Between two worlds: Limbo Farangs

[laolover88]

Between two worlds: Limbo Farangs

Or possibly between many lives?

We live in NE Thailand, but we also live, nowadays occasionally, in the UK.

In Issan we, unlike a lot of the people we live with and our neighbours, have and can acquire most of the gadgets that are considered ‘standard’ in EU/US homes..hot water, air con, large fridges/freezers, computers. internet etc..So we live a relatively privileged life here.

We and the children can speak Thai and English..and a few other things...,and the children go to Thai schools, mainly to ensure they can read and write Thai also. But I, not my wife, who anyway is from a Thai ‘minority’ and the children are clearly not Thai. The children are ‘Luk Krung’....

They are beginning, aged 10+, to inquire about their ‘identity’...On the one hand they are lauded for their English skills, beautiful hair and white skins!! but . not sure the right word here....doubted? as the Thai Government websites charmingly put as "Aliens" . As my daughter said to me 'Daddy am I an Alien like ET? They are beginning, also, to encounter hostility about their ‘ethnicity’ .

Given that we live in a community that is approximately 40% Thai, 25% Vietnamese, 20% Lao and 15% Chinese...;and most signs are written in 4 languages....therefore there must be a huge degree of 'tolerance' of ethnic difference locally....... appears it does not extend to farangsw. We would be interested to know how other people have dealt with this......well if you needed to.......... ??.

[transam]

For the kids, ridicule from others really means envy. They must deal with it. Don't worry.

[ukrules]

They are jealous.

[Dr Robert]

Thai/Laos Farang children are normally very attractive and it wont be very long before the perceived prejudice disappears in the scramble to mate-thats when you will have real problems OP

[RamblingSam]

I'm now haunted by visions of the highly improbable and frightening sight of Falangs in Thailand, limbo-dancing ... If they are wearing their usual revoltingly baggy shorts, I think it would get banned pretty quickly!

[cocopops]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with using the word "Alien" the way they do on various official websites and forms. It's the English language, nothing more and nothing less. I (Australian background) certainly did not think it odd the first time I saw it. I mean no disrespect when I say that on this specific issue you have misunderstood - it's your paranoia that is the problem. The wikipedia link below has the formal definition of an Alien in Australia, the UK and the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_%28law%29

Your kids will, at some point in their lives, be called lots of nasty names by other kids. This happens to them all. Sometimes it will relate to the color of their skin. It will make your blood boil. Certainly it does mine... But it's probably not so much worse than what they would encounter in any school in any country on Earth.

Edited October 15, 2013 by cocopops

[thongdee]

Jealousy is a bad disease .... ;-)

[bobmac10]

it's a bonus for them to have two cultures to chooses from, a great advantage over their peers.

My kids are luuk-kruang and have two passports, have friends in both countries, are western educated but love Thailand and their Thai relations.

I wouldn't worry at all, they're lucky

[loong]

Given that we live in a community that is approximately 40% Thai, 25% Vietnamese, 20% Lao and 15% Chinese.

So an Asian community, not so ethnically diverse.

My child is teased for having a farang father, so many children are taught by their parents that having a farang parent is something to be embarrassed about.

[flyingdoc]

It is a fascinating dilemma!

Less marked at University where I work part time, but even with Thais who have lived and worked abroad, including the U.S. they still revert to inbred and innate Thai reactions, which can catch even the most astute of us unawares !

[oops]

For the kids, ridicule from others really means envy. They must deal with it. Don't worry.

Agreed and I have faced that same issue. In a village where we lived the Thai, Thai kids really didn't play with the La krung kids.

It's easy to see the envy though. They know our children will have more offered to them in life or more available I should say.

I am hoping that our children rid Thailand of the corruption. But I do believe the people I am referring to are worried about it.

We have 1000's of La krung children and eventually they will leak in to areas that are taboo for now. When they do get in, we can

only hope and pray they go after the corrupt people and take everything away from them and their family members that have lived such

a great life off the blood money.

[rfukata]

"community that is approximately 40% Thai, 25% Vietnamese, 20% Lao and 15% Chinese...;and most signs are written in 4 languages....therefore there must be a huge degree of 'tolerance' of ethnic difference locally"

not to worry.

