HEADLINES [click on headline to view story]:

I too was accosted

Mind numbing II

Obama popularity

No Parking

Michael F. Lowe

Offended by bar language

When will people stop laughing at the discomfort of others?

Thai Proverbs for Farangs

I too was accosted

Editor;
Re Mickeyfin (Burnly): I too was accosted by at least two (or was it three) ladies after returning from a night out in various UK towns and indeed married two of them after listening to their hard up stories (actually as I was fairly young then we supposedly fell in love). Of course it was a scam and I lost a lot of money! However, after leaving my brains behind at Don Muang (we are looking 1998) I met a lady here and her scam was better than the UK ones. We have been happily married now 11 years. We have a nice house, car, etc., and yes I do spend a bit of money on our stepdaughter to get her the education her mum didn’t get. Also her family, but hey! You can’t take it with you when you go! Perhaps you are the mind numbing person in the title of your letter! Don’t be ashamed to admit it - be a man and tell us more about your experiences.
Regards,
Numb Brain

Mind numbing II

Editor;
My friend Mickeyfin Burnley rightfully is a little confused about why farangs put their finances in the hands of Thai ladies of the evening. He related a story that sounded like a classic Thai fleecing only it was set in England. I have to admit that when one thinks of it that way, it does seem a little insane.
I have an unproven theory about why foreigners come to Thailand and do put their trust in ladies of the evening so maybe it will help Mickeyfin and others understand why it happens.
If the story he had related were actually accurate and was set in England or America or in most Western countries for that matter, it would have gone something like this:
A man meets a woman in school, at work, in a bank or restaurant or through a friend. She is a respectable girl who works as an executive, secretary, legal assistant, librarian or any one of a hundred other “legitimate” callings. They get married and in many cases have children. Somewhere along the way the woman decides, maybe justifiably, that he is a rotter, or maybe she wants to “find” her own identity, or maybe she gets involved with another man at work or possibly even a woman. Maybe their sex life is the pits or maybe she just can’t stand the hairy mole on his back. In any event, she now wants a divorce, but unlike the bar girls in Thailand, she doesn’t listen to other bar girls and get advice to fleece him or simply have unreasonable expectations. She gets advice from friends to secure an attorney. The attorney gives her the idea to be greedy and ask for the impossible and settle for the ridiculous. So now she takes his house, kids, furniture, car and maybe even a portion of his retirement fund.
The end is the same which would seem to prove that greed and unreasonable expectations know no particular ethnic group, country or profession (with the possible exception of law). They would appear to be universal, so that brings us to only one possible consideration; the amount of the fleecing. I had a couple of friends in Pattaya who lost homes valued at one million baht to insincere Thai bar girls. In all fairness I have to admit that the amount they were taken for wouldn’t have been sufficient as a down payment on a couple of houses that I lost back in America. So logically it would seem to follow that just possibly the reason a lot of farangs come here and take a chance of being fleeced by a lady of the evening is a relative matter in that once again it requires a role of the dice. Only this time the stakes are considerably lower. You see a fleecing in Thailand costs about one eighth or less of what it costs to get fleeced in our own countries by “respectable” girls.
John Arnone
Yasothon

Obama popularity

Editor;
Bob from Pattaya seems to have transposed his digits. Obama’s Gallup Poll job approval rating at 100 days was 65%, not 56%. These numbers are available at the Gallup web site - www. gallup.com.
Ken from Maine

No Parking

Sir:
A friend who lives in a condo close to the beach got together with a few neighbors. They petitioned the traffic commission to paint a red-white no parking zone in front of the condo building. This was because the street becomes a traffic zone from hell during the weekends. Cars block the entry and exit ramps as well, so residents have difficulty gaining access to their building. Surprisingly, the traffic department was attentive, and lo and behold, the residents woke up one recent morning to find a red-white no parking zone … painted on the wrong side of the street. Bravo!
Yankeleh

Michael F. Lowe

I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.
Whatever we were to each other that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name.
Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
AJW

