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We Thais Don't Trust Each Other To Do Even The Simplest Thing


webfact

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Thailand is a developimg economy.

And still very much on the developing stage.

What does it mean?

People care about themselves and not really about Thailand, meaning their fellow Thai citizens.

And well, so called educated Thai people (did I say rich?) sure subscribe to this philosophy.

Pity for most Thai people, they're the ones running the country...

Edited by eurasianthai
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At least somebody has his fingers on the pulse.

No tilac, it isn't there.

"Every time we took a little step forward, we took two huge steps backward. Two great national traits have held everything hostage - blind selfishness and blind envy."

"How did our Southeast Asian neighbours manage to leave us in their dust?"

T.I.T. Where the goal is suicide.

Forty years ago, Thailand was 'King of the Hill' in South East Asia and Singapore was an unknown, backwater port. Presto, Singapore opened its doors to unfettered foreign investment and now Singapore is top dog. Vietnam is following fast, while Thailand wallows in the Kwai Pond...

"Thailand was king of the hill" They had no small number of US military pay checks spent in country ever month. A monkey could have been king of the hill I think - but - no they started thinking or teaching it was their greatness to claim for success and we should all leave now. That worked real well. If we had stayed - I don't know maybe it would look more like South Korea and the US leaving the PI seems to have had the same result. Maybe they should get the support bases going again for the mid east operations and we can get hop's in and out again like the good ol days. Klong hopper airlines was a great deal and no baggage restrictions.

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I got on my first bus in ten years of Thailand on Sunday.

It wasn't a clonker it was the VIP bus to Chiangrai.

I was near the emergency door at the back and noticed the two essential safety tools, a handle to work the door (red/yellow well-displayed EMERGENCY HANDLE sign) and a small window hammer with a point to BREAK WINDOW HERE or something like that, despite having a place to fit, were both missing.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a nervous wreck and I wasn't expecting too much. But having been in a multiple death train crash in my life, I thought I'd just politely point out "What will happen if we have a crash and the bus catches fire? It would be nice to get out..."

"Oh" said the katoey hostess in Thai. "I'll get one from up front".

The cute young lady who was actually right next to the door looked upon me benevolently, smiled as if explaining something to a child, and calmly said "Mai penrai....".

Naturally three days later I'm still waiting for the return of the hostess....

John,

You were supposed to get off the bus and not wait for three days rolleyes.gif

Good post though!

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dam_n, dam_n, dam_n you took the words right out of my mouth! I've been here 11 years, in my first business venture I was burnt by my Thai partner and lied to by people I asked advice from! I then read "Furure Shock - Thailand". Every farang who comes to Thailand with a dream should be given a copy free, before they come here.

I sincerley hope that this country never changes....really! Where else could we live in the manner that we do? We are accepted as being seperate from the society, what's wrong with that? Our living costs are lower than almost anywhere else on earth and some of the people appear to make us welcome ('mericans excluded) If we don't get 3G so what! It's not our problem, everytime we go back to our dependants all of the modern world is available to us. Lay back and keep smiling, it drives the locals crazy! :lol:

"Future Shock - Thailand" sounds like very interesting reading! Do you have the ISBN# for this? (Couldn't find it on Google)

Thanks!

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Robsamui...My friend you hit the nail on the head!

Maybe Thais should seek farang guidance instead of dismissing us like enemies.

Farang have done more for this country than all the reds in front of Central World and all the Yellows blocking the airports.

Thais love 3 steps forward 5 steps bqck.

As long as they sweat they think they are solving a problem.

I've been thinking about this all day!

I think the biggest setback is a blind nationalistic pride which is glued to the idea of not being able to bear to lose face.

I keep having this image of a room full of people: 20 or 30 farangs all intimidatingly BIG with a Thai person in the middle, looking like a 10 year-old in comparison. All the farangs are highly qualified - engineers, academics, teachers, diplomats. They are informed on world issues, educated to an extent that can't compare with Thai universities, have the ability to and experience of organising and planning international projects and are hugely better informed, more skilful, and far more efficient and competent than any of their Thai counterparts. The Thai man in the midst of the group knows this and it makes him nervous, insecure and he feels threatened by it/them. It makes him lose face just by being there. He feels inferior. He feels resentment. He cannot bear to admit that he does not have the world-awareness, knowledge or skills of the others in the group, so he tries to save face by bullshi**ing and bluffing and making promises he knows he can't keep.

And when it comes to big engineering projects (the Skytrain springs to mind) then he has to seek help from 'these people'. It makes him angrier and more resentful because he realises at some level that these guys know he can't cope. So he becomes passively aggressive, takes the credit where he can (I remember the big signs that the German (?) and Thai collaboration had all along the Skytrain route - Thai-Gammon) blames any snags on the farangs and lets all his friends know just how brilliantly he has organised everything.

Which paints a really gloomy picture! Because it's only half of the story!

The reason that I'm still here after all this time is the other side of the coin. Hand-in-hand with this amusing behaviour is that Thai people are child-like. On a day-to-day basis nearly everyone I have met (certainly everyone away from the tourist areas!) is light-hearted, fun-loving, warm, generous and open and delightful in a way that I've only ever found in a few communities before. Yes, they can have tantrums and be as selfish and as thoughtless as children, too; it's part of the charm!

The problems seem to develop when these same people rise to a position of power or decision-making. They desperately cling to the comforting notion that this is their country so they know all about it and thus can do their jobs fine, thank you. True. But it's no longer a big world. They try to pretend that if they mess up then it can be somehow glossed-over or blamed on someone else. The fact that the entire world is watching it all live on TV as it is happening, the Internet and YouTube has videos of them floundering, makes them close their eyes in panic and pretend even more that this is Thailand and it's nobody else's business. They pray every day for all those farangs to go away and yet they need their help - from national projects to tourist income - although the best farangs by far are the ones that appear for a week with a wad of dollars and then go away again.

Yes, some Thai people are aware, educated and cosmopolitan - the privileged tiny minority who's family are rich and can pay for them to go abroad. But, even so, as they say, you can take the Thai out of Thailand ..... !!

R

BRILLIANT. Thank you for your posts.

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I got on my first bus in ten years of Thailand on Sunday.

It wasn't a clonker it was the VIP bus to Chiangrai.

I was near the emergency door at the back and noticed the two essential safety tools, a handle to work the door (red/yellow well-displayed EMERGENCY HANDLE sign) and a small window hammer with a point to BREAK WINDOW HERE or something like that, despite having a place to fit, were both missing.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a nervous wreck and I wasn't expecting too much. But having been in a multiple death train crash in my life, I thought I'd just politely point out "What will happen if we have a crash and the bus catches fire? It would be nice to get out..."

"Oh" said the katoey hostess in Thai. "I'll get one from up front".

The cute young lady who was actually right next to the door looked upon me benevolently, smiled as if explaining something to a child, and calmly said "Mai penrai....".

Naturally three days later I'm still waiting for the return of the hostess....

oh yes how I love the thai way of 'always thinking about safety first' :lol::rolleyes:

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