rooster59

 

The news on Friday that Thaivisa was no more - at least in name - caught many of the forum faithful on the hop. What was all this ASEAN NOW stuff about?

 

Cue a rather hilarious thread that claimed the owners of the site were now in the pay of the Chinese Communist Party. Maybe posters had misread ASEAN as ASIA and didn’t know that ASEAN referred to ten countries in southeast Asia. 

 

Or didn’t believe the hopeful blurb that the site was moving into new markets, expanding horizons. 

 

To read some of the comments it felt like members were grieving for a departed relative. It certainly smacked of “lurve”, so that was heartening for us at AN HQ. 

 

I can assure you that Rooster is still here (stop groaning) and it’s business as usual so in the spirit of celebrating ASEAN I’ll be writing about how I came to Thailand rather by accident via some of our neighbors.

 

But first ASEAN. The original members of “The Association of Southeast Asia” sixty years ago this month were Thailand, the Philippines and the Federation of Malaya. ASEAN started in 1967 when Indonesia, the newly formed Malaysia and Singapore joined the fray. Brunei joined in 1984, Vietnam in 95, Laos and Myanmar in 97 then finally Cambodia confirmed membership in 1999 after a coup delayed things. 

 

Weighty matters, but Rooster’s Asian connection began in a small railway compartment on the 8.11 am from Beckenham Junction to Victoria.

 

I was late for school and all alone so I thought I’d look under the seat as you often found magazines there. Peering up at me from something I’d never seen before called Penthouse, was an oriental looking lady in a state of undress. 

 

Looking around furtively to make sure I hadn’t been observed, I secreted the glossy pages in my satchel next to the pens, ruler and sharpener then after a further perusal deposited it under my bed at home in case mother did a strip search. 

 

It sowed a seed, as it were, in the mind of an impressionable 14 year old. 

 

Six years later I had the opportunity to visit a friend of mine who was a steward on the P&O liner The Canberra that was heading for port in Sydney. 

 

I bought a ticket on Philippine Air and headed for Australia with a three day stopover in Manila. The Village Hotel had a casino where I deposited myself for most of the trip though I did have a ride on a jeepney and was hooked on Asia as a result. 

 

People were talking about a man called Marcos and his wife who had zillions of shoes; it seemed terribly exciting and everyone seemed fascinated by me - that was a first in my life - not least of all that I had the same surname as a well-known US president. 

 

After three weeks in Australia I returned to London not talking about shrimps on the barbie,hats with corks or billabongs but the amazing people of “Asia” that I had discovered. A bit like MacArthur I vowed to return. 

 

But I never did, at least not to the Philippines. 

 

I got sidetracked. I arrived in South East Asia in early 1982 on a reconditioned French ship that had set sail from Madras (that dates me) five days earlier. 

 

Disembarking in Penang, little did I know that I would visit that gem of an island maybe 20 times in the coming decades, mostly on visa runs from a country I knew virtually nothing of to the north. 

 

A Canadian in Goa on a rickety bus sharing a cigarette with me had mentioned not to miss Thailand. I made a mental note of the name, though that lady in the railway carriage always seemed more Hong Kong than Bangkok to me…..(she was probably from Cleethorpes but who was I to know).

 

From Penang we traveled to Singapore in far greater comfort than we were used to in India. There we stayed with a friend on Orchard Road who said he had to always go to the back of the queue because he had long hair. He warned us about spitting gum and getting the cane. 

 

It seemed like I was back at school. 

 

Headmaster Lee Kuan Yu was in charge and it seemed like a police state and unpleasantly clean to boot; time to move on.

 

Back to Malaysia we travelled in diesel taxis from town to town. First stop was Tioman island where they filmed the musical South Pacific. 

 

Idyllic but we were itching for more action than snorkeling and ogling the fisherman’s daughter in her headscarf.

 

Kuantan seemed dreadfully dull and closed at 8pm. You were woken at 5 am-ish by some dude wailing.

 

Ditto Kuala Terengganu, likewise Kota Bahru. Where oh where was the action……??

 

We Crossed the border on foot to the station at Sungei Kolok and we started to have our answer. 

 

To this day I remember everything about THAT day. The picture of the hippy that thankfully we didn’t resemble so we wouldn’t have S.H.I.T. (Suspected Hippy In Transit) stamped in our passports, strange people with no hair dressed in orange, nobody speaking English, everybody smiling and looking at us as though we’d got out of a spaceship. 

 

I pity the tourists who come today, or who might come today. Back then it was discovery. No internet. No phones. We didn’t even have a copy of Southeast Asia on a Shoestring as that was cheating. 

 

After the train to Surat Thani, Samui was unbelievably cheap and enjoyable. The only girl in the only bar in Chaweng - Lightning Bar - actually came over for a chat in bitty English. And when we arrived in Bangkok I only thought of one thing.

 

I was home. 

 

Not only did I let down the memory of MacArthur and never return to the Philippines, I could hardly be called an ambassador for ASEAN in subsequent years.

 

I’ve never been to Myanmar, Laos or Cambodia. I have traveled extensively in Indonesia and been to more Scrabble tournaments in Malaysia and Singapore than I care to remember. But neither Brunei nor Vietnam...chern khrap, be my guest, if you fancy those.

 

Top of the news in Thailand this week was Phuket.

 

I visited Patong on that first trip in ‘82. We stayed in a bungalow for 50 baht and the owner hated us “Cheap Charlies” because we ate tinned fish bought in the market for 5 baht and gave him 4 baht for plain rice. We dined in our room.

 

I never liked Phuket because of this guy after he tried to pad our check-out bill with “Lady 300 baht”. I pointed out that this was a private transaction already enacted that didn’t involve him or payment for the use of the premises.

 

I learned my first Thai swear word. 

 

Thursday this week was the much heralded opening of the Sandbox and Prayut and his cronies descended on the island for the “Khun Mae” of all photo-ops. 

 

It was an almost complete PR disaster. Not because of the numbers of tourists - that’s a sideshow to the main feast. How we dined on the PM and Anutin caught with their masks down, Pipat’s incoherent burbling about numbers, the environment minister clearing up 800 kilos of trash so that Uncle Too could hug a turtle on the now pristine beach and DES minister Chaiwut having to go into 14 day quarantine on the island after travelling down on a plane with someone with Covid. 

 

Pure gold. And all accompanied by yet more assessments (posted only yesterday) from the Tourism Council about how tourism was saved so long as the Chinese are allowed out in October and Bangkok is virus free.

 

The chance of either is about as likely as Anutin doing a Matt Hancock after snogging a Covid infected sea turtle, having a meal in a restaurant in the Thai capital or a beer after 8pm in Pattaya!

 

The resort became the latest place where the Covid-ante was upped. 

 

The numbers of dead and total cases broke records daily as many places were in lockdown in all but name. 

 

Plod in Bangkok said they didn’t want to arrest people for inciting civil disobedience and pubs opening but it was their duty to try and get off Facebook and leave the sanctity of their booths and stations. At least after the sun goes down. 

 

Flip-flopping continued to be the order of the day. The most hilarious followed the almighty debacle that was the late night announcement of the closure of construction camps. 

 

Thousands got wind of that and fled the scene to the countryside with 34 provinces infected with virus by people from Bangkok. Songkran all over again, only much worse. 

 

The hilarity was the cancellation of Tuesday July 27th as a public holiday. So what I hear you say.

 

Well taking this day off was designed to make the end of July holiday a whopping five days long to “stimulate the economy”. 

 

After the embarrassing exodus to the villages the cabinet was forced to rescind this and tell everybody not to travel next month after all.

 

If you’d booked - hard cheese. The spokeswoman, left on her lonesome as Uncle hid, muttered something about asking for cooperation on refunds. 

 

Still the flip-flops continued. (Australians call the footwear thongs which makes the Brits cackle). This was the cost of Moderna vax at private hospitals. 

 

They’d said 3,800 baht for two doses, then changed it to 3,400. This was found to be price gouging by the hospitals due to a markup of over 50%. Eventually 3,300 was agreed. 

 

If you’ve already overpaid I expect they’ll give you a monogrammed mask when you get your first jab. 

 

Rooster’s biggest laugh this week was when my sub-editor said it was a slow news day. Surely he was joshing. 

 

The first story he sent for translation had “gay, Italian, fake Viagra, murder suicide and injured cop” in the first paragraph.

 

This was a story that happened in a house on the Petchkasem Highway.

 

Elsewhere a man in Chaiyaphum killed a family of four then himself because of a pump then a Brit started shooting at a luxury house in Pattaya that resulted in 50 cops descending.

 

There were just enough rozzers to ensure arrest, meaning we missed out on a manhunt for a pot-bellied, Singha singlet and grubby shorts wearing trigger happy guy with an Uzi. 

 

Frankly, one would have thought that he’d have been happy after England dispatched the Germans at the Euros on Tuesday night. There again….he may have been Scottish or heaven forbid, even Welsh.

