Injustice

There's a peculiar breed of justice here in Thailand, perhaps due to the intersection of large foreign economies with a smaller local one. Here are some stories I've heard that are rather unpleasant.

A Swedish friend of Carl's was sitting on his motorbike with the engine running, not moving. A young Thai guy whistled down the street on his, not looking where he was going, smashed full force into the Swede's rear. Nasty wreck. Injuries, motorbike damage all around. The poice show up, take a brief look around, and say to the unconscious Swede's girlfriend, "You pay."
"What? We weren't even moving!"
"You pay." The idea is that the Thai guy has no money, and the foreigner can always get money from somewhere, some magic fountain of cash that only flows in faraway places. It got worse. The man's bill's at the hospital added up to over 400,000 baht, due to numerous procedures necessary for the collapsed lung and the rest of it, and each procedure would not begin until the cash had been presented. So the girlfriend basically took up residence at the ATM at the hospital. This all took quite a long time, so needless to say their visas ran out. The girlfriend eventually took two letters from the hospital explaining their overstay and their inability to make a border run over to the immigration office. The bureaucrat behind the desk accepted the letter on behalf of the man, but to the girlfriend, they said, "No. You go. Go to a border." Her arguments notwithstanding that it was only her continuous presence at the hospital that was enabling her man to be treated, banging her head on a hardhearted wall of bureaucracy, he left in tears. I don't know what she did after that.

It's about the money. It's about the money, and not in a long-term sense. How horrible is that? Much worse than the shitbag cab driver who claimed that I had hit his particular waterpipe, when I was standing there covered in sand and blood under a geyser. Far worse than that.

Here's another awful one, also about motorbikes, also about money.

Justin was riding in Phuket, and doesn't recall what happened. What seems to be clear is some farmers found him on the road and pried the motorbike out of him where it had penetrated him, like the kickstand impaling his calf muscle. At this point what seems to have happened is the local town boss, something like the mayor of Phuket, had run him over while drunk in his big SUV, and then kept on moving. When Justin was at the hospital, apparently word got back to the town boss, so he sent one of his guys around to inform the friends of the still-unconscious man that he expected to be paid 40,000 baht (~1000$) for the damage to his SUV.

Last horror story.

Three friends, one Thai and two foreign, got busted smoking a joint. The bribes demanded were as follows. Mr. Thailand, kick down two grand (baht). Mr. France, we'll take 40 grand. Oh, Mr. Belgium with the loud mouth, You owe us sixty grand.

And that's the way it is. If you're a foreigner, you're expected to apologize with legal tender. It makes you a little cranky, stories like this.

I wonder what would have happenned if any of the parties in question said, ok, let's settle this properly. LEt's put this on the record, I'll get myself a Thai lawyer and we'll see how it pans out.

The fear is that speaking up for yourself could land you in worse trouble, since our rights are somewhat limited in a foreign place with its own logic of justice.

It's not all bad; A, who runs my guesthouse, has complained to me about the too-common greed and shortsightedness common amongst here people in touristed areas. She says, "yes, I love my people, but sometimes I hate them. So stupid sometimes!"

Regarding long-term foreign residents and tourists, an analogy to a cow might work. We see that the cow is drying up a bit. Rather than doing things like massaging the udder and beefing up the feeed for a bit with measures such as more generous visa policies and greater protection under the law, what seems to get done more often is measures like cutting open the udder to see if perhaps there's a little more milk hidden away in there somewhere. Lots of the laws enacted under the now-departed Thaksin fit that description. There are many many foreigners living here, working here, contributing their skills and cash to the economy, yet Thaksin was constantly finding ways to facilitate squeezing ever-more money out of them. Cracking down on loopholes enabling them to own businesses and homes, things like that. I know it's not just about squeeze, it's about keeping Thailand Thai, but it seems like that sometimes.

The logical explanation is that most of the folks around here have been living hand-to-mouth for such a long time, long-range planning is just not really part of the mentality. For many.

This will come home to roost, I think. Once Vietnam opens up further, and if they make things a bit easierm then Thailand will start losing its growing expat population. Vietnam's got just as many beaches, just as many pretty girls, the food's just as good, it's just harder to go there at this time.

The mentality is just so different from what we're used to in the west! Building for the future is not really part of the thought process. Building for cheap for now. I've got enough today. But what about tomorrow when there's no trees left, or fish left, or expats left, because you sucked too much money out of them in the short term? Um...

Glass houses: we've already developed, we've already savaged our natural resources, but I think we've learned a bit. Can't you take the good and bypass the bad, learn from our mistakes?

Sigh.