Let’s be honest with one another. I recently went to Indonesia and I was surprised to see how few farangs there are in the capital city. I guess this is different to Bali where I am told there are many. But Jakarta can be compared to Bangkok and frankly there are very few farangs to be seen. Obviously I couldn’t cover all the city during my short stay but my Indonesian colleagues confirmed that in Bangkok the number of farangs is so much higher than in their home city.

I began making other comparisons between the two cities. Economic ones. Maybe the farangs stay in Bangkok more because it is cheaper than Jakarta? Wrong. The average plate of rice in a nice restaurant in Jakarta seems to be about 1/4 the price of the equivalent back in Bangkok. This goes for everything- costs for going out, costs for eating, costs for shopping. Everything is cheaper in Jakarta than in Bangkok! Well, most things.

So how about work comparisons. Maybe it’s so much easier for Farangs to work and setup business and make money in Bangkok than in Jakarta? Wrong. The visas available for farangs to work, setup business and make investment etc in Indonesia are so much easier than we make it for them back home in Thailand! The average piss-head farang can get a 6 month visa here for next to nothing, just provide some sort of nonsense letter from a friend and “Selamat Datang Mr. Farang!”. Plus I looked at the cost of the tourist visa- 1/3 the price for a farang to get a tourist visa to Indonesia than for a farang to get one for Thailand.

Hrm! So what the bloody hell makes all these farangs stay in Thailand? Maybe it’s the geography. Wrong. Bali and other parts of Indonesia are almost as beautiful as Thailand and the islands in our south. I say almost because I haven’t seen them all myself. But it’s easily equal between the two countries.

Maybe its the political situation which makes farangs want to stay more in Thailand than Indonesia? Wrong. The political situation in Jakarta is way more stable. No coups recently!

So… what on earth could it be?! And Im talking a huge difference in farang population numbers here. I saw 3 farangs the whole time I walked around two or three malls in Jakarta. I can’t get on the bus in the morning without seeing about 5 in Bangkok, and that’s before 8am! Clearly the only reason any farangs stay in Thailand is because of how easy it is for them to get sexual gratification. This is not so readily available in Jakarta. It exists, but no where near on the scale that it does in Bangkok and other areas. Sure, they say it’s for their wife, or the beaches, or the friendly people, but none of that would be enough to make them leave their rich western countries and fly all the way over here if it were not for the fact that the lack of feminism, lack of education among women and general lack of enforcement of the law allows them to get away with patterns of behaviour that would simply be unacceptable in their home countries.

I like to go shopping now and then at this market near my home. Its normal to see plenty of farangs there but this is even though it is a very cheap market. Usually they come hand in hand with a Thai girl who dresses suspiciously provocative, so you tend to know where the happy couple met one another. I was standing next to one particular stall looking at some earings when just such a farang appeared looking through the dvds on the shop beside me. He barked “you how much this” at the shop assistant who was taken by surprise and jumped up to serve the customer. She asked him very politely what he would like to buy and he raised his voice again saying the same thing in loud English: “how much this”. The problem was he did not point at any particular thing so how was she supposed to know what it was he wanted to know the price about?

I looked at the girl next to him- very short, looked a bit shy but when she saw me looking immediately became confident and asked the seller (in Thai) ‘If I tell him to buy many you must give me some money’. The seller looked at her, and then looked at me, a little shyly. “That’s not possible, sorry” was the seller’s reply, to which the girl said to her “boyfriend” “Honey here no good have only bad movie make from copy very shit”. The farang grunted and finished the scene by waving his hand derisively at the seller and saying “My Ow My Ow” with a big frown on his face. Then they turned and walked away.

The seller looked at her feet, then at me, while I tried not to stare. I felt so sorry for her, so I ended up buying a dvd. The quality was fine, as it turned out, but then I wasn’t surprised by that. I tried to find the happy couple again to see if the girl was trying this trick with everything the farang wanted to buy, but unfortunately she had obviously decided to take him onto richer pickings elsewhere.

The thing is that I can imagine this to be understandable if the girl was so poor and desperate for her next meal, but she was covered in all sorts of jewellry, much more than I have myself and I have what is considered an OK job. Im pretty sure there was more than 100 000 baht of gold on her. Is it really going to help her to make another 50 or 100 baht from commission on a few movies? The seller by comparison wore no jewelry.

I don’t know actually who I felt more sorry for- the farang, the girl who was so selfish or the seller.

Last night I was enjoying the last of the Songkran festival celebrations with some friends- we went to eat pad thai in our favourite eatery and then drove over to a friend’s place. To get to our car however we had to walk the roadbridge not far from the middle of Sukhumvit. I was particularly feeling awkward because I was with an older friend of mine who has never really been to Sukhumvit during the evening time and I knew there was a chance of something embarassing happening. Sure enough, a fat farang waddles along the bridge in the opposite direction and says something in very bad Thai to my friend. Fortunately my friend didn’t understand it, unused as she is to the attempts of most farangs to speak our language. I told her he just said “Hello” but in German. I think she believed me.

What he actually tried to say was “You are very beautiful”, except what he actually said was “You are very unlucky”. If I had a 20 baht note for every time some farang has called me unlucky I would be a very rich girl. This is why you need to learn to understand tones before you learn any Thai words. You have to copy the exact way a word is said or there is a big chance you will end up getting it wrong and embarassing you, the girl and whoeever else hears you. And why are you going up to strangers in the dark on roadbridges and telling them they are beautiful anyway? Don’t you realise you stink of beer and ciggies? Haven’t you spotted the large sweat patch under each arm?

Then I walked past a street stall (yes.. I know.. ) and one thin tall guy waved me over, obviously thinking I was for sale. I was wearing a trouser suit you complete ass!!