The punishment fits in the crime!

These are the two key things that happened:

A Russian woman was rude to me
I deleted every photo on her camera

This may sound bad, but what actually happened was that on my brief return to the elephant camp I was helping to sell bananas for the baby elephant to eat. A Russian lady approached and bought a basket of bananas. Demonstrating the Russian Rudeness that I saw on a daily basis while working at the camp, she took them without a smile or a word. Then, still silent, she thrust her camera in my face and I was compelled to leave the shade and photograph her. After just three photos her memory card was full (with over 1000 photos) so I thought I'd just delete the last one I took. I should have just given it back to her and gone back to my hut instead of trying to be helpful, because with her Kodak camera, it is very much possible to format the memory card with just three button presses... oops. Now she started speaking to me!

Obviously being slightly impolite to someone doesn't warrant the deletion of all your holiday memories, but I reckon this was just symptomatic, a manifestation of her chronic rudeness while in Thailand, and karma had decided to act through me to punish her. Well, probably.

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Kick Ass!

Since I'm being given free food, accommodation and a modest harem in the hill tribe village, I thought it would be nice to take Pensi and her sister to Taweechai Elephant Camp in Kanchanaburi. The villagers didn't understand of course, insisting I just go to an elephant camp in Chiang Rai. I just smiled and asked them if they would pay the 6,000 baht (£120, $180). I wanted to see my friends (human and elephant) again. Thus the three of us headed off to Bangkok, but the little sister (15), whose real name, adorably, is “Nice Day” didn't do well with the bus and didn't want to make the 2 hour journey onwards to the elephant camp, so she went to see her big sister (24) in Bangkok.

After the elephant camp, Pensi and I also went to visit big sis, who was working until 10pm.We seemed to be in a hard-working area- there were loads of printing shops nearby, emitting rather nice paper smells. The man downstairs also seemed to spend about 16 hours a day making a ring. The room was very hot though and there wasn't much to do. Although my pile of “Jew Gold” is certainly diminishing, since I don't spend money on alcohol and hookers I'm not on the dole yet and I thought the three of us should go to the cinema.

We went to a big mall for rich folks and there were lots of foreigners there so I blended in well. I had assumed that the two girls would have been to the cinema before, but it turned out they hadn't, which was why they were excited and also didn't know the “procedure” for the cinema – in fact, I had to tell THEM to stand up to honour the king. Usually it's the wrinkly foreigner who needs to be told to stand up!

I had originally wanted to see Clash of the Titans but since the non-3D showing (the 3D in this is apparently terrible) was quite late we went for Kick Ass instead and it was a great choice. I thought it was a fantastic film and I'd highly recommend anyone living on Moseley Road, indeed, on any road, to go and watch it.

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My 7 year-old Lover

When I went back to the elephant camp I was hoping to be able to fight the baby some more, but he's put on about 30kg+ and is a little too strong for me. We still had a nice time when I met him in the jungle in the evening, and he didn't even attack me.

The real treat was when I was reunited with mali. She was delighted to see me, raised her trunk over my head, then grabbed me and pulled me in for a kiss. How sweet! Elephants never forget. On the next trip I'll have to bring a load of fruit for her.

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My Name is John Doe

People in Thailand seem to struggle to say “Nick.” They consistently pronounce it “Neck.” This is so consistent that in moments of paranoia I wonder if I'm pronouncing it like that. They're nearly as hopeless with my surname. Even if I spell it out for them in Thai, many still seem to think I'm saying Neck. The final was the fact that Nick is apparently a girl's name in Thailand. Thus, during Songkran, where I'd otherwise have to listen to Neck all day, I pioneered John Doe. It turns out everyone can pronounce this and since none of them understand its morbid associations, I get to snicker quietly when they say it.

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And try not to die...

After several days of intense water fighting the actual Songkran date rolled around it was announced that we would go to Pattaya. Not the one where the average age of a male foreign visitor is 98 and money can buy you love, but Pattaya, Chiang Rai, so only an hour away from me.

As usual with car journeys I took up a commanding position in the back of the pick-up, except this time I had a 200L barrel of water, a load of buckets and lots of girls with me. During Songkran the roads become a hazardous obstacle course and groups of people line the roadside throwing water and cars. This meant I got some great hits on them as blazed past at a thousand miles an hour, but I was also blasted in the face several tims when I wasn't paying attention and didn't duck.

As we neared Chiang Rai city the concentration of Songkrans increased and they started using ice to chill their water to almost 0 degrees Kelvin, which was horrible. I didn't have my camera but it was quite a sight to behold, the streets all soaking wet and thronging with people.

