Should You Go to Thailand in Search of a Bride?

Probably not, and here’s why.

For the last 50 or so years in the West, social forces - most notably feminism - have been steadily chipping away at the nuclear family unit.

Feminism has actively fostered hostility against males and a feeling of aggrievance among Western females.

Despite the benefits a stable family unit can deliver to females and their children, traditional marriage has been relentlessly derided as a paternalistic institution that benefits males only.

The MeToo phenomenon further drove a massive wedge between sexes in the West, with many men concluding that even looking at a member of the opposite sex was now too risky. Research shows men are reluctant to be alone in the workplace with a female colleague, lest they be falsely accused of sexual assault and not have any witnesses to refute the accusation. Even senior male managers are increasingly reluctant to mentor and work alone with female employees, citing “#MeToo issues” as the reason why.

Gyms were once a place where like-minded singles could meet, but the defamatory “gym creep” video phenomenon has seen to it that most males now look straight ahead and/or down in the gym, even when a highly attractive and fit female walks right by them.

Meanwhile, platforms like YouTube and TikTok feature a significant volume of females complaining men don’t approach women anymore. Many of these females seem genuinely perplexed as to why that might be, indicating a stunning ignorance of the social changes that have taken place around them.

After years of deriding men for looking at them and having the temerity to approach them, women now wonder why men no longer look at and approach them.

Of course, there is an obvious, immediate and free solution to this problem:

Women can start approaching men.

But lo and behold, despite decades of banging on about equal opportunity and how “women can do anything a man can do”, very few women are prepared to do this. They quite literally prefer to spend time making videos complaining about the situation than doing something about it.

But that’s hardly the end of it.

If a male somehow manages to partner up with a female in this highly dysfunctional social environment, he is by no means home and hosed.

The portrayal of men as members of a so-called “patriarchy” that seeks to oppress and manipulate women has endowed many females with a combative attitude towards relationships.

A constant stream of self-aggrandizing rot such as “all women are beautiful” (imagine declaring “all men are wonderful”!) has left even average-looking Western women, of modest intellect and questionable character, believing they are inherently special and deserving of nothing but the best in life - and that any man they team up with better damn well provide it.

Or else.

After marrying such a charmer, the guy finds regular sex has been replaced by regular arguments, and his life now seems filled with drama and tension. He feels like he is perennially walking on egg shells. He realizes what he once called loneliness was in fact peace and quiet, and he really starts to miss it. Deep down inside, he knows the inevitable outcome, but he feels trapped and overwhelmed by inertia.

When this toxic scenario finally ends in divorce, the woman who now hates his guts gets to walk away with 50-75% of everything he owns. Rather than enrich his life, marriage has achieved the exact opposite.

It’s a far cry from what he observed with his parents, whose time together ended only when one passed away.

Men who have endured this scenario, or have observed others suffering through it, are increasingly voting with their feet.

And their frequent flyer points.

Yep, increasing numbers of Western males are now looking overseas for a life partner.

The Increasing Popularity of Foreign Brides

The K-1, or "fiancé visa," allows future spouses of US citizens to enter the United States in order to marry and ultimately apply for and adjust immigrant status.

According to immigration firm RapidVisa, over 80% of their K-1 sponsors are male, with a median age of 42. Over 60 percent are Caucasian, 15 percent African-American, and 14 percent Hispanic/Latino.

The average RapidVisa K-1 applicant, in contrast, is a female in her late 20s. Just under 78 percent of applicants are female, and over 40 percent are from the Philippines.

In 1998, only 13,000 fiancé visas were granted, steadily rising to a peak of over 44,000 in 2016.

K-1 numbers dropped during the first Trump presidency, despite Captain Warp Speed himself being married to a foreign bride.

While still below pre-COVID levels, K-1 visa approvals are on the rise again, with 19,825 issued in 2023. Meanwhile, approvals for I-29F visas (required to obtain a K-1) hit a 12-year high in 2024 with 56,382 approvals, up from 42,661 in 2023.

However, the US fiancé visa situation doesn’t even begin to tell the full story.

Rather than bring a partner home, there are countries to which large numbers of Western males move in the other direction. Rather than import a partner, they emigrate and settle in a country where they perceive the romantic prospects are more fruitful.

