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My Experience Coming To ThailandThailandGuru.com > History, Culture, Situation > Journals > My experience comingAfter 9/11, in view of all the warnings to American citizens around the world, I removed this web page which revealed that I am American in Thailand, particularly one who had previously worked for the U.S. government in the Washington, D.C., area. In April 2003, I put this web page back up, but added this section at the top of the page. While I consider myself more an internationalist and world citizen than an American, am independent thinking (often disagreeing with my government), and not a "superpatriot", on the other hand I am aware that there are fanatics all over the world who have crazy opinions and are full of hate in their minds and hearts, and that I could be a target of an anti-American fanatic. That was my thinking immediately after 9/11. Even a few of my Western expat clients said nasty things. For example, three of them were clients who had long unpaid bills to both myself and their own Thai employees. They were all nice asking me to do more work for them, but when I was disinterested because of their unpaid bills and salaries yet high-spending lifestyles, all three of them spit out obscenities and said things like "That's the problem with you Americans ..." There are too many barking mad crazy people in the world, who think their problems can be blamed on other people. It is times like these when I am grateful that the world's remaining superpower is a democracy of diverse people, none too powerful. We American people have many different opinions, and our patriotism generally comes from our Constitution and freedoms, not the present politicians nor all the current government policies. However, because we Americans grow up in a multi-ethnic environment (we are a pioneer culture of diverse races, religions and subcultures; and my own father didn't learn English until he went to school, and decades later chose to teach at an immigrant college on weekends), we don't tend to stereotype others like True Believers and my bad clients did. Notably, America liberated my clients' countries from Hitler and the Imperial Japanese military, we protect the world economy's oil, and now the American military is stopping weapons of mass destruction from falling into the hands of crazy fanatics and egotistical leaders, sometimes a thankless responsibility. (Saddam's tortures and killings far outnumber the collateral damage of the war, and all for no good purpose.) That does not mean that we American citizens agree with our governments on everything, such as the issue of Palestine, post-Saddam Iraq, trade issues and many other things. When I came to Thailand in 1994, every day I saw far more American flags in Thailand than I saw in the U.S. I thought that was strange, especially in Thailand, the only country in the region which was never colonized by a Western power, and so proud of that fact. In America itself, before 9/11, people who waved the American flag were often looked upon by other Americans suspiciously. Is it election time? Are they campaigning for some politician? Is a journalist scheduled to come visit them for an interview? Were they Christian fanatics of the radical right? It seemed a little overbearing. Until 9/11, when all that changed, and American flag waving became OK in America, not odd. Thailand officially maintained a neutral position on the Iraq war, which I think was the best thing for Thailand's government to do, all considered. However, there is no question about the Thai government's cooperation in the war against terrorism. Fortunately, Thailand has experienced no such terrorism, and seems unlikely to. My Circumstances and DecisionCoincidence, sometimes pure, sometimes impure, shapes our lives at different times, but what happened when I came to Thailand, and what unfolded afterwards, was entirely unpredictable. Surely, you can expect the unexpected if you're on your first trip to Asia. For me, it turned into an unexpectedly major change in my life, into a whole new world. If you want to skip the weighty decisions and circumstances surrounding my decision to come to Thailand and then to stay, and move on to my experiences here, then skip to the next section, Upon Arrival. Leading Up To The Decision To GoIt was 1994, and I had been living in the Washington, D.C., metro region since 1985, at the time in Reston, Virginia. Since 1987 when I resigned my last fulltime position, I had worked as a young communications consultant, mainly to the U.S. government, and mainly in applying the new (at the time) sector of PC clones to communications for various projects, many involving people travelling overseas with a portable computer, or based overseas with a desktop. I also did general PC computer consulting -- hardware and software. I had developed a private communications hub with an Internet gateway, in fact one of the first private and publicly accessible ISPs in the Washington, D.C., area, and the first e-mail link to many countries. This was back before the web existed, and before Windows was mainstream (in fact before the Windows version 3 graphical PC interface existed)! My system ran under MS-DOS and Unix, and clients ran under MS-DOS. Less than 1% of the U.S. population had Internet access, which back then was mainly e-mail. The graphical World Wide Web (WWW) did not exist. (Besides email, the rest was usenet, telnet, ftp and gopher.) Half of my important users were overseas, and I was nailed down to running hubs in Washington D.C. because nobody else could technically operate the system. I was somewhat envious of world travellers. I trained people technically to replace me, but you know how that goes if their heart isn't into it or if they don't have the knack. I took a lot of responsibilities upon myself. Most of my work was getting leadership and top personnel to use e-mail more to communicate with each other continuously, rather than jointly scheduling travel to meetings or total reliance on fax and being able to reach each other on the phone or schedule conference calls. I replaced fax machines with file attachments, organized information, helped people collaborate on documents, "group mail discussions", things like that. That meant first getting them to use a computer, and e-mail was the first application for many of them, word processing the second. Tutor was often an on-the-spot assignment. I did it all. I had to hire people to write our own user friendly software, do our own Internet gateways, etc., because precious little existed back then. Again, Internet was cutting edge back then for PC users. Such a scenario is laughable now, but things were very different back then, with "What is Internet?" common. Frankly, most people in government "don't really give a sh*t" in my opinion. In Washington, D.C., we have "Beltway Bandits", many of whom were taking business away from me by under-the-table methods. What irked me was that they were incompetent, yet could get contracts at higher prices. On the surface they would take pride in their position and stake out their turf, but their systems often didn't work, they didn't care to pro-actively improve things if it was not really required of them, and they were complacent to do the minimum (and less) to get their posh paycheck and keep their position. There were several strikes that really put me over the edge. First, I was carelessly replaced on a United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) - USAID project shipping food around Africa to starving people -- by an incompetent crony, under some typically very ugly and