 

The progress of England brought much joy to my Ratchayothin Roost. The children were chained down to learn the lyrics of “Three Lions” and promised that if our heroes make the final next Sunday everyone gets new phones…..fancier ones if they win. 

 

Finally, the change of name to ASEAN NOW was also accompanied by a swanky new logo that looked very professional.

 

One poster on Facebook made me chuckle with his comment that I think was meant to be positive:

 

“Way better than that stupid durian”. 

 

Oh I don’t know Ryan. I’m sure we’ll all get used to the new format and features of our go-to place for news. 

 

But I think I may miss that durian.

 

Rooster

 

-- © Copyright ASEAN NOW 2021-07-04

 

 

Thaivisa is often criticized for not following up on stories and there are many reasons for this. Not least of all because we are basing most of our content on translations from the Thai press so we are largely dependent on them following up. 

 

There was no danger of the Thai press failing to do that with one of the most followed stories of the year that smacks right at the heart of popular Thai culture. 

 

The interplay between Mia Luang’s or main, legal Thai wives and mistresses or Mia Noi’s sometimes referred to by the gentler minor wife. 

 

Anyone who has been in Thailand for five minutes will know that this is a subject discussed endlessly; something that every soap, every comedy routine and most every liquid gathering of adults features. 

 

Even children get in on the act, though whether Thai adults are children in disguise is a moot point….

 

So no wonder that in February everyone was talking about a wife called Nipapan, in her early thirties, who showed up at her husband’s wedding. 

 

He had been married to her for nearly 16 years, they had two children, but he decided to nip off on the sly and tie the knot in an unregistered Buddhist kind of way with his bit on the side in Chainat. 

 

Nipapan, dressed in highly inappropriate or appropriate black depending on your point of view, took her “tabian somrot” (marriage certificate) that added to the drama. The video included her mother-in-law slapping her son in front of the chanting monks!

 

Soap writers wouldn’t have dared go that far, methinks!

 

But the next episode in the saga was a court date in which Nipapan claimed damages from the woman who wronged her and the court decided to award her 200,000 baht of the 300K she had asked for. 

 

Of course, one suspects that her new “better half” will front up the cash. 

 

Nipapan went online - under her maiden name it appeared - to say she was “sa jai”. This essentially means pleased or satisfied but carries feelings of having put one over on a rival.

 

Sa jai jing jing!

 

She sure did that, telling the media that it was a great day for mia luang’s. Her lawyer Pat said it was a lesson for “third parties”. 

 

The much scorn’d Nipapan went on to say - almost de rigeur - that she’d spend the money on the kids’ education. But also a boob and chin job after she’d shed a few pounds. 

 

Good luck to her, she already looked drop dead gorgeous so it was a wonder why hubby had ditched her in the first place. 

 

Maybe if he has some spare readies he should get a lobotomy in Lopburi.

 

The Soap Opera style of Thai news this week continued with everything related to the Phuket Sandbox - now referred to as the litter box by mischievous onliners. 

 

Friday saw new heights of hilarity when the head of the Phuket Tourism Association was quoted as saying in the Thai press that foreign visitors to the island would have to be legally married in order to share a hotel room. 

 

The report was swiftly followed by a PTA rebuttal saying the chief’s comments were “misinterpreted” during an interview with Thai media. 

 

Miss Interpret, sounds like one of Rooster’s past flings, the “nong sao” of Miss Understanding. 

 

Yes, foreigners would be “allowed to share (rooms) within the framework of Thai legislation”, whatever that meant and all would be revealed when the Government Gazette announces what foreigners can and can’t do on Monday.

 

TAT chief Yutthasak said that was the day when all would be set in stone. In the meantime he told the media that hundreds of flights would be landing in Phuket next month. 

 

It remains to be seen if anyone except the pilot and flight crew is actually on them, however. Several reports suggested 300 tourists (in total) on five flights come Thursday.

 

Barely enough to put any extra prawns on the barbie, especially as none of them will be Chinese. 

 

It’s going to be a doozy of a D-day with Yutthasak and tourism minister Pipat at the end of the red carpet, I suspect. 

 

More sinister than humorous perhaps was the announcement of a command center to track the tourists during their 14 day sojourn in Phuket.

 

Cheeky poster RotBenz8888 said it best referencing the picture: “Let’s see, 8 screens, that’ll be one for every foreigner in the sandbox”. 

 

Not to be outdone amid the madness, Pipat said when he visited the south that his lord and PM was concerned that other PM would ruin the sandbox party - the Phuket Mafia. 

 

Expect another version of the Cosa Nostra, local plod, to be pulling out all the stops to prevent the taxi drivers from charging 1,000 baht to take Johnny Tourist the length of Patong Beach. 

 

Then Yuttasak said that he hoped Brits would be coming as he expected the “angkrit” authorities to stop quarantine for their nationals coming back from Thailand. 

 

As many news stories this week pointed out, the sandbox is just a start but the Thai government has invested heavily in its success and woe betide anyone who gets in the way!

 

On the subject of drugs, the head of the NCB Wanchai pointed out that cocaine was being posted in and heroin and ice was being mailed out of Thailand, mostly to Australia. 

 

It was claimed Nigerian’s were involved in the coke trade but Wanchai’s comment about foreigners being the main customers struck Rooster as a little far-fetched. 

 

Whenever I hear reference to the Narcotics Control Board I remember an occasion more than 30 years ago when in the late night pouring rain I hid out in the garden of their offices in Sukhumvit Soi 15. 

 

I’d just lost my rag with a car that soaked me going through a huge puddle as I walked under my umbrella. I kicked his wing mirror off. I was stalked by the car but was thankful for the NCB undergrowth after I “fled the scene”. 

 

Down in QUOTES - the Queen Of The Eastern Seaboard - it was business as usual. Twenty nine out of work Go-Go dancers (and a hapless farang) were arrested streaming their gyrations with demands for “virtual ladies” drinks at 150 baht a time. 

 

Rooster hasn’t been much of a bar aficionado in the last two decades but I do remember how long is a Nanasecond - the time for a dancer to finish the drink I bought her on Soi 4. 

 

Also in Pattaya 121 Thais and foreigners were arrested and charged with Covid and alcohol violations on Friday night at two “restaurants” and the beach. 

 

The interesting point was that this was at the behest of Chonburi plod. Expect more crackdowns in this regard leading up to D-Day for Phuket on Thursday. 

 

Gambling crackdowns continued nationwide giving the Thai press the chance to mention Euro 2020 at every turn. The delayed tournament is hotting up with the mouthwatering prospect of England messing up again when they play Germany on Tuesday, 11pm Thai time.

 

In lighter news another drama ensued on the Route 36 bypass in Rayong when a roadside durian trader threw a wodge of the smelly fruit at a woman in a car after she reneged on a deal to buy. 

 

You take your chance lady! That’s why across the whole of Asia you see people kneeling to discuss and smell if the fruit is ready or potentially good tasting before the trader cuts it open. 

 

Anyway the local constabulary decided they were as bad as each other and the netizens joked it would’ve been a lot worse if they’d thrown the prickly fruit whole. 

 

That I doubt.

 

Top picture of the week that came from a video, was of a wild elephant that broke into a kitchen in the Hua Hin area. Several worldwide news organisations picked up on the story and it prompted some great photo- shopping.

 

In one Prawit was bursting in to get a midnight snack and in another Burger King decided to replace the pachyderm with a Whopper to advertise their burgers. 

 

Reasons to love the internet rather than castigate it. 

 

In Prachinburi netizens had a field day with a 24 year old corporal who drove his police pick-up through a red light straight into the path of a large truck and was creamed. 

 

His chief fined him 1,000 baht and the trucker - perhaps realizing what side his som tam is buttered - kindly said his insurance would sort out the damage to his ten wheeler.

 

Other noteworthy items this week that caught Rooster’s beady eye were a parrot that swallowed 21 diamonds, a couple of employees who pinched 240 million baht of prepaid phone cards, a 15 year-old girl who needed surgery on her back after carrying heavy school bags and an elephant in Chiang Mai who was painting to raise money for a friend called Dumbo who had eaten some dodgy grass. 

 

Not Anutin’s I might add. 

 

Finally, and to round off the wedding theme this week, there was a story reported by the BBC about a prank advertisement in India that supposedly came from an “opinionated feminist” seeking a marriage partner.

 

They wanted a handsome, young, well-built, rich man who didn’t burp or pass wind.

 

Though I am a man of sorts, Rooster sadly struck out on the other six.

 

Rooster

 

 

 

Covid-19 - and all its bells and whistles - visited this columnist’s family this week. 

 

Our experiences over the last seven days highlight much of what is good and bad about the response to the pandemic and other health and social issues in Thailand. And mirrors the country as a whole from politicians and community leaders down to ordinary folk.

 

Rooster’s mother in law is not the healthiest person. She has chronic diabetes and has been in and out of hospital this year. Her husband has had a stroke a couple of years ago, yet they still manage to look after their second daughter’s two preteen children while she tries to scratch a living in Samut Prakan. 

