While Europe worries about trafficking and the so-called refugee crisis, Thai villagers are still building their hopes on women’s migration and labor abroad.

The day Dak left her small village in Isaan, she picked up her in-laws’ radio and got on a bus to Nakhon Ratchasima.

Dak was 33-years-old; her husband was a migrant worker in Saudi Arabia but drank the money away and stopped sending any back for her. Dak made a living as a day laborer in the tapioca fields around her village in Isaan and supported her four children, parents in-law, her own parents and her terminally ill sister.

The pawnbroker in Nakhon Ratchasima took the radio, and Dak spent the money on a bus ticket onwards to Pattaya. She planned to work at a beer bar and find a foreigner to marry, so she would be able to go abroad and work. In Pattaya, she eventually met a Danish man.

In Denmark, Dak initially worked in three different day jobs as a cleaning assistant – cleaning the summerhouses of Danish families and doing night shifts on board a ferry sailing between Denmark and Norway. At first she had to send a lot of money home, but after several family members passed away she only needed one job at a metal factory. Every month, Dak now sends $150 (5300 baht) to her family in Thailand.

Full story: isaanrecord.com

By Sine Plambech