KJH

this is ridiculous, what possible difference does it make. Whether he is using it or not, it was given to him. After misleading the public about planning to give him his passport after he had already given it to him, the government now wants to take the heat off by dismissing it's importance. These guys are the worst, incompetent and dishonest.

Good post, 100% agreed.

Remeber, it wasnt just the current government that lied... All parties did....

- The Democrat goverment (when they were in power) lied about revoking Taksins passport and putting him on an international wanted list...

- The current government lied about the timeline for granting Taksin his passport back (they claimed in early Dec. that Taksin would recieve a new passport within a couple of weeks when the truth was that it had been issued sometime in October.)

- The Democrat opposition (I forget which politician) then lied when they claimed that, in the midst of the flood crisis some civil servants sneaked into a buillding to issue a passport for Taksin... Maybe they already knew that the passport had been issued and, to be able to discredit the govt, they needed to make up some convincing sounding story as to when and how ????

"These guys are the worst, incompetent and dishonest."

They seem no more incompetent dishonest than the politiicans that preceeded them...

And the current string of lies, more lies and cover ups... I guess they could be seen as a sign of incompetence... But could just as easily be seen as the opposite, that the current govt are very skilled at making the Democrats and anyone who opposes their actions look stupider and stupider...

ok so here goes, I did a post a few months ago about having too much advice from the locals ............. lol latest update : I got myself evicted lmao

long story short , I had a baby in March , first 4 months I was here there was no problems at all . Then the BABY came............ the second I stepped out of the door would be comments, advice etc about the baby , non- freaking - stop , it drove me mad.

neighbour was landlady's daft sister, so I got evicted .......... good thing is that I found a great apartment at a better location and a REAL sitter nearby , FOR THE SAME RENT ................yay

advice for OP , move on, it's not worth it

OR like bina says start new gossip

Its so sad that these people have nothing better to do that gossip about or interfere with the lives of other people... and that Thailand has so many people/communities like this.

Im glad that moving out turned out to be better... A real babysitter who listens to what you say sounds much better than your old neighbour did...

I think one reason why a lot of people (girls who get bitched about at school etc...) are scared of moving on is that they think that things could be a lot worse somewhere else and dont want to take the risk of moving to a new town/village and having to deal with a new set of faces and the personalities behind the, all over again...

Another story / more stuff about moving on...

Last year one of my colleagues had a horrible time at school. The teachers loved and doted over her kids (dressing them up, putting make up on them, giving them candy etc...) but constantly bitched about her personality, her teaching, and the fact that the lights / computer / air con etc. in the teachers room were always left on. At one time, some of the Thai teachers used to stand on tiptoes peering through the window as they walked past the foreign teachers office to see whether anyone was sat in there (teachers absences - yep... no one seemed to accept the fact that the teachers were actually 'teaching', when they weren't in their office - and fag breaks were also bitched about too...)

The school offered to renew her contract... Other (Thai) people in town couldn't understand why she turned it down and was wanting to leave. She had what, to them was a good, well paid job, in a nice quiet town, the teachers loved and took good care of her kids etc... Thai people in local communities rarely see the way that Thai teachers behave towards their foreign staff. The Thai teachers create the impression that the foreign teachers are well liked (the truth is that whilst the students usually love foreign teachers... reasons vary from English being fun to foreign teachers not hitting students in class..., the Thai teachers are usually less admiring... and are often openly bitchy...)

Talking honestly (in this case negatively...) about how the Thai teachers really behave usually makes things worse... (as you destroy the little illusion that the teachers have created... that they are taking good care of their foreign guests etc...) It also leaves you open to attack (as you are being disrespectul to Thai culture. must be lying,... since no Thai person would ever behave/treat someone in the way that you have described etc...)

Anyway, I digress. Back to the story... She left... at first for a crappy job on the outskirts of BKK, and a few weeks for one of the jobs she really wanted, at an international school in the south. She's still there now... Is very well paid, has a much better job, nicer colleagues, a house near the beach etc....

Me... Jobwise, I haven't been so lucky... But since leaving that school in Sept 2010, and Thailand in Jan 2011 life has been an incredible adventure. Now a year and a bit later I can't help wondering why I wasted so much time and effort wondering why people were being so horrible to me... listening to and trying to analyse and find reasons for the maliciousness and all the lies and the gossip... It would have been far better to get well away from those people and that environment much sooner... though in my case escape would have been expensive. The agency I worked for said I must pay 2000b a day (almost double what I earnt each day) for breach of contract if I left my school before the end of term... The only things I got from staying until the end of term were insights into how nasty Thai people and the communities they are part of can be and serious test of my sanity, not things that I would recommend anyone experience...

To anyone else in a similar situation....

Move on... Look forward to making a fresh start, and the day when you'll be able to feel grateful for the experiences you had, but glad you don't have to listen to or deal with these people, and the situations they create ever again..

OP... Would be interested to know which agency you worked for...

He used to sell coconuts 2 blocks away from my house in Laksi. When the red shirts started occupying downtown he changed to selling red shirt merchandise and then disappeared about half way through the occupation. He was a well known red shirt supporter in our area.My guess would be that the government thought they had got some total unknown to be their patsy in the 'look how good the police is' plot but thousands of people know this guy and his background.

Just hope, for his sake, that some of the thousands of people who know the guy and his background are willing to stand up for him and protest his innocence...

Hongsa will be a lignite strip mining and power plant site generating some 1800 MW by 2015 at a cost of some $3.7billion. Majority owned by Thai companies Banpu & RATC (having eased out the original Thai company, see New York based law suits), 95% of the electricity will be sent to Thailand. Funding is via Thai/Chinese banks and the construction will be done by Chinese contractor CNEEC. This explains all the road building.

