BANGKOK — A 24-year-old Thai woman was deceived by a matchmaking agency into marrying a Chinese man who claimed to be a businessman with a luxurious condo in China. However, it turned out he lived in an old house on a mountain without a bathroom.
On September 17, a 24-year-old Thai woman, using the pseudonym Fern, shared her story during a press conference at the office of the ‘Sai Mai Tong Rod’ (Sai Mai Must Survive) page in Bangkok.
Fern said she used to work as a receptionist at an airport. Later, an acquaintance introduced her to an agency that would help find her a Chinese husband who wanted a Thai wife. She was promised a substantial dowry and a good life with a good family, which interested her.
She then chatted with the man through WeChat. He told her he was a businessman with a luxurious condo in the city. After talking for about a month, they got along well, and she agreed to go register for marriage and live in China. The agency gave her 90,000 baht as dowry, and the man covered all travel expenses.
She arrived in China on August 20. Upon arrival, the agency’s partner brought the man to pick her up. They then drove up a mountain, getting farther from the city. She wondered if people really lived in such remote areas.
When they reached the accommodation, it turned out to be the last house on the mountain, far from any community. It was a sheep farm with corn fields. She asked the man about the promised luxurious condo in the city. He replied that it was harvest season, and he needed to help his mother with work first, promising to return to the city later.
At that point, she felt she had no choice and decided to try living there. The man took her to register for marriage. However, life there was extremely difficult. There was no bathroom; they had to use buckets of water in the room and wipe themselves with wet cloths instead of showering. There was no clean drinking water.
Hair washing was limited to once a week when the man would take her to use a bathroom in the community. For toilet needs, they had to dig holes in the cornfield. She would hold her bowel movements to wait for hair washing days, causing constipation.
Moreover, the man rarely bathed. After working in the fields and farm, he would just take off his clothes and go to sleep. She couldn’t bear to sleep with him and had to sleep on the sofa. The man complained to the agency that she wouldn’t sleep with him. She explained the problems, but the agency didn’t help.
On September 15, she seized an opportunity when the man’s mother went into the cornfield. She escaped by sneaking through the cornfield, which was on terraced slopes with deep ravines. It felt life-threatening, but staying wasn’t an option.
She walked for over half a day until she reached a community. She asked locals to help take her to the city, then took a 4-hour bus ride to the airport to wait for a flight back to Bangkok.
When she returned to Thailand, she contacted the agency and explained what happened. The agency demanded she return, or she would have to pay a 350,000 baht fine to the man because he had already paid the dowry.
The man also tried to contact her, asking why she had to run away when he had given 800,000 baht as dowry, which should have been enough to support the whole family. This was when she realized that the agency had kept most of the money and only given her 90,000 baht.
Until now, she has been harassed and threatened by the agency, who also threatened her family, saying if she doesn’t pay the fine, they will sue her and force her to sign a loan agreement. She sought help from the ‘Sai Mai Tong Rod’ page to file a complaint against the agency.
She wants to warn other women considering finding a Chinese partner to be careful. In her case, she wasn’t physically abused, but whenever she did something the man didn’t like, she was verbally abused. Other women who found partners through the same agency and went to live in China were physically abused by their partners.
Mr. Ekapop Luangprasert, an advisor to the Minister of Interior and founder of the ‘Sai Mai Tong Rod’ page, said this case needs to be investigated for potential human trafficking because the agency received 800,000 baht from the Chinese man to send a Thai woman.
The team will take the victim to file a report with the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Division. He warns Thai women who want Chinese husbands to be careful, citing a previous case he helped with where a Thai woman married a Chinese man but was beaten when she had a daughter because the man’s family wanted a son to continue the family line.
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