The Man, The Boy, And The Donkey
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As I read many of the posts on this website I can’t help but remember Aesop’s fable:
The Man, the Boy, and the Donkey:
A Man and his son were once going with their Donkey to market. As they were walking along by its side a countryman passed them and said: "You fools, what is a Donkey for but to ride upon?" So the Man put the Boy on the Donkey and
they went on their way. But soon they passed a group of men, one of whom said: "See that lazy youngster, he lets his father walk while he rides."
So the Man ordered his Boy to get off, and got on himself. But they hadn't gone far when they passed two women, one of whom said to the other: "Shame on that lazy lout to let his poor little son trudge along."
Well, the Man didn't know what to do, but at last he took his Boy up before him on the Donkey. By this time they had come to the town, and the passers-by began to jeer and point at them. The Man stopped and asked what they were scoffing
at. The men said:
"Aren't you ashamed of yourself for overloading that poor donkey with you and your hulking son?"
The Man and Boy got off and tried to think of what to do. They thought and they thought, till at last they cut down a pole, tied the donkey's feet to it, and raised the pole and the donkey to their shoulders. They went along amid the
laughter of all who met them till they came to Market Bridge, when the Donkey, getting one of his feet loose, kicked out and caused the Boy to drop his end of the pole. In the struggle the Donkey fell over the bridge, and his fore-feet being tied
together he was drowned.
"That will teach you," said an old man who had followed them: "Please all and you will please none."
Recently there has been some interesting banter about the “fools” and “mentally ill” men who marry Thai ladies in general and Bar Girls in particular. We are called insane, foolish, losers, louts and the like.
As was recently pointed out in the fun post: “Hating Men” those of us who do so may not fit into the category of the old, fat, bald, drunken loser category so easily. In fact another fable might be in order for those who think that
farang men married to Thai Bar Girls are the dregs of western society…Sour Grapes
The neophyte “Nos” in an earlier posting went on and on about how he had had a miraculous non sexual relationship with a BG and how he didn’t pay for anything. He had a lot to say on the subject of Thailand, Thais and
the whole P4P scene too. Very judgmental little man but in fairness if he keeps coming and has a willingness to see others as they are rather than how he expects them to be, he might be able to mature enough to really be able to learn a lot from
his experiences in Thailand.
I have considered the advisability of writing this post for a few days and eventually the pleasure of writing it outweighed the desire to avoid the scorn and derision I am likely to receive as a result. Having said this I admire Stick’s
integrity and his point of view as well as many others on this board. I think any good company can tolerate honest differences of opinion.
Also I’d like to add that I am not trying to stick my finger in anyone’s eye on this board. What I write is only my humble opinion based upon my experience. I do however get some satisfaction in the discomfiture of the western
geldings and feminazis specifically at the increasing rate that western men are being perceived to be attracted to Thai women.
Anonymous in “Hating Men” was spot on in my opinion in describing the western male attraction to Thai women; “They just no longer see the value in being used as target practice for the institutionalized petulance and
bitchiness of western femininity.” There are other options…and increasingly they are being exercised.
In my own case I am in my mid forties, attractive, slim, athletic and have a great job and good investment portfolio. I have all my hair and can do as much or more physically than ever. When I was 1st divorced though I am told I am attractive
and in great shape women in the west didn’t give me the time of day. They could smell the defeat, the carcass had been picked clean by another jackal and there was nothing worth bothering with.
I never had a problem getting a date but it was unfulfilling. As my hard work started to bear fruit, my goodness how they started knocking on my door…ZZ Top was right but you don’t even have to be a “Sharp Dressed Man”
you just have to give off the right ATM signals:
No wait it wasn't my new house, nicely paid for European sports sedans, corporate salary, frequent international travel, stocks & investments, no it was me it wasn't the money. How insensitive and immature of me to have such
disgusting and blatantly chauvinistic pig-like thoughts…How dare I even think that!
Finally western women again respected me for who I am not what I have, surely that was it. I can see it all now I have matured, just as they said I would to see things right again…Yeah that's it…keep looking at the watch back and
forth, remember western women don't care about your money, your getting sleepy, sleepy…By the way do you want a receipt with this transaction?
While that could be fun I no longer harbored any illusions about the “coin” of the realm. Don’t get me wrong there are lots of great western women and even Asian women in the west who are genuine and have a lot to offer.
Despite this they are 1) increasingly rare due to quick sale. 2) A minority. 3) Not really worth it to me anymore.
Western women and the current western cultural norm is unequivocally and unashamedly to treat men as human ATMs. Any male that has been divorced (if he can face it honestly) knows this is true. My own case is no exception. All around me I
watched men going through the same fleecing most I have seen are just like I was: human ATMs…
In California for example if a man’s wife screws around and gets pregnant by another man, the one who is married to her can be forced to pay child support if she leaves him to be with her new lover. This is the law of the land. How
much more evidence does anyone need to see than this? This is just plain disgusting to me. <This is FXXXING ludicrous – Stick> Fortunately for me I was spared this one or I might have just left the planet otherwise.
Being in the “forest” of our western culture it took me sometime to work things out. I have lived in Europe and before and after my divorce traveled widely in the west but never to Asia. I had no interest really in going there.
I am something of a history buff but even our history taught in College or high school is so slanted against Asia as to seem to suck the life out of it.
For the longest time I blamed myself for a lack of social awareness and skill in resolving this issue or being able to please these selfish turds. I had always felt that a marriage should be a partnership and that families should operate
to support one another. I am attracted to women and not men so it seemed for a very long time as if I must operate within a rule set that seemed crazy. I mean it is almost Orwellian; there was a time when men in the west were overly Patriarchal
and now the pendulum has swung too far towards feminazism. We know of a time that things were different but that was the past things are different today…Somewhere in the distant and lost past of Farangland, man and wife lived happily together
as partners?
Being that we are not immortal the world around us is the one we get by and large. Within human cultures the tides flow generally so slowly that a person’s whole youth tends to be spent within one constant cultural state, change outside
of war and upheaval happens slowly within the average society. We didn’t get here in a day and we aren’t likely to change in one either. Besides those that have what they want don’t like to give it up.
“Cultural Isolation & Arrogance”:
Women in the west have been taught for a little more than a generation to be unrealistic and unreasonable in relationships with men. Most young and middle aged women I have met are unhappy and confused emotionally. They complain about the
men in their lives as if it were some sort of required testament and have forgotten that they are responsible for themselves. They can never therefore when acting in this way feel any real sense of fulfillment or happiness in their relationships.
In short they seem to blame men for all the ills of the world before they even have something actual to complain about. Men are easily characterized in western culture as abusive, sexually depraved oafs incapable of higher thought and exhibiting
only the basest behaviors. I remember when this all started and people would joke around about “men”. Now it has become a cultural truth; men are pigs…
Women in the west now it seems are encouraged to be rough, pierced, tattooed slags, and dress like post-op transsexuals. In a word; “Madonna”. Men are now expected to be sexually ambiguous “metro-sexuals”, a word
I hate passionately by the way. While I do have gay friends that I am quite fond of (within limits). Most western women now seem as if they went to a “finishing” school run by militant bull dykes.
Also in America there was an absolute abomination of an advertising campaign last year telling us that we must worship fat women. This was the one where we were all told that sloppy fat was beautiful and that it was okay to be fat and that
REAL men liked their women that way. Well I don’t, and no amount of advertising is going to change that. When I looked a the mingers in those posters I couldn’t help but thinking that they probably smelled bad too…I really did.
