Living In Thailand Blog
Tuesday 10th May 2016
I was born in a place called Stratford. Not Stratford-Upon-Avon, a beautiful part of the English countryside famous for being the home of Shakespeare, but another Stratford which is a rather ugly part of East London.
Areas in need of serious redevelopment are often chosen as venues for Olympic games because the huge investment in building the venue benefits those areas after the games finish. When London was chosen to host the 2012 Olympics several different venues were used, but the main Olympic Park was in Stratford. I couldn't attend the Olympics in the place of my birth because I was in Thailand.
After birth I spent my early years in another part of East London called East Ham. One hundred years ago, East Ham wasn't really in London, but was considered an urban district of the much maligned county of Essex (one of London's neighbouring counties and the county where I lived from around the age of 13). East Ham was rural and leafy.
In 1859 a railway station was built and in 1905 an electric railway service arrived when East Ham station became part of the District Line - the green line on Harry Beck's world-famous schematic map of the London underground (and overground in parts) railway.
With improved access, the small village of East Ham grew rapidly and in 1965 the London Borough of Newham was formed, which incorporated East Ham.
These days, my family live all over the globe. A sister of my maternal grandfather's met a USAF airman in WW2 and relocated to the States, thus giving me the opportunity later on to have some fabulous vacations in Colorado Springs with my cousins.
One uncle moved to Canada in the late 60's, an aunt followed and through her marriage to an Egyptian ended up in the Middle East. My brother lives in Thailand at the weekends and commutes to his place of work in Singapore. This type of thing seems to be normal now, but in previous generations many people stayed close to their families and places of birth.
My maternal grandparents lived in East Ham and my paternal grandparents (and great-grandmother) lived in Forest Gate. One of my paternal grandfather's brothers died in WW1 at the age of 24 while serving on HMS Hampshire. He lived in Plaistow and died on 5th June 1916, just after the ship he served on was sunk by a German mine in Scotland.
If you look at where my family members lived on a map there isn't much of interest in the area, but one feature stands out. It is within walking distance of all these addresses and, indeed, I walked there from my home in Hall Road just off the Barking Road several times in my early years. It is a football stadium.
The River Thames used to be a real working river. Along its banks were docks where goods from the far flung corners of the British Empire arrived and were unloaded. As a child I remember my father driving into London and seeing docks and cranes everywhere, but that was 50 years ago. The docks provided employment for many men and a favourite pastime of working class men was watching football. The old docklands area is now full of extremely expensive houses and flats.
There was also an iron works - the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company. Some of the men working there formed a football team in 1895 called Thames Ironworks FC. In 1900 the club was relaunched as West Ham United Football Club and in the 1904-5 West Ham started to play at the Boleyn Ground, also known as Upton Park. This is the football stadium near to where I lived as a child.
West Ham United FC
I have often heard it said by Thais that it is impossible for foreigners to fully understand some aspects of Thainess, for example, the love Thais have for their monarchy.
Conversely, it is impossible for Thais to understand some aspects of farangness. Many Thai men like English football, but they all 'support' one of the top teams. When I first visited Thailand in the 1980's they all supported Liverpool, who were unassailable at the time.
Then it changed to Manchester United. Then Chelsea. And now, no doubt, there will be Thai supporters of Leicester City FC, since Leicester just won the league AND the club is Thai-owned.
A very rare sight in Thailand
This doesn't happen in the UK. There are exceptions, but most people support their local club and it doesn't matter how successful or unsuccessful that club is, people don't change their allegiance. A local club is a part of the community and following the ups and downs of a club bonds fans and it bonds communities. I look at a website called WestHamTillIDie.com most days and that is what it is like being a fan. You don't change. You can't change. You support the same club until you die.
I've never been a fanatical West Ham supporter, but being born and raised so near to the ground it was always a part of me. My relatives supported West Ham and, even now, whenever I exchange e-mails with my uncle or cousin in Canada we never fail to mention West Ham. My school friends supported West Ham and one of my classmates at Nelson Road Junior School in East Ham, Steve Whitton, went on to play for West Ham before starting a career in football management.
When I received football strips for Christmas and birthdays as a boy they were always claret and blue. Nothing else would have been acceptable. This season my brother travelled to the UK from Singapore, as did my uncle and cousin from Canada, just to see a game at Upton Park before it disappears.
