Living In Thailand Blog

Thursday 14th January 2016

As a tourist and also as a new expat in Thailand I used to fly around the country occasionally. Up until 2003, there was only one option - Thai Airways, the national carrier. Fares were quite expensive because a) Thai Airways is a premium carrier, and b) Thai Airways, at the time, had a complete monopoly on domestic flights. Every flight in Bangkok originated or ended at Don Meuang airport.

Tourists could get quite good deals by buying a fixed number of flights in their own countries before they travelled to Thailand, but buying tickets for Thai Airways in Thailand was quite expensive and not accessible to the masses. That all changed in 2004. I guess that some deregulation took place because this is the year that budget airlines arrived in Thailand.

All of a sudden it was possible to fly for the same price as taking a bus, and flying was a lot quicker. When the budget airlines offered discounts it was actually cheaper than taking the bus. The distance between north and south Thailand is considerable and it can take almost 24 hours to get from one end to the other by bus.

A rite of passage for many farang males in Thailand is to get involved with an Isaan girl and then do the trip back to her village. I was no exception and on one occasion took a 12 hour bus ride to Bangkok and then did a similar length journey from Bangkok to deepest, darkest Nong Khai. It was an ordeal. I was lucky in that I had a seat for the whole journey whereas a few poor souls had to stand or sit on plastic stools.

In addition flying is safer. Statistically, flying is the safest form of travel and, conversely, travelling on Thai roads is one of the most dangerous. It's not surprising that the budget airlines do a lot of business.

Even now, new budget airlines are springing up and some offer routes that weren't previously available. For example, a small airline called Kan Air now offers a direct flight from Hat Yai to Pattaya. If, forbid, I have a complete mental breakdown and decide to go to Pattaya there is now an easy option to get there.

Also, new airports are opening. A woman I spoke to on Monday at Don Meuang lived in the Betong district of Yala and told me that a new airport would be opening in two years' time. Recently, the old U-Tapao military airport in Rayong started accepting commercial flights so that farangs suffering from mental breakdowns can fly to Pattaya.

Fares are edging up, but they have to. The market is very competitive and with the airlines all trying to outdo each other, fares are so cheap that some airlines run at a loss. They have learned lessons from Ryan Air and charge extra for everything but the absolute basics. Certain seats now have a surcharge and on the last AirAsia flight I took the seat pitch was so small that I found the flight quite uncomfortable. However, considering that the flight to Bangkok is only just over an hour a little bit of discomfort is bearable if I can get a cheap fare.

When Bangkok's new airport, Suvarnabhumi, opened I was one of the first passengers to use it. My flight back from Chiang Rai was on the first day that it opened. Everything was very new, staff were still finding their way around, and there were very few passengers.

Don Meuang Airport, Bangkok, May 2011

I think the plan was to stop using Don Meuang altogether because it closed for a while, but the Thais quickly became aware that there wasn't enough capacity and reopened Don Meuang. When I first started taking my daughter to see the doctor in Bangkok we flew into Don Meuang and it was great. It brought back lots of good memories and it was almost deserted.

That situation changed quickly and soon Don Meuang was as busy as it had ever been. It was no longer any fun and the single terminal that was operating ran out of capacity. A decision was made to reopen Terminal 2 and it opened on 24th December 2015. My trip to Bangkok last week was the first time I had used Terminal 2 at Don Meuang.

With so many tourists visiting Thailand each year and with so many Thais opting to fly around the country rather than to travel by road, Thailand's airspace is becoming very busy.

I live near to the local airport and I recently discovered that one of my neighbours is an air traffic controller. When he told me this my reaction was that it must be a fun job. His reaction is that it is a very serious job because there are now so many flights. Seeing as how both Bangkok airports are now so busy, I suspect that Thailand may have to consider a third airport in Bangkok in the not-too-distant future, just like London.

On my first visit to Thailand in 1987 I was so inexperienced, naive and wet behind the ears that it would have been obvious to a seasoned expat that sooner or later I was going to get scammed. And I did. A couple of students offered to give me and my buddy a tour of Bangkok (to practice their English, of course) and it ended up with us getting ripped off by a longtail taxi driver to the tune of several thousand Baht.

These days I can't remember the last time I was scammed. I am very familiar with Thailand having lived permanently in the country for over 12 years. I speak Thai, read Thai, and I am very familiar with normal Thai behaviour. When behaviour isn't normal, such as a Thai approaching me on the street with some kind of an offer, I immediately smell a rat.

When I start to quiz the person in Thai they immediately back off and forget about trying to scam me. What happens then is that they normally start to ask me general questions about my life in Thailand. They target fresh-off-the-plane tourists and aren't interested in people like me.

I don't generally have a lot of sympathy with tourists who get scammed because the scams seem so obvious to me these days, but it is wrong of me to think this way. The problem for me now is that it is so difficult to remember what it was like when Thailand was totally unfamiliar. For foreigners who don't know Thailand, a visit to Thailand is very different to what they are used to. This, for many, is one of the big draws. Normal life gets boring and it feels great to be somewhere that is very different. However, it can also be quite disorientating.

Also, foreigners don't know what is normal Thai behaviour and what isn't. They don't realise that normal Thais don't approach random strangers on the street with an offer of assistance. Perhaps they just think the person is being friendly. If they are confused anyway and someone offers help they may well accept it, and this is what Thai scam artists want. Scammers in Thailand depend on foreigners not knowing anything and being confused.

I had an interesting little incident at Don Meuang on Sunday. I am very familiar with Thailand, very familiar with Thais, very familiar with Don Meuang airport and very familiar with the taxi ride from Don Meuang to my regular hotel. However, on this trip I wasn't familiar with Terminal 2 because it had only just opened.

As I left the arrivals hall I didn't know where to get a taxi and I stopped and looked around for a sign, either in English or Thai. A Thai woman was there waiting for confused looking farangs to appear and when she saw me I obviously fitted the bill.

"Taxi?" she asked, and I said yes, thinking she would direct me to the taxi stand. "Where you go?" and I told her. She then said, "Bt800." The normal fare is just over Bt200. It was at this point I realised she wasn't what I thought. She was working for a very expensive private taxi company and trying to snare naive farangs.

The person I speak to most is my wife (who wasn't there) and our conversations are in Thai. I also tend to think in Thai in certain situations. When I was offered a fare four times the normal cost my first reaction was, "Bah," (crazy). I continued walking but unfortunately as I thought, "Bah," I also voiced it and I spoke a little louder than I should have done.

As I walked away I could hear the woman speaking with her mates about the farang who had just told her she was crazy and she wasn't happy. I queued up at the taxi stand for a regular taxi and the fare to my hotel was Bt220.

Foreigners associate Thailand with a number of things, both good and bad. Some will talk about the friendly people, beautiful beaches and tasty food. Others will highlight the prostitutes, ladyboys, sexpats, crime, accident rate and scams. Thailand is now very well known for scamming foreigners. The country's tourist industry is now quite mature and scammers have a lot of experience under their belts.

There are lots of different types of scam. Some people will just lie. They will tell you that the Grand Temple is closed today, but they can offer you an alternative excursion that will probably end up in a gem shop, or that there are no river boats today because the water in the river is being changed. (OK, I made that last one up, but you get the point.)

Others won't lie, but neither will they tell the truth exactly. When I didn't know Hat Yai a travel agent was trying to sell me a minivan ticket. Even back then I knew how dangerous minivans were and asked where the bus station was. She didn't want to tell me and made out that it was so far away it was almost impossible to get to. A big lie.

Someone who offers you a Bt800 taxi fare isn't lying, but neither do they tell you that you can get a Bt200 taxi fare just a few metres away. OK, the Bt800 taxi might have been a Toyota Camry instead of the Toyota Corolla that cost Bt200, but it's still not worth four times the cost.

If you aren't familiar with Thailand and can't speak or read Thai, how do you avoid these scams? I admit that it isn't always easy. There is a lot of information on-line and you can do some research beforehand. Thais themselves know a lot about their own country and the vast majority of Thais won't scam you.

The thing about the good people is that you have to approach them because they won't approach you first and, even if you do, the language barrier may be a problem. That is certainly the case with the older generation, but these days Thais start learning English at Kindergarten when they are three years' old and many younger Thais can communicate to some extent. It's therefore probably better to ask a young person.