Arriving at Pattaya I saw it was a shallow river with a sandy bank, full of swimmers. It was odd to see everyone swimming fully-clothed, with only a few foreigners around. Swimming fully clothed is dangerous because your clothes become very heavy and weigh you down in the water. Oddly, I kept being told to be careful and that someone had died yesterday. After some investigation of the water, it was clear that the deepest part was 60cm deep and though the current was appreciable, children could quite easily walk against it. I know you only need 5cm of water to drown, but come on. I disregarded the warnings and splashed around until some idiots in longboats, those ones with a big exposed propeller on a long stick, were allowed to drive up and park in the middle of the swimmers. Sometimes my mind boggles at the idiocy I see here.

No sooner had we finished a mediocre and massively overpriced meal when I spotted a commotion on the other side of the river. It appeared an adult man had drowned. Although I was about 100m away and don't have hawk vision, I'm quite sure I didn't see anyone do CPR or give the kiss of life. It looked like the “doctors” just stood around to see if maybe the guy would wake up. Then someone lifted his legs up once and then he was declared dead. As a sheet was laid over the man, the people I was with “I told you so”'d me, but really, how a) drunk b) stupid or c) massively unlucky do you have to be to drown in such a mild environment. I'm personally inclined to lean towards a combo-platter of a) and b).

I've read that every year around 600 people die of Songkran during the “Seven Dangerous Days of Songkran,” mostly from accidents resulting from massive alcohol consumption and the number of motorbikes in the country. Exacerbated by the fact that unless it's the day of the week the police have chosen to enforce helmet use, people rarely wear them. If they do, they don't fasten them. Plus, the widespread drunkenness makes the average person's attempts to speak English even worse. While a typical evening “conversation” with a stranger might go something like “Hello, good morning! I love you!” on this day I was just getting gibberish. My favourite was the urgently bellowed “You! You! I kiss I!”

Still, it was nice to have a great big water-fight and good to see the usually fairly reserved Thai people let loose, screaming and shouting. Even better were the screams of anguish as we splashed groups of cocky roadside youths on the way home – after installing three large blocks of ice in our water barrel.

Interestingly, the Songkran new year festival is also celebrated as the Akha new year, which they celebrate by dying eggs different colours and giving them to each other. As a result I spent about a week eating 7 eggs a day!

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Beautiful Nose

I was out shopping recently and stumbled across an amazing product. Thai people are obsessed about having white skin which is why just about everything from moisturiser to antiperspirant to prune juice is sold under guise of a “skin whitening” product. They would also all like to have bigger noses, but you can't get one by putting bleach on your skin twice a day, so for those who can't afford surgery it's an unreachable dream. Luckily, China is on hand to sell false hopes to gullible fools:

That's right, for 78 Baht you can bestow clarity, beauty and happiness upon your little nose by putting a glorified peg on it! For the excited ladies who think this product to their anatomy will make their nose bigger and longer, however, men around the world can (dejectedly) assure you that such hopes are false and the Jiahe Nose Up will not add inches.

In case you're wondering where you might use the Jiahe Nose up, the rear of the product contains fairly poorly translated instructions:

Finally, where did I see (and buy) this nonsensical peg? Tesco of course! They really do have everything you need under one roof.

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Thai Censorship is a Disgrace

This post contains some pictures from Thai newspapers that some people might find unpleasant. It also describes the content of Thai television shows which are equally disturbing, so as a courtesy I'm putting this warning in for readers of a sensitive disposition. It's also a bit of a rant.

In my old blog I did write a small post about my opinion on censorship in Thailand, but I've been compelled to resurrect it in a new and longer form by a popular daytime TV show. As a bit of background, in Thailand daytime/evening programmes tend to last about 1 hour 30 minutes and can be on as many as 5 days a week for up to a month, like the much-loved Borp Apartment (a light-hearted evening programme about a bunch of idiots whose apartment building is being terrorised by two ghosts and who spend all their time coming up with schemes to outwit them, rather than moving away). Producers need to come up with a lot of content, therefore it's hardly surprising that most of it is repetitive. And terrible.

The show that has rattled my cages airs at around 1pm each day. I'm not going to name it in case I get into trouble, but I've nicknamed the programme “Stick-Hit-Rape” because this is what it's about. Characters fighting with sticks. characters hitting each other with their fists (as well as beating up women), and finally the rape and attempted rape of the women in the show. Every day.

I don't actively watch the programme, by the way, but it's being watched when I have lunch so I am forced to man-up and endure it. You'd think the routine violence against women would probably be the upper limit for mature content in a 13+ daytime programme, right? Wrong. I look on in amazement as I watch a terrified twenty-something in a bedroom, crying her eyes out, being told to undress herself by the criminal boss, who then climbs on top of her as the camera fades to black. I'm baffled how the censors allow this. It's not even an isolated event, a climactic and disturbing demonstration of the depth of the bad guy's callousness. It seems to be a routine part of most episodes at the exact time I watch them. For example, today we had an attempted rape by someone else, which included a 2-3 minute long physical struggle with the girl screaming and crying “I hate you, I hate you!” Don't forget that because this is at 1:30pm, on a Friday, during the Thai school holidays, I am sat watching this surrounded by young girls and boys.

