I arrived home last Thursday, rather late in the afternoon, and ready to go out and grab a bite to eat. There was a car parked out front of the garage, none of us drive and to my knowledge neither do any of our friends. I went into the house, which was locked, and as I entered the foyer a woman's voice called to me from upstairs.
“Oliver?”
“No, not Oliver.”
“Oh! Adam.”
“Yeah, that's me.”
A very pretty Thai girl comes walking down the stairs and smiles at me.
“Who are you?” I ask innocently.
“You don't remember me?”
At this point I'm thinking oh shit what did I do. I don't get black out drunk so I didn't randomly pick up on this girl and then forget, besides, the Thai girls don't generally do it for me. Then I realized she wasn't here for me, she just knew who I was, and obviously had at some point met me though I didn't remember when or how.
“I'm sorry, when did we meet.”
“Other night, in the car.”
Shit, shit, shit, what car, what the fuck is going on........OH!
“That's right, you were in the car next to our cab and you handed Ian your phone through the window. We drove a few blocks and put his number in your phone and then gave it back to you at the next stop light. Wow, how did you get in the house. [You crazy psycho]”
She searched her brain for the proper words to describe the insanity which she was about to unleash upon me, but then she just motioned for me to follow her and we walked into the living room and she slid open the glass door.
“Oh! It was unlocked.” I said, “Prang spent the night last night and left out the glass door this morning. That's right I forgot. Does Ian know you're here?”
“Yes, I ask him.”
“Cool, how was the date?” I have at this point remembered that she and Ian went out on a date about three nights ago when Olly and I were in Hua Hin.
“I'm new girlfriend.”
“Oh cool, it went well then. Good.”
“I ironing, you need ironing?”
“No thanks, I'm good.”
At this point I took my leave and the second I got in my room I texted Ian telling him I met his new girlfriend. Needless to say his response was not a happy one. On my way out of the house I found her car had been moved around the corner and she was sitting in the passenger seat staring out the window. She got out and began talking to me in a very different tone then she had used earlier.
“What wrong?”
“Nothings wrong, I'm just going out to get some dinner.”
“What wrong?”
“Nothing, is there something the matter?”
“What you say to Ian?”
“Oh! I just told him you were at the house.”
“Yes, what wrong?”
“Nothing's wrong, I'm going to go get some dinner now, see you.”
Needless to say she was upset and when I got back to the house a couple of hours later she was still sitting in her car. Ian and Olly were in the dining room when I got there.
“Ian, did you see her on your way in?”
“No, guy, where is she?”
“She's outside in her car.”
“Shit guy, lets go.”
Olly ran up to his room wanting no part of the situation and Ian and I headed out to where her car was parked. She wasn't in it anymore and though we looked around outside for a bit we didn't find her. We came back to the gate which we leave unlocked when we're home and then went our separate ways. I went up to Olly's room and began telling him about the Tazy girl who was waiting for me when I got home. A minute or two into the story Ian called down the stairs from his room.
“She's here.”
“Where?” We both call out.
“Here.”
“In your room?”
“Yeah guy.”
They talked up in his room for a couple of minutes and then Ian walked her out and we've not heard from her since. Ian had gone out with this girl on one date, they didn't have sex, she hadn't even been inside the house before, she dropped him off and then left. How long it took her to figure out the glass door was open I don't know, why she thought it was ok to tell me she'd told Ian she was here when she hadn't is beyond me, but most of all I can't fathom how she thought it would be ok to enter the house uninvited when none of us were home. Oddly enough she did actually iron Ian's clothes for him. Olly said that the next time she breaks into the house she had better put his clothes in the wash too.
There is a phenomenon here in Thailand, it's rather widely known and accepted among anyone who lives here for any amount of time. It is beginning to gain notoriety outside of Thailand as well, but in truth it is kept out of the spot light in an attempt to promote tourism. It is known as the Crazy Thai Woman, from now onward and forever we will shorten it to Tazy.
“What happened to that girl you were seeing, oh she went Tazy.”
Basically nearly every woman in Thailand seems to have this affliction from time to time. Some live in a perpetual state of Tazy while with others it comes and goes. There are some women who have managed to avoid it all together but these examples are few and far between. To allay your fears right now, no this is not some sexist diatribe. I actually am going to trash men and women relatively equally in this little foray into the psychology of love and dating in Thailand.
