Not Pattaya Scams. Funny true stories

Dear John letters

Now this is going back nearly twenty years, in the good old days before email, the days before mobile phones in Thailand.

I lived in Bangkok for a year. It was the first time I was out here, came for six weeks, but never made it back home for a year!

I had a good friend, another Brit - we used to go to Patpong together for a night out, two or three times a week.

We got to know the bars, and the girls in a lot of the bars. In those days when communications weren’t so instant, apart from the girl’s boyfriend calling her on a landline (even that was not so easy then) the method of staying in touch was by letter.

After a few months some of the girls plucked up courage to ask if we would write a letter in English to their loved one on the other side of the world.

The girls written English wasn’t so hot. Being the two gentlemen we were, we offered to oblige.
So there you had it, two ferangs writing in intimate detail (believe me) letters to someone we only knew the name of (usually).

Then of course when the reply arrived in Thailand we were volunteered to read that too.
Oddly enough, sometimes it made you wonder who had the better command of the English language, the girl or the guy.

But as they say, business is business, so it evolved to become the price of one beer per letter.
God we were so drunk sometimes! Couldn’t even spell “hello” on one occasion!