Some of the farang men here – yikes! There used to be a saying; FILTH (Failed In London, Try Hongkong)... sad to say that this seems to be alive and well here in Chiang Mai (and, I suspect, other parts of Thailand too). The attitude of some of the western males here is frankly, archaic in my opinion.
I am utterly shocked an appalled by the attitude of some of them. It’s bad enough that they refer to their employees as servants, when in fact what these people do is maintain the garden and clean the house, but I find the attitude toward the Thai women actually to be repugnant.
Freely admitting that they came out here to have multiple girlfriends or sex-partners, they then complain that the Thai women they are with refuse to ‘be a source of pleasure’ for them (their words, not mine) if they are not faithful to them. Do they really think that Thai women are so desperate for a western man that they should be grateful for any crumb thrown to them? That they should be meek, humble little women, serving the man’s every whim, no matter how unreasonable it may be? Or do they genuinely believe they are such a great catch because they have an amount of money and these women don’t, that the women will just accept their unreasonable behaviour in order to feed their families?
What is this, the dark ages?
And then you have the ones who complain about the bar girls; firstly that they exist, and secondly that some are over 30 (and I’ve heard both of these from the same person). So it’s not OK to be a bar girl, and it’s especially not OK that some are not as young and pretty as certain men would like them to be. It’s as though there is something wrong with a woman who is not a teenager or in her twenties. I honestly don’t understand why a guy in his sixties would want a 19 year old – either to have sex with or to marry. What do they have in common? Yet you see this all the time here... and usually, the man is walking ahead of the girl.
What I especially don’t understand is men in their sixties (for example) who are with girls who look like children. Thai women often look far younger than they actually are, and I have on several occasions discovered that someone I took to be around 13 or 14 was in fact in her early twenties. Maybe it’s me but I find something very sordid about a retired man who wants a woman/girl who looks like a child.
Maybe some of these relationships work – I’d hope that not all of the men are horrible individuals, and I’d hope that not all of the girls are on the make (although I’m sure some of them are, and frankly, good luck to them!) but the more I see of this, the more I have to wonder at the mentality of the men who go down this path (sometimes over and over again – I recently heard of a man in his seventies who has just got divorced from his seventh Thai wife). On the odd occasion I have been unfortunate enough to be in the same restaurant as some of these people, overhearing their conversations (all their wives’ fault of course), it seems that most have had failed relationships/marriages in their home countries, yet expect the Thai women to drop at their feet and worship them... without ever addressing any issues which are likely to have contributed to the other break ups (e.g. too much booze, chauvinism, generally being an arse, etc.).
I recently heard one complain that his wife has refused to sleep with him until he mends his philandering ways; he actually said she was being completely unreasonable, and that as a man it was his right to have as many women as he wanted... and that his wife should be grateful he married her! And yet another was soliciting advice from his peers as to the best way to do a bunk on his wife... the consensus was that he wait until she is asleep, sneak out, and head for the nearest border. Unbelievable. Fortunately, our encounters with these kind of people are few and far between; they don’t really come up to where we live and socialise, well not much, and we keep away from those kind of farang haunts in the city.
In addition to seemingly treating their wives and girlfriends like pieces of meat, it’s the complete disregard for feelings of others; it’s how they abuse their host country; it’s the rude jokes they make about the Thais when they think they cannot understand what is being said about them. It’s the constant trying to get one over on the Thais, and it’s how they are all ‘experts’ regarding the finer intricacies of the Thai government. But mostly, it’s that even though they complain endlessly about how horrible it is here (it’s not – it’s lovely and the people are lovely), they are still here. In a way, I actually feel very sad for these people because I don’t believe that anywhere, anyone, or anything could ever make them happy or be satisfied with their lives. Much less be thankful. It must be a very sorry state of affairs to be so utterly without grace and dignity.
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