'I Walked Away: An Expatriate's Guide to Living Cheaply in Thailand' by Michael Ziesing

Review by Alexander Turner

Nana Plaza. 8PM. January. 1994. Throbbing lights throwing primary coloured tones over passing revellers. Pulsating music gushing from bars and vibrating in stone like a million heartbeats vying to be heard. Glimpses through briefly opened doorways of a women jostling nakedly against each other on narrow stages. Skin brushing against skin. The smell of perfume and hair lacquer flooding bars that are starting to fill with customers. Entreating touts sometimes accompanied by sangthip-coke swilling bargirls. "Come and look inside." It's an intoxicating atmosphere even for those already drunk on it or suffering from expat hangovers. Nanaplaza was just starting to out-Patpong Patpong.
It had been threatening to do so for a while and now it was working.

I was sitting at one of the outside tables belonging to a Turkish restaurant. At least I think it was a Turkish restaurant. It might have been Greek. Neither my Greek or Turkish friends would thank me for confusing the two. But I wasn't here due to any culinary experimentalism. I was about to meet someone who according to my, then, girlfriend, Oy, might be able to give me the information I needed to stay in Bangkok.

Since my first arrival in Bangkok in 1991 I had been looking for an angle or an insight as to how I might be able to stay, live and work in Thailand. I had tried some fairly extreme things already. I had had a marriage which was really a bid for the Thai equivalent of a green card. Bad research. Marrying a Thai gives you no rights to stay or work in the country. I had looked very seriously into faking cheating and lying and had loads of photocopies of other people degrees with my name replacing theirs, TOEFL certifivates, with my name replacing the original, faked up journo cards. My mind had been down a thousand roads and none of them so far were worth jacking in my job in the UK for. After all I was lucky enough to have a boss that let me get someone in to cover my job for months at a time. My life wasn't that bad but I wanted more. I wanted to be able to stay in Bangkok on a decent wage. If I had that, I thought, then I would be set.

Why Bangkok had taken such a hold on me was vague in my mind. It wasn't the bars. Since I'd been living with Oy I'd pretty much stopped going to the bars anyway. It was the sheer pleasant-ness of daily life here. Everybody had time to stop and chat. Everybody greeted you with a smile. If you went somewhere you had gone perhaps once or twice before people would shout out your name and ask you about some detail of your life that you had only mentioned in passing. Thai people seemed more fully alive than any other people I had met.

Plus there was Oy. We'd lived together for a couple of months and felt close. I didn't want to just fuck off and leave her to go back to the bar. I knew that within a couple of weeks there'd be nothing left between us. She knew I had no money to give her. After all I really was and am pretty low on the financial order of farang. In fact I'm almost off the chart being somewhere on a financial par with a rice picker. Oy would go back to being a skilled Patpong bargirl and would, in weeks, have another live-in boyfriend.

Oy, despite being a tad psychotic (See And Blood Came Out of His Eyes in the Short Story section), was a nice girl to be with. She had a very bendy body and a natural ability to chat and charm. She was a bit older than many of her friends and lacked that blank canvas pretty face of the younger girls, but she was a real fiery girl. If you weren't a customer she'd still chat and joke with you. She genuinely enjoyed flirting and joking around and I think, in the long run, this paid off for her. She had a very spoilt three year old girl who lived with the grandparents in a hair salon a couple of blocks from Patpong. She loved her daughter more than anything despite blaming her for having lost her once perfect breasts. She also knew virtually every well to do farang who had ever been near a Patpong bar.

The guy she had set me up to meet with was an American businessman called Bob. Bob was the real McCoy. Bob was a guy who knew every angle and how to play it. If anyone knew how I could stay and work in Thailand it would be Bob. "Bob 's a good man. He likes helping people. He helped out June before, just because I asked him if he could."

"Was he your boyfriend."

She laughed. "No... Bob... Well. Bob likes ladyboys. Crazy I know... But there are a lot of farang like that. But he's a good man. I know he can help you."

