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?Culture Shock in BKK: Part of my experience?


Tiger Moth

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The bottom line is I seem to have gone from ?lower class? my entire life to being ?upper class? overnight and I am finding it difficult to understand Thailand and where I fit in in this world.

 

I come from the US and my family was ?poor? and ?lower class?. Here is some of my family/childhood background. First of all, neither of my parents graduated high school. My father was a truck driver and I have 2 brothers and a sister (later a half brother ? same father different mother ? my half brother is younger than my son). The cost of living for a family with 4 children was beyond the income of a truck driver and we were lower class socially and economically. Until I entered high school, I was with peers from similar situations and so I just felt ?normal?, not lower or any other class.

 

Somehow, when I entered high school, I was sent to a private boys prep school. Here many of the other students came from educated families with money. This began my introduction to feeling lower class and poor and less than others as I had fewer clothing, less money etc. than my peers.

 

Unfortunately, a couple of years later, I was again in a situation where I was much lower on the social economic scale then my peers and was to feel lower class and less than. What happened next is that I was hired by IBM when I was 18 years old as a clerk. Due to unusual circumstances, at age 21 IBM placed me in their professional training program for Systems Engineers. A college education was required for this but I had only 1 year of college achieved in night school. In the 1st training program, we lived in a hotel and had roommates. My roommate had graduated from Stanford University (one of the US finest, where Hewlett and Packard (founders of HP) had also graduated). In addition to not having graduated college, I again had less financial resources than my peers and much less life experience. As a small aside, when I arrived at the hotel where IBM was putting us up, I walked into the lobby and almost went into a panic. I had never been in a hotel before in my life and had no idea what to do.

 

This trend continued as I was moved by IBM to its top office in Manhattan. Here the IBM professional staff was its best and brightest with most coming from privileged backgrounds. Here is one incident I will never forget. Several of us were at lunch and two of the people started talking about traveling in Europe. Eventually as the conversation they ended up discussing a particular bakery in Paris. Now, I had never been 100 kilometers from where I was born. I was mortified as I sat there listening to the conversation. I felt like dirt and horribly out of place.

 

To fast forward, the last few years I was living in Boulder, Colorado in the US. This is a wealthy community with many having trophy homes costing $millions. So, still I was low on the social economic scale.

 

In October of last year, I retired and moved to BKK where I now live. As I early retired, I gave up a lot of potential retirement benefit to get out and get on with my life. So, I viewed my pension as being marginal at best (part of the reason I came to BKK where it is relatively very inexpensive to live). Now, I am living in a very, very nice apartment in a very nice section of BKK. I pretty much can afford to go out and do anything I like (within reason to a degree).

 

To try to convey what is happening for me, here is a situation that epitomizes part of my difficulty and culture shock. I was at my apartment and talking with the BG I had brought home (a bit unusual in that she was very bright, had lived outside Thailand for a year, had a couple of years at University ? while in her early 20?s paid for by her boyfriend ? not that she came from a family that could afford to send her to the University). She was telling me about her family being very poor as a child and how her father is very poor. Basically, my attitude was, tell me about it, I come from a poor family also. When I related this, she looked at me with a bit of disdain and said something to the affect that being poor in the US was nothing like being poor in Thailand (and to a large degree she is correct).

 

Additionally, I am starting to get some idea of the poverty of most Thai people and how difficult their lives are. Much more difficult than anything I ever experienced.

 

While there are many other cultural differences between Thailand and the US, the biggest shock for me is that after 57 years of being lower class socially and economically (to some degree emotionally rather than pure reality and fact as I earned a fairly good income for many years). And all of a sudden, overnight, I am wealthy and privileged.

 

By the way, I am not complaining or whining about my life here as I know I am very fortunate. Its just that my world has turned upside down overnight and I am a square peg in a round hole as far as how I feel, my economic situation and ?where I fit in?.

 

I suppose I have written this as a bit of self and situation analysis but also I am sure that many of us experience some similar and some different culture shocks when we come to Thailand. So, I hope some of you can relate to or find mine thought provoking.

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>>>And all of a sudden, overnight, I am wealthy and privileged<<<<

 

Get used to it.

 

It's a perceived value. You are farang, so therefore rich. Don't fight it.....you will not win. Just go with the flow. You will never convince them otherwise. Or how else can you afford to fly there? :p ('Thai logic).

 

Really...learn to live with it. You will never convince them otherwise.

 

:drunk:

 

HT

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Sounds like when you were younger you had an opportunity at IBM and you took advantage of it. I imagine you worked hard as a Systems Engineer so you earned your place in life. Some people just marry into money or inheriet it. I can't even finish my "Perl for Dummies" book so I have a lot of respect for you....I can not even imagine trying to learn some of that IBM stuff like DB2/MVQSA, etc......he he he.

 

Seems like people in Thailand just can not understand people in America growing up dirt poor. They think we are Bill Gates or Charles Schwab.