overly greedy corruption, and my eventual whistle-blowing ended my chances of consulting in that realm again. Here's what happened: Before the Somalia hunger problem, hunger was spreading around parts of Africa due to less rain. I and some associates were helping USAID with communications. We would send satellite imagery to field offices, exchange reports, analyses, news and email. All by modem. The project was called FEWS - Famine Early Warning System. People were amazed that PC-to-PC modem communications -- email, file attachments, and groupmail message conferences -- were such an improvement over faxes and phone calls. They were also amazed that technically it worked so smoothly. It became famous around the world in the development community. FEWS was an excellent project run by good people, one of the best groups of people I have ever worked for in government circles. Then came Somalia and other hungry areas. A big new project came in, a major UN-USAID bag of money. The first order of business of the USAID higher-ups was to channel the money to their friends (and I wondered what might be going on under the table), not to the appropriate skilled people for the tasks. Their second step was for their friends to try to do the work required. According to rumor, they failed in the latter, as regards the communications system. They could steal the idea, multiply the price to vast sums of money, and hire some computer guys, but their computer guys didn't really have the specialized skills and experience required, nor were they really motivated to create a complete solution. They tried to do the minimum according to the contract ... and they failed at that. After they were pressed about the schedule, they approached me very carefully, and eventually offered me money for work in exchange for assurances and reassurances that I wouldn't cause any problems to their contract. At first, they were secretive about what they needed help with. Nevertheless, the intent of their approach was clear from the start, and it didn't take long to get to the topic -- the UN-USAID communications system. I knew about it already, thru the grapevine. In Washington, there are few secrets, mainly just illusions of secrets. They paid me to set up the system and then to train a guy to replace me in running the Africa-UN/Geneva/Rome-US communications hub. Fine, I'd train another person in development communications. I'd trained many Peace Corps Volunteers and held a class for people from developing countries. No problem. I was happy to do that... ... until I met the guy hired to run the hub. This guy was a low class, lowly educated country bumpkin who didn't seem responsible, knew little about computers except playing games ... and turned out to really have only a high school education, which I would guess was a struggle to accomplish for him. Why him? He turned out to be a "#4". He was the motorcycle riding buddy of a highly placed USAID director (#1) responsible in large part for negotiating the deal with the UN-WFP. This male director was in collusion with his female deputy (#2) who used the Beltway Bandit private company of the deputy's live-in boyfriend (#3). That boyfriend's company (#3A) was the main official beneficiary of the money, and he did nothing except line up the paperwork to hire the motorcycle jockie #4 and eventually myself (#5) to train #4. My contact was for a short while, and then I was to leave completely. There were three parts. First, I was to copy my previous hub from my FEWS project, as we were prohibited from using that already-in-place and proven infrastructure. (No, they also were not interested in technology transfer -- using any of the indigenous people of each country who I or others had trained, either. Just these American contractors, beltway bandits.) After equipment problems with their hardware contractor were finally fixed, I set up the hub, which the motorcycle country bumpkin would be trying to operate. The hub took one day to set up. Secondly, I needed a few days to create a link and gateway to the UNICC (U.N. International Computing System). The UNICC had an expensive software system that didn't work well enough, which is why they had come to USAID and myself for our FEWS solution. (Furthermore, the other computer "specialists" said the gateway was not feasible due to incompatible systems. In contrast, I had the solution, and it took just a few days.) Thirdly, and finally, most of the contracted time was training the motorcycle country bumpkin. That proved a waste of time. Fortunately, I was used to automating things, and the hub worked well on AUTOPILOT (plus fault-tolerance and self-diagnostics). The motorcycle country bumpkin sure as hell couldn't do much more than watch a technical screen he'd never understand (you don't turn a high school graduate into a computer and Internet system administrator in a short time) and write e-mail. I trained him as best I could, but emphasized that if there's a problem, then call me or someone who knows the system. I checked back a couple of times in the first month. The system worked so well, and so much better than faxes and phone calls, that the U.N. WFP became heavily dependent upon it. Nobody on the USAID was interested in talking to me further about it, though. Thanks, bye now, and go away, far away! Butt out. I heard nothing back for months ... until one day, several months later, I got a call from Rome from a colleague with the UN WFP. We'd met at the beginning of the project, and after I'd proven myself professionally, we'd progressed to trusted and friendly communications, e.g., he jokingly would refer to me as the "Moorish prince" and things like that. But here was a telephone call, and he was YELLING, asking WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON THERE? The Washington hub had been down for 2 weeks, vital food was not getting to its destinations, logistics were a shambles, the e-mail communications were dead for 2 weeks, and the USAID people had blamed it on me, the scapegoat. After informing my UN WFT associates, to their surprise, that I was cut out of the operations months back, and what was really going on (which they were not surprised about -- it seemed more the norm than the exception in the world, even with the U.S. government), I was immediately hired and authorized to go fix the hub -- which I found UNATTENDED and nobody around it claimed to even know what it did! Almost unbelievable gross negligence and irresponsibility. So, where was the motorcycle riding buddy of the USAID administrator? It didn't take long to find out, that the motorcycle riding buddy was on an expenses paid "working" tour of Africa, where he had been for a few weeks. They had just left the hub unattended, because it has run so well on autopilot. I found that hard to believe, but apparently nobody else had come in and fixed the hub. I eventually located the motorcycle buddy, kind of. He was unreachable at that moment, but was believed to be somewhere within a game park near Victoria Falls. Officially, he had been sent out to train people how to use the communications software. (Besides the fact that it had a simple install.exe , was very user friendly, and I'd even written an easy-to-use manual for it, that guy was also not the person to send out to train other people. He could hardly use it himself, and there were many other people -- in addition to myself -- who would have been better people to send. They sent a country hick to train field people.) At the Washington company where the hub was set up, nobody around it knew what the hub in that room was for. Everybody was saying "I don't know" in a way that implied "don't blame me!". The hub had failed for a simple reason. Someone in the company had turned off the computer, opened it up, made a small hardware change, closed it and left it. Never mind that it wouldn't boot up because of an error message related to the new hardware. Unbelievable. Nobody really cared, either. Let me tell you, the above is not uncommon. More often than not, it seems few people really give a sh*t. In 15 minutes, I had changed the hardware to its original state and the computer booting up again. It automatically resumed where it had left off 2 weeks before. I didn't need to do anything except watch it start to catch up on communications automatically. I browsed some of the traffic going thru. Two week old messages reported things like these examples:
