There’s more to Thailand than the smile
I thought I would have the right to say that after all the years I lived here as a paying customer of the country. I could easily add more but I’ll leave it at this.
I bet we will hear a lot in Thailand from these two fellows over the coming years. Jakrapob fighting for change from the dusty old feudal system that is called "democracy" in Thailand, to something that is more in line with advanced notions of development and sharing the wealth. I’d term him a social democrat. Abhisit, who is a member of a party that is confusingly called the "democrats", but should in actual fact be called the "aristocrats" is fighting for the privileged old guard to keep things as they are, dust and ugly warts and all. I’d term him a conservative.
Thailand only scores 118 out of 140 on the World Peace Index, in the good company of African tinpot dictatorships. That’s way behind Cambodia and Vietnam, not to mention Singapore and Malaysia. If only Thailand had been governed in a decent way for the last 61 years. As it is, should we all move to Cambodia now?
An excellent website to get you up to date on Internet censorship in Thailand is FACT, Freedom Against Censorship in Thailand. The situation is quite chaotic with ISP doing their own thing, because they are afraid of the censors and their draconian laws. Anyway, a VPN service will let you bypass all that nonsense without any loss of speed in your connection. I recommend Strong VPN.
The Economist has a good article this week on the perils of mass tourism, and writes about the Spaniards:
in recent years even they have started to notice how the ugliness and the noise is keeping visitors away. The government in Madrid grew so concerned that it bought tracts of seaside land itself, to stop developers from getting their hands on it.
I think the powers that be in Pattaya (and Thailand in general) would be wise to read this article. Well, I guess for Pattaya it is already too late. It is already a corrupt concrete jungle full of whores and moneyboys.
It goes to show the futility of the socalled "war on drugs". Basically it is a war against people who want to have the freedom to do what they want. Anyway, out of 170000 people in prison in Thailand, 90000 are there because of drugs. So they should not be there in the first place. That’s more than 50% of all people in prison in Thailand. I’m flabbergasted at such a huge waste of taxpayer money on a misguided "war".
Samak has such a big foul mouth they are now planning to censor his weekly TV chat for bad words. Or something like that. This is what I heard. Is it true? It seems bizarre.
I usually have a look a the Bangkok Post website in the morning to see if anything at all happened in Thailand. Alas, usually I get to see yesterday’s "news". At the Bangkok Post nothing happens in the morning (or on Sundays, for that matter). I wonder how many years before they will close alltogether.
According to the Bangkok Post, as always thoroughly analytical, a "survey" has found that "the media industry is exerting a bad health influence on Thai youngsters, leading them into hazardous behavior like having sex with friends". How exactly have they oberved this? And what’s the problem with having sex? They also claim that kids are "washing in laundry bleach to lighten their skin". This is based on one anecdotal observation. Typical. I guess if you analyze your "surveys" like that you can also declare that there is an alarming trend in Austria to incarcerate children in basements.
Here’s a funny article by Harrison George on the Prachathai website about all the brilliant appointments in Samak’s kitchen cabinet. One of them is the son of the notorious Chaler,m fulfilling his dream as the country’s head toilet honcho.