Bachelors Abroad is a new reality television show on the National Geographic Channel that looks at the phenomena of mail order brides and international dating. The show follows a group of American men as the pursue foreign women around the world.
The show is being done in conjunction with A Foreign Affair and it follows a group of Foreign Affair tour members as they travel. So, if you are interested in romance tours this is a great opportunity for you to really get an honest look at what really goes on behind the scenes when a group of middle-aged American men meet beautiful young women from Eastern Europe.
John Adams, the owner of A Foreign Affair, which is based in Phoenix, Arizona, says that show gives the audience the perspective of a fly on the wall, …simply observing and recording everything as it took place.
The first episode follows a group of American men on a ten-day tour of Ukraine, but later episodes will travel to Latin America and Asia.
A Foreign Affair is the biggest romance tour operator in the world and they offer over forty tours a year to Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Here’s a link to the A Foreign Affair Romance Tour page. Also, it is worth remembering that even if you are already signed up with a different company like Anastasia or Elena’s Models you can still use AFA’s tour service.
AFA will help you set up meetings with women you might have already met through those services and you will be able to meet hundreds of other beautiful women on the tours.
It can be a win-win! Generally, speaking these A Foreign Affairs tours receive very high marks in terms of customer satisfaction and I expect the show will really be interesting.
I am certainly looking forward to seeing what happens. Bachelors Abroad premieres on Saturday, January 12th, 2013 at 11:00 pm EST (9:00 pm MST) airs on the National Geographic Channel. Here is a link to our Romance Tours page if you want to get an overall idea of what they are about.
Bachelors Abroad – Episode 1: Joe, Bill and Bob Go To Ukraine
Episode One of Bachelors Abroad introduced the concept of international dating and romance tours. It introduced John Adams the owner of A Foreign Affair, and followed three American bachelors, Joe, Bill, and Bob, on a ten-day romance tour of Ukraine. The show began with a long introduction of international dating and romance tours.
It discussed the old mail order bride myth that is so popular among feminist studies professors and their allies in the mainstream media. It was subtle, but it really made the point by mentioning that John Adams is married to a Russian woman that he met in St. Petersburg while leading a tour.
Tatyana Adams, John’s wife, is obviously a big part of the show and the company and she clearly didn’t care for the mail order bride myths. She said, “Who is not looking for a better life….”
And explained that John certainly didn’t pick her out and order her and if anything it was the other way around. John talked a little bit about the company, A Foreign Affair, and explained that they had a web site and were based in Phoenix, Arizona.
The Bachelors
Then the show zoomed in on three bachelors, who were really the main characters for the episode Joe, Bob, and Bill. They were three very different men from different parts of the United States, but they were all looking for the same thing – love.
Joe was a fifty-one-year-old divorced cop from Phoenix who really seemed to want to get married. He had a mature, but fun persona and seemed to be absolutely earnest in his desire to find a wife – particularly one close to forty.
He had four daughters who looked like they were between maybe fourteen and twenty-three and he talked to them before he left for the tour. Joe’s daughter’s only had one rule: “Don’t come back with anyone close to our age!” (Maybe Joe’s daughters need to read our article – Live Longer – Marry a Younger Woman) Joe understood and promised them he wouldn’t do that.
He seemed like a great dad and kept saying that he had been married twenty-four years and really enjoyed being part of that sort of close relationship. Bob was sixty-one-year-old high energy former college professor from Pennsylvania. He seemed very intelligent.
He was the only one of the bachelors to make a serious attempt to learn Russian and he also tried to talk with the other guys and be really supportive.
The final bachelor the show focused on was Bill a sixty-six-year-old twice divorced man with a pure white beard. Bill was chubby and about 5’4 and his whole look was sort of like a miniature Santa Clause. But Bill was still trying to get over his second wife, a Russian woman he had met on a romance tour some ten years earlier.
The Tour
Then the show got into the tour. It explained that guys who sign up for a romance tour with AFA get a free subscription to the web site too and showed the guys going through the orientation.
One of the big things John pointed out here was this was not going to be like anything they had experienced in the United States because there were going to be twenty-two men and two hundred and fifty women at the socials on the trip and “…these women actually want to talk to you.”
In a few words, this really summed up the attraction of flying to Ukraine for the American, but it was also clear that John Adams knew this was going to be difficult for a lot of the American men to understand.
