Overseas Siamese, not so Chinese

“Thai society is pretentious,” or so says my wife, a quote I remind her of periodically. All the little one-on-one-up-man-ships become rigidified into a vast social stratum of Creoles, half-breeds, and Interzone clones just dying to meet you, Anglicized and Westernized to order. Then there are everybody else, the regular folk that make up the vast country-side. And if citified Thais are pretentious enough in country, they take it to new extremes overseas. Unlike their Chinese and other Asian cousins overseas, they rush to assimilate at a speed that would make your head spin. But those regular folk are the Thai people that I like best, for at its best Thailand is a village, not a city. What does Bangkok really have to offer anyway? Most of the worst and little of the best that cities tend to offer in general. There’s plenty of traffic, pollution, and noise, but little of the art, science, and culture that define modern cities. It’s better than it used to be, what with the new sky train and underground train. At least now you can get around without hours in traffic, but that still begs the question, “Why?” Thai culture at the village and small town level is a thing of beauty, friendly beautiful and welcoming. Take this one step further to the tribal ‘Tai’ culture that still exists in Laos, Vietnam, Burma, and China (everywhere in SE Asia except Thailand), and the results are extraordinary. Tai ‘Dams’ (Black Tai), though maligned by their Lao cousins and exploited by their Vietnamese neighbors, are some of my favorite people in the world, a living link between modern Thailand and the tribal past that once dominated all of Southeast Asia. That tribalism is still to be found in the well-documented-and-touristed H’mongs and Yaos and Akhas and Lahus and Lisus centered on the five-country Mekong corridor where China, Vietnam, Laos, Burma, and Thailand almost meet and the lesser-known Bahnars, Gia Rais, and many other Chamic and Khmeric groups in the Annamite Highlands where Vietnam, Laos, and Kampuchea do meet. In the former the Tai Dam are radiant and even elegant in their self-styled traditional costumes, a cut above the others for whom they often mediate with the larger surrounding cultures, doing business and even governing within historical times. In them you can see direct antecedents with the culture that became modern Thailand, the Lao language being somewhat central and mutually intelligible to both.

Take that progressive tribal culture, militarily competent and in southward migration a thousand years ago away from advancing Han Chinese, mix with renegade Chinese themselves, either disaffected or Hindu/Buddhist religious or just opportunistic businessmen, put them in a cultural context dominated by the classic-era Khmers, and you have the origins of modern Siamese culture, only recently re-christened ‘Thai’ in back-formation homage to their cultural roots, both to unify a country composed of a not-so-Siamese north and northeast, and to send a clear message to the hordes of Chinese flooding into the country at the turn of last century following the Taiping and Boxer Rebellions in China. Fast-forward to the present and you’ve got a quirky modern culture, equal parts hot-and-spicy, sweet-and-sour, and pungent-curry, and that’s just the women. Overall you’ve got a vigorous hybrid of Chinese business acumen, agricultural bounty, and village friendliness, a culture with a decent standard of living not because of vast wealth but because of multiplicity of services. Every Thai has a second job and a handful of scams, however redundant and unimaginative. This keeps prices low but diversity limited. Thus Bangkok is little more than one mega-village, any culture of international note achieved largely by imitation of Western models if not by Westerners themselves. Just like the villages there is little or no centrality to the urban planning and infrastructure always comes last, in a constant struggle to keep up with development that must be retro-fitted hodge-podge. In a culture where conformity is prized above all else, this results in a city with reasonable costs, ample services, but little or no character, a city monstrous in size but a midget in culture.

