[Sir Burr]

The first time I came to Phuket was in 1982. I brought with me a Singaporean girl and we stayed in Patong. The night-life was almost non-existent back then, with only a few bars on Soi Bangla. Soi Gonzo and Soi Ko Yoy (the real name for Soi Crocodile, named for the owner of the land) was still under construction. The Singaporean girl and I argued constantly, and we flew back to Singapore two days later. So, I don’t really count that trip.
Since I came to live permanently in Phuket in 1985, I have only ever had three real girlfriends. This is my story and if there is anything to be learnt from it, you will have to look for yourselves.

In 1985 I was departing from my offshore job and going on leave. I hadn’t a clue where I was going to go. I was bored of my usual schedule of spending all my time in the bars and ago-gos of Bangkok and Manila. A close friend who I worked with suggested I go back home to his place in Phuket. I jumped at the idea.
We arrived in Patong in the early afternoon and by 4 O’ clock we were having our first beer in Soi Gonzo at the only bar open. As we sat there, we saw a Thai girl in the next bar getting the place ready to open. She had her back to us and had the most amazing hair I had ever seen at that time. It was a glossy, blue-black that came down to the tops of her thighs, just like you see in the shampoo commercials.
I gave my mate a nudge and bet him a beer that when she turned around, that she would be revealed as a total dog.
Well, I lost that bet. When she turned around she was an absolute stunner! When she saw us looking at her, she smiled and that smile lit up the Soi.
My chin hit the counter, my heart felt it was going to burst and I found out that love at first sight really did exist.
I immediately abandoned my friend, went over to her and announced to her that she was going to be my girlfriend and that in all probability, one day I would marry her.
It turned out that she was the owner of the bar and had been in Phuket for about three years. Her name was Dang (not her real name) and she was a year older than me at 28 years old.
I went to her bar every night for a week and gradually wore her down until on the eighth day she finally relented and became my girlfriend and consummated it in my bungalow.
Six months later, I was laid off from work and came to live in Phuket full time.
Life was good with Dang, she was not the typical inactive Thai girl. We both learnt to Scuba dive and went to the Similans together many times. She liked to run, so we joined a running club. We traveled all over Thailand together. I still have never met such an active Thai woman.
Anyway, all these good times had a price and the money was getting lower and lower.
We started a couple of business and both of us worked every hour of the day that God sent us, yet, we were still earning peanuts.
Within six months of the relationship, it became obvious that it was a little one sided. I loved her with a passion and told her so two or three times a day. The only time she ever said “I love you” was when I blatantly fished for it, and then it rang hollow. Don’t get me wrong, she “liked” me immensely, but looking back now after all this time, I don’t think she ever really loved me. She had been ditched by a previous boyfriend that she really did love. I think after that relationship ended, she would never entrust her heart to another person ever again.
Anyway, the money was running out and she gently started to suggest that I get another job. To me this was not an option. I would have to go back to the company that laid me off cap in hand, and I just wasn’t prepared to leave Dang or, Phuket.
The relationship started to slowly sour and she finally booted my butt out after staying together for two years. She broke my heart and I was pretty messed up for the next two years.
In hind-sight, she did the right thing, I went back offshore and started earning again. She found another boyfriend and continued staying in Phuket, opening various businesses over the years. To this day, I am good friends with her and her now husband.
She was my first Thai girlfriend.