I'm not sure whether they realise it yet, or not, but the football club my children will support was already decided before they had been born. It is a hereditary thing that can't be changed.
Not being fanatical, I can't remember the first game I attended, but it would have been in the late 60's or early 70's. I saw West Ham's world cup winning trio of Moore, Hurst and Peters. I saw the great Leeds sides of the 70's and footballing legends such as George Best.
In the early 80's I had just finished my tertiary education and had many things on my mind, but not football. This also coincided with a period of football violence that was very ugly. I didn't go to Upton Park for several years.
However, in the 1990's I started to go again. I had a season ticket for several seasons. My brother did too and it was a good way to bond with him. We attended all home games and about half-a-dozen, or so, away games. Some away games were at famous venues, such as, Anfield, Old Trafford, and Stamford Bridge. We also went to some games in dreary, industrial northern towns that didn't have quite the same glamour and excitement, but it was still good fun.
I have many memories - some good, some bad. Just like the football chant that is sung to visiting supporters, on one occasion I did actually leave the Boleyn Ground in a London ambulance.
Almost exactly 23 year ago to the day I had just watched West Ham beat Cambridge 2-0 to achieve promotion to the English Premier League. There were scenes of jubilation and I felt the crowd behind me surging forward. Afraid that I would be crushed I attempted to jump over the wall on to the pitch. However, my feet got tangled up, I tried to break my fall, but instead of breaking my fall I broke my wrist. It was a nasty break. The ambulance took me to a local hospital where a metal plate and several screws were used to repair my broken arm.
West Ham fans love committed players and a few years later I watched two of the most highly committed players who have ever played for the club. One is now managing West Ham and the other is a first team coach - Slaven Bilic and Julian Dicks.
Why I am writing about this today? Many football clubs started from humble beginnings in the same way as West Ham, but the game is no longer simply a pastime for working-class men. I guess it started with Rupert Murdoch and the introduction of satellite TV, but now English football is a huge multinational business involving massive amounts of money.
Several clubs have already moved from their traditional homes to large, modern stadia to keep the money rolling in and that is what has happened with West Ham. Next season the club will move its home from the Boleyn Ground to the Olympic Stadium in Stratford and tonight, when West Ham host Manchester United, it will be the last ever football match played at Upton Park. Just the action of writing these words makes me well up inside with emotion and I expect that this evening tears will be shed by the kind of men who you would normally cross the road to avoid.
There is 112 years of history associated with the Boleyn Ground, an infinite number of memories, and English football clubs such as West Ham touch the lives of the people who live in the local community probably more than Thais will ever fully understand. The Boleyn Ground has been a central part of so many people's lives for so long. To think that after today it will no longer be in existence seems almost incomprehensible.
2016 has already been a difficult year with the deaths of several famous people who touched the lives of millions of ordinary people, but the loss of certain places can have just as profound an effect on people as the loss of a famous or close person. It's very sad but, as I wrote about recently, change is just a normal part of life. The only difference these days is that the rate of change just keeps accelerating.
For a long time, West Ham didn't stand a chance of beating Man Utd, but that is no longer the case. This season's team is strong technically, there is great spirit in the dressing room, great people in management and coaching positions, and there has always been something very special about watching West Ham play under floodlights at Upton Park, as I was very fortunate to experience on several occasions. The atmosphere tonight is going to be absolute unbelievable. I wish I could be there, but I can't. All I can hope is that the result this evening will be fitting for the occasion.
COYI!
"Some 3,000 students in Thailand must retake university entrance exams after a cheating scam involving cameras and smartwatches was uncovered."
(I'm not sure if the BBC has reported this correctly because the Thai press talks about three students, not 3,000. Perhaps, because of the incident, everyone will have to retake the test?)
Smartwatch cheats force Thai students back to exam halls
Rectors mull moves to beat exam cheats
This story will come as no surprise to regular observers of Thailand, especially foreigners working as teachers in Thailand. Salaries in most professions are a joke, but doctors can earn decent money and it is a foregone conclusion that some Thai students will do anything possible to get into medical school. There is also a massive obsession with qualifications and honorifics in Thailand (with many politicians and businessmen wanting to use the title Dr), but the business of ghost-writing university theses and other important documents is well known.
As a tourist destination, Thailand is notorious for scams and there are thousands of Thais who make a living by preying on naive tourists. Sure, it happens elsewhere, but not quite to the same extent.
A year or two after arriving to live in Thailand a guy called Dave, who lived in Hua Hin, got in touch and sent me a document. I'm not sure if Dave is still around. He had a serious illness and I last heard from him 11 years ago.
I don't know who wrote the original document, but it seemed to be common practice in Hua Hin for every new expat to receive a copy. It contained information about common Thai characteristics and one of the pieces of advice was, "Conning and cheating are skills that are applauded not denigrated."
This isn't just more farang Thai-bashing. The people who know Thais best are Thais themselves, and Thais are very wary of other Thais trying to cheat them. It is reflected in the language and the Thai word for a cheat is 'kee gong'.
Kee gong
I have been scammed in Thailand, but not for a very long time. Firstly, I am cynical by nature and suspicious of people who I don't know. Secondly, I speak Thai and I am familiar with what is considered to be normal Thai behaviour. Thirdly, I have quite a good sixth sense. I'm not claiming to be immune, but on the occasions when I enter tourist areas and get approached by Thai confidence tricksters, alarm bells start to ring straight away. They are only interested in fresh tourists who know nothing about Thailand and as soon as they start to hear a farang speaking Thai they move on to look for easier targets.
The behaviour I see a lot more of is what Thais refer to idiomatically as 'luk gai'. The literal meaning is 'stealing chickens', but idiomatically it means 'to sneak in, to slip in'. I encounter this every day. Although it is cheating, it's not as serious as cheating in a university entrance exam, but neither is it a particularly pleasant trait.
Luk gai
Quite often when I am queueing for something, someone will attempt to sneak in front of me to the front of the queue. If I am waiting at traffic lights, drivers will shoot up the emergency lane to get to the front of the queue.
If a driver wants to go straight on at red lights they will either jump the lights or turn left, do a 'U' turn, and turn left again to get through the lights without waiting. When I see this happen I often see the driver smile broadly as if he is quite proud to have cheated and gotten away with it.
This kind of thing possibly upsets me more than it does other foreigners because it goes against all the things I was brought up to believe. My parents taught me wrong from right and most English people of my generation had a sense of fair play and justice. I also played cricket and a lot of behaviour I see in Thailand simply isn't cricket, but my value system is different to the Thai value system.
It's a case of 'When in Rome ...', not that I can bring myself to do as Thais do, but when in Thailand you just have to accept that many things are different.
Saturday 7th May 2016
The magic of baking soda and vinegar ... is a complete myth.
The kitchen (if you can call it a kitchen) in our old rented Thai row house was at the back of the house. Waste water from the sink ran through a small diameter pipe to the storm drain at the front of the house, which was a long distance. We attempted to remove as much grease, oil and fat from crockery, pots and pans before washing them, but the waste pipe constantly became blocked and flooded the kitchen.
All of the neighbours I spoke to had the same problem. Thai cooking involves a lot of frying, and a lot of oil, fat and grease ends up down the sink. When you combine this with a basic design flaw in the house it is bound to cause a problem.
I had plumbers in many times and spent a fortune on various solutions in an attempt to fix the problem. Some solutions were chemical while others were organic and the claim was that living organisms would digest the fat. Nothing worked, apart from plumbers using mechanical devices to remove the blockage.
Naturally, I also consulted the wisdom of the Internet and hundreds of sources told me that baking soda and vinegar were the magical household ingredients that would fix my problem. In addition to being effective, they were also a lot kinder to the environment.
I spent more money on baking soda and vinegar, but the result was exactly the same as the other solutions I had bought. My waste pipe remained blocked.
When my wife's friend did some cooking in our present kitchen (which doesn't have the same waste pipe problem) she rested a red hot frying pan on the counter surface, which left a nasty scorch mark. I was furious. I consulted the Internet again and, once again, the magical ingredients were baking soda and vinegar. And, this time, also toothpaste.
I tried all three, as well as other cleaning solutions, but to no avail. After spending the best part of three days scrubbing with wire wool I managed to remove most of the scorch mark, but it was the physical action of the wire wool rather than any chemical action that did the trick.
When we returned from a trip recently, we got home to find that the fridge had packed up. Everything had melted and the stench inside the fridge was awful - even after cleaning. I did an Internet search to find out how to remove the smell and read that baking soda would absorb the smell. I tried this method and after a couple of days the smell was just as bad. Another baking soda failure.
My wife has just decided to clean the grout on our floor tiles. I bought a small bottle of special grout cleaner from HomePro, which was quite expensive, but my wife said it wasn't that effective and asked me to look for tips on the Internet.
Even before I did so, I knew what the answer would be. You guessed ... baking soda. Do you want white teeth? Use toothpaste with baking soda. Whiter skin? Baking soda. You want to reverse the ageing process? Baking soda. Hair loss? Baking soda. Terminal cancer? Baking soda. Is there anything that baking soda can't be used for?
Baking soda toothpaste
I'm sure there are times when baking soda helps, but whenever I try to clean or unblock anything using baking soda and vinegar it is never very effective and I am fed up reading on the Internet how magical and marvellous these things are for doing jobs around the house when they never work for me.
Thursday 5th May 2016
I have a dumb TV downstairs (as opposed to a smart one) and connected to it is a Philips Blu-Ray player. The Blu-Ray player is connected to the Internet and it is mainly used for watching YouTube videos via its built-in YouTube app. Well, that was until about a week ago.
All of a sudden it started telling me that YouTube wasn't available, when obviously it was. When this first started to happen I could sometimes get it to work by trying again, but for several days the problem has been solid. I did a quick search today and found the reason.
My Blu-Ray player, as well as many other devices, used version 2 of the API that connects the device to YouTube, but Google (the owner of YouTube) upgraded the API to version 3 and all the devices that used version 2 stopped working. The changes was made a while ago and I'm not sure why I have only just seen the problem.
One of the reasons for doing this was to integrate the Google+ social media application in Google's battle with Facebook, even though Google lost the war a long time ago. Apparently, it didn't matter to Google that perhaps millions of people with older devices would immediately lose their ability to connect with YouTube.
You buy the TV, Google 'upgrades' its software and then YouTube doesn't work ...
For those who don't realise, Google isn't quite the nice 'Do no evil' company that it portrays itself as. It isn't a company staffed with loveable geeks eating free food, receiving free massages and sliding down fireman poles while they make the Internet a better place for the world.
It is just another big self-interested corporation that will do anything to increase its bottom line at the expense of anyone. And since Facebook started to be a serious threat to Google's domination of the Internet, things have only got worse. If you browse some of the forums at Webmasterworld you will see that many owners of websites that were doing very well once upon a time are now struggling severely, and much of the pain has come about a result of changes that Google have made.
I will now have to upgrade my TV or Blu-Ray player, and it will probably be the TV when I have a spare Bt30,000 in my pocket. A new smart TV will be able to connect to YouTube, as do the other TVs in my house, but my concern now is that when Google decides to upgrate to version 4 of the API, exactly the same thing will happen.
When I discovered the source of the problem this morning my first reaction was, "They can't do this." Unfortunately, they can do anything they like ... and they do.
On to my next gripe.
I downloaded lots of Microsoft updates for my computer operating system last week, but after hours and hours of heavy disk activity they failed to load. The computer didn't tell me why. It tried to reboot about three times to install the updates, but finally gave up and reverted to the original version.
I had a pretty good idea why because of previous problems, but if that hadn't been the case it isn't good that Microsoft software doesn't give the user more information.
When I bought ny Lenovo computer the hard disk was partitioned for certain things. There is a hidden partition for the recovery software so that the machine can be returned to how it was when it left the factory.
The partition for the C drive is 50GB and this is used for the Windows operating system and devices drivers, etc. The D drive is huge and I only use a fraction of it. However, this is the root cause of my problem. Not good Lenovo.
The problem - after lots of updates to Windows - is that the C drive is almost full. The Microsoft 'Disk Cleanup' facility is not good and I use CCleaner often to keep the C drive as clean as possible. Not good Microsoft.
I have already been through the exercise of removing applications from the C drive and reinstalling them on the D drive. However, this is not possible with some applications, such as Google Chrome, which do not give you the option and insist on being installed on the C drive. Not good Google. As a result I no longer use Google Chrome.
I have been using Opera for a while. It's not without its problems, but it's OK. However, one big problem is that a lot of Google applications won't work with Opera. You can't even do simple things, such as adding YouTube comments. YouTube is a Google application and if you use Opera you will get a message about a problem being detected with cookies. Not good Google.
It is impossible to use the disk management facility in Windows simply to make one disk partition bigger and one smaller. Not good Microsoft.
Fortunately, there are applications available that will do the trick but they all require the kind of technical knowledge that most computer users probably don't have.
One such applicated is called GParted, and it is free. I burnt my disc image of the software as instructed, went into BIOS to rearrange the order of my boot devices, and fired my machine up. It all looked good and the GParted application appeared. I knew roughly what I needed to do and was excited about fixing my disk partition problem.
It was then that I found my mouse and keyboard were no longer functioning. Further searching suggested two possible remedies. One was to use a mouse and keyboard with PS/2 connections, but my all-in-one computer has no PS/2 ports.
My mouse has a USB connection; my cats don't
The next was to go back into the BIOS and select the legacy USB support option. I did this, but the option was already selected. What next? After this I ran out of ideas.
This year has been a nightmare for things going wrong. I've had several problems with plumbing, cars, ceiling fans and fridges. I have spent time and money (in the case of my car, a lot of money) fixing things myself or getting things fixed in the hope that eventually everything would settle down.
Things have settled down a lot but I still have one fridge that the serviceman told me has a design problem and can't be fixed and one toilet that doesn't flush properly. I also now have one Blu-Ray player that can no longer access YouTube and a computer that can no longer accept any software updates.
It's tiring and frustrating.
In the World University Rankings 2015-2016, the top Thai university appears to be Mahidol, which is ranked in the tier between 501 and 600. This is followed by Chiang Mai University (601-800), Chulalongkorn University (601-800), Khon Kaen University (601-800), King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi (601-800), Prince of Songkla University (601-800), Suranaree University of Technology (601-800).
I worked at the Hat Yai campus of the Prince of Songkhla University for about four years. It has a good reputation locally and is regarded as the top university in southern Thailand. There is a strong medical bias and thus there are faculties of medicine, dentistry, nursing, pharmaceutical science, traditional Thai medicine, and veterinary science. PSU turns out many clever graduates who play a big role in helping society.
I don't think lists like this should be taken too seriously. I'm currently reading Stephen Fry's "The Fry Chronicles". He goofed off at Cambridge (number 4 university on the list) for three years and admits he only attended three lectures the entire time he was there. He spent all his time on drama productions and did as little academic work as possible. He was born with the gift of an amazing memory and was able to do well academically without putting in any effort.
The top universities have lots of students with brilliant intellects, but an individual's success in life depends very much on personal qualities rather than where that person studied.
Wednesday 4th May 2016
There are still a lot of people in rural Thailand who live a traditional life. They do traditional work outside and many wear the paa nuung, a single piece of cloth wrapped around the body. I see many such people in the south and my wife's parents, who used to own a small fruit and oil palm orchard, also fall into this category.
Many only speak the southern Thai dialect, which makes communication a problem for me. The limited Thai I can speak is of the central dialect variety and combined with my many pronunciation and tone errors I can tell that they don't understand me. Conversely, I have great difficulty understanding them.
Traditional Thai fisherman - Thale Noi wetlands, Phattalung province
Last week I boarded a sawng-thaew to pick my car up after a service. It stopped and a typical rural Thai man climbed on board. He sat next to me, put his hand on my leg and did his best to make conversation. As I said, communication is difficult but I ascertained that he had four grown-up children and he was on his way to the minivan station to catch a van down into Pattani, one of the deep southern mainly Muslim provinces.
I also gleaned another piece of information - his age. I had assumed he was in his early 70's and was very surprised to hear that he was the same age as me, 55. Working outside in the intense sun ages people very quickly and many rural Thais probably don't get the same level of healthcare as city dwellers.
In the early 1950's the average life expectancy in Thailand was just over 50. Per capita income was less than US$100 per year, nutrition was poor, fatal disease was rampant, a large proportion of the population worked in agriculture, and medical care was rarely available outside of Bangkok. Dental care in the provinces was almost non-existent and the dental faculty where I used to work was established to train local dentists and to treat local residents. Similar faculties were established in other parts of the country.
Many other initiatives were undertaken (many of which were royally sponsored projects), such as the 'village doctor' programme, and there was a big improvement in public health. Doctor/population ratios continued to drop, healthcare improved, and life expectancy increased.
