The Tourist, Thy F(r)iend!

Sometimes you wonder as a foreigner in Thailand: Can I ever be a friend of the beautiful people here? Or am I doomed to be their fiend?

However good you master the Thai language, how Thai you may become: Aren’t foreigners doomed to stay on the outside of the Thai society?

As it is not even considered a possibility by most Thais that a non-Thai can become a Thai.

Some call this whole gap between locals and strangers a engrained defense mechanism rooted in an inferiority complex of Thai society. Others call it the feeling of simple racial supremacy.

Take following example:

BangkokDan enjoys the privilege of Permanent Residency, which requires you at the airport to queue up at the always shorter waiting line for “Thai Nationals”.

Nearly every time I leave or enter the country some overly kindly smiling Thai draws my attention to the obvious fact that I do not look like a Thai and must therefore choose one of the long queues designed for “Foreigners”.

A simple explanation that I have to queue up with Thais, even though I’m an alien, clears the skies and leads to many “kho thoooot, kho thooot khaaa/krup!”

Then you have to show of with your meager Thai – to at least proof that you’re a kind of Thai.

But the whole point is this: Can a foreigner ever truly be welcomed into Thai society? Not to speak of ever becoming a Thai?

Not that the West offers shining examples of integration, but processes such as naturalization and assimilation go easier over there, don’t they.

Well, we aliens are still lucky in Thailand. Try paranoid Japan, one of the richest countries in the world that welcomes two or three refugees a year.

But then again, Thailand could and should do better. As it depends a whole lot on the liking of foreigners.

Each year Thailand’s authorities aim to haul in another million of more cash-rich tourists.

Or you never felt cheated when you had to pay 400 baht entering a national park while even rich Thais in a Mercedes have to fork out some baht?

At least here Thailand gave in this December and halved those substantially higher fees for foreigners in order to reduce that double pricing racism.

Or the constant neglects when an overloaded boat sinks again or a racing bus crashes.

With foreigners in it. What a waste of human potential.

Or the troubles in the South, political instability, persistent street sellers, bumpy-humpy walkways, fines for littering, life-threatening bird flu and SARS …

Who in the right mind still thinks about coming to Thailand for a holiday?

Double pricing, overzealous developments over nature and beauty, taxi scammers and other crooks – and not even the beer is cheap anymore.

What are the reasons that people are still coming here?

“Thailand has so much more to offer than its women,” we were recently enlightened by a letter in the Post’s Postbag.

The letter went on: “It’s down to Thailand as a whole to change this opinion.” This opinion, it is to say, about the state of affair of Thailand’s tourism industry.

Probably written by a reader who travels back home and emails his local newspaper a letter.

A letter praising the ever smiling staff in local shops back home, the great climate, wonderful food and oh so helpful authorities.




Sphere: Related Content

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  1. Big Trouble In Tourist Thailand
  2. F-Farang
  3. Thai Love Talk
  4. Scientifically Proven: The Good Farang

December 7, 2007 | Filed Under The Thai Mind, Travel & Tourism 

Comments

One Response to “The Tourist, Thy F(r)iend!”

  1. panmoria on December 10th, 2007 8.52 am

    Here’s Wikipedia on this topic – let’s first understand who we foreigners here really are:

    Farang, sometimes pronounced falang, is the generic Thai word for a foreigner of European ancestry. While generally farang is a neutral word, it can be used in a mocking manner, or even as an insult depending on context. For instance, the expression “farang ta nam khao” – which literally means farang with rice-milk-colored iris) would be considered an insult. It is common in Thai to just say “farang” to point out the presence of one, without making a whole sentence. Black Americans have been occasionally referred to as farang dum (black farang), especially American servicemen during the Vietnam War.

    Farang is also the Thai word for the guava fruit, which of course can lead to “farang eating farang” jokes from Thai people when foreigners are seen eating a guava in Thailand. This is because the guava was brought to then Siam by Portuguese traders over 400 years ago. The tree was thus called the farang fruit. Stingy or unruly foreigners may referred to as kee nok (bird shit), which is the name of a particular variety of guava. Varieties of food/produce which were introduced by Europeans are often called ‘farang’ varieties. Hence, potatoes are man farang, whereas man alone can be any variety tuber; parsley is called phak chii farang, literally farang cilantro, and chewing gum is maak farang. Maak is Thai for betel, which many rural Thais chew for the euphoria it gives. When chewing gum was introduced, it was thus labeled farang betel, maak farang.

    In the Isan Lao dialect, the guava is called bak seeda, which is sometimes jokingly used to refer to a farang too.

    The most likely theory of the word’s origin derives it from farangset, the Thai pronunciation of français, the French word for ‘French’ or ‘Frenchman’. France was one of the first European nations to establish cultural ties with Thailand in the 17th century, so to Thais at that time, ‘white man’ and ‘Frenchman’ were synonymous. However, the Portuguese, Dutch and others arrived long before the French, which makes that origin unlikely. A few others have suggested that in the Ayutthaya period, land was given to the Portuguese merchants to conduct their business at “Baan Farang” (Guava Village).

    A more common etymology which explains why many other Southern Asian and Southeast Asian languages use the word, has to do with the French but in a more indirect way, saying it derives from the earlier Persian word farangi, which refers to foreigners. This in turn comes from the word “frank” via the Arabic word firinjia, which was used refer to the Franks (French) in the Middle Ages. The French were later the first European nation that helped the Ghajar Kings modernize the Iranian government, in particular with the establishment of customs, in Persian: gomrok. Long before English, and until about the 1960s, French was the foreign language of choice for educated Iranians. The abundance of French words in the Persian language attests to this fact.

    By another account the word comes through Arabic (“Afrandj”), and there are quite a few articles about this. One of the most detailed treatments of the subject is by Rashid al-din Fazl Allâh.

    Farang is closely related to the Khmer word Barang.

    In Tamil, the word that refers to Europeans (most specifically to the British) is parangiar, presumably because Tamil does not have the “F” sound. Many South Asian and Southeast Asian languages, including Hindi-Urdu and Malay, also use this word to denote foreigners.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farang

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