 

However, after those hospitalizations and a toe amputation my wife’s sister decided that it was best to go and look after her mum. She took a bus to Loei a couple of weeks ago.

 

But last Sunday she came down with a fever and the next day at the local hospital she tested positive for Covid, the very first case in the village and was immediately quarantined in the hospital.

 

Yikes, the family of the only foreigner in the village had brought the lurgy to town!

 

An ambulance with staff in hazmat suits was dispatched to the House that Rooster Built. That was immediately surrounded by red tape.

 

The four family members were taken away, tested then returned home where they had to remain in isolation. The phoo yai ban was the only one who could bring food. The village school, due to open that day after two months shut, was ordered to stay closed. 

 

Covid for mum or dad with their underlying conditions (they still haven’t been vaccinated despite being in their mid-sixties) could have been serious but relief came next day when their tests and the preteens all came back negative. 

 

The phoo yai ban said to ignore some people who had already taken to social media in the village. He named no names but they’d been blaming my family for bringing Covid. Some comments had been very hurtful.

 

Talk about stigma! All my sister-in-law had done was go home to help an ailing mother when no other realistic option was available. Something Thais have been obliged to do since forever. Now the whole family was being blamed on social media!

 

The response of the medical teams in this district of Loei, well off the beaten track where there have been no infections, was excellent. The coordination of the phoo yai ban was good, too. 

 

The other villagers’ bitching was far less helpful. 

 

Elsewhere in Thailand the vaccination rollout shambles - for that is what it is - and the blame game continued. 

 

Rooster has been caught a little flat-footed too. I wrote recently that I fully expected the rollout to be successful very quickly. Wrong! 

 

Prayut has desperately been trying to keep hold of the reins of his shambolic government of misfits. 

 

His subalterns like health minister Anutin and tourism minister Pipat - billionaires both - haven’t got the first clue and are stumbling from one PR disaster to another. 

 

PR are Pipat’s initials so you’d think he’d know better!

 

Prayut even suggested an election; maybe he was trying to divert attention away from aces he thought he had in his pack as the House of Cards tumbled. 

 

The Phuket Sandbox is hanging by a thread. Believe the figures for the vaccination of people there if you will. 

 

Yes, some airlines are keen to fly in with direct flights, yes a small start to reopening to foreign tourists is better than no start at all. Or is it? Would Thailand not be better to concentrate on the domestic market first and face the undeniable fact that they are going to have another high season that is mostly obliterated?

 

By focusing on foreigners - that I can’t believe are interested in coming if they have to stay in Phuket for 14 days (foreigners wanting a ticket back to families would just quarantine in Bangkok) - they are set to scare away domestic tourism. 

 

Pipat has been utterly clueless since the outset. Remember when he said that 2020 Songkran breezes would blow the virus away? Now this. 

 

He should have concentrated on trying to inspire confidence in Bangkokians. They are loaded with spare cash now. If their confidence was raised by the prospect of flying to a safe beach holiday they’d make far more money than trying to get Europeans or Americans in longhaul. 

 

Malaysians are confined to barracks, most other Asians will wait and see and can play golf at home. As for the Chinese - they are not being allowed out and have plenty of domestic options of their own for now. 

 

The “Let’s attract a Million foreigners to Spend a Trillion Baht” scheme is just a sideshow. A watered down version of the TAT proposals will emerge one day that will satisfy no one except “face”. 

 

If you think that foreigners will really get tax breaks, truly be able to buy land, then think again would be my advice. 

 

The recovery of the property market is largely dependent on the Chinese. A report this week suggested that more than 50% of condos owned by foreigners are in the hands of Chinese nationals. Only those shelling out $500,000 on a room will get any advantages. 

 

The run-of the-mill digital nomads you see in Starbucks are small fry. The Thai government couldn’t give a monkey’s about them and are only letting them stay because having a few foreign faces in Thailand keeps up appearances!

 

Putting aside that the bars and entertainment is still not open, the final absurdity for the Phuket Sandbox  - some called it a nail in the coffin but the lid has already been sealed - was that foreigners would need to wear tracking wristbands. 

 

Pipat should be made to sit in a room tied to a chair while foreigners tell him how that sounds to their authoritarian fearing minds. He can expect more than the reported 50% that have already cancelled to vote with their feet. 

 

Failing that he should be made to read “1984” though I suspect he’d say that was then this is now, 2021 and we’ve moved on…..

 

Orwell’s that Ends Well, eh minister.

 

Also shambolic this week were data breaches revealed with some simple sleuthing by blogger Richard Barrow. First came the “intervac” site then immigration reporting.

 

In a democracy heads would roll. Here expect drums! A bit like the “ta-da” after a pathetic one liner one might hear at a Thai “cafe”!

 

In corruption news the latest way for bent local officials to afford BMWs has now been dubbed “Lamppostgate” (a Roosterism). Billion baht kinarees, ladies in boats selling mangoes, dancing fish and aeroplanes adorn the posts on roads that go to nowhere. 

 

While everyone knows where the budgets go, those especially deep and well-lined pockets beloved of Tambon Tea Leafs. 

 

The National Anti-Corruption Commission is investigating. I hope they have a big staff.

 

Some respite from the madness - at least for football fans -  came in the form of the start of Euro 2020, now shown on NBT2HD after the tycoon who owns the shoe firm Aerosoft coughed up 300 million baht. 

 

Not unreasonably the breaks in the matches feature advertising for Aerosoft though it is about as slick as a 1960’s British ad for Persil or a boy expounding the merits of Milky Bar. 

 

It’s clear that both the ads and other messages throughout the Euros are designed to bolster the Thai government with all the amateur “we’re doing this together for the benefit of everyone” angle. 

 

Prayut obviously made that a requirement when acceding to the tycoon who in turn was thrilled with showing his apparent largesse. 

 

One singer - they couldn’t afford At Carabao or get him in time  - intones nationalistic epithets in the manner of the legendary crooner. 

 

The authorities have even enlisted the Leicester EPL football team - owned by a Thai family who have bountiful lashings of boramee - to promote Phuket. Methinks the stars may go to Cleethorpes rather than face quarantine on return from SE Asian shores risking missing the start of the 2021-22 season!

 

In more light hearted news the large phallus erected in the road in Chachoengsao is, like the people who read the story, cracking up. 

 

Not much requested rain has arrived and what little that has fallen has got in the fissures threatening a potential wilt. 

 

What is needed is a big version of what Pattayans call condoms, those ghastly things they put on their beer bottles to keep them cool in the midday heat. 

 

Finally, as you might imagine Mrs R was a tad stressed early in the week with the news from the village though of course delighted that mum had dodged the Covid bullet. 

 

Along with the here today gone tomorrow reminder that Christian Eriksen’s cardiac arrest caused, we were discussing the future should one of us cark it. 

 

I lightheartedly insisted that before I go up in smoke I should be dressed in a Spurs kit, Kane on the back,  and sealed in a cheap coffin with a Scrabble board, two racks, 100 letters and a tile-bag. 

 

Her response was a little disconcerting: “Ror korn, ja ow paakaa maa jot”

 

Hang on, I’ll just get a pen to write that down.

 

Steady on lass, I’m not brown bread yet! 

 

Rooster 

 

 

 

It is comforting to know that no matter how long you have lived in Thailand there is always something new to learn. Especially of a cultural and/or superstitious nature. 

 

While the prevalence of phallic symbols in Thai culture and religion is quite widely appreciated, they do not er….rear their ugly head in the middle of the road.

 

That is what happened this week in one of the most amusing stories of the year on Thaivisa. 

 

Locals in Chachoengsao were worried about the salinity of their water for crops so had turned to the Water Goddess for rainfall assistance.

 

And what better way to get a woman’s attention than with a decent endowment of the solid kind. 

 

Why they decided to put the five foot six, painted clay todger in the middle of the road was less clear. Rooster’s Thai pals were equally confused by that showing that it was not just foreign cultural bemusement!

 

Perhaps they were worried that Percy, who normally points at the porcelain and not in vain at the heavens, would topple over. 

 

Anyway, it seems to have done the trick. On Saturday, it was confirmed that the area received a significant amount of rain in the days after the phallus was erected. 

 

The notion that such an object could inspire rain was pooh-poohed by a Singaporean buddy of mine who studied at Cambridge, so he should know. 

 

He said that the only way to ensure rain was to wash the car. Failing that, go out without an umbrella. 

 

He called the Thai idea a fallacy though I pointed out I think he meant phallacy, clearly a new Scrabble word in the making. 

 

Another friend pointed out a T-shirt from the Taj Mahal in Agra, India that said: “Come Via Agra - You'll see man’s greatest erection for a woman”.

 

Thai superstitions have fascinated this writer since well before the year dot.com. While it was disconcerting that one of my first Thai girlfriends wore a dozen penises around her waist (on the inside) they were only about an inch long so for the first time in my life I felt reasonably well-endowed. 

