Why Do Falang Ignore Falang?

[simple1]

To the OP:

I used to wonder the same thing my first year here. Now I probably distance myself from farangs much more than I do Thais in public because I've found the odds to be higher that I won't like them.

Although I have more close farang friends than I do Thai, excluding family here, it is hard to find ones who have integrated into Thai society or have a desire to as opposed to seeing Thais and Thailand as a place to be used all the while not understanding themselves why they think and constantly complain that Thais & Thailand only want to use them.

Nothing prejudice against my own kind, I just see it as the same as the odds being much lower I am going to find friends at a Christians for the Death Penalty gathering... sure there will be some but most will usually not be people who I enjoy being around. Sometimes we can't help who we become friends with but I try now to do my best to limit the negative people I my life.

Funny antidote but one that didn't surprise me at all ... I often smile at people when our eyes meet be it walking on a sidewalk or on a subway. Yesterday, I did this to an Australian or New Zealand father who had a very cute kid who was waiving at me and my wife. His response was; Do you have a <deleted> problem?

With reference to you last paragraph; for some reason it reminds me of living in Australia. My Thai wife used to commute to work by train with a Thai girlfriend and converse in Thai. On a number of occasions a commuter would have the front to say "when in Australia, speak English". wife retorted in English "when you come to my country do you speak Thai with your Australian friends". Getting back to the topic I also minimise social contact with farangs; so many either complain about their experience of living in Thailand. Alternatively boast about having sex with bar girls. just weird when it's a paid transaction.

Edited July 2, 2012 by simple1

[Razzler1973]

I don't really like seeing two people of the same nationality speaking English if they're not English, it's stupid. Of course they'd speak their own language.

A Thai friend of mine would get annoyed to find Thai people speaking English amongst themselves in London and I kind of agree actually

[tutsiwarrior]

I saw a falang the other day at the corner shop a said a friendly 'hi, howzit goin?' and he was silent and then shifted his eyes like the Robert Duvall character did in The Godfather before dispatching the mobster associate Tessio to his death for disloyalty...

Edited July 2, 2012 by tutsiwarrior

[StreetCowboy]

I don't really like seeing two people of the same nationality speaking English if they're not English, it's stupid. Of course they'd speak their own language.

A Thai friend of mine would get annoyed to find Thai people speaking English amongst themselves in London and I kind of agree actually

Some of the native families round my way speak English amongst themselves, and in the pubs its the lingua franca, I would say. I think most of my friends speak English amongst themselves even when I'm not there. I suppose it depends on the extent of one's education in English, how comfortable one feels in that language, whether one shares a common dialect with one's conversants, and whether there is an alternative lingua franca with which you are familiar. I think many of my friends are more comfortable in English than in their national language

I don't think I ignore farang here any more than I did back in the Old Country

SC

[mjj]

It's simple really. Most farang in Thailand are scumbags.

[StreetCowboy]

It's simple really. Most farang in Thailand are scumbags.

I have to take your word for that. The ones I know are not. Maybe you are estrapolating from your own example, and assuming that you are typical

SC

Edit:

Prejudiced scumbags

Edited July 3, 2012 by StreetCowboy

[Ron19]

It's simple really. Most farang in Thailand are scumbags.

As the old saying goes " It takes one to know one "

[cooked]

I posted on this thread before about how weird I find it that people don't answer when you wish them a good morning (it means something like ' I hope you have a good day, I feel fine') as well as avoiding eye contact. I will be leaving for good a small village in Switzerland for good soon and I'm sure that I will miss the greetings I get when I walk up to the shop or post office, or as I drive down to the valley. It's normal to say good day, to people that you know so that you at least acknowledge their existence, to people that you don't know to people that you don't know because you are curious.

Not the same thing for you big city slickers of course, you can't say hello to everyone on Sukhumvit.

Up in the mountains, not stopping to say hello and discussing your planned route can be a matter of life and death. Not having seen anyone for a few hours and then getting someone avoiding eye contact as you cross paths is weird, these are city guys and also not Swiss I guess.

I think this is not a 'Farang thing' it is a 'grown up in a big town thing', that or being English.

I don't mind being taken for an idiot by a would-be conman, I find it funny and let them know. Where's the problem?

[mjj]

Street cowboy and Ron19, sense of humour failure today, huh?

[Bangkokhatter]

Street cowboy and Ron19, sense of humour failure today, huh?

maybe you should work on your delivery a bit , not much humour in your post

[onionluke]

If they don't greet with a "sieg hail" or a " I ave a pebble in my shoe , i want you to remove it " , I usually ignore them too . The Tesco in Det Udom is lacking in the quality , but I don't care , I just want to swap war stories or crime tips with some fellas . Course I do .

[Nisa]

Why Do Falang Ignore Falang?

