Beetlejuice makes valid points.

Go to any tourists area and we are treated less respectfully than will be outside of those tourist areas.

We are often tarred with the same brush. In most cases the Thai's are intelligent enough to spot the difference between riffraff and someone dressed and behaving respectfully, for the most part the people we deal with will make attempts to treat us as such.

However, once a series of impolite, clumsy imbeciles have been encountered too many times it will be difficult for anyone not to judge all in the same light and a certain level of contempt will stick.

I have no wish to be placed in the same bracket as some violent, abusive and impolite expat. Those who suggest they don't care what others think of them.

I do care what others think of me, in Thailand and in the UK - And those who care what others think of them leave fruitful ground for those who follow.

For long-termers while in Thailand or anywhere else we are constantly laying and relaying the foundation of our future.

It is natural that we object to letting people who have proven that they have no respect for society place this at risk.

It is human right that citizens should be free to move as they wish and visit where they like. However, some believe that when someone has proven they have anti-social tendencies to such extremes they have perhaps already given up those rights.

Well using your logic, we're all tarred with the same brush as any "bad farang' the Thais may see on TV such as Hitler, Mussolini (who has shaped modern Thailand's love of uniforms thanks to Plaek) or Benny Hill.

It's really no big deal.

People who feel we 2 billion "farangs" are homogenised by some imagined Thai collective thought really don't know Thailand, nor Thais that well.

Give the Thais more credit for independent thought than you do and you'll be fine...

Does your wife know your going to Soi Cowboy?