It's all Thai to me: Bikes, dogs, and slum guys

We’re shut up in our own home, like rats in a hole. How else to keep out the construction noise from the condo next door?

The workmen shoo-ed away by one of my neighbours on Friday are back, drilling, and bashing away with a sledgehammer.

My hot-tempered neighbour told them to go, as he was tired of their noise. Today he is away, or perhaps has decided he has no choice but to let them get on with their work, for I have heard nothing further from him.

I have closed the sliding doors on the balcony, and the windows against the noise and the dust.

The owner of the building next door did not bother to tell his neighbours that he was hiring a gang to refurbish it.

Thais assume everyone will just put up with noise and inconvenience. We find out when the labourers arrive, and have to tolerate their presence until the work is finished, which could take weeks.

The same care-free attitude explains why we also put up with young men charging through the condo precinct on souped-up motorbikes, just for a lark; or why in our high-value neighbourhood we also tolerate packs of stray dogs inter-breeding, fighting and howling at all hours.

When Maiyuu peddles his bicycle to the market, he is chased by dogs snapping at his heels. The mutts live and breed on vacant plots of land, though a few also have taken up guard duty at the entry and exit to this condo.

When I walk home at night, the dogs bark, as the place is in darkness, and humans aren’t supposed to be out at that hour.

Last night, half a dozen mongrels were fighting each other on the road I take home. I am grateful they let me pass.

Thailand is a laid-back place, so noisy labourers, teenagers and dogs are part of the deal.

As I walk home, I also pass a block of slum housing, opposite a school. A young man who lives there likes to wander about on the road outside. He wears nothing but boxers.

When I come across him, he is talking on his cellphone. Presumably he has come out to get some privacy.

The other night he had taken off the boxers, and was wearing just a pair of briefs.

He sees me pass each night, but doesn’t seem to mind that I witness him in such a state.

Young men in a state of near-undress who don’t care what other people think are another part of what makes this place Thai.

Such scenes of near-naked abandonment would be hard to find in my buttoned-down neighbourhood in the West. All in all, I’d rather still be here.