Bachelors Abroad was a reality TV show on the National Geographic cable channel that follows international group romance tours operated by A Foreign Affair/AFA. The first (and I think ONLY) episode around ~2013 followed a multi-city tour to Kharkov and Poltava Ukraine.

For a while there was a promotional video at National Geographic’s website. It had video segments and pictures that told some of the story.

People would naturally ask “IS THIS REAL?” I have been on an AFA tour and every other kind of tour, so I’ll answer. YES and NO.

On the one hand, yes, Bachelors Abroad depicted an AFA group tour relatively accurately. But there’s some sleight-of-hand you should know about.

The show opened following several of the participants prior to the trip, one of which is “Joe”, a policeman from Phoenix. Joe shows his friends the online profiles of the girls he likes, and his favorite, and they respond in awe. They ask “Do all the girls look this good in person?” Joe answers, “Usually better”. The women Joe showed his friends look much like those you will see if you visit A Foreign Affair’s home page (i.e. drop-dead-gorgeous models).

Initially there was a link to a photo gallery from the Bachelors Abroad show, but that has been removed since this article was first written. BUT here is what you would have seen…

In the pictures from the Bachelors Abroad photo gallery, approximately 22-24 women are reasonably visible in the photos, and maybe ONE is “cover model hot” like the pictures Joe showed his friends (or like those plastered all over AFA’s home page). From AFA’s home page, you’d think Ukraine was a whole country filled with Cosmo cover models!

Now PLEASE don’t misunderstand me here. I’m NOT suggesting…

• that all the women in these pictures are dogs
• that a man should only pursue “cover model hot” women
• or that these tours cannot be a lot of fun

What I AM saying is that if you listen to AFA’s propaganda, which was even evident in the Bachelors Abroad promotional video, you would be EXPECTING more “cover model hot” women. That’s what you see all over their front page, isn’t it? It’s what you see in the margins of their tour pages, along with the text “meet hundreds of beautiful women…”. That sort of leads one to conclude that when they say “beautiful women”, they mean “something like those you see pictured here”, doesn’t it?

Now the women you see in those Bachelors Abroad tour pictures aren’t bad, but they don’t look like what AFA is selling on their site.

And about the “fun”… Yes indeed, the tours can be a lot of fun, much as depicted in the Bachelors Abroad TV show. And if “fun” is your primary goal and price is no object, GO. But, if your goal is to actually meet and marry a Ukrainian woman, you need to realize that the AFA approach is the MOST EXPENSIVE and LEAST SUCCESSFUL approach.

First I’ll address the effectiveness of AFA’s approach. Unfortunately the full show is not viewable on the site as of now, and the part I need to reference is not on the short promo video for Bachelors Abroad. So I will try to summarize from memory…

Joe has been writing “Natalia” from the site for a few months before the trip referenced in Bachelors Abroad, and she was his favorite. To listen to him speak about this, you would get the impression he was mostly going on this tour to see only her.

The Bachelors Abroad cameras follow him on his ONE date with her, and at least to me, she seemed like a real winner. Very sweet, very polite, very feminine, and fairly attractive.

Now pardon me if I’m mixing up the dates or not quoting completely accurately (it is all from memory), but as I recall, both lamented that they did not have more time together.

Then you hear John Adams (AFA President) narrating the Bachelors Abroad show, saying something like “Joe and Natalia had a good date, but now it’s time to move on… he’ll meet many more women at the social tonight, and then it’s on to another city to meet even more… That’s how this works…” (again, I’m quoting from memory, but I assure you this is close enough for our purposes)

Well, it may be “how it works” to keep you single and spending $5000 each for AFA’s tours, but it’s most definitely NOT how it works if you are serious about finding, meeting, and marrying a foreign woman without going broke.

But if Joe really wants to find a suitable partner, that’s most definitely NOT how it “works”! Joe is still single, but had he not followed AFA’s self-serving advice to meet as many women as possible during his tour, he might be working on a fiancee visa application with Natalia! He should have ditched the stupid social, and even the next city, and seen this girl a few more times.

Hey, if he didn’t like her I would understand him meeting others. But I didn’t get the idea that he didn’t like her (or vice versa). I got the idea he was just following AFA protocol, which is accurately depicted in Bachelors Abroad.