Perhaps I'm unusually sensitive or my Western upbringing has given me a distorted view on the extent to which women being raped is a bad thing, but all I can say is “WTF is going on here?”

Thailand is a country that blocks adult-content websites because they are allegedly harmful to the morals and security of the country. Alcohol and cigarettes cannot be shown on TV because if children saw them they would become heavy drinkers who breathe smoke. This means that because the Korean Secret Agency programme is set in a bar about a third of the time, 50% of the screen has to be (clumsily) blurred. The three commercials that follow, strongly linking alcohol with friendship and fun (100 Pipers), with the ability to succeed against the odds (Jonny Walker) and with having exciting and fulfilling lives and success with women (Chang beer) are of course completely kosher. No to mention that once we return to the programme we might be treated to a rape or sexual coercion (though the Koreans don't seem to do this.)

It's not just the actual rape that I think is harmful to the impressionable psyche of the young viewers eating this wretched dross up every day, it's the way the aftermath is portrayed. In Stick-Hit-Rape, after a rape or attempted rape, the female characters seem to be as happy as Larry, continuing to live under the shadow of the rapist and in some cases continuing to interact with them. In an early-evening programme I watched, after one guy got drunk as a skunk and was helped back to his room by a lady, he aggressively told her they were going to spend the night together and then despite her crying and wailing protestations, he grabbed her and pushed her onto the bed (and fade to black – you know what that means). The next time I saw the programme, these two had decided to get married. I assume their proposal went along these lines:

“Kwan, sorry about, you know, getting drunk and forcing you to have sex with me. So, uh, will you marry me?”
“Jong, no worries, it's nothing, really. This is Thai TV – it's happened before. No-one ever asked to marry me though... I guess I won't do better than you, so yes I will marry you. I love you.”

What kind of message is this sending out to the male and female viewers? Watching television incredibly popular in Thailand and I think this widespread portrayal of sexual assault as fairly inconsequential, when you consider that children are seeing regularly it from a young age, could genuinely be influencing attitudes towards women and sex in the youth.

One of my few readers and regular commenter, “Moondoggy” replied to the previous post about censorship and said it seemed as though censorship in Thailand was controlled by a 12 year old boy with good intentions, so “Smoking and drinking = bad for you” and “Dead bodies in cars= cool!” I actually think he might be right and that censorship rules have genuinely been written by a 12 year old called Nit Wit. Nit won't have had sex-education yet and so doesn't know about rape, which explains why he allows it on TV. I was rather disturbed by the sight of seeing the silhouette of a man burn to death in the cab of a lorry on Thai TV, but I bet Nit Wit (probably high on a sugar) thought it was cool. Similarly, while I think that showing footage of a man attempting to jump off a roof to commit suicide but bouncing off a ledge and so not dying on the 19:45 news is highly unappealing, but Nit Wit presumably high-fives his friends and gives it the Okay.

Speaking of serious injuries, let's have a look at the newspaper reports of deaths. Remember that in Thailand you're not allowed to look at a photo of a naked lady or a film of someone drinking and smoking, because it's harmful the health and morals of the country. So, if we look at today's front page, I don't expect we would see anything unpleas-

My mistake. A dead woman in a car. Just imagine if that was your wife or daughter and you saw this. Still, although Nit Wit did quite like this photo, it wasn't gory enough for his tastes. Just a few days later though, his ship came in when this young man drove his motorbike into a truck:

Much better! A possibly missing leg and a dead teenager lying in a pool of his own blood. As long as there are no bottles of beer nearby, Nit deems this photo to be fine for children of any age to see.

The mildest death photo I found was of these two dead students, which I still thought was very grim. What I found very interesting was that when I asked anyone if they were bothered by the images, they said they weren't. Even the kids aren't bothered.

Is this what censorship in Thailand has sought to achieve? A nation of sober psychopaths completely desensitised to rape, violence and death. Nice.

Still, as a friend told me, “at least if you die in a sufficiently horrific motorbike accident you'll get your 15 minutes of fame on the front page of a national newspaper, so it's not all doom and gloom, Nick Towers!”

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Young Children for sale!

There are cute children in every village so I’m not labouring under the illusion that mine are the cutest in the world, but I thought I would share some of them. They’re not actually for sale, although Fitness First’s mum told me I could buy her for 5 Baht, which rather frightened the poor girl.

I call this little man Putter. He’s a big fan of the horn on motorbikes and he likes giving kisses. Everyone seems to like him and he never has a bad gurgle to say about anyone. In the photo he’s trying to do a “peace” sign, but clearly has a long way to go. I taught him how to do a thumbs-up on command, which he executes perfectly.

