Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing foreigners in Thailand, maybe just chill; to use the Thai term, "chill, chill" on Social Media. What am I talking about here? I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Briton dies in stunt gone wrong. Quoting directly: "A 33 year old British man died on Saturday after his parachute failed during a jump from the top of the 29-storey Pattaya condominium for his social media page." (So I redacted the names; I don't like using people's names if I can at all avoid it.) "Name redacted, he sneaked into" (is it sneaked or snuck, I never know!) "He sneaked into a condo building in Banglamung district with a 30-year old friend, to record video clips of a jump on Saturday night.” (Again I am redacting the name) but "he jumped off building but his parachute failed to open. He fell and hit a tree before falling further and hitting the ground. He died at the scene." 

Yeah very sad. When you get into this you will see they kind of go into some other exposition in there about how apparently he might have tried to do this before, and apparently, again I am not trying to make light of any of this but apparently he had broken into this place - this wasn't where he lived - he just sort of enjoyed using this place to do this sort of base jumping whatever you want to call it and then was doing it to create content apparently for his online presence, social media presence online. Now again we are on social media, I get it, it's sort of part of this brave new world that we are all living in. But folks please, foreigners especially, I do get it.

It is really interesting to watch especially new foreigners; my young colleague there Andrew although he is not that much younger than me, is I have met a lot of younger potential clients and folks the past few months and yeah it is a very different attitude than especially the older guys who have been around here for a while or have been coming and going or came 100 years ago and now they are coming back, anybody that has been here once sort of understands, yeah in Thailand the guardrails if you will are off. You are not bicycling with training wheels in Thailand when it comes to personal freedom. Thais kind of live and let live and they are going to kind of leave you to your own devices and most Thais are not going to want to even get in the way of whatever some crazy foreigner is doing in Thailand. Again I don't mean necessarily to call this guy crazy but to my mind it doesn't seem like the most down-to-earth if you will thing, no pun intended, I am really not trying to make jokes but it doesn't seem like the most prudent thing to do to base jump off of a 29-storey condominium especially one that you are breaking into to do so. The whole thing doesn't seem like a particularly good idea. Again not to cast aspersions, not trying to speak ill of the deceased, that is not the point here but new guys coming in, I immediately see it. It is like a look of wonderment. I imagine it is probably like when a child first goes to a massive toy store or something. They just sort of "oh my gosh, I can really do this? I can do what I want? I have some personal freedom, some personal agency!" Yeah it is great, it is great but again common sense should prevail; use the rules of reason for lack of a better word and just be careful. And honestly, is getting yourself killed really worth "likes" and "shares" or whatever it is. I get it, we all use social media. I really like it because I am a News Junkie but I get it, I really do but it is just a tragedy to see this kind of stuff and unfortunately it is not something we want to see here in Thailand. So hopefully, in the future if nothing else, this tragedy can act as a lesson for folks in the future to maybe make the same decisions you would make back in your home country especially when it comes to risking your life.