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Some Observations and Stories on Middle Class Thai Men

Over the past few months I’ve gotten to spend a lot of time in the new Surin rental house. We no longer live in the village house, although we do stay there on the weekends when visiting the village and my wife’s mother and other relatives there. While I have no problems living in the village, and actually like it, as hard as that is for some to understand and believe, with a school age child in need of a decent education it just wasn’t practical or expedient to stay in the village. The village school just wasn’t up to snuff. We started sending our daughter to Surin to a Muang school, daily, a long drive from the village and back, a couple years ago. It made no sense time-wise, nor monetarily even though. Surin is a fifty minute drive from the village. Roundtrip this becomes over an hour and a half each day just to go to school, which is a bit of a strain on a young kid, even without factoring in the dangers of travel in Isaan, the extra monies involved to pay for the travel to and fro, and the fact our daughter was scared shitless of the driving skills of the village guy who provides this bussing service from the village to Surin each day.

So a couple of years ago we as a family decided to move to Surin to have look sow (daughter) close to her new school, close to her new friends, and to cut out this lengthy and possibly dangerous daily travel time. For a while before we moved to Surin Sis and I were doing the daily roundtrip village to Surin driving, twice a day, to drop off and pick up look sow for her schooling. This truly became a real pain in the ass. Nearly four hours a day driving the highways and byways of Isaan, during the school rush hours to boot, can get tiresome very quickly. So, once the decision was made I had my wife and Sis look around for something suitable to rent for our stay in Surin. They found a nice house on the outskirts of the city that we rented for a while, nearly a year, and then we found something even better close to look sow’s school and her best friend from school’s family. Now we have a nice town-house style apartment with three bedroom’s, two baths, large living room and kitchen. The three bedrooms are all on the second floor with one bathroom. My bedroom has a small balcony overlooking the street and an empty lot directly across from our house that some of the neighbors have planted with trees and flowers to beautify the neighborhood. We have a carport/garage/driveway in front of the house too to park the pick-up truck out of the sun and rain, with a lockable gate. It’s a nice quiet middle class Surin neighborhood. Very safe, with good neighbors, most of whom work for the hospital nearby, one a doctor, another a government worker, a couple of teachers, an obviously gay bank manager for Thai Farm Bank, a building contractor, a couple of nurses, an Army officer, a policeman, etc. Working class and upper middle class mix it is. Nice people. The Thais are a very friendly people I’ve seen here. What’s a bit different from the west though is that even in a larger city type of setting they still remain in fact ... villagers. They even call the neighborhood we live in ... “our village”, and a lot of things I’ve seen and experienced, behaviors I’ve come to understand in the village of my wife carry over into this ‘city’ neighborhood living.

I’ve seen many western men talking about their experiences with Thai men on the different Thai related message boards. Most of these posts and stories are negative it seems. Most of them seem to be about Thai men met while indulging in the bar scene, and in these surrounding areas where the bar industry supports a lot of the businesses there. I take a lot of these negative stories with a grain of salt. I’ve seen the way a lot of westerners behave when out and about in Bangkok and Pattaya. I’ve seen the way they sometimes treat the natives of the country while they are drunk and running the bars and gogos. I know that this behavior by the louts and drunks has to have a negative effect on how a lot of us westerners there are perceived by the Thais who work in these areas. And I have to say that very, very rarely have I ever had a problem with a Thai man outside of these areas of influence during all the years I‘ve spent in the country.

I mean, let’s put it this way. Let’s say you live in New York City . You work in a hotel let’s say. (Something like Majestic Suites hotel on Soi Sukhumvit let’s say, or even somewhere more upscale down the soi from the bar areas.) A hotel near one of the areas where men can find streetwalkers. You see these men all the time in the area, picking up hookers, drunk and disorderly. They can be disrespectful and obnoxious, loud and abrasive. (And please, I’m not saying most farangs in Bangkok are this way, although Pattaya has a higher percentage behaving in this manner in my experience and opinion, but sit at the railing in Big Dog’s bar for instance overlooking the entrance to Nana Plaza for a few hours over a few nights and you’ll see what I am talking about. You’ll see many/enough examples in the hours you sit there to see my point, especially toward the end of the night nearer closing time.) For a Thai man these are foreigners to your country, not fellow countrymen. Most do not share your religion, your beliefs, or even your language. Obvious whoremongers who have money to burn, seemingly of little sense or self respect, cavorting openly with hookers who you see as the ugliest of the women representing your country, at least many of them. (As a lot of Thai men I’ve met do seem to be more interested in the very white skinned women, and also seem to like women a bit heavier than a lot of western men seem to do.) It's hard to blame the Thais for having a negative view of the farangs they see in their country in these areas, and thereby thinking, wrongly, but understandably, that all or most male visitors to the country are there for the same reasons.

