Living In Thailand Blog
Wednesday 6th August 2008
I was watching TV in a restaurant a couple of nights ago at around 6pm and there was some kind of nose operation being performed. I don't know if it was cosmetic or functional but close-ups of surgical instruments being inserted into nostrils and breaking off pieces of cartilage weren't really what I wanted to see as I was eating my dinner.
In the same restaurant they often have newspapers lying around. On one occasion when I ate there with Iss, there was the most gory photo of a blood-covered murder victim on the front page. Again, it wasn't pleasant, and not what I wanted to see just before I was about to eat.
These gory images are quite common in Thailand and no one seems to bat an eyelid. However, in Thai soap operas, images of anyone smoking, drinking alcohol, or holding a gun aren't allowed. Images of cigarettes, alcoholic drinks and guns are made fuzzy even though it is obvious to all what the actor is holding, and everyone knows what these things look like.
Thai censorship laws are a little strange.
The BBC reported that Thailand bans Grand Theft Auto IV because a teenager killed a taxi driver while copying a scene from the game.
Perhaps the Thai authorities might want to think about banning 'The Fast and the Furious' (a cult movie in Thailand) and other movies that encourage and glamourise illegal street racing for the same reason they have banned Grand Theft Auto IV?
Tuesday 5th August 2008
What's the best way to describe what it's like living in Thailand to someone who has never lived in Thailand? A short allegory perhaps.
Imagine you've had another terrible day at work stuck in meetings listening to corporate doublespeak and playing buzzword bingo. You leave work thinking to yourself, "Why on earth am I wasting my life like this?"
Instead of going straight home, you decide to have a drink to relax and unwind. In the pub, you meet a person who is obviously a few sandwiches short of a picnic. The person is half crazy but their weird behaviour is the perfect antidote to your boring, tedious life.
For a while you forget everything else and you actually find yourself laughing again. The irreverence and lack of seriousness feels great. You think, "Isn't this how life should be all the time?" At the end of the evening you leave the pub, say goodbye to the crazy person, and go home thinking about what a great time it was.
This is what it's like taking a vacation in Thailand.
Now, what if the crazy person were to move in with you permanently seven days a week, 24 hours a day? You could never get away. There might be times when you wanted to be a little serious - perhaps to get something done - but the crazy person would always be there. There would be no escape.
How do you think you would then feel about that person? Would it still be fun? Unquestionably it would still be fun sometimes, but quite often what was fun for a short time could start to become highly irritating.
This is what it's like living in Thailand.
In the past, I've corresponded with a few foreign men who have had problems with their long-distance Thai girlfriends. A common theme is that the men seem to be blissfully unaware they are dealing with people from a very different cultural background.
Actions and behaviour the men think are unreasonable are based on an assumption that Thai girls think and act the same way as they do. They are aware, obviously, of the superficial differences: the girls look a little different and speak a strange language, but that's it.
Apart from those superficial differences, they seem to think that Thais have similar value and belief systems to their own. This couldn't be further from the truth and this lack of understanding is guaranteed to cause lots of problems.
Take, for instance, spiritual beliefs. This is a country where many people are terrified of ghosts; where people do their best to appease local spirits by giving them food and accommodation in order to keep the spirits out of their own houses; where people place great faith in fortune tellers; and where the belief in amulets and other objects containing sacred saksit powers can (and does) lead to national crazes, resulting in people being trampled to death as they stampede to get hold of the latest magical amulet. (I'm not making this up.)
The dispute between Thailand and Cambodia over the Preah Vihear temple was recently escalated to other-worldly heights when the wife of the Cambodian Prime Minister organised a meeting of Khmer wizards at the temple so that they could cast black-magic spells over Thailand.
Aware of the potential danger, Thai astrologers got together and suggested Thais should wear yellow in order to fend off the evil spells.
When Thaksin was in power, he was alleged to have consulted with a Cambodian witchdoctor. Thaksin studied for a PhD in the United States so he isn't exactly an uneducated man.
This is the kind of thing you have to deal with in Thailand all the time. The next time, therefore, you're sitting in a Patong/Patpong/Pattaya bar and Nong Noi from Nong Khai innocently asks if you want to play a game of 'Connect-4', you might want to think first what this could be leading to. Never, ever believe that Thais think the same way as you do.
