Thai country girls dump their foreign husbands

Of the 142 divorce cases filed in Khon Kaen Civil Court in the last three months most involved local girls seeking to split from their foreign spouses, Patikorn Khonpipat, chief justice of the Juvenile and Family Court said.

 The judge could give no reason for the recent turning away from foreign husbands who have been sought after by women from this relatively deprived region for the last several decades.

 He speculated that Thai girls had unreasonable expectations of a superior lifestyle and high incomes when they married foreign men - only to become sharply disillusioned quite quickly. Few Thais nowadays live in abject poverty.

 There are no reliable statistics for the number of Thai women marrying foreigners with many marriages not registered in Thailand, but it seems likely to be quite high. Many of the single men who visit Thailand's notoriously raunchy nightlife zones come away with a girl in tow.

 More respectable women are finding it easy to link up with lonely foreigners thanks to a plenitude of internet dating sites where girls who can hardly speak English can connect with men hoping to find an "exotic" Thai partner.

 In Roi Et province, next to Khon Kaen, there is a "Swiss Village" so called because more than 100 women there have married foreign men, with already married girls introducing others.

 A couple of years ago the National Economic and Social Development Board discovered that 15,284 women in the sprawling north-eastern region were married to foreigners and live overseas, which prompted the economic think tank to promote the idea that foreign-married girls could help channel investment back to Thailand.

 The latest news suggests either that many country girls think they have already received sufficient investment or are no longer prepared to pay the price of an unsatisfactory marriage.