CBC Documentaries

The Passionate Eye: My Thai Bride (2014x3)

Air date: Feb 16, 2014

Is it possible to find love in Thailand? Many westerners go looking, but Ted discovers that money can't buy everything and gets "lost in Thailand". Ted Rees is a middle-aged British salesman. Back home, young attractive women are, in his words, “priced out of my market.” But when he travels to Thailand, he’s free to enjoy the company of the exotic and alluring women who work in the bars of Bangkok. He revels in the freedom he finds in a country where everything is for sale at the right price; including the beautiful young women who want to be with him. When he meets Tip, a ‘bar’ worker, she’s kind, helpful, attentive, and most importantly, in need of him. A pretty and petite single mom in her thirties, she helps him with his import business by buying cheap Thai goods. Ted returns to the UK, but stays in contact with Tip, sending her money so she can give up her bar job and return to her family’s farm in her village. After a few months, at Tip’s request, Ted returns to Thailand and marries her. In northeast Thailand marriage to foreign men seeking love and sex has become an industry. Tip is from the northeastern Issan region, the poorest part of Thailand. Like many Issan women, Tip is uneducated and could never earn enough to own her house or educate her child. She hates the thought of her daughter growing up to be involved in prostitution. When she meets Ted, she thinks she has finally found a foreigner who will take care of her and her daughter. Ted sells everything he owns and the two start a life in Tip’s village. Ted finances a pig farm and builds them a house - but since Thai property laws restrict foreign ownership, everything is in Tip’s name. Ted soon discovers there are many other foreign men who have married and settled in northeast Thailand. John, an Australian, says that there are about 90 foreigners living within a five-kilometre radius and that new foreigners arrive every week. For many Thai women, marriage to a forei