See here.
We do get our fair share of people disappearing. In some instances, they disappear of their own free will.
Whoa, that’s a bit disconcerting! My brother and his wife are going over there for a teaching gig next month. (They’ve already done one in Korea). They do some initial stuff in Chiang Mai, then it’s down to Chonburi to the schools they’ll be working.
I wonder what percentage of these disappearances are voluntary?
Creepy as all get-out. Even creepier are the ads from Thai hotels.
I seriously would not worry about it. These represent a minuscule proportion of total arrivals and foreign residents. Thailand is very safe, much safer than many neighboring countries. But it’s that feeling of security that cause many to let their guuad dow. Following just common-sense stuff will ensure your brother and sister-in-law survive unscathed. The vast majority of people have wonderful experiences here.
And Chiang Mai is a nice place. I could do without Chonburi, though, because Pattaya, which is located in that province, is such a shithole, but hopefully they’ll be in someplace like Bang Saen.
Oh, and as for how many are voluntary, hard to say until they resurface, but many people do choose Thailand to disappear in. But that one ad about the Englishman whose family lost contact with him just before the tsunami struck I found a bit poignant. He was in Phuket, which caught some of that.
And in addition to disappearances, we get a lot of farang (Western) suicides. There are two schools of thought about this, both valid to a certain degree, I think. Sometimes a farang will end up falling for a local girl, often a bargirl, and getting his heart broken and savings cleaned out, leaving him financially destitute and emotionally drained. Then they kill themselves. But some poeple feel many farangs come here intent on committing suicide after a last fling. They’ll live the high life for a number of months, maxing out their credit cards and screwing every girl they can find, then offing themselves. Both situations occur, but the former clearly predominates.
A preferred method of suicide is what has become known here as the farang high dive, off the balcony of a tall building. This happens SO often in the aforementioned Pattaya that it’s become a bad stereotype, farangs jumping from buildings.
Is it possible to go to Thailand, meet a nice girl/guy and settle down with them happily ever after?
There’s also a lot of discussion about how voluntary some of those “suicides” are.
I’d say it’s as possible as an other cross-cultural relationship, given the right set of circumstances. Just being from different cultures is a huge hurdle for some people; Thai women in particular put their parents/family oftentimes ahead of their spouse in terms of relationship hierarchy.
If you are both from similar socio-economic strata, educational background, etc. and both accept the cultural differences that are sure to be there, then it’s not improbable.
The problem is a lot of Western guys move to Thailand, meet a girl working in a bar, and decide to “rescue” her. This seldom works out well, even if the girl is well intentioned about it.
Yes, it does happen, all the time. 
(Although I met MY Thai wife in Hawaii.) Just don’t go looking for your future soulmate in a bar. And for Og’s sake, stay out of Pattaya! The record I’ve personally heard for time elapsed between meeting and marrying was 36 hours, to a Pattaya bargirl! Her English was thin at best and his Thai nonexistent. Gee, I wonder how that happy couple is doing now.
Bingo!
It´s going well so far.
And just in case one day I misteriously stop posting here, it was the food that did me in, if it´s not spontaneous gastric combustion from a particularly spicy dish it´ll be food poisoning from the rather relaxed standards of culinary higiene here.
And when I disappear for a spell next month, it’s because the wife and I will be travelling up in the North. 
A friend did just that. We had an mutual acquaintance who did the Pattaya, shagging himself silly trip once or twice a year. He had nineteen trips from Sydney under his belt when I knew him. He enticed a close friend of mine to go. My friend came back after his first trip swearing he’d fallen for the best girl in the world - in a bar. My bullshit sensors fired up immediately, but then I looked i his eyes and saw he meant it. I told him I would support him in whatever he did. After years of hassle and paperwork, she is now an Australian citizen, has been with my friend for over ten years, the two are still deeply in love, and she’s never tricked him out of money or slept around (as far as I know). They have two beautiful little daughters and did so on the IVF programme.
So yes it can and does work. And yes, this is a statistical sample of ONE. Not a thing I would do. I’ve been to Thailand (even Pattaya) and loved it, but the only local produce I sampled was the food.
I know several western girls who have met and fallen for Thai boys (they’re men, but the girls always call them “boys” for some reason). All but one of these relationships have foundered because of one reason: the Thai boys can’t keep their dicks in their pants when their girlfriends are not around.
Even good Thai friends of mine, who are full of integrity in any other sphere, and whom I’d trust with my life, still feel the need to play away whenever the opportunity arises. I think it’s cultural, though others better informed may disagree.
The one exception to this is a friend of mine who nursed his English girlfriend back to health after her devastating injuries in the tsunami, and he is devoted to her like no relationship I have never seen before: he loves her more than life itself, and would never do anything to hurt her, ever.
My brother lives in Pattaya,I think one of the reasons so many farang die from falling off of balconys is that many of them get pissed out of their heads so often.
(Pissed as in Brit English)
It’s almost be worth going through the bars and the alcohol to find someone… and I dislike alcohol.
I wonder whether part of that is that the women never referred to them as men? Was this just in casual conversation to others? Makes it sound like the women weren’t truly serious about their relationships either.
Wow. That’s inspirational.
I’m guessing there are just as many if not more people who went missing in every other country in the world.
I remember when there was a spate of German tourists getting whacked in Florida. Apparently people driving rental cars were targeted on the theory that people on vacation would have lots of cash. Now rental cars are less conspicuously marked as such, but it’s as a direct result of foreign tourists getting shot to death.
A big reason for this is Thai men frequently tend to brag to all their buddies that they made it with a farang chick. This is considered a real feather in their cap, and they’re shamelessly not shy when it comes to crowing about it.
Now, they’re not all like that. A good friend of mine, an American lady who now lives in Connecticut, actually became engaged to a Thai man in the upper South 20 years ago. Circumstances dictated that she return to the US, and try as they did, keeping up the long-distance relationship simply did not work out, and they drifted apart. They both married other people. She now has an American farang husband, a really great guy, and three boys. Her old fiancee has his own family, and he’s a super guy; I’d bet money he never bragged and would never have cheated. But I’m afraid his type is the exception from my experience. The two remain good friends, and both families get together whenever my friend brings her family to Thailand.
Part of it is the culture of keeping concubines, or “minor wives” as they’re called. My father-in-law had a whole other family, as I’ve detailed elsewhere on the Board.
That happens, too. Pattaya is Party Central, and there are a lot of tall hotels. Also, there’s a suspicious number of “suicides” that were ruled as such even though it was clear the victim had died beforehand under suspicious circumstances. I remember one celebrated ruling from Pattaya where the victim was determined to have jumped from the window. Evidence was then uncovered that he was already dead when he hit the ground. The official finding then changed to he had “obviously” died of natural causes while sitting on the ledge of his window, and gravity eventually toppled the body over.
There’s a lot of Russian Mafia and British gangsters in Pattaya. It does not do to piss them off. The police either, when it comes to that.