Who wins in a bar fight in Thailand?

The other day I was at my local pub which is not much of a place. It's just some chairs and cold beers and they have some foodstuffs for sale that very few people buy because it isn't very good. It has a decent crowd of locals and it is mostly expats.

I'm not going to put the name of it up here because this situation has absolutely nothing to do with the establishment and they do not deserve any bad press about this.

This place has no ability to do any sort of crowd control because the only staff there is this old woman who does the cooking, and her daughter who does all the bills and is the waitress and bartender.

Well over the weekend some older guys got mouthy and next thing you know an all out brawl broke out between 3 or 4 people that were there: Chairs got knocked over, bottles and glasses were broken, and some of the most pathetic attempts at some sort of MMA was on full display.

There was nothing classy about it, nobody really knew who was in the wrong or who wasn't and most of us were just kind of concerned about serious injury because all of the men involved were nearly 70 years old.

Eventually it was broken up by the other guests and the two women shouting at the guys who definitely weren't going to hit an old Thai woman and then one of the guys was encouraged to leave. The man who didn't leave probably should have because when he sat back down expecting sympathy from the rest of us he didn't receive it. Some people were getting angry at him for getting involved in something so stupid and he didn't end up being the "hero" I think he hoped he would be.

he had a scrape on his arm and his hands from where he also hit the ground.

This was not an exciting fight, it was just embarrassing to see. Two men older than my father having a pathetic and talentless brawl over some drunken stupid crap that is meaningless.

Neither one of these guys were the "winner" and now everyone just has a negative opinion of both of them.

But here is one thing I will say about barfights in Thailand. If you are a foreigner, and you fight another foreigner, or group of foreigners - there is virtually zero chance that any authorities or police are going to get involved, even if serious injury ends up happening. The police have a sort of "stand off" policy when it comes to bar fights in a general sense, but particularly when it comes to foreigners. If you get hurt and are thinking about pressing charges, chances are that isn't going to happen. The police will fill out a report if you pay them to do it, but they are not going to hunt down a person who punched you and take him to court. That just isn't the way things work here.

On the other hand, if you are stupid enough to get into a fracas with a Thai national, you are going to have a world of hurt heading your way. Once again the police aren't going to respond right away, but there is a sense of pride among Thai people and I'm sure you have heard about the notion of "losing face."

In a story that I heard through the grapevine, there was this bigger foreigner that was having a pool dispute with a Thai guy and the bigger foreigner decided to have a punch up with him. The Thai guy realized that he could no win this and wisely fled the scen. The big guy though he was a big man but hours later when big guy left the bar, about a dozen young Thai men were waiting in the parking lot and beat the absolute crap out of the guy. The police did get involved but the Thai man didn't even try to hide... he turned himself in and told his side of the story. When the police heard the story and it was backed up by CCTV, there was no way they were going to press charges against one of their own people that was being bullied by a much bigger opponent. In their mind the beating the bigger guy received in the parking lot was justified and no charges were brought against anyone.

It has been my experience that in almost all situations, if there is any way that Thai authorities can side with Thai people, they will do so. Also, there is a cultural thing here that I think many drunken tourist visitors don't understand and that is the extreme importance of "losing face." A Thai person, especially a young Thai man, is willing to face any consequences that might come when they are extracting their revenge for someone having made them lose face... so good rule of thumb is to just not be a jerk to Thai people. Well, let me re-phrase that: how about don't be a jerk to anyone ok?

There is no such thing as "winning" a bar fight. They are the stupidest kind of fights especially if you are 70 years old and a tumble down a few stairs would likely land you in the hospital.

Everyone just be cool!