Gay Boy Thailand

Diary: Chalerm is on TV (really)

A Thai twist to the story of Chalerm fronting a protest against the military and being upstaged by the stars. Surprise. He got on TV after all.

Chalerm behaved strangely regarding this. He denied he was interviewed or would appear on the television talk show at all. But he did. I had set my alarm clock to remind me of the 10am show, which was just as well as Chalerm didn’t tell me.

Rather than a segment the military issue got half an hour. The concept seemed to be one of those “we help people with their problems” programs. The hosts were three ladies, including the one Chalerm had taken pictures of at the Department of Defence.

They certainly did show Chalerm’s military service book on the screen. As Chalerm had said a gay celebrity was the star of the program. What Chalerm “forgot” to tell me was that he was in the audience and that he was interviewed as well.

So there Chalerm got his 15 minutes of fame. Well, at least two minutes.

I watched the program with Chalerm and one of his school friends. Chalerm was so tense he literarily sat on the edge of the chair when watching the show. He was nevous on TV too. I would have been as well. And he beat me to it; I have never been on telly anywhere.

The broadcast was a happy occasion but it ended with Chalerm and me arguing. I wanted to know why he had said he wasn’t interviewed. “Up to me”, said Chalerm. I found this annoying and reminded him that I had passed this erroneous information on to others. It was one of those shyness/modesty things he sometimes does, like when he will pretend to have failed exams when he actually passed. It is a Thai “no” that means “yes” out of embarrassment or whatever. He does this rarely now because he has realised farangs want accurate information and are not amused having to guess when yes means no or a no means yes, but on this occasion the habit came back.

The program had two parts. In the first part they presented the problem, and the next day it was solved. I forgot to watch the second day but I understand The Beautiful Boxer was the star in that one.

All is well that ends well. I hope the military will do as they promise and no longer stamp ladyboys, transgenders, transvestites, gay boys etc as people with permanent mental illness.

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Diary: Immigration wants to know

Here is something new…. Thai Immigration wants to know what we think of them. Excellent, good, average, below average or poor? They don’t ask what we think about the visa rules or the cost, only about the experience in their office. On the back of the form they want to know your name and address.

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Diary: Chalerm is on TV (almost)

Chalerm (also known as The Love of My Life) was summoned to the studios of Channel 3 here in Bangkok last week. They were making a segment about the “insane” ladyboys in the military for a morning talk show.

Chalerm went there with the group of gay and ladyboy celebrities that accompanied him when he was at the Ministry of Defence. It turned out that the television presenter lady who was at the Ministry is the host of the TV show. She interviewed the military spokesman.

Anyway, Chalerm went to Channel 3 with great expectations and came home in a bad mood. It was Chalerm’s initiative and his “insane” stamp in the military book when they sent him home, but he wasn’t asked about anything. Toom the Beautiful Boxer and the other celebrities were on camera and Chalerm was reduced to sitting in the audience watching the stars talk about his pioneering case – or talk about themselves, more likely.

Poor Chalerm. This was his first contact with mass media and now he saw how it works. Even more than in Western countries Thai television is celebrity-focused. They are not terribly interested in ordinary people.

The talk show is Monday at 10am on Channel 3, which incidentally is owned by the Thai Army. I don’t know when this specific segment will be on the air.

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Diary: Learning Thai 2

Am I lacking the motivation to use Thai? I was eager to learn Thai when I signed up for the school. I don’t’ have that sense of urgency anymore, but this is in part because I have learned survival Thai now. I know basic taxi driver Thai, chat up boys Thai, buy food on the street Thai.

Some say the best way to learn Thai is to get a Thai boyfriend. Well, it helps but less than I expected. My boyfriend “Chalerm” is ambivalent about my Thai efforts. He likes that I study Thai and in the beginning he was enthusiastic about it. But he expected me to learn and remember a Thai word after telling me once. That rarely happened. Chalerm doesn’t have the patience to repeat a word over and over, or to correct my invariably wrong pronunciation. For this I had to depend on my teacher.

Chalerm can be cheeky and pretend he doesn’t understand what I say in Thai even if he does. He says he does this because my poor pronunciation is annoying. My broken Thai can be unbearable at times, I understand.

