Confessions of a Bangkok Private Eye: True Stories From the Case Files of Warren Olson

by Stephen Leather

  How can they lie so easily? For money. Most of the girls that farangs meet are from the countryside, or are one generation removed from working the land. Rice farming is back-breaking, sweaty, unpleasant work. So is factory work, twelve-hour shifts and one day’s holiday a month. Is it surprising that a girl would be prepared to tell a few lies if it means an easier life? And once she’s started lying, wouldn’t the lies get easier and easier? Especially if she’s gone into the relationship solely as a way of earning money.

  How can they sleep with farangs when they already have a Thai husband or boyfriend? Because by doing so she gets a better life for herself and for her man. It’s work, pure and simple. And in comparison with local wages, it pays well. A half-decent go-go girl can earn over 100,000 baht a month, about six times what a nurse or a teacher would get. As a student, Miss Pim’s earnings would be zero. Her husband, even as the boss of the motorcycle rank, would be lucky to pull in 10,000 baht a month. Then out of the blue appears Lars, flashing his Euros and offering her 20,000 baht a month just to go to university and have sex with him on his occasional trips to Thailand. Lie back and think of the money. I’ve heard that refrain from countless bargirls. Farangs like Lars assume that girls would be ashamed to take money for sex, that there is something morally wrong with trading sex for money. The Thais don’t see it that way. They see it as commerce, and more fool the farang if he mistakes commerce for love.

  How can the husband tolerate his wife sleeping with another man? Because he understands that it’s work. She doesn’t love the farang, she probably doesn’t even like him. She is the mother of his child. She is his wife. The farang is just a customer. A fool with more money than sense.

  I hoped that Lars would just do the sensible thing and cut off all contact with Pim. But I knew from experience that often the girl would be able to persuade the farang to give her a second chance. Or a third. Or a fourth. Thai girls can be very persuasive. And farangs can be very stupid. A perfect match, really.

  I can never remember if it’s good things that come in threes, or bad things, but that week I got two more ‘good’ girls that guys wanted me to check up on. Like Miss Pim, they were both girls who had never been within a hundred yards of a naughty bar or a short-time hotel. Both ladies were in their early twenties.

  A guy called Terry who lived in the UK had lost his heart to Nam, who worked as a private secretary in a Thai oil company.

  A South African by the name of Mark who worked for an estate agency in Bangkok had hooked up with Suming, a hi-so girl who seemed to do nothing other than shop, take care of her daughter from a previous marriage, and socialize. She had a maid to clean the ten million-baht penthouse that she shared with Mark. Hi-so girls, in my experience, should come with a Government health warning. Hi-so stands for ‘high society’ and you’ll see them in all the trendy bars and restaurants, hanging out in the expensive shopping malls, or parking their BMWs or SUVs while talking nineteen-to-the-dozen into mobile phones. The hi-so girls are generally high maintenance, they rarely pay their own way and expect to be courted with expensive gifts, holidays and sometimes cold, hard cash. They also, from what I’ve seen, tend to have the moral standards of alley cats that have snacked on Viagra. A pal of mine who is a good deal more cynical than me once said that if a hi-so girl is at the wheel of an expensive car then she’s either having sex with a rich guy, or is the daughter of someone who had sex with a rich guy. Mind you, he’s the same guy who swears blind that bargirls who wear high heels only ever adopt the starfish position when they’re in bed and I know for a fact that he’s wrong on that one.

  Anyway, Terry and Mark got in touch with me shortly after I’d burst Lars’ bubble. Of the two cases, Suming was the more interesting because according to Mark she spent most of her evenings at Rivas nightclub in the Sheraton Hotel. Usually she was with Mark, but when he was out of town she went alone or with friends and it was on one of these nights that he wanted me to check on her. That meant sitting in a top bar eyeing up hard bodies and drinking JD and Coke at 200 baht a throw. Mark had okayed all expenses and sent me a decent retainer to kick off the case.

  Nam’s routine was much more mundane. She worked in the company’s head office in Yannawa, a huge building more than thirty storeys tall, and I had to hang around in the midday heat trying to spot her among the thousands of office workers pouring out for a noodle or fried rice lunch or at five o’clock when they headed to the bus stops.

