What Women Want - - Issan Dreams

[zanemay]

The Romantic Hearts of Issan

 

Painting with a too-broad brush (again!) and throwing about generalizations based on a few specific experiences (as usual!), I am going to try to answer one of those big Thailand questions: ?What do women want?? Or, more modestly, ?What do Issan girls want from us?? We all know that sometimes it?s a lot more complicated than a quick 1,000 baht.

 

I will only talk about ladies FROM ISSAN, not about middle or upper class Thai girls, but about the girls that most of us meet in Bangkok and Pattaya. Not all of those are alike either, of course, so I am only projecting from my experiences.

 

This is a little long and a bit trip-reporty in places, but its theme is relationships. I could not get it to flow as perfectly as I would like, but anyway?

 

First the conclusion and then the jumbled trail of experiences that led me to it:

 

What Issan girls want is to build families with those they love and trust. They want to be surrounded by what the Brits and Aussies call their ?mates.? In order of priority this includes the FEMALE members of their families on their mother?s side, their blood sisters and their girlfriends (including lady boys.) No men are in their trusted circle and especially no farang men. Not to say they don?t want to be with us. They need men to father their children.

 

*****

 

I was ensconced in the Hotel Rimpao with my young Issan girlfriend and I was putting on my shoes. ?Where are you going?? Joop asked.

 

?For a walk,? I said.

 

?You can?t walk here! Not same Pattaya.? She motioned me over to our fourth floor window. ?Do you see anyone walking?? Not a soul. She had a point.

 

?Well why can?t I walk? I walk every day.?

 

?Kamooee.? (Thieves.)

 

We had only been here in Kalasin for a day and I didn?t know my way around. But I had covered a lot of other parts of Thailand and walked in every city and town I had been in. I had taken verbal flak in Songkla while walking past in Muslim areas. In other places people seemed a bit worried about the farang walking around alone at night. Some had stopped to ask if I was okay. Some had offered me rides or had taken me to their homes to get me off the road. No one had ever threatened me. On the other hand, my first night in Cambodia, two guys on motorbikes had run me and my escort off the road. But my fellow reacted quickly and sped us away without a problem. Things happen. I?m not immune.

 

I tussled with Joop verbally. ?If I go for a walk, I might die. But if I don?t walk, I WILL die! I have to walk!? I tried to convince her, but she wasn?t moved. I acquiesced.

 

Around 1:00 AM, I sneaked out while she was asleep. I walked on the highway that ran near the hotel feeling conspicuous to the passing drivers. A lone pedestrian, a farang, out late at night. After awhile I was relieved to see another pedestrian, a forty-ish woman who approached me from across the highway. (?Here we go,? I thought, anticipating a come-on.) ?Hello. How are you?? she asked. ?Fine,? I said. ?This is for you.? She handed me a Thai newspaper and walked away.

 

Oh-so-oddly, I saw her again two nights later. Far away, in a completely different part of town, I had stepped out for a stroll while I was waiting for Joop and her sister. I came out of their alley onto a city street where I again was the only pedestrian. Then the same lady came walking by ? the only other walker I would ever see in Kalasin. The town?s loony!

 

Pretty soon I got it: One does not walk in Kalasin because of the boys of Kalasin. Young fellows from teens to late twenties who hang out on the streets at night. Always in groups, always drinking. Sitting on parked motorbikes in groups of four to ten. When we rode by they made ribald comments in loud voices about the old farang on the back of the cute girl?s bike. Intoxicated, disrespectful and highly mobile, these boys were the opportunistic thieves Joop was worried about.

 

The next night there was to be a big musical show at the local temple. Joop asked me if I wanted to go. I did. There was NOTHING else to do in this town except to sit in the hotel and watch Thai TV. ?Are you sure? There will probably be trouble.? ?What do you mean?? ?Young men. Boxing.? ?Well, that?s just normal. They can box with each other. They won?t bother me.? She just looked at me. But she and Yai wanted to go so she agreed to take me.

 

My thinking in these situations is that first, I am an elder. Young Thai?s respect that. Second, I?m a farang ? in fact the only farang in town. They wouldn?t bother a visitor.

 

We went to the concert and sat on the grass in a crowd of a couple of thousand. It didn?t take long. In ten minutes someone was in my face. In this case it was a woman. Drunk off her ass, she was friendly at first. She shook hands. She talked nonsense. Pretty soon she was touching me, quite aware that Joop, her sister and lots of others were watching. This was her time to act out. She began loudly asking me for money. ?You can give me 2,000?? she said. She slapped me on the arm. I ignored her, but Joop and Yai were mortified. They wanted to go home.