<
You're showing the sort of honesty here that I find damned admirable. Call a spade a spade, and out with all that PC junk! – Stick>
Years ago I made my first trip to Thailand and was delighted with the country and its people. Thailand is a wonderful country and boasts a long and successful history of avoiding foreign occupation and control. To my knowledge no other country
has had such a long and successful history of self determination. A friend of mine recently remarked to me how exotic Thailand seemed (he being from the Philippines). He told me that there was nowhere like it that he had ever been before, nowhere
that seemed so much a part of another world than Thailand. Increasingly all around me people seemed to be flocking there. During the disaster of the tsunami I was amazed to learn how many people that I personally knew who were there. For the most
part these were people whom until then I had had no idea had ever been to Thailand.
“The Conquest of the Planet of the BGs” -or- “The Tao of the Thai”:
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and have witnessed an increasing fascination with Thai culture being exhibited all around me. Recently I was surprised to hear some farang women speaking openly and honestly about how they were noticing
more and more men marrying Thai ladies and then I was amazed when they said; “Yeah and these are successful guys too.”
A few years ago I remember hearing different things more in keeping with the stereotypical; old, fat, bald guy with the illiterate peasant hooker. Interestingly it seems that the voting has begun to be tallied and even the lady farangs are
starting to notice. Miss Norway I believe provides an excellent example as does Tiger Woods in addition to the beautiful and sensuous wave of ex-BG immigration quietly occurring all around me here in Northern California. I am noticing more of
them at the temples and in the suburbs. Ex-BGs continue to trade their Thai scooters in for minivans and Lexus SUVs here in the Bay Area at delightfully brisk rate and contrary to popular opinion seem to be doing quite well in marriages here when
treated with dignity and respect.
Laugh at me if you will but I think that time support that the Thais are conquering the west one husband at a time.
Go to the temples in San Francisco or Fremont and tell me you don’t see the ex-BGs driving there in a new BMW with the husband & kids or at the market across the street. I have seen the Lady Bars enough to recognize the tats now
partly covered by the designer tops and cashmere slacks. You also can’t miss the Isaan gold that they wear, heavier than the Thai ladies who came for more gentile and less provocative backgrounds. When you first go they will look into your
eyes and it is almost like an encrypted transmission.
I remember one particularly tall ex-BG passing by me as I walked across the courtyard at the Wat here. It was a beautiful day and the head Monk was standing just above us on the steps as we passed by beneath him each of us diagonally
passing in front. The grounds around us were beautiful. The flowers were in full bloom and the gilding of the temple added to the perfect visual of the moment.
I felt like I was in a Zhang Yimou movie (Hero, House of Flying Daggers), one of those slow motion scenes were everything happens within the blink of an eye with stunning clarity. This tall exotic Thai woman walking towards and past me wearing
a light sun drenched blouse and silk skirt. One moment our eyes met and our awareness was shared, both of us knew something significant about the other but we’d never before met. Here we were thousands of miles away from the source of our
shared awareness. No words were spoken or needed and we each continued about our business and past the moment of perfect clarity.
This woman was in my mind someone who had managed her transition well from Isaan to California. The Wats here are well populated with former BG’s and this is well known to those who are regular visitors to LOS pastures of
heaven. Many many ladies make the transition well. This at first astonished me. I had at some point earlier I guess internalized the idea without much thought that the reverse were true; that same stereotype of the 99% failure and the old fat
bald alcoholic wife beating punter and the Isaan rode hard BG bride. Time and observation changed this opinion for me.
“Secret Agent Man”:
I was on a plane once with (Let’s call him: “Agent Orange”) a former military intelligence officer. By the way; ever notice how about half of these guys claim to be former Vietnam era top secret guys?…Anyway “Agent
Orange” does pass on a few things I had known before from my military days (no I was never a secret agent, special forces, or a Delta Force Chuck Norris wannabe, I was just another GI sleeping with a machine gun every night and I am way
to young for Vietnam in case anyone is listening). So as I was saying “Agent Orange” pipes up that the US military statistic for failed GI marriages was the highest for GIs marrying Thais. He was right about this so I asked him the
reasons.
