Dear Hillary,
Thai families, Thai families, Thai families!Are all Thai families the same under the skin?Everyone has his or her hand out as soon as the daughter settles in with a farang.There is always some family emergency ranging from education expenses, falling off bicycles, crashing motorcycles, grandma sick again, paying off the loan sharks, the list is endless, and somewhere in the middle of it all there’s the house to be built for the parents.Is any money put aside for emergencies?No, the farang will pay.But there’s always enough for a couple of cases of Lao Khao and let Papa sleep it off, rather than harvest the rice.Then there’s the kids.The farang is expected to support all the kids in the family, even though these kids do not belong to him by blood.Everything is a constant drain on finances (mine) as the Thai family never has any put away for a rainy day as we used to say.Is there some way around this?
Gregg
Dear Gregg,
You are certainly not Thai are you.Thai families function well by everyone in the family being in a loosely arranged cooperative and there’s no man in a suit telling them how much money they’ve got to spend.Need a pick-up?Get one on HP.Need help for planting rice?Get the daughter up from Pattaya for a week.She’ll miss a week from her job, but she can bring her farang up as well and he will plant some rice too.Up-country families have worked this way for generations.You won’t get them to change.If this worries you, then now is the time to run.
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