Selling wedded bliss big business in Thailand

Selling wedded bliss big business in Thailand

Andrew Marshall Reuters Bangkok

English dentist Ken Moylan came to Thailand looking for a wife. It took two hours to find her.

"The first day I went out with Wan, she came back to my hotel and hung all my clothes up and tidied the room. I thought it was marvelous," he said. "I knew then there was something special."

Moylan, 49, is one of thousands of men who use introduction agencies to meet -- and marry -- Thai women. He lives in England now with 28-year-old Wan, who is expecting their first child.

Critics of marriage agencies say they exploit the grinding poverty of women in developing countries, offering dreams of a new life in the West that often turn sour. But Moylan says he has no regrets about coming to Thailand in search of a wife.

"I got to Thailand at two o'clock, and by four o'clock I'd met Wan," he said. "I knew I found her attractive. I could tell straight away that she was very caring."

Moylan spent a week in Thailand, and after returning to England kept in touch with Wan by phone and mail. Six months later she came to England and the couple married.

Lawrence Lynch, 49, runs Thai Professional Introduction Services, the agency Moylan used to meet his wife. Lynch, who calls himself "Mr Marriage", started the company after also marrying a Thai woman through an introduction agency.

Since then he has helped set up hundreds of marriages.

"In the last five years we've done about 400," he said. "To the best of my knowledge, they have all been successful."

Male clients pay 1,450 pounds (US$2,213) for the service, although men from countries that require them to handle some of the visa work on their own get a discount. Clients then get to view catalogs and videos of hundreds of Thai women looking for a husband. If they like what they see they come to Bangkok.

Clients are introduced to several women in chaperoned meetings in Lynch's office -- encounters that can often be awkward given mutual shyness and language problems.

"We find that the gentlemen are usually just as nervous as the ladies," Lynch said. "But once they start meeting the ladies they soon relax."

After the first meeting, couples can decide to go on dates to get to know each other better. Within two weeks of arrival, Lynch says, almost every client has found a potential wife.

"At the end of a fortnight it's very, very rare for a guy to go back and think he hasn't made his mind up," he said. In most cases, marriage follows, usually within the next year.

Roongthip Kamchat, managing director of Thai No 1 Connections, a Bangkok-based agency, says she has introduced about 1,000 couples, and less than 10 percent have broken up.

Roongthip says she sometimes has a difficult time calming men who have just arrived in Bangkok looking for a wife.

"Sometimes they are very nervous," she said. "And sometimes they are very impatient and say 'Give me a lady, I want to get married now'. I say: 'Calm down, OK, we'll talk'."

But if men are really in a hurry, Roongthip says, she can find them a wife and get them married within a week. Lynch says clients he has found wives for include a blind man, a man with one leg and a man with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Similar marriage agencies can be found in many developing countries. Critics say they thrive on the neediness of lonely Western men who are unable to form relationships in their own country, and on the desperation of impoverished women who believe they can find a better life in the West.

But Moylan says that if the arrangement makes both partners happy, there is no reason to object to it. "If you talk about people who are needy, I think everybody wants someone to love them, and wants someone to love, so yes, I need Wan," he said.

"Thai women are dissatisfied with life in Thailand. I think there's no secret there. They are looking for a better life. I don't have a problem with that. In return they are willing to give a lot of love and care to their future husband."

Lynch says men are dissatisfied with Western women too, and that is why they choose to use his agency.

His brochure promises an alternative to the "kind of de- feminized, over-sized, self-centered, mercenary-minded lady available on the British singles scene", and says he can make dreams come true even for men who are not "God's gift to women".

Roongthip said many Western men found it difficult to meet women in their own countries -- and found Thai women attractive.

"They don't know how to meet women. Even if they go to pubs or discotheques or restaurants or department stores, how can they ask people to marry them? Impossible," she said.

"Many Thai girls are slim, have long hair, black eyes, small nose. They are good at taking care and joking and laughing, not strict. Different from ladies form other countries."

Although many couples married through agencies have a considerable age gap, the agencies say this is not a problem.

They say language problems are also not a major obstacle.

"Thai ladies are not ageist, and they have no qualms whatsoever about having a husband who is significantly older," Lynch said. "When I met my wife she couldn't speak a word of English. We muddled along with a phonetic dictionary. The ladies are very keen to learn English and they pick it up very quickly."

Many agencies also offer tuition for woman on what to expect when they move to the West.

"We have kitchens, we have study classes," Roongthip said. "We teach them how to eat, and when to make tea."

But not all dreams come true. "Bee" is a 26-year-old Thai woman who went to Switzerland two years ago with a man she met through an agency. Now she is back in Bangkok, sad and angry.

"He had no friends, and I was so lonely," she said. "I tried to make him happy but he just wanted sex and somebody to keep his house clean. He never spoke to me."

Bee left her husband and came back to Bangkok earlier this year. "I thought I would be happy there," she said. "But it was the worst time of my life."

Lynch says that while some agencies are badly run, he makes checks to ensure unsuitable candidates are weeded out.

"We are ethical and professional," he said. "We will not take on all comers."

Moylan says that despite possible pitfalls, his own marriage is proof that the arrangement can work . Wan's sister has just signed up with Lynch's company, looking for a foreign husband.

"Perhaps there are cases of women being exploited. I'm sure there are," Moylan said. "But in the majority of cases the women get a good deal."