Thai men are notorious philanderers and stories of mass infidelity are wide spread. More so than in America the extra monogamous relationship is not only a coveted luxury but is nearly a right. It is not discussed by a couple but it is usually understood that both have a gig. The word gig is a variable word that some say comes from the word gigolo. More likely however is that the word comes from the Thai word meaning laugh or flirt, ironically enough you could say that gig comes from the Thai word for giggle, though it is only a convenient coincidence. The gig is for some exclusively a sexual relationship, for others only kissing is permitted, to further confuse the situation there are still others who only go out on dates with their gig but keep it secret as no Thai woman would permit a man to socialize alone with another woman regardless of any long standing platonic history between the friends. While both men and women have gigs it is the men who catch most of the flack for this, I don't know why but I guess that it has something to do with women typically being smarter about their infidelities and as a result getting caught less often. My original idea was simply that men are more apt to cheat but nearly every single woman, Thai or otherwise, has said that women cheat just as much as men they simply get caught less frequently. So I put forth that this is not something I personally came up with but something that has come from a consensus of conversation.
The gig though is not the only form of infidelity, there is also a mia noi and a choo. Mia noi translates into extra wife and choo doesn't translate very well but it essentially is a secret wife. Despite the use of the word wife these relationships are not only for married men to partake in, they are simply terms to describe the nature of the relationship. A gig implies there is no illusion of romance or a possibility of a future relationship, a mia noi on the other hand will at least keep up the pretenses of love and a possible future with their counterpart. In Thai newspapers there are frequently stories about women who are fed up with their cheating husbands or boyfriends and to gain retribution they chop off the penis of the offending party. These stories are kept out of the English language newspapers but if you dig a little and ask really nice the Thai's will tell you that by the end of the story it's usually revealed that the husband wasn't the only one being unfaithful. The articles are often accompanied by rather graphic pictures.
Given the prevalence and general acceptance of infidelity the basic logic would follow that either Thai women should expect it and be relatively unsurprised by it, or try and combat it tooth and nail fighting in every which way they can in an attempt at changing the status quo. The later is the progenitor of Tazy.
After hearing the millionth story about a Thai woman going berserk on a foreign guy for a deed either done or imagined, I asked, “Why don't they just date Thai guys?” At this point I was laughed at and told that with a foreign guy you might get cheated on, with a Thai guy you will get cheated on. If you're going to be a girl in Thai land and play with fire then you mind as well go for a big pay day, which is ultimately my biggest gripe with dating Thai women. In the end, our value as westerners is seen as so much higher in this country simply because our passports are blue or green or red, that there is little that can distinguish between interest in self advancement and a future for their family and actual honest to goodness love. I was told once that to a Thai my passport was worth more than gold, I didn't believe them until I met Ahn. Ahn works at an ex-pat bar near Asok, an area with what is probably the most famous strip of go-go bars. The ex-pat bar has bar girls but they are not dancers and they leave you alone unless you approach them. Ahn is one such girl who as I was speaking with some old salty dogs about their history in Thailand they called over to chat with us. My curiosity was enough for them to give me an example of the massive power imbalance that exists between myself and the people who's country I live in.
Ahn was married, she's not beautiful but she's good looking and she has two kids. Her husband was British and a drug dealer who was by all accounts a rotten person. There are plenty of westerners I know who are sterling individuals and are married to Thai women, this man was not one of them. He was eventually caught and put away in jail for a very long long time as Thai law generally dictates. Ahn was left with nothing but her two kids. She now works at this bar seven nights a week, she does a great job and she says she doesn't take men home anymore though the salty dogs I was talking to said they'd seen it once or twice. Ahn makes roughly one third what I make in a month and she says that if she had a chance to do it all over again she would have found a different foreigner but a foreigner none the less, her children will be able to leave Thailand if they choose, and that's worth more than any good father or kind husband. Thai people can of course leave Thailand, however the clout and financial power that it takes to make it happen restricts such endeavors to the very rich.
It makes me wonder sometimes if all the smashed TV's and the phone calls at three in the morning just to check up actually make sense. Is all the Tazy that everyone despises perhaps just the way things need to be? Olly had a girl text messaging him for weeks from an unrecognized number, she would never tell him who she was but she would send him, “Have you already forgotten me?” and “How is your new girlfriend?” These sorts of things. Eventually he met up with a girl he'd been out with a few times ages ago and she confessed to being the random text messager. What sense does this make? One of the very few dates I went out on with a Thai girl ended in her climbing onto me telling me she loved me. I just wanted to ask her if she actually knew what the word love meant. One girl told a guy I knew, upon their breaking up, that if she ever saw him with another woman she'd have him killed. Yet another told a guy I know upon break up that she had HIV. All this insanity and yet everywhere you go there is a cute little Thai girl tossing herself at you making eyes at you and just waiting for you to even look back at her so that she can begin the process again, maybe this one will be the one she must think, but probably not.
Good bye for now friends, and every time you think, "Damn that ______ is crazy!" Remember, at least they're not Tazy.
A four foot by four foot sculpture in a hotel in Cambodia
Another great story about life in Thailand! Keep on writing, son. I love you. --Mother
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