Martin

I hope the lads pull through, and their Mother manages to put the shock behind her (though it cannot help but take its toll on her).

There is a lesson here for all travellers.

When you travel, you take the risk that you may be misled by the assumptions that you bring with you.

What you have got used to (in this case, building safety standards protecting you by making railings safe to lean over) may not be the same in another country.

As a young man, I went from the UK to work in Canada and twice I was nearly killed in Montreal because I looked right before stepping off a kerb (as one does in the UK) rather than left (as one needs to do in Canada, where they drive on the other side of the road).

In Nepal, we used to get fed up on the Everest Trek with Europeans (often young Germans) who were critical of the slow service in the lodges (because the owner only had the one wood fire on which to cook and so had to cook the meals in succession). I wish I had a gold coin for the number of times that I have growled: "If you wanted it all to go like clockwork, you should have gone to Switzerland, to the Alps, and not come to the Himalaya".

Getting back to the case in point, it is particularly difficult now to spot when you are 'standing into danger' in overseas touristy areas, as there are efforts made to get you to think, particularly when you are reading the brochures and about to make your purchase decision, that the place you will be going to is not alarmingly different from your home surroundings.

Those railings were built to be photographed looking 'Aussie'.

Had the lads been up on the balcony of house in a village in Isaan, they would not have been lulled into any sense of security that would have caused them to 'do an Aussie thing'. The sensing that they were somewhere 'strange and new' and needed to be cautious would have been in their minds.

Every tourist brochure should be thought of as lacking a warning notice:"This place has different hazards from what you are used to" in the manner of the warnings on ciggy packs.

I am sorry to have to say this to 'George' and 'Boo', but the more I think about this, the more I think that you have got yourselves, and us, and the Nation, into a 'lose-lose-lose' situation.

I won't repeat post #87 from 'mobi' as that has already been done several times, but I thoroughly agree with it.

'Merangue', in post #16, said

"Simple fact is that the forum is now allied with a news outlet that is not free from political leanings."

'Merangue' is right and puts his typing finger right on the point.

Whether we agree with those leanings, or not, is irrelevant.

Thai Visa had a moral duty to us not to tie us in so that we are all seen as having an affiliation with a particular news outlet (since every nws outlet has its political leaning----that is why its proprietor bought it, usually).

Because ThaiVisa, by its very success in bringing together so many farangs, got itself to be seen as the voice of the farangs, it brought upon itself a moral duty to, at least, discuss any such move as this openly with its members before it committed itself.

'George' and 'Boo' saying that it is "only a marketing/branding exercise" is not good enough.

Like all the rest of us, they cannot serve Good and Mammon.

The whole point of 'establishing a brand' is to develop customer loyalty, which is bias towards the slant of the brand. And then those who consume the brand 'brand' themselves.

Well, I am a maverick. There is no brand on my rump.

(For any who don't understand the allusion, I should explain that Mr Maverick was a Texan rancher who was too busy with other things to have time to brand his calves.)

I am trying to think how we can limit the damage that ThaiVisa has caused to the whole farang community by this move.

The best would be for this tie-up to be untied immediately.

I wonder if this person 'George' is man enough to say:

"Sorry. ThaiVisa is my brainchild and I 'threw the baby out with the (commercial) bathwater'.

I am going to get it back by negotiating ThaiVisa out of this deal.

That will make it clear that all farangs are not in the Nation's pocket."

I await your reply, 'George'.

(Since my e-mail notifications from Thai Visa still don't work, despite having PMed 'George' about it, I won't know immediately that 'George' has answered, but I will look back at the thread periodically.)

Yes, 'Wedders'.

Considerable misgivings are appropriate, no matter what bias such a partner has.

This could rebound on the expatriate community quite badly.

Perhaps someone should start a 'stand alone' website that we can point to as being neutral to head off the stereotyping that is likely to occur in the minds of influential Thais---especially if it is stirred up by the NoFIMBY (No farangs in my backyard) brigade.

