much time together as I did with Noi, but we got along well at first and got along even better as time went on. I would pay her bar fine each night we were together and give her a thousand baht. I paid rent for both she and Noi a couple of times when they needed it.

 

A few things got me out of the Girlfriend Phase. I saw that the expense of girlfriends was a burden and I started to butterfly in Pattaya. The emotional attachments were slowing me down. Even the perfect An would cry once in awhile because I was spending less time with her.

 

I was living in Pattaya and I would invite Noi to come stay with me. The first couple of times she came for five-day visits and we bored each other into stony silence. After that I would invite her for three days. No matter which, I had to apologize to An and drop all of my other friends - Noi was 24 hours a day.

 

An was always perfect, but I needed more freedom. Noi wanted more money than I was giving her. 5,000 for three days was my limit. She wanted more and was pricing herself out of my market. She had no consideration for An or for other things I wanted to do. The bloom had come off the rose, and I was seeing her as a pushy, self-centered little bitch.

 

I said that An loves me and I know what people are thinking, "Yeah!! Right!!" An has stuck with me through everything and been a friend 100% of the time. She took my butterflying with a grain of salt and could laugh about it with me - she's quite the butterfly herself. When I needed to pull away, she let me. At the beginning of my last trip, I dropped her completely. Wouldn't see her or call her. A few weeks ago I was walking along the beach and heard, "Zane, Zane." It was An. She had quit her last job of overworked cashier and mamasan and gone home for a month. She was back and refreshed. I told her I don't give 1,000 baht LT anymore. This didn't bother her. ?I never asked you for money, did I? I don't care. I want to go with you? We went to my room, had sex, slept for an hour, then went out to play pool. When she left in the morning I gave her 500 baht. This was fine and I started seeing her once in awhile, but I was moving into my next phase.

 

MY LIFE AS AN OUT-OF-CONTROL 57 YEAR-OLD TEENAGER

 

At 57 years old I began living the life I would have loved as a teenager. Free of emotional attachments I followed a hungry dick. One month I had 58 ?dates? with 44 different girls. Everyday ST and LT. Sometimes with two ladies at once. This went on for two months before it got old. By the time I went home I had burned out. It was something I needed to do because I thought that I might be spending the last of sexual currency, but afterwards I knew that that was hardly the case.

 

Anyway, it?s always something, isn?t it? While the dick was satisfied, the heart was hungry. The heaviest thing was that I met a "regular" girl from Bangkok. Not beautiful at all, but a very nice body. Very religious and works as a masseuse for Thai women. Straight as an arrow. She wasn't greedy and didn't mention money. On the other hand I gave her money and I asked her about it - it felt strange paying her. "Oh you want free with me?" ?No, I don't want free, but I don't understand what we are doing. I thought this was different than with every other ladies." In the end it seemed the same. She was pleasant and fun, the sex was good, and when she left I gave her some money. Once, when I told her I would give her money the next day, she told me she wanted it now because she had to go shopping. The same old B.S.

 

THE FULL CIRCLE - I ONLY WANT THE ?REAL THING? AGAIN

 

So here I am again. I?ve been in Pattaya two months and haven?t been to a bar except to play pool with my buddies. I want a normal, non-working girl. (Actually a few of them.) I go with different women, and my criteria isn?t so much that they never go with other men, although that?s a benefit, the criteria is that they are good for the heart. When they leave, I want to feel good inside and I do.

 

And I have a couple of girlfriends that have never gone with any other farang. I met them both in Pattaya while they were on holiday from their regular lives. I have a couple of other girls, kind of half-working girls, who don?t speak English and don?t pursue men. I met them because of my rudimentary Thai. Then I have a girlfriend who works in a bar, but no, I didn?t go to her bar, I met her otherwise, see her three times a week, never pay bar.

 

Joop is twenty-two and very special because she is the closest thing to pure sweetness that I have found. (I wrote about her in ?Life is Still a Magical Place? in Relationships.) I?m taking her and her sister to Phuket this week. A nice girl from a nice Issan family. Everything is great except that I can?t believe she is REALLY interested in 57 year old farang. A few things make me wonder, but when I brought it up after a little problem the other day, there was such a flood of denial and tears! Phew!! Oddly, she has actually moved to Pattaya from her home near Khon Kaen and is working as a cashier in a restaurant. She said this wasn?t because of me, but it just worked out that way. Of course she knows people in Pattaya she was visiting when I met her. Either way, it?s a good thing. I see her every few days.

