So, why are you looking at our website?  By now you probably have checked out several “find your wife here” sites and are now looking at ours.  So many of the sites out there look so very professional and slick and some of the ladies impossibly beautiful or looking like they just stepped out of Playboy.  Our site was put together by my Thai wife and myself, an American who has moved to Thailand to be with my Thai wife, now live here in Thailand and find myself very happy with my choice.  The pictures you see on our home page are of course our wedding photos.  A beautiful Thai Style catered wedding at a beautiful hotel lounge where they did everything, sound system, music, catered food for 150 people, banners and beautiful wedding decorations.  This whole incredible, dream come true evening  only cost me $1,500.00!  It would have cost AT LEAST $15,000 for a wedding like that in the U.S.  My wife and I had a most beautiful Thai Style Wedding that we will remember for the rest of our lives all video taped and photographed and I paid a paltry $1,500 for it.  Just another example of how inexpensive you will find almost everything over here compared to America.   We realized from talking to friends who often ask, how did you two meet?  Can you find an Asian wife for me, or in my wife’s case, can you find an American husband for me?  Sometimes we think her friends must think my wife has a cupboard full of eligible American men just waiting to meet a desirable Asian woman.   After a few introductions we decided that we have a very real, helpful and useful service to offer single American men and single Asian women looking for each other. In other words, arranged marriages. That is how we came to start this website. It is a full time job, we put hundreds of hours into building and maintaining this site, meeting and interviewing ladies, photographing them, updating their information, advertising to you but we Love what we do, we arrange marriages and bring happiness to other people.  I believe that if you find a job that you like you will never have to work a day in your life.  But like any job that takes this much time, we must charge a reasonable fee for our services which will is explained in "what it will cost".  I am assuming that most of you men interested in this site have not been to Asia. Then again, some of you may  have, most likely serving dear old Uncle Sam in one way or another.  Those of you who have been here to the exotic Orient know of the wonders and untold beauty that await a single man especially on his first trip over here.  Thousands of years of history, incredible ruins, beautiful temples to tour, outrageous food and entertainment. Sights only seen on TV shows.  But half way around the world in a strange country with very different customs, food and language. This can be a bit of a scary thing to think about for the man who has never left America or been to the exotic Orient, traveling half way around the world to a very different country, different in language, culture and the way people are brought up and the things they believe in.  Where do you even begin to start? You have probably read about or heard about the con artists and schemers just waiting for the gullible American tourist as he leaves the airport.  Be assured, Thailand and Bangkok where you will land is a very safe place for the tourists.  It is their main income and the government guards it well taking good care of the tourist. Americans in particular are very welcome here, unlike many countries where you are a target or worse. Americans are looked up to here. There is very little violence involving tourists, BUT, from the moment that you step out of customs at the Bangkok airport, you will be besieged by very well dressed, well mannered and good English speaking men and women all trying to get your attention to find you everything from overpriced underrated hotels, very overpriced taxis, entertainment, etc.  CON ARTISTS and SLICKSTERS all of them. Example, they will offer you their taxi service to your hotel for 1,000 baht, about $30.00 when if you just step outside the airport door to the taxi stand, you can take a meter taxi and the meter will only come to about 200 baht or $6.00.   And you have not even gotten out of the airport yet!  Baht is what Thai money is called and there is 32 baht to the dollar right now.  This will all be part of your adventure, probably the adventure of your lifetime. Just how are you even going to begin the process of coming over here to meet your Thai bride?  Where do you go? How will you be safe?  What about the paperwork?  Where do I go when I get there? Who can I call?  That is our job, my Thai wife and myself on this end and our American representative and travel service, Paul Vehorn in St. Petersburg, Florida. We take care of everything from finding your new mate, translation services for you where necessary, printing your photos for your mate, arranging your tickets for you, arranging for your hotel reservations, putting you on the airplane in America to pickup service, personally picking you up at the airport in Thailand in our personal vehicle. You will have an American who has been to Thailand 8 times in 12 years on business and pleasure and his English speaking Thai wife personally meet you at the airport to take you to your hotel. And of course we will be bringing you the surprise and dream of your life with us to meet you, YOUR Thai Mate that you have picked and spent many an hour looking forward to meeting and being with.  We will be there to help you through the initial awkwardness that is usually present at an initial meeting of two people like this. If the ladies English is limited, my wife will be there to help translate for you. if necessary later, we can arrange for an English speaking guide-assistant to go with you as long as you need or want on a daily basis for a very reasonable fee on her part.  I will give several suggestions here to help you with your new life and new love. It is understood that you will have to spend a few bucks on some necessities and pleasures over here and one I strongly suggest is the talking dict if the ladies English is limited.  