Things In Thailand That Will Annoy You

Annoyance #1: The Sidewalks

Those are some pretty choppy-looking sidewalks. A lot of obstacles in the way random poles, random signs. As you can see, the sidewalks get pretty rough, and during rush hour, that whole street is packed with people navigating all those obstacles and each other.

A lot of this has to do with the planning here in the city. This area, Rama 9, grew very quickly you can see all the condos behind me it’s a very busy neighborhood, and yet there’s been very little effort put into developing a walkable infrastructure in the area.

I recommend if you’re planning to stay in the city, move to the city, that you do take a look around, look at the walkability of an area, because it gets annoying when you’re constantly navigating stuff in your way.

They are improving some of the cables. They’re actually removing the cables up above. Bangkok’s been famous for the overhanging cables the jumbled mess that sits over the sidewalks. But I think it would be a lot better if they just fixed the sidewalks. I don’t mind the cables; the cables give the city character. They’re fixing the wrong thing.

And I didn’t even talk about the motorbikes on the sidewalk.

Annoyance #2: Traffic Congestion

This is Jodd Fair. We had a little bit of rain this morning. They’ve got some significant flooding here lately. Jodd Fair has become a little bit more of a tourist trap. Chinese tour buses have returned got the flag people everywhere and that’s actually added a lot of congestion to the Rama 9 neighborhood in particular.

This is just north of Asoke interchange. There’s a lot of traffic in this city, and over time it does get to you.

I live in a very busy area. The Rama 9 intersection to the south, you have Petchaburi intersection and then Asoke, and there’s choke points at every single intersection. Just last week I actually got a motorbike I got caught at all three red lights. Each wait was about 8 minutes long. It took me 30 minutes to get from Asoke up to Rama 9. I could have walked in less time.

If I order a taxi, it takes me ages to get anywhere. And this is something you should be aware of when you move to Bangkok and choose an area to stay. Currently I’m planning to move out of this area because I’m just sick of the traffic. Moving around gets very irritating.

Annoyance #3: Crossing the Street as a Pedestrian

Even crossing the street can be quite brutal, and this is another thing that can be very annoying here in Bangkok. As a pedestrian, cars don’t respect you. I actually was walking yesterday back to my condo and crossed at that intersection, and a car drove directly in front of me just to sit and wait at the red light.

I used to live in the Asoke neighborhood. In that neighborhood, you often have very narrow, very busy sidewalks, and you also get touts and this is another thing in Bangkok that I really don’t like. This sales approach of waving signs in your face, yelling at you. I don’t even think it’s good for business. Most people are not big fans of having signs waved in their face.

Annoyance #4: The Walking Culture

Before we move on from those sidewalks, I also have to address the walking culture. A little too often, people in Thailand walk around staring at their phone. And these are on narrow sidewalks, broken-up sidewalks.

Three times this week, somebody walked directly into me. One of them was a really big guy, and afterwards very apologetic. It’s not a deliberate thing it’s not like people are trying to be malicious there’s just a lack of attentiveness to spatial surroundings. This big guy, he bumped into me, and I’m pretty big too. If that had been a little old lady or a woman with children, that would have ended very differently.

One of the interesting things here in Thailand is that these things that I dislike, they’re actually a little bit out of character. Because when you go out on the streets here, people are really polite, people smile. This is a very friendly culture.

Absolutely beautiful day today. I love this time of the year this is the early rainy season. You get these downpours, they’re very brief, and they actually cool it off. And most importantly, the air quality is very good. There isn’t the PM2.5 air pollution from around December through to early April, late March we get some really bad pollution here in Bangkok and especially in Northern Thailand.

Annoyance #5: Cycling in Bangkok

Being a cyclist in Bangkok that’s a tough one. I feel like I’d get run over too quickly.

My parents visited me here last year, and my mother has some mobility issues. It was really difficult getting around, and that really highlighted some of the issues with sidewalks, with people walking around on their phone. I was always hyper-alert that somebody wouldn’t walk into my 70-year-old mother with an injured hip, or that she would fall on a chipped-up sidewalk.

Annoyance #6: Government Policymaking

You couldn’t have a list made by a foreigner in Thailand that doesn’t include government policymaking as one of those things that they hate. This is probably what foreigners complain the most about in Thailand when you live here long term. This is the haphazard, disorganized policymaking that exists here in Thailand, particularly when it comes to foreigners.

This has happened many times in recent history. Last year we had announcements to changes to the tax rules here that would mean that you pay taxes on anything that you bring into the country if you’re deemed a tax resident. Now it’s been almost a year, and we still don’t know how that is being applied. There’s no clarification, no follow-up. The government goes out, they make big announcements, they never actually do the hard work of sitting around figuring out the policy first. It’s just a big announcement, and then it kind of disappears.

Over time, this definitely becomes an annoyance because it’s hard to predict any given policy and what’s going to happen. You get a lot of noise and chatter on social media. Here on YouTube, I’ve made videos about it, but my videos are always going to tell you: we don’t know what’s going to happen, so don’t pay that much attention. Because that’s the only thing you can do when it comes to government policymaking pretty much ignore it until you see it written into law and you see how it’s going to be actually enforced.

Recently we had changes to the immigration policies. There was a big announcement; June 1st was all over the media for some reason, and June 1st came and oh there are no changes.

Annoyance #7: The “Go Home” Foreigners

And don’t take this list as meaning that I don’t like Thailand. I know I’m going to get comments in the comment section telling me to go home it’s always the foreigners with those comments. I think you guys might be on the list too, actually. The foreigners that tell everybody to go home.