New Boganville?

So we're all familiar with the notion of the bogan and all the stereotypical personal traits that entails.

Bogan HQ?

Now we get to experience the bogan look (at least) even when thousands of kilometres from Rooty Hill.



Time for a rant in which I throw stones while inside my snug glass house..
Note: I almost decided not to post this, as it's a bit on the negative side, and I prefer things to be positive, but I hope I added enough hints of humour for it to be bearable..
Feel free to skip it, though, especially if you love tattoos...

TL;DR - bogans everywhere! Grr!


Yep, here in Thailand, there are a lot of (foreign) folks with questionable hair and clothing styles (and coming from me,
that's really worrying!) and of course plenty of "tribal pattern", "word in 'fancy' font" or "chinese character" tattoos.

Seriously, if the best tattoo idea you have is to put "Wolf" in a fancy font on your torso, you should probably reconsider..

An aside: As we know from Red Vs Blue, tattoos in general are a bad idea.. OK, so a very small subset of tattoos are ok for a tiny portion of the population (you know who you are), but the rest of humanity should stay out of tattoo parlours.

Paradise

What is it about coming to an island paradise that inspires people to get these new styles, all of which look very similar (so it's not "I'm being an individual")? I guess it could be just embracing freedom, letting it all go (and grow)?

And are dreadlocks still a thing?? Or is it just plain laziness ("I don't want to bother washing my hair, so I'll just dreadlock it for a few months" - but wikipedia tells me that "Many dreadlock care regimens require the wearer to wash their hair up to twice a week.") ? So what is it..?

And "hey, it's sunny, so why should I bother wearing a shirt" somehow becomes okay as a men's fashion statement?
I saw a sign at a bar "Topless men = no service", which I agree with.
Topless on the beach, go for it everyone! Topless in the streets, cafes and restaurants? No thanks.
And don't worry Aussies, as I write this at a cafe, there are some Norwegians at the next table, one of whom is a topless guy, and in the street is a topless guy from some other European country, and a bunch of topless men of unspecified origin drove by on motorcycles..
So it's common to do so, not exclusively an Aussie bogan thing..

And tattoos and no shirt is a common combination here..

Anyway, what annoys me isn't even the look, it's the behaviour. Especially towards to local people who are serving them - many times we've observed pretty rude behaviour. Not sure if it's racist undertones, or just plain bad manners.
Maybe if everyone spent some time as serving staff before they travel, they will be more appreciative and polite towards the local staff.
At least, I know that after my experience as restaurant / bar / coffee bar staff, I try to always be polite and make the staff's day a little better, not worse.

OK, enough ranting..

Here's a 7-Eleven cat to cheer us all up again:

Cat from the local 7-Eleven store

Tomorrow, I'm off to do a scuba refresher and a 'fun dive'. Finally putting my scuba license to use (needed to do refresher due to not having done a dive for over a year!). Hopefully, I'll see lots of interesting marine life.