This is Bowl Cut. In Thailand most young girls wear their hair in this style, but Bowl Cut seems to have a special stylist who uses a ruler and only cuts horizontally, giving her a comedy helmet hairstyle that needs to be seen in the flesh to be properly appreciated. Bowl Cut and I are currently locked in a war of pulling faces at each other and I'm confident that with further support from the donating public I will emerge victorious.

When I forced every child in the village to do a certain number of pull-ups on the Jungle Gym, I was surprised to see the winner of the Under 10’s category was a girl, who I now call Fitness First. She has become a regular at the gym and continues to impress me with her work ethic and determination to pull herself up. I don't have a photo of her yet because she's quite shy so when I get one, I'll update this post.

Batman and Robin

This dynamic duo was an early favourite of mine and I thought they were a very cute couple. Unfortunately, Batman’s has started behaving aggressively. I suspect he’s getting this from his dad, who doesn’t seem like a particularly nice guy. I don’t really know how to react to his puny fists pummelling my legs and I don’t make a big deal out of it, but if he goes for a crotch-shot I pick him up by one leg and hold him upside down until he concedes defeat. The villagers seem to approve of this tactic.

Every child is special and all the children in the village have something interesting about them, but alas, only these four were available for the photo-shoot so only they are achieving internet fame. One nice thing is that I’ve been taking photos of little boys and girls and no one has given me devil looks or accused me of being a paedophile.

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On my GAP YAH

This is why I'm relieved to be away from the Khao San area and in a place where I'm the only white in the village.

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Wet T-shirts and Rats

I'm currently experiencing my first Thai water festival, Songkran, which starts on April 13th, apparently. Much like bonfire night in the UK (except in Thailand teenagers attack strangers with water instead of fireworks) the fun starts several days before the official date. Songkran is now a nationwide water fight that seems to last for about 7 days. Gangs of children line the roadsides splashing passing cars and motorbikes and everyone gets very wet.

What's nice to see is that, at least where I am, if you're walking or driving along, the gangs of people will ask if you want to be splashed, rather than just bunging a bucket of water in your face, which is how I hear things are in Bangkok. I made an interesting spur of the moment decision to walk 15km down the mountain to Mae Chan town this morning and while I was there I picked up a sort of rocket-water-gun thing for a bargain 25 baht. It's very difficult to fill up and fire which largely precludes the younger villagers using it, giving me a great tactical advantage. Contracting my man-beef with maximum force I cause the rocket to eject a very powerful jet of water which at close range will soak anyone. This was especially satisfying when I blasted the boy in the yellow t-shirt who kept waiting until everyone else's guns, especially mine, were empty and then appearing and shooting them, while staying dry himself. Coward!

It's been a fun several days, but let's face it, a water fight is a water fight and I would like to see the spectacle of the real Songkran when EVERYONE has a water fight.

Despite the fun of Songkran, a real blow to my enjoyment of life came today when I discovered that a rat had got at my protein powder. Clearly he didn't have ambitions of larger and more muscular buttocks, since he hadn't finished the bag and eaten 100 times his bodyweight in whey, but regardless, because I don't want Weilles Disease or Bad AIDS or Scurvy I now have to throw away about £15-worth of contaminated “legal non-anabolic non-steroids.” Since protein powder costs about a million per kilogramme in Thailand I won't be buying any more. Thanks, you little rat. I've decided to give the contaminated protein powder to the piglets to make them enormously muscular and hopefully able to attack and kill rats.

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Are You Local?

I just realised that I haven’t really explained my situation very clearly, so I’m writing this to provide more detailed insight into what I’m actually doing with myself and with taxpayers money on this little jaunt to the far east.

This is the Yesoh family, the kind people who have decided to let me live with them. On the far right is Pensi, who I met on Khao San Road and who invited me to visit the village last Christmas, which set the ball in motion for my move up here. Where is here? The village is in the Chiang Rai province, right at the top of Thailand. It’s located up a mountain about 15km from Mae Chan, a little town about 50km from the city of Chiang Rai.

It’s a hill tribe village. For those of you who didn’t write your final year dissertation on whether or not international law can help ameliorate the human rights problems faced by the hill tribes in Thailand, there are about 9 hill tribes in Thailand. They are traditionally migratory people and existed throughout the northern region of Thailand, Laos, Burma and Vietnam, as well as Southern China. With modern borders they are restricted to one country and oft-resulting statelessness has caused great problems for these marginalised people. Each hill tribe has a distinct language and set of customs.