If you were in your home country I'd be willing to bet that if Thai men were behaving the same way while visiting your country that most of you would come away with a bad impression of the Thais visiting your home area. The same goes for the Thais seeing farang this way. Plus when you consider what would be going on in a western country with these sort of pay for sex areas, the dangers involved I'd suspect to be much higher in the west than what I have seen in . Robberies, beatings, muggings, rip-offs of all sorts, pick-pockets, pimps and predators abound in the western prostitution areas, way more so then in . It's dangerous in the west. It's why Bangkok is such a popular destination for gentlemen so inclined to indulge in the ‘bar scene’ as it is called. It's not so dangerous, though some problems can arise they seem much less physically threatening, usually, not always, and the chances of a guy having a problem-free night out with some paid company are generally very good. But the Thai men one meets in these venues are not the cream of the crop, or just an average Joe. A lot of them are in one way or another involved in the prostitution scene there, or at least are making their living off the revenues generated by this prostitution based ‘tourism’. In varying degrees they have an interest in the scene, and are trying to make maximum dollars off the punters arriving on their shores in droves. And they all gossip back in their hometowns/villages of the antics the farang get up to while on holiday, and how easy it is to make big money off these drunken foreigners, or lovesick fools and/or whoremongering gents with full pockets of greenbacks and Euros and Yen. Believe me, even the middle class Thais I've met have heard the stories, and formed their opinions of farang according to these stories and gossip. We farangs are all labeled as sex fiend fools with too much money to burn because of these bits of gossip and stories passed around in the villages and non-tourism centered cities.

I know, because I live in a middle class community, and have been befriended by middle class Thais with no connection to the sex scene in who have no involvement in the revenues generated by it. They are middle class and run the gamut of jobs, businesses, and professions. They are my neighbors. We chat over beers and food almost nightly, and most topics are covered and discussed, my input being asked as I am an American, and they seem to want to know this Yank farang’s ideas, thoughts, and positions on many of these topics. Most do care about the outside world, but mostly as to how it affects them here in . They are devout consumers, but have a limit as to what they will pay for a product, especially a Thai product. Depending on the ‘status’ of a farang product and its perceived snob value (DuPont gold pens, Levi Jeans … real, not copies, western style jewelry, and high end perfumes … again not copies), are highly valued and desired by the people. Actually anything western is usually deemed to be of higher quality and durability than locally made products, or the usual imported Chinese made products widely available in Isaan, which mostly are crap I've also seen myself. It's no wonder they desire western, Japanese, or even South Korean merchandise. Most of what is available there is garbage that doesn't last and isn't really worth the baht to buy it. But, western and Japanese products are very expensive, if available, and the purchasing power of the Thais is fairly low, as even middle class jobs really don't pay all that much. The Thai gents I've met are very frugal, and very resistant to any change in the price of things they've grown accustomed to purchasing. Beer is one product they'll not pay much over the standard price they've paid for it for years now. And beer prices have been fluctuating quite a bit the past few months for the shop owners that buy it wholesale. It costs more to buy it wholesale than it did just a year ago, but the consumers will not pay much more than they've always paid retail.

But, enough of the background and introduction to this story. It's time to introduce my Thai neighbor Buddy. Now Buddy isn't his real name, it's a nickname I dubbed him after he insisted on giving me a new Thai name. I figured, what the hell, if he can change my name to make it easier for him to pronounce and remember … I can certainly do the same. Tit for tat.

This past trip to Surin I was staying for 10 to 12 weeks. I had met some of the neighbors the last time there, but hadn't gotten much chance to hang out and chat with them, because I had a lot of domestic stuff to do while there. I painted the house and furnished it and did a lot of stuff to make it more the way I wanted it. I didn't have that much time to hang around socializing. This time there, although I still had some stuff to finish around the house, and had a construction crew building a new restaurant/noodle shop/convenience store across the street from the house, which took a lot of my free time, I still managed to sit out in front of the house and get to meet the neighbors.

My wife and her sister had started a noodle shop/market in our carport in anticipation of our starting the new restaurant after the previous owners/renters across the street up and left their own shop and house, failing to pay the old guy who owns the house a few months back rent as well from what I was told. It took us a while to get the shop and house for ourselves to rent, but it was told me it wouldn't be a problem. It just took more time then I thought it would, as does most everything over here. Eventually we got the house and shop for a five year lease at 2,500 baht a month (65 US dollars). The old shop was torn down and a new shop was built. So we now have a nice little place for my wife and Sis to run and work at to make some baht, and to keep them busy and out of my hair.

