boomerangutang
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Posts posted by boomerangutang
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Some of us grew up watching 'Casper the friendly ghost.' He was as white as this page.
Farang equate white with ghosts. Just sayin'.
In Tibet, a ghost is an entity with a tiny mouth (difficult to get any food into it). Different strokes for different folks.
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23 hours ago, habanero said:
I was not comparing white people to black people. Also, I was only speaking of Thai people. But, I think you know that!
One of a million examples of how most Thais think: I was talking to a young Thai fellow. A beautiful amber-toned gal walked by. I half-joked to the guy, "there's a gal who would make a good wife for you." He responded, "Yes, she's beautiful, but I could never bring her home to meet my parents - she's too 'dam dam' (dark)."
10 hours ago, Berkshire said:While I understand your point--and don't necessarily disagree--I must point out that you're looking at things from a different perspective. The truth is Thais are less obsessive about skin color and the whole "race" thing than farangs. We from the west bring a whole lot of baggage when it comes to skin color because in our homeland, it's more about historical racism and discrimination. The Thais look at skin color the same way they look at fat people, just another physical trait that they can tease one another about. White skin in Thailand is largely about feminine beauty, nothing else.
As mentioned in earlier posts herein, and countless times elsewhere; Thais generally equate darker-than-white skin with outdoor/menial laborers. Women take it to more ridiculous extremes, because they're even more vain than most men (ladyboys excepted).
Thai gals will check their eye shadow/false eyelashes/painted eyebrows in the rear view mirrors of their motorbikes, while driving.
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28 minutes ago, habanero said:
Having light skin shows that you are not lower class. Darker skinned people are associated with laborers, farmers, herdsmen. More in the line of the poor.
You're right, in describing ignorant people stuck in group-think. Using that logic, here are some of the people who do slave-work outdoors all day in the hot sun
Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Martin Luther King, Michelle Obama.
......and here are some of the people who are superior, with their white skin:
Bernie Madoff, Donald Trump, Fat Boy Kim,
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It's ironic that, because of the title and content of this thread, ...a bunch of skin whitener ads show up all around, to accompany it.
There's an industry that's even lower than skin-whitener industry which also dupes people on industrial scale. Yet, the target little kids. I'm referring to the slicksters who sell sugar-laden snacks to kids. To me, they're worse than the seediest street corner drug dealers who peddle heroin. At least the people who buy heroin and speed are usually adult-aged - so they can decide whether to ruin their lives. Little kids can't decide about sugar-laden stuff. They just love the sweetness and bright colors (and Tony the Tiger, and jingles, etc) that sugar is packaged with. National Geographic declared sugar is addictive. Ok sorry, I veered off-topic a bit.
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Things should be done in moderation. An English R&R band called 'The End' played clubs in Madrid when I was a teenager. One of their songs had the line; 'Too much cake and ice cream, will give you a stomach ache / too many cups of coffee, will keep you wide awake.'
Some sun on the skin is good for everyone. Some folks, particularly when they get older, get one or more 'sun spots' if skin is exposed to direct sun for protracted time. A slice of bread left too long in the toaster will start to get black spots. ....and so on.
The OP is mostly about advertisers and others in the skin whitening industry - telling lies to Thais (and reinforcing stupid ideas) in order to sell as much product as possible. Granted, advertisers have been telling lies since the first pimp, about 232,309 years ago. The laser surgery ad referred to in the OP takes shystering to a particularly low level. It shows a young (around 19 yr old) pretty woman with blanched (photoshopped) skin, and has her saying that exposure to sun creates dark patches on her facial skin. It's patently false, and contributes to unease among countless Thai youngsters. Young folks are already insecure about dozens of things, so to create a new false insecurity for the purpose of duping them out of lots of money, ....is disgusting. It should be illegal.
But it will take a sea change in how Thais perceive of themselves and others. I think, over time, many Thais will gravitate toward reasonableness on the issue of thinking; the whiter a person's skin is, the better and more attractive that person is.