Offended by bar language

Editor;
As students of language will know, language is constantly changing and developing to accommodate new words and structures. Therefore, based on the colloquial English conversation I hear from farang around Pattaya, I would like to suggest that English teachers should now incorporate the following two expletives into their curriculum as part of normal English language: (a) the F word as an adverb of degree to intensify adjectives and (b) a four-letter word beginning with C to describe an obnoxious person.
Seriously, though, I would be interested to know why farangs feel it necessary to use the aforementioned expletives so frequently. I was recently in a certain farang establishment in Pattaya watching cricket on TV and was genuinely shocked by the level of conversation going on around me. I am not naive enough to expect that people will not use bad language but what I heard went way beyond what one would expect to hear in a public place. When I complained to the staff about the language, all they could say was, “It’s up to them.” In other words, if people upset other customers by their language, mai pen rai.
I am not sure if I am a voice crying in the wilderness and would be interested to know if others are similarly perturbed by the way in which certain farangs choose to express themselves, especially in the company of women and children.
Brian (from UK)

When will people stop laughing at the discomfort of others?

Editor;
The police in Pattaya seemed to be non-existent during Songkran. Hoards of people in trucks were using powerful spray guns to go after those one motorbikes and baht taxis while buckets of water were dumped on the unsuspecting. Most of this must have been ruled extremely dangerous, but the same old antics go on year after year. And it is only getting worse.
It’s all done while the authorities look the other way and drive around in their armored cars. After a period of six days people were anxious over the disruption of mail service. They were asking why things were so much out of control. I should think that business people especially are beginning to think that a great deal of this water business is unnecessary, when beer drenched rough necks from other countries join in you think something must be changed. Picture of traffic jams on roads leading into Pattaya are simply unbelievable.
People leave the country in droves. Those left behind store up food and try to forget the mayhem going on outside. They try to avoid the caravans of what some people describe as “fun lovers”. It all went on far too long. When will it all end? When will people stop laughing at the discomfort of others?
Thailand now wants to put its best foot forward, but how can it when it shows nations of the world that it doesn’t care how many billions of liters of water it wastes?
R.E.S.

Thai Proverbs for Farangs

By Thai-lish
Are you one of those people who are interested in Thai culture, mentality, and language but find it hard to understand and get to the hearts of the people?

Learn these Thai proverbs and you’ll have a deeper understanding of Thais and even impress a few.

Thai proverbs are centuries old, and are widely used among the Thai people in order to explain the situations and matters so that others can have a clear picture about what they are saying.

Some of the proverbs have words that usually rhyme the end of the first clause with the beginning or the middle of the second clause.

It is an artistic and fun way and to communicate. Try it.

Adage 1

Since the economy is not so great nowadays, we’ll begin with one about gold.

เสียทองท่วมหัว...ไม่ยอมเสียผัวให้ใคร

(siã-tawng-tuâm-huã…mâi-yawm-siã-puã-hâi-krai)

siã-tawng = to lose gold

tuâm-huã = as high as the head

mâi-yawm = not letting

siã-puã = to lose husband

hâi-krai = to anyone

 Meaning: “I’d rather lose a pile of gold as high as my head, than to lose husband to anyone”

Now in ancient times a husband was more valuable than gold or other expensive things. But ancient times or not, if a certain woman finds out another lady is after her husband or he is after her, she will spring out her claws and roar like a tiger. There are many cases in Thailand that the wife or girlfriend actually cuts off the vital part of her husband or boyfriend and feeds it to the ducks. Some pour hot sugar syrup on it while he’s asleep, while the worse cases reported that after cutting ‘it’ off while he was asleep, she put in a blender and turned it on. The intention was not to make a banana shake, but to make sure that it never could be used again. This way she can still keep her gold and her husband.

Coming back to present times, since the economy is so bad and gold is expensive; here’s a new one for some of you: “I’d rather lose all men but not an ounce of gold.”

See you with more proverbs next week. Sawat dee.

Letters published in the Mailbag of Pattaya Mail
are also published here.