Hongsa has been developing as an ecotourist spot based around the Sayaburi elephant festival and the large local elephant population (sadly only around 500 now due to the destructive logging of the area), but these are likely to be early casualties of strip mining and power generation. Lignite is one of the dirtiest and least efficient fossil fuels. Banpu's similar lignite operation at Mae Moh, near Lampang, has been highly contoversial due to the degree of pollutants generated, and the subsequent cost of retrofitting some pollution control has meant Banpu has been very interested in developing similar projects in more "amenable" locations such as Hongsa.

...

That's worse than I expected...

One sad thing about this (given the well publicised health problems / environmental pollution associated with the lignite plant at Mae Moh) is the apathy/total lack of opposition to this development from Thai Environment activists and people in Nan.

The corporate press release - which we had plenty of time to study while waiting 2 hours for the entry procedure for our bikes - reads like a sad joke. It's trying to talk up the benefits of this plant but kind of ends up doing the opposite. It's a classic villain in a James Bond movie plot, except Bond is missing to ride in at the last minute and save the day. The press release shows a picture of happy, displaced, compensated villagers; If I remember correctly, everyone got about $500. And it does not fail to mention that 20 bicycles were given to local kids! Think about it... 20 bicycles... !!! Gee, thanks, please go ahead and destroy the valley now...

I think right now the feeling in Hongsa valley is that the plant provides lots of business and jobs.

Yeah, the Laotians I met when I travelled through Ta Souang / Hongsa in Oct 2009 seemed resigned to the fact that the power plant would be built, and that they would gain very little from it.

Back to the road... There are 2 roads that go north from Meuang Ngeorn.

The first, the nice 'new' tarmacced one has been open over a year now. After 40km or so theres a small ferry crossing. The Chinese were supposed to have built a bridge too but they didn't. (I'm not sure how true this is but I remember reading something on the i-net about construction being halted because the Chinese govt had demanded that the Laos govt give the Chinese construction workers/engineers rights to settle in Laos afterwards...and Laos refused..)

If you're in a car you will probably have to pay the ferry captain a bit extra to take you across (or wait until a lorry arrives...) Once you've crossed the Mekong it's around 10-15km to PakBeng, and from PakBeng you can either drive to Udomxai/LPB (or, if you find somewhere to leave the car in Pak Beng, take a boat to LPB)

The other road, the big wide dirt track that some people are also talking about goes to Hongsa, then to TaSoung (a small ferry port) from where you can take a boat to LPB. This is the road I took in Oct 2009. I wouldn;t recommend going this way unless you have a pick up / 4WD. From Hongsa there are dirt track / old logging roads that lead to Xaiaburi / Meuang Nan (the Laos one) and on towards LPB but I don't know what they are like as I was told not to take them. They would make for a great off road motorbike trip though...

On the Nan side the road is pretty good as far as Tung Chang. Then it narrows and becomes a typical rural mountain road. Steep and winding with blind corners. The last 6km or so before the Thai-Laos border has lots of ruts and potholes.

Apologies if anyone's posted this before, but I was reading this article (about psychopaths) in the guardian earlier,

http://www.guardian....art-of-comments

and noticed the comment from carriemaizey (copied and pasted below...)

'' This article couldn't be more timely for me.I am in engaged in a criminal dispute who's profile would score positive of each and every point on the Hare checklist, particularly pertaining to pathological lying/grandiosity and worst, plausibility.

He's a man in his 60's and told me on my first, and unfortunate, meeting with him, he'd feigned insanity to get a discharge from the Royal Airforce in the UK in his youth, so the correlation between Tony's story and his struck home.

He isn't physically violent but leaves a trail of destruction in his wake with his various schemes/scams. He and his wife had transferred my property into their names just five days after my being admitted to the ICU of a local hospital, and this just one week after my husband had died, with the aid of a bent lawyer forging a power of attorney (easily done here in Thailand).

After my idiotic first lawyer had filed a Civil suit, and their eight no-show's, the Court Judge suggested 'I give' them the Civil case and instigate the overlooked by their dimwitted lawyer, Case for Theft.

They showed up at the police station in the jurisdiction of the offence/s, my lawyer, thinking they wouldn't, didn't. Am now having to wait the decision of the Court Prosecutor to go ahead with Court proceedings, after the smarmy psycho and his equally addled wife had lied and lied to an easily duped police captain.

We'd 'known' this man and then his bargirl 'wife' over a period of ten years. No remorse was shown and this man flatly denied everything, even when his obnoxious threatening emails had been shoved in his face.

These people can never be reformed, ever.

PS NEVER EVER invest in Thailand. ''

Maybe its an old story and has appeared somewhere on here before, but I couldn't help thinking that it's yet another example of a foreigner being cheated in the LOS (except in this case it sounds like the Thai woman's ex-pat husband was more that willing to help with the cheating...)

Also, just out of interest (since I haven't been in Thailand in months...) was there ever anything about this case in the Thai press?

I feel really sorry for this woman. Losing her husband must have been upsetting enough... but, then having to deal with these people and the Thai legal system too...

Couple of comments to add...

First of all, I really wish I'd seen this thread last Aug. I was going through similar problems at my school. I also went back to work after the Khao Pensah holiday to find that the other teachers were blanking/refusing to talk to me, and that people in the town - who I'd always seen as nice and friendly - were behaving in the same way too.

Like you I struggled to try and work out what was going on, and why people had decided to pick on and gossip about me in the way they were doing.

Unlike you, I wasn't brave enough to say that I would stick my contract out. Unlike you, I resigned (I told the head of the school that I would leave one week after the gossip became worse... One day before this someone had unclipped the brake cables on my bike whilst it was parked at school and, from that moment on I was really worried about what people might do to my stuff/me if I stayed...

Even though I'd handed my notice in, the gossips did not stop. I asked the teaching agency that I worked for whether I could break my contract and leave early. They refused to acknowledge there were any problems at school. I insisted that they came to visit me at school to see the way that the teachers were behaving towards me for themselves. In the morning they saw (and said) that there were problems. They came back later that afternoon to say that the teachers had said that there was nothing wrong (even though they themselves had seen the way the teachers were treating me) and because of that I would have to stay until the end of my contract. Leaving early would have meant losing 2,000b a day in breach of contract fines.

