12,500 baht for two bottles of wine. As I got out of the taxi, I watched the manager get in with her.

Just got back from Bangkok, where I got scammed pretty simply, to be honest. I saw it coming, but not quite fast enough to avoid it entirely.

I'm Austrian, 44, and I met a woman on Thai Friendly a few days before my trip, killing time at Vienna airport waiting for the flight. Her name was Fon, 37 years old, a profile with carefully chosen photos and easy, flowing conversation from the very first message, the kind that makes you drop your guard without noticing. I told her which part of the city I was staying in without thinking twice, almost in passing, something I now know was the first mistake of the night, the one that opened the door to everything else. We arranged to meet on the second night of my stay, after a first day spent just walking around and getting used to the heat.

She showed up right on time outside the hotel, dressed more carefully than you'd usually expect for a first date, and we got straight into a taxi to a Thai restaurant she said she knew well, one of her favourite spots in the area, where according to her they always treated her wonderfully. The moment we sat down she started ordering practically the entire menu, dish after dish with barely a pause or a glance at me, plus a bottle of red wine that cost 2,500 baht, telling me that's all she drinks, with a naturalness that didn't strike me as odd at all in the moment.

The bill was substantial, quite a bit more than I'd mentally tallied while we ate. I paid it without complaint, pulling out the card almost by reflex. The chemistry seemed good, easy laughter, constant eye contact, her hand brushing mine over the table now and then, the kind of night you hope for when you take a chance on a date through an app after months of nothing like it.

Afterwards she suggested a show nearby, just a five minute walk, she said, nothing much, taking my hand to cross the street through the moped traffic. We ended up in some fairly shady venue, dim coloured lights and background music loud enough to make any real conversation impossible, low tables with cushions instead of proper chairs, where she ordered another bottle of the same red wine without even asking me, holding up two fingers to the waiter like someone who already knew the place by heart. Snacks kept appearing one after another without anyone ordering them out loud, melon cut into small pieces, pineapple, a few more starters I never quite identified in the dim light. A Thai man sat down at our table without anyone inviting him, wearing a dark polo shirt with the venue's logo stitched on the chest, and she introduced him as the manager, completely naturally, as if it were the most normal thing in the world for him to join the table.

One glass into the second bottle, all the signals pointed the right way, or so it seemed at the time. She danced pressed against me between the tables, Thai music at a volume that made any serious conversation impossible, held my gaze longer than usual, laughed at my weakest jokes like they were genuinely funny, resting her hand on my arm every time she laughed. Everything pointed toward a good night, no reasonable doubt in my head at that point, not the slightest hint that something didn't quite add up.

Around midnight the bill arrived.

12,500 baht.

When I started to question the amount, running my finger down each line on the bill that didn't quite make sense, mentally counting how many drinks we'd actually had against what was written down, she told me, lowering her voice but with real firmness, not to embarrass her in front of everyone, that she'd lose face if I kept pushing the issue in front of the manager and the other staff who were already glancing over at our table.

I was out of cash, just a few hundred loose baht in my pocket, so I had to go find an ATM a couple of streets away, walking alone down a poorly lit street, telling myself it was fine, that we'd be heading back to the hotel together afterwards anyway, that this was just an unpleasant moment before the good night still ahead.

We went back to the table, I paid the rest in cash in front of her and the manager, who counted the notes with a calm that, looking back now, feels pretty telling. We got in a taxi together, and then she said, with a sudden look of worry, that her daughter was at home hungry, waiting for her, and told the driver to drop me at my hotel first before continuing on to wherever it was she actually lived.

As I got out of the taxi, already at the hotel entrance with my room key still in my pocket, I watched the manager from the venue come out of the same building through a side door, but this time in regular clothes, a plain t-shirt and flip-flops, no more uniform polo shirt, and get into the same taxi with her without the slightest hurry or attempt to hide it, like someone heading home after an ordinary shift at work.

Boyfriend. Obviously.

A classic scam, pulled off with real ease, almost elegance if you stop to break it down coldly afterwards. The restaurant chosen carefully, the show venue as a second stop already planned in advance, the fake chemistry from start to finish, the guilt trip about losing face as the mechanism to get the money paid without further questions, and the perfectly choreographed exit the moment the cash was already in her hands.

Thinking about it now with a clear head, every piece fit together almost too precisely to be improvised. The manager who appears without anyone calling him, the drinks arriving right when needed to keep the mood going, the hungry daughter excuse prepared in advance to separate us without it looking suspicious. They must have been doing this for quite a while, practiced enough that everything felt spontaneous when in reality none of it was.

What bothers me most, honestly, isn't so much the money lost that night, which wasn't an amount that was going to ruin my life or anything close to it, but how well every part of the con fit together with the next, no visible crack anywhere until it was already too late to do anything about it. I spent a good part of the flight back to Vienna going over the whole sequence in my head, trying to pinpoint the exact moment I should have realised, and honestly there were several, not just one.

I'm not telling this to say Bangkok is a dangerous place or to generalise about anyone who lives there, the vast majority of people I crossed paths with during the trip were perfectly kind and honest. I'm telling it because at 44 I thought I'd seen enough not to fall for something this obvious in hindsight, and a nice dinner with red wine and an easy smile proved me wrong.

Don't tell girls where you're staying before you've met them in person at least once, that extra piece of information only helps them plan how to separate you from your money more effectively. And if a bill arrives that looks nothing like what you actually ordered, you're already inside a scam, there's no walking that back at that point. Walk away before the face-saving conversation even starts, because the moment it does, you've already lost, not her.