This is a pocket size electronic voice translation machine-dictionary that translates 10 languages both verbally through high quality speakers and in words and sentences typed on the keyboard on a good sized screen. It can be plugged into a computer or stereo speakers for added versatility.  Really straight out of 1960's Star Trek,"the universal translator".  The thing about the translator is TWO fold, first it will very much help the two of you to communicate, start her on her way to learn English better and you some Thai words but most importantly, you will be sitting close to her, holding hands with her SLOWLY learning to communicate with her. Slowly getting her comfortable being with you.  You will find that Thai Customs are very different from American especially when it comes to dating and personal relationships. You will probably find the lady a bit shy at first. It is important to understand that most of the ladies on our site, if they have been married and divorced probably went back to live with their parents. This will be like a first date for both of you. You will feel like a teenager again trying to impress your new date. Unlike in America after a woman gets a divorce, a Thai woman just dose NOT go out dating or hanging out in the bars with their friends. When you go out with her, there will be a very good chance that she has not had a date since she left her husband possible years before she is going out with you. You will probably be the first. This meeting with her has been arranged, so Absolutely do not expect to have sex with her or be intimate with her soon after meeting her. Thai Custom does not allow her to do that, it has been ingrained in her since childhood and it is important for you to respect this. In Thai custom the women are expected to be sexually inactive until marriage and not before.  She might even come with a friend to act as chaperon or to make her feel more comfortable for a day or two until she gets to know you a little bit better. My wife brought her aunt when she came to meet me.  So do not be offended by this, she really should  not go alone with a man, especially one she dose not know yet. It is mostly the bar girls that do like that.  She has been at home helping to take care of her family not going out on weekends partying and dating like American women do. Going out with a man, especially one who has come half way around the world to see her is going to be a very exciting yet scary time for her.  A FIRST DATE for her if ever there was one. You must respect Thai custom and her culture for this. Families are very close here, the children often staying with the parents into their 20's or more until they get married and if the marriage fails, they usually come back home to the parents and live with them and help them.  Marriages are often still arranged in this culture. The women MOST often are still virgins when they get married here. Thai men are brought up from earliest childhood to respect women.  If divorced, she will probably go back to live with her parents or mother if the father is gone and she will not be going out romantically or dating any men as is done in America.  If she has not been married yet, she is probably still living with her parents, helping them with both work and money and as such cannot go out dating as the neighbors will "talk" and she and her family will loose face.  Straight out of 1950's America. Most ladies here when they go out shopping or to the movies go out in twos and threes for that same reason so you MUST be aware to go slow at first. She is not something from a used car lot waiting to be taken for a test drive by any American that comes along with a good line. She will probably be very shy with you at first, but will warm up quickly. A man with a loud mouth, bad temper or heavy smoker or drinker will not be thought of very highly here but the soft spoken gentleman with gentleness and love in his heart will win over his mate faster than anything I can think of telling you. The man that brags, talks loudly or shows off and flashes will not be looked on very highly or with much respect here by anyone. The typical loud mouthed western attitude will make you an outcast very quickly and people will not be interested in being around you.  Your mate will loose face being with a man like this.   But the man that is a gentleman and can talk with a soft voice and good heart will be looked up to. He will be respected. Buddhism is the national religion here but all religions are tolerated and no one is harassed for his  beliefs.  These ladies have deep religious, emotional, cultural and personal feelings and customs that go back over a thousand years compared to our country that is barely 200 years old.  In Thailand, public display of affection is strongly frowned upon, hand holding usually is the most you should try to do in public with any woman, even your wife. Customs are very different I will say again.  It is assumed that the men who are eligible to use this site have been around long enough to have achieved a measure of success in his personal and business life. And it can be assumed that you also have gone through a divorce, maybe two of them, usually a traumatic and devastating time for us men too and are now unhappily single. And as the joke that was recently told to me, where does a successful man over 50, probably over weight and maybe loosing some hair go to find an attractive, younger intelligent woman that would be interested in developing a personal relationship with him?  Try the bookstore under fiction.  How true this is in America.  The unpleasant fact is that American women when looking for a mate usually start with what the man looks like, their age and what the man can do for her in that order.  When we reach 50 or more it seems like our choice in finding a woman, especially attractive and younger than yourself becomes very limited in America.  BUT there is hope.  In Asia, the ladies take a much more logical and realistic look at how a successful relationship will work.  