Gaccha

If you are a kidnapper:

Live on the fringes of the city to maintain a low-profile. Police searches are rare on the West side of the river. Be aware that your prized asseets are more vulnerable here owing to the propensity of your intended victims to slice them off with a sharp knife.

If you are a 7-year-old girl:

Best to leave that amusing pole-dancing set that you got for Christmas back in the mother country.

If you are an 85-year-old granny:

Bring your hearing aid. And your colostomy bag. And your portable oxygen tank.

If you are an arms trader:

Perhaps you should relocate to Pattaya. You can leave your yacht in the harbour, and can always head out into the high seas to avoid any unwanted entanglements.

I have the exact same problem, can read and speak fairly well but following a conversation is difficult.

I am always asking the missus "What did he/she say?"

What I need is something like Youtube videos of people speaking Thai with Thai subtitles.

1) You might like Rikker's idea: http://rikker.blogspot.com/2008/06/my-idea...ranscripts.html

2) If you have a computer, some time and someone to help you write out/check transcriptions, you could make some of these Thai subtitled vids yourself and learn a huge amount in the process. Check my recent thread on subtitles. In it, jay_jay says he is using a variation on this method to help with his language learning.

As can be seen in my recent post, I am a keen advocate of Thai subtitles with Thai language. Let me tell you why that will definitely work.

I think you have identitifed a big weakness in your language acquistion: your listening ability. This is how to remedy it: get a DVD of Winnie the Pooh in English and Thai. Record the sound and then listen to an interesting 2 minute segment. Listen around 30- 50 times, until it starts to feel a like a song, you can anticipate the cadences, the rythm, the stresses and pauses. Then try to write down everything you can hear. Or if this is too bothersome choose one sentence you really like and learn it. Write it in roman letters but try to get anything you can. Some phrases because of slurring may require 30 listenings to a 5 second part of the dialogue.

Persevere, you are training your mind in real speech.

I did this learning Japanese and my level leapt. And I mean leapt. I can remember listening to 'Apollo 13' around 30 times until I knew and understood every sentence (except one). Of course, I unintentionally, as a by-product, learnt phrases such as 're-enty plan' and 'booster rockets', and 'skip right out of the atmosphere'.

Now this will work. But you will need an MP3 player (iPod etc.), a DVD writer on your computer, a sound recorder (download 'PCWinspeakrecord' for free) and a great deal of time and patience.

If there is simply too much new vocab, then it was not a listening problem after all., You just need to expand your vocab. Get a vocab book.

If you use the Google auto-suggestion feature in the Thai version then it can reveal enormously telling points about categories of people, e.g. Thai women and Thai wives.

I want you to go to Google Thailand, type in Thai

1) "How can I get my girlfriend to…” and 2) “How can I get my boyfriend to….”

and then change it to:

3) "How can I get my wife to…” and 4) “How can I get my husband to….”

it is revealing because it attempts to automatically complete the sentence based on what searches were most done with the same words.

In the US google the primary keyword for 1) is "propose" and for 2) is "give head" (I am not joking)

A version in the US was done of this here:

http://trueslant.com/erikkain/2010/01/12/g...rimonial-bliss/

It was concluded that "Tellingly, perhaps, wives would like to know how to get their husbands to “leave the house” while husbands would like to know how to get their wives “to shut up.”"

And in Japanese here:

http://www.mutantfrog.com/

And this "indicates that [Japanese] women overwhelmingly want to be loved, while [Japanese] men overwhelmingly want to get kinky."

I would do this but my Thai is not good enough...

This could be very interesting (and distressing).

A genuinely handy phrase (in Thai) would be "Please speak to me in Thai". Or a variation:"Please in God's name speak to me in Thai".

I used to wear a Gap Store lapel that said in japanese "Please speak Japanese" when I lived in Japan, after I accidentally discovered this label underneath the actual stickers "I speak English" worn by the Gap staff.

Do you have any suggestions on where I can learn Japanese in Bangkok?

