Krillin

I take them. And wear earplugs. And have two jumbo electric fans at full blast to provide ambiance to try to muffle the barks.

I have, but the Thai way of life really isn't that appealing to me. Honestly I can't think of anything that was worth coming over here for. Thinking of going back to China.

I wear earplugs and have two jumbo fans at full blast at either side of the apartment.

Yep. Contracted until March.

I live in a tiny village in Isaan. Since I'm under the age of fifty, my ears still work well... too well. Sleep is damn near impossible sometimes. There are about ten to twenty nocturnal dogs in my neighborhood. I'm moving out of the country in March, mostly because of the nightly noise pollution. I refuse to do anything illegal, but I'm okay with losing face because I just don't give a damn. Do small villages have dog capture businesses? Should I hire folks with pickup trucks to capture the dogs and release them in another province? Chase stray dogs out of the neighborhood on foot while barking at them like a lunatic? Buy really big speakers and play the sounds of barking dogs and wolves on high at night so that nobody in the neighborhood sleeps? Put up anti-dog signs? What is an effective legal way to deal with this? I cannot overemphasize how little I care about what the others here think of me. When I first came here, I did... very much so. But seeing how they live, how they treat their animals, how little they care about sleep, I just don't care anymore. I just want to get some sleep at night while I count down the days until I can leave this country behind and never return. Any advice?

That's brilliant!

I chose Isaan because, from my perspective, I definitely would not have fit in with the expat communities of larger cities. I could list all of the things I'm not, but in doing so implicitly offend a lot of people. In my mind, Isaan life meant countryside life, and countryside life meant a quiet life, conservative attitudes, clean air, blue skies, beautiful fields, tight-knit families, hard-working farmers and herders, and a quiet religion. I, uh... Well clearly I was mistaken. Roaming packs of wild, territorial, nocturnal street dogs; temple announcements over giant loudspeakers early in the morning, all-night cowbell and drum concerts utilizing huge subwoofers that can be heard from kilometers away; I hadn't foreseen any of those things. And even if someone had warned me about them, I would probably have responded by saying that they were exaggerating and that no place on Earth could be that over-the-top noisy. How I ended up in the particular town I'm in right now, was actually out of my hands. It's not where I started. Once I leave Thailand, I intend to never, ever come back.

I'll happily have left long before this time next year. I don't know what kind of people Thailand's for, but it's not me.

I live in a small town in Khon Kaen -- a village, really. Not much going on here. The people are nice and hospitable. Decent school. But, there's something terrible that's been happening here for the past several days. I want to be told that this is not normal for Thailand. Beginning last Thursday night, my town has been hosting all-night concerts featuring extremely loud bass, drums, and cowbells on a newly built mega stage, along with a carnival. The first night, thousands of people from out of town showed up. There are about sixteen refrigerator-sized subwoofers, all stacked on top of each other. I live about 1.5 miles away, and the vibrations from the rhythmic cowbells still shook me. Put earplugs in. Still got shook because it's not the sound that's doing it but the actual vibrations going through my walls. Sleeping proved impossible. Last night it lasted until 4 am. I have a day job, so I need to sleep. Sleeping in that village is impossible, so now I'm in a cheap hotel in a nearby city. Is this sort of thing normal, or is my town just crazy?

I'd like to know what your thoughts are on these two questions: 1) What positive thing is Thailand the best at? 2) What is both uniquely Thai and good? Thank you.

I might later. And it is.

Some <deleted> in the neighborhood has started playing music late at night and as early as 05:30 on weekdays. He or she is single-handedly making sure I never look back on my days in Thailand fondly. (I'm a teacher; I'm leaving in March.) Whoever this person is, their music of choice consists of synthasized drum beats and cowbells with the bass cranked up so high that it shakes my very chest cavity. I purchased a jumbo fan and turn it to high at night. It drowns out the audible noise, but not the vibrations. Whoever this person is, they're giving me a very, very bad impression of what passes for normal human behaviour here. 05:30 is not the time to be rousing the entire neighborhood from their beds. I had come to Thailand because I thought, surely the country's reputation can't be correct. But in the two and a half years I've been here, I dare say everything I'd taken as false slander has been proven true. And I hadn't even known about the early morning music before I came here. Since it started, I've read more. Now I know that this really is normal Thai behaviour, and it horrifies me. It tells me that moving to another city wouldn't do the trick; no matter where I might go, there would be some <deleted> with bad taste in music playing it on loudspeakers early in the morning or late at night without caring at all about anyone else. I will never, ever set foot in Thailand again after my contract is up.

Something that I admittedly was not prepared for when I came to Thailand, and something due to which I will leave Thailand next spring, is the local idea of what counts as festive "music." It's just loud bass, a synthesized beat, and maybe either lyrics or cartoon sound effects, on repeat, for hours. I have come to know it and the sound of street dogs barking as the bane of my time here. I don't know why, but the bass just goes right into my guts and drives me nuts. And the knowledge that there are no lyrics -- that it's just noise for the sake of noise -- means I can't even find a reason to acknowledge its worth as music. From the bottom of my heart, I hate it. Intensely. We are all aware of the sad passing of HRH the QM, and have probably all heard about the rules issued by the government. The rules of course do not apply to citizens in their respective households, but even so... have any of you tried to use recent events as an excuse to tell your neighbors to turn down the volume on their "music?"

I sometimes wonder whether the alarm that Europeans feel when they hear dogs barking at night isn't felt by people in South Asia because of the different evolutionary trajectory that the relationship between humans and dogs took in Europe as opposed to here. Maybe to them the sound of dogs howling at night or tearing each other to shreds is like crickets chirping.