One of my students (repeating what another teacher had said) slandered me in class, and I reported her to one of the Thai teachers. The Thai teacher interrogated her to the point where she was in tears denying that she had said anything. Eventually she said that she was only repeating what her mum - a nurse at the hospital - had told her. After that, whenever my student made rude remarks, I just ignored them. I didn't want to see the Thai teachers upsetting them again.

I was slandered and insulted until my contract ended in Mid Sept. Even then it didn't stop. I left quietly. My boss organised a small leaving ceremony and got some of my students to give me leaving presents. Some other teachers spread more gossip around town, about how selfish I was/how I had made the children cry/made the school waste loads of money as they had prepared a big leaving ceremony for me and spent a lot of time making a bai see (one of those big green folded banana leaf thingey-majigs you see in Thai ceremonies...) and I hadn't showed up...

This was not true, the school had done nothing - and the other foreign teachers at my school confirmed this - but the teachers there just wanted me to lose whatever little bit of face I still had left. The teachers also said that I was disrespecting Thai culture as they wanted to have a 'su kwan' (where people tie string around someones wrists) ceremony for me but I'd refused (there was no way that I could have listened to the same 2 faced, lying teachers who had made my life so hellish wishing me luck, good health etc...)

I also went back to the UK, took some time to think over what went on and wrong, and reached the same conclusions as some of the other post-ers here...

small town, small minds... thai women having nothing better to do that gossip... thai women being malicious/jealous/competetive... etc, etc...

Fast forward a couple of months...

I went back to the town in Nov to see a few friends. Back in the UK, being amongst family and friends, I figured that it would be OK to go back, (as at that time I had no idea what had been said about me or how serious the stories that were made up were....)

When I rode my bike past my old school, one of the teachers stopped me and said (in Thai...) 'so, the guy who came to school and said bad things about you.... is it OK now?' When I replied that I didn't know what she was taIking about she said 'forgotten already...thats good.' I was stunned. I'd no idea that it could have been connected to any guy.

Later on, I was told that this is what happened. A guy I used to know when I lived in BKK (and had formely thought of as a friend) had started dating a new gf, who 'didn't want you in the country.' 'wants you to live far away' They'd contacted people at my school and slandered me - as they wanted me fired. The school couldn't fire me on the spot (as I was employed by a teaching agency.... ) so my so called 'friends' there, decided to make my life as hellish as possible until I left.

I was told this very casually (like the person relaying the story expected me to know everything that happened, and to be totally unemotional about it.) When I heard I was in shock. I couldn't believe that no one told me what had happened....

The Thai girl had made me out to be a total psycho who would take revenge on the guys family if I found out that anything had been said. She claimed to be totally terrified of me. They also claimed - falsely - that I had deliberately visited the guys house, and that, since I knew where the guy's family lived, his family were worried that I would harm his family if I stayed in the area.

The guy's house is a good 150km from where my school was... it was somewhere i'd rode my bike past a lot - as its a shop on one of the main roads in the area, but not somewhere i'd ever 'deliberately' been to.. and all but one of the times I went there were before I had any idea whatsoever that it was his house (I knew him from BKK. I'd never seen him at home.) Plus the guy had previously told me that his house was in a town almost 10km away from the place I rode my bike...

Anyway, people in the town where I worked decided that I'd been to his house 3 times and deliberately tried to find him there. To add to this, the guy had made out that I was madly in love with him - definitely NOT true, we were never anything more than friends, and it was a pretty strange 'friendship' at that - and that when he'd said that he wasn't interested in me, I'd been to find him at his house.

In the midst of all the gossip at school, I used to joke with my Thai friends that my life was a real life 'lakorn nee ngow.' Going back to Thailand in Nov, it felt like it was becoming one for real.

Knowing what had happened made me question so much about my life there... Whether I really did have the friends/good relationships with my students that I thought I did.. whether I was that dumb as a person, that I couldn't see through the superficiality, whether I was going crazy (as when I tried telling someone that people were gossiping about me, they suggested that I was 'thinking too much' and going crazy...)

Like you I was told that 'I'd changed...' but nothing about me had changed. What had changed was the Thai teachers behaviour towards me, and as Thai's its far easier for them to blame their reactions on me eg. 'you've changed' than to accept responsibility for their own emotional immaturity and childishness.

Things that I knew were part of Thai culture (eg. no one questions a Thai person/older person... what they say is usually accepted as being true... no one will go against what a group of people say/will normally want to show they agree with it.... foreignerVthai - foreigner will almost always come off worse ) and had always accepted suddenly became very hard to accept.

I still can't believe that no one thought to question/check whether the stories that they told were true or not before people spread them around/reacted towards me in the way that people did... that no one from the school could/would tell me what happened... (did they really believe I was the crazy psycho person???? or were they just scared to stand out from the rest of the community???) I thought that, having lived in the town for over 2 years, I had a good relationship with my students/the other teachers/did a good job/was well liked/respected in the community but... THAT COUNTED FOR NOTHING!!!

One of my sister's bf's friend taught English in a village in Issan and suffered similar treatment to you (unlike you she wasn;t strong enough to stay and see it through to the end of her contract.) I remember telling the guy the story of how some people gossipped about her and made her life hell. I had no idea that, a few months later he and his new gf would do exactly the same thing to me...

Sorry just realised I've been waffling on for ages...

The other things I wasnted to say was that I really, really admire your strength for going back, and being able to do your job in that climate... and getting recognition for being a good teacher. If you can work with those women after the way they treated you, and bear no grudges towards them, then you are for sure...

Working in Thai schools (with all the politics/bitchiness) that goes on isn't easy.

