I Need Some Advice, Please!

[HB2010]

hello,

first let me say, i'm from the usa and traveled to thailand twice in 2 years. late last year i met a young thai via the gay.com site. chatted for months before we met in january of this year. side note here, the first time we chatted on gay.com, not 1 thing was mentioned about sex or how big is your cock! okay, we spent 2 fantastic weeks together. laughing, talking, kidding, tickling, swimming, dancing, eating and of course, making love ( no sex, just making love, big difference!) i'm coming back this december for 3 weeks. i love this guy. and he loves me. i also like ( not in love though) thailand. i have the financial opportunity to move there. i'll get a job, but i can afford to make the move. my question, am i moving for the "Right" reason(s)?? i feel afterall, you only live once, so make the best of it!

i'd appreciate any response. thank you!

[Thaiquila]

Living in Thailand and your experience with your Thai guy are going to be entirely different experiences LIVING in Thailand versus being on VACATION in Thailand. My suggestion is before you make a rash move, visit Thailand on a longer term trial basis, for example, three months. Things should be a bit clearer after that.

And what kind of job do you think you can get in Thailand?

[HB2010]

Living in Thailand and your experience with your Thai guy are going to be entirely different experiences LIVING in Thailand versus being on VACATION in Thailand. My suggestion is before you make a rash move, visit Thailand on a longer term trial basis, for example, three months. Things should be a bit clearer after that.

And what kind of job do you think you can get in Thailand?

thanks thaiquila for your comments. i agree. afterall, you really don't know a person until you Live with him. and i think it takes longer then 3 months. a year is better. i can always move back to the usa. teaching job eventually.

[DUMPSTER]

What does your b/f do?

[Oogleman]

My advice would be to know this guy for at least a year before you even think of moving.

[jdinasia]

December is a long way off .... and a young heart is often a fickle heart ....

don't even think of moving here if you don't love it here! If you do it'll drive you nuts!

[toptuan]

hello,

first let me say, i'm from the usa and traveled to thailand twice in 2 years. late last year i met a young thai via the gay.com site. chatted for months before we met in january of this year. side note here, the first time we chatted on gay.com, not 1 thing was mentioned about sex or how big is your cock! okay, we spent 2 fantastic weeks together. laughing, talking, kidding, tickling, swimming, dancing, eating and of course, making love ( no sex, just making love, big difference!) i'm coming back this december for 3 weeks. i love this guy. and he loves me. i also like ( not in love though) thailand. i have the financial opportunity to move there. i'll get a job, but i can afford to make the move. my question, am i moving for the "Right" reason(s)?? i feel afterall, you only live once, so make the best of it!

i'd appreciate any response. thank you!

My experience parallels yours almost exactly. I cut the cord and made the move. Everything worked out very nicely. Never regretted it.

Call me a romantic, call me impulsive (never did an impulsive thing in my life prior to this), call me lucky, or call me crazy (as quite a few friends did in my home country). I've finally come to the point I don't care what they call (or called) me. I followed my heart and it didn't fail me.

Go for it. Like you said, you've got an out--you can always move back.

[Ijustwannateach]

Gabriel,

Certain Thais can be expert at maximizing the differences between appearance and reality, when they want to be- especially when their "victims" are willing participants. There is a large corps of Thai guys, gay *and* straight- who know very well about Internet chatting, tourist hangouts in Thailand, and the foreign gay scene- who basically live off the foreign gay community.

That doesn't mean they don't like foreigners, or don't like sex, or don't like you. They may very well like or even love you. However, this is still a Victorian-style culture and money is at least as important as love as a concern in many relationships.

What other posters have hinted less bluntly is that it could be suspicious that your young Thai friend has two weeks free simply to run off and frolic with you. You need to worry about how he gets his living, unless you are willing to provide that living (probably at a high income level)- and if you are, then your eyes are wide open and good for you. Otherwise you may be in for some very nasty surprises when you move here. The relatively high income and standard of living you enjoy as a tourist may not translate into a satisfactory arrangement for you or your Thai friend when you are a resident and working here.

How did he learn his English? Was he raised in a fairly wealthy style to begin with, or not? If not, there is a certain suspicious element to his fluency- in other words, most persons with such high English ability are either relatively wealthy, or have had a *lot* of contact (of some sort) with English-speaking foreigners.

Is he willing to introduce you to his family or other friends? Reticence in this regard may be a sign of a double life in more than one way.

Nearly every foreigner arriving in Thailand has endured at least one (and usually more) encounter with gold-diggers, stealth prostitutes, and other parasites. Learning to identify and avoid them is only the first step in intercultural dating- *then* you have to learn the tricks and pitfalls of dealing with the "real" Thai gays. Fortunately, there are fringe benefits and other joys to be reaped in the process- but it is easy to get a broken heart and wise to be careful in what you do. "Caution to the wind" does not result in many happy endings here.