Remember, this was 1993. I told everyone involved on the USAID side that their corruption not only cut out vital communications between travelling professionals (and put them at risk) but also caused countless people to starve. It put me over the edge, and I started complaining about things like the perks of flying Americans to the beach resort of Mombasa, Kenya, for a meeting that would be better done in Washington, especially in view of bean-counting budget cuts whereby even petty cash expenses on important things were rejected. (Others noted other graft in a resigned way -- what's new?) Some people were really angered that I had noted some children probably starved to death because of their greed. Others said "business is business". To make a long story short, I was axed for whistle-blowing on that particular "good 'ol boys" network and starting to complain about similar forms of corruption, and that made me quite unlikely to be hired by anyone around them again. It wasn't the first time I'd experienced something like that. On another aid project, I had been called in to load software onto a shipment of computers going to a poor country, as part of U.S. aid. The computers were failing to run the software (unstable, crashing within 15 minutes, all of them), and I clearly identified the two faulty parts. They were mass produced with the same parts. The cheapest you could make. I requested they exchange these two parts, and the supplier agreed to do so for a very small amount of money. Unfortunately, the contractor was extremely greedy and disallowed it. In their words, they already had someone ready in the other country to "sign off" on the shipment, and all that was needed was that the computers would boot up to an MS-DOS prompt if turned on for 1 minute at the cargo reception place. In no uncertain terms: "We don't care" after that, and the computers didn't actually need to work. The owner of that company, who was the person I spoke with making the above decisions, was formerly a deputy secretary of a major U.S. government agency, and had a special award from a U.S. President in regard to his company's work. To make a long story short, I made sure those computers didn't ship out. (There were no heavy duty dramas, since they had not shipped out yet, but it did require some careful discussion to get authorization to fix the computers.) Things like that really disillusioned me about the government aid system. After the above experiences, I thought it would be the last time I would deal with "foreign aid" and USAID ... The prospects of foreign travel became dim. I picked up work with a good friend who was a Director of a branch of ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) in a "defense conversion" project by Presidential Directive. (Co-Incidentally, this ARPA director had lost a son in Mozambique while serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer, who died in a traffic accident during a rain on the road to the airport.) President Clinton and Al Gore wanted to minimize job losses due to cuts in defense spending by converting selected high tech defense industries into commercial businesses, and it became my job to network people in both industry and government -- get them onto the information superhighway and "networking" with each other -- with private e-mail, mailing lists, "group discussions", bulletin boards, announcements, etc. The top guys were great, the pay was good, and several of my first networking "clients" were dynamic and creative people with good ideas to implement. That was at the top. However, as I moved down the ranks, most of my networking "clients" were typical government deadwood -- stuffy, narrowminded and rather dense. There was political motivation, rather than technical motivation, for many of the targetted groups I was supposed to get up and running on e-mail, for the simple reason that their programs were at the top of the list for getting cut, and a lot of people were about to lose their jobs. I was supposed to get them networked with both internal (defense) and external (nondefense) industry news sources, in addition to leaders formulating future work needs. People needed to be reassigned to new work before their contracts were terminated. They had ARPA, the best networked agency, trying to help them. Most didn't want the help. They were content to put their heads in the sand and continue their day to day tasks as if somehow tomorrow would work itself out and nothing would change. The whole process of trying to get many of these technology contractors to go commercial was farcical. At each site, there was usually one or two bright guys who would familiarize me with their operation, technical sector ... and the realities of their corporate culture and employees. I'd travel and arrive with everything free because it was already paid for -- my time, a modem, already-paid-for software and manual. Most went along with a minimalist attitude, sometimes even joking in a brush-off way about the ARPA director in Washington (who they didn't know was my friend) as if I was a fellow beltway bandit (which technically I was). Some would actually refuse to let me install it and train them on something called "Internet" because it wasn't part of the contract, and they wanted more money in their contract for this new task called "Internet access" BEFORE I could do anything. Even though I'd flown or driven a long distance there. It sometimes took an hour of phone calls and faxes to turn the previous verbal plans into a permitted action. For example, I went to Bath, Maine, to connect a shipyard whose defense contract was ending but which had operations with commercial potential which had not been tapped. The union would not let me install the Internet kit because I was not part of the union, but they had nobody else able to install it, and they weren't really interested. I left having accomplished NOTHING. Indeed, they went on strike two days later, demanding higher wages and benefits, even though the end of their contract was imminent within a few months. (Despite the end of the Cold War, they could not believe that after 40 years the shipyard would be shut down. They thought their congressman would cut a deal to keep them going. It didn't happen, and people were laid off with severance pay, or retired early, or relocated, with a lot of complaints about joblessness and a local recession in their town.) There were similar things happening on other projects, which I need not go into, but it was much the same kind of story as the above two cases. I was really tired of government contracting. So don't tell me it's not that bad. I've seen it with my own two eyes, full stop. Forget much of the propaganda that comes out in newsletters, and leaders on the pulpit with great stump speeches and speechwriters. The above is actually not as bad as it gets, but is relatively innocuous. It's