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Don't Do Things in Thailand You Wouldn't Do Back Home

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing things people do in Thailand. 

This is kind of another one of those videos where I sort of editorialize a little bit about people coming to Thailand as tourists or to live here. Let me be clear when we say don't do things in Thailand you wouldn't do back home, what I mean to say is I am not talking about don't go to the beach in Thailand; "if you come from Kansas or something don't go to the beach in Thailand, you wouldn't do that at home!" That is not what I mean, or "you never get to eat Pad Thai; don’t eat that in Thailand because you wouldn't do that at home." That is not what I am talking about. What I am talking about in Thailand is one’s behavior, especially with respect to abiding by the laws or just sort of the customs of civilization for lack of better term, and unfortunately there are a fair number of folks that come over here and kind of go off the rails a little bit and Thailand is not a great place to do that. 

In a recent article, I found this on Thai Visa that is thaivisa.com. The article is titled:  Problem Farang in Chiangmai: American is in Custody and Will be Deported. Quoting directly, "People in Chiang Mai can breathe a sigh of relief after an out-of-control American responsible for a string of incidents in the northern Thai city was arrested for a second time."  Quoting further, "He had damaged traders’ property in the Ruamchok area, been filmed calling Thais “gooks” and reportedly even attacked a Ronald McDonald statue but when he pushed over a mailbox it proved to be the final straw for the authorities." Quoting further, "The man was finally arrested again near the site of the now missing mailbox. He was found to be a US citizen on a three-month tourist visa. He blamed being very drunk on the mailbox attack." Quoting further, "The man will remain in custody and when everything is settled, he will be deported said the police." 

The reason I bring this up is because I know most people don't come to Thailand to do this kind of thing but it is not uncommon to hear about this stuff. In the past there may be a level of this where we are hearing more about it because there is simply more media exposure especially you know there is more expat media exposure due to the internet compared to times past, but this is not the first time we have seeing somebody, as I said previously go totally off the rails and get into a problem for it. This person will probably be blacklisted. I suspect that blacklisting, if it is not directly noted as indefinitely, the fact that it is on his record the way that it will be, will probably result in him being as a practical matter blacklisted for the rest of his life.  Any time he comes in that will come up in the system and even if a certain duration of time is past, for example 5 or 10 years, the Immigration Officer may simply just use their discretion under the Immigration Act here in Thailand to just say "no I am not letting you in. We find you inadmissible”, basically.  So, this person isn't coming back. This person will probably spend some period of time detained in Thailand and that is not a fun prospect; I can tell you for sure of that.  I have been to many of the detention facilities for Immigration, as well as the prison facilities; not a great place to be in any country but I definitely wouldn't recommend it here in Thailand. 

I don't even know that a video needs to be made on this but I thought it was something worth pointing out that, look if you come to Thailand it is great. Have a good time here but don't go completely off the rails as it can result in a really bad set of circumstances for you or anybody involved. It can be expensive as well because getting legal defense to go ahead and get bail issued, getting legal defense to go ahead and get a lighter sentence, expediting deportations can be a problem. All of this stuff can lead to just problems across the board and they are problems that frankly can be avoided.