Today a friend of mine mentioned something interesting. He said that attractive people develop fewer social skills while growing up because, as children, there is less need for them to fight for what they want. People are more inclined to give in to an attractive child than an unattractive one, or a mildly attractive one. Scrounging around in the recesses of my brain where the spiderwebs live, I do recall learning something to this effect in a uni psychology class. This led me to wonder whether said skills learned as a child could be unlearned in adulthood if one were suddenly thrust into a world where you become the cute kid in class...
Men who are considered mildly attractive (I might kiss him if he were the last person in a club on a Saturday night and I'd been hitting the vodka shots) and even those considered downright vile (I wouldn't touch him with a 2 meter pole after a bottle of tequila in the dead of night during a power failure) all move up a notch on the scale of social standing the minute they land in Bangkok.
Bagging a farang man is considered top prize for many Thai girls. Many of them have grown up in tough circumstances and have learned that a farang man who can provide money and stability is the way out. They travel from Isaan and the rural areas of Thailand to Bangkok with this as their goal.
Cue the farang man.
But the competition is hot. Girls in this city are beautiful and more than ready to put on the charm for a farang man. So they ooh and aah over these men who, for the most part, haven't enjoyed the same attentions in their home countries. Men are surprised that getting a girl can be so easy. More than one of my male friends here have remarked how difficult the dating game is at home while hooking up with a Thai girl eliminates the need for work in the initial stages of the relationship.
With the increased attention that's thrown at them, comes the enlarged ego and inevitably, a certain sense of entitlement and the attitude that any woman who is the recipient of their attention should consider herself very lucky indeed.
So I ask you... Can social skills learned as a child be unlearned in adulthood if one were suddenly thrust into a world where you become the cute kid in class... Or the eligible man in the room?...
My most recent experience with this was at 5am on a Sunday morning in a taxi on the way home from a night out...
A guy I'd recently met and who seemed sweet enough said something along the lines of he and I not being able to hook up because we know too many of the same people. Really?... Really?...
Allow me to elaborate. I'd been out with friends and after hours of parting we'd decided to hit Ko San Road for The Falafel. (I capitalise intentionally. If you've ever had a Ko San Road Falafel between the hours of 11pm and 3am, you will understand why). He was with friends on Ko San and so we met up and he joined my friends and I at Burger King because, much to our horror, The Falafel Lady was closed. So after chomping down Whopper meals we all shared a taxi home. As he and I live closest together and furthest from Ko San, we were the last two in the car. I think his blow to my dreams of marrying him and having his babies was slurred out somewhere between his putting his hand on my leg and trying to look meaningfully into my eyes despite the obvious trouble he was having stringing sentences together.
Let me make this clear: At no point was I even vaguely interested in him as more than someone who seemed sweet. Being a traveler in a foreign country, I'm always open to the possibility of meeting new people and making new friends. In retrospect it does seem fitting that being a farang man in Bangkok he would think that I was chomping at the bit to get him into bed. Because I am a woman, after all, and who could resist that irresistible charm. Oh come on! Really?!...
At home, I would have considered this insulting and outrageously audacious but here, I'm coming to expect this kind of behaviour.
Another note in the Bizarre Human Social Experiment we like to call Bangkok.
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