I advise you read many of the threads in this subforum and gather as much information as you can before making any firm decisions. I concur with other posters' advice for you to arrange a longer-term holiday here before jumping- preferably one which involves staying in the city and living a normal day-to-day life with your young man, and not going on any exotic tours. That might provide you with a better picture of the ways things will be when you are here.

"Steven"

[toptuan]

Steve has a lot of good points.

If you covered all the important bases in your long "chats months before we ever met"--and, I might add--continue them as you get more serious about committing your life to him and Thailand, then you have a good basis to proceed (as opposed to "throwing caution to the wind.")

In doing what you did, I made sure we turned over every stone: cultural issues, family issues, money-boy issues, age differences, long-term careers, how to handle normal life when the "honeymoon" was over, etc. The emails & chats could have filled a large volume (and just may, someday!).

If either of us start to depart from our original perceptions or impllied agreed-upon direction, those early conversations provide good benchmarks--and, we often go back to them in retrospect--to either reaffirm or re-evaluate.

Good luck (and I can't understimate THAT wild card...)

[Thaiquila]

Yes, indeed.

Mileage may vary.

Though if people experienced in Thailand were to be more honest with you, they might tell you the ODDS of this first one you met working out to be a long term "real one" are not very high.

You learn so much the more time you spend in Thailand ...

Edited June 11, 2006 by Thaiquila

[Ijustwannateach]

^Agreed... and to put things in a nutshell:

"Don't move here for the sake of someone you've already met as a tourist."

[HB2010]

What does your b/f do?

my b/f graduated from a university in bangkok several years ago and is in customer service for a large transportation company in bangkok.

[jdinasia]

Yet again .... sweeping characterizations of Thai's in the above posts ...... <kinda sad really ... we have pretty well gone mnoths without this stuff>

And to answer the question TQ posted above ....

I dated a total of three guys when I got here ... none of them users ... all of them still friends ... before I met my partner ...

Granted I didn't do the Silom bar scene etc at ALL to meet these guys. But still ...

Edited June 11, 2006 by jdinasia

[HB2010]

i want to thank everybody for all your constructive comments. obviously i need to do more thinking and come september it'll be 1 year since i first met my b/f. we'll do more chatting and i won't make the move until after i come to thailand in december ( which i told him some time ago). that will give me 3 more weeks with him. he does want me to meet his family and talk face to face about me moving. once again, thank you for your comments. i need it.

[Ijustwannateach]

Gabriel,

I don't mean to shock you, but it would also be reasonable advice not to take what your guy says about his life for granted until you've actually seen him in his office/workplace. It's fairly common for a CERTAIN SECTOR of Thais who date foreigners to make up things about their lives on the assumption you'll never know the difference.

In one case, I got set up on a blind date with a guy who said he worked for a Japanese company (with Japanese bosses). Unfortunately for him, I knew Japanese and could easily discern he knew not a word; furthermore, he responded badly to my "poison pill" routine: "oh, yes, I only make 20,000B a month teaching English to little Prathom students off in Noburi, but I really like Thai food, why don't you come visit" - never heard from him again until the guy who set me up forwarded what might be called "compromising" photos he'd found on the Internet.

Of course, you may have lucked out and found a sincere guy on the Internet from abroad who could manage to get a two-week vacation with you [it's typical for an employee to get one day off a week, with no other holiday except for emergencies]- some people do- though as Thaiquila says, your chances are small. Again, my best advice for you is to maintain a healthy skepticism until things he tells you get confirmed, again and again and again.

Of course, chances are you won't take any of this advice- I didn't want to hear these kinds of things when I was a newbie here. It's easy to stay in denial.

Good luck, indeed.

Edited June 11, 2006 by Ijustwannateach

[Thaiquila]

Yet again .... sweeping characterizations of Thai's in the above posts ...... <kinda sad really ... we have pretty well gone mnoths without this stuff>

And to answer the question TQ posted above ....

I dated a total of three guys when I got here ... none of them users ... all of them still friends ... before I met my partner ...

Granted I didn't do the Silom bar scene etc at ALL to meet these guys. But still ...

I think you have mistaken me for someone else!!!!!!

The only question I asked of the OP is what kind of job he thinks he can get in Thailand.

Sometimes new expats don't realize the limitations there.

[HB2010]

Gabriel,

I don't mean to shock you, but it would also be reasonable advice not to take what your guy says about his life for granted until you've actually seen him in his office/workplace. It's fairly common for a CERTAIN SECTOR of Thais who date foreigners to make up things about their lives on the assumption you'll never know the difference.

