Nothing happened that night in Pattaya, just talking and falling asleep together. That was exactly what made me fall for her.

I'm Belgian, from Ghent, and I'm 35. I've got a good job, my own place, and I joined the family business straight after school without really thinking twice about it at the time.

A few years ago I got sent to Pattaya on what was supposed to be a short business trip, just a few days of meetings and that would be it.

Before going I'd heard all the usual stories about Pattaya. Older foreign guys, bars everywhere, and plenty of women waiting at the door of every single one. It didn't sound like my scene at all, honestly, and I went out there planning to just get the work done and head home without much else.

But after finishing up one evening, I decided to go out and see what all the fuss was about. I walked along Walking Street with no real plan, more out of curiosity than anything else, neon lights reflecting in every puddle on the pavement and different music spilling out of every open doorway.

In one of the bars I went into, I met a woman named Nong.

We sat drinking and talking for hours, and I enjoyed being around her and the feeling she gave off, something calm and genuine that didn't match what I'd pictured before arriving. We talked about all sorts of things, my job, why I was only in Pattaya for a few days, music we both liked without either of us expecting that from the other. At some point I asked her, half joking, how many times a day someone asked her the same question I was asking, and she laughed and told me fewer than I probably imagined, though she didn't give me an actual number.

Eventually we left the bar together and carried on the night outside, walking without any destination through streets that no longer had anything to do with the bar's atmosphere.

The funny thing is nothing happened. We spent the night talking, cuddling, and eventually just fell asleep together. I remember waking up before her, staring at the hotel ceiling and thinking I hadn't felt that calm with anyone in years, not even with girlfriends I'd had back in Belgium. It sounds ridiculous looking back on it now, but that night really is what made me catch feelings for her, far more than I'd have expected after knowing her only a few hours.

The next morning I decided I'd rather spend the rest of my trip with her than keep bouncing from bar to bar the way I had the night before.

What started out looking like the usual holiday-girlfriend arrangement quickly started feeling like something a lot more serious.

After a few days together, Nong told me that from then on I only needed to cover the bar, so she wouldn't have to work while I was there. She even offered to pay for things herself whenever we went out, though I never let her, not once.

As we spent more time together, she opened up about her life. Her mother had passed away years earlier, her father had disappeared when she was young, and she'd been helping support her sister and her sister's children for a long time. According to her, that was the reason she'd ended up working in Pattaya, not because she'd chosen it eagerly but because it was what she'd found when she needed it most. She told me this one afternoon sitting on the terrace of a restaurant by the sea, her voice noticeably quieter than usual, and I remember not really knowing what to say beyond just listening and letting her talk for as long as she needed.

I asked her, maybe without much tact, whether she missed anything about her life before all that. She thought about it for a moment and told me she missed being able to choose, simply that, choosing instead of doing whatever needed doing so her sister and nephews and nieces could eat that month.

When it was time for me to go back to Belgium, neither of us wanted to actually say goodbye. We stayed in contact every day through messages and video calls, working around the time difference as best we could, and after a while I decided I wanted to give the relationship a real chance, not just leave it as a nice memory from a work trip. I went back to Thailand twice more that same year, each time with the official excuse of visiting clients who by then didn't really need that much attention, and every visit confirmed a little more that this wasn't cooling off with distance the way everyone had warned me it would.

Before doing anything else, I asked to see documents proving she wasn't married and didn't have children of her own. She understood without me having to explain much, which I also appreciated, because she clearly knew exactly why I was asking and didn't take it as some personal insult. Once I was satisfied everything checked out, we applied for a visa.

The whole process took way longer than expected for what was supposed to be a fairly straightforward visa, months of paperwork and waiting rooms, and we had to get formally engaged just to keep the application moving forward at all. But once the visa was approved, I paid for her to leave the bar and move to Belgium with me.

She's been here for six months now.

It hasn't been easy for either of us. She's had to adapt to a completely different culture, a new language, different food, and a way of life that doesn't resemble anything she knew. The first few months I noticed her exhausted in a way that was different from ordinary tiredness, worn out from constantly translating in her head, from not quite getting a joke at dinner, from hunting for jasmine rice in supermarkets that only stocked two varieties and neither was the right one.

I've had to deal with family and friends who wouldn't stop questioning the relationship every time it came up at dinner or some family gathering.

My mother gets on really well with her now, after a fairly cold first few months I'd rather not repeat, family dinners full of awkward silences and polite questions that were actually hiding something else. I remember one Sunday lunch in particular where my mother asked her, with absolutely no tact, how long she planned on staying in Belgium if things didn't work out between us. Nong answered with a calm that surprised me more than anyone else at the table, and that answer changed my mother's attitude quite a bit from then on.

But a lot of people still think she's only with me for the money or the citizenship, and some friends don't even bother hiding it when we're all out together, dropping little comments they think are jokes. Maybe that's understandable, considering how many stories there are out there about relationships like this ending badly for one side, usually the one left empty-handed after giving everything.

All I can say, as honestly as I know how to put it, is that so far she's given me no reason at all to think that. We're happy together, she's settled well into life in Belgium, she's even started language classes twice a week and can already order at the bakery without me having to translate anything, and we're already talking about spending part of our future in Thailand later on, maybe not the whole year but a meaningful part of it, close to her sister and the kids she's helped raise for so long.

I know perfectly well that a lot of people will read this and think I'm just another guy saying his girl is different, the line everyone says right before something goes wrong. Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong. All I know is that right now things are working out, and we're building a life together, step by step, no rush but no pause either.

I wanted to share my story because most of the stories people hear are the ones that end badly. Mine hasn't ended at all yet, not even close, but so far it's been a positive one, and I honestly think that deserves telling every once in a while too, if only to balance out a little what usually gets said about Pattaya and everything it represents to people who've never gone past its bars, people who hear one word, Pattaya, and think they already know the whole story before I've said another thing.