Now, just to confuse you after writing this, not every single Thai who approaches you wants to scam you. If they approach you on the streets of Bangkok it is more than likely a scam, but I have been quite embarrassed in other situations to see farang backpackers acting very aggressively towards Thais who are trying to help them.

At certain well-known places in Thailand, backpackers arrive looking for accommodation. Local Thais with accommodation businesses know this and will go to the bus or train station when foreigners arrive to offer their accommodation. They are not trying to scam you; they are just trying to show you what they have to offer.

I have seen young backpackers push these people aside and cling on to their Lonely Planet guide as if it is a bible. Their Lonely Planet guides are possibly quite old and will not include new accommodation options, but the little Thai guy waving brochures around may have just opened a brand new guesthouse that is very good and very cheap.

There are lots of people you need to be wary of in Thailand but, somehow, you also have to try to distinguish who is trying to scam you and who is trying to help you. It's not easy, I know, but it all adds to the fun of travelling around Thailand.

Return to top of page

Wednesday 13th January 2016

When my wife told me recently that a 'famous' Thai 'superstar' was critically ill with Dengue fever and might not pull through, I had never heard of him. It therefore shouldn't surprise me that she has never heard of David Bowie. It shouldn't surprise me but, nonetheless, it does ... a little.

Most foreign men marry Thai girls who are a lot younger than they are and instantly there is a big age and gender gap. Additionally, and not to be underestimated, there is a huge culture gap. We were brought up in very different environments with completely different belief and value systems.

It would be inconceivable that, if married to a farang girl, she wouldn't know who David Bowie was. Not only that, but a Bowie song or two would probably mean quite a lot to her because Bowie's music touched a lot of people in different ways.

My marriage at the moment is better than it has ever been and we have a lot in common and shared values regarding the upbringing of our children, however, outside of that there is very little that we have in common. It was another reminder this week of just how big the culture gap is in cross-cultural marriages.

Bowie's death hit me quite hard, as did Chris Squire's death halfway through last year. Both were only in their 60's and I had no idea that either of them had a serious illness. In my teenage years, Yes had a much bigger influence on my life, but Bowie was always there and certain Bowie tracks take me back to very precise times earlier in my life.

It was very sad and a big reminder of how old I am getting myself.

The reason I can speak with a certain amount of authority about hospitals in Thailand is because I spend a lot of time in Thai hospitals.

Last Thursday evening I managed to split a toe open when I slipped on a wet tile while doing work on the fishpond and garden. When the wound wouldn't stop bleeding I decided to go to hospital and they stitched it up. I went back to the hospital on Friday to get the wound redressed. Saturday was taken up with activities for Children's Day and on Sunday I took my daughter to Bangkok for her regular six-monthly appointment with the doctor on Monday. Yesterday, I was back at the local hospital for a follow-up appointment and I also took my daughter for her diphtheria, tetanus and polio vaccination.

My daughter needs another small operation in a few months' time and thus we will be back at the hospital again. Before then, she needs another vaccination and my son has a hospital appointment for his asthma problem. While in Phuket at Christmas I needed to take my mother to hospital. There was a time in my life when I hardly ever saw a doctor, but these days barely a month passes without someone in my family needing some kind of medical attention.

It is possible some people thinking about moving to Thailand will think that medical insurance isn't necessary because they are never normally ill. However, I would urge them to rethink.

The constant hot and humid weather in Thailand is a perfect breeding ground for bacteria, viruses and fungi. Food hygiene is often lacking and if, like many expats, you decide to ride a motorbike it will considerably increase the chances of you needing medical attention.

The visit to a private hospital last week was covered by my insurance - the bill was Bt5,300. When my mother went to a public hospital to have a gash in her leg sewn up the bill was Bt1,800. You can save money by going to public hospitals, but it isn't always easy for foreigners who can't speak or read Thai. Conversely, private hospitals will take care of everything and this is why most foreigners use private hospitals, despite them being a lot more expensive.

At the public hospital on Monday I had to schedule my daughter's operation after the appointment with her regular doctor. As soon as I stepped out of his office I was on my own with no one to help me. It wasn't at all easy and getting done what needed to be done would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, without speaking or reading some Thai. Basically, I would have had to beg for someone to help me and everyone there was too busy to help.

My conclusion - if you are thinking of living in Thailand don't overlook or ignore medical expenses even if you are normally very healthy. Secondly, there are many reasons for learning to speak and read Thai, not least it can save you a lot of money.

I really like my daughter's doctor. For the problem she has, he is the best doctor in Thailand, which is why we take her to Bangkok instead of using a local hospital. He studied in the US and speaks very good English. On Monday he asked me whether I thought that Thailand was really the 'Land of Smiles' because he didn't.

I don't think it is either, but I do think that the slogan 'Land of Smiles' was one of the most successful pieces of PR ever and that those three words have been responsible for bringing in billions of dollars to Thailand.

If you look at Thais when they don't know you are looking you often see very sad faces. Also, interestingly, I had picked up a book at the airport on the way to Bangkok written by an expat which describes the thirteen different types of smile in Thailand. I will talk about this book later.

Years ago, someone had told me that Thais have many different types of smile, but only one is good. Westerners generally only smile when something is good, but Thais have a smile for every occasion. Thus when you see a Thai smile it doesn't necessarily mean that it is a good smile. Often it isn't.

I was watching the Thai news with my wife today and there were several video clips of road rage incidents and fists flying through car windows. This type of thing certainly doesn't belong in the 'Land of Smiles', but it is becoming all too common. The Thailand I see these days isn't the same country I fell in love with many years ago.

I don't know if it's because I have changed, Thailand has changed, or that these incidents have just become more visible now that there are so many cameras around and so many ways to share videos on social media. My wife made the comment that Thais are violent, not kind. This isn't altogether true. The majority of Thais are nice people. The bad people are still in a minority, but unfortunately that minority is big enough to adversely affect a lot of good people.

Here's the latest roadrage incident to get Thais talking:

There are lots of Thai drivers who habitually bully and intimidate other drivers, especially drivers of pickup trucks and minivans. Most of the time the people they intimidate don't do anything so the bullies get their own way. Other people understand that they may be armed and that it is potentially dangerous to react.

Occasionally, the other person reacts and that's what appears to have happened in this incident. They were giving each other the middle finger and the red mist descended. That's when the pickup driver started to deliberately reverse into the Toyota Yaris. The pickup truck driver then lies through his teeth about what happened, unaware that the incident was being filmed.

The pickup truck driver is a DJ, MC and small-time actor and after the negative reaction on Facebook he has been banned, apparently, from his job at the radio station. Thais are also signing a petition to have his driving licence revoked for life.

There has been quite a lot of this kind of thing in Thailand recently and I am finding it all quite fascinating. Thailand has a major problem with lawlessness on its roads and a huge road traffic accident fatality rate. Thais are aware of this, and many don't like it, but nothing is ever done. The government pays lip service to the problem and the police do nothing - at least they don't in the provinces. From what I have seen in Bangkok, there seems to be more adherence to traffic laws.

What now seems to be happening is that Thais are taking the situation into their own hands. Virtually every Thai has a smartphone with a video recorder and lots of drivers have dashcams in their cars. As a result, lots of roadrage and reckless driving incidents are now being filmed and then uploaded to social media.

One of the main reasons that Thai roads are so lawless is because there are no deterrents. Reckless and aggressive drivers can do what they want with impunity knowing that they aren't going to be apprehended by the police. However, they now have to think about whether they are being filmed and the possible implications of their actions being seen by thousands of people.

This guy just lost his job at the radio station and his insurance company have also seen the video. He will have to pay for the damage he caused to the other car. A few months ago an idiot driving a yellow Mitsubushi saloon and playing silly games with other drivers was also caught on camera. It turned out that he worked for Mitsubushi Thailand and he also lost his job.

I think the problem is that Thailand has adopted a Confucianist style of management to control society. A lot of moralising goes on within Thai schools and Thais are brought up to behave a certain way and to be good citizens. There is a lot of merit in this and if everyone followed this path there wouldn't be a need for a strong rule of law.

However, in any society there are always going to be people who don't conform and a strong rule of law is required to deal with them. Thailand doesn't have a strong rule of law and those who cause problems in society are allowed to get away with antisocial and dangerous behaviour. That fact they do get away with it frustrates and angers the Thais who are good citizens and who conform to the rules of society.