MUCH worse than that in other realms. I'm not a cynic but an optimist, and a pretty robust one. But the above events pretty much made me feel that I was wasting the precious time of my young, energetic and creative life on organizations full of careless deadwood. Money is not an end to me, it's a means. As one of my close associates kept telling me, "nobody really gives a sh*t", and sometimes it seemed true about too many people. If I were to start whistle-blowing again, then "be careful, and watch your back." After too many years of this, I was up for a change. I was totally burned out on government related work. I had a lot of money in the bank by then, and I was thinking of investing in my own next stage Internet ventures (in early 1994) when ... One day at the end of a client session, I retrieved from my answering machine a series of messages from a frantic woman who worked for a USAID contractor which had used my system in the past, and which was unrelated to the aforementioned corrupt group. "Jane" couldn't log into my system and URGENTLY needed to exchange e-mail with someone in Thailand, having used my system for quite some time. The Asia Regional Office is located in Thailand, so I gave it priority. Gee, I'd hardly ever dealt with Asia in any way. "Sure, I'll fix you right up!" Logging in and checking the logs, she had been automatically cut off from the system due to excess login time because she had ignored warnings to switch to an offline e-mail read/write program. (All you had to do was download two files and run the one called INSTALL.EXE but she was a computer neophyte, which was common back then.) Their in-house computer guy couldn't help her because it was for ... her HOME, not her office ... and no, it wasn't for official business, though in probing conversation she was also professional and seemed to have a lot of contacts, indeed dangling out some referral prospects, so after some pleading, I said "OK, OK... I'll stop by when I'm in the area ... within a few days". Small chance, I thought at the time, hoping that maybe she would get someone else to help her set up a new account. I got lots of calls like that from neophytes, and the time of travel round trip usually made it not worth the consultation time, plus they usually found someone to download and run the INSTALL.EXE program within a day or two. Late that same evening, I was scheduled to set up a Washington Post reporter with e-mail. (Yes, even many of them didn't have e-mail in early 1994, living by fax.) I got to their home in D.C. but nobody was there. Waited, nobody came. This was long before small mobile phones emerged. Not far from Jane in Arlington, Virginia, I thought, and only 10pm, then saw a phone booth nearby. Hmmm... and made a decision that would unwittingly change my life. She said she'd adjust to the late schedule, and we agreed I'd stop by. It was a brief visit whereby I set up her offline e-mail package, but there was a chemistry there. She told me that she had worked and lived in Thailand before, spoke the language well there (could even read/write), and was trying to get an assignment back in Bangkok. She was not the typical beltway bandit mentality, and indeed she was a former Peace Corps Volunteer, the kind of person I hold in high esteem. However, what she did NOT tell me was that she had a serious boyfriend in Thailand. She DID tell me she was working on getting an assignment in Thailand, which was true, but not the complete story. We spoke again the next day and met, and things took off into a romance and an exposure to an almost unbelievable life of hers, with lots of world travels. Eventually, from messages on her answering machine, I found out that the aforementioned URGENT communications with Thailand were to a serious boyfriend in Bangkok (an American). She had started losing interest in him after meeting me, but her previously begun strong search for an expat assignment in Bangkok were already producing results, apparently past the point of no return -- she was going to Bangkok anyway, or else everyone who had been pulling their weight for her would be aghast. I was also kind've coaching her on interviewing, not that she needed it, but it kept me engaged in her process. She had one particular "dream assignment" that she had been discussing with the people in charge, almost too good to be true, and it looked like it would work out. A Director wanted to get someone into the position quickly -- before the end of the fiscal year in September, and Jane fit the bill. When Jane went to meet again with the Director to finalize some details (and there was no contract), I tagged along with her with the intention of waiting outside. The Director was a middle-aged, strong woman of action and a voice of authority. During the course of their discussions, Jane mentioned in more casual, friendly conversation that her boyfriend (me) sitting outside was a communications consultant and named several of my high profile USAID clients, explaining what I do. The Director boomed "I've been looking for someone like that!!" Before long, it was "You're going too!" Huh? Asia was the most backward of all regions when it came to the communications networks of the U.S. government and its contractors. (No, it wasn't Africa, thanks to me. Asia was the only place that seemed to be still running on fax nearly 100%.) My first reaction was, well, maybe I could go to visit and do some short consultations, but I have a lot of work to do here and am nailed down to my infrastructure and clients in D.C. Go deal with a government bureaucracy and its contractors in a place as culturally different as Asia? I'd be dependent on this small niche. An associate with another branch of the U.S. government quipped that the USAID people in Bangkok were a bunch of head cases. If I stay in the U.S., then if the bullsh*t became too much, I could always switch clients, as there were many interesting private organizations, individuals and companies who valued my services. Indeed, I often had switched. I am fiercely independent about doing what's right, which is why I'm a consultant. I don't "need" to agree with my paymasters, and can change work anytime. But in Asia, I would be locked in, as I couldn't consult to Asians ... ... Or could I? Western multinationals? Aw, come on, you can't say you can't. Who knows... check it out. There were lots of expat multinationals, too, and it was a far cry from the Washington DC economy. I had a round trip ticket in hand at no cost to me, and a place to stay with free rent. I could always bail out if I didn't like it. For development of less developed countries, I believed in "Trade, not aid". This is what most non-corrupt people in less developed countries ask for. They don't want U.S. government aid, as it just feeds the banks accounts of -- and strengthens -- corrupt vote-buying politicians and their power base of contractors. What the mainstream people want is access to western markets, and lower trade barriers, especially for farm products. "Trade, not aid." I was eager to get into the purely private sector overseas. I was feeling burned out and up for a change and adventure. You aren't young and single forever, and I had savings in the bank. Maybe I'd turn over my system to my best-trained associates, go consult in Bangkok for awhile, travel around the region, maybe find some interesting work, then either return or else wind up in Australia or New Zealand when it was time to set up a base again. It was an idea to dream upon ... and seriously consider. The decision was made: just do it. Implement. They wanted Jane out there quickly, and despite delays in getting a written contract out of the mill and ready for signatures, the Director's power was reassuring, and we started to shut down our work projects, pack our things for domestic storage, and prepare our moving items without a signed contract. By the time the important loose ends were tied up, I was so enthusiastically looking forward to it that I almost couldn't wait to get on the plane. We were very early to the airport, relaxed and dreaming. It seemed surreal. Admittedly, I knew little about Thailand and the region. When Jane had first said "Thailand" shortly after we met, the first things to come to my mind were Seagate hard disks, Vietnam War air bases, Golden Triangle poppies on mountains, Thai Buddhist temple architecture, long tailed boats and Thai food. I knew practically nothing about the people or culture except they were somewhat dark skinned and had a lot of Asian in their eyes. I did know that reading about a place is no comparison to coming and experiencing the places, and my own modern observations and analysis often differed significantly from what I read.
