That which we call a Farang.…”

Yan read aloud the news­pa­per ad: Seek­ing Male, 25–40, Thai native for Com­puter Tech posi­tion.  We were both com­pletely taken aback.  How is it you can spec­ify the gen­der, age and nation­al­ity required for a job open­ing?  Seems out­ra­geous.  But then I was still new & naive to the con­cept of Farang here in Thailand.

We have been hear­ing through­out our trav­els that the Thais con­sider all for­eign­ers (seem­ingly the non-Asian ones although they have another word for Indi­ans) as Farang.  Farang means a whole host of things, namely that you’re not from here and no mat­ter how much you try to fit-in through learn­ing the lan­guage, liv­ing here for 12+ years etc. you’ll never be accepted as Thai.  Farang enjoy higher costs for many of the same com­modi­ties.  There is no deny­ing a def­i­nite and super­fi­cial bar­rier between us which looks almost impos­si­ble to break down.  A cer­tain dis­dain and mis­trust is pal­pa­ble in some peo­ple.  And to fur­ther com­pli­cate mat­ters, Bangkokians, like New York­ers, can often times be a bit curt when deal­ing with you.  I sup­pose this treat­ment is some­what under­stand­able if put into the con­text of the sex indus­try.  Although the Thais have a long his­tory of con­cu­bi­nage and pros­ti­tu­tion, in which both rich and poor man par­tic­i­pated respec­tively, never has it been set-up for such exploita­tion as for the Amer­i­can ser­vice­men dur­ing and after Viet­nam.  This opened the door for more Euro­pean ‘explo­ration’ as well.  I can’t even describe how com­mon­place and revolt­ing it is to see such old Farang men accom­pa­nied by their mis­er­able, bored and often pained-looking young Thai women.  It wears on you like a wet pair of jeans in this muggy heat.

But hardly all Farang are here as sex indus­try tourists so this isn’t an accept­able excuse-away of any­thing.  The influ­ence of American/Western cul­ture is every­where here from ads to t-shirts to music to hair­styles.  The hypocrisy feels like a peo­ple cling­ing on to what they think they should dis­like in the ‘other’ but con­fused as to exactly why.  Yan thinks their old cul­ture is the only thing they have to sell there­fore the feel­ing is to pro­tect it all costs by shut­ting out any pos­si­bil­i­ties for dilu­tion.  And really isn’t that why we’re all here?  For the cul­ture and his­tory?  Can’t cul­ture and his­tory be pre­served, tourist money acquired from it, new world tech­nol­ogy incor­po­rated and less dis­crim­i­na­tion encour­aged all at the same time?  Shouldn’t be impossible.

I must say I’ve taken this par­tic­u­larly hard — just sen­si­tive I sup­pose from var­i­ous sce­nar­ios of not being accepted.  And the daily threat of a scam doesn’t help with my often vis­ceral response to being swin­dled, taken advan­tage of, or at least sus­pect­ing as much.  How we all under­stand each other and relate to sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence is what I’m all about so being for­ever a Farang doesn’t quite sit right.  It’s dif­fi­cult to under­stand how smoothly some service-type inter­ac­tions (ie. in hotels, restau­rants, train sta­tions) flow despite that cold wall.  For instance, I love in the Thai lan­guage the response of return­ing only the verb in the sen­tence as a con­fir­ma­tion — as used in this exam­ple by my friend down at Recep­tion reply­ing only ‘Can’ to mean ‘Yes, what­ever the request is can be done’.  Being a per­son of the OCD per­sua­sion, that one word con­fir­ma­tion strikes a cord with me of such sim­ple bril­liance and effi­ciency that it hurts to think there aren’t other pos­si­ble per­sonal bonds to be forged.  I will win them over yet.  There’s always hope, like the car­ing, pro­tec­tive assis­tance of the sky­train guard isn’t solely reserved for Thais and is like a safe blan­ket around me every time I ride; some­thing I’ve rarely felt from an MTA guard nor NY’s Finest for that matter.

Adden­dum:  Just came back from a med­i­ta­tion les­son and spoke of some related top­ics.  Med­i­ta­tion teacher said, in not so many words, that it pretty much all boils down to some­thing about walk­ing amongst turkeys instead of soar­ing with eagles.

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