Bangkok Filth

by Ken Austin

  There are almost weekly examples of foreigners killing themselves in Thailand. Each subsequent tragedy is trotted out in the local media. And here is another question that should be examined: is it a false impression that the per capita numbers for expats and tourists are higher here simply because there seems to be such a prurient appeal for the local media to report when foreigners go out with a bang or a splat, as it were?

  Not every suicide in England or Australia receives the sensationalistic coverage it gets here. But it’s also hard to believe that so many of the suicides in those western countries are jumpers.

  Or maybe the expats who feel there is nothing left to live for are more adventurous and dramatic to begin with. After all, not everyone has the guts to pull up roots and move half way around the world with the vague notion that success and contentment can be found in a foreign country. Once they’ve made the move they probably retain contact with a few mates and family members from back home. The e-mails and phone calls are likely more positive than the reality. Most people like their friends and family to think that things are ticking along nicely and confirm that in fact it wasn’t such a hair-brained idea to make the move.

  When depression hits due to a traumatic experience, drug or alcohol addiction or simply because things don’t quite work out as planned, there are far fewer support systems for the foreigner in Thailand. That skewed, almost child-like way of thinking takes over when suicidal thoughts enter the picture. When the decision is made, despite the finality of it all, many people retain the strange belief that they will be able to witness the aftermath of their own death. There is a subconscious or deliberate decision to write the final chapter in the most dramatic way possible. While they may have failed in life, at least they have control over how the last scene will be played out.

  Other explanations abound. The typical expat likes the seediness. It matches his inner thoughts, makes him think that he’s living on the edge in a gritty third world country. Offers a way for him to fulfill the fantasies he has long held but has been unable to experience because of his social status in the west, or his appearance, or his eccentricities. But almost as powerful as all that is the fact that living in Thailand offers anomie. That first-year psychology term that describes the situation of being disconnected and out of place. Of course, in those first-year textbooks, anomie is usually used in a very negative sense: alienation, darkness.

  But many people know otherwise. To them it is liberation. Free from the constraints of extreme familiarity, they see unlimited possibilities. And free from the knowing looks of others from their country of birth, they are unburdened. People who know what your facial expressions mean, what social class you are part of simply because of your mannerisms and the way you dress. While the same kind of familiarity eventually develops in your adopted country, it can never be as smothering and intrusive.

  Freaks, Frauds and Failures

  Try and imagine what it is like for the broken expat. You haven’t built up anything in your home country, or have lost it all. Maybe you convince yourself that all those symbols of status and accomplishment don’t mean that much to you. Whatever the case, that willingness to drop everything and relocate to a vastly different country than your own also means that you don’t have as much to lose

  But the honeymoon period always ends. Inevitably, an expat faces personal problems and crises, as all people everywhere do. With nothing back home to return to, you rationalize, focus on the positives and carry on as best you can. Until something comes along that hammers you in a way you never thought possible. A combination of your good nature and trust in people sets you up for a life-altering bit of nastiness. And that’s when the earth truly opens up around you. All you previously thought winsome, quaint and enchanting becomes sinister and loathsome. You enter territory previously unknown. At best you can classify it as a nervous breakdown; at worst a period of temporary insanity. With no support and nowhere to turn, things become dire in a short period of time.

  The onl saving grace may be if you crawl down into the slime in which you find yourself and see it as a learning experience. Unfortunately, many of the lessons only further darken what has become your corrupted and hopeless outlook on the world. You know with all certainty that the ability of humans to empathize is almost non-existent and is only a pathetic narrative we have created over time in order to convince ourselves that understanding the pain of others is actually possible.

  It isn’t.

  You may find some solace in knowing that you are one of the damaged and can never return to the place you were before. It’s a twisted brotherhood that holds no meetings, has no support groups and provides no comfort beyond the knowledge that there are inevitably others somewhere who have suffered far worse than you have.

  It’s not all bad, of course. You still have life.

  But many people are not able to deal with this prospect, and so they choose a more final option: ceasing to exist.

  A couple of qualifiers are in order about the supposedly higher rate of suicide by expats in Thailand as opposed to the overall suicide rates in the countries from where they originate.

  In western countries, the media does not report suicides unless they are by celebrities or done in a high profile way. Despite the fact that suicides are one of the leading causes of death in many countries, the issue is out of sight for many people. On the other hand, a suicide by a foreigner in Thailand almost seems to be reported in a gleeful way by the local media. A freakish spectacle for all to see. Thus, supposed suicides by foreigners are very visible in Thailand.

  However, while many suicides and deaths of foreigners are reported in the media, there is no way of determining how many go unreported.

  Also, there is no accurate census of how many foreigners there are in Thailand at any given time. While statistics in 2009 and 2010 pegged the number of visitors to Thailand at about 10 million per year, the majority of foreign suicides appear to be by expats. Whether the suicides represent a higher per capita rate than in western countries is impossible to know. But the perception is that a peculiar number of foreigners meet their end in Thailand, and very often it is by suicide.