Monday 4th August 2008
I read that the UK has been hit with swarms of flying ants this year, but at least in temperate countries insect problems are only seasonal. While living in the tropics, insects are a constant problem and although the odd battle may be won it is a war that the insects will always win eventually.
I have a small patio area outside my room and discovered a newly-built ants' nest this morning. As I started to wash it away, the ants went into 'nest under attack' mode and attempted to remove all the eggs but I have now completely eradicated everything.
There are ants in my bathroom that I think have built a nest behind one of the walls. The nest therefore can't be destroyed so all I can try to do is block their access. Every time I buy a bag of fruit, the fruit arrives with several hundred ants, thus introducing more ants into my living space.
Yesterday, shortly after sitting down at my desk I felt a painful mosquito bite on my foot. The thing had obviously been hiding there waiting for me and had forgotten to use the special chemical that prevents you from feeling the bite.
It bit me twice and the bites were very itchy but some spray quickly put paid to her little game. It is apparently only pregnant females that bite because they need the protein from blood for their developing eggs.
Dengue has been on the increase in this region in recent years and a report from The Nation a few days ago about an outbreak of the disease in Bangkok seems to indicate that it is only getting worse.
I have had to sack a couple of jing-joks (small house lizards) that I allowed to stay in my room on condition they kept the room insect-free. I gave them a written warning last week but after getting more mosquito bites yesterday it was obvious they weren't meeting their performance targets so they had to go.
A Thai friend of mine who works in Bangkok for a large international travel company told me the English teacher her company employs, an American, gives very boring lessons. Poor guy. I expect a lot of my students say the same thing about me.
I've had some good experiences teaching in Thailand but it can be a soul-destroying job. When I have watched Thai teachers in action, their lessons are entirely one-way. The teacher goes into 'rhetorical Thai' speaking mode and spouts forth for the entire lesson, often with the use of a microphone, and sometimes out of sight of the students hidden away in a little boxed area in the corner of the classroom.
The students, being model Thai students - and having lots of respect for their teacher - just sit there looking attentive without saying a word. It's one of the main reasons why Thais are so poor when it comes to actually speaking English because they never get a chance to practice.
The kids get so used to this method of 'teaching', that they find other methods difficult to deal with. They come to expect that whenever they attend a lesson, they will just open their books and the teacher will 'teach' the entire time. Their expectation is that they don't actually need to do anything, apart from sitting there looking studious, while trying not to fall asleep.
One of the courses I am running at the moment is called 'Active English Conversation' but the students couldn't be any more passive if they tried. They never have anything to talk about themselves, never want to participate, and never have any questions to ask.
"What did you do at the weekend?" "I stayed at home." "What did you do?" "Nothing," or, "I slept." Great, this is a really 'active' conversation.
Because of the way things have always been, they don't develop any self-confidence and they are afraid of speaking out in case they speak incorrectly. I tell my students repeatedly that they will only learn by trying, making mistakes, and then understanding their mistakes. Most of the time though, I am just wasting my breath.
It's a strange line of work because the dynamic between any given group of students and the teacher makes such a huge difference. Even having just one outgoing student in the class can make or break a class.
In the past, I've taught a few effeminate males and they are great fun. Their English ability is normally higher than average and they create a fun and relaxed atmosphere in the classroom.
Adults are generally better in this respect than young kids but not always. Teenagers, especially some girls, tend to be so shy that it presents a serious handicap to their learning ability.
If there's one thing Thai students aren't, it's stupid. They have just as much ability as students from other countries but their progress is held back by an antiquated method of teaching, and certain aspects of Thai culture.
Someone was telling me recently that changes are supposedly underway, and that the Thai education system is supposed to be more 'student-centred' now. Maybe that's true but so far I haven't seen any hard evidence.
Saturday 2nd August 2008
How's this for a marketing strategy? A shop sells widgets in a marketplace where everyone knows roughly how much widgets cost. One day, the shop owner makes new price tags for all of his widgets that are double the normal price. He continues to sell his widgets at the same price as before, but hangs a big banner outside his shop declaring that his widgets are now being sold at a 50% discount.