First of all, looks are definitely way down on the bottom of the list of desirable traits they will be looking for.  And as far as for an age difference, the older man has a distinct advantage here as he is seen as probably successful in his life, not like the younger men out drinking and gambling and womanizing most of their wealth away.  And there is that "age gap" you usually see between an Asian woman and her American husband that people talk about and point at and tee hee about.  The only people that really have a problem or with it "or talk" are those poor jealous, envious have not souls that are not in the same boat as we are.  The have nots always talk, that is all they have in their little tiny lives. They can only wish and dream about what we have achieved, having a really attractive young woman on our arm that they can never hope to have in their lives, a woman that really takes care of him and they KNOW it. The man in his 40’s or 50’s and older are most at the top of a Thai womans list of the man a Thai woman would want as a husband just BECAUSE of his age. She will see him as stable and will be a good provider, the most important needs of any woman since cave man days. He will be able to take care of me and my family is foremost in her mind.  My Thai wife is 26 years younger than I am and we have been together for almost 5 years we have had a truly happy marriage for over 2 with none of the problems I faced with an American wife.  She takes very good care of me from the time I get up in the morning until I go to bed at night. I want for nothing with her.  My life here is way more than I dreamed it could be like.  It is truly a dream come true.  Your MATURITY here is a very distinct benefit to you.  You are suddenly not an “older gentleman”, age discrimination in dating dose NOT exist here in the eyes of some very beautiful younger ladies that would just love to find their American husband. It is the younger men they are not interested in.  And, if you are a bit overweight? HO HO HO, you are now deemed a successful mature man who when single Asian ladies know of your availability are most definitely interested in making your acquaintance.  And I mean there are a lot of them too, just look at our website.  Again, looks are not that important, It is most definitely NOT like in America.  An American friend of mine in his 50's who has a 23 year old drop dead gorgeous long haired, movie star quality melt your back teeth out Thai fiancee told me his son asked him, "Dad, why don't you get a woman your own age"?  He just smiled and answered a most sensible and meaningful, "Son, I don't WANT a woman my own age".  Is this not true for most of us?  And they are very happy together, she has an American man of class taking care of her, a huge status symbol for her and her family and she will fight tooth and nail to keep him.  He is her dream come true, the man that came half way around the world to be with and take care of her. You do have a top of the line chance here to pick and choose the woman that brings a tingle to your heart, not sit on the sidelines as in America eating your heart out, the man of maturity has NO competition here, an available woman will walk right past and not even see a younger man preferring to meet him.  And it is a very large choice you have too.  As long as you are gentleman and can treat the lady with respect and good will, you should have no problems with whomever you choose.  Arranged marriages have been around for as long as recorded history.  And they are shown to be more successful than the “traditional” way of meeting someone, going out, falling in love, more going out buying her "things", trying to impress her and finally getting married, maybe taking a year or more for this whole process to take effect!  And the divorce rate for those traditional type of marriage, as you know or you wouldn’t be here, are at over 50%!  We at A Thai Mate know you do not have or want to take this much time to develop a meaningful relationship with a woman, you have already done that.  Nor do the women we are presenting here for you to meet want to wait.  This is what arranged marriages are all about.  As a Thai lady once told me, if you like each other, get married.  You will fall in love later, why waste valuable time?  I am here to tell you, if the lady likes you and you like her, there is nothing more you need to do.  It is then settled between you, and you will from that time on start your lifetime of getting closer to each other each and every day, learning to communicate, to hold hands again, to find love in your heart where you thought it would never happen again for you.  You do not have to date and date with her hoping she will learn to like you. You will know in a few hours to a couple of days if you like each other and are meant for each other. If you do, there is nothing more for you to do but plan to be together for the rest of your lives. No dating and going out for a year or more.  Real closeness and intimacy will soon follow.  You pick from our list of ladies the one you are interested in, and send us the information we request about your personal self, a few interesting pictures of you, a close up and a full length so the lady can see what you look like too. We will  print copies of them and personally give them or post mail them to your Mate. My wife will phone your mate to read  your initial e-mail to her and translate her a copy if necessary.  She will also translate if necessary your mates answer to you and e-mail you her translation.  These first two translations are included also.  They want to know what you look like as much as you want to see them.  They too are excited, wanting to see what their new American husband looks like.  We do not give out the ladies phone numbers or e-mail addresses for their protection and privacy, all correspondence going through us to help insure everything runs smoothly.  In the event the lady you choose is not available for any reason, you can pick another lady at no extra charge until you find one you are happy with.   If, after you get here, the lady you have picked and you do not get along or she is not the one for you, that too is not a problem.  