Thailand-Related Videos

Videos about Thailand, Thai Culture, Thai Food, Learning Thai, Thailand Tourism, Thailand Ladyboys, Thailand Bar Girls:
http://www.learn-faster.org/Thai/Videos/

Also check out: I'm Live! Asian Adult Video Chat Sphere: Related Content

Amazing Thailand - Prime Minister Convicted

Today Prime Minister Samak was convicted of a conflict of interest by the Constitution Court because he hosts a TV cooking show. Or perhaps one could turn it around: TV Cooking Show Host Convicted for Impersonating a Prime Minister.

Thailand never ceases to amaze me. Sphere: Related Content

An Amazing Young Woman

While wasting time browsing the Internet the other day, I came across the story of a young American woman named Holly Mann, who is an Iraqi war vet, and a single mother of a 3 year old boy. She's only 25 and lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

What's remarkable is that, after her service in Iraq, she was living in the US, pregnant and penniless, and decided to do something bold to change her life. For six months she read all she could about Internet Marketing, read about the scams, learned what successful marketers do, and after her baby was born, sold everything to pay for her airline ticket, and flew to Thailand. She had a small pension coming in from her Army service, and lived on that.

Within 4 months, however, she was bringing in over US$12,000 a month through her Internet Marketing efforts.

The story of how she did that makes fascinating reading. She bases her success on offering straight-up, honest ways to make money, no scams. She calls herself "Honest Holly" and has written a book called "Honest Riches" which is available here. If you've been thinking about trying to make some money on the side, you would be hard pressed to find a better mentor. Sphere: Related Content

Isaan Blog

Today I discovered another Thailand blog; this one has a lot of good pictures about Surin and other parts of Isaan. It’s at http://isanthailand.blogspot.com/ Sphere: Related Content

Some Thai Girls Aren't Girls

Anyone who has ever visited Thailand will know about the beauty of Thai women. In their twenties, they are striking. In their thirties, they are looking more mature, but still most are very attractive.

The women working in the ubiquitous bars and massage parlors of Bangkok, Pattaya, and Phuket are mostly former housewives, believe it or not, married but separated, with two kids they left back in their village with their mothers. Most are from Isaan, the North-East corner of Thailand, which has a large amount of poverty. Some are from other parts of the country, especially Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, and a very few are from Bangkok or central Thailand.

But about 1 in 100 is not a female at all, but a "ladyboy", or katoey in Thai. Quite often, they appear more feminine than the real women. I have seen many a farang ogle and lust after a very sexy woman, not realizing that "she" is a "he".

Like the women, most ladyboys are from Isaan. I have talked to a few on a one to one basis, and asked them when they first knew they wanted to be a female. All said they knew at an early age, around 5 or 6 years old. They said they liked the female manner, didn’t like rough sports, were partial to art and music.

Katoeys are an accepted part of Thai culture, considered to be a third sex in Thailand. Several are movie stars and TV announcers. One is a national kick-boxing champion. You will find ladyboys everywhere, working as waiters, store clerks, hairdressers, couriers, etc.

In North America and Europe, a sex-change (also called a gender re-assignment) operation is considered to be a big deal, requiring many months of psychological counseling before the operation to make sure the person is committed to the change.

In Thailand, a sex change operation is quite common. There are several clinics and hospitals which perform it, and the cost is a fraction of what the western charge would be, typically US$5000-7000. Nevertheless, for a poor person from Isaan, $5000 is a huge amount of money.

There are three main areas in Bangkok where ladyboys are present in large numbers: Nana Entertainment Plaza (on Sukhumvit Soi 4), Patpong Road (off Silom), and Soi Cowboy (close to the intersection of Sukhumvit Road and Asoke Road, which has both BTS SkyTrain and MRT Subway stations).