 

I would imagine most expats feel out of place living in Thailand....as the previous poster says, just go with the flow an enjoy the ride! :D

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Tiger,

 

I think there's many of us who can't wait to experience that same 'culture shock' you are experiencing now!

 

You've actually "made it", after many years of hard work you're now in a position to enjoy a great life over there living a life of comparative wealth and privilige. If it was me, after finally having "made it" and being so lucky, I'd be afraid of some peice of space junk falling out of the sky and smacking me on the head as I walked to 7-11 one day! I hope you work out and stay healthy (while still partying) to ensure you stay around as long as possible.

 

It's true folks in Thailand have it rough and many are quite poor however I found most are still happy in life and not bitter or dejected. Can't forget the time I visited a regular BG's home on the outskirts of Pattaya, is was a hot, miserable sweatbox: a 6 by 8 ft concrete "cell" with no furniture except a small, thin mat, tiny old fan, and a few pics of family taped up on the conrete wall. On either side of her in similar sized 'concrete cells' were entire families living there. That afternoon I met many of these people and they were so happy and generous - all wanting to feed me and hear stories of America. I was the only one who felt 'bad' about how they lived.

 

Wonder if part of the 'culture shock' might not be a sense of guilt in that you are so far better off than the local Thai's around you. You've worked hard and earned what you have and nothing to be guilty about. Every time you buy some girls drinks or bring them back to your place you're helping them and sharing the wealth. Of course Thailand itself encourages people like yourself to retire there.

 

Where do you fit in: I like to read alot and recall one romantic adventure novel (written nearly a century ago) about a small tropical village in India. Large part of the story was about how many of the attractive young women in the village all vied for the attentions of the wealthy expat who was often seen sipping his tall gin and tonic in his balcony, lazily resting in the hot sun, watching the village life below...

 

Guess you'll be writing your own chapters now...::

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Jesus, TM, with all due respect, I think you need to count your blessings. Being able to retire early and enjoy a nice lifestyle is the dream of pretty much every working Joe on the planet : at the rate that many of us are taxed, its an increasingly difficult dream to achieve. Just be happy that you are where you want to be : for many men, retirement is a shortcut to the morgue, as work was their entire life and they just 'fade away' when its no longer driving them.

 

Be happy ::

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[color:"red"] That afternoon I met many of these people and they were so happy and generous [/color]

 

Not sure I wouldn't trade some of my "wealth" to be like them. One time I went to the home of a bar girl in Pattaya. It was kind of funny how I came to go there. I said something to her and she thought I asked about her apartment (which I didn't). When she thought she heard apartment, her face lit up with happiness and she said, "you want to see my apartment, no one has been there before". Since she was obviously happy and anxious to show it to me, I didn't want to disappoint her and went along. In her case it was a nice one room in an apartment building. She had decorated it very nicely obviously with pride.

 

I stayed overnight and saw her interact several times with neighbors. I was very impressed as she was very friendly to her neighbors and they obviously liked her a lot.

 

Encouraged by seeing that she was a very nice person, well liked by her neighbors, I took her with me for a week in Chiang Mai. A good decision as she was a very nice person to be with and she looked after me very well.

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[color:"red"]for many men, retirement is a shortcut to the morgue, as work was their entire life [/color]

 

One of the reasons that I early retired (at a great financial loss) is the hope that I would be young enough to build a 2nd life for myself. The culture in IBM at the time I joined was one in which you were encouraged to have IBM as your life. My last boss at IBM was a perfect example of someone who will probably not adapt at all. He worked all the time, including just about every weekend. One time we who worked for him were all surprised when he left on a one week vacation with his wife. But, he returned to work mid-week because he was bored on vacation.

 

One month after I retired, he was forced out of IBM at age 59 after 35 years with IBM. I hope he has somehow survived but I am not optimistic for him as he had no hobbies or interests outside of work.

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People perceive their world differently. I grew up in a so called poor community but no body ever mentioned that. For school lunches, we were served food that as far as I know. nobody else was served that kind of food in their school. One might think we actually believe that is what everybody else eats.

 

Perceptions of people can be very strange. I was friends with a person that everybody thought was rich. He was dirt poor. He could only afford a piece of junk for a car. Because of his car, people thought he was eccentric.

 

Get into good vibes and things look better. Get the vibes from a bootle of booze and the vibes maybe differently.

 

Thailand, can changed that. We are looked up at, even respected. It saddens me when they say bad things about Thailand, because I see more good then the indifferent.

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[color:"red"] No need to feel strange. You are still way outside the Thai social circles. You had no personal invitation to the shows during Fashion Week, right? [/color]

 

Ironically, when in the US in Colorado, I became friends with a Thai graduate student from BKK. Her boyfriend is presently living in the US. His father is "govenor (I don't think this is the correct Thai term) of one of the provinces. The boyfriend is returning home later this month. I have been invited to go on vacation with the boyfriend and his family to visit Angor Wat in Cambodia for several days and to stay at his home as well. Still, coming from a poor background, I feel like I will be in over my head being with people from wealth and influence.

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