Pieter was born to pious Dutch Protestant parents in the small city of Apeldoorn in the centre of The Netherlands, a place that Pieter believes has absolutely nothing to recommend it. The second child, with an older sister and a younger sister and brother, some of Pieter’s most vivid childhood memories are of his “attempted indoctrination” into Christianity, in the form of the bible stories he was subjected to in the Dutch equivalent of Sunday school. Even at a tender age, Pieter was horrified at the immorality and inhumanity of the Bible stories to which he was exposed. In retrospect, Pieter likened it to emotional warfare, but then alluded to it in more brutal terms, calling it mental rape, since something foreign and unwelcome was thrust into him.  By the time Pieter was ten or twelve years old, he was forming his own opinions that collided with those of his parents, who are both still alive as far as Pieter is aware.  Contact with his family over the past 25 years can best be described as next to none, though in the last few years there has been an annual, brief test interaction with his elder sister. In religious terms, Pieter is definitely the black sheep of the family however he is comfortable in himself and in his status as an outcast.

In both elementary and secondary school Pieter had exemplary reports from his teachers.  He had superior recall and could memorise bible verses by heart, a much-praised skill.  Secondary school was not sufficiently challenging for Pieter’s intellect and he coasted, doing the minimum possible without applying himself at all. By the time he entered Technical College at the age of 17, to study Engineering, Pieter was absenting himself from school without his parent’s knowledge, in acts of rebellion. He didn’t excel at either skipping class or running away from home either. Pieter was often exposed to verbal abuse, and worse. He particularly remembers one incident when he received a solid beating from his father who espoused the concept of “spare the rod, spoil the child”. Scared that serious damage had been inflicted, Pieter’s family called a doctor and blamed Pieter’s incoherence on substance abuse, which was an outrageous lie.  Pieter regrets that he didn’t have the courage to call his father out for the abuse, as the doctor would have been obliged to inform Child Care Services and his father would have been removed as his legal guardian and most likely charged with a criminal offence. It was an event that haunted Pieter’s grandmother for the rest of her life.

A subsequent job for Pieter was working in factories and on ships conducting maintenance cleaning on their huge industrial steam kettles.  Entering via the hatch, Pieter was tasked with scrapping the built-up residue left after water was boiled to provide power.  Although it was a dirty job, and potentially damaging to his lungs, the pay was good. If you have ever checked out the kettle in your own kitchen, you can imagine the detritus on an industrial scale.

At the end of the 1980s Pieter had the opportunity to spend a few months in Bangkok because he was on a sickness allowance which provided a regular income for a few months.  He stayed in the Riverside Hotel in Bangkok which at the time was a basic, cheap hotel. It was at this time he met Wimon who was working as a cleaner.  Wimon had come to Bangkok from her home in Korat, seeking a better life. They were drawn to each other, partly as both had experienced childhood trauma. Pieter had never believed he needed a piece of paper to sleep with a woman, but in order to secure a spousal visa for Wimon within weeks of her arrival in The Netherlands, the pair wed in a low-key ceremony in the equivalent of city hall, followed by a meal together in a local Chinese restaurant.

Wimon and Pieter spent fifteen years together back in the Netherlands, working in a variety of jobs, with Wimon taking every opportunity to master the Dutch language both orally and in writing, all the while earning a salary around 15 times more than she could in Thailand. One of Pieter’s memorable jobs in this time was as a courier driver. He drove an overnight van carrying a ton and a half of computer components 1700 kilometres from Rotterdam to Madrid, virtually non-stop, sometimes twice a week, saving the company considerable money compared to air freight costs. Dedicated to her husband’s welfare, Wimon obtained her Dutch driver’s licence and gave up her job, so she could become co-driver on these arduous trips. Occasionally, half the freight was unloaded in Madrid and the rest continued on to Lisbon in Portugal with them.  This freed up bed space in the van and the pair then had a mini-campervan to use on the less frantic trip back to Rotterdam.

In 2005, Pieter and Wimon returned to Bangkok because they saw an opportunity to generate an income there with the implementation of the upcoming Dutch civic integration law. The Dutch government had introduced the civic integration exam for those foreign nationals who wanted to live in the Netherlands with their partners.  Pieter spied a window of opportunity to work for himself, and with Wimon’s help, as she was now fluent in Dutch, Pieter established the Dutch Cultural Centre in Bangkok, where he could legally be a consultant. The centre, for a fee of €1200 paid by their partners, tutored Thai women in all aspects of Dutch language and civics so they passed the integration exam. Pieter established a website where he published photos of graduates with their certificates and the business flourished for a couple of years, growing exponentially from just three original clients, as there was no competition at first. As competition arose, Pieter had to strategise and adapt the business model to move to e-learning with dutchtutor.com, which had a much bigger potential client base.  Pieter hired technical expertise to transition the business into an online platform not only providing the course to the Thai market but also to most other regions in the world.  Nowadays the course is available in ten languages. While setting up this business entailed a lot of work, it is now set to “autopilot”.

Pieter is not the sort of person who easily does nothing, however. In 2019 Pieter’s debut novel, The Second Poison, was published by Monsoon books. It explores the sex industry, cyber-crime, crypto-currency as well as the scam industry in Thailand and has been well-received, despite its strong themes and gritty language.  Much of the content was inspired directly from personal experience or from stories garnered from British and American veterans Pieter encountered on the various bicycling adventures around Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam he took during the second part of his 40s. Pieter’s worn-out knees preclude further long bicycling trips but he still often cycles from his home of Soi 116 down to Khao Tao to meet up with one of his favourite ladies.

Lola has become a frequent companion and a bit of an obsession for Pieter, and he can spend hours tinkering with her, or indeed making her even more powerful and reliable.  Lola is a Thai boat, locally crafted and painted similarly to the local fishing fleet, that allows Pieter the freedom of the Gulf of Thailand. So far, the longest trip they have made together is from Khao Tao to Sam Roi Yot and return but a trip all the way to Chumpon and maybe even Koh Samui is on the agenda for this amateur boat captain, who has been taking lessons about local sea conditions from a local Thai fisherman.  Recently, Lola has had solar panels installed and a second longtail motor, an electric one, making her a hybrid and ensuring even safer boating. 

Pieter’s greatest hope for the future is to live healthily for another 20 years, (more likely now that he has given up smoking, though he still partakes in an Amaretto after dinner and does admit to eating junk food occasionally), taking as many trips with Lola as possible. Pieter finds that it is easy to make people happy in Thailand: a smile and a simple compliment to a Thai lady is always returned gracefully and without suspicion. As Pieter will tell you, “A smile costs nothing to give or receive.”

When he’s not occupied with either of his “wives”, Wimon or Lola, Pieter enjoys classical music and is glad that the Centara Grand hosts classical music events often. He has a love for the melodic and can’t abide quite a lot of more contemporary music. Pieter wouldn’t go to Pattaya now, not because the scantily-clad women or lady-boys concern him, but he finds the pulsating beats of the nightlife area of town offensive to his ears.

Pieter is a candid, direct and affable man who certainly knows how to spin a good yarn, provided you are prepared to avoid both politics and religion in your conversations.  He cites Professor Richard Dawkins, a British evolutionary biologist, science communicator, author and vocal atheist as the living person he admires most, after the love of his life, naturally! While Pieter confirms his best friend would tell you that he is a poorly-behaved person who will eventually “get his just deserts”, many people in Hua Hin would beg to disagree.