At Nana, the majority of ladyboys are "pre-op", meaning they still have a penis. At Patpong and Soi Cowboy, most are "post-op", meaning they have had the operation to create a vagina. The operation involves cutting out a section of intestine, which will become the vagina. The penis is cut open and inserted into the intestinal tube; typically some of the scrotal sac is used to increase the length of the new vagina. The tip of the penis becomes the new clitoris, and is normally still sensitive after the procedure is finished and everything has healed. The ladyboys I talked to said they could still have an orgasm, but did not ejaculate.

Scar tissue is visible if the post-op ladyboy retains his/her public hair, but if it is shaved off, it is difficult to tell an artificially created vagina from the real thing.

However, this is typically not the end of the story in sex reassignment. The male body is typically larger than the female, even in Thailand, where many people seem to be 80% the size of western people. The ladyboy has to take hormones for a couple of years before the operation; these hormones help him grow breasts and reduce his facial and body hair growth. Thai men don't usually have much body hair, compared to Western men, but they do have some; hormones or another treatment are needed to reduce or eliminate it. However, hormones have a side effect of reducing the ability to ejaculate.

Males typically have a protruding Adam's apple, so that is yet another operation: it can be shaved by a surgeon to reduce or eliminate the protrusion. And many have electrolysis to eliminate body hair, especially in the armpits.

If you visit Nana Entertainment Plaza after 7PM (which is when it opens), you will find several hair-dressing establishments located on the decks that run around three sides of the structure. The ones at the front cater to the bar girls; the ones at the rear cater to ladyboys. You can watch some of the ladyboys preening and preparing their makeup.

Some of the bars are exclusively ladyboys. If you enter one such bar, you will find that most ladyboys are more than passable and some are strikingly beautiful. I don't think I have ever seen an ugly ladyboy.

As far as relationships go, ladyboys are just like Thai women. They want a long-term relationship, and they will try hard to make the relationship work. Many speak some English, but you really need a product like Speak Easy Thai to help you learn some basic Thai vocabulary. If you can communicate better, you have a much better chance of a lasting relationship.

A part of Bangkok's nightlife that should not be missed by any visitor, ladyboy cabaret shows are professionally done, with spectacular productions (lots of feathers and glitter, good music, and some comedy as well). You can see them at the Calypso Cabaret (Asia Hotel, Ratchathewi SkyTrain station), Golden Dome Cabaret (15 minute walk from Sutthisan subway station), and Mambo Cabaret in the former Washington Theater between Sukhumvit Soi 22 and 24. Sphere: Related Content

Learning to Speak Thai

The main problem with learning to speak Thai is that the basis of the language is not European-based. English and the other Euro languages have Latin, Greek, Viking, etc., roots; Thai does not, so you have to memorize hundreds, if not thousands, of strange and unrelated sounds. This is difficult, unless you use some sort of memory trigger.

Speak Easy Thai is a low-cost (about US$25) CD-ROM that helps solve this problem by presenting a picture and a sound file; all words are spoken by a native Thai speaker, so you hear the correct tone.

If you see a Thai word printed in a book, such as a travel guide, chances are you will not remember the word because there is nothing to hang your hat on.

But when you see a picture of something and hear it spoken properly in Thai, your brain will find it much easier to remember the word because it seems to set up more associations (hypertext links, if you will) in your brain.

It’s a fact that most people learn better visually and aurally than they do by simply reading and trying to memorize. This is, in fact, how children learn. They hear the words spoken by adults and other children, and repeat them. Young children learn to speak a language well before they can read.

Thai uses its own alphabet, rather than pictograms like Chinese, which makes it much easier to learn than Chinese. You just have to get over the hump of reading the Thai characters. The alphabet contains the same letters as English, but they are drawn differently. For example, all the common consonants and vowels exist in Thai, but a Thai G (or P or M) does not look like an English G (or P or M).

But the best part of learning Thai is the grammar, believe it or not, because there is very little to learn. There are no, absolutely NO verb conjugations, which will please anyone who has ever tried to learn one of the Latin-based languages like French, Italian, and Spanish. Future tense is handled with "ja", meaning "will", or by adding an adverb of time, like "tomorrow". Past tense is handled by putting "already" at the end, or by adding an adverb of time, like "yesterday". For example, instead of saying, "I went to the market", you use the present tense ("go") but add "already" at the end, as in "I go market already". Easy peasy.

