Chapter 79

Money and the Thai Girl:

Any farang in this beautiful Island of Phuket will have had experience of this topic. Frequently to become utterly frustrated by the apparent disregard which many Thai girls seem to have for property, especially theirs, that is to say, the farang's property.

It is a source of confusion that frequently destroys otherwise quite promising relationships.
In the hope of clarifying this issue a little I would like to tell the story of an episode which has certainly made me realize that all is not quite as bad as it sometimes seems.

A year or so ago a Thai friend asked me if I would lend her some money to help her set up a massage parlour. Now she is a good friend who I trust so I asked her to show me her business plan and the premises so that I could decide whether I thought it was a viable proposition.

It was, so I lent the lady a few thousand pounds.

The only thing that slightly perplexed me was that she seemed to have enough money already, as well as a farang boy-friend who was much wealthier than I am.

The next day a mutual friend, another Thai girl, phoned me to say "Hey Reb I gather you have just lent khun X a lot of money". She named the sum and left me perplexed that khun X had been so keen to tell her about it.

How very different in England where people try very hard to conceal their debts as they are embarrassing and even slightly humiliating.

It vaguely occured to me that she seemed almost proud of herself.

Over the past year she has been regularly paying back the money. I was sure that she would and that, it must be admitted, is not usually the case.

I like many other farangs have discovered, the hard way, that in most cases of money transferal here in Phuket, the verb 'to lend' becomes synonymous with the verb 'to give'.

Then, recently, khun X and I had a bit of a disagreement, the details of which are not relevant to this story, (perhaps another story?) but anyway she was deeply angry with me.

She said to me that she didn't want my money anymore as I was using it to have control over her business. This surprised me as I thought I had lent her the money because she needed it.

Anyway we parted on not very good terms. The next day she sent me a text message telling me that she would go to the bank, that day, and repay all that she owed me. I replied that it is rarely a good idea to do things of significance while one is angry and perhaps she should relax a little before doing this.

She put the money into my account about an hour later. I just hoped that she could afford to do it.

It took me a day or so to work out what had been happening.

As I see it it was like this. She borrowed the money not because she needed it but because it gave her a sort of status.

"Khun Reb likes me so much that he has lent me all this money".

Looked at like that I suppose I should be flattered that she considered that I was worth being liked by........