Already, in the past couple of decades, Thais have embraced some dark-skinned people as heroes. Most prominent is Tiger Woods. Honorable mention goes to H.Bolt, Michael Jordan and other sports stars as well as movie/TV stars, and music icons. It's doubtful their parents' or grandparents' generation would have dared adulate a person with such dark skin. For example, would Somchai's grandmother have put a poster of Jesse Owens or Harry Belafonte on her bedroom wall when she was a kid?
Similar to problems in the M.East, the best way to find solutions is to influence little kids in right ways. As long as parents'/guardian's attitudes are stuck in dumb-ass prejudices/ignorance, Thai kids will keep growing up with similarly stupid attitudes, ......and keep wasting tens of millions of baht each year on products which they hope will make their skin whiter.
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I'm looking at the opening page of the major Eng.Lang newspaper. In their Life Section, there's a quarter page sized ad. There's a pretty woman's face with skin as white as the paper its printed on. Alongside is the following blurb (excerpt): "....exposure to sunlight causes dark patches to appear on my face."
It is signed by Nitra Kittiyakorn. It's an ad for Apex Medical Center which offers laser surgery "Dark Spot Removal".
Everyone reading this knows Thais have fixations about needing snow-white skin. Along with that, they're afraid of even a few rays of sunlight. Even my hill tribe friends wear long sleeved heavy shirts (over other shirts) on the hottest days - while sweating like they're in a sauna.
Thais are sensitive to ridicule - more so than they're responsive to common sense suggestions. I encourage every farang to tell their Thai friends three basic things: A. tan-colored skin is fine. B. Natural is better than fake C. Sunlight does not cause dark patches to appear on skin.
When farang do this, their Thai friends will grin and say, "yes, I know that, but Thai people are like that."
Things can change. There was a time when cigarette companies had ads telling people that smoking tobacco was good for health. Tomatoes were considered poisonous by early European settlers in New England. Old Chinese men think that rhino horn keratin gives them hard-ons. Yet, ideas can change. People can adjust their outlooks on things. Thais can mature to realize they're spending hundreds of millions of baht on whitening creams and laser surgery, which could be better spent on healthy foods. There's hope, isn't there?
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a bit off-topic, but when I went to buy rubber glue (called 'rubber cement' in US), the hardware guy said they sell out, because young boys buy the stuff. It's doubtful the boys are doing so much repairing of shoes. I should tell the Hardware store owner not to sell the stuff to kids, but he's Thai, and you know how Thais hate for farang to suggest they do things differently.
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As the post above indicates, Thai officialdom is highly subjective when meting out penalties/fines. That's the sign of a tin pot country. I'd like to think Thailand is easing toward egalitarian, but it's not. It's only a bit ahead of N.Korea in the fairness of its justice system.
Like with paying taxes, uneven/subjective meting out of justice/rules hurts some segments of society while continuing to coddle other segments. With taxes: the very poor and the very rich don't pay, so that leaves the middle income people to carry the full burden. In the US, less than half the citizens pay any taxes, and that includes the richest people, like Trump.
Here's a true little story told to me by my Thai neighbors. They're poor and they hail from Laos. They were returning from their annual pilgrimage to their home village in Laos. Their children have Thai ID cards and were born/went to school in Thailand. But the parents never went through the process.
So two sets of parents are waiting for a bus at a Thai border town, - to return to Chiang Rai. Two uniformed fake cops confront them, and demand Bt.5,000 for each adult in the group. The parents protest, but to no avail. They suspected the uniformed men didn't have proper uniforms. They tried to get the attention of a nearby official to assist in the stand-off, but the official slinked away. When it was clear the parents didn't have Bt.5,000/person, the gruff men asked how much cash they had altogether. The victims forked over their entire savings of about Bt.6,300.
For every privileged person (farang and Thai VIP) in Thailand who can easily skirt around rules, there are dozens who get unfairly victimized.
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1 hour ago, jeab1980 said:
Dont understand your lose bit regarding PEA. Electric for my gaff is in my name no problems whatsoever.
You have an account in your farang name? If so, I'd like to know the office you're connected to, so I can refer the headman at my office to reference your office. Something tells me you won't want to tell me the name of your office, because it may jeopardize your situation. I wouldn't blame you.