Also, I really admire you for seeking advice and posting your story on here. I know of other people who have also had bad experiences in Thailand (dealing with gossip, politics at school etc...) and they all seem to think that its just them, and that its something that they have done/are doing wrong. Thai people also like to believe that they are really nice and friendly, treat guests well etc. and that if/when foreigners have problems living in Thai communities its the foreigners fault... Truth is, a lot of maliciousness and envy can be hidden behind those polite words and nice Thai smiles...

Hopefully they get some actual qualified teachers with degrees in education and english instead of all these people who take a 4 week TEFL class and pretend to be english teachers so they can play tourist for a year!

Sure, there are a lot of backpackers in Thailand who just want to teach for a bit, get a bit of money and move on... Thailand's a beautful country, well worth spending a but of time in, and given that there's a big teacher shortage - in terms of 'native' English speaking teachers - and the fact that when Thai people see a farang they instantly think 'English teacher...' if you were a 20 something backpacker and someone offered you 30k a month for standing in front of a group of kids, saying hello and making a clown of yourself for a hour, would you be pondering over the ethics of taking a teaching position when you have no idea what you are doing???? or would you just make the most of the opportunity, to get a bit of money and have a new experience, teaching for a bit.... And some of the backpackers, despite not really knowing that much about what they are doing, manage to do a good job... their youth and enthusiasm can count for a lot.

But, this situation, the 4 week 'tefler's' teaching for a bit, is in part created by the Thais (and Thai society) itself. Thai's in their desperation to have a nice, 'white' foreigner teach their kids (Thais' can be very racist...) don't really care that much about who that foriegner is or where they have come from.

So, last year the town I worked in had a Russian guy teaching at a school there - a guy who's English was awful and who the native speaking teachers (from SA, the USA, Canada and England) found very hard to understand. He was loved by the locals who's children attended the school, and he taught private classes after school at his house etc... why??? because he was a charming, white person... His actual English and teaching didn't come into it all.. I've also seen black african american's criticised for being bad teachers (one, a qualified teacher working in a private school in BKK) for no other reason than they were black. The same with the filipino teacher who worked as a temp. my old school. She was a brilliant teacher (she had a BEd..), had neear perfect English, and the students (and my old boss) loved her, but other people in the department were against the idea of a filipino teacher working the school.

Until Thai people (teachers/parents etc...) start looking beyond 'pretty young white face = good teacher' this situation's not gonna change.

Anyway I digress.

Back to the point I was originally going to make... Sure there are a lot of backpacking TEFLers out there, but don't forget that TEFL is also a teaching qualification... Sure, it doesn't teach you anywhere near as much about teaching as a BEd does (how could it, its a 1 month course.... a BEd is normally 4 years), but, it does teach basic classroom management techniques and how to plan/devise acticitivies that will get students to practise communicating with each other in another language.

And, there are a lot of TEFL teachers out there who take their qualification(s) and work seriously and really do care about their jobs, their students and teaching them English in the best way they can....

Hi my name is Oliver.

I am English, 61 years old with a Thai wife and live in Mae Sariang in the Mae Hong Son district. Despite having no official teaching qualifications, I have the commitment and patience and would love the opportunity to teach English to the Thai children at a local school. How do I make contact with the authorities to apply for a teaching post ?

Many thanks.

If youre not a qualified teacher/don't want to do a tefl course etc. just yet... the easiest thing to do, at first, would be to get in touch with the English teacher at your local school and see if you can volunteer there one or two days a week to help out... If you enjoy it, then think about studying for a TEFL (CELTA is probably one of the best ones you can get) qualification.

You don't say whether you have a degree or not. You usually need a degree to get an official teachers liscense/work permit etc... in Thailand...

If you're not confident teaching large classes of children (depending ony your local school, classes will either be huge 40-50 students per room, barely enough room for the teacher to walk between the student's desks, or, if its a very poor rural school that people don't want to send their children to, somewhere between 5-20 students....), another way you could help would be to sit and talk to the Thai teachers - and teach them general conversational English/work on their pronunciation etc.... If they become more confident speakers of English, they might (I'm not saying they will...) even try speaking English (rather than Thai) with the students they teach.

I went travelling around there a couple of years ago and I remember talking to a couple of teachers who were desperate for volunteers to help out in their schools. If I could have spent more time there, i would..... Mae Sariang's beautiful. .

If you're unfamiliar with teaching techniques etc. and you know of any other foreigners teaching in the area, ask whether its OK to go to their school and watch a couple of their lessons, to get an idea of the kind of activities that work well with Thai students.

correct me if I'm wrong about this but, despite its claims to independence, I thought that the TAN was owned by the same people as ASTV (eg. Sonthi...) and that it was part of his manager 'poojatgarn' (not sure how to write it in karaoke Thai...) media group... Maybe its realy is independent of ASTV not, but that the channel that preceeded it (the Thailand outlook channel) wasnt... I remember seeing the 2006 coup footage/analysis on both ASTV and TOC and the coverage and editorial standpoints of the journalists were practically the same on both channels.

Is TAN yellow? .........

do you guy know?

TAN is the Thai Asean news network reporting on thre case so I fail to understand you're question, unless it is a play on words to do with colour schemes that is!!!! Tan, yellow and all that .

Who are we? We are Thailand's only 24-hourEnglish news channel.

Aimed to showcase all aspects of the Kingdom of Thailand and countries throughout the entire ASEAN regions to its both Thai and foreign viewers, Thai-ASEAN News (TAN) Network or the former Thailand Outlook Channel (TOC) broadcasts via Asia Satellite Television (ASTV). Despite the same broadcasting entity, TAN Network is absolutely independent from ASTV. Broadcasting entirely in English from the Thai capital of Bangkok, TAN Network is operated and managed by Thai nationals. It offers a perfect arena for everything you need to know about Thailand and of countries throughout the entire ASEAN region. The end-goal of the channel is to give a voice to the untold stories throughout the land, promote debate, and challenge established perceptions that surround the Thai media.

http://www.tannetwor...an/aboutus.aspx

Hundreds of vehicles drive this route daily, perhaps even hourly.