 

This lady - a Klong Toei slum dweller who plied her gyratory trade at the Pink Panther in Patpong - introduced me to Tarot readings or “phai yipsy” and a rather strange experience with a monk’s hands at Wat Pho. 

 

Glad to say I remained a skeptical Englishman, despite this “education”, that contributed to the relationship foundering!

 

I’ve always erred on the side of caution when it comes to religion though. I’m a devout atheist but button my lip when Buddhism is mentioned, smiling inanely when the “graaping” and the offerings are made for good health and lottery winnings. 

 

But I once appeared in court and made the mistake of answering “none” when the judge asked my religion ahead of oath swearing. 

 

Consequently the lawyers went into a huddle and I was obliged to tell the truth and nothing but the truth lest my wife and children boil in hot oil (an experience based on Thai hell).

 

I told no porkies, especially as I didn’t wish that on my kids……

 

Teaching Thai culture at an international school I always told my students to have a thirst for knowledge if they were Thais or visitors to the kingdom. Most bought into my quirky lessons appreciating that learning about culture should be a fun journey and not a constant “us and them” critique.

 

I would take them to festivals like “Bun Bang Fai” in Isaan, the rocket festival, another appeal for rain in May. Or “Phi Taa Khon” in Dan Sai of Loei where everyone wears elaborate masks made from coconut trees. It brought Thai culture to life for both teacher and student!

 

In related news this week a huge sex toy (I mean there were a lot of them) haul was busted by the cops. Many posters on TV Facebook remarked on the apparent double standards!

 

Maybe this is where propriety and Priapus collide, as it were. Or more likely the classic Thai sensibility that when it comes to sex - if you can’t see it it’s alright. But if it’s thrust in your face we could have a problem Houston. Hence sidestreets full of prostitution but police claiming it doesn’t exist!

 

My final observation on the matter is that many Thais don’t believe their cultural superstitions. But they go along with them to please others and achieve a kind of sabai jai through acceptance. 

 

Try giving the benefit of the doubt if you ever get too frustrated with the madness of Thailand’s wacky culture!

 

The pandemic continued with a steady stream of about 2,500 cases daily and a few dozen deaths. 

 

Sorry to say I’ve become rather inured. I must agree with the poster last week who said they turn off at the merest mention of Covid. 

 

But it’s my job so…...

 

The flip-flopping over Phuket Sandbox was amusing, so long as you’re not thinking of holidaying on the southern island. The CCSA wanted a 14 day quarantine back on the table, tourism minister Pipat rumbled that it all looked a non-starter at least for a month, while the folks from the Surat Thani islands wanted to join in with something that wasn’t happening. 

 

No wonder a Pheu Thai MP for Nan told Prayut to get real. Uncle actually apologized this week (for a vaccine shortage) though he looked as contrite as DPM Prawit gazing at his latest chronometer. 

 

Prawit - never shy when it comes to porkies or pies - is now overseeing the drainage improvements in Pattaya. 

 

I can see it now;  huge billboards in Pattaya with Prawit’s grimacing face ecstatically proclaiming the flood-free resort of our dreams - proudly sponsored by Rolex. 

 

Not to be left behind in the madness, Phuket said that entertainment and bars (there is a difference?) would be shut on July 1st for the big reopening.

 

Bless, double bless and triple bless.

 

It’s now looking like the dampest of squibs since Nero lit the first Roman Candle. And is unlikely to begin until at least August 1st.

 

At least the much heralded start of the mass vaccine rollout got off to a reasonably bright start on Monday with 306,000 jabs nationwide. Other days the press seemed, suspiciously, to stop reporting exact numbers. 

 

The private hospitals’ association announced Moderna would cost 3,800 baht come October and the government gazette said wear a mask or face up to 20,000 baht in fines for repeat offences. 

 

The gazette gave plenty of leeway in the structure of fines - just what Plod relishes.

 

The constabulary were also adamant that they would fine or jail people caught gambling on the delayed Euro 2020 football tournament that started Friday.

 

After a tycoon stepped in and we can now view the tournament on free TV at NBT2HD, I suggest the probation and corrections departments start building prisons. 

 

While it was said that two Irishmen would bet on flies crawling up a window, two Thais would devise a way to make it a handicap and wager on the winning distance.

 

Thaivisa continued to make hay with the story about the four groups of “well-heeled” foreigners being given privileges for spending and working in Thailand.

 

It’s not ridiculous to suggest that Thailand could do far better when it comes to attracting foreigners and foreign investment and quite right that they should try. 

 

But please don’t expect me to believe foreigners will have land buying rights or pay less tax. That would mean turning against social mores about independence which is not about to be undone by the TAT or a government with the credentials of Uncle Too and his cronies. 

 

Prayut - in a busy week for our father who art in khaki, hollow be thy name - also started rattling his saber about the miscreants who criticize him on websites and social media. He thought what they do in India was worth studying. 

 

Attempts by the ministry responsible for media to rein in the un-reinable have been amusing. Poor old Uncle’s only recourse is to completely pull the plug on Facebook.

 

Do that and Bangkokians - the most Facebook-ized population on earth - would take to the streets. Lose, lose - so expect him to back down, bluster and moan. He’s very good at the last two in particular. 

 

Also big news was the continuing investigation into the death of the billionaire couple on Koh Tao. I’d be prepared to believe that the lady drowned and the man died trying to save her. Contrary to many conspiracy theorists it’s not an uncommon occurrence and drowning is a very quiet death. 

 

But the son’s movements were interesting and the change of hotel because they wanted a “bigger pool” was hardly going to quieten the mob that thinks anything that happens on Koh Tao is suspicious. Toxicology reports may shed some extra light on the darkness. 

 

On the plus side it was good that local plod was obliged to watch as outside forces were brought in. 

 

Though Thai watchers may remember the time Big Joke went there to find out about a foreign woman’s rape. He had a quick chat with someone then declared there was no case to answer. Not one of Surachate Hakpan’s finest hours. 

 

On nearby Koh Phangan a marijuana plantation was found intermingled with other bushes by a coconut orchard. Rooster couldn’t resist that the Department of Provincial Administration was responsible for the bust.

 

Yes, DOPA found the DOPE. 

 

Finally my last comment also harps back to Prayut. The PM’s brother - who has more medals than George S. Patton - has been charged with “graft”.

 

Big deal, I thought, remembering the meaning of the world I learned as a child. 

 

At least someone was doing an honest day’s work. 

 

Rooster

 

 

Well, well….June already. The Derby was yesterday and soon it’ll be time for the groundsmen to pull over the covers as the rain will be falling on day one of Wimbledon. 

 

I was reminiscing about the land of my birth this week, anything to try and forget the ghastly heat in Bangkok, Thailand, the land of my choice. 

 

I’d been reading multiple comments of the moaners on Thaivisa when I recalled a TV show from my youth. 

 

Why Don’t You Just Switch Off Your Television Set and Go and Do Something Less Boring Instead?

 

It ran mostly in the holidays for 22 years and was designed to get kids into art and crafts, games and magic tricks. Kind of a twentieth century YouTube.

 

Rooster has been criticized for being boring and waffling. I’m used to that, I have a wife.

 

After reading the forum this week, it struck me that cabin fever has set in for some. Bad news was greeted with moaning. Good news was greeted with complaining. Amusing news was greeted with cynicism and brickbats. Some people are never happy.

 

I know the pandemic has taken its toll on all of us but for some, it really might be time to not spend quite as long sitting in front of the computer. 

 

For those who did pull the plug, here's a rundown of some stories that caught my beady eye this week - there were some belters!

 

There was a strong reaction from the authorities in Thailand to the scandalous notion that a virus strain might be called the “Thai Variant”.

 

Fortunately the WHO (why do I always think of Abbott and Costello’s Who’s on First?) had already decided that political correctness was the order of the day and that the Indian variant was to be called “Delta” and the UK one was now Alpha.

 

It all seemed like Greek to me.

 

Apparently Kent, the county of my birth, was no longer good enough. Sheesh! It’s the Garden of England I’ll have you know!

 

Putting aside that Thailand missed a trick at being named the Hub of Variants, maybe the WHO also missed an opportunity. 

 

Thailand is brilliant at categorizing nations with terms like Phoo Dee Angrit (English gentlemen), the Land of Beer (Germany), the Nationality of Raw Fish (Japanese) to name but three. 

 

At Rooster Central we were on tenterhooks praying that they don’t put the start of term back again. The school had the temerity to send me a bill. I thought of responding with one of my own listing what we’ve been doing - namely teaching, using our air-con, providing meals. While they send out banal cartoons trying to teach my kids to add and subtract.

 

Look here school, I love my kids but I want them to meet their friends again at your place. Please, pretty please, take them off my hands on June 14th.

 

Meanwhile, the biggest D-Day since June 1944 is upon us tomorrow, June 7th not the 6th! That’s when we will find out - or begin to discover - if the Thai vaccine rollout is hot air or the hottest thing since hot cakes. 