On my first day back I was relaxing over a beer or two while my wife and Sis ran their improvised shop. It was late afternoon and it was hot as a bitch, hence the ice cold beers for me. A neighbor, Buddy, that I had met before, but never really sat and talked with, came around to see me. My wife told me he had been waiting for my return to , as he wanted to befriend me and practice his minimal English with me. I like this as I usually get free lessons in Thai, Khmer, and Lao during these impromptu language lessons. The problem is when this is done with Thai guys over a few beers it usually means I won't remember too much of the language lessons the next morning. So Buddy came and reintroduced himself and we had a chat. His English being just as bad as my Thai we used my wife and Sis to interpret much of the time, and had a quick language lesson over a few brews while we got to know each other a bit.

Now I know I should be much better in the Thai language than I am with all the time I have spent here, but I have yet to take actual lessons, am a bit lazy, forget things easily, am not that good with languages, (hell, English is hard enough for me, let alone this foreign language that sounds like a mixture of be bop jazz and bird songs to me) and I used to have to leave the country and would have no need to speak Thai for weeks and sometimes even months at a time. Plus my wife speaks fairly decent English. But hey, pardon me, but Buddy's goddamned wife IS an English teacher! He should also be speaking friggin' English a bit better himself, right? Nah, not really, but I can use this as another excuse anyway.

While we were chatting Buddy was having problems pronouncing my English name, and decided I needed a Thai name. (Thais have a problem with the hard "K" in my name, and it always sounds like they are saying "My"). So he ended up dubbing me with my new Thai nickname ... ‘My Dtree’. Which I think means something about ‘friend of the world’ or something like that I was told. I was told it was a good nickname, nothing to worry about. I should be proud to be called ‘My Dtree’. I had my reservations, but what the hell, as long as Buddy bought the next round of beers he could call me an asshole for all I cared.

Now Buddy's real name is Turt, which is actually very fitting, and not hard to either pronounce or remember. You see, Buddy looks like a Turt, a turtle to be exact. Seriously, if you saw the guy you'd definitely say, "Hahaha. You're right Cent! He does look like a turtle." In fact if you are a fan of Bugs Bunny cartoons, and remember one of the older ones where Bugs plays the Hare in the Tortoise and the Hare race story in one cartoon, try to remember the part where Bugs runs by the turtle and the turtle's shell comes off as he is jogging down the racecourse. That's exactly what Turt looks like, an old turtle without its shell. Swear to gawd. Since Turt felt compelled to nickname me I decided I'd just have to do the same for him, so I told him my nickname in English for him would be ‘Buddy’, which means ‘good friend’ in English. He seemed honored with this and I started calling him Buddy and he calls me, 'My Dtree'. We got along fine.

He was funny and seemed to be very happy to be meeting me and making a friendship. I got the distinct impression that my being a ‘farang’ was one of the reasons he wanted to befriend me. As though it was cool to have a token farang buddy to show around to your family and friends. He was so excited with this that he started trying to get me to go somewhere with him to meet some friends of his that were at some elephant show for a holiday that was going on that weekend. Not the Elephant roundup they have in Surin, that was another week away, but something else they were celebrating. It's hard to keep track of all the Thai holiday/holy days. These people have more goddamned holidays than Catholics have saints it seems. Both my grandmothers were Irish, and both devout Catholics. I remember seeing the calendars they'd bring home from the church and hang up. There seemed to be a holy day for a saint on almost every day of the year. Well, the Thais have just as many as Buddhists it seems, and the Thais celebrate every freaking one of them from what I've seen.

 

Buddy chattered away with my wife and her sister explaining to them how he wanted me to go for a ride with him and how he wanted to show me this elephant show and meet his friends. I was a bit reluctant, as I'd only just arrived up in Surin that morning, and was a bit jet lagged and beat, not to mention a little buzzed after drinking about three big beer Changs with him while we were sitting around. My wife and Sis thought this was a great idea though, and urged me to go along with Turt for a while. So I grabbed my beer and followed my new ‘buddy’ to his brand new 4x4 Toyota pickup truck, which was parked across the street, to go for a ride to this elephant show and meet a few of his friends. What the hell. You only live once, unless you're a Buddhist. You might as well experience all you can. Turned out to be quite the experience it did.

(To be continued)



Cent
(The Central Scrutinizer)