 

There was no way I was going to let some drunken idiot run me off of something I wanted to do, so I only agreed to move. We moved to the opposite side, towards the back and sat among a lot of families. Towards the front on that side there were lots of young men milling about, but they weren?t acting up and didn?t seem to be a problem. After awhile I was sore from sitting on the hard ground and moved off to the side to stand by myself. I became visible and began to get attention from the drunken young men. They would walk up very close and look at me a little hard. They would stand next to me or walk past too close. It was intimidating, I didn?t like it, but I wasn?t taking it personally. They were just regular small town boys same as in the countryside of the USA, Canada or England. It was Saturday night, time for FF & D. Fuck, Fight and Drink. On the other hand it was clear that in their condition neither my age nor the fact that I was a farang was going to shield me from any impulse they might have. I went back and told the girls we could go. They were more than ready.

 

*****

 

I had met Joop?s sister Yai the night before. A cute twenty-seven year old that lived with a Thai man in his forties. He was in Kong Kaen for a few days. Although my understanding of Thai is quite limited, Joop told me something I understood clearly. Yai wanted to marry a farang. I was surprised! ?But you have a man now,? I said to her. She replied as if he was completely insignificant. Without hesitation or embarrassment she told me, ?He is older already. I want to marry farang.? Wow! This was a revelation! Had this girl ever met a farang before? There aren?t any in this town and she spoke zero English. No matter, she knew what she wanted. I didn?t quite get it?

 

Soon I would get the same story from Joop?s homely friend Fon. She had a boyfriend, spoke absolutely no English, but she too wants to marry a farang.

 

*****

 

Up to that point I wasn?t at all clear as to what Joop wanted from me. I had met her the first time she stepped onto Beach Road in Pattaya. She was visiting in town and staying with a relative. Thirty minutes after we met she playfully asked if I wanted to go to her home. It seemed totally frivilous, but I understand this now in the context of knowing her better. She wanted to marry a farang, and if I was a nice guy, available and had farang money, those might be the only real requirements.

 

I knew what I wanted. I wanted to keep her as long as I could. She was the cutest, youngest girl I had ever gone with. She was not a working girl (please don?t waste time debating this point) so I was thinking of her as a ?real? girlfriend. I saw her a couple of times a week for about a month before we went to Kalasin. We were together for five days in Kalasin? something I really never do ? and being a bit in love and not knowing when I might see her after that, I invited her to spend a few more days with me in Nong Khai. While we were there I asked her about the future. I was quite transfixed and miserable (full of desiring ? the great human flaw that Buddha pointed out) with wanting to keep her for a long time and knowing how unlikely such a thing would be. ?What do you think about the future?? I asked her. ?We cannot know the future,? she said, ?but I have always had a dream. I dream that I will marry a nice, romantic farang.? A Later it came out that she wanted to have children with me.

 

That was the death knell and I didn?t have to be miserable worrying about the future anymore. She needed to go find someone else.

 

*****

 

Sits a girl on the floor of a shack in Issan. A wire runs to the shack and at the end of the wire is a television set. Through the air are transported romantic visions of beautiful girls, in beautiful houses with beautiful families and girlfriends, none of who soil their hands with honest (or dishonest) work. An accessory in the soap opera is a rich man who furnishes the lifestyle and spermatozoa and then removes himself to his business interests or the discreet attentions of his mistress. With him out of the way the ladies can relax and gossip among their truly significant others.

 

Joop is such a girl, like thousands of others, who sits on the floor of an Issan shack, watches Thai stories and farang movies on TV, and dreams up sweet Issan dreams.

 

*****

 

Joop lives in a classic Issan setting. We know that it is the daughter?s responsibility to take care of the parents and in Joop?s family they do. All up and down the line. Joop lives in her mother?s home. Her older sister Yai lives in town just a few kilometers away. Only twenty feet away is her mother?s mother?s home. Joop and Yai are the only children. Conveniently there are no problematical boys in the picture. Yai has a hair salon in the town proper and Joop has just graduated from a kind of technical school. Yai is the present pillar of cash support for the mother and grandmother, and Joop does her part as she can. Scattered about the moo ban (their hometown) are Joop?s mother?s sisters and aunts. The matriarchical links are strong and the family is happy.

 

There are men here too, but it is the dynamic among the women that is the engine of the family. The maternal grandfather is alive and living next door, but he is old and passive. Joop?s father is present. ?What does your father do?? I asked her. ?Nothing!? she said. But when I was there this man, burned red-black from years in the fields, worked on a construction job in town every day. ?What about his family?? ?He doesn?t have a family.? ?What do you mean? Did they die?? ?Yeah, they died.? He struck me as an all-around good man from what I saw. He worked every day and he came home every night and worked more. He seemed like a good match for his wife and a good father for the girls. But Joop almost spat when she spoke of him: ?He doesn?t do anything and he doesn?t have a family!? She wasn?t lying, but neither was what she said true. Apparently he just isn?t significant. He doesn?t have money and his family was not as tight as his wife?s family.

