Spitting in public

October 25, 2011

Depending what it is I’m looking at, and what mood I’m in, I usually think Pattaya is either a wonderful melting pot of cultures, creeds, races and manners, or it is full of the lowest forms of life.

Unfortunately, recently, the latter thought was predominant.

Let me recount two instances.

A couple of weeks ago I was walking inside Tukcom.

Coming towards me on the ground floor was a fairly well-dressed, middle-aged, sub-continental-looking gentleman. As he got quite close to me he retched up and spat on the floor of the shopping mall, right in front of me, and continued on his way.

Slightly shocked, and in total disgust I called him a dirty something something (seven and four letters), and pointed angrily at his expelled expectorate now lying in a slimy, bubble-filled green pool on the mall floor.

He of course couldn’t understand what my problem was, and he wasn’t in the slightest bit apologetic or embarrassed, and as I waved my finger in his face he walked off, although I hoped the guy had now got the message that it is NOT OK to spit inside shopping malls in Thailand, wherever he comes from, where presumably it is acceptable to do so.

Oddly, a week after that, I witnessed a second incident, on the same road, inside Friendship supermarket.

I was walking down the stairs when I saw some trouble breaking out at the furthest checkout. A European man, speaking English with a European accent seemed to slap a small, darker women in the face (I couldn’t tell if there was contact).

He continued verbally abusing her and then spat in her face!

I wondered if this was a foreigner/Thai domestic, but if it was, the tardy security guards probably would have killed him.

As it was, they eventually threw him out, as he uttered threats to the shocked woman, who was Arab, it transpired.

Apparently it was because the man thought the woman had pushed in front of him at the checkout.

Whether she had or not, there are other ways of resolving such small disputes without slapping a woman around and spitting in her face.

By the time I got outside, the security guards were crowding him as he started up his motorbike and disappeared, still uttering threats as he departed.