Bitter Farang

There are distinct stages in a person’s acclimation to Thailand. Nearly every aspect of your life in Thailand requires different solutions. In fact, even the problems change. You’re no longer worried so much about how to clean your house or fix your car because someone else does that for you, but you do need to spend a great deal of time setting up companies, working through visas, and jumping borders.

In fact, after a few years, you figure out that all the problems aren’t really problems at all; at least they wouldn’t be if the rules governing foreigners in Thailand weren’t so mixed up and confused. This first realization marks the beginning of the metamorphosis of the sweet happy and contented foreigner into the bitter foreigner that you’ll find making up the majority of the long-staying expat population.

In Thai they have a special descriptor for this type of farang: “roo mak”, which just means “knows a lot”. That’s not a complement though: it means that the foreigner has been around enough to know the score and has become a bit embittered having figured out how the deck is stacked against him.

This transformation usually takes between 3 and five years, but as a rule, the longer a foreigner has been here the more bitter he will be. Issues that the newly arrived (visas, land ownership, the questionable application of law) will find but mild annoyances will have stuck like sand in the older expat’s underwear slowly rubbing his most sensitive parts raw.

Indeed, when the subject comes up, many newly arrived expats will be shocked that I’m still here. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard, “Well, if you don’t like it, just go someplace else.” You’ll see this same response repeated endlessly in the Bangkok Post in response to some farang curmudgeon’s complaints. Besides ignoring the reality that many people have built a home, family, job, and a life here, it’s a craven response to just pack up your bags and move on in the face of a few problems. Complaints without action are simply annoying, but because of expats’ limited political voice, difficulty volunteering, and such large differences between the foreign and local cultures, sometimes it’s the only thing that gets done.

These problems though are the paradox of Thailand: The wonderful thing about the place is in many ways its disorganization and free lifestyle. Indeed, if it were managed effectively like Singapore there’s no doubt that many of the silly rules would immediately be removed. Of course, the reasons for being here in the first place would disappear as well.