Foremost among those countries is Thailand, a country with a substantial expat population.

Thailand: The Land of Smiles Transnational Marriages

Transnational marriages in Thailand are a thing. A big thing. They are overwhelmingly Western male + Thai female, as it is quite rare for Thai men to partner up with Western women.

The majority of Thai females who partner up with Western males can be broadly divided into two categories:

• Prostitutes in their 20s, 30s and early 40s;

• Non-prostitutes, often older and typically from rural settings.

In either case, the relationship is often a largely transactional one revolving around material considerations.

If neither are the category of woman you are seeking - and I’d venture for a majority of my male readers, they are not - Thailand is unlikely to furnish you with a suitable life partner.

In most countries, people overwhelmingly pair bond with a fellow resident. Thailand is no different; the majority of Thai women are expected to partner up with a Thai male, and that’s exactly what most of them do.

In urban settings, most Thai women have jobs, some even attend university. Just like in the West. Contrary to what certain Internet commentators would have you believe, the majority of Thai women are not sitting around waiting for some Western prince charming to come swashbuckling in and rescue them from Third World misery.

If you want to rescue something, go to an animal shelter and adopt a dog. It really will love you long time; it will be a faithful, low-drama companion that won’t set out to milk you dry.

The same can hardly be said for the sex worker demographic that many Western guys fall for in Thailand.

The John Wants a Wife

Non-degenerate readers are no doubt thinking, “what kind of clown would partner up with a prostitute?”

Read on.

Thailand has a huge prostitution sector. In fact, it ranks among the top 10 in the world, alongside much larger countries such as China, India, US and Brazil. This attracts ‘sexpats’ from around the world, with a significant presence of American, British, Australian, and German men.

Prostitution is officially illegal in Thailand, but widely tolerated. In areas catering to foreigners, the prostitution scene does not center around the traditional brothel and street-walker scenarios.

Instead, much of the trade takes place in bars, and with the use of ‘dating’ apps. This, it seems, fools many men into believing they are participating in something other than a prostitute-client relationship.

Females working in the “girly bars” are known as “bar girls”, while those plying their trade on platforms like ThaiFriendly (Thailand’s most popular ‘dating’ app) are known as “freelancers”.

In the bars, male patrons buy the bar girls drinks. If a girl is sufficiently non-repulsed by the guy plying her with alcohol, she may agree to engage in sexual relations with him in exchange for money. Sometimes this will involve leaving the bar, while in some instances the bar may have rooms available for such purposes. As part of this procedure, the male pays a “bar fine”. Ostensibly, this is to reimburse the venue for the lost labor and drink revenue resulting from the girl’s absence. It also allows the bar to officially wipe its hands and deny any involvement in prostitution, the argument being that the girl took temporary leave from her work with the guy, and as grown adults what they did on their own time is none of the bar’s business.

Of course, facilitating this exact scenario totally underpins the bar’s business.

The “freelancer” scenario involves women soliciting men via other means, online dating apps being a favorite. Shortly after arriving in Thailand in early 2024, I was encouraged by a third party to join ThaiFriendly, the largest dating app in the country. At the time, the app’s website was claiming the site featured 1000s of “genuine” singles, an egregious adjective that, thankfully, appears to have since been dropped from the website blurb.

The aforementioned third party was an avid patron of Thailand’s sex trade, but assured me I could meet plenty of regular, non-shady girls on the app. “You’ll do great!” he declared. “Thai women love fit guys with shaved heads and no facial hair!”

And so, despite a deep and long-held disdain for online dating, I downloaded the free app and uploaded some selfies. I also stated clearly in my profile that I did not want to hear from bar girls and freelancers.

What followed was an immediate and constant bombardment of messages, heart icons, “matches”, and other assorted bollockery. I often had to mute my phone to quell the constant dinging sound of notifications.

“Wow,” I thought to myself, “Thai women really do like fit guys with shaved heads and no facial hair! I should be able to meet a nice, sweet Thai girl in no time flat!”

Then I took a close look at the pictures. Many of the women, quite frankly, weren’t that attractive. I like Asian girls, but I also like some curves on my women. Rather than the timeless and distinctly feminine hourglass shape, many Thai girls have a very thin, slender, straight-up-and-down build.

