When Jaded Expats Wrongly Predict Thai Failures [S8.E4]

Greg 00:00:05 On this episode, we dial down the cynicism and talk about a few things that were ridiculed at the beginning, but ended up doing quite well.

Ed 00:00:12 So if you've ever thought a new program or initiative in Thailand was bound to fail but were proven horribly wrong, you'll love this episode of the Bangkok Podcast.

Greg 00:00:36 So this is the Bangkok Podcast. My name is Greg Jorgensen, a Canadian who somehow ended up in Thailand in 2001 on a wing and a prayer. And since I'm an atheist and can't fly, I have been unable to leave.

Ed 00:00:48 To do that. And I met with an American who came to Thailand on a one year teaching contract almost 25 years ago, fell in love with my goal of making the name for a person who lives in Bangkok. A Bangkok or so. I never left.

Greg 00:01:04 As an as a long term Bangkok peon. You should know better.

Ed 00:01:06 Know Bangkok are correct. One can achieve this. Once I achieve this, then maybe that's when I can leave.

Greg 00:01:13 You know. This fits in with the theme of the show.

Greg 00:01:15 I think that's going to fail, but maybe it'll be a success.

Ed 00:01:19 All right. We want to give a big thanks to all of our patrons who support the show. Patrons get every episode a day early. Behind the scenes photos of our interviews adds up to send questions to upcoming guests and access to our discord server to chat with me, Greg, and other listeners around the world. But best of all, patrons also get an unscripted, uncensored bonus episode every week where we riff on current events and Bangkok topics on this week's bonus show. We chatted about Greg's upcoming trip to Canada with his son, and his continuing efforts to instill him with the spirit of the great moose and maple syrup. Our experience doing a 12 K walk and checking out the hipster Paradise of Songhua Road, which is actually quite cool, and further refinements to my nascent Tai Learning app, which I'm continuing to work on. I expect to be fluent in. I don't know, it might be, I'd love to say three months, but we'll see.

Ed 00:02:16 We'll see. Yeah. We'll see. To learn how to become a patron and get all this good stuff. Plus full access to over 800 bonus and regular back episodes. Click this poor button at the top of our website.

Greg 00:02:28 That's right. And don't forget, if you listen to us on Spotify, you can hear all the bonus shows there as well. If you're a patron, simply link your Patreon account to your Spotify account. Add our new feed titled Bangkok Podcast Badass Patrons, only to hear the regular and bonus shows in the same place. And before we get going ahead, we got to have a bit of a visit to the corrections department. I guess it's corrections, but I can't really think of another category for it. But you remember last week we did a we did a show about, cringe. Cringe times.

Ed 00:02:53 Cringe. Unfortunately, I can remember the cringe.

Greg 00:02:56 I remember a lot about it, and I couldn't I couldn't figure out who had sent the idea, but I figured out who it was, actually.

Greg 00:03:02 It was my friend Scott.

Ed 00:03:03 Oh, excellent. Now, Scott the pedant or Scott the buddy? No, the the drinking and biking buddy.

Greg 00:03:09 No, not Scott the parent. Unfortunately he was. He always comes in with stuff after the show to correct us on the mistakes we've made during the episode, which which we appreciate, but no, this is our buddy Scott Coates, who is the, fill in co-host when Ed is not available. That's right. Yeah. So thanks for that, Scott. That was a fun one. All right, then on this episode, we're going to take a little bit of inspiration from an article that appeared in the South China morning post this past week. The title was Thailand's DTV Digital Nomad visa proves a Runaway success one year on. Now, this got us thinking about how the default reaction by many expats to any big government program in Thailand is this is going to fail. Now, obviously not everyone is so cynical, and I have certainly been guilty of it myself many times.

Greg 00:03:55 But the thing is, some of the big projects we think will fail end up being quite successful, just like the DTV, DTV visa. So we thought we'd sprinkle some good news fairy dust on this episode and talk about a few things that have got a lot of ridicule when they began, but are still chugging along quite nicely and doing pretty well. So I think this is one of these episodes we think we try to do as much as we can. The good news episodes, the the stuff that makes us smile and be happy about living in Thailand.

