Tender Trap Trilogy #2

🇦🇺 I split my time between Sydney, Kuala Lumpur, and Bangkok. Three cities. Three rhythms. Sydney is home now. Kuala Lumpur is where I began. Bangkok is the one I keep returning to.🇹🇭

———————————

A few days into this trip, poolside, writing. The kind of afternoon where heat slows everything down but sharpens what you see.

Bangkok at night shows its patterns. Heat stays on skin. Neon pools on wet pavement. Smoke from skewers drifts through Sukhumvit. Bars spill onto the street. Happy hour stretches into midnight.

Farang men move through the noise with their shirts half untucked, shoulders slightly lifted, walking like being looked at has returned something to them. Girls in tight dresses and towering boots lean in doorways, heels clicking against wet concrete, laughter cutting through traffic. The air hums. Nothing settles.

“Handsum. Where you from? Ai… come here… handsum na…”

_________________

By morning the volume drops, but the pairs remain.

A farang man and a Thai woman walking toward a coffee stall. Another couple waiting for the BTS, her hand resting lightly at his back. Someone’s hotel keycard still visible in a back pocket. Plastic bags of iced drinks swinging between them. Some move with careful distance, as if still learning each other’s timing. Some fall into step without thinking.

You can’t tell where the night ended or how long the story has been running. The city doesn’t care if you know the difference.

Bangkok has many kinds of couples. This is one of the scripts it performs loudly. Stay long enough and a pattern begins to show.

If Malaysia has Lulu, Thailand has Dao Isaan. From the northeast, where the soil is red and the options are not. Where every family has a daughter sending money home from Bangkok and everyone knows what that means and nobody asks.

Lulu waits for a Datuk in an air conditioned mall. Dao waits for a farang in a bar where the floor sticks to your shoes. Same dream. Dao just has less money to chase it with. Lulu wants an Hermes handbag. Dao wants a life that does not break her spirit. I am not laughing at either one. I have seen this shape before.

_______________

Bangkok Thais hear her accent first. Farang men see her body. She becomes the joke twice. Once for being Isaan. Once for choosing a farang. The girl from the poor province who couldn’t even get a Thai man and had to settle for a foreigner decades her senior. That is what they whisper when she walks past. Not the whole story. Just the part that makes them feel superior.

At the hotel breakfast, one of these pairs sat two tables from me. The buffet stretches across the room — Thai congee and dim sum on one side, bacon and eggs on the other, everything in between for guests pretending they are still home. He fills his plate with bacon, scrambled eggs, toast so pale it looks steamed. She moves past all of it and goes straight for jok, khai jiao, a small plate of som tam that probably isn’t hot enough but it’s the closest she’ll get in a hotel like this.

He fumbles with the sugar sachet. She steadies his hand.

Not romance. Not duty. Just a small moment between two people who need something from each other. One of them still eating what she grew up with. The other never having to.

______________

Westerners call her a rice paddy visa gold digger. They say it like she is robbing him. She is not robbing anyone. She is trying to climb out of a life that has been beating her since childhood.

Farang women glare. She feels it like she stole their last chance at happiness. Farang men mutter that Western women are “too entitled.” Dao is stepping into a role Western women walked away from. The soft girlfriend. The patient listener. The caretaker. Western women let go of that life because they had options. Dao picks it up because she does not. Someone always gets angry when you use the ladder they threw out.

A young Thai couple walked past them. The girl glanced over and rolled her eyes lightly. Recognition, not judgement. Same country. Different path. Not all Thai women want farang. Not all farang want Thai wives. But the ones who choose each other do it with reasons the outside world will never fully understand.

___________

In MBK, riding the escalator down while a woman who could have been a Dao was riding up, holding hands with her much older farang boyfriend, lover or maybe husband, not sure. She was moving toward something she still hoped for. I was moving toward something I had already built for myself. We caught each other’s eyes. A small nod. A quick smile. When we passed each other, we both said the same soft word at the same time. “Kaaaaa…”. Two women going in opposite directions, recognising the same instinct in each other.

I understand her. I work in intimacy too. I know how to be soft by choice and sharp by necessity. I know how to give the version of myself a man wants without losing the real one. I get to clock out. Dao does not. She goes home with him and inherits his entire life. His mood swings. His medications. His declining body. His loneliness. No one talks about that part when they mock her ambition.

I saw a farang stand up and his knee almost gave way. Dao caught him quickly. Her hand on his arm was steady. There it was. The whole future in one unglamorous moment. One day she will push his wheelchair. One day she will argue with hospital staff. One day she will wonder how much of her youth she traded away. The world calls her a gold digger. They never call her what she really is: tired.

_________

Dao Isaan is the real Lulu here. Not because she is foolish. Because she is willing to gamble on change. She gambles everything on the belief that things can get better. People laugh. Love up. Marry up. Escape upward.

She is greedy, they say. Naive. Using him. They forget how few choices she started with. She learnt English by memorising phrases from a syllabus never meant for real conversation, repeating them until they sounded natural enough. Enough for ordering. Enough for flirting. Enough for survival. Not enough for grief. Not enough for regret. Not enough for the kind of silence that sits between two people who actually understand each other. Sometimes he slows his words without thinking. Sometimes she smiles and nods because it is easier than asking him to repeat himself. They call it communication. Maybe that’s enough. Maybe both of them prefer it this way. She is building a future with the tools she has, not the tools they take for granted.

__________

Another day, I saw a Luk khrueng girl holding her farang father’s hand. Everyone stared at her like she was a movie star. Big eyes. Lighter skin. A pretty mix that makes strangers soften. You could almost see Dao watching. Proud. Dreaming. But nobody talks about the full truth. Mixed kids sparkle in public and struggle in private. Too foreign here, too foreign there. Admired and alienated in the same breath.

__________

Sometimes when I’m back in Sydney, walking through ThaiTown for groceries or a bowl of boat noodles, I see couples like them again. A farang man and his Thai wife, moving through ordinary life instead of neon fantasy. Shopping bags. Prams. Quiet routines.

I watch what they buy. Sometimes it’s all Thai ingredients — morning glory, galangal, fish sauce by the gallon. Sometimes it’s Vegemite jars, sliced bread, cheddar blocks, streaky bacon — with a small Thai corner tucked in. And sometimes, if she got lucky, they walk out with both and neither one looks like they’re losing something.

They look happy. Not perfect happy. Just settled. A calm kind of happiness. And something in me softens. She made it out. He found someone who stayed. They turned uneven beginnings into a real life. Everyone loves to mock these couples but I’ve never wished them anything except ease. I don’t know if they deserve it. I just know they fought for it.

_____________

Lub you rong time. People say it as a joke. Dao says it because she needs something to believe in. He hears it as a second chance. And somewhere between those two meanings, a life takes shape.

Imperfect. Human. Possible.

________

Click here for more images and videos.