she gets a better life for herself and for her man. It’s work, pure and simple. And in comparison with local wages, it pays well. A half-decent go-go girl can earn over 100,000 baht a month, about six times what a nurse or a teacher would get. As a student, Miss Pim’s earnings would be zero. Her husband, even as the boss of the motorcycle rank, would be lucky to pull in 10,000 baht a month. Then out of the blue appears Lars, flashing his Euros and offering her 20,000 baht a month just to go to university and have sex with him on his occasional trips to Thailand. Lie back and think of the money. I’ve heard that refrain from countless bargirls. Farangs like Lars assume that girls would be ashamed to take money for sex, that there is something morally wrong with trading sex for money. The Thais don’t see it that way. They see it as commerce, and more fool the farang if he mistakes commerce for love.
How can the husband tolerate his wife sleeping with another man? Because he understands that it’s work. She doesn’t love the farang, she probably doesn’t even like him. She is the mother of his child. She is his wife. The farang is just a customer. A fool with more money than sense.
I hoped that Lars would just do the sensible thing and cut off all contact with Pim. But I knew from experience that often the girl would be able to persuade the farang to give her a second chance. Or a third. Or a fourth. Thai girls can be very persuasive. And farangs can be very stupid. A perfect match, really.
I can never remember if it’s good things that come in threes, or bad things, but that week I got two more ‘good’ girls that guys wanted me to check up on. Like Miss Pim, they were both girls who had never been within a hundred yards of a naughty bar or a short-time hotel. Both ladies were in their early twenties.
A guy called Terry who lived in the UK had lost his heart to Nam, who worked as a private secretary in a Thai oil company.
A South African by the name of Mark who worked for an estate agency in Bangkok had hooked up with Suming, a hi-so girl who seemed to do nothing other than shop, take care of her daughter from a previous marriage, and socialize. She had a maid to clean the ten million-baht penthouse that she shared with Mark. Hi-so girls, in my experience, should come with a Government health warning. Hi-so stands for ‘high society’ and you’ll see them in all the trendy bars and restaurants, hanging out in the expensive shopping malls, or parking their BMWs or SUVs while talking nineteen-to-the-dozen into mobile phones. The hi-so girls are generally high maintenance, they rarely pay their own way and expect to be courted with expensive gifts, holidays and sometimes cold, hard cash. They also, from what I’ve seen, tend to have the moral standards of alley cats that have snacked on Viagra. A pal of mine who is a good deal more cynical than me once said that if a hi-so girl is at the wheel of an expensive car then she’s either having sex with a rich guy, or is the daughter of someone who had sex with a rich guy. Mind you, he’s the same guy who swears blind that bargirls who wear high heels only ever adopt the starfish position when they’re in bed and I know for a fact that he’s wrong on that one.
Anyway, Terry and Mark got in touch with me shortly after I’d burst Lars’ bubble. Of the two cases, Suming was the more interesting because according to Mark she spent most of her evenings at Rivas nightclub in the Sheraton Hotel. Usually she was with Mark, but when he was out of town she went alone or with friends and it was on one of these nights that he wanted me to check on her. That meant sitting in a top bar eyeing up hard bodies and drinking JD and Coke at 200 baht a throw. Mark had okayed all expenses and sent me a decent retainer to kick off the case.
Nam’s routine was much more mundane. She worked in the company’s head office in Yannawa, a huge building more than thirty storeys tall, and I had to hang around in the midday heat trying to spot her among the thousands of office workers pouring out for a noodle or fried rice lunch or at five o’clock when they headed to the bus stops.
Terry had sent me several good photographs of Nam plus a copy of her ID card and passport so it didn’t take me too long to spot her. He didn’t expect me to find out anything untoward. He loved her, she was from a good family in Chonburi and was a university graduate. They were engaged and had already set a date for a wedding in Thailand in six months time and were already talking about starting a family. Everything had been going along swimmingly until Terry had started visiting several websites devoted to Thailand and Thai ways, especially the Stickman website at www.stickmanbangkok.com. Stick’s an old mate and his site is packed with first-person accounts of farangs who have lost their hearts, and their cash, to lying bargirls. There are some success stories too, written by guys who have settled down with former bargirls and never regretted it, but I’d say that the horror stories outnumber the success stories by about fifty to one. Terry realised that the odds were stacked against him, and while he had no reason to doubt that Nam was anything other than the perfect fancA© he figured it would be prudent for me to run a few basic checks. Smart boy.
