How I Met My Thai Wife
So when I left off I was up to 2005 and the winds of change were ready to blow into my life.
The past couple years I had been developing the idea of expatriating, leaving America to live in another country. What country though? I had been traveling quite a bit over the past 5 years and the list had been narrowed down to Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Costa Rica. Russia was a contender, but as you can see from the short list I didn’t want to endure any cold weather. Mexico was also a possibility, but I had never been there yet, so couldn’t really assess whether or not I would like it.
So in October of 2005 I booked a 3 week trip to Cozumel. The plan was to get some diving in as well as investigating the rest of the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula from Cancun down to the border with Belize. My flight was booked and the initial week in Cozumel was booked as well as the diving being all set. The trip was planned for November, so all that was left was the waiting.
As they say though “The best laid plans of mice and men may often go awry”. So it was with my planned Mexico excursion when on October 20th, 2005 hurricane Wilma, the most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Atlantic basin made landfall on Cozumel.
The small island was completely devastated and my plans were completely disrupted. I held out for a couple weeks, hoping the devastation wasn’t complete, but no luck there. That’s why in mid-November I changed tack and re-booked everything for my favorite destination – Thailand – for April of 2006 to coincide with the Thai New Year celebration of Songkran. As a side note, I have since made it to Cozumel and my wife and I agree it would be a wonderful place to spend an extended period of time. Chances are you’ll find me blogging from there or nearby sometime in the future.
Here’s where fate steps in. Literally the day after booking my trip to Thailand I was on a dating site and up pops my (future) wife. She says little more than hello and that she works as a nurse in Bangkok and then has to log off with promises of chatting the next day. I was confused as to why she would pop up just to leave, but quickly forgot about the short contact.
As this was over the Thanksgiving holiday I was working 16 hour days to provide on site support for my companies data center. No one else wanted to work holidays and for me it was a great chance to make a nice chunk of cash for very little work. As long as nothing went down over the 4 days I was getting double pay for 48 hours of very easy work.
That weekend I spent the majority of my time online chatting with my wife and getting to know each other. Despite incredibly different cultural backgrounds we both had very similar goals, motivations and ideals and by the end of that 4 day weekend I was beginning to be hooked. As it turns out so was she.
Over the following 4 months not a single day went by that we weren’t chatting online, talking on the phone or using our webcams to talk “face-to-face”. By the time April rolled around we were both in love (still hard to believe) and when I arrived in Thailand it was only 9 days until we decided to get married. And such was the unbelievable beginning to our wonderful relationship.
Naturally this turn of events pretty much cemented my choice for an expatriation destination. Thailand it would be, but not until Golf came to the U.S. for some American cultural experience and to be with me while I continued to pay down the rest of my debt and save for our eventual return to Thailand.
She arrived in November 2006 (almost 1 year to the day after our first chat) and even though I was over $40,000 in debt at that point I promised her that we would return to Thailand within 5 years.
The debt took 33 months to get rid of and the savings took an additional 19 months, 6 months shy of my promised 5 years even though we added a 3rd member to our family in June 2010. That almost derailed things, but you will find that many times where there’s a will there’s a way and we made adjustments to keep our savings on track even with the expense of a new baby.
And that’s how I found myself moving to Thailand in June 2011 with my lovely wife and our adorable 1 year old daughter. And if you are wondering how we finance everything since then it is a combination of my earnings from sites online and my wife’s salary here in Thailand. No we aren’t wealthy, not in the monetary sense. We are however very wealthy in terms of our relationship, family and experiences.
And what about all of you…are there any readers out there with dreams of an expats life in Thailand? Do you have a story of a time where fate intervened and sent your life off in a new direction? Are you working towards your dreams and what are those dreams? You can post anonymously if you are too shy to publicly share your dreams; I know it can be a very vulnerable position to place yourself in.
Read the entire series:
1. My First Trip to Bangkok
2. Changes and a Coming Hurricane
3. How I Met My Thai Wife
4. Thai Visa Costs, Types and Our Arrival in Thailand
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“Here’s where fate steps in”
Funny that. Fate played a huge part in me meeting my own wife too. I was on one of many Thailand trips back in 2010. It was coming to the end of my trip and I only had a couple of days left. Then it happened…..the Iceland volcano caused chaos over Europe and my flight home was cancelled. I ended up staying for an additional 10 days before I could get on a flight. That was over 2.5 years ago and we’re now happily married. My life would have been so much different if it wasn’t for a helping hand from mother nature
It’s a wonderful story Steve. And, nice to hear these cases where there is true love between a Thai girl and foreign man. I wish you good luck for the future and hope you can find a good school for your daughter. If you are interested, there are some Catholic schools in Bangkok such as Sacred Heart Convent with bi-lingual programs that are a little cheaper than international schools but still have a rather good quality reputation among Thais.
