Let's Hire a Girlfriend Every Sunday!

Source: Thanh Nien

Hong hangs out with him every Sunday, meets his friends, listens to his tales of happiness and woe, and even cooks for him sometimes if he wants, but they never make love.

The garment factory worker is an occasional escort who gets paid VND300,000-500,000 (US$17-28) for playing girlfriend for half a day or a full day.

More middle-aged men in Ho Chi Minh City feel lonely and stressed out from work these days and want a girl to go out with, and tell their troubles to, with no strings attached.

Their loneliness has given birth to what is a new service in Vietnam whereby a man hires a girl to be his “lover for a day.” Most of the chaste escorts have moved to the city from the Mekong Delta countryside to work in the factories.

For Hong, it started out by accident when a co-worker told her about a cousin, a forty-something businessman with no emotional ties who just wanted a girl beside him on Sundays.

The first time they met, the businessman told Hong he needed a girl to accompany him sometimes when he met his friends or went to the café on Sundays. Aside from that, they would have nothing to do with each other.

“He made it clear that he needed a tender girl to listen to him, and no sex,” said Hong, who comes from An Giang Province and works in Tan Tao Industrial Park in Binh Tan District.

Even with overtime, she makes VND1.5 million a month at most from her factory job.

“I lose nothing working as a girlfriend. All I have to do is go out with him and listen to him, and I get money. It helps that he’s an educated and kind man.”

The extra job allows Hong to send more money home while the man was, and still is, happy to have someone to talk to about his work, sometimes his family troubles, and feel proud to have a pretty and well-behaved girl of his own to introduce to his friends.

Some of these friends were quick to catch on and asked Hong to introduce her co-workers to be their “girlfriends.”

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VND1.5 million is $100 US.

I think it's a pretty cute idea. Some men just need a companion to talk to, to discuss his troubles inlife. I don't like the part where he needs a girl to meet friends. They're his friends and they wouldn't think any less of him if he didn't have a gf. His friends are probably single too since single guys hang out together.

Could this work? If the guy is successful and she talks to him every Sunday, wouldn't they get closer and closer. Eventually there would have to be some feelings right?

If you're a guy, would you pay to be in the friend's zone!?