Orphans, anyone?

[Jester]

Jeez you're a wet blanket sometimes.

No, someone DOESNT have to fall in love first, then discover the baggage later. Yes a guy CAN be deliberate.

The point of the OP was not to victimize emotionally vulnerable girls, the point was to get a Filipina without marrying the whole damn village.

Hmm...sorry Jes, I didn't read it that way. And I may be too young and idealistic, or too old and dumb to understand. Or just an ocean apart from the "anything can be bought for the right price" mindset typical of many Americans.

Ahh Public, you're playing with us now, naughty boy. You know darn well we are not typical Americans, and that typical Americans would not be considering such ideas. In fact, typical Americans would agree with everything you are saying in this post.

Yet, I am wondering, what's the fascination with "getting a Filipina", no matter how poor, destitute and emotionally burdened, as long as she's young, a virgin and free of the kind social obligations typical of that culture?

Yes I suppose anyone as wealthy as we are would be foolish to dilute our estate by marrying someone poor and destitute. Let's stick with those smart-assed, entitled, slutty children of divorce, who know how to upload a selfie from an Iphone 6. They will better safeguard our extensive holdings.

Can't OP just take a little extra effort and look for a girl who can stand on her own feet

You mean one of those sassy independent career woman, who doesn't need a man to take care of her? Yeah, MM-HMMM, yes indeedy that's what **I ** want. You BETCHA.

or take the time to understand her family situation and past better before "falling in love" (= choosing her)?

You mean you could date a girl for a while, get her all interested in you, hold hands and kiss, hug, spend time, till she takes you home...

and you could do all that without falling in love?

What part of italy are you from anyway? The ALPS?

Seriously, the OP certainly could screen for family later down the road, but if there's a way to stack the deck, why not do so? Myself, I have started screening for a girls parents being together, right up front -- but I discovered that they lie about that, here in Mexico anyway.

Until not so long ago, even in our Southern Italian towns

oh - my bad - note to self - Public is not as icy as he sounds

we had people, usually old women with too much time at hand, who could be hired as "informants" on anything coinceivable about a bride (or groom) to be: their family status, reputation, major life events etc. There's even an advertiser on this forum called "Love Private Eye" that purportedly does that for a fee.

Wisdom here, and yes do so -- before falling in love, yes...

What you get for sure is a girl with extra life baggage, often a terrible one, and possibly subpar in terms of personality and literacy. If the OP thinks that's a fair price to pay for a better chance of not having to help her family, then let him be my guest.

That's a tough one, some orphans DO have some damage - as do some others. But the not-having-to-help-family thing is not minor. People hitting you up for money all the time gets old after a while. For some guys I think it is the hardest thing about SEA wives. Certainly would make it tough to make genuine friends out there in the "province".

Creepy? Yeah till it WORKS. Then it's brilliant.

Definitely not creepy from a girls' POV. They'd be peering out, checking the guy out, giggling.

Again, it depends on what you're looking for. The idea of the Kano who turns up to an orphanage and negotiates with the carers while the girls are "peering out, checking the guy out, giggling" may sound cute, but to me it's as far detached from the dating/falling in love game as I can imagine, and as close as it gets to a pet store transaction.

Which, with all due respect to you and the OP, make me think that some of you are just too old, too jaded, or too lazy to be even pretending to like the classic dating and mating role play.

If classic dating and mating was going to work for us, why would we be on HA at all?

I'm 56, been married a long time and also been single and dating a long time, now interested in an untouched bride. So what do I do, attend a high school prom in Pasadena? Or maybe.... GO OVERSEAS?

"Classic approaches" aren't going to cut it.

Pet store transaction? You mean if there are a lot of women someplace, like a marriage-tour social, all gussied up, looking their best, and waiting to see what men come along, then they are the equivalent of dogs in cages?

C'mon now.

Sometimes even when they're on display, with actual women, you still gotta bring it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoLtHqS_LhA


Or when you refer to a pet store, are you just saying that it doesn't take long to bond with someone cute, and to bond for life?

Because for some of us - you're right, it doesn't.

I have the feeling that you are a playful person, but also deliberate. Probably some women find you very charming. And mature as well.

I'm none of that. I fall in love fast, or I want to anyway, and I want to be all in.

Love is directly portrayed on this video at 4:22 when they exchange glances. and each of them commits totally.
(makes more sense if you start watching from 3:44 or before)
(sequence concludes 6:44 to 7:00)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah9XCamPyKA

You want it easy, easy, easy...

Easy??? Easy would be Armenian divorcees back in Glendale, my friend. A dime a dozen.

Or any any other ethnicity.

Easy would be selling real estate in LA.

Easy would be still living in a luxury high-rise with all the amenities.

Easy would be knowing some people locally.

Easy would not be changing my language and my culture and my nationality.

EASY??!!

In what way am I taking the easy way out -- on anything?

My first sales manager told me a story about how in college he and his pals took a road trip to a girls college. He was the leader, led them into a girls dorm. They were allowed into the lobby only. He hollered upstairs: "I need five girls to go drink beer, down here in five minutes". He said the girls all crowded around the rail of the balcony, checking the guys out.

He got his five girls.

Who dares, at least has a chance.

That's a nice story, but it happened in the US and hopefully didn't involve any underage girls. I don't really see any dare or challenge in sweeping the places where the poorest and most clueless girls are found and choosing a few like one chooses his favourite ice cream scoops.

