Chapter 31

Motorcycles and Babies:

I have now been in Thailand for eight of the last twelve months. I have had a wonderful time and been astonished at how friendly people can be. I have tried very hard to come to terms with the cultural differences and am getting better at not offending people by my sheer ignorance of local customs and mores.

I fear that this is about to change since what I am about to write cuts right across cultural divides and is in fact an appeal to the Thai community to sort out two serious issues which are causing, in of course my view, a level of sadness and indeed tragedy which is painful to witness and indeed must be causing suffering on a scale which is hard to comprehend.

As a farang I should perhaps merely be an interested observer of the exciting world around me and perhaps it is not up to me to criticise but… for the sake of humanity surely something has to be done.

My first subject is that old standard, the motorbike.

A few weeks ago a front page article in “The Phuket Gazette“ noted that on one day in the previous week seven motorcyclists were killed in accidents. Six of them were young Thais and one was a farang. This was news since generally the death rate is only about one per day.
Even at one a day, assuming a population for Phuket of about a half a million people, this would translate in English terms into a mortality rate amongst motorcyclists in England of about forty five thousand per year.

In the past populations have been kept in check by killing off “surplus” young men by fighting wars.

So who needs wars when motorcycling can be equally effective whilst probably causing less collateral damage?

So what are the reasons for this attrition rate. Well I think that is best summed up after I have noted my second subject, since I think the reason behind both these problems is the same.
The tourist industry in Phuket is served by many thousands of girls who work at all levels from streetwalkers and bar girls to masseuses, cooks, receptionists and indeed senior management professionals.
The huge majority of these ladies migrate to Phuket from outlying provinces, in particular Issarn for the high season.

They are here because back home there is no work and here it is possible to earn, by various strategies, considerable amounts of money.

So far so good. This is typical of a most societies and in England too the seaside towns have a large influx of girls in the summer who can clearly earn more than by staying at home.

What is different is largely the difference in scale. And also, I believe, the reasons behind this huge migration.

I have spoken to a large number of girls here in Phuket, at all levels, and have been astounded by the commonality of their stories.
It is not just that they have a common story - it is startling that this story is always almost identical.

The story is this: A young Issarn girl, about eighteen years old, finds herself to be pregnant by a local Thai Lothario, who doesn’t hang around. She has the baby and her parents accept the responsibility of caring for the child. The girl has then disgraced her family and is sent away, partly to minimise the disgrace, but mostly to provide an income for her family.

Now from my western perspective I see this as a bad thing. When I got married, with the intention of raising a family, I reached an agreement with my wife that she would not work full time until the youngest child was five years old. The reason being that we both agreed that small children need their mothers. In this time of supposed feminine equality, the scene in our western society has changed so that sometimes it is the father who stays home, or indeed the task is shared, but the point remains: kids need parents.

Now I am sure that the average Issarn grandparent does a loving job of caring for these children. All I am saying is that it is far from being an ideal solution.

Here we come to the tricky bit. What is it that these two distinct problems have in common?

Ok lets start by looking for obvious causes which may seem to relate only to the motorcycling scene.
What causes accidents? In nearly all cases they are caused by careless or aggressive driving quite often fuelled by drink. Some of them are caused by farangs who have never ridden motorbikes before and have little or no concept of the skills required. They also feel liberated by the lack of drink/driving laws, or the fact that they are not seriously implemented. One is stopped for drink driving, one pays a small fine and one drives on. And so off they go on their merry way heading for the nearest hospital. However most of the accidents involve young Thais, nearly always men, or should I say boys?, whose testosterone levels are way beyond their control. Enough said there I think.

Now let’s consider the causes of my second subject concerning the high season influx of young, usually unmarried mothers from Issarn.

When my mother, the eldest of eight children, got engaged at the age of twenty five she was told the facts of life. She was so shocked that she broke the engagement. In my western world times have changed such that my nine year old son asked me what a condom was and on being told replied “Oh you mean a French letter.”

Here in Thailand I think things are different.
The question which springs to mind is this: Are young Thai girls not taught about the consequences of unprotected sex? Do they not know about condoms? Indeed I suspect that they are not taught about sex at all. This lack of sex education is clearly bad news if you don’t want your daughters to get pregnant.

Now it takes two to make a baby and, of course, as everywhere young men are hell bent on impregnating as many young girls as possible. I assume they receive as little sex education here as do the girls. And so it becomes a fumbling match where young men declare their love in order to get sex and young ladies give sex in order to get love.

Ok so what is the common link here.

I am told, have read, and have observed that young Thai men are treated with a deference and respect which surpasses my understanding. Whilst a Thai girl is rushing around helping with the many chores which living involves, her brother is sitting about doing nothing. He is brought up to expect that it is a woman’s job to do the work. His job is merely to criticise and have the world presented to him on a plate. This for an individual man is bad news since it allows him to grow up arrogantly self-centred with little or no appreciation of other people’s needs. For a nation this is no less than catastrophic.

This then is the link. The young Thai men is brought up, more or less out of control, believing he is some kind of minor deity. So he believes that women are merely there to serve him and gratify his needs. As for a women getting pregnant, well that’s her problem - not his. The motorbike is simply an instrument of his power. He can of course drive as stupidly as he likes since it is up to the Buddha when he should die, not him.

It is no wonder that nearly all Thai businesses are run by women. They have had the right training. It is also no surprise that in the extended Thai family it is usually a woman who holds the purse strings.

It is, of course, much easier to state a problem like this than to solve it.

There are of course many factors involved, some cultural and some economic.

All I would say is this: I do not much care for Tony Blair and some of his later policies but he got one thing exactly right. He said that his three most important priorities were “education, education and education.”