“Help me find the Danish father of my niece,” wrote ‘Waew’ on the Facebook group for Half Danish Children or Daughters-in-Law of Danes. If you never heard of this group, you can find it here: สมาคมลูกครึ่งไทยเดนมาร์ก og เขยสะใภ้เดนมาร์ก
The post included a cute photo of her seven year old niece and an outdated photo of the father ‘Kapper’ that she was seeking to reestablish contact with. Her niece needs the Danish father’s support to get a good education.
Waew further explained that the half-Danish girl is the daughter of her older sister. They met in Phuket. Then they moved to Udon Thani. When her sister got pregnant, they were together in Udon Thani, but when she gave birth, he was back in Denmark but they kept in touch.
Waew explained the whole scenario to ScandAsia.
“Before 2017, ‘Kapper” often came to Phuket where he met my sister. She took him to Udon Thani where they stayed at a hotel downtown. A year later, he came back and rented a house for them too live and he brought all his kitchen equipment with him from Denmark, where he works as a Chef.”
“When he left for Denmark that year, they had stayed in Udon Thani. Later, my sister explained to him – when they talked on video-chat – that she was pregnant with his child. Later, she gave birth to my niece and the father even named her ‘Jasmine’.”
“Initially, he sent her money, but when he stopped, my sister started drinking heavily and she is today an alcoholic. My niece is raised by a sister of our mother, because our own mother has passed away.”
ScandAsia asked for a copy of the birth certificate of Jasmine and when Waew sent it to us, it contained all the information we needed such as name of mother, address etc. Except her name was not Jasmine.
We booked tickets and on 1 July 2024 we flew to Udon Thani to talk to Jasmine herself, her mother and her grandmother. The mission was simple. We were there to gather enough information about the elusive ‘Kapper” to find him Denmark, where we will travel later this month so we could confront him with the situation.
We booked our stay in Kavinburi Green Hotel because Waew believed they had stayed there during his first visit to Udon Thani. The hotel might have the record of him, since Waew said he broke his arm while there. If not, maybe the hospital might have his patient record so we could learn his full name and birth date that way.
Opposite the Kavinburi Green Hotel, there is a Danish restaurant called The Good Corner. Here, they would probably also remember him, since he was a professional Danish chef.
We also planned to go the Immigration Bureau of the Royal Thai Police in Udon Thani, where they could look up his record complete with arrivals and departures over the years.
The morning when we arrived Udon Thani, we called Waew. “We are here now! We will go to see your niece today!”
“Wait, let me clear with my aunty who is taking care of her,” she replied.
“OK, but we have her address from her birth certificate, se we will rent a car and go there, but it is fine if she will be expecting us.”
About an hour later, Waew called and said her aunty was OK. Her sister lived a bit removed but may show up if she was not too drunk already, she added
We were already half way to Nong Bua Lamphu, which is a new province separated from Udon Thani some years back. This was where Jasmin lives with her Granny. Since nobody can find head or tail in Thai house numbers, we went as usual to the Nong Bua Lamphu main post office, which is the only place in the local administration where you can find staff who actually knows where houses are located.
The postman at the post office drew an accurate, easy to read map and ten minutes later, we pulled up in front of “the house next to the modern style house after house number 86”. There, resting in her hammock, was aunty already expecting us.
Aunty was a friendly, sixty-ish Thai grandmother with a patient attitude to life. She had seen it all and nothing could excite her. She didn’t recognize the name ‘Jasmine’ for the girl that she was taking care of – she called her Mali – but she called to Mali’s mother “Jiab” to come and join us.
Shortly after, Jiab arrived. She looked good for a forty-ish Thai woman and was as sober as you or me. We explained that our mission was – with her help – to find ‘Kapper’ and reunite him with his daughter.
“At the time when you met, ‘Kapper’ had already been visiting Phuket several times?” I started out.
“Yes, Kasper had been in Thailand several times already, but it was in Koh Samui. We met in Chaweng,” Jiab replied.
“OK!”
In my mind, I quickly exchanged Phuket with Samui, and continued asking her if she had the bank records of how Kasper had sent money to her, because that way, we could trace him for sure, when we were going to Denmark in two weeks.
“He sent by Western Union to Bangkok Bank,” Jiab explained. She added, though, that to get the record from the bank would probably be more complicated than just contacting him through Line where she still had his contact.
“So, you haven’t really lost contact?” I asked a bit puzzled.
Then finally my wife kicked my foot under the table and asked:
“Tell us about how you met.”
Then we got the whole story. Jiab worked for four years in Tip Bar opposite Lagoon Bay Hotel in Chaweng. Not far from her bar, Kasper had a restaurant. Kasper and she met in her bar and he fell in love with the lively Jiab. He didn’t stay all year but went home and came back for some months every year.
“When he was here, it was a big bang! He never counted his money, we just partied until he had to go back. We both loved getting drunk,” Jiab recalls with a dreamy look in her eyes.
Then Jiab took him home to meet her family in Nong Bua Lamphu and they rented a house together. When she told him, that she was pregnant, he was happy, she recalls.
“Kasper gave her the name Jasmine, which I translated into “Mali” in Thai language.”
“When Mali was born – she was born after only 7 months – Kasper was excited. He came back and stayed with us. This photo is from our visit to the big red lotus pond,” she says and shows us a photo of herself, Kasper and little Mali.
During that visit, Kasper brought a DNA kit and sent the samples back to Denmark and when the result came, he told Jiab that Mali was actually not his daughter. He might have wondered about the two month early birth.
“I just said “OK, so she is not your daughter. It’s OK.” We both had sex with many people during those years,” she adds.
“Kasper said: “But I still love her.” And after that he went home and still sent her 5000 baht per month. But only two months. But then he stopped.”
“He said he lost his job because of Covid and I could understand that. But now it’s over and he would be welcome to come back and visit us,” she adds.
It seems ‘Waew’ got it all and everything wrong, but I still got a good story. Without having to trace the elusive Kasper in Denmark.