Bob had to be a good man because he decided that the best place to meet would be the Nana. Oy came with me. I suspected that she might be checking up on me. Sussing out if I had a girlfriend hidden away in some Nana bar.

Bob was a forty-something guy wearing a semi-casual suit. We ordered and ate something Turkish (or Greek).

"Oy tells me you're interested in staying in Thailand... Well. I can't say I blame you. Thailand's a great place to stay. I mean it ain't Heaven. And the hassles once you settle here are a real pain in the ass. You been here a while... How long ? A few weeks ? A few months ? Thing is... I should say this first. I've seen a lot of good men go down here. It can kind of get people down. If I had a baht for every guy I'd seen come here sharp as a new razor and end up a poor drunken slob who can't get up in the morning or even function I'd be a richer man by far... The Thais are a good people, but working for them... Well... Working for them is something else. None of them quite seem to understand the concept of paying you on time. You have to keep invoicing them for any service. If you're working for a Thai company full time they're always very wary of you. I guess they've seen too many farang turn into bar junkies. They assume that you're only here for the women... Hell if I was honest I'd have to say that was the main thing that keeps me here. Nowhere else in the world you can sit drinking a beer, watching the football with three Katoeys fighting over which one gets to suck your dick. But there's always a bit of personal distance. It can be a lonely place too. You can have all these women all over you and yet you'll never have the sort of relations with them you have with a girl back home. Oy's a good girl. Maybe even an exception. But how long do you think you could keep that together with all this pussy here... Oy seems to think you have a pretty good grasp on the place. She says you have goodmanners and speak pretty good Thai. I tell you. The manners count for a lot with the Thais but speaking the language... This country has Sixty Million people that can speak Thai and they all speak it better than you. What do you do...?"

"I'm in the theatre. Lighting back stage stuff."

"That's not much use here. They don't even know what the theatre is. Anything else ?"

"No. Not really."

"Then I'll be honest. You're going to have a hard time, unless you want to be an English teacher and you really don't want to be an English teacher. English teachers are a dime a dozen here. Last thing I heard a lot of the bigger schools have even started checking up on those fake degrees."

At this another guy joined us. A big guy with ginger hair and a Southern US accent. I can't remember his name.

"Hey. How're you doing ?" He said.

"Fine. Good to meet you."

Bob came back in "Our young friend here is looking for a way to find work in Thailand."

"Where you from ?" Said the new guy.

"London."

"Hell. No wonder. There's a fucking miserable place. Miserable place. But if anyone knows what's what, Bob's your man."

Bob continued. "Truth is I came here with published books under my belt. In the US I was being consulted by the best. But I got the idea into my head that I wanted to live here and it took me about three years to even get a job that got me a work permit. It was like I was fresh out of college again in a town where no-one knew me. For you I'd say that getting a decent job here was nearly impossible. The only way you could really do it would be to get something while you were in the UK. Get yourself sent out here. The fact you can speak a bit of Thai might even mean something in the UK. Doesn't mean shit while you're here."

What happened was that I went back to the UK. Within a couple of weeks I couldn't even remember what Oy looked like and I just went back to the business of working with half a mind to getting back to Thailand. I don't think Bob's words really sunk in at the time. But over the next year or so I started losing the will to even want to relocate in Thailand. Maybe if Michael Ziesing had written his book I Walked Away: An Expatriate's Guide to Living Cheaply in Thailand a couple of years earlier I would be sitting in the Nana Plaza right now.

Ziesing's book is realistic about the problems one is likely to encounter living in Thailand. Like Bob he is swift to correct any notions the reader might have about Bangkok being a kind of farang Heaven. He illustrates most of the pitfalls that the expat farang is likely to fall into while putting across the benefits of Thai society with equal clarity.

Ziesing was a forty-six-year-old divorced anarchist teaching part time classes full time when he decided to take the gigantic first steps that were to lead to a life in sunny Thailand. His decision seems to have come like a dramatic bolt out of the blue with a diary entry on June 11 1992 saying "Tonight I decide to get rid of everything I own except what I can fit into a backpack. I expect this to take six months to a year. I am also leaving my teaching jobs - my primary source of income. After all that is taken care of, I am moving to Thailand. I have no specific plans relative to earning a living and there is nothing lined up."