Some of the women who contacted me were photographed while wearing skimpy outfits while posing in what were evidently girly bars.

Hmmm.

Others were in their 50s and 60s, with photos suggesting a life of hardship that had left them worse for wear. Their profiles spoke of wanting to find a good, stable man for love and companionship. Their profiles didn’t say it, but what most of these women were seeking was financial security. Something for which I could hardly begrudge them, knowing they’d probably grown up sans many of the luxuries we in the West take for granted.

As the messages began flowing in, I noticed many of those in their mid-40s and below were asking the same thing:

“What are you looking for?”

How nice of them to ask, I thought to myself.

Naive farang that I was, I replied to some of the better-looking girls wearing non-hookerish clothing that I was settling in Thailand for a bit, would love to meet a nice girl to do some exploring with, and briefly listed some of the attributes I l’d like such a girl to possess.

Inevitably, the reply would be “thank you”, with no further correspondence entered into.

“What? Did I say something wrong?” I wondered the first few times this happened.

I was then informed that when a female on these apps asks you what are you looking for, she is not asking what attributes you seek in a soul mate. She is asking what sexual services you are seeking during your visit, for which she will then offer a price.

Oh joy.

Other women, despite my clear stipulation that I was not interested in whoring, outright offered various sexual services in their messages. I was asked if I was looking for “short time” or “long time” (was I after a one-time encounter, or looking to rent a ‘girlfriend’?)

Neither, for crying out loud.

It quickly dawned on me that 95% of the women under the age of 45 on ThaiFriendly were prostitutes.

I get that these women may have been excited by the prospect of extracting money from a lean, healthy male instead of the fat, sweaty, double-chinned losers they normally had to contend with.

But it was still prostitution, and the A-Train does not and will not ever pay for sex.

“Don’t worry,” the third party told me. “When you get up to Chiang Mai and change your location, you’ll start getting more messages from regular girls.”

My ass I would.

The whoring scene in Chiang Mai is indeed far more subdued than most other popular Thai destinations. In the popular Nimman district where I spent most of my time, I remember walking past only one venue which looked to be a punani bar.

However, as I would soon find out, this apparently provided even more incentive for local sex workers to jump on ThaiFriendly.

I continued to get relentlessly hammered with messages from prostitutes. One enterprising lass, determined to stand out from the competition, even sent a naked picture of herself posing doggy-style on a bed, with her landing strip in full view.

Ah yes, just the kind of girl I’d like to take home to Mum.

I realized I was wrong to assume 95% of the under-45 women on ThaiFriendly were prostitutes.

It was more like 99.9%.

Disgusted, I cancelled my account and deleted the app.

Thailand is a beautiful country with a rich culture, yet one of its biggest drawcards is sleaze and whoring.

It’s also a country that, despite having undergone considerable economic advancement, still features high levels of poverty and hardship, especially in the north-eastern rural areas.

All of which you need to be keenly aware of if you venture there looking for love.

As a Western male, a certain segment of Thai women will look at you with dollar signs in their eyes.

What Western men think Thai women see when they look at them.

What Thai women targeting Western men really see.

As Hong-ngam et al report in their 2021 paper on foreign male-Thai female marriages:

“The values that make Thai women choose to marry foreign men are as follows. Thai women believe that foreigners are wealthy so that they and their families can have secured and stable life. This belief has been cultivated for a long time.” (Bold emphasis added)

They further cite Saisanguan 2011 who found “The key factors that influenced cross-cultural marriages were economic incentives, family debt, failure of former marriage, starting a new life, imitation behavior and values.” (Bold emphasis added)

Hong-ngam et al warn, “women should realize that having long and happy marriage life starts from ‘love’, and language literacy must be considered for the main element.”

Older Thai women looking for Western husbands have often been through considerable hardship. They are often from poor backgrounds, typically divorced and many have suffered through abuse and infidelity by their former husband/s.

Unlike their younger counterparts in the sex worker demographic, they are not overtly looking to milk and scam their partners. They are looking for “good man”.

Nonetheless, the relationship is still predicated upon economic considerations. That may be of little bother to older Western men, who grew up in a time where gender roles were more clearly defined, an era where men were the providers and women were the home-makers.

