BF - Before Falang

Her life 'BF' (Before Falang) was very different to her current life, but similar to many young women in Thailand.

She left the local Temple School in Samut Prakarn, an industrial and commuter city next to Bangkok, before completing high school to earn money to help support her younger brother. They lived with their Father on a modest house on communal land next to a river.

Her Mother had left home, taking her elder children with her, leaving her, the youngest sister, with her little brother. Their Father provided a strict upbringing for his daughter, in contrast to his own bohemian lifestyle. When her Father died, she was still a teenager, so she moved in with her elder sister, who had inherited a family property.

Basically used as an unpaid housekeeper in classic Cinderella style, she left the sister's house one night after a major argument, and moved in with friends in a condo in Chonburi.

Casual work in a restaurant, a local bar plus a failed attempt to run her coffee stall followed, before she moved back to Samut Prakarn to take a job working in Boots the chemist in Bangkok.

Her friends and family suggested she try to find herself a 'falang husband' in Bangkok, as one of her sisters had managed to get a foreign boyfriend who bought her expensive gifts and gave her money. They told her foreign men would like the way she looked: pretty face, slim waist, long legs and unusually large, natural breasts for a Thai girl. She'd been raised in an almost entirety Thai environment and had never met a foreign men, and viewed them as strange and dangerous creatures, so laughed off the suggestion.

Now approaching 30, living in a tiny room with all her belongings in a single drawer, and spending almost half her shop assistant salary on just traveling to work, she was desperately looking for a way to get a better job.

Her sister was now working as a DJ in a Thai nightclub in Ekamai, and suggested she try working there. The nightclub manager took one look at her, and said she could work on the door to attract customers.

Wearing a short silver dress and painfully high stiletto shoes, her and another pretty girl would stand at the entrance to the club, greeting the HiSo Thai men with a smile and a recommendation to buy expensive whisky to reserve a private booth.