I just moved my family including our 3 small kids to Hawaii this July. I enrolled my eldest child to public school and certain DOE department of education brochures have translations in 12 languages + 2 dialects - this is a true diversity here, the kids just blend in without any difficulties.

[TTom911]

it's something 99% (or maybe just 98%) of farangs in Thailand will have to come to terms with, whatever their/our initial expectations are: it is "limbo" and will never change... not a really good perspective for every(any?)one... but then there is "hope" or plain old "delusion"... (and of course, there is still this slim chance that "we" can really achieve here what is/was not possible in other places...which is why most farangs come to Thailand in the first place... leading us back to why "hope" or "delusion" keeps prevailing for a looooong time...)

Edited October 15, 2013 by TTom911

[bina]

my daughter, for about three years, wanted to have dark skin and dark curly hair and not her blond blue eyed white whtie look , this is in an israeli public school wehre most of the kids are of morrocan or yemen descent. when she moved schools (county regulations) she was suddenly just an other light haired whtie skinned kid since most of the kids there were either from anglo or european ancestry and then the darker kids were a minority (and also from poorer villages, and more religious.) racism is alive and well everywhere, sometimes its just less blatant, especially in small towns... and if tis not skin colour or hair then its clothing, food, religioun, money/ have them excel in things taht give them satisfaction so that they dont look to others for approval. sports, dancing, whatever. and explain as best you can why people are prejudiced, explain that in other countries, like here for instance, people go crazy over 'asian' features , and the big thing here was black hair straigtening...

two ways to fight it. one is to not dwell on it too much, and second is to find ways to overcome it in a positive way, after all, have u not noticed skin whitening deodrants? what is horrible now will be an asset later in life...

[wooloomooloo]

An alien is defined as a foreigner.

OP - is there a chance that your children are mirroring your apparent sense of victimhood? And what has what you own got to do with it.

Relax a little and life will be far easier.

[lannarebirth]

Given that you've got a large refrigerator and claim to live a relatively privileged life here, why don't you send your kids to a decent school? Your children will get a much better education at an international school and will mix with children not unlike themselves who won't see anything "alien" about them at all.

[cpofc]

Have you ever watched this?

(BTW I am the Step Father of a now 38 YO Thai daughter, and father of a mixed race 26 YO Thai/Australian Son. My daughter started school in Australia in the 5th Grade, in an all white, causcasian, christian school. She was the only Asian Student both in her Primary and High School.)

introduction - (This is an award winning docco).

On the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in April 1968, Jane Elliott's third graders from the small, all-white town of Riceville, Iowa, came to class confused and upset. They recently had made King their "Hero of the Month," and they couldn't understand why someone would kill him. So Elliott decided to teach her class a daring lesson in the meaning of discrimination. She wanted to show her pupils what discrimination feels like, and what it can do to people.

Elliott divided her class by eye color -- those with blue eyes and those with brown. On the first day, the blue-eyed children were told they were smarter, nicer, neater, and better than those with brown eyes. Throughout the day, Elliott praised them and allowed them privileges such as a taking a longer recess and being first in the lunch line. In contrast, the brown-eyed children had to wear collars around their necks and their behavior and performance were criticized and ridiculed by Elliott. On the second day, the roles were reversed and the blue-eyed children were made to feel inferior while the brown eyes were designated the dominant group.

What happened over the course of the unique two-day exercise astonished both students and teacher. On both days, children who were designated as inferior took on the look and behavior of genuinely inferior students, performing poorly on tests and other work. In contrast, the "superior" students -- students who had been sweet and tolerant before the exercise -- became mean-spirited and seemed to like discriminating against the "inferior" group.

"I watched what had been marvelous, cooperative, wonderful, thoughtful children turn into nasty, vicious, discriminating little third-graders in a space of fifteen minutes," says Elliott. She says she realized then that she had "created a microcosm of society in a third-grade classroom."

"A Class Divided" is one of the most requested programs in FRONTLINE's history. First broadcast in 1985, it is being rebroadcast in 2003 as part of FRONTLINE's 20th Anniversary Season.