We had a lot of material produced by USAID and the State Dept. introducing us to Thailand and Bangkok, but it was obvious that it was woefully inadequate. While I've come to expect government services to be less than the minimum acceptable standard of quality, I was still surprised that this is what someone provided to us. On the other hand, it laid the groundwork for me to realize the need for something like ThailandGuru.com
My first glimpse of an Asian city was Taipei, Taiwan when the plane landed for refueling. However, that just doesn't compare to stepping out into the street, the outside air and the open environment. Nationalist China. Nonetheless, it's a noteworthy warmup to Asia. In Bangkok, going thru passport processing and the airport, I was pleasantly charmed by the intrinsic nature of the Thais. The sanskrit writing was a bit intimidating, and for the first time I felt illiterate. Now was the time to start learning the alphabet. Eventually, I reached my next goal: stepping outside the airport into the open environment. A little warm, slightly musky, but not too unlike my native Arkansas or Virginia. First order of business was taxiing to our condo, and the metered taxis are very nice ... and amazingly cheap! As we rode down the highway, I was amazed to see so many modern highrise buildings. The road infrastructure was excellent, pretty much as good as anywhere in the world. (Now, in 2003, many westerners say the freeways are better and nicer than in their own country!) I was also struck by how colorful the city was, as Thais like neon signs, fluorescent paints and curvy designs with nice matching colors. The Thai music on the radio was quite charming and relaxing, and the whole ambiance was wonderful. We had no idea what our apartment/condo looked like, and I had long imagined a cement place rustic by western standards. However, I was starting to get some hope that it was, well, maybe in a modern part of town, hopefully? It was at the end of a place called Sukhumvit soi 4, Sethiwan Palace, and wow, it looked pretty nice. Guards opened the gate, and I got my first feel for "servants" in Thailand. When we walked into our condo, our breath was taken away. It was nothing like we imagined. We had a super-modern 8th floor condo with an open view off the terrace facing west towards the expressway. Three large bedrooms, each with its own private bathroom. Fully furnished. Large dining room, living room, terrace and kitchen, and a small laundry room on a small side terrace. Still another room for the maid, with separate entrance. There are just two of us, so why do we deserve all this space? Holy moly, we can fill only a fraction of it with our belongings. What an expat package! (I later found out that the rental was $3000/month. We paid nothing, it was covered for us.) All this for just two people? I felt guilty about it. But Jane was a workhorse, and she was one of a minority of people in USAID who I felt earned and deserved her money and perks. We were oohing and aahing and giggling. Unbelievable. After awhile looking off the terrace and out the windows, we headed out, with the grocery store as our only meaningful destination. It was clear to me that we were in a foreigner center, as we weren't exactly surrounded by Thais. It was as if we were two of countless foreigners surrounded by Thai support people and servants, as all the Thais around us were clearly of the service class. Even as we walked down our soi, there were service people of restaurants and other commercial outlets who were so ... well ... "serving" of customers. Where are some Thais dressed professionally or driving a car? I didn't know it, but out of all of Bangkok, our soi was on one of only three big Western expat go-go bar complexes, this one called "Nana Plaza", near the mouth of the soi. As we approached it, I heard lots of Western rock music and noticed increasing numbers of open air bars filled with Western male expats with patronizing young Thai women, as well as the sidewalk walking population. Jane was the only western woman I saw outside our condo complex (and we were young for our condo). Then we passed the entrance to Nana Plaza itself. I looked in and was overwhelmed. I'd never seen anything like it before in my life. I was also embarrassed to be there, standing right in front. Jane was half laughing and half pulling me along. My first question was: "Is this common in Asia? Is this typical for Bangkok?" I was totally amazed. Then came Sukhumvit Road, filled with traffic and sidewalks crowded with merchants selling to foreigners. Jane then revealed to me that we had been set up right smack in the middle of a tourist area, but that was good because we had Western groceries and restaurants. A most pleasant surprise was that the grocery store was like one in the West, though the selection wasn't exactly the same. Nonetheless, lots of familiar western products, fresh and clean meats, and practically everything I wanted. This grocery store clearly catered to the local expat demand, and even seemed to go out of its way to. No problem with groceries here, getting what I want. On the way back, Jane suggested we go in and see a go-go bar in Nana Plaza, figuring I was a guy and would be curious, and better to go with her. So, with bags of groceries in hand, we walked into a bar on the ground level, sat down and got a beer. To my amazement, there were a dozen NAKED girls dancing on the stage in front of me, and a dozen girls in only a swimsuit bottom on the stage across the room. Right there, live, and available for any expat to do as they please with, for small money by Western standards. I just sat there and observed the variety of human genitalia and breasts live in front of me. This wasn't some movie or magazine, this was for real, happening right in front of me, real people, real time. And I saw a few guys take girls out of the bar, presumably to their own hotel room or apartment to serve as a sex toy. As we exited, my ears were ringing from the music, my head was a little buzzed from the beer plus jet lag (it was 11pm Bangkok = 11am Washington), and I was looking down a long sidestreet on the other side of the world. "Where am I? Is this for real? Well, here I am..." The next morning, I was waken up by the bright sun, having forgotten to pull the shades on the beautiful city lights the night before. "Good morning, Bangkok!" We spent a long time drinking coffee on the terrace. So many beautiful skyscrapers, so many under construction, tropical plants, Asian houses and apartment blocks, Asian language billboards looking at all the