How She(Miss Udon) Sees Us by Werewolf
Posted by werewolf | Blog, Reader Submissions | Posted on September 10th, 2007
The Stickman site has an interview this week with ‒Miss Udon”. In it she makes the following comments about the Big Mango second anniversary party, which she attended:
‒I saw a guy who used to work in an English school where I studied, actually where I still study at. But he no longer teaches there. I was quite surprised to see someone like that because that school pays a high salary so he should be professional and he shouldn’t go there and hang out with girls like that. For me, I think that with him being a teacher he should be more respectable than that.
He never taught me but I saw him working at my school. For English skills, it’s ok, but now, when it comes to respect, I don’t have that for him. It is harder than before to respect someone who is not what we really thought they were.”
This reminds me of the old Groucho Marx joke: I would never want to join a club that would have me as a member.
Miss Udon lost respect for the teacher because he was at the same party she was? It makes me question whether I understand the mindset of Thai people at all.
I wonder if Miss Udon ever reads the Stickman site, which features articles with colorful titles like, ‒Gogo or Nogo? The Thailand Gogo Bar Decline” and ‒Are Massage Parlors a Better Option?” In at least one of these feature articles the author makes reference to personal observations inside bars watching girls go out for short-time sex with customers.
Does her close association with the Stickman site (which I have enjoyed reading for years) cause her any moral dilemma? I don’t know.
What is clear from these comments above, and others that follow in the interview, is that she looks down on the men who go to bars like the Big Mango as lower class individuals who don’t deserve respect.
The longest answer in her interview detailed a story about a Ferang English teacher here in Thailand who had been arrested and sent back to the UK to face rape charges. She says, ‒Now I realise there must be many Western guys who have done the same thing and…we Thai girls should be more careful talking with guys working here or Western guys online. We don’t know them and what they are really like!”
Wow! That’s a pretty broad brush to be tarred with!
As a final comment, I want to mention the English teacher at the Big Mango party. Imagine his shock when he saw her at the party! A school that pays high salaries to its teachers must charge high tuition to its students. He must have been surprised to see her there, thinking that she should be more respectable than that. After all, it is harder than before to respect someone who is not really what we thought they were.
33 Responses to “How She(Miss Udon) Sees Us by Werewolf”
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Translator
It kills me. Firstly, Stick is an English teacher, and was at the party. Has she now lost all respect for him in the same way? Of course not, or she wouldn’t have done the interview.
One farang teacher was wanted on rape charges. Obviously this is a bad thing, and I’m glad the authorities caught up with him. But are there no Thai rapists? These petty generalisations would get me annoyed if they weren’t so ridiculous.
Remember that this is a hugely proud and patriotic country, and that can often tip over into nationalism and plain old racism. Look at how the Bangkok Thais view the Issan folks, for example. They practically consider them to be sub-human. And thanks to the Chinese influce, the majority of the population of Thailand hate the colour of their own skin. Insane.
If you’re not Thai, or Chinese-Thai, you’re inferior. Some nationalities are reviled more than others, of course. Witness the many Indian men who are regularly denied entry to Nana Plaza gogo bars simply because of their ethnicity.
This kind of mindset isn’t exclusive to Thais though. One of the most illuminating conversations I’ve had since moving here was with a white western English-speaking guy who’s been here for around a decade.
He felt that he had to leave his home country because there were “too many immigrants”. He would describe, incandescent with rage, how some of them didn’t even have the decency to learn how to speak English.
“You’ve been in Thailand for ten years now. Can you speak Thai?”, I asked him.
“No”.
He didn’t get it.
View all comments by Bangkok Bad Boy
Perhaps I should give her the names of the two Thai guys I know who were deported from the US after they both were convicted of rape. One was convicted of raping a 14 year old after getting her drunk.
Oh wait, maybe they can be respected because they both drive Mercedes and only hang out at respectable places like RCA and Ratchadaphisek (…..for the car dealerships….).
View all comments by Paul
Stickman’s site is full of hypocrisy and paradox.
First of all, I am amazed anyone finds the reader submissions, which are the only content worth finding, since the site is so badly designed. Everything seems purposefully engineered to make finding this content hard to impossible. I have friends (OK, not so smart friends…) that I have recommended the site to in the past as required background reading before they visit Thailand, who have come back to me weeks later to say they never found anything interesting on the site and gave up.
Secondly, why some of these contributors write lengthy, witty and revealing essays on such a regular basis to help line Stickman’s pockets (or whomever is actually controlling this site now) is beyond me. People like Dana with his well-written but very odd weekly submissions.