Actually very few vehicles use this route...

Theres only 1 (sometimes 2 public buses a day) from Nan to Chiang Rai that go this way. Most people who travel from Nan to Chiang Rai tend to go via Chiang Muan or Rong Kwang, both wider, less winding and generally safer routes.

Maybe things are changing nowadays (as a lot of people are promoting Nan as a tourist destination) but at the time I went on the road, between Songkwae and Sakeorn I saw maybe 10 pick ups, and the one daily bus.

One reason a lot of locals avoid it (and the reason I used to love biking on it so much...) is that its known to be dangerous (its a mountain road which in places is very steep, and winding and where bad and quickly changing weather (torrential rain, fog, and occasionally landslides etc...) can make already dangerous conditions treacherous....

Every day, all the ingredients are out there on the roads for this to happen again and again.

True... The sad thing is that, with the police blaming the driver, there probably wont be a proper investitaion (and emphasis on improving road safety / accident prevention etc...) that in Thailand, is badly needed.

Natural selection at its peak!

Everyone and every thing involved is at fault; not just the driver.

Who takes the fall is the shame of it all.

Does anyone know in which Songkwae the accident took place? (there are 2 songkwae dsitricts in Nan, one about 20km west of the city, the other around 60-70km to the north...)

Alos, does anyone know what the weather was like at the time of the accident (in both areas there is usually early morning fog. Sometimes visibility can be down to 10-20meters.)

Since the group was heading to/from Tung Chang to/from Chiang Rai, I'm guessing that they were travelling on Highway 1148, and going through the Songkwae in the north.

Some people seem quick to blame the driver/reckless driving... but anyone who's been to either Songkwae will know that both roads are very steep, winding mountain roads. They are also quite narrow and very, very dangerous especially if the weather's bad, or it's foggy.

I'm not saying the driver wasn't to blame... but maybe people should wait until there's more information before blaming the accident soley upon him.

RIP to the dead, and I hope the injured recover quickly...

Don't be so wet!

If the roads and visibility are that bad then the driver should slow right down so he can cope with conditions.

Only one vehicle involved, of course it was the driver to blame.

Or the guy who decided to save money on a mechanic or replacement parts.

I'm not saying it wasn't the drivers fault... I'm just saying that maybe people should wait for more information before they blame him for causing the accident... Imagine how his/her family must be feeling knowing that this has happened and that so many people are injured / have died...

In December, just before Christmas I was in Mae Salong. The night that I arrived, there was a news crew in the village as there had been a really bad accident on one of the roads there (this one a lot narrower and more dangerous that the ones in Songkwae...) A minivan went off the road, and into the forest below, and people in Mae Salong were saying that between 1-8 people had died (I can't remember how many people actually died but I think it was 4...) People went down the old Akha road to search for the wreckage/help the survivors.

Almost everyone in Mae Salong that I heard talk about it that night complained about the driver, saying the accident must have been his fault., that locals don't come off the road like that... that he shouldn't have gone that way down the mountain (I kind of agreed with the last comment, as it is probably the most dangerous of the 3 roads that I know of that go down from Mae Salong...)

I'm sure the story must have made the news but I was travelling then, so I didn't see the papers/TV that much, and I don't know whether the Thai newspapers blamed the driver or the minivan.

A day later I rode down the mountain and went past the crash site. A group of people were stood on the road, and they pointed out the wreckage to me. When I asked what had happened there, they said that, the night before, a convoy of minibuses had been travelling downhill and the 1st van's breaks had failed. From what they said it sounded like there was little the driver could have gone (if he hadn't had gone off the road on that bend, chances were he would have come off, or overturned on one of the next ones....)

At that time, people were still blaming the driver for causing the crash... and I kind of wondered whether most people would ever know what really happened, and that it probably (unless you blame him for the fact that the brakes failed...) wasn't his fault.

Sorry its taken a while to reply. Im travelling now so don't read or look at the news on Thaivisa as often as I used to.

Thanks for all your comments and support. As I said the attack happened over 2 years ago. Its not something I think about that much anymore.

A friend in England read what I wrote and was surprised I was so open about it. I didn't plan, or mean to be, but once I started typing, the words just spewed out.

I've read everyone's comments on what I wrote.

Here are mine...

London Thai:-

RE:- Comment about tourist police... Maybe you are right, maybe they would have dealt with the case better and been more professional than the local police. But, when they showed up at school, demanding that I repeat the story from scratch, and complaining to the teachers (who did not want to upset me, at school by making me repeat the story when the police already had the details...) they were anything but professional.

AndrewDrummond:-

Your comment 'thais do not do such things...' is something I heard a lot. Truth is, it probably was a hilltribe guy who attacked me (given that the nearest villages to where the attack took place are all Mong hilltribe villages), but even before there was any conclusive proof of this, people were going around blaming the 'chao khao' and telling me that no Thai person would ever do anything like that, especially to a foreigner.

Mario2008:-

Thanks for letting me know. Other people have also told me similar things.

Brhahmburgers:-

Yeah I agree. I know that people complain about the insensitive way rape/assault cases are handled back in England too, I guess its difficult for authorities know how to deal with such cases but I'd like to believe that English cops are nowhere near as insensitive as the Thai ones were. eg. I'd like to think that in England victims are interviewed by women, are not asked about their taste in men, and whether they go for Thai ones or not etc...

I can understand some of the problems Thai cops had. They are men. They work in a small city, are not used to cases like this being brought to them (as I believe that a lot of Thai women who are raped - I've known of 2 - would never ever ever go to the police...)

A lot of it's cultural. Their own ways of thinking about sexual relations between men and women are very different from how we think in the west and that this affects their judgement and the way they question you; their own ways of thinking about appearance too... eg. we notice eyes, and the structure of a face whereas thai people tend to notice noses and how pale or dark someones skin is more - probably why the police asked me whether he was 'black skinned' 'piw dam...' or not a lot, and why they didn't seem to take notes when I described his eyes, but kept asking me about the shape of his nose.