Also, adjectives do not change form, you don’t have to worry about the sex of a noun because all nouns are neuter. Adjectives always follow the noun, without exception; you say "house big" rather than "big house".

General plurals are done by doubling the noun: "house house" instead of "houses". Specific plurals use the same construction we use in English for groups, as in "The farmer has three head of cattle". You can’t say "I have three children" in Thai, you must say "I have child three person"; "child" is the noun, "person" is the group word, also known as a "classifier".

Adverbs are easy too, no variations. You can add emphasis by doubling the adverb: "He runs quickly quickly".

The most difficult part of learning Thai is that it is a tonal language. English uses tones on sentences. Compare these three statements:

"You’re going to the party."
"You’re going to the party?"
"You’re going to the party!"

They all use the same English words, but the tone (flat, rising, falling, respectively) gives an entirely different meaning to each sentence.

Thai uses tones on words, but not on sentences. For example, "seu-ah" spoken with a flat (mid-range) tone means "clothing"; "seu-ah" spoken with a rising tone means "tiger". So you must be careful to learn the correct tone for each word, otherwise you might be saying "my tiger is dirty" when what you meant is "my clothing is dirty". There is no doubt that this is the hardest part of learning Thai, and the only way to learn the correct tone is to listen to a native Thai speaker saying the word. Sphere: Related Content

Resources to Learn English

I have been researching English learning resources lately, as I have some Thai friends who need some help. I have consolidated what I have learned so far here:

http://www.ebooks-international.com/Languages/LearnEnglish.html

The Thai people I know fall into two categories, as far as education goes: those with a university or college education, and those who quit school at age 10 or so and had to work.

Some of the brightest people I have ever met have only 4 years of schooling. They can add and subtract but cannot multiply or divide and do not understand fractions, decimals, and percentages. One lady (age 29 with two children and two ex-husbands) that I know well was a waitress a year ago. In the past year, she has taught herself English, how to use a computer, and how to run a business with several employees and a half a dozen major customers.

Another lady took 2 years at a technical college, financed by a government student loan. She created a multi-page web site using Notepad to code raw HTML. That's not something I would do, it's too difficult. When I asked her why, she said she wanted to understand exactly how HTML worked.

However, none of these people speak English very well. The university-educated can read better than the others, but they invariably write poorly and often speak poorly.

Hence my research. Hopefully it will benefit you or someone you know. Sphere: Related Content

Hong Kong Foot

I learned a new expression in Thai today: "Hong Kong Foot". Yes, that's the Thai; it refers to what we call in English, "Athlete's Foot", the fungus that grows between your toes. Apparently Athlete's Foot is a major problem in Thailand because practically everyone wears open rubber flip-flops, and there's water everywhere. But I never knew this was called "Hong Kong Foot" in Thai until today. Sphere: Related Content

Cultural Differences

I use MSN Messenger to keep in touch with friends around the world. My assistants also use it.

I usually put a subtitle under my name, saying what project I am working on, or naming the current Thai holiday, whatever. One day I put "In hot and steamy Bangkok" because it was 33 degrees C outside and 90% humidity.

Shortly thereafter, one of my assistants started crying.

I went out to see what was wrong, but she wouldn't talk to me.

I asked my other assistant why the girl was crying. She asked her, and then said, "You said you are having sex everywhere."

What the hell?

"When did I do that?"

"On Messenger."

It turns out the crying girl did not understand the word "steamy", so she looked it up in our dictionary. Apparently, one of the meanings in Thai referred to "steamy sex", so she assumed I meant I was having sex with my assistants and everyone else.

Sigh.