 

*****

 

So here we have two really sharp Issan girls ? Joop and Yai. Twenty-one and twenty-seven. Both intelligent, single, no children. And very cute. A few weeks before I had asked Joop about boyfriends. ?Mai cope gap poo-chai Thai,? she said. (I don?t associate with Thai men.) Of course I didn?t believe her at the time, thinking she was just another girl telling lies in Pattaya. Now that I had seen Kalasin I knew it was true. There may be men in Kalasin that were good enough for her and Yai, but they were one in a thousand. These girls are too special to go with the boys I saw sitting out drinking on their motorbikes and getting drunk at concerts. The girls are saving themselves for a dream. Whether it will come, whether they will wait a long time and give up, or whether they will go to Bangkok or Pattaya to look for it, only time will tell - two nice farangs, one for each sister. After marrying the girls in lavish, romantic farang-style weddings, they would build houses for the girls and their mother, deposit their seed and go live in farang land or Bangkok. They would resupply the bank accounts often and visit occasionally, briefly interrupting the reverie of the girls with their children, their female relatives and girlfriends.

 

What makes this more than just a silly dream? Everyone in Issan knows someone who knows someone who has made a success of a relationship with a farang. Whether it was marriage, or living together or just regular support. Farangs are silly enough (just my opinion) to marry these girls whose language and souls they cannot understand and against all odds, they sometimes carry off successful relationships that are good for both of them.

 

It is a dream that lives in the romantic hearts of many Issan girls.

 

******

P.S. The lack of credibility or substance or respect given to Issan men also had me musing about Lady Boys ? I?m always trying to understand why there are so many in Thailand. On this trip I was wondering if I would see any in the backwater town I visited, and yes there they were in force. (If one went to a hick town in the U.S. you would (almost) never see such a phenomenon.) One of Joop?s best friends is a Katoey.

 

So?if men have little credibility or substance in a certain segment of society, and one can just willy-nilly (every pun intended!) change into a woman, wouldn?t that partly explain why so many guys make that decision? You want instant credibility and you want to have really good, respectable friends. You want to separate yourself from the boys hanging out on the street? Presto-Chango! Now I?m a woman!

 

Of course it?s not really all that fast or artificial. And BTW ? I don?t know a great deal about Lady Boys, but I do know that there is only one way to begin to understand them: Try to get over your prejudices and hang-ups (that wasn?t easy for me) and believe this: they are girls. Not gays, not fags, not just guys trying really hard to look like women. They think of themselves as women. They are women - with dicks and more testerone than a lot of us have, granted - but they are women. Some legal complications with the ID card, but that?s about it. They hold down respectable jobs and are acknowledged in all the media.

 

Zane May

[Guest]

you slowly start getting the hang of it, only a few very obvious misinterpretitions this time.

 

 

 

>>>Now that I had seen Kalasin I knew it was true. There may be men in Kalasin that were good enough for her and Yai, but they were one in a thousand. These girls are too special to go with the boys I saw sitting out drinking on their motorbikes and getting drunk at concerts. The girls are saving themselves for a dream.<<<

 

 

that is the most obvious one. these blokes are no different than the vast majority of girls you as a westerner come into contact with. these girls are as hard as the boys, in their own time (when not persuing farang) they hang out with them, and have relationships with them. the "dream" of marrying a "romantic" farang does not exclude relationships with those guys. reference for me is there is that i often hang out with those people in their homes, and i don't mean with some girl i have picked up.

don't live under the illusion that those girls actually prefer a bloke triple their age in their romantic dreams - the want the security such a guy can offer. what is left of their romantic dreams is no different than with their western counterparts - a guy of similar age who they can have fun with and does understand them.

 

 

 

 

>>>>No men are in their trusted circle and especially no farang men.<<<<

 

younger brothers, cousins, nephews, husbands hidden from farang men, etc. very much are part of the close circle of the family, and are to be taken care of. being with a village girl for the last ten years i do know what i speak about, and i can only say that i do respect and love her younger brothers. even though all their short comings (aren't we all human?) they have never ever failed us when we needed their help.

 

 

 

 

>>>She was not a working girl (please don?t waste time debating this point) so I was thinking of her as a ?real? girlfriend.<<<

 

there you still make the same old mistake. what is here often a "working" girl has no equivalent whatsoever in the west. there are a lot of shades of grey here, most of which are not easily recognisable.