If however, you believe that compatibility, common interests and communication are key requirements of a successful long-term relationship, you should approach the prospect of a long-term relationship with a Thai female with great caution.

Most are not fluent in English, so there will be a communication barrier. Most are not especially concerned with world events, and have little interest on what goes on outside Thailand.

If you hail from the “soul mate” school of thought when it comes to relationships, as a Western male you probably will get real bored, real quick after teaming up with a Thai woman.

Unless, of course, you sourced her from the bars. Then you will indeed be bringing lots of excitement into your life.

Entirely the wrong kind.

Marrying the Unmarryable

If you told the average farang male, while still in his home country, that he should find himself a nice, sweet prostitute and settle down with her, he’d look at you like you were nuts.

Yet that is exactly what countless Western men proceed to do in Thailand.

It’s one thing to lower yourself to the point of paying for sex, but commencing a long-term relationship with a prostitute is a whole other level of stupid.

In addition to the problematic issue of settling with someone whose moral code allows her to screw multiple men on a daily basis, Thai prostitutes have proved themselves highly adept scammers.

Let me present you with a remarkably common scenario.

Bob the sixty-something sexpat goes to Thailand and starts hitting the bars like its 1999. One night, he meets a twenty-something bar girl who we’ll call Lily, and the two seemingly hit it off.

Bob and Lily promptly become a couple. It’s like the Pattaya remake of Pretty Woman, where Bob has ‘rescued’ Lily from her former life.

Or so he thinks.

Lily love-bombs Bob. “You very handsome,” she tells the flabby, graying, double-chinned retiree. “You nice man.”

Bob thinks she’s being serious.

The relationship progresses quickly. Unlike Bob’s grumpy ex-wife, Lily always welcomes his sexual advances and boinks him to his heart’s content. Not because she finds him irresistible - she doesn’t - but to make sure he keeps thinking with the wrong head. Not once does Bob ever wonder why she’s devoting her sexual energies to an old coot like him instead of a fitter, younger buck. He’s come to accept the belief, eagerly perpetuated among the sexpat crowd, that “Thai women don’t care about age.”

That’s partially true. When there’s money involved, the bar girl and freelancer crowd are indeed nonplussed by age. In fact, I dare say many of them actively prefer older guys, because they are the easiest to ensnare. Younger guys with options are less likely to consort with prostitutes in the first instance, and those who do are less likely to form ongoing relationships with them.

As part of the quest to milk Bob like a cow, the pair travel to her village in Isaan, where Lily introduces him to her family. At no point do they ask what any Western family would ask, which is: “Aren’t you a bit old to be dating our daughter? Heck, you’re older than us, and we’re her parents!”

Instead, Lily’s family greet Bob warmly and eagerly participate in the love-bombing.

Bob finds nothing unusual about any of this.

In fact, Bob is so ensconced with Lily that when she suggests they build a happy home together, he thinks nothing of it.

And so begins the scenario in which Bob will eventually be drained like a bath tub.

In Thailand, Westerners cannot own land. They can buy a condominium, but who wants to raise a family in a glorified hotel room?

Lily sure doesn’t, and Bob wants nothing but the best for the prostitute of his dreams. Therefore, their new home has to be a freestanding house. As a Westerner, this means Bob has two options:

1) Buy or build a house, and rent the land it sits upon from its Thai owner using a long term lease arrangement. As a Westerner raised on the concept of owning one’s own property, this is not an attractive option to Bob.

2) Purchase it outright by putting it in Lily’s name because, as a Thai, she can legally own the house and land. Even though Bob is fronting the money, his name cannot and will not appear on the property title. Lily will be the sole titleholder. Should they ever separate, she will retain 100% ownership and Bob won’t be able to do a damn thing about it.

Men are born with two heads, one of which should never be allowed to make key life decisions.

Bob, under the influence of his southernmost head, chooses option 2.

So despite never having made a single mortgage payment in her life, Lily now owns a house.

A nice one.

Which means Bob, with his double-chin, generous paunch and protruding nose hairs, has now served his purpose. It’s time for Lily to start engineering a relationship breakdown, after which she’ll head back to the bars in search of more Western suckers.