  Take a look at some of the reported suicides of foreigners in Thailand in 2010:

  January 27, 2010

  A German man is found dead in front of his apartment building in Pattaya. He fell from his balcony on the 8th floor and the police “presume that he had committed suicide.”

  February 8, 2010

  A German man is found hanged from a sliding gate connected to his house in Pattaya. When he was found, he was wearing a white t-shirt and blue shorts. Also, a plastic bag was covering his head and he had heavy bruising on his knees and legs. Family members indicate that he was depressed due to financial troubles.

  February 21, 2010

  Russian tourist does a swan dive off his 16th floor apartment in Pattaya. The 32 year-old man was found dead on the balcony of a sixth floor apartment. Police ruled the death a suicide.

  March 10, 2010

  An elderly Norwegian woman is found dead in front of the 18-storey building of condominiums in Pattaya where she lived with her husband. Her husband indicated that she had experiencing the onset of dementia-like symptoms recently.

  March 19, 2010

  The body of a 75 year-old Finnish woman is found in her apartment in Pattaya. Police do not suspect foul play.

  April 7, 2010

  A 71 year-old foreign man is found dead at the base of the apartment where he resided in Pattaya. Police speculate that he leaped off the balcony of his 14th-floor apartment.

  April 23, 2010

  An American man falls to his death from the 25th floor balcony of his apartment in Pattaya. Police believe that it was a suicide. The 73 year-old man suffered from numerous ailments associated with old age and his 29 year-old wife indicated that he had been depressed.

  August 6, 2010

  A 73 year-old British man and his 56 year-old Thai wife are discovered dead
in their Pataya house and the police ruled it a double suicide. The couple were having trouble paying off business-related expenses and they left instructions in a suicide note that their house should be sold and the money used to settle all outstanding debts.

  August 10, 2010

  Neighbours notify police that they believe a Belgian man committed suicide in his home in Pattaya. The neighbours saw the 73 year-old man hanging from a rope tied to the awning of one of the windows on his house. His head and face were covered with a blue toque and his hands were loosely tied together. Not surprisingly, police have been reluctant to close the book on this case and are not willing to classify it as a suicide for the time being.

  The last case mentioned above demonstrates that only when circumstances blatantly point to a likely murder do the police go so far as to hold off on classifying the death of a foreigner as suicide.

  Ostensibly, most of the cases mentioned above reflect the usual reasons people have for killing themselves: financial problems, old age and chronic ailments, relationship problems, and loneliness. All of which can be compounded and made to seem hopeless when you are in a strange place with few services in place to offer help to those in distress.

  But why do so many of these apparent suicides choose the most horrific method possible—jumping off a balcony of a high-rise apartment? When that most brutal thoughts could enter a person’s mind before they hit the ground: “Perhaps there is another way.”

  This has been discussed at length amongst the expats of Thailand who debate such things. Some people claim that the relative difficulty in obtaining firearms for foreigners in Thailand, removes a method of suicide that is much more common in their home countries. Others point out that foreigners who have fallen to their deaths are ruled suicides in relatively short order. A phenomenon that confirms the suspicion of many expats: that foreigners are viewed with contempt by many Thais, and that we are a sort of second-class citizens whose misfortunes are a source of amusement for the locals.

  Has a sort of ready-made, stay-out-of-jail card been fashioned for the underworld in Thailand? If you want to bump off a foreigner, send him off a balcony and it is unlikely that the police will do anything more than a cursory investigation? Extort and rob from the outsider before you send him to a well-deserved death in your country, and if you have left the scene relatively free from any signs of struggle, you will probably get away with it?

  While there is absolutely no evidence of that, the number of relatively well-off foreigners who continue to die from falls from high balconies, many of them concentrated in one geographic region of Thailand—Pattaya—continues to baffle many people. Just what is it about Pattaya?

  Pattaya

  Pattaya has often been called the vicepit of Thailand and the region. Located about 90 minutes from Bangkok on Thailand’s eastern seaboard, Pattaya has long attracted some of the seediest and least appealing tourists and expats. A decades-old, well-entrenched prostitution industry caters to every form of deviancy imaginable. Of course, willing suppliers and purveyors of the filth must be present before the shit-seeking flies begin to hover and the maggots begin to convulse.

  As with any cesspool of human garbage, there are the accompanying thugs and criminals to provide the drugs, collect the unpaid loans, and recognize those who are out of place and ripe to be taken.

  Few, if any, outlets exist for relatives and friends left behind to officially question whether an investigation was thorough enough or to point to potential evidence that could indicate something other than suicide.

  Of course, often times a suicide by a foreigner is obvious and tragic and a sign of how brutal and unforgiving life can be. When an unspeakable horror takes place in the life of an expat in Thailand, the sense of inescapable doom can be overwhelming.

  On August 28, 2010, a 40 year-old American man wrote out his farewell note, emptied a bottle of prescription drugs, lay down on his bed in his apartment in Pattaya and went to sleep for the final time. The final days of his life were the most harrowing nightmare any person could ever endure. Four days before he took his own life, he had been sitting on the balcony of his fifth floor apartment with his four year-old son. The man got up and briefly walked back into the main room of his apartment. As the late afternoon sun was starting to go down in the sky, perhaps he was getting a cold drink for himself and his son. As he returned to the balcony, his mind was flooded with pure horror. His son was gone. He looked down and saw his son’s small body lying still on the concrete below.

