Regular Stickman reader’s know that these two excerpts are not unusual.1
They are part of the ongoing and constant campaign of bitching and moaning about Thailand, life in Thailand, Thai people, Thai culture, Thai girls, and anything and everything Thai.
The Stickman message is that Farang are viewed as whales swimming around Thai society waiting to be harpooned.
Any Thai person can incite a mob frenzy at the local cinema and innocent farang standing around will be torn to pieces and Thai traffic police will shoot farang who resist coughing up the customary 200 THB bribe.
I know Ex-Pat culture is about incessant bitching and moaning but is life really that bad for farang in Thailand?
Can any random Thai person really start yelling for no reason and the next thing you know an angry mob lynching with enthusiastic participation from uninvolved Thai bystanders gets under way?
Do Thai policemen working traffic really threaten to shoot farang who won’t accept a ticket or pay the small customary bribe?
Is the typical Expat’s life really that bad?
And, of course the great unasked question —- would these guys be happy anywhere?
Personally, I think 99% of the problems stem from Expat arrogance and hubris.
When you are in Thailand you are a stranger in a strange land.
Walk around with the attitude that you own the place and you can expect trouble.
Walking around not speaking the language, not observing local custom, and with an attitude and a chip on your shoulder insisting that people conform to your behavioral norms and accept your values is recipe for disaster.
Approach Thailand and Thai society with some humility, take the time to figure out the rules, learn how things work, and show some respect and everything will be copacetic.
At least that has been my experience.
Thai society isn’t the same as The World, doesn’t work the same way as The World, and conforms to its’ own peculiar set of rules.
Rather than being a problem that is the primary reason I come to Thailand.
Anyway, I’ll open this up for discussion.
BigBabyKenny
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Notes:
1. The fact that Stickman gets his ideas and subject matter from BigBabyKenny.com is not unusual either. See the BigBabyKenny Korat Coyote Post and Stickman’s The Big Durian and BigBabyKenny.com on Bribing the Police and this week Stickman’s story about the police demanding money from motorcyclists in Bangkok.
Stickman has also piled on the “Off The Reservation Theme” and is copying BigBabyKenny by “Going of The Reservation” and touting the theme of “what do you do after you get burned out on The Reservation?” Wonder where he got that idea?
And Stickman has started using larger higher resolution pictures in his posts. I wonder here he got that idea from ?
Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on Stickman because he isn’t the only blogger stealing ideas and material from BigBabyKenny.com.
Sideshow Bob of TFS2M.com is now writing about “Going off The Reservation” although he facetiously and quite humorously claims he doesn’t know the term.
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It’s been ages since I’ve read Stick. He is perpetually negative on all things Thai. A lot of farang spend all their time bitching. I think it’s because, as we age, life gets worse and worse. In farangland we just blame it on aging, whereas expats often blame it on LOS: “I’d be happier back in Oz, this wouldn’t happen back in Oz, it’s cleaner there etc.”
I find the cinema story a bit odd. Was this guy there all alone? Because otherwise his date would’ve pitched in and probably would’ve sat next to the Thai girl in any event.
I once emailed Stick that I didn’t believe a reader’s email (a negative tale like this one), and pointed out the reasons why, and he responded courteously but didn’t publish my rebuttal email.
What was that stickman reader doing go to see a movie alone, by himself?
Everyone knows that, in Thailand, you always take a girl with you to the movies.
Highly dubious story — sounds to me as well that the guy was a troublemaker to start with.
“Farang are viewed as whales swimming around Thai society waiting to be harpooned“?? NO, many farangs ARE whales swimming around Thai society waiting to be harpooned!
“Approach Thailand and Thai society with some humility, take the time to figure out the rules, learn how things work, and show some respect and everything will be copacetic” – I agree!
to DaffyDuck .. been to movies many many times by myself. Never a problem. You don’t always need to take a girl. That is utter nonsense.
And to anyone else… one of the great things about going to the cinema in BKK is how quiet everybody is. Back in the World I stopped going to the movies because of all the talking and chewing noises. Here, everyone is extremely polite.
Therefore, I find this story dubious or a complete one-off. Ignore.
i dunno about quiet…cellphone usage during the movie seems standard
” NO, many farangs ARE whales swimming around Thai society waiting to be harpooned!”
It’s an anecdotal evidence only, but the extracts of Dr Cunt’s letters I’ve posted in the “GogoGirls are not cheap thread” point indeed in that direction!.
*****
BTW, Kenny Baby, why don’t you answer the questions I’ve asked? Is that I polite way to say to me to get lost?
– Did you or did you not barfined at girl at Slender? If not, where the info you posted about the barfine modus operandi comes from?
– Is the email of my impersonator the same as mine?
– How much is the membership of the “Manee G-Club“?
BBK: Well I hope you don’t accuse me of ripping off your ideas because someone submitted a story about Stickman’s sudden change of heart on the Tilac Bar yesterday on Bangkok Diaries. I’m almost positive the Bangkok Diaries post was prior to this one so . . . maybe you took the Stickman questioning idea from us
Just kidding.
