White Shirts

One of the great things about Phuket is the huge range of people that call it home. There’s the locals with families stretching back generations and generations, later Chinese immigrants who came here to work in the tin mines and now the influx of Europeans and just recently Eastern Europeans, Russians, and Middle Easterners.

Each of these communities generally keeps its own company, so if you’re part of one group you can often be completely blind to the comings and goings of the other groups. Indeed, the Korean community in Phuket, while very large, is nearly invisible to the European communities because they generally don’t speak English, stay in their own communities, and blend in with the larger Asian community.

Beyond the distinct communities created by nationality and culture, there are quite a few more manufactured for the benefit of the clique itself. One of the most visible, if only because of their attire, is what I’ve taken to calling the “white shirt club”, so named because of their universal love for long flowing white cotton shirts—sometimes paired with long white flowing cotton pants.

This group of affluent Western Europeans can be found at any trendy night club on any night of the week. Indeed, weekends hold little meaning to the true adherents of this group as work is only a vague concept to them. However, if you truly want to see them in force, you must wait for a “white night” at any of the high-end resorts up in the Surin area.

So insecure are they of their status that they legislate that all those coming to their parties must demonstrate their allegiance by donning the white flowing shirt, paying a crazy cover charge, and then drinking until the early hours (probably on a Wednesday) to prove that they don’t have a job to go to in the morning.

One night I was at a club which actually has “white” in its name, a young 30 year-old member of the white shirt club came up to me. A bit tipsy, he slurred out his name and how he had just gotten to Phuket from Singapore. He said he was staying in a villa up the way. Being in the business, I asked him which villa he was staying in and if it was nice. “I can’t remember.” He gestured up the beach and said, “It’s over that way.” A little shaken, I think, because he couldn’t name his fancy villa, he rebutted with, “I’ve been thinking of buying a villa here. Can I get anything nice for 500,000 US? It’s not a big deal; it’s just company money.” With that beautiful introduction, I excused myself from the drunken white-shirter happy to know that they haven’t changed in all the years I’ve been here and my prejudices did not need to be questioned.