Monk advises trickery, Por and Pornthip fake a divorce

Actor Nattawut 'Por' Skidjai has confirmed the long-traded rumour that he and his wife Pornthip got divorced (despite having a baby boy, named Nong Phoo). Except that they didn’t. Por recently told Thai Rath Online that they legally split up in November – but they’re now legally husband and wife again. He shall endeavour to explain.

“We were having a lot of quarrels because we were raising our son on our own. We were stressed and tired all the time and that often led to disagreements and quarrels. So we sought advice from a monk and he said we should go for a divorce.”

Por said the recommendation shocked him, but then the monk explained that it was a “trick” to keep them together. He told them to legally divorce and then re-register their marriage. So they split up in November and re-registered in December. 

“To celebrate our new turn at marriage, we went on a trip to Japan. We’d actually planned the trip earlier, but now we took a chance and called it a honeymoon!” Por said. 

Did the trick work? Por said it has indeed improved the situation. “When we went for the divorce it made us think. We’d argued and disagreed, but we never thought we’d ever get divorced! So doing this taught us that, if we don’t compromise and instead keep fighting, the end is there, and we asked ourselves whether that was what we really wanted.”

They still quarrel, he said, but now they look for ways to settle their differences in an effort to avoid an undesirable end to their marriage. 

You’ve got to hand it to those monks sometimes.

 

Close call for Aum-Amp

Well, you can go talk to a monk – or you can have a romantic holiday in France.

We were just binning our 2014 calendars when news arrived that A-list actress Patcharapa “Aum” Chaichua had broken up with her businessman boyfriend, Pita “Amp” Ongkosit. And when we were cracking open our 2015 calendars, news came that they were back together again.

The reunion was what her fan club (and, okay, the gossip media) were looking forward to, but it came with a bonus in the form of Aum’s revelations about a lovely trip to France. The immediate speculation was that Amp had swept her off to Europe as a way of making up to her for their split, but Aum says no. “I just learned about it at the last minute and flew there the next day. He was on business there, so I went and did some shopping before meeting up with him.”

And once there (this was mercifully before the murders in Paris, of course), they finally had some much-needed time to talk matters over. While in France, they were able to sit down and discuss their relationship, Aum says, and it improved the situation a lot. Now she and Amp make time every day to talk. 

The press waited a generous 10 seconds before resuming its bombardment with the same old question, “Has he proposed yet?” Aum was as firm in her reply as ever. “I want to keep working for now, but I don’t deny there’ll be a day when I think about marriage. Any woman would love that, but I just prefer to keep working for the time being.”