Well i was in Thailand about 25 years ago and absolutely loved it. Spent a week in Bangkok and one in Chiang Mai (water festival), but my favorite time spent was the two to three weeks in Ko Pha-ngan and Ko Tao Islands. Absolutely lovely <3

@MilkmanDan

Having spent a great deal of time in Thailand over the last 20 years I agree with your comment. I would like to add that one would have to really be poking the hornets nest extremely hard to get carted off to a re-education camp or kicked out the country if you are an expat.

Mind you the last major use of those camps was due to bombs going off in central Bangkok back around 2008. I still have a hard time finding a public trash can when I visit.

Pretty good video. Specific things:

Too many prostitutes: Most of the non-Thai people that complain about this went to the wrong places in Thailand. Pattaya was a tiny fishing village before the Vietnam war. Then, soldiers started getting shipped into the country for R&R. The Thai government didn't really know what to do with them, so they sorta passed the buck and decided to send them to Pattaya to relax. Bunch of stressed out dudes there, nothing to do, high demand for alternate activities ... the market answered.

Fast forward to today, and Pattaya knows exactly what put it on the map. I hate that place -- it is like what would happen if you took the worst/sleaziest elements of Vegas and Tijuana, and then built a "city" around it. Shittiest beach in Thailand, chock full of sleaze, disgusting. However, it is one of the most major tourist destinations. Gee, why could that be? Is it in spite of the nature of the place, or because of it? No false advertising here, you know what you're getting when you book a trip there. And if that is your thing, more power to ya.

Now, I don't want to act like prostitution exists in Pattaya and Soi Cowboy / Patpong in Bangkok, and is absent elsewhere. Far from it. Every town, down on to tiny ones, likely has a red-light district and brothels. The ones you hear about are sex tourism pits like those major ones, but the trade is alive and well pretty much everywhere -- and mostly caters to local Thais.

I've honestly never been to such an establishment or sought those services (in 11 years of being here), but I don't care that they are available. The most significant negative is that they are NOT well-regulated like, say, what I've heard about Amsterdam. Prostitution is technically illegal in Thailand. So the de-facto situation is that brothels have to pay protection money to police in order to avoid getting shut down or "inspected", etc.

Corruption is a major problem -- much worse than prostitution, in my opinion.


Too many ladyboys: It is certainly true that there are more trans people per capita here than pretty much anywhere else that I know of. It took me a while, being a country kid from Kansas, but I see that in pretty much the same light as the German narrator in the video at this point. Acceptance is good. You do you, man.

As a stereotype on the flip side of the coin, I think the ladyboys tend to be great in custom interaction kinds of jobs. Cashiers at 7-11, waitpeople at restaurants, etc. Polite, attentive, helpful. And often the most willing to attempt to use English. A lot of the best students that I've taught English to have been ladyboy leaning.


Freedom: I'm with @Mordhaus here. When your personal liberty is mainly due to the apathy / incompetence of the governing authority, and they may choose to get off their asses and revoke that at any time ... perhaps it isn't something to brag about. Very basic stuff like dissenting speech and protesting is met with being carted off for little re-education chats, etc. Pretty scary shit, actually.


Basically I tend to think that just like anywhere on Earth, there's a lot of good here and plenty of bad too. There's plenty of legitimate gripes with cultural elements and stuff in Thailand, but the most common ones (that the video pretty accurately listed) are pretty insignificant in my opinion.

At least they finally finished that elevated highway. Bangkok to Pattaya in 1 hour 35 on a good day.

I agree, these videos tear me up (both definitions of "tear"). I'm not bothered by watching videos of some moped rider in Bangkok get wiped out at an intersection but these videos have an effect on me. I can't watch those videos of a happy dog being adopted from a shelter because all I can hear is the dogs barking in the background that are still in cages. We have 4 rescue dogs in the house and I wish I had the resources to have more. Upvoted anyway.

They might not be that close together, but the distance from Bangkok to either NYC or Topeka KS is almost the same You just head in opposite directions for the shortest path.

*Bangkoks

*cue comedy movie-trailer voice-over:
"He was looking for a pineapple, but what he got was the whole fruit salad! Shuacs' in Thailand, and Bangkok closes when he finds out where and how, to pass-out, or just SIT DOWWN!"

Yes but one night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster.

Living in Thailand, most TV shows aren't available here until WAY after the Western airdate, if ever.

I live in a pretty small town. Western movies don't play here, and if I travel an hour or so to a town where they do, they do they are dubbed in Thai with no English subtitles. DVDs are readily available, but they are usually pirated cam copies burned to disc, and again dubbed in Thai.