Take that generic urban Thai culture and transplant it to America and you’ve got something that’s hardly recognizable as ‘Thai’, almost a perversion of the original. If chattiness is one of the most desirable of Thai qualities in-country, it suffers horribly overseas. Presumably part of a linguistic caste system of English-language ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, Thais in America seem to make a concerted effort to avoid speaking Thai except to intimates. While this is not unusual in Thailand, especially when Farangs are involved, in America it even applies to Thais themselves. This is sad, because language is the DNA of culture. Once you’ve lost it, you’ve lost your culture. Language was always intended to be something evoking magic and power, literally casting its ‘spell’ over the psychological landscape, but it was never intended to be a weapon. Overseas Thais jockey for position in a caste system of the soul, clinging to their nuclear families while largely ignoring their culture. This is ironic because Thailand itself enforces a nationalism second to none, even refusing to register a name that’s not on the list of acceptable Thai names. Not surprisingly many Thais, and all women, have nicknames, frequently similar to those of pets, not infrequently derived from English sources. In the US they rush to ‘become American’ without realizing that to transplant their doctrine of conformity into a culture of individuality is largely contradictory and difficult to accomplish. But this is very similar to the way that Chinese immigrants ‘become Thai’ in Thailand by simply learning the language and either marrying in or buying in. By the second or third generation, they’re ‘Thai’, if they stay that long. Many use Thailand as a marshalling yard to gather themselves a grubstake to move on to America. It’s not uncommon for a nuclear Thai family in the US to consist of grandparents whose first language is Chinese, parents whose first language is Thai, and children whose first language is English.

Chinese proper in America have a totally different history, dating back to the gold rush days in California, and enduring much hardship and discrimination in the process. This must encourage solidarity, because to this day Chinese maintain their names and languages and lineages in America. Chinese still preside over chop suey kitchens dating from the old West, especially along the old highways and rail routes. This is a dying breed of restaurant, because the food sucks. But they’re still counted back in China and presumably counted on. That may sound conspiratorial and paranoid, but no, it’s just good old fashioned racism, the history of our species, getting there ‘firstest with the mostest’. I can appreciate their maintenance of traditions culturally while deploring the racist separatism psychologically. To this day there are laws on the books in Arizona outlawing parking in front of an opium den. Fortunately you can park in front of a Thai restaurant, the last line of cultural self-defense for many Thais. For a long time in Thailand I likened my experience to the peeling back of layers on an onion. Only later did I realize that I was getting no deeper, that the surface just kept refreshing its screen in a self-healing safety of face. Thailand takes superficiality to a high art. What it sacrifices culturally, it gains back in economic progress I suppose. The Interzone clones that I tend to avoid are viewed by many foreigners as the apex of Thai culture. They fall in love with the interface and hybrid vigor resumes its path of evolution by economic selection. Thailand is a woman, looking for a husband to take on his name accordingly. For that it only takes a village, not a city.

Hitched and Harnessed… Have Siamese Twin, Will Travel

I’ve done my own taxes all my life, Schedule C and SE, 1099’s and 1040 long forms, estimated tax and exempt foreign income ad infintum ad nauseam. So big deal, but I also did my own Customs brokering back in the halcyon days when business was my disease, Forms 3461 and 7501, formal entries and intensive exams, textile quotas and certificates of origin. I’ve done Customs entries in different cities on the same day, leaving Flagstaff at 3am to drive to Nogales, Mexico, picking up goods at the train station there and crossing back over the border, doing the paperwork and awaiting my release, then driving to Phoenix and getting my papers submitted there in time to clear my goods before the day’s over, then driving back to Flagstaff as the sun sets over the purple sage, all in a day’s work. It’s hard to appreciate if you haven’t been there, not to mention the anxiety of ‘crossing the border’ every couple of weeks and having to clear Customs. The point is that none of this compares to getting a visa for your foreign fiancée, all by yourself and starting from scratch. ‘Scratch’ in this case is the forms you submit to CIS (formerly INS) in the US. This includes bank statements and verifications, pictures of you and the lady taken within the last thirty days, and evidence of your relationship, all in addition to the multiple application forms and biographical information. We had a picture taken of ourselves reading the Bangkok Post with a big picture of the Korean-American mass murderer on the front just to date us and place us and send a little signal about the absurdity of their requirements. I feel sure they smiled.