Thai laws, as they apply to farang, are subjective on several levels. I was once driving a car with a farang in the passenger seat. I made a turn, going 2 mph, where it was slightly illegal. A cop pulled the car over. My friend shuffled quickly through his wallet and pulled out a dog-eared piece of paper with some Thai writing on it, about the size of a biz card. He waved it in the officer's face. The officer squinted as he read the one line of script, then handed the card back and waved us on with a grin.
It turns out the card had some reference to a member of the Royal family. I don't know what it said or who issued it, but it was like a 'get out of jail free' card. If a couple of scruffy farang can successfully use a card like that, imagine what privileges rich VIP's can get. Heck, if they're rich enough, they can get their cop-killing kids off the hook with no legal repercussions.
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16 hours ago, sarahjo said:
Quite a revealing story by the 2.
welcome to T.Visa, Sarahjo.
Yours is the first of 7 comments that showed any compassion or sense.
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For farang residing in Thailand, we know that it's best to always do what Thai authorities tell us to do. However, if you're brave, you may sometimes speak up and question a dictate, if you think the edict is ridiculous. I've done it several times, and usually (but not always) get my way. Below are 2 examples, one where I lost and one where I won. . . . . . . .
Lost: I have 3 properties. Because I'm farang, the electricity accounts have to be in Thai peoples' names. One of the accounts is in a name of a Thai friend who died 16 years ago, but anyhow..... I went to PEA (Electric Company) to request to get the accounts changed to my name. I put in the electric services (paid for all the materials/labor) and pay 100% of the bills. PEA boss gruffly refused.
Won: I had a Thai corporation. I chose to let it die. At the provincial center, a bureaucrat insisted I needed to pay a lot of money for that to happen. I paid him some. Then, when he wanted more, I went to a Thai lawyer. He took money, and said to go back and pay more money to the bureaucrat. I didn't. Instead, I went to another gov't building which I vaguely recalled going to years earlier. I stood in the entry hall, looking at the 63 accountants who were all looking back at the odd farang. A woman came forth who spoke some English. I told her my dilemma. She said, "do nothing." I did nothing, and all is well. Her free two-word advice was the best counseling! I should go back and give her a fruit bowl and flowers.
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55 minutes ago, Suradit69 said:
Great pic. They should have permanent assistants who follow them around everywhere they go, 14 inches behind, with poster-sized placards studded with medals. They probably wear those jackets when showering at night. The only functioning industry in N.Korea is a commemorative-medal-making shop, next door to the shop where they counterfeit US $20 and $50 dollar bills.
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There are many unsung heroes, many of whom do things for the sake of doing good. Often there are no witnesses or video tape.
Once, while driving a p.u. truck in California, it was the end of a long drought, I noticed some bit of flame down a hillside. I stopped the truck, charged down the hill with a shovel, and put out a fire which, by the time I got there, had spread to about 30 sq. ft. (someone may have tossed a cig). It's an area where fast-moving fires sometimes burn hundreds of acres and take down dozens of houses.
Then there are those, like Prince Charles, who get gaudy expensive baubles to pin on their chests, just for showing up at an event. .....or sometimes for doing nothing at all.
I had a friend in California (now deceased) who organized a community event. It was a smallish town, so everyone knew everyone. It was a free event. Everyone, as they entered, was asked to write their name and 3 things about themselves on a ledger - things which they felt they excelled at, or were good at.
The 1st half of the time in the theater, there was local entertainment on the stage. At the same time, several staffers were backstage, busily filling in the blanks of pre-printed certificates of achievement. The 2nd half of the show, was awarding certificates to people in attendance. Some gave acceptance speeches, if they weren't too shy to speak to a crowd. It was a blast for all. Only the organizers knew, beforehand, about the awards ceremony.
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4 hours ago, tso310 said:
I thought it was for taking part in golf tournaments. Don't the military have some of the best golf courses in the region. Hub for golf courses ?