Thirdly, you can’t comment on or partake in a forum related to any of the posts. Can anyone say web 2.0 and social networking? Has Stickman not seen any user-participating web site since circa 2003? I note with wry amusement this reasonably new comment on the site “This column might actually be unique to Thailand in that it is all about original material and not simply commenting on what other people write about”. Hmmmm. If you don’t start with an original material, you’ve got nothing to comment on! Great example of how to make a bug sound like a feature.
Fourthly Stickman’s own contributions have become moralistic lectures and increasingly depressing commentaries on the state of Thailand, followed by an up-beat quick gossip update on the go-go’s and bars of Bangkok and Pattaya. Bizarre. And exactly who is Stickman Mark II these days anyway?
And lastly, the reader submissions themselves are not organized in any manner. It would be good if the site had a category of “fell in love with a Thai bar girl but it all went horribly wrong” since that would weed out about 70% of the content and not waste our time. And, as far as I can tell, Stickman does not allow or post any decent guide to the nightlife scene in Thailand, which is what most of his readers surely want?
View all comments by mochalover
I think it is pretty clear that Miss Udon is a farang Dude pretending to be a Thai woman.
It is rather insulting because the farang Dude is not even that knowledgeable about how Thai woman think.
If you read some of her earlier content, she writes and thinks like a man and some of her thoughts are something that no Thai woman would ever have or express.
This was pretty much apparent to everyone who reads the Stickman II Miss Udon.
I must not have been the only one to come to this conclusion because they have been forced to address the issue.
View all comments by BigBabyKenny
Mocha,
You are correct. I find Stickman impossible to read and to follow. That black background gives me vertigo. I’ve often wanted to comment as we do here, but there is no facility. Hopefully, Stick’s English teaching skills are better than his web skills.
View all comments by bo
Kenny, I agree that it doesn’t sound right, but think it’s also quite possible that during the transcription and editing process that her opinions have been interpreted and filtered. People hear what they want to after all, and what comes out of a Thai woman’s mouth is not necessarily what a farang dude hears.
View all comments by Combover
I was introduced to Miss Udon at the party and spent a pleasant half hour or so talking with her. For what it’s worth, I found her to be an intelligent and articulate young woman, neither unduly aggressive about expressing her views nor stupidly coy about making them clear. For her to express a combination of surprise and disappointment at finding someone she once knew and respected among the scrum at Nana hardly surprises me. Neither do I interpolate from that some personal putdown of me because I was there, too.
The plain fact it that educated and intelligent Thais — every last one of them — have a generally negative impression of those foreigners who are found in places like Nana, but that doesn’t mean that they apply that impression uniformly to each of us individually who might happen to be there. My wife would certainly second Miss Udon’s general view about foreigners at Nana, but she doesn’t give a second thought to me dropping around to Big Mango for a beer and a burger every now and then. It’s a core part of the Thai personality to see the world inconsistently and in terms that foreigners might view as hopelessly contradictory. I would think you, Smitty, of all people, would understand that very well by now.
View all comments by Old Asia Hand
Was Miss Udon at the party as a customer, as a working girl,..? I agree with OAH, but since she was also present at that party it’s strange she looks down on people who are at the same party she goes to. So I also dont get her point… did she look good at least?
Any pics 
In fact, I try to be very polite and nice to Thai people when in Thailand and that usually makes my stays much more enjoyable and let’s me get in closer contact with a large variety of people. But if they still don’t like me for whatever reasons… their problem. I am also looked down by many people in my home-country for travelling to Thailand… So what.. I don’t give a damn. Let’s not let the opinion (especially if it is a rather common one) of one single person rule an entire post… too unimportant.. imho.
View all comments by Phoenix
I did a search for Miss Udon and got this…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRBi9nD1n_Y
Think this is her?
View all comments by Combover
Combover,
Maybe some of the answers are written by a Thai women and some of them were written by a farang dude.
Maybe it started off being written by a farang dude and later they found a Thai woman to take over.
Who knows and who cares.
Whatever the case, the whole thing is indicative of the what has happened to the stickman site.
Being forced into trotting out “The Real Miss Udon” to allay the widespread belief the column is written by a dude seems a little desperate and pathetic.
View all comments by BigBabyKenny
I also think it’s a little pathetic that the chattering classes give enough of a monkey’s about that overrated site even to hold a widespread belief on the matter. As you say, who cares?
View all comments by Combover
Oh Lord, it really must be something in the water here. For every foreigner who has ever actually accomplished anything in Thailand and whose name gets mentioned in one of these online forums, a dozen beer-soaked losers appear out of the woodwork to trash the poor sod.
