victrola

I am just amazed at how a woman who has been around the corner can be so foolish or is it the thai guys are that good?

Both. Humans are suckers for love, and yes, some Thais (male and female both) are very good at understanding that.

I wish expat women and men in Asia could have more honest discussions about their experiences. Really, we experience so many of the same things and I wish we would have more sympathy for one another.

I've dated a lot of Asian guys, and each one has been different from the next. I'm not "only" attracted to Asian men, I just happen to live in Asia and like men.

Be careful of applying generalizations about "what Asian men are like" from one guy you meet to the next. That has caused me to do a lot of stupid things and not see the particular individual I was involved with clearly.

Also be careful of making excuses for a guy based on his culture.

My advice is this: if he seems to be giving you space, take it and run. You don't have to sleep around, but for chrissakes, don't act married if you're not. Let a few guys take you out, a variety of them, and find out for yourself what Thai men are like.

I've searched extensively and everything seems to be around £1,000 and of of dubious credibility.

You certainly don't need to break the bank to get good teacher training.

Quality online courses offer a great training opportunity at entry level. They can provide a thorough grounding in a new career and the right tools to approach a new profession within a manageable amount of time and finances. They are a good option particularly if you have a limited budget to further your studies or if you have other work and/or family commitments that restrict the amount of time you have available to study.

As for which course to choose it really depends on how much time, money, and commitment you are prepared to invest. There are quite a few good courses both online and onsite to choose from. You could start by taking a look at TEFLWatch.com. This is a site where TESL/TEFL courses and course providers are independently reviewed and rated.

Learning to teach online without any practical classroom experience is similar to learning to be a ballet dancer by reading a book - waste of time.

You also know ICALPete (seller of online courses) that most employers around the world are looking for a 120 face-to-face training course with 6 1-hour teaching practices.

Do they recognize the CELTA in Thailand? I mean, does having a CELTA enable you to get a better job? I have one, but was sad to find that schools in Japan have never heard of it.

Hi,

I am new to this forum after having lived for four years in Japan and China. I just visited thailand for the first time last month.

First, let me start by requesting that you don't pin the stereotype of "Bitter Western woman" on me. I understand why the stereotype exists, but don't lump me in with the girls who come to Asia and refuse to date anyone but other whites. I have never understood those girls, and for me, dating the local men is something I can't comprehend why any woman would close herself off to. I've got no time for people who villify farang men for dating Asian women, and even less time for men who express disbelief that I could ever be attracted to an Asian man.

Anyway, recently I had a conversation with an expat man in Bangkok who really opened my eyes. Anyway, we talked a lot more than I have the time to write down here, but basically, I came to realize that Western men are suckers for love. And speaking for myself alone, i tend to have forgotten that. Hollywood portrays a "manly man" as someone who never shows his emotions or vulnerability, and I must confess I have internalized that a little bit, and don't often consider that a man may be more sensitive or easily hurt than he appears.

So anyway, I was reading this blog:

http:// www.deanbarrettthailand.com/ten_golden_rules_of_thai_bargirl.htm (smilies put there to prevent hotlinking) and I came across this gem:

8) Learn to prey on the emotional weaknesses of Western men. You must learn how to make customers feel lust, guilt, responsibility, jealousy, and a myriad of other emotions. This isn't that easy as no Thai man would ever fall for the silly little games that come from this but many (certainly not all) Western men are unequipped to handle these games. One of my best mates likes to say (when referring to Western customers dealing with Thai bar gals) that "the gals have the home field advantage and many of us don't even know the rules to this game."

Okay, now as a western woman, i have a handle on the idea that I have to make a man feel lust in order to get him to like me. And be umm, sweet and not mind sports and such.

But emotional weaknesses/ That does not make any sense to me. I was brought up to believe that a woman should pretend that a man has NO emotional weaknesses even when it is blindingly obvois that he does. (Like, for example, noticing that your man seems afraid of heights and saying "gee honey, I am afraid of heights, can we get down from here" rather than comforting him.

So in short, I am realizing that perhaps I have never seen Western men accurately at all, that the ridiculous stereotypes of Hollywood have blinded me to the reality of men. And obviously, Thai women don't have this handicap. C'mon, guys, give me a hand in human understanding over here, I promise i'll use it only for good.

You know it's like this, the more i understand men, the better I am able to treat them. Seeing men innaccurately leads to hurting them inadvertantly, I believe.

So please, give me some insight! I wanted to travel to understand my world better, and i am more confused than ever. Help me get towards the light, please?

Thanks,

V.

p.s I am on a tiny keyboard, please excuse my typos/

Hi V.

Always been told to that woman want the following.

1) Feel wanted, loved and admired.

2) Their partner thinks kindly of them.

3) Whether right or wrong they take your side.

4) Good mannered enough not to belittle you in public, not rven in jest.

5) Give emotional support.

6) Partner is always appreciative.

Guess what men want the same................................We have feelings, Thai women know how to push buttons 1 to 5.

Thanks. I have to do some thinking about hwo western women are taught to deal with men's feelings.

if I may ask, are you more comfortable asking a Thai women for emotional support than a Western one?

why post this on the women's branch? and what exactly is your question- do men have real emotions? why are thai women (or more specifically, bargirls) so adept at manipulating them? how can you become better at manipulating them? i don't get it.

I would post this on the men's branch of you point it out to me, as it is this seemed like a forum where men come to talk about Thai women.

And no, I am not interested in learning how to manipulate a man, and I wonder if you got that idea from what i wrote or from the ideas of Western women you have in your head, just as I have ideas about Western men in my head that prevents me from seeing them accurately of really being able to listen to what they have to say.

But yes, I do want to know what it is abotu Thai bargirls that they are able to understand Western men so well. How did they grow up outside of Western culture, and yet have a clearer understanding of how western men think than Western women do?

I hope to understand man, and my world, better. And since I date Asian men (not as a rule, I just like men and happen to live in Asia so I like the men around me) primarily, I am interested in what Thai bargirls have learned are the differences between Asian man and Western men.

Aren't you a tiny bit interested in this topic? Don't you want to understand yourself better as a human, and as a man?

While I think that most Western men who come to Asia have good hearts, I do think that the majority of men would benefit from a little self-analysis and an examination of the ways in which they differ from Asian men.

All I want is a little discourse that is free from the self-serving bias Western men and women are too quick to show.

Please?

I am no saint myself Victrola...I am not trying to preach from a high horse. But I am not proud of the fact I was involved in a similar situation and am a little shocked that all your empathies seem to lie with the poor beach boy who just cannot help but service these girls, rather than the girl in Bangkok that is being made a complete fool of. The line about about "all the girls just go back home" is the biggest one in the book by the way. I know far more girls sacrificing everything to come here, than ones who don't. And to be honest the only time the girls don't is usually when they find out about somebody like you, and are unwilling to put up with it.

I am glad to hear it is not the person I thought it was, but I am also pretty convinced that I would know who the girl is. Had Rin is a small place. Yes I hear about similar stories all the time, but I rarely hear such calculated justification. Did none of these emails that you read make you feel for these girls or did you just see them as gullible? It is too easy to do that, but don't because it isn't fair. As they say here the Thai men are kings of the "put waan" (sweet talking)...you were got by it, as were all these other girls.

Whoa, calculated justification? I never meant to come across that way. I guess I just try to understand everybody I meet, especially if they are being nice to me, and while i can admit that some people deserve to be condemned rather than understood, I usually try to hang back for the ride and try to "understand' what I can.

Please remember that I found this forum after my first trip to Thailand. If I had been warned beforehand, I would have been a lot more cynical towards him than I was.

Okay, as for the emails from the girls: well, i did see them as gullible, i am afraid. I understand we all have a need to be loved, but how can you believe that someone you met for a half week of drinking really LOVES you? I'm sorry, but there is a time for girls to pull back and remind themselves that men don't fall in love this easy. That said, i did understand how they missed him as they did, no matter what his philandering says about him, he did have a good heart.

You are probably right about him seeing that the "honest' route was the best route to take with me, but at least he didn't have to pull out the really dirty tricks.

