In Coconuts’ “The Expat Files,” writer Jim Algie picks the brains of the most famous — and infamous — foreigners in Thailand.
Andrew Biggs is arguably the most omnipresent farang in Thailand. The well-known English teacher hosts TV and radio shows, big Thai events, and speaks at government seminars. He also writes for newspapers and magazines — his current Sunday Bangkok Post column is a hit with Thais and foreigners alike. His Thai-language books have been bestsellers, and he boasts 2.5 million followers on Twitter. As if that wasn’t enough, he runs his own English-language school, The Andrew Biggs Academy.
So much for his CV of personal achievements in the kingdom.
As they do in the lives of many visitors-turned-expats in Thailand, chance encounters loom large in Biggs’ story. He happened to be in the editorial offices of The Nation newspaper, where he was working at the time, when somebody dropped by to say they needed English-language content and videos for the then-new — and now long-defunct — Microbus TV show. On the spot, they offered him a job. Initially hesitant about hosting a TV show, “I have a face that’s perfect for radio,” he said with a wry grin – the Australian turned what could have been a banal segment, called “English on the Bus,” into an often hilarious and culturally insightful showcase for how to teach the English language in Thai terms.
Many mornings on the way to my own copy editor’s job at The Nation, where I first met Biggs in 1995, I would see him pop up on the show speaking remarkably fluent Thai as he taught commuters how to speak English like Clint Eastwood by translating the tag lines from films like Dirty Harry. “Go ahead, make my day,” he would translate into the local vernacular. In other segments, he spelled out how Thais could tell obnoxious farangs to piss off in polite terms, educated Thai women how to ward off the come-ons of would-be romeos from the West, and even satirical lessons for Thai police officers to teach them how to request bribes from native English speakers by using expressions such as, “Please grease my palms.”
The 55-year-old parlayed those appearances into regular slots on Thai TV, hosting news programs and even a game show about learning English that turned him into a household name in Thailand by the late 1990s.
Qualifying for celebrity status, in my eyes anyway, requires more than just millions of Instagram voyeurs gawking at your retouched hindquarters with hashtags like #bootyfordays. What you really need are stalkers. Biggs has had several. One hunchbacked Thai woman dogged him for months, stepping out in front of his speeding car and nearly causing a fatal accident. Another Thai woman, who used to wait for him every evening for three months in the lobby of the TV station where he worked, became so aggressive one night that he had to call out for help from the security guards. However, they were hesitant to assist him when the lady told them that Biggs was her ex-boyfriend.
“Thais won’t get involved if it’s a personal thing,” he said. “She used to send me letters and kiss them at the bottom with her lipstick and all that.”
While his academic credentials are impeccable – he has a bachelor’s in Thai language studies and is currently working on a master’s degree in Curriculum Innovation and Learning Management, his real background is in journalism. As a young reporter in Queensland, he had the chance to go to England to work for a newspaper. Thai Airways had the cheapest flights then, but the catch – and the letdown for him – was the mandatory two-day stopover in Bangkok.
Arriving on Valentine’s Day in 1989, he had no interest in seeing the city. Instead, he had planned on holing up in his hotel room to spend his downtime reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, but the capital, with what he called its “air of excitement and lawlessness,” along with the genial people, slowly pulled him into their orbit.
Biggs extended that two-day visa for two weeks and then two months, backpacking around much of the country. Every time he called his mother, she’d tell him to leave Thailand immediately because it was too dangerous. In an irony of travel ironies, when he finally arrived in London, all of his possessions were stolen out of his friend’s flat within the first two days, including his traveler’s checks and clothes — though nothing negative had befallen him in Thailand.
Only a month later, after realizing that being a journalist in London would be much the same as in Australia, he was back in Bangkok, convinced that the capital would be a dramatic catalyst and backdrop for stories. That theory proved to be practical. During his time at The Nation, he witnessed some pivotal points in Thai history, like the “Black May” crisis in 1992, when protesters took to the streets around Democracy Monument to voice their discontent with the installation of an unelected military government. As tensions mounted over several days and nights, soldiers emptied their cartridges into the crowd and the body count soared past 50. Martial law was declared and a curfew imposed.