 

Posters have been whining about conflicting news stories. What do you expect Thaivisa to do? We get our stories from the Thai media. It’s not their fault. They get theirs from the Thai authorities. If you wanna break the vicious circle and one which is replicated across every major new cycle on every major event! Why did you expect information regarding the vaccine rollout would be any different?

 

I’m waiting till August when I see my doc for a check-up. I expect they’ll have some form of vaccine for me by then; I couldn’t really give a monkeys. I’ve got better things to think about, such as Euro 2020 and Harry Kane’s Golden Boot. 

 

Apropos the vaccine, the xenophobes (who hate China even more than Thailand) were out in force, especially on TV Facebook. Despite WHO approval, putting Sinovac in your veins is tantamount to injecting cyanide apparently.  

 

Look people, China needs to be watched like a hawk, there are some mischief makers there, but you need to choose your battles. Sinovac isn’t one of them. It’s a sideshow. 

 

Another D-Day looming is July 1st and the Phuket Sandbox. TAT’s Yutthasak revealed that 20 Americans were coming! Whoopidoo - here comes the cavalry!

 

Somehow, this will add up to four million by the end of the year according to tourism minister Pipat’s abacus. Thaivisa did the math and lo and behold, more than 20 a day were needed!

 

Reading behind the headlines and the absurd rhetoric, it was clear that the Phuket governor (and everyone else in a modicum of authority) knows that the sandbox is destined to be more like a litter tray. 

 

Yes, they have to start somewhere with reopening the country. Yes, Phuket is as good a place as any. Yes, the tourism industry is desperate. Yes, the people are starving…...But NO. Foreign tourists will NOT be coming. Quarantine or no quarantine. 

 

People all around the world, conditioned by the last 18 months as much as anything, are staying put in their countries. Governments have too many restrictions on their populations.

 

The Thais need to focus on the bare bones of domestic tourism and put any thought of foreign travel off until 2022 at the very earliest. 

 

Don’t raise the hopes of the little people in the tourism industry. Encourage them to get into manufacturing. Provide some incentives to retrain. Diversify for goodness sake. Face it - the international tourism industry is dead and buried for years. 

 

Johnny tourist doesn’t give a hoot about your herd immunity. Yes, he’s got plenty to spend but he’s going to part with it near to home, in a place he can easily return from. 

 

For goodness sake, Brits are even being put off going to Portugal and why should Americans even consider leaving their continent?

 

The only “tourists” coming to Phuket will be those looking for a convenient and cheap way to finally rejoin their families in Phijit….

 

Enough of the pandemic. Time for crime….

 

It was a juicy week for crime-watchers with the arrest of “Uncle Phol” the man who became a celebrity on the back of the murder of his niece Nong Chompoo.

 

Pitiful, three year old Rose Apple was left to die a year ago in a Mukdahan field. Now the police and their forensic experts have determined that the only feasible suspect is her uncle. 

 

The case divides public opinion with celebrity muddying the waters as it so often does in Thailand. But while much of the evidence is circumstantial, its accumulation is close to damning. 

 

Whether close is enough to convict a slick operator like Uncle Phol remains to be seen. The case has shades of Azaria Chamberlain about it. 

 

My, how so many Australians were convinced of the guilt of Lindy and Michael as murderess and accessory in the death of their nine-week old baby. And my, how they had to eat humble pie six years later when Azaria’s clothing was found by a dingo lair.

 

Lindy was innocent and the dingo was guilty! Who would have thunk it!

 

The Thai case is a cause-celebre that is more like a cause-he’s-a-celebrity. The case may yet have more twists and turns and cause more dining on humble pie. 

 

Humble pie is not something anyone is likely to ingest in the case of Red Bull Boss. The new chairman of a committee that oversees public prosecutors has promised a new investigation.

 

This news will not be quickening anyone’s pulse, least of all the fugitive’s. 

 

And so to a few Rooster Awards.

 

The Darwin Award for absolutely no service to the gene pool, goes to the motorcyclist caught on video trying to nip under a barrier at a level crossing on his motorcycle.

 

Unfortunately the load on the back got caught and reared him up like a praying mantis as the Iron Horse approached. 

 

Please don’t even think of having kids. 

 

The “Life” award sponsored by Volvo goes to Laan in Buriram who returned home after going to help his mates in the field for a few days to see that his relatives had put his picture next to his coffin and were mourning his passing. 

 

“Nee goo tai laew ler!” (WTF I’m dead am I) was the best he could muster as it emerged that the person who was really creamed by the 12-wheel truck was someone else in the village. 

 

Finally, the “Stick to your Guns” award is jointly presented to the authorities in Surin who insisted that a wiggly road conformed to their plans and to nationwide Plod.

 

The constabulary have had their revenue stream from traffic offences caught on CCTV cut off by the finance Mandarins. They will no longer be able to syphon off a proportion of the fines sent through the mail.

 

In future all extortion must be done face to face.

 

How comforting. 

 

Rooster 

 

 

 

 

It’s nearly three years since I got on a plane. I miss travel but Boy!, I don’t miss flying. 

 

When it comes to buckling up my seatbelt and preparing for take-off I’m a bundle of nerves, convinced that the grim reaper will be carting me off well before I get my first tray of airline slop.

 

It’s not the thought of being in “coach” that freaks me. More like having not the slightest concept of how thrust works outside the bedroom and being helpless in an aluminium tube. 

 

I took my first flight aged 19 in October 1980 from Heathrow to Paris for the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. I didn’t back the winner but got back to South London safely despite being terrified. Next flight was one way to Kabul on Ariana Afghan Airlines. But that’s another story.

 

Since 2018 the furthest I’ve been is Khon Kaen. On the safety of a motorcycle. Yes, I don’t really appreciate the wisdom that says you’re more likely to die on the way to the airport than on a plane. Give me my Honda 250 over a jumbo any day.

 

Rooster was reminded of all these irrational angsts this week - and much more - when Manager prompted my Thaivisa editor about a grim anniversary on Wednesday.

 

It was 30 years since the May 26th, 1991, crash of Lauda Air 004. A total of 223 passengers and crew died after a Boeing 767 broke up in flight over what is now the Phu Toei National Park in Suphanburi, Thailand. 

 

In aviation circles the accident and its investigation became famous for the actions of airline owner Niki Lauda, the former world champion racing car driver who started the Austrian company. Lauda’s work led to Boeing modifying the thrust reverser system that contributed to the accident.

 

But in Thailand it is remembered for a different reason. The wholesale looting of the crash site over many square kilometers of semi-wilderness led to much national soul searching.

 

Locals and foundation rescue staff scoured the site for jewelry, passports, electronics, luggage - anything they could sell to make a quick buck. Few cared about the integrity of the crash site for investigative purposes or the fact it was a graveyard. More than two dozen victims were unidentified and buried in a cemetery 90 kms from the main crash area. 

 

Newspapers and magazines at the time showed the brazen trading in the possessions of the dead on tables at the site. A line of noodle vendors stretched for miles to fuel the gawking and the greedy.

 

Obviously this was a pre-social media, pre-video on demand age and looters were unlikely to be found or personally shamed. But the press and letters to the editor questioned the ethics of Thais and how they would be viewed by the international community. 

 

Have things improved? I don’t know. We are more watched these days that might make us better behaved. But when one hears of looters and opportunists at ordinary crash sites the memories come flooding back. 

 

Many Thais have a ghoulish streak that might have made them immune to the horror of an aircrash. Just look at their press photos and crime mags for proof of that. But I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide if Thais are any more or less moral than they used to be.

 

There have been many other aircraft crashes of note within the kingdom and involving the country’s national carrier outside Thailand.

 

One of the first of note during my time in Thailand was on 21st November 1990 shortly after the opening of the airport on Koh Samui. A De Havilland Canada Dash 8 crashed in bad weather 5 km south west of the airport in a coconut farm killing all 38 aboard Bangkok Airways Flight 125 from Don Muang. Pilot error and spatial disorientation were blamed. 

 

Such causes result in carnage on the Thai roads, just replace pilot with rider or driver. 

 

Much ghoulishness and some public-spiritedness was also associated with the 31st August 1987 crash of Thai Airways Flight 365 from Hat Yai to Phuket that ended up in the sea after an aerodynamic stall caused by concern about another aircraft approaching Phuket International Airport. The pilot and air traffic control were blamed. 

 

Many fishermen were instrumental in the recovery of 83 people and parts of the Boeing 737 from the Andaman, 15 kms from the airport. 

 

But some of the parts became gruesome accoutrements at a restaurant on the island. The huge supports for the wheels became the entrance and airline seats were used to seat the diners. 

 

I never saw it personally but I think I might have brought up my dinner if I did. 

 

On 11th December 1998 an Airbus 310-204 stalled and crashed in a swamp while attempting a landing. Flight 261 started in Don Muang but 101 of the 146 aboard perished before they could disembark in Surat Thani. It was determined that the crew became disoriented in what was Thailand’s second worst air disaster after Lauda Air. 

