in the village, hammocks and naps.. and there was always something being grilled and a small group sitting around chatting which is still what it is like today.

Jungle drums.

10 hours ago, OneMoreFarang said:

The first thing she asked me if I mind if she continues to watch the soap opera on the TV in the room while I f@$#%$ her...

Well, did you (mind)?????

11 hours ago, jwest10 said:

Ask the younger ones what is happening in Country and overseas they probably could not answer.

But ask what Daeng or Lek had for breakfast and they'll know, they saw it on Facebook on their phone!  ????

Play with their hair. Smile. Provide good service. Give GFE. 

 What did people working in shops, waiting at bus stops, on a break from their job, etc., do before the smart phone?

 

Eat, Eat and Eat!

 

Go into any shopping mall, at any time of the day, and the staff are too busy stuffing their faces to serve!

 

Did I mention, Eat!

12 hours ago, richard_smith237 said:

When the BTS first opened I recall people would read books...  most commonly ‘comic type’ books... 

 

Rather than the magazine type comics we are used to in the West, they are actual books... with story-board type layout. These are also very popular in Japan. 

 

 

I recall going to Au Bon Pain and reading the paper... Bangkok Post... The Nation and also BK Magazine and The BigChilli magazine (stocked in some areas). 

 

 

Those are called "manga".

 

OP must be very young not to know what people did before the phone mania began.

As for Thai people, they did what anyone else in the world did without the stupid phones smartphones, except they seemed to have far more public phones available than in any other country I was ever in.

11 hours ago, Sparktrader said:

True

Book flight n hotel

Use map

Pay a bill

Camera

 

Post on a forum lol

 

I got a tablet too. Its just a big phone without the phone. Better for charts.

How do I ever survive without one 55555555555555555555555 ( I don't have one )

I recon they fell asleep in under 5 seconds a lot more ????

8 hours ago, Bluespunk said:

And yet you are focused on this bickering exchange because my reply wasn’t what you wanted to hear. 

I forgot how upset you get by people pointing out your mistakes. I'll reply to whomever I want thanks. ????‍♂️

1 hour ago, blazes said:

Well, did you (mind)?????

At that time, I didn't care, and I didn't mind. ????

 

And probably by now I would still tell her to watch her soap opera. Because if she wouldn't watch it, she would not be happy and probably speculating what happens in the soap opera. So, she would also be distracted and unhappy. Go ahead ... 

 

Internet Cafes, Nokias, and before that phone boxes, telegrams, handwritten letters, or not bother!

1 hour ago, wombat said:

Jungle drums.

Village telegraph was/is very effective.

9 minutes ago, OneMoreFarang said:

At that time, I didn't care, and I didn't mind. ????

 

And probably by now I would still tell her to watch her soap opera. Because if she wouldn't watch it, she would not be happy and probably speculating what happens in the soap opera. So, she would also be distracted and unhappy. Go ahead ... 

 

What was it like?  $crewing a corpse?  No KY?  Difficult job, no?

As for all the people who want to show you pic after pic on their phone.....I am not interested thank you.

For the motorcycle taxi guys, it was mostly popping pimples, extracting earwax with their little fingers and picking their noses.

Don't know why they are called smart phones when using programs like tik tok, etc their mentality is actually moving backwards.

Quote

What did Thais do before smart phones?

They smiled.  

That was the Thai Smile era - now is the Thai Gaze era.

2 hours ago, blazes said:

Well, did you (mind)?????

Having sex with a Thai woman while she was watching tv would probably have been more exciting than sex with my western female partner. I used to wonder why love/ sex in movies was so much more passionate than what I got, till I realised they were being paid to fake it.

They had lives, and were not obsessed with tik tok, posting every tiny detail about their lives in Facebook and taking 200 selfies a day. 

Maybe people think of smartphones as android / iPhone.

 

If my memory isn’t too clouded, in the 2000s I had a palm titanium that was linked to my Sony Ericsson mobile phone via BT. Even 20 odd years ago, Thais were very early adopters of windows mobile phones. Panthip was full of windows phones. Way more than you would see in the UK.

 

So although I visited before then, I don’t remember what people did before smartphones because there was always some kind of mobile computer here.

1 hour ago, BangkokReady said:

I forgot how upset you get by people pointing out your mistakes. I'll reply to whomever I want thanks. ????‍♂️

and what mistake did I make exactly?

Edited October 3, 20223 yr by Bluespunk

14 hours ago, BangkokReady said:

Sure, the whole world has been changed by smartphones. But Thai people even now have different pastimes to what we have back home. Safe to assume the things they did before smartphones were different also.

People lived a life that was more stress free and had more freedom to do other things.

I used to read magazines and newsPAPERS.  On the subway or in the coffee shops.  I used to complete work projects. Enjoy the scenery and meet people.

 

Thais had a better more relaxing day before smartphone.  Mainly because when yoyleft home or work. You left home or work.

Computers were supposed to make life easier.  As someone who lived and worked before PC I can honestly say I would gladly go back to those days.

 

Today most lives are glued and dependant on computers.  Before we had to actually talk to each other and think.

You obviously haven't been home many times in recent decades.... 

I took a Thai kid (15yrs) for his first-ever flight in a light aircraft.

Got in - selfie, photos by parent. Strapped in - selfie. Taxied out - selfie.

Took off - head buried in phone.

Flew over beaches, islands, city, beautiful views on a beautiful day - head buried in phone, never looked out or down.

"That's your house down there, look." - grunt, head buried in phone.

Not a photo taken!

"Would you like a shot on the controls?" - grunt, head buried in phone.

Landed, parents crowding, "How was it? Did you like it? etc.."   - "Cool", walks off head buried in phone. 

 

At that age I would have killed for such an opportunity!

2 hours ago, RichardColeman said:

Don't know why they are called smart phones when using programs like tik tok, etc their mentality is actually moving backwards.

Perhaps because they come off smarter than the user.  Include myself in that equation.  Which is why I have returned to a Nokia 3310 without data.  Understand they can be useful for many people - but for selfies/social media?  Expect artificial robots will soon be more social than humans if it continues.

3 hours ago, tandor said:

Internet Cafes, Nokias, and before that phone boxes, telegrams, handwritten letters, or not bother!

Don't forget pagers

I had the advanced version which showed not only numbers but also text. ???? 

 

 

3 hours ago, blazes said:

What was it like?  $crewing a corpse?  No KY?  Difficult job, no?

Do you really think I remember the details after > 20 years?

She wasn't so exiting that I visited her again. But at that time I had at least one girl a day for a purple. The good old times.