Hi good evening from accra ghana,i am a ghanaian interested thai culture,i need a thai lady for a serious relationship and exchange of visits reply needed urgently bye
Hi Steve,
I enjoy reading your posts and appreciate your honesty and good sense of humor. I was approaching sixty, had been married twice before to western women, and was quite frankly, about to throw in the towel on relationships altogether.
I had traveled quite a bit in South Asia and had talked to many retired expats who were “living the good life” overseas, several of them married to Asian women. Knowing that my own retirement was close at hand, and that my income would be barely adequate in the states, I began to research the possibilities of retiring in Asia (somewhere) and hopefully, finding a GOOD woman to spend the rest of my days with. That is when I joined an Asian online dating site.
I must admit, I “shopped around” quite a bit. Being so burned out on relationships and also online dating in the west, I wasn’t about to settle for second best. I corresponded with Ukrainian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Phillipine and finally, Thai women. Most of them seemed nice enough but when we got down to brass tacks it was about money, and leaving their home country.
Just when I was about to give up, I ran across a profile that seemed to jump out at me. Her photo wasn’t a glam shot. She was in jeans and a t-shirt, no makeup, sitting on a bench in a train. I think what caught my eye (and still melts my heart) was her brilliant smile. It seemed to light up the whole picture. As it turned out, the profile as well as the photo (taken with a cell phone) was posted by a friend of this gal who was trying to help her find a good man.
When I first started to write to her, her friends had to help her out because she couldn’t speak or write any english at all. She informed me out front that she was in her forties, single no kids, loved Thailand and didn’t want to leave. She was a school teacher, not a bar girl….no drink, no smoke, no drugs, and if that was what I was looking for, I’d better look elsewhere.
Maybe she thought that would be the end of it, but right off the bat she hit a home run with me!
As I was planning on being in India for a month, I arranged to come to Thailand and meet her at the end of my trip. Luckily her two english speaking girlfriends chaparoned us for the duration of my visit. At the end of my visit she thought I would never return, and I felt I never wanted to leave!
We’ve been married (civil and traditional) for a little over a year now and she is doing quite well with english (even teaching a bit to her students) and I am picking up a little Thai along the way. She will be coming for a visit to my home in the U.S. in october and in november I will be heading over to start my retirement in Thailand.
We are very happy together and her family has embraced me as one of their own. Although it has been very challenging for both of us, we both agree that our love and dedication for each other will help us overcome any obstacles we may face in the future.
I think it is a great story. It is nice to hear of Thai – western couples where the wife is not just the stone around her husbands neck financially but a real contributor to the family income.
It saddens me to see naive girls selling themselves short by marrying a man for what they assume is a good life with often a man who is unable to communicate or even relate on a level intellectually with their spouse. That is not to say or imply all western -Thai marriages are for security on the part of the Thai or sex on the part of the westerner but a lot certainly were started with that reason in mind.
I often hear of expats that leave Thailand to get their children a western educations and go back to their home country to live fr a number of years to do this, what is your feelings on this? Maybe a posting might be in order for this some time in the future. I know is soon to worry about for you, but as father I am sure it must be in the back of your mind, is it not?
Hi Somchit,
My wife and I have discussed this already even though school is 3 years distant. We have not come up with a suitable solution yet. On the one hand, the schooling back in the U.S. is free (well my taxes have already paid for it) and as long as we are in a good school district the education will be good. On the other hand, we could don’t particularly wish to return to the U.S. Here in Thailand we could get a decent education for our daughter, however the price tag would be in the neighborhood of 400k THB/yr. A third option we have considered is home schooling, however I am not certain I am up to that. Qualified yes, interested…not sure. Added to the whole schooling issue is the fact that my wife will be completing a degree in about 18 months and I believe that it will be necessary for us to remain in Thailand for her to at least get her new career off the ground. So, yes it is in the back of both our minds, but we don’t have a good answer as of yet. It is a very good idea for a post though and I will certainly cover it in more depth as my daughters 5th birthday comes closer.