Speaking Thai to BGs

[khun_khon_neua]

As a fairly long term non-Thai speaking resident' date='....[/quote']

How can you be a fairly long term Thailand resident and not speak at least basic Thai?

 

Easy. Work is all done in English. Friends are all Farang/Thai couples or English speaking Thais. Otherwise, wife takes care of any Thai speaking requirements.

 

Donâ??t get me wrong, would love to be able to speak even some basic Thai, but I am just not motivated to spend the time to learn, and besides Iâ??m not convinced I could learn it anyway as I have no language aptitude at all. :grin:

 

[frede]

Charming frede...real nice.

 

 

As I said, it usually elicits laughter in a prostitute. I dont think they expect us to be 'charming'. :smirk:

 

Ofcourse, my silver tongue is used in wholly different ways with a lady I wish to charm :content:

[frede]

As a fairly long term non-Thai speaking resident' date='....[/quote']

How can you be a fairly long term Thailand resident and not speak at least basic Thai?

 

Easy. Work is all done in English. Friends are all Farang/Thai couples or English speaking Thais. Otherwise, wife takes care of any Thai speaking requirements.

 

Donâ??t get me wrong, would love to be able to speak even some basic Thai, but I am just not motivated to spend the time to learn, and besides Iâ??m not convinced I could learn it anyway as I have no language aptitude at all. :grin:

 

Jesus man, how do you get a haircut? Get a fast food delivery? etc

 

[khun_khon_neua]

Been going to the same barber for 7 years now, she knows how to cut my hair. Wife orders food delivery or I do it on Internet (Food by Phone). Maid speaks pretty good English, same with driver, street vendors near home all know me and what I want, communicate well enough with caddies at my club, can't think of much else.

 

For my lifestyle, in which everything is pretty much taken care of for me :grin: , speaking Thai is just not needed.

 

[Mentors]

it helps a lot and if you are able to talk decent thai then it helps to hold sluts away, this is my experience.

:thumbup:

[kamui]

Been going to the same barber for 7 years now, she knows how to cut my hair. Wife orders food delivery or I do it on Internet (Food by Phone). Maid speaks pretty good English, same with driver, street vendors near home all know me and what I want, communicate well enough with caddies at my club, can't think of much else.

 

For my lifestyle, in which everything is pretty much taken care of for me :grin: , speaking Thai is just not needed.

 

You are the kind of expat I met in Tokyo often. I always felt sorry for guys like you, since they miss the opportunity to learn and experience so many new things. IMHO it's like living in a bubble. But I gues our interests in other cultures are quite different.

[frede]

it helps a lot and if you are able to talk decent thai then it helps to hold sluts away, this is my experience.

:thumbup:

 

Damn, Id best speaking it then. I want sluts near me

[frede]

Been going to the same barber for 7 years now' date=' she knows how to cut my hair. Wife orders food delivery or I do it on Internet (Food by Phone). Maid speaks pretty good English, same with driver, street vendors near home all know me and what I want, communicate well enough with caddies at my club, can't think of much else.

 

For my lifestyle, in which everything is pretty much taken care of for me :grin: , speaking Thai is just not needed.

[/quote']

 

You are the kind of expat I met in Tokyo often. I always felt sorry for guys like you, since they miss the opportunity to learn and experience so many new things. IMHO it's like living in a bubble. But I gues our interests in other cultures are quite different.

 

I have to agree with you. Id hate to be in a position where I am so reliant on other people, espcially the Mrs and Mia Nois to manage my life.

[bibblies]

Exactly. How the hell does he really know what's going on?

 

Looking back, this puts a whole new slant on some of his posts. (I thought they were odd before, mind you... )

 

This guy looks down on the likes of you and me yet we lowly mongers take more interest in the most basic thing of a country - its language. That's the first thing. How can you hope to understand a country, let alone comment on it when you haven't even tried to understand that?

 

On the main subject, there are a lot of great girls that I'd never even know if I hadn't made that effort myself. I'm glad I did. In fact, I'm sorry that, once I got to a certain point, I got lazy and stagnated. I'm trying to repair that now (as always, spurred on by a girl. There always has to be a good reason... )

 

One thing I've noticed compared to 12 years ago, when I first got through the Linguaphone course, is that bargirls especially almost expect guys to know it. Whereas before, they were really surprised if you could say anything in Thai, let alone read it, now it's commonplace to find guys who can do that...(which means I'm not special anymore... )

[khun_khon_neua]

Though I appreciate the efforts at sympathy for my â??bubbleâ? lifestyle, the personal attacks notwithstanding, I have to say they are wasted. Just because I have people whose job it is to take care of me doesnâ??t mean I am isolated from what is going on around me. I suspect that the people saying such, not having actually lived that lifestyle, are making assumptions based on their perception of what that must be like. Since they donâ??t know (and Iâ??m not saying) the details of my life, they really have no idea how off base their perceptions are. Sorta like dising Bill Gatesâ?? lifestyle, which none of could possibly comprehend.

 

I will say that at the level of Thai society I spend most of my [working] time with, not speaking Thai is not problem as they all speak English (some certainly better then others). I do find it amusing to be lectured by a self proclaimed monger about understanding Thailand who learned Thai in order to fuck young Thai women. Trust me bub, I know a lot more about Thailand then you would ever hope to and sure ainâ??t from hanging out on lower Sukhumvit. Some how I suspect that my conversations (in English) with presidents of several major Thai corporations has given me a slightly better insight then the free lancers at the Nana Hotel. At the same token, the working class people in our mostly Thai neighborhood have helped me understand a lot as well, even though a most of that is translations through my wife or the English speaking retired Thai gentlemen we hang out with several times a week who is very happy to translate.

 

What I have found out over the years while living in several countries where I donâ??t speak the language is that you need to be much more observant and not just tune out when a conversation is going on you donâ??t understand. You would be amazed at how much you can discern from body language, hand gestures, and facial expressions, and the tone of the words being used. This is especially true in a business setting as so many English words are used you can often get the gist of a conversation pretty well. It is sort of like being an anthropologist and observing how people react to each other without understanding the words. I have always felt sorry for the people that donâ??t continue to pay attention and observe the people around him just because he doesnâ??t understand the words.

 

Again, I donâ??t doubt that speaking Thai would great, but I have learned how to live without it and it really doesnâ??t bother me much. Maybe in a few years when I retire and have the time to really devote to it, I will take it up as a hobby. Right now, just too busy to spend the time.