Up until now there hasn't been any way to deal with the miscreants but now, with camera technology and social media, the good people are fighting back. As of last Saturday, over 25,000 people had signed the petition to have this guy's driving licence revoked. That's a lot of people and it shows how the majority of Thais feel.

Original story: Lies follow road rage, all on video

The Phuket Gazette looked back at some of its headlines from 10 years ago and the problems then were exactly the same as they are now. If the Phuket Gazette looked back at headlines from 20 or 30 years ago it would be the same. A major problem 10 years ago was deadly roads and, if anything, the problem has only gotten worse.

A Decade Ago: Tsunami heroes, safe-sex battles and deadly roads

This is what I have never been able to understand about Thailand. Ever since I have followed events in Thailand I have just seen the same problems go round and round each year with no attempt to fix them. Over the recent New Year period hundreds of Thais lost their lives on the roads, as happens every New Year, and it will be exactly the same again in April during the Songkran festival.

After a few years, observing the country it all starts to become very predictable.

Return to top of page

Saturday 9th January 2016

There's a set conversation that I have in Thailand quite often. Thais want to know how long I have lived in Thailand and when I tell them they reply that I must love Thailand. I tell them that I like some things, but not others. If they want to know what I dislike I tell them about the same things that I write about here.

Quite often, I find that they agree with me; they dislike the same things. However, there is a big difference. Foreigners tend to be quite vocal about things they dislike and will confront other people who act antisocially. Thais don't say anything and certainly wouldn't confront anyone. Guide books will tell you this is because Thais are non-confrontational. This is true, but the guide books don't explain why.

The first reason is pragmatic. Thais know better than anyone that Thailand is a violent country with a lot of violent males and an enormous number of unlicensed firearms. Telling anyone that they should or shouldn't do something is guaranteed to result in some kind of a response, and it could actually be very dangerous.

The second reason is related to culture - greng jai gone too far. The extreme reluctance to impose on other people even extends to interfering with people who are obviously doing something wrong.

Thirdly, Thais are taught that to criticise anything about Thailand is an act of disloyalty so they just don't criticise.

However, as I mentioned previously, social media is helping to change attitudes in Thailand and although Thais are stifled from stating their opinions in real life, they are gradually finding a voice through social media.

If a Thai sees an able bodied driver parking in a disabled bay there is no way that person will say anything to the offender. On the other hand, what they will do is take a photo, post it on Facebook, and lots of people will weigh into the argument. They feel a lot less inhibited about voicing their opinions through a keyboard.

I was very interested to read an article today about the response on social media to the issue of skin colour in Thailand.

'Racist' Thailand skin-whitening advert is withdrawn

"You just need to be white to win"

You only have to be in Thailand a short time to understand that there is a serious obsession with skin colour. Every single commercial break on Thai TV features an advert for a skin whitening product and Thai women hate being in the sun. When Thais observe milky white farangs lying in the sun deliberately trying to get darker they view it as the pinnacle of insanity.

Thai girls sheltering from the sun

I enjoy photography and take notice of things like colour and white balance. When I happen to see a soap opera on Thai TV I notice that the objects in the background, such as trees and foliage, have a really strange hue. My theory is that Thai TV producers adjust the lighting and camera settings to make the actors look as white as possible. This has the effect of screwing up natural colours for everything else.

Thais are very good at using software, such as Photoshop, to lighten skin colour in photos. My wife is dark, but when she has a photo taken for official purposes the photo makes her look like Snow White.

Many years ago I helped a PhD student with his thesis writing, which was in English, and coached him for his thesis defense, which was also in English. He was a nice guy, but still single. The reason he was single was because he was extremely fussy and was looking for something that doesn't exist - the perfect girl. He gave me his 'spec' for his perfect girl and the number one item on his list was white skin. That was far more important to him than anything else.

When I taught at the local dental faculty the students had access to a colorimeter. Its purpose was to measure the colour of teeth in order to get a good match when fitting false teeth and implants. Naturally, being Thai, the students used it to check their skin colour to see who was the whitest and who was the darkest.

The problem actually goes a lot deeper. My wife's family are naturally dark-skinned southern Thais. One sister is married to a very dark-skinned man and their children are very dark-skinned. Their daughter was teased relentlessly about her skin colour when she entered kindergarten.

Thai schools start to inculcate Thai values in children at a very early age. This is done formally and informally. Students have to be able to recite the '12 values of Thainess' and will be taught other things about the Thai value system by their teachers.

In addition, students will tease each other about various things and dark-skinned children will get a hard time. In Thailand, white represents goodness and beauty; black represents ugliness. One of my old students had a dark-skinned boyfriend but her father objected, saying he looked like a thief. Her father associated dark skin with criminality.

Another one of my wife's nieces had aspirations to be an air hostess, but she too has very dark skin. Everyone, including her, knows that her skin colour will be an impediment in getting the job she wants. I have never seen a dark-skinned air hostess in Thailand. It is regarded as a good job in Thailand and good jobs are reserved for fair-skinned girls.

There are lots of very attractive Thai actresses and they are all fair-skinned. Most are Eurasian (look-kreung) and the fair skin gene from one of their parents (normally their father) gives them a big advantage in Thailand. It's the same with girls who advertise skin whitening potions. They can thank their genes for their skin colour, not the product they are being paid to advertise.

Many dark-skinned Thai girls have quite big inferiority complexes about their skin colour because of this obsession in Thailand and many use expensive skin whitening products. They only tend to use it on their face and after a while their faces turn a different colour to the rest of their bodies. It's not a natural white skin colour and some girls with grey faces look like walking corpses.

It makes me uncomfortable even writing about the subject, but it's a fact of life in Thailand. If my wife was fair-skinned she would probably have been married before I met her. Some dark-skinned males were interested in her, but the interest wasn't reciprocated. She even made the comment that she would not want dark-skinned children from a dark-skinned husband because she would feel sorry for the children. Being dark herself, she fully understands the implications.

The one issue I have with the BBC headline is that it isn't racist. It has nothing to do with race. Prejudice is shown against dark-skinned Thai girls, but a fair skinned foreign girl will be treated quite differently. It is simply part of the Thai value system in which white skin is preferred and prejudice is shown against people with dark skin.

Anyway, it's good that this dialogue is taking place, and good that this unfair prejudice is being challenged. Dark-skinned Thai girls are now demonstrating that they are proud of the way they look. Caucasian foreigners generally don't have any issue at all and, indeed, many foreign men actually prefer the dark-skinned 'island girl' look. As the Thais say, "farang chawp dum dum." [Foreigners like very dark (skin).] Some Thai-Chinese girls I have met are so unnaturally white that they look ill.

The only foreigners I hear who reinforce the Thai view are normally other Asians who have a similar value system. I've heard comments from Malaysians and Singaporeans about dark-skinned girls and Indians and Africans also have the same skin colour obsession.

When you analyse the problem it is just about status and Thais are obsessed with status. Dark skin is associated with Lo-So people working outside in agriculture and this is looked down upon. Light skin is associated with Hi-So individuals working inside with good jobs.

In cold countries it is the same, but in reverse. Farangs with tans in the winter demonstrate that they are wealthy enough to travel to sunnier climes when the weather is cold, whereas pale-skinned people can't afford the same luxury. It's a status thing and it is the reason why getting a tan is so important to Europeans who visit Thailand in the winter months.

Human beings, wherever they come from, are a very strange race.

Return to top of page

Friday 8th January 2016

With stock markets in mainland China being suspended twice this week, George Soros is predicting that economic problems could be as bad in 2016 as they were in 2008. Many countries did well piggybacking off the back of China's huge economic growth in recent years, but those same countries are now facing difficulties following the big slowdown in China.

When the last big Global Financial Crisis hit I still had a lot of money (a lot for me, anyway) invested in stock markets and watching my investments decrease massively day after day was very stressful. There was a recovery in 2009 and I got out of the markets while I still had enough money to buy my house in Thailand. I lost quite a lot, but not everything. At one stage I honestly thought that all my savings from years of hard work were going to be wiped out.

I have no plans to reenter the stock markets because the world is just too volatile these days. Based on the old adage about only investing money that you can afford to lose, I can't afford to lose any more. The big players will continue to invest and make money, but for the small players it is just a casino.

