Riding out the Recession
I’ve met a wide swath of people from throwing the Hippie Disc. The expat community here is pretty small and you end up meeting the same people over and over again but this may largely depend on the people you hang out with. I’ve found the vast majority of foreigners here who aren’t just traveling are either English teachers or NGO workers.
There are also people who come to love it here and really want to find a job so they work in call centers. These guys act as secretaries or customer service representatives for western businesses such as credit cards or something like that. They answer your calls but they live in places like Thailand and get paid slightly higher than Thai wages. They are fluent in whatever native language they are hired for and thus giving you the impression that you’re getting local service even though the person you are talking to live on the other side of the world. I think it’s a win-win situation for everyone. The companies save on labor costs, the worker lives where they want, and the customer gets help from people who can relate better than – oh let’s say an outsourced Indian operator who might not really understand why your two thousand dollar cappuccino machine leaves a slightly bitter taste after using Ethiopian beans (I know, that example is stereotypical and doesn’t make any sense but hopefully you understand what I mean).
And then there are the photographers. There are a good number of camera aficionados here doing a variety of different things. Well, there’s a lot of stuff to photograph here.
Lastly there are foreigners who come here or have moved here to be with Thai women. I haven’t really met any of them and don’t know much about them because I think they congregate in different circles. I don’t want to judge because I know there are some, in fact many, people who have really found love and never had any mal intent. But there definitely is a prostitution industry here and it’s concentrated on this one road near the night market. I never go that way so I don’t see it (except for this picture taken during Songkran, hehe).