Interestingly for me the reasons he gave were wonderful: Thais in general and Thai ladies in particular are not very submissive and don’t therefore adapt well to life as a military spouse. They are also fiercely independent, proud
and quite nationalistic, and he said this was a real problem. He attributed these insurmountable challenges and bad personality traits to the fact that Thailand had never been conquered or colonized and that as a people made them unable to conform
to other’s demands. He was telling me all this because I told him I was married to a Thai and he had begun the conversation by telling me what a mistake I had made and if only I’d talked to him sooner and the like. Oh yeah some nice
old drunk guy on a plane…oh yeah that’s who I ought to listen to…The guy was nice and fun to listen to, he also was right about his facts about the military statistics but his conclusions were his own.
He also didn't like the way I said Pattaya. He told me that I said it the way the Germans said it and they were driving him crazy at the moment. I told him I rather liked Germans but that I would try to be more careful about it in the
future. Apparently he had been in Pattaya when it was still part of the ancient super continent of Gwandanaland or something…
As “Agent Orange” was talking and giving me the reasons that he felt that all marriages to Thais and Thai BGs were destined to fail I felt pretty happy. Most of the reasons were the reasons that I really liked about my wife.
She is a hard worker, proud, fiercely independent, strong ties to her family (but speaking quietly and honestly to me about their pressure on her from time to time). I am perfectly content with Thais’ nationalism, after all we all
love going and living there…
At the end of his discussion (really his 2 hour monologue punctuated with me nodding and smiling politely and so on) he asked me what I did for a living and where I lived etc. I was in my usual “you look like man with no money”
Thai uniform: Crew-cut, T-Shirt, shorts, and sandals on the plane. So I told him what I did for a living where I worked, what departments there reported to me, what they did and so on. This apparently surprised him and he muttered; “Oh
yes, top flight company, wow, never would have thought…blah, blah, blah…”
He told me he liked talking with me and would invite me to the Airline’s lounge but you had to be a member…I told him; “No problem I understand totally, no I wasn’t offended, no worry, a rule is a rule…”
He arrived in the airline’s VIP lounge just before the boarding announcement was made and I was finishing my 1st Bordeaux. He seemed surprised to see me there I guess. So I offered to pour him whatever he wanted and gave him my copy
of Asian Business week. He followed me to the boarding gate. As we boarded the plane he hunkered down in stowage, and I settled into business class and ordered another Bordeaux and a new magazine for the Flight to chilly Farangland.
“Honesty, Reality, and Dust in the Wind”:
Another thing I love about my wife is her honesty. This should cause a few of you to roll your eyes back in your head, but consider that we both made a decision to be honest and direct with one another and we did it without really vocalizing
it. I didn’t make a demand on her for this or even tell her how critically important to me that this was. Rather I held my tongue and let her be her. I have learned that people often seek to please one another and in doing so may be able
to temporarily compromise who they are as a person. After a time this takes too much effort and they appear to have “changed”. She evidentially appreciated this and felt very comfortable telling me about herself and her life.
This doesn’t mean that I knew everything from day one but it is reasonable for these things to take time in any relationship. There are also drivers that can pressure a person such as HIV status for example. I am free form the issue
and hopefully will remain so due to good health care and medication for my wife, but I understand her struggle with that.
There is another woman in my wife's village whose husband died some while ago from the disease and she now is over 40 and too weak to work much. She relies on the kindness of the rest of the community and denies her status. This woman’s
husband was Thai as is she. She was able to work and at one time earned a good Thai salary in a normal Thai office job and sent money back to her family. Her husband contracted HIV and then AIDS and died. After a while she couldn’t work
anymore and couldn’t tolerate the medications she was given well (a test is beyond most Thai’s means) so she was forced to move back and live with her sister and her sister’s family. After a while her sister and her sister’s
husband asked her to leave as she was a burden to them (I guess she wasn’t too much of a burden when she supported them for years before). Now she lives in the temple on a mat on the floor.