In one case, I got set up on a blind date with a guy who said he worked for a Japanese company (with Japanese bosses). Unfortunately for him, I knew Japanese and could easily discern he knew not a word; furthermore, he responded badly to my "poison pill" routine: "oh, yes, I only make 20,000B a month teaching English to little Prathom students off in Noburi, but I really like Thai food, why don't you come visit" - never heard from him again until the guy who set me up forwarded what might be called "compromising" photos he'd found on the Internet.

Of course, you may have lucked out and found a sincere guy on the Internet from abroad who could manage to get a two-week vacation with you [it's typical for an employee to get one day off a week, with no other holiday except for emergencies]- some people do- though as Thaiquila says, your chances are small. Again, my best advice for you is to maintain a healthy skepticism until things he tells you get confirmed, again and again and again.

Of course, chances are you won't take any of this advice- I didn't want to hear these kinds of things when I was a newbie here. It's easy to stay in denial.

Good luck, indeed.

hi,

thank for your comments. and no, you didn't "shock me". i appreciate your candor. first, let me explain that my b/f only took 4 days off from work to be with me in krabi last january. and by the way, he paid his own way down there. i wanted to see if he really was interested in seeing me and i never offered to pay his way. the rest of the time, we spent in bangkok and he worked every day. and second, i called his office and indeed he does work there. has for 4 years. i guess my nature is to be cautious. over cautious, thats why i've posted this question, to get other opinions. opinions that arn't "rose colored". btw, i do like your "poison pill" routine! you are good! :-)

[Thaiquila]

It sounds like you have met a "better quality" type of Thai guy than is more typical for a first time visitor to Thailand, who, lets face it, usually meets a bar worker or stealth prostitute. So, a good start for you anyway, enjoy your adventure!

[HB2010]

It sounds like you have met a "better quality" type of Thai guy than is more typical for a first time visitor to Thailand, who, lets face it, usually meets a bar worker or stealth prostitute. So, a good start for you anyway, enjoy your adventure!

Thanks! its all about the heart and mind. i just need to buckle up for this adventure!

[DUMPSTER]

What does your b/f do?

my b/f graduated from a university in bangkok several years ago and is in customer service for a large transportation company in bangkok.

Well that's a good start. Personally, I would check out everything about him to verify what he is telling you. Look for any warning signs and take notice of any alarm bells that start ringing.

I have been in this situation before, and from my experience, I would say that you are very much in lust with this guy but lust does die down and in time you will realise if it is actually love.

If you are aware of what you are doing in this relationship you will see it for what it truely is.

Many guys will tell you of negatives and some positives but everyone is different. Your experience is unique to you. But if you don't try, how will you ever know? If you have the mindset, if it works out great, if it doesn't, nevermind, you wont get burnt. and as you say, you have nothing much to lose and lots to gain, so follow your heart, be aware and enjoy the ride. That's what life is all about, isn't it?

[toptuan]

• my b/f only took 4 days off from work to be with me in krabi last january
  
• he paid his own way
  
• he went to work while you were back in Bangkok
  
• You called to verify work
  
• has been at if for 4 years
  

I concur, all very strong indications you have a winner. I think you have a very healthy mix of optimism and caution. And, you're giving it time. Did you say what you might do (for work) when you get here? (is that for forum knowledge?).

[jdinasia]

OK ....

Did any of you move here that didn't love Thailand before getting here? I think this is the area of risk that is far bigger than the guy involved!

[DUMPSTER]

I have to agree with JD. If you don't really like the place you could be asking for trouble and even if you love the place it can be a very difficult / frustrating place for a westerner to live. But again if you don't try how will you ever know?

I had been here 4 times on holiday before I finally moved and for me living here was completely different. After 6 months I had had enough but I changed my expectations and started accepting life as it is here and not as it is in the UK and things started to change for me.

[toptuan]

OK ....

Did any of you move here that didn't love Thailand before getting here? I think this is the area of risk that is far bigger than the guy involved!

I was in love with the idea of living in a non-western exotic culture, period. Coulda been India or China. Glad it turned out to be Thailand.

I met Thailand and my soul mate the same day. They seemed to come to me inextricably intertwined. But really, Thailand is just the icing on the cake (Thai soul mate). I do believe that with a piece of cake this good, a hut* in the jungles of Laos would have been just as fullilling.

My Two-bits,

Hopeless Romantic

P.S. Yeah, I'm the kinda guy who, when the money runs out five days before pay day, suggests "Let's just live on love...." Keeps the weight in check.

*...with mosquito screens over the windows, air-con, and hot water, of course. No snakes and lotsa fruit trees.

Edited June 12, 2006 by toptuan

[Ijustwannateach]

Well, Gabriel, maybe you're much luckier than I thought! It does seem like you found a good 'un.

