Anone Even Torn Down A Speaker

[apetley]

We have just moved back to the wifes town/village to be nearer the house we will start building next month.

For the last year we were living on a reasonably quiet housing estate in Kanchanaburi.

The difference is astonishing.

I have lived with the inlaws for a while in the past but the noise they have to put up with seems to have gotten much worse and drives me near crazy.

Thankfully, if 'uncle', the builder, delivers on time if will only be for a few months.

Every day someone nearby seems to be getting married, becoming a monk or dieing.

So of course they have to have satans own sound system outside at some unearthly hour to announce the fact to the rest of the inhabitants.

Then there are the chickens. In the middle of town! Why is it they always see the sunrising at 3.30?

And the dogs very own dawn chrus at 1, 2,3 and 4 o'clock in the morning.

Oh and of course the nearby wat from where we get woken up nice and early 3 or 4 times a week.

Best of all is the recently elected mayor. He must have run for election as he likes the sound of his own voice and has a lovely captive audience with a pa system covering the whole of town.

He was on the air at 7.30 this morning, a Sunday <deleted>, spouting on how Somchai had donated 100 Bht to this and Kovit has donated 50 Bht to that. Most days he is on air 2 or 3 times for at least 30 minutes boring the pants of everybody.

Who gives a f***. Nobody I guess but alot of peole are fedup with the interminable noise if chatting with the neighbours is anything to go by. Maybe he only wants one term in office coz he wont be getting re-elected if the whingeing is a good poll of public opinion.

Didnt he who cant be discussed recently call for less noise in Thailand?

What are the penalties for cutting a wire to a speaker?

It may be just be worth it.

There, got that off my chest, now for a nice quiet lie down.

Oh yes, our house is being built in a lovely quiet village 10k's down the road. Heaven!

[technocracy]

Well the Thai's sense of community spirit seems to be completely missing in you!

[waveydavey]

Sounds about the same as my village. When I first moved here 18 months ago it used to drive me crazy but I'm used to it now and it doesn't bother me at all. In fact, when I visit 'civilisation' for a few days I sort of miss the dawn chorus from the chickens.

Had an election wagon (democrats) come round this morning though that actually made my ears hurt it was so load. Quite why they think anyone will vote for them after they drive though the village and deafen everyone I dont know.... My girlfriend said she definately wouldn't be voting for them after that.

[chownah]

When we moved in to the village here the wat didn't have a sound system. After about two years, one morning, at about 6:00 I guess music start reverberating across the village; about 4 tunes and then some announcements.....I asked the wife what was going on...and she told me this was going to be the way it was going to be. I had enough sense to not go balistic over it (at least in a way that could be detected externally) but my wife could see that I was not happy about it. I could be out working in the rice fields and hear the music like a I had my own radio right there with me. I made the comment to my wife that they should change the direction that the speaker was pointed because out there the crabs would be the only ones besides me to hear it....about a week later the volume was turned down....but the good news was that they were going to install a system of speakers all over the village and there would be some right on our soi....and soon they were there and it was back to the original level at our house but it was probably really annoying for those who lived right by the speakers (we were about 200m away from the nearest one while some people lived 20 metres from it). Announcements came every morning and every evening. For awhile they were playing the birthday song at 6 o'clock if someone in the village had a birthday that day and then announcing the names of those who had birthdays.....our village is big enough so that EVERY DAY someone had a birthday....so EVERY DAY we got the birthday song along with the other announcements. I asked my wife what people thought about hearing the B'day song EVERY DAY at 6 o'clock...she tried to smile and say that it was good to wish people a happy birthday but I could tell it was that insincere smile that Thai people do when they don't really like something but they are relating the socially correct polite answer......it was not too long afterward that they stopped the b'day music....and then a miracle happened; they didn't make any announcements one afternoon....and then awhile later (weeks probably) they didn't have any music or announcement through an ENTIRE DAY!!!!.....and now the volume has been lowered to a more reasonable level and announcements are perhaps 2 or 3 afternoons a week and only in the mornings to announce special activities for special holidays like loi kratung or the H. M. the King's birthday, or songkran....so not very often in the morning.

My guess is that at first the enthusiasm of some led to overuse of the facility and in Thai society the scaling back had to come slowly so no one lost face for their lapse in judgement. My advise to those living in villages with overuse of the village audio facility that if they try to make small incremental reductions and can come up with some vaguely plausible rationale for it then you might slowly get a reduction. As for sabatoge of the speaker....if I had to do this (I don't as I'm luckily far enough away from it) I think I would gradually fill it with mud and make it look like mud wasps were doing it....and if anyone mentioned the mud in the speaker I would say that I saw some bees up there and I was wondering what they were doing....and isn't it considered to be bad luck to destroy a bees home?

Chownah

[chanchao]

Well, welcome to Thailand.

I wouldn't tear it down, that would be vandalism after all.

However perhaps you can get creative with some resistors to tone the noise level down a bit.

[apetley]

Chownah, like the idea of the bees. Or maybe termites?

The level of use has definitely gone up since we were last here just over a year ago so as you say maybe the new mayor is finding it a new novelty toy.

Wifey is sick to death of it too and told her mum that it's lovely and quiet back in the UK.

