Thai Logic
When I visit the LOS I often stay at the Nana. I like the location and I like the hotel. As a hotel quest you get a breakfast coupon every morning that entitles you to a free breakfast. The breakfast is buffet style and of course it comes with coffee or tea. If you have a companion with you, her breakfast would not be free.
One morning myself and my companion from the nite before went to breakfast. The waitress asked my girlfriend if she was having breakfast and my girlfriend said "no". The waitress asked me if I wanted any coffee and I said,
"No, not for me – but you can bring it and give it to my friend."
Now, if you are new to Thai logic (?), you don't know where this (she'll have no breakfast, just give her my coffee) is going. But if you have been to the City of Angels in the Land of Smiles before, you know exactly where this is going and I won't disappoint you.
When we got up to leave, I was presented with a bill in full for a complete breakfast for my girlfriend! To the Thai mind the coffee sitting in front of my girlfriend constituted 'breakfast' and a billable item. I know 12 year olds that would not make this mental mistake. In no other developed, or even minimally courteous country would this have happened. If you lead a pro-active busy life in Thailand where you are mixing with Thais daily, this sort of thing can happen daily. Thai's are so ignorant they appear to be retarded and they are so greedy they make Nigerian diamond smugglers look like angels.
When I first started visiting Thailand and I was presented with this nonsense, I used to use my abundant sales skills, and diplomacy skills, and social skills. and smiling charm, and logic to get the problem corrected. I was never successful. Not once. Apparently, no Thai individual or Thai business person or Thai employee has ever made a single mistake ever. It is apparent that no part of their public school education delivers even a glancing blow with the subject of logic and the concept of 'face' obviates them from having to assume personal responsibility or admitting an error, and honour and dignity are not words in the Thai dictionary. In addition, Thais do not have the stamina and the patience that business negotiations require. If a customer business employee interface lasts more than a minute; then away goes the smile to be instantly replaced with violent-contemptuous-racist behaviour. This is the real Thai personality in the land of fake smiles and the longer you persist in trying to get civil discourse and civil behaviour, the closer you are to jail. This is why I don't respect Thailand and why I don't like/trust Thais. It isn't a country. It is more of a combination criminal conspiracy/amusement park. They have nothing but contempt for all farangs because they are racists and their solutions to many problems are violent solutions.
Thailand has no idea how these little things add up in people's individual and collective memories. If tomorrow they changed the laws and allowed farangs to own property, I would still never invest there. And in my own country I would never hire or trust Thais. And the individual and collective memories we build up affects other relationships and reactions also. For example: I sometimes wonder if there can be any Good Girls when the whole country is such a cesspool of ignorance and greed and illogic. Being a Good Girl isn't just a matter of being a good wife and mother. You have to be capable of thinking logically, like an adult. What separates us from the lower forms of life is that we can sift the facts without regard to emotion or whim. To successfully mate in a busy, competitive, modern world you have to be able to think. Thais inhabit a world completely divorced from modern behaviour. You can get Thai Buddhist monks (for $ of course) to come to your house and 'bless' your new washing machine or your new car. That's not Buddhism. That's animism and paganism, but the average Thai is too ignorant to know even that. Hell, I'm a farang and I know more about their corrupt 'philosophy' than they do.
Well, fuck 'em. The price they pay for their behaviour and for the way they treat me is that I don't take them or their religion or their country seriously. Because they don't take themselves seriously.
And of course, you are never supposed to get upset or angry or raise your voice. Oh no, that wouldn't be cool. You are supposed to just bend over and take it up the rear. OK, I'm bent over and I'm taking it up the rear. It's called a vacation. I come here at great expense and inconvenience and not a little risk because parts of the experience amuse me. But my sweet revenge and guarantee is knowing that Thailand will never be a great nation and the Thais will always be the world's tuktuk drivers. That's the real reason I smiled when I paid full price for my girlfriends 'breakfast'!
Stickman says:
Such cynicism. Yeah, Thailand is far from perfect, but there are ways to deal with things here…and that is something you do not seem to have got a grasp of yet.
