You will be relieved to know

You will be relieved to know, on coming to Thailand, and having spent a good few months here, that you are not the ignorant farang you might have thought yourself to be. Supposing that you are a halfway decent person of course (of which admittedly there aren't too many among the foreign contingency) you will get along with the locals only up to a point. Somewhere along the line there is a barrier which no sane man can comfortably cross. This is the barrier that does not allow for stupidity of the sort that has preserved the engine of social engagements for millenia, as well as the many bang-your-head-against-the-wall type rituals that accouter this so called "Land of Smiles."

Now, sure enough, there is lots of smiling going on, but it does not factor in the genuine problems of Thai society, including a total lack of cognitive development for the large majority of the population, not to mention a large smattering of cognitive dissonance. This fact does not only go for the uneducated, but is runs true even for the richest of Thais. As an example, I will offer you one episode that stands out in particular.

In my short time here, there was a much shorter period in which taught English for a household, the kind of household rich enough to call their home what most people in the west would describe as a Mansion of Gatsby-like proportions. It was plain, but it was, in its dimensions, showy, the kind of edifice that could be seen a long way off as an intentional show of wealth. They were nice enough, and for that reason I cannot bring myself to call down any really vituperative phrases, epithets or curses of any sort. But it struck me from the start that they were quite dim, and even remarkably stupid in certain aspects. 

The whole thing began in a room as big as a reasonably sized apartment, wherein some children were gathered around by tables, and the thing was - the thing that enervated me - was that I was being pressured into offering up a kind spiel that might engender them and their parents to me. Now, most teachers don't. They have the good sense to have prepared a game, and don't think further than that. But this being Thailand, and "slap-dash" being the style and manner in which English is traditionally delivered by backpacking fiends, I had not done so either, and I might have only felt such a pressure. The pressure of the unprepared, the pressure to be formal, and to show that one is worthy of a task.

Nonetheless, there they were, this bevy.  Oh, there were grandfathers and uncles and grandmothers in this lofty room of theirs. They were staring expectantly for the show to begin. All very alienating, all very surreal. And I felt, I dare say, imposed upon. I did not feel the slightest warmth or gregariousness or any such thing most would expect of a teacher. And so, as an onlooker, you might have just detected a grimace cracking through a frosty glare on a pasteboard mask. A glare that went inwards, and not outwards, on a face that would much rather be part of the wall. I was concerned with the furniture of my mind staying intact, not the wellbeing, education, edification or any such thing, of any child whatsoever.  


That kind of vicious, fox-like, or wolf-like apathy can be expected of anyone as introverted as me, suddenly expected to play a role of a social extravaganza. This was during lockdown, and the money was running dry. I had no obligation, I felt, to be entertaining grown ups with some kind of pedagogical exuberances. All that farcical stuff, the stuff you see on movie billboards could far as I was concerned, go and shit.  So I was only in it for the money, and here were my clients. And what did I do? The only thing that I could do. Ask for there names.