Guest Posted July 24, 2001 Report Share Posted July 24, 2001 quote: Originally posted by flyonzewall: snakehead, numbers here in thailand won't tell you too much. as scum baggio already pointed out, most marriages in the villages never go into the registration office. so when these marriages divorce they won't appear on any statistic. It is clear that the more affluent and westernized a society is the higher the divorce rate; therefore the divorce rate among the affluent thais, who register their marriages will probably be higher than those living a traditional rural lifestyle. If these figures are inaccurate, they probably err on the side of overstating the true divorce rate.... Regarding your own family I can't comment. In general most farangs come into contract mainly with people from the bar scene who are not in any way representive of Thai society as a whole. My own impression of those Thais I have met and worked with is that the family is very strong, much stronger than in the west. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CondomKing Posted July 24, 2001 Report Share Posted July 24, 2001 Steffi - IMO, the best replies on this discussion and most reasonable assessment of your situation has been posted by Flyonzewall. I would say that if you really want to marry this girl you may have to shrug your shoulders and pay the dowery with a smile. If you can negotiate, how far down can you negotiate from 1,000,000 B(!!!)? It would still be a hefty sum and and I doubt if the amount you save would be worth the face you lose. Again, my opinion. Another alternative is to just sit there and smile without committing and eventually a solution may appear. When you're alone with your g/f tell her that you are concerned about what will happen to the money once it's out of your hands. It should be up to the two of you to work this out so that her parents are happy, she's happy and you are happy about it too. I recently married my wife in an upcountry ceremony and the figure proposed to me, by her, for the dowery was 100,000 B. Call me cheap, but even that sum was about 5 times more than I felt comfortable handing over to her mother, who is a notorious spend thrift and, I've been told, likes to gamble as well. So, I asked how much she was currently in debt. Turns out she owed that bank 60,000 B (remainder of 2nd mortgage on the house/land), which I paid on the condition that the house and land be signed over to my wife so that we'd have no repeat performances. Also, last year she needed 20,000 B for some other bullshit and I deducted that as well, so when all was said and done, mom wound up with 20,000 B out of the 100,000 B that was on the plate wrapped up to be the dowery sum. Mom was happy to get her hands on the 20K. I know you're situation is different, so maybe you could use it to pay for a house for the both of you or something like that. In any event, it will cost you money to get married here, Flyonzewall's experience being the except to the rule. BTW, if you have a legally registered marriage in Thailand, you wife will be restricted from owning land here. Maybe a topic for another thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 24, 2001 Report Share Posted July 24, 2001 Originally posted by flyonzewall:"india's way of dealing with dowry is at times scary, over the years you start seeing a lot more women with burned faces... as far as i know in the last 15 or 20 years the amount of dowry has risen a lot, ..." The one with the burnt faces are the lucky ones. Every year there are hundreds, if not thousands of "dowry deaths", in which the brides are burnt to death - poured over with kerosene and set alight. These horrific crimes are usually covered up as "kitchen accidents"(gas cylinder exploding etc.). I knew a chap who had torched his wife because she wouldn't get pregnant; after a few years in jail he paid his way out and married again. Officially, dowry has been banned in India since 1961, but, as you rightly say, the amounts given have risen considerably over the last decades. There are a few highly educated people in the metropolises who reject taking or giving dowry, but statistically they are a tiny minority. On top of the dowry, the bride's family usually has to pay for the wedding feast, which can last several days and is often excruciatingly expensive. "The traditional use here in thailand was that land was inherited mainly by the daughters, ..." ... which is quite interesting as it is reminiscent of the traditions of some matrilinial tribes in Assam and Meghalaya in Northeast India. The area was once ruled by the Ahom, a Tai tribe closely related to the Thais (like the Burmese Shan and the Laotians). I've been to both and I found the women incredibly self-confident and open, especially in Meghalaya, whereas the men, appeared meek and "under the thumb" (also especially in Meghalaya). Reversal of roles! I agree that dowry is useless now and shouldn't exist. If Thailand ever gets to be a developed country (not in our life-time I reckon), it will probably disappear for good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 24, 2001 Report Share Posted July 24, 2001 BTW, if you have a legally registered marriage in Thailand, you wife will be restricted from owning land here. Maybe a topic for another thread. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ I've read in a number of places that this has changed. the foreign husband has to sign a declaration giving up all rights to the land. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 24, 2001 Report Share Posted July 24, 2001 quote: Originally posted by Snake Head: It is clear that the more affluent and westernized a society is the higher the divorce rate; therefore the divorce rate among the affluent thais, who register their marriages will probably be higher than those living a traditional rural lifestyle. If these figures are inaccurate, they probably err on the side of overstating the true divorce rate.... Regarding your own family I can't comment. In general most farangs come into contract mainly with people from the bar scene who are not in any way representive of Thai society as a whole. My own impression of those Thais I have met and worked with is that the family is very strong, much stronger than in the west. Unfortunately you are wrong there. the social situation in the villages is in a state of collaps. Just an example: in the west the major drug problem is in the cities, here in Thailand it is in the villages. The social situation in Thailand and the west is not comparable, because in the west we do not have an impoverished rural class anymore. The so called boom never really touched the villages in a positive way. It only prolonged the collaps, which started at the completely failed green revolution. During the boom, villagers sold a lot of land because of the illusion of security their small jobs in the city gave them. The migration to the cities disturbed the very complicated social fabric in the villages tremendously. Now, in the crises you can see something which you could not see for the last twenty years anymore - villages full with young men. Only that these young men are unemployed, frustrated, hopeless and look for a release in amphetamines. The vicious circle of poverty. I do not think that there is something as a Thai society as a whole. What i have seen is a society disrupted by extreme class struggles which already ended up in one civil war, which was not won by either side, but solved by a compromise. The sublime factors which led to that civil war are still actual. It is more many countries in one, the country of the poor, the country of the urbanised middle class and the country of the rich. Not much social interchange between these countries. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 24, 2001 Report Share Posted July 24, 2001 Condomking, i agree. is that really me who just posted that? i must be sick, LOL! seriously, you are right there. the dowry issue is very complicated and very grey zone, no set rules. something which has to be solved on a personal case basis. it is not worth to lose the love of your live just because someone rides on some principle. if you are on the outside it is easy to say this and that, but when you are the case, then things become very different. one has to find compromises between the cultures. you found yours, and i hope steffi will find his. i found mine. i am somehow pushed into the position of acting head of the family, which is a responsibility i do not take easy, and christ, at times it is very frustrating. but luckily also very rewarding. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 24, 2001 Report Share Posted July 24, 2001 scum_baggio, we gotta stop talking about india! it brings it all back and i start getting these urges to sell all my stuff and buy a ticket for me and my wife and disappear in the himalaya, or varanassi, or madurai... well, in that aspect i am lucky. when i went with her to india, she loved it. she was only a bit paranoid that we might run into a former girlfriend of mine from india, who was, incidently, from mizoram. the only indian girlfriend i had where things went more than platonic. another one was a upcoming movie star whose constantly farting brahmin dad never left her out of his evil eye. did not give us a single chance, LOL! I wondered already a long time about your seriously educated posts about india, they sound as if you have studied sanskrit in dephth. I always wanted to do that, but unfortunately i am not the scolar type. well, maybe next life. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 24, 2001 Report Share Posted July 24, 2001 Originally posted by flyonzewall:"we gotta stop talking about india! it brings it all back and i start getting these urges to sell all my stuff and buy a ticket for me and my wife and disappear in the himalaya, or varanassi, or madurai... well, in that aspect i am lucky. when i went with her to india, she loved it." Yeah, some Thai ladies do love India. My ex, well let's call her common law wife of some ten years, certainly does, does so a lot in fact. But these open-minded Thai ladies are a minority. I once went to India with another Thai girl, and after a few days she went on a sort of strike, refusing to leave the hotel room and to eat ("ahaan khaek men!"). I did learn a lot of Sanskrit, though the grammar has become very rusty; after all, one doesn't get to use it much, does one. I'm much better in Hindi, which has a large Sanskrit-derived vocabulary, and have basic knowledge in a couple of other vernaculars. And one of my favourites is definitely cultural studies. Sorry you didn't make it with your actress friend. I wonder how much dowry you would have got (just trying to stay in line with the thread!). Maybe one should tell the Thais that dowry is an evil custom which they adopted from the India of a thousand years back and they don't want to be like those olden-days "khaek". Many Thais are surprised to find out that there is no dowry system in Western countries. There used to be, even up to the middle of last century in some places, but usually the bride just had to provide some household utensils, furniture and the like. Of course, they're also surprised to learn that in today's India the man is the recipient. Which reminds me of a matrimonial I came across in an Indian newspaper: "Hunch-backed widower looking for deformed spinster. No dowry necessary." Cheers, SB. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CondomKing Posted July 25, 2001 Report Share Posted July 25, 2001 quote: Originally posted by rictic: BTW, if you have a legally registered marriage in Thailand, you wife will be restricted from owning land here. Maybe a topic for another thread. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ I've read in a number of places that this has changed. the foreign husband has to sign a declaration giving up all rights to the land. Well, OK, that's good news (?) for all who would be in that situation. We were married in the US last year, and then for her family in the traditional wedding here, string, etc. a couple of weeks ago. We registered our foreign marriage certificate with the Minister of Foreign Affairs and then with her local district. At the same time she transferred the house/land registration papers, mentioned in the earlier post, with her new, Mrs. CondomKing, ID card receipt and paperwork. We have been subsequently told by everyone in Thailand, who knows that we just got married, not to register the Thai marriage because she would lose the land rights. I guess most people are still unaware of the change that you posted. It is pretty confusing, but so far so good and we have been taking it one step at a time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 25, 2001 Report Share Posted July 25, 2001 Steffi, It might seem like self-defeating advice, but I'm going to have to take sides with Whosyourdaddy. YOUR cultural traditions count for something more that dog shit, don't they? Stand up for your own roots and family tradition. Your forefathers died for them, I would imagine. Let this prima donna go marry some wife-beating jackass Thai boy, who will sleep around on her and jump her parents' asses when he gets feeling crossways. (I'm pragmatic enough to know that you'll end up paying something. But, if you bend over for them and let them rape you with a shovel, they are not going to suddenly start treating you like a respected member of the family after you submit to their extortion.) There are more fish in the sea, especially in Asia! Start respecting your own family, and play "hard ball" with these greedy, exploitative, prospective in-laws. They are laughing at you behind you back, and you damn well know it. Don't buy in to all these analyses, assuming that this family's actions stem from some profoundly alien and mysterious, traditional mores. They are acting out of a universal and primitive "f*ck the rummy" instinct; but, you are being a sap and interpreting it through a ridiculous cultural-sensitivity lens. It stinks to high heaven. PS--Lucent Technologies just announced the layoff of 10,000 techies or something, today. [ July 25, 2001: Message edited by: vtombrown ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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