From: godfrey@sscvx1.ssc.gov (LAURENCE GODFREY)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.thai
Subject: Re: Hiring Farang Again
Date: 29 Sep 92 19:43:00 GMT
Article-I.D.: sscvx1.29SEP199213431025
Organization: Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.4-b1

Khun Sripen, khrap

I answered your post point by point, but after some thought I feel that I
should like to say something else.  As you have unilaterally chosen to
post my email to you I guess I should continue to reply to you on the
network.  This is a more general reply and more personal.

The most charitable interpretation I can put on the feelings which underpin
your mail is that you misunderstand altogether my reasons for sharing
my feelings about Thailand.  While I admit that some of my postings to
other network groups are mischievous, those to the Thai group are from
the heart and they are things that I feel strongly about.  Don't think
I do not criticise my own country (England) or others I haved live in,
because I do all the time.  My motives in the Thai group are that I would
like to see some improvements in Thailand and I care enough about it to
spend time thinking about these things.  I tell you quite honestly that I
care far less about my own country and those of the west, because I
frankly think most of them are too far gone to ever become desirable
places to live in, whereas Thailand has such an intrinsically attractive
culture and so much potential that I feel it is a shame to see it wasted
and subjugated by corrupt politicians and other exploiters.

The least charitable interpretation is that your mail is xenophobic - 
very xenophobic - you don't like farang.  I know there are quite a few
Thais who feel this way and I don't try to change their minds, I just
avoid them.  There is a very big difference between criticising a group
of people and irrationally disliking them, and if you are just being
critical then that's fine with me.

I end with a story, which might help you see things from the farang point
of view - always supposing that you want to make that effort.  While at CMU
I met an American ex-professor of an obscure branch of philosophy who had
retired from the US and chosen to spend the last few years of his life in
Thailand.  He arranged with CMU to come there and set up a very small
department in his field, and to do so for NO SALARY and support himself
on his savings (which I am sure were quite considerable).  The first thing
that went wrong for him was that the Thai government taxed him on the savings
that he sent into Thiland in sorder to support himself - these were savings
that he had earned in the US and which of course had already been taxed in
the US.  The next thing that went wrong was that his private library on
his subject, wich he donated free of charge to the university, was valued
and taxed by the Thai customs.  The last thing, just before I met him, was
that a scholarship fund which he had set up to sent two Thai students to
the US to continue their studies ($20,000, if I recall correctly) was
taxed by the Thai revenue when he brought it into Thailand.  Not surprisingly,
when we met in the forecourt of the Tax Office in Chiang Mai he was applying
for his exit visa to leave Thailand for good, having just paid the necessary
bribe to the tax lady (who I am happy to recount is now in prison after a
lifetime of demanding bribes from farang).

Now think about that (I hope you will accept that I have told it exactly
as it was told to me, and that I think he was being absolutely truthful)
and see if you can understand that from a farang point of view

Sawasdee khrap, Laurence