My best friend at school chose a financial career and ended up managing wealth funds for very rich people. I met him for a drink in London one day after work and tried to get some inside information on where I should be investing money. His advice was just to put it on a horse running in the 3:15 at Ascot because the odds were about the same as investing in stock markets.

Property has always been, and will continue to be, a good investment. Had I not invested in property I would not be able to enjoy the life I have in Thailand. With hindsight I would have invested a lot more, but looking forward is always a lot trickier than looking back.

In the 1980's I had the chance to buy an apartment in Maida Vale, which is a very exclusive part of London, for basically peanuts. My father's uncle had been renting it for years for a peppercorn rent and was given the option to buy it. He was old and wasn't interested.

It was offered to me, but I couldn't use it until he died. It needed a total refurbishment and around that time interest rates were about 14%, which made mortgage repayments very expensive. I turned down the offer, but had I bought it I would be sitting very prettily now.

Since the GFC many retailers in the UK have suffered. Many have also suffered because of on-line sales, notably book and camera stores. On-line retailers don't have the overheads of running brick-and-mortar stores and can therefore sell goods far more cheaply than high street retailers.

In contrast, so-called 'pound shops' have done very well. They buy in bulk and have a lot of purchasing power, which enables them to buy cheaply. Even though the good they sell have low profit margins, they sell in enough volume to make good profits.

I was in the vicinity of the local bus station yesterday and went to look in a computer shop where I have bough computers and accessories in the past. It is no longer there and has been replaced with a 'Twenty Baht Shop' in which every item costs just Bt20. This tells me that the economy has definitely started to falter in Thailand.

Twenty Baht Shop

I talked about house construction in a previous post, but there has also been a huge slowdown in the housing market. A few years ago, new houses were selling like hot cakes and this fuelled a huge construction boom. In addition to houses, lots of condo buildings were built.

Many Thais rent, but just like people all over the globe, most want a home of their own. For those who can't afford a house, a condo is the next best thing. When I first arrived in Hat Yai there was one high-rise condo building. Now, a Thai friend was telling me, there are over 60.

When my developer started to build Phase Two I think he knew what was coming and he introduced a new design of house, which didn't exist on Phase One. It was a small detached house, but it gave potential condo buyers the option of spending a bit more and living in a detached house with a small garden instead of a cramped condo in a block. I imagined that this design would sell quite well.

Last week I had a chat with the foreman, who I have now known for several years. He told me that people are interested and want to buy, but the banks are refusing to give them mortgages. Thus a lot of the new houses remain unsold. There is an enormous amount of household debt in Thailand and if people already have a lot of debt they are going to find it hard getting a mortgage.

Thailand enjoyed several years of huge economic growth in the 80's and 90's, but it all came crashing down with the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997. There has been another big boom in recent years, but these things never last forever and normally, the bigger the boom, the bigger the crash. There are signs now that things are at least slowing down. Whether there will be a big crash or not, I don't know.

Humour doesn't tend to cross borders very well for a variety of reasons and it works better when there are cultural similarities. An old friend sent me this joke, but Thais probably wouldn't find it very funny.

The other day I went to a nearby pharmacy. When I got there, I went straight to the back of the store to where the pharmacist's counter is located. I took out my little brown bottle along with a teaspoon and laid them both on the counter.

The pharmacist came over, smiled and asked if he could help me. I said, "Yes! Could you please taste this for me?" Being a senior citizen...I guess the pharmacist just went along with me. He picked up the spoon and put a tiny bit of the liquid on his tongue and swilled it around. Then, with a stomach-churning look on his face, he spat it out on the floor and began coughing.

When he finally finished, I looked him right in the eye asked, "Now, does that taste sweet to you?" The pharmacist, shaking his head back and forth with a venomous look in his eyes yelled, HELL NO!!! So I said, "Oh thank God! That's such a relief!" My doctor told me to get a pharmacist to test my urine for sugar!

It's probably not very funny to Thais because tasting urine was (probably still is, I guess) a part of the diagnosis process in Thai traditional medicine. Although unpalatable to most people, urine is sterile and drinking it shouldn't cause any ill effects. Some people drink their own urine (urophagia) because they believe it has health benefits, and the party trick of an old friend of mine was to chug a glass of someone else's urine while standing at the cricket club bar.

This is reflected in some aspects of the language.

โรคเบาหวาน

roke bao waan is Thai for diabetes. roke = disease/illness; bao = to urinate; waan = sweet.

In the days when traditional Thai doctors could only prescribe medicine made from local herbs and there were no fancy laboratories or diagnosis equipment, how else were doctors supposed to test for sweet urine?

My housing development is quite large. Phase One consists of 70 houses and is complete, Phase Two is currently being built and has 150 houses. In addition, there are plans for two more phases. The owner owns a lot of land and he, or his parents, probably bought it years ago when this area was a deserted wasteland and land was dirt cheap. That certainly isn't the case now.

This was the owner's first property development project. Prior to this he ran a Mercedes Benz dealership. His inexperience showed at first and initially the houses were probably built too well and sold too cheaply. He also allowed buyers of his houses to make changes as the houses were being built.

I had some small changes made, but other houses were changed extensively. This created a huge amount of extra work and subsequently he missed all his deadlines. Another problem was with the parquet flooring used in Phase One. It was difficult finding workers who could install parquet flooring and this created more delays. Furthermore, it wasn't installed very well and has given people lots of problems.

By the time that Phase Two was started, he had smartened up a lot. To increase profits, he raised house prices while, at the same time, decreasing construction quality. My Phase One house is constructed from red brick, but Phase Two houses are constructed from breeze blocks.

Phase Two homes were sold on the provision that owners accepted the standard design and weren't allowed to make any changes during construction. Of course, they are free to change their houses after construction has finished but this adds money and time. Parquet flooring was also done away with and the houses fitted with laminate tiles. If I had known how much hassle the parquet would be, I would also have opted for the laminate tiles.

Another way to keep construction costs down is to employ the cheapest labour available. Some specialist tradesmen, such as the guys who install aluminium doors and windows, are local, but the workers doing the construction come from other regions of Thailand and a lot come from Burma. Even though big changes are occurring in Burma and the economy is picking up very quickly, a lot of Burmese workers still come to Thailand.

The construction workers live on the construction site. After they arrive, the first thing they do is build their own accommodation. It's temporary, of course, and built to very basic standards using scrap wood and corrugated iron. They have running water and electricity, but it's unbearably hot in the hot season and the workers complain bitterly about mosquitoes.

Along with the workers have come dogs and it seems to be a symbiotic relationship. The dogs get scraps of food and the workers get some animal companionship. The problem with dogs is that they tend to breed quite quickly.

Eight pups were born last year and within a year were having pups of their own. Their mother is quite prolific and produced eight more a few months ago. The survival rate isn't good, but this at least keeps the population down. They live on the construction site and many of the houses have fishponds. These fill up with rain water and quite a few pups have drowned.

The management company sent out a letter to residents last year telling them to put collars on their pets because any animals without collars were going to be rounded up and disposed of. This resulted in many of the strays being fitted with collars and no one ever came to round up stray animals. They are still there.

At this point you might be expecting me to say that it's disgraceful and that the dogs should be removed, but nothing is ever that easy in Thailand. I love animals, my wife loves animals, and ever since they were born I have encouraged my children to love animals. The kids love to go to feed the dogs and despite not owning a dog, one of the items in my monthly expenses is dog food. Other people also feed them, partly because they also loves dogs and partly because it is a form of merit-making, which is highly valued in Thailand.

Instead of helping to solve the problem, I am therefore guilty of contributing to it. I feel sorry for the dogs and it isn't their fault that they don't have owners. Also, they are great dogs. The pups are incredibly cute and the adults would be if someone looked after them. Instead, several suffer from mange and other canine diseases. They are all good-natured and not aggressive at all.

Stray pup

The best thing to do would be to get the dogs neutered - the females, at least. Stopping them from procreating would help reduce the population size and people could contribute money for this instead of buying food. I had this conversation with my wife last week. She agreed, but I'm not sure if other people would be willing because many Thais see this as some kind of a sin.

Some years ago, foreigners set up an organisation in Bangkok to help Soi cats and dogs. There are now other branches and I saw one in Phuket last week. I know that Thai staff work for the organisation, but I'm not sure why it was foreigners who started this initiative instead of Thais.