  Terry had sent me several good photographs of Nam plus a copy of her ID card and passport so it didn’t take me too long to spot her. He didn’t expect me to find out anything untoward. He loved her, she was from a good family in Chonburi and was a university graduate. They were engaged and had already set a date for a wedding in Thailand in six months time and were already talking about starting a family. Everything had been going along swimmingly until Terry had started visiting several websites devoted to Thailand and Thai ways, especially the Stickman website at www.stickmanbangkok.com. Stick’s an old mate and his site is packed with first-person accounts of farangs who have lost their hearts, and their cash, to lying bargirls. There are some success stories too, written by guys who have settled down with former bargirls and never regretted it, but I’d say that the horror stories outnumber the success stories by about fifty to one. Terry realised that the odds were stacked against him, and while he had no reason to doubt that Nam was anything other than the perfect fancA© he figured it would be prudent for me to run a few basic checks. Smart boy.

  As always, I ran through a list of questions with him, partly to get a feel for the girl but also because there are often telltale signs that something is wrong that only a long-time resident of Thailand would spot. Women with kids asking for a sin sot, or dowry, for instance. Payment of a sin sot is common enough in Thailand, but the amount paid depends on the girl’s social status and frankly, her condition. A hi-so virgin would set a suitor back several million baht. A bargirl who has been around a bit and has a couple of kids wouldn’t merit anything. So when clients tell me that their bargirl’s parents are insisting on a big dowry, I usually tell them to run a mile.

  Nam’s parents ran a small supermarket in her home town and they had asked for a sin sot of 100,000 baht. She wasn’t a virgin when she’d met Terry, but she had only had a couple of boyfriends and no kids so I figured that sounded reasonable. He’d met her in a cinema, she’d been with a girlfriend, he’d been there alone. They’d started chatting, he’d asked her out and she’d accepted. That sounded okay, though it was slightly unusual in that she’d turned up alone on the date. Usually a ‘good’ Thai girl would bring along a friend or two as chaperones.

  But what really set alarm bells ringing was that he had never been to her apartment. Not once in all the months he’d known her. She’d told him that as much as she wanted him to see it, the block was for women only. It was close to her office, walking distance. Now, there are woman-only apartment blocks in Bangkok, but they are few and far between, but in my experience it’s always a red flag when a girl doesn’t let a guy see where she lives. They’ll pull out a whole host of excuses: it’s a mess, it’s in a dangerous area, she lives with a friend and the friend has the key. But the bottom line is that she’s probably living with a boyfriend or husband, or the place is full of his pictures and his toothbrush is in the bathroom.

  Terry had given me Nam’s office address but he didn’t know the name of the apartment block. That was another red flag raised. Anyway, I went out to Yannawa one afternoon and took a few bags of fried insects over to the nearest motorcycle taxi stand and started chatting to the guys there. The motorcycle taxi guys pretty much know everything that goes on in their locality and they’re always my first port of call in an investigation.

  I got chatting away in Khmer and asked them if they knew of any women-only blocks within walking distance. There was lots of frowning and head-shaking but when I said I’d pay a hundred baht to anyone who could come up with a name one of the guys said he
thought there was a hostel for women fairly close by so I had him run me over. Another hundred baht for the security guard on duty and I learned that no one who looked like Nam lived there. It was a small place, probably only two dozen studio flats, so I was pretty confident that the guy knew what he was talking about.

  My motorcycle guy saw that my wallet was well-packed with 100-baht bills so he came up with another women-only block in Silom. That was well outside walking distance from the office where she worked but I figured it was worth a try so we took a run out there. Another hundred baht later and I had confirmation that Nam didn’t live there either.

  By four o’clock I was back at the office block, sweating in the heat and waiting for Nam to finish work. I was pretty sure that she was lying about living in a women-only block close to her office and having caught her out in one lie I was sure there’d be others.

  Nam appeared just after five by which time I had large damp patches under both armpits and I could feel puddles of sweat in my shoes. She waved goodbye to a group of her co-workers and walked across the road to a bus stop. A bus came and went and Nam made no move to board it. She looked at her watch, then made a call on her mobile phone. Another bus came and went.

