Rock and a Hard Place

Thai economics play an important part in many Thai's decisions. This is the story of a friend of mine who I will refer to as T.

T is a vivacious fun loving 27 year old Thai woman that I have known for about 3 years. She is also a very good friend of Thavorn's. T makes her living as a bar girl.

Like most Thai girls, T had an early relationship with a Thai boy in her village. She has 2 children, a 9 year old girl and a 6 year old boy. If you do the math, she had the first child at 18 and the second at 21. Like many early Thai relationships it failed and I think the big stressors were children and male infidelity. T's children live with the boyfriend's mom, which is a little bit unusual as they typically end up with the girl's mother.

Grandmother's often are the primary care givers for children. It is a role they are often eager to embrace as the parents (usually the female) provide funds to the grandparent that supplement their eager incomes.

T works as a bar girl which results in an income that is greater than a Thai college or university graduate. The life of a bar girl is hard and they usually party hard as well. Their income ends up being sent home and/or spent on partying or supporting their latest Thai boyfriend. Thai women prefer a Thai boyfriend over a farang boyfriend, all else being equal.

However it is seldom equal. Most Thai men have little income and earning potential due to a lack of education and poor employment prospects. This leads to dual relationships with the Thai bar girl indulging in relationships with a farang man while maintaining a Thai boy on the side. This is not something that a farang will accept while the Thai boy is willing to accept, often dropping the girl off at the bar, knowing what she will be doing to earn money that often goes towards supporting a lifestyle the Thai boy would normally not experience.

Now, back to T. T has had her share of farangs who would of been happy to spend their lives with T. Sometimes cohabiting, sometimes in marriage. However, they are often older than T and T prefers young Thai boys. Her latest Thai boy (I will call him P) is 19 and I know him quite well. He is lots of fun and is a typical 19 year old with little education and poor job prospects. While in a relationship with P she met a 32 year old Aussie who fell deeply in love with T. I will call him L. L had a good job in Australia and was a good looking young man. However, he was a little possessive and wanted to see T all the time which meant T saw little of her Thai boy P.

Eventually L twigged on what was going on and decided T was a lost cause.

The story does not end happy. T is now 6 months pregnant with P's baby. P does not want a family but T loves P and hoped he would eventually agree to try raising the baby as a family unit. P is smart enough to realize that he will forever be poor as T can not work while trying to raise a baby. Both T's and P's mothers do not want to take on the raising of a baby. P's mom has a farang boyfriend (she is a former bar girl) and does not need the money. T's mom is quite old and is physically not able to look after a baby.

T came to realize that P would not come around to being a family man and went to the hospital looking for an abortion. The hospital refused because the pregnancy is too far advanced. T looks to the internet and orders some weird cocktail that supposedly aborts late term pregnancies. I can't imagine that it is safe.

So what does a friend do? There is no local ProChoice or adoption agencies to turn to.

This situation is not all that unusual in Asia and many of these babies end up in dumpsters.

There is free hospital births for Thais but T has to return to her village of registration but loses face by doing so. There will also be a lack of support for T in the village as her mom lives with relatives and does not have her own home. T also has no income as she can not work as a bar girl while 6 months pregnant.

Last night I lay awake for quite some time pondering what, if anything, Thavorn and I can do and what alternatives, if any, are available to T.

What would you do?

Awesome View

Shaun sent me an awesome panorama view from the top of the Holiday Inn Hotel at the corner of Sukhumvit and Soi 22.

Thavorn and I are looking forward to having Shaun visit again in October of this year.

Thanks for the pic Shaun :-)

Emporium Expands, Optics, and Dentistry

Emporium was one of the smaller high end malls in Bangkok. However, smaller just meant it was missing H&M, Banana Republic, Victoria Secrets, etc. but had Dolce and Cabana, Prada, Hermes, etc. However it was the closest mall, next to Terminal 21 for me to walk to. It also had a large bookstore whereas Terminal 21 did not.

Over the past 3 years I have watched Emporium double in size as workers from Myanmar, working 3 shifts a day, constructed the new building which is accessed via the BTS station walk through.

Today, the new building was getting ready for its red carpet opening and most of the stores were open. Here are a few pics. As always, any of these malls put Canadian malls to shame.

The view from the older building with a new big screen display.

Preparing the red carpet for the media Thai superstars to open the mall.

Thavorn on the Red Carpet (with new glasses)

A pillar covered by an ever changing videoscape.

There are about 5 of these video transitions.

I mentioned Thavorn's new glasses. I had suspected that she needed glasses as she often squinted when trying to view writing at a distance. I asked her if she had ever had her eyes tested and she said, 'Why would I do that, I can't afford glasses?'. That is the typical pragmatic response to situations beyond their control. The vast majority of Thais do not get knee replacements, costly prescription drugs, etc. Many women get pregnant because she and her partner can not afford condoms at the local 7/11. There is no regular dental checkup. What we take in North America for granted is a luxury to lo-so Thais.