I'm really sorry to hear what happened to you. Yeah, I've heard stories of people being singled out by the police too, and yeah I agree, maybe once in a while they have some desperate need to show who's boss.

But part of me still believes that, in my case, ome people in the police force really did want to help. They just (because of the way that they think and the way (later on) that they wanted me to pick out 'a bad guy'...) couldn't.

Thelaughingman:-

I'm really sorry to hear about your girlfriends story. Sounds like you both went through a terrible ordeal. I really hope that she's OK now.

TigerWan:-I agree totally. In the west we're taught to be calm, and that resistance will make things worse. I think Thai girls believe that they should kick, scream etc. (some are even told - as I later found out when people asked me why i did not do this - and I'm talking educated people in BKK here too... not just people from the town where i stayed - to 'bite it off...')

I kicked out when the guy dragged me across the grass but I don't remember screaming... though if I had no one would have heard. The attack took place around 50m or so from one of the main roads in the province, but save for a couple of buses and songteaws in the morning, most of the time, there's no traffic on the road. I didn't hear a single car or motorbike go by in the time that the attack took place.

I think my lack of resistance allowed some people to say, later, that I wanted to have sex with the guy. Their comments upset me a lot.

Re:- Thailand safer than the west. It's all relative. I lived in Thailand for 6 years too, and most of the time felt very safe there. In BKK I could happily wander around at 2am without ever worrying that someone was going to mug me, or take my mobile. I'm not sure I would want to do the same thing in London. I could also go out drinking without worrying about lechy men (unlike at home...) and rarely felt threatened sexually.

But westerners/Thai people have very different ideas about what is/isn't safe. Thai people would never behave the way I did in the town where I lived. They used to tell me all the time, its not safe to ride your bike after dark (there are bad men on the street) you shouldn't stay alone at night / live alone (what happens if an attacker comes to your house...) etc...

Sure, (for guys with money at least..) sex is much more 'available' here though I'm not sure that I agree with your comments about it being less moralised. In some ways it is... eg. guys often have giks, or will pay for sex with whoever, whenever. Girls who do sell their bodies for sex (some aren't 'career' prostitutes, as I understand it, eg. some will only sell their bodies to certain men/friends and only at certain times eg. when they need money for something...) do this without any feelings of shame etc... that westerners would expect someone who took money for sex to have... But, in other ways, as I understand it, there's this big double standard... in that guys are supposed to be sexually experienced, but girls (the good ones anyway...) are supposed to virgins who don't play around with men... It's almost Victorian.

Another reason why we probably feel safer here that Thais is because we're foriegn. I don't know how you look, but I'm well built, a little bit overwieght and not into wearing skirts/looking that feminine. I'm not most Thai guys idea of a good looking girl so they don't hassle me. But, I know of at least 2 foreign friends (younger, prettier ones) who, when they went to Thailand were pestered by Thai guys.

The Laughing Man:-

I agree with your comments.

Does anyone know in which Songkwae the accident took place? (there are 2 songkwae dsitricts in Nan, one about 20km west of the city, the other around 60-70km to the north...)

Alos, does anyone know what the weather was like at the time of the accident (in both areas there is usually early morning fog. Sometimes visibility can be down to 10-20meters.)

Since the group was heading to/from Tung Chang to/from Chiang Rai, I'm guessing that they were travelling on Highway 1148, and going through the Songkwae in the north.

Some people seem quick to blame the driver/reckless driving... but anyone who's been to either Songkwae will know that both roads are very steep, winding mountain roads. They are also quite narrow and very, very dangerous especially if the weather's bad, or it's foggy.

I'm not saying the driver wasn't to blame... but maybe people should wait until there's more information before blaming the accident soley upon him.

RIP to the dead, and I hope the injured recover quickly...

Just re-read this and realised that the last para but one has some words missing... I was typing/talking at the same time so guess I must have accidently deleted a few words... Should have read something like this...

I wasn't brave enough to follow through with all (though my case was a bit different, in that the local police were trying to get me to identify a different guy to the one who actually carried out the attack and, when I refused a couple of weeks later, gave people reasons to suggest that I had somehow deserved what had happened to me - as I went to the mountains, alone, on a bike, something no Thai girl would ever do.... or worse, that I had paid for sex. It took a couple of weeks for these sort of comments to die down, but, in this respect I guess I really was lucky, as my foreign friends in town and the other teachers - both Thai and English- in the English Department at my old school were fantastic and gave me a lot of support...)

I guess that the police have their own reasons and own hidden agendas too. I still don't know why didn't go for the 'right' man, but now, I am so glad that I didn't give into their pressure and pick out the main they had scapegaoted. Though, even if the police had arrested the guy who actually attacked me, I still don't know whether I would have been strong enough to have picked him out of the ID parade or not, and, assuming the police wanted to (as I was told - again I don't know how true it is... - that, under Thai law, in sexual assault cases its up to the police, not the individual as to whether to prosecute the acttacker or not) gone to court.

Thinking about it, given the cultural background, anyone (Thai or western) who is willing to point out the man that attacked her, given that there will be no anonyminity.... - sure there is supposed to be, but when journalists/relatives of the accused are waiting in the police station for you arrive, and when, outside of places like Bangkok, news / gossip travels fast and retribution for the accusations etc. can be quite nasty.... how will the victim ever remain anyonymous? - has to be emotionally strong and extremely brave. I doubt that I am.

OK, here goes...

I wrote the comments (about how the police treated me after I was attacked) as a reaction to a story that I read on the internet - some people who commented on a story about a British girl who was gang raped in Phuket last month were asking why she didn;t co-operate with the police.

I didn't know that he would reprint them as a news story, and that it would appear on thaivisa (at the time I didn't think what I wrote was that exciting or important...) but now I don't mind that it has.