And I do feel sorry for his girlfriend in Bangkok, because she is a less cynical person than I am. The only thing I can say in my defense is that I never led him to believe he & I were involved in anything but a holiday fling, and he didn't tell me about her until the third night we were (insert pejoritive term for foreign women who hook up with beach boys here). And after that, i'm afraid, it had become "normal' to me, because every other bartender in his bar has a girlfriend off of the island and a temporary girlfriend on Had Rin, and were looking for more. The other girls were so casual about it I felt like a good girl in comparison to them, but maybe I should give them more credit for just being gullible, since as you say these guys are very good talkers.

all I can say is it won't be happening again, or at least i can say, not unless i am aware of it.

Hi,

I am new to this forum after having lived for four years in Japan and China. I just visited thailand for the first time last month.

First, let me start by requesting that you don't pin the stereotype of "Bitter Western woman" on me. I understand why the stereotype exists, but don't lump me in with the girls who come to Asia and refuse to date anyone but other whites. I have never understood those girls, and for me, dating the local men is something I can't comprehend why any woman would close herself off to. I've got no time for people who villify farang men for dating Asian women, and even less time for men who express disbelief that I could ever be attracted to an Asian man.

Anyway, recently I had a conversation with an expat man in Bangkok who really opened my eyes. Anyway, we talked a lot more than I have the time to write down here, but basically, I came to realize that Western men are suckers for love. And speaking for myself alone, i tend to have forgotten that. Hollywood portrays a "manly man" as someone who never shows his emotions or vulnerability, and I must confess I have internalized that a little bit, and don't often consider that a man may be more sensitive or easily hurt than he appears.

So anyway, I was reading this blog:

http:// www.deanbarrettthailand.com/ten_golden_rules_of_thai_bargirl.htm (smilies put there to prevent hotlinking) and I came across this gem:

8) Learn to prey on the emotional weaknesses of Western men. You must learn how to make customers feel lust, guilt, responsibility, jealousy, and a myriad of other emotions. This isn’t that easy as no Thai man would ever fall for the silly little games that come from this but many (certainly not all) Western men are unequipped to handle these games. One of my best mates likes to say (when referring to Western customers dealing with Thai bar gals) that “the gals have the home field advantage and many of us don’t even know the rules to this game.”

Okay, now as a western woman, i have a handle on the idea that I have to make a man feel lust in order to get him to like me. And be umm, sweet and not mind sports and such.

But emotional weaknesses/ That does not make any sense to me. I was brought up to believe that a woman should pretend that a man has NO emotional weaknesses even when it is blindingly obvois that he does. (Like, for example, noticing that your man seems afraid of heights and saying "gee honey, I am afraid of heights, can we get down from here" rather than comforting him.

So in short, I am realizing that perhaps I have never seen Western men accurately at all, that the ridiculous stereotypes of Hollywood have blinded me to the reality of men. And obviously, Thai women don't have this handicap. C'mon, guys, give me a hand in human understanding over here, I promise i'll use it only for good.

You know it's like this, the more i understand men, the better I am able to treat them. Seeing men innaccurately leads to hurting them inadvertantly, I believe.

So please, give me some insight! I wanted to travel to understand my world better, and i am more confused than ever. Help me get towards the light, please?

Thanks,

V.

p.s I am on a tiny keyboard, please excuse my typos/

Hello! This is my first post here and i am so happy to have found this forum! I'm an English teacher whose been in Asia for the past 4 years, and I came across this forum while searching for blogs of other girls who had met the same beach boys i had met in Haad Rin!

I think my experience is best illustrated by cutting and pasting the email I sent to my best friend about him:

I have so many stories for you! I met a gorgeous Thai bartender boy. He told me sometimes when girls look at him fire-dancing his friends tell him "You like him? For 1000 baht you can take him home for a short time" and they do it. I asked him if they ordered him around when they pay and he said "no, I make a decision, if they are beautiful I go with him, not beautiful I no go." Also, he opened up his email and showed me all the emails he gets from girls he has known, telling him how they love him and miss him. He has a French girlfriend in Bangkok and hopes she will marry him, since her family has money and he hopes he can open up a resort and support his family. We spent four days together and went to a secluded beach for a night. He is soooo lovey-dovey and I understand why so many girls fall for him. I told him I understand the hustler stuff because it's just the nature of his situation. He drove me all around on his motorcycle, and wouldn't let me pay more than half foranything. I'll send you pictures when I get back. I have kissed him goodbye and am headed now to a good snorkeling beach and...

