Gaccha

I don't know that we would tbh. But I think to bring up one instance of an evil woman and then suggest that women would all be that way slots quite well in with submaniac's comment about a recent spate of nastiness.

Crumbs. You have managed to combine a syllogism with a logical fallacy. Impressive. I will leave it to the other forum members to explain so I don't appear nasty.

But, to quote a far wiser man than I, "If you are offended and I am wrong then that is my problem, but if I am right and you are offended, then that is your problem".

More than once have I thinked "what if all the countries leaders, was a woman?".

Might be a much much better place to live.

One of the main instigators of the genocide iin Rwanda was a female cabinet minister-- the Minister for Families (Pauline Nyiramasuhuko). But not only that, she was also a member of the tribe that she ordered massacred! It has been analysed by Prof Zimbardo who conducted the famous Stanford Prison Experiment and who places situational forces above dispositions. She wiped out her own people to prove to the other cabinet members her loyalty and because she did not have the moral courage to say no. So maybe she was a person of bad character.... nope. She was a former lecturer on women's empowerment...

She gave the order: "Before you kill the women you need to rape them".

So would women do a better job? Would peace rein if they were in charge? Let's ask Nyiramasuhuko's female lawyer:

"when you do murder trials, you realize we are all susceptible, and you wouldn't dream you even dream you would ever commit this act. But you come to understand that everyone is [susceptible]".

All of you probably think you would never murder, would never commit genocide, never rape (male or female members of the forum)... you are wrong. You all would, except an astonishingly tiny percentage. Who are these people? They are non-group non-emotional (no mates and have no desire to join groups/gangs at school, but not loners[who are 'failed joiners']). So, for example, a married man is more likely to commit genocide than a 50-year-old bachelor. But I suspect this would mean women are more likely than man to commit horrific acts if power lay in their hands.

So PS3, let's leave fantasy to Walt Disney.

I have lived here for a few months and just heard how the Russian Arms dealer was arrested, and supposedly the Tamil Tigers leader. There is the obvious insurgency in the south.

For the people who have lived here longer. Is this the norm? Why are these shady people in Thailand in the first place? Are there increasing occurrences of world-wide fugitives doing business or planning attacks in anywhere in Thailand and Bangkok?

Is the Thai government law enforcement, etc. capable of stopping bad things before they happen?

Basically, is Thailand a 'Safe Haven' for scum?

Your mistake is the syllogistic move of making 'shady' into 'scum'. The people you speak of as scum are not the people I think of as scum.

1. The Russian arms dealer is no worse than the US government as an arms dealer. As the Thai judge said when he threw out the case against the Russian, it was a political case. As a country the US has the ability to define what is 'legal' and attempt to assert this with all its power. Thailand, however, has its own ideas.

2. The insurgency in the South has an extremely complex background. it is ethnicity issues mixed with religion and general economic underdevelopment. The Thai state further exacerbates it by usuing 100 year old military manuals and by insisting that an essental part of Thainess is to be Buddhist, which the Muslim-dominated South feels then in a constant state of alienation. I wonder who you think are the 'scum' in this matter...

3. There are scum. I almost got beaten up by a British expat 'roid user in Issan for no other reason than his imagination caused him to believe I had mouthed off to him. These sort of people who routinely commit petty crime would be locked up in the UK or be under considerable constraints (the police would always be looking out for them) but they can run wild here.

So I think the target of your disgust is the wrong people.

OH YES! You have pictured the REAL Thailand perfectly without having to add a word! Well done!

Eh, no he hasn't. Read my post above. No more than a duck pond in a village green is the real (sorry, 'REAL') England.

So,Gaccha assuming that is impossible to represent the real Thailand in a few pictures,would you care to explain what is the real Thailand?

IMO the "real Thailand" (or any other country or place on this Planet)is something not really existing,but in the mind of each individual who cares to look for.

I.E. you can ask a thousand Thais what is the real Thailand,you will probably get a thousand different answers.

Or not?

PS i really like Ian pics

The one hundred million dollar question. Obviously it is not a material truth. I cannot find it in photos, although poses in photos, or quizzical looks may offer the chance to grasp at it.