We had an argument over this when Chalerm began learning English at the university and expected me to help him. I said he had to help me with my Thai in return. This didn’t work so for a while we were in a stalemate. But the situation has improved lately. Partly my Thai is not as hopeless as it once was, partly we speak more because Chalerm does enjoy speaking Thai when he knows I can understand it.

Even if Chalerm is a central Thai (not from Isaan) his pronunciation is a little different from my middle class Bangkokian teacher. This means he sometimes will correct what my teacher taught me. I have noticed this with other Thais too. They are convinced that their own way of saying something is the only way it should be said. But luckily Chalerm doesn’t speak with his thick and fast village accent when he is in Bangkok. I only hear that when he is on the phone with his family.

How much Thai would I like to learn? My aim is to be fluent in everyday conversation. It would be nice to read and write Thai, in particular to read street signs and newspaper headlines. Writing isn’t that important. Reading is limited too. What would I read? If you learn German or French there is a great literature to explore. But I am not aware of any literary masterpieces in Thai. Thais don’t have much of a written culture and they rarely read books.

The specialised Thai they use in news broadcasts, in government affairs or in legal matters seems difficult. I don’t think I need to learn it. Thais like to signal importance by using formal language. Thai has a whole separate vocabulary for dealing with royalty, for example. All languages have formal as opposed to informal words, but owing to the class system in Thailand the Thais seem to go further in using “high” language than most.

Since Chalerm’s English is improving quickly I don’t get to use my Thai as much as I hoped. I live in an English-speaking bubble in downtown Bangkok. Many waiters etc expect to speak English here. The only ones I speak Thai to daily (apart from Chalerm) are the building staff and the taxi drivers. This means my progress is slow. But each time I meet someone who can’t speak English, forcing me to speak Thai, the conversation is a little easier than the last time.

Thais are flattered and happy I learn their language but also strangely reluctant. They enjoy that foreigners don’t understand Thai, as if Thais are members of a secret society speaking in code. When a foreigner learns Thai he breaks into their club and they resent that. Thais like, for example, to speak about farangs literally behind their backs. They will comment on your looks, about what you buy or eat or whatever. I am not taking that anymore, I will turn and say something in Thai to make them shut up if they do this in a market or on the bus. Their embarrassement when I catch them can be fun.

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Diary: Learning Thai 2

Am I lacking the motivation to use Thai? I was eager to learn Thai when I signed up for the school. I don’t’ have that sense of urgency anymore, but this is in part because I have learned survival Thai now. I know basic taxi driver Thai, chat up boys Thai, buy food on the street Thai.

Some say the best way to learn Thai is to get a Thai boyfriend. Well, it helps but less than I expected. My boyfriend “Chalerm” is ambivalent about my Thai efforts. He likes that I study Thai and in the beginning he was enthusiastic about it. But he expected me to learn and remember a Thai word after telling me once. That rarely happened. Chalerm doesn’t have the patience to repeat a word over and over, or to correct my invariably wrong pronunciation. For this I had to depend on my teacher.

Chalerm can be cheeky and pretend he doesn’t understand what I say in Thai even if he does. He says he does this because my poor pronunciation is annoying. My broken Thai can be unbearable at times, I understand.

We had an argument over this when Chalerm began learning English at the university and expected me to help him. I said he had to help me with my Thai in return. This didn’t work so for a while we were in a stalemate. But the situation has improved lately. Partly my Thai is not as hopeless as it once was, partly we speak more because Chalerm does enjoy speaking Thai when he knows I can understand it.

Even if Chalerm is a central Thai (not from Isaan) his pronunciation is a little different from my middle class Bangkokian teacher. This means he sometimes will correct what my teacher taught me. I have noticed this with other Thais too. They are convinced that their own way of saying something is the only way it should be said. But luckily Chalerm doesn’t speak with his thick and fast village accent when he is in Bangkok. I only hear that when he is on the phone with his family.

How much Thai would I like to learn? My aim is to be fluent in everyday conversation. It would be nice to read and write Thai, in particular to read street signs and newspaper headlines. Writing isn’t that important. Reading is limited too. What would I read? If you learn German or French there is a great literature to explore. But I am not aware of any literary masterpieces in Thai. Thais don’t have much of a written culture and they rarely read books.