They have always felt nervous about approaching women and in their heart of hearts always believed that the women really didn’t want to talk to them, but clearly, with twenty-two men and over two-hundred and fifty women, this was going to be different – very different.
So, then the show follows the guys through their flight to Ukraine and introduces the Ukrainian mail order brides.
Ukrainian Mail Order Brides
Then we are introduced to the Ukraine through the voices of the Ukrainian women who explain many of the problems in much the same way that we did in our article Why Do Women From Eastern Europe Want to Marry Foreign Men?
The women explained that life is hard in Ukraine and Ukrainian men drink heavily, die young, and often beat their wives and girlfriends. There were lots of great shots of the Ukrainian countryside.
Romance Tour Socials
Then the show moved on and showed a social in the large Ukrainian city of Kharkov. It showed hundreds of young women signing up for the event and then followed Joe, Bob, and Bill around the event. Joe seemed to be just looking for pure love.
He was relaxed, but even a positive reaction from the women never seemed positive enough. Bob laughed and danced and flirted with all of the women, but somehow didn’t quite seem to get there.
Bill was a real mess because it became apparent that he is still in love with his last Russian wife.
There were two large socials – one in Kharkov and the other in Poltava. Both of them looked interesting, but the one in Poltava was especially compelling.
There were more women at the one in Poltava and they seemed more interested in the guys, perhaps because Poltava is a smaller city.
In Poltava the guys took several individual dates, either with women they met through the web site or with women they met at the social. The individual dates seemed a lot more nerve-racking and prone to disaster than the socials, because it was one on one.
Well, actually the individual dates were two on one because all of the guys needed a translator to make the date work.
Going Home
None of the three bachelors that Episode One focused on ended up finding the love of their life, but they all seemed to have a good time and enjoy themselves. Like all National Geographic Channel shows Bachelors Abroad was beautifully shot and well-edited.
It provided a fly on the wall perspective on a tour and it should be required viewing for any guy considering getting involved in international dating.
The Future of Bachelors Abroad
A lot of guys are wondering what the future is for the National Geographic Channel’s new reality show Bachelors Abroad.
It aired once, on Saturday, January 12, 2013, and had an immediate impact on guys who are interested in pursuing foreign brides, particularly Ukrainian women, and on the whole business of romance tours.
However, currently, the National Geographic Channel does not have any follow up episodes of Bachelors Abroad scheduled and this has caused a lot of questions among visitors to International Love Scout.
So, we reached out to John Adams the owner of A Foreign Affair, who was one of the main characters in Bachelors Abroad, because his company organized the romance tour featured in the show.
We asked him what he thought of the first episode and asked him about the future plans for Bachelors Abroad. According to John, there are plans to air the first episode again and to show additional episodes. Here is his reply in full:
Thank you for your E-mail and your interest. I thought the show was very well done, and did a good job of portraying what takes place in the tours. Obviously, I was there and I can tell you that none of it was scripted, they just followed the guys on dates and at the socials and filmed what happen as it took place, the good and the bad, which I thought was great. Yes we expect more episodes but I am not sure when they will run. I also think that they will rerun the first one as well. Thanks again for your interest. John
There is the answer straight from the source and as soon as we find out any additional information about the show we will pass it along.
From my point of view, I thought Bachelor’s Abroad did an excellent job of portraying what goes on romance tours. They are fun and you can see why A Foreign Affairs romance tours are so well regarded.
The company has a well-trained staff that has dealt with almost every problem imaginable and they know where the minefields are when a couple of dozen middle-aged American men come into contact with hundreds and hundreds of beautiful Ukrainian women.
There is some shock and a learning curve for both the men and the women. It also makes it clear that women still want to leave Eastern Europe, because it is a hard-drinking, generally patriarchal society, with fewer chances for economic advancement than they have available in the West.
The Ukrainian women featured in the episode seemed very honest and grounded in reality.
But Bachelors Abroad also makes it obvious that these women are not desperate and Western men still have to work to present themselves as quality husband material, not only because of their economic status, but mostly as good compassionate human beings who have the necessary intangibles to be great husbands and fathers too if kids are a consideration.
So, we are really excited about Bachelors Abroad, because I believe it can help guys really make good informed decisions about whether to really go all out and pursue international dating.
