I gave her 400,000 baht and two years of my life. One day she went to a temple and never spoke to me again.

I'm Canadian, 51 years old, and my first trip to Pattaya was in February 2019. I met a girl called Om, we had a good time together, and stayed in touch when I got home.

In October I came back for a whole month and we travelled together, Bangkok first, then Hua Hin by train, and finally across to Pattaya by boat, a route that sounded a lot more romantic on paper than it turned out to be in practice.

It sounded romantic, sure, on paper, two people crossing the country together, but really we argued constantly over things that ballooned into something bigger, she wanted money for this and that, a new dress, a gift for her mother, the hotel bill, and gave very little of herself back in return. I made the best of the trip because I genuinely liked her despite the constant drama, telling myself it was just her way and that it would smooth out over time, but when I got home she went cold out of nowhere and started ignoring me without any explanation, replies getting shorter and shorter until they stopped coming altogether.

I decided Om simply wasn't worth any more of my time or energy going forward.

So I started chatting with her roommate, Lek, instead, someone I'd met in passing during the trip with Om but never exchanged more than a couple of sentences with. A quieter girl, not as popular at the bar as Om, with fewer regulars and less interest in putting on a show, but exactly my type, the kind who doesn't grab your attention at first glance but grows on you with every conversation you have with her. We got on really well from the start, none of the constant tension I'd had with Om.

When COVID hit and the bars shut down overnight, both girls lost their jobs from one day to the next, no warning, no severance of any kind. I offered to cover rent and food for both of them for as long as it lasted, without thinking twice, because at that moment it just seemed like the normal thing to do, helping whoever you could. Lek told me, during one of those long nightly video calls we had almost every day, that she was tired of Pattaya, tired of the bar scene and the nightlife in general, and just wanted a normal life back in her home village near Prakhon Chai, inland, far from the coast and the tourists.

She wanted to sell food in her village, something simple, her own stall. So I bought her all the equipment she needed, stove, tables, chairs, absolutely everything, around 50,000 baht in total, transferred gradually over several weeks.

She got the business going entirely on her own, deciding the menu, the prices, even the name painted above the stall, and it did fairly well for a while, with regulars from the village coming back almost daily to eat. Then COVID reached the village too, people stopped going out for fear of catching it, and she had to shut the stall down indefinitely without even having recovered what she'd put in. I told her not to panic, that these things happened and we'd try again once it all passed, and I kept supporting her financially through those months of closure without giving it much thought or keeping exact track of how much it was adding up to.

We talked and laughed on Messenger every single day without fail for almost two years straight, voice messages she'd send while cooking, photos of the village, of the sky at sunset, everyday nonsense that at the time felt like the best part of my day. I'm twice her age, she's about 25 and I'm 51, and I'm not naive, I know full well what it can mean when a young Thai girl tells you she loves you, I've heard enough stories from other expats not to lower my guard completely. But she also told me she respected me, in those exact words more than once, and the way she treated me day to day backed that up, at least for a very, very long time.

No sick buffalo stories, no sudden emergencies every other week like I'd heard other expats describe with their own girlfriends, just genuine gratitude and normal conversations between two people who got on well and genuinely enjoyed each other's company, at least that's how it looked from where I was standing.

Then in February 2022, almost two years on from those first video calls during lockdown, she told me she was going to a temple for two weeks on a retreat, no phones allowed inside, something to do with her mother and a religious vow I never fully understood. I thought that was fine, I understood completely, plenty of Thai women go on retreats like that from time to time and nothing about it struck me as unusual. The exact two weeks passed and I called on the day it was due. No answer. I tried again the next day, and the day after that, and kept trying for a whole month more, calls, voice messages, texts. Nothing at all, not a single reply.

She went quiet on Facebook, ignored my messages on the days she did show up online, then removed me as a friend, and eventually blocked me completely everywhere.

I asked her sister by private message, a couple of her friends I still had added from the Pattaya days, nobody would tell me anything at all, everyone with the same polite deflection, "I don't know, ask her yourself directly," as if that wasn't exactly what I'd been trying to do for weeks without any luck. Eventually I saw a photo of her on her sister's Facebook, smiling at what looked like a family celebration, so at least I knew she was alive, well, and at home in the village. She'd simply decided, at some point I never managed to pin down, that I no longer existed for her, with no explanation of any kind.

I don't cry over the money, honestly, around 400,000 baht in total across everything I gave her over those years, the business equipment, rent during the closures, the odd bit of help here and there that never felt like much to ask. I was actually ready to buy her a house of her own, something small but hers, so she'd have a place away from her family if that's what she wanted deep down.

I had a few good years of travel left in me, healthy and willing, and I wanted to spend them with her, that was honestly the whole idea, nothing more complicated than that. What kills me isn't the money, it's the total silence, the absolute nothing after all that time shared. If she'd found someone else, or simply had a change of heart about us for whatever reason, just saying so would have been enough, one sentence, one message, anything at all. Not knowing is, by far, the worst part of all of it.

I've been back to Pattaya a few times since, with no particular agenda beyond having a good time, most recently last June, and I met a nice new girl there and had a good time with no complications or promises of any kind. But the whole Lek situation kept hanging over me the entire trip, in the background, like an unanswered question that would surface at the silliest moments, on the street, in a restaurant, completely out of nowhere. I even considered getting a bus out to Prakhon Chai and finding her in person to demand an explanation face to face, showing up at her door unannounced. But I thought better of it after all these years gone by, all that time in between. There was no point reopening something like that out of nowhere, for either of us, and even less point showing up uninvited in whatever life she'd decided to build.

I'm genuinely moving forward now, bit by bit, and enjoying keeping things light and uncomplicated for the time being, in no rush for it to turn into anything more serious than that, wherever it happens to lead next.