What do they think?

Millions of foreigners visit Thailand each year. It is not always easy to find out what they think of our country. We can get some idea, however, from the letters they write to Postbag.

Thailand is very open to the world. Every year it welcomes millions of tourists from abroad. Hundreds of thousands of other foreigners live and work in the country.

As you would expect, visitors to Thailand quickly form their own impressions of the country. Just like Thai tourists visiting other countries, they find things to like and things to dislike. Sometimes they discover aspects of the country they think are wrong and should be improved.

Some foreigners feel so strongly that they want to speak out. One of the best places to do this is through a letter to Postbag. As you will remember from last week, Postbag is the Bangkok Post’s forum for readers. You can find it almost every day in the first section on the opinion and analysis pages.

Many of the letters are complaints. That doesn’t mean most foreigners dislike Thailand, however. People naturally seem to want to write about things that make them unhappy more than things that make them happy.

Over the years, one of the subjects foreigners visiting Thailand like to complain about most is the system at some tourist attractions of charging foreigners a higher price for admission than Thais. Such letters often generate a long series of responses, some saying the practice is justified (e.g., foreigners don’t pay Thai taxes) and others saying it is not (e.g. Thais are not overcharged in other countries).

Some of the letter writers can get quite emotional. Below is a typical example. What do you think? Does the writer make a good point?

Let’s all acknowledge the two-tier pricing structure for tourist attractions for what it is: blatant racism.

As a foreigner, I pay more money in taxes than most Thai people earn as a wage but I still have to pay the extra costs. So you can forget the foreigners don’t pay taxes argument.

It really hit home however when I went to the Grand Palace and the Crocodile Farm with a Thai friend. This individual was born in Thailand, has Thai nationality, ID card, etc., but has a very light skin colour. At both locations he was not allowed to enter as a Thai even after showing his ID card. The reason was simple: his skin was the wrong colour.

So keep all the so-called arguments and rationalisations; none work and the issue is an embarrassment for Thailand. Not apparently for the Thai government however, which continues to do nothing about it. Until it does, you will be able to see the rich Thai with the gold Rolex getting into places for a fifth of the price of the foreign backpacker at most tourist attractions.

Not all letter are complaints, however. Many tourist write in to praise something they have seen or experienced in Thailand. Others offer suggestions for how something can be improved. And, of course, a large number of letters from foreigners are not about Thailand at all. They are about important events that have occurred elsewhere in the world – like the recent fighting in Yugoslavia, for example.

This week I have included five letters written to Postbag. All were written by foreigners and all concern Thailand. Unlike some of the examples you read last week, all of these letters are direct. They mean what they say. Here are some things to consider as you read each of the letters:

• What is the writer’s purpose in writing to Postbag? Is to criticise or complain? Is to it praise something? Or is it to make a helpful suggestion? Perhaps, the writer has more than one purpose.
• If the writer is making a criticism or complaint, is it a fair one? Should something be done to improve things? If so, what? If you think the complaint is not fair, what is wrong with it?
• If the writer is making a suggestion, do you think it is a good one? Is it practical – something which can actually be carried out? Or is it impractical. Perhaps it was the result of misunderstanding something about the Thai way of doing things.
• From the example letters, can you make any statements about what kind of things foreigners want when they visit a country like Thailand?

On a recent journey by train from Bangkok to Sungai Kolok I witnessed the following:

a) A member of the kitchen staff empty the complete contents of a dustbin out the dining car window.

b) A member of staff immaculate in his brown uniform, walk the length of the carriage assiduously sweeping eight hours’ accumulated rubbish from one end to the other, ignore the available rubbish bag, and sweep the lot out into the passing Thai countryside.

c) A repeat of the above act in the adjoining carriages, and on through the 20 or so carriages making up the rest of the train.

d) A repeat of the carriage cleaning procedure described above, after a further 8-10 hours of rubbish accumulation.

With this sort of example set by those in positions of authority, it is no surprise to see a large proportion of the general population treat anywhere and everywhere as one large rubbish bin particularly when travelling in cars, buses and trains. A cursory glance at the trackside confirmed that these were by no means isolated incidents. Is it company policy?

A few weeks ago, I took my visiting friends on a canal tour in Thon Buri. Being a frequent canal tourist, I was expecting to see the usual dirty water with floating garbage.

To my surprise, we found the canals to be very clean. We encountered close to 20 garbage-collection boats during our tour. We did not spot a piece of styrofoam floating anywhere. The water was reasonably clean.

The trip was very pleasant as a result. So, whoever is in charge, keep up the good work.

There is no smoke without fire.

Some time ago, there was a fuss over the way Thai female travellers were being treated on arrival in Hong Kong by immigration.

It is indeed humiliating to be automatically suspected of being a prostitute solely on the basis of one’s nationality. But it is a fact that a large number of Thais do work as prostitutes abroad.

This traffic is illegal and is considered undesirable in Hong Kong, so naturally the immigration see it as their task to do their best to deny prostitutes access to the territory in whatever disguise they arrive.

Instead of expressing dissatisfaction with the way foreign countries handle the situation, you should take an inward look at your society.

Thailand has earned itself an unflattering reputation for prostitution by allowing a-go-go bars and the like all over the country. Every year this is reinforced in the eyes of millions of tourists and the foreign journalists and television stations who love reporting on it. This has made Thai women popular in brothels abroad and has spurred the demand for Thai prostitutes world-wide.

Thailand has a serious image problem. Shame has been allowed to be heaped on your nation by none other than greedy Thais.

Any decent Thai concerned with the dignity of the country is unlikely to find this acceptable. Sex tourism is a historical mistake and it is time to right it. There is only one way to re-jig the country's image: close down Patpong and Pattaya for good. Thailand’s reputation would soon change for the better.

You are free to leave things as they are if you want the tourism dollar at any price. But if you do that, you must keep things straight and bear in mind that sex tourism is an industry that you have deliberately chosen and then just accept the consequences.

Don’t blame the Hong Kong immigration for doing their job.

Over the last few years, the airport authority has done an excellent job in improving and systematising ground transport services for passengers on arrival at the international (and domestic) terminal.

I for one am very grateful to it for setting up a system to dispatch public metered taxis at the curb-side. My only complaint is that the desk of the Thai Limo Service is so near the exit from the immigration and customs hall that many passengers new to Thailand do not realise that public taxis are available at curb-side for about half the price.

It is unfortunate, as explained in your article "Airport at mercy of criminals" (June 13), that the airport authority has very limited legal power to effectively eliminate unauthorised taxis that are often used for scams and even an occasional murder.

I would like to make a simple suggestion that is definitely within the authorities’ power and that could help the situation considerably.

Please post large, eye-catching signs on the walls of the exit paths from the immigration and customs hall to the main arrivals hall that clearly warn passengers not to take unauthorised taxis. Make the signs in several key languages, not just English and Thai (e.g., Japanese, German, Arabic). Mention that crimes against passengers have been committed by unauthorised taxi drivers or their associates. Mention that only taxis obtained through the Thai Limo Service desk in the terminal or the Public Taxi Dispatcher desk at curb-side are authorised. Show a map locating these desks.

Of course, there will still be some passengers who do not follow this advice. However, in my experience with the many visitors I have talked to, the main problem is unfamiliarity with the situation. Providing the basic information suggested above could go a long way to curtail use of unauthorised taxis.

Are Thais honest? Conventional wisdom says: "Trust No Thais (TNT)."

Is this true? Not in my experience. This is neglecting the many millions of honest shop-owners, merchants and peddlers we deal with every day.

Well, if all are not dishonest, how can you tell the difference?

Here is my experience. Do not automatically trust the well-fed, well-dressed, smooth-talking, intensely interested, and well-endowed with gold and expensive jewellery. All these attributes speak of a person trying very hard to climb on top of his fellow man in his pursuit of the things he craves the most: money and what it buys.

Find me a owner who has good products, good rentals, and good services, and I'll show you a person who doesn’t have to abase himself in order to get business. They can afford to be honest; rather, they cannot afford not to be honest.

Now we foreigners must look ourselves in the mirror. Are we honest with ourselves? Probably not. We reach for the cheap street goods thinking we have a bargain when in truth we have just purchased seconds. If we had taken the time to go to a department store and paid just a little more, the purchase would have been rewarding.

peddlers	people who go house to house selling goods
attributes	features; qualities; characteristics
abase	to cause yourself to seem to have little importance or respect

They look like they're having fun! Tourists like these often write to Postbag with high praise for the country.

Follow-up

Collect as many examples of Postbag as you can from old issues of the Bangkok Post. Skim through thems selecting only the letters which are clearly written by foreigners. Make a list of the topics they write about. Select two or three of the most interesting ones and make a brief summary of what they say. What do you think of the points they make?

If I were still teaching English in Thailand, I would definitely make frequent use of the Postbag column in the Bangkok Post. The letters are lively and opinionated and they talk about real issues that people feel strongly enough about to write to the newspaper about.

Perhaps it is because we are an English language newspaper, but most of the letter writers are foreigners (although this is slowly changing). Not surprisingly, they often write about Thailand, particularly things they don’t like about the country or things they think should be changed. Then again, others write in praise of things that they do like.

This week I have chosen a number of recent letters to Postbag which were written by foreigners. I think your students will find them interesting, even provocative – so much so that you might want to make Postbag a regular part of your reading curriculum.

The procedure for this lesson is pretty straightforward. Just work through it from beginning to end, starting with a discussion of the introduction and the example letter it includes. You might want to have the students divide up into small groups when they read the example letters. I suggest that you have them read all the letters.

If you missed last week’s lesson, you can still find it on our Internet site at: http://www.bangkokpost.net/education/latest/ptau0999.htm. It was a rather thorough introduction to the Postbag column and it included an interview with Kanjana Spindler, the editor who is responsible for selecting the letters which appear in Postbag. It also provided some interesting examples of satire and sarcasm, both of which often cause comprehension problems for Thai students.

Next week: Tips for finding a job through the classified section. Find out what employers do with the responses they get to their "employees wanted" advertisements.

•This lesson was prepared by Acharn Terry Fredrickson, BA Stanford, MA (TESL) University of Minnesota, Manager of the Educational Services Department at the Bangkok Post and general editor of this programme.