Balance son!
Nothing is white or black (except a black-guys a-hole in the middle of a tunnel at night without moon or stars...) and so is Thailand.
Yes ALL the things he mentioned are true. ALL of them. I experienced most of them myself.
BUT I also experienced a very distinctive POSITIVE side to Thailand. Side which is beautifull and touching, very human and sharing, very friendly and kind.
I agree - there are a lot of positive things.
You often get people that have been shat on from a great height offering to help you out. A lot of the things that appear so positive are acts by downtrodden people.
The problems is, they are kept low and downtrodden for a purpose. They are fed a lot of stuff about Elvis to fever point for a purpose.
This is a country where at least 2 moms have been caught trying to sell their 12/13 year old daughters virginity to westerners in the past 6 months. Those were the ones that made the papers. One woman claimed it was because she had no money for the bus home. I could (but I won't) name an area in Bangkok where a certain group of bars is full of 14/15 year old girls.
Still - funny shit happens. Today I got a taxi from Surawong to Rama IX. It's a holiday tomorrow, so it was tough getting a taxi and when we did it was 4pm, so we got stuck on the expressway.
I got talking to the driver, having a general chat and I asked "your taxi, or you just rent it?".
"No" he replied "I'm a mechanic and I just fixed the car, I'm just giving it a test run"
Stuff like that doesn't really surprise me any more. To him, it was the most natural thing in the world - test drive a potentially fucked taxi that he didn't own & pick up a couple with a kid on the way and get a fare out of them.