Calling Stickman “desperate” and “pathetic” is a prime example of the species. On the contrary, Stickman is a pleasant young fellow with his own point of view on Thais and Thailand who has worked hard to create an online body of online work that he is proud of. Whether you like what he has done or not, it has substance and is the product of conisderable effort. The whiners who get off on trashing him should do half so well for themselves……
View all comments by Old Asia Hand
OAH – To be clear. Anytime you have an open forum like this blog people will use the comments to digress on the subject matter at hand. This original post was not a bash Stick post at all. In fact it was quite clear. Miss Udon took swipes at customers of the big mango bar and I also thought it was a little out of hand. As an advertiser on Sick’s site I did find it a little odd that he would publish an interview with her, at a party she attended, looking down on people who were at the bar and in the plaza. I think WW’s reader submission was right on the money in that regard. Given he is willing to do that then I am also willing to have a forum discussing it. Seems fair on all accounts.
Maybe some of the subsequent comments are about people taking a swipe at stick or frankly just saying what they feel. I don’t think that is bad. I have been reading stick for years. It is not as good as it used to be and it has not grown with the times in terms of better search, information architecture and user interaction. If he chooses not to do those things than that is cool. People can seek out the sites that cater to their needs.
Sometimes I think Stick walks a fine line with his biases towards venues, content clearly not written by him but ultimately published by him and as of late the attitude that is portrayed by Miss Udon.
I think the WW post was on target and an honest opinion of how he feels Miss Udon portrays people like us. End of story.
View all comments by smitty
The original Stickman site was great. Head and shoulders above any other site about Thailand.
The reader’s submissions were and still are great.
What the Stickman site has become since he had his troubles with John Gault is what is so sad.
Whoever is writing the column these days has none of the insight, wit, or writing skill of Paul Owen.
Any discerning reader of the recent Stickman II columns can see that it is not Paul Owen wrting them.
Calling the column Stickman II really denigrates the original Stickman.
The same goes for Miss Udon. When the column was written by Mr. Owen’s wife, it was entertaining, informative, and engaging.
The Dude and/or the Thai woman who replaced Mrs. Owen is just a pale imitation of the original if it is being written by a Thai woman and a fraud if it being written by a dude.
View all comments by BigBabyKenny
@BBK: this is the third comment where you are insisting Miss Udon is a guy or an imposter. Stickman & Miss Udon were at the party… she is real.
Like many people, Stickman was the first Bangkok blog I ever read. Stick has commented before on his reasons for keeping the site in his original format. I admire the job he did building a forum known around the world for its unique style. I owe much of my initial comfort level on my first trip to Thailand to his site. I, for one, will never criticize Stick for what he did over the years with that site.
Stickman II is not the same as the original. I can live with that. Generally speaking I don’t read the site often these days… I think this week was my third visit since the reincarnation (while I read the Big Mango blog at least 4 times per week).
I took great exception to the specific comments Miss Udon made in her interview following the Big Mango party, but I also find that generally speaking her comments these days reflect an attitude that I don’t care for. It’s a shame, because in person she seems to be a lovely woman.
View all comments by werewolf
bbk – thanks for also reminding me of the not stick thing. I never really got a clear picture of who is writing the column anymore and for sure it is not the same as it was. It is a tragedy that John Gault achieved what he did and the resultant change in the Stickman site.
View all comments by smitty
OAH Stickman a young fellow?
View all comments by hanuman
Werewolf,
Most men who hang around Bangkok develop the ability to spot the Ladyboys–men masquerading as women.
After a short time, even the really good Ladyboys, the ones who have had various surgeries and faithfully mimic the body language and demeanor of real women are picked out without much difficulty.
How many of us walk into GoGo’s and Beer Bars and automatically and subconsciously mark the impostors among those dressed as women?
These days, like most farangs, I rarely get fooled and even then only for a short while by even the best Ladyboys.
Most of us who have been around the internet have developed a similar ability to spot men masquerading as women on the internet.
It is a common feature of most chat rooms and dating sites for men to frequently masquerade as women. Most of the time the guys are doing it as a joke but there are sickos out there who get off on it too.
When it comes to things sexual and relationships, men and women think differently. This comes out in their thoughts and philosophies about dating, sex, and marriage and in the way they express their thoughts. Women just do not say certain things or express certain thoughts on these subjects.
When reading Miss Udon it was apparent to me that it was being written by a man not a woman.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who came to this conclusion. There have been numerous comments around the internet coming to the same conclusion as I did and the recent appearance by “Miss Udon” at the Mango Anniversary party and this week’s column are pretty transparent attempts to ameliorate the problem.
In the Stickman columns there is a plea for more letters. It is speculation, but maybe the reason people have stopped writing to Miss Udon for advice is they too smell something fishy about the Miss Udon column.