It is clearly in the persons' minds. Although I reject your (positivist) notion that if it is only in a person's mind then it is not 'real' (let me digress to explain this: how do you know that which you claim to know? When you look at China do you see it as more of a threat to the World than the US? To answer this would you add up the number of tanks they have, look at the designs of their nukes and calculate the greatest danger. I think not. You would try to work out the ideas they have. How aggressive they are, how they feel about themselves. In other words, the only reality is the ideas people have, the material is irrelevant [the reversal of your position]).

So how do we discover this reality. Obviously asking people what it is will not work. it is the ideational realtionships they have with Others that makes this reality. How they know how to behave, what they expect of Others, define what it is to be Thai. They define themselves by saying what they are not; in olden times this was the hated Burmese, in modern times it is the Farang.

As Farang we catch glimpses of this constantly changing and challenged narrative of Thainess. We find it difficult to follow as we are not completely submerged within and when confronted by a dissonance with are own culture we will try to resolve this dissonance by a rational explanation on our own terms, e.g. claim it is TiT.

As an example a dominant narrative is to be Thai is to be democratic. Another narrative is the idea of a land of no violence. You will readily spot that the facts as we known them often do not immediatley back up the narrative of the identity.

The idea of Thainess obviously is a faked concept (just as so is Englishness). The nation-state needs to instill this concept to ensure harmony. It does this through education at schools or in Thailand's case, the 'Village Scout' movement was used agggressively in Issan to force a sense of Thainess. The most nationalistic Thais you will meet are from Issan, yet Issan was a serious trouble spot in the late 1960s and 1970s. The Village Scouts did their job well.

So I like photos that present ideas, rather than scenes. They reveal truths, not colours.

OH YES! You have pictured the REAL Thailand perfectly without having to add a word! Well done!

Eh, no he hasn't. Read my post above. No more than a duck pond in a village green is the real (sorry, 'REAL') England.

There is always talk in these types of web communities from expats who have obtained a higher knowledge of Thailand and Thai people than the other foreigners living here via the discovery of what is commonly referred to as 'The Real Thailand'.

I thought it would be interesting to hear what everyone's Thailand is. My Thailand is not very different from my America. Its primarily based on the consumption of food and women. I do not have much, if any, desire to form emotional or spiritual friendships with Thai people beyond my spouse. The best things about Thailand to me, are that everything is cheap, everyone is shorter than I am, the locals are subservient, you don't have to worry about getting robbed or attacked if you don't go looking for it, everywhere you go there are establishments setup for the purpose of male relaxation and they do a very good job at providing that service, the food is delicious, I do not have any problems communicating what I need to communicate to the locals while at the same time not being burdened by knowing what anyone else is saying. I love the fact that everyone smiles so much, the girls are so pretty and available and that everyone is so poor. I love that I do not have to work hard at all to live an awesome, worry free life style here.

What is your Thailand?

Well, Mr Draper, let me conceptualise this a bit to advance the discussion beyond "this is the real Thailand", "no, this is the real Thailand", "no this...".

Your positioning is a kind of reverse snobbery. You are proud of your lack of cosmopolitanism (I wonder if you are working class origins?). Other posters have picked up on the equal lack of any sense of the cosmopolitan by tourists, whether they are backpackers or 5 star hotel residents-- there is a sense of a staged authenticity about it. The backpackers may seek a more genuine Thailand (by living rough, not taking staged photos) but their priority of enjoyment means they never find it. As you have noticed, it can take pain or boredom to find the real place, the real Other.

So where is the real Thailand? Mr Forbes intimates with his pictures that it is to be found in the simple country life: the dog scratching, the children playing in the river, the old lady selling fruits. But that is simply romantic imagery (that not only Westerners but Thais also have).

You must go deep to find the real place. Simply speaking the language is not enough. You must be prepared to not only consume the culture but produce the culture. It requires building a slick ability to go between your culture (the Western World dominant) to the local and back. This will be boring, may be met with hostility and feel deeply unrewarding. But it can be done.

