9 Days In Mexico

[drealm]

I spent 9 days in Baja California Mexico looking for a Mexican wife. The towns I visited were Tijuana, Tecate and Ensenada. I may write something longer later, but for now I'll limit this post to discussing methods for meeting women.

I went into Mexico with the impression that a white American man would automatically have Mexican women walking up to him asking for dates. At the very least I expected to get second looks. My plan was to exploit my hypothesized status. However my status perception proved false. Americans are too common in Baja California. You will not get second looks just for being an American. Of the three towns I visited, Tecate had the least American presence. In Tecate I got a few second looks, so my status was marginally higher.

It didn't occur to me to think through how to meet Mexican women until I was in Mexico. As I previously said, I was expecting women to come charging at me, I learned this is a fantasy. I also learned the method for getting a foreign woman is substantially different for those living abroad as opposed to those visiting abroad. If you're living abroad, you can take your time and you'll eventually meet someone with little effort. However if you're tied to your job, you can likely only take off a short amount of time. In my case I had 9 days to find a woman. So the questions becomes, how do you find women quickly? I'll list methods below.

One option, that I came to call the "cold approach" is directly approaching women on the street. The problem with the cold approach is most settings are not conducive to hitting on women. The optimal environment for directly approaching women is a slow paced environment. Preferably an area like a park or plaza. Believe me, jogging along side a woman to try asking her out will be perceived as out of context. For this reason modern malls were not suitable. Most of the women there were on shopping race tracks. The best place is a small town park.

The other option is getting women to come to you. This means posting an ad in one of three places: internet, radio or newspaper. With any of these three ad options, you need to list a phone number for ad viewers to reach you. In my case I bought a cheap Mexican cell phone in Tijuana and with minute packages in cash. Of the three ad options, newspaper was best, radio was a long runner up and internet was useless. In America there's built up social networks like craigslist. In Mexico this is not the case, there is no meetup website that's widely used.

There are other factors that affect advertising. For example I placed my ad in three news papers. The top newspaper "El Mexicano" got probably around 50 replies. The second highest paper "Frontera" got about 10 replies. The third paper "Sol De Tijuana" got zero replies. You need to choose a newspaper that has the highest readership. But all ads are cheap, so you might as well try all papers.

Radio has a different problem. If you're trying to buy radio ads on a border city, US stations will dominate the airwaves. Only buy ads on radio stations that you know don't have to compete with US stations. In my case I bought radio ads in Ensenada and Tecate. Tecate got zero responses because San Diego stations cover the area and are more popular. Ensenada performed slightly better with 2 responses. Ensenada got radio responses because it was far enough away to not have to compete with San Diego stations. However radio did not perform well overall. I think this is because few women will remember a number from an ad and then call it. If your going to do a radio ad I suggest repeating the number two or three times in the ad copy. This will probably require buying 30 second time slots as opposed to 20 second time slots.

Overall conclusions:

* The most important criteria is picking a city with a high population. The receiving method requires a city to have at least 1,000,000 people.
* Pick a city with few Americans. Your status decreases the closer you are to the border.
* Ads should have dis-qualifiers. State desired age up front and that you don't want kids. I made the mistake of putting no dis-qualifers and got many calls from middle aged women with kids (I'm 25).
* Get the biggest paper ad possible. You only have one chance with your ad.
* Streamline your process for receiving, recording and arranging meet times with all women. You will get confused quickly when you have 50+ women calling you.

Since I cannot live abroad, I'm forced to visit abroad. This requires time sensitive methods for meeting women. Ideally someone should meet the person they like in the first 3 days and spend the remaining days dating them. A relationship should then be maintained virtually from home until the woman could be brought to the home country. An agency is one option, which has the benefit of not forcing you to look for women. The problem with an agency is it forces you to choose a woman very quickly. Ideally a relationship should be built up over months. Agencies are also expensive.

If anyone has suggestions on methods for meeting women, I'd appreciate feedback.

[momopi]

You're 25 and looking to get hitched ??

¿Hablas español?

[Repatriate]

The easiest way to meet local women is to act natural and friendly then make friends with decent local guys or guys who are semi-local like (Mexican-American expats) then get introduced to a large number of acquaintences and single friends. From that point on you can usually meet some fairly good quality women that would normally be inaccessible to you socially.

Being too rushed or insistent on meeting "the one" on your trip will probably end up in disaster as a lot of guys who go to SEA and EE for that know.

[Falcon]

Wow, I never tried ads. Plus, I never went to Mexico actually intending to find a girlfriend, even though I did end up with a girlfriend from a rural locale just west of Mexico City. Also I'm even younger than you, haha.

Have you tried Mexicali? Personally I find the women (and everyone in general) there to be exceptionally friendly. It has very few Americans but plenty of Chinese. I usually blend in well in Mexicali because of its large presence of Chinese Mexicans. Plus, since I'm of Chinese descent, people in Mexico usually don't think of me as American, but rather as a "chino" even after I've told them that I grew up in the U.S.

AmericanInMexico, who's a white American dating white Mexican women in northern Mexico, reports:

As for "racial phenotype", I am white and here in Mexico, the women who want me are the white ones. The brown ones usually want nothing to do with me. In other words, white Mexican girls will date me but white American girls won't even look my way.

Repatriate also made a very good point. That's what I always do in Mexico - make a lot of guy friends and take it easy. Honestly, many Mexicans don't like it when unacculturated foreigners come into their country just to look for brides. (As a side note, many Central and South Americans stereotype Mexicans as being obnoxiously nationalistic and ethnocentric.) Mexico is not like the Philippines or Thailand where simply being a white American will make you "hot stuff." But if you delve deep into their culture, locals will encourage you to be with a local girl as a way of further accepting and integrating you into their society. One good way is to get to know an entire extended family very well through home visits and so on.

You might also want to see my list of relevant posts for some helpful tips, opinions, and trip reports. viewtopic.php?t=12555

[drealm]

Yes but how does any of this work for someone who can't leave their job for more than a week and even then only take week long trips at several month intervals?

If I can only take a week off to travel every 4 months or so - I don't think this networking approach works. Agencies are a consideration because the women are already lined up to meet - but they're also expensive and you need to commit in a short time.