Since most of the girls on our site are close enough to where my wife and I live, you can easily pick another one and she too will be most eager to meet you, no time lost.  But this is very unlikely.  Before you ever come here you will be developing a personal and hopefully romantic relationship over the inter net with her.  You are not going to want another girl, you have already started developing feelings for the lady you have chosen and it should work out just fine.  That is why we do not even try to sell you many pictures of different girls as you see on other sites, you only want one, you are not playing the dating game.  It works, you are looking for her, she is looking for you, you can start your initial getting to know each other by letter and long distance.  When you feel like you are ready to meet the lady of your choice, you only have to arrange to take off 2 weeks of your life to come to Thailand and let us know.  We will take care of everything for you from there on.  THAT is what you are paying us for, that is what we do for you.  We will hold your hand from the minute you get here until you are ready to go off adventuring on your own with your new mate.  You will see some websites with thousands of girls available, some looking like they stepped out of a sex magazine.  Is this what you are looking for in a wife that you hope will spend the rest of her life with you?  Now that is a fantasy.  Where do all these thousands of of beautiful girls come from?  How do the websites find that many available women?  Beauties from Russia, Gorgeous ladies from Romania, sexy girls from the Philippines all waiting for you.  And all on one website!  And the oldest trick in the book, using obviously sexually suggestive pictures for the poor lonely and emotionally starved and deprived single man.  Leave it to your imagination.  At A Thai Mate you will never see more than 100 to 125 girls on our site.  ALL of the girls you see on our site are girls that my wife and I either personally know, are friends or relatives or introduced to us by friends or relatives.  We take a personal interest in meeting the ladies and photographing most of them ourselves in our home and talking with them to find their desires and needs in a man.  Most of them are truly the girl next door, not some fantasy out of a slick glossy magazine waiting to slick you.  Our site will show you a slide show photo album of the girls, their astrological sign for those of you interested in such things, their height and weight and minimal information about them. An astrological chart and reading is available for a reasonable price from a link on our website.  A man can look and see with his eyes if he thinks a particular lady is going to make his heart happy.  We do not include all their measurements and vital statistics, they are not auditioning to be models.  Nor do we include all the bologna about what they are looking for in a man as you see on pre- prepared forms on other sites.  Our ladies just want a good man in their life to take care of them, a man they can devote the rest of their lives to.  We will tell you what kind of a man you must be to be accepted and loved by a Thai woman and her family.  The Thai people are a very tolerant people and tend to overlook a lot of the stupidity and loud talk and overbearing attitude that so many westerners seem bring with them.  But there are some requirements of the mans character that should be noted for your understanding as it is very important, both as far as the girl is concerned and U.S. Immigration is concerned before they will give you a fiancee’ visa for your mate.  Immigration is not looking for a perfect man, or woman but they will not accept men that have a history of domestic violence or alcohol abuse.  They have found that the man with this sort of history will usually bring his bag of problems to his new marriage causing it to fail too and more problems for Immigration to sort out.  Same for the Thai lady.  If she is divorced, her ex-husband almost certainly was an alcohol abuser and probably physically abused her too.  If she has never been married to a Thai man the reason she is probably looking for an American is she saw the abuse and cheating so many Thai wives face through friends or family.  This is one of the main reasons she is looking here for her new mate.  She has heard that American men are very romantic, that they take good care of their wives.  That is all they really want, a good man to take care of them and help their family a little bit and they will take care of you like you have never thought possible.  A Thai woman’s most important job in her marriage is to take care of her husband and his needs above all else.  Here he IS the head of the family and most all decisions are “up to him”.  You will hear that phrase a lot from Thai women when you ask them about something.  They will say, “up to you”.  You as the man are expected to make most all of the decisions in the family.  No back talk from the wife as in America, it is all “up to you”.  But it is up to the husband to take care of his family as best as he can.  It is a two way street, they are looking for something in their man too.  The women you will see here are not gold diggers.  Thai custom is so very different than what you have been brought up to understand in America.  Here the minimum wage is about 200 baht per day, that is $6.00!  A good construction worker or electrician will be happy to get paid $9.00 or $10.00 PER DAY for a 12 to 14 hour  day of 100% work.  And this man is raising a family and buying a house on this money.  So understand right from the beginning, your money is going to go very far over here.  It is like what the dollar was like in the 1950’s.  When you are here you expect to spend money that is one reason you are coming here.  To enjoy yourself and see and do things you have never done in your life.  And you can afford to do it here.  You can take out six to eight people to a complete seafood dinner with all the trimmings for $20.00 to $30.00!  And I am talking about a dinner that would  cost you over $200.00 in the land of the fee.  