Stickman this week regarding violence .

[Prosal]

Mailuk.

 

I agree with most of what you said.

 

Yet as Suadum points out, we need to define two very different kinds of violence: violence against property and violence against people.

 

Refering once more to Brasil, most brasilians I know have been victims of the first kind of violence ; muggings and the like. Yet in most muggings I've seen or heard of, 9 out of 10 times, these do not involve physical violence to the victim, merely the threat of it. This is traumatic, I admit, but hardly a reason for an excessive paranoia. This kind of "violence" has increased tremendously EVERYWHERE in the third world where economic situation has worsened over the years.

 

Then we have the kind of violence that makes the nightly news, which is the relatively rare random violence against people such as shootings, assaults, rapes and etc. In Rio, from the stats, this second kind has remained relatively stable over the last 20 years (with dips and rises on the order of no more than 15 percent) but the MEDIA REPORTING has surely increased of 500 percent. This is enough to fuel the reputation of Rio as a violent city.

 

Some people make intentionally the confusion between those two kinds of 'violence' to justify their hysteria.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[STDAY3]

"on about 3 to 5 yearly visits I spend about 5 weeks in the kingdom since 1997"

 

Do you consider that to be a long time..?

 

I just can not understand the point..

 

You mean to tell me that in an extremely short period of time you have never been thrown of a Balcony etc..?

 

Please clarify

[FIGJAM]

MaiLuk said:When you say "steal" from you this could mean several things. So some examples:

 

1. If a thai guy grabs your phone and runs off, personally i would not shoot him. If you shot him I would not second guess your decision. But its not what i would do. The thai guy put himself in play in a very dangerous business that has consequences. Do you think a thai guy would shoot a farang who made off with his expensive phone?

 

2. If a thai guy tried to rob me at knife point, I would shoot him if i had the means to do so. I am cogniscent of the fact that this guy may have had a bad life, or is hungry. It would not make me happy that i shot him. But i will not be a victim if i can avoid it. And i've got this thing about people pulling a knife on me as it happened twice before in my younger days. And OTOH the thai guy may have plenty of baht in his pocket and thinks this is funny. Or maybe he is a psychopath. Either way, he has put himself in play and its a dangerous business.

 

>>Barowners in the west legally shooting down or beating to death customers to death<<

 

Not sure what the point is. I don't see that in the west nor do i see it in thailand. Me thinks you are taking the farang who was hit with the board incident and stretching it a bit.

You wrote that "In the west (well in the US) if you shoot someone, it is a defense if they were robbing you" in response to my question of "can I shoot the next Thai who steals from me?".

 

It's you the one who thinks that these two things are somehow in relation...

 

 

>>Moreover, you have conveniently forgot to answer the all important question: can I (with my mates) beat up to death Thais who abuse me verbally?<<

 

Why would you do that? Why ask me if its OK?

I am asking you if it's OK because it's you who apparently finds perfectly reasonable to do that.

 

You have written:

"farangs who are belligerent for no reason are not victims if they get beat up or hit over the head. They "get what they deserve". That is, a guy acting like an asshole puts himself in play and will not get my sympathy when someone plays back. There is no such thing as a response that is "out of proportion". Him who fuck alound too mutt get jep"

 

And again in another post:

"there is a claim (that I agree with) that BELLIGERENT (not just any) falung who are attacked should shut their mouths after it happens lick their wounds and hopefully they will go home and never come back. Don't you ever get sick of the falung who come to los and make trouble?"

 

I naively assumed that we could replace "farangs" with "Thais" or just "men", "folks", "people"...

 

 

If a thai abuses you verbally for no apparent reason and you beat him, I will shake my head and say: "why did this thai act belligerent when it can result in violence?"

Nice to see the so different wording when the victim of extreme physical violence in response to non physical attacks is a Thai and not some farangs who are instead, in similar circumstances, "assholes who finally fucked with the wrong person and paid for it"...

 

And you are also quick to add that I and my friends "have acted belligerent so don't be surprised or complaining to me when the thai guy's friends or family even the score.

But Thais beating/stabbing/shooting non physically violent farang "assholes" don't seem to get this remark on their belligerence and certainly seem to get your sympathy.

 

 

Don't you ever get sick of the falung who come to los and make trouble?"

Don't you ever get sick of the Thais who make troubles?

 

Or is it that they are allowed to do so because they are on their home turf?

 

 

As for the farang who was hit with the board, the arguments that it was no surprise that he got hit are based on the assumption (may or may not be correct) that he got behind the bar and broke some bottles, and when asked to pay he laughed and walked off. If that is what happened, then the guy should get out of the hospital and be happy he was not shot in the head instead. He better not come here and complain about how violent the thais are because that is ridiculous coming out of his mouth.

The claim the Thai made was that the farang refused to pay for 2 bottles of spirits he says the guy broke (no mention of laughs). The farang, his wife and his mate deny the allegation, paid for the bar tab and not for the bottles. The (unarmed) farang hasn't physically harmed the Thai in any way. While he was leaving the bar owner and/or other Thais there smashed his skull attacking him from behind.

 

How do you justify this since the farang seems to have not been verbally abusive and has certainly NOT physically attacked the Thai?

Even if he verbally abused the Thai, the belligerent one should be the Thai, according to what you have just told me about me and my mates beating up Thais who verbally abuse us.

 

But since you have clearly said here that the one who "should be happy to not have been shot in the head" (and add later that "he better not complain about how violent the Thais are") is the farang (so he is the party at fault) the only possible fault of his that I can think of is the (ALLEGED) monetary damage.

