Tag Archives: farangs

LOVELY SLEEP

Published 2013 The Thai people pride themselves in the purity of their language. Few English words have infiltrated the common lexicon. Dtam-ruaat is the word for police. The diphonic annunciation can confuse most farangs. I thought for years that Dtam-ruaat meant ‘make blood’, however make blood is spelled Dtam-leuuat with a falling accent on the […]

THE PRICE OF PURITY by Peter Nolan Smith

Ten years ago during the monsoon season a biblical deluge swept the sois of Pattaya. refuge from an early evening deluge in a very ordinary beer bar off Pattaya’s Soi Excite. I parked my motor scooter under an awning a very ordinary beer bar off Soi Excite and scooted for shelter. The rain cascaded off […]

Berlin Wall a la Pattaya

The Berlin Wall fell in November of 1989. Several years ago a German expat in Pattaya tried to recreate one of many escape attempts over the infamous barrier between East and West by trying to evade police by leaping over a concrete wall topped by barbed wire in a state of nakedness. Stasi Police would […]

Mad Dogs And Farangs in the Sun

Last week I met Jamie Parker on Soi Chaiyapoon. I hadn’t seen him in ages. He looked ten years younger and said, “Botox. Only cost 5000 baht.” No wrinkles around his eyes and those furrows in his forehead had been smoothed out like 5-star hotel sheets. I was a little jealous. “So now you’re ready […]

NAPS OF THAILAND by Peter Nolan Smith

When a Chinese general was asked about the defeat of the People’s Army by the Vietnamese in 1979, he replied, “We get up at 5am and they get up at 4.” The draconian work ethic of NVA seemed to have been sapped by the torrid climes closer to the equator, because Thais and Laotians are […]