Isaan, as Thailand’s 19 northeastern provinces are called, is the country’s poorest region. Degraded soil, a lack of irrigation and a dense population have combined to make it the country’s fountainhead for factory workers, housemaids, bus boys and bar girls. But the region is not without its attractions, as an estimated 100,000 foreign husbands will testify.

“When I came up here 17 years ago, I thought this is a brilliant place,” said Martin Wheeler, a 47-year-old Briton. “In terms of social infrastructure everyone has a house and land and the lifestyle is unbelievable,” he said, describing his home village of Kam Pla Lai in Khon Kaen, 350km northeast of Bangkok.

Wheeler married Rojana, his Thai wife, in Bangkok and moved to her home town when she became pregnant with their first child. “My wife warned me about Isaan being the poorest place in Thailand, but I thought if this is poor, I’ll have some of it,” Wheeler said.    

A London University graduate in Latin, Wheeler started out as a labourer and farmer and soon learned the Isaan dialect and eventually became an assistant to a rural development project, working in community building and promoting self-sufficiency agriculture as an alternative to single-crop farming. Perhaps as a result, Kam Pla Lai became a much talked about success story of rural development and Wheeler has often been recruited by the Thai government to talk to farmers and civil servants about the benefits of diversifying crops, self-sufficiency and wholesome country living.

“My primary point is you have to accept two truisms – most people are not going to get rich nor highly educated,” Wheeler said. “If you accept these two truisms, the countryside has a lot of offer.”

Another message is closer to home. “For rural people now, the answer [to poverty] is for your daughter to marry a foreigner,” he added. “But a lot of the westerners who come here are like me – we’re not the cream of the crop.”

Westerners have been marrying Isaan girls for decades. It all started during the Vietnam war when more than 100,000 US military were stationed in Thailand. This included three air bases in the northeast. The bases attracted bars and bar girls and some local women became “rented wives” for the servicemen. After the war, the GIs were replaced by European and American tourists, for whom Thai ladies remained a big attraction.

According to a study carried out by the Thai government’s national economic and social development board (NESDB), as of 2003 there were 19,594 women in northeast Thailand married to Westerners. The migration of these mostly elderly, retired men to the region had generated 10.5 billion baht ($308m) in spending and created 578,609 jobs, according to NESDB estimates.

Buapan Promphakping, an associate professor in humanities at Khon Kaen University, estimates there are closer to 100,000 cross-culture couples in the northeastern provinces. The influx of comparatively wealthy westerners, sometimes amounting to 100 foreigners in one village, has had an obvious impact on Isaan society – creating a huge income gap between cross-culture couples and villagers and fueling more materialism and consumerism, according to Buapan.

The trend hasn’t been good for all Thai men. “Nowadays in the villages, parents will say to their daughters: if your Thai husband is no good you can divorce him and find a farang [foreign] husband,” he said, “so you have to behave.” For western men, especially elderly ones retiring on modest pensions, Isaan women have won a reputation as good housewives and nurses, while the local economy offers them a standard of living their incomes couldn’t buy in the West. 

“It is a win-win situation, but don’t mistake it for a love story,” Wheeler said. “It’s about finances and sex.”