  He rushed down and tried in vain to resuscitate his son, but it was too late. Four days of hell were enough for him, and that was when he took his own life. Of that, there is no debate.

  Rankism

  Human beings live to rank themselves against others. The ways in which people can compare themselves to others is nearly limitless. Perhaps you might think that expats living in Thailand have left all that behind. A certain image exists that to live in a tropical paradise is to get one of the best possible lifestyles free from the annoyances of hung-up, western countries. In many ways, that is true. But the compulsion to compare oneself to others is alive and well in the expat community, and perhaps stronger in some ways than back home.

  Because the opportunities to compare yourself to others are less frequent for expats in Thailand, it’s almost as if when the chance presents itself, it must be done in a way so that it lasts for a good while. The “my Thailand experience is better than yours” comparisons can be brazen and contemptuous.

  But because there are so many broken, wasted individuals living the expat life in Thailand, sometimes there is no possibility for them to rank themselves favourably.

  Which leaves one last option—to mock those who are dead: I am alive but you aren’t. Who you compare yourself to is an indication of how you see yourself. When you choose someone who is dead, who can no longer defend himself, and whose death is probably clouded with incomplete facts at best, you are saying a lot about yourself with your smug, sneering, gleeful pronouncement.

  Yes, this does take place, usually by freaks who spend their time on various discussion forums for western expats living in Thailand. There is truly nothing left for you when you feel a twisted sense of satisfaction at seeing someone who has suffered through some kind of trauma and has either been murdered or committed suicide. True, this kind of sick gloating comes from many people in society and not just expats.

  But it takes on a special kind of repellent quality when perpetrated by expats in Thailand against other expats in what should be seen as a brotherhood of others who have chosen this country as their second home. Those who are energized by tragedy that has befallen fellow expats must truly have nothing left.

  To the families who have lost loved ones in Thailand in what are uncertain circumstances, or even in those cases where it is clear that despair did get a hold of your brother or son or friend: yes there are many who do share your pain and do not judge. The indignity of passing away in Thailand is compounded in many ways. From the local media who swarm a crime scene and take photos of the deceased that are shamefully printed and played on TV to the lack of thorough investigations, to the sheer overwhelming despair and loneliness of dying alone in a strange place.

  This is only the beginning of my exploration into the deaths of foreigners living in Thailand. It may turn into nothing more than a tribute to people trapped in despair while living in a strange land. But I will keep looking, asking and talking to families of the deceased in an attempt to shed more light on this topic.

  Getting Settled in the Slums

  Tales of newbies are always entertaining. The fresh eyes, the mixture of wonder and rage that all so often culminate in tragedy and horror. But it isn’t all bad. Some newcomers to Thailand discover that with a little effort and some unflinching self-honesty, they can find their own little comfortable niche.

  I arrived in Bangkok in 2005, fresh off a whirlwind TEFL course I had completed in Los Angeles. It’s the kind of teacher train
ing designed for those who make decisions on a whim and are short on time and money yet still recognize the need for some kind of preparation. In many ways, these courses are simply a way to validate your decision to pull up roots and start a new life half-way around the world.

  I rented a cheap room in the foreigner slums of Suhkumvit road, a span that stretches from the dire bars and whorehouses of Soi 4 and continues on for miles towards the south of Bangkok and the district of Bangna. The farther south you head, the thinner the concentration of foreigners (at least the white-skinned ones who have largely arrived out of choice rather than desperation). Their presence in terms of apartment rentals and “neighbourhoods” is probably strongest around Sois 17-30. The main thoroughfare of Suhmumvit in this stretch is fronted by 7-elevens, restaurants and bars and cluttered with street vendors. There are numerous side streets (sois) with more restaurants, bars, massage parlours, hotels and apartments for rent.

  Dead-eyed expats with booze addled faces and listless appearances lumber or slither along the streets. Many look as if they are retired and have no aim but to drift from bar to bar to air-conditioned room. If it weren’t for the fact that many of them have decades-younger prostitutes in tow and relatively presentable attire, many of them wouldn’t look out of place in skid-row soup kitchens in the west. The reality of their lives is no doubt more nuanced and not so easy to characterize.

  Despite the hedonistic overtones of the area, it’s a logical starting point for those looking to stay in the country for a few years or more. The presence of relatively inexpensive housing, amenities that appeal to westerners and other foreigners to socialize with and seek advice from makes it easy to settle in for a short period of time.

  The Job Search Begins

  After a week or so of getting acclimatized I started my job search. There was a small language school just down the street from where I was staying. The Australian who owned the place essentially offered me a job on the spot despite my lack of experience. The teaching would be at corporate offices at all hours of the day and would require me to take taxis and the skytrain to various locations. Although the pay was well within what I had expected, the thought of trudging around in the stifling heat (something I was still getting used to) didn’t appeal to me. Finances were no concern at that point and together with the realization that jobs were plentiful, I held off on accepting.