traffic buzzing by on the roads, driving on the left side, the scattered sidewalk vendors selling food, motorcycle taxis... Jane "hit the ground running" workwise, as people took advantage of her willing workhorse nature, and I was left to set up the apartment with all the necessities. That meant going out to department stores. Since I couldn't speak Thai, I carried business cards of Sethiwan Palace to show taxis for the return trip. My neighbors were very helpful, especially the spouses who were home during the day. There is no substitute for having someone there to answer your questions, give tips and generally make sure you're not alone in a strange part of the world. The printed guidance literature which I came with, as well as the guide books at the bookstore, were grossly inadequate at helping me get oriented as an expat LIVING in Thailand. (ThailandGuru.com was motivated by these experiences.) I headed out with gusto. Watching how things are done, I just hopped on buses going up and down Sukhumvit during the day, jumping out when I saw something interesting. At first, if they turned, I got out immediately, backtracked, and took the next one. However, with the eventual aid of a map with bus numbers (duhhh...), I started going all over Bangkok. I figured that if I got lost or went too far out, then I could always catch a taxi back home, with the help of the Sethiwan business card which had a map on the back. The taxis know enough English to understand the main places to go like the grocery and department stores, and tourist spots. Anywhere else and you should carry dual language sheets of paper. However, taxis remove a lot of the intimate adventure compared to hopping buses and walking, if you can take the heat and daytime vehicle pollution. (I walked on the upwind side of the road.) Your first Thai-style outside eating is a watershed experience. Just start with hot foods, and better not too late in the day because I believe they get their daily food supplies in the morning. Since ordinary street Thais and department store employees don't speak English, it's like you're an illiterate deaf mute when shopping, though there's easily enough English to get by in the expat centers. Usually you can get by without pains elsewhere, too. The Thai music helps charm and sooth you. However, all the initial shopping required to get settled in is a real chore, finding things and not always being able to ask the department store employees for help. I recommend one of the bigger English-Thai dictionaries, not the pocket ones. Jane was jealous. She was working hard, I was out exploring. Jane had always been jealous, even before we came. She said "The Thais are going to love you", because I was pretty notorious for being laid back and non-macho for a Western guy, with a friendly smile. One day in the first week, I came back with a bunch of plants. Eventually Jane and her associates asked me where I got them. "Soi 63 and 71," I replied. Some of them looked at me with wide eyes: "So far!" My reaction: Far? Ha! Before I bought the plants, I went a lot further than that! After awhile, I could tell which of my neighbors were less exploresome and adventurous than others. I felt that hey, I wasn't such a newbie at this after all, not quite on the very bottom rung any more. I love to explore the ordinary parts of culture, not just the tourist sights. From all accounts, Bangkok was a safe city, quite unlike Washington, D.C. After more than 7 years here, it continues to be the case. I take reasonable cautions, but it's remarkably safe, especially for a male. I did people-watching at suburban malls, explored odd parts of town, took the buses to the ends of their routes and then back, rented a motorcycle and wandered, and after sunset ate and drank beer at the "Christmas light restaurants" (as I'd call them) in the more natural settings, just careful to finish before the last bus headed back in, or making sure to have enough cash for a long taxi ride. The first 4 months I didn't make an effort to speak or understand much Thai. I wasn't sure I'd be here long. In fact, most of the Thais I circulated with were professionals who spoke fluent English. I could get by shopping and in other things without knowing much more than the numbers and pointing to a dictionary. However, things stopped working out between Jane and I after 3 months, and I started thinking about whether to stay in Thailand or go elsewhere. In my free time, I'd been mixing with some Australians and British who were in the multinational engineering and construction business and who needed computer consulting help. After about 3 months, I moved out at the end of December, and stopped my USAID related effort (picking up my last money in February for an Asia communications infrastructure survey). Actually, I moved more than 20 kilometers away to an almost 100% Thai area, where there were precious few foreigners, and nobody knew where I was except by e-mail. Sometimes I wouldn't see another foreigner for days. That was Bangkapi, specifically the Ramkamhaeng soi 24 area, where I moved into a nice modern studio 12th floor apartment with a fantastic view off a nice terrace. The building was filled with English-speaking students of Assumption Business Administration College, the only suburban English-speaking university. Rent was a laughable $200/month, plus electricity (mainly air conditioning) of approximately $50. I often preferred the 12th floor breeze instead of a/c. It had a swimming pool, weight room, sauna, convenience store and Thai restaurant with room delivery, all on the second floor. It's not the kind of place I discovered in a day. It was the product of a lot of research and exploring around, and came after going to a lot of other places. Like in business, it came after a lot of patience and perseverance. However, there are a lot of these kinds of places spread around, albeit usually with Thais who don't speak such good English. Someday, I plan to write some journal articles of my experiences there, and at subsequent places in the region, including houses in nice neighborhoods. You must learn the language in order to better understand the culture. It's also vital for functionality, and is the key to opening up all kinds of doors. Thus, learning the Thai language was the next thing on the agenda. It's my fourth language and third alphabet. It started with tapes and I hired daily "tutors" (chosen for their clarity of speech) to accompany me to read my phrase books slowly and clearly (1000 baht per day to accompany me, which was about 4 times the typical Thai daily wage). I started to learn to read common and ordinary signs on the street, and learned the alphabet this way, but I felt that my progress was less than satisfactory. I got a big jump start when I met a female small businessperson on the street who had a radio quality voice, and fell in love. Every sound she spoke I remembered. It's funny how love does those things to you. She was so lovely, pleasant ... and patient. That mutual infatuation lasted a month, but I learned far more in the first two weeks with her than I had learned in the previous 6 months. I went thru multiple phrasebooks. Fortunately, she was less interested in English that I was in Thai, and loved to help me speak Thai. In fact, I reached a "critical mass", whereby I was functional in Thai society and my rate of learning was accelerating. Actually, to this day, I still don't know the names of some of the letters of the alphabet, but I know their sounds and can read words with them. To me, it helps if I can graphically visualize the word in my mind. Otherwise, I don't remember it as well. Once I could