Watch the program in full in Windows Media and RealMedia

Elliott repeated the exercise with her new classes in the following year. The third time, in 1970, cameras were present. Fourteen years later, FRONTLINE's "A Class Divided" chronicled a mini-reunion of that 1970 third-grade class. As young adults, Elliott's former students watch themselves on film and talk about the impact Elliott's lesson in bigotry has had on their lives and attitudes. It is Jane Elliott's first chance to find out how much of her lesson her students had retained.

"Nobody likes to be looked down upon. Nobody likes to be hated, teased or discriminated against," says Verla, one of the former students.

Another, Sandra, tells Elliott: "You hear these people talking about different people and how they'd like to have them out of the country. And sometimes I just wish I had that collar in my pocket. I could whip it out and put it on and say 'Wear this, and put yourself in their place.' I wish they would go through what I went through, you know."

In the last part of "A Class Divided," FRONTLINE's cameras follow Jane Elliott as she takes her exercise to employees of the Iowa prison system. During a daylong workshop in human relations she teaches the same lesson to the adults. Their reactions to the blue-eye, brown-eye exercise are similar to those of the children.

"After you do this exercise, when the debriefing starts, when the pain is over and they're all back together, you find out how society could be if we really believed all this stuff that we preach, if we really acted that way, you could feel as good about one another as those kids feel about one another after this exercise is over. You create instant cousins," says Elliott. "The kids said over and over, 'We're kind of like a family now.' They found out how to hurt one another and they found out how it feels to be hurt in that way and they refuse to hurt one another in that way again."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/etc/view.html

[Thai at Heart]

I finally gave up because I couldn't find any decent schools in isaan. At the end of it, kids were completely bilingual, great friends, family etc.

But they will be better set having done high school and university over seas and returning to Thailand if they wish to, than going to high school in Thailand and trying to embark on university overseas. Even worse, if they don't go oversees at all, could they think and handle going overseas to work?

Doubt it very much.

[Rancid]

My kids copped a bit of predudice in Thailand but I warned them that when we finally went back to Australia it would be a lot worse. I was wrong, since getting back they have had no issues whatsoever. Seems things have moved on here since I was a kid.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

[Bkungbank]

Your daughter is very lucky as mixed here are very popular they welcome everywhere and get a lot of good attention even movie stars here 40% are Luk Krueng, the word alien means more special then others(beauty) that should explain to the children as it boots their confident.

[Dellie]

Funny how people move to an area where the majority of the locals are uneducated and then are dissapointed when they realize said people are ignorant.

[ABCer]

OP, don't worry about your kids.

Kids are flexible and resilient.

It will not be long before they will realize their advantages. Then the local kids will have some complaints.

Whiter skin, fair complexion, bilingual, dual nationality - they have everything going for them.

As to being picked on by other kids, let it wear out naturally. All kids around the globe are cruel and 'birds of feather...' is present even in UK, as in any other country.

As a parent and educationalist one word of advice - do not opt for a Private school. They will turn out to be snobs in no time.

Add sport to their education. Judo or boxing would give them confidence, self-esteem and works miracles with school yard bullies.

Best of luck to all family.

Edited October 16, 2013 by ABCer

[Lucie]

I have been lucky. Although I myself am sometimes made to feel like something from another planet (usually unintentionally by lovely people) my half Thai, half British kids have never had a problem with discrimination. They are now 9 and 5, and have always just been 'one of the gang' at their school. It could perhaps be because we live very much like the lower-middle-class locals - the people my kids go to school with. It could be partly because I have lived and worked here for 17 years, and speak Thai.

The differences that my kids have to cope with are small things that may not be obvious, like the fact that I give them only a few Baht for snacks at school, as opposed to the 40-100 Baht their friends get.

In response to someone above, just because you can afford mod-cons in your house, you can't necessarily afford international school - we're talking 10,000 -50,000 per term for a private Thai school, as opposed to 10 times that for international schools. Trust me, I looked into it - I am not happy with the academic side of the Thai education system, and we've only stuck it for a few years to get the kids a basic foundation in reading and writing Thai. However, socially the schools have a lot going for them. Bullying is almost unheard of in the schools in our town.

We will be moving to the UK next year, and I wonder if my kids will feel, or be made to feel, 'strange' there. Obviously I hope not.