“Jasmine Fever & the Future”:
When I was a kid growing up in the lily white heart of the conservative land of these gosh darn United States, when people still told others proudly that they voted for George Wallace as a write-in candidate; my Dad once told me that in a
few hundred years we would all be brown anyway and those people were fools. “Oh yes”, he added; “and don’t marry a black girl.”
Where the hell was I going to find a black girl around here anyhow I wondered, and why wouldn’t you marry one…I needed more information.
Back then I was way more worried about getting nuked by the Russians, or what did happen to Slim Pickens when he rode that bomb down out of the plane in “Dr. Strange Love”. Now that’s the kind of thing they shouldn’t
have let kids watch on TV back in the day…
Go to Chiang Mai for Christmas one year and stay at the Sheraton and see all the past punters and ex-BGs with their Luk Krung. The kids are in good schools and the parents are back home to visit the grandparents. These things are
working out if a person puts in the effort to make a good relationship; it is just more rewarding and easier with the Thais than with a lady farang in my humble opinion due to all the cultural baggage that women internalize in the west.
“Beware he who protests too much -or- Arrrghh Matey thar be Sharks in them thar waters, Arrrghh”:
Not long ago a man was openly derided if he took a trip on his own to LOS. Today it is whispered a bit quieter at least in these parts. The funny thing might be it seems to me that so many women for so long deriding men about all the naughty
business happening in LOS has caused something of a flood of interest in the place…one can only hope.
“We are the choices we make, not the risks we take”:
A few years ago I met my wife in a small beer bar in LOS. I noticed her right away. She had a genuine and sweet smile and was clearly a very happy little person. She had dark cinnamon skin which she complains quietly about sometimes but that
I treasure. I fell in love with her immediately. I was very cautious of this feeling I have been divorced before (from an awful farang woman) and was somewhat experienced with the beer bar scene. I also never had any difficulty in Farangland finding
a woman to date either. In fact my net worth had been increasingly nicely prior to my meeting my wife and this was not missed by the farang women around me, no sir, not missed at all. My radar station has been upgraded since losing everything
in my divorce and I had worked too hard building up my assets after that to throw them away again. I have also taken the appropriate legal countermeasures to avoid such an unfortunate series of events in the future.
Nevertheless I felt very good and quite at ease with this wonderful woman. She had worked in the bar for several years and cherished her friends and family and proudly showed me some of the people she’d met while working before. These
pictures weren’t salacious and it was easy to see how happy she looked in them. Her life wasn’t easy and she was in her late twenties when we met. She even warned me at dinner one evening that she “wasn’t a young woman”.
I have always felt very much at ease with her and I’ve found her to be the most honest woman I have ever been with. I have always been very careful to not lay out any demands or make any “lines in the sand” regarding my expectations.
Rather as we got to know each other I was able to just watch her and let her be herself. It turned out that I couldn’t have asked for a better wife. I am so proud of her. I wasn’t desperate when I married my wife. I was incredibly
selective.
One of the things I had begun to believe on my trips to LOS was that BGs are for the most part looking for husbands and to a lesser extent in it just for a quick baht and a Thai boyfriend as is often claimed on the web. Having said this,
their profession is filled with risk and difficulty. If they are lucky and they are honest with themselves about what they want they can have Cinderella stories in the bar all the time. If they are not lucky they will live hand to mouth in the
bar until their health and youth give out and then move back to their villages or the city to live out their days.
After we had become serious she moved back home awaiting the Visa we talked everyday on the phone. Being from the US we didn’t bother with the tourist visa as they are all denied so after some careful consideration and soul searching
I asked her to marry me and she happily agreed.
As we planned for the wedding one of the things we discussed of course was the embassy physical and infectious diseases such as HIV. We were both tested and passed but hers was done at a small clinic near her village and it wasn’t
the same battery of testing that we do here in the west.
At the time I found this peculiar and weighed the risks and the possibilities being an engineer this comes as second nature. I considered all the negative stories I’d heard and possible scams and I considered the possibilities associated
with them. For example what would I have done if she was positive? Would I cancel the wedding and abandon her if the test she took at the clinic were wrong? That would have been a death sentence for her and it would have been very hard to do.