Lily starts acting up. She becomes increasingly temperamental and argumentative towards Bob, who is perplexed as to why his sweet prostitute now screams and throws things at him.

The situation eventually becomes untenable and one of them has to leave the house. It sure as heck won’t be Lily, because she owns the place outright.

Bob leaves with his tail between his legs and a sick feeling in his stomach. Several days later he tries returning to the house to talk to Lily, but a heavily tattooed Thai male answers the door. “She not here,” he tells Bob in a tone of voice that indicates the matter is not up for further discussion.

Reality finally begins to dawn on Bob.

All along, he was getting screwed, just not the way he thought. Now he’s been left high and dry in a foreign country. He’s learned the hard way that, even in the Land of Smiles, some folks still live by the dictum “all's fair in love and war”.

In 2021, the chief justice of the Phuket Provincial Juvenile and Family Court (PPJFC) reported that Thai-foreigner relationships accounted for well over half of all contested divorces in Phuket the previous year. The majority of the divorces in question were filed by the husband on the grounds the wife was misusing ‘jointly owned’ property for her own benefit.

In many cases an estranged wife sold property registered in her name and refused to give her husband his share, leading him to file for divorce in order to be properly compensated.

In a minority of cases the wife filed for divorce, alleging the husband was unfaithful.

In Thailand, a foreign husband may be able to pursue compensation after divorce, with the courts often splitting the proceeds of a property sale 50/50. Not a great outcome for the husband when he entirely financed the property purchase.

In the West, de facto living arrangements are commonplace. Thailand, however, does not recognize de facto relationships or common-law marriages. Couples living together without formal marriage do not have the legal rights or protections typically associated with marriage under Thai law.

Meaning that, instead of getting pinned for half of the property value, guys like Bob - who bought his sweet whoring princess a property without ever marrying her - lose out completely.

You might be thinking, quite understandably, “who the %^&# would be stupid enough to fall for that scam?!?”

You’d be amazed. Right now, as you read this, some Western genius is literally being screwed out of a house by some likely lass he met in a Thai bar.

It’s a routine scenario.

Incredibly, while Bob finally realized he was being screwed, other farangs don’t. They cling to the deluded notion that things just didn’t “work out” and then get sucked in all over again.

In another variant of this scam, the shady lady moves with her Western partner back to his first world country. Once her residency status is assured, the plan is set in motion. Availing herself of that country’s no-fault divorce laws, she starts acting up, the relationship becomes untenable, and she gets to walk away with at least 50% of everything the guy owns.

Most ironic, when a lot of guys complain Western females are obsessed with money and that the law favors gold-diggers.

While not necessarily intended to result in a long-term relationship, another scam employed by Thai sex workers is the sob story ruse.

It involves the girl sharing with the guy a remarkable series of hardships that have allegedly befallen her extended family.

Her mother has breast cancer. Her father has lung disease. Their house was damaged by a mudslide. She has to look after her sister’s children, because her sister cannot work. Her sister, you see, fell off her scooter and broke her leg after some kid squirted her in the eyes with a water gun during Songkran. Her poor sister also suffered nasty road rash, and her wound dressings need to be changed daily. Yes, the Thai system offers free healthcare for nationals, but the local hospital is next to a rice field and accidentally got razed to the ground during burning season. So now they need to drive her 80 km to the nearest hospital every day. This all costs money. She’s living in a cramped apartment with ten other family members, all of whom have been struck by various misfortunes. And she has to support them all. Every one of them. She could really do with some help. You know, help in the form of money.

She cries as she tells the story, and it’s so heartbreaking that gullible Western men open their wallets and give her even more money. Even after they’ve returned to the West. Yep, believe it or not, there are Thai sex workers who, in addition to exchanging sex for money, have a nice sideline in which men from various countries simultaneously continue to send them regular payments to help relieve their unbelievably bad luck.

The Deadly Flip Side

So far, I’ve focused on the exploitation of Western males by opportunistic Thai females. It would be remiss of me not to point out that sometimes foreign male-Thai female relationships end catastrophically for the woman.

While some men are genuinely exasperated by the lack of quality women in their home country, others are no doubt forced to go offshore for more nefarious reasons. Namely, they have undesirable personality traits that make a successful union with even the most patient of Western women unlikely. These guys hence move to another country where the females seemingly have fewer options and no knowledge of the guy’s past.