Ed 00:04:25 Yeah, no, I actually love this topic and I like the way that you framed it because, as expats, there was always that, danger pit of, oh, my God, this is gonna suck. Like, it's very there's something we've talked about before, but, certain types of expats, not us, they get sucked into a vortex of negativity. And, as you said, the default reaction to anything the Thai government proposes is this is going to suck.

Ed 00:04:55 Yeah. And, so finding exceptions to that. Things that worked out better than we expected. it's worth doing because it's true. the government does not always fail.

Greg 00:05:08 I agree, and in my first few years here, I was actually quite cynical about a lot of stuff. I used to get wrapped up in Thai politics really well, and I used to think, why can't they just do it like this? So it makes sense. That's right. Yeah. Harassing blah blah blah.

Ed 00:05:22 You've got all the answers.

Greg 00:05:24 That's right. I had them all. I had them all sitting at the end of the bar, and I had it all in a little book. I don't know why no one listened to me, but the first, the first time it became very clear to me that I had maybe better readjust. My thinking was one day I was sitting in a movie and I was looking around and I was like, man, Thailand does movie theaters way better than Canada has ever done movie theaters.

Ed 00:05:44 Man.

Ed 00:05:45 I mean, it's interesting you brought this up, but I, I, I had a very similar thing. I was just shocked how chill they were about, being able to buy a beer. And that would just be like a shocking thing in the US that a movie theater in a mall would let you bring a beer in it. It was like there would be some assumption that society would fall apart if we did that.

Greg 00:06:07 Well, you know, and then.

Ed 00:06:09 Yeah, but then in Bangkok, it's just yeah, we do this and it's totally fine. Like, it doesn't create any problems. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. And then, I mean, we don't want to get diverted by movie theaters, but, I would agree with your sentence.

Greg 00:06:24 It was a long time ago, and I think movie theaters in the West have come a long way since then. But true, things like booking your seat, that wasn't a thing when I was. That's right. Before I came to Thailand, we had to fight over the seats and throw your jacket over, like, six seats to reserve them for your friends.

Greg 00:06:37 It was. It was. It was a hell show.

Ed 00:06:39 That's how we grew up.

Greg 00:06:39 Yeah, yeah, but there's a there's a lot of really, really great stuff here. And I think as expats, we're sort of worldly and, we tend to be a little bit, cynical and jaded after so long and seeing so many people cycle in and out of Thailand. So it's easy to sort of play armchair quarterback and criticize these things. So we thought we would just go over a few that maybe got a bit of a ribbing when they were first announced, but are doing pretty well by all accounts.

Ed 00:07:09 Yeah, I mean, my examples are kind of eclectic. They're very different from each other. But these are things that I thought, okay, this is going to be a nightmare. This is not going to work out. Right. you know, whatever for various different reasons. and then surprisingly, they either worked or at least didn't lead to disaster, as I predicted.

Greg 00:07:31 Do you want do you want to go first? Then you want to get your first one?

Ed 00:07:33 Sure.

Ed 00:07:34 my first example, the first thing that popped in my head when you proposed this topic had to do with the the Covid vaccine rollout. and my issue has nothing to do with any of the debate about the vaccine. It was just that, you know, I worked work for the Thai government through a Thai university, and the initial vaccines were all allegedly set up like for university employees. So it's all government run. We're not even at a private hospital with some government contract. And I remember thinking, oh my God, this is gonna it's going to take eight hours. It's I was just dreading it. And, you know, I had a bunch of work to do and I'm just like, this is going to be. It's like like, you know, we talk a lot about Chang Watten and how you can get sucked into that black hole for 6 or 7 hours, but that happens every day. Like those people have practice and they, you know, so they've been doing it every day and it still takes eight hours.

Greg 00:08:29 Yeah, that's a good point.

Ed 00:08:30 So I'm like, this is a pandemic. This is like an international thing. It's like the Thai government is never going to be prepared for this. This is going to suck.

Greg 00:08:40 You're bringing content with you to camp out on the sidewalk.