You cannot compare what the newspapers here call 'farmers' (whose 'farms' are small semi-self-sufficient units of yeoman-peasantry) with the UK and USA 'farmers (whose 'farms' are big areas of land on which expensive machines spread petro-chemical-derived fertiliser and pesticides in a highly-capitalised industrialised way).

To understand the rich social capital of the villages of the Thai farmers and their paucity of monetary capital, I recommend "A Child of the Norteast" by Kampoon Boontawee.

(Or send me a PM and I will reply with an attachment of an article on my MA study of the future of Thailand and its Villages-Bangkok balance.)

Look at the geography, particularly the topography.

In the long term, good relations between Thailand and Laos are vital to both.

Thailand needs the hydro-generated electricity to come south to it from Laos, not all go north and east to China and Vietnam; and the only practical major links to the rest of the world for Laos are down the railway alongside Highway 2 in Thailand and on Highway 2 itself as long as diesel/gasoline is affordable.

I hope they are quietly agreeing to doing the preliminary studies to the double-tracking and electrification of the railway.

Yes, 'Scott', that baby was put where he was bound to be found very quickly.

Clearly, this isn't a case of a new born baby being abandoned in a panic.

More likely, a young couple at their wits' ends from being made redundant giving the little one at least a chance.

It doesn't say when the baby appears last to have had food.

It is hard for us who have always had welfare provision to fall back on as our last resort to know how we would react if destitute and hopeless.

I read recently that it was not unknown in the past for adults to sell themselves into slavery as their last resort when destitute.

So let's suspend our judgmentalism and try to get understanding.

Unfortunately there never seem to be any follow up stories on cases like this that would help the acquisition of understanding. The papers seem to just move on to the next "Shock, Horror"-inducing titbit. In these modern times, we need a 'Charles Dickens' as much as former times to enlighten us.

Governments are not elected to be generous.

The idea of democracy is that everyone will have an equal say in the choice of an effective Government.

They seem to have been eminently sensible in choosing those items that will give 'most bang for a buck'.

They'll get proportionately more publicity for waiving visa fees than they would for subsidsing air fares.

This seems to be the result of simple, sensible 'cost:benefit' analysis.

If the best that this leader of this part of this "University" can come up with is the totally-misplaced, totally-inappropriate cliche of "jump start the economy", there is little hope for those whose jobs are threatened. You don't jump start a vehicle that is spluttering, because it is running out of gasoline, and beginning to slow down!

The whole report reeks of the clucking of headless chickens.

This is the start of a long-expected transition from unsustainable consumerism-driven 'growth' of a Grossly Delusional Parameter (GDP) towards whatsoever new paradigm homo sapiens adopts.

Myopic individuals like the ones quoted here contribute mere irrelevant noise. Monetary-capital nostrums like lowering interest rates are going to be as effective at sustaining the economically-unsustainable as pushing on a string.

Fortunately for Thailand, out in its rural ares, there is still a lot of the basic social capital upon which pre-industrial societies were based. Leadership in developing the new paradigm could feasibly come from that small area of Earth that comprises the Mekong and Chao Phraya basins, if it can cope with the drag of inheritance of that hyperurban primate city called Bangkok and its denizens, such as those quoted here, who will have to be 're-educated'.

The thing to do with headless chickens is to pluck and draw them, put them in the pot, and get on with the job whilst they stew.

Just the two penn'orth of an irascible old git!

"First World" and "Third World" are likely to change their meanings with this onset of energy-depletion on an over-populated Earth.

Until now, "First World" has come, over the past 200 years, to be shorthand for "....over-privileged, highly-industrialised, manufacturing, importing fuels and foods (usually cheaply from under-privileged countries) for its industrial workers and the supporting service sector....".

However, reading books like James Howard Kunstler's "The Long Emergency" (about what may happen in America as oil-availability contracts) leads one to the feeling that the countries of the world may soon divide into two groups. First, "The Lucky Few" where the populace can be fed and housed adequately (like Thailand) and the "The Unlucky Many" where standards of food and shelter are less than adequate.