If you’re lucky they’ll send you an acknowledgement of receipt. If you’re unlucky they’ll tell you some info is lacking and they’ll need more forms. All this is rather sketchy and dependent on the uncertainties of the US postal system, but fortunately you can track it somewhat on their website, assuming you know your code. When your forms are all in order within a few months they’ll kick it over to the National Visa Center where, once again if your forms are in order, they’ll kick it to the country where the visa will be issued, in this case Thailand, who will process the applications and initiate the continuing process over there. Once again this step is rather sketchy though somewhat traceable, but hopefully the mail won’t get lost. The first time we did all this five years ago, all the US paperwork went like clockwork but we never got the paperwork on the Thailand side. Presumably the mail got lost over there. For better or worse our circumstances had changed a bit over the year-long process, so after a couple of tentative phone calls with limited results, I decided to forfeit rather than pursue it at that time. This time started off even worse. I never received any acknowledge of receipt at any point. I traced it to the point that it went to the National Visa Center, but then could find no record of it. As I was waiting for their two-month deadline to expire to officially conclude the papers lost, suddenly it shows up, not there, but at my fiancée’s doorstep in Thailand, the whole package of forms from the US embassy in Bangkok shuttled down a humble middle-class alley by the Royal Thai Mail. I couldn’t believe it; still can’t.

At least at that point it’s my wife’s turn to do some work. There are medical exams to be done, by pre-approved doctors only, half a dozen in Bangkok, one or two in Chiang Mai. Fortunately Chiang Mai’s only a few hours from Chiang Rai. Unfortunately my lady’s had TB, probably had it in fact when we met, though the diagnosis came about a year later. TB is a slow burn, almost winning by robbing you of the will to fight it. I’ve often accused my wife of putting herself on the market because she thought she was going to die and wanted to suck(er) someone into taking care of her family. She denies it, but I don’t know… She thinks about death almost more than I do. Anyway after three Thai doctors fumbled the diagnosis and she had had enough Aids tests to supply Africa for a year and her father had started making little black magic shrines in auspicious corners of the property, I finally said something cursory, spent an hour on the Internet, and told her I thought she had TB. The (fourth) official diagnosis came in within a day later. Then followed six months of four different antibiotics, enough presumably so that no bacteria could outsmart them all. So it’s a big deal. The new doctor, while approving her current health, made her carry fresh X-rays around with her, just begging a challenge. In fact TB is making a big comeback on the world stage, simply because people don’t eradicate the disease completely, so it comes back. She needed a police clearance also, for which she had to make a special trip to Bangkok. You have to apply for the actual visa online, in English, and then pay for the bloody thing at the Thai post office. After researching further I Skyped her from the US and told her to pay the fee before year-end 2007, when the price was to go up. When you get the forms in order, you send a checklist telling them the forms are in order and await a date for the interview.

They finally set her date at March 10, which was good, since I could be there, too. There was only one problem. Her passport expires November 9, and you need at least eight months validity. So I Skyped her from Senegal and told her to get a new passport before the interview. For those of you who don’t know already, one of the latest nicest and most inexpensive developments for the traveler is the rise of Skype’s Internet-based telephone service. Unlike previous services like Net2Phone, etc. the lag-time between transmission and reception is down so low that unless someone is a really fast talker and the signal is good, it’s usually not much of a problem. You certainly don’t have to say “over” walkie-talkie-like after each side is finished speaking so the other party won’t overlap. Just speak at a normal unhurried rate. As they tell you repeatedly, this service is not designed for emergencies anyway. But Thailand doesn’t do passports locally anymore, so she had to make another trip to Chiang Mai. This runaround is wearing me out just thinking about it. If companies do all this work for you they charge $1000- $2000 depending on the level of service. I’d probably recommend it unless you’re a pro bono lawyer by profession.