 

Nearly nine years later it was the turn of Phuket again as One-Two-GO flight OG 269 from Don Muang crashed into an embankment in flames after a failed “go-around”. Ninety of the 130 aboard died, some burned alive in the flames, others killed by flying luggage. 

 

Thai Airways have had several other accidents most notably flight 311 on 31st July 1992 when a “loss of situational awareness” by the pilot and air traffic control led to an Airbus A310-304 bound for Kathmandu from Bangkok crashing in Nepal. All 113 aboard died.

 

Apart from these one of the most notable crashes was one in the Andaman sea about 150 kms off Thailand that was caused by a terrorist bomb left by two North Korean agents aboard Korean Air flight 858 from Baghdad to Seoul via Abu Dhabi and Bangkok on November 29th 1987. All 115 passengers and crew died and wreckage was washed up in Thailand. Ultimately after one of the agents took cyanide and the other, a woman was pardoned, the crime was linked to the then North Korean heir apparent Kim Jong-Il. 

 

For Rooster it’s not just the accidents but the whole process of flying that is scary and miserable. I love travelling and have taken hundreds of flights but these days I prefer to say I’m into what the Swedes call “flygskam” or flight shaming, a movement to restrict unnecessary air-travel that gained traction in northern Europe. 

 

It was started in 2018 by celebrities in Sweden including Malena Ernman, the opera singer who is also the mother of climate activist Greta Thunberg. 

 

Yes, as I have noted in this column before, if I ever go to England again I shall take the train via Russia - and blow the expense in time and money!

 

Other news on Thaivisa this week inevitably concerned the pandemic and the vaccine rollout. Record daily death tolls were recorded. 

 

Record numbers in Bangkok went to places like 7-Eleven to register for a jab - 1.2 million on the first day prompting time extensions.

 

I went to “sewen” to get ice (frozen water) for my Chaba brand Pomelo juice. (Thanks eternally to the reader who suggested it as an alternative to grapefruit juice. I ditched the vodka and got addicted to Cha-Ba….)

 

The Thai bashers on the forum and Facebook page revelled in the continued flip-flopping and delays in the vax rollout. I reckon it’ll all be forgotten come next month.

 

The authorities hope that tourists will be imbued with confidence once 70% of Thais are jabbed. Methinks that international tourists are going to be very reluctant to go far if they even travel internationally. A report that Thai tourism would not recover “fully” until 2026 seemed optimistic!

 

In Pattaya maskless people and drinkers were named and shamed in several stories giving ample scope for click-a-thons. Some said “som nam na” (serves you right) others screamed about civil liberties, denied the pandemic was real or that vaccines were of any use.

 

Big Too gave the former Chiang Rai governor Narongsak Osotthanakorn a further slap. After he stole the PM’s thunder doing a good job in the cave drama in 2018, but was subsequently removed, Narongsak became governor of Lampang. 

 

Here - by hook or by crook - he managed to get 223,976 people to register for jabs (compared to 4,587 in neighboring Lamphun). Prayut then changed the rules and directed that vaccinations must be carried out where they were needed most - like Bangkok and Phuket! Bless!

 

Narongsak can’t win unless he is compared to the former general in the credibility stakes, that is.

 

Report cards on Prayut’s seven year anniversary of his grab of power depended on the outlet who produced them. I just want to see a new face - as I told my big brother this week, I’d be bored with him if we had to live together every day.

 

Fallout from the raid at the Phoenix Country Club mansion the previous week in which two members of the RTP were shot, continued. Chinese media showed CCTV from several angles that they claimed showed that the plain clothes Thai cops were a little, er, overzealous in presenting a search warrant.

 

They were shown running at the Chinese suspect who fled to his bedroom and then fired multiple rounds from a high powered gun. He claimed he thought he was being abducted. 

 

Lt-Gen Roi of Region 2 - Roi of the Rozzers if you like - claimed everything was done by the book and the Chinese media only showed selected angles. 

 

Mind you I strongly suspect that “by the book” covers a multitude of sins. The RTP manual is likely to have sections that Cockneys would call “‘ow to get away with porky pies”. 

 

In crime news the word “jealousy” is fast taking over from “brake failure” and “transferred to an inactive post” in frequency of use. A nasty lover unloading his gun into a woman in a taxi outside Big C on Rama 2 being a case in point. 

 

And so to a few highly prized Rooster Awards.

 

The “Put That in Your Pipe and Smoke It” award goes to Somporn, 32, the truck driver who drove from Samut Prakan to Sadao (barely 1000 kms) with his pipes lying sideways. He said he left in the afternoon so other motorists could see the hazard. No charges were laid. 

 

The “Look at me I’m Not a Pirate” prize goes to Uncle Too who was basking in praise from the English Premier league supremo Richard Masters this week for his stance on copyright issues. 

 

As a myriad of posters observed, Mr Masters might like to take a trip to a Thai market to get his favorite footy jersey - he’ll save a fortune and could even take a job lot back to Blighty to flog at the pub.

 

All this reminded Rooster of happy days mailing boxes of Jean Paul Gaultier off to London in the 1980s and telling customs officers at Heathrow that I wouldn’t dream of smuggling while trying not to let the dozen dodgy Rolex in me undies slip down.

 

“Top Video” of the week went to a 24 year old mechanic and shock absorber guy who got the shock of his young life. A wheel came off a truck and nearly sent him to his maker as he played games on his mobile during a lunch break at the repair yard. 

 

The “Fake” of the week, always keenly contested, went to Thanetphon in Don Muang who pretended to be a cop and fired two shots in the air in a road rage incident caught on tape. 

 

Tut-tut Thanetphon. Didn’t your mummy tell you that if you were a real cop the other guy would have ended up shot…..

 

Finally, there was far better news for the much maligned water monitor.

 

My first wife always told me to say “Ah! There’s a ‘tua ngern tua thong’ ” if one crossed my path. This appropriate language will bring untold riches. 

 

Most Thai men just use its more common name when they swear about their first wives. 

 

Apparently, a vet and researcher at Mahidol has been experimenting on the creature’s blood and hopes to find medicines to treat cancer and even Covid!

 

As Thaivisa said, Varanus Salvator (its Latin name) has gone….

 

“From Hia to Hero”.

 

Rooster

 

 

Rooster has taken a bit of forum flak recently for being too serious. All that talk about getting vaxxed and being a pandemic denier was a bit rich for some though many still liked the sarky cock sticking it to the Thai government. 

 

But in the spirit of lightening up a tad and perhaps even garnering the odd chortle I shall endeavor to be a freerange cock rather than a battery hen this week. 

 

I’ll even reinstate the Rooster Awards - there are some doozies ready to swamp the podium of patheticness.

 

In my defence - and I’m sure it's something many readers can relate to - it’s been pretty hard cooped up at home recently. With Mrs R tearing her hair out trying to do online learning with an 8 year old while a five year old begs for attention while a 59 year old upstairs calls for quiet - OK you get the picture. 

 

This lockdown, and the cabin fever it promotes, has not been easy especially as we thought we were through the worst before the third wave proved us very wrong. 

 

Yes, a lot of time living together. Being on top of each other used to be a good thing, not so much now!

 

I left my first Thai wife - who is 12 years older than me and who I had lived with for a dozen years - in 2004. I have known my present wife for 21 years; she’s 43 about 16 years my junior. I had two kids with each wife but remain legally married to the first.

 

This marital status has been a bone of contention with my second wife though she understands the reasons. Who wants to be forced into a nasty divorce settlement! Schizophrenia was another.

 

Having lived together for 17 years in the same duplex I was musing this week and even asked Mrs R about our differences and similarities leading us to reflect on our relationship.

 

We’ve had all the rows and temporary break-ups but we’re still together. Perhaps it's the differences that help to keep us fresh and together. 

 

I say fresh because one of the differences is that Mrs R showers about two times a day and is appalled by someone who talks about bath night, even though that's tongue-in-cheek in the heat we have (35C inside this week!).

 

Cooking and eating causes much “intercultural debate”. She is livid when I don’t wash the veg that I am about to boil. I’m risking the lives of the children apparently. Beside herself with annoyance when I make a mess in “her” kitchen. And apoplectic when I relegate her “pla raa” (fermented fish) in an outside closet away from my sensitive nostrils. 

 

This will always result in retaliation against my ever present but entirely innocent slab of “blue cheese”. 

 

Kipling (Rudyard, not the guy who made delicious cakes) is sometimes maligned as a racist for his famous poem “The Ballad of East and West”.

 

“Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,

 

Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;”,

 

he begins, but then qualifies this with:

 

“But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,

 

“When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth”. 

 

Though there are shades of war in our household at times, there is far more agreement. But when it comes to food we’ll often agree to differ. When cooking Mrs R complains of having to cook “sii khon sii yang” (four people four different dishes). The pandemic means I do a lot more cooking these days. 

 

Secretly, there is a fair bit of rivalry as to what we can make the children eat. To their credit they’ll tuck in on Vegemite and Isaan style som tam bemused by the fuss, just attracted by the taste!