Games? Not available in stores in my town. Bangkok, sure -- but again they are almost always pirated copies burned to disk. Console games are the same way and any shops selling the game will also chip the console to play pirated disks. I could, and admittedly probably SHOULD use steam for PC games.

Other software? Basically same story as games. If you go to a computer store here, advertising usually says that they are sold with Linux OS or bare drives. But, the shop will automatically put on a pirated Windows plus loads of software (office, Photoshop if you ask for it, etc.) upon purchasing the hardware. They are usually fairly inept at it, frequently have viruses or fail to actually activate the OS, etc. so I tell them to leave the drives bare and do all that stuff myself. But for 99% of people who buy a PC here, they will automatically get a pirated OS and software along with it.

Basically, my default mode of getting ANY media is piracy. Price (free versus not) is a part of that. Incomes are low here, but cost of living is comparatively even lower. Still, if media was fully available here but equal to the price in, say, the US the vast majority of people here don't have enough disposable income to afford much if any of it. A bigger issue for me personally is convenience. Piracy (torrents, etc.) as a distribution system is infinitely more convenient, easy, and "customer"-friendly than any more legitimate service. I get what I want very quickly, usually in multiple options for filesize vs quality on up to as-good-as-broadcast/blu-ray 1080p, with most everything available from a single source (isoHunt, kickass, PirateBay, take your pick). In terms of user experience, legitimate distribution can't even begin to compete with that -- and that is BEFORE considering price.

Instead, they exacerbate the difference by treating paying customers with open contempt. Pay for TV service? Enjoy 10 minutes of ads for every 12 minutes of show. Buy a DVD? Sit through un-skippable ads, dire piracy warnings, etc. before the show actually starts. Move or simply take the disk on vacation to another country and you will likely be screwed by region locking. Buy software? Get some DRM that slows things down or restricts fully NORMAL use of the software, nags you to register, etc. On the other hand, if you pirate stuff all of that goes away. No ads. Watch/use the media wherever you want, whenever you want, on whatever device you want. Software DRM circumvented easily, usually hours after the first release if not *before*.

I honestly see it as a problem that I am not supporting the creators of the media that I enjoy. But, Pandora's box has been opened on this one. Generation X and Y learned to scoff at the idea of paying for music due to Napster. iTunes has been extremely lucky to turn that around even slightly, making lots of mistakes along the way (DRM and device-locking, etc.). Gen Y and beyond are going to have the same attitude towards piracy with regards to ALL MEDIA that we learned to have towards music. I don't think there is any getting around that.

For content creators, I think that funding via Label / Publisher / Network is going to die out. And soon. The good news is that something akin to an evolution of patronage of arts and creators can work even better than it did in the past. The Motzarts and Beethovens of the future don't need 1 rich duke or king to commision a work, they need 10,000 average Joes on kickstarter or the like. I see things trending more and more in that direction, and all the time. I think it is an exciting time -- unless you're an exec in one of the old dinosaur publishers/networks.

A bit of a cop out, but Bangkok / Krung­thep­maha­nakorn­amorn­ratana­kosin­mahintar­ayutthay­amaha­dilok­phop­noppa­ra
trajathani­burirom­udom­rajaniwes­mahasat­harn­amorn­phimarn­avatarn­sathit­sakkattiya­visanuka
mprasit.

http://www.fun-with-words.com/longest_place_names.html

it's an amalgamation of words so probably doesn't count

"Ha, those asian races that are all racists, unlike us!"
Please kindly go fuck yourself ^__^

With love,
- Hong Kong, Singapore, Java, Bangkok, Guangzhou, etc...

Cool idea and execution for a video -- nice sift!

I'm an American living in Thailand for the past 6 years. Thai food is cheap and good, but stuff like Western fast food (for example the Big Mac in the video) is probably near double US prices here. But as long as you're happy with Thai food, you can get a plate of average-to-good quality Thai fare for roughly 60 cents (more in Bangkok). Beats the crap out of stuff like the "dollar menu" back home.

One more thing -- I wonder if the price of rice was comparing the same variety of rice in each country, or just comparing the most commonly consumed variety for each location. Thailand exports a lot of sticky rice ("glutinous rice", but not from gluten) to Japan -- they love it there and pay a large premium for it over "normal" rice varieties. Maybe that accounts for the video noting that rice is expensive in Japan?

*bangkok

Is like Bangkok driving but without tolerance.