Features

Dear Hillary,
I am only here for a short holiday, so I hope you can answer me quickly. I have fallen in love with a Thai girl and don’t know what to do. She works in a bar, but she had only just come down from her village “up country” this week. She makes friends very easily (all the other girls in the bar seem to know her) and speaks very good English. I would like to take her back to the UK with me when I go next week. How do I go about this? Will she come with me (I haven’t asked her yet)? Do I need to ask her parents’ permission to take her overseas? Please hurry with the reply as I haven’t got much time left.
Starstruck

Dear Starstruck,
You have an entire lifetime ahead of you, not just next week. How old are you, my Petal? 15? 16? Your girl is not a newbie (“all the other girls seem to know her,”) and you don’t learn “very good English” up in Nakhon Nowhere. Simple answer my Petal, is to leave her where she is, where she is happy and has lots of friends. Don’t send her money, and grow up a bit more before your next trip to Thailand. It’s not the place for you.

Dear Hillary,
I have fallen very much in love with the cashier at the local optical shop. She seems quite interested in me, we have been out together a few times, but there is one problem in our relationship. I asked if I could come and meet her parents, but she immediately said no, and when I asked why she said because her mother does not like farangs. I sort of feel that if this relationship is to progress any further I am going to have to get over the mother problem. Any advice Hillary?
Myopic Mark

Dear Myopic Mark,
You’re not the leader of the Democrat party are you? Anyway he’s not a farang, he was just educated in farangland. Now then, your short-sightedness extends beyond your glasses I am afraid. Before you go any further and make a spectacle of yourself, I would suggest you have to tread warily and slowly. The wooing you have to do is with the mother, not the daughter, Petal. Send flowers or a buffalo, or whatever is required, to mother before making the next move on the young damsel. On second thoughts, have you tried the girl in the dentist surgery next door? Your optical romance sounds as if it has terminal teething problems.

Dear Hillary,
I used to be very friendly with a girl in a local café and often used to just say hello, as her English was not very good. About three months ago she disappeared and the new waitress could not tell me where she had gone. However, I bumped into her in a shopping center the other day and her English was much better, so I decided to ask her out for dinner. She told me she couldn’t go as she was working in a bar in South Pattaya, but I could see her there. Hillary I was just so disappointed. How could a sweet young girl from a restaurant turn into yet another bar girl? I still like her a lot. Should I try to get her to leave? She’s much too nice for the bar work.
Jimmy

Dear Jimmy,
In a word, No! There’s an old saying - You can take a girl out of a bar but you can’t take the bar out of the girl! If that’s what your sweet young thing wants to do, you have to accept it. Just think about it from her side of the fence. She did not make much money as a waitress, the hours she works in the bar are up to her, and she gets to meet lots of native English speakers, as well as just you. She’s made her decision and you have quite frankly nothing better to offer her.

Dear Hillary,
One of the women in my office was always meddling in everyone else’s business, telling them what to do, and generally being very aggressive about it if anyone crossed her or contradicted her. Nobody knew what to do about her and she was becoming a real tyrant. When she left the company we were all very pleased, and it became a good place to work again. However, she has started doing part-time work in the office again, and we are all dreading what is going to happen when she decides she wants to work full-time again. She has known the boss for many years and he seems reluctant to intervene. This has depressed everyone of us. What should we do?
Dazza

Dear Depressed Dazza,
If there’s enough of you, then just ignore her and refuse to work with her. You all got along OK without her, so surely you can continue doing that. If that doesn’t work, then there’s always other offices to work in. Unfortunately these types of people do spoil it for everyone else, and there is not much you can do without the support of those higher up.