There is also the language issue.
If you study Thai grammar a little you know there are differences in the way sentences are constructed in English and Thai. Once these differences are pointed out to you, it becomes pretty easy to recognize a Thai person writing English.
An example is the location of the adjective. In English the adjective goes before the noun. In Thai it goes after the noun. In English we say “big house”. In Thai, we say “house big”.
Another example is the use of compound words. Instead of having a separate word for things, in Thai they just string together two words to make a new word. Instead of saying “ice” in Thai they say nam keen g, i.e. water frozen.
When you read the Miss Udon column it is easy to see that is written by a farang not a Thai person because instead of transliterating Thai to English, proper grammar and sentence construction is used.
Again let me say the original Stickman columns were classic. The original Miss Stickman was orginal and illuminating. The Reader’s Submissions are still wonderful.
The current Stickman site with its’ transparent sycophantic hyping of businesses and individuals who pay them, the current commentary about the Bangkok nightlife by someone who it is pretty apparent doesn’t know much about or participate much in the scene, and the dispensing of relationship advice by a Farang Dude pretending to be a woman is pretty demoralizing for fans of Paul Owen—of which I am one.
IMHO, the torch has been passed on to the New Generation.
The Big Mango Blog is now the premier website for honest, insightful, up to date information, commentary, and debate about Thailand Nightlife and Thai-Farang relationships.
View all comments by BigBabyKenny
@BBK: Stick emails the questions to Miss Udon, gets the answers back by email, then tidies up the grammar himself before publishing. I’m pretty sure Stickman has mentioned this openly on his website.
So there’s no conspiracy, I’m afraid…
If you really think Miss Udon is a bloke, perhaps you’d like to comment on why she was so vigorously in favour of the castration of cheating boyfriends in the most recent Stick Mark II column? Surely no bloke could possible entertain that opinion? I’ve already written to her myself about that one – looking forward to Sunday.
Think about it – why on earth Stick would go to the trouble of persuading a Thai woman to accompany him to the Big Mango party, to pretend to be “Miss Udon”, and to talk to some of the revellers about some of the questions she’s been asked in the column? Surely that would be more trouble than it’s worth?
And yeah, some of the Readers Submissions are a great read. Most of them are awful and make me want to stick forks in my eyes. All a matter of taste, and indeed of opinion. And you know what they say about opinions…
View all comments by Bangkok Bad Boy
BBB,
As Mochalover wrote in an earlier response “Stickman’s site is full of hypocrisy and paradox”.
Maybe when Mrs. Owen stopped writing the column, a farang dude filled in for awhile. Maybe it is being co-written with some of the questions being answered by a Dude and some being written by Miss Udon. Maybe Miss Udon’s responses are being edited and enhanced by a ghost writer.
What is clear is that Stickman and Miss Udon are not being honest with their readers anymore.
The Miss Udon columns are not just a Thai woman expressing her feelings and thoughts. It is something else.
The original Stickman and his wife wrote honestly and from the heart.
Like the regular posters here, you may not agree with them but they are honestly expressing their ideas and communicating their experiences. This was the appeal of the original Stickman and what made his writing so rewarding.
It is also what is currently making the Big Mango Blog such a good read.
The current for sale endorsement of businesses that pay Paul Owen to do so and the puff pieces hyping people with books coming out and people opening new branches of their business in Pattaya, etc. is a form of transparent low grade hustling.
Personally, I find it rather patronizing and an insult to the intelligence of their readers that they think they are really fooling anyone.
Over the years, Paul Owen wrote some great stuff and built up a reservoir of respect and trust with his readers that is currently being pissed away for a few dollars of advertising.
The whole thing, for the fans of the original Stickman columns and Mrs. Owen, is a pretty sad spectacle.
Like Werewolf, I don’t read Stickman every week anymore. It is just too painful to see what levels the site has fallen to.
View all comments by BigBabyKenny
@BBK: You crack me up dude.
View all comments by Bangkok Bad Boy
Why you guy get so piss off when Thai girl start to sharing her thoughts about western guys. It is just an opinion of some one who is free to think of anything,Right!
Don’t you think it’s unfair if we’re allowed to think about Thais but Thais are not?
I found that she is intelligent Thai girl who cause a lot of western guys sitting infront of his computer and posting comment about her here. As long as you keep talking about her as long as you falls in her trick and her partner Stickman. Am I right?
If you are not happy reading her post then stop it and find something happier to do…
View all comments by MU
MU – seems you want to mouth off without really understanding the whole story. She is entitled to her opinions – we all just thought it was funny that she was looking down at people who were at a party she was at. Seems rather odd.