Thais are generally very fond of dogs and want to allow them to live and breed, but this then causes the animals to suffer. With no one to look after them they get hungry and they don't receive any medical treatment.

The UK has a Mothers' Day and a Fathers' Day - usually a Sunday. Thailand also has a Mothers' Day and Fathers' Day, which fall on the Queen's and King's birthday (12th August and 5th December). In addition, there is also a Children's Day in Thailand, which there isn't in the UK. It falls on the second Saturday in January - tomorrow - and is called wun dek in Thai.

A lot of Thai kids get very little and this is a nice treat for them. Many organisations and private companies get involved and the kids can get free dental checks, free health checks, free haircuts, and the chance to play on fire engines, etc.

Free haircut on Children's Day

Playing on a fire engine

I don't feel the same about my own children. Since they were born I have not had a life of my own and my life now revolves around their needs. I'm not resentful, but considering how much they receive already (they just received a large number of presents at Christmas) I don't think it is necessary to set aside a special day for them and give them even more.

My wife doesn't agree and in her view not taking the children anywhere on Children's Day is akin to the worst form of child abuse. I wouldn't mind, apart from the fact that I hate crowded places and congested roads and Children's Day in Thailand is one of the worst days of the year for crowded places and congested roads.

Last year we took them to the local airforce base. It was the first time it had been opened for Children's Day and it drew huge crowds from all over the lower part of the south of Thailand. The base is five minutes from where I live, but it took around two hours to get there and almost four to get home again. We just sat in stationary traffic.

I knew that this was coming and told her last week that we wouldn't be going back to the airforce base again. I don't want to go anywhere, but she is insistent. I know that wherever we go there will be crowded places and congested roads.

After being married for five years I have learnt that whenever we disagree about anything, such as this, she always gets her own way. If I put my foot down too hard she will just sulk for weeks and living in the same house is unbearable. After all the problems last year, I don't want more of the same thing this year.

It therefore seems that instead of being allowed to stay at home tomorrow and do some useful jobs around the house I will be stuck in more traffic jams and fighting my way through crowds to keep her happy. Never mind. Marriage is full of compromises and give and take.

Return to top of page

Wednesday 6th January 2016

I've been going to one small, local restaurant for years. The food is good, it's not expensive, and the ambience is pleasant. There is quite a lot of memorabilia on the walls from a bygone era in Thailand and I enjoy looking at the old shop signs and advertising posters. Nowadays, most of Thailand has been modernised and Westernised, and in the process a lot of the magic, exoticness and mystery of Thailand has disappeared.

The restaurant is also friendly. The staff know me well enough to know what I will order before I order it, and I chat with the owner who often sits in the dining area with her customers.

Among the signs and posters is a photo of an attractive young woman. She has an enigmatic smile (if I'm allowed to use that phrase when not referring to Leonardo's Mona Lisa) and I really like the pose. It wouldn't be the same if she was staring directly into the camera lens wearing a goofy smile and making a 'V' sign, as Thais normally do when they are being photographed.

On my last visit, just before my trip to Phuket, I asked the owner about the girl in the photo. Who was she? She answered that it was her. She is 73 now and the photo was taken when she was 25. She is wearing a uniform and she worked as an officer in the prison service.

The difference that 48 years makes

My feelings about living in Thailand have never been very even and if I had to choose one adjective to describe my life in Thailand it would probably be 'ambivalent'. At times I have wanted to leave and at other times I couldn't bear the thought of leaving. Since getting back from Phuket, life has been really good.

My other half has been great recently and domestic life has been quite blissful. I've been really busy doing jobs around the house - repairing things, fixing leaks, cleaning things and places that the cleaner doesn't clean, doing home improvements. These things may sound like a chore to others, but they give me immense satisfaction.

It may sound strange, but I get more enjoyment and satisfaction from doing something useful at home than I would sitting on a Thai beach all day or drinking at a bar all night.

When I decided to completely change my life in the early 2000's I spoke to some close friends and did a fair amount of reading about life change. One message that was very clear is that you have to know yourself and be very honest with yourself. Just because everyone you know wants to get a high-paid job so that they can drive a BMW and go to fancy restaurants doesn't mean that you want the same things in life.

It often surprises me to see people on the Internet asking for advice on very personal matters. The on-line world is great for getting questions to certain things, but for personal matters you need to look inwards, not outwards.

The problem with my old career is that technology had changed my working environment and I had ended up doing a job that was very different to the job that made me happy. If you do a job for money or because someone else thinks it's a good job, but it isn't something that you want to do, it will end up causing problems. Follow your heart and do whatever makes you truly happy.

My family and my house are the things that are important to me now. I'm not interested in cars (my car is so old it's almost a classic car), I'm not interested in clothes (my wardrobe is embarrassing), travelling no longer interests me much, I stopped chasing girls after I got married, I have never been much of a drinker or socialiser, and I can't think of anything more boring than sitting on a beach all day.

Living in Thailand has allowed me to live in a fantastic home because property is a lot more affordable than the year, allowed me to have a young wife and family and, importantly, allowed me to have the time to spend with my family at home. It's perfect. And all this happened after retiring at the age of 41.

I believe that Thailand received almost 29 million tourists last year and I suspect that quite a few had thoughts about living permanently in the country. It's a big decision and you need to know yourself and be honest with yourself. Thailand can offer foreigners some things, but not others. Will you be happy with the things that Thailand can offer you, and will you be able to live without the things that Thailand can't offer you?

I can no longer walk over to the West End of London after work to buy a theatre ticket and watch a play. I can't eat in any of London's excellent restaurants, can't visit pubs, can't watch cricket, can't go to see West Ham. These things I enjoyed, and there were others, but they weren't as important as other things in my life.

Some lucky expats can afford to spend some of their time in Thailand and some at home - the best of both worlds. I can't and only living in one place means making compromises. In life, you can have anything but you can't have anything.

Overall, after more than 12 years, I still have no regrets whatsoever. The other things were nice, but non-essential. Thailand gives me the things in life that are really important to me.

There are only two things that concern me right now, and I have spoken about these things before. The first is crime, especially burglary. Last night I was talking to the man in the shop where I buy rice and eggs. He told me that he is really concerned about crime and theft at the moment, and gave me a few anecdotes.

Outside the 7-Eleven near his shop a woman was mugged recently and the gold chain she was wearing was ripped from her neck. In one housing development burglars turned up in a truck and cleared the house. Instead of just targeting money and small high value items, they stole electrical appliances and anything they could remove. He was saying that another development with high value homes has also been targeted recently. The development has high walls and security guards, and I imagined that it would be very safe. However, it seems that nowhere is safe.

As the cost of living continues to rise in Thailand, and as the gap between rich and poor continues to expand, some people are getting more desperate and will do anything to get money. He was also telling me that there is a slum area nearby (which I didn't know about) and that a lot of residents are drug addicts. They will stop at nothing to get the money they need for their next fix. The problem of increasing crime and burglaries is concerning a lot of people around where I live at the moment.

My other concern is road safety. I watched the Thai TV news yesterday morning and what happens on Thai roads is shocking. Lots of Thai drivers have dashcams, virtually all Thais have smartphones, and there are cameras at lots of busy road junctions. Consequently, many fatal road accidents now get captured on video.

The videos I watched on Thai TV news yesterday were frightening. In many cases the victims of road fatalities are motorcyclists and the guilty parties are often pickup truck drivers. In both videos I watched yesterday (and also with the policeman who was killed in Phuket recently) the motorcyclists who were killed had done nothing wrong.

One motorcyclist had been waiting at traffic lights and moved off when the lights turned green. Going across the intersection you can see three vehicles. As the lights change to red, two cars slow down and stop. However, a pickup truck driver decides to run the lights and you can see the truck accelerating. As he runs the light at high speed, he completely wipes out the motorcyclist and the poor guy doesn't stand a chance. Running red lights is a big problem in Thailand. Many Thai drivers don't just go through amber lights; they go through red lights after the light has been red for three or four seconds.

The other video showed a motorcyclist just waiting to turn when a pickup truck comes from nowhere and wipes him out. This is what happened to the policeman in Phuket. The trucks are driven at high speed and the drivers are often drunk.

No matter how good my life in Thailand is, nothing will matter if one day a drunk driver driving a large truck at high speed wipes out my family. It is this complete disregard for other people's lives by some Thai drivers and the fact that nothing is ever done to improve the situation that makes me so angry about the subject.