In that case the points that other posters have raised are the most important:

1. How will you survive here?

2. How will you arrange your visa?

3. How will you cope with daily Thai life?

In my case, I had a group of friends working here who could show me directly how it was to work and live here- so I didn't only have the "tourist's-eye-view." Bangkok city life is very different from tourist beach life, which is once again very different from rural village life- and all of them are different viewed through a 1000B-a-day-spending-money working lens as opposed to a 5000B-a-day-spending-money tourist lens, as an example...

If you have the right kind of skills and there is local demand, you can do very well indeed in business. Teaching is more iffy, but it can be done. And eventually if you are successful at either the visas will take care of themselves. But all of these things are really topics for other sections of this forum.

Good luck.

[HB2010]

• my b/f only took 4 days off from work to be with me in krabi last january
  
• he paid his own way
  
• he went to work while you were back in Bangkok
  
• You called to verify work
  
• has been at if for 4 years
  

I concur, all very strong indications you have a winner. I think you have a very healthy mix of optimism and caution. And, you're giving it time. Did you say what you might do (for work) when you get here? (is that for forum knowledge?).

thanks for your comments! i'm trying very hard now to ask my b/f the right questions and he's asking me questions as well. he doesn't want me to move here and find that i'm unhappy. i've managed to save some money over the years and i have zero debt. i have a degree in marketing/business and will take a "Text and Talk Academy" course to get my certificate to teach english when i move here. hopefully, with some luck and hard work i'll get a teaching job.

[HB2010]

I have to agree with JD. If you don't really like the place you could be asking for trouble and even if you love the place it can be a very difficult / frustrating place for a westerner to live. But again if you don't try how will you ever know?

I had been here 4 times on holiday before I finally moved and for me living here was completely different. After 6 months I had had enough but I changed my expectations and started accepting life as it is here and not as it is in the UK and things started to change for me.

yes, i agree and this is giving me some troubles. 1 reason why i'm coming back for 3 weeks this december and i told my b/f that i need to see this city not as a tourist, is to make sure i'll be happy and somewhat comfortable living here. i know it's a drastic change from living in a small midwestern town in the usa, but how does one really know a city until he moves there. i have to come here with the Right Attitude. it's all about attitude. i keep reminding me of this all the time. i guess if i can find just 1 good western gay friend, that i can trust and confide in, that would really help. someone i can talk to and get advice. and of course, have some fun with.

[HB2010]

Well, Gabriel, maybe you're much luckier than I thought! It does seem like you found a good 'un.

In that case the points that other posters have raised are the most important:

1. How will you survive here?

2. How will you arrange your visa?

3. How will you cope with daily Thai life?

In my case, I had a group of friends working here who could show me directly how it was to work and live here- so I didn't only have the "tourist's-eye-view." Bangkok city life is very different from tourist beach life, which is once again very different from rural village life- and all of them are different viewed through a 1000B-a-day-spending-money working lens as opposed to a 5000B-a-day-spending-money tourist lens, as an example...

If you have the right kind of skills and there is local demand, you can do very well indeed in business. Teaching is more iffy, but it can be done. And eventually if you are successful at either the visas will take care of themselves. But all of these things are really topics for other sections of this forum.

Good luck.

wow......"Ijustwannateach", you certainly give good advice and ask good questions. thank you. i'm a survivor and a pretty strong willed person. i want this relationship to not only work, but survive the the rocky road( life is not perfect) forever. i believe in relationships, my last one lasted 15 years. "how will i cope with daily thai life", well, i'll just jump in and see where it leads me. and i'll probably always get lost and frustrated, but hey, that happens to me here!! hehehe...sometimes i think too much about all this. ah well, thanks again for your comments!

[jdinasia]

if you can take the time without working .....

Get here and rent a house/condo/apartment/room for 6 months ... (paying cash up front will usually get you about 20% break ... and a reduction in deposit. Take a week to settle in ...

Then start taking Thai classes for a few months ... your life in Thailand will be sooooooo much easier if you are not reliant on your Thai friend and on just being in farang places.

[HB2010]

if you can take the time without working .....

Get here and rent a house/condo/apartment/room for 6 months ... (paying cash up front will usually get you about 20% break ... and a reduction in deposit. Take a week to settle in ...

Then start taking Thai classes for a few months ... your life in Thailand will be sooooooo much easier if you are not reliant on your Thai friend and on just being in farang places.

thanks JD. my thought now is to move during the 1st quarter of 2007, after selling my home and furniture and stuff. i'll keep some in storage here. spend about a month in some nice condo/apt. and then start my T&T course and i believe they also offer some thai classes. i do need to learn thai, thats a given. although, i'll tell ya......their words are sooooooo long. do they ever stop!! why not "smith" street or we have a street here, called "gay" street. ah well :-)