Most people will not be able to truly shift into the other culture. Almost all of us need our home comforts (newspapers, English breakfast...) but many of us can act cosmopolitan and glide easily between the two socionormative regimes.

I want to distinguish this ability to casually move between cultural norms from the businessman who works and flys around the globe. They are the metropolitan mobiles, but they are certainly not cosmopolitan. They have only a very fake, superficial contact with the local culture, as they stay in their penthouse with their housemaid, swimming pool, and hang around with their expat friends;their life is the most banal and parochial of them all.

A Thai who has never travelled abroad can get quite cosmopolitan; think, if we must, of the bar girls. They must develop considerable adeptness in working around the map of the Western culture in order to extract the most cash out of you (not me).

If that is true, did they really need to turn up en masse, on duty, and in uniform. And then proceed to do no exercise. And indeed do nothing to indicate they were joining the gym. Something missing in the explanations.

you are a member of the gym and you jump to those conclusions??

What conclusion? I merely suggest that there might be something more than has been explained. It still doesn't seem right.

You will note my caution in jumping to conclusions. When I raised ideas I said it was conjecture. There is no indication that I felt I had worked out what had happened. Au contraire, I asked and sought on this board some answers.

It is you, sir, who should be careful in jumping to conclusions.

Is multi-culturism good for a country and can it actually work? I don't see too much of it in Thailand because most of the country is Buddhist, and other cultures seem to be scattered in tiny groups.

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There are at least 5 million Burmese, most of whom are registered (and you can't make this sort of thing up) as "Legal illegal residents". They are required to possess an id card, which their employers keep. They cannot change jobs without these cards and the employer may seize the card from them. They are required to live in certain areas. A quick visit to the border city of Mae Sot and the vast Burmese factory ghettos may enlighten you to the reality of multi-cultaralism in this land of smiles. The consequence is utter wage slavery. They do anything wrong, such as ask for their wages to be paid, their card is taken and they fall into destitution.

On your trip to Mae Sot lookout for the police checkpoints in the middle of Thailand designed to prevent the Burmese from travelling around the country.

The future is interesting: a Chula Professor told me last week he thought the population would reach 20 million with massive inter-marriage with Thais.

Also, look at the hill tribe girls selling their wares on Khao San Road. The Thai state requires they remain in certain localities. They may not move around freely. So these girls cannot return to their homes. Nice, eh?

On a further note in regard to multi-culturalism, there are 16 cultural groups that must self-identify themselves on their id cards in Thailand including, and again you can't make this sort of thing up, "Former Communists". Beautiful.

From your privileged perch at the top of the capitalist success story I can understand you can't see the quagmire of muck of serfdom, and pernicious evil in Thailand's system of control of various minorities. I suggest you read more.

If that is true, did they really need to turn up en masse, on duty, and in uniform. And then proceed to do no exercise. And indeed do nothing to indicate they were joining the gym. Something missing in the explanations.

Around 9:30pm 11 police officers waltzed into California Wow. One Major and three Sergeants.

I thought it was a response to a robbery (in England you get 11 officers for a robbery in progress, not for a theft report) or something pretty acutely serious, but the police after around 5 minutes sat down on the swivel chairs and started chatting as if in a karaoke bar.

There was an undercover officer (he had the standard radio) and he seemed to be doing the talking. He wandered up to staff spoke for around a minute and then wandered up to customers, who just carried on on their jogging machines.

I was entranced by the whole situation.

Then while the police took pretty random photos of nothing in particular, the staff of the gym started taking very serious photos of the officers (I mean there were no smiles, no interaction, but the staff carefully took photos at all angles of the police officers sitting around doing nothing). It all looked pretty frosty on the staff side, but the police were grinning, sitting on their swivel chairs.

So here comes my conjecture: if you are the 'thiefs in brown' as the locals call the police it is never a wise move to walk through the main entrance and joke around to obtain your tea money. I see them do this at my local snooker hall all the time; most of the bets laid on the table are by mildy drunk police officers in uniform at the snooker tables. But at a publicly limited company like California Wow, surely some subtlety is required?