The photo above is my house. That’s a lie though because it's someone else's house. This is my house:

This is my bathroom:

The village I’m staying in is an Akha village, so although most people do speak Thai here, amongst themselves they speak Akha. This is an interesting language because traditionally it did not have a written form and everything was passed down through speech and song. The collision with Christian missionaries over the 20th century has led to them adopting a Roman alphabet, though when spoken it bears little resemblance to how an English-speaker would read the words. There are different variants of this written form, but in some of them, for some reason (I’m inclined to blame the idiot Christian Missionaries) the tones of the word and length of the vowel sound are indicated by additional letters tacked onto the end of the word, which makes it even more difficult to read than Romanised Thai. As an example, look at the word for face, written as “myahxf pyawv.” It’s pronounced “Mia Pyoh”, rather than a garbled mix of Xs and Vs.

What I think makes the Akha language sound very unique is the fact that all of the words end in an open vowel sound or sometimes an “mmm” sound. None of them end in T/K/D/G/S sounds. This basically makes all the words sound the same at first, which makes it quite difficult to learn.

There are very few very old men in the village, and quite a lot of old ladies. Even at 70 they’re still active and work collecting vegetables etc. As for the men, eventually a life of rampant alcohol consumption catches up with them and they seem to die at around 50 or 60 years old. Some of the old ladies (particularly the one in the photo above) quite like me, despite their puzzlement with my strange ways. There is one lady who for some reason always wears a Santa hat and she constantly tells me that my mother is crying because I’m away from home.

'

78 years old and still hard at work!

There are few economic opportunities within such a small village, but the Yesoh family has a little shop that seems to do quite well. The problem is that in the little village there are 3 other identical shops!. Ours was the first and naturally it’s the best, with an expansive shaded seating area that’s a communal centre for the village. I’m told the lady immediately next door then decided to open one, selling exactly the same things at the same price. Luckily our seating area and recently installed Jungle Gym ensure our commercial superiority. Plus we put extra salt on the French fries to make sure they come back to buy a Coke...

Adding the salt...

Anyone still reading is probably wondering what I do with myself here. The answer is basically that I spend 90% of the time drunk on rice whisky with the other men whilst coughing out bawdy 1970’s hospital innuendos at teenage girls and the other 10% of the time lying around waiting to get drunk. Just kidding. They wouldn’t understand the innuendos.

Seriously, after nearly a month her I can see how easy it would be to slip into doing nothing, so I’ve created a fairly good routine involving fitness, academic study, language practice, exploring and eating that keeps me occupied and productive, while still giving me the freedom to relax. It’s working very nicely.
I like the people in the village a lot. They're always very friendly and everyone will ask me about what crazy activity I'm doing at that moment in time. The only thing that frustrates me are the misconceptions about me, i.e. that I am a millionaire.

This fire is actually burning $100 bills that I don't need because I'm so rich.

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My Burmese Mum

One thing I didn’t write about in my previous post about the elephant camp was the people who lived on the camp. Although I forged some real lasting friendships, I particularly wanted to share the story of Mee Gah and her son Goh.

Mee Gah was one of the ladies who manned the stall where we sold upwards of 1,000 bananas each day at the camp, henceforth referred to as the Banana Ladies. When we were introduced she told me that her husband had died the month before. I was quite shocked because she said it in a very matter of fact manner, as if she’d said something as trivial “it rained last night.” I have to admit I had absolutely no idea how to react to that disclosure!
As the month progressed, it somehow came to be a running joke, I forget how, that Mee Gah was my mum, and as a result I took to calling her “Mair”, (which is mum in Thai) and she called me “Luk” (child). The fact that she was 26 didn’t seem to be a factor. As a result of our new familial status I played with Goh, who was now my little brother, which gave Mee Gah some time to herself.

Becoming friends with the Burmese workers means I was invited to dinner in the Burmese quarter several times, and it was great to try some traditional Burmese dishes, which seemed to lean towards Indian curries more than Thai food does. Near the end of the month it emerged that Mee Dtae no longer wanted to work on the elephant camp and wanted to leave and work in Bangkok. We’d got to be quite good friends and so it was quite sad when she left. Her sales pitch, “Banana-por-elephaaaant” was noticeably absent.

Fortunately, I told Mee Gah that when I went to Bangkok I would come and visit her. That proved to be rather difficult – On the phone her brother told me she lived near The Mall Bankapi, which is quite far away from where I was staying. After 30-40 minutes on the canal boats, I arrived at The Mall and called again. I was given the name of the area they were in, and I hopped on a motorcycle taxi. He drove for 30 minutes, literally out of the city! Hardy “near” The Mall! Eventually we managed to meet up, where we spent a few hours eating, before she had to go to work and I went back to town to buy a shot-put. A strange and very convoluted reunion, but a very nice one nonetheless. I hope I can stay in contact with my Burmese mum.

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How to Be Lucky

I don’t think there’s much point in believing in luck. Undeniably, the person born to millionaire parents in the USA is luckier than the child of a crack addict in a slum in The Gambia, but in a comparison between two average Joes, it doesn’t serve much practical purpose to describe one person as being naturally lucky and the other as naturally unlucky.


