Ask KJS what's not so great about living in Thailand

[daryn]

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Deg mentioned several times that you are better off avoiding meeting girl outside of bars.

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kkf is this a typo or do you actually mean that you are better off not meeting a girl outside of bars??

[xxThe_Lebowskixx]

typo. dont meet girls in bar for serious relationship.

[Georgia Avenue]

KKF: You are right. He was 20 at the time and very unsure of himself. He had little experience with women, and thought he was some huge player. He didn't lead her on, and he did try to pay for normal BF stuff, but yes, he now feels that he used her for sex and self-esteem. But he felt also that this was not unusual for foreingers to do and that it was kind of a system for them...True Love is wrapped up for Thai women with security in a way that US men and women can't understand. That's the way he put it anyway.

PS: She was not a bar girl.

[HP]

good thread. good debate

[Keepitsimple]

I dont see the problem with leaving a girl. It happens all the time. You take what you want and move on. I mean it sucks but life hurts sometimes. The thai girl was likely better off without the guy anyway if he left.

[KJS]

[ QUOTE ]
Do you think this is rare, or standard, or in between? Have you seen extremes of this power dynamic?


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This is not something I can easily generalize about.

I have friends who have lived there for ten years and are happily married to well-adjusted Thai women. I know someone else who was very committed to a Thai woman who was not faithful to him. And I have been around people talking about marrying prostitutes a month after meeting them. Not exactly sure which is standard. As with any cross-cultural romance, particularly one between a first world and a third world citizen, the dynamics are going to complicated. Love can overcome them for sure but when the feelings are not true, I would expect problems.

KJS

[effang]

[ QUOTE ]
When I was there, for instance, there was a war on drugs where poor people in rural areas who may or may not have been involved in the trade were murdered by police without any substantial outcry from the leaders of the country. The PM went on record as saying drug dealers don't deserve to live. All major international human rights groups criticized the police and government's role as judge, jury and executioner but not a single police officer was disciplined despite nearly 2,500 deaths.

In a separate incident 5 Burmese migrant workers were brutally murdered and their dead bodies thrown on a pile of tires and burned in the jungle outside Mae Sot. Mulitiple eyewitnesses placed a prominent village headman and his men at the scene of the crime. There people risked their lives to come forward with this information. No one every did time for these murders.

This disrpespect for life in general was bothersome to me. The fact that one's value diminished so rapidly when you moved down the socioeconomic scale made it worse. The powerless there have no rights whatsoever in reality. The protections that we are accustomed to are not there.

Other things:

Most, but not all, of the other farang you meet are interested only in boozing, [censored] whores, talking about how cheap everything is, having servants they could never afford at home and otherwise acting like they own the place despite having no interest in the culture, interest in learning the language, interest in doing much more than throwing money around and thinking they are doing a great service.

There is also a social aspect to living there that is akin to living in a resort area anywhere. Namely, a pretty strong hierarchy based around accumulated knowledge of the local area and not much else. So you end up having endless conversations like "how long have you been here, what do you do, have you been to Nana Plaza (yes many times), isn't it insane how cheap everything is, do you have 4 girlfriends, etc.. And people go way out of there way to practice this kind of juvenile form of one upsmanship based around not really contributing anything worthwhile to the place but moreso on drinking more, [censored] more whores, going more places, having a bigger apartment, whatever. Personally I got bored of talking about the same [censored] all the time. Imagine living in Telluride and just talking about shreadding and how drunk you were last night and you get the idea.

More later.

KJS

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you're not really a journalist are you? well, maybe a photojournalist? something about your writing is interesting to say the least.

[KJS]

Nope. Just missed your comment.

I recommend this camp: http://www.lannamuaythai.com/

It was in my village of Chang Khian in Chiang Mai. I did not train there but met some folks who have trained there over the years and all recommended it.

Have you heard of the film Beautiful Boxer? The boxer in that film trained there.

KJS

[KJS]

Judge for yourself:

Now You are Speaking My Language: Ethnic Radio in Thailand

Thaksin Betting on Victory in Casino Referendum

Securing Democracy (Editorial)

Wooing Women Worker's (Cover Story)

KJS