But they do have some things in common they tend to be pretty smooth at playing the face game. The only time they don't give a f**k about putting on social airs anymore is when they are silly rich and have been exposed already. A good example is the Thailand's former soapy king Chuwit turned soapbox politican. This brings me to the phenomenon of fake hi-so Thais which is pretty interesting in Bangkok. I ran into quite a few Thais who liked to pretend and even kind of believed that they were of much higher status than they really were. I use the U.S. benchmark to determine middle class. If they are making around 40-50k (U.S. equivalent) a year in BKK then they are truly middle class. BKK is about as expensive as a tier 2 U.S. city. The reason why I use the U.S. as a benchmark because despite cost of living differences middle class (in any country) should be able to transition a good portion of their middle class purchasing power to another country without a huge deficit. I don't believe it's accurate to lower the "middle class" benchmark based on a country's COL but that's getting too much into economics and the fixed cost of global commodities.
Back to the fake hi-so; these are usually Thais who go into deep debt and live hand to mouth to pay for extravagant material goods and a pretend lifestyle. They will sometimes sell their family plots (which have been owned for generations) and purchase a condo in BKK. They also use their savings to purchase a late model Mercedes or BMW or finance it at silly interest rates. Luxury cars go for anywhere between 150%-200% compared with the U.S. just to give you an idea on what they are buying. They hang out at places like Thonglor or second rate overpriced luxury places and socialize with mostly like minded play pretend people. Their salaries might crack 40,000 baht a month which is good compared with the average salary but still not quite middle class. However they spend all this money on keeping up the image. There is no end game for these types of people. The women are usually shooting to marry a rich dude so they can upkeep their lifestyle but they are pretty high maintenance gold diggers. The guys are usually out to f**k as many women as possible and live it up until they crash and burn.
When you ask them what they do they tend to embellish or claim to have family ties to the political or business elite. These people love to do subtle name dropping. They aren't outright lying because Thais really do tend to have wide social networks but only as very casual superficial acquaintances. It's not really hard to meet some famous Thai people around Bangkok. When you probe it a bit further though you figure out their cousin rubbed elbows with the nephew of the son of the CP founder or something. Basically if they called in a favor they wouldn't even get past the door man.
These pretend types are a pretty significant slice of the Bangkok demographic though. A friend of mine used to stay around Ekkamai at a pretty nice condo just to put on airs as well. It was a big inside joke when we were around each other but he would roleplay to sleep with these types. He could do it well because he was tall foreign (mixed asian/aussie) and dressed well. He really did look like a 6 figure a year gentleman. His whole thing was to attend these places and give them the impression he was a wealthy young trust fund guy on business from Australia. Part of his cover story was that his father was from a wealthy Thai family that immigrated to Australia so that he could explain his thai skills. Then he would take the ladies out give them some fake pretense on not paying for anything. Hump and then dump. It was morally unethical for sure but these ladies were all category #1 types I mentioned in a previous post..ie. gold diggers.