So when the day finally came the tension was running high. Her appointment note told her to submit papers at 7:30 am, which I thought was pretty absurd, but not half as absurd as the line that was already there a full half hour before that. It looked like a security line at LAX airport. I guess they were mostly tourists, first come first serve, because we got to bypass them with our fancy little card with an actual date on it. In our category was a motley crew, including one little twenty-ish Bimbette with a sixty-ish Farang in tow and one older woman with her entire family there. They were shuffling papers and swearing oaths and moving on to other windows and suffering other ignominies that only stiffened my resolve to push this thing through, if for no other reason than to avoid ever having to go through it again. When my wife finally got her turn, they told me to please have a seat, then put her through the paces with the help of an interpreter. In fact, they dismissed her so quickly that I was sure she’d failed. But no, she was told to come pick up the passport with visa in two days. When she did, they strongly advised her to enter the US as soon as possible since her medical exam was due to expire in two months. That was the glitch we needed, since I had wanted to look for an immediate flight but her mother had forbade it due to her father’s health. Well we rushed home and Pa looked okay to us so we booked a flight the next day to leave in three. I usually eat what’s put before me, even on airplanes, but the boiled rice didn’t inspire me, and as the plane began its final descent into LAX the wife suddenly felt ill and started puking, something I’ve never seen her do before. This continued all the while the plane taxied to the terminal, an awkward start to a new country, to say the least. I think it was just nervous jitters, because from there things went smoothly, immigration, customs, rental car, etc., at least until we got to Kingman, where I-40 was closed because of a 139-car pile-up by Flagstaff, our destination. Two days later we got married, officially, only six days after receiving her visa, all in a day’s, I mean a week’s, I mean a year’s work.

Flagstaff: Might as well be Chiang Rai or Huaraz or TJ

Welcome to the new era of the generic ex-pat. It used to be that people would ‘end up’ in remote corners of the world because of some curious connection- marriage, work, research, ethnicity, or such. The highly motivated immigrant would likely be well-versed in local lore and quite proficient in the local lingo. He had to be. He might even ‘go native’ and adopt the local garb and hang out with the local residents. All that’s changed now. These days the connections are more spurious than curious, and the local garb is Kmart classic. The only question facing the would-be ex-pat now is “Which country?” as though the only differences were quantitative, particularly financially. Though many countries are wary of casual ‘unofficial’ immigrants like me, there is a plethora of those courting the retiree trade, especially those with a surplus of nurses, like Thailand. These guys usually are largely ignorant of the local culture and rate their experience by its similarities to ‘back home’. Similarly, they rate locals by how Westernized they are, particularly linguistically. Thais even rate each other by how well they speak English, as if any of them were qualified to judge. The Mexican border area also rates well in this area of service and, accordingly, those areas have their fair share of retirees and weekend adventurers, Americans usually, of course. But you can go to the Dominican Republic, Philippines, Morocco, Guatemala, Brazil, Bali, India, or many others, and find similar situations. This is a growing trend, pasturing the herds. What they all have in common are low prices (relatively), nice weather, appropriate services, and a reasonable level of safety.

‘Convenience’ ex-pats like this tend to follow geographic and linguistic lines. So Spaniards, Portuguese, and especially, Italians, tend to gravitate toward Central and South America, linguistically and culturally similar. French can go both ways, of course, but heavily support their cultural and linguistic cousins in North and West Africa. Au contraire that they are, they tend to grant higher status to black Africans in France itself than they do to Arabs, different from most other ‘high’ cultures. Familiarity breeds contempt I guess. If they hurry they can still find some francophones in old French Indochina, that is Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, though those numbers are fading fast before the onslaught of English. Englishmen and northern Europeans tend to prefer those who prefer them, cultural pragmatists like Thailand that prize the English language above all else, and the genuine English speakers like the Philippines, India, and Anglophone Africa. Southern Europeans are conspicuously absent in Southeast Asia and the ones who do wade through the mental confusion might wish they hadn’t. Once I was summoned to translate for an Italian who found himself lost in my neighborhood. He and I had a nice conversation in Thai while a group of Thais stared on dumbfounded, finally ‘getting it’ toward the end. He spoke no English. We didn’t get around to Spanish.

