True or not

[Rinrada]

True or not? (# ok i censored)...but...

4 years ago I married a nice Thai lady.

Less than 3 weeks after we were married she came sobbing to me about a mortgage of 700,000 baht that she owed (get this) her ex-husband.  It turned out to be true.  She borrowed to help her parents pay debts.  This cheap Chinese bastard helped her family in terms of a real documented loan.  He is from a well off Chinese family that makes their living as loan sharks to Thais who cannot borrow from a bank.  F##K CHINA, THE CHINESE and everything they cheat for!

I ended up paying half of this and the family paid the rest.

My wife had 2 rai of land in Nonthaburi and I built a home on it complete with a beautiful garden, fish pond with a waterfall, the works!

Her sister (sans family) started a furniture business and we agreed to allow them to borrow 1 million baht from the bank and use the house for collateral.  They assured us that it would only be one time.  The loan turned out to be 1 million plus a 1 million overdraft (trust me the overdraft hit the limit within 90 days).

9 months later they were back at out door begging for more (quite curious as we had not seen them for 9 months).  Seems they needed 600,000 baht to buy a truck to deliver the furniture.  They promised it would be the last time and I promised them that we would not help them again.  As before the loan turned out to be more, another 1 million baht.

About 1 month ago they approached my wife and wanted to make a new loan and extend what they owe by another 1 million baht.  The bank says that the land must not be in my wife's name because she is not in the company or some such bullshit and the name must change to her sister's.

Being a reasonably intelligent sort I decided that enough is really enough and said No F@#$%* Way!

Now the fight is on.  I am hated outright by these parasites.  They question why my wife cannot make the decision to help them.  They question her about why she won't help!  The Family?  They seem to forget the help we have given them.  NEVER ENOUGH.

I have offered to sell the land and house for 60% of what I have invested and about 25% of the real value.  This mess is more than I care to deal with.  Now the "Family" is outraged that I want them to belly up to the bar and stand on their own two (actually 18) feet.  This offer includes the stipulation that if they refuse I am going to rent a backhoe and reduce everything to rubble and walk away.  I really have had enough.  Then the problem with the bank will really begin.

BEWARE OF WHAT YOU ARE GETTING INTO.

:ghostface:

[D80]

Bad luck, mate...

[Rinrada]

Just in case -above is not me...Mai Mee ben Ha...

Just seemed a bit of a nightmare situation I would never wish anyone to get into.Unfortunately I think we all know someone who despite all the warnings, still ends up in the "keech"

O but for the grace etc..

:cool:

[D80]

I know it's not you!  Sorry-I'm still new to this webboard but I've read a few posts you've written.

I've heard of so many stories like the one above.  Luckily, I have not had any problems either.  I don't want to be class conscious here but it seems that girls from the lower classes tend to bring with them this sort of trouble...  (ok, it takes two to tango, so I wouldn't just blame the girls...)...  So far, my new Thai family has been so helpful to us in every ways & never asked for anything in return.  Couldn't have asked for a better situation to be in really!   :laugh:

[lumar]

Read a very good article on Stickman's pages recently, and re-post it here. Can maybe answer some of the issues:

---

She treats you well and makes you feel like a million dollars.  She does things to you that no women has ever done before, like you thought no women ever would.  But deep down you know that she is a professional, a working girl, a prostitute, a whore.  You justify it in your mind with the knowledge that you paid her fairly for the transaction.  And you try and mask this in your mind that it is not really prostitution because payment was not made in the explicit way it would have been in the West.  And besides, the ultimate justification often comes from the misnomer that if she hadn't met you, she would be back in a village in the middle of nowhere with some punk who would treat her like dirt and who wouldn't give her the love, attention and MONEY that you do.  For many whoremongers, justifying the way they ###### their way across Thailand is easy because they seldom give the consequences of their actions any thought at all.

But back in the villages of Thailand, desperately poor places, all as is not quite as you may think.  The stereotype that so many have of the rural men of Thailand all being a bunch of good for nothing layabouts is so often totally unfair - and wrong!  While so often these Thai guys are portrayed as villains, the perpetrators of evil, we have to remember that they are men, just like us, and funnily enough, they have very similar dreams and aspirations to the rest of us.  They want to meet a nice woman, settle down, have a family, and generally live a pleasant life.  Unfortunately with the way things are in Thailand, they are up against it.  Having missed out on the benefit of a good education, they may find themselves having to trade 10+ hours of hard labour under the unabating Isaan sun, all for the ignominy of a red - a solitary 100 baht note.

There are guys in the villages who have seen their girlfriends, wives, and in the worst case scenarios, the mother of their children, head down the well trodden path to Bangkok, down the path to a career in the world's oldest profession.

In October of last year myself and a good friend went on a road tour of Southern Isaan.  My friend is married and I had a girlfriend who I was very serious about so meeting women was the last thing on our minds.  However, we couldn't help but notice the lack of females in the 18 - 35 age group.  Throughout Buriram, Surin and Si Saket, the girls who fell into that age group didn't tend to be too attractive.  Travelling around Thailand, one gets used to seeing many attractive girls wherever one goes, but in those provinces there were few.  They were conspicuous by their absence.  And then the penny dropped.  Many of them had gone to work in Bangkok or Pattaya.

My best guestimate is that there are around 30 - 35,000 bargirls servicing farangs within the Kingdom.  And there must be thousands outside of Thailand too.  On top of these numbers, there are thousands who have been married off and either live locally with farangs, or who have married and moved abroad.  We are now looking at serious numbers.

Let's assume that in Thailand there is one boy for each girl, and one girl for each boy.  But in Thailand, a country where the locals are notoriously sensitive and thus selective, it doesn't take much for a woman to become undesirable.  It goes without saying that a stint as a working girl will render any woman totally undesirable to a Thai man, in just the same way that Western men are not at all thrilled at the prospect of marrying a working girl either.  Many Westerners in Thailand either mar the women or take them away.  The village men now find that their potential pickings are very slim indeed.  Women from the higher echelons of society simply aren't interested in them.  Remember, women like to "marry up".

By creating a commercial demand for the girls of Thailand, sex tourists and locals who consume heavily in the pay for play girls are partially responsible for a reduction in the number of women available to the local men, especially to those men who find themselves in the villages, the places where most of the women who work with farangs come from.

I remain mystified at the way the poorer Thai men seem to largely accept this in so much that they do not respond in a way which would confirm their stereotype in some circles as drunk thugs.  How would you feel if people came flooding into your country with salaries far greater than you could imagine, and started buying up the women?  Well, that is exactly how the village men view this phenomenon.  These poor village men watch as their childhood sweethearts, their girlfriends, and even their wives get wooed by Western suitors with bank accounts bigger than Everest.  These poor Thai guys can't even hope to compete.  If it were me in the situation of the Thai men, I'd feel a great deal of resentment, perhaps even more.

Seeing their women migrate to the capital and popular tourist islands and beaches to work as prostitutes and possibly marry off with farangs - a specie far wealthier than they can imagine - has to have some sort of effect on these men.  The rural men of Thailand have it tough, tougher than we can ever imagine.  Taking their women away from them often results in tragedy.  Some men go on benders with the local whisky while others take relief from their sorrow with drugs.  Those who become distraught may in some cases even top themselves.  If Western guys top themselves in the seaside city of sin when they find out that their girlfriend has a husband upcountry, is not therefore inconceivable that the Thai men does the same?  Yes, it happens.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't find the women of Thailand attractive and I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with two consenting adults engaging in sexual liaisons on a commercial basis.  Obviously many of the people who come to Thailand do a lot of good for the girls and offer them a life that she might have never been able to get locally.  But that doesn't mean that one shouldn't consider the poor rural Thai guys who suffer as a consequence of what goes on.

[marty]

I can sympathize with the unfortunate farang from Nonthaburi who wants to rent a backhoe and reduce everything to rubble and walk away. And I think every farang will agree that it’s too much to endure. Most Thais, however, would disagree with him, because farangs and Thais have almost diametrically opposed views on many subjects. This stems largely from their different religious beliefs and upbringing.

We farangs remember, and are influenced, either consciously or unconsciously, by our embedded Christian beliefs, which teach of “right” and “wrong” and something called “sin”. From an early age, we are taught that sex, killing, lying, stealing, and prostitution are sins, for which the penalty is damnation to hel_l in the afterlife.

But sin, as we know it, is a concept totally unfamiliar to a Thai. Thais are Buddhists and Buddhism stresses three principal truths which address all aspects of existence:

1. Dukkha: stress, unsatisfactoriness, disease, imperfection. All forms of existence are subject to dukkha

2. Anicca: the impermanence/transience of all things. No experience, no state of mind, no physical object, lasts. Trying to hold onto experiences, states of mind, and objects that are constantly changing, creates dukkha.

3. Anatta: the insubstantiality or nonessentiality of  reality.

The Buddha taught that no-one can avoid dukkha. It happens frequently because it is caused by tanha (desire). Eliminate tanha and  dukkha will cease to arise.

The Eightfold Path is the way to  eliminate desire/extinguish dukkha:

1. Right understanding

2. Right-mindedness (thoughts)

3. Right  speech

4. Right bodily conduct

5. Right livelihood

6. Right  effort

7. Right attentiveness

8. Right concentration

These are noble truths, worthy of adoption by any religion. However, it should be noted that the word "right" is not the opposite of “wrong” as we farangs know it. It means "complete" or "full". Inability to do things completely or fully is therefore not a “sin” in Thai eyes, and not doing “right” doesn’t entail eternal damnation to hel_l. Buddhism understands human frailty and imperfection very well, and therefore teaches that one should strive to do right, and live life by avoiding both extreme austerity and extreme sensuality, taking the middle way instead. It also recognizes that falling short of these ideals is sometimes unavoidable.

If a woman finds it necessary to temporarily sell her favors for money and thereby support a husband, children, or family, that is a noble act. No Thai would look down on her because devotion to family is their highest priority. Nor is sex a sin in their eyes. To them, it is an enjoyable activity, like eating a favorite meal.  And, unlike many Western women, Thai women are honest enough to admit it and enjoy sex without inhibitions, or avoid it by pretending headaches.

Unfortunately, this noble effort by many Thai women has led to their exploitation by uneducated Thai men, many of whom refuse to work and become layabouts and pimps. Why work, when the wife or girlfriend can earn more money than they can, and so easily? Are the poor rural Thai guys who “suffer” as a consequence of this to be pitied? In the case of some of them, decidedly so. But why are so many of them discarded by their wives and girlfriends for laziness and non-support? Do they ever stay and look after the children, or even send money to support them?

Many owners of bars and other entertainment places also see nothing wrong with increasing their revenues by encouraging these activities. Is greed the only justification? Are they not also providing the venue where many farangs either temporarily gratify their desires, and often develop long-lasting relationships?

These activities are not confined to Bangkok, Pattaya, Phuket, and the other tourist places. It also happens in country villages all over Thailand, where the clientele is exclusively, or predominantly Thai. That is a fact.

Rather pity the farangs who are either trapped in Thailand because they have exhausted their “fortunes” by honestly entering into what they thought would be a lifetime relationship caring for their Thai ladies; or have to leave Thailand because they no longer have the money to meet the financial requirements stipulated by the government and/or its officials.

marty

[jayenram]

"However, we couldn't help but notice the lack of females in the 18 - 35 age group.  Throughout Buriram, Surin and Si Saket, the girls who fell into that age group didn't tend to be too attractive."

Although I cannot comment much on Buriram and Si Saket, I live in Surin. If, as you say, you noticed a lack of pretty females in the 18 - 35 age group, you were frequenting the wrong areas/nightspots. Did you spend any time in the two main department stores/supermarkets? What about the disco on Cola? What about the sing-a-song bars along the Klong? Try also driving past the many colleges at finishing time. And then there are the beer promotion girls - the guy who interviews/employs them is doing a sterling (and enviable) job!

[lopburi3]

If a woman finds it necessary to temporarily sell her favors for money and thereby support a husband, children, or family, that is a noble act. No Thai would look down on her

Not true.  Nor is it true that no Thai would take a backhoe to the house (strike out in anger).  Don't try to put people into box's.  There are far too many exceptions.

[Mr Helper]

Well if you loaned out 1 million bhat, and it wasn't repayed, then loaned out another, and another. On top of paying off the mortgage, to a property you will never have any legal rights too. Well it just goes to show that a fool and his money are easily parted.

   Sounds like the entire family took you right to the cleaners! And Im not being cold, but if you were that gullible, then the family deserved every penny you stupidly gave them!

   Oh word of warning, when taking back-hoe to the house. Make sure you have armed bodyguards, and are wearing full body armour.

[Fu-manchu]

Sorry pal but you are a nice guy but a sucker. Remember some places need permits to tear down any building so don’t get thrown in jail. Better you leave the building as a monument for what you tried to achieve.