Rainy Season Starts, and Learning Badminton, Thailand.

It is virtually the start of the wet season here in Isaan. It has started a little early with rain falling every night this past 5 days. It isn’t the heavy rain we get but it has been good soaking rain for the farmers to start planting their rice crops.

















I had a running battle with the rain as I got up early on Monday to wash and polish the car. It is funny how many Thais cannot really believe a farang would wash, vacuum and polish, his own car. Most Thais take their car to a service station to be washed, I enjoy doing this task, it doesn’t take too long and isn’t hard work. Three times I had to put the car back under cover when rain started to fall.













The new couch in the lounge room has been a welcome addition; it has been getting plenty of use. Yesterday at one stage Noot, Ben and Joom were all asleep on it while the TV was going of course.













Now, I am back at school doing the hard yards. Today there was a bunch of kids being coached in how to play badminton. Many were old students of mine who are now in year 8.













It was funny watching them try and sidestep or crab across. Some of the girls were bouncing like little fairies with arms raised, they looked more like they were doing dance steps. I was laughing and also the Thai sports teacher.













Some of the girls who hadn’t bought racquets had to sit out but they didn’t seem too upset. Maybe they should have been doing shuttle runs or laps of the oval as a punishment and a reminder to have their racquet next time.

My classes are looking really good. I have two year 1 classes, a year 5 and year 6 class. I have been very strict with the older two classes, you have to not give an inch in the first month, praise the good kids and ones who are trying and the lazy or bad behaved kids get all over there backs and make them understand that being like this is only going to make their year long and drawn out with lots of extra work.

My year 1 classes have settled in well. It is a bit of cotton wool the first two or three days and then rules must be followed, even by kids so young. You have to be a lot more lenient of course, but basic rules are followed, even year 1 kids need to know that if the do the wrong thing there will be a consequence.

The first week went well and the second week has also shaped up good, so far. I am happy now I am back to only 20 contact teaching periods a week this year, down from 23 periods last year. It doesn’t sound like a lot of difference but it is. Three hours less in a week to do lesson plans, corrections, make tests and do the dreaded paperwork needed by the Thai hierarchy works out to be a lot.

So things are looking good here in Isaan country, Thailand. Where living is great.

Brunty.

Brunty's Advice on Bar Girls and Relationships, Thailand.

Earlier today I spent some time surfing forums that are running here in Thailand. I hardly ever go to them and read the threads as there are so many tools making idiotic comments.

There are threads that are a wealth of information, but sadly you get some dickhead who makes some off the cuff comment and then the subject at hand is lost and the fools and what they think to be funny comments, take over. These people comment in the forums all over the place on all different subjects. They cannot be ‘experts’ in all that they comment on but they put their 2 cents into the topic and it is usually worthless shite dribbling out of their mouth.

Today I read plenty of different stories of guys saying how they were ripped off, fooled, and taken for a ride by a Thai girl. Each story is virtually the same.

Meet the girl, things were great, went to the village and meet the parents, gave some money to the parents, more money needed by GF and parents, build a house, bought a car and then thing went sour, didn’t have the house or car in their name so they have been told to leave, and on and on the stories go.

What I don’t really understand is how these guys get into these situations, I mean there are warnings all over the world wide web, how not to become a statistic. Why do so many guys leave their common sense and their intelligence at the airport when they arrive in Thailand?

I hate to mention this but I will. Bar girls, those beautiful petite girls that so many foreigners come to Thailand for. Come on, let’s be serious. A big percentage of people who come to Thailand are here for sex tourism. They come to Bangkok or Pattaya and end up at Patpong, Soi Cowboy, Nana Plaza or Walking Street. They go between the bars and back to their hotel for the 7 or so days they are here on holiday. They don’t see anything else of Bangkok or Thailand. This is a typical sex tourist, and good luck to them, it is their choice.

The thing I cannot understand is how these guys fall in (supposed) love with them. These girls are offering a service, they are offering sex for money; they are prostitutes. Do guys back in their home country fall in love with prostitutes? I don’t think many do.

These girls are in the job for money, they aren’t in it for the sex. Do you think a 40kg petite Thai girl really wants to have sex with a 120kg plus guy that is drunk and stinks of smoke?

They are in the business to support mum and dad who might be poor farmers and have huge debts they cannot repay, they could have dropped out of school, had a baby/babies and cannot find a job that pays more than 4,000 Baht per month, their Thai boyfriend makes them work in the sex trade, they need to support their drug habit and the list goes on and on.

Guys! Don’t be fooled by their persona, by their charm, their sweet mouths. Of course they know what to say, they practice and practice, they can buy books that tell them things to say and ways to act around foreigners.

Here is a very good example for you. I just holidayed in Pattaya. Pattaya wouldn’t exist as it does today if the sex trade wasn’t there. There would be a few tourists there, but not on the magnitude as you see today. There are Beer Bars in virtually any little street you walk down.