So I apologised, said, "No, I meant the weather was hot like in a hot shower," and then I went and changed the Messenger text. Sphere: Related Content

On Construction Standards

The new subway, opened in mid 2005, is first class, very well designed and very efficient. On a scale of one to five, I give it five stars. The stations are wide, escalators are fast, trains are fast and clean and bright. And it's not expensive to take a trip anywhere.

The SkyTrain, built a few years ago, is efficient, but not as well designed. There are only 3 cars in the trains, although the stations can handle 5 or 6 cars, so the cars are always overcrowded. Worse, there is typically only one escalator, so there is always a mad crush. On a scale of one to five, I give it two stars.

Bangkok's sidewalks are dreadful. Most are a haphazard collection of mismatched concrete and tiles, difficult to walk on. Cracks and holes are everywhere. Sewer covers are frequently damaged and have gaping holes. Occasionally I see new construction where a sidewalk has been torn up for some reason and replaced; the new work is very sloppy, uneven, hard to distinguish from the old.

I find it incredible that a country that can produce such an amazing subway cannot build a flat sidewalk.

Sphere: Related Content

In a German Restaurant

One night, I and my two assistants were sitting in a German restaurant near my place, when there was a funny kind of HONK! at the door. It was a baby elephant, poking his head inside. His handler was selling food, probably sugar cane, to feed the elephant. This doesn't happen very often to me in restaurants in Canada or Australia, but here in Thailand, it is not unusual.

Expect the unexpected. Sphere: Related Content

Ritual at Bar in Nana Entertainment Plaza

Near where I live is the multi-storey, slightly sleazy Nana Entertainment Plaza, which has many licenced bars.

Almost all of the 30 or 35 bars or clubs have a standard bar with stools, bartender, and a mirror behind the bartender, just like any other bar in the world. They also have a carousel (some have two) in the centre of the floor, and three rows of bench-type seats, successively higher, more or less in a semi-circle around the central floor area with the carousel.

The carousel holds about 10 or 12 girls, who dance, mostly lethargically, occasionally energetically, to annoying music, as the carousel turns slowly. After 15 minutes or so, the DJ calls out something (probably "All change!") in Thai, and the girls on the carousel descend and put on a T-shirt and jeans, or a uniform peculiar to that bar, and another set of girls strips to their bikinis and gets up on the carousel.

Nudity is forbidden, the girls must wear bikinis, and they can't be too revealing.

One evening, I happened to be walking around Nana just before 7PM, which is when the bars and clubs open. At one bar, the interior lights had just been switched on, and there were a half dozen beautiful bar girls standing around chatting.

One girl took some jasmine necklace wreaths and a wooden bat, about the size and shape of a milk bottle (probably the wooden pestle used to make som tam, the spicy papaya salad), and rapped it twice on one of the vertical wooden poles holding up the floor above. She gave one wreath to one of the girl dancers. She rapped on two more poles, then moved to the doorway. She ran the bat up one side, across the top, and down the other side of the doorway. Then she rapped it twice on the floor inside in front of the doorway. She held a shiny metal pot filled with water, and poured water over the bat, then rapped it twice on the floor again. She put the pot aside. She hung a jasmine wreath on a hook by the door.

She moved back into the club, and walked around stopping often. She squatted down, rapped the bat twice on the floor, then stood up and moved on. She did this 6 or 7 times around the floor of the club. I couldn't see any particular difference in the floor at the spots where she rapped.

She then walked around the carousel and rapped each brass pole twice.

At the end, she gave her final wreath to another dancer.

Sphere: Related Content

Why I Feel Old

I was talking to a beautiful young girl in a bar at Nana, which is near my apartment. "How old are you?" I asked.

"Twenny foh," she replied, "how ole you?"

"Fifty-nine," I said.

"Oh," she said, "same same father me."

Sphere: Related Content

Fear of Goats

Two of my assistants often sleep over in my apartment, one in the second bedroom, the other on the sofa. They both sleep with a light on. I asked why.

"Because of goat," said Kik.

"Goat?" I asked.

"Yes, at night goats come."

OK, I believe that. Sure, uh huh.

Sphere: Related Content