So that was my Thai beach boy experience, and yes, i used condoms and all of the extra safety precautions as well. I hung around with all of the other bartenders at his bar on Haad rin and they had the same stories, all of them had tons of girlfriends, and were great big playboys in general. I'm glad I got a guy who was honest with me, and gave me an awesome guilt-free holiday romance that helped me get my groove back! Yes, he was a hustler, but I was on holiday and the idea of a thai boy hustler seemed romantic, being on holiday enabled me to romanticize a lot of things about him that I would have had to analyze critically if I were looking for a relationship. And i even thought "ooh, he husltes all of these girls but he isn't hustling me, and he shows me all of these emails from girls but he says he doesn't want my e-mail, maybe he really, REALLY LIKES ME!" but I only thought that for a few minutes, thank goodness!

I should read this forum more carefully before posting any more, since I know how annoying forum newbies can be, but I just had to dish that here, since I don't have any girlfriends whove dated in thailand.

However, I wouldn't rule out a move to Thailand, so again, I'm glad I found this forum. Cheers!

Hi Victrola,

I have a fairly good idea that I know the fire dancer you are referring to (if it was within the last couple of years). He is now married to the french girlfriend now and has an 8 month old baby. She doesn't have loads of money...she has pretty much bankrupted herself by trying to build a life with him. A life that he said that he wanted.

It may seem like he was being completely honest with you and it was just a bit of harmless fun...but what about this girlfriend in Bangkok? You may not be in love, but I am sure she is...and would be heartbroken by your few days of "guiltless fun". You were being hustled I am afraid to say...even him being 'completely honest' with you was a ploy (I have seen it used just as much as the "you're the only one" game). He weighed up the odds and decided that you had probably twigged they are all a bunch of players so decided to flatter your intellect by 'levelling' with you. And it worked!

Also, where do you think he got the money from to take you around the island?

I don't want to be harsh, but please don't see the playboy act as harmless.

Mssabai,

Thanks for your honestly. After reading the entirety of this thread I sent a PM to another poster because the guy she describes sounds a little like him and the decription fits. Anyway, it isn't the girl you know because I originally wrote the correct nationality of his girlfriend, then thought "whoa, maybe I should give people a little more privacy on the internet, as I'm not posting his pic on here either, and edited it to say "French". Sorry, I should have thought that through. I am certain that he is not married, as he talked a lot about wanting to marry the girl he is seeing now. (Who is not French, but if you have cause for concern, pm me)

Anyway, I was coming here to post a bit more after reading the rest of the thread, particularly the bit from the girl who had wondered if a beach boy can ever not be a beach boy. Anyway, I told him truthfully that I understood the position he was in, as I have some experience working in bars and vacation resorts myself and I really do feel for the fact that every girl he meets goes back home. In that way, I feel the way the beach boys life their lives is a two way street. In addition, I have known poor girls back home who needed to have a husband with money in a way that women who have the money to take holidays in thailand can't really relate to, and so I can't come down on him so hard for thinking a farang wife would give him a nice life - anyway, he seemed to have a good heart, so i think he could make a woman happier than a lot of other guys I've met.

Yeah, I knew that he had a girlfriend. But, I also knew that he had a foreign girl like myself about once every two weeks. I asked him about this and he told me that there is a tourist girl about that often. I asked him a lot about his gf in Bangkok as well, and he said that he does love her, but doesn't know if she will stay with him, both because she is in bangkok and becuase she worries that he has 'too many girls'. He also mentioned that she has tried to give him money and he doesn't take it. His camera was full of pictures of her, he showed them to me. They were pictures of her dressing table with her makeup and stuff, the kind of things you are only interested in when you really like a girl.

Anyway, I asked him about his tourist culture lifstyle and asked him when he would stop, and he said that most guys stop when they hit 30 or so, and that working in a bar on a beach is something you do when you are young.