 

Hence my previous (still unresolved) question of "can I shoot (or send to ICU with a fractured skull) the next Thai who steals from me".

 

 

Patience Figjam, patience. I'm right here with you

Oops, sorry. Seems you just overlooked that question of mine (which incidentally happened to be the main point)..

 

 

My morals are simple: don't fuck with anyone. Thats it.

Your morals (like that of many others here) seem to have a double standard.

[buffalo_bill]

STDAY3, sawatdee krap

 

** Do you consider that to be a long time..? **

 

Never said so but at abot 500 USD expenses a day it is .

 

 

** you mean to tell me that in an extremely short period of time you have never been thrown of a Balcony etc..? **

 

Hansum man , I dearly suffer from the fact that I cannot contribute anything violant to this thread because Thailand to me means nothing but sweet memories. This hurts more than 4 machetes in my belly. To catch up with the rest of the crowd I was therefore considering to have myself thrown from a given balcony , preferably Pattaya of course but they do not have the facilities that would suit me.

 

Somebody else said before I look at Siam through rose tinted eyes . The man was right but that comes only from laughing.

 

Hope I could clarify your worries , If you briefly read my other 1500 posts you may find out that I am mentally not 100 % in order but don't really care.

 

BuBi

 

( I have a platonic girlfriend , urban)

[Guest]

"find it very strange that some falangs believe when other falangs are attacked, they are attacked because they deserve it."

 

 

sad comment on how ppl think:

 

but ask a few thais about farangs getting trouble in los and you get the idea they think if the farang had not come to los in the first place, it would not have happened, in other words ( thai logic) its their fault for comming to los .

 

I think this kind of ties in with the buddist pre-destanation idea. you get what you deserve type of thing. ( could be the same reason they are apathetic when seeing someone hurt on the street)

[pattaya127]

could be the same reason they are apathetic when seeing someone hurt on the street)

--------------------------------------

not really, IMO, best to leave Buddhism out of this one. basically, someone can say that to help someone is very good for your karma, etc...

I think again, it has to do with living in a huge metropolis, people are so apart from each other. Just riding the skytrain or metro, this is one of the most unthai experience to be had in the kingdom. In smaller places, they will help. They probably help in BKK, in some measure, still.

 

Another thing is that people do not want to have anything to do with the cops, if this is a dramatic case, bleeding (HIV scare there too), run over, beaten up, etc...

 

Last, for all the talk about ONE thai people, or THE thai people, they do stick a lot by regions, clans, family, specific network, and for all the idiosyncratic behaviours we see them lumped by, they are quite individualistic under the surface.

 

I always say ask a thai "what it means to be thai?", and he won't know, except for trivial type of answers (we love the king, we like to enjoy, thai means free, buddhist, etc......) that don't take in account the drastic social changes of the last 50 years.

[Zorro]

Something happened to me yesterday that highlights some of the potential problems for tourists in LOS.

 

I took a songtaew at 3pm on second road in Pattaya near soi 9 with girl in tow.

 

Said songtaew was empty apart from us.

 

Our destination was Big C.

 

For some unknown reason the driver turned up Pattaya Central road towards Carrefour.

We immediately alighted whereupon I asked the driver why he didn't continue down second road.

He said he was going to Carrefour. All well and good but every songtaew i ever caught has gone down towards big C.

Nonetheless I handed him 20 baht and asked for 10 baht change as we had hardly gone any distance and he had taken the wrong turn and in any case the prescribed fare is 5 baht per person even thou i do normally pay 10 baht.

 

At this point he got very agitated stating that i should pay 20 baht and i sort of said but we only went a small distance and then you went the wrong way at which point he then decided to thow the 20 baht note back at me out the window onto the ground.

 

Unbeknowenst to both of us a motorcycle cop was sitting right next to the songtaew,

 

The cop said something to the driver and took his licence and rode off. The cop said nothing to us so we left the scene.

 

Now the girl i am with starts telling me that i did a bad thing and that i should have paid the 20 baht and that the songtaew driver might be looking for me after that.

 

WTF. She then went on to say that farangs get murdered for what we consider small things and that she hopes the driver doesn't remember my face etc,

 

I thought that this was an interesting insight to the Thai way of seeing things!!!

 

I suppose there are guys on this board who will say that if something happens to us that we had it coming!!!

[pattaya127]

You did the right thing. I think the girl only meant, "why you waste time, why you yakyak, 20bahts not too much for you". She thought that telling you you could be hurt showed you were wrong, nothing else. That's the insight, IMO.

If the driver knows he did something wrong (and he did, otherwise the cop would have asked you to pay), and you have not insulted him, you have nothing to fear in a place like Pattaya.

[Zorro]

I think you missed the point i was trying to make.

 

That is how easy it is for a seemingly innocent situation to maybe lead to violence of some kind.

 

The fact that i may have been right was irrelevant.

 

The girl was only trying to help that is true.She would have paid the 20 baht as she knows that the potential risks are not worth it.

Tthe very fact that she worried over this situation sends a message that violence is very close to the surface and even a small misunderstanding like this could lead to serious trouble even when it patently should not.

[khunsanuk]

Hi,

 

Have been told the same by my wife. Some of the motorbike guys charge 20 Baht now for what should be a 15 Baht ride, and I tended to express my displeasure with that.

 

She knows this and has specifically told me to just pay the 20 Baht as people get killed over this (her words).

 

Sanuk!