Enemy of the State - Discussions with Rural People in the North - #1

I was sitting on the floor with a young guy, maybe 25 years old, in his parents living room eating sticky rice, grilled chicken and something else I wasn’t familiar with. It was hot and he turned on the fan for me.


He started to talk.

Sometimes it was a bit hard to understand him, not because he wasn’t articulate but because he would bounce from Thai, to the Northern dialect and throw in some English words just to help on my toes and confuse me. He had a story that made one feel like having a breakdown and start to cry.
He was living with his parents as he couldn’t find any reasonable work. He had graduated from Trade school as an electrician but there was no work around for him. I just let him talk, not knowing what to say.
He told me that all he wanted out of life was a house, a beautiful Girl, his words, and a decent car, he had nothing. He told me how people looked down on him because he had dark skin and I thought to myself he should go to Isan, but I digress. He said that because he was only a soldiers son he didn’t have the opportunities that others had, that he was looked down upon and he was depressed about it as he didn‘t know what to do. He told me that he had taken the Government course and it was worthless but at least they paid him to take it. He told me about his sister who had to travel way south of Bangkok to find work and leave her son to be looked after by his aging parents. He told me about how his parents got up at 4 am every day to go to work for a few hours because his father’s military pension was not enough to pay the family costs. He then told me he was a Red supporter but couldn’t go to the city as he didn’t have any money.

The frightening part is his story is not unique. I heard it, or versions of it constantly as I traveled around the North for the month of March doing some research for a story I was going to do and which, as always happens to me was preempted by events bigger and more important. Death of the Polish President and the deaths of protesters and soldiers in Bangkok.

I’ve decided to write some small articles over the next while about what I learned about the people, the reds and maybe even life in our recent travels in Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Phayao, Lampang and Tak. Maybe, just maybe, people will begin to understand a bit more about the mindset of the rural people of Thailand.