Would you believe you were really getting a 50% discount? Probably not. Anyone with half a brain would realise immediately that the shop owner was being deceptive. It would be so obvious to everyone that shopkeepers wouldn't even bother attempting such a crass deception.
However, this is the standard modus operandi for anyone selling anything in Thailand.
I looked around a large department store yesterday that sells mainly clothes. I go there fairly regularly. There isn't a single item for sale without a supposed discount and everything is "on sale" every day of the year.
I know I've made this point several times but it's another example of an outrageous deception in Thailand.
The Camel clothes shop inside the department store sells good clothes. Their designs are good and the clothes don't fall apart after being washed a couple of times. I buy quite a lot of my casual clothes there.
However, they are as guilty as everyone else when it comes to lying about discounts. As new stock goes on the shelves, it has two prices. There is a price in black, which is supposedly the retail price, and a price in red which is the actual selling price, and which is half the amount of the price in black.
Outside the shop there is a big '50% Sale' sign but it is there every-single-day of the year and the goods are never sold at the higher price. Never. In the UK, goods advertised as being on sale must have been offered at the pre-sale price for 28 consecutive days in the previous six months.
There's no such law in Thailand, and even if there was it wouldn't make any difference.
OK, no problem apart from one thing. I know perfectly well this is how things work in Thailand - that the higher price means absolutely nothing - and I wouldn't mind, if it wasn't for the fact that shop assistants also insist on trying to insult my intelligence.
Whenever I look around shops, they keep telling me, "50% discount." No there isn't. And if I ask for a genuine discount, they have the nerve to tell me they can't discount any more because they have already discounted the item 50%. No they haven't because it was never, ever sold at the higher price. The higher price is completely fictitious.
One more point. Don't bother trying to explain this logic to a Thai shop assistant. I've tried, and the people I've tried explaining to just look confused.
It's about time the international community took action against Indonesia for the haze that is caused every year by farmers burning forests to clear land for agriculture.
In the past, Singapore and particularly Kuala Lumpur, have been badly affected. The smog in 1997 was exceptionally bad. If weather conditions permit, the haze can also affect southern Thailand.
The Nation web site yesterday that Songkhla province had been affected but there were no signs of any haze. But that was only until I looked out of my room this morning.
It's not every year that this happens. The last time (which was worse than today) was on Saturday 13th August 2005 - almost exactly three years ago.
The point, though, is that it shouldn't happen at all. If I wanted to breathe polluted air I would move to Bangkok.
Friday 1st August 2008
This is an old English fruit.
I met him at Horse Guards Parade in London a few years ago and he was keen for me to take his photo. He had a thing about the guardsmen in their ceremonial black and red uniforms so used to hang around there. The guardsmen knew him so he must have been a regular visitor.
But today's subject is not about old English fruits; it's about Thai fruit.
แก้วมังกร
gaew-mung-gorn = dragon fruit (although a more literal Thai translation would appear to be dragon glass).
An aching body was not the only thing I came home with after my recent mountain climbing expedition. I was also given a bag of rambutan and a couple of dragon fruit.
Thailand is blessed with a year-round abundance of delicious tropical fruit. Fruit is available throughout the year but some varieties are seasonal and appear only at certain times. During these times, there is normally a glut.
The fruit harvest was so good last year that much of it rotted before it could be sold. Prices were so cheap that fruit was almost being given away.
As prices continued to drop, fruit farmers in Nakhon Sri Thammarat province resorted to dumping their produce outside the local municipality in a protest to politicians to set a minimum price.
Many rural Thais have fruit trees in their gardens, and some have quite large orchards. This makes it unnecessary to buy from shops because people who grow fruit will just sell it from the back of a pickup truck, or from boxes at the front of their regular businesses.
It's not unusual to see fruit for sale outside a small clothes shop, hair salon, or other small business. That's what happens in the provinces, anyway, but Bangkok is probably different. Most things in Bangkok are different compared to 'upcountry' Thailand.
Where I work, some of the staff just bring fruit in from home and leave it lying around for anyone to eat. There is such an abundance of fruit at certain times of the year, you could almost believe that it grows on trees.
Dragon fruit (Hylocereus undatus) are available to buy in some temperate countries, but they are very expensive. For example, Greenhouse Girl paid £1.79 for hers from Tesco in the UK (about Bt119). In comparison, they work out at about Bt9 each from my local branch of Tesco Lotus in Thailand when bought by the kilo. Mine were free.