Same reason dogs lick their balls.

[Sharp]

Really i worked in Sing for 10 yrs never experienced this.

Sent from my GT-N7000B using Thaivisa Connect App

[jdinasia]

Nisa pretty much pegged it for me, except she/he? left out that I am likely not to pay any heed to Thais in some places, particularly tourist areas. Come into the same coffee shop that I am in and you very well might get a conversation if you instigate it and I am not otherwise occupied. On occasion, at a similar type of venue I will instigate a conversation IF I am for some reason finding you interesting. (There is a guy that goes to the same coffee shop that I do that is more fluent in Thai than I am and had said some things loudly enough for me to hear. He rides a cool motorcycle. He was talking openly about a minor dilemma that I knew the answer to the first time I spoke to him.

"Pardon me , but I couldn't help but overhear what you were saying and you can do it this way ....." He could have easily said "thanks" and then ignored me but he chose to ask for more explanation ... We are just casual acquaintances still, but we are friendly towards each other. The staff at the same place know that I am always willing to be helpful but generally avoid single tourists. If I am there and a group or couple etc wants some help they often bring them to me. However, if it is a single person they come to me with any question by themselves. They know me and my quirks even if they don't understand that I often (correctly) see single travelers as being needy.

That being said, there was a French woman not too many months ago that was asking about getting her hair done. The staff member there looked at me for an "OK" and I spoke to her in Thai suggesting one of several places. They spoke to her and, to me. she seemed quite decent. When she was asking for more info, I spoke to her directly. I have seen her several times over the last 2 years as I learned that she comes to CNX once a year for 3-4 months.

I always have time to help families or groups (mixed gender or female) and have been known to actually stop and help groups that were consulting maps and looking confused. Always with an "excuse me, but you look a little confused, I live here, do you need help with directions?"

On a final note, when I am upcountry or out of my element ... the best the random foreigner can expect from me is a nod ... see Nisa's post for why

Edited July 3, 2012 by jdinasia

[NBD]

It depends where you are.

If I'm upcountry then I'll generally say hello and strike up a conversation with another farang, because where I stay there are few, most tend to know each other and if they're visiting for a few days or moving there permanently then it's nice to know a few other people from a similar background.

Most are perfectly friendly and glad to meet someone. Some politely say hello and make it clear they'd rather be left alone, fine. A couple have come across very rude and snooty with the attitude that they are some how superior, and don't want to mix with us lowly regular foreigners. Funnily enough one of these guys then turned up a couple of months later all matey and asking for help on some problem he was having...

If I were to go around Central World or Sukhumvit trying to speak with every farang I saw then I'd probably never get where I was going. However if a tourist needs some help or directions then I'll give such time as I have.

Shades inbetween the two extremes of course.

[tutsiwarrior]

it all has to do with local associations...when I go to the market with my darling little thai niece I ask her which hat I should wear and then she jumps around and sez to wear the panama as that makes me 'look like a falang'...

and then I try to be friendly with other westerners and then they look at my hat and back away...

[cougar]

Well, really, you can't nod and say hello to every Tom, Dick, and Harry. that comes along. There were two Englishmen stranded on a desert Island. For ten years they lived there alone, never speaking to each other. At last a ship was seen on the horizon and they were saved. The sailors, during the course of the conversation, discover these chaps had not exchanged words for ten years. Why ? " No one introduced us, "

It's an English thing, but it might explain part of your problem. Most English people find it difficult to interact socially without a proper introduction. It's always strained, trying to figure out the other person's social and financial status. In England social and financial status don't always coincide.

Of course this shouldn't matter. You should take the person at face value. But you and I both know this isn't true. Our evaluation is shaded by our knowledge of the person's social. economic and, family circumstances. They would have to be intellectually, or artistically brilliant, or in some other way amazingly outstanding,, to overcome our prejudices.

[KeyserSoze01]

I posted on this thread before about how weird I find it that people don't answer when you wish them a good morning (it means something like ' I hope you have a good day, I feel fine') as well as avoiding eye contact. I will be leaving for good a small village in Switzerland for good soon and I'm sure that I will miss the greetings I get when I walk up to the shop or post office, or as I drive down to the valley. It's normal to say good day, to people that you know so that you at least acknowledge their existence, to people that you don't know to people that you don't know because you are curious.

Not the same thing for you big city slickers of course, you can't say hello to everyone on Sukhumvit.

Up in the mountains, not stopping to say hello and discussing your planned route can be a matter of life and death. Not having seen anyone for a few hours and then getting someone avoiding eye contact as you cross paths is weird, these are city guys and also not Swiss I guess.

I think this is not a 'Farang thing' it is a 'grown up in a big town thing', that or being English.

I don't mind being taken for an idiot by a would-be conman, I find it funny and let them know. Where's the problem?