Fortunate are all we who came to Thailand when it was easy to be admitted. That may not last long as "The Lucky Few" countries will become subject to great migratory pressures by those people who wish to get out from within one of "The Unlucky Many" countries.

"Is this the PAD guy who said the rural poor were to ignorant and uneducated to vote ? "

I doubt it. I have seen that he did put in a well-regarded performance as an ambassador, and such a man would have more 'nous' than to say something like that, even if it was his private view of democracy.

Without seeing the whole transcript of the speech and the question-and-answers, it would be wrong to take a dogmatic position about this matter.

But it smells to me of one part of an answer to one question being presented without context to make the man appear an idiot.

It is a common ploy by reporters who know that is what their editor would like to see. It is also quite common for editors, in reducing a report to the size that there is room for in that day's paper, to cut all the 'balance' out of a report and just leave a 'titbit' that their readers will be pleased by.

I speak from experience of reading press reports of meetings that I have attended.

From what I see in the villages here, most remitted money gets invested in the children and youths. It is not just tuition fees and transport to school, but youngsters having motorbikes and mobile phones is important, too.

A lot of the social harm done by rural-to-urban drift can be laid at the door of living in the village being boring to the young. Mobility and connectivity, based on motor bikes and mobile phones, are two of the ameliorators of that.

What Thailand needs is for its villages to keep their brightest and best youngsters and for them to have the spirit to start businesses and build up the 'social capital' in the villages.

It is a mammoth requirement and very difficult in the present circumstances of sudden collapse of the foreign-currency earners of manufacture-for-export and tourism.

That is no short-lived recession that is setting in in those long-industrialised countries. It may well be that they never see an increase in their GDPs again. Already 'being frugal' (and cutting out foreign holidays is one part) is becoming the paradigm for many in 'the West', even though they are in a secure position and can afford to go on spending.

I am much more optimistic for Thailand than, say, James Howard Kunstler is for America in his book 'The Long Emergency'; but my optimism is tempered by seeing that the magnitude of the transitions that will come is not being quickly realised.

The OP is right that the blockade of the airport had knock-on effects beyond the tourist industry, and other posters are right that there are other problems also feeding in to the economic downturn that we are seeing.

We should try to stand back a bit and see more of the whole picture and care and be kind to those who are suffering, even if their employment was something that we did not approve of.

Hey, lighten up, folks. It is the 'Torygraph' reporting on SE Asia, so it will be written with the most derogatory slant that the reporter and editor can get away with.

The reporter and editor know what their readers like to read and serve it up to them.

For the readership of the Telegraph that is anythig that puts down Asians, particularly those of the South Eastern part.

It is obvious that a great gathering of people, whatever for, need good food and entertainment to keep them gathered. So what is so newsworthy about that? Nothing---but it gives a chance to denigrate where denigration is the name of the game, as it has been this last sixty-some years.

It goes back to when Mountbatten was put in charge of SEAC---which was officially the South East Asian Command, but his job was to interpret it as Save England's Asian Colonies.

(That was a forlorn hope, as Britain was skint after WWII and couldn't foot the bill, but that hadn't been realised.)

Mountbatten was going to take the Surrender Parade in Bangkok, towering head and shoulders over the young King-Designate of Thailand. But the teenager brought a box to stand on, so that his head was the higher. Cheeky young whipper-snapper: all his subjects must evermore be denigrated for such an act of anti-authoritarianism directed at the representative of the Imperial Power.

Then there is the deep, buried shame of being so inept as to allow Singapore to fall so easily to "the little yellow men", but I won't go into that.

Suffice to say: "Never ever expect South East Asian news to be given a fair crack of the whip by the Western Press---the right wing press, in particular".

If she had made off with 50 billion dollars she would have been out on bail whilst investigation was carried out. Even if she had confessed freely under no duress, before going into incarceration where reported confession is always suspect.

And if she had been a convicted criminal of the magnitude of Ken Lay of Enron, she would have been out on bail even after conviction.

There's on rule of law for the poor (whether guilty or not), and an entirely different one for the rich (whether guilty or not).