Same with some beautiful hotels in Udon Thani where you can get a really beautiful room with an outrageous food bar over 5 stories long and pay only $25.00 per night for it including a breakfast coupon for all you can eat.  A hotel like this would cost $150 and up in the U.S. There are actually really nice hotels available for $8.00 to $10.00 per night!  We will show you in every way and place you go how to make your money go the farthest and get you the most for it.  We can do this because we live here and know where to go and what to do and what it should cost you. This is what you are paying us for. As you can see the average Thai worker just makes enough money to take care of his family and dose not really have any extra to take out visitors and friends to restaurants and places of interest.  You are expected to pay for most of this when you take people out for dinner or to see things.  No one is trying to take advantage of you, people here just for the most part have no extra money to go out on the town. Most of them have not even seen the inside of a really good restaurant or good show or tourist attraction, there money goes to feeding their family. This expense will be “up to you”.  This will raise your status and that of your new family very much, showing them things and taking them places in their own country they have not been able to see, showing them how much you care for their daughter.  In Thai custom, unlike in America, when you spend money on your lady, you are showing her how much you love her.  In America you are expected, almost required to give the lady gifts and presents and buy her “things” and take her places.  Some expect it, some demand it and some may even appreciate it a bit.  Then it’s forgotten until the next “gift”.  Gold digging American style?  What do you think?  In Thailand if you give your lady a gift, she will of course show it off to her friends and in this she gains a lot of face and status with those she knows.  Her status just got a big boost, thanks to you.  Wow, her American man really loves her is what is seen.  They feel in their hearts what you do for them.  It all costs money, everything we do in this life including finding the woman of your life or going to church.  This is not gold digging, this is a good investment.  This is an expense like anything else in our lives.  Most of the ladies come from families that are not near as well off as what you are accustomed to seeing in America.  And when you help them or their family a bit, they see it as showing them how much you love them and want to help them.  The more you help them, the more you are showing them how much you love them.  And by our standards it is not much money we are talking about.  Just help her parents to buy food and some necessities of life once in a while if they need it. Some do not as many are successful in their line of work but there are those of lesser means that will more than appreciate your help.  This is information for you.   Bring some serious happiness into their life and have a wonderful feeling in your heart that the money you are spending is going to a very good cause, your new family who can probably really use your help. They work really hard and long hours for the little bit they have.  Your Thai Mate will be very proud and happy about you as you have brought such happiness into their lives and raised their status and face with her friends and neighbors with so little effort on your part.  Just a few bucks you would easily blow in a bar or lounge trying to get some babe drunk enough to go home with you back in the states, and you would probably still go home alone looking at your fist.  You are not wasting any of it here, a good cause helping others less fortunate then yourself should make you feel good about yourself too as it will your mate.  Closer and closer she will get to you.  Your dream coming true and hers too.      
     DOWREYS or Sin Sod as they are called here is still a Thai custom when taking a daughter from the home to marry her. You should give a dowry to the parents.  You are taking away their daughter who usually is helping to support her family both with work and money she earns at her job and the dowry helps to compensate for this loss. Thai men are expected to do this too, not only Americans.  It is a Thai custom as old as the country itself.  Very often the parents will return this dowry as a wedding gift to their daughter if they are well off.  If not, they will make good use of it. The size depends again on you.  One thousand dollars or 30,000 baht is usually a good amount to offer.  If you are generous with your money and give them 100,000 baht or $3,000 you  would enable them to make some serious life improvements in the way they live and really increase their status and stature in their community.  Again, this is "up to you".  In America you are expected to give your wife a ring, usually a diamond of possibly some considerable expense.  In Thailand the custom is you give your wife gold.  Unlike in America, the gold here is about 97% pure and often used as money or savings. A really fancy carved bracelet or ring is sold by weight as the labor for making the design is VERY low compared to American prices, that is why the gold can be sold by weight. You do not pay the expense of the design, the man actually doing that work only gets $10 to $20 for his beautiful design work! A gold bracelet and necklace shows that a Thai lady is married, not a ring.  The size is up to you but it is much cheaper than a diamond would be.  About $500 at the low end and "up to you" how much you want to show her your love at the high end.  Some Americans also give their wives a wedding ring also as an American custom, I personally had two matching plain gold wedding bands made for my wife and myself in addition to her bracelet and necklace.  They are really not all that expensive here but highly looked upon and respected by her friends and family.  Again, up to you.  If you have any questions about anything on this site, please do not hesitate to e-mail me with them. Enjoy.