So he sold virtually everything he owned converting goods into currency, rented out his house to a former student and took a leap into the void. Once there he moved to Phuket and owned a bar for a while, a nightmare for a man who loves beer too much, taught English for a while, for beer money, and found that soon Thailand became his home. Later he moved to the North Eastern home of his girlfriend Det and has lived there ever since. Because along the way he saw so many farang make a huge mess of the move while having a clear vision himself of how to keep life as an expat brimming over nicely he started getting asked probing questions from tourists and would-be expats as to how he was able to make the move so successfully. The resulting book is his explanation. And his candour is admirable.

"This book is written from the perspective of a divorced, middle aged (and then some) man. If you have been to Thailand, you have some idea of what that might mean. I have not glossed over anything that accompanies the experiences of such a man. Political correctness might be OK for those who can afford the luxury of theorizing rather than doing. However, as a Westerner relocating to Thailand, the reality of everyday life is more important than the speculative agenda known as "political correctness." "

In fact he feels that political correctness, however well intentioned, is something that anyone travelling to Thailand should leave behind.

"Thais tend to be somewhat fatalistic and accepting in their approach to life. Consequently, they have not bought into the "recovery movement" so popular in the West. They are much less likely to feel they have been "victimized" and are more willing to take responsibility for their actions and the consequences. They are not whiners and complainers. Psychotherapy is not big in Thailand, and I suspect that is because people neither need nor want it. Thais recognise that everything is "up to you", and this is a frequently heard phrase. In my view, one of the great lessons Westerners can learn from Thai people is the lesson of individual responsibility."

Thus, having set out his general views, he goes on to outline his own experiences and write carefully set out chapters covering the various realities of the problems, benefits and necessities any farang relocating to Thailand is likely to encounter. There are chapter headings on Jobs, Visas, Costs, Thai Women, Thai Men, Buddhism, Language and Sex. As well as advisory chapter headings like "You Will Always Be A Farang", "Toward a Philosophy of Money" and "Do's and Don'ts". Throughout these chapters good clear succinct advise is backed up with anecdotes and examples of the serious pitfalls of ignoring basic rules of common sense.

"I find it difficult to sympathise with a 45 year-old man who married an illiterate 19 year-old "bar girl" and got taken to the cleaners. But you will meet many such people. Instead of learning from their mistakes what they have done is adopt a universally negative attitude about Thailand. Quite plainly, the cynical Thai-bashing ex-pat should go home."

He warns not just against the cynical expats but also specifies that for all the talk of rip-off bargirls that the greatest threat to any farang setting up in business or just trying to make his money last, is the down at heel farang drunk. These often charming characters are usually more adept at destroying the lives of their fellow farang than any scheming bargirl.

Just reading Ziesing is a bit like walking into a bar and getting into a chat with the coolest farang in Thailand. I would recommend it not just to those who want to make the hop to expatriate life in the Land of Smiles but to anyone visiting or thinking of visiting the country. There is clearer and truer advice for travellers in this book than in half a dozen worthy travel guides.

Whether I could live in an upcountry Thai village like Ziesing is another matter. Over the past three or four years I think I have become quite attracted to my things and the presence of my own culture which is, after all, what informs who I am. But there are definitely times when I think of Mr Ziesing sitting somewhere in his village with a fridge full of cool beers and I just think "You lucky lucky bugger".

I Walked Away : An Expatriate's Guide to Living Cheaply in Thailand
Copyright Michael Ziesing 1996
Published by Loompanics Unlimited 140pp
Price ???

Review: Alexander Turner 2001

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Here's some links from ThailandStories.com to where you can find more info on this book reviewed by JagoTurner and where you might purchase a copy :

http://www.amazon.com/Walked-Away-Expatriates-Cheaply-Thailand/dp/1559501391

http://www.bestwebbuys.com/1559501391