PHUKET: The latest e-mail letter to fans from Bangkok-based crime writer Jack Needham brought the response 'What a grouch!' from one. Do you agree or not? Here's what he wrote:
Dear Readers,
April 13 through April 15 is Thailand's major annual holiday. It's the Thai New Year, and the holiday period is called Songkran.
On the whole, foreigners who live in Thailand loathe this time of the year. Most of us call it the silly season and almost every foreigner who has been in Thailand longer than a few weeks heads for the airport as soon as April 1 rolls around and refuses to return until after May has safely begun.
April is one of the hottest months in Thailand (which is really saying something), and a generation or two ago the Songkran holiday was quite different. It was a time when the young paid their respects to their elders with a gentle and quite lovely gesture of taking a bowl of cooling, jasmine-scented water . . . and pouring it over their hands.
Then, somewhere along the line, all that changed.
Foreign travel agencies started promoting Songkran as the Thai Water Festival, and they used the promise of merry, smiling Thais sprinkling water on each other as a lure to foreigners to visit the country during April.
But let's be absolutely clear here . . .
The Thai Water Festival is actually a week or so every year when street thuggery takes over the country and hooligans dragging buckets of dirty water or equipped Super Soakers filled with even dirtier water roam the streets dousing anyone and everyone in sight right down to their skin.
For most of the year, Thais are generally courteous to foreigners, even extending to us a degree of deference which we are utterly unaccustomed to experiencing anywhere else. But during Songkran, all bets are off. The foreigner is the first target of the water-slinging goons who fill the streets every April.
In spite of all the happy-talk horse manure flowing out of the Thai Tourist Office, the plain fact is that foreigners make most Thais uncomfortable. We're all rich, of course, and that's bad enough, but worse, we're all just so . . . well, foreign.
Thais don't have much use for anyone who's not Thai, other than to separate them from as much money as possible and send them on their way as quickly as possible, and Songkran is when they are freed from their inhibitions to demonstrate that without fear of retribution.
Boy, are they ever freed of their inhibitions . . .
On the whole, most foreigners - at least those who don't see themselves as the young hoodlum above - either leave the country during April or they barricade themselves in their apartments and refuse to go outside for weeks at a time.
Because we know all too well that this is pretty much what the once gentle and beautiful rituals of Songkran have become . . .
Since the Songkran holiday runs for three days and any of those days that fall on the weekend are replaced by weekdays, and because there are more three-day weekends and individual holidays both immediately before and after Songkran, the Thais usually manage to stretch the holiday into something close to a month-long shutdown of productive work across the entire country.
Of course, most foreign residents are quick to point out that it's pretty hard to tell when Thais are doing productive work at any point in the year anyway, so a lot of people don't really notice Songkran being all that much of a change.
That said, I'm told that the worst of the water throwing is mostly restricted to about a week around April 13-15, but I wouldn't know. I haven't been in Thailand during April in 15 years.
Because you see, I do know what I'm missing.
Stay cool.
Jake Needham
Jake Needham is the author of several crime novels set in Asia.
Dear Readers,
April 13 through April 15 is Thailand's major annual holiday. It's the Thai New Year, and the holiday period is called Songkran.
On the whole, foreigners who live in Thailand loathe this time of the year. Most of us call it the silly season and almost every foreigner who has been in Thailand longer than a few weeks heads for the airport as soon as April 1 rolls around and refuses to return until after May has safely begun.
April is one of the hottest months in Thailand (which is really saying something), and a generation or two ago the Songkran holiday was quite different. It was a time when the young paid their respects to their elders with a gentle and quite lovely gesture of taking a bowl of cooling, jasmine-scented water . . . and pouring it over their hands.
Then, somewhere along the line, all that changed.
Foreign travel agencies started promoting Songkran as the Thai Water Festival, and they used the promise of merry, smiling Thais sprinkling water on each other as a lure to foreigners to visit the country during April.
But let's be absolutely clear here . . .
The Thai Water Festival is actually a week or so every year when street thuggery takes over the country and hooligans dragging buckets of dirty water or equipped Super Soakers filled with even dirtier water roam the streets dousing anyone and everyone in sight right down to their skin.
For most of the year, Thais are generally courteous to foreigners, even extending to us a degree of deference which we are utterly unaccustomed to experiencing anywhere else. But during Songkran, all bets are off. The foreigner is the first target of the water-slinging goons who fill the streets every April.
In spite of all the happy-talk horse manure flowing out of the Thai Tourist Office, the plain fact is that foreigners make most Thais uncomfortable. We're all rich, of course, and that's bad enough, but worse, we're all just so . . . well, foreign.
Thais don't have much use for anyone who's not Thai, other than to separate them from as much money as possible and send them on their way as quickly as possible, and Songkran is when they are freed from their inhibitions to demonstrate that without fear of retribution.
Boy, are they ever freed of their inhibitions . . .
On the whole, most foreigners - at least those who don't see themselves as the young hoodlum above - either leave the country during April or they barricade themselves in their apartments and refuse to go outside for weeks at a time.
Because we know all too well that this is pretty much what the once gentle and beautiful rituals of Songkran have become . . .
Since the Songkran holiday runs for three days and any of those days that fall on the weekend are replaced by weekdays, and because there are more three-day weekends and individual holidays both immediately before and after Songkran, the Thais usually manage to stretch the holiday into something close to a month-long shutdown of productive work across the entire country.
Of course, most foreign residents are quick to point out that it's pretty hard to tell when Thais are doing productive work at any point in the year anyway, so a lot of people don't really notice Songkran being all that much of a change.
That said, I'm told that the worst of the water throwing is mostly restricted to about a week around April 13-15, but I wouldn't know. I haven't been in Thailand during April in 15 years.
Because you see, I do know what I'm missing.
Stay cool.
Jake Needham
Jake Needham is the author of several crime novels set in Asia.
Well, I agree with him to a point.
Songkran is out of control and downright dangerous. Most of my expat friends on Phuket simply stay indoors during the mad days.
In contrast Loy Kratong is beautiful and serene.
As to how he says most Thais see foreigners - one could be forgiven coming to that conclusion if living in places like Phuket.
Go out to the small villages (ban nook) and you'd see the genuine kindness and hospitality of Thais that died on Phuket decade or so ago.
I would not want to live there either, though. I'm not much good in farming and as a foreigner would not be allowed to anyway.
Open sex trade prevalent in major tourist destinations attracts a certain type of foreign visitors (yes, quite a few foreign women also flock to Thailand for the same reasons) and if Thais form their opinions of us based on that, I can understand why their perception of us is less than stellar.
For me there's very little to like about Phuket anymore and I've started to make arrangements to end my business liabilities and hope to leave Thailand by the end of next year.
What I say or think makes no difference whatsoever and I see things only getting worse.
Why stay in a place you can't change and don't feel comfortable in ? 10 years here is enough for me.
Posted by Stephen on May 7, 2013 10:26