The details were very sketchy. It was a stream of conscious rant about the police procedures and the way rape is viewed by some people over there. I didn't know that people would want more information, or question whether it was true.

I wanted to add these comments to his website, rather than printing them on here, but it appears to be down.

Some peole seem to want more details, so here goes...

The attack happened towards the end of June 2008 in the north of Thailand. I'm still keeping it vague. I don't want to identify the town etc. but if anyone insists I will do. I wasn't raped - though the guy inserted 4 fingers inside me before making me perform oral sex on him.

After going to the police, the story appeared (a couple of lines on the front page and more details inside...) in ThaiRath newspaper. People also joked that it was on the television news that night, but I'm not sure whether that is true or not.

It wasn't, as far as I know printed in the nation/bbk post or any of the English newspapers in Thailand. But take a look at any Thai 'tabloid' and you will see a big difference in the types of news stories that appear and the way that they are reported. The Nation etc. has lots of small print, and a couple of pictures of politicians, whilst Thai rath has at least one corpse/traffic accident/shooting/robbery story on its front page.

I'm glad it wasn't in the Nation/the English press. At the time I only told a few close friends back home what happened. Had the story been printed in English, my family/friends etc would have been very worried about me. I'd just taken a teaching job in a small northern town, and quite liked it, and I know, my family especially, would have wanted me to leave and go back home.

When I went to the police, with my then boss and one of her close friends, I had a very naive attitude that thought that the police would help. They would find/catch the man, and there'd be some kind of justice.

At the time I think we all believed that the police would help. Even now I still think that some of the policeman really wanted to. They just lacked the tact/abililty to deal with such a sensetive case (this was a small Thai town, and Thai police officers are almost always male.)

Culturally there are HUGE differences in the way sex/sexual relations are percieved between Thais and westerners. (Watch any Thai soap/see a Thai romantic movie at the cinema and you'll notice that there's a big contrast between the way relationships are formed/portrayed, in Thai movies theres little sexual activity. Maybe a couple hold hands once every so often or get - fully clothed.... have never quite managed to worktha one out... into bed. Western movies in contrast show naked couples making love, and the womans not a passive character.) Maybe its because of this, I don't know but some Thai people (esp. Thai guys) think that western girls are sex obsessed, 'gagging for it...'

And I think that this kind of attitude probably affects the police's line of questioning. They spent a lot of time asking who/what I find attractive, and repeatedly ask whether you've ever dated/wanted to have sex with a Thai guy. I guess that, to Thai people, these questions aren;t seen as being particularly insensitive or rude. When I lived in Thailand, one of the first questions people asked, after name, age and whether I'd ever eaten som-tam/been to Pattaya was whether I had a bf or not, whether I'd ever had a Thai one, and why not...

At the time, the police questions were very upsetting. I said 'no' to almost all of them (I've had Thai friends but at the time had never, ever, ever dated a Thai guy or found them attractive in that way...) but, part of me can't help wondering what had happened had I said 'yes'to any. Would they have taken the attitude (as I later heard people in town telling each other) that I had somehow deserved what happaned?

Someone commented about Medical examinations...

I was, after a couple of hours at the police station taken to the hosptial and medically examined. The hospital staff were brilliant. A nice, English speaking female doctor. She confirmed that things had been inserted into my vagina and that there was internal bleeding.

I was given an AIDS test. The results were fine. Though I've since been told that no AIDs test can detect AIDS within a day or two of blood contact, and that the doctors should have waited for a couple of weeks before they tested my blood. I'm not sure how true this is. At the time, when the hospital told me that I was OK, I was so relieved. I didn't question their procedures. I guess the people there were wanting to make things OK (or as OK as they could) again.

There were 2 police interviews, and one interview with a police artist, who sketched a rough outline of the accused. There were also a couple of visits to the police station to comment on evidence/things they thought of, and a trip back to the mountaintop to point out where the attack happened.

One of the first things the police said they wanted me to do was to go back to the attack site, describe what had happened and where. But it took a while for us to be able to do this. There were no cars (I guess we could have used my friends pick up and piled in the back but, for some reason we had to wait for a police car, and then we needed to wait for other policeman to finish their cases so that they were free to come with us too.)

By this time it had rained, so we needed to wait a while longer. I remember feeling very shakey and sick. The grass was still flattened (from where the guy had dragged me across it.) Even though it had rained the trail from my mountain bike trye tread (I was trying to turn around and go back to the road when the guy got hold of me) were still there.

I'd told the police I'd been dragged around 10-20 metres. The truth was that it was a lot further, almost 50 to the place when he'd forced me down onto the grass and carried out the attack.

I've since read about this on the internet. When people are in bad situations they often percieve the thing that happened to them to be a lot worse than it was. Later on, the police used the fact that I couldn't remember exactly how many meters the guy had dragged me across the grass for to imply that my memory was playing tricks on me, and that I was remembering info (like the t-shirt the guy was wearing at the time) wrong. They also used this line of reasoning just before the 2 ID parades. They said to look closely at the men and pick out the one 'closest' to the guy who carried out the attack. I refused, twice.

I had to pose for photos of the site, and was asked to smile (I'm still not sure whether the 'kor yim no nai kap' was a joke or not... and can't remember whether I actually did) and to look down at, and point to various things (tyre treads, grass marks etc...) I guess they're the same kind of photos that appear on the pages of ThaiRath etc. after robberies etc.

I was told that a couple of days later the police went back to the site and found an amulet close to the places I'd pointed out. It was, they said, how they knew who the attacker was and which village he'd come from. They said there were only a few villages where people wore those kind of amulets.

There are a lot of other things I could say about the evidence collecting process... The way statements are changed to suit the police's writing style eg. I told the police that the guy said 'suck...' ('aooom' in Thai.) The police told me, that no way would he have said 'suck' as its not polite, he would have said 'aoom kap' (I guess the policeman has never heard the way Thai people speak basic Thai with foreigners... they often do use one/two words though the policeman told me that this would never be the case...)

When I insisted that he wrote 'aoom' in the reoprt, as it was what the guy actually said, he said that if he did this the report would not sound polite.

After the attack the guy made me empty out the contrents of one pocket of my bag and demanded money from me. He said 'ow tang' (want money.) Again the police toldme that, no way would the guy say this (it's not polite...) and that he would have said 'kor tang' - please give me money, or 'kor ngern.' Again I insisted that the policeman use the actual words that the guy used. I don't know whether he did or not.

The police asked me to describe my route, and all the places that I'd stopped off at on the way (the police thought that maybe, someone in one of the villages along the way had seen me riding my bike, and had got on their motorbike and ridden to the mountaintop to wait to attack me...) From what I now know (I've seen the guy who attacked me twice in the 2 and a bit years since then. Both times at the mountain top viewpoint, with a blue motorbike and always on a mobile phone) I believe that the guy goes there as its the only place in the area with a mobile phone reception.

Anyway... I digress. There's one village on the way (one of the first after you leave the city) set back a bit from the road. There's no sign, as in a while village name sign that I can remember, but on the right hand side, theres a big archway (as far as I know its still there) and a sign in English 'Welcome to Mien.' The policeman said that there wasn't. There are no 'mein' villages in the area I was told. It was only when we drove past in the police truck, that he accepted it was. Everytime I gave him the info they asked for, the questioned what I said.

After the attack I rode my bike back home. At the time I didn't have a speedo, but I know that it was one of the fastest bike rides I've ever done. I think I went down the mountain at at last 50kmph. I didn't brake until the last 2 corners on the way down... and was back in the town and home in around an hour. The police questioned whether I could ride my bike that fast (they told me it was impossible... and even checked with other bikers in the town whether a grl could ride a bike as fast as I had said.

They also asked why, when I passed a local police station did I not stop and report the incident there. Why had I needed to go home, and go to the police station in town. (I went home - as soon as the guy had left - he drove off after taking my money. At the time I didn't pay that much attention to the direction, I had this wierd feeling that I wanted to be home, back in house I rented as soon as possible....)

It was when I was back home, that I called a friend, and my former boss. They came over, and we decided to go to the police. I was asked why I didn;t go to the local policestation (as when I rode back down the mountain I passed at least 1 police box - at that time all I thought about was getting home...) and why I had decided to wait a couple of hours (it took around an hour to get home, and another hour or so of telling the story to my friends) before going to the police staion .

A day after the story appeared in the news, the police broght a big basket of flowers to school (they wanted to bring them to my house but I refused.) They wanted to say 'sorry' for what had happened to me (though the people who said sorry were the same people who had given the story to the journalists etc...)

A couple of days later, the tourist police showed up unannounced at my school. They wanted to know exactly what had happened (they tried to bully me into repeating the story again) and compained that, as a foreigner I should have gone to them, rather than the regular police. Thankfully the other teaching staff told them that I had classes to teach and made them go away.

During this time there was only one female police officer who spoke to me. A month or so later, after being given a mass of photos and told to pick out 'a bad man' from them, I told the police (after being advised by a friend from BKK) that I couldn't remember enough about what happened to help them find the man. I don't like lying (and liars) but it seemed the only way to move on with my life. A couple of days later a female police officer showed up at school - I think she may have come from BKK I'm not sure but she didn;t speak with a local accent. She told me that it was really important that I continue helping the police with their investigations, that the guy may have attacked other people before, that Thai people who had been attacked would almost vertainly be too scraed to report him. I just said I couldn't I couldn't remember enough about what had happened to help them and she accepted that that was OK,

Like I said before I still believe that some policeman really wanted to help, I just don't think they have the cultural awareness and sensitivity to be able to. They are also very driven by rewards (at the time there was a reward for info that helped the police find my attacker.) At the time lots of people in the town were wanting the police to 'jab kon rai' 'get the evil man' too. They thought what had happened had damaged the towns reputation, and this is probably why they were wanting me to pick out a different guy,

When I described what happaned to a friend in BKK, they suggested that the police probably wanted to arrest a man for drugs etc. or something where they couldn't pin down an exact charge. Accusing him of attacking me (and trying to say that my memory was bad etc... that I didn;t remember all the details etc..) would have probably given them the excuse the needed to arrest him.

Lots of people told me that my attacker was a hilltribe guy (almost certainly true... from what I now know) and that they were bringing shame on the town and the province, and that city people weren't like that. City people. I was told are good and dont do things like that. Again - cultural differences - whilst westerners see hilltribes as exotic some Thai townspeople have very negative/prejudiced attitudes towards them.

Hey, just realised that I've been typing for well over an hour and that this is becoming very very long... I'll try and cut it short.

I was 'lucky... you very lucky', (as thai people kept telling me afterwards...) as I wasn't raped but, after the way the Thai police handled my case I would never, ever, ever recommend that anyone who does suffer a sexual attact go to them, and think that Thai girls who do (given the differences in culture etc, and the differences in the way rape/sexual crimes are percieved in Thailand) are very very very brave and I admire them a lot. And, rape is always nasty but when Thai girls are raped its usually a lot nastier than back home (in that Thai girls are often gang raped.)

I wasn't brave enough to follow through with all (though my case was a bit different, in that the local police were trying to get me to identify a different guy to the one who actually carried out the attack and, when I refused a couple of weeks later, gave ) but for someone to point out the man that attacker her (given that there will be no anonyminity.... sure there is supposed to be, but when journalists/relatives of the accused are waiting in the police station for you arrive, and when, outside of places like Bangkok, news / gossip travels fast and retribution for the accusations etc. can be quite nasty.

Occasionally (though not often enough) Thai guys are brought to trial for rape, and sucessfully prosecuted... To the girls who are strong and brave enough to identify their accusers, and make it happen, I have so much respect.