>>1
I feel ya, man.
Southeast Asia sucks. Especially this country.
Everything here is so nationalistic. The bulk of the population wears the same color every Monday and Friday. The military has been and always be the controlling force of this place. They're worse than Japan with covering shit up. In 1992 there was a bloody coup, in 1976 another one, a "bloodless" one last year, a total of eighteen. Thousands of civilians have died at the hands of this military and it has never been accounted for.
The thing that's fucked up is that every man has to play a part in this army that will never do anything but oppress us. You have four choices in this country:

• Join the reserve forces at age fifteen. Shave your head, go to five hours of propaganda and M1 Garands every saturday for six months of a year for three years.
• Go to the draft. If you are conscripted you're looking at three years of service. If you volunteer it's 18 months. If you're not you're lucky.
• Join the civil service and get paid two hundred dollars a month to file papers. No, they never made the shift to computers. Be a policeman, clerk, teacher, or doctor.
• Bribe someone high up in your district. It's what many do. If it doesn't work out for me I will simply stop using my citizenship completely and live in the states.

Everyone here is taught to be the same. They're taught not to think but to memorize. They're taught to pass exams, yes, there are exams to go the next year of elementary school. Every kid at a public school wears the same uniform, has the same haircut, has to go to the national scouts (propaganda). The people here are never taught to accept criticism. They're taught to not accept anything radical. They're told to be proud of their country, what they say is the best country in the world. They will never learn of world history. They will never learn about what the outside world is like. All they will learn is to be one giant hive of a mind.

They hate their neighboring country, saying that this country can produce things that are much better. They scorn all their products, many even refuse to buy their cheaper gasoline when the truth is that they've excelled this country because they had ambition, they've tried to get somewhere. They allowed foreign investment, and now they produce high-tech products like fucking CPU's and even their own cars. This country has done none of that, it is a novelty of a country.

The truth is that this country supported fascist ideals in WWII and they don't want this country to know about it. They were buddies with imperial japan. They were adamantly anti-communist, there was a clear split between communists who had their own army and national organization but the fascist monarchists ran them out. They deny it all they want but it's painfully obvious. There's a ministry of culture for fuck's sake, they ramble on about tradition and how the youth is sinful and how this culture is superior. On alcohol advertisements instead of health warnings there are religious warnings "Alcohol consumption is a violation of the fifth moral precept." On the national ID cards you are required to state your religion.