Many times I’ve spoken ten or fifteen minutes in Thai with Thais when they suddenly felt inspired to ask, “Can you speak Thai?” What can you do? Patience, patience, suffer it gladly; or suffer it still, whether gladly or not. Still the pragmatism and wifely flexibility shine through. One prominent Thai web dating service has information in eight languages, including Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese, and Swedish, none of them major languages, but excluding Chinese and Spanish, the world’s first and third most-spoken languages in the world. They know where the bread is being buttered. It even has Thai language; what the Hell, why not? It’s surprising how many Western men in the Thai dating service are in their thirties. The women are overwhelmingly in their twenties. That may be more the medium than the message, youth being more ‘net’-oriented. The reality ‘in-country’ is certainly toward older foreign males. Maybe the new generation of Thai females doesn’t want to wait around to be dumped by their Thai husbands as they turn thirty.

Then there are the ex-pats like me, long-time travelers and avid adventurers, imbued with ethnicity and in love with language. It’s not necessarily like we could be anywhere, though we almost could, it’s more like we want to be everywhere. We don’t look for the easiest places to be, the paths of least resistance; we look for challenges. We look for authenticity. Personally I wouldn’t be in Thailand if I weren’t inextricably involved at this point and a bit over the hill where oats are usually sowed. Thailand’s really almost TOO easy, too willing to emulate the northern European model to the point that authentic Thai culture has to be searched for at deeper levels, with mixed results. You can avoid the interface people and the interzone girls, refusing to speak English, but ultimately you can only do that effectively by moving to areas where that is minimal, and those are few. Everybody wants the new hybrid reality, almost in direct proportion to the extent that they celebrate their ‘Thai-ness.’ It’s always been that way, the Siamese being a hybrid Chinese blend long before they ever thought about affiliating themselves with their tribal ‘Tai’ and Lao cousins. The word ‘Tai’ entered the English lexicon in 1895. The word ‘Thai’ followed in 1902. Siam changed its name to Thailand in 1939, under an onslaught of Chinese immigration.

This is similar to the Irish celebrating their Gaelic ‘Irish-ness’ while following customs and language that are generally English. The English and Americans do it, too, ‘Celtic’ traditions apparently being transmitted through Irish pub culture and traditional music. In reality the last stronghold of Celtic language in the British Isles is in Wales, though it’s not Gaelic, and it’s hardly acknowledged. Nobody goes to Welsh pubs. The language closest to English language itself is to be found back across the channel in the Frisian islands, those who never left with their Saxon and Jute cousins, speaking another modern tongue whose ancestor was Anglo-Saxon, just like ours. It’d be interesting to hear how intelligible it is, if at all. Do the French celebrate the same thing as the Irish when they remember their Roman-era ‘Gallic-ness’? I wonder. Do modern Turks celebrate their Roman-era ‘Galatian’ roots, now long assimilated? I doubt it. They aren’t usually kind toward minor cultures within their boundaries. Ask the Armenians and Kurds. The Celts, probably one of the earliest of Indo-Europeans to break away from the pack, seem to have abandoned their language at every juncture. I suppose it wasn’t a very good one. They were better at applied mechanics, and beer. The culture hangs on precariously. Score one for Sapir and Whorf. Pragmatism loses a point.

