We’re all familiar with the whole Ladies Who Lunch concept.

Rich, housewives who go out for fancy meals with fellow rich housewives while their husbands are out making more money for them to spend.

But in Bangkok, there’s a whole other culture of these ladies.

Ladies who do…nothing.

Just pick one: Siam Paragon, CentralWorld, Central Chidlom, The Emporium. They are all there. Not during weekends. Not in the evenings. But during weekday afternoon while us commoners are confined in our cubicles, crunching numbers/penning copies.

Who the hell are these bitches?

And they’re not like 40-50 years old. They are my age. Twenty-something Thai females, all dressed up, carrying the best in designer goods and just walk around. In packs.

Loaded husbands? I doubt it. And even if they have loaded parents, what kind of parents would just let them out spending their money? My loaded friends are working with their parents at least.

And every girl my age I know all have a day full-time job. And ones that don’t, they stay home and slave over their computers. They’re not out and about shopping, drinking Ventis in Paragon all day long.

And then there’s another type of ladies–ladies to sell. They don’t own a store. They are not working in a company that imports these stuff. But they’re online, constantly updating their forum posts, selling not common items like makeup or clothes but Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, YSL bags.

Siam Brand Name

These bags are not selling for a few thousands of baht. And they don’t only sell only one or two at a time. These girls have a whole series of forum posts where they put up at least 5-6 items a post. All brand new items.

Seriously, WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?

And most importantly, HOW CAN I BE ONE?

Today I was hit with a big fat chunk of reality when I was looking through my account balance.

For the past 2 months I have spent my whole paycheck completely. Not that I have a hefty ward of cash handed to me with this job but it is still a lot of money. And the scariest thing is, I have no idea where it all went to. Until I retraced my steps.

All this time I have in mind that I roughly spend around B6,000-8,000 a month but I was way off. With food alone I’m already spending around B5,000 a month. And then there’s trips to Zara, that 50% off pair of shoes I gotta have, B400 plates of pasta, B200 Hello Kitty keychain that goes with my new B200 case for the iPhone which just had a B1,000 upgrade to 2.1 firmware. And the list just goes on and on.

As I was going through the free App list on iTunes I found this application that lets you set your budget for things. You can set the topic of your budget, food, clothes, shopping, etc. and then you set the budget for each. You can have it refreshed monthly or weekly or even daily.

So starting today, this App will be my life. No matter how much I spend, B35 street food dish or B2,000 pair of shoes, I’m going to put it in and I’m not going to lie. I mean how can I lie the results are printed in my bank book every month.

Today is Oct 1 a great day to start since I just banked in my money. Let’s see how I take it this month.

If it’s not happening, maybe it’s time to be a sell-out and start making money working for The Man.

My last post was also the last time I used my luscious pink Vaio as I have just sold the baby off at Pantip!

I can’t believe the store would give me that price. It’s the exact same offer I get with online shoppers. Went to the first few shops in Fortune Town and the lowest offer I got was B12,000! How ridiculous! With that amount of money I’d be better off keeping the thing.

Speaking of money, today also marked the first time I paid off a traffic cop in my whole driving in Bangkok experience. My mom would be so proud.

We were driving to Pantip from Ratchaprasong and we turned left to go to Pratunam. As we turned, the brown man walked over to the middle of the street asking us to pull over.

Before we turned there were two other taxis turning. We weren’t that far behind.

Apparently, according to the brownie, we ran the red light.

“Red light where?,” Chou the driver asked, trying his best to scare off the brownie with angry English sentences.

The light was wayyyyyy lodged on the opposite side of the street, totally obstructed by the overhead bridge we were coming under.

“Can I see your driving license?,” brownie muttered.

So I gave him the international driving license blaring alien words like Prenom, Nom, etc. it is hard enough as it is for a cop to see ABCs on a driving license. So he started whining,

“You know, I will have to take this away. And you will have to fill out this form and go to the police station to pay B1,000 because you didn’t see the sign,” Brownie hinted and paused for a while to observe our reaction then continued,

“But if you don’t want to go through the trouble, you can pay the fine here for B400 and I’ll give it back to you.”

I was already on my full-on merchant-mode ready to haggle for the price of my Vaio once I get to Pantip. So I gave it my best,

“B400? I don’t have enough (I had about B800 in my wallet), B300 dai mai ka?”

“Here’s your license back. Here, I’ll help direct the traffic for you so you can get to the left lane easily,”

What a friendly, and cheap, piece of brownie.