The way I think about it, “luck,” good or bad, is just the positive or negative outcomes in life. Many are purely the result of chance, like winning Blackjack (I know, wait a minute) or the Lottery, but when you think about “luck” in terms of positive or negative results in life, I think it makes you realise how much of your “luck” you actually control. And if you can control it, you can make it better.

The crux of the issue is a popular quote, “The harder you work, the luckier you get”, which could also be phrased as “the more work you put in, the more positive outcomes you’ll have in your life.” To take the example of Blackjack, though it may seem to be down to chance, actually the person who puts a little effort into learning by heart a table of the statistically best moves to make in any given position will have slightly better luck than before. The person who puts a lot of effort into learning how to card count will have much better luck and a bigger bank balance. More realistic examples are the person who puts works harder at practising golf and improving his physical fitness winning more golf games, or the person who studies harder getting a higher score in a test, and going to a better college.

You’re probably thinking that the problem with this is that people already work hard but still lose games, still get bad scores and still get passed over for promotion. This is why I change the previous quote to “The harder and smarter you work, the luckier you get.” It’s not enough just to do more of the same. I think Einstein’s definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. If a student is revising for 8 hours a day and still getting low scores, simply working harder and studying for 12 hours a day won’t make him luckier. Trying out several new ways of revising and finding one that works much better for him will allow him to get a higher score, maybe with fewer hours of revision... clearly his “luck” has improved.

What about the person working in the accounts section of Dundermifflin Paper Co, who always comes to work early, works unpaid overtime yet still gets passed over for promotion and feels stuck in their job? Like the student doing more of the same, coming to work earlier, working faster and doing more overtime is not going to suddenly increase their luck and make a pay rise appear. That is working harder, but not smarter. It won’t get the promotion and it might even make other parts of their life worse. Instead, what if the accountant took a night or weekend course that would get them an additional qualification or certification for some new business software? They’d have to work hard and might lose some free time for a few months, but with their new skills, they could better justify a raise to management, or even apply for a new job.

So if you want to know how to be lucky, I believe you should think outside the box and make sure that you work harder and smarter.

If, however, you think people are stuck with the hand they’ve been dealt, write a comment! If you’ve worked hard and smart (or are lucky) to be able to give me an enjoyable and lucrative job, also comment! (Now THAT would be luck)

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Get Your Finger Out of my Face and Stop Calling me Hulk

One word that just about any foreigner who stays in Thailand for a while will learn is “Farang” which basically means “white foreigner” (as well as Guava fruit, incidentally). The word seems to have Indian origins (Farengi) and I believe it was historically used to specifically describe the French, but in 2010 it's the Thai one-size-fits-all way of describing any of the 1 billion-plus Caucasians in the world. So far, nothing wrong with that, right? We use “Asian” to describe any of the 2 billion-plus people from the Far East, for example. The significance is how the word is used. Someone from the West would never address someone as “Asian.” If you were trying to attract someone's attention you wouldn't call out “Hey, Arab!” Yet in Thailand, “Farang” is not only used to describe Caucasians, it is openly used to address them.

Is this a specifically Thai thing? While I was studying at The National University of Singapore I sometimes heard myself being referred to as “Ang Moh” (which originally meant “red haired person” but is now the general word for Caucasian) by Chinese people having conversations, but in 4 months no one ever said “Hey, Ang Moh” to my face.

The use of the word Farang is widely discussed and debated by expats in Thailand and causes offence to many of them. I think I know why. When someone (especially someone who already knows your name) addresses you or refers to you in an audible conversation as “Farang,” it depersonalises or even dehumanises you. Most Westerners take this as an insult. By referring to someone in English as “it”, using a word for inanimate objects or animals, you're degrading that person's status and making a negative comment about their value as a human being. “Farang” has a similar effect, because it reduces you from an individual with a name to a thing, a “foreigner.” Are Thai people deliberately being insulting when they do this? I don't think so, at least not completely. For Thai people, this whole notion of depersonalisation doesn't exist on the same scale as in the West.

Stop calling me Farang. I'm a person, OK?

When speaking to adults, all Thai children (and even young women) will refer to themselves (Thai people use the third person a lot more than we do, perhaps with the exception of Alex Turner) as “Noo”, which actually means rat! As another example, “Mun,” a word for “it” used to refer to objects and animals, can also be used for people, without causing any offence. Therefore I think “Farang” is unlikely to be meant to be insulting in the same way that calling someone “Foreigner” would in the West.

The problem is that, intended or not, it does cause offence. In the same way that Thai people don't like you touching their head, Western people don't like to be referred to as a thing. This is whether they've been in Thailand for two weeks or two years. In addition, for Westerners who speak Thai the fact that when Thais address Thais, they use “Pee” for older people and “Nong” for younger people, is grating. They don't say “Khun White Skin” or “Miss Fat Neck.” In conversations they will refer to other people by name, or “khao” (he/she/they). Why do they not do the same for us? Ignorance? A belief that Westerners are actually inferior (Thailand is a strictly hierarchical country after all)? Maybe.