Re post 3451, where ' Thai at Heart' says:

"...I notice when policies are aimed at the poor it is populist, but changes to corporation taxes or income taxes are in some way proposed as sophisticated, necessary economic reform. ..."

So true.

It reminds me of something that was pointed out to me long, long ago about us humans being more able to see a speck in someone else's eye than a great big lump in our own!

I am not going to get involved in the game of quoting numbers from tables of statistics, because I have no faith in the way that they are tabulated. For instance, they list 'employed in agriculure', but don't say how many of these are partly-employed in agriculture and partly-employed in something else like so many of my neighbours.

But my gut feeling is that 'Lao Po' is right: we see small minorities struggling between themselves to get power to exploit the large majority.

I await with trepidation the time when the big 'it' happens. If there is any poster that doesn't know to what I refer, they are referred to some overseas forums where 'it' is allowed to be discussed.

Looking back at the OP and some of the simplistic images of their country that some of the Bangkokians reveal, there seems to be more of a need for some primary education in some products of the higher-education industry than of 're-education' up here.

I am told by people who have researched it that, worldwide, micro-credit schemes run by government officials have a very poor track record.

Better to leave it to 'self-help' groups. GAWFA, The Gambian Womens' Finance Association, is a good example. "Self-help" groups have a much shrewder idea of who is a reasonable prospect to loan to!

Probably best for Government just to lay on training and other 'background' support to those working to get 'self-help' groups going.

Support for 'sufficiency development' is fine---but it is Bangkok and the other heavily-urbanised areas in which it is noticeable that there is infinitesimal sufficiency.

When I travel around Bangkok and Hong Kong beyond their inner cores I am struck by the difference. In Bangkok, land on which vegetables could be grown in '9-to-5ers' spare time just sits idle, unlike Hong Kong and the New Territories.

(I joke on UK websites about watching for the present crisis due to the debt crunch resulting in Golf Clubs morphing into Allotment Associations, but there is truth in the jest. Cities, as they operate at present, are economically (and, so, socio-politically) unsustainable in a low-energy-availability future.)

Thailand needs a Government that thinks ahead beyond just jockeying for position for when the big 'it' happens.

It passes unnoticed here in Ban Nork.

But I was greatly amused in Singapore about twenty years ago, when one of the big Orchard Road hotels had a huge polystyrene sculpture of a sleigh and reindeer outside. In January, the sleigh was taken away, and the reindeers' antlers were removed in order to celebrate the Year of the Goat!

Definitely go on the river.

The 'tourist trip' from beneath the the Skytrain station at Thaksin Bridge is good value; but I prefer the ordinary passenger boats. Not only are they cheaper, but you get a more authentic feel of Bangkok.

Some day I want to go all the way up to Nonthaburi on one of those 'commuter boats'.

Talking of Nonthaburi, a visit to Bondstreet Road at Muang Thon Thani, Banpood, Pakred, Nothaburi is something unusual that that shines a light on Thailand that tourists don't get. It is about a kilometre of high rise office and condominium buildings, built just over ten years ago and never, or only slightly, tenanted. (Some are not even completely built.) It is different from visiting ruins of places that were inhabited! I can't give you the bus routes to get there, but one of the information booths will.

It isn't cheap (at almost 1000 bahts total) but I reckon the best value for money for a 'Bangkok experience' is to get up early and catch the first Skytrain to Thaksin Bridge, go down to landing stage for the hotel shuttle boats, go over to the Peninsula and while away three hours having breakfast on the terrace. Whenever I have to go down to Bangkok, I try to include that. Eating good-quality smoked salmon whilst doing the crosswords in the Post and the Tribune (which the hotel provides) seems quite decadent, but I succumb.

For 'Lao Po', re post # 420, where you say:

"...let's hope the rural people stay calm..."

I am more worried about the Bangkok people failing to stay calm when ther lifestyles cannot be supported any more. The first reaction to hunger tends to be anger.

What is happening in Greece is worrisome---and it is not the rural poor who have 'lost their cool'; nor even the urban poor; but the urban middle-class.

As energy depletes, 55 million Thai people in the Provinces won't be able to support 10 million in the hyper-urban primate city-captal. Bangkok's population needs to halve to 5 million over the next twenty years, and to halve again over the following twenty.

That is an enormous structural change, which, as you say, the present socio-political situation is ill-designed to cope with.

For 'Animatic', re post #418:

I, too, have come to the conclusion that excessive specialisation and a dearth of trans-disciplinary academic work is one of the major untackled problems in which many modern problems are rooted.

As an engineering student half-a-century ago, I was lucky to study in a Department of Electrical Engineering in a University that had no other engineering departments, and our Professor, the late Emrys Williams, believed in 'The Whole Engineer'. So we also had to do Mechanical, Civil and Hydraulics in broad outline, taught by the same staff who taught Electrical, or Electronics, or Communications. It did both us and them good.

In mid-career, when I drifted into academia for a while, I found myself regarded with awe that I would volunteer to teach at undergraduate level across all the disciplines. One friend asked me: "From where on Earth do you get such confidence?" and I said: "From Prof Emrys Williams. It is a pity that nobody followed in his footsteps".

I noticed that there are a couple of leading American profs (at Yale, I think it was) who were pointing to excessive specialisation as resulting in nobody having a good overall view at the highest levels of governance. (Sorry, but I can't put my hand on the reference.)

But it is a problem in other areas, too. In fact, when executive directors in major banks cannot grasp what their trading managers are doing, and we end up with their whole edifices reeling, it is more than a problem, though; it results in disaster.

It is not just 'rural Thais' who need different education, and not just the wider range of Thais (especially surgeons who display such crass ignorance of the greater part of their country that they make statements like the one that started this thread), it is a worldwide need.

For 'Siripon', re post # 411:

Having to divide the land between siblings is a huge problem in all 'peasant' communities, I know.

Where I farmed in the hills of Mid-Wales there was a saying that it is awful for a hill farmer not to have a son to leave the farm to' but also awful for him to have two sons who both want to farm.

(That is one of the reasons for another saying there in Mid Wales: "Our biggest export is young teachers to English cities."!)

(Another reason behind that latter saying, though, is that a lot of farmers' daughters don't want to be a hill farmer' wife!)

I am not convinced that the problem in Isaan is lack of land, though. When I did my scenario of Thailand and its Isaan villages in the coming era of energy depletion for my MA thesis, I had to consider how urban-to-rural migration will be coped with; and, so, the 'population-carrying capacity' of Isaan. At first glance, there looks to be enough land if the big blocks in the ownership of private landowners and 'the powers that be' were put to intensive cultivation.

I toyed with the idea of switching to Agricultural Economics and Economic Anthropology for my PhD and doing an in-depth study of how much population the land of one representative Isaan village could carry, if the problems of the requisite socio-political transitions could be surmounted. I dropped the idea for two reasons: firstly, I don't speak, read or write Thai, and secondly, one is expected to make policy recommendations at the end of such a study and it seemed indelicate for a 'farang' to get involved in that!

I agree with you when you say that Thaksin was 'a false messiah', but my neighbours say much worse things than that about Chuan! However, there is no point in getting into the subject of the governance of Thailand on this website. If I reported a few happenings up here this week, the Mods would trash my contribution in seconds.

Actually, Abhisit got his 'first' in a Disneyland collection of Mickey Mouse subjects called PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics).

A 'first' in PPE was also gained by Ruth Kelly, who got to the UK Cabinet and was not impressive. It was also gained by a certain other old-Etonian called Cameron, who is now leader of the UK Opposition, but seems very short on policy ideas.

Not all 'firsts' in PPE at Oxford have been disappointments, though. Possibly the best Prime Minister that the UK never had was Dennis Healey, who was one such----but it was after a boyhood in a tough North Yorkshire textile-machinery-manufacturing town called Keighley, and being a pupil at Bradford Grammar School. There is all the world of difference between Bradford and Windsor (the location of Eton).