Ed 00:08:42 That's right. and then I showed up with a couple of my colleagues. A couple we. I kind of walked in while some other colleagues were walking in and we were saying the same thing. We're like Jesus. You know, whatever. We rolled in at like nine. And I remember being like, are we going to be out of here like this? Are we going to be out of here like five? And it was incredibly well run. Like it was. It was it was almost like Taiwan was playing time, was playing a joke on us. It was it was basically perfect. I was honestly in shock. We were in a it was not a gym, but it was like a, like a hall of a government building which was not far from my university.

Ed 00:09:22 And they had like little checkpoints. It's like, go to the station one, go to station two, go to station three. And it was well staffed. They had at least okay English. There wasn't insane forms to fill out. And you know, so we rolled in at like 9 a.m. I think at like 920. I was like, oh wait, what? Like, I thought it was, I thought I honestly, it was thought it was going to take all day.

Greg 00:09:45 And you were done by 920.

Ed 00:09:47 Yeah.

Greg 00:09:47 Wow.

Ed 00:09:48 It worked perfectly. I honestly, it was great. It was. And I had a couple of vaccines when I was in the States. and it was better than what I did in the states. And the states wasn't that big a deal, but I, you know, I had to go to a this was a government thing, but they had contracted with like CVS pharmacy and you had to sign up on the website first and then you got a phone call confirmation.

Ed 00:10:12 And I had the temporary cell phone, you know, because I was right. You know, so it was it was a it was perfectly run in Thailand. So kudos. This is the whole point of the show. Kudos to the Thai government, whoever is in charge of their pandemic response or the Thailand whatever health agency. Right. They crushed it.

Greg 00:10:31 Well done, well done. Bravo to you, sir. Well done. Or madam. that's a good one. the first one I'm going to go for here is something that I've talked about on the show before, and that is the forest park in the middle of. In the middle of the city.

Ed 00:10:44 Yep.

Greg 00:10:45 Yep. And for those that don't know, it's, I mean, it's sort of close to Lumpinee Park, which is the old granddaddy of Bangkok's park systems. But the forest park is a gigantic, marshland like animal bird breeding area, walking area, bike riding, running. Jogging area. Event area. Formerly warehouses.

Ed 00:11:05 Formerly tobacco monopoly.

Ed 00:11:06 Is that.

Greg 00:11:06 Correct? Formerly the Thai tobacco monopoly. And, It's great. It's beautiful. Now, I'm not going to comment on how much of a pain in the ass it is to get there. Sometimes, like my son and I want to go ride our bikes there sometimes we've got to, like, load our bikes onto the car, sit in traffic for 40 minutes to get to the park to ride.

Ed 00:11:24 Right. Right. Right.

Greg 00:11:25 Different issue. But the very fact that it exists is is so incredible to me because it's right in the middle of the city. It's hard to imagine more valuable land. Right? And when they announced it, I was just like, yeah, that'll happen. Good luck.

Ed 00:11:42 Like, what is it? You're right. It is the kind of thing that, you would think that, like, a condo developments can take over. There's going to be a mall, you know. So someone says, oh, we're going to make a huge park right here.

Ed 00:11:53 And you're like, oh, yeah, sure.

Greg 00:11:55 Yeah, it's it's very close to Sukhumvit. I was like, there's no way that's going to happen in a million years. That works. They could sell that land and make billions of billions.

Ed 00:12:03 Yeah, billions.

Greg 00:12:04 Yeah, yeah. But I was 100% wrong. And they did it. They. Yeah. Yeah.

Ed 00:12:09 And actually the the park is pretty good. I mean, it's, that's that's actually a whole we maybe we should do a show on parks because I'm spending more time in Lapine and, so this, this new park, it in general, it's pretty good to me. They let it kind of stay a little jangly. So it's it's not really well landscaped, but that's part of the design.

Greg 00:12:33 That's what they tell you anyway. But it works.

Ed 00:12:35 No, no but it's the it's a little bit jangly, but it's in short it's great. It's like like I'm. I have always loved Lumpinee and I still probably prefer Lumpinee to the new one, but, it's still very cool.

Ed 00:12:51 It's great.