I stayed in Soi 2 off Beach Road. I stayed at the Sabai Lodge. In Soi 3 up the top near Second Road, there is an internet café that I went to check emails and post a blog. Each time I visited the place it had Thai bar girls in there talking to the two young owners. These guys are smart, they were translating emails from foreigners to the girls and then composing emails for them into Thai. The girl dictates and one of the guy’s types. The guy charged the girl 80 Baht to translate the email she received from her foreign friend and 100 Baht to another girl for one they composed into English for her.

The girl who had the letter composed, she had said to them that she had been to the doctor for all the tests and is waiting for the test results; I heard the word “blood” in Thai, so some sort of blood tests. She went on about how much she missed him and also that she wasn’t working in the bar and so forth.

Another girl on the second day I went to the internet shop was a classic; she was cute and young, maybe 18 or 19. I was on computer number 3 in the corner and she came in and sat at computer 2. She had a nose piercing and also one through the lip. She was wearing a short denim shirt and a cut off top revealing her midsection, or tummy.

Yes, I looked. I am human and male. She logged on and was talking on the phone to her foreign friend in Denmark I think I heard her say to the owner later on. She booted the webcam into action and put on her headphones and starting talking bad broken English to him, she was cheeky, in a fun way. She teased the poor guy a bit by logging the camera off at times, one time she put the owners dog onto the desk in front of the webcam and when she turned the camera on again this is what her man seen.

She danced for him. Yes, danced in the internet shop. Wiggling and shaking and lifting her top right up, all the time laughing a lot. Two guys come in to make an international call, she turned the camera off again and had one of the guys sit in the seat, when the camera came on there is this guy sitting there. She was pissing herself laughing.

She turned the camera on me and asked me to speak to him; I politely declined and gave the poor guy a wave. I left and she was still mucking about, later that night I seen the girl standing on the edge of Second Road in front of a Beer Bar. She was touting for customers, she gave me a “hello” and come in for a drink, again I politely declined.

Internet shops are doing this everywhere guys! They help the girls translate emails and compose them. Good luck to them too. They are providing a service just like the girls do. If there are guys out there silly enough to fall for the stories and send money via Western Union, there is one every few metres in Pattaya, then good luck to them.

All I can say to anyone traveling to Thailand as a sex tourist, don’t be ashamed if you are, there are so many that do. Come to Thailand and do just that, think of the bar girls as prostitutes and treat them as prostitutes. This doesn’t mean mistreating them. Treat them as you would treat any lady you might meet but remember you are paying her for the service she is providing to you.

To the guys who get ripped off, the ones who have a girl for a few weeks or months, she sees all the cash and valuables in the safe in the room where he is staying, then when they are out having a fun one night the room is broken into and the safe is emptied or is stolen, 99% of the time this isn’t a coincidence that you were out, you need to put 2 and 2 together.

The other guys who buy a house and car and don’t put them into their own names, if you have the correct visa it isn’t too hard to do this. You cannot own the land, that will be in your Thai girls/wife’s name, but the house and car you can have in your name. You need to do this no matter how much you are in love or think that nothing will go wrong. If you aren’t worried about losing everything, then don’t bother.

Get a 30 year lease on the land with a 30 year option and don’t build in the village of your girl, if things sour you are not going to want to live there, build in a place you want to live. So the land will never be yours but in 30 or 60 years who really cares as you will either be dead or well on the way to pushing daisies.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not pigeon holing bar girls; this also is good advice for the services that are offered on the internet. There are many websites that set people up together. Lonely guys searching for love and they believe they find it.

I know 2 guys personally that meet their now Thai wife on the internet. One guy has ups and downs, but this happens in any country with normal relationships. The problem is that his wife keeps asking him for 6 million Baht and a new car. This is for security; the only security I can think of is if he dies. The advice I gave him was very straight forward and probably not what he wanted to hear.

Not all the bar girls or girls crawling the internet are like this, there are of course girls who just need a break and a foreigner can offer this. They want security, a better life without worrying about where the money for next week’s bill will come from. They find a man and will be out of the game forever but it is a small percentage, I believe.

Money is the greed of all evil and for some reason, people want more and more even if they have more than enough for a comfortable life. Also a lot of girls leave the game of prostitution to find their new life, no bars, drinking and hanging out with friends to be boring, they move back to the village but this life is nothing of the lights, endless parties and open all night eating places to go with friends. The language and communication barrier kicks in, life isn’t all rosy.

The only advice I can offer to any guy looking for love is;

Don’t fall in love with a bar girl, you might get lucky and get a good girl that wants out but most of the time you will be one of the guys writing on the many forums or websites, the same story but different girls name.

You can meet girls outside of bars, they do exist. Finding one in certain areas such as Pattaya and Patpong could be hard. You could always travel to different parts of Thailand and see sites on offer. Here you can meet girls in all kinds of places from shopping centres, markets, coffee shops and just walking around places. You always get people, especially girls saying hello and asking you questions about where you come from and so forth. This could lead to who knows where.