Funny, the way I met the next girlfriend has similarities to the way I met my first.
Three years later, I remember waking up and trying to open my eyes as they were glued together with sleep. My head was pounding with the worst hang-over I had had in years and my mouth tasted like a soi dog had shat in it.
That was when it happened. I heard and sensed a movement next to me. I slowly turned my head to the side and found my nose two inches away from the back of a girls head!
WTF! I didn’t remember taking a girl home. I certainly couldn’t remember any horizontal athletics. In fact I couldn’t remember a thing about the previous night at all.
I just knew in my heart of hearts that she was going to be a real horror. If I had picked her up, it would have had to have been real late, when all the good looking girls had been taken.
I gave her a nudge, and bugger me with a fish-fork! She was an absolute stunner with the most magnificent set of head-lamps I had ever seen.
Noi became my second girlfriend.
I eventually bought a small town-house over in Kata and we moved in. I was still having to go to work offshore and at the start, things seemed to be going well. After a while I would come back to Phuket to an empty house. She was never there to greet me, which sort of hurt.
Things got slowly worse. Strange Thai men, turning up at the house at all hours. Absences that she couldn’t explain. Anyway, things bumbled along in this vein for another six months, or so (never under estimate the power of self denial).
The (almost) end came when she demanded money to open a boutique in Surattthani, her home town. I packed her bags, demanded my front door key, told her I was going to change the locks, then, unceremoniously, booted her out.
I was free again and loving it.
After telling her that I would change the locks, I figured she would never come back. So, for the sake of saving a few hundred baht. I didn’t change the locks.
Next time I got back from offshore, I walked into a completely empty house. Everything was gone except my bed and the settee.
That was my second girlfriend.


Six years later I was still single and still living in my small house in Kata.
Now, the one thing you have to understand, is that when you come back from six weeks offshore without having had any alcohol or sex, is that you are very horny and it doesn’t take many drinks to get completely blotto.
For several years, my first night back in Phuket would follow a very predictable course.
I would head to Patong on the first night with the express intention to get laid.
I would bar-hop, having one drink at each bar scoping out which girl I would take. Unfortunately, I am one of those people who always thinks that there is a better girl just around the corner in another bar. By closing time I wouldn’t have found a better one, go back to the previous bar where I had picked a candidate, and inevitably, she was gone. A mad dash to the bar before that. Same story. By that time, I would be so drunk that even if I got a girl, I doubt whether I could do anything about it. Always got hammered on the first night. Rarely got laid.
So. On the second night at home, still nursing a hang-over, I would be determined to get laid. No way I was going to Patong as I would just repeat the previous night’s performance.
Usually, I went out in Kata, had just enough to drink to pick up a girl, then took her home.
This was how I met girlfriend number three.

Nit (also not her real name) was the best looking girl working in what is now known as Soi Happy Bars. I often asked her why she didn’t work in Patong because I was convinced that she could earn more money there. She always said she didn’t like Patong and that it wasn’t “her style”.
Nit became my regular “second night” girl, and I would usually take her if I couldn’t be bothered going to Patong to get laid. She had a bubbly personality and after doing the biz, always proceeded to tidy and clean the house. Do any laundry and generally got my pad looking respectable.
This went on for a year. By this time I was sick and tired of the bar scene, sick and tired of having sex with strangers. I wanted, and was on the look-out for a potential girlfriend, as yet with no success.
On one of the infamous second nights, I went to the bar to pick up Nit. I was horny and the house was a mess. At home, she told me that she was going to quit the bar and go to find work in a restaurant. I asked her why? She said that she had never liked selling her body and that even though she would earn less, she would regain her self respect. I asked her which restaurant. She said she didn’t know yet.
I knew that when she left the bar, I would never see her again.
It’s funny how you take so many things for granted until there is a danger that it will be taken from you.
I asked Nit to be my girlfriend. Love had nothing to do with it. I was just lonely and I needed a maid / cook.
It was all very business like. I set down the ground rules, told her how much money she would get every month, and emphasized that my word was law, and that at any time she did not like that, then she knew where the door was.
I can remember the exact moment when I fell in love with her. We had been together for just over a year and we were wandering around the annual Chalong Temple fair buying stuff for the house. We were surrounded by hundreds of Thais, when quite unconsciously, she slipped her hand in mine while she was haggling with a stall holder, completely unmindful of what other people would think. That night, I told her I loved her for the first time. She broke down in tears of happiness and confessed that she had loved me the second time I had ever taken her. She had never told me.
That was my third and last girlfriend, and incidentally, my first wife.