The Thai Middle Class

[younghusband]

Thank you for the awfull reminder, I guess I will learn to keep my gob shut in your company, should our paths converge.

It serves to reinforce my choice to retire in Thailand and keeping well alway from Uk and Uk expats.

Don't worry, there are very very few UK expats here who could be defined as "gentlemen" in the English class sense, and they would almost certainly be too polite and secure in themselves to worry about lower class accents or origins.By a curious coincidence a high proportion of these are gay, refugees like you from the UK though for different reasons.

[onzestan]

Amazing how this topic went from "class" to "bargirls" in just 6 posts.

cheers

onzestan

[younghusband]

[quote name='Thai at Heart' date='2008-03-06 11:14:09' post='185666

Bravo. Thailand is filled with one upmanship like nowhere else and as for the Hi-So, I have never seen such a load of nouveau riche nonsense. Daddies little rich kids running aroud creating largely nothing and perpetuating their own myths.

You are right of course but personally I enjoy the entertainment of it all, for example the laughable assumption that luxury European watch sales are somehow elite social occasions or the matrons of a certain age squeezed into outfits more suitable for a 20 year old.Talk about mutton dressed as lamb!Of course this is all really Bangkok Sino-Thai tomfoolery not the traditional Thai patrician style which really is cool, classy and impressive in a modest understated way, in some ways very similar to the traditional mores of the English aristocracy and landed gentry.Don't see much of either around these days sad to say.

[Dakhar]

But just as elsewhere in Thailand middle class is not all about earnings.

Occupation, education level etc have to come into it too.

British and Americans tend to have a different take on it too - some considered middle class in American parlance would be considered "Working class" in the UK due to the education and job skill level - if i am not mistaken the USA would consider a skilled tradesman like an electrician middle class while in the UK he would be working class.

Yes, you are correct. In the US, its all about the money and skilled electricians can make alot of it.

I have to agree... it is what is in the bank that matters to me. Not the paper on the wall, because ultimately it is what that paper earns you that matters. It that paper earns you squat, but knowledge picked up of the years as an laboring apprentice earns you a huge bank account.... I would rather the huge bank account over a piece of worthless papper.

But if that papper earns you tons of money..... then same is true there.

[Heng]

Amazing how this topic went from "class" to "bargirls" in just 6 posts.

cheers

onzestan

Yeah, it's a topic so far from the lives of folks around here that it's taboo to talk about it.

[HS Mauberley]

as a former member of the Polo Club and a frequent guest sports player at the Royal Bangkok Sports Club....

As I was saying to the Duke of Edinburgh only yesterday, name dropping is the most ghastly faux pas to make.

[Jingjok]

As I was saying to the Duke of Edinburgh only yesterday, name dropping is the most ghastly faux pas to make.

Quite right, old boy. Charles told me the same thing.

In the UK people (and people I meet from the Uk in Thailand) assumed by the way my accent sounded, that I was low / working class, even though I am Uni educated and have professional qualifications.

You wot mate? Get aaht of it! I don't adam it meself.

[Dakhar]

As a former member of the Thai Polo club.... I scrubbed out the horse stalls, but I sure did spend a lot of time with the phillies....

[Jingjok]

As a former member of the Thai Polo club.... I scrubbed out the horse stalls, but I sure did spend a lot of time with the phillies....

Philistines?

[Thai at Heart]

I cringe every time I see it. You are right there is a certain bunch in Bangkok who have a way that is modest and doesn't need to be spread all over the news. The Hi-so phenomenon fortunately has died down recently. Did anyone see the show where the took the three hiso idiots to grow rice in Surin, or the one where the two little hiso Thai journos (daddies little girls) went bush to work out where the food in the market came from. Paris Hilton was ditzy, these shows were down right insulting and showed just how far removed from reality the nouveau riche of Bangkok are from reality.

Daet rorn, piu dum, bla bla bla.