A challenge, and immense fun as far I can see, is to find the right one, the one who ticks all boxes, the one who you will take your time to woo into your arms...because she is worth it. Perhaps it's the rather cynical view that "all girls are the same anyway, so why bother" that drives some of you...who knows...

The wooing sounds very nice, and will still be necessary to some extent for most of us. Yet I know how to seduce, or let's say, move a relationship forward, pretty well. So I don't really encounter a lengthy challenge with a woman.

I think your slower, deliberate approach must create some great memories - it sounds like a European movie with subtlety, humor and great photography - but you can't expect people to just turn into copies of you.

And per the second video I posted above, from "Last of The Mohicans", I don't see your approach as being necessarily more romantic. I'm just in a different movie.

[pandabear]

EDIT: hmmmm... something odd. According to the video above, the fat old French mailman married his Khmer hottie in late 2011. But according to this video below, the Cambodian government had already banned marriages to over 50 men in March 2011.

Maybe the above video was posted on YouTube long after it was made? Or else the law didn't go into effect right away. Or the law can be ignored?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12802339

The documentary "Excess of Sexual Tourism" came out in 2004.

[pandabear]

http://www.twincities.com/columnists/ci ... rted-abuse

Cambodian authorities said Monday they had shut a foreign-run orphanage that is suspected of beating its children and carrying out human trafficking.

Officials and a rights group said police in the capital, Phnom Penh, on Friday raided the unlicensed orphanage, called Love in Action, and rescued 21 children.

Gratianne Quade, a spokeswoman for SISHA, an anti-trafficking organization in Cambodia, said an Australian woman who ran the orphanage was not arrested in the Friday raid and her current whereabouts were not known.

Poverty compels many parents in Cambodia to send their children to orphanages. SISHA estimates that 70 percent of Cambodia's 100,000 orphans actually have at least one parent.

Um Sophanara, an official at the Social Affairs Ministry, which oversees orphanages, confirmed the closure but declined to give details. A SISHA statement said the raid came after several groups of children had fled the orphanage recently and reported a variety of neglect and abuse problems to authorities.

"The shutdown is a massive step forward, demonstrating the Cambodian government's increased capacity to deal with abusive orphanages," SISHA said, adding that its Australian owner was under investigation for human trafficking, child abuse, neglect and running an unregistered orphanage.

An investigation found "the food standards were subpar, some children were visibly ill and not taken to a doctor, the facility was dirty, sewage was blocked, and the living quarters were overcrowded," the SISHA statement said, adding that interviews with children revealed "many instances of physical abuse from the staff."

Love in Action's website describes it as a Christian-run facility that receives funding from church groups in Australia.

Separately, the 36-year-old director of an orphanage in northwestern Siem Reap province was arrested Friday for repeatedly sexually abusing two girls, 11 and 12, over a four-month period, police said.

The suspect, Mon Savuth, was detained for the alleged abuse at the Angkor Orphanage & Education Organization, but the center—which cares for 36 children—remains open, said Duong Thavery, the head of the anti-trafficking police unit in Siem Reap.

It does seem unsavory. But, Cambodia is so poor, you probably wouldn't feel so bad about supporting a woman's family, given that wages are incredibly low there.

[pandabear]

Here is another consideration:

http://www.khmer440.com/chat_forum/view ... =8&t=37682

Many years ago a Cambodian lady in Pursat married a Cambodian man. Her family didn't like the man at all, and she found herself ostracized by the family. The lady had one beautiful daughter, who was raised in relative isolation. When the daughter was about 6, both mother and father were hit by a truck.

The daughter went to live with a relative in Battambang, attended school there, and when the relative died, moved to Phnom Penh to open a beauty salon. It was there that an impossibly handsome Englishman met her and fell in love with her...

All this time, the family referred to the daughter using the nickname "Sre Svai" – mango girl, due to the color she turned while having some kind of infant sickness. Her birth wasn't registered; she has no ID card, has never paid taxes, and uses cash instead of having a bank account. This poor girl, not only doesn't know her name, but actually doesn’t exist from a legal perspective.

None of this has bothered me, the Englishman, but now we are having a child, and a minefield of problems has presented itself: We would like the baby to have dual citizenship - which is impossible when the mother doesn't exist; She would quite like to open a bank account and have a passport - again impossible; she would also quite like to know her name. We have tried the police stations in Pursat for paper records of deaths, but even using loy to grease the bureaucratic wheels hasn't thrown up anything. I have met all of her living relatives, but none of them know anything beyond "Sre Svai" and the name of her mother before marriage. To make things worse, my darling girlfriend paid a cop to make a fake ID card, which will not stand up under scrutiny from the UK embassy or even the government here if they cared to look - Apparently some Khmer girls details have been cloned for the card, so we need to dispose of that as soon as possible.

So, how does one either find out someones name and DOB in the Kingdom of Wonder? If they find it, or if they don't, how do you get a real birth certificate and ID for an adult whose supposedly been living here all their life and running a business without paying a dollar in tax? A harder one - how do we backdate all of her hospital records under her real/legal instead of the cloned details, as the embassy needs all medical records for the babies citizenship?

An orphan might not be able to produce a birth certificate, or other document to prove that she exists. Which might make getting a passport and visa impossible.

[pandabear]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/15/world ... .html?_r=0

There is quite a lot of deception regarding orphanages in Cambodia, and possibly elsewhere in SouthEast Asia. Most of the children aren't orphans, and are just used to raise sympathy to bring in donations.