speak Thai fairly well, and politely, Thais responded to me with extra charm, and all kinds of doors opened up. Fortunately, I learned mainstream Thai, not the kind of Thai spoken in the tourist sections. However, once or twice a week I'd go back into the expat areas and socialize with foreigners. The world travellers made for good adventure conversation, but I started gravitating to certain pubs which were watering holes for those in the engineering and construction business. All those beautiful skyscrapers were going up, and industrial parks were also sprouting along the eastern seaboard. Many of the engineers, project managers, architects and others tended to hang out in certain pubs, and I got to know a few. They were mostly Australians and British. I decided to try to work for these multinational companies as a computer consultant. Since I'd also studied mechanical and electrical engineering for 3 years, and had a B.Sc. degree in physics plus some engineering experience, and a lot of self-taught knowledge, I could talk shop with them and help them with engineering software. That was the beginning of my main clientele from 1995 to around the year 2000. It was very easy to get work from 1995 to 1997, much easier than I'd imagined before I came. I had far more work than I could do. I outsourced to other expats and Thais. The pay was great. If I woke up in the morning with a clear mind and felt creative, then I could do creative writing and other personal things for several hours, then when creative energy was ebbing I could pick up the phone and call a few project managers to find work to do in the afternoon, almost without fail. In fact, they preferred that I work on the computers and networks at night when I wouldn't interrupt people. I had keys to several places, and would often work until midnite. However, that kind of work came to a screeching halt for most expats when the mid-1997 Asia Economic Crash happened. I still provide consulting for that community up thru today, based on referrals, albeit at a much lower volume, and the pay rate isn't as good. I was forced to diversify in my work starting in 1997. The vast majority of my expat associates left Thailand right after the 1997 crash, and there was a constant dropping of stragglers from die-hard companies up until around 1999. Why I stayed starts with my first wife and daughter. In 1995, I had met a Thai lady who worked for a Thai architecture company, and we got married. Our daughter, Angela, was born in September, 1996. Basically, my savings had reached their peak in mid-1997 when the crash occurred. The Thai currency, the Baht, was floated in July 1997 and plummeted in value, and with it the value of my savings when converted into foreign currency, though it was the same if spent locally. Within a few months, it became less than half its value in terms of conversion into US dollars. By this time, construction of practically all the unfinished office and residential buildings in Bangkok had nearly stopped, due to the popping of the speculative property market and the banking crisis. Construction of factories on the Eastern Seaboard subsequently had slowed due to the projected recession in demand. Most expats left, many without their last paycheck and told they must buy their own ticket, contrary to the contract. Leases were broken. I had recently settled into a new home with my family and thought that a computer consultant could always find work. During the 1995-99 period, I also did a lot of travelling around Asia. After the crash of 1997, I considered following friends and associates to other countries to do work, and indeed did a little bit of consulting in the Philippines and Singapore. However, my travels only made me appreciate the wonderful elements of Thai culture and Thailand. My wife also much preferred Thailand. The first mistake I made in 1997 was underestimating the depth of the recession and how it would affect my business -- that the work available to computer consultants would disappear as much as it did. The second mistake was not curtailing my expat spending habits enough. Late 1997 and 1998 were spent largely idling. For the first time, I had time to finish writing a book I had started on before coming to Thailand, which was based on work I did before becoming a computer consultant. I self-published it. You can see an on-line version at www.permanent.com It was an important accomplishment in my life. In late 1998 and 1999, I was getting concerned by the recession for two reasons. First, work had slowed far worse than I expected, and secondly, many clients were not paying on time ... if they were paying at all. Many companies had staff who were several months behind in pay, and continued to work only because there were no alternative jobs. They hoped they would get paid. There were a lot of things I learned in 1998-99: Life in a deep recession. Companies who hire you to do work and then don't pay their bills, delaying indefinitely. How to find out about who really can and cannot pay their debts. How to deal with those who can but don't pay their debts. How to avoid such bad situations in the future. Adjusting my rates downward to match client's financial strength ... way downwards! With the help of my first wife, I also learned what it's like to live like a Thai, which is very useful in understanding employees, their situations and their values. However, I have standards and ambitions in life which go way beyond what Thais around me could comprehend. I was having all kinds of difficulties trying to set up a new business with this first wife. Financial pressures were stressful enough. I questioned whether she could function in the USA, but I didn't want to start over there, and I'm not a quitter, so I decided to pursue my business ideas in Thailand. I needed a lot of Thai assistance but my wife was not able to help much and we argued a lot. Eventually, I split with my wife, packed up some things and moved back to Bangkok. I would definitely do much better the next time around, based on what I had learned. Initially, I did a variety of things. I wanted to quit doing I.T. consulting in Bangkok (at low rates) and focus on other things, but I needed all the money I could get. I also worked by internet, creating a few websites for people overseas. From my experience in property development, I thought there was a niche market in real estate helping foreigners to find quality homes, especially in the suburbs to take advantage of the new expressway infrastructure which was emplaced from 1998 to 2000. My main difficulty was finding *competent*, reliable and loyal Thai help based on commissions, as I had no savings left to guarantee salaries. Thais like fulltime jobs with big companies ... I had a new Thai female companion, Wanida, a former friend who had switched careers from journalism to running her own business successfully (despite many tough challenges), and I was impressed with her competency, perseverance, and care for other people. Her relaxed self-confidence and poise made it easy to miss her keen business sense. She didn't show off anything. In many ways, she was quite exceptional. She is from southern Thailand (Nakhon Sri Thammarat), and from a humble background, but her father was a teacher and community leader, and I came to appreciate her nature. We talked a lot about joining together, as we each had important strengths that the other one lacked, so we would make a good team. (Wanida eventually became my wife.) My friend Sam in New Zealand, who I had met on the internet when he volunteered to do artwork for the PERMANENT website, offered to come to Thailand to help me develop some of