Still I was troubled by what I thought was the sloppiness of this clinic. I had been there before and thought that they were not the best but they were the local guys. What it came down to was a nagging moment of truth. So I made my decision:
I had a test from her and it could be wrong, forged, or otherwise flawed. If that was the case then she could be either knowingly or unknowingly positive or HIV negative. So I considered all the possibilities and weighed them. As it turned out
another fact was that the guests would soon be arriving for the wedding. I could cancel it and bug out if I wanted to so that wasn’t much of a distraction.
I could also demand a test in Bangkok at the University Hospital and that would definitely settle things but the more I thought about it the less that mattered to me. I am, was, and remain in love with her. If she had HIV and even if she
lied about it (something I could understand from her point of view, anyone in a similar position’s actually) I still love her and didn’t want to abandon her. So I accepted that and moved on with the wedding and got married. It was
a wonderful time and everyone had fun.
“Reality”:
After that I flew back to the States and we started working through the paperwork. As the final part approached she had her physical and was positive for HIV. There was a very slight amount of the virus in her bloodstream and they had had
to test twice to determine it with any surety. This was probably with her for a while and undetected according to the doctors.
When I heard the news I was devastated. It was the single worst day of my life. I was worried for her and I was concerned that I might have had it as well (subsequent and ongoing testing has shown me to be free of HIV). I comforted my wife
on the phone since at the time we were still waiting for the visa and I let her know that I loved here very much and that we would do everything we could for her and that we would make it though this. I cried which is rare for me and then I did
what I could do. Being that I was in San Francisco I called my insurance company and located a female Thai speaking doctor with an HIV practice and set up an appointment and she agreed to speak with my wife on the phone. This is quite common as
I have run into a lot of couples who whether they have an HIV positive spouse or not seek out Thai speaking physicians in the area.
After that I called my attorney and the 1st thing my attorney asked me was what I wanted to do. Meaning did I still want to pursue the marriage. After I said yes of course the attorney told me that they had actually gone to law school in
San Francisco during the 80s and had some experience with this, which was very good to hear.
When I met with the doctor she was exceptionally sweet and caring and told me that she had several couples like my wife and I where the wife was Thai. In some cases one was free of HIV and in others no. She also counseled me a bit so that
she made clear what I was signing up for. This isn’t to say she wasn’t supportive but she told me that I was her patient as well, whether I had HIV or not. She made sure that my wife was hooked up with the best hospital in Bangkok
for HIV and would order a blood test to determine what medications would be best for her and when she should take them. Given that her viral load was so low the doctors here and in Thailand all concurred that she shouldn’t start treatment
right away. All of this was quite new to me but I am very fortunate to be able to arrange for a great level of care for my wife. We don’t have public insurance here in the States but we don’t have to wait in line either. The American
doctor told us that her practice was treating several couples where the wife came from Thailand.
There are now medications that can treat the disease and protect others from contracting it if the infected person follows the treatment plan which in most cases is down to one or two pills per day. HIV can be made to be undetectable in the
blood stream and this will eliminate and / or significantly reduce the chance of additional infection as well as giving the infected person a normal lifespan and the ability to bear children free of infection. Why you might ask am I going into
this detail. The answer is that I value this woman so greatly. I am not some degenerate and shiftless loser. I have choices and I have exercised those in this case. My wife understands and cares for me and I feel the same for her. That would seem
to me to be the basis of a good marriage. We love and care for each other, it is as simple as that. In the west most people have very strong opinions but often the foundations running under them are not very deep. In a lot of cases they are simple
prejudices that the person espousing them doesn’t fully understand or even realize where they came from.
A vaccine is maybe 7-10 years off but that will probably be the best treatment in the near future. Having said all this, my love for my wife is undiminished and I remain very glad we got married.