Where I sat to rest after my workout was where the officers decided to congregate. So I became either the best protected farang in Bangkok at that moment or the worst.

This is bizarre. Any thoughts? Any knowledge?

Just to conclude. Upon speaking to my New Zealand embassy friend, it turns out that the protest was against the Swiss embassy. With so many protests nowadays it is difficult to remember which country you are protesting against. How many times have you started a riot at the wrong embassy-- I think we'll all been there.

I understand the Swiss embassy is located in the same fire hazard skyscraper. I further understand the New Zealand Ambassador still has his beard. I think all of us can rest easy that the full might of New Zealand was not turned against Thailand. Peace.

Well, it's midnight and I have still heard no word from my NZ embassy friend, so there seems to me two possibilities:

1. the seamstresses walked on the road a bit about 20 floors below the embassy so caused the traffic to get blocked up.

2. a crack team of protestors stormed the embassy. The police went in with their elite units sending everyone they have, using flash grenades to take out the Manillans (what are they doing here?), crashing a tank onto the top of the skyscraper and driving it down the stairwell. In the meantime, the New Zealand Ambassador, upon shaving his beard, because this is like well serious man, gets on board a weatherballoon (the only flying equipment in the New Zealand air force) and escapes back to New Zealand.

I am wavering to the second possibility on the evidence at hand. I am going to sleep on it. But you are all free to write anything as inductively reasoned as the above.

The New Zealand embassy is a couple of rooms in a skyscraper on Wireless Road. Are you sure about this?

My friend working at the embassy is not answering her phone. But then again it is late on Friday night...

I've always been friendly and outgoing, but Thailand has muted me somewhat. I still initiate hi's and nods, and meet interesting people.

Were you buying a ticket at 'Mr Thai' for an 80 year old lady and ended up talking to a young, handsome Englishman about 3 weeks ago?

Unless I am greatly mistaken there is no ป.๖ proficiency exam offered for foreigners any longer.

I believe it was discontinued in favor of a different testing/grading method on thai language acquisition skills which rates your speaking, writing, and reading comprehension skills separately on a 1 to 6 scale or something of that sort.

I think there is a post about it in this forum by "withnail".

The best starter post is here:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Brand-Thai-L...ne-t195594.html

It lays out all the details of the new exam.

There is another post where someone (perhaps Withnail) described his experience of the exam.

For Japanese learners there are books to prepare them for this new exam. But nothing for anyone else.

Does anyone have experience using a kit to whiten your teeth at home? Do they work? Where to buy in Bangkok? Price?

All information greatly appreciated.

You could just buy a prepared kit from Boots but it won't work.

What you need to do is go to the dentist and have the teeth 'gumshield' made based on your teeth. The gumshield can then be filled with the bleach by you at home. And it will work since it is not really that different from doing it at the dentist.

Not that I have done it. You can get your teeth bleached for around 6,000 baht at the dentists so I don't see much point in DIY. Also, for around 9,000 baht you can get your teeth scaled before bleaching. It makes sense to do this.

Here are a number of language schools that target the Japanese (in the vast Japanese language press for Thailand). Since the Japanese have very high standards and cause less trouble than us I suspect these schools are hidden gems. Has anyone made use of them:

Thai Language Clinic Ltd (Thonglor soi14)

Siri Pattana T.L.S. (sells itself as 90% Japanese students)

Kingswood Thonglor (cheap as chips at 4,800 bahts for 60 hours, above a ramen shop on Thonglor Road) (k24-55.com)

Sala Silom Thai Language (salasilom.com)

Thai solutions (thaisolutions1502.com)

Rockwell and Friends (rockwell-friends.com)

I am definitely not familiar with any of them. And you know what they say: I don't want to be a member of any club that wants me. So I reckon I would like to give them a try...

I love the explanation that the English language press will not print the story because it is concerned with the image of Thailand.

I find it so obviously not true that I hardly feel the need to argue it. If the newspapers knew about it I am sure they would print it.