my business ideas. He came in 2001. Sam filled in some other key skills gaps. We were 3 different kinds of people, with different but very complimentary skills sets, and similar personal values and interests. We founded two companies, Export Quality Services Co., Ltd., and Serena Property Co., Ltd., the latter named after my second daughter Selene Serena. Things picked up very quickly from that point in 2002. However, it's worth rewinding back to 1998-1999 for a moment. I was no longer a wealthy foreigner in Thailand. By the end of 1999, I'd never been so poor in my life. I also learned who were my real friends and who were not, e.g., people who I had previously gone out of my way to help or lent money to, but they were not helping me back. Some got big work contracts overseas but did not pay me back, nor did they outsource to me. A few others didn't do little things, like not letting me use their truck to move. That was as ugly as seeing the expats who were blowing big money at go-go bars while not paying Thai staff small money salaries, or myself as a consultant. When times get tough, you start to see who is good and who is not. One thing I learned is that overall, my core Thai friends and associates were more concerned and reliable friends than my remaining expat friends. Some of my Thai friends would call and ask how I'm doing and make sure I was OK, saying they are worried because I was a foreigner in Thailand. However, there were both Thais and foreigners who not only fell out of friendship but actually seemed to want to rub in my misfortunes relative to theirs, a relative status thing. I have no regrets about becoming relatively "poor" for the first time in my life since I left the university in the mid-1980s. In Thailand, you aren't going to starve. There's always work and you don't need to take on really bad clients, though sometimes you do take on clients that you previously wouldn't. It just doesn't pay at Western hourly rates any longer, and you must compensate by either living more like a Thai ... ... until you can ramp up a company with multiple employees who can produce better profitably. Getting good employees who have the required skills is the challenge. Unlike some companies, in my company I paid myself last. I always paid others and settled my debts first. In 1999-2001, I had gone thru a few small partnerships with Thai friends. They were profitable enough for them, but not for me, and I eventually moved on, leaving the business to them. Notably, in 1998, my cash-strapped landlord sold the house I was renting (at an amazingly low cash price, and didn't return our deposit, either, long story, plus valuables went missing), so we moved out on short notice, and I decided that it was time to put our things into "storage" and move back to the U.S. I moved all our stuff to my first wife's provincial home in the province of Nakhon Pathom, which is just 50 km west of Bangkok. However, this proved well within easy driving distance for freelance consulting, and not a lot different than the suburban Bangkapi/Minburi area in which we previous lived, as regards Bangkok consulting. We lived close to the next big river, the "Ta Jeen" River (translation: "port Chinese", and my half-Chinese first wife's pioneering grandfather had parked his boat there and homesteaded), also known as the Nakhon Chai Sri River. It is a fairly nice, open aired and peaceful place, the Internet connection was OK and it was a nice break from the excessive rent we were paying for a luxurious house in Bangkok. My daughter grew real close to her grandma, grandpa and community, and we started having second thoughts about moving to the U.S., where I would start all over from scratch. I also had my doubts as to whether my first wife would be happy or even functional there. I got back in contact with some old associates in the U.S. while looking into my options, and indeed got some consultations by referrals in the Washington DC area, for work IN Thailand, mainly web research and some development work, and it was good to touch base with them after 5 years, but it was small scale and they just didn't have much work to give me, especially given new laws against outsourcing overseas by the government. There were much better opportunities if I were to move back to the Washington DC area, but the idea of going back and doing the same old things all over again didn't appeal to me. I wanted to move forward in life, not go backwards. I decided to at least set up a base in Thailand, and branch out from there, maybe to India and eastern Europe for offshore labor (see below), maybe Australia as another residence. I formulated a more diversified new business plan, with two parts, one Thailand and one overseas. On the overseas front, I started exporting skilled Thai labor by Internet, but I had a difficult time finding Thai people who were as productive and competitive as Indians, Russians, and some eastern Europeans. The language barrier is also stiff. While there are good Thais here, the demand outstrips supply as regards quality. After awhile, I switched my business model from trying to get Thais to do advanced things, to deciding what Thais *could* do well and building a business around that. It started with Thai-English language translations for business, and expanded into company setup for foreigners, office setup, and various other support services for foreigners coming to Thailand to work and live. The property side of our business -- finding homes for foreigners -- is what we enjoy the most and as a result has become the biggest part of our business. This is what the staff likes doing the most. For customers' advanced needs, I deal with the customers. Nobody else can do that well enough, because as a foreign businessman I understand other foreign businessmens' needs and interests. I am the most highly and diversely skilled, partly based on my experience dealing with hundreds of clients and situations as a consultant for 15 years, but also because business requires strong analysis and problem solving ability which is hard to find -- complete solutions, and often creative solutions. I also like meeting business people in the course of this kind of work. You will see some of our business divisions mentioned on this website, and some even have their own website:
This is what my Thai staff enjoy doing and who I have trained well. Sam and I are still the only foreigners, though I'm quite open to involving some other foreigners in my business as a strategic partner or more. In RetrospectIt's clear to me that I missed the Internet gold rush of the 1990s, which I was uniquely positioned for in 1994. That is my only regret in coming to Thailand, though a huge one. I also got my book and main website, PERMANENT, up and running, something I had neglected to do since 1987. The lack of work after the Asia Economic Crash, particularly in 1997-98, was what resulted in my finishing the book. It's my most important lifetime work, and it may not have gotten done if I had not gotten out of my busy lifestyle in the U.S. and isolated myself in a Thai community with few distractions. That may or may not be true, but the result is there nonetheless, and the book and website have had broad ranging effects. There is also no substitute for living in a culture very different from your own, in order to see your own country and the world thru the eyes of other kinds of people. That is a very valuable education, and the only way you can do it is by getting out of your culture, and indeed outside of the expat region of Bangkok for a long time, and learning the language, too.
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