Channel 4 recently broadcast a program called My Online Bride.

The program investigated the world of online dating with the emphasis on searching for brides from overseas.

Three british guys where the subjects

i) 46 year old Chris from Macclesfield

Chris has been single for 5 years and with his 10 year old daughter is browsing the website of a thai dating agency called A Foreign Affair which is run by an American company.

Looking at their website it seems they run tours to many different countries.

Chris has signed up for a week long romance tour of Thailand at a cost of £2000. A 51 year old british man called Leonard is in charge of the tour. Mike tour will have 8 western men on it with the should purpose of being introduced to local ladies who are looking for love. The main event of the tour will be an evening at a club where the 8 guys will meet between 80 and 100 girls and be able to choose who they would like to date.

Leonard says of the girls they are all good cooks, are the perfect housewife and like our mums of 25 years ago. For the guys its like they will be in a candy store.

At the club Leonard helps with the introductions, this event is their most popular and has generated a healthy profit on the 18 years its been on offer.

The guys are shown the girls details prior to the event to see the type of girls that will be there and they are known as number rather than a name.

At the event some of the girls are asked whether they think the guys are attractive one says no, another just giggles another has no comment.

Chris meets a girl called Baimon who is 10 years younger than him at the event and they decide after going on a date they would like to meet again. However before they can date properly Baimon informs Chris he has to meet her family and get their permission she however really likes him. Chris goes to meet a senior member of the family where things start to unravel.

Chris is upset and has found love in a foreign country is complicated and expensive. He has met Baimons sister and she apparently has asked for money. She believes that for every day that Chris is in Thailand and dating her sister basically meaning Baimon is not earning that Chris should pay money t support the loss in income, she shows Chris by calculator the some of 2000 per day I presume thats Bhat which is about £40 a day. Chris is extremely upset this and says he is unwilling and unable to pay he thinks its a form of human trafficking. He meets Baimon one more time and tells her its over. She begs him to reconsider she says she is serious and wants a good man for love and she no play game and this is her life not business, he leaves in floods of tears and is extremely upset. and he looks a broken man.

The next we see of Chris is he is back home and he is still bitter about the request for money. We are told that Baiman was already in a relationship with a foreign man when she met Chris and she is now pregnant. Chris though actually met a nice women in a market in Pattaya where he had gone after the disastrous encounter with Baimon to relax. She could be the one.

You do have to feel sorry for Chris, though its hard to believe that he had not heard he may have to support ant thai girl he met and started dating whether he is supporting the thai girl who could now be the one is not clear. Surely the dating agency would have informed Chris the protocols though questions have to be raised about the screening of the girls on their books if the girls may already be dating other guys.

ii) 26 year old Welshman Mike

Mike had joined an agency called marriabebynatali looking for brides from the Ukraine.

Marriabebynatali is an online site with a 45 year old female owner called Nataly who had run the business for 17 years. Ukraine is considered the bride basket of Europe and has the highest proportion in Europe of women to men.

Mike works in a call center and used all his savings to find love with the agency he believed it would cost him £2200 to £2300 but he says there is no price for love. He lacks dating experience or so he says, Nataly will coach him as part of package deal. He uses Skype to chat with potential brides that have been put forward to him. One called Tetiana a 27 year old travel agent from Kiev has caught his eye and he believes he is punching above his weight level. He has been speaking on Skype with her for 6 weeks and they have decided to meet. Tetiana will meet hm at the airport and being very trusting she will let him stay at her apartment in the spare room so they can trial being man and wife. On meeting he seemed overawed with her she was very happy with him. The following day he met her from work and they went on their first proper date he presented her with a bunch of flowers and they went out for a meal. The conversation hardly flowed during the meal perhaps due to lack of a common spoken language so once the meal was over Mike suggest they should go home. The next morning shows a sheepish Mike who admits that against the advise of Nataly the relationship had progressed to being more that friends straight away. Mike was unsure how he felt and what to do so he sought out Nataly and told her that he had slept with Tetiana by way of saying he got his hand in the cookie jar. Nataly feigned being shocked. Mike tells Nataly he believes he might have made a mistake and wants to meet other girls to but does not want Tetiana to think he has messed her around. Nataly believes he is stupid but agrees to organise some speed dates with other girls, Mike decides whilst he is doing this he should move out of Tetianas and rents other accommodation. He is now on the net looking at other girls he will meet over next few days.

On each date Mike gives each date flowers , however on most dates we see there is once again a language barrier, he only meets the women for a  short time, some were impressed others not so. one of the dates said not handsome did not like his face and he is flustered and more importantly she did not like him

Mike in the end has decided to call it a day with Tetiana and has decided to play the field. He reasons that this week he has met some women who have been interested in him so why not in the future could there not be thousands. Mike says he now believes that love is not as simple as getting to know someone immediately.

Mike was quite a strange character he seemed to have a strange american twang to his accent. He did not go down well on twitter. I can’t believe that at 26 he was so naive in relationships Im sure he knew what he was after. It would be interesting to know if he has met any other girls from overseas since returning home and also it was not obvious if on his other dates he as he put it got his hand caught in the cookie jar.

iii) Sam from Wakefield

Sam from wakefield has been long distance dating a thai girl called Apple presumably they met online. Apple lives with her mum and 12 year old son in rural thailand. She says that many girls want to find a foreign man as wages are low around £2 a week also foreign men are a safer than thai men who like to flirt and gamble.

Sam sends Apple £200 a month. The money is expected by her to help her and her family survive. They have met in Thailand 6 times in total and have decided to marry at a the local thai registry office at a cost of £2000. They have got help from a western 46 year old man called Darren who looks after about 50 weddings a week. It was not said what his cut of the £2000 would be but one would say its a lucrative business.

Once married Sam has to leave the country Apple has to apply for a visa which will take 6 months to be processed. Due to UK visa restrictions Apple will have to travel to the UK alone for the first year and so will have to leave her son with her mother. Her son is upset when she leaves as he feels she will not return for him.

Apple believes Wakefield will be cold but will provide her with the opportunity to find work to earn a good wage to be able to send money home to support her family back in thailand.

During the 6 months since getting married Sam has been preparing the home they will leave in sort of tidying up. Apple and Sam have remained in contact by phone and text.

The house is not that tidy but Sam believes that women like doing housework and besides it will give her something to do.

Sam has invested every penny of his savings to get Apple to the UK and believes he has spent between £8000 and £9000 with his trips to Thailand, sending money of support and the paperwork.

On arrival in the UK Sam meets Apple at the airport and takes her back to the home they will live in. She is impressed and says the house is big though the spare room is messy and like what a tramp would live in. She is shocked there is no tv in the bedroom. Sam shows Apple her cupboard in the kitchen which is full of cleaning products.

Apple thinks she will like it there and is looking forward to earning the money to safe guard her families life back in Thailand.

Its hard to know what to make of Sam perhaps the impression he leaves of being quite a chauvinist is down to how he has portrayed himself in front of the cameras. He has spent quite a lot of money to meet , marry and get Apple over to the UK so perhaps he genuinely wants to be with her. He is young and not like the perceived impression that kits just old guys chasing young far eastern girls. As for Apple one would presume that she would have married any western guy that was interested in her as her goal in life is to provide a better life for her family. This is a common held view of why overseas girls marry western men and move thousands of miles to strange surroundings. Whether it will work we will probably never know.