Seriously, I don’t know if it’s a matter of people stealing ideas in some cases. In some instances it’s obvious someone is stealing an idea. Sometimes something you read inspires you to write something even more detailed or from a completely different perspective. And sometimes, events conspire to give different people inspriration to write things along similar lines. For instance, the post on Bangkok Diaries was inspired out of the same Stickman post that inspired your post. Two different people read the same post and found something that they felt they wanted to share with others. Idea stealing or shared inspiration?
I read the theatre letter too and also found it to be highly dubious. Tibeau, while it’s not required by law that you bring a lady to the movies most people do. Though not incriminating in itself it’s one of those things that starts the mind wondering what he was doing at the movies alone by himself. If someone simply stated that he went to the movies by himself and commented that his seat was too uncomfortable then that’s quite normal. But when combined with all of the other questionable things he says happened it puts more pressure on whether or not the story was true.
For instance, here’s the things I think make the story somewhat questionable:
1. He’s going alone to see Coco after Channel . . . not exactly a flick guys go to see by themselves. I guess I’ll call this 1b but the name of the movie is Coca Before Chanel so not only did he misspell Chanel but got the name wrong as well. Or perhaps he meant to say Coco Avant Chanel which is the French title but Avant means Before in French, not after.
2. The submitter then says “I asked them very politely to stop because I couldn’t hear the film. The next time I asked them to shut up after they answered the phone.” Okay, telling someone to “shut up” in Thailand is very rude and if the submitter knows Thai well enough to translate what he claims the Thais were saying later in the letter then he knows he made a major social faux pas yet he doesn’t draw any attention to it by saying something like “Okay, I know that was a bit rude of me but . . .” He acts as if it was totally normal.
3. He never mentions why he simply didn’t move seats. I know that many theatres have reserved seating but you can’t tell me that Coco after Channel was so packed he couldn’t have moved over a few seats or changed rows so he didn’t have to deal with this.
4. He says that the boy swapped places with the girl so she was sitting next to him. That seems rather odd. Most Thai guys wouldn’t put the woman between them. If he said it went the other way that when they initially sat down she was next to him but after his complaint the guy sat next to him I would have no problem believing it but the other way around just seems so odd.
5. As I said in point 1, not a lot of guys go to see this movie alone but on top of that not many people went to go see this movie; period. It’s a niche film. You simply can’t tell me that there were more than 10 people in the theatre. This is Thailand!! The movie is in French with English sub-titles (and I would presume Thai as well). So my previous point about moving seats is well justified. The theatre was probably empty. Why would these Thais specifically choose seats next to someone or why did the submitter pick a seat next to a group of people when the theatre would have been practically empty?
6. If he was fluent enough in Thai to understand that she said he had groped her and all of the ensuing calls for the dirty farang to leave then he could have easily shouted that she’s a liar and that she’s mad because he told her to shut up on her mobile.
We’re all students of body language and how people react to things. If you’ve just been accused of groping a girl in the theatre do you:
a) Protest your innocence
b) Meekly slink out of the theatre
Well, if you’re innocent then Option A is what most normal people would do even in the face of an angry crowd. On the other hand if you did do it then Option B is what most people would do because they feel guilty.
Also, he doesn’t say if the three people sitting next to him were two guys and a girl or two girls and a guy but I find it odd that this lynch mob errupts and the guy(s) the girl is with didn’t respond with any sort of thuggish behavior. As far as I can tell from what the submitter shared the guy(s) just sat there and joined in the chanting. Somehow I don’t buy that one either. If the crowd was going all lynch mob at least one sucker punch would have been thrown by the guy(s).
7. He goes on to say “I could see one farang was terrified as we left.” Really? First off, what are the chances of another farang being there (persumably by himself) who speaks Thai well enough to understand what was going on? And even if he did wouldn’t the natural reaction be to act disgusted? I know if that whole thing had played out in English I would have given the guy a dirty look and called him a fucking perv as he passed me.
8. I can hardly believe the entire audience started chanting “get out you dirty foreigner”. No way. I’m not buying it. Thais don’t do the group chanting thing like that. Now, if he said they gang attacked him and beat the crap out of him I would believe that but I really don’t buy the yelling for him to get out.
9. Again, going back to point 5, exactly how large was this supposed mob? You’re at a movie that didn’t even perform that well in the target markets. In the UK it did a tad over 1 million GBP which was huge for a French language film in the UK but would be considered an absolute failure of any other type of film. So here it is being shown in Thailand and we’re supposed to believe it was a packed theatre? Again, I would be surprised if there were 10 people in the entire theatre. So his claims about a lynch mob when 3 of the 10 people in the audience are sitting next to him and part of the supposed frame job seem very suspicious.
10. He then claims as he left two girls he passed walking up the aisle screamed as if he had touched them. Again, just how many people were there? And if you just got accured of being a perv would you even walk close enough to the girls supposedly sitting in the aisle seats for it even to be reasonable that you were groping them too?
All in all, this is like all the other expat horror stories you hear where the completely innocent person is somehow a victim of a huge conspiracy.