Hi Toolz,

I was also confused. The first paragraph requires clarification.

Specifically what you mentioned: the farang tax mostly applying to white foreigners followed by an anecdote of an incident of the farang tax in action. It biased me to believe the commenter was indeed, white.

The weird reply back when you asked for clarification was obviously immature and absurd. The second Expat chiming in was not helpful either - as if that person’s understanding is some global expert consensus on the comment and you’re a bizarre 5 sigma deviation.

Maybe they’re expats for good reason - they can’t communicate effectively on even the simplest of little things (with peer commenters). So what do they screw up?

You clearly missed my point. I was saying that OP should not call it "farang tax" and that they should call it "foreigner tax". The reason is that "farang" means "white foreigner". However, the tax is applied to all foreigners, not just white people.

I can only assume the confusion arose from the person in question either:

1. not being a native English speaker

2. assuming I was white

Hope that clears things up. I really don't know how I can make this any clearer aside from the lot of us hoping on a plane to BKK and you experience the place yourselves.

Yeah, sometimes it's best to just ignore people at the first sign of hostility. If I had done that here I could've avoided being called a racist, which would've been nice. Oh well, it's hard to tell when the person on the other end is going to engage in good faith or not.

Never called you a racist. Not even sure where you are getting that from either. You simply misunderstood what I said -- based on your own preconceived notions.

When I tried to explain (several times), instead of taking a step back and trying to understand -- you doubled down on your own misunderstanding and accused me of seeing racist undertones everywhere.

Again, I can only assume English isn't your native language, hence the confusion.

Being white farang and having lived in Thailand for 6 years now I immediately got what he was saying.

Maybe you should consider you might not have the full context of the conversation instead of launching into a rant.

The farang only for white people is something that just comes up here sometimes. At one point we tried to get the Thai colleagues to call black expats "farang dam". Didn't catch on haha.

Foreigner tax is the correct way to call it because pricing in national parks is tied to citizenship not race

I'm also scratching my head as to what was confusing about what I said. Boggles the mind. I can only assume English isn't their native language.

So you lived there for 6 years and didn’t require clarification? Are you impressed by your own comprehension?

I am not.