The specialised Thai they use in news broadcasts, in government affairs or in legal matters seems difficult. I don’t think I need to learn it. Thais like to signal importance by using formal language. Thai has a whole separate vocabulary for dealing with royalty, for example. All languages have formal as opposed to informal words, but owing to the class system in Thailand the Thais seem to go further in using “high” language than most.

Since Chalerm’s English is improving quickly I don’t get to use my Thai as much as I hoped. I live in an English-speaking bubble in downtown Bangkok. Many waiters etc expect to speak English here. The only ones I speak Thai to daily (apart from Chalerm) are the building staff and the taxi drivers. This means my progress is slow. But each time I meet someone who can’t speak English, forcing me to speak Thai, the conversation is a little easier than the last time.

Thais are flattered and happy I learn their language but also strangely reluctant. They enjoy that foreigners don’t understand Thai, as if Thais are members of a secret society speaking in code. When a foreigner learns Thai he breaks into their club and they resent that. Thais like, for example, to speak about farangs literally behind their backs. They will comment on your looks, about what you buy or eat or whatever. I am not taking that anymore, I will turn and say something in Thai to make them shut up if they do this in a market or on the bus. Their embarrassement when I catch them can be fun.

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Diary: Learning Thai

It is annoying to be in a country where I don’t understand the language. I feel left out. I had decided that I could not live in Thailand without learning Thai, so I signed up for classes at one of the schools in Bangkok.

Before I started I had tried a cassette course I bought at Asia Books. I didn’t have the self-discipline to keep going for more than a few pages. And the people on the tape spoke too fast. I could not catch what they said.

I had heard a lot about the tones and how difficult they were. There are five tones in Thai: high, low, rising, falling and flat. So in a way you have to sing when you speak Thai. Some swore that the tones were impossible to learn. Some said I should not even bother to learn the tones, as Thais would guess what word I meant. This was bad advice. Without the correct tone a word will change meaning from, say, “come over here”, to “dog” to “horse”, or mean nothing at all. Ignoring the tones will not get you far.

In the event the tones were not the obstacle I had feared. I soon learned to pronounce them, even if the rising tone is the most difficult to get right. It was harder to remember which tone to use for which word. Thai is not an Indo-European language, but one of the Sino-Tibetan ones. The words remind me of nothing I have heard before. Since I have nothing to associate the words with I forget them easily.

I got along well with my teacher, who taught me one on one in a cubicle at the school for 300 baht an hour. She was probably the best teacher they had. Still, the lack of professional books or any systematic learning method soon slowed things down.

I learned Thai phonetically, using Roman letters for the Thai alphabet and accent markers to show the tones. This worked well. I didn’t want to go to the school where they make you sit for six month watching others speak Thai without saying a word yourself. Neither did I want a school where they start with the Thai alphabet as if I were a child. Learning conversation based on Roman script kept the motivation up because I could learn to speak quickly.

Actually I didn’t learn quickly. I had about 300 hours of class now and my vocabulary is 500 words at most. I my brain wasn’t wired to understand or remember Thai. If I had spent this many hours learning a European language such as Spanish I would have done much better since my brain *is* wired to understand those languages and all European languages are closely related. The human brain develops language capacity when you are a baby and a toddler and once you are past seven or so the structure is hard to change. I struggled with my Thai. It felt like I was going nowhere but since I can speak simple Thai I guess I must have picked up a little.

Sometimes their teaching surprised me. Consider this list, which my teacher presented me with one day:

mokkaraakhom
kumphaaphan
miinakhom
meesaayon
phrusaphaakhom
mithunaayon
karakadaakhom
singhaakhom
kanyaayon
tulaakhom
phrusajikaayon
thanwaakhom

These are the twelve months of the year. Never mind the tones, how am I supposed to remember these words or keep them apart?

A modern way of teaching the months would be to include them in different chapters in a book based on stories. If learning Spanish I would read about Maria and Jose going on holiday in July and returning in August. That way I might have a chance to remember it. But in my Thai school they simply gave me the list of the 12 months and expected me to learn it till next class. I still can’t remember them.

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Diary: Why did Chalerm thank the military?

A reader wrote me today asking what Chalerm went back to the Ministry of Defence to thank them for. Had they done anything? Was something achieved?

The answer is in this newspaper quote from The Nation:

Due to heavy complaints from transvestites and transsexuals who are exempt from the military because of “mental disorder”, the Thai army is amending the law to omit the words and keep up with a changing society, an official said Wednesday.