So where do you go if you want the third world without leaving your modern developed country? After all, that’s what people like me are after, regardless of where we actually find ourselves. We’re culture jocks looking for culture shock, in the downtown slums and in the remote border areas. If you’re European, you head for the far reaches of the Carpathians and the Pyrenees, and even then you might not be satisfied. Cost is a factor, after all. You’ll do better in America. There are still ethnic enclaves in Cajun Louisiana, the Mexican border areas, and Indian country, especially the southwest. When I first came to Flagstaff twenty years ago, you could still see Navajo women on the street in full silver-and-turquoise regalia, not to mention street drunks frequenting several Indian bars. They’ve long been replaced by lawyers and dentists, Deadheads and Trustafarians. The ethnicity may still be there, or out at the WalMart, at least, but the scene has been sanitized. That random element of disorder is priceless. It can’t be mocked-up at tourist-oriented ‘Indian villages.’ That’s what the Third World is all about, and to some extent, any place will do. When I’m stuck in the States, I found solace across the border in Ensenada. If I’ve got a month to kill, hardly enough time to go back to Asia, I’ll catch a cheap flight to Peru and a seven-hour ride to Huaraz- instant Andes (and no jet lag). Or maybe go to Guatemala and hang with the Mayans in Quezaltenango or the Garifuna at Livingston. The possibilities are endless. The flights are cheap, probably cheaper than living in the US full-time, certainly Europe. Of course, there’s always Alaska, where you can kill two birds with one stone, ethnicity and the elusive Arctic Circle. I saw the northern lights at Fairbanks in my first hour there. It’s like Flagstaff twenty years ago, Indians and college students. Athabascans across the border in Canada even call themselves Dene’. It’s a small world… and a narrow strait. Is Tijuana really any different from Tangier (Tanjah), the ‘other TJ’? When you get the itch, head for the border, any border.

Thai immigration: will that be Visa? or American excess...

That Darwin guy is not making things any easier for any of us. No, I’m not talking about Charles, or even Grandpa Erasmus, but that guy whose canoe was lost at sea, then turns up a few weeks ago safe and sound, long declared dead, life insurance long paid to his wife. Only problem is that there are pictures of him in Panama during that time with his wife. Uh-oh, something’s rotten in Denmark besides old cheese. But that has nothing to do with Thailand, right? We’re all normal, aren’t we (unless you maybe grew up in a family of faith healers in the deep US South during the Segregation era, and the only clear-cut choice was to conform or rebel, but what are the odds of that?)? OK, so maybe we aren’t all normal-normal, but still we’re all honest ex-pats, hard-working, sober, and respectful, aren’t we? Well, yeah, sorta’ kinda’ maybe if you don’t ask too many questions. Certainly there are a few among our numbers who have skipped out on some child support, and a much larger number who’ve loaded up the Visa card while packing the bags, one-way ticket in hand. This works best with older retirees. This is why many companies in the US won’t accept cards with a foreign billing address. But here we’re still talking about the typical Western ex-pat, safe and secure, and these little problems are of small consequence to the Thai government.

But Thailand is a haven not just for Western retirees and adventurers, but also Chinese and Indians looking for business, and Pakistanis and Bangladeshis looking for work, resource-poor but hard-working. And then the waters get really murky- Russians with Mafia connections, Arabs with jihad connections, and Nigerians with heroin connections. These people are the real problem. So what if some loose flakes get shaken out in the process? I’ve got friends who have crossed the border every month for years, getting a thirty day entry without visa every time. Some even have kids by local wives now. Many wouldn’t have air fare ‘home’ if they had to. That’s getting harder. Now you only get three of those visa-free entries in a six-month period, and then you gotta’ go get a visa somewhere, most likely Laos if you live in the North here. As long as you can leave, then you can stay, or something like that, seems to be the operative concept. But the new visa regulations in Thailand are not the real problem, not for me at least; arbitrary, capricious, and incompetent enforcement of them is the problem. According to the posted regulations, only ninety days of visa-free entry are allowed every six months. But the lady stopped me at Chiang Mai airport on my fourth entry within six months, even though it totaled up to less than ninety days. I had to go cross the Burmese border again the next day. Similarly, visas with two, or even three sixty-day entries are allowed with the same visa, the last entry occurring before the visa expires, usually six months from the date of application, though the traveler may remain in the country beyond that expiration date. That didn’t help me any last Sept. 27 with a visa that expired Oct. 29. She gave me thirty days. “Mai bpen rai.”

Partly this is tit-for-tat. Other countries don’t throw open their borders to Thais, so Thailand doesn’t throw open its borders to them, except in a few cases. How many of you fellow ex-pats know that citizens of five South American countries get ninety days on arrival in Thailand, no visa required? This even includes Peru, one of the poorer countries in the American hemisphere. That would explain all the Peruvians here. That’s a joke. Brazilians have money and, loving sunny beaches, have certainly long since discovered Bali, and may very well have some numbers in the southern Thai islands, but other than that, the effects are purely symbolic. Even Korea, the only non-South American country in that favored list, has few citizens here, though Japan certainly does. Koreans are still Asian; they travel in groups; Japanese have long joined the West, culturally as well as economically. They do whatever they want. Nobody loves to travel any more than Thais, for example, but no one more hates to be alone more, either. When Thais travel, it’s not ‘How many people are going?,’ but ‘How many vehicles?’ And so they go, caravaning over the countryside, taking pictures of each other and carrying their little world(s) with them. Same with foreign countries- they’re surrounded by so many family and friends from home, that they may have no contact with the locals at all, except for maybe a few intermediaries and salespeople. But I digress.

If I thought that the new visa regulations wouldn’t impact me, since I come and go so much anyway, the reality is just the opposite. It’s worse, because that’s the first line of defense. Keep potential malingerers away from the start. These measures are draconian. At the Thai consulate in LA, not only do they want to see a return or onward ticket within two months for the standard two-month tourist visa, not only do they want to see hotel reservations, but they want to see bank statements! That is offensive. Bank statements are shared only between me, my wife, and my God. And this is from a consulate that won’t even accept cash because of the risk of corruption?! I refuse. Still I persevere. The lesser honorary consulates outside the main ones at LA and New York are a bit more sympathetic, and available! Be polite, and don’t let on that you’re visa-shopping, if you are. They might ask. As onerous as the new visa situation is, it’s certainly not the worst in the world, as some spoiled ex-pats say in the on-line forums. Many other countries are the same or worse. At least a Thai tourist visa is only $25. Brazil is $100 for US citizens, for purposes of reciprocity. That means the US charges them $100, so they charge the same. Mali, one of the poorest countries in the world, not only charges $100, but they want to see a return ticket and hotel reservations and a yellow fever certificate at $100-150 a shot. ‘Cheap country’ doesn’t mean ‘cheap hotel’, either, at least not self-bookable by internet. Cheapest I found was €50 in Bamako. Bangkok’s half that. Maybe I’ll get lucky and get a five-year visa. Some countries have gotten easier over time. Thailand itself used to allow only fifteen days without a visa the first time I came in 1992. The first time I went to Guatemala in 1977 they made me cut my hair, and then gave me five years multiple-entry, but only thirty days per entry. Now they give you ninety days, visa free, same as Peru, same as Thailand, if you're Peruvian.

I know where they’re coming from, probably far better than they know where we’re coming from. They want control of their borders, their society, and their public image. We want good lives, good and cheap. Like the H’mong, Yao, Lisu, Lahu, and Akha tribes who have filtered down over the last century or so, on the same routes that Tais themselves filtered down seven hundred years ago, the European tribes filter down by jet when they decide to ‘Phuk-et’, and the rest is history. It’s not that we washed up on the beach here because we didn’t know how to swim. Rather it’s because we liked the beaches here, warm and attractive. Some build new lives and accomplish things they might not have accomplished otherwise. Others ‘Phuk-up’ royally and someone has to come get them and accompany them back, the gravity of decadence is so strong, just like in the movie the Elephant King. Well come to Thai land, land of smile. Pero ten cuidado con la migra, hombre.