Return to top of page

Monday 4th January 2016

I took a trip to one of the public hospitals in Phuket on Christmas Day after my mother bumped into a sun lounger and a huge, open gash appeared on her leg. My brother was keen to go to the Phuket Bangkok private hospital, but the public hospitals are just as good. Private hospitals in Thailand are a lot plusher and the female staff are more attractive, but they are also a lot more expensive and the care is no different.

My mother was impressed. I have been thoroughly impressed with the Thai healthcare system ever since I started living in Thailand. The doctors and nurses are kind, caring and competent and the system provides for everyone in society. Some of the public hospitals are immensely busy and there are long waiting times, but at least poor Thais have affordable access to the healthcare system. And if you have even a little money, you can bypass the crowds and queues by attending one of Thailand's many private hospitals. Great healthcare is one of the major benefits of living in Thailand.

After having a stroke, an unconscious German tourist with no pulse was saved by a passing Thai nurse who administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation. He was taken to ICU, but she saved his life and he survived. What a fantastic story! Had it not been for her, he might have had to go back to Germany in a box.

Thai nurse's timely assistance saves German cyclist

Both my children arrived in this world with medical problems and Thai hospitals, doctors and nurses have been a big part of my life for the past five years. If I really tried I could find a few things to criticise, but I have far more to praise and I have enormous respect for the medical profession in Thailand.

Lots of foreign men - the majority of them decent, honest people - come to Thailand looking for wives. Quite a few take the easiest option with meeting Thai girls and never leave their tourist resorts. Predictably, quite a few then come unstuck because a lot of Thai girls who go to work in tourist resorts can be quite cold-hearted and mercenary.

While spending lots of time in Thai hospitals with my children I have met some wonderful nurses. Many haven't been that young, but if you are an older foreign man looking to meet a Thai female you are much better off avoiding girls in their teens and 20's. Most Thai women in their 30's and 40's are still very shapely and attractive, and as they get older they also get themselves together mentally.

I chatted to some of the nurses that I met regularly and they were all single and unattached. Their work is very demanding and involves working shifts. After finishing the midnight to 8am shift, they often have to return to work at 4pm to work until midnight again. This isn't very conducive to having a social life and, as a result, quite a few remain single.

You often find that Thais meet their partners at university or work, and many male doctors I know are married to female doctors. However, with probably 99.9% of nurses in Thailand being female, there is a huge shortage of males in the profession and it seems that quite a few of the male nurses are gay anyway. This is another reason why many Thai nurses stay single.

If I found myself single again there's no way you would catch me in a bar in Pattaya or Patong, but I would be doing my research on where Thai nurses hang out during their breaks and time off and trying to get to know as many nurses as possible.

This isn't actually difficult to do, but first you need to get to know at least one nurse. Once you are friendly with one nurse it has a snowball effect and it is very easy to get to know other nurses because they introduce you to their friends. I know this because I was very friendly with some nurses before I ended up marrying a teacher.

I called this post 'Land Of Contrasts And Contradictions' and it really is. Tens of thousands of Thais work and study hard and dedicate their own lives to caring for others and saving lives and they demonstrate enormous caring and kindness. Yet, just outside the hospitals on Thai roads there is roadrage, raw aggression, violence, shootings, drunkenness, utter stupidity and the killing of thousands of people every year in countless road crashes.

The road fatality rate is high all year round, but it goes sky high during the New Year and Songkran holidays. This year is no exception.

Road toll worse than last year on fifth day

By Saturday, almost 300 people had died on Thai roads over the New Year period. I wonder how many people died in the same period in countries with similar sized populations, such as France and the UK. Probably a handful, I would imagine.

In the UK there are approximately five road deaths per day, or 3.5 fatalities per 100,000 people per year. The figure in Thailand is 38.1 fatalities per 100,000 people per year. (Source: Wikipedia)

I have several theories as to why there are so many road fatalities in Thailand.

1. Intelligence Levels

   Those working in the medical profession must be intelligent enough at least to earn a degree in their chosen field and understand that reckless driving will cause death. Unfortunately, this doesn't apply to many of the delivery drivers and tradesmen racing around in pickup trucks who seem to have similar IQ levels to goldfish.

2. Gender Differences

   Differences in behaviour between males and females in Thailand are huge. In addition to an excess of testosterone, there are some cultural reasons for this but I won't go into them now. I taught at an all-girls' school for four years and it was quite manageable. When I had previously taught at an all-boys' school I walked out after a month.

   Most Thai women act like mature, responsible adults. Unfortunately, this isn't the case with a lot of males who show no maturity or responsibility, especially when in charge of vehicles. Most healthcare workers in Thailand tend to be female and most delivery drivers, minivan drivers, tradesmen, etc, tend to be male.

3. The Thai Value System

   The way that Thai society at large fails to do anything about the highly unacceptable number of road fatalities indicates that the problem isn't regarded as being important in Thailand. If it was, then something would be done.

Despite having owned a Kindle for several years I have never paid for a Kindle book. Real books have always been very special to me and I have no objection to buying expensive books. A well bound book using high quality paper filled with information and high quality images is a work of art and my money is well spent. On the other hand, I can't persuade myself to pay out good money for a file download.

I use my Kindle to download free books or samples. No one wants to work a regular job and everyone's dream is to earn a living from wherever they desire using a computer. Consequently, since the advent of self-publishing, hundreds of thousands of e-books have been published. With so much competition, new authors have no visibility and a common method of at least getting a new book read and rated is to offer it free for a while. If it gets good reviews then the author may then be able to actually sell it.

I have read some very good free books, however, I have also read a lot of really bad ones. With no publisher to satisfy, there is an awful lot of complete rubbish being self-published.

Yesterday, I took a look at what is being published about Thailand. Interestingly, one book gave reasons on why NOT to retire to Thailand. It's normally the other way round. People who write books or have websites generally do it to make money and painting a picture-perfect paradise portraying Thailand tends to sell better, even if it is just a fantasy. It's not often that you see anything that offers any truthful analysis.

One of the author's pet hates was seeing websites that tell people it is possible to retire to Thailand for ridiculously small sums of money, such as $400 per month. Theoretically it is possible, but in practical terms, and if you want to live a life that is worth living, it is nothing but lies and deception.

Also, be very careful about believing false information on the Internet

That amount of money is about Bt14,300. I have seen rooms for rent for Bt1,500 per month, but there aren't many foreigners who would be willing to live in such accommodation. If you expect a certain degree of comfort and hygiene, and you would like neighbours who are at least a little civilised, it will be more like Bt6,000 in the provinces - more in Bangkok. This does not include water or electricity and you will need to use air-conditioning for most of the year.

Therefore, if you wish to stay in a decent place and you have budgeted $400 dollars a month it will leave you with less that Bt300 per day for everything else. You can eat rice and noodles cheaply, but have you ever tried eating cheap rice or noodles for every single meal? A good Western meal at a restaurant, or even from the supermarket, is going to blow your budget easily.

What about illness? The two options are health insurance or pay-as-you-go. Minor problems are very cheap to treat in Thailand, but not free. And what about a major problem?

So far we have just dealt with absolute basics - accommodation and food - but what is the point of living in Thailand if you can't enjoy the things that Thailand has to offer. Massage is cheap, but a massage will break your budget. Do you drink or smoke. Do you like visiting places or like going to the movies, do you have hobbies that cost money?

Many foreign men are drawn to Thailand because they can't attract females in their own countries. There are lots of Thai females interested in foreign men, but the number one reason is money. How many Thai females are you going to be able to attract on a Bt300 per day budget?

Do you have enough funds to satisfy the requirements for a retirement visa? If you need to leave the country every month to do a visa run, have you factored the cost of visa runs into your budget?

As I think I said before, my cheapest ever month in Thailand (years ago) cost Bt20,000 and it was miserable. My living expenses are now considerably higher and I have no debts, no mortgage and no rent to pay. I would be lying if I told you that you could retire to Thailand on any less than $1,000 per month, and even that would be pushing it.

If I was still single, which I'm not, and had no one dependent on me, which I do, and if I was in a really desperate financial situation, which I'm not, I could probably just about survive on Bt14,000 per month. Even if I was single there is no way on Earth I could live on Bt14,000 per month, and with a family to support it would be impossible.

