Krataiboy

A poisoned chalice you can't refuse. Very Thai.

23 hours ago, Bluespunk said:

If only those tourists never existed, there would be no evils in this world. 

 

People, listen to my appeal: stay at home, don’t travel, make the world a better place. 

A lot of them - especially those who reckon seeing animals being humiliated is funny - happen to be Thai tourists. Just saying.

Maybe she could be given, free, one of those tracker wrist bands which the Thai tourist bigwigs wanted foreign tourists to wear.

The Peking University Third Hospital could not be immediately reached for comment, outside of business hours on a public holiday.

Probably too busy making babies the old-fashioned, democratic capitalist way.

. . . means a pinky promise in English

That's not what I, as an Englishman, have understood by being on a promise - irrespective of colour.

Hope there are no double-deckers among them.

"Hey, boss, I've got a great idea. Let's wait until they tell us what they actually think of us before telling them what they should think of us."

"Somchai, you're a bloody genius!"

What you might call a cop-out.

Sheer HUBris.

18 hours ago, jenny2017 said:

Pongthep Pongphan, for example, was acknowledged as the best singer and actor in the class while Methawee Supawang won praise for remarkable fishing skills. Another student, Thirapon Donsawang, was named “outstanding volunteer” for handing milk cartons to his classmates every single day.

The guy is a joke, maybe not the big joke but a joke. "for handing out milk cartoons. Hrrrgggggg

  I'm truly amazed that he didn't acknowledge the best looking ladyboy in his class. But that might be his secret, looking at him. 

How uncharitable, Jenny. It is the failure to motivate children individually which bedevils the Thai national education system, still trundling along as if the Industrial Revolution had just happened.

Anything that helps break the repressive mould of rote learning and mindless conformity is to be welcomed. So more power to your academic elbow, Kuhn Shinnakorn.

I speak from experience, as a father of five with two daughters managing - with parental encouragement - to retain and nurture the creativity and individualism which the sausage machine of state education is seeking to squeeze out of them.

If you keep repeating the same story, most people eventually will believe it. A glance at the suicide rate for the Land of Smiles, which one might imagine would be at least some reflection of how miserable the population at large is feeling, reveals a rather different picture.

According to the latest WHO figures, Thailand currently stands 46th out of 186 countries for suicides, with a rate for both sexes averaging 12.7 per 100,000 people.

An "Other Sources" table covering the years 1985 to 2017 shows Thailand doing much better in the suicide stakes, in 66th place with a 9.7 average rate. In other words, things are getting worse, not better.

Figures from both sources show Thai men have a far higher suicide rate than women - part of an ongoing worldwide trend, and one of those inconvenient truths feminists tend to ignore when banging on about "equality".

What a relief it wasn't eleven children or adults bitten rather than those those luckless deer, as further proof emerges that the rabies epidemic is not under control but festering into something potentially far more catastrophic.

If the worst happens, the government and other responsible authorities, now going through the usual set of knee-jerk reactions to a crisis which has been brewing for years, have only themselves to blame.  They have constantly sidelined the rabies threat in favour of more politically "sexy" issues. 

Once again, the nation is reaping what its short-sighted political leaders have sown.

As in past, the latest outbreak of this terrible disease - invariably fatal if not treated quickly with the right medication - is being spread mainly by bites from the  "three or four million" stray dogs which roam the country.  The glaring vagueness of this official estimate speaks volumes for how seriously the canine carriers' role in the spread of infection is taken.

At least there are reliable figures for human deaths from rabies, mainly from dog bites, which have tripled in just three years. Last time I counted, no less than 42 provinces scattered across the country have been designated as "rabies prone".

My own province, Phetchaburi, has just made the hit-list, thanks to those eleven dead deer in the bustling town of Tha Yang (where, as luck would have it, I am due to extend my visa in a week or so). 

Where, one wonders, will the next rabies case pop up? Nobody knows for sure, least of all those charged with protecting public health and security. 

An editorial in the Bangkok Post last month urged the authorities to do more to limit the current outbreak and prevent others in the future. It criticised lax enforcement of laws designed to limit the spread of the disease, the lack of an effective public awareness campaign, and - inexplicably, in the circumstances - a shortage of anti-rabies vaccine. 

The article concluded, chillingly: "The rampant spread of rabies with the designation of 13 red zones proves that the state efforts in dealing with this disease are futile,."

Futile means pointless, a waste of time. It is definitely not the a description anyone wants to read in respect of measures being taken to protect us from a deadly virus spread by an unknown number of dogs and cats wandering our town, city and village streets.

Can the junta come up with a more reassuring one, please - and soon?

Smart TV and Android box from around 1,000 baht and the world's your lobster.

Yada, yada.

If universities fail to change, he said, their students may not be able to get a job after graduation.

This is just part of a larger and more concerning picture. According to a Times Higher Education article last May,  three out of four Thai universities risk closure over the next decade because of low student enrollment and increased competition from overseas rivals.

Nearly 40 per cent of all job seekers coming on to the market here have bachelor degrees and the number unable to find work to match their talents has risen steadily since 2013, reaching a high of 220,000 at the start of this year. 

One of the main factors behind the stubbornly high unemployment rates for young graduates is what the National Economic and Social Development Board acknowledges as "a mismatch between their qualifications and the needs of employers". Innovation Hub will go some way to address this worrying situation.

However, similar ground-breaking initiatives are needed at all levels of the Thai education system. Otherwise prospects will remain bleak not simply for the ailing universities, but for future generations whose latent talents need to be nurtured and harvested in the national interest.

The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) Amazing Thailand’s ‘Open to the New Shades’ marketing concept 

Let me guess - free rose-tinted sunglasses for every tourist.

They'll sure need 'em.

Reads exactly like a recycled Pres handout from a Government House, released to bolster the junta's flagging reputation in the run-up to the elections.

Or maybe I'm just an old cynic.