Greg 00:12:52 Yeah, I think so too. I like Lumpinee because it's got more older, bigger trees, more shade. Right? But this one just just for the sheer fact that they took that that giant plot of land that could have been soluble and filled it with trees and birds and animals, it's.

Ed 00:13:08 That's right. It's worth it's worth billions. Yeah.

Greg 00:13:11 That land.

Ed 00:13:12 Totally. Yeah. That was a good one.

Greg 00:13:14 That was well done. Well done there. Forest Park people and continue.

Ed 00:13:18 To trade whoever that was. Was that the BMA who did that like the Bangkok city crushed it.

Greg 00:13:23 Yeah. Well done, well done, sirs and madams.

Ed 00:13:26 Okay. My other my other thing, I think it starts around 2010, 2012. I remember when, e banking kind of started where you could get an app on your phone for your bank. So you and I grew up in, in in the years of the savings book. And when I, when I was in Thailand for I think the first ten years, I think all my banking was done in person.

Ed 00:13:53 Yeah, it was actually worse than the West, because I remember being a kid in the States and having a savings book.

Greg 00:14:02 Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Ed 00:14:04 Well, as a kid. But then I don't remember that really. When I was in high school, like like we got rid of that, I don't know, that's a that's a good trivia question. Like, I feel like but by the 80s in the States, I never maybe my parents maybe had a savings book for me. I don't know, I just feel like the savings book is super retro. And then I come to Thailand and they're addicted to savings books. And this stuck in my head as, oh, they're behind.

Greg 00:14:31 Okay.

Ed 00:14:32 So so in my head I've always thought, okay, okay, this is Thailand. So they're they're 40 years behind. Like we got rid of the shit in the 80s, right?

Greg 00:14:41 It's the same people that ask you to fax something to them.

Ed 00:14:43 Yeah, right. That was my mindset. Yeah.

Ed 00:14:46 And then whenever it was, I don't know. 2008, 2010, something like that. It was like, oh, you know, Seb's got an app. And I'm like, oh, here we go. Like, here we go.

Greg 00:14:57 Like this. This is.

Ed 00:14:58 Gonna suck. This is never gonna work. Like Thailand is gonna get banking. My buddies in the States, they don't have banking. And then it just works. Basically it works. I mean, over the years, obviously, I'm obviously occasionally it doesn't work, but I mean it if you if you add up, like the banking and then much later we got QR codes like, like the prompt pay system. Right. Like the basically Thailand is the best place in the world to pay for anything. Like there's QR codes, prompt pay, which, and you can just link your phone number to prompt pay. So if you're if you step foot in Thailand and just sign up And set this up. You can pay for anything at any time, like with no money.

Ed 00:15:42 I feel like this is the e-money capital of the world. It just. It just works almost flawlessly. Like taxi drivers, like motorbike guys, like motorbike guys. I'll be like, can I, can I QR there? Like, sure. Boom.

Greg 00:15:55 Most motorbike guys, not a lot of them. Now they have that little pocket on the back of their vest. They write the QR code there. He just scanned their back.

Ed 00:16:00 No, this is is the electronic money. It's way easier here to pay people than in the States. Way easier.

Greg 00:16:07 Well, I mostly agree with you. I 95% agree with you, but I've always said that I just. I really hate Thai banks. They're there.

Ed 00:16:16 No, no I agreed in in the banks are horrible. But in general I've had good experience with the with the apps, with the electronic interaction.

Greg 00:16:23 Right. But that's why it was so surprising because it just I hate going into banks. I hate dealing with a stupid book bank question and stuff like that.

Greg 00:16:32 Yeah. But then but then the apps, it's it's almost like a totally different business. It's like, you.

Ed 00:16:38 Know, that's what I'm saying. It's like they they know they went in our time in Thailand. They went from being behind to a head. Right. This is why it's perfect for the show. Because I just remember thinking, yeah, right. Like you're going to do something that the US is not even doing.

Greg 00:16:56 Good luck with that.

Ed 00:16:57 Yeah.

Greg 00:16:57 But. So I can say I hate Thai banks, but I love online banking in Thailand because that's it. I think the apps work just really, really well. I mean, I've got the.