This is off topic, but it will bump the topic back to the top, so I'll answer . I would suggest the Japan Foundation (a propaganda arm of the Japanese government), they have a very comprehensive set of courses available for Japanese language acquisition, in addition to a superb library and frequent showings of Japanese films. Go along (they are located slightly North of Asoke Station) and ask for details. Classes include a class just studying Japanese dramas. Other classes prepare you for the proficiency exams.

http://www.jfbkk.or.th/2009/index.php3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Foundation

Stated aim of the Thai government is half of all tourists to be from mainland China by 2015.

Just go down to Hatyai to see part of the vast Chinese tourist crowd that is forgotten by the Westerners in their ghettoes of Khao San, Phuket and Patpong.

From having learnt Japanese I have put together some listening practice clips on YouTube. I had noticed that there was nowhere in the entire world that provided an exact transcription of popular Western movie clips after they have been dubbed into Japanese. There were, of course, subtitles in Japanese, but these do not come even come close to matching the actual dialogue. So I set out to change this.

Take a look at my Star Wars entry:

And my more advanced level Braveheart entry:

So, I want you Thai speakers to match this. You need a good ear, a notepad, Windows movie maker, Audacity (free sound edit cutter) and around 5 hours to spare...

Or I'll do it , but I need your ear. Please find a famous scene in a movie (I have used "Thirteen Days", "From Earth to the Moon" etc.) and transcribe the Thai dubbed version, stick it on this website and I'll make it into a Youtube clip. The clip should be at most 5 minutes long.

Thanks in advance.

I just don't buy this idea that it is the tones that are the major obstacle. It is the stresses. Since they are not shown in the dictionaries they have to be heard. If you say a word 'tonedeaf' but with the right stress then a Thai will not even blink. Native English speakers stress the first syllable on a noun (usually) and the second syllable on a verb (a lot of the time), which means Issan dialect is often easier-- it tends to have a dropped stress on the noun.

It's learning the vocab that is staggeringly tedious. You need to get to 12,000 words, but just getting to the first 3,000 is very hard going because it is so dull. Once you get to 3,000, the World is your oyster since you can learn via movies, dramas, cartoons etc., learning idioms, odd grammar patterns.

I'd pay cold hard cash to be dominated by Thai females. Preferably ones dressed in university uniform and thigh boots.

I read a post here somewhere that talks about a club that will do that for you if you like!

Between the high population of females, and the large ratio of of Katoey and homosexual men, I often wonder if there is something in the water! This is why there are so many women here looking for a man, there are not many to go around!

The women are heading in from the countryside, the men remain on the farm. The exact same phenomenon exists in the UK, with young women far exceeding men in sheer numbers in London. By the age of 40, half of all female graduates in the UK are unmarried and childless. That explains the bar girls.

To explain the vast outnumbering at University level there are three things going on. Firstly, courses in that would be regarded as simply diplomas are treated as degrees (e.g. accountancy courses) so this slants the numbers to females as they tend to take up these clerical jobs. Secondly, linked to the first point, females are encouraged to take up these safe clerical office jobs, while traditionally the males take up the running of the (Chinese) family firms/companies. Thirdly, like the UK, the education courses at school have become 'feminised', they favour attributes of females over males (e.g. coursework, not sudden death exams). In the UK, this year coursework was scrapped for maths (because parents were doing much of the work), despite all this talk of females outrunning males, immediately the figures were reversed and now males dominate the high grades again in maths.

As for the large portions of gay men, I don't recognise it. I suspect the UK is identical but they are not as overt because they fear getting beaten up.

A monk studying at Thammasat told me there was a shortage of men from Issan (for he was from Issan) because 1/5 of men are gay, 1/5 become monks. He is an interesting alternative, since he is going to quit the monk order (after 10 years in it) and become a ladyboy.

Seems from the age of 14 males are killing themselves off at a higher rate.

Gee, I wonder what is causing that?

