With names like Oops, Beavers and Cheeky Monkey, it’s clear the dive bars along Soi 80 in the coastal city of Hua Hin, Thailand, offer more than just a cheap drink. Then again, with dozens of scantily clad women advertising their wares from mid-morning to the early hours, this notoriously seedy strip hardly prizes subtlety.
And yet, the clients here aren’t just looking for sex – they’re longing for love.
For Hua Hin now boasts one of the fastest growing expat communities anywhere in the world – including more than 1,000 Brits – the vast majority of whom are elderly single men hoping for a second shot at happiness. Only this time, with girls as young as their granddaughters.
A survey conducted last month by local news service Hua Hin Today found that about 81 per cent of expats in the city are male with over half aged 66-75. An impressive 96.5 per cent said that living in Hua Hin had either met or surpassed their expectations.
However, while many believe expats are little more than a boon to the local economy, worries are now being expressed over the chequered histories of those who decide to leave everything behind and relocate to this small corner of Thailand.
Earlier this month, the city – some 200km south of Bangkok – was rocked by the arrest of British expat and former military officer 55-year-old Graeme Davidson who stands accused of killing his former wife and mother of his three children, Jacqueline, in Queensland in November 2020.
Davidson claimed Jacqueline drowned in a kayaking accident, and moved to Hua Hin within months of her death.
He purchased a £315,000 four-floor beach-side villa, then married Pick Pattraporn, a local girl believed to be in her early thirties. He is also known to have briefly dated a 28-year-old woman named Ploy Ranu.
Hua Hin now boasts one of the fastest growing expat communities anywhere in the world – including more than 1,000 Brits – the vast majority of whom are elderly single men
‘Just how did this otherwise quiet coastal city, once favoured by the late Thai King, morph into a dating pool for elderly expats in search of young women?’ asks Fred kelly
Pick has now been left in the property while her wealthy British-Australian husband awaits trial for murder in a Brisbane jail – he was arrested when he returned to Australia on a short holiday to see his children Hamish, Robyn and Brooke.
What makes the case so shocking is that Davidson had quickly become a pillar of the Hua Hin community, earning widespread trust among the locals, even organising a recent Remembrance Day event and appearing on local radio.
The Davidson saga has forced many in Hua Hin to confront the uncomfortable reality that there may be a dark side to the arrival of wealthy Westerners, many of whom have come to Hua Hin not only for a new life, but to escape an old one. So just how did this otherwise quiet coastal city, once favoured by the late Thai King, morph into a dating pool for elderly expats in search of young women?
The Mail finds 65-year-old Mark enjoying an ice cream in 30 degree heat outside a shopping mall in central Hua Hin. He is a long way from his home in Cheltenham.
Mark has spent 40 years working as a plumbing and heating engineer in the West Country, and has been coming here for a few months at a time since his 30-year marriage ended in 2019.
‘Soon I’ll move out full-time,’ he said. ‘The demographic of England is changing and I don’t feel safe there. Plus, the girls aren’t interested in me.
‘I’m more into petite, attractive girls anyhow – not like the big girls in the UK. And here, men don’t even have to flirt with women, it’s the women who flirt with me.’
So-called ‘retirement visas’ are readily available for foreigners over the age of 50 provided they have a Thai bank account with more than £18,000 or a monthly pension of £1,472.
So-called ‘retirement visas’ are readily available for foreigners over the age of 50 provided they have a Thai bank account with more than £18,000 or a monthly pension of £1,472
The Davidson saga has forced many in Hua Hin to confront the uncomfortable reality that there may be a dark side to the arrival of wealthy Westerners, many of whom have come to Hua Hin not only for a new life, but to escape an old one
While meeting girls in bars is the most common way for elderly men to date younger women, expats also use online dating services including the popular local site: ThaiFriendly
As Anna, who runs a business called Anna Visa Services, and helps Brits gather their paperwork together, puts it: ‘retirement visas are an easy way in.’
Mark revealed with a smile that he is currently dating a 38-year-old Thai woman he met in a bar, making her 27-years his junior: ‘I do find the age disparity distasteful,’ he admits.
‘But she got pregnant aged 20 by a 43-year-old man and so she’s always had older men in her life. My age doesn’t worry her.’
Could this girl – who Mark was reluctant to name – be the one?
‘She’s also seeing a German man,’ Mark admits, with a tinge of bitterness in his voice. ‘And he supports her financially.’
Such a situation isn’t unusual, he assures me, despite prostitution being illegal in Thailand.
‘A lot of the girls used to work in the sex industry here and the men know that every girl here is available at a price,’ he explains.
Regardless of his girlfriend’s dalliance, Mark is adamant: ‘I don’t sleep with other girls… Not unless we’ve had an argument.’
Fred Kelly on the promenade of Hua Hin. According to Kelly, Hua Hin – with its Royal connections – is a place where Losers Back Home can live like kings in luxury condos and with beautiful young women on their arms
While meeting girls in bars is the most common way for elderly men to date younger women, expats also use online dating services including the popular local site: ThaiFriendly.
‘The girls use it for finding rich guys,’ Mark explained. ‘I went on a coffee date with a girl from the app once. It turned into a massage and then into sex.
‘She told me she didn’t want any money, but she did want a relationship. I wanted to keep it purely transactional, so I paid her anyway.’
Unlike many others, Mark is reluctant to financially support a permanent girlfriend. ‘Most girls are getting two or three hundred pounds a month from their guys,’ he revealed.
‘But I’d find that tricky to accept considering one of my daughters back home is in her mid-30s and is struggling financially.’ For similar reasons, Mark isn’t yet considering getting remarried. ‘Not unless I could protect my assets,’ he says with a grin.