The thing is that we now live in a global community and a society like Thailand that so heavily emphasises respect would perhaps do well to show a bit to non-natives. A Thai visiting the UK would be quite upset if, despite their protestations, the locals touched their head or pointed feet at them, so I hardly think the “when in Rome” counterargument holds much validity here. Thai people might not intend offence when they call someone “Farang”, just as I might not intend offence if I called someone very tall “Giraffe,” but if the recipient of the title is uncomfortable with it, a respectful person, in a respectful society, should at the very least stop using it to their face.

I warned you!

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Get Rich or Die Trying

Trump: The Art of the Deal is not a treatise on how to succeed in the business world. Although it doesn’t quite make the empty promises of its more recent successors (“Make it happen in business and life.” – Trump: Think Big) the book sells itself as a distillation of the secret business skills of one of New York’s most successful real estate entrepreneurs, a description which is false. What Trump: The Art of the Deal really is, behind the gloss, is an autobiography. It pays lip service to its title with a brief chapter outlining 10 basic aspects of a deal in no real detail, but the rest of the book is just a walk through Trump’s history of real estate success – which you won’t learn how to emulate by reading the book. Donald Trump, as he explains quite thoroughly in The Art of the Deal, is the son of a fairly wealthy real estate developer in New York and he learned about real estate from a young age (the book has a photo of him inspecting building foundations, aged 12) . He went to a very good college, Wharton School of Finance, and undertook a development project with his expert father, which meant his personal wealth was $200,000 when he graduated. I strongly suspect these experiences had a greater influence on his future success than if he had read a book by some other real estate millionaire.

My distaste for the false pretences used to sell the book aside, I actually rather liked it. Trump had enjoyed great success when this book was written in the 1980s and I enjoyed reading about the projects he undertook. The way the book is written is engaging, with Trump’s brash and arrogant style brightening up every page, and the content is great – Who doesn’t like big skyscrapers and deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars?

When I was forced to take a day bus from Chiang Rai to Bangkok, my MP3 player had no battery and all I had was this book. Over the 14 hour journey, I think I read it cover to cover three times, so I’m well-versed in the content. The distinct chapters mean it’s good to re-read – my favourite story in the book is when Trump renovated the ice rink in Central Park in 1986. He did it in 5 months for under $3 million, whereas the City of New York had previously spent 12 years and $13 million not completing it. You can’t argue with that, even if he has terrible hair.

Clearly the book is very one-sided and there’s probably a little more to most of the stories than Trump lets on, but as a bit of light reading that at least makes you look at real estate with a little more interest, I recommend it.

If by some miracle one of the four people who read this blog has also read the book, why not let me know what you thought of it?

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Five Tips for Aspiring Dr. Doolittles

Eventually we all have to wake up to the reality that we can't really talk to animals. It's not even our fault, it's the fact that animals rarely combine a highly-developed brain with the ability to make a wide array of noises that humans can mimic. Nonetheless if we can't talk with the animals, at least we can walk with them, assuming they'll let us get that close. Here are my tips for befriending all kinds of animals, from dogs to hogs.


1. Feed it! - Animals love to eat and giving one food is a great - probably the best - way to help them overcome their fear of you and can prevent them from biting you. I mentioned previously that I got on a big elephant's good side by giving her tasty treats every day – a handful of sugar for an elephant or meat dipped in honey for a bear could be the ideal starting point for your endeavour.

2. Stroke it! - Animals are dirty hedonists who have no desire to contemplate the universe or the deeper meaning of existence – they're more like a retired Priest who just woke up in Pattaya, Thailand, with a fistful of $100 bills. Exploit this. When I was getting to know Patrick, the large male pig, I discovered he was in dire need of someone to scratch his side. I was only too keen to oblige and he continues to enjoy it on a daily basis. This was the key to becoming his friend.

3. Defend it! - When Dwight the female pig was released from her pen to wander with her new litter of 7 piglets, she was very scared of me. As part of the process of becoming her new foraging buddy, I identified a problem she faced: harassment from dogs. They would often behave very aggressively towards her, barking and biting, always attacking in packs. Pigs are easily scared and she was having a bad time. I decided I would immediately join the fray and fight off the marauding hounds. Pigs are also quite clever, and Dwight recognised my selfless act and immediately became more comfortable around me and would even sometimes follow me around.

4. Shout at it! - I don't mean to literally bellow at your chosen animal, but to listen to the noise it makes, and make it back at it. Patrick the pig makes fairly comical grunts, which I emulate. I feel this helped to make him more at ease with me. Gan Gloey the baby elephant would make a choking/gurgling noise when he wanted to wrestle, so by making the same noise I could indicate that I mirrored his desires. This effective communication helped cement our relationship.