 

 

 

>>>>?What do you think about the future?? I asked her. ?We cannot know the future,? she said, ?but I have always had a dream. I dream that I will marry a nice, romantic farang.? A Later it came out that she wanted to have children with me.

That was the death knell and I didn?t have to be miserable worrying about the future anymore. She needed to go find someone else.<<<<

 

 

that is the thing which makes my skin crawl whenever i read your posts. on the off-chance that you really got to meet a clearly non-working girl (not even semi like so many here), you are not doing anything good whatsoever by playing around with their hopes and dreams. you are obviously not aware of the tremendous responsibility you carry by going out whith such a girl, especially going home.

if such a girl is bringing you to her home and you have a sexual relationship with her that can mean a commitment towards you. if you just leave her like that, her name and face is destroeyd, and you can easily be the main reason for that girl slipping into full-time prostitution. the only way to counterbalance such a lost reputation is by earning a lot of money, and given the social situation in this country - prostitution is the only way.

that is not a burden i would want to carry. and as you like to quote buddhism, you aquire an enourmous load of karma - wen gham.

 

 

 

by the way, one serious advice here. do not walk at night alone anywhere outside the tourist areas. 99% of the time you are safe, but the consequences of that 1% are mostly not just suffering a simple hold up.

do not hang out at village fairs and concerts outside the tourist regions without a large group of male relatives of the girl you are with.

what you have described here with the behavior of those blokes were very clear attempts to pick a fight (and i don't even want to speculate here what drove them to such a hostile behaviour...).

if something like that is repeated anytime anywhere towards you - never look back, put your eyes down straight away and leave ASAP. those fight are never just simple fistfight which end with a bloody nose. chances are that you will end up in the hospital if not worse.

 

 

[Central Scrutinizer]

Zane,

 

Excellent post! What you've described here I've seen myself in the wife's village and in Isaan. A lot of what you describe is spot on to what I've seen also.

 

One thing. Please stop walking alone at night. At least do it in the very early mornig after the sun comes up. The violence and crime is there and can be very dangerous. The fact that you are farang also negates the respect for the elders you think may protect you. They respect Thai elders, not so much farang elders. :-) At least the motocyke cowboys who don't work and sit about drinking all night don't/won't show you any respect, and these are the guys you need to worry about. Scout about for a local gym in the town if you need the excerise. Ride a bike during daylight hours. (That's what I do, or I walk in the early morning hours with a couple of the guys in my neighborhood who walk every morning.) When away in a strange area go to the hotels and use the gyms and/or the swimming pool for your exercise. I worry for your safety walking alone at night. When it comes to safety and security I always try to listen to my lady's and her families advice and warnings. (It sometimes seems absurd and paranoid, I know, but) They know the score. It's their country/town/village.

 

Good stuff Zane. Thanks. Always interesting to read one of your always on topic and intelligent postings.

 

Cent

[Central Scrutinizer]

Ajarn Fly,

 

While everything you say is very true, and very good advice, surely there must be a less condescending way you can present your advice, no? :-)

 

Grasshopper Cent

[Guest]

Says Cent:

---

Ajarn Fly,

 

While everything you say is very true, and very good advice, surely there must be a less condescending way you can present your advice, no? :-)

 

Grasshopper Cent

---

 

 

 

difficult, very difficult...

 

problem there is, that in his posts are always a few comments which do make my skin crawl in a very uncomfortable way. this one though less than in most others, i have to admit.

 

 

[Guest]

Fly,

 

Your posts always have the ring of truth. I think you have a clear-eyed, in-depth take on Thailand. Have you thought about writing up some of your experiences there? Most of your comments are in response to other people's messages.

 

Khun Pad Thai

[Central Scrutinizer]

KPT,

 

Yes. I'd love to see Fly write up some of his experiences and post them here myself! What about it Fly? How about doing some stories on your times in Thailand, and maybe some stories on your up-country experiences. Would love to read them. Also a good way to express your opinions and show others how you approach the culture, and pass on what you've learned over the years. Would be nice to see.

 

Cent

[jp1]

Cent,

 

I second this. I'd love to read some of the experiences and adventures Fly had in all his years in Thailand. Would be great to read something about the Northern home village of his wife or any other story.

 

C'mon Fly, give it a try.

[Guest]

thanks for the nice comments.

 

but, erm...first of all, i would not really know where to start, i am better in responding, and, there would be a few other complications, which would make that not easy at all.

[shygye]

[color:"green"] i would not really know where to start, ... [/color]

 

Start with the farm your brother-inlaws are developing. How much land was needed to keep the family above water?