A Reply to Stick’s comments:
Actually I never in the last 30 or 35 years frequented the bar industry as you call it. So you could be no more wrong in assuming I gained my relative limited inside of the Thai society in these places. All my experience was actually gained in the so called hi-so circles; I would not call them that, as generally they are at a lower honesty level as the real scum of the Thai population. Snobbish and looking down on anybody with a slight brown colour.
Yes during the late 80 and early 90th I spend one hour a day for one week each month at the coffee shop at the Grace Hotel, usually from 2 until 3pm for a cup of coffee. But this was during my time as a System Engineer and Staff Training officer with a very large military communication company. I had to come once each month for a week from Perth to Bangkok to train military staff with our equipment. That’s when I learned about the extremely poor education system at the Thai University level. All the people I had to deal with were naipongs “generals” or had PhD’s in electronics. Well let’s put it this way, a normal high school student did know much more as the highly overpaid Doctors in Engineering, I can not blame the military for the poor knowledge as they had to relay on their technical staff, however the high level military people were generally trained overseas and had a much better general knowledge as the University trained people.
I had one experience with 3 bar girls when they brought me to my hotel and stayed from Friday afternoon until Monday morning. But this was a special occasion which does not figure here.
But I never ever frequented the bar or disco industry, I never even went to Patpong, Soi Cowboy or to Pattaya. I could not effort to be seen at these places. After all I was a
Senior officer of a multinational company and represented them. Even today I would not even know exactly where these places are. Also during this time I never picked a bargirl up.
Usually in the evenings I was invited by our clients to some very hi-so places and even if I wanted too I had no time to spend. Yes there were plenty of girls, or I should say ladies available but normally very well educated ones which quite often accompanied me to my Hotel. I used to stay officially at the Royal River Hotel in one of their suites but this is another story. What happened there is nobodies business.
So Stick is quite correct to say all is from my own experience. I will grant this but unfortunately this experience was not gained by frequenting the bar or sex monger industry which I never frequented in the last 35 or so years. Yes, I did as a younger man during my stay at Korat at the Royal Thai Air force base, but you can not even count the early to middle 70th we have now too many changes in the industry.
No, all of my experience was gained mainly from so called highly educated parts of the Thai population. To tell the truth I found more really nasty and backstabbing people there as in any other country on this fine Earth of ours. Later on during my 10 years stay in Thailand I married into a real high class family, they were apart from one older sister some of the finest people I ever had the fortune to meet. The younger sister is a University professor educated in UK to the PhD level, the brother is a lawyer educated in the US and BKK, only the she dragon older sister was educated in a Thai university. With her it does show in the almost complete lack of knowledge of the rest of the world and her high and mighty attitude. My father in law was the mayor of one major northern city. He is also holder of a PhD in law ad before he retired he had 6 lawyers working in his law office.
Before my marriage I were befriended by some of the Chinese and also Japanese mafia people and gained my knowledge of the real scum of the society that way. But this was covered in a submission many years ago.
Again during my marriage I could not visit any of the bar or gogo places as that would have lead to a complete loss of face for me or my wife.
I can only assume that Stick and some of the other writers really never dealt with the real hi-so and decision makers in Thailand. Also from his past comments on my other submission I really do not believe that he knows very much of the real low down Thai people. His knowledge seems to be limited solely on the foreign sex monger industry and the very limited Thai middle class with very little if any knowledge of the Thai oriented side which appears to be much bigger, and really nasty. Also I do not believe that any of the people living in LOS, even if they are running a bar for 30 years, have any experience with the low life inside the very large Thai orientated sex industry. A farang can simply not visit these sites. He would not be admitted and might have more problems as he bargained for if somehow he could gain entrance.
Sorry, Stick, you could not be more wrong assuming that I gained my experience from the bar industry. Also I got many very positive replays to earlier submissions of mine; some of them even wondered what happened to you lately.
Best Regards
Jurgen
Stickman's thoughts:
Admittedly I may well have been wrong when I said you learned much from time in the bars. That is something I cannot possibly know and I was making an assumption. But I do maintain that much of what you write, both in submissions and in private emails, is fiction. Nothing wrong with fiction, of course, but when it is presented as something else it can irritate. I tend to err on the side of reticence, but with you, well…