So Thavorn had her eyes checked and sure enough she needed glasses as she could not really focus much past 20 feet. I found out why she did not like to watch English movies with Thai subtitles. She could not read the subtitles and was too embarrassed to tell me.

The next item on the agenda was the dental checkup and thankfully Thai have good teeth and she had only accumulated 3 cavities in her lifetime. She had the 3 fillings and a general cleaning for 4,000 Baht which is about $125 CDN which is not too bad but still outside the realm of someone in a country where the minimum wage is 300 baht a day. BTW, the dentist was trained at UCLA. Obviously, he comes from a hi-so clinic. During the day, he works at a Thai hospital and off hours during the week and on weekends he augments his salary by working at a dental clinic on Soi 22.

First Rain of the Rainy Season

It is almost April 1st which is officially the rainy season in Bangkok. The first heavy rain came down for almost 45 minutes and overwhelmed the storm sewer system. After about 6 months of no rain I imagine the sewers were all clogged up with the garbage that often gets littered (is that a verb?) about.

Soi 22 was awash with water flowing over the top of the sidewalks. Jaidan and I went for a stroll as soon as the rain stopped so we could shoot some photos.

This is what we found.

Propane tank deliveries must go through.

The cockroaches were abandoning the streets for higher ground.

Farang was out for a stroll.

Venice of the East

Are you sure you want to do this?

More propane tank deliveries.

W hatch that wake!

Too late for the umbrella ... I think :-)

Back in Bangkok

I had forgotten how fatiguing it can be to travel with a 7 month old baby. However, we are back in Bangkok. However, before we left Phuket we had ...

One more visit to the children's pool.

Play time with Poppa.

Cleanup in the pool shower. 

One last walk on the beach with Poppa ...

 

and Momma.

One last cleanup in the bathtub ...

with Poppa.

The best part of travelling with a young baby is you get priority boarding. However, the dark side to that is you are in your seat longer and you have longer to entertain Mr. ADHD! It turns out Jaidan is reminding me very much of my son Jordan when he was a similar age.

We were spoiled while staying at the resort. Unlike most Bangkok restaurants, restaurants at the resort had high chairs. I vowed to get one as soon as I arrived back in Bangkok. It turned out they were very expensive (6,000 -12,000 baht) and only found at hi-so malls. A quick check on the internet turned up ... guess what .... Bangkok has an Ikea.

So we grabbed a taxi via GrabTaxi, the Asia equivalent of Uber and the taxi arrived on time at our apartment and off we went to Ikea. I had keyed our destination into GrabTaxi so the taxi driver already new where Ikea was ... which was a novelty ... at least for the first taxi flagged down on the street :-)

Here is Jaidan in his 1,900 Baht high chair!

While at Ikea, I could not pass picking up my favorite Ikea chair. I have now purchased 5 of these and have left a trail of them across Canada and Asia.

I also could not pass up the Ikea food court for a quick lunch of Ikea hot dogs, Ikea french fries, and Ikea, all you can drink Coke. I also bought some Ikea chocolate bars! 

The taxi fare was 150 Baht which is about $5 CDN for a 25 minute ride. I will definitely be going back to Ikea sometime soon.

Expat - Canada Relationship

An expat is someone living in a foreign country who maintains his/her citizenship of their mother country. In my case I am a Canadian citizen living in Thailand but receiving income and paying taxes to Canada.

Another towel animal magically appeared! Ling (monkey)

I receive my teacher's pension from Canada and pay the income tax that I would normally pay in Canada. I question what I receive of value for my taxes paid but apparently I pay taxes because the money I put into my pension while working was tax free. All in all, I consider it a benefit to Canada because I use none of the services except for the Embassy here in Bangkok which is excellent!

However, I have a beef to pick with Canada! You Canadians are not pulling your own weight in the relationship. When I first started visiting Thailand, 1 Canadian dollar purchase 30 Bahts. Now 1 Canadian dollar purchases about 25 Baht. If you Canadian keep this up I will have to move back to Canada full-time and start drawing on the resources that my taxes pay for.

Here is a four year chart of the Canadian dollar trading with the Thai Baht.

and the US dollar

Now, one may argue that the Canadian dollar has not really done badly and it is just the upstart US dollar is doing very well and since most of the world's currency are rated against the dollar then down we go.

However, given that Thailand is under a military junta and that tourism is down I really do not understand how the Canadian dollar has fallen in relationship to the Thai Baht. Perhaps it is because Thailand has essentially 0% unemployment. However, that is not a great feat when the minimum wage is $10 a day for a 12 hour day.

Perhaps Canada's socialist programs are hurting its productivity. 

Perhaps someone out there can enlighten this poor grasshopper :-)

Selfies and Towel Animals

Selfie sticks are everywhere. They are even being banned in some places. Asians have this love for selfies. The selfie is usually put up on Facebook to show what they have been doing or in some cases, not doing. I must admit, I don't really get facebook or the need for selfies.

