I was in Pats this week and whilst having a beer on Walking street I was surprised to see an old white farang guy going through the bins pulling out empty water bottles etc for recycling- outside 7 Eleven. He was doing a good job crushing them after first pulling off the lables.

I asked one of the bar girls if this guy was crazy or homeless. She laughed and told me that he does it every night to support his thai family. He apparently has 2 thai kids to raise.

He must be aged in his 60's and I started to think how much coin can he earn each week. Surely there must be an alternative for this old fella. If you can think of one let me know and I will go see the guy. Helping people or animals brings me inner peace and happiness...

I have often thought that the best, most respectful way to help people is just to leave them the hell alone.

I dont think euthanasia is legal here and cant think of any other way to help.

Sent from my GT-P7500 using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

I dont think euthanasia is legal here and cant think of any other way to help.

Sent from my GT-P7500 using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

Are you talking about the guy collecting from the bins or the OP?

One is doing what he has to do to earn some cash to help his family, and one is drinking beer in a brothel.

I can tell this:

i had my entire balcony covered in beer bottles,

easily a full truck worth of bottles, my land lord cashed them in for me for a total of 14 baht.

OTOH i was offered to work at a karaoke bar as a boy-toy for woman,

mama-san said i was 700 baht bar-fine, of which i got to keep half, on top of what i got for action.

Probably not applicable for a 60 year ole man tho

David, as recommendable it is to help a fellow farang, I am afraid that there is not much that you can do for him. For shure, he must have looked for better avenues to make a living in Pattaya for himself before.

He may have missed the point, where a Farang MUST return to his home-country (usually for financial reasons). I dare to say, that going through garbage-bins was not part of his plans as far as his retirement in paradise is concerned.

I used to help out a few Farangs in the past (including buying their one-way ticket to go back home on 2 occasions.) But I don't do things like that anymore.

Seems to me, that Farangs that hit "Rock Bottom", were here long enough to adopt "Thai Ways".

Have never received anything like a sincere "Thank-You". Comments like "I will make it up to you someday" or "I will pay you back the airfare" have never materialized.

Is there any wonder, that I am no more in the business of helping out fellow Farangs in distress?

Cheers.

I can tell this: i had my entire balcony covered in beer bottles, easily a full truck worth of bottles, my land lord cashed them in for me for a total of 14 baht. OTOH i was offered to work at a karaoke bar as a boy-toy for woman, mama-san said i was 700 baht bar-fine, of which i got to keep half, on top of what i got for action. Probably not applicable for a 60 year ole man tho

Sounds like you got ripped off then - it is 50 satang per beer bottle (brown glass), or 10 baht per kilo of clear plastic here. Just think how rich you could have been with a truck full if your landlord hadn't taken all of the money...?

Either way, the old boy scavenging in bins is not likely to be making much each day. I don't have suggestions to what he can do, but I do feel a bit sorry for people living like this. You can't help everyone though unfortunately...

Save all your empties, take them with you and hand them over to him. You never know, he might be happy and thank you for your help.

Not necessarily, i asked a thai guy looting the trash bins on this street if he wanted more bottles ?

Yep, he wanted, but when i came down with a case,

he thought it would be heavy to carry, so could i just give him a tip instead ?

I can tell this: i had my entire balcony covered in beer bottles, easily a full truck worth of bottles, my land lord cashed them in for me for a total of 14 baht. OTOH i was offered to work at a karaoke bar as a boy-toy for woman, mama-san said i was 700 baht bar-fine, of which i got to keep half, on top of what i got for action. Probably not applicable for a 60 year ole man tho

Sounds like you got ripped off then - it is 50 satang per beer bottle (brown glass), or 10 baht per kilo of clear plastic here. Just think how rich you could have been with a truck full if your landlord hadn't taken all of the money...?

Either way, the old boy scavenging in bins is not likely to be making much each day. I don't have suggestions to what he can do, but I do feel a bit sorry for people living like this. You can't help everyone though unfortunately...

Yeap, he got ripped off if he was suppose to get a cut. I save my beer bottles and cardboard cases for a in-laws....he says he gets one baht per bottle when turned in with the case and all the bottles the same brand...expect the beer distributer will pay a recycler a higher amount when returned is such condition

Over the many years that I have lived here I have been ripped off a few times, always by a farang. The only way to help them is to tell them the address of their Embassy and hold on to your wallet!

I typically lose money on all interactions with mankind,

dont interact much these days, cept from the safety behind internet

We recycle everything, and I mean everything. Convenient as the recycle place is about 5 minutes up the road.

Usually come away with 100~200 Baht depending on our load, then we blow it all on yellow tag promotion items at Tesco Express, maybe enough left over for some monkey balls on a stick from the cart outside.

Think there might be more in this than people realise. I walked around my local lake the other day and was disgusted to see after a hot weekened there were a fair few empty bottles and cans left dumped. So rather than whinge about it in the pub or on the internet and moan about how it was all Eastern European's who'd left the rubbish (which it was) I Returned the next day with a big refuse sack and in a brisk 30 min walk completely filled it, picking up all the chucked items, about 15kg worth. That was 30 min with randomly dumped rubbish. Someone going for where people dump 100's of bottles/cans etc on a daily basis is gonna get a pretty good amount collected over say 2-3 hours.