The Ugly Farang
Thailand is a nice place to stay, for short or for long termers and when you keep in mind that it is all just a fun fair here, it's great. Just don't expect to do anything remotely serious here. If you have to change your return flight, call
to the Singapore office of your airline, don't waste your time with the idiots here. They will keep you on hold forever and probably can't even speak English, but their arrogant attitude is multilingual.
I lately keep away from fellow foreigners or as the Thais rightfully call them, the farangs (95 percent of all foreigners are just farangs or even paxidas, the Isaan slang for foreigners, maybe 5 percent I would name using the more
respectful term kon thang chart. Depending on how I am being treated by the Thais, I can be all 3 of them in the same day. My good manners leave me from time to time with certain individuals, Thai or foreign.)
It's doing me good not to have contact with foreigners here. There is one thing worse in Thailand than the Thais and that is the farang, tourist or long term resident with or without money, it does not matter. Just the other day I was
hanging around a mall, chatting to some Thai friends, when a busty farang girl came along and asked my friends something in a rather demanding manner. They of course did not understand a word the girl was saying. I took another look at her. She
was 180 cm tall, and weighed probably 85 kilos. She was not pretty and not very ugly. Her clothes were of that jungle dress, many farang tourists wear in Thailand. Also sandals. I usually don't want to get near people wearing sandals. She
bought a lot of cheap stuff, mostly textiles. So I went over and it turned out she had a problem with her mobile top up card. The Thais of course were unable to help her, even the instructions on the card were in Thai, but after 5 years here,
I know everyone is stupid, so I don't get angry anymore. I helped the farang girl to upload her 200 baht (yeah, 200 baht credit LOL). She took the card and walked away. A thank you? Forget about that one. I stopped helping farangs looking
for directions. Let them deal with the Thais, they prefer it that way. When I interfere, they don't believe me or want to be left alone. They think I am a psycho for helping them out. Yeah, farangs are crazy, I know.
I don't know any farang anymore, and I don't wanna know anyone. Every time I got to know a farang man or woman, they tend to invite me here and there and never leave me alone when they have met me. No thanks, I came here to have
time for myself.
To get rid of the Thais is easy, it's not easy to get rid of the farangs. Farangs always talk about the shithole Thailand is, I know all that, I agree to a million percent, and I want to read about it sometimes on Stickmanbangkok.com,
but I don't like to actually talk about it anymore. It just depresses me and ruins my day.
I think I know why farangs like Thailand first, and then get depressed, cos the first depression I had was when I started to listen to other foreigners. After my first year here, which was just great, I met a German girl on the plane from
KL. She kept on moaning and moaning about the Thais, that they were walking slow and that the Thais in her office were all stupid and lazy and so on. I thought, well, that is just her. I never had a problem with the Thais until that day. But,
her speech was nagging me, eating my brain and after 2 weeks I started to see the things like her. I started to get annoyed with the Thais. Everything they did was wrong and if you are once in that mood, the Thais see that you dislike them and
they will ruin your day even more. Vicious circle with no way out of it.
It took me 4.5 years to get my first Thailand holiday mood back. At the moment, I actually love it here 95 percent of the time. Why? Cos I got rid of all farangs. I swear to God, that's the reason. No dating American girls anymore, no
Austrian pals, exactly nobody. I have a Japanese friend, a retired airline manager I see from time to time and that is it. I don't give my number to any new farang, and I don't want to go for brunch, lunch or supper.
I do what I do here, and it's a thing between me and the Thais, mostly female Thais. When I go to the shops and restaurants, everyone knows me and treats me nice. Maybe it's also because I live away from all the farangs. Here at
xxxxxxxxxxx, there are basically none and I hope nobody moves here.
Last week two mid 30s farangs came to my building, kind of sleazy looking. I disliked them from the first second, actually the first millisecond. They asked me how it was here. I said terrible, the landlord is a cheating bastard and the place
is noisy. Of course I love the apartment, and it comes so cheap compared to the farang areas. Call me mean, but I don't want any farangs near me. Especially not the Khao San type which they clearly were. So off they went. One thing I did
not understand is, that they came straight off the plane, to my apartment. I met them at 11 pm. Why would they remotely think that the office here is still working? It is not a hotel by any means. Try to go to a apartment building in Europe and
just show up for a flat, without announcement, even in daytime they think you are nuts. Now these two clowns came at night and were disappointed not to find a sales person. I heard that they were heading to Khao San the same night.
Nevertheless, to my surprise they came back and argued with my landlord, the nicest Thai I ever met about the price for rental of a fridge and TV, both together 500 THB per month. The 2 clowns wanted only to pay 250. This landlord, he usually
buys new TV sets for his guests, no kidding. So asking for 500 a month is dead cheap for the fridge and the TV set. The landlord asked me to tell them very, very politely to get the fuck out of his building because they had placed their backpacks
for 2 days unattended in the lobby. No one knew where the two farangs had gone. The landlord was worried the bags would get stolen and then the 2 clowns would cause trouble. So I wrote a nice get the fuck out of here note on their backpacks and
went on with my day. God forbid I see the 2 clowns again.
Stickman's thoughts:
I know the feeling. I really do!