Here’s a great site for anyone with questions about sex in Thailand. Kaewmala is a Thai lady with a great sense of humor. She’s gone to great trouble to create a useful guide to relationships in Thailand: “I wrote about the evolution of Thai-farang relationship in three phases: “rental wife”, “farang son-in-law” and “post-rental wife” phases, here….I have also made A Rough Guide for Finding the Right Thai Woman for Western Men in which Thai women are divided into 5 major groups. I’ve put them in a matrix with expectations and considerations for each group that foreign men, especially those with limited exposure to Thai culture and society, maybe even the old hands, might find useful. I attach the matrix here, but for more detailed explanation about it, go to the original article“.
In her excellent book covering five kinds of Thai women, Thai Love Talk : In Search of Love and Romance, Kaewmala helps you understand and navigate the stormy waters of relationships with Thai women: their culture, their expectations, and their shortcomings. Along the way she gives you almost 900 new amorous phrases. Just reading them is an education in the subtleties of the Thai language.
Five Kinds of Thai Women – the Chart:
This is my favorite part of the book: Kaewmala lays out her typology crisply: Average Thai Bargirl, Average Thai Woman in a Low Paying Job, Average Thai Woman in a Poor rural Village, Average Middle-class Thai Woman to Educated Middle/upper Class Urban Thai Woman:
The chart is more legible in the book:
It covers the ‘big issues’ like
The Thai Sexual Jungle
The characters inhabiting Thailand’s love jungle. It discusses your chances of wooing different types of Thai women through animal metaphors like ‘dog barking at an airplane’ and ‘rabbit aiming for the moon’: don’t waste your energy. Unless, of course, you a ‘lucky mouse falling into a rice bin’: luck tends to follow you around and you end up with a beautiful, rich woman.
The Battle between Love and Lust
Is it love or is it lust? Whichever, it begins with sexual attraction. This chapter walks you through the language and falling in love stages: love-struck, infatuated or just plain turned on. Whatever it may be, you will find the right phrase.
Looking for love
There are some wonderful characters out there and the author describes the runners and riders, like ‘Single but not fresh’, for someone who’s been married more than once and is now back on the circuit. Then there’s the ‘Pretty and loaded’ and ‘the playboy’: regular ladies’ man.
The Thai Art of Flirting
Flirting in Thai culture has in the most part been carried out by the men. You will find some of the more common flirting terms, but there are some real colorful flirting phrases in this chapter. Find out what the full explanation is of ‘Selling / tossing around flirty cakes’. What about ‘being dancing – fish excited’? This phrase is a warning to a woman of not to become too excited in the company of a hunk as it were. A lady is supposed to be able to control her excitement and not bounce around like a dancing fish. The term ‘being a golden flower’ sounds good, but in actual fact is rather insulting to women.
Traditional Thai Courtship Rituals
Traditional courtship rituals may in the main be a thing of the past, but there are still certain ways a couple are supposed to act. In fact for a man, acting in the proper manner and meeting the lady’s family are essential. This is apparent in the phrase of ‘Enter through the proper alleyway, exit through the door’. If the parents tend to favour a particular suitor, but the son or daughter are not so keen, then the parents should take a back seat. To try to force the issue would be known as to ‘Force the cow by the horns to eat grass.’ Cute, huh?
Modern Thai Courtship and Dating
Traditional courtship rituals have given way to more modern courtship/dating terms. Now, you can fill in the detail…. want to know what being ‘just friends, more than friends” means? Or ‘before the pot becomes black’? The phrase ‘Arriving mornings and evenings’ describes a persistent suitor and you can probably guess the phrase meaning of ‘Sending out the invitation cards’.
Lovers and Bedmates
In this chapter you’ll find out what ‘Love over the skyline’ means and how to say it in Thai. The meaning in Thai of ‘Secret lover’ and why for a woman you wouldn’t really want to be a ‘Flower by the roadside, a pass-through‘. Or a ‘Plaything or a dead-thing’!!
In the Eye of the (Thai) Beholder
Kaewmala provides the usual phrases for being beautiful, good-looking, good personality and shapely, but then gives you some real gems. How about ‘Chili – carrying crow’? What about ‘Black as charcoal’, ‘charred stump’, ‘chrysalis’? You” find out…
Sexy…Thai style?
Some great expressions here, like ‘Sizzling hot and flammable’,’appetizingly, crushingly sexy’ and, for guys, ‘Muscular, robust.”
And if you’re interested in another account of how Thai women are taught to handle Thai men, here’s Aimie explaining what her father taught her: