Living In Thailand Blog
Monday 9th September 2013
I was chatting about snakes to my friend who, as a student, was bitten by a cobra. After it bit her foot she grabbed hold of the cobra's tail so that the snake could be identified. It bit her again on the hand, wrapped itself around her arm, and she drove her motorbike (one-handed) to the hospital A&E department accompanied by a live snake.
She was telling me that the really nasty one is the Malayan Pit Viper. It's not that long, but the venom can cause tissue necrosis and bitten limbs often need to be amputated. It is bad-tempered, aggressive and lives around here.
งูกะปะ - 'ngoo guh-bpuh' (Malayan Pit Viper)
After her bite she had some problems and went to see a Thai traditional healer. She said that he cured the problems. She has a friend who was bitten by a Malayan Pit Viper. The doctor wanted to amputate the bitten limb, but her father wouldn't give permission. The girl went to see a Thai Muslim traditional healer and was also cured.
Another friend of mine works as a lecturer in the Faculty of Traditional Medicine at the local university. She has studied the Sakai tribe extensively (a dark-skinned, curly-haired, pigmy tribe in Thailand) and has also done of lots of research into Thai traditional medicine.
Some of the natural ingredients used in traditional medicine are very powerful and a good alternative to Western medicine.
The government has said it won't pay rubber farmers any more than Bt90 per kilo. Some farmers want Bt95 now and also want the price to be raised to Bt120 in six months' time. I was told this morning that protesters are planning to block the main routes from Malaysia so that Malaysian tourists won't be able to enter the country.
The article at the following link mentions that protesters "will block the Sadao border crossing, the central rubber market in Songkhla province, Songkhla port, main roads and local airports at 7pm on Saturday."
More tourists visit Thailand from Malaysia than anywhere else and such a blockade will hurt southern Thailand's tourist industry. One protester is suggesting that Chumphon will also be blockaded, thus isolating the entire southern region of Thailand.
These latest demands are completely unreasonable and now they are acting like little children. If this continues, the situation is going to get very messy indeed.
Govt will stand its ground, won't hike rubber price, Yingluck says
As I predicted, farmers are now also demanding an increase in the price of oil palm nuts. I knew that it wouldn't end with rice and rubber, and that before long farmers of other produce would start demanding higher prices. Before long it will be shrimps, fish, coconuts, pineapples, longan, mangosteen, etc etc.
This all began because of the government's populist rice-pledging scheme.
THAI mishap blocks airport runway
A Thai Airways Airbus 330-300 slid off the runway at Suvarnabhumi airport. These things happen and no one died. It appears that the incident was caused by mechanical failure.
I found it interesting that the first thing maintenance crews did was to cover up the Thai Airways logos and national flag. Why was this so important? It probably had something to do with saving face.
A Thai celebrity was on the flight and was interviewed on Thai TV this morning. He was sitting by an emergency exit and described how passengers were elbowing and kicking other passengers in an effort to get out of the aircraft first. "Me first," is the Thai way.
I first saw evidence of this in 2004 when the government was giving out free chicken dinners in an effort to restore confidence after the Chicken Flu scare. The scenes were ugly as Thais pushed and shoved each other to get their free chicken. Now, I see the same kind of behaviour on Thai roads every day. "Me first, me first," is their mantra.
Not all Thais are like this, but a lot are. How many?
My wife was driving a couple of days ago and an oversized pickup truck just pushed in ahead of us while we were waiting at a junction. This kind of thing happens all the time and it really annoys me, but I can't do anything for reasons I have explained previously. Drivers of pickup trucks, Toyota Fortuners and minivans are normally the worst culprits. She estimates that 70% of Thais are like this and have absolutely no consideration whatsoever for other people.
Those foreigners who have only spent time in tourist resorts probably won't believe this. Whenever I spend time at hotels in tourist resorts the staff are always friendly, helpful, polite, considerate and go out of their way to help guests.
You get one impression of the country as a tourist, but when you begin living in real Thailand it is very different.
Sunday 8th September 2013
To quell the rubber protesters' disruptions and violence the government has agreed to give the farmers a minimum price of Bt90 per kilo.
South rubber growers ready to accept govt's price offer
Some farmers are satisfied with this, but others aren't and want more. The current market price is US$2.69 (about Bt86.6 at current exchange rates). This is higher than the Bt78.13 price I had read in a previous report, but maybe commodity prices are different in different regions?
The main point is that Thailand is defying open market prices and therefore defying the basic economic laws of supply and demand.
The Thai Rubber Association estimates that in 2013 Thailand will produce about 3.86 million tonnes (3,860,000,000 kgs) of rubber. If the government has to subsidise each kg by Bt3.4, that's about Bt13,124 million and if the price falls on the open market the government will have to dig deeper into its coffers to make up the difference.
The open market price has been on the slide for quite a while. Everything in life is cyclical and eventually the price will rise again. What will happen when the open market price goes above the governments agreed price?
Two sectors of the agricultural industry are now being supported by the Thai government. The government has set a precedent now and I think it will only be a matter of time before farmers of other types of produce start to demand a minimum price, which is above the open market rate. Other low paid workers in service industries may also start demanding higher wages if all it takes to get more money is to organise some protests.
This situation reminds me in some ways of the UK when the country was run by strong unions who kept demanding more and more. Industry wasn't efficient and spiralling wage costs simply made the UK less and less competitive. It was a situation that couldn't continue. Margaret Thatcher set out to fix the problem and in doing so caused years of massive pain and social unrest.
With the advent of globalisation the world has become a tough place in which to do business. If one country isn't competitive, then other countries will overtake it. Governments of individual countries can try to protect their own economies from the rest of the world, but they can't do so forever and this approach gets very expensive.
The police checkpoint on the road to Hat Yai airport has now been removed. It seems as if the current round of protests is over, but nothing stays quiet in Thailand for very long.
Russian tourist shot in Phuket in roadrage attack. This kind of thing is fairly common in the 'Land of Smiles'.
You can't afford to take chances with the maniacs on Thai roads. You have to get out of their way, let them do what they want and avoid saying anything, or face the risk of being beaten up or shot. Such a civilised country.
Two Teenagers Arrested For Murdering An Elder American Man
Journalists were told not to report this story because it might hurt the tourist industry.
Friday 6th September 2013
One of our cats was acting very strangely yesterday. She was staying a lot closer to us than she usually does and she was obviously frightened. Last night she alternated between sleeping on the bed and sleeping on my bedside table. She has never done this before. She had only been outside briefly after breakfast and we weren't sure what it was that had spooked her.
The last time I saw her like this was when a stray dog nearly bit her. Prior to living in this house she had only met one dog and he didn't bite cats. She seemed to have no idea that dogs were potentially dangerous and went to say hello to one of the strays that lives on the workers' camp here.
It attempted to bite her and she escaped by about half an inch. I watched the incident take place. She was in a state of shock for about three days and now she doesn't go outside the garden. What could it have been in the garden that made her so afraid? We may have found the answer.
A neighbour called my wife this morning. As she was driving out of the housing development today she saw a big cobra in the road. She reported it to the security guards and they told her that they have also seen king cobras. I remember reading somewhere that all animals have a natural fear of snakes.
I mentioned recently that the outside area around our house wasn't finished very well by the builders. I've been working on it, but there are still some problem areas.
The base of the house is a couple of feet above ground level and in one area at the back of the house where we are growing some fruit there is just soil. There have appeared what look like rabbit holes leading under the house. It's very unlikely that rabbits have taken up residence, but possible that snakes have.
I spoke to the developer this morning about the problem and they have promised to take action. They have been very slow resolving other issues but because this is a safety issue I won't be very pleased if they don't take action quickly.
งูเห่า - 'ngoo hao' mid tone / low tone (cobra)
งูจงอาง - 'ngoo jong aang' mid tone / mid tone / mid tone (king cobra)
English speakers find it easy to pronounce the consonant cluster 'ng' at the end of words. In Thai this consonant cluster appears at the beginning of words and pronunciation isn't so easy. I think that after years of practice my ngor ngoo is just about OK now, but it can be a big problem for new learners of Thai.
I've talked about snakes in Thailand before. You only see them rarely, but there is always evidence (dead snakes on the road and shed skins, etc) that they are never very far away.
I found a shed skin from a good size cobra by the rubbish bins here and the big flood a few years ago flushed lots of snakes out of their holes.
Years ago I taught a student who had performed a field survey in an area very close to where our present house is. She spent quite a while just recording all the different types of fauna that she saw. On her list were lots of cobras and king cobras. My brother has had a problem with monocled cobras in his garden in Phuket and Suvarnabhumi International airport in Bangkok was built on land that was once known as 'Cobra Swamp'.
I wonder if I can find a pet mongoose to keep the cats company?
Reading signs and menus in Thai is quite easy and the basic reading skills to do this can be learned in about six months with a little effort. I would imagine that it is quite difficult to learn if you live outside of Thailand, but if you live in Thailand there are no excuses.
In Thailand there is practice material absolutely everywhere, an abundance of cheap children's learning material which is intended for Thai kids but it is perfect for foreigners wanting to learn to read Thai, and millions of people to help you.
However, being able to read passages of text in documents, books, newspapers and magazines is a big step up from reading signs and menus. I've been meaning to try to make this jump for years, but I never seem to have time.
I actually have some free time at the moment so picked up a cheap book of 'sexy jokes' that I bought at the local branch of Tesco Lotus in order to practice reading and translating. Each joke is short. The book didn't look too difficult and I thought it would give me a few more insights into Thai humour.
One of the problems with passages of Thai text is that writing tends to be quite formal. Almost every noun and verb in Thai has a formal and informal version. Some have more than two versions. In the short joke I will explain today I had to resort to my Thai dictionary for the very first word.
สตรี - 'sa-dtree' (woman)
If you ask someone what the Thai for woman/girl is they will tell you poo-ying. The other common word is saaw as in nong-saaw (younger sister), pee-saaw (older sister), or look-saaw (daughter).
But then you find out that the word ti-daa also means daughter and there is also this word sa-dtree that is sometimes used. This happens all the time in Thai, and there are probably more words that also mean female/woman/girl.
When you learn to speak you normally learn words that are in everyday usage and not the formal words. Thais know them, but when foreigners meet them for the first time the meanings are unknown.
Another problem is idiomatic usage of words. There are no spaces between Thai words and although you start to be able to separate words, it isn't always clear if two words are used together or not.
You might know the individual meaning of two separate words, but used together the idiomatic usage is quite different.
Thai grammar structure is quite different to English. Even if you understand the individual meanings of words, when they are strung together in a sentence the sentence doesn't make any sense.
Many different Thai words have the same meaning and, conversely, individual words have many different meanings. I often have problems when I don't know a word and look it up in a Thai-English dictionary. Which of the several different meanings is the one I want?
Another difficulty with written Thai (there are many) is abbreviations.
ชตพ - 'chor dtor por' (Q.E.D)
Apparently, this phrase originated from a Greek and was then translated into Latin .. and was then translated into Thai.
This particular joke (the easiest one to read in the book) has been written as a mathematical equation.
girls = time + money
time = money
Therefore: girls = money + money = (money)2
money = demon
Q.E.D.: girls = (demon)2
The Thai language can be very easy or very difficult. The grammar structure in everyday spoken Thai is very simple and, in comparison, English seems overly complicated.
However, tones are a perennial problem, as is the problem with Thais refusing to listen to, and refusing to understand, foreigners when they attempt to speak Thai.
The everyday spoken language is generally quite informal and you don't encounter formal language very often. You will hear taan instead of gin (to eat) in polite conversation with Thais who are further up in the social hierarchy, but not many words change.
Written Thai tends to be very formal and there is the immediate problem of lots of new vocabulary. The lack of punctuation and idiomatic usage, which renders word to word translation useless, also make reading difficult.
Still, I find it good fun to learn and quite enjoy the mental challenge.
As well as property developers selling condos, car manufacturers in Thailand also advertise new cars for sale on credit schemes with very low repayment rates. If you do a few sums, you realise that these low rates can't be right. I spoke to my wife about this yesterday.
She told me that these are all variable interest rate deals. The very low rate only applies for a year or two and then there is a big jump.
I've seen the same kind of thing in the UK. The difference is that in the UK this would have to be made very clear in the advertisement. In Thailand this important information is absent and thus it is quite misleading.
Yet more passenger van deaths. Are you beginning to see how nothing ever changes in Thailand? If you drive regularly in Thailand you will encounter lots of passenger vans and when you see how fast and aggressively they drive you will understand why they kill and injure so many people. The majority of van drivers are quite nasty individuals.
Already the cries to do something after the recent passenger van accident, which killed nine people, have died down. This is typical. There is always a lot of rhetoric immediately after major accidents in which lots of people die, but a few weeks later everything goes back to normal and nothing changes.
2 killed, 9 injured, including foreigners, in van accident
Thai security forces have erected a large checkpoint on the road to Hat Yai airport with lots of police present. At first I thought it was related to the ongoing southern insurgency, but this was a wrong assumption.
It's to do with the rubber protesters and government concern that they will attempt to disrupt airports in Thailand. The protesters have now resorted to throwing acid and ping-pong bombs at police. I don't know what ping-pong bombs are. When ping-pong is mentioned in Thailand other activities normally spring to mind.
Acid, bombs thrown in rubber protest
Surat Thani airport is also being guarded in case the protesters try to disrupt operations there.
Phuket Police on guard to face angry rubber farmers
Govt warned of airport seizures
If the open market price of rubber is Bt78 per kilo the farmers want the government to subsidise each kilo by Bt22 to Bt42. This would cost the government an absolute fortune and it clearly isn't feasible. The government must now be starting to regret its decision to support rice farmers.
There's never any logic in Thailand. It's all emotion, violence, guns and shootings. But is it entirely their own fault?
The video clip I gave a link to previously is well worth watching, and the book I referred to previously is well worth reading. Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit have a deep knowledge of Thai politics and the way that Thai society is structured, and they also have the ability to explain everything in English.
If you watch the video you will learn several things. The top 10% of Thai society own 70% of the country's wealth and there is a huge wealth gap in the country. The Isaan region accounts for one-third of the entire population but the highest jobs people from the northeast are expected to aspire to are petrol pump attendants or house maids. Real opportunities in life only exist for a small privileged minority in Thailand and this inequality causes problems in society.
The recent survey on education by the World Economic Forum ranked Thailand's education system as the worst in Southeast Asia. There are some decent schools in Bangkok, for those children whose parents have money, but education in the provinces is very poor.
Unless something is done to genuinely even things up for everyone in Thailand, this cycle of violent protests every few years will never stop.
Investors are already getting nervous and have started investing in Thailand's neighbouring countries where there is more political stability, lower labour rates, better English skills, and better education.
Confidence falls to nine-month low
As Burma's development continues to make progress it will take more and more away from Thailand. There are some wonderful unspoilt tourist areas in the country, and Burma will be hungry for any manufacturing and assembly work that it can take on for foreign companies.
Thailand really needs to get its act together otherwise the country will be left further and further behind its neighbours, especially in light of ASEAN.
Meanwhile the UK pound to Baht exchange rate continues to fly up and is well on the way to Bt51 as I write.
Thursday 5th September 2013
Being a generous person, I provide a free service to Thais correcting their English when they make mistakes. Some are appreciative; others not so. I had problems with my Internet connection yesterday and called the service centre in Bangkok. The girl called back telling me that a technician would come tomorrow and she asked whether that would be comfortable.
You mean, "Would that be convenient?" The word in Thai is saduak. She had no doubt been employed for her English language skills and she wasn't at all impressed with a farang correcting her. It really pissed her off.
A lot of Thais I have met who have lived abroad for a while and speak relatively good English have been quite arrogant. Their assumption seems to be that foreigners in Thailand are never able to speak any Thai and because they speak both Thai and English it makes them superior in some way.
I went with my wife to look at a kindergarten earlier this week. My wife asked the owner some questions and received answers. I could understand what was being said but the woman made a point of translating everything into English for my benefit, which I found quite patronising.
She was extremely arrogant and I took an instant dislike to her. Her school wasn't up to much, either, and it can now be crossed off our list.
I have also found that it is normally Thais who speak reasonable English who are the ones most likely to claim that they can't understand my Thai. That's easy to deal with and I can easily claim to not understand their English. If I want to, I can be just as childish as they are.
I sometimes get involved in little language duels with me speaking Thai and the Thai speaking English. The objective is to ask a question that the other person doesn't understand, at which time that person has to revert to his or her native language and thus loses the duel.
Again, it's exceptionally childish but I do it simply because some Thais annoy me with their arrogance.
I've just finished reading Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit's 'A History of Thailand' and it has been the best book I have read in a long time.
The second edition has an added chapter to include the 2006 coup and the authors' views on Thaksin are a lot more open and critical compared with their biography of Thaksin, which was written very objectively.
The book doesn't paint Thailand in a good light, but this will apply to any book that portrays Thailand how it actually is. When you start to understand how Thai society functions it isn't pleasant. The ruling elite have always maintained the need for a strong, authoritarian, dictatorial state and depending on different eras, different reasons have been used to justify this.
Various attempts have been made over the years to challenge the dictatorial rule, but no one has ever been strong enough and attempts have usually ended with bloodshed.
I have always had an interest in Thailand and Thai history, but the more I learn about Thailand the less I like the country. This is quite perverse and I should stop trying to find out more, but I can't.
I came to Thailand thinking that I knew something about the country because I had been there for a few vacations, but actually I knew nothing. It took about four years living in Thailand, observing, and reading as much as possible just to start to scrape the surface.
This book could have speeded up the learning process by several years. It will not now be consigned to a bookshelf where it will gather dust. I will read it again, highlighting the most pertinent parts, and then use it as a reference.
I thoroughly recommend this book and I thoroughly recommend anything written by the same authors. You can watch the authors making a presentation at the Ford School's International Policy Center on the subject of Thai politics on YouTube.
Understanding the Colors of Thai Politics
In the video the speakers talk about many aspects of Thai politics and society, including how unfair society is in Thailand, how the ruling classes are given special privileges, and how there is no interest in implementing the rule of law because that would undermine the privileges that the elite enjoy.
I'm already having nightmares about what I'm going to do about my children's education. The World Economic Forum carried out a survey on education in the ten ASEAN countries. Burma and Laos weren't included. Of the remaining eight, Thailand came eighth.
Thai education ranked bottom out of eight Asean countries surveyed
Low ranking for quality despite high spending
Having taught at some Thai schools I'm not the least surprised. There are many reasons.
When I was teaching I asked my M6 students what they learned in their ICT (Information and Communications Technology) class. They reeled off a very impressive sounding list of different technologies and network protocols. Wow, I thought at first, next time I have problems with my home network I can ask one of the students for help.
However, some further questioning revealed that knowing the names of some different technologies and protocols was the extent of their knowledge. They weren't taught anything technical at all. As is typical with the Thai rote learning system, they just had to remember some facts and regurgitate them in an exam.
They were supposed to know about HTML so I gave them a mini-project to create their own business and make a simple website. They didn't have a clue about HTML and could only create web pages using Dreamweaver.
These type of problems are only the tip of the iceberg. Thailand is an authoritarian state and the ruling elite want ordinary people to behave and do what they are told. Free-thinkers are dangerous and undesirable. A big part of the 'education' system is designed to make the general population think and behave how the ruling elite want them to think and behave.
The children of the ruling elite don't have to endure the Thai education system because rich people in Thailand send their kids abroad for their education.
This is the third time I have seen this kind of incident in recent weeks:
Man stabbed to death in feud over girlfriend
Wednesday 4th September 2013
The rubber protesters have now got the bit between their teeth and the situation is getting worse. The current market price for rubber is Bt78.13 and they want the government to guarantee a price of between Bt100 and Bt120.
The government offered them a subsidy of Bt1,260 per rai, but they refused this. Thailand uses both metric and imperial units of measurement (1 sen = 1 centimeter, 1 niw = 1 inch), and there are also Thai units of measurement.
One waa is two meters in length and thus one square waa (dtaa-raang waa) is the equivalent of four square meters. One rai (area) is equal to 1,600 square meters. These are the commonly used Thai units of measurement. There are others, but they aren't commonly used.
Rubber protesters gather near airport
Rubber farmers reject cabinet subsidy offer
The government has brought this problem on itself by introducing a populist policy to help rice farmers. If they now give in to rubber farmers, next up will be fruit farmers, shrimp farmers, oil palm farmers, and fisherman, etc.
If workers in the agricultural sector get government subsidies this will probably upset low-paid workers in other service industries who might be tempted to follow suit. Thailand is becoming quite an expensive country in which to live and lots of low-paid workers are really struggling.
If wages go up, prices will increase further and the cost of living will become even more expensive for those left behind. Whenever I talk to Thais about the increasing price of goods, they always blame it on the current government's introduction of new minimum wages.
Booze price going up in Thailand
Thai businesses are even expected to relocate to neighbouring countries where labour is cheaper in the same way that businesses from developed companies have relocated assembly plants to Thailand.
Costs may force SME relocation
If the United States goes into Syria this is likely to increase the worldwide price of oil and this will push up the cost of living in Thailand even higher. No doubt Yingluck is seeking more family advice on how to resolve this problem.
There's a certain amount of irony here. Thais have always looked enviously at the high wages and standards of living in developed countries and striven to emulate those countries. While doing so they have always been blind to the problems that ordinary people face in developed countries.
With all the development that has taken place in Thailand in recent years and with higher wages for certain people, they are now beginning to see some of the problems that exist in developed countries. Of course, the huge burden of supporting an expensive welfare state is one problem that Thailand doesn't have.
This morning's exchange rate of Bt50.1143 to one UK pound is the highest I have seen for a while. If these problems escalate it could go higher. With the farang high season approaching in Thailand, what is bad news for rubber farmers could turn out to be good news for the tourist industry. It will also be helping exports.
The other effect all this uncertainty and talk of military intervention in Syria is having is to start pushing up gold prices again. At the start of the global financial crisis gold prices went crazy because gold was seen as a safe haven for investors.
The price dropped quite a lot earlier this year, but it is now starting to climb again. It's a highly volatile, unstable world that we live in.
Despite rice farmers being given a guaranteed price for their rice by the government, which is higher than the price on the open market, they still aren't happy and want more.
Farmers unhappy with pledging prices
Are they never satisfied? It's the same with many Thai girls. Good-hearted, kind, generous, caring foreign men get involved with poor Thai girls who have absolutely nothing in life (and no chance of ever getting anything in life) and give them lives that they could never have dreamed of.
Instead of the girls being eternally grateful to the men for elevating them out of a life of poverty, they just want more and are never satisfied with what they have. It's this kind of greedy attitude that can really turn you against Thais.
The government should simply stop subsidising farmers and let them fend for themselves in a free market economy. If this goes on for much longer and the government keeps giving in it will break the country.
With Thais it is always one way. If the market price were to go above the government's agreed figure would they then decide that they wanted to trade in the open market? Take, take, take and never any give. Now I'm getting quite bored with all these protests.
There are certain things that foreigners should be very careful of in Thailand. One is danger on the roads, especially riding motorbikes. Another is getting involved with Thai girls who have jealous boyfriends.
Many Thai men regard girls as possessions and won't accept the girl wanting to end the relationship. If the girl wants to leave and gets involved with another man it can be dangerous for the girl and also dangerous for her new boyfriend.
There are lots of guns in the country and lots of jai rawn Thai men who are stupid enough to use them.
Australian tourist dies in Patong motorcycle crash
Man slain in Krabi, jealous lover suspected
Another incident due to the gun culture in Thailand.
Football referee hit by gunfire in Bangkok
Tuesday 3rd September 2013
I haven't worked out whether Thailand has no consumer laws, or whether there are consumer laws, but (in the same way as traffic laws) they are simply ignored.
The sign here has been put up all over town. The advert looks great. It basically promises home ownership for the same monthly payment (or cheaper) than renting a cheap room. It claims that a small one-bedroom condo can be reserved for Bt1,900 and the monthly payments thereafter are only Bt2,900.
Lots of Thais can only afford to rent rooms and paying rent doesn't buy them anything. Why would they want to rent when they can buy their own home for the same monthly payment as their rent (or lower)? It will be theirs eventually and hopefully will also go up in price. The choice is a no-brainer.
These tiny condos cost almost Bt1.9 million and some quick mental arithmetic told me that the figures didn't compute. At these figures the mortgage would take almost 52 years to repay without any interest payments. Interest payments would increase the overall cost by a third to a half and no one is going to get an 80 year mortgage.
This was bugging me so I went into the sales office to get an explanation. Of course, this didn't happen. The girl presented me with some pieces of paper and evaded my questions. When Thais know that there is no answer, they won't admit that there is no answer. They ignore the questions.
There are various additional upfront payments that the advertisement didn't mention, and even after paying these payments the outstanding amount is still Bt1,676,900.
No matter how long the term of your mortgage (and I think the maximum mortgage term is 30 years) the monthly payments, including interest, are going to be a lot more than Bt2,900. Or does this low repayment figure require making a large lump sum payment beforehand? If so, why doesn't the ad mention this?
Unless I have missed something quite fundamental, the claim in the advertisement is a complete lie. If they advertised the actual amounts they probably wouldn't get many customers. By not being truthful they probably entice people through the door and maybe then they can convince people to buy.
Budget airlines got into trouble in the UK some years ago for advertising flight prices that weren't realistic. A fare of 99 pence to New York looks great, but after they add in the airport taxes and various other taxes the price that you actually have to pay is significantly more.
This kind of scam is illegal in the UK, but not in Thailand.
Ryanair fined for 'misleading' pricing
I was pleased to see that Tesco in the UK were in trouble recently.
Tesco fined over 'half-price' strawberries claim
Tesco were fined in the UK because consumers have laws to protect them in the UK. Tesco Lotus in Thailand do similar things and nothing happens.
Last week at Tesco Lotus my wife saw something on sale, but the 'before sale' price had been inflated. It was something she had bought before and she knew the price. The real price before the sale was a lot less than Tesco were claiming.
On a few occasions we have picked up something advertised on the shelf at one price, but been charged a higher price at the checkout. We have only noticed this with certain items, but it has probably happened on other occasions without being noticed.
If you shop at Tesco Lotus you should be good at mental arithmetic or carry a calculator. Most people probably think that buying double or triple packs, or buying larger sizes, is cheaper. This isn't always the case, even with the 'special offers' that are advertised. Sometimes it works out cheaper to buy single items or small packets, but you need to be able to do mental arithmetic.
A few years ago I saw some imported jam in Tesco Lotus with a sign saying that there was a discount if you bought two jars. I worked out what the discount should be, but I was charged a higher price at the checkout. I queried this and was told that the discount only applied to the second jar. The first jar was full price. The sign didn't say anything about this and the way it was written was highly misleading.
All of the clothes and shoe shops here have permanent 365 days a year sales. New stock arrives on the shelves with a supposed 30-70% discount from day one. The goods were never sold at the supposed original price. Therefore, they are never on sale. This always reminds me of how mattresses are sold.
UK consumer laws are very clear about this, but these laws are non-existent (or ignored) in Thailand.
I really dislike deceit. Foreign tourists in Thailand will encounter a lot of lying Thais in Bangkok and the tourist resorts, but Thais also deceive other Thais. They advertise in such a way to make people who can't afford things think that they can afford things. This is why there is so much household debt in Thailand.
- Before reducing prices in a sale, items must have been sold at the higher price for 28 consecutive days in that store immediately before the sale, unless a sign explains the terms of the offer
- Items shouldn't be on offer at the sale price for longer than being sold at the higher price unless the shop displays a sign explaining how the sale differs from these rules or, if something is going out of date
Maybe I'm being a little too cynical here, but I think there is also another reason. The non-returnable payments to reserve houses and condos are extremely low. You can reserve a multi-million Baht home for Bt20,000 or Bt10,000.
There are probably a lot of Thais who get excited about owning their own home and reserve somewhere only to realise later that they can't really afford the property. The reservation money doesn't get returned and it's an easy way for property developers to make money by selling an unattainable dream.
With a few recent blips in the Thai economy and Bernanke saying that the Fed will start to reduce 'quantitative easing', the UK pound to Baht exchange rate has finally started to improve.
The 50 Baht to the pound level seems to be where resistance is being felt and whenever the rate goes to over 50 it returns to below 50 shortly afterwards. It's never easy trying to predict what will happen next, but Brits such as myself will be hoping for more gains.
How bad will it get for Thailand? It's interesting watching how the same problems keep coming around in Thailand and how lessons from the past are never learned. Some Thais think the same way.
It seems like 1997 all over again
The housing boom that I have been witnessing locally has all the signs of being a very big bubble. The single bedroom condos I referred to above are tiny and cost Bt1.9 million. The two-bedroom condos are also tiny and these are on the market for Bt3.8 million. These prices are making the house I bought a couple of years ago look like a real bargain.
It's happening elsewhere in Thailand as well.
Land Prices In Pattaya Have Increased 150-200%
I really don't care if the housing market implodes because I bought my house to live in, not as an investment. However, a lot of speculators have been buying property just to make a profit and if there is a repeat of 1997 a lot of people will get their fingers burnt.
Whenever Thais get upset about something it never seems to take very long for the guns to come out and for someone to get shot.
As I have found on Thai roads, certain types of Thai male get very angry and aggressive and they can't control that anger and aggression. This latest fatal shooting was in connection with the rubber price protests. This is an aspect of the country that I find very disturbing.
Even if the first shooting was over a previous dispute, shooting someone dead is not the right way to settle a dispute. Unfortunately, this is how disputes are often settled in Thailand.
Shooting of protest guard stemmed from previous dispute: police
Second rubber protester shot dead
Nakhon Sri Thammarat already has a fearsome reputation among Thais as a violent province and these incidents will only enhance that reputation.
A friend of my wife's has a small (11 rai) rubber plantation. She visited us with her husband a few days ago. They aren't complaining about the rubber price and they're doing OK. Her husband taps the rubber himself instead of employing rubber tappers. This seems to be quite unusual.
I have no personal experience of cultivating rubber, but I have been told by Thais that most rubber plantation owners employ people who tap rubber for a living. They're not actually employed, as such, but work on a commission basis and take a 50% cut of the takings for the rubber they tap.
This seems quite generous, given that the owner of the plantation has to buy the land, rubber trees, fertiliser, etc., and is responsible for any maintenance that needs doing. My wife says that there is also a problem with the rubber tappers stealing rubber and not accounting for all the rubber that is tapped.
Apparently, rubber farmers in Nakhon Sri Thammarat want the government to guarantee a fixed price that is about 50% above current market rates. As I said before, it's not so much that they don't understand the basic laws of supply and demand, but the problem stems from the government supporting rice farmers with the rice-pledging scheme and rubber farmers don't think that this is fair. They have a point, but shooting people isn't going to resolve any of their grievances.
Monday 2nd September 2013
At 4pm yesterday my builders still hadn't shown up, so I took my wife and daughter swimming. Optimistically, I left the front gate open a little so that they could get in just in case they showed up. When we got home they had indeed arrived. There were quite a few, including the two young Burmese boys. They only had about an hour of daylight after which they worked by artificial light. It then started to rain heavily so they called it a day and said they would return tomorrow.
My Mon friend, Chaang Where, modified the water pipe himself rather than having to get a plumber involved and another guy started laying the concrete blocks. It looked OK last night in the dark, but not so good this morning.
The rectangular section of ground isn't quite square and he has aligned the interlocking blocks with one of the short edges of the rectangle. With every row of blocks the gap on the long side gets bigger and it doesn't look right. It will also create more work cutting blocks to fill the gaps. It would be better to align the blocks with the long edge. Chaang Where came over this morning after I had called him. He agrees and they will change it.
At the start of this project Chaang Where gave me a lot of his time and made lots of phone calls on his own mobile phone. He asked for nothing and the only thing he showed was a genuine willingness to help me. He's a lovely guy and if I was an employer I would hire him in a heartbeat. He's smart, he's cooperative, he's bilingual, and it matters to me not one iota that he doesn't have a degree.
My previous criticism wasn't directed at the builders personally. They take on a lot of work because they get paid poorly and need the money. The point I was trying to make is that if you start a big house-building project and the workers keep disappearing to do other jobs it adds a lot of frustration.
The construction workers here, like many construction workers in Thailand, live in temporary accommodation on the building site. The worker accommodation here is euphemistically called 'The Camp'.
It's a ramshackle collection of dwellings made from scraps of plywood and corrugated iron. There is no protection from mosquitoes and the workers always complain about mosquito bites. They've tried to make it into a home by adding some plants and one of the women has opened a small minimart, but it's basically a slum.
One of the government's big election pledges at the last election was to introduce a minimum wage of Bt300 (9.33 USD) per day for manual workers. The workers here may actually get a bit more than that, but not much. Their work is very tiring physically and they work long hours. They do jobs like the one I want doing after they finish their regular work.
There has been quite a lot in the news this week about fast food workers in the States demanding a 15 USD per hour minimum wage. I'm not sure if Thai construction workers have seen this or, if they have, what their reaction is to fast food workers demanding more money per hour than they receive all day.
Many Thais go to work abroad and when they hear about salaries abroad their eyes light up. This is also why a lot of jobs have been lost in the West and relocated to Asia.
I don't know how Malaysia continues to get away with its Bumiputera policy. This kind of discrimination is illegal in the West and if anyone tried to give one ethnic group special privileges over other ethnic groups in a Western country there would be riots in the street. In Malaysia there are special laws to actively support discrimination.
Is Malaysia university entry a level playing field?
Not only is it wrong, but by building resentment among the large non-ethnic Malay population the country is creating a ticking time bomb. Malaysia is also failing to develop its best talent if that top talent happens to be ethnic Indian or Chinese.
It's 2013. With policies like this, does Malaysia really expect to be a fully developed country by 2020? How does openly discriminating against a large part of the population fit in with the government's own mission statement for Vision 2020? Where's the national unity, social cohesion and social justice?
"Malaysia should not be developed only in the economic sense. It must be a nation that is fully developed along all the dimensions: economically, politically, socially, spiritually, psychologically and culturally. We must be fully developed in terms of national unity and social cohesion, in terms of our economy, in terms of social justice, political stability, system of government, quality of life, social and spiritual values, national pride and confidence."
Sunday 1st September 2013
Foreigners go to live in Thailand for all sorts of different reasons, although a general dissatisfaction with aspects of their home countries is probably something that many have in common. My reasons for going to live in Thailand initially were different from my reasons for continuing to live in Thailand.
For some people, the opportunity to build their own house to their own design at an affordable price is very appealing. Land is getting expensive in certain parts of the country, but there are still lots of places in Thailand where land is cheap. Labour and materials are also cheaper than in most Western countries.
Thai book shops sell books full of different house designs, some of which are very attractive. You could use one of these designs as a guide and then customise it to get exactly what you want. An architect can be found easily and then commissioned to produce a detailed plan. It all sounds very good in theory.
I didn't go down this route, and I'm quite pleased that I didn't. I bought my house from a developer who had four different sizes of house. I chose the size that offered the space we required and then had a few things changed.
Why didn't I simply buy a piece of land and custom design my own house?
There were various reasons for this. One was security. The development in which our house is located is secure and has round-the-clock security guards. The guards control access to the development and also patrol the development once an hour 24 hours a day. My neighbour also told me that the local police take a look around every night, but I have never seen them.
Outside of a secure development I would have no security and would have to rely on fitting lots of burglar bars, lights and alarms, etc.
Another reason for not going it alone was that I didn't want to be the one attempting to project-manage Thai and Burmese construction workers. The builders I've met have been good people, but like builders all over the world they work to their own rules. It was much easier having someone else to manage them.
Controlling local workers proved to be too much of a problem even for Thais and while our house was being built we saw the disappearance of three foremen. They kept making promises that weren't fulfilled and it was obvious that they had very little control over the workers.
One of the problems here, in this part of Thailand at least, is that the current construction boom (along with improving conditions in Burma) has resulted in a severe shortage of constructions workers. There are new condo buildings and private houses being built all the time and many Burmese workers, who came to Thailand to find work, have returned home because the economy in Burma has now started to boom.
If you can actually find workers it is likely that they will already be working on other projects, and that they will continue to work on other projects while they also work on your project.
Since moving in last November I have been kept quite busy doing jobs myself and there were also a few jobs that I wanted done by other people. Last month I made an effort to get some of these done.
The outside areas around the house were a complete mess. The ground consisted of bad soil, clay, and lots building debris. Instead of doing a proper job, the builders simply covered it over with turfs - almost literally, painting over the cracks.
The grass died because there wasn't any good soil underneath and after a few months it looked terrible. The 'grass' they planted behind the house wasn't even grass - it was like weeds. One of the first things I got done was to replace all the weeds behind the house with tiles.
Most of the outside area is done now, apart from one small section where the grass has died and there is an exposed water pipe. It's still a mess and I wanted some attractive concrete blocks laid. This should have been a really simple job, but that hasn't been the case.
The first problem was finding where to buy them as none of the large home improvement stores had what I was looking for. Eventually I found a huge factory that makes concrete paving blocks. The factory normally supplies big projects, however, they do sell to the public. The next problem was that they offered no delivery service.
The blocks I needed weighed about 1.5 tonnes. I didn't want to make multiple journeys in my car and didn't want to damage my suspension. The weight was too much even for a pickup truck. One of the builders arranged for a big truck to help and after a lot of coordination I managed to get the blocks home on Friday.
The builders said they would come to my house on Friday afternoon to start work. I waited in, but they didn't come. They arrived on Saturday morning and started preparing the ground. They left, saying they were going to lunch and that five people would be back to do the work at 3pm. I waited indoors all day, but again no one came.
This morning one of the workers arrived early. I was pleased ... momentarily. I thought he was going to start work, but he only wanted to collect some tools he had left behind. Now I don't know when they will be back.
The guy who helped me initially was the same man who arranged for the tiles to be laid at the back of the house. He is ethnic Mon and speaks both Thai and Burmese fluently. He's a really nice guy. He seems to control a small group of family members consisting of younger brothers and nephews.
On Friday he brought along two of his nephews aged 11 and 14. They only speak Burmese, so he translates for them. I was concerned that they weren't at school, but he said they were currently on a school holiday.
While he was helping me at the concrete block factory, he was supposed to be building a bungalow near the Thai/Malaysian border. Like builders everywhere, he always has several projects on the go and flits between different jobs.
It's not a big problem. I'd like them to get the job finished so I can get the garden organised, but it's not a huge inconvenience. I'm sure that when they do eventually turn up they will do the job quickly. One added complication is that a plumber also needs to lengthen a water pipe so that they can lay the blocks above it.
The worst thing is not knowing when they will come back and not really being able to go out. They are helping me, so I don't want to put too much pressure on them otherwise they might not come back at all.
Getting back to my original point, the amount of work involved in building an entire house is several orders of magnitude greater than the piddly little job I want done in my garden.
With the way that local construction workers work - doing things their own way, disappearing, saying they will come back but not returning, working on other projects, etc - I really wouldn't want to go through the process of building an entire house. The language difficulties are not to be underestimated, either.
The strict Thai social hierarchy also comes into play with such matters. I am, no doubt, the poorest person in the neighbourhood and I am also a farang, which is about as low as it is possible to get in Thailand. I am given passing respect, but I know that by being a foreigner and by not being immensely rich I am not important at all.
Quite a few of my neighbours are senior soldiers in the Thai army. One neighbour, who has had a large house built on a double plot of land and is having lots of additional work done, is a big boss in the customs department and also the relative of one of the most important men in Thailand. These people don't seem to have the same problems getting things done that I do.
My neighbour, a university lecturer and business owner, is a bit more important than me but even she has difficulty in getting things done. However, when her husband - a high ranking soldier - asks for anything to be done it is done immediately.
No one is equal in Thailand. As a house owner I should be equal to other house owners, but there are always other factors that place me way down the social hierarchy. Thais get priority over foreigners, and Thais higher up the social hierarchy get priority over Thais lower down. Quite often when I am trying to deal with Thais they think talking to a foreigner is so hilarious that they laugh. That's how important Thais regard foreigners.
If you have lots of patience, Thailand is still a great place to have a beautiful, affordable home built. I've seen articles in 'Home and Garden' type magazines about farangs who have had beautiful houses built in Thailand.
Building your own home looks very desirable, but if you decide to undertake such a project bear in mind that it probably won't be quick and it probably won't be without many frustrations.
I'm also not sure whether it helps having building experience or not. Being able to do things yourself would help, but if you have too much knowledge you might have problems dealing with local construction techniques and practices.
My wife has been watching a lot of reports on Thai TV news recently about criminals interfering with remote controlled car locking mechanisms. Not so long ago we all used to lock our cars with keys, but I don't think anyone does that these days and we all have remotes on our key fobs.
The signal from the sender unit can be intercepted, of course, and it appears that there are a number of criminals in Thailand who have devices that can intercept signals.
They can block the signal so that the doors don't actually lock when the owner thinks the car is locked, and I also think they can copy the signal so that they can open doors later without the remote.
I'm not sure how widespread this is, how much of a problem it really is, or how much scaremongering is going on. The wife says that most incidents take place in large car parks in Bangkok.
I'm not particularly concerned, but when parking in big underground department store car parks it's probably worth taking a look around as you are about to lock your car to make sure there are no suspicious looking people in the vicinity.
Some people are advising everyone to lock their cars using their key, but this is probably a bit of an overreaction.
Motorists urged to ensure cars locked
Many Remote Control System Cars Been Broken Into!
Last week I saw the Japanese man in this photo being dragged around the shops by his wife and he looked quite glum. I didn't find out whether his wife could read English, or not, but his T-shirt made me laugh and I asked if I could take a photo. There are times when the simple expression written on his shirt seems to sum up marriage quite well.
If you had asked me five years ago what I would be doing now I would probably have said travelling all around Asia. That was the original plan for my retirement. I'd planned on keeping a rented room in Thailand as a base, but spending lots of time elsewhere.
It didn't happen and I don't honestly think I wanted it to happen. It could have happened if I'd really wanted it to. It seemed like a good idea for many years, but I had begun to grow very tired of my solitary lifestyle. It was getting lonely, boring, and meaningless.
I met my wife, had a child, bought a house, and now there is another child on the way. I never have a complete day to myself and there are always things to do that aren't exactly fun. I can't do the travelling that I used to do, and it's difficult even arranging day trips.
Most of my savings have been used up buying the house and cars, etc, and my house and growing family take care of my monthly income. Whereas money was never really an object before, it is now. It's strange why so many men choose to marry, but like most of them I wouldn't want to go back to being single.
It may seem even stranger in a country such as Thailand where temporary female company is so abundant and easy to find. The girls for hire put on an act when they are working, but it is only a job. As soon as your time is up they just want to get away and find the next customer.
There is a certain amount of physical satisfaction, but no emotional satisfaction at all. To get the emotional satisfaction you need to make relationships permanent and once that happens you are awarded the 'Game Over' T-shirt.
Of course, we are all different and we all have different physical and emotional needs. These also change as we get older. We can't ask for advice or follow what other people do because we all need to do what is right for us at our time of life.
It also depends whether or not having children is important. I think that deep down I did, but my brain always said that I didn't. This is why you should always pay attention to your inner gut feelings rather than your logical thoughts. I think also that I sensed my time to have children was running out.
When foreign men move to Thailand they have options that maybe they wouldn't have in their home countries. Instead of being ignored and treated as completely undesirable by women, there are suddenly young and attractive girls interested in relationships and marriage.
Some of the girls view marriage to a foreigner as so desirable that they will put a lot of pressure on men, or even trick them into marriage.
This happened with my first Thai girlfriend who suddenly announced that she was pregnant. Even though I wasn't ready for marriage I agreed to marry her for the baby's sake. Subsequently, she slipped on her grandmother's wet bathroom floor and miscarried.
There were a lot of trust issues with the relationship, she was far too pushy with what she wanted and didn't care what I wanted, and the relationship didn't last. However, it could all have ended up very differently.
As a foreign man with moderate means in Thailand you do have a degree of power and the ability to choose what kind of life you want. However, there's a good chance that you will encounter Thai girls who see you as a means of getting the kind of life they want.
When you first arrive in the country it may seem as if you are a kid in a candy shop with all the attention you receive from Thai females, but remember that there is no need to hurry.
Moreover, if your first stop in the country is in a tourist resort the girls that are most likely to pay attention to you are the girls you most need to avoid. Take your time learning about the country, the culture and the girls.
The old saying 'Marry in haste, repent at leisure' is very appropriate in Thailand.
It's worth bearing in mind that these trivial issues in Thailand that I write about pale into insignificance with regard to what is happening in the rest of the world. It's hard to imagine that the world could be any more screwed up than it is. (That wasn't the term I wanted to use, but I try to moderate my language when writing on-line).
I hadn't paid that much attention to Syria until I saw the following report of a school being attacked from the air. Children were running away in agony suffering from Napalm-like burns and there is very little medical support in the country. It's a harrowing piece of news footage.
Syria crisis: Incendiary bomb victims 'like the walking dead'
Just after watching this crime against humanity I watched the chimps' tea party in the UK House of Commons and saw MPs cheering because they had won a vote ruling out UK military action in Syria. Having just watched video evidence of the atrocities being carried out in Syria, the reaction of the MPs looked extremely callous to say the least.
Of course, the vote had nothing to do with Obama, Cameron or Syria. This was all about Iraq. MPs who had previously had the wool pulled over their eyes by Bush and Blair - and felt stupid as a result - wanted to prove that they couldn't be fooled again.
The cost of yet another war is absolutely horrendous, and coming at a time when many ordinary people are now suffering financially because of failing economies and huge amounts of government debt.
The cost of sending a soldier to war for a year isn't very clear, but depending on who you listen to it is somewhere between US$500,000 and US$1 million.
Calculating The Cost Of The War In Afghanistan
The news reports have talked about the US attacking Damascus with Tomahawk Missiles. Again, it is difficult to find a definitive price because of the different ways cost is calculated, but these missiles can cost up to US$1.4 million.
How Tomahawk cruise missiles may send messages to (and from) Syria
Not only does war use up billions of dollars, but some of the world's best brains are behind the technology. With so many poor people in the world suffering from a chronic lack of basic infrastructure, that money and technological know-how, ideally, should be used to improves lives, not destroy lives.
"Worldwide 2.7 billion people do not have adequate sanitation facilities, and 880 million people do not have access to clean water."
Source: A lack of access to clean water and sanitation is a worldwide killer claiming millions of lives
Obama is now in a difficult position. Naturally, I can understand the people who don't want to go to war, but it isn't right for a government to commit atrocities against its own people and for the rest of the world to do nothing.
Another crazy story involves sport and the transfer fee of an English footballer to a Spanish club. I was glad to see that the Barcelona coach has spoken out about this.
Many Spanish football clubs are in lots of financial trouble, as are many ordinary Spaniards. Spain was one of the countries hit hardest by the Eurozone crisis and there are still big problems.
The authors of 'A History of Thailand' use a great little phrase in describing the events leading up the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997.
"The (Thai) property market had become detached from reality."
The transfer market and money involved in football has certainly become detached from reality. A huge bubble has been created and it's going to make a big explosion when it bursts.