Thavorn is also into selfies in a limited way and has yet to ask me for a selfie stick.

She certainly pays attention to what gets LIKES on her facebook page. 

However, I do LIKE the towel animals that magically appear in our room everyday when we return to enjoy lunch and a brief respite while Jaidan sleeps for an hour after he is fed.

Here are some examples.

Birds

Puppy Dog

Rabbit

Elephant

God's Greatest Gift

God's greatest gift to humankind is a child. Believe it or not, this quote came from John McGrath. The place was Queens Park on Soi 22 and the occasion was Saturday night. I had just explained to John that Thavorn was 1 month pregnant with Jaidan and I asked him his opinion. I was expected some very fine ridicule followed by, 'How could you be so stupid!' and was surprised at his response. For a moment I thought I was speaking to Dick McGrath. I guess apples do not fall far from the tree.

So there I was 63, with a new baby on the way. I seemed to remember that Pierre Elliot Trudeau had children at a later stage in life and a quick Google turned up a daughter at age 76. Of course, Margaret Trudeau was much younger than Pierre (30 years differential) when she married him at 22 years of age after a 4 year courtship.  It appears I was in good company although Thavorn is not 22.

I never really understood the fascination that grandparents have for grandchildren. I soon discovered what it is. When you have children at the normal (whatever that is) age you are fully immersed in your careers. The time you spend in the morning is rushed as you ship them off to some form of daycare and the time at night sees you tired from your days work. I daresay, if you are human, you sometimes resent your children.

However, with Jaidan, I have no job to run off to. I see him each and every minute of the day and I get to watch every minute step in his development. As a psychology major I find it fascinating. I do not second guess myself after raising two wonderful children ... Jaime and Jordan ... They are so successful and talented .. each in their own ways ... each with 2 degrees.

Thais are so conservative in raising their children. I delight in going to the local health clinic and throwing Jaidan up into the air and catching him to the delights of his giggles and the shocked faces of the Thais. I also turn him upside down and give him kisses as he giggles. This is a no no from a Thai perspective as it puts his feet above his head.  I am as politically correct as ever and my Thai partner Thavorn, cringes and tries to hide! Lots of fun :-) Not to worry, there is no Thai equivalent of Children Services waiting to take Jaidan away from the crazy farang.

Me and my shadow are a consistent sight in downtown Bangkok and if I dare go out without him I am consistently queried every 50 feet ... Where Jaidan? ... Where Baby?

JW Marriott Phukett

The JW Marriott in Phuket at Mai Khao Beach in Phuket is highly recommended. It is probably the nicest resort I have stayed at. We are staying in a 2 bedroom condo, 2 bathrooms that sleeps 6. It even has a washer and drier which means you do not have to pack so much for your week long vacation.

The resort itself has one of the nicest stretches of beaches I have walked. You can go 5 kms in each direction and not see another soul. The water temperature is so close to body temperature that walking into it is soothing and cooling but not a shock.

The only downside is it is a trek (45 mins into town and Patong beach) if you want to be a little bit crazy. The nightlife is incredible for those of you who want a walk on the wild side. Completely safe however :-) sort of ...

Here are some pics of our room.

The main living area ... bigger than my 2 bedroom condo in Bangkok.

Master Bedroom with king size bed.

Master Bedroom ensuite.

Part of the balcony.

The bar area.

Kitchen is completely equipped.

View from the kitchen.

Second bedroom with 2 queens and separate washroom.

Entrance area.

View from the balcony.

Jaidan takes a timeout for his bottle.

Phuket Town

We are spending a week at Phuket as we decided to take a break from Bangkok. Phuket is very popular with tourists especially Russian tourists who are still travelling despite the low Ruble.

I met a couple of Latvians who flew to Bangkok on a $200 Euro return tickets. The cheapest ticket I can get these days is $1500 CDN return , Ottawa to Bangkok. I have always felt North Americans get ripped off in airline tickets!

The resort is beautiful and I will post some pics in the near future.

A Thai friend came by with a truck so we headed off to Phuket Town and Patong Beach. Afterwards our Thai friend took us to a local tourist spot I had never been too.  There were many tour buses and people from all over the world, many from China.

The tourist spot was a retired Light House with a commanding view of the ocean and sunsets. Unfortunately there was low cloud cover which messed up the sunset photo ops.

However, there was still some nice scenery to shoot on my Note 3.

Tourists from all over the world

Offerings to Bhudda

Thavorn and Jaidan

Ibid

Ibid

Lighthouse Exhibit

Thavorn, Jaidan, and Bie Derry

View from the Top of Lighthouse

Ibid

Sunset

Can you say ADHD

Silhouettes

Jaidan is always happy on the move

Jimmy and his shadow :-)