Ed 00:17:07 Time, I've got picky things. But what I'm saying is in general, the whole electronic money experience, everything like whether it's QR codes, banking apps, whatever it is, it works way better than I thought.

Greg 00:17:20 Right, right. So I just got to get the rest of the house in order.

Ed 00:17:24 That's right. Agreed.

Greg 00:17:26 Yeah. Well, the next one I want to come up with is something that, I was curious about. So I did some research online, and I. And I put this into ChatGPT. So take all this with a with a grain of salt. But I think it's generally right. But I also wanted to say the Thai elite card.

Ed 00:17:44 It's funny because the title card, I don't know that much about it, but I remember when it very first came out and everyone was very optimistic about it. And then it like, fell apart. And I feel like it had 2 or 3 iterations that were kind of a laughing stock. Am I wrong?

Greg 00:18:02 I think you're right. And I remember too, when when it was announced, I thought it was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard. I'm like.

Ed 00:18:07 Well, it's way too expensive. I remember, I remember again, it has gone through several iterations, but whatever, you know, it was just something like, oh, pay $50,000 and get these, like shitty benefits.

Greg 00:18:19 Yeah, get a 5% discount on a golf course. I'm like, yeah, hey, if they can fly to Thailand on a private jet and spend 50 grand on membership, they're not. Yeah, they're not saving $27 on a round of golf.

Ed 00:18:31 The initial benefits were ridiculous. It was stuff like a private car from the airport.

Greg 00:18:37 Right?

Ed 00:18:38 And everyone who lives here knows. Okay, that costs 500 baht.

Greg 00:18:43 But this is. This is what. This is what ChatGPT gave me as a summary. So again, take us with a bit of a grain of salt, but it all sounds right to me. So it was launched in 2003 under the Tax and administration. the initial reaction, it was widely ridiculed in the press and public discourse, criticized as a vanity project aimed at selling citizenship lite to wealthy foreigners. Yep. Had concerns over unclear visa rules, lack of real benefits, and very few takers at the start. It was even called a national embarrassment in quotes by some opposition voices.

Ed 00:19:12 Oh wait, let me interject one thing that I just remembered.

Greg 00:19:15 Sure.

Ed 00:19:15 Okay. Part of the reason that was ridiculed is that Taksin, who was prime minister at that time, made some ridiculous statements. And I'm just going to go out there. I know this sounds crazy, but I'm going to stick with my memory. He said, we're going to sell 1 million of these.

Greg 00:19:30 Oh, I do remember that.

Ed 00:19:32 He he made some insane claim. And again, I forgot how much was at the time $25,000. 40, whatever it might have been. 10,000. I have no idea. But I remember just doing the math going, dude, there's not a million people who want to spend that much money. And there weren't. And then. And I remember in the first year, like a couple hundred people signed up, you know, and he's and he's trying to claim it's going to be a million. So I think so maybe part of the problem was it was oversold.

Greg 00:19:59 Well then it says why it actually turned out to be a success. It said it didn't boom. But it didn't vanish either. The program survived multiple government changes, including coups, and gradually found a niche market. Now it has over 30,000 members. And it's become an economic soft power tool, attracting wealthy individuals without granting them full residency or political rights. And it aligned with Thailand's shift towards high value tourism. bureaucratic headaches in the Thai visa system created an opening for a fast lane, Quote unquote, a growing global class of location independent professionals wanted ease, comfort and status. And perhaps most importantly, it kept a low profile and delivered just enough value quietly, which I think is interesting.

Ed 00:20:43 Well, here's what I'll say to this. I think the key word and all that was the word niche. As long as you recognize that, hey, this is a niche thing and then you capitalize on that niche, I'm all for it. I think it was oversold early. And the fact that it's he he predicted it when this program started, it was way overhyped.

Ed 00:21:02 I mean, listeners, I mean, this was a big deal that the government announced. Like it was like a world changing thing. We're going to allow this Thai elite visa. And it was all over the news. It was, I don't know, like I guess it was soft power and.