 

Then there is Pen who works in a sewing shop in BKK. She was in town for a few days a couple of weeks ago. She was with a friend who had an eye out for a farang, but Pen didn?t. She speaks NO English - neither one of them do, it?s just that her friend was bolder. I started talking with the friend, got into a good mood and took them both to Jomtien for a look around. I ended up liking Pen. When we split off on our own, things got interesting. We were taking a shower for the first time and I told her that I liked ?sa-moke.? She was hot for it! She went to her knees right there, lay-o, lay-o. (Quickly.) Wow! Where did she learn that!? (No. Not going with farang - I?m sure of it.) Everything else sexual was like that. If I thought about it, I did it and she liked it.

 

Then there?s Yep. (I wrote about her in ?An Ordinary Prostitute? in Relationships.) Another EVERYTHING girl and really great and perfect. There are some very interesting semantical things to know in Thailand. I told Yep in English that she is perfect and she understood and agreed! Later I looked up ?perfect? because I wanted to know how to say it in Thai. It is literally something like ?is not criticized? or we might say ?is above criticism.? She says it means that she can do everything - cook, clean, do everything sexual and do anything else I might to think of which includes understanding that I go with other ladies. She says all this with a wonderful sincerity, kind of like saying, ?When I know what you want, I?m going to do it every time.? When I said she was perfect, I also meant she had a fine character and intelligence, but I don?t think that plays into her definition, perhaps because she works in a bar.

 

So no, I am trying to keep these two, Joop and Yep. These are the two that I am trying to love. Trying to get love back from. It?s always a problem when we give them money. This remains the most opaque question in all of our minds. It?s impossible to know how they really feel.

 

TWO MONTHS LATER. BROKEN AND DISAPPOINTED.

 

I lost both Joop and Yep. I guess I lost them, maybe I?ll connect with them again, but it won?t be what it was before.

 

Joop took off with her sister, supposedly to take care of some business in Bangkok. She called to say she was going and then she didn't call me again for eight days. That was too long. It told me she wasn?t really interested. I didn?t blame her, but of course my feelings changed.

 

Finally, the phone rang on a Saturday morning and it was Joop. ?Where are you?? I asked. ?On a bus coming to Pattaya!? ?Okay, fine, we?ll talk when I see you.? Then, in what may have been a misunderstanding because of the deadly language barrier, that night she called again. She wanted to come over, but Pen was in from Bangkok. We had set up a date weeks ago. ?You have lady?? asked Joop. ?Yes.? An agitated, ?Oh!? and a click. "Fuck you too!" I thought. You can't just show up and expect me to be on call.

 

A couple of days later I softened and wanted to see her so I called her like I always had. "Can you come over?" "I am at my home. You have lady, I get back on the bus." She had actually made a ten hour U-turn because I had a date! If she had told me that she had been planning to see me that Saturday night when we spoke on Saturday morning, I didn't catch it. I wouldn't have changed my plans anyway. There was no way to call Pen. Anyway, I had suffered enough during those eight days of silence

 

Yep got a call from home. She left without calling me. I didn't know she was gone and rang up her cell. "I'll see you tonight," I said. "I am home. My family needed me." "You're fucking kidding! You mean you left Pattaya and didn't even tell me you were going!?" "I'm sorry. I had to leave quickly." A week later she was back and things were okay, except I had had my painful reality check. A couple of weeks after that she had to go home again. This time she called to say she was going and would be back in a week. When she didn't I called her. "Two more weeks," she said. "I'll be leaving in three weeks. I really hope you make it back." She didn't and I never saw or heard from her again.

 

I don't say that any of this was unexpected. There's the cultural differences, the language barrier, the fact that I'm not monogamous. Maybe Yep sees Pattaya as the unreal place so many other people (Nana Plaza board members) think it is. A weird world of its own where bar girls mix it up with farang butterflies, where nothing is real and nothing matters except making some money. Real life is in the moo ban (home town.) I hoped for a lot more from these two girls, especially Yep who is the most mature.

 

BACK TO 100% BUTTERFLY

 

During the last three weeks before I left Pattaya, after both of my special girls left me high and dry, I went back to my butterfly ways and enjoyed it. I made a play for Nit who I wrote about in another post, I saw a couple of my good "regulars" and I had a great time chasing new ones. I got on the plane with mixed feelings of satisfaction and disappointment. Life and love are messy. Mai pen rai.

 

So?I agree with the old guy. After awhile your approach changes. And changes. And changes some more.

 

At least that the way it works for me.

 

Zane May

 

[carew66]

Quality post zanemay.

:up: :up:

[HSTEACH]

Damn good! Good perspective.