So come to the land of LOS and enjoy, keep your wits about you and use your common sense, leave your heart at the airport and have fun. Thailand is a beautiful place, there are so many things to see and do, if looking for love, be careful and choose wisely, take your time and don’t jump into anything head first.

Brunty.

A New Couch and Room for Cola.

We have bought a second hand couch of my English mate John. He has just moved into his new house that is 99% finished and bought all new furniture for it. So the old couch he had in the unit he was renting he wanted to get rid of.













He bought it from Index just over 5 months ago for just under 11,000 Baht and I bought it for 5,000 Baht so just over 50% off the retail price, a bargain. Getting the new couch brought a little dilemma though as well, for Noot not me as she was thinking of changing the entire living room around. The new couch has been put into place and within an hour of being in the house it was being used as a bed.

I said that we didn’t need to change anything around, and if we moved the TV to where she wanted it would mean having the cable extended for the cable TV by about 15 metres, so that idea went out the window. Noot’s sister said that the rabbit (Cola) needed to go, or die, that was also quickly hit on the head.













Cola had the run of the living room, a large area in the corner where he could jump around, Noot wanted some extra room so we needed to move him somewhere. This is where he used to live.













Now it looks like this, a lot more room for us and also my private students who study with me here at home.













We have three bedrooms, two are used and the other stores all our clothes in cabinets. There was a bed in there but it never got used, well when guests came by, but even then most of the time because they are from Isaan and the village they slept in the lounge room on the floor on a thin roll out mattress. So I removed the mattress and cola now has his own bedroom.













He has been a little wary for the first day but is now adjusting to his new home, it’s a little smaller but he still has plenty of room and he is let out every day for an hour or so to bounce around the house.

So that is what has been happening here in Isaan country, there was also a trip to the temple but that story is for another day.

Brunty.

Golf, a BBQ, Lunch on a River in Isaan.

After arriving back in Ubon Ratchathani here in Isaan, we went to play a game of golf at our local course. We went on a Friday as weekends are just so busy and really slow play.

We arrived at 8am and I was surprised to find a lot of people about, I was then told that it was a public holiday. The first nine holes were quick just over 2 hours.













Henry was in the shade waiting for our second nine to start. We waited about 30-40 minutes to tee off.













Looking down the first hole, a par 4 with a big dog leg left, it’s a 7 iron to the corner and a 9 iron or wedge into the green.













After golf, in the evening we had a BBQ at my place as it was Henry’s birthday, earlier in the month it was my friend Keith and his daughter Chelsea’s birthdays, so we celebrated them as well.













Henry was rapt to find someone as big as him here in Thailand, made him feel normal again and not a giant.













Here we boys are together, we had a heap of food, Noot and I over catered but that was better than being short of food.
The girls were inside the house in front of the TV.

Here we were sitting back chatting and relaxing.


Henry couldn’t resist himself.

Here we were at the temple in the village.

We went to the river for lunch in a floating hut.

Some grass or weeds floating down the river, there’s a person under it.

Dad having a swim, the current was strong from the rain we have had.


Henry and I taking a dip.

Out for dinner again.

Here Sue and a friend pose for a picture.

Mum had a picture taken as well.














And then sadly it was time for me to go back to work after nearly 10 weeks of holidays.

Life is hard here in Isaan.

Brunty

Greenwood Country Club Pattaya, Thailand.

Our next game of golf was at Greenwood Country Club, formerly known as The Noble Park Golf Course. It’s about an hours drive from Pattaya back towards Bangkok. The club house isn’t anything outstanding but has all the facilities you need or want. We met the resident golf pro when we arrived and he was such a friendly guy who couldn’t do enough to help us. He wasn’t after us to buy stuff or give us lessons he just genuinely wanted to help.

The course is a gem. It was designed by Australian 5 time British Open Champion Peter Thomson. It is similar to a links course as in the fairways are undulating; there are plenty of bunkers and also a bit of water. The rough wasn’t too long, so not a lot of danger if you ventured off the fairway. The greens were perfect and good speed, 2 were a little slow and bumpy as they were getting some work done to them. It was the best course we played and will definitely be back there next year.

Green fee for a midweek game was 750 Baht or 500 Baht after 12pm. It was a bargain compared to the fees at other 5 star courses in Pattaya. This course is as good as those well known courses; Laem Chabang is 2,500 Baht weekdays, so you could play 3 rounds at Greenwood for the price of one at Laem Chanbang.

The following pictures are of the course and you will see the undulations on the fairways and the many bunkers that greet you off the tee and when you approach the green. There is water, not a lot but enough to cause problems if you aren’t hitting the ball well.











On our last day in Pattaya Noot wanted some pictures by the pools, so here Noot is at the dolphin pool.

Here she is again at the Dolphin pool.

This is the Ruen Thai pool.

This is the Sabai Wing pool.

Heading home there were plenty of clouds about.

Here Noot and I a few thousand feet above the ground.

It was cloudy out the window but there wasn’t much turbulence.

Descending through the clouds to land at Ubon Ratchathani airport and head home to rest some weary legs and bones.












Brunty.