All Thai men at the age of 20 are required by law to register to serve in the military as conscript soldiers. Recruits are selected by a lottery system, but each year thousands of men who dress, or have undergone surgeries to look like women receive certificates of exemption that are stamped “due to mental disorder”.

The existing conscription law has been promulgated since 1954, when there were few homosexuals and transvestites, but society is changing rapidly, thus the army is in the process of amending the law and omitting those words from the certificate, Lt. Gen ArthornLohitkul, director general of the Army Reserve Command said.

Now they have promised to do it. Lets see if it happens too. I think there is a fair chance as I don’t see any powerful group opposing it. The wording doesn’t matter much to the military but it matters a lot to those who are branded as mentally ill. The military don’t want negative press coverage so in this case they might improve their practice.

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Diary: Chalerm’s activist career is taking off

Chalerm’s activist career is taking off today… He just came back and showed me the business card from the “Army Spokesman”. He had pictures (the new digital camera came handy) of himself with Toom the ladyboy boxer, a gay Thai author and other notables at the Ministery of Defence. As if this wasn’t enough someone called from a TV station and wanted Chalerm to appear on a talk show next week.

I am teasing Chalerm, saying I expect him to dump me for a better boyfriend now that he is famous.

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Diary: Chalerm the social activist

I posted to Sawadee Forum yesterday abut the initiative to remove the mental illness stamp the military uses to exempt ladyboys, transvestites and homosexuals from service. When I posted that article I didn’t know who was behind it.

This morning my boyfriend “Chalerm” wanted to show me something on the Internet, and it was the same news story. Chalerm said that he and the famous ladyboy from the movie “Beautiful boxer” had been to the government offices to lobby for the removal of the mental illness diagnosis. The initiative was organised by the “Rainbow Sky” group, where my bf is a member.

The example they used was Chalerm’s own military service book, which was stamped with this diagnosis when he showed up for the draft in full ladyboy regalia earlier this year.

I remember how angry and sad Chalerm was when he came back from the military drafting session in his province. He was happy to escape the service (it was no place for him anyway) but bitter about being branded as “mental” for life. Now he did something about it.

Today he and the ladyboy boxer are going back to the government offices with flowers to thank them. I am proud of him.

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Diary: Chalerm’s digital camera

Chalerm was on a field trip with this school last week, and needed a camera to make his report. I didn’t want to give him my camera, as it is too expensive to risk. My fears were confirmed when Chalerm said his friend, who had brought his own camera to take pictures both for him and Chalerm, had dropped it in a canal.

But the episode started our discussion about buying a digital camera again. I have stuck to film, which gives great quality, certainly better than small digicams. But The Boy wants a digicam and I have been tempted to get one too for the fun of it.

We ended up buying a Minolta X31 in Maboonkrong. It was 7300 baht after Chalerm had haggled. I am on my guard in shops in Asia. They sometimes like to give you the same camera that has been fingered by customers in the shop for months, but without any discount. I told them I wanted a new-out-of-the-box camera. We got one but had to wait for them to fetch it from somewhere outside the mall.

It might be a sign of me getting old that Chalerm is quicker to figure out how to use the camera than I am. Chalerm loves to show off how clever he is with the buttons and menus. In my family I was always the one to be clever with electronic while the elders looked on with puzzlement. Now I am the puzzled one. This goes for mobile phones and the DVD player too. I guess I am not a teenager anymore. However, if something serious needs to be done in Photoshop I am still master of my domain.

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Diary: Thai restaurants are cheap for a reason

I came to the restaurant at 8.15. It was half full and seemed normal. The table I got was dirty and wet so I asked the waiter to clean it. This took a little while, as she had to find a cloth. I had already decided what I wanted to order but the waitress kind of forgot me after cleaning the table, which meant I had to wait a while.

It took some time to make the food. Longer than normal. But I didn’t mind since I had a magazine to read. I didn’t mind that one of the dishes had gone cold either. The other guests started leaving. When I got my food at 8.30 the staff began putting the chairs upside down on the tables.