[Pops]

Quote:

"Given that we live in a community that is approximately 40% Thai, 25% Vietnamese, 20% Lao and 15% Chinese...;and most signs are written in 4 languages....therefore there must be a huge degree of 'tolerance' of ethnic difference locally"

All ethnic groups you mention are asian and have similar external features.

They probably look pretty similar to the Thai kids in your community, who are probably a mix of these same ethnic groups themselves, without realizing it.

Anyhow, your kids probably look very different from the other kids in your community.

That is where the problem starts.

In western society we have exactly the same problems.

A Thai acquaintance of mine lived in Texas USA for over 30 years and has stories to tell regarding racism and xenophobic behavior, by the locals there, that will make your toes curl.

I have several white European friends that lived in Texas as well and whom encountered no problems at all.

It is not just a Thai thing, xenophobia and racism are worldwide problems.

These problems can only be eradicated with support of parents and the government by teaching our kids well.

[farang000999]

Are you happy with the education at the Thai school? Is it a public school or private school?

[Travel2003]

Children all over the world experience teasing, bullying, harassment of some form.

Anyone who sticks out will sometimes become a target by others.

Important the parents support and teach the kids to understand that children in general many times forget that what they say or do can hurt another person.

Problem is bullying/harassment when they are not children anymore.

This of course, must be dealt with in another way.

[sms747]

Your daughter is very lucky as mixed here are very popular they welcome everywhere and get a lot of good attention even movie stars here 40% are Luk Krueng, the word alien means more special then others(beauty) that should explain to the children as it boots their confident.

Rather depends, if the are half African they are going to be in for a hard time here.

[asiamaster]

Your daughter is very lucky as mixed here are very popular they welcome everywhere and get a lot of good attention even movie stars here 40% are Luk Krueng, the word alien means more special then others(beauty) that should explain to the children as it boots their confident.

Rather depends, if the are half African they are going to be in for a hard time here.

And there is also quite a difference as to whether they are boys or girls. The girls are mostly loved by all (Thai men & women and also by Farang men & women). With boys it can be different story as quite often they are not accepted by Thai men (for not being Thai enough).

Fortunately I have two daughters.

I have tried to give them the best of both worlds -unfortunately I see a lot of kids embracing the worst of both worlds.

I myself was born in S'pore and raised in Malaysia. My father always taught me to act like a chameleon. Change color when required whilst maintaining a balance (keep your opinion to yourself). Therefore I fully understand Asian cultures -not meaning to say that I accept it all.

It can be difficult sometimes to find the right balance. I recall that when they were young they were politely wai -ing each and every Thai. However when we were visited by an elderly friend of mine who could have been their grandfather he was greeted with a simple "hi !". I had to explain that we still have at least some respect for the elderly in the Western world (although there is not much left of it....).

[sms747]

I have never heard a Thai express anything other than dislike/pity for half African kids here of either sex. What with the darkness and very usually absent fathers their life here is bleak and if you visit orphanages they often have a high percentage of these unwanted kids.

[Thai at Heart]

I have been lucky. Although I myself am sometimes made to feel like something from another planet (usually unintentionally by lovely people) my half Thai, half British kids have never had a problem with discrimination. They are now 9 and 5, and have always just been 'one of the gang' at their school. It could perhaps be because we live very much like the lower-middle-class locals - the people my kids go to school with. It could be partly because I have lived and worked here for 17 years, and speak Thai.

The differences that my kids have to cope with are small things that may not be obvious, like the fact that I give them only a few Baht for snacks at school, as opposed to the 40-100 Baht their friends get.

In response to someone above, just because you can afford mod-cons in your house, you can't necessarily afford international school - we're talking 10,000 -50,000 per term for a private Thai school, as opposed to 10 times that for international schools. Trust me, I looked into it - I am not happy with the academic side of the Thai education system, and we've only stuck it for a few years to get the kids a basic foundation in reading and writing Thai. However, socially the schools have a lot going for them. Bullying is almost unheard of in the schools in our town.

We will be moving to the UK next year, and I wonder if my kids will feel, or be made to feel, 'strange' there. Obviously I hope not.

My two came back to the UK a months ago.

Zero bullying or issues so far. Schools here have kids of all shape, sizes and colours. A couple of luug kreung barely register on the list.

They are completely bilingual and have settled in completely so far.