IT HAS been just six months since his then comatose Vietnamese fiance, Miss Dinh Thi Thom, 21, left Singapore.

But newspaper vendor Teo Boon Teck, 31, is preparing to get married again – to another Vietnamese woman.

He filed a marriage application with his new 21-year-old bride last month, and said the wedding would be held today at his family’s Jurong West flat.

If it happens, this will be his fourth relationship and second marriage to a foreign woman in two years.

He said he has known his bride, whom he calls Ah Hao, for less than a month.

“These girls come to Singapore to get married. Life is hard (where they are from). And I think she is better than the third one (Miss Dinh),” Mr Teo said “Marriage is a big event in a person’s life. Only I decide who I want to marry. I don’t care what other people say.”

Mr Teo and Miss Dinh hit the headlines after she was knocked down by a lorry last Christmas eve, and spent months in a coma in hospital.

He claimed initially that she had been on her way to their wedding, and played the role of the loving fiance – only to demand $100,000 from her parents when they tried to take her back to Vietnam.

He said the money was for the hospital bill and living expenses, even though he had not paid a single cent to the National University Hospital (NUH).

With the help of NUH and the Vietnamese embassy, the family eventually managed to leave with Miss Dinh without his knowledge in April.

An angry Mr Teo then burned all of Miss Dinh’s belongings.

He also revealed that he couldn’t have married her anyway – he married an Indonesian woman in December 2007, but she ran away four months into their marriage, and he had yet to finalise their divorce.

A reader contacted The New Paper after seeing Mr Teo with a new woman at the Teo family’s newspaper stand outside Jurong Point.

Madam Angela Lee, a 46-year-old housewife who walks past the stand every day, said she first saw the woman last week.

“She was still in Vietnamese dress,” she said.

Wondering if the woman knew anything about Mr Teo’s past, she asked: “Can the embassy help? Go down and talk to her? I just feel sorry for her.”

‘Free to marry’

The New Paper tried to speak to Ah Hao, but she does not appear to speak any English or Mandarin.

Mr Teo said he communicates with her by pointing to a Vietnamese-Chinese translation book. She is also learning Mandarin.

He added that Ah Hao has been living with him in the family flat and helping out at the stall since last week.

He refused to reveal Ah Hao’s full name, but a check with the Registry of Marriages (ROM) online service showed a marriage application from him and a Miss Nguyen Thi Hoa, filed on 25 Sep.

Mr Teo claimed that his divorce from his Indonesian wife was finalised last month, leaving him free to marry Miss Nguyen.

But he refused to show The New Paper his divorce certificate to prove this.

ROM said there is no law prohibiting a person who is still married from submitting a marriage application.

But couples are required to make a statutory declaration on matters like their marital status before a marriage licence can be issued.

A person who gives a false declaration can be fined, jailed up to three years, or both.

Mr Teo admitted he told Ah Hao that he had never been married before.

He said: “I don’t want Ah Hao to know about Ah Xiang. That’s already in the past. I’ve already burned all her things. I treat it like I’ve never known her.”

Although Miss Dinh is still alive, Mr Teo claimed that he received a call several months ago from Vietnam during which a female police officer told him that Miss Dinh had killed herself.

“She told me Ah Xiang woke up and asked her mother, ‘Where is my husband?’ She told her, ‘No need to return to Singapore, your husband doesn’t want you anymore.’

“Then she took a fruit knife and killed herself that night. I was a bit sad, but who asked her to kill herself.”

Mr Teo also revealed there was another woman after his Indonesian wife and before Miss Dinh.

He had flown to Vietnam to meet the woman, who had been introduced by a friend. He said they were at the airport to fly to Singapore when she said she had to go to the toilet, then disappeared.

Mr Teo said Ah Hao is his first girlfriend since Miss Dinh. He said he didn’t meet her at an agency, but through a friend.

He said he likes her because she helps take care of his wheelchair-bound mother.

“She has good manners, especially when she’s with old people. She won’t talk back to you or be greedy over materialistic things, like other women.

“To customers, she would say, ‘Thank you, welcome.’ She’s very obedient, not like Ah Xiang. I don’t like women who are rude.”