This whole business of how much it costs to live in Thailand is extremely subjective because we are all so very different. However, even if you plan to live very simply and very frugally it's going to cost more than you think. As a simple rule of thumb, work out what you think your living expenses will be and double it.

Another 'book' I came across was so bad that it was almost embarrassing. The author is obviously very bitter and twisted towards his mother country and fellow nationals, especially those living in Thailand who he refers to as 'f***ing arseholes'. He has the opinion that every other foreigner in Thailand has no respect for Thais and that they 'treat Thais like shit'. It's not the first time I have encountered a foreigner in Thailand who thinks like this.

He also dislikes foreigners making any kind of criticism about Thailand. Apparently, it's acceptable for drunken pickup drivers to race around killing people and if foreigners don't like it they can just 'piss off' home.

It is his self-appointed mission in life to show Thais that there are good foreigners in Thailand (him) and to change the attitude of all other foreigners. There is a lot of colorful language used in the book and no shortage of grammatical and spelling errors.

When I repeatedly read 'your' instead of 'you're', 'except' instead of 'accept', 'effect' instead of 'affect', 'soul' instead of 'sole', 'no' instead of 'know', etc etc, I find that all author credibility quickly disappears. The book was written to pass on knowledge he has supposedly learned in Thailand, but it shows that he wasn't even capable of learning how to spell basic words. I would also suspect that his ability to read and write Thai is somewhat lacking.

I also find it quite disturbing that the author claims to be a teacher. The Thai education system has enough problems already without semi-literate foreign teachers contributing more problems. His comments on Buddhism were quite strange and illustrate that he has very little knowledge about Buddhism.

The farang community in Thailand is extremely diverse, but not all foreigners in Thailand are quite as he paints them. He admits to having been a sex tourist and judging by his descriptions I suspect that the only foreigners he has ever met in Thailand have been sex tourists.

I have met many highly intelligent foreigners in Thailand who have extensive knowledge of the people, country, language and culture. Some also contribute a lot to the communities in which they live. They're around, but you need to get off your barstool to find them.

It's a strange book, but he is perfectly entitled to write and publish his views, just as everyone else is. The Internet has given us all the opportunity to have our voices heard and anyone can publish anything to the whole world. Just a few short years ago this was only possible if you were a wealthy media magnate. Now, all you need is a computer and an Internet connection.

The rate of change in the world now is simply incredible. I recently finished reading David Jason's autobiography (actually, a very enjoyable read). He is 20 years older than me and was born and raised in London, as was I.

What I found very surprising was how similar my memories of growing up in London were to his, despite the 20 years' difference. Not a lot had changed in that 20 year period. Nowadays, however, the world right now compared to the world just five or ten years ago seems like a different place.

With millions of websites, YouTube videos and now, self-published e-books, there is no shortage of personal opinions, but the difficulty is trying to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Probably the first place that most of us go now for information is the Internet. There is a huge amount of information, but most of it is completely unregulated. Some people push a certain view because they have an angle or an agenda; others do it to make money.

Making money from the Internet is certainly not a sin. Websites cost money to run, and writing content takes up a lot of time. In the words of Adam Smith, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

In the absence of any self-interest there probably wouldn't be very much content on the Internet at all. However, there is a balance between self-interest and providing information or skills that are honest and useful to other people.

That balance and honesty doesn't exist when people set up websites claiming that you can earn enough to live in Thailand by doing on-line surveys while sitting on the beach drinking cocktails and being massaged by beautiful Thai girls, or that you can afford to retire in Thailand on a ridiculously small amount of money. These claims simply aren't true.

Return to top of page

Saturday 2nd January 2016

Before my parents came on this current trip I ordered a Kindle reader through Amazon and had it sent to their UK address so they could bring it out for me. The battery in my old Kindle had stopped taking a charge and it wasn't convenient to use the mains adapter all the time.

My new Kindle Paperwhite

Rechargeable batteries don't last forever and with so many rechargeable devices around these days it really bugs me that you have to replace a complete item when the battery fails because new batteries aren't available or they aren't cost-effective to replace.

The same thing happened with my Garmin SatNav. The Garmin distributor in Thailand told me that it would have to be sent back to Taiwan for a new battery, at great cost, and it was actually cheaper to buy a brand new SatNav with a one year warranty and free lifetime map updates.

Sanyo's (now Panasonic) Eneloop rechargeable battery technology is excellent. Why can't manufacturers of rechargeable devices just use Eneloop batteries that can be replaced easily when they wear out? Anyway ...

The Kindle Paperwhite I have now is a lot better than my first Kindle. It has some nice features. It is touch screen and therefore has no fiddly buttons, the battery life is excellent, the display is great and, being backlit, it means that I can read in the dark without switching on a light and disturbing other people while they sleep.

I will always love real books, but obviously there are some big advantages with an electronic reader. There is a very poor selection of English books in the part of provincial Thailand where I live but, of course, I have access to millions of books with the Kindle.

With well over a million words in the English language, I don't know them all. Thais think that anyone who teaches English in Thailand should know every English word, but I doubt that many do.

I love the way that you can easily get the definition of unfamiliar words on Kindle via the built-in dictionary. On my old Kindle that was all I could do - look up the definition, but then I would probably forget again. This function has been improved on the Paperwhite version.

The device stores every word that you look up in its Vocabulary Builder feature. At any time, you can review all the words that you have looked up in the past and then check to see if you still remember the meaning or not. As education standards continue to decline and societies continue to be dumbed down, people's knowledge of vocabulary is deteriorating.

I have read accounts about Thailand written by early visitors hundreds of years ago and the vocabulary they use is far more extensive than most articles I read today. It's refreshing to see something that actually helps people to build vocabulary.

I think it's a great little device to complement a real book collection, but it will never be all things to all people. If you want immediate access to a huge number of books it is great. If you are travelling it is great. If you read books that are mainly text it is great. If you like looking at finely detailed, coloured illustrations in books it isn't great, and neither is the Experimental Browser. If you want to browse the web and you want pretty colours, buy an iPad or something similar.

Mine cost £79.99. You can buy them in Thailand, but they are more expensive. B2S sells them for Bt7,990 (around £150). There are other websites in Thailand selling Kindles cheaper, but there may be extra charges for import duty, tax, shipping, etc.

Many years ago, when I used to try to help people on Internet forums, I had an American once-a-year-tourist to Thailand shout me down because I suggested that not everything is cheaper in Thailand. He insisted that it was.

Items made in Thailand are generally cheap, however, anything from abroad is expensive. Apart from the obvious shipping charges, Thailand levies big taxes on luxury items and basically anything that comes from abroad is considered a luxury. The tax on luxury European cars with powerful engines is over 300%. The little food treats from home that I like to buy in TOPS are very expensive.

If you are in Thailand and have friends or relatives visiting you can ask them to bring certain items when they come. If you order items on-line from abroad they are sometimes held by the Thai postal service and only released once you have paid the import tax. This has happened to me a few times with toys I have ordered for my daughter.

Good quality toys in Thailand are very expensive. There are lots of poor quality, cheap toys from China but they are a waste of money. Toys like Lego last forever, but I pay a lot more for the same Lego toys in Thailand than I would do in the West.

My daughter is still crazy about the Frozen movie and I bought her a Frozen Lego set for Christmas - set 41062. It cost Bt2,550 (about 71 USD). The price is 39.99 USD in the official USA Lego shop and you can get it cheaper on eBay.

Some things are certainly a lot cheaper in Thailand. Thai products are generally cheap and labour costs are ridiculously low, which is why you can enjoy a two-hour massage for the same price as a pint of beer in London. However, blanket statements to the effect that everything is cheaper in Thailand are absolutely not true.

Return to top of page

Friday 1st January 2016

While in Phuket I was talking to my brother about snakes because it is a problem we have both had. His house is isolated in a rural area and, from previous conversations, I know that he has had some big problems with venomous snakes in the garden.

He showed me some solar powered snake repellers that he had planted in the garden. You simply stick them in the ground and all they need to operate is sunlight, which isn't a problem in Thailand. There are no batteries or power cables.

Every 15 seconds or so they emit a short whining sound and when this happens, apparently, it sends vibrations into the ground which are supposedly repellent to snakes. The theory is good, but how effective are they? He says he hasn't had any snake problems since they were installed, but this might just be a coincidence.