I snuck onto the grounds of a local military golf course - because I just wanted to walk around. the connecting paths between greens and tee-off places were 1 meter wide rubber mats, 1 inch thick. We wouldn't want our esteemed generals to have a bumpy ride between holes, would we?
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They all look the same age. My guess it's a high school outing.
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Overall, I like Thailand, but here are some of the most glaring drawbacks:
>>> noise pollution. Whole books could be written about it. Don't get me started (and I've got 11 books listed already, on Amazon).
>>> stealing. In years past, it was an on-going problem for me. Now not so bad. Perhaps I should qualify that, by saying; nearly all the stealing I suffered was by hill tribers. In the big picture, any culture of people has its bad apples, so it's not fair to pigeonhole one ethnic group - though Latin and South America have more than their share of thieves.
To balance out my bellyaching, here are some of the good things about Thailand:
>>> friendly people. Rule of thumb: the farther away from touristy areas, the friendlier the locals are to farang. I've had that proven hundreds of times.
>>> children are carefree - to the extent of being able to walk/ride bicycles where they want, pretty much any time. It brings joy to my heart to see kids being kids, and exploring outside, and mingling, making up games, not being afraid of strangers. In western countries, particularly the US, kids are indoctrinated to always fear and distrust strangers.
There is a true story of a newlywed US couple who were vacationing in Mexico. The man's motorcycle overturned and he got a bad bump on the head. The wife was hysterical. She wouldn't allow any Mexican ambulance staff to touch him, while she kept screaming for a medi-vac helicopter. After a long wait, while the man was bleeding, a copter arrived. On its way to hospital, the man died.
>>> very little price-gouging away from touristy areas. When I walk into a restaurant in my northernmost region of Thailand, or over the border to a Burmese town, .....I don't ask about prices. I simply ask what they have to offer, and go from there. They never charge inflated prices. Vegetables at markets are so cheap, that I often pay more than the vendor asks. P.S. I'm not rich by any means.
>>> no tipping required outside of touristy regions. Therefore; I tip when I choose. In contrast, tipping for certain things, in the US, is required. Exception, in Thailand, are some hotels/restaurants in very touristy areas, which tally in the tip onto the bill. I don't like that. If a person has something to sell, name the price, and go on from there. It's disgusting, to me, when a vendor names a price, the customer agrees, and then the customer gets a bill for more than was agreed upon. Suggestion to anyone reading this: if there's a tip tacked onto your restaurant or hotel bill, .....DON'T PAY IT, ....and tell them why.
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50 minutes ago, joeyg said:
I think you deserve a medal for that post, or at least the Nobel peace prize...
Thanks, but I'll take a danish pastry. It tastes better and I get a few calories.
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10 hours ago, Jingthing said:
Last time I checked expats in France can get on the national health system.
The U.S really is a freakish case. The highest health care costs in the world by far and nowhere near the best outcomes or access.That's a factor in my thinking. I moved to settle in Thailand in 1998 and have been doing alright here, in spite of being poor monetarily.
Now waxing philosophical: Nearly everyone worships money. That is their God, despite the acting they do at temples, mosques and churches. I view money as a means to get by and hopefully be comfortable. When I think of having it tough, I give a thought to things like gulags or Syrian refugees, where basic survival is the name of the game.
I've thought of returning to my country, the USA (I was 'naturalized' at 12, before that; Danish). I'm drawn to the desert regions of the SW.
I recently read about an Italian woman who just died. Emma Morano of Italy was 117. The eldest person now living is 117-year-old Violet Brown of Jamaica, born 10 March 1900.
I had to grin when Morano mentioned the reason for her longevity: Not getting married.
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I started writing this blurb in response to the article about street vendors being banned in Bkk. It then segued into a topic of its own, so here goes..... Street Vendors (and others trying to make a living from the ground-up) should retaliate by outlawing unearned citations on military and non-military uniforms.
I saw a photo recently of some of Thailand's leaders wearing snow-white uniforms - with multiple rows of medallions weighing down the fronts of their shirts. Epaulets, commemoration medallions, pilot wings and who knows what else. Movie stars are already ridiculous in awarding themselves gold trophies in their multiple award ceremonies (and business people who constantly award themselves commemorations), but grown men who never saw any combat look even more ridiculous in awarding themselves multiple garish medallions.