As an advertiser on the Stickman site I also found it amusing that is was open season on our customers. Which is fine. Freedom of speech. I am down with it. So we turned the tables a bit on her – why do you find that to be a big issue?
I am happy btw. are u?
View all comments by smitty
I must say the latest stick column seems to make miss udon look even sillier than I already thought she was. There seems to be this retort from stick enterprises that she is just speaking her mind and isn’t that a good thing. Sure – but so is everyone reacting to what she says if what she says is ludicrous.
I am not quite sure I fully grasp her answer but basically I digest that she is saying if one is really upset when their gf/spouse cheats than it might be okay to cut off her genitals the same way a Thai women might do in a similar situation. Quality stuff folks.
Sorry. I forgot how to cut and paste links…
View all comments by smitty
@MU Are you a farang bloke taking a piss out of us? If not, in the western world there is something called ‘freedom of speech’ If you can’t live with that knowledge, take a few valiums. Miss Udon doesn’t strike me as an intelligent thai woman when she suggests to cut of one’s penis when caught cheating
View all comments by hanuman
Because of Miss Udon, I had stopped reading the Stickman site, which was a shame because the material from the Stickman is generally very high quality. A tip from someone who does read the site led me to this piece of good news printed in the 21 October weekly:
“Miss Udon is no longer. Remuneration talks collapsed and Miss Udon has no interest in answering your questions any more. Despite my best efforts to tell her how much her answers were appreciated, and me forwarding all of your emails of positive feedback to her, she insisted that she was done.”
Great News!!!
I don’t know whether this statement is a face-saving measure or if Stick Mark II realized he was alienating too many readers. I do know that — personally — I had no interest in reading her answers any more.
In any event, in the past I always found the Mrs. Stick contributions to be interesting, in stark contrast to Miss Udon.
I will gladly be bookmarking the Stickman site again, so I’m sure his page position in Google will be moving back up the charts.
View all comments by werewolf
Maybe the experiment of having a dude answering emails pretending he is Thai chick failed because too many people recognized what was going on and they got called on it.
Maybe they are abandoning the scam and trying to save face by claiming a renumeration dispute.
It’s great to right—or is it paranoid?
)
BigBabyKenny
View all comments by BigBabyKenny
Coincidently the readers interest in Miss Udon reached a point the previous week where she was sent no questions to answer.
View all comments by Cookoo
The scammers were also forced to state explicitly that no one was writing her answers for her.
With their credibility in the shitter no one believes them of course.
It is nice to see truth and justice prevailing once in awhile.
)
BigBabyKenny
View all comments by BigBabyKenny
I actually thought Stickman’s latest piece (on the Mango and NEP) was excellent – best I’ve read in ages.
@BBK: Miss Udon actually attended the Big Mango’s 2nd birthday party, and met several customers – including Werewolf, who’s already pointed this out. Smitty also confirms her existence above.
Whilst I do look forward to your posts, if only for the comments that are guaranteed to follow, I wish you’d pay a little more attention
View all comments by Bangkok Bad Boy
Actually, I’ve got it on good authority that BigBabyKenny is actually a retired Isaan go go dancer with Laoation grandparents who has been masquerading as a punter and is laughing at all of us for believing he exists. Said go go dancer has been known to send ‘ringer’ ferangs into the Big Mango Bar in the past to perpetuarte the myth of BigBabyKenny’s existence.
View all comments by werewolf
Just to beat a dead horse ….
BBK.
I know they trotted out “Miss Udon” at the BigMango 2nd Anniversary party but that doesn’t mean she actually wrote the column.
I am going to claim I was right until I give Miss Udon an English Grammar and vocabulary exam to see if she can write properly and really knows all the big words she claims she wrote on her own.
I am also going to continue to claim it was an intelligent thing to invade Iraq.
)
Werewolf.
I’ll fess up. I am Thaskin’s illegitimate son.
Now that Daddy is exiled to London with nothing to do and with a bazzillion baht stashed in the Cayman’s, I pass my time posting to the BigMango Blog in between sessions with the London whores, bathing in bathtubs full of French Champagne, and getting fat eating greasy unhealthy British pub food.
View all comments by BigBabyKenny
Is it just me? I fail to see the point of Stickman’s reader submissions when so many of them are clearly poorly written attempts at literature.
Not to brownnose, but the Big Mango dudes live the life they blog about; Stick has for a long time ‘distanced’ himself from the nightlife, or so he says. So he is regally surveying from the distance something that is below him now? Hmm. Sounds like he and Ms Udon are birds of a feather.
View all comments by Julian