And honestly, while i feel bad for the girl that loves him, I don't feel too guilty, because i know that I meant nothing to this guy, just another tourist girl to help him pass the time, and he didn't even take a picture of me.

Oh, and I never meant to imply that he took me places that cost a lot of money. When I say he "took me around the island" I mean that he drove me around on his moto a lot, and the things that he did buy me that he didn't accept money from me for were little things like some street food that cost 30 baht or so. I was doing the backpacker budget thing as well.

Anyway, I'm glad I found this forum. I had mentioned that he had opened up his email and showed me tones of emails from girls around Europe, and let me read them. At least four different girls had mentioned how much they cried when they left him, and all told him that they loved him and missed him, but i didn't see anything about anyone sending him money.

Well, that's about all I have to contribute on this topic, and thanks, Missabi, for talking straight with me.

In a serious note, I've no clue why farang girls would travel halfway across the world to bed one o' these Thai beach boys. I can understand the guys coming here, but the girls? I might not have met the right people, I guess, but Thai guys aren't exactly the personification of what you'd be looking for in an ideal mate, no matter how you cut it.

Eh?

I read into this you understand why men come here because Thai women are better than farang women. And I also read into this that you don't understand why women come here because farang men are better than Thai men?

Is that about right? Or have I misinterpreted your post?

Aww jeez here we go again.

Dear Mr Burman, perhaps you came across the world because Thai women are what you;re looking for, That;s great; I hope you find the woman of your dreams and make her happy someday.

If you want to make her really happy, maybe you should consider that when you put down Thai men, you are saying something negative about Thai culture that might hurt her feelings. And I don't think the insinuation of "You are lucky to have me, because I'm farang" that your attitude implies makes her feel so special either.

Good luck in love and in life.

But the girls blame us guys to go to Thailand to find an easy GF.

Do we?

I acknowledge that some women in Asia give Western men a hard time, and often villify them for liking the Asian girls. But many of us do not. Don't judge the western women you meet prematurely and you may be pleasantly surprised.

Hello! This is my first post here and i am so happy to have found this forum! I'm an English teacher whose been in Asia for the past 4 years, and I came across this forum while searching for blogs of other girls who had met the same beach boys i had met in Haad Rin!

I think my experience is best illustrated by cutting and pasting the email I sent to my best friend about him:

I have so many stories for you! I met a gorgeous Thai bartender boy. He told me sometimes when girls look at him fire-dancing his friends tell him "You like him? For 1000 baht you can take him home for a short time" and they do it. I asked him if they ordered him around when they pay and he said "no, I make a decision, if they are beautiful I go with him, not beautiful I no go." Also, he opened up his email and showed me all the emails he gets from girls he has known, telling him how they love him and miss him. He has a French girlfriend in Bangkok and hopes she will marry him, since her family has money and he hopes he can open up a resort and support his family. We spent four days together and went to a secluded beach for a night. He is soooo lovey-dovey and I understand why so many girls fall for him. I told him I understand the hustler stuff because it's just the nature of his situation. He drove me all around on his motorcycle, and wouldn't let me pay more than half foranything. I'll send you pictures when I get back. I have kissed him goodbye and am headed now to a good snorkeling beach and...

So that was my Thai beach boy experience, and yes, i used condoms and all of the extra safety precautions as well. I hung around with all of the other bartenders at his bar on Haad rin and they had the same stories, all of them had tons of girlfriends, and were great big playboys in general. I'm glad I got a guy who was honest with me, and gave me an awesome guilt-free holiday romance that helped me get my groove back! Yes, he was a hustler, but I was on holiday and the idea of a thai boy hustler seemed romantic, being on holiday enabled me to romanticize a lot of things about him that I would have had to analyze critically if I were looking for a relationship. And i even thought "ooh, he husltes all of these girls but he isn't hustling me, and he shows me all of these emails from girls but he says he doesn't want my e-mail, maybe he really, REALLY LIKES ME!" but I only thought that for a few minutes, thank goodness!

I should read this forum more carefully before posting any more, since I know how annoying forum newbies can be, but I just had to dish that here, since I don't have any girlfriends whove dated in thailand.

However, I wouldn't rule out a move to Thailand, so again, I'm glad I found this forum. Cheers!