It's a well recognised evolutionary mechanism. More males are born than females (1.05-- this ratio is the same everywhere) with the knowledge* that their high risk life style (driving fast cars, hunting wild boar) along with weaker bodies (males are more vulnerable to diseases) mean that by the age of 35 there is a 1:1 ratio of men to women.

However, there is a further evolutionary adaption. In peaceful times (i.e. no stress hormones in the womb) more females are born than males. This accounts for the majority female populations of the World (except for Georgia, China etc).

*Nature cannot, of course, see into the future. But the reverse engineering of evolution gives that impression. Please read Dawkin's 'The Selfish Gene'.

Of course, times change and people have different levels of social responsibility, so to stereotype Thai people in that way is not really fair. However, there may be something in it as Thai society continues the transition from face-to-face, village-based community life and mores (gemeinschaft) to impersonal, urban living (gesellschaft) and the emergence of a broader sense of civic responsibility, one which brings rewards in a less immediate, more secondary way (e.g. cleaner, quieter environment; safer, less nerve-wracking driving).

Weber has entered the building. Fantastic. This could get interesting. You say tomayto I say tomato. I say gesellschaft, you say gemeinschaft.

I cannot tell you much as this is a big secret, but some of the top academics in Thailand are getting together to make a new University on the border zone (probably around Mae Sot) so stateless individuals can obtain a University education.

Should be a news splash soon on this.

I really wish them well.

His grasp on reality is limited:

" I don't speak any other Asian languages. I’ve never dealt with a tonal language before, and I’ve never read a language that doesn’t use the Latin alphabet"

But his goal is very easy to achieve:

"I want to be able to correctly speak the 5 tones of Thai and be able to read a given text of several sentences aloud to a local (who is not necessarily familiar with English and European accents), so that they can understand it."

It would be astonishing if he failed.

It opened on schedule 4 January.

Excellent.

And for other readers, it is here:

Chamchuri Square, Floor 18, 319 Phaya Thai Rd.PatumwanBangkok 10330

(And can be entered directly from Sam Yan MRT)

The issue is whether the new (One Stop Shop) place is now open.

I know that there was a roughly 6 day period when neither are open. And that period is about now. Which is annoying since I need to get my 90 day report done.

Anyone have the exact (and I mean exact) timings for the new place. I want to avoid a fine but also want to avoid the new in-the-middle-of-nowhere immigration office.

You really have fallen head over heels for the new wave of the fear discourse. This insipid use by the media and the fear-entrepeneurs to use this primoridial response by you towards fear to effect changes.

"A politics of fear rests on the discourse of fear. The politics of fear serves as a

conceptual linkage for power, propaganda, news and popular culture, and an

aray of intimidating symbols and experiences, such as crime and terrorism.

The politics of fear resides not in an immediate threat froman individual leader

e.g., Senator Joseph McCarthy [Griffith, 1987]) but in the public discourse

that characterizes social life as dangerous, fearful, and filled with actual or

potential victims. This symbolic order invites protection, policing, and inter-

vention to prevent further victimization. A public discourse of fear invites the

politics of fear. It is not fear per se that is important in social life but rather how

fear is defined and realized in everyday social interaction that is important. The

role of the newsmedia is very important in carrying selective news sources/mes-

sages. News sources are claimsmakers, and studies of crime news show that gov-

ernment and police officials dominate how crime is framed (Ericson, Baranek,

Chan, 1987, 1989; Surette, 1992)."

-- 2006; 6; 415 Cultural Studies

David L. Altheide , Terrorism and the Politics of Fear

You have never had it so safe. In the whole history of humankind you could never have had it so good. The dangers you face in Thailand are staggeringly trivial. Even if some were to improbably escalate the risk to you is utterly negligible. You have nothing to fear. Go home and read a good book.

Gaccha,

I know there is always a lot of talk on this board about the Higbe book, but I hadn't seen this book discussed.....

I can't watch every thread though.

I am glad to hear its well known. As you suggested, I see it in the online library catalog for Chula.