Ed 00:21:19 It flopped. And so the fact that he predicted a million and now it's only 30,000, it just shows how ridiculously oversold it was. Or you know, in terms of just how over promoted it was, right? But as a niche product it's great, you know. So I think there are 30,000 people who are going to pay this amount of money to this. And I agree with it as a soft power tool. And, you know, I like the fact that it it's not like so they're not selling citizenship. Like it's not it really. It really is. you're just kind of kind of like a super tourist. Yeah.

Greg 00:21:53 Right. Right. Like super. That's good for my life.

Ed 00:21:56 Yeah. And that's good. That's fine. I do think it's a right. I, I support the idea of the program. I just don't it's just kind of funny how how popular they thought it was going to be.

Greg 00:22:08 Well, over the years I've sort of met more and more people and more and more often in recent years who have it, who have the elite card. And a couple of times I made a joke. I'm like, oh, like the like the idiots that have the elite card. And then someone says, I've got it. I'm like, okay, sorry. So I've had to sort of pull.

Ed 00:22:26 Everyone else but you. Everyone else with you? Yeah.

Greg 00:22:29 I'm the only surf here.

Ed 00:22:31 Yeah, well, the fact that it survived. I would consider that a success.

Greg 00:22:36 Yeah, I would do. Yeah.

Ed 00:22:37 All right. My third thing, it's a little bit different. it's not so much a business or a government project, per se, but, I wanted to bring this up since, my field that I teach in is political science.

Ed 00:22:51 And, I do tell this to my students. I try I try to be somewhat humble with my students. And I talk about how even though I do think politics is a science, it doesn't mean it's physics. And and it even if you spend years studying an area or era, it can be very hard to make predictions. So in in politics, the classic example we always roll out is the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was predicted by almost no one among these, like hard core, like Soviet geologists and criminologists like these are PhDs who are like. Right. very famously, they were, doing like, body language analysis of, like, people like, high up in the Soviet government and like, oh, you see the way he's sitting, that means that this, you know, the you know, there was literally it's a, it's a field. And and then and then Soviet Union collapsed and, and these experts are like, oh shit.

Greg 00:23:48 Oh, I don't I don't know anything.

Ed 00:23:49 Damn I didn't yeah I didn't see that. So in that vein, I want to bring up, without going into all the details, the return of the toxin Shinawatra clan, the Shinawatra clan. Because when, So, listeners, you probably know some background. So, Toxin Shinawatra is the kind of godfather of the family. He was overthrown in a coup. then his sister was overthrown in a coup. And then just common sense and all the information and knowledge and wisdom you could imagine, like from Plato Up till today, it would be. It would be like they're done. Like they're never going to make a comeback. Like every person. Like there's no one who were like, yeah, they got a future.

Greg 00:24:35 Really? No one thought that.

Ed 00:24:37 Yeah, it just wasn't a thing. And when, there was talk of his daughter running for prime minister and then talk that he might try to come back, I will. Well, me and everyone else was like, oh, my God, like, this is a horrible idea.

Ed 00:24:56 I just will this will never work. No, that was okay. Whatever the year would have been 2016 when this kind of kicked off the return of Taksin physically himself, but then also his daughter running like this was this was an okay, I don't even have to speak about. It doesn't really matter what everyone else thought, just myself, I was. I remember just telling people like, trust me, I've been studying politics for, you know, 35 years. Like this. Like this. This will never work. Like it's going to cause chaos. It's going to be. It's going to be more violence in the streets. You know, I remember just just thinking. Oh, this is a disaster. This is a disastrous thing. And now I want to be clear. It is true right now that that his daughter has been suspended as prime minister. So maybe I can try to salvage a victory from, you know, you know, from my prediction of victory. But but but the bottom line is that the the party made a comeback.

Ed 00:25:58 Thai rak Thai Thai. They made a comeback. They won the prime ministership like, you know, parliamentary wise, like, not without doing anything illegally. They got the Prime Minister to back his daughter, became prime minister. Like. And he's free, you know.

Greg 00:26:12 So you're wrong, wrong, wrong.

Ed 00:26:15 I was totally wrong. And I remember being really cocky about it at the time. You know, I remember telling people, look. This is my field. You're just a political hobbyist. Like I'm a pro. This is never going to work. And then it worked. And then it worked. And and then it worked.