Indeed, separating from rich, white Westerners has become a lucrative industry for many Thai girls who decide their elderly expat husband isn’t their dream lover after all.
Earlier this week, the Mail sat down with 45-year-old real estate agent Thita Wichaikool who has worked in the industry since 2013 and is now CEO of Hua Hin Property 94.
Thita revealed to the Mail that under Thai law, foreigners can own property but not the land it is built upon. Consequently, British men buy land under their Thai wives’ names with some women hardly waiting to get the deeds in their hands before disappearing off into the sunset.
‘The last time this happened,’ Thita revealed, ‘was just two months after the marriage! So I now draw up a special type of contract so that the ladies cannot sell the land without the man’s permission, whatever happens in their marriage.’
While a one-bed studio apartment can cost as little as 3 million Thai Bhat (£68,000), many of the luxury villas purchased by well-heeled foreigners cost over 60 million Bhat, or about £1.36million.
Late one evening, the Mail visited the Walking Street Bar to hear from young Thai women themselves. ‘Noo Nie’, 29, met her 46-year-old boyfriend David, from Birmingham, while working at Joe’s, one of the many bars along the strip.
The pair dated for a month before a traumatic break up saw them cut all communication. A few months later, however, and they’re giving it another go. So far – a week into their second shot at love – and things appear to be going steady.
‘He’s kind and supportive,’ Nie told the Mail: ‘I wouldn’t say he is handsome,’ she laughs, ‘but he takes very good care of me. Unlike foreigners, Thai men don’t take very good care of their women.’
Nie pauses with a mischievous look on her face before adding: ‘Thai men don’t care if I orgasm, but David can take me to heaven!’
‘We get a lot of British people,’ she adds. ‘They’re nice, but they talk a lot! They want to talk about work all the time and they never talk dirty.’
Nie now runs her own eponymous bar a hundred yards further up the strip from Joe’s where she employs two other girls to help keep the customers entertained and the drinks flowing.
The girls employed at Nie’s can expect to make about 300 Thai Bhat (about £7) each night, though they are provided with free board and food.
The income is modest and entirely made up of commissions from drinks the girls can convince the men to buy. However, it is still a healthy living for those who grew up in rural Thailand.
Forty seven-year-old Joy was raised on a farm in northeastern Thailand and moved to Hua Hin just a fortnight ago after the farm became untenable. In a good year, her rice crop would bring in about 15,000 Bhat – that’s just £340.
With two grown-up children living in Bangkok, Joy considered asking them for help but did not want to become a burden and so instead has taken up a friend’s offer to work in a bar.
‘I preferred working on the farm,’ she admitted. ‘But at least my colleagues here are supportive and I can make more money.’
Joy has not found the transition easy. ‘I am shy, which doesn’t help in this job,’ she confesses. ‘Foreigners approach me and touch me. But I just can’t get used to it.’
So far, no one has asked to ‘buy her out’ – the slang phrase for taking a girl off for intimate encounters. However, Joy admits that even if someone had asked, ‘I’m unsure if I would do it.’
The financial benefits of doing so, however, are considerable with the girls charging about 2,500 Bhat (£56) for the night, almost ten times what they’d make otherwise.
Suddenly, a local man seemingly associated with the bar, dressed in a vest and shorts, approaches and begins to talk hurriedly in Thai, gesticulating aggressively. It is clear this interview is over.
As I was escorted off the premises, Joy told me she was worried she could now be in trouble.
In spite of the openness with which sex work happens in Hua Hin, and across Thailand, prostitution remains illegal in the country along with pornography, Viagra (unless it has been prescribed) and sex toys.
Past midnight, and the atmosphere on the strip becomes increasingly debauched with customers and girls alike getting ever more inebriated.
One lady, who pours out of a bar, takes me and my photographer by the arms and cries: ‘I’ll have you both!’ She drags us unceremoniously into the neon-lit bar blaring noughties pop music and past a sign declaring: ‘Wear a facemask. We are vaccinated.’
The lady goes by the name Emma and eventually reveals: ‘I was working as a hairstylist before, but then I wanted to find a European boyfriend – they’re handsome and kind – so I started working here.’ The boisterous 40-year-old divorcee and mother of two looks me up and down before adding with a smile: ‘I’m not fussy about age, but perhaps you are too young for me.’
According to Emma, the oldest lady working on the strip is 52 and is affectionately known as ‘Granny.’ Allegedly, the youngest girl is 20-years-old.
In October last year, a major sting operation saw the closure of two bars on the Hua Hin strip after police working for the Anti-Human Trafficking Division found evidence of three minors being exploited for prostitution in both locations.
A 53-year-old woman known as ‘Madam Ann’ and a 50-year-old Ms Lee were both arrested and their businesses, Exotic and Full House Bar, were shut down. The Mail understands the youngest girl involved was only 15.
The extent to which minors may still be exploited for sex on the strip is unclear with everyone we spoke to insisting it did not happen.
As the Mail retired from the strip shortly before 1am, the cut-off time set by local police, a man in his early seventies who called himself Chris sauntered by.
‘It’s a fresh start here,’ he admitted exposing yellow teeth. ‘No one knows who you were back in England, what you did for a job or who you slept with.
‘All that matters is who you are now. And that’s up to you.’
In Thailand, they have a phrase for balding expats with a bulging paunch: Losers Back Home, or LBH for short.
Hua Hin – with its Royal connections – is a place where Losers Back Home can live like kings in luxury condos and with beautiful young women on their arms.
Graeme Davidson’s past may have caught up with him. But for thousands of other ageing men, Hua Hin might just be the place they leave it behind, perhaps for ever.
