Whiners and double standards for expats living in Thailand
I have often heard that 25% of all tourists coming to Thailand are sex tourists. The expats that live here all know how they ended up here. I am a bit naive, but when someone says they were just walking down the street one day and ended up living in Thailand I become suspicious of their motives.
I know many people who came here on a holiday from their home country and never left. I know several people who came on a family holiday, left, then returned a few weeks later sans their family. Reasons vary little and with time and a bit of revisionist history the impetus to relocate gets lost or forgotten. I have been present when some of these men, all men in my experience, called home to explain that they are not coming back. Ever! Keep the kids, the mortgage, house, car and dog. Basically they all say it was nice knowing you. Goodbye.
Do they suddenly have an epiphany? Do they really like the hot, humid weather or is Thai food really that irresistible? So it could be the laid back lifestyle of the Thais? Men drink until they are blind while the wife dutiful cooks and cleans, works two jobs and raises the children. Do these men find the prospect of teaching English for a few hundred dollars a week so compelling that they leave their marriage, job and families behind?
We all know the answer. Of the choices, an epiphany of sorts is the closest right answer. Most of these men do have a sudden intuitive leap of understand through an ordinary but mind blowing experience. This is not like Bill Gates developing a computer operating system that changed the world type of epiphany. This is the shocking realization that you can be with women who acts like they really want to be around you and are only half your size. No longer do you wake up to the recurring nightmare of fat woman in curlers, red faced, clutching a large water bottle telling you what to do every waking minute. You find that for a very small investment someone will actually appear to be interested in your old, overweight frame and actually refer to you as “handsome man”.
Fast forward a few years. These men are living their dream out in the jungle somewhere. They have a thirty year old wife, ten to fifteen years their junior. These women are a little rough around the edges and rub the poll holding up the clothesline just like you remember the way she used a similar poll the day you met. The two kids are a bit of a bother but not too much. Requests from the family for money are frequent but no big deal. You have nothing anyway but the family, the wife and kids in the jungle, a television and the internet.
Many of these bums, for lack of a better term, now strongly denounce tourists and expats who avail themselves of the nightlife in the urban areas of Thailand. Their morals are now impeccable even after leaving their wife, children, financial responsibilities and job to take up with a prostitute. These guys actually want all of the entertainment areas to close, the baht to crash, alcohol sales to be banned and anyone here for a good time beyond the floating markets and elephant rides to be thrown out of the country.
It sounds like these people, who are no longer here for sex and living out in the jungle with their ex-bargirls, with a fan and maybe a flush toilet are forgetting their roots. Many are now living on the largess of their parents by way of a small allowance or have a small pension and cannot even afford cheap sex. They forgot how they got here and instead of contributing to the Thai economy they try to get by on a few hundred Baht a day. They spend every waking hour worrying about their visa status while developing thin skin as it relates to visitors in their adopted country. They do not remember back when they went on vacation to relax and have some fun. They are now the moral compass of society here if we listen to them. They are very sad, unhappy people who use their meager funds for internet access to denigrate a segment of the population who have every right to be here. I suggest that they save the money for something positive like getting those irritating tattoos removed from their wives’ backs.
Cheers!
David Barkdull
Bangkok, Thailand
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