“Do as I say, not as I do”:
I enjoy the company and friendship of people from all over the world and I really enjoy interacting with and talking to my European friends when I am in Thailand. We all get on very well and I am extremely grateful for their company. Increasingly
I think many are irritated by American foreign policy and have been vocalizing to me about this. Being that I am not in any sort of position of power there isn’t a lot I can do for them. Nor do I think I always advocate accepting their
political recommendations. None of this changes my positive feelings for my European friends or the richness that their company has brought to my life. Again as I have said it is possible for people of good conscience to disagree even significantly
from time to time. For me if everyone always agreed I think I would go crazy from boredom.
Not all but some western European expats and Thai travelers often tell we Americans that we are uncompassionate louts that we don’t care for our poor and abandon social responsibility and many posters hailing from there also regularly
lambaste the BGs for making the only choices that many of them can. Most of the loudest critics though don’t seem to contribute much more than criticisms of Thais, Thailand and BG’s moral failings. However as most of us realize almost
everyone who posts here that is male has participated in the P4P scene so the irony of the late discovered “morality” isn’t lost on everyone.
The at once guttural and puritanical media of the US is really pretty much in the same boat with telling people how they ought to behave and then drooling over every distasteful and voyeuristic morsel they can possibly ever find. In keeping
with the best of the puritan tradition of complete hypocrisy they are regularly found in violation of every standard and moral value they claim to hold so regularly that it all just becomes white noise as they wallow in the journalistic sewers
that they live. This doesn’t stop them however from preaching how other consenting adults ought to behave. Even the Lonely Planet’s mention of the P4P scene expresses wide eyed wonder that many of these ladies are welcomed back to
their villages and “even respected” after building up a nest egg and retiring from the scene. While it is just an opinion of mine but I can’t hardly believe the callousness and ignorance of such statements. I am particularly
taken aback since the Lonely Planet staff ought to have spent enough time on station to know better. I personally believe the whole area of Isaan might implode without the IBP’s (International Brotherhood of Punters) generous on unwavering
financial sponsorship.
When journalistic ratings are low in the US they sometimes go to Bangkok or Pattaya and do an expose’ on Thailand’s red light district. Some tattooed moralizing anchorwoman then speaks distastefully about all the “exploitation”.
The piece usually ends with an interview of some poor frustrated, and clearly exasperated Thai official. After that there is the usual back and forth banter from the talking heads about; “what is being done about all this?”. I have
been over there enough to see and know exactly what the news crews are doing; they are shagging the BGs vigorously off camera the whole time.
Popular American television exploits the old stereotype of Thailand in Patpong and Pattaya even though the US has a sex industry that dwarfs in raw numbers that of Thailand. The US State Department also regularly chastises the Thai government
for not doing enough about prostitution and then performing such insanely and blatantly hypocritical stunts as sending whole Navy fleets to Phuket and Pattaya for R&R. The State Department also does nothing to help poor Thai women avoid prostitution
by supporting education initiatives or information industries.
However there are still plenty of sweatshops where the ladies can go and if they are lucky earn 200 baht per day 6 days a week at piece work. How is this a better lot than working in a beer bar? How many people on this site have slept in
such an operation or spent anytime in those types of living conditions? I took the time to do just that. And I can assure you that for most men and women that is a complete dead end to the extent that piece work operations have been banned on
humanitarian grounds in the United States for over a generation.
“Still crazy after all these years”:
I married a woman whom I love dearly and I feel fortunate to be in a position to help her and she helps me. As in any good marriage we compliment and enhance each other's lives. I am happier married to her than I have ever been in any relationship
in my life and she is honestly the easiest person in the world to get a long with. We are both happy with one another and we have both made a point of being explicit emotionally. Once again it seems to come down to the simple principle of working
together to have a healthy emotional relationship.
Okay now that I have said all that have at me…
Stickman's thoughts:
It would be interesting to read a piece where you expand on your decision to marry a woman you know to be HIV+. There can't be that many guys who would choose to do that.