The junta also attempted to censor the local press. Some papers like Bangkok Post caved in, but The Nation did not. They continued to run stories and photos of the carnage. That did not sit well with the military, which brought its tanks rumbling down Bang-na Trat Road to point their turrets at the paper’s editorial offices, where Biggs and his colleagues had front-row seats during the tense standoff.
In the end, The Nation refused to back down and the military backed off: a victory unimaginable during the current climate of repression and media intimidation.
These are the kind of recollections that he sometimes shares in his weekly column “Sanook” in the “Brunch” supplement of the Sunday Bangkok Post. It’s an entertaining read that also illuminates many murky aspects of Thai culture and history unbeknownst to most foreigners. For human interest, he sketches portraits of the Thai staff at his language school and their superstitious beliefs, while also tossing in observations, sometimes critical, sometimes laudatory, on the state of the nation.
Of these subjects, few are more contentious or pertinent these days than the subject of education. Thailand is mired in what economists call the “middle-income trap.” After moving from an agrarian society to a manufacturing-based economy, the country now needs to innovate its own products and services, which would require more critical-thinking skills and a better education system free of rote learning.
In his capacity as an adviser to a number of high-level academics in the Education Ministry, Biggs is well placed at the center of this debate, which seesaws between the need for more creativity and the upholding of long-standing traditions in Thai society.
“The Education Minister and I are great mates. I love working with Dr. Theerkiat. He’s a smart, forward-thinking guy. He’s not an academic doctor, he’s a physician,” Biggs said, before adding, “The people at the top are really good, but the [education] ministry is a dinosaur, and it’s so entrenched. It’s been like that for 50 years and it has the highest budget of any Thai government ministry.”
The main contradiction, he said, “is that critical thinking skills go against Thai culture of ‘respect your elders and shut up.’ But I have faith that the education system will get better, because it has to or Thailand will go down the pan.”
For such a high-profile man about Thailand, Biggs always comes off as low-key and humble in person. Asked about his massive Twitter following, he said, “Nobody gives a shit about me. They just wanna learn English for free,” and laughed.
For this interview, which took place at a coffee shop in Terminal 21 shopping mall, he showed up wearing jeans and a checked shirt pinned with a royal insignia to mark and mourn the passing of the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej, apologizing profusely for his lateness. His only nods to wealth or high fashion were an expensive watch and a stylish silver bracelet on his opposite wrist.
When the meandering conversation turned homewards, he said, “I love Australia now, it’s more multicultural. Going home is fine for about three weeks, but then I start to get bored.”
While he’s contemplated the idea of moving back, he echoed a statement repeated by many expats who have abandoned their predictable homelands in favor of more exotic terrains and said, “What the hell would I do there?”
On the upside, he probably wouldn’t have to fend off any hunchbacked stalkers.
But pragmatically speaking, it’s hard to leave a place where opportunities keep coming your way. As Biggs revealed in a recent “Sanook” column, his omnipresence in Thailand is set to grow after he records the new voiceovers for the Bangkok Immigration Bureau at Chaeng Wattana. Soon you will be hearing a distinctly Australian accent calling out, “Ticket number 53 at counter number 15,” to shepherd you to the right counter, which brings his career from an outlier to an insider full circle in a way that could only happen, and possibly only makes sense, in bizarre Thailand.
Andrew’s website is www.andrewbiggs.com where he’s now doing video on demand. Follow him on Twitter @andrewbiggs.
He also does a radio chat show, Mon.-Fri. from 7:30-8pm on FM97 called “Okay English” with the well-known Thai journalist Ornuma Kasetpheutphon. On Saturday and Sunday he hosts an English learning program called “The Biggs Story” at 5:45pm on FM106.
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