The waiters cleaned the restaurant floor. When two Thais left, the last remaining of the other guests, the staff turned off the light everywhere in the restaurant apart from where I was sitting. I was beginning to feel the pressure and ate faster. They turned off the air condition and I began to sweat. At 8.45 I was presented with the bill and since the staff were all hovering near my table it only took seconds from my last piece of pork left the plate till they removed it. At 8.50, still ten minutes before the official closing time, I paid and left. I paid the stated amount. No change was needed.

I have been going to this particular restaurant on Silom road every week but they lost points today. I considered complaining; saying “borigann mai dee”, but my Thai isn’t good enough to explain in detail why I objected. I wonder if the staff considers how a guest feels while sitting in an ever-narrower circle of light as they loudly close the place around him? Do they think it doesn’t matter? If so, maybe they also wondered why they received no tip.

I understand they are eager to get home after a long day but if they let customers inn and give them food they should let people eat undisturbed. I am willing to pay the bill early so they can close the books for the day but the rest of the closing procedure should wait till last customer has left. Turning off the air condition was a particularly unwelcome trick. I won’t name the restaurant as this is fairly typical in Thailand, the only difference is that they took if further today than I have seen in other places.

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Diary: Face

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Diary: Home alone

I was home alone this weekend. I was a good boy. I did not go to naughty bars and I did not bring home questionable male company.

At a restaurant I often go to one of the waiters is gay. He is cute and likes to be admired. So when I went there on Saturday I admired him once again. I do anything to keep people happy.

Sunday I went to Pantip Plaza, the computer shopping mall here in Bangkok. Three teenage boys were crammed into a phone box on the pavement near the mall. One of them looked at me and smiled. A couple of seconds later he was behind me on the pavement, rubbing shoulders with me. Actually since he was shorter than me he rubbed his shoulders against my back. His friends called for him and he left, but only after posing a little and giving me another smile.

Inside the mall I saw one of the sales boys had dressed up in leather pants with matching shirt. He showed off by hovering his butt in my direction. As I walked by him I gave him a thumbs up for the outfit. He liked this and he knew exactly what I meant.

These small encounters were only some of the boys I ran into this weekend. The great thing about Thailand is that it never ends. There are boys everywhere, in the restaurants, on the street, on the Skytrain, in the malls. The small flirts gay boys and men exchange adds to the Thailand feel good atmosphere. All you need is a gaydar and a smile.

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Diary: Chalerm goes home to vote

“Charlerm” went home to Anyburi to vote in local elections this weekend. He left Saturday afternoon and came back Sunday afternoon.

Chalerm had received a phone call from his grandmother that he had to come home to the village for the election. She again had been told by the village headman’s people, who not only tell city dwellers to return to vote but also (I suspect) who to vote for. The village headman has power to punish or reward villagers, which is why the pressure works.

Why can’t Chalerm vote in Bangkok? The government keeps records of Thai citizens based on their house registration. Chalerm is registered as living in the grandmother’s house in the village. It is not common to change this registration, so most migrants to Bangkok from the villages are not officially in the city. This is why we sometimes can see in books or articles that Bangkok city has six million people when the city is double that size. They only count those who are registered here.

If Chalerm wanted to become an official Bangkokian he would have to convince our landlord to register him as living in our building. I don’t know how that would go. I never heard of anyone who tried it.

I don’t know who Chalerm voted for. I don’t dare to ask as I probably would be upset if he told me.

Elections in Thailand are too important to be left to the voters, so those in power tell citizens who to vote for. I don’t know if this is true in Anyburi, but in general a village headman will “sell” the votes from his village to a Mr. Bigshot. The headman receives money for this, and often the voter gets money too – from 100 baht and up to 500 baht in the big cities.

Thais turned democracy into another version of their traditional patron-client system. Small people support Mr. Bigshot types in exchange for handouts, as cash when voting or as new roads, street lamps, water services, a new school etc. Mr. Bigshots uses tax money to reward villagers with building works but villagers see it as coming from Mr. Bigshot personally.

Mr. Bigshot doesn’t do all this to be nice of course. He will use his position for kickbacks and corruption. You can be sure he makes a profit. To run for political office in Thailand is like a business enterprise. Mr. Bigshot makes an investment in getting elected and then he wants his money back plus a lot more.

Village Thais don’t think far enough to see that they are getting cheated. They don’t see that Mr. Bigshot is stealing more than he hands out to them. They don’t see how this system distorts the economy, or how mafia figures get elected because there isn’t really any clear line between business and organised crime.

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