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?Letters from Issaan- End of story? Part 1


phoenix

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?Letters from Issaan- End of story?

 

 

 

In January this year, I posted a series of trip reports about travels in Issaan with my friend Nok. It is the same Nok I first wrote about on the old board, in June 2000 I think, under the title ?newbie landed in LOS?. Although I had to ask Khun Sanuk to remove it from the board and his site some time last year, things have changed now, and I?ll try and repost it here, because it really describes the start of my ?relationship? with Nok. Now, at the end of it, it sounds very naïve, but then it was real for me

 

 

 

Since that first report, I have been back to LOS about 8 times, mostly spending my time with Nok. She worked in Nana when I first met her, but in January 2001 she quit working in the bar. In April she started learning traditional massage, and having completed those two courses, enrolled in a school for hairdressing and ?beautician?. (cost of schooling and living supplied by me). I was doing an Henry Higgins/Eliza Doolittle trip. (Pygmalion). She recently completed the school. In August last year she informed me she was pregnant with my child. I wrote about that in a post ?Etiquette relations Mia Leuang/Mia Noi?, in ?Relationships?

 

The upshot of that drama was that she was pregnant with the child of my ?alternate?, a guy from Britain, who visited her about the same frequency, but a month before or after me. He also thought he funded her schooling single-handedly.

 

 

 

I had no bad feelings about that, after all, a girl has to hedge her bets, even if she doesn?t work bar anymore. That baby was aborted when she found out it wasn?t mine, because ?Other man no good, boxes me?.

 

 

 

In December, due to changed personal circumstances, I left my country semi permanently, and came to LOS, with the idea of maybe living here. I got an apartment, and Nok moved in. We both went to school in daytime, me to language school to learn Thai. This period is described in my ?Letters from Issaan? (Trip reports).

 

 

 

Living more or less permanent and fulltime with Nok wasn?t quite what I had anticipated, and it proved to be a rather rocky road. She became temperamental (Used to be always cheerful, happy and easygoing), got bored with me reading or studying at night, mainly watched movies and yakked to her friends on the phone. I slowly over the course of January started to come to the conclusion that the differences between us, age, education levels, culture, background, beliefs etc were too huge to be able to overcome, and that the relationship was bound to head for the rocks. In fact, I started to think about a strategic exit, in a way that would cause the least loss of face and heartache for me.

 

The day after I started thinking about that, she tells me she is pregnant again!

 

 

 

Once bitten before by that one, I go with her to Bumrungrad, and we do tests and a scan. Yes, she is pregnant, yes, the time of conception is during my second to third week with her in December, when we both went to school, and spent all other times together.

 

I had a fertility test done on my arrival here, to see if I could still sire children (not that I wanted to, but I wanted to check out if we could forget about condoms), the doctor said: ? in principle it is possible, but the likelihood is so small it is almost negligible. ? Out went the condoms.

 

So I was faced again with the possibility that she was having my child. I was of course not 100% certain yet; a DNA test after birth would have to verify it. In was possible she wanted a child to tie me to her, and had gone out during school hours to find a suitable farang man to provide her with a baby. I?ll never know.

 

 

 

I felt quite ambivalent this time about fatherhood, especially since I had misgivings about living with her on the longer term. But I did undertake to maintain her during pregnancy, and if the DNA test was affirmative, I?d provide cost of living support for the next 20 years. I didn?t know how that would pan out in terms of contact with her, but decided to not worry about that yet.

 

 

 

Three days later we had a fight about something minor (her irritability was no doubt partly caused by her pregnancy), and she stormed out ? I?ll never come back, I hate you?. Three days later she was back. During these three days, I?d found she used my cell phone the day before our argument to call her friend in England, whom I?ll call Ted. I remembered that she?d shown me the email address she used to write to him, and given me her password, because she claimed she broke it all off with him in November, and would never see him again. I?d read, upon her insistence, the entire years correspondence between her and Ted, remarkably like the emails between her and I, some of them almost identical.

 

 

 

Finding the trace of the phone call, I decide to see if she?d contacted him recently. Yes, she had written to him, saying she was "all alone with nobody looking after her". (while living with me). He told her the week before that he was coming to LOS mid February, and looked forward to see her. She responded by telling him she?d be in Taiwan until Feb21, visiting her daughter. In fact, she knew that I would be gone from LOS for a few weeks starting Feb. 21, the Taiwan story was to hide from Ted the fact that she was living with me.

 

 

 

If she came back again (always a likelyhhood), I thought it was time for her to put her cards on the table, and make a clear choice, him or me. After all, now she had been more or less permanently living with me, it was in my view no longer appropriate for her to have another man on the side. Last year, when I could only come for a week or two every two to three months, I didn?t mind, but this was different.

 

At this time, although I was ambivalent about my chances of an ongoing satisfactory relationship with her, and had been thinking about an exit strategy, I was also again influenced by the fantasy about her child, and some of the times wanted to give it a real go before deciding to quit.

 

 

 

I could have written to Ted directly, but instead decided to make a slightly less direct approach. I sent an email to both her email addresses, asking her to return a few items she had stormed out with. I strongly suspected that Ted might also have her email password, and might find this email from me. The ball would then be in his court.

 

 

 

When she came back, I confronted her with the phone call and emails, and suggested she?d make a choice. She said it was just a joke, she didn?t want to see him, and she wanted me only. I am somewhat weary, but give her the benefit of the doubt.

 

Shortly after that, we leave on a planned ten-day trip around the country.

 

 

 

Will be continued

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