  I went inside a coffee shop, bought a Coke and settled down to wait. I figured she was waiting for a bus and that once she’d boarded one I’d get one of the motorcycle taxi guys to follow her. Following busses is a piece of cake because the motorcycle taxi guys all know the bus routes. I was sipping my Coke when a new model Toyota Corolla pulled up at the bus stop. Nam got in and the car roared off. I managed to get a look at the number plate before it vanished around a corner. I rushed over to the motorcycle taxi rank but by the time I’d explained what I wanted the car was well gone. It was my own fault, I should have had my ride already fixed up, but I’d just assumed that she was going to get the bus. Still, I had caught her out in two lies, and I was pretty sure that it had been a Thai man at the wheel of the Corolla.

  I phoned Terry and told him what I’d discovered, and he said he’d pay me to follow her for another couple of days. He asked me what I thought, and I told him the truth. She was lying to him, and that could only mean one thing. ‘But she isn’t a bargirl,’ he said plaintively. I thought about giving him the ‘just because she doesn’t work in a bar doesn’t mean she’s not a bargirl’ speech, but I decided against it. I said I’d phone him back when I had something to report.

  The following day I was better prepared. I had my own motorcycle guy all ready to go at four o’clock, and when Nam appeared I was on the pillion and he had his crash helmet on. The Corolla turned up at ten past five and we tucked up behind it and followed it a few kilometres through the crowded streets until it parked outside a decent-sized apartment block. The man was in his thirties wearing a suit and tie and the way she touched his arm as they went into the block together suggested that they were, as we say in the private-eye game, ‘romantically involved.’ I managed to fire off a few digital photographs and I emailed them to Terry later that night.

  There was only one more piece of the puzzle and that was to identify the guy. The next day I took a run out to the Car Registration Office at Chatujak, near the famous weekend market, filled out the necessary forms and a twenty-baht fee, and explained to the girl behind the counter as I slipped her a tin of chocolate almonds that I was buying the car and wanted to check that it was owned outright and not under any finance deal. It’s a common enough request and the chocolate almonds were the only incentive she needed to offer me every assistance. She punched in the registration number of the Corolla, printed out the details and gave me a copy, along with her phone number, which I thought was quite sweet of her considering she was a good five years older than me and had the makings of a half-decent moustache.

  The owner was from Chonburi, the same place as Nam, which suggested the he was a long-time boyfriend, but the surname on his ID was different from Nam’s so it didn’t look as if they were married. Chonburi is on the way to Pattaya, and as I had a couple of bargirl investigations lined up in Sleaze-By-The-Sea I decided to pop out that way and stop off at the Chonburi Municipal Office to run a check on the guy. I told the girl behind the counter that he had applied for a job with my company and my winning smile, a box of Thai sweets and a 500-baht note got me a look at his house papers. He was married and had a son. Nam was obviously his mia noi, his minor wife.

  I guess that Miss Nam was happy to be the Thai guy’s mia noi at the same time as she was going out with Terry, and that she was just putting off the time when she had to choose. Maybe the Thai guy would leave his wife, maybe Terry would marry her and she’d settle down with him. To be honest, I could understand why she’d want to keep her options open. Girls marry young in Thailand, often in their teens, and her clock was ticking. For all she knew, Terry might dump her for a younger, prettier girl. It’s not as if he’d be spoilt for choice in Thailand. The Thai guy could also trade her in for a newer model at any time. From Miss Nam’s point of view, she was simply hedging her bets.

  Terry didn’t see it that way, of course. He couldn’t stand the fact that she’d so blatantly lied to him and he called off the wedding, changed his phone number, and refused to answer her emails and letters. From the day I filed my report, he had no further contact with her. Harsh, maybe, but in my opinion he did the right thing. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again-lies are like cockroaches, If you find one,. There’ll be dozens of others that you don’t know about.

  So, with two out of two good girls turning out to be bad, I started Mark’s investigation feeling pretty confident that Miss Suming had a skeleton or two in her closet. I parked myself at a corner table in Rivas nightclub and knocked back JD and Cokes at 200 baht a throw, plus tax plus service charges plus the odd tip for the very pretty waitresses. I had a good view of Miss Suming and her friends-all thirty-something hi-so Thai women-knocking back bottles of champagne and having a whale of a time. Suming showed no interest in any of the farangs hanging around the bar and no Thai men came over to join them. From the look of it, Miss Suming was enjoying a girls’ night out, and fair play to her.

  There was a band playing, an American group that could actually hold a tune, and during their break they came over and joined Miss Suming’s group and more champagne was swiftly ordered. Miss Suming certainly knew how to enjoy herself, but I suppose it was nothing to her as Mark was paying for everything even though he was out of town for a week on business.

  Other than the band, Miss Suming’s table remained a man-free zone for the night, but I figured that I ought to hang around until closing time just to check that she went back alone to Mark’s apartment. Eventually the band finished and the staff started packing up for the night. Miss Suming and her group were obviously well known there and they seemed in no rush to leave so eventually it was just me and them still drinking. I decided I’d better go so I hung around outside, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. I was able to keep an eye on Miss Suming through the open doorway.

  The band had changed out of their stage outfits and they went over to Miss Suming’s table and helped her and her friends finish the last of the champagne. The drummer, a big African American guy with bulging biceps and a massive afro, sat next to Suming and seemed to be hanging on her every word. He was about ten years younger than Miss Suming, with a thick gold chain around his neck and a gold front tooth. One by one most of Miss Suming’s friends said their goodbyes and left, and the band members drifted off until eventually there were just four at the table; Miss Suming, the black drummer, one of her friends, and one of the guitarists.

  I sat in the corner of the lobby and pretended to read the Bangkok Post. Another bottle of champagne arrived at Miss Suming’s table, and there was lots of glass-clinking and laughing.

  It was two o’clock in the morning when they finally left the nightclub. I was knackered and feeling the effects of the dozen or so JD and Cokes that I’d had drunk at Mark’s expense, so I sat in the comfy arm
chair and tried to focus on the group as they stood in the hotel lobby by the elevators. I expected a bit of air kissing, maybe a handshake or a wai, what I didn’t expect was to see Miss Suming link arms with the black drummer and go into the lift with him. As the lift doors closed Miss Suming’s friend was giving the guitarist a full-on kiss and a grope between the legs to boot.

  I watched as the floor indicator lights blinked. The elevator stopped at the seventh floor and a few minutes later returned to the lobby, empty.

  Miss Suming’s friend and the guitarist went up to the fifth floor, so if the partying was continuing it was on an individual basis. I waited for another hour but Miss Suming didn’t reappear so I headed home to my bed.

  The next day I emailed Mark a full report. He was, understandably, livid. He’d invested a lot of time and money in Miss Suming, and had been planning to ask her to marry him. If it’d been me I’d have cut my losses and walked away, but Mark was convinced her infidelity was a temporary slip. He confronted her and she eventually admitted to having a fling with the drummer, but that she’d only been to his room once. That sounded dubious to me. What were the odds that the one time she had slept with the guy, I’d be sitting in the lobby? Pretty bloody slim. And from the way they’d been head to head in the nightclub, I’d say it had been going on for some time.

  Anyway, rule number one of the private-eye game is that the client is always right, even when he isn’t, and if Mark wanted to pour good money after bad then that was his business. But I did suggest that he install a password sniffer on the computer that they both used in their apartment. Before long he was able to keep a track on her emails and sure enough he discovered that Miss Suming was still very much in touch with the black drummer. Unbelievably, he was asking her for money, which had to be a turn up for the books. Usually it’s the Thai girl hitting on the farang for cash, but the drummer wanted a 10,000-dollar loan from Miss Suming, ostensibly to buy new equipment. Mark hit the roof again, and she begged him to forgive her. It was his fault, she said, for leaving her on her own such a lot. She was flattered by the attentions of the young black drummer, but she promised on her mother’s life that she would never talk to him again. Anyway, Mark gave her another chance and as far as I know they’re still together. I’d like to think he knows what he’s doing, but in my experience if a girl fools around once, she’ll fool around again. And like I said, generally hi-so girls have the moral standards of alley cats. You’re often better off with a bargirl. At least you expect a bargirl to lie and cheat and you won’t have your balloons burst. Unless you find yourself in a Patpong show bar, of course, sitting opposite a pretty young thing with a dart gun inserted into her you-know-what.