In 1976 the average life expectancy for a male was 58 and 63.8 for a female. Ten years later the figures were 63.8 and 68.9, respectively. According to some information I found online, the figures are now 71.5 and 78.8. This is a huge jump compared to the early 1950's.
Incidentally, the information here comes from the book King Bhumibol Adulyadej - A Life's Work. If you are interested in Thailand's history and development it is a fascinating book packed full of interesting statistics and information.
The improvements in healthcare and life expectancy are positive, of course, but while this has been happening there has been a drastic slump in the fertility rate. My wife is the youngest of eight children and in the year I was born, 1960, the average number of births per woman in Thailand was over 6. Large families were the norm in Thailand, just a few years ago. Now, the number of births per woman is less than two.
The people I know with young families all have either one or two children, I don't know any with more. Thais nowadays have opportunities to travel and to buy material things, provided they have the money. Raising children is expensive and detrimental to the lifestyle that many Thais want, so most limit children to one or two.
Singapore recognised this problem many years ago and there have been various baby bonus schemes in which parents receive financial rewards for having children. Parents also receive for healthcare and education, and can also claim tax rebates.
In the UK there is no bonus for having a child, but most people responsible for bringing up children can claim child benefit allowances.
In Thailand nothing like this exists. Powdered milk and disposable nappies for new babies are expensive, and education is expensive. My education in the UK was all free.
It always seems in Thailand that as one problem is solved, another is created. Pensions are extremely small - Bt600 and Bt1,000 (about 17 - 28 USD) per month for those above the age of 60 - but as more people grow older the government will have to pay out more. Not only is more money needed to support old people, but in the future there will be less young people to physically take care of them.
Big ramifications from our ageing society
The culture part of the school curriculum places a lot of emphasis on children being responsible for their parents in old age. Taking care of parents is important for most Thais, but as Thailand becomes more and more Westernised this attitude may change in the future.
Most Thais earn pitifully low salaries and can't afford to save anything. Most jobs don't have pension schemes. Unless people do have children who can support them in retirement, they have to continue working until they die. I've seen 80 year-old women who could hardly walk shuffling around the streets trying to sell lottery tickets.
There are also some strange attitudes about age. Many years ago my first Thai girlfriend wanted to change jobs, but said it would be impossible because she was too old. She was 30. I've heard this confirmed many times. Job adverts almost always specify an age range and the upper limit is always below 30. The average retirement age in Thailand is 55 and people above the age of 60 are regarded as elderly.
I mentioned to my wife that I haven't seen my favourite Thai actress, Chompoo Araya Hargate, in any Thai soap operas for a long time. A few years ago she was never off the screen. The reply was that she is old now and that Yaya is getting all the acting work. Chompoo will reach the grand old age of 35 next month, while Yaya is 23. Why would anyone be interested in an old lady of 35?
The problem for Thailand is that so much development has taken place only fairly recently. It was a completely different country 50 years ago (even just 29 years ago when I first visited). Instead of having many years to adapt to significant changes in society, Thais have had to try to adapt much more quickly and that is always difficult. Average life expectancy has increased by almost 30 years in a time frame of just over 60 years, but old ideas and attitudes about age still persist.
Educational needs have changed immensely with so much technological change, but teaching methods in many Thai schools have not changed since the days of temple schools when the only educational requirement was to learn to read and write Thai. Thus the continued reliance on memorisation and rote learning, which works very well when learning Thai, but not for most other subjects. In every regional survey of education, Thailand comes at - or near - the bottom of the list.
Many Thais nowadays have access to the same modern, powerful cars found in Western countries, but there is no long-standing car culture. I remember talking to a Thai man of about 70 and he told me that in his youth there were no cars, trucks or motorbikes. Suddenly everyone has access to vehicles and this has resulted in Thailand having the second-most dangerous roads in the world.
This is not a criticism of Thailand. As a Westerner I regard the rate of technological change in society as being too much these days. One of my reasons for moving to Thailand was to live a slower and better quality of life. It's difficult for Western countries to adapt, but even more difficult for developing countries.
Tuesday 3rd May 2016
What do foreigners think when they see news articles like this?
Britons beaten up in Thailand will never go back to country, says son
The Bangkok Post has devoted several pages to this story today.
Battered family will 'never return' to Thailand
I don't know all the ins and outs of the story, but the victims were quite old, the attackers were quite young, and the beating was brutal. I don't know who started the attack or the real reason why it happened and therefore I'm not in a position to apportion blame. As I mentioned in a post recently, there are fairly frequent news reports of people dying in Thailand after suffering such attacks and I also mentioned that it is never a good idea to get involved in an altercation with Thais.
Thai men are strong, they will normally have friends to help them, they will often use weapons, and they never seem to know when to stop. The beatings will often continue until the victim is severely injured or dies.
There will be lots of people who have had wonderful vacations in Thailand and have met lots of friendly, kind Thais, and they will probably find this incident quite difficult to believe. As tourists they have only ever seen one side of Thailand.
The Bangkok Post articles allow reader comments and whenever there is a story like this lots of expats want to make the point that these incidents aren't unusual in Thailand. As expats who have lived in the country for several years they have seen the other side of Thailand and get irritated when guide books and naive tourists talk about the country as if it is a perfect paradise, which it certainly isn't.
I have heard and read about many such incidents over the years. Some, such as the Koh Tao murders, are widely reported, while others get virtually no media attention. A friend told me about a female English teacher who was attacked and beaten badly in Songkhla a few years ago. She needed lots of reconstructive surgery and she left Thailand, presumably never to return. I never saw any newspaper reports about that incident.
The reality is that there are two very different sides to Thailand - a pleasant side and a very ugly side. I have a very good sixth sense, which has done a good job of keeping me out of trouble, and can immediately sense potential danger. An old friend of mine sent an e-mail last week telling me his daughter and a friend were travelling to Thailand and Vietnam in June. He was worried and made the comment, "They have no sense of danger."
This is not good regarding trips to Thailand. If there is one thing that you do need in Thailand it is a sense of danger, and if you sense danger just get out of the situation you are in. Don't worry about stupid things such as pride or manly honour, just extricate yourself from the situation very quickly. I once found myself on a sawng-thaew in a remote part of Chumpon province with a powerfully built Thai man who made me feel very uneasy.
I just rang the bell, got off the sawng-thaew, and waited for the next one. Doing this added another half hour to my journey, and perhaps the guy was harmless, but my sixth sense told me otherwise and I didn't consider that it was worth taking the risk.
Thailand changes after it gets dark. When I first arrived I walked around everywhere in the daytime and never felt in any danger. That wasn't the case at night and I noticed that there were very few locals out on the streets. They were all at home with their shutters and doors closed and locked.
I don't go out at night now because of the children, but even before kids I was never much of a night person. The attack in Hua Hin happened in the early hours of the morning. Be a little careful after dark. On Thai roads it is almost lawless at the best of times, but at night it is anarchic
Tourist areas are generally quite safe, but not always and it can be easy to stray from an area that is safe to one that isn't. Try, if you can, to read Thais. A Russian tourist was attacked with a knife in Pattaya because he tried on a fake watch, but decided not to buy it. Obviously, the vendor must have been quite unbalanced and even before the attack there must have been some warning signs. You can read a lot about a person from their eyes.
Females, especially lone females, are at the greatest risk. Yes, I know I'm not allowed to say this because it is sexist and political incorrect, but, unfortunately, in the real world it is a fact. If you have any doubts, observe for a while how Thai girls behave.
The foreign girl in Songkhla was alone in a deserted beach area and I have read other accounts of lone foreign girls being assaulted in Thailand. Dressing in skimpy clothing or bikinis and/or drinking alcohol doesn't help.
Again, I appreciate that lone foreign females have a perfect right to go alone to a secluded beach and drink alcohol in a bikini at whatever time of day or night they want, but this is the real world and not a politically correct fairytale land.
As I've mentioned many times, be particularly careful when driving because a very unfortunate personality changes comes over Thais when they drive. I had to have words with my wife on Saturday when she drove us all to lunch. She was driving like ... well, like a Thai. Very fast, very close to the car in front, and quite scary.
She was furious when I said something because Thais are extremely sensitive to any form of criticism. I can do almost anything on the road. If I so desire, I can drive like an insane maniac and nothing will happen. The one thing I can't do is criticise other people who drive like insane maniacs. My wife's reaction when criticised is to become angry and stop talking to me, but it isn't unknown for Thais in road rage incidents to get angry and then to start firing bullets.
The driver of a minivan in which I was travelling many years ago wanted to beat me up when I made some remarks in Thai after he stopped to pick up his 19th passenger. The van had 14 seats and his greedy and selfish actions were making the van both dangerous and uncomfortable. Thais will do whatever they want to do and god forbid anyone telling them otherwise. Criticising the actions of Thais can be very dangerous.
If you visit Thailand and stay in a big hotel like I did in Pattaya recently there is nothing to be concerned about. Out of the millions of tourists that visit Thailand each year, very few have any problems. Don't be overly concerned but, at the same time, don't be deceived and lulled into a false sense of security by all the Land of Smiles nonsense.
If you have a sixth sense, pay attention to it. Single females should be very careful. Be a little more careful at night and try not to upset Thais because of their sensitivity to criticism (often, but inaccurately described as losing face) and their vindictiveness.
I have always been very aware of the two sides of Thailand and have always made an effort to avoid the people and places that constitute the ugly side of Thailand. It's not always possible, but I manage to do it most of the time. Generally life is good and most of the time I interact with good people because of my conscious decision to stay away from bad places and bad people.
Yesterday I went to a shop I needed to go to and the area it was in gave me a bad feeling. It's a difficult feeling to describe because it is intuitive, but much of it had to do with the way that Thais were looking at me. It isn't an area I usually go to these days and I was in and out quickly.
The biggest problem - and I have mentioned this many times - is driving. The ugliest part of the ugliest side of Thailand is on Thai roads but, unfortunately, it is impossible to avoid roads. If you don't drive - and most tourists don't - it's not a problem you will have.
All Brits over a certain age will be aware of the changes to their local High Streets that have occurred in the last 40 years.
10 High Street stores of 1976 that have disappeared
I remember all of these and more. As a teenager I developed an interest in golf, but couldn't afford to buy a complete set of clubs. However, my local branch of Woolworths sold individual clubs. Irons were £5 and woods were £7. Using the money from paper rounds and other part-time jobs, I bought one club at a time until I had my own half-set. That branch of Woolworths disappeared long ago, but I still have fond memories.
Some brick-and-mortar shops have not been able to compete with on-line retailers, some didn't adapt, some simply went out of fashion, and technology has played in big part in making things obsolete.
When I arrived in Thailand in 2003 the Internet was still fairly immature. Not only did apartment buildings not have WiFi (as they all do now), but they didn't even have wired broadband connections. To connect to the Internet I could either use a very slow, expensive dial-up connection or I could go to an Internet shop and use their connection. All of those Internet shops have now gone.
Skype and other similar services hadn't yet arrived and international calls were expensive. There used to be girls on the street who offered cheap international calls using a mobile phone. They had special high-use call plans and with so many customers they could keep call rates low. The girls have all gone now.
Cheap international phone calls - I no longer see this service on the streets of Thailand
Near to where I used to stay was a Nokia service centre. If you wanted a mobile phone back then you didn't need to think about which brand to buy. There was only one serious brand and it was Nokia.
As I used to walk past, the girls working in the shop would wave and smile and eventually I got friendly with them. One proposed marriage to me. It wasn't so much that she was desperate to marry me, but she was desperate not to marry the Thai man her father had lined up for her and she needed an alternative.
As we all know, Nokia has now all but disappeared. That Nokia service centre has now morphed into another business that sells phones made by Apple, LG, Samsung, Lenovo, etc.
There is nothing new about change, but never before in human history has the rate of change been so rapid. Changes that might used to take 20 years now happen almost overnight.
My life changed beyond recognition when I moved to Thailand and the same thing happened again when children arrived. The Internet has changed enormously in the last 10 years, as has this website.
The current hosting plan for my site runs out at the end of next month and I continue to vacillate between deciding to keep it going or closing it down. One thing is certain and that is I can no longer afford to continue paying for the expensive hosting service that I currently use.
The site will either die or I will move to a cheaper hosting service and just leave it running on the backburner. I'm still not sure. At times it seems a shame to just let it die, but whenever I find - yet again - that someone has stolen a load more content and photos this seems the best option. It's particularly galling that Google rates sites with stolen content higher than it does the sites from which the content was stolen.
As there are now a few regular visitors to this blog I will let you know what I decide to do nearer the time.