Mail Order Bride Biz Booms in Thailand

You’ve all seen the ads directed at single white males: “Get your Asian wife, your Thai darling, your Philippine dream girl, your Chinese fortune cookie, your Japanese cherry blossom.” They all feature a pretty thirty-ish Asian woman smiling radiantly for the cameras, exuding the good old-fashioned values of motherhood, well-scrubbed floors, dish-pan hands, and economic security. They might not directly speak of sex-on-demand or docile submission, but there is definitely a not-so-subtle message to take advantage of the opportunity to get a girl ‘unspoiled by feminism’. Apparently many men still appreciate the old-fashioned stay-at-home wife, guardian of the kitchen, keeper of the keys. Apparently many women do, too. Similar ads tell women to “get your Farang husband,” though the pictures tend to still be of women, since they’re probably better looking. Of course problems do arise sometimes. That Asian wife may not be so submissive after all and that smile may be little more than window dressing, and even serious problems such as spousal abuse and virtual slavery have occurred. This prompted the newly enacted ‘feminist endorsed’ International Marriage Brokers Act in the US, which attempts to monitor and regulate the booming business. This requires potential wives to be supplied with a background check of their foreign ‘dates’ before the relationship can proceed.

The practice of local women marrying foreigners is so wide-spread in Thailand now that the society is being transformed in the process. If it was taboo for a Thai woman to be seen with a foreigner twenty years ago, it’s certainly not now. It’s not only open, but encouraged. My wife’s mother even told her, once upon a time, that she ‘wanted a Farang son-in-law.’ The rest is history, and a new generation of Siamese is being created, whiter and brighter. If that was something once limited to sleazy settings and GI bars, now it takes place on the Internet, the world wide web of social intercourse without borders. Live cameras have revolutionized the process, allowing potential couples to ‘chat live’, more or less in jerky motion, building new lives and healing broken hearts with broken English. Peasant girls in the Thai countryside get up at three in the morning to meet potential suitors in Europe and America, gradually settling on mutual favorites and mutual favors, like ‘going steady’ on the world wide web. The men pay the company for this service, not surprisingly, while women join free. If a potential couple hit it off, then he’ll come visit, and see what happens. Many a happy marriage has resulted, and more than a few dollars have changed hands, lonely men with plenty of money joining hands with women poor in finances, but with lots of love.

The story can get complicated, of course. Many times couples are mismatched by age or life-style, economic or emotional incentives failing to close the gap between cultures. Sometimes the men are abusive or the women are manipulative. Sometimes the companies themselves are little more than outright frauds. One company takes the customer’s money with promises of hassle-free Czech girls, educated and daring, with US entry privileges only accorded EU citizens. Once the middle-class middle-age Americans pay their money, they see girls in tattered newspaper clippings, and arrive in Prague to find equally tattered women who’ve been promised a nice meal. No refunds, no exchanges. East Europeans, in fact, dominate the marriage brokerage transactions, especially Russians, perhaps because their white skin mixes easier in pockets of Europe and America where that still matters. Thai companies seem the most aggressive, however, their ads showing up on Google searches for brides of any nationality, whether Russian, Latina, or any other Asian country. Thai commercial instincts don’t hesitate to find the back door into any market.

Of course web cams have revolutionized more than marriages. Telephone sex was rendered obsolete the day that they hit the market. Now web cam cuties line the honeycomb rookeries of the Net like girls in the windows of Amsterdam’s red light district, scantily clad with little more than a laptop, ready to perform for you in their ‘private room,’ jerky camera but an appropriate little side-joke snicker. Some of the backgrounds look suspiciously like cheap apartments in Thailand, with sparse and uninspiring furnishings. In reality, not surprisingly, most of them are probably in the Philippines. Problems arise when customers for these sites expect similar responses from good girls in legitimate dating services. Kinda’ makes you wonder what’s next. I think the Thai government’s given it some thought, hence recent attempts to make visa applications stricter and 'restore social order' by closing nightspots well before daybreak. I doubt that girls are the number one export in Thailand yet, but, like the slaving period in Africa, you have to wonder if they’re aren’t some profound sociological repercussions in the works as social demographics become shifted. The Philippines, for one, has outlawed the marriage brokerage business locally, though that hasn’t stopped other companies from ‘out-sourcing’ to the Philippines. Pinoys do speak good English, after all. Personally I wonder what happened to the good old days when you could meet women in bars. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be, after all?