There is an exhaustive thread on this here:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Intensive-Th...Ad-t212821.html

One of the great joys of Thai culture is the resistance to categorisation. So when a boy acts all feminine in his village he is not pushed into an 'identity ghetto'. The village gay. Contrast England.

There is an odd double narrative in Thailand. The old way of thinking of it: "so many people, so many ways". They let people do as they will. And then there is the nasty 1950s academic discourse from the USA: gays are abhorent, ladyboys are gay. It is a medical condition, they need curing.

The odd consequence is the better educated members of Thailand are closer to your Daily Mail reader in England(for non-UK citizens: these are largely desperately aspirational, right-wingers who feel put upon by a society of scorungers, immigrants and anything else they read on the front page of the Daily Mail) , while the country yokels have the sounder, more tolerant UK broadsheet reader view of the issue.

In medieval times, Western Europeans believed there was only one sex. They saw women as men with inverted genitalia. The modern tendency to bifurcate is no more logical and no more right. Any attempt you make to claim there are two sexes can be refuted. It is socially constructed. (Of course, I am assuming you already accept that gender is socially constructed, that is blindingly obvious)

"But I have a two veg and sausage genitallia", you cry. But why do you privilege this point above all other points? Why not bifurcate by eye colour. "Ah, but these determine if you can have a baby", you cry. Eh, no they don't. Ask all the infertile women.

"But it is clear by DNA", you appeal. No. Two points. Until we knew about DNA, are you then accepting it was socially constructed before then. Also, since quite frequently the DNA can be XY but the person can appear female are you certain you want to make the bifurcation along these lines? And second point, as scientists will point out until they are blue in their faces, the social belief in the clear bifurcation does not happen. Around 1 in 1,000 children are born gender ambiguous.

This is extremely complex, I am glossing the analysis of the discourse of language that would simply win this issue but I recommend you read the great masterpieces of Foucault: "The History of Sexuality". As one reviewer puts it:

"Foucault's three-part History of Sexuality begins here with an examination of the ways in which our contemporary interpretation of sexuality has been shaped by historical trends. Foucault makes a compelling case for the construction of sexual identity as a function of political and economic forces. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in sexuality, psychoanalysis, gender studies, queer theory, or feminisms, or indeed anyone who wishes to confront his or her own personal assumptions about gender and sexuality. Think you know what normal is? After Foucault, you may not be so sure."

Then read it with Judith Butler's Gender Trouble.

Now go and do some homework.

And, if worse comes to worse, what can I have in my possession that is small and light weight which can fend them off? I thought of buying pepper spray and an extendable baton in my backpack. Are there places in Bangkok which sell these?

Thanks in advance for the replies! I am def. not a big dan of these soi dogs... I find them dangerous!

Yes, but you need the baton to actually work, and you need the spray to spray. So you need to buy them from the police directly. Across the road from the Immigration Office in bangkok is the police store, in addition to the police uniforms, helmets, medals, you can buy the spray they use and the batons they use.

But one big suggestion from me. Buy a bottle of mineral water (6 bahts), empty it of water, fill it with around 15 1 baht coins and when the dogs come near you shake it once, violently. This really works. And costs you 21 bahts. In contrast the baton is around 600 bahts and the spray is 250 bahts. One further alternative is a BB gun...

Maybe someone could suggest to the mods "Not Thailand Related Forum" on TV ??

Is there any Burma forum out there which acts as a general local fora for those dealing with the country, such as tourists, expats, students etc? I think not, but I want to check.

I feel the thread has coagulated around a Thai contributor's assertion that the Thai's don't care what farang think. Let me try to demonstrate this is nonsense.

Being Thai is an identity.

Identity is an inescapable dimension of being.

Identity is constituted in relation to difference (you farang, me thai)

The State 'Thailand' then, to assert an identity is performatively constituted (that is, it must constantly do things to show its identity. Since it is intangible you cannot see an identity of a State unless it does somethig)

The Thai state then performs against the defiling Other. (the one it uses to make its identity by noting differences)

The Thai state has two dominant discourses in this regard-- the terrible Burmese and their merciless destruction of Ayathuya, and the farang

foreign policy (lower caps are deliberate here; it is a contrast with Foreign Policy that would refer to the State Institution's policies) is a privileged instance of acts required by the Thai state to reveal its identity

So the security by a state isn't towards an objective danger, but is instead a way of the state legitimising itself.