During my stay in Pattaya, I resided in Pratumnak Hill. Apparently the city’s most desired neighborhood, it wasn’t without its problems. While I was there, police were called to a nearby condo complex after a Thai woman was stabbed with scissors by her European partner.

In 2018, in nearby Jomtien, police arrested 49-year-old American man Nicholas Hillman after his Thai wife fled from their condo building, bleeding from knife wounds, with her seven-year-old son. The woman had a cut in her head and stab wounds in her chest.

These women survived, but others have not been so lucky.

In 2018, 50-year-old British man Kevin Smitham brutally kicked his 29-year-old Thai wife to death after she refused to have sex with him. Her murder left three children without a mother.

Smitham was arrested and held at at Ubon Ratchathani prison, where he was subsequently found dead after falling from height. Thai police suggested it was either an accident or suicide. A third possibility is that he was given a not-so-gentle push. Thailand’s culture of politeness does not extend to its prisons; they are absolutely not nice places for Westerners to find themselves.

The late Kevin Smitham, with the wife he murdered and the three children he orphaned.

In January of this year, authorities arrested David Armitage, 61, for the murder of his Thai wife, Lamduan, more than 20 years ago. Her lifeless body was found by hikers in remote English hills in 2004. She remained unidentified for 15 years until her family saw a BBC News report and came forward.

In Summary

Thailand has some of the sweetest, nicest people I’ve ever met.

It also has some of the hardest-working and most obliging folks I’ve come across.

There was the adorable Thai nonna who used to wash bags of my sweat-soaked gym clothes for a couple of dollars, and routinely tried to refuse when I insisted on giving her more money.

The taxi driver who, after I lost track of time in a Bangkok cafe, put on a performance worthy of a 2 Fast 2 Furious cameo to make sure I didn’t miss my flight back to Chiang Mai.

The country’s culture of politeness, with its endless parade of warm smiles and Wai gestures, is infectious.

But not everyone in Thailand has your best interests at heart, and that includes many of the women who specifically target Western men.

Do some Western men form successful long-term unions with Thai women?

Of course. But to quote the StickMan Bangkok website:

“My best guess is that probably only around 20% of the Thai female / Foreign male relationships I know are truly successful, where each partner really is genuinely happy.”

It notes that one of the commonalities of successful Thai-foreign relationships is that both parties are educated. If you’ve ever scanned the beer-gutted, tattooed, singlet-wearing sexpat crowd, and the women they consort with, you’ll know that’s not a common attribute.

“The better her education, the better it seems the chances that the relationship will flourish, and the greater the likelihood of success. If, for example, she has a Master's and / or she went somewhere like Harvard or Oxford, or even Chula or Thammasat, the chances of relationship success skyrocket.”

“There needs to be genuine mutual respect for a relationship to flourish and a lack of respect is like letting a cobra loose in the marital bed. There seems to be a lack of respect in many Thai / Foreign relationships where each partner enters the union for what's in it for them. Her mind may be on whether the promised new pickup will be a Toyota or an Isuzu, his on whether the promised daily blowjob will be administered morning or night. The quid pro quo so many Thai / Foreign relationships are based on is more like a business deal than a personal relationship where love is conditional.”

“In so many Thai female / Foreign male relationships there seems to be a connection missing. The idea of a bond just doesn't seem to be there and it all feels rather more like a business relationship where one party brings this to the table and the other brings that. That works in commercial relationships, but do you want to be taking account of KPIs at home? The more in common, the better.”

As for the “age doesn’t matter” hypothesis perpetuated by the sexpat crowd:

“You never hear the term age-sensitive dating in Thai, but large age gaps seldom work. How much of an age gap is workable depends on many things, but when a woman is young, say aged under 25, and a guy is aged over 50, most agree it looks ridiculous but more than that, the differences between the two are so great on top of all of the other differences that it is very hard for each to be genuinely happy. If he is twice her age it's probably too much of an age gap. In fairness though, once a woman is north of 35 age gaps seem to matter much less.”

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if you’re a Western male who is not into whoring, and believe common interests and strong communication are key facets of a successful relationship, the chances of finding relationship success in Thailand are low.