Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing unfortunately another incident of this 'foreigners behaving badly' theme that we seem to have seen the past couple of months now; I guess, it's going back about 6 or 8 weeks. It seemed to really start coming to a head going back to this 'beach bully' situation and even before that we were seeing a few incidences of foreign nationals kind of, it really wasn't all that out of line with prior years. We get a high season here and tourists; people may get a few too many beers in them or now cannabis is legal so you have got people that may have a little bit too much fun and they may get a little bit out of order but it's something that oftentimes can sort of be dealt with civilly, socially, however you want to put it. Sometimes it would pick up a news headline maybe in some of the local papers here. That said, recently I mean we have just had a spate of these and I haven't even gone through them all. There were a couple I left out just because we had other things to talk about on this channel and I didn't want it to just become one giant feedback loop of pessimism regarding foreigners as tourists here in Thailand but some of these incidences are just kind of beyond belief. They are incredible to a certain extent but that said they provide some data points and they provide some basis if you will to be able to provide some insight to foreigners over here if for no other reason, at least you know the extreme parameters of what not to do. 

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Smoking Austrian attacks taxi driver in Phuket. Quoting directly: "An Austrian," and I keep thinking of that scene in ‘Dumb and Dumber’ when he when he pulls up in the limo next to the woman and he sticks his head out of the, he says I have to go to a symposium at the local University, can you help me give directions", and she says "oh it's up and to the left," and he says "that's a fantastic accent you have there, where are you from?" and she says "Austria" and he says "oh well good day mate, let's put another strip on the Barbie. You know Austria". I thought of that the minute I started reading this article, that's just me. In any event, quoting directly, I thought I would add a little levity to this video because it is kind of a downer. "An Austrian visitor has been charged with assaulting a limousine taxi driver who reportedly told him not to smoke in the vehicle. The altercation resulted in the taxi colliding with another car. The incident happened on Thep Krasattri Road in Thalang District on Wednesday morning. Pol Col Pasakorn Sonthikul, Deputy Commander of Phuket Police, said on Thursday." So I urge those as usual who are watching this video, go check out that article in detail, you will see how this all went down. 

The first thing that I thought was really interesting was this all apparently got instigated over a matter involving smoking in the car. Well look I used to smoke; I very much understand people's frustrations with restrictions on smoking I think to one degree or another. We need to look back on the restrictions on the smokers and understand that a lot of our liberties went along with that too when we first started telling one group of people what they could and couldn't do. That said, I do also get the counter argument ‘when you smoke you are also affecting those around you’ so I get all of that. Long story short though, it has become pretty much known procedure throughout the world that smoking indoors is usually pretty uncommon at best and definitely smoking in cars. So the first question I thought of when I read about this case was this person is coming in from presumably Austria. Do they let you smoke in cabs in Austria? I have to imagine the answer to that is no. Now I am not saying that Austria is the same as Thailand by any stretch the imagination. But that said, if you are in a foreign country and you come here and you are trying to light up your cigarette and they say "hey you can't smoke in here", first off, it's not your car. Just generally speaking it's not your car and then at the same time, where in the West would it be considered acceptable to just tell "oh no," and then get into a fight, get into a physical altercation - you can see from the photos we have of the thumbnail of this - there was a physical altercation involved which then involved the collision with another car so again this resulted in damage to not only one person but also the property of somebody else. It could have also I guess presumably caused serious harm to other people at the scene. That being said, as you get to later on the video or later on in the article, they talk about the fact that yeah they went ahead and this person is being put through due process to deal with this whole matter. Again this is merely an allegation as of the time of this video although there seems to be a lot of really strong evidence behind the allegation so until there's a final adjudication, hold off on presuming any type of guilt. That being said, presuming that there is guilt in this case and it involves this foreigner who apparently got into this altercation over smoking, pretty much within the first from what I can see the first few moments of being on the ground in Thailand, I just don't understand where this mindset is coming from, from people that are coming here, and it doesn't seem to be from any one place. There seems to be multiple accounts including of Eastern tourists; maybe I should start pulling up some articles, cite some sources on that, but even Eastern tourists who are behaving badly. 

So again, this has ramifications for the broader foreign community in Thailand. As we have discussed in many other videos, I can't see how this is not having an impact on police decisions to enforce Thai Law more stringently; heightened scrutiny associated with foreigners operating here in Thailand, both living and working. Again, these are all things that in my opinion are probably going to only heighten moving forward if this behavior continues. So again, take it for what it is worth. But the one thing more than anything I find weird about these kind of scenarios, it's like the two guys that disarmed a police officer. Where in the world would you go where that is acceptable behaviour? Why would you think that that is acceptable here? Where else in the world would you go where you think you can be in the backseat of a cab, you start lighting up a cigarette and they say "hey you can't smoke in here" and then you get in a physical fight with that person. Where on Earth is that considered acceptable? But yet you come to Thailand and you treat this place like it's acceptable here? That's just, it's beyond rude. The level of entitlement in that kind of paradigm is just beyond me.

So leaving my own personal rant aside on this, again I think that this will likely have a ramifications for the broader foreign community here in Thailand and we will certainly keep people updated on those ramifications as they evolve.