Greg 00:26:33 But just as I show you, man, like Thailand is never, never, never ceases to surprise, never fails to amaze.

Ed 00:26:39 It's really the field of politics. but that's a whole nother topic. But it's a it's a good lesson in humility. Even in your field.

Greg 00:26:48 I like it, I like it. Well, that was, That was interesting. You had three.

Greg 00:26:51 I don't have any more. I only had two. You had three. But,

Ed 00:26:53 No worries.

Greg 00:26:55 But I think that's good. And I think earlier you and I were talking. We're gonna have to do the the opposite to this show. Things in Thailand that we thought were going to be sure. Things home runs, but ended up crashing and burning really badly.

Ed 00:27:06 well that's another good one because, again, since we're since we're usually negative, it's a little bit hard to find things that were like, this is going to crush. You know, and then it fails. But but we'll see what we can do. We'll see if we can come up with that.

Greg 00:27:19 Yeah, I've got a couple of things in mind, but, yeah, we might have to do a bit more research on that one, but it's a it's a fun idea. It's a fun idea. And I just think that sometimes we need to dial down the cynicism and just sort of sit back and wait and see how things pan out.

Ed 00:27:33 For sure. For sure.

Greg 00:27:34 Yeah. All right, well, we ask our listeners to send in a voicemail using the little microphone button on our website if they have something to say. And this week we heard from our pal Vinnie. Vinnie. Take it away.

Vinnie4 00:27:45 Hey, guys. Greg Ed, and all the listeners, this is, everybody. It's Cousin Vinny calling in from new Jersey. so in regard to season eight, episode three, trying to fit in back in 2012, when I came out to Bangkok for the first time every morning outside of our hotel, which was the Green Hotel, which to my knowledge, is still shuttered. Now it's all overgrown, but it was a few blocks behind Rajadamnern Muay Thai Stadium. we would get back up out pile every morning and, And I remember I thought the y was almost a thank you. So one morning, I kept wiping the lady who was serving our food to us. And at one point, she grabbed my hands and put them down on the table.

Vinnie 00:28:40 And so essentially told me to stop doing it, because I kept doing it over and over to her. Every time she would bring me a condiment or my or my dish. And my friend was laughing and he was he said, you know, I was waiting for that to happen. You don't have to do that all the time like that. Thanks so much. Take care guys.

Ed 00:28:59 Vinny. Totally agree. Glad you concur. it's just, it's the why is hard to get, right? And the odd thing is, most foreigners end up just whining too much.

Greg 00:29:11 Right. Well, and what we said on last week's show was it's better to under why than over why. And there's been some discussions on discord about that with our listeners. And I think everyone kind of agrees, like, yes, way better to under way than over. Why?

Ed 00:29:22 Yeah, it's just because Thai people don't expect us to. and so and and for them, if you for example, if you y a younger person for them, it's very weird and confusing.

Ed 00:29:35 Like like like that's much weirder than having a foreigner who doesn't. Why? Someone that they should.

Greg 00:29:40 Why sometimes I why my wife to say thank you or just as a joke. And she hates it.

Ed 00:29:44 So yeah. No, no, it crosses circuits. It's not. It's not a Thai thing.

Greg 00:29:48 Crosses circuits, I like that, yeah. No, thanks, Vinnie. And, it's I just I would love to see that. That woman, that that polite woman. You just grab your hands. You don't have to do this anymore. True. Stop it.

Ed 00:30:02 True. It is. Good. Alrighty. A final thanks to our patrons who support the show. Patrons get a ton of cool perks and the warm, fuzzy feeling knowing that they're helping and are never ending. Quest for cool content? Find out more by clicking support on our website and connect with us online where Bangkok podcasts on social media, Bangkok podcasts on the web or simply Bangkok Podcast at gmail.com. We love hearing from our listeners and always reply to our messages.

Greg 00:30:30 Totes maggots. Each episode is on YouTube as well. Send us a voicemail through our website. We'll feature that on the show just like we did with any. Hit us up on Hit me up on blue Sky. I'm bc Greg. Thank you for listening, everyone. Take it easy out there. Take care of yourself and we'll talk to you next week.

Ed 00:30:44 For sure.