5. Play with it! - If you can identify something that the animal likes doing, think of a way you can get yourself involved. Mali the elephant liked to put leaves and things on her head and shake them off, so I would put them on for her as part of our bonding exercises, as well as more direct play where she would toss me around. Dwight the female pig likes to root around in fresh earth, so I would dig a small hole when she was nearby so she could come and investigate it. Dogs enjoy chewing and biting things, monkeys enjoy picking scabs. Find out what your animal likes to do and start doing it!

Perfect your technique before trying to befriend a Rhino

I hope that these unconventional tips, gleaned from years of working with the animal kingdom, will help you to have more fulfilling and less fatal relationships with the animal of your choice. I would however caution you to remember the following: “Don't kid yourself Jimmy, if a cow ever got the chance he'd eat you and everyone you love.”

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The Indian is Compelled to Acknowledge his Inferiority

An interesting fact about Thailand is that it's the only country in Southeast Asia that escaped colonisation. For those interested in a little bit of history, the following text is for you. Readers with less time on their hands or limited interest in colonial expansion beyond the fact that at one point Britain “owned” ¼ of the world, skip down a few paragraphs, at which point the title of this post will make sense. It's only 364 words though - go on, don't be lazy!

In the late 18th Century Britain was looking to expand its trade into Thailand and demanded that the country lift the trade restrictions and royal monopolies that existed, or it would suffer the same fate as Burma, which Britain had colonised. King Rama III signed the Treaty of Amity and Commerce in 1826, but sensibly embarked on a course of interacting with and learning from the British, to the point where the Thai elite's proficiency in English surprised British visitors. By exploiting the superior British knowledge of science and technology, Thailand hoped to profit and yet avoid colonisation, a strategy which worked remarkably well. Unfortunately “Thailandophiles” will be disappointed to hear that this wasn't totally a case of the Thais outsmarting the clumsy “Farang,” as we continue to the First Chinese Opium War in 1942. This was essentially a war over the fact that the British wanted to import opium into China and sell it to the population and the Chinese disagreed with the idea of loads of drug addicts. When the Chinese lost and were subject to humiliating treaty terms, it became clear that “if the greatest nation known to the Siamese” could be subjugated by the British, Thailand was skating on thin ice.

The game of beach volleyball where the Chinese Opium War started. Look at the determined rage on China's Face (left) and the slightly baffled imperial arrogance of Britain (right)

With Britain in Burma to the West and France in Vietnam to the East, Thailand was in a tight spot. Whilst the British seemed content to have Thailand act as a buffer between French and British territory, the French were keen to expand and threatened Thailand frequently. In those days France enjoyed a good war so Thailand was forced to ask for help from the British. Essentially England told France to back off, which she did, but in return there were territorial concessions to be made to both Britain and France. Thus between 1967 and 1909 Thailand lost rather a lot of real estate and the difference between an 1800 map of Thailand a 1909 map is quite considerable. Once we get to the 1930s Thailand develops a multiple personality disorder and changes it's name from Siam to Thailand and back again several times before settling on Thailand, and thus we have the modern Thai state.

***(This is where you start reading if you don't care about the stuff wot happened long ago)***

So, although Thailand escaped colonisation and the deterioration of it's political, religious and economic independence and the subjugation of it's people, a book I'm reading about Delhi in 1857 called “The Last Mugal” makes me wonder if perhaps the country missed out a little bit. Read this quote about the British eating habits by Aldous Huxley:

“Five meals a day – two breakfasts, luncheon, afternoon tea and dinner – are standard throughout India. A sixth is often added in the big towns where there are theatres and dances to justify late super. The Indian who eats at most two meals a day, sometimes only one – too often none- is compelled to acknowledge his inferiority... The Indians are impressed by our gastronomic prowess. Our prestige is bound up with overeating. For the sake of the Empire the truly patriotic will sacrifice his liver and his colon, will pave the way for future apoplexies and cancers of the intestine. I did my best while I was in India. But at the risk of undermining our prestige, of bringing down the whole imperial fabric in ruin around my ears, I used from time to time unobtrusively to skip a course. The spirit is willing, but the flesh, alas, is weak.”

For those who read everything, I hope that I gave you a chuckle but also taught you something; although it certainly sounds impressive to boast that our green and pleasant island at one point controlled ¼ of the globe and the sun never set on our empire, when you look at what really happened, is it actually something to be proud of? If a bunch of drug dealers from LA came to London and did a drive-by through Prime Minister's Question Time because they insisted on being able to sell crack in school canteens, would they have done something to boast about?

Luckily by 2008 everything had been forgotten.

Descendants of Queen Victoria, Thai history buffs, Americans who scoff at the tiny stomachs and puny portion sizes of the 19th century British colonists in India, anyone, write your comments below!

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