However, the website for both Kinokuniya and Chula bookstores say they DON'T have this book.

Since a lot of posters have spoken about it on this site, can someone suggest where to buy this book in BKK?

Yes, a lot of us have spoken about it on this site. If you can't find it in the shops, and don't want to order it, then both Thammasat and Chula have copies in their libraries. Their library catalogues are available on line.

In a sense you can 'buy' it at Chula or Thammasat. The libraries have photocopy companies whose job is to copy the book for you. They should do it in about 1 hour and it should cost around 100 baht. They are located within the big libraries or thorughout the campuses. All legal.

Yes, a lot of us have spoken about it on this site. If you can't find it in the shops, and don't want to order it, then both Thammasat and Chula have copies in their libraries. Their library catalogues are available on line.

Where can I get the makes-English-look-like-Thai font that is used for the title of the video?

Methinks he doth protest too much!

Seriously, though, the kind of behaviour you are observing isn't typical of most real Thai gay guys who are not in some way involved in... um... compensated approaches to dating. Business must be slow.

I can only wish you to take a look down there. I feel that the dearth of foreigners in the insurrectionary Deep South manifests itself in a particular form of flirtation with the foreigner.

I could point to the female side of things with one female scooterist (with hiqab) letting out a gasp of "wow" to draw the attention to the foreign object of her two riding companions.

In Narathiwat, which I would earmark as the friendliest place in Thailand, almost every other person stops to talk. Although there was no sign of gay flirtation. Only in Yala was it bilindingly overt. The gay men were only doing what most others were doing but with greater vigour. I really don't believe there was any compensation anticipated in the economistic sense....

The lack of (white) foreigners, and the religion, have played a part in marking out what is probably unique.

I'll put my cards on the table and admit that in providing gay holiday destinations I might not be the best person for it since I don't like men, but having just got back from Yala and the insurgency area I need to send a message of quiet desperation from the folks of Yala.

I had anticipated that Islam would effectively and quietly shut down the public appearance of gayness. And it has--- in Pattani, down the road about 70 clicks. But at Yala I left jaw-dropped.

The central road (*) for the nightlife and trendy shopping must be Thailand's primary pick-up joint. The young femboy men on their scooters ride up and down in all hours and it seems every single one has a dream of a farang man.

They are so keen they forget to ask if you are interested in them. The conversation upon the abrupt stopping of their scooter and their quick flounce to you runs like this:

"how long here?"

"where you stay?"

And perhaps out of courtesy,"what's your name?"

Now if I am right, and I am never wrong, this is a social disaster. Every sweet femboy in Yala is either looking for, planning on, dreaming of a farang man. Yet from a quick bodycount in my 3 days there I counted, eh, one farang (me).

So there you are, buses leave from South Bus Station Bangkok, lots of sleeper trains stop at the railway station in Yala. And watch out for insurgents. Run, run, run.

(* the road runs parallel to the roads of Siroros and Phiphit Pakdi)

That whole area is heavily mined on both sides of the border. Has got to be "one" of the largest minefield areas in the world.

LL

I suspect you are just misreading the map; the person who made the map owns the area and had a mushroom field.

00:46 of this video onwards.

"It says 'mine'. So... these mushrooms must belong to the man who made the map."

i bought a mosquito light at tesco fo 200 baht shaped liked a panda for kids room i suppose

it probably works better in the dark at night

I have the same panda thingy. I swear by it. It kills every mosquito in the room. There is also a lovely positive feedback, with the electrocuted bodies fused to the surface of the electric coils. My worst night had a 20 body count...

Not that I know about, we've not many farang in Hat Yai and I don't really know how our Chinese Christian community celebrates Christmas, but I don't think it extends to turkey and brussel sprouts!

It was worth a try. I'll be on location on Christmas Day. Might head for the cabaret...

Is there a fanatical farang blog/website that deals with the details of the thai boxing. It would have detailed discussions on each thai boxer, their current performance, the inside gossip, photos, the stats....

there must be...