 

We have no arguments about language at all. We spoke only Thai since we met though these days I speak only English to my young daughters so she hears plenty. Mrs R learnt enough English on trips to Blighty and four years as a nanny at my international school and now she gets snippets from when I diss her and verbally high-five with the kids.  She speaks well and her accent is excellent but we’ll always speak Thai when alone. 

 

Though sarcasm leaves her befuddled, we have a lot in common when it comes to humor as we both like to joke about our deficiencies and funny events in our lives. We’re both getting on a bit so forgetfulness does rear its ugly head!

 

Just don’t joke about money…..

 

She told me this week that she always respected me for “looking after the pennies so that the pounds would look after themselves”. I am a great saver for a rainy day and she came from the background of if you have it, spend it. Together we’ve moved closer. 

 

She realises the value of saving, putting aside for the unpredictable. While I try to be less of a bore when we do go out to eat or on trips to the seaside. Less penny-pinching from me has meant less arguments. She’s right when she says “why bother to go if you’re going to be mean” though she appreciates why I am happy when I spend less. 

 

This is a case, for us both, of blame your upbringing but don’t be a slave to it.

 

Raising the kids has its disagreements. After she failed at school and was beaten by her dad for bad grades, Mrs R baulks at my attitude - overwhelmingly that education begins at home - as tantamount to child abuse. My 30 years as a teacher and constant references to Finland’s complete lack of homework cause her to shake her head; but the fees are paid and I smile at parental consultations. 

 

Yes, I have learned about face in Thailand. I have about as many as Thotsakan (the demon of the Ramakian, with ten).

 

My first wife once called me to take away the children after they renounced Buddhism! I told them later not to be silly buggers and that being two faced was important when it came to religion. Especially in some circumstances. I don’t wear my Militant Atheism on my sleeve but no offspring of mind could possibly end up religious, unless it’s obedience to Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. 

 

Mrs R accepts that the TV is mine when the footy is on and she’s welcome to the soaps. Though my criticism of her as “taam cheewit meuan chong 7” (doing everything as though life on Channel 7 was real) abates with each passing year. 

 

She reads a lot, a bit unusual for a Thai I’m told, and we both love crime and punishment, supplementing the mutual interests. 

 

Her ailing mum and dad come first, of course. It’s easy for me as they are great people who have welcomed me into their family. I’ll stick to promises to help them that I made in a loud Thai speech I gave in a very crowded Loei village in 2004…..that marriage gave the second wife face. 

 

Be fair in Thailand. Put your pith helmet away. Move as much towards Thais as you can without compromising your principles too much. But don’t stand rigidly by them. Be flexible and wait…..Thais might  come round to your way of thinking if given time and shown patience. 

 

My mother always used the word “procrastination” about me. I kept schtum - I thought she must have caught me with a dirty mag. Years later I realised she was encouraging me to not put off to tomorrow that which could be done today. 

 

Mrs R has rejigged this part of my psyche to a more healthy manana; so many things resolve themselves when you do absolutely nothing! It requires little effort except willpower!

 

I still spend up to four days in the “baan maa” (doghouse) when she suspects mischief. This can be as little as an innocent advert for “Thai Dating” popping up on my computer screen. I scream my innocence, but the “making up” always makes the row worthwhile.

 

Yes, there’s an age gap. Mrs R mentioned it. I said saucily:”Oh, you mean you think like an old woman while I think like a 25 year old…”. I’ll never let anyone get away with calling me old-fashioned or past it.

 

Someone on Facebook recently called me “pops”. They learned some new vocabulary. 

 

The missus gossips too much for my liking but I listen patiently interjecting with a facetiousness she has never been able to identify. I surely play too much Scrabble for her liking but she does always know where I am….

 

There’s quite a bit of winding-up when it comes to our urban/country differences. But Loei born Mrs R, though she won’t admit it, has become more of an urbanite if not urbane over the years. I’m a London city mouse though more like a rat this week when I blamed her for “overwatering the plants and killing them” something I thought a “country girl like you” would know. Cue threat of doghouse.

 

The East is still the East and the West the West but billions have mixed the two since Kipling’s day and millions, I guess, have married and formed intercultural relationships. 

 

We should be able to stand “face to face” without coming to blows, respecting our mutual differences and learning from each other.

 

Virus news continued to dominate the Thaivisa forum this week, no change there, though there were some interesting crime stories.

 

Prayut caused the latest “U-turn” with his remarks about walk-in vaccination centers getting overcrowded. This was borne out in Pattaya when, after people turned up earlier in the week and there was no vaccine, on Thursday it was packed with the unregistered causing some embarrassment for mayor Sontaya’s Sinovac rollout when vaccine DID arrive.

 

Bangkok plans to vax 5 million by the end of July. Outrage was caused by Anutin’s deal with the Chinese. On the one hand it was presented as philanthropy, on the other it was intended to jab Chinese folk in Thailand first - 100,000 of them as well as people planning to visit China for study. 

 

Thaivisa packaged this as “What is your government doing for you?” which lead to many comparisons between government’s in the west and the Chinese. 

 

Mind you, such is the rampant xenophobia against the Chinese on the forum and Facebook page that just saying “Sinovac” does that.

 

Overcrowding in Thailand’s prisons finally became a hot topic after a couple of millennia. Covid outbreaks did that. Many facilities are 50% oversubscribed with 80% of those banged up for drugs. 

 

Coming up with a viable policy to at least tone down the war on drugs should be a priority when Thailand gets a democratic and responsible government, maybe 2050. For now, why not stop locking up small time druggies and petty dealers. Think rehab, address unemployment and opportunity rather than punishment. It’ll save you money in the end. 

 

Parents were told that their nippers wouldn’t go back to school until mid June. I smiled because I haven’t paid my fees - do they seriously expect us parents to do the teaching and pay for the privilege?!

 

In Bangkok two former US marines as well as a Thai cop were nabbed for their part in holding a Taiwanese businessman for ransom. They had brazenly dragged him out of an Italian restaurant in Sukhumvit 36. 

 

In Krabi a Thai restaurant owner was murdered and his car was buried 700 meters away using a backhoe. In Lopburi the ghastly stabbing murder of a beauty salon worker was resolved with the arrest of her boyfriend. In Ayutthaya a minivan driver killed himself after murdering his “attractive” massage lady girlfriend….more jealousy suspected. 

 

In Pattaya commandos went into a luxury golf course home after a Chinese man shot at police serving a search warrant connected to online gambling. At press time one captain was in a coma and one Chinese was in custody.

 

In Nakhon Sri Thammarat police who had been trailing an Australian man with drug and prostitution connections in Phuket made their move. Overstay and a dodgy driving licence could be the least of his worries.

 

Traders at the Chatuchak weekend market said that their “only hope” was getting foreign tourists back. I was there last weekend buying guinea pigs for my 5 year old’s birthday. Plenty of people there.

 

Maybe the traders should just diversify from selling so much tourist tat to the Chinese. One shop can be just the same as the next; and they’re all deserted right now. 

 

And so to those promised Rooster Awards. 

 

The Darwin Award for absolutely no service to the gene pool goes to the Brit in Chiang Mai who went after a monk with a machete.

 

It’s not the most sensible thing to do when you’re on overstay. 

 

The “Entrepreneur Award” goes to the district chief in Phon, Khon Kaen, who offered 10% off in restaurants and three gold necklaces to older folks and the sick to register for vaccinations. A man who understands the Thai heart. 

 

While the “Police Investigation Award” goes to a garage owner’s dog called “Seenin” who sniffed out 2,000 Ya Ba pills outside the front gate. Plod weighed in with the expert analysis that someone must have left the drugs there. 

 

Six Labrador Retrievers also jointly got this week’s “Covid Prize” for sniffing out the demon virus. They have been trained by vets at Chula to smell the virus in sweat.

 

The “Penny Finally Dropped” award goes to a Kalasin grocer who took more than five years to realize that she was not getting half a billion baht for her 39 million baht investment in a “nice couple” who were “friends of friends”. That story beggared belief. 

 

Finally, the agony for many will be over today (Sunday) for those who both love and hate the English Premier League. 

 

My local club Crystal Palace parted ways with affable pensioner Roy Hodgson who was one of my PE teachers in my first term of secondary school.

 

The former England manager and I have shared a lifetime passion for football. 

 

Though, despite my golden boot in a Bangkok veterans’ tournament, he was a little more successful. 

 

All the best Mr Hodgson, sir.

 

Rooster

 

 

Things were so much simpler when I was a child. My parents’ generation suffered from so many ailments that are past history today. They were damn sure with modern medicines and vaccinations they were not going to let their own children suffer the same fate.

 

As the years have passed and that generation and even many of their children have died off, they have been replaced with a new breed who don’t know anything about history let alone the history of common diseases. And these ignorants are interspersed with an even deadlier strain that threatens us all, the vaccine denier or anti-vaxxer. They’ll be even worse than the pandemic denier as their misguided nonsense can affect us all. 