You finally figured it out. People from smaller communities or rural areas are more friendly than those in large cities. The culture of large cities more or less dictates a stand-offish demeanor when out as it would be unrealistic to smile and greet 1000 people an hour.

[zzdocxx]

I enjoyed this post from several years ago, whether true or not I cannot comment:

Posted 2004-03-17 08:45:31

I am a long-time resident of Bangkok, and while I enjoy reading this forum, I don't post. Still this time, I just can't resist.

From my point of view, there was a really wonderful slant on this whole discussion in the best of Jake Needham's Bangkok-set novels, KILLING PLATO, which was published last year in Hong Kong.

Please forgive me the inevitable typing errors, but here's the way Needham put it....

"The Thai press generally uses phrases such as ‘the foreign community’ to refer collectively to Bangkok’s non-Thai residents, but the truth is that there is neither anything particularly collective nor community-like about foreigners in Bangkok. On the contrary, most foreigners in Bangkok hate most other foreigners in Bangkok, and many of them go out of their way to inflict whatever harm they can on each other."

"My own residency was only a couple of weeks along when I started noticing the phenomenon. I began calling it the Jungle Jim syndrome, since the whole business rekindled childhood memories of a television series I used to watch every Saturday morning when I was about ten years old."

"The series told the tale of a suitably strong and naturally quite handsome white guy whose name was Jungle Jim. He lived in some nameless country in Africa, and he spent his weekend mornings having adventures in the jungle and rescuing people in distress, frequently damsels with quite amazing hooters straining against their tight blouses. The natives whom Jungle Jim encountered in the course of all these adventures respected him because he was a decent and honorable guy, and in return, he treated the natives he met with an equal degree of respect."

"But that was not to say that Jungle Jim had no human enemies. A frequently recurring plot line was Jungle Jim’s arrival in some isolated village where he would find a couple of old European traders already living happily among the locals. They were usually Dutch, for some reason, perhaps because they had funny accents. Regardless, these traders were inevitably grizzled old drunks who were working on all kinds of evil schemes for swindling the natives, but they were still living among them like kings and pulling all the babes since the locals didn’t know what pathetic losers they actually were."

"When Jungle Jim arrived on the scene, of course, all that changed. The attention and loyalty of the natives shifted instantly from the old traders to Jungle Jim, not only because he was clean-cut and handsome and decent, but also because he was . . . well, new."

"At first, the old traders inevitably claimed to want to make some kind of common cause with Jungle Jim, but by the end of the show you always discovered that it was these jokers, not the locals, who were Jungle Jim’s real enemies. His arrival in the village had put the continuation of their little scam at risk. The original white guys on the scene had to get rid of Jungle Jim somehow or they’d never get back to being the big cheeses, or more important, ever have all those babes to themselves again."

"Bangkok is exactly like that. "

...And that's the name of that tune.

[Rsquared]

Wow! I didn't realise I was that old............I used to watch "Jungle Jim" as a kid and can relate to the previous post.

Think I'll go have a lie down now.

[Spaniel]

I have lived in various parts of Thailand since 1967, for around 25 years, the past 15 in retirement, in Miinburi. So I have seen lots of falangs come and go. When I'm in town (Bangkok) or Pattaya or anywhere there is a large number of falangs I wouldn't think of saying hello to a total stranger unless they initiated the greeting then I would just respond with a quick hello. I go to Fashion Island Mall, near where I live, a couple times a week and I always see several falangs about. A few months ago I tried to see how many would respond to my greetings as we passed in the mall. I said hello to 4 different people and only 1 replied, the other 3 simply passing by!

[jacktrip]

I tend to do this ignoring thing. Why? Because the first questions are always the same. Where are you from? What do you do in Thailand? What do you do for work? If I answer that I'm retired then they ask why I'm so young, where I worked previously and eventually (yep) where my money comes from.

I'm simply tired of answering the same questions, and/or evaluating who this stranger is and whether I should tell them my stuff right away.

[nocturn]

because the change room at the gym is simply not a good place to start a conversation.

Anywhere else, because I'm simply not interested.

[Ron19]

If I see a farang and they haven't seen me,always say hello and then if they want to talk,will do also.

If they speak 1st,always answer,never ignore.

[ivan96822]

We falang are complex....I ignore 95% of white males because I am more interested in talking to females. I have zero interest in what any man, ages 19 - 85, are doing. My motivation for socializing is women. Period.

However, I did meet a few decent human beings recently. I met a Scot from Glasgow, an English teacher from London, and an American from Miami. That said, I spent about seven minutes with each and when I saw them again in the Sukhumvit area, I raised my eyebrow and continued on.

[2unique]

We falang are complex....I ignore 95% of white males because I am more interested in talking to females. I have zero interest in what any man, ages 19 - 85, are doing. My motivation for socializing is women. Period.

That's complex?

Sent from Android, please excuse errors in type or judgement.

[VintageTQ]

I am a pretty friendly person, I will sometimes say hello and help a tourist, I even do this in my own country, especially when someone does look lost and confused. But in the remoter areas I usually restrict it to a nod. Still, often not responded. Whatever. Their problem.

I find it worse dealing with Thais in some service (7/11, movies, restaurant) and often I say Hello or Sawatdee first. I'm amazed at the number of times I don't get a response. Just yesterday after someone didn't respond to hello, and pointed to the cash register for the price (to me plainly rude, even just say it in Thai!), they sent me off with a "thank you, please come again". I couldn't understand that.

However just the other day I had the opposite experience. I was somewhere on the road between Khon Kaen and Bangkok, stopped at a set of lights. All of a sudden the car next to ours starts honking its horn. I look over to the mirrored drivers window when it's winds down and a young Thai man is smiling (and shaking his head), took me a second to realise, there was a Caucasian gentleman sitting in the passenger seat. He leaned forward and started waving frantically as if we were long lost school mates.

I did wave back, but it was more from shock than anything else!

I live on the 11 floor and whenever I step into the elevator to go downstairs and it is already occupied I tend to smile ,nod and say 'Good morning/Good afternoon or even...'Sawatdee krup'.....

but often as not I get ignored.

Maybe it's me...

Ha, it's not just you, I lived on the 8th floor and generally I say hi as well, or again, at least give a nod. I would say that less than 10% would respond in kind.

I find this all very strange too, very few people in my condo talk to you. I started off saying hello to people i would see quite regularly but often got ignored too. Some people are nice but some people, even my close neighbours would literally walk past you in the corridor with their head down rather than even smile or say hello.

I find it very strange to be honest

[StreetCowboy]

I am a pretty friendly person, I will sometimes say hello and help a tourist, I even do this in my own country, especially when someone does look lost and confused. But in the remoter areas I usually restrict it to a nod. Still, often not responded. Whatever. Their problem.

I find it worse dealing with Thais in some service (7/11, movies, restaurant) and often I say Hello or Sawatdee first. I'm amazed at the number of times I don't get a response. Just yesterday after someone didn't respond to hello, and pointed to the cash register for the price (to me plainly rude, even just say it in Thai!), they sent me off with a "thank you, please come again". I couldn't understand that.

However just the other day I had the opposite experience. I was somewhere on the road between Khon Kaen and Bangkok, stopped at a set of lights. All of a sudden the car next to ours starts honking its horn. I look over to the mirrored drivers window when it's winds down and a young Thai man is smiling (and shaking his head), took me a second to realise, there was a Caucasian gentleman sitting in the passenger seat. He leaned forward and started waving frantically as if we were long lost school mates.

I did wave back, but it was more from shock than anything else!

I live on the 11 floor and whenever I step into the elevator to go downstairs and it is already occupied I tend to smile ,nod and say 'Good morning/Good afternoon or even...'Sawatdee krup'.....

but often as not I get ignored.

Maybe it's me...

Ha, it's not just you, I lived on the 8th floor and generally I say hi as well, or again, at least give a nod. I would say that less than 10% would respond in kind.

I find this all very strange too, very few people in my condo talk to you. I started off saying hello to people i would see quite regularly but often got ignored too. Some people are nice but some people, even my close neighbours would literally walk past you in the corridor with their head down rather than even smile or say hello.

I find it very strange to be honest

Maybe they're just walking with their head down concentrating on their own thoughts, and it has nothing to do with saying hello or not saying hello. They just don't notice, as their thoughts are otherwise engaged...

Or, more likely, they are SOE operatives who know that they are under surveillance, and fear for your safety should they acknowledge you

SC

[smokie36]

Football shirts....singlets and budgie smugglers are a definite no.

Spider tattoos on the neck....nose rings and obvious steroid abuse are on the advisory list.

Short skirt and a smile will get me chatting every time though. Farang or Thai.

I've become a good judge of a person based on the first minute or two of interaction....sadly through experience however....

[StreetCowboy]

Football shirts....singlets and budgie smugglers are a definite no.

Spider tattoos on the neck....nose rings and obvious steroid abuse are on the advisory list.

Short skirt and a smile will get me chatting every time though. Farang or Thai.

I've become a good judge of a person based on the first minute or two of interaction....sadly through experience however....

I had to do a 10-second research project there, and I was about to post "This internet thingy is just tops!" but then my eye happened to stray to the Google Images for "budgie smuggler". I'm struggling to face the Konigludwig in front of me, now. I feel a little queasy.

And staying on topic, what are you doing in Diggers of a Sunday afternoon? Apart from drowning your sorrows at missing the rugby?

SC