Think about it… Natalia and Joe have been corresponding, and have been looking forward to getting to finally meet face to face. In what universe is it going to be an effective relationship strategy for him to meet her ONE time then go on to meet many other women during his trip (and Natalia KNOWS he’s going on to meet many more women)?

A Mental Exercise…

I know men and women are different, and I know American culture is different from that of Ukraine, but to really get an accurate picture of the dynamics in play here, try to imagine the shoe on the other foot for a moment. Imagine a world in which Ukrainian women take “romance tours” to the U.S., and that all the dynamics worked like AFA tours there… The women attend socials where there are 20 women (older than you and relatively overweight) and 200 men, and they attend multiple socials in multiple cities during their tour.

Further imagine that you’ve been corresponding with “Natalia” for a few months before she came over on one of these tours, and she seems sincere, has told you about her family, her past, her children, her hopes for the future, and has assured you that she’s serious about finding a sincere, kind man with whom to spend the rest of her life. You’ve exchanged photos of your children, yourselves, and your homes, city, etc.

THEN two months later she arrives, has ONE 2-hour meeting with you before attending more socials and visiting other cities to meet more men she hasn’t even been writing, like Joe did with Natalia in Bachelors Abroad.

Seriously… re-read those previous several paragraphs, and really try to plug yourself into that situation. Now answer this: How do you feel about Natalia NOW? How do you feel about this whole ‘romance tour’ thing?

Now let me bring it home… Have you ever participated in online dating in America? Maybe Match.com or POF.com? If you have, then this little “mental exercise” should not be too difficult for you! It has in all likelihood been your REALITY!

If there’s ONE individual factor to which I could point that makes me RUN to Ukraine, it’s this… I know that on Match.com/POF.com a woman who MIGHT score an “7.5” on the 10-scale gets well over 500 messages per week! A “9” or higher probably receives MORE than 1000 messages per week.

THINK ABOUT IT… even if you were Tom Cruise (rich/famous), Brad Pitt (rich/famous), Bill Gates (RICH/famous), or Mark Zuckerberg (RICH/famous), your chances of this “9” even SEEING your message, let alone READING IT, let alone LIKING IT, and let alone MEETING YOU, are very slim! Short of landing your private jet right on her street and taking her in it to a lunch date in Paris, what are you going to do to stand out from the 999 other men that contacted her that week?

Staying with our imagined shoe-on-other-foot scenario… When you receive messages through this agency in the future from another woman claiming she’s serious, sincere, blah, blah, blah, what are you going to do? And, assuming you went to any socials with the 10-to-1 ratio working against you, would you go another social when this agency announces another tour coming through town?

Well, due largely to the natural differences between men and women, women take this kind of thing FAR WORSE than a man would. The AFA “group tour” as depicted in Bachelors Abroad is a FLAWED MODEL from start to finish! I’m not saying no one ever lucks out, but objectively speaking, for almost all men this approach has the lowest probability of success.

So, I believe I have probably adequately addressed why I believe the AFA approach (the Group Tour) is the “LEAST SUCCESSFUL” approach. But what about “MOST EXPENSIVE”? Well, the typical 10-day AFA tour to Ukraine runs in the neighborhood of $4000-$5000 and covers airfare, hotels, socials, and introductions.

If you read my full review of A Foreign Affair/AFA you will see that I suggest that one could turn an AFA group tour into a success by making heavy use of their UNLIMITED introductions feature that is included in their group tours. That means that while you are on an AFA group tour in Poltava Ukraine (for example – it’s one of the cities the TV show covered), you can ask AFA to arrange dates for you with ANY women in Poltava on the AFA site, whether or not she attends any of the socials.

Also in my full review of AFA, like here, I suggest that the socials are NOT all they are cracked up to be.

Well, taking all that together, you could easily do an Individual Tour to Poltava or Kharkov for barely more than HALF the cost of an AFA group tour, and have all the best and none of the worst of an AFA tour!

To read more about more effective approaches to meeting and marrying Ukrainian women visit my How to Meet Ukrainian Women.

And frankly, to read a LOT more about effective approaches to meeting and marrying a Ukrainian woman, THOROUGHLY READ THIS WHOLE SITE!