 

Before every poster screams civil liberties at Rooster, just relax. You’re within your rights not to take the vaccine against Covid. But you’ll have to suffer the consequences that in most cases will not be disease but problems with going anywhere, problems even visiting your local pub or cinema. 

 

Scream injustice behind your keyboards but we won’t care. We’ll be having a good time. 

 

The next few years at least will be marked by vaccine passports and documentation worldwide that’ll make yellow fever regulations look miniscule. 

 

If you wanna be the only denier in the village go for it. You’ll probably enjoy the ostracization if posts on Thaivisa are anything to go by.

 

When I was a kid in primary school I remember a poor boy that was different. He wore some things I would later know as calipers. Because he couldn’t walk properly due to polio. 

 

I’d taken by polio VAX on a lump of something. Had my vaccinations for whooping cough, diphtheria you name it. Though admittedly I developed enough of an anarchistic streak in teen years to avoid matron’s BCG jab, in my earlier years I was made to feel like a big boy. 

 

“It might not taste nice, might hurt a little,” mother would say. “But be a good boy and mummy’ll give you a sugar lump”. 

 

Yes, there have been some terrible scandals down the years regarding drugs that were supposed to be good for us. Any doubts about that check out the excellent documentary about Thalidomide on Netflix. Many women who had horribly deformed children after taking the drug in pregnancy fought for justice for years.

 

But comparing the 50s and 60s with today’s regulatory procedures for drugs is chalk and cheese. We’re overdue to return to a time when virtually no one would refuse a vaccination. Then it would have been seen as absurd, inviting death or horrendous illness. 

 

Yet, out they have crept from under their keyboard stones. Under the guise of their pseudo science quoting from like minded muppets who post unsubstantiated drivel on the internet. Regaling us with “facts” that are spurious, attention seeking lies. 

 

Many, too lazy or incompetent to search online accept their diatribes of nonsense and pass it off as new found wisdom to yet more of the gullible.

 

They are the sort that think a one in a million risk of death is serious enough to warrant risking serious disease instead. The probability challenged with a pass in maths but not a real clue about numbers and how they relate to life. 

 

Worse still there are those that, again despite all the evidence, spout their theories about the efficacy of vaccines. Sinovac, for example has come in for big criticism from these numpties. No coincidence that the next minute you’ll see them post more xenophobia against China on an unrelated subject. You can read them like a book - a book for the trash. 

 

Thailand’s vaccine rollout has been slow. Of that there is no denying. But this is because though they haven’t actually admitted it yet they are banking on producing all of their own - and far more - in the Siam BioScience labs that have now been given all the green lights to produce AstraZeneca. 

 

My prediction is that the local vaccine will not only prove to be highly effective and reliable but that the Thai authorities will be able to produce it by the bucketload and put it into everyone’s arms at a rate of hundreds of thousands per day very soon. 

 

Then or perhaps even during this phase they will sell vast quantities of the vaccine to ASEAN members to recoup money. And why not? While vaccination should have a humanitarian component, someone has got to pay for it. 

 

For now I would implore everyone to get vaccinated when it comes available to them for free or pay for it if and when that option emerges (Moderna was approved this week for that purpose at private hospitals).

 

Be good boys and girls and mummy - in this case the world at large -  will give you a treat.

 

Not a sugar lump but a life back. 

 

Rooster will be waiting his turn. I’m in no rush being not particularly old, having a chronic health condition but not one that seems affected or worse due to Covid. I think I’ve probably already had it anyway and if not am very unlikely due to my lifestyle to contract it. When it’s easy and free I’ll have my jab and flash my certificate on Facebook like the millions of others who care more than me. 

 

But while my personal care and fears are low I believe it's time to be socially responsible and get vaxxed. 

 

The pandemic - particularly its third wave in Thailand - continued to be headline news wherever you turned on Thaivisa this week.

 

I was moaning about only translating Covid stories. I’m desperate for some good murders to relieve the boredom. Road carnage just doesn’t cut the mustard.

 

The midweek spike in infections to a daily high of nearly 5,000 was caused by infections in the prison system. The usual fools who don’t read a story and jump to erroneous conclusions thought Thailand had a spike. 

 

It was just another day you’d expect with infections around 2,000 and deaths about 30, par for the course recently and nothing worth getting in a lather about. It’ll go down soon. 

 

Rooster went out to visit friends in Ayutthaya where 50 people are allowed to gather. We were having a laugh about the overzealous authorities who seemed to have busted a few British expats in Phuket for daring to have lunch together, Monday’s story of the day on the forum. 

 

We took the first of two trips all masked up in a car. Absurd really as we’re all from the same household but it’s hardly onerous so why the hell shouldn't you forego a small personal liberty.

 

My children were enjoying great food, open air, rides on tubes behind boats, trampolining and motorcycle rides. No wonder they don’t want to go back to school.

 

(We heard of some people asking the local municipality nicely if they could be vaccinated early; they were accommodated). 

 

D-Day for the start of term is now June 1st and 600,000 teachers and school staff are supposed to be vaccinated before then. Administrators can easily accomplish that by having staff vaxxed en masse. Another 1-2% of the needy population, job done. 

 

Mayor Sontaya was pictured on Facebook getting his second jab. 

 

In Amnat Charoen an American man added to the litany of misdeeds of his compatriots recently by fleeing a Covid ward after the doctors told him he couldn’t share a room with his Thai wife, who was also infected.

 

Blimey! I’d look upon a bit of enforced separation as a good thing - Mrs R has been a tad “Covid Sensitive” in the last week since returning to Krung Thep - pandemic central in her eyes - from the “safety” of Loei. 

 

Pictures of deserted tourist resorts and shopping centers continued to get more clicks than they deserve. Examples were Siam Square One, Big C’s food park opposite Central World and just about everywhere in sleepy Hua Hin where the clusters from pubs and the pineapple factory have devastated tourism. 

 

My last trip there was in December 2019. Apart from a brief Scrabble jaunt to Isaan it’s my last trip anywhere outside Bangkok and its environs. Nothing unusual there!

 

In Bang Yai, Nonthaburi, local police chief Pol Col Pheeradech paid a poor mum’s 1,000 baht mask fine after she got involved in a fruity slanging match with a fruit vendor. 

 

Similarly humanitarian was a rescue foundation in Hua Hin that took a bedridden old lady to Krung Thai bank so she could get her disabled person’s benefits. These organisations do a grand job in Thailand (and could do without nasty posters on TV’s Facebook arm suggesting they do nothing but take backhanders).

 

BMA spokesman Pongsakorn said that all foreigners would get free vaccinations. Though the wording from Spring News was a tad disconcerting putting the order of importance as 1 Thais 2 Foreigners 3 Vagrants.

 

Jeez, Pongsakorn khrap,  where do us British residents fit in?? I’m only joking, the “rayron” (tramps) can go in ahead of me, mate.

 

In Chiang Mai one news org on Facebook said every foreigner would get a jab by June. Free too!

 

Meanwhile the tourism authorities, with PM’s office heartthrob Traisuree as spokeswoman, “revealed” their 4 “timelines” for the reopening of Thailand to foreign tourism.

 

We’re in Level 1 and by January 1st the hordes will be arriving, fully vaccinated and eager to reacquaint themselves with a now cleaner and less cluttered Thailand. And no need to quarantine in Level 4!  

 

Ten tourism places will benefit from October to January with visitors not needing to quarantine. They include Bangkok, Phuket, Pattaya, Hua Hin,  Chiang Mai, parts of Krabi and Surat Thani.

 

Three and a half million tourists were mentioned spending hundreds of billions of baht but they conveniently forgot to mention a timeframe for that. Tourism minister Pipat - knee high to a doctor - thinks that herd immunity will be achieved well before then. 

 

His boss Prayut and Anutin - Big Too and Big Nut - were guests of honor at Central Ladprao shopping mall where a vaccination center will operate - one of 25 in the capital and surrounding areas in business premises. Hospitals and clinics will be the mainstay but initiatives such as this can only bring vaccination closer to the people. 

 

Thailand’s porous borders were still big news. The IB admitted to thousands getting in each month and regaling journalists at their Suan Phlu press conferences with their sterling efforts to “keep Thailand safe”.

 

In Prachuap Khirikhan Naew Na reported on a ten year immigrant workers trafficking scandal allowed to continue after a Myanmar agent received help from a whole host of bent officials, past and present. 

 

Keeping Thailand locked down is hard - but crooked officials don’t help matters; a statement that could be said about so many aspects of Thai life.

 

In lighter news - though by the look of this woman not her weight - a Thai lady was apprehended by immigration for taking 5,000 baht to marry an Indian in Bangkok so he could extend his visa. 

 

And also more humorous than anything else were the irate netizens banging on about a group of people who drove up to the top of a scenic viewpoint in Phu Thap Buek rather than walk. 

 

For many Thais in the heat of the day that seemed to me like par for the course!

 

In crime news a particularly nasty piece of work who has been preying on “pretties” was arrested just a stone’s thrown from my Ratchayothin Roost. “Denphoom” has been raping women he enticed online at knifepoