Mistaken For A Terrorist
I was in Bangkok recently to audition some high end audio equipment and have some suits and shirts made.
I don’t really like Bangkok, preferring to spend my precious holiday time at Koh Samui, Phuket, or in the North.
While visiting Nana Entertainment Plaza, I was about to step in at the Playskool gogo bar, as I had never seen that place. Suddenly, some sort of a goon came rushing out, waving his arms windmill style and yelling ‘No No No’. I was taken aback a bit and then somewhat amused, as that idiot probably thought that I had a couple of terrorist hand grenades hanging around my balls somewhere (I am from central Asia, but sometimes get mistaken for an Iranian, or a person from the the Middle East, as I have a swarthy complexion, dark hair, and an aquiline nose. In Europe I am classified as Spanish). This is the only time that anything like this has ever happened to me in Thailand.
Not being a person who spends money at a place where I am not absolutely welcome, I walked away.
I don’t look remotely like a Thai and don’t speak their language, but at several MPs , particularly in the North of Thailand, I have not had to pay the ‘farang surcharge’. Also, no Thai lady has ever asked me for more than 1,000 baht short time (this is without any bargaining, as I don’t bargain over sex with a lady if that happens to be her only source of income). Indeed, one of my minor problems in LOS is to moderate, without giving offence, the sometimes over enthusiastic attentions of some Thai ladies. All this leads me to conclude that I am not particularly distasteful to Thai people.
The tailor from whom I had my suits and shirts made was Indian. I asked him, as well as other people in his shop, whether they had faced any sort of discrimination in Thailand. They replied in the negative and added that the Thais are a good people, if a person spoke Thai, he or she is accepted as one of them, no matter what the person's appearance, or colour.
Most forms of discrimination, or racism, that exists in Thailand today, are confined to farang hangouts. Such places include Patpong, Nana Entertainment Plaza, Soi Cowboy and the Sukumvit night spots generally, together with most of Pattaya.
The inference is that discrimination and racism in Thailand was introduced, established, and is being perpetuated by the farangs, that is, by the Aussies, the Brits, together with their friends the Americans (and their friends the Israelis) plus people from certain European countries.
Excluding the Zodiac MP in Bkk, discrimination (or racism) has very little to do with the Thais, who are about the friendliest and most courteous of people on this planet.
My advice to any person of atypical farang appearance visiting Thailand is:
AVOID FARANG INFESTED AREAS LIKE THE PLAGUE (unless you happen to like the dubious charms and odours of farang company).
You will find a very much better type and class of Thai ladies and of Thai people generally, outside of the farang ghettos.
Stickman says:
So, you had a bad experience with a goon – who I presume was a Thai, yet you have the audacity to blame farangs for this? Generally, us farangs are not welcome at Soi Thaniya. Farangs do not always feel safe in Sukumvit Soi 3. It is the Thais who make and enforce the policies in the bar areas, NOT farangs. If I was having a bad day, I'd tell you to piss off and get your ugly ass over to Sukumvit soi 3…but I'm too polite to say that.