 

Thanks!!!!!!!

[think_too_mut]

>The Phases I have been through with ladies in Thailand:

PHASE ONE - I WANT A NORMAL, NON-WORKING LADY

PHASE TWO - THE GO-GO BARS, ETC.

PHASE THREE - REGULAR GIRLFRIENDS

MY LIFE AS AN OUT-OF-CONTROL 57 YEAR-OLD TEENAGER

THE FULL CIRCLE - I ONLY WANT THE ?REAL THING? AGAIN

TWO MONTHS LATER. BROKEN AND DISAPPOINTED

BACK TO 100% BUTTERFLY

 

 

 

Trouble with illusions in Thailand is - they really happen. Who said that?

 

[pattaya127]

The Phases I have been through with ladies in Thailand:

-I am in love with THAT woman

or

-I love women! ::

[chilli13]

Nice post - I'm sure it'll stay in this forum along with the other one

 

One thing struck me though. Why do you have so high expectations of what the TG's will put up with from an old horny farang to put it frankly?

 

I mean as much as they 'love' you they hopefully play their options & change their approach in a similar manner to you, but hey it's still an amazing world out there - even down the rather sleazy pattaya way

[Redbaron]

I can only the praise in another great zane post. Well done.

 

IB13's got a good point though, you'll find it hard to settle down without getting settled down. Does that make sense? Probably not.

[phoenix]

Hi Zane,

 

I usually enjoy your posts, and this one especially (the exception was your last post, which got you into hot after about three-holing your latest Pattaya friend without condom. I?m afraid I agree with those who were upset about it. Please for the sake of us and all those wonderful companions out there, sheath up!!)

 

But this post here really go me thinking. I?m about your age (a couple of years younger), and have had a similar range of experiences, the ?Wanting a GTG, the wanting to explore the barscene, wanting a Gf, wanting to behave like a teenager? etc. You describe it well.

 

I have been wondering about myself recently ?WHY???

Why am I so preoccupied with all those experiences you describe so well.

 

What do I really want??

What do you really want/

 

As long as we want to continue to butterfly, we?ll have to accept that no TG, GTG or BG, will ever take us seriously in terms ofrelationship.

Even if they do, what 25-30 yr old girl can really be expected to be serious about a farang our age. The only serious consideration is in terms of money, either up front, or potential long term security. Anything else is of less importance to them.

 

I don?t rule out that, in a longer term relation, some may start to develop an affection, but to call it love would be a rather long shot. Affection, and caring for, looking after, in exchange for medium to long term security. OK

But, as long as you butterfly, forget it.

 

Anything longer term, they want a sign of some commitment. Butterflying is the opposite sign.

 

Face it, they have limited shelf life, if they want a secure long time supporter in place for their future, they need to achieve that before their time runs out. If you, by butterflying demonstrate you?re not a good bet, they?ll drop you for the next best bet. Can?t blame them!

 

I lost a long time Gf, who was at that time carrying my child, because I wasn?t ready to commit. It took me a while to come to term with that, but now I understand, and don?t blame her. She chose for the more secure alternative. Good on her!

 

Yet, I still go through fantasies about all thoe same stages you describe.

 

Maybe it?s the ourney, not the destination that counts.

 

[zanemay]

Excellent responses boys!!

 

I think Phoenix spoke for many:

 

"As long as we want to continue to butterfly, we?ll have to accept that no TG, GTG or BG, will ever take us seriously in terms of a relationship."

 

I have a "Zany-ism" to cover this:

 

Hope Springs Eternal -- That's Its Job

 

You know...uhh...maybe there's one girl out there...somewhere

 

:hubba: Zane :hubba:

[MaiLuk]

Zanemay:

 

When you were in this phase: I ONLY WANT THE ?REAL THING? AGAIN, you were very busy.

 

"Joop is twenty-two "

"Then there is Pen "

"Then there?s Yep."

 

If the 'real thing' is finding young girls than you were doing a bang up job.

 

But during this same phase you also said

 

...Joop and Yep. These are the two that I am trying to love. Trying to get love back from.

---

 

You had me confused with this 'real thing' business, now i see what you were after. Love? Between two people its a very rare thing and often a one way street. Trying to accomplish this with two girls? While still butterflying? My two cents: you are integrated into the farang scene in los, the girls are well aware of it. As a committed butterfly you are confusing your role in life with this talk about love, you cannot be serious.

 

Its a lonely life you choose, searching for love will bring you heartache.

 

"BACK TO 100% BUTTERFLY"

 

You never left to begin with! ::

 

 

ps: welkom back?