It's also demeaning to people who have actually earned battlefield commendations. There's a shop in my town of Chiang Rai which sells nothing but police uniforms and all the glitter that goes with it. It's easy to go to a medallion maker and just pay money to have a specialist craft several dozen authentic-looking medallions to wear in public.
What's next? Head monks gathering together with robes plastered with dozens of gaudy commemoration? The mind reels. Halloween doesn't need to come to Thailand, it's already here, and the grown-ups have commandeered it.
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A lovely new restaurant / coffee shop in town: Am not sure of its real name, but the sign in front says something like; FOOD / BREAD / COFFEE / TEA. It's small, very nice interior design, clean, and located right next to Siam Commercial Bank. West of downtown is Ratyota road, going north-south. The restaurant is about 80 meters north of the major intersection with Nakai/Sangkongnoi road and Ratyota, on west side.
The menu is half coffee shop specialties and half Muslim food. Low prices, quick service, lovely waitresses.
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I do believe that one (maybe the main....) reason aspirin is phased out in Thailand, is aggressive campaigning by aspirin-replacement trademarked pills. Tylanol, for example, is very successful in getting its brand showcased in all Thai hospitals. Personally, I don't like Tylanol, but they're like the Donald Trump of aspirin in terms of aggressive marketing.
It would not be surprising if it were found that the Tylanol people were bribing people in the medical or gov't communities - to make their product dominate. Of course, Thais would not be involved with initiating an investigation, but Thais may follow-up on farang initiatives - similar to what's happening with the Rolls Royce/Thai Airways imbroglio.
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I bought Bayer Aspirin for years - here in Chiang Rai. About a year ago, it quit being available for sale. I then found a little pharmacy which sold regular aspirin (probably the same as Bayer). Now, every pharmacy in Chiang Rai says 'no aspirin for sale.' Do I have to go to a hospital and talk to a doctor just to get aspirin here? I don't want the newer types of headache pills; Anacin/Ibuprophin/Tylanol..... I just want plain ol' aspirin.
Note: When Actifed (pseudoephydrine) became illegal in Thailand (because ya ba makers were using it as one of the ingredients in speed), I had to go to a doctor in a hospital to get the 'ok.' Hassles.
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re; the post above; I've heard those sorts of endlessly droning messages from wat P.A. systems. However, those drone on with numbers like 100 or 200 baht, for about 30 to 40 minutes, while mentioning names alongside the numbers.
As a clarification: I don't know if the extremely annoying and v. loud broadcast from Mae Sai (heard in many parts of Tachilek) were from a Thai wat or from the governor's office or pu yai ban in Mae Sai.
Yet, In contrast to numbers of 100 or 200 baht, the numbers shouted to Myanmar from Thailand were like; 548, 632, 961, 376, etc. All were 3-digit numbers. I also heard words like 'nor sor' which, I believe, relate to categories of real estate properties. I really don't care about the topics. I'm more concerned about the early-morning noise assault on people from 2 countries.
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Yesterday: the hotel in Tachilek where I usually stay was full, so I went to another. It was along the border river facing Mae Sai. Only one problem. Early morning, very loud sounds of a man's voice blasted into my hotel room. VERY LOUD. DRONING, ....went on for about 35 minutes. Anyone reading this who has resided in Thailand knows what I mean. Every few syllables were tagged with the word 'kap.' I don't speak much Thai, but the voice kept mentioning 3-digit numbers. Was he a soothsayer suggesting lottery numbers? It was awful. Can such men, shouting into microphones which go through amplifiers (500 watt?) turned up to 10 .....can they find a way to speak with nice voices? .....instead of authoritative drone voices? In some ways, Thailand is fine. In other ways, it's a big open sewer.
Thais getting duped by skin whitener salesmen
in General Topics
Posted
'expensive pee' That's the 1st time I've heard that phrase, in a sentence or otherwise. Thanks for the chuckle!