Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thais the notion of Thais "flouting the law". I thought of making this video after seeing a comment on one of our recent videos, quoting directly: "Going back to one of your earlier videos where you asked why Farang feel they have to behave badly here although the mis-doing quoted, in my opinion, was relatively trivial, I made the comment that foreigners see all around them Thais flouting the law, so it is no wonder they feel they can do the same." 

Hey, a) it is the Thai's country. I really have always hated this response from foreigners, "Well the Thais do whatever they want!" Yeah, it is their country. I mean what is that? Then second to that, you don't even know what the law is. The things that the Thais are allowed to do that is an inherent Thai liberty, for example selling street food is a perfect example. I have heard for years, I have been here 16 years, I don't think a year has gone by that I haven't heard this three times out of every year that "well why do the Thais get to go out and just sell food on the street and foreigners can't do that!" Because it is their country. That is one of the rights as a Thai to go out and make their living however they see fit. They are not flouting the law. There are laws on you as a foreigner because you are not from here, you are not inherently part of this Nation. 

I don't mean to get so upset about this and I kind of understand where this comes from, but yeah and I also get that driving around Thailand, I get it, you watch Thais drive and the way driving works here and as a Westerner that can seem very foreign and that they just don't care about the rules. Well first of all, they are more guidelines than rules when you are driving around Thailand and as one person who rather brilliantly summed it up when we were driving around once, it was this guy I was helping with something, I think we were doing a Visa for something, I was in the back of a cab with him, and he had only been here like a week and he said "one thing I can say about the Thais when driving is unlike in the West where they follow rules, the Thais just aim to miss each other." And I was like, that was a good observation, that is exactly what they are doing. But this whole notion that the Thais are running around ‘flouting the law’ and therefore the foreigners have license to just ignore it as well is nonsense, okay? The laws as they pertain to Thais are not the same as they pertain to foreigners. That is just an inherent fact of being in Thailand. If you don't like it, quite honestly, leave. I don't know what to say other than that because the Thais aren't flouting the law in the vast majority of circumstances, it is just there is a different set of rules that pertain to the people that are actually from here than those who transplant themselves and come here from abroad. 

So that is my point when it comes to this, again I don't mean to get overly passionate about it, but it just seems silly and it is very almost, it is almost kind of a colonialist attitude if anything - "well these folks don't even know how to live in a civilized manner and obey the laws, so why should we?" Just stop, just stop with that. That is not helping anybody.