Picture Police

Tim took the kids over to her brothers on Saturday night. Tim and Top had some work to do, so they decided to have the kids sleep over together and play on Sunday.

This left me with some unexpected free time. I decided to grab my camera and go out and take some pictures of the area in which we live. Not only would it let me hone my photography skills, but it would let you see a bit of what things looked like here.

I walked for about thirty or forty minutes, snapping about thirty pictures in all. My walk started in the community in which I live, Nichada. I also walked outside Nichada to show the contrast. I only hit a part of the community, and no doubt missed some of the nicer views, especially around the lake.

As I think I've written before, Nichada is a planned community catering to ex-pats, mostly of the Western variety. The key to the community is the presence of the school ISB (International School Bangkok) in Nichada. As ISB is arguably the best international school in the country, a lot of foreigners want to live in Nichada and send their kids to ISB.

Nichada is a pretty upscale community. We live in a four bedroom townhouse that rents for 50,000 baht ( about t $1,600) per month. By Thai standards, that is a princly sum as most Thais do not make much in a month. By Nichada standards, our place is at the lower price range. There are homes that rent here for five or six times the price we pay. When I walked by the real estate office, I looked on the postings and saw a house that was on the market for about $1.6 million U.S.

The way Nichada is laid out is as a community with a number of small complexes consisting of twenty to forty homes. There are three entrances, each with guards posted. Each complex then often has its own guard. The main purpose of the guards is to keep out people who don't belong (as is usually the case for guards). Generally, that involves keeping Thais out, as Nichada differs from the rest of the country in that having a Western face usually makes things easier. Guards often won't stop Westerners that they don't recognize.

On my way back from my little jaunt, I was about five minutes from home when one of the security guards for a complex came up to me. He approached me, asked where I was from. I was wearing my ISB ID (issued to parents) and he grabbed it, held it up and looked at it. I was a bit puzzled at this point because I was not trying to enter his complex. I said where I lived and he pointed at my camera. I just decided to keep walking.

When I got to my complex the guard there approached me and pointed at the camera. He said something about the office. He was speaking rapidly in Thai, so I really didn't understand him. I think that he was telling me that I was not allowed to take pictures in Nichada.

Okay, at that point I was pretty pissed off and decided to just turn away and walk home before I said something in English that he was sure to understand and dislike. I understand that Nichada owns the premisis, and that they are private roads, but this was ridiculous. I was taking pictures from the main streets, I wasn't going into people's yards or even complexes. There is nothing in any of my pictures that you couldn't see just driving through the neighborhood. I was also angry because I'm not sure if the guards even saw me take a picture or not. I could have been carrying my camera to take pictures outside of Nichada (which I did).

I wrote an email to the customer service department and asked them to clarify the rule. I was in a bit of a smart ass mood, but I removed the parts where I asked if I was allowed to take pictures in my own home, or if we all needed to gouge out our eyes because our brain might store the image in it. Sometimes its good to write those parts, even if they don't end up in the final draft.

I shouldn't get so pissed. Oh, I mean its absolutely bull shit, but its so typical Thai. People with a little power tend to be authoritarian, and they are always concerned that someone is going to steal an idea. Yes, that's right, I was taking some pictures so that I, a foreigner who is not allowed to own land, could steal their brilliant layout and build a chain of Nichada's across Thailand.

I was in a bad mood then when I went to the local grocery store to pick up a few dozen things. There was a guy in line, who stepped over to look at some things. I made the mistake of trying to be courteous and leave a little room for him since he had only one item. There might have been two feet between my cart and the person being checked out, which was obviously enough for some Thai woman to squeeze in and start unloading her basket in front of me. I was going to say something, but since I didn't know how to say, "Hey f'ing stupid, you every heard of a line? How come the only time someone in this country is in a hurry at all is when they are trying to check out of a line." Of course then the maid was paying on an account which took several minutes. When the bag boy saw that I had several cases of Coke Zero (which I have bought there dozens of times without incident), he ran off with one for a bit, came back and started saying something. At that point, I decided that I'd had enough Thai for one day, so I told him "mai been rai kab" and left.

Was it really a big deal about the grocery store? No it really wasn't (although the line cutting is really annoying), but I was not happy about the whole camera incident.

This morning I saw the real estate agent who helped us find this place and is our neighbor. She has always been very nice. I told her about what happened. She said that they don't like people coming in to take pictures, but that I should have told them that I lived here. I told her that I did, and that when I came in our actual complex the guard here was giving me grief as well. She told me to take down her number and call her if I had any trouble like that in the future and she would talk to them.