Asian Heat (10 page)

Webcams are
brilliant. The girls can Photoshop their photographs – many do –
but they can’t mess around with their webcam pictures.
 
Some of them try to get out of the
webcam chat but I always cut off contact with them.
 
I didn’t want any nasty surprises when I finally got to meet
them so a webcam chat was a must.

The webcams rule
out another third or so, those girls who’ve lied about their attractiveness or
their age.
  
I know it can be
difficult to judge the age of a Thai but even I can tell when a woman is in her
forties.
 
And if they look rough on
a webcam they’re going to look even rougher in real life.
 
The webcam also gave me a chance to get
a look at their figure, and show me any obvious tattoos.

If the girl
passed the webcam test, it was time to arrange a face-to-face meeting.
 
I spent a lot of time working out the
best place to meet the girls, and I found the perfect spot. There’s a sort of
café area on Sukhumvit Road in front of the Landmark Hotel, raised above the
pavement so you’re looking down on it. That means there’s plenty to look at
while you’re waiting because half the hookers working in Nana Plaza walk by
from the Nana skytrain station.

I usually
arranged to meet the girls at about seven, just as it’s starting to get dark.
And I always ordered a coffee because I didn’t want them to think I’m a pisshead.
 
That was the first test for the girl,
too. If she ordered a beer then that was a bad sign. Coffee or a soft drink,
that’s what I wanted to see.

Sitting out in
the open put them at ease; they didn’t feel trapped and there were plenty of
people around. I got to see what they looked like in the flesh, and to see how
they handled themselves in public. The Landmark staff are great, very attentive
and polite, and the way the girls reacted was a good clue to their background.
 
I wasn’t looking for a girl who was too
shy, but I didn’t want one who treated the staff with contempt. I was looking
for politeness and good manners.

I usually chatted
with them for about an hour, I think that’s the minimum amount of time you need
to size up a person.
 
I spoke
mainly in English because my Thai isn’t really good enough to hold a
conversation. If the girl was hi-so –that’s what they call the upper
class Thais - then her English would be good because she probably attended an
international school. But if she was obviously a bargirl then good English is a
sign she’s been around for a while and has had a few Western boyfriends or
sponsors.
 
I was looking for
honesty, because in my experience lies are like cockroaches – for every
one you find there’s a dozen hidden ones. It wasn’t hard to catch them out in a
lie.
  
I took notes when I
talked to them on-line and when I was face-to-face I double-checked everything
they said. I was looking for tattoos, and checking out their clothes and
jewellery.
 
A black t-shirt, tight
jeans and too much gold screams bargirl even if she told me she’s as pure as
the driven snow.

I didn’t talk
about myself too much; I told them I’m a teacher and that I lived on my own,
but I didn’t talk about money.
  
If they kept asking about money then that was a red flag. Some of them
even told me up front how much they expected me to give them. Seriously.
Sitting there over coffee they’d tell me that for three thousand baht they
would go back to my flat.
 
It’s as
if they had completely forgotten everything they had said on Skype about
wanting a relationship and wanting to meet the right guy.

Anyway, after the
hour was up I would pretty much have the measure of the girl. If she was an
out-and-out gold-digger or a bargirl, then I would just tell her I had someone
to meet and I would head off to Nana Plaza. That’s the beauty of Bangkok - my
worst possible scenario was a night looking at naked girls dancing around
chrome poles. If she phoned me again I wouldn’t answer, and I would ignore her
on the internet.
 
Girls like that
soon get the message. They didn’t care because all they were after was money
and they were probably meeting as many men as I was meeting girls.

If she was a shop
assistant or a hairdresser and her English was fairly good and she seemed fun,
then I would offer to take her to The Huntsman Bar in the basement. They serve
Western food and there’s a Filipina band that aren’t so noisy that you can’t
talk. The lighting’s quite romantic and there are booths that give you the
chance to sit together and get a bit of physical contact going.

If she was a good
girl but quite shy then there’s a good Thai restaurant in the hotel that I
could take her to. That gave me the chance to show that I understand Thai food,
and she would be in an environment where she felt safe.

If she was hi-so
then I would take her to the Rib Room at the top of the hotel. It’s one of the
best steak restaurants in the city and the view is spectacular. It would be
overwhelming for an average girl but the hi-so girls love it. I would watch
what they ordered, though.
 
If she
started taking the piss and ordering the most expensive things on the menu,
then that was a red flag, but I would still pay because the surest way of
getting a hi-so girl into bed is to splash a bit of money around. Plus I love a
good steak.

I guess you’re
wondering what my success rate was?
 
Well, cross my heart and hope to die, if I take them to eat then it’s
pretty much one hundred per cent. If they let me take them to dinner then half
the time I ended up going back to their place afterwards.
 
Of the rest, half would sleep with me
right away. But because they live in a shitty room far away then I’d take them
to a short-time hotel.
 
The rest
would sleep with me on the second date. That was pretty much guaranteed.

But the face-to-face
does root out a lot of undesirables - girls who just aren’t pretty, or who are
after money, or who are just plain boring. I’d say that accounts for about half
the girls I meet.
 
Of course for
every one I meet outside the Landmark, I’ve already rejected ten or so. So in
the grand scheme of things, I reckon for every hundred girls I meet on line, I
meet ten and I end up in bed with five.
 
But that’s five stunners, and they don’t ask for money. If they do, I
don’t see them again. That’s an absolute rule. As soon as they ask for money
– even if it’s just the cab fare home – then it’s over.

So basically it’s
a matter of numbers. For every one hundred girls you connect with on
ThaiLoveLinks, you get to have sex with five stunners. That, to me, seems like
pretty good odds.
 