As always, I ran through a list of questions with him, partly to get a feel for the girl but also because there are often telltale signs that something is wrong that only a long-time resident of Thailand would spot. Women with kids asking for a sin sot, or dowry, for instance. Payment of a sin sot is common enough in Thailand, but the amount paid depends on the girl’s social status and frankly, her condition. A hi-so virgin would set a suitor back several million baht. A bargirl who has been around a bit and has a couple of kids wouldn’t merit anything. So when clients tell me that their bargirl’s parents are insisting on a big dowry, I usually tell them to run a mile.
Nam’s parents ran a small supermarket in her home town and they had asked for a sin sot of 100,000 baht. She wasn’t a virgin when she’d met Terry, but she had only had a couple of boyfriends and no kids so I figured that sounded reasonable. He’d met her in a cinema, she’d been with a girlfriend, he’d been there alone. They’d started chatting, he’d asked her out and she’d accepted. That sounded okay, though it was slightly unusual in that she’d turned up alone on the date. Usually a ‘good’ Thai girl would bring along a friend or two as chaperones.
But what really set alarm bells ringing was that he had never been to her apartment. Not once in all the months he’d known her. She’d told him that as much as she wanted him to see it, the block was for women only. It was close to her office, walking distance. Now, there are woman-only apartment blocks in Bangkok, but they are few and far between, but in my experience it’s always a red flag when a girl doesn’t let a guy see where she lives. They’ll pull out a whole host of excuses: it’s a mess, it’s in a dangerous area, she lives with a friend and the friend has the key. But the bottom line is that she’s probably living with a boyfriend or husband, or the place is full of his pictures and his toothbrush is in the bathroom.
Terry had given me Nam’s office address but he didn’t know the name of the apartment block. That was another red flag raised. Anyway, I went out to Yannawa one afternoon and took a few bags of fried insects over to the nearest motorcycle taxi stand and started chatting to the guys there. The motorcycle taxi guys pretty much know everything that goes on in their locality and they’re always my first port of call in an investigation.
I got chatting away in Khmer and asked them if they knew of any women-only blocks within walking distance. There was lots of frowning and head-shaking but when I said I’d pay a hundred baht to anyone who could come up with a name one of the guys said he thought there was a hostel for women fairly close by so I had him run me over. Another hundred baht for the security guard on duty and I learned that no one who looked like Nam lived there. It was a small place, probably only two dozen studio flats, so I was pretty confident that the guy knew what he was talking about.
My motorcycle guy saw that my wallet was well-packed with 100-baht bills so he came up with another women-only block in Silom. That was well outside walking distance from the office where she worked but I figured it was worth a try so we took a run out there. Another hundred baht later and I had confirmation that Nam didn’t live there either.
By four o’clock I was back at the office block, sweating in the heat and waiting for Nam to finish work. I was pretty sure that she was lying about living in a women-only block close to her office and having caught her out in one lie I was sure there’d be others.
Nam appeared just after five by which time I had large damp patches under both armpits and I could feel puddles of sweat in my shoes. She waved goodbye to a group of her co-workers and walked across the road to a bus stop. A bus came and went and Nam made no move to board it. She looked at her watch, then made a call on her mobile phone. Another bus came and went.
I went inside a coffee shop, bought a Coke and settled down to wait. I figured she was waiting for a bus and that once she’d boarded one I’d get one of the motorcycle taxi guys to follow her. Following busses is a piece of cake because the motorcycle taxi guys all know the bus routes. I was sipping my Coke when a new model Toyota Corolla pulled up at the bus stop. Nam got in and the car roared off. I managed to get a look at the number plate before it vanished around a corner. I rushed over to the motorcycle taxi rank but by the time I’d explained what I wanted the car was well gone. It was my own fault, I should have had my ride already fixed up, but I’d just assumed that she was going to get the bus. Still, I had caught her out in two lies, and I was pretty sure that it had been a Thai man at the wheel of the Corolla.