[rychrde]

wait for the next rain and short-circuit the thing.

I suffer the same thing both in the village and the town. However, when we lived in a big city my thai wife complained about the noise of the traffic. I, having lived most of my life in a metropolis, don't notice traffic noises.

Thai chickens need to learn to tell the time. In the town we have an olde worlde town time-keeper who rings a cow-bell on the hour every hour after dark. he also doubles as the market security guard. strange place :-)

[GuestHouse]

However perhaps you can get creative with some resistors to tone the noise level down a bit.

I've cut the cable - under the extreme noise being reported here. MiL was undergoing Chemo for cancer, near dead and unable to sleep during the racket.

So I nipped out during the night and cut the cable (I snipped at it with cutters to give the impression a rat had been at it).

When that was repaired before our next visit, I did exactly what chan suggests, I cut the wires again and put a resister in the circuit, burried the wire and resistor in the dirt and it hasn't (or at least wasn't ) discovered on my last visit over two years after the dirty deed.

----

But its not just Thais making the noise. A friend of mine had a German neighbour in Narklua Banglamung, who frequently had his music blasting out at all hours of the night.

This got to the point that my pal borrowed a pair of insulated cable croppers from work and cut the neighbours power supply.

[Hog Head]

I turned down the blaring speakers in Tesco one day and the dumbfounded look from the staff was worth the wrath of my wife. All the same once I bought my deli items back up it went and I have never returned to Tesco again.

same experience at Watsons with a blaring TV

I now have a TV-Be-Gone which is a blessing for those who live here. It is a 20.00 USD, key ring sized device, that will turn off virtually any TV made. Great for airport lounges, and restaurants where the TV is blaring and the staff all watching football.

Wife is not impressed, but as you can imagine I love it and in fact have a spare.

If my neighbour has another party, its off in the dark with my snippers.

[apetley]

Hog Head, never heard of a TV-Be-Gone but it sounds a great little toy, great for winding someone up.

What sort of range does it have?

[Mosha]

A Thai friend altered the direction of the speaker out side of his house. Here we are lucky they are only used for Moo Ban annoubncements now. Not turned at 6 am as before.

Edited December 10, 2007 by Mosha

[Lite Beer]

A great way to start the day. Even better when you get the neighbouring Moo blasting out at the same time.

When I ask the wife what they are going on about she says `dont know, not listen`. When I ask her why they bother when nobody listens, she says ` He has to do, It his job`.

[Dustoff]

Put a cork in it...

In Hawaii (Paradise) where I moved here from the crabbing was all about tour helicopter noise, recreational boat and jet ski noise, loudmouthed foreigners, a lawyer who bought a home on Maui right under the takeoff path of the airport then spent years and years filing injunctions to close down or move the airport, demands for laws about motorcycle mufflers, leaf-blowers and garbage trucks, locals with speakers in their pickups that pounded out music over a certain decibel level, introduced frogs on the rainy side like Haiku that screeched so loud that people even considered suicide, even a few rich idiots that thought the state should put underwater wave-breaks some distance from their mansions that would keep the breaking waves on the shoreline from keeping them awake at night..

The ridiculous list went on and on but I suppose as a tour helicopter pilot, a biker-dude and a rock-n-roll kinda guy, I found their complaints difficult to take seriously. Not to mention that I grew up in Countryland, Nowhere with roosters, crows, wildcats, coyotes, Owls, bullfrogs and other assorted noisemakers and slept all the better for them..

While I muffled my motorcycle, flew my helicopter respectful distances from residential areas and kept my Rock and Roll confined to my own closed environment or headphones, I have no illusions, in this country or any other that the local populace has me in mind when they celebrate their holidays, mourn their dead, hawk their wares, engage in marriage ceremonies, promote their political candidates or just plain have one hel_l of a good time, whatever the reason.

Good on 'em and if I find myself particularly perturbed by what seems a violation of respect for my space, I have found that even a casual mention to "them" makes all the difference in the world and is a way to make new, and respectful, friends...

...Attitude is everything...

Try repeating that with emphasis on each word alternately...

[Scott]

I've cut wires to the speaker next to my office, which was so loud, it actually physically hurt my ears--and I am inside the office and the speaker is outside.

I did complain first, since I couldn't even talk on the phone (business calls). They paid no attention, so I snipped the wires. The rest of the building is blessed with music, but where I am it's nice and quiet!

[a2396]

Not a good idea to mess with their stuff. Noise is a definite hazard living in LOS. Thais seem to be immune to it & I think this is one reason for their poor attention spans. They have learned to tune many things out, including things they should be paying attention to. I would relocate to an area where such aggravation is less, but is is sometimes difficult. There is little, if any, sense of land use control here and you can never be sure what outrageous activity is going to locate next to your area. Village life is not on my list of preferences, in any case.

[cmsally]

A friend of mine was volunteering in a remote village in Nan for a long period and this same scenario started up, while he was there. The whole village being blasted with promotions and announcements at 0600. Earplugs, pillows, closed windows; nothing could solve it. So he went around the village getting signatures for people who wanted it stopped. Then one morning he went in his pyjamas to the the source of the sound, pulled the plug and gave the person the list of signatures. Pulled the plug off the cord and then went home. After that blissfully quiet!