It worked for
me, anyway, and I ended up getting laid every other day by a new girl, plus I
have literally hundreds of phone numbers of hot girls who are just a phone call
away.

Now the question
you’re probably asking is why are the girls so keen to sleep with me? Why is it
so easy?
 
The thing is, I don’t
know. I’m not the world’s best-looking guy, not by a long way. Back in Derby
I’d rate myself a seven, eight on a good day.
 
In Thailand I’m better than the average Westerner just
because so many of them are bald, overweight and tattooed.
 
But like I said, I’m no Brad Pitt. On
the positive side I dress well and I make sure I smell nice. The Thais hate
body odour so deodorant and aftershave are a must.
 
I’m polite when I talk and I tell them I’m looking for a
girlfriend. I tell them I’ve met the wrong sort of girls before – but I
claim never to have gone into a go-go bar or a massage parlour. I tell them I’m
a bit lonely and that I want to spend time with someone
 
I care about.
 
That and a few lingering looks seems to do the trick. And
they’re usually the ones that make the first move. They ask if they can see my
apartment. I always say no. That’s an absolute rule. I never allow them back to
where I live. It’s just too risky. If anything goes wrong, they know where you
live, and a Thai girl out for revenge knows no bounds. I know one guy who ended
up in prison because a former girlfriend planted drugs in his flat and then
grassed him up to the police. Another found a girl on his doorstep who had
slashed her wrists, and another got into the flat and destroyed all his
clothes. So they never go to my flat. I always make an excuse, tell them the
place is a mess or I have a friend staying over.
 
More often than not they’ll then offer to take me around to
their room. And as soon as they do, I know that means they’re going to have
sex.

The only times it
gets a little complicated is if they don’t invite me back to their place
because then I have to suggest a short-time hotel. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t.
I play it by ear.
 
Frankly, I
prefer to do it in their place because then you really get a feel for the
girl.
 
But at the end of the day
it’s the sex that matters, not where the bed is. And I’ve had a lot of sex.

I’ve been with
university students, nurses, beauticians, shop assistants, two police officers
and one immigration officer, air stewardesses, hotel workers, personal
trainers, waitresses, factory workers, pretty much an A-to-Z of the working
population. All of them young, all of them pretty, and not one did I pay for.
Not one.
 
Mind you, I barely gave
them time to ask because another of my rules is I never stay overnight. No
matter whether I’m at their place or in a short-time hotel, once the deed is
done I shower and I’m off. Then it’s up to them. If they call me back and they
want to see me again I add their number to my list.
 
If they don’t call me back, that’s fine. But they only have
a week at most because I keep changing my sim cards.
 
I don’t use my real name, either. I tell them my name is
John. That’s actually my middle name. I never tell them my family name and I
never ask them theirs either. If the sex is good and they don’t ask for
money,
 
then I might think about
telling them my real name.

I can’t believe
how easy it is, and it makes me realise how stupid I was for spending all that
money on hookers.
 
I get laid for
free and I get to practise my Thai instead of throwing my money away on
watered-down drinks and barfines. I was like a kid in a sweetshop. Or at least
I was, until I met Nok.

Nok’s profile
picture was cute, but no cuter than hundreds of others. She was twenty-three
years old, long black hair, olive skin, nice little upturned nose and her
picture suggested quite large breasts. She was from Saraburi, in the middle of
the country, but she lived in Bangkok and worked as a beautician.
 
She wanted a good man to take care of
her and she liked reading and music and walking on the beach. Her contact
details arrived on a Saturday along with almost sixty others and I didn’t get
around to replying until Sunday morning. She didn’t get back to me until the
evening and we chatted on the phone and then switched to webcam and I have to
say she was hot. Just over my height limit, which was good, but with a very
sexy laugh and fairer skin than most Thais have.

My first vacant
slot was for the following Thursday so I arranged to meet her outside the
Landmark. Nok arrived in a very short dark blue dress that showed off an
amazing pair of legs and cut low enough at the top to show me a bit of cleavage.
More than a few heads turned as she sat down opposite me.
 
Her story was typical of what I heard
from the girls I met on ThaiLoveLinks. Her father had left her mother when Nok
was young, the family was always short of money, and Nok had come to Bangkok to
earn a decent salary so she could send money to help support her mum and her
siblings. There’s no social security system in Thailand – if you don’t
work, you don’t eat.

I’d pretty much
decided to take Nok down to The Huntsman when I caught her smiling at me over
the top of her Coke. “What?” I said. “What are you smiling at?”

“You’re such a
butterfly,” she said.

A butterfly was a
man with lots of girlfriends, moving between them like a butterfly flying from
flower to flower.

“What do you
mean?”

She pointed at a
beauty parlour on the other side of Sukhumvit Road. “That’s where I work,” she
said. “I see you here with many girls.”

I laughed. “Are
you sure?”

She nodded.
“Every day,” she said. “And every day a different girl.”

“You’ve been
spying on me?”

“Not spying. But
I could see you when I was upstairs. Then one day I saw your profile on
ThaiLoveLinks.”

“And you still
wanted to see me?”

“Your profile
looked nice,” she said. “And you’re quite good looking. But your profile
doesn’t say you’re a butterfly, does it?”

I sat back in my
chair. Busted. I shrugged and waved at a waitress for a bill.

“What’s wrong?”
she asked. “You want to go?”

“You’re right, I
am a butterfly,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Why sorry?”

“Because you’re
looking for a man to marry. You’re looking for a man to marry you and take care
of you.”