The dragon fruit plant produces magnificent white flowers (as you can see from the photo above), which can grow to a very large size. The photo was taken in the garden belonging to one of our mountain guides two weeks ago.
Individual fruits are a doddle to eat. First, store them in a refrigerator for a while. Then, just cut them in half and scoop the inside out with a spoon. The consistency is such that a spoon will easily remove the flesh.
The white flesh is full of small, soft, black seeds. The taste isn't that exciting. For example, it isn't like eating a really sweet Thai pineapple where the taste sensation sends your taste buds into overdrive. The taste is agreeable but won't result in oral orgasms.
One fruit that is giving me oral pleasures of a very significant kind at the moment is mangosteen but more about that later.
I talked recently about how Thais will often speak about foreigners right in front of them, assuming the foreigners can't understand what is being said. Sometimes it will just be crass comments but sometimes what they say is surprising.
For an ugly bugger like myself, hearing a Thai girl telling her friend I am "lor" (handsome) does wonders for the ego - and it happens fairly often!
I was wandering around a local fair a couple of days ago and there was a young girl pushing her mother in a wheelchair. I guess the girl was about 15. The first thing that got my attention was the girl's use of the 'F' word - farang. I heard it but didn't react. Instead, I slowed down a little and listened in more.
The next thing I heard was, "jamook su-wai." In fits of laughter, I then had a quick conversation with them.
Probably the most flattering way to describe my nose is 'unfortunate'. The genes (going all the way back to the Roman occupation of Britain) were already in place when I was born and at around the age of 12 it started to sprout. Throughout my entire period of higher education, I got a bad time from my fellow students and, life being what it is, these things always happen to people when they are most sensitive about their appearance.
The irony is that by the time the teasing stops, people are normally at an age where they just don't care anymore.
So, back to the story, and after getting so much grief as a self-conscious kid, how strange it is to be wandering around Thailand in my middle years and to hear a young girl remark that I have a beautiful nose. How can I possibly fail not to love this country?
To further balance things up, I also need to make a few more positive comments to counter negative ones I have made in the past. The bottom line is that to generalise in Thailand (and anywhere else for that matter) is just about pointless. Everyone is different.
While queuing at the supermarket checkout last week, a young girl in front of me noticed that I only had a loaf of bread. She didn't have many items herself but she insisted that I went ahead of her. What a nice gesture.
Also in the last week, two people on motorbikes have stopped to give me a lift to work when they saw me walking. The first was a fairly old lady who couldn't speak any English. I was almost there so declined her offer. The second was a young lad doing a PhD in Chemistry who spoke good English.
Regarding customer service, I bought an English TOEIC text book to use for a course I am just about to deliver. The book came with two CDs but one track on one CD wouldn't play. I took it back and got a replacement. However, the replacement CD wouldn't play at all. It was replaced again and the third one was fine. All of this was done with absolutely no fuss at all.
We all do it, but making generalised negative statements based on one or more experiences is quite worthless because good things will also happen to contradict what was said in the first place.
The start of a new era? Can Thailand really start to move forward again after the long political impasse that has not only stopped all progress in the country, but has threatened at times to tear it in two?
From today's Nation:
The court's ruling will not only set a high standard of ethical conduct for business people, investors, politicians and other powerful people, but it will also erase the common belief among Thais that the rich and powerful people in this country will never go to jail. The root of the problem in Thai society and Thai democracy is that the law is not applied to everybody. If one is rich and powerful, one is exempt from the law or equal treatment. This common belief will have to be destroyed if Thailand is to move forward as a country of law and order.
This an excellent summary, but it remains to be seen whether or not this really is the beginning of a new era of ethical conduct in Thailand. Thaksin and his wife made a lot of enemies, some of whom are very powerful people in Thailand.
They are being dealt with but will the courts be as tenacious with other rich and powerful Thais who do wrong and don't have as many enemies?
I mentioned to Iss that some of my students told me I look like Richard Gere from the back. She agreed and added that I look like Richard Gere from the back and Mr Bean from the front. She thought it was funny, anyway.
You can always rely on cheeky Thai girls to give your ego a boost.