PPE makes sense as a mid-career degree for a mature adult who has real-life experience with which to compare the theories of politics, philosophy and economics----but, when I mischievously suggest it, I find that university lecturers blanch at the suggestion that they should be exposed to the rigours of having such 'students' to contend with.

(Incidentally, Dennis Healey wasn't only a politician. His World War II service showed him to be a man who could manage a tough managerial job in the field of action (invasion beach master----than which I cannot think of any tougher managerial appointment---and I have held the highest one on Earth). One always wonders how much of Healey's success at Westminster was due to boyhood in Keighley and Bradford and service in the wartime army, rather than the 'first' in PPE at Oxford.)

So, if the new PM of Thailand does turn out well, I shall wonder whether it was because of, or in spite of, a very privileged start in life.

No, it is not an Open Society.

That was brought home when I (and a huge number of thinking people in Britain) this morning read the downright racism at the end of this piece from a report in the London 'Observer':

"....almost all observers agree that, if Abhisit is to gain any traction and win the popular mandate he so badly needs, he must take action to connect with ordinary Thais.

Judging by his appointments since becoming prime minister, the chances of that are slim, particularly in the north. Last week, emerging from parliament minutes after Abhisit won his vote, Democrat MP Charoen Kanthawongs, a lawyer with the prominent firm Tilleke and Gibbins International, told a Malaysian newspaper, the New Straits Times, that he was not concerned by the opinions of the north-easterners who make up much of Veera's support.

"People in the north-east are employees of people in Bangkok," said Charoen Kanthawongs. "My servants are from the northeast. Gas station attendants in Bangkok are from the north-east."...."

If the present crash of his urban, middle-class capitalist financial system means that Charoen Karthawongs finds that the services of Tilleke and Gibbons are no longer required and he gets hungry in Bangkok and would like to eat from my granary, then he will work long and hard in the fields as an unskilled servant of an Isaan farmer in order to earn the rice for his bowl.

There is an article in the London 'Observer' today that will be revealing to many in the West who have previously lumped all of Thailand together in their image of it.

They wiill purse their lips at the downright racism revealed in:

"....almost all observers agree that, if Abhisit is to gain any traction and win the popular mandate he so badly needs, he must take action to connect with ordinary Thais.

Judging by his appointments since becoming prime minister, the chances of that are slim, particularly in the north. Last week, emerging from parliament minutes after Abhisit won his vote, Democrat MP Charoen Kanthawongs, a lawyer with the prominent firm Tilleke and Gibbins International, told a Malaysian newspaper, the New Straits Times, that he was not concerned by the opinions of the north-easterners who make up much of Veera's support.

"People in the north-east are employees of people in Bangkok," said Charoen Kanthawongs. "My servants are from the northeast. Gas station attendants in Bangkok are from the north-east.".... "

Of course, the boot may be on the other foot when the international capitalist crisis, plus energy depletion, crashes the economy of the city dwellers and they have no need of Tilleke and Gibbens' services.

If Charoen Kanthawongs then wants to eat from my granary, he will bloody well have to work long and hard in the fields to earn that rice for his bowl.

"Countries, like Thailand, might be better equipped to deal with the future world economy. "

That was at the heart of my recent MA thesis. PM me if you would like to read an article that describes it.

Reading what James Howard Kunstler, in 'The Long Emergency', writes about what America may have to go through makes me glad to be in Thailand, and even gladder to be up-country and to have had a good rice harvest.

There is a balanced overview, posted from Bangkok, in the 'Observer' today.

The 'Observer' is one of Britain's top serious Sunday papers, read by a large proportion of the 'middle-class'.

It can be read at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/2...haksin-protests

Sorry. I don't know how you all do those 'link' things, so you may have to copy it and paste it into your browser address box.

The article doesn't tell us much we didn't know, and is carefully worded so that its writer doesn't get expelled under those laws about which we mustn't comment, but most buyers of the 'Observer' will be able to 'read between the lines'.