The nation is an 'imagined political community" (see the masterpiece by benedict Anderson for more on this)

The entity does not possess a prediscusive, stable identity (i.e. Thailand has no identity until it tooks ill of farang)

Ironically, if a state ended this practice of representation it would mean its death.

"At this point all identities would have congealed, all challenges would have evaporated, and all need for disciplinary authorities and their fields of force would have vanished"

"Ironically, then, the ability if the state project if security to succeed is the guarantor of the state's continuted success as an impelling identity. The constant threat of danger through foreign policy us thus not a threat to a state's identity or existence: it is its condition of possibility"

(David Campbell, "Writing Security")

The key to get around this mess of novel ideas is to imagine the State not as a structure but as a process.

If I ask you to point to the Thai state, you cannot. You can point to a flag, a police officer, a border post, a map. But these are flags, polcie officers, border posts, maps. The State is simply in your mind. It is in chronic danger of not existing.

The Thai readers above croak that thais do not care what farang think. If only. In fact, they really, really, really care. Just look at the tremor in their lips when any criticism is made.

"In Thailand today, the farang are still regarded as a race (unspecified nationalities) possessed of an ideology inferior to the abundantly rich local culture. The farang who come to reside in Thailand are described as begging for the boundless benevolence of the King , or rom phtohi somphan, to live a pleasant and enchanted life. For a Farang to be accepted in Thai society, he or she must totally abandon their innate attitudes or become excessively enamoured with anything Thai (culture, art or way of life). Todd Lavell... is an American writer who provides an example of how a farang can be so Thai-like. His articles ... often underscore what is deemed to be the true value of Thainess, which is opposite to and more superior than that of farangness."

--Pavin Chachavalpongpun

Thai Professor, visiting Professor of SOAS, London University

"Thai identity is elusive because of a lack of cultural coherence or uniqueness, so it is easier for its promoters to imagine what is not Thai"

"The adherence to Khawnpenthai [Thainess]... is a part of the exercise of Thai nationalism through which power holders portray themselves as legitimate players formulating legitimate policy"

"[The power holders] high degree of power helps create the official version of Thainess that masks political unattractiveness as well as elites' private accummulation"

"Thais comply with this variable nationhood and perceive it as though it is part of their chit winyan, or spirit... This explains why they never look beyond the boundaries of Thai nationhood, and why it always remains predominant, ultimate and supremacist."

"according to this... self-image, Thais are not guilty of anything and blame is always placed upon foreigners"

"The farang... have continously represented a real enough threat to the power interests of the Thai leaders"

I rest my case, my honour.

I think this will shine a light on this issue for you:

The Ladder theory:

"Ladder theory teaches that differences between the "one-ladder" ranking system of men and the "two-ladder" ranking system of women often lead to mutual misunderstanding, the most egregious example of which is purported to be the so-called "nice guy" approach. In this model, a man attempts to increase his appeal to a woman by demonstrating the qualities she has indicated that she values in another person (stereotypically, these are positive "friendship" qualities such as patience, kindness, helpfulness and consolation). To the male, this is perceived as simply increasing his overall appeal on the single ladder; for the female, however, such behaviour increases the man's rank on the "Friendship" ladder while simultaneously decreasing it on the "Partner" ladder, due to the perceived disparity in criteria between the ladders." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladder_theory)

Of course I shouldn't generalize, men are men, no matter where they are from.

55555+

That reminds me of Tony Blair:

“A day like today is not a day for soundbites, we can leave those at home, but I feel the hand of history upon our shoulder with respect to this, I really do.”

As for answering your core point. The answer you seek is to be found in any issue of Cosmo. And the correct answer requires a reading of evolutionary psychology, an awareness of biological reductionism.

Think. Why should people talkiing about sex make you tired. Cui bono? The answer is found within your presumptive logic.