JimHuaHin

Of course Thai government officials and politicians have never ever damaged Thailand's peerless international reputation!

Only 30 heatstroke-related deaths this year?  A nice round figure, which seems rather low to be considering the current "heatwave".

Every country and probably nearly every community has its nasty and violent members, and Hua Hin's expat community is no different.

Those of us who are "long-term" expat residents of Hua Hin have heard "stories", know of cases or witnessed incidents involving local expats who have been involved in "shady"/dishonest/illegal business activities and others who are prone to violence.

As an older person with COPD, Legionnaires’ disease is sometime to worry about.

I hope the local health authorities take a full history of where these five people visited over the past few weeks, and also, as a priority, check the air con systems in the major malls in Hua Hin.

A most interesting, but largely uninformed, discussion.

May I go slightly off topic.

In high school in Australia, back in the 1960s and early 1970s. I spent 5 years learning Latin and French.  The former I rarely used, the latter I can still read with some difficulty.  My five years of learning French spent little time in speaking French - which I have used in Laos and Viet Nam in the late 1970s, and briefly in Quebec, Canada, in the late 1980s (native speakers had difficultly understanding me, not unexpectedly).

At university in the mid 1970s, I had many Vietnamese friends (and later a Vietnamese wife).  At that time I spent an hour or so every day learning how to read, write and pronounce Vietnamese words.  By the early 1990s I was proficient enough, but not fluent, in the three main Vietnamese dialects to be able to do my PhD research on Vietnamese communities in Australia by conduction about 450 interviews of families in the Vietnamese language/dialects.  After the research finished, I very very rarely had the opportunity to speak Vietnamese again.

In 1976, while studying another degree at university, I was required to learn Bahasa Indonesia, which I found difficult at the time.

In 1996-1997 I spent 7 months in Thailand, attached to several research projects at a major Thai university.  Over this short period I learnt enough central Thai to carry on a basic conversation.

Almost 12 years ago, I returned to Viet Nam for the first time since 1985, and tried using Vietnamese again for the first time since 1993-94.  After a few days "words came back to me" and after about 2 weeks I was able to carry on a very very basic conversation and read signs.

Arriving in Thailand to live just over 10 years ago, I started, for the first time, to learn how to write and read Thai.   I persisted for a year, until I gave up.  The Thai I had learnt in 1996-97 did not return.  And I admit, after a few years here, then in my early 60s, my native English ability slowly declined, despite my reading English works for hours every day.

A detour.  I had a friend at work in the early-mid 1980s.  He was in his 50s, a retired Australian Army major, who had be an intelligence officer.  Bruce (his name) wanted to learn Pu Tong Hua (Mandarin Chinese), but no institutions in China would accept him - he was too old, people over 35 were nor admitted.  Every day, he would spend hours trying to lean how to read, write and speak Chinese, but he never advanced beyond the very basics.

In conclusion - our brain's plasticity, declines as we age, our ability to learn new skills, also declines over time - for some of us, this decline is very slow, for others it is fast.  Some old people find it easy to learn new skills, new languages, but others amongst us find this task difficult, if not impossible.  For young people, it is easy to learn a second, third, etc. language; for us older people it is much harder.  As a university student in the 1970s, I was "stunned" at how many of young student friends from continental Europe fluently spoke 4, 5, 6, languages, or how some of Chinese Malay/Indonesia/Brunei friends not only spoke English and Bahasa, but also 3+ Chinese dialects.

Some of us older people may desire to learn beyond basic Thai, but our ability to do so may not match our desires.

Thank you for reading.

The lead paragraph of the article concludes " ... reinstating mask mandates for foreigners in major tourist areas.".

Firstly, the article does not target just farangs.

Secondly, from a medical/health perspectives "natives", ie people born in Thailand, have a degree of immunity/resistance to local (Thai) pathogens; while non-Thai-born long-time residents, say 10+ years, generally develop some immunity/resistance to such pathogens.

Ignorance can be bliss, but an informed mind can be a life-saver.

Not surprised, in light of Taksin's history and greed.