I think sin sod is a valuable custom. It’s usually men who run away. Having an investment in his wife makes him think twice. At first, I thought of sin sod as buying a wife. We were “engaged” (boy, that was fun!) for more than a year before marriage, Although my bride was a city girl, her parents had lost all their money in bad land investments. She grew up rich and they became poor literally overnight. When you marry a girl, you marry her family. My sin sod paid off her parents’ house and they felt very badly about not being able to return it to us. (They did count it, though!) We had a very simple group marriage at the Monks’ Hospital and a table of ten relatives at a Thai restaurant. If a marriage starts off with debt because of a big show-off wedding, it’s doomed. Her mother came with us to pick out a ring. It was expensive but by no means extravagant. We chose it not the mother. Yes, I arrived at the parents’ house at dawn. Her siblings had put my gold chains across each doorway to symbolically keep me from reaching my bride. Parents expect the new husband to have provided their daughter with a house and a car and gold. I drew the line at a car. No need in Bangkok, just doubling both your monthly expences and your frustration. It’s just a show-off buy. We lived with her parents for several months before we found a house. I had the dream of a house on a klong or the river. They were cheap then but we didn’t know how to look for one. So we ended up with a house in a five-year old mooban.The mooban has aged and gotten seedy, as have we after 37 years here. Does sin sod make your wife more valued to you? Probably not, but it’s a good start to a lifelong marriage. Or, at least she hasn’t left me yet!
