Dear Hillary,
I never realized I was smart until I came to Thailand one year ago. I always used my common senses back home and here in Thailand and I never had any problems but too many foreigners just can’t help themselves. Thailand receives the world’s biggest jackasses and fools and every week I see or hear about some guys who gets into problems with bar girls and complain and cry about everything and everybody here. I’m tired of these fools bad mouthing Thais and Thailand. If they don’t like it go home. Why do we get so many foolish, ignorant farangs who makes us all look bad in front of Thai people?
Happy Here
Dear Happy Here,
You don’t sound all that happy to me, Petal, your letter is full of grumps and grouches. I agree that there are many foreigners who don’t seem to use much common sense (why is it called ‘common’ when there’s so little of it around?), but I think you are overstepping the mark when you start painting your foreigners as foolish and jackasses. I agree that there is nothing to be gained by foreigners when they start bad mouthing Thais and Thailand, and you do have to wonder why they left their own countries in the first place. There can be many reasons I believe, and not all of them are lawful! Of course it is not too difficult to see why some of these people become cannon fodder for the sharp-shooters in the bars. It must be difficult to survive the “Buy me cola, darling” when all they are used to in their home countries are women who want to put them down all the time. “What are you looking at,” being a standard western woman’s response to a bright appreciative smile I am reliably informed. Perhaps you should be producing a lapel button which says “Don’t complain to me – I like it here!” Finally, don’t let the idiots spoil it for you. You don’t have to drink in bar beers, and if you take the effort to learn the language, then you don’t have to talk to the foreigners either, as there are 60 million Thai people out there who would like to know about you and your country of origin.