I asked where he bought them because I have never seen anything like this in Thailand. He didn't. They were given to him by a guy who has done some electrical installation work at his house.

I just did an Internet search and it seems that they come from Australia, the country with probably more highly venomous snakes than any other in the world. Whether the devices do actually work appears to be a highly controversial subject judging from some of the comments I read on-line.

Some people swear they are effective, while others say they are a scam and completely useless. I don't know, therefore, I can't offer an opinion. Maybe snakes are highly sensitive to small vibrations in the ground? His garden is quite large and my gut feeling was just that it seemed unlikely that two such small, innocuous devices could keep snakes away. But I'm not an expert and I haven't done any scientific research.

If you have any experience of these devices, let me know.

Solar Powered Snake Repeller

When writing about a subject as big as a country it is necessary to make some generalisations. I always feel uneasy about doing this because whatever generalisation I make there will always be individuals who contradict my generalisation. When I make a generalisation about 'Thai drivers', not every single Thai in the country drives with Kamikaze tendencies, but the number is significant enough to make the generalisation. If it was just one or two I wouldn't generalise, but it isn't one or two.

Even though it is unfair and inaccurate to make sweeping generalisations, I am often surprised how common certain behavioural traits are among Thais who live completely separate lives. Whenever I catch up with my brother, which isn't often these days, and talk about issues he is having they are often the same kind of issues that I have in Thailand.

He only spends the weekends in Thailand and he is in a position where he has money, but very little time. It therefore makes no sense for him to be working in his limited time at home and he has a lot of tradesmen in during the week to do jobs. He pays them well, but often receives poor service.

The people who are paid to maintain the swimming pool don't do things they should and try to repair the filtration system using twigs from the garden. He has just had a new solar-powered water heating system installed and it doesn't work. It was expensive and he was told it was state-of-the-art. He put down a deposit and now they want him to pay the balance, but it still hasn't produced any hot water.

I have often found in Thailand that once tradesmen have been paid they lose interest in doing the job they have been paid to do. I asked some painters to come in to do some external painting and paid them before they had finished. As soon as they were paid they didn't return.

I was worried about termite infestation when I moved to this house and signed a three-year contract with a pest control company. They carried out the initial treatment and came back on schedule to spray around the house in the first year, but then disappeared.

While I was working in Thailand I was never paid until the work had been completed. Thais treat foreigners as they would other Thais and they know that it isn't wise to pay people before they complete their work.

The tradesmen my brother employs normally arrive during the week while he is away from home and he leaves his Thai wife to deal with them. When he has problems and asks her to take action she is very reluctant to do anything and will often take the side of the Thai workmen. He doesn't speak any Thai and everything goes through her, but when she won't comply with his requests he gets very frustrated.

Going right back to my first Thai girlfriend, I have experienced the same thing. Firstly, if you are dealing with Thais and have a Thai with you, you will find that you simply get bypassed. Whenever I deal with Thais and my wife is with me they talk directly to her, even though it is me who is paying. Thais don't particularly like dealing with foreigners and will always try to deal with another Thai if possible.

I don't necessarily believe this has anything to do with language. It has more to do with dealing with people who share a common culture. Foreigners are serious about good service and won't accept poor excuses. Thais seems to accept any excuse they are given and because of the 'greng jai' aspect of the culture they won't make a fuss. Providers of poor service know that foreigners will give them a hard time but Thais won't and if dealing with a Thai they can get away with poor service.

On a few occasions I have tried to put pressure on Thais about poor service and they simply switch off. If you do it in person, they stop listening to you, avoid eye contact and act as if you aren't there.

This happened to me several years ago after I booked my parents into a hotel by the beach for a couple of nights. They stayed one night and the hotel then told them they had to change room because some 'important' guests had arrived and wanted their room. After my parents had stayed one night the hotel had no right to do this, but they did and they saw nothing wrong with what they were doing. I was furious, but my protestations got me absolutely nowhere. When I tried to complain it was as if I had turned invisible.

It's easier for Thais if you try to complain by phone. A foreign teacher I knew had problems with his apartment Internet connection and after making several phone calls the network administrator simply stopped answering the phone.

Thais don't like the confrontational nature of foreigners when there is a problem. In many cases the Thai person you vent your frustration upon will not have the power or authority to change anything themselves, and because of 'greng jai' they will not want to impose upon their superiors.

All they can do is talk to a Thai person, if there is a Thai person to talk to, because the Thai person will understand the cultural aspects of the situation. If there is no Thai person and the foreigner continues to be angry then all they can do is try to ignore the person.

The best thing to do if you live in Thailand is learn to speak some Thai. In Phuket I listened in to a few conversations and my brother constantly has to ask his wife what is being said. It's not something that you can learn overnight, but to understand what is being said makes a big difference.

It's also important to understand something about the culture. As I have said before, cultural differences aren't confined to the superficial things that guide books describe. Thais have a completely different way of interacting with the world and other people due to their cultural behaviour. In the West you can probably get your way if you make enough of a fuss. The person will either concede or talk to someone superior in the organisation. In Thailand this isn't going to happen.

To summarise, don't pay for things until you are satisfied and try to learn a little about the language and culture. I've always managed to get big issues resolved, but other issues never get fixed. There are still flies around the garbage bins here because one neighbour refuses to put her household waste into plastic bags before discarding it and I'm still not sure how to resolve this issue without creating a bigger problem.

Something I've found very interesting is to discover in one-on-one conversations with Thais is that they dislike the same aspects of Thailand that I find unacceptable. The big difference is that I will openly discuss these things, whereas they won't. The culture is powerful and overrides any personal grievances. They may not like something, but they won't complain or say anything.

Something else that I find interesting is the way in which social media is starting to challenge traditional cultural behaviour. Thais are avid users of social media and I must be the only person in Thailand without a smartphone. Facebook and other social media applications are a big part of the lives of many Thais. Let me give you some examples.

I've written extensively about the appalling driving standards in Thailand, but the way in which many Thais park their cars is just as antisocial. Basically, they will park as close to the restaurant, shop or ATM they want to visit and they don't care about blocking an entire lane of traffic or parking in such a way that other parked vehicles can't get out.

When I do the school run the road outside the school is just single lane and there is very little parking. I go early to get a parking space or, if I'm late, I have to park some distance from the school and walk. Some parents do neither. They turn up just as the kids are leaving school and wait in the middle of the road for their children to get in the car. The vehicles behind them can't leave, but they don't care about anyone else. They do whatever is convenient for themselves alone.

When I get caught behind someone doing this I get angry and toot my car horn. My wife gets really upset about this and tells me off. It happened to me recently when I was on my own and I told my wife later. Her reaction is that it is perfectly acceptable for someone to do this.

What do you think? If you are waiting in a single lane of traffic and the reason you are waiting is because someone ahead of you has parked in the road waiting for his or her children to arrive, would you think it is acceptable? I can't think of a single Westerner who would find this acceptable. It just illustrates the huge cultural differences that exist between Westerners and Thais.

Another favourite trick is parking in shopping mall bays that are reserved for handicapped drivers. These bays are often empty and located just next to the mall entrance. I have seen several able-bodied drivers - usually in pickup trucks - parking in the handicapped bays.

Other Thais see what is going on, but because of the non-confrontational, 'greng jai' culture no one would ever dream of saying anything to someone doing this face-to-face. It could also be quite dangerous, which is another key reason why Thais don't criticise other people. There are a lot of violent people in Thailand and people with violent tendencies often carry weapons. However, it is a different story behind the relative anonymity of social media.

Just recently there have been photos of drivers parking in handicapped bays doing the rounds on Thai social media along with lots of angry comments. I don't use social media, but my wife does and she tells me about some of the things she sees on Facebook.

At the moment Thais seem to inhabit two separate worlds. In the real world they act in accordance with Thai cultural norms and never confront, complain or criticise, however, they speak their minds when using social media. I think that in time the two worlds will start to merge and Thais may actually start to criticise antisocial behaviour in the real world. When this starts to happen, those people who are guilty of antisocial behavior might actually start to change their ways.

Thailand has always been a very insular country and the only way that Thais know is the Thai way. Westernisation in general, and the Internet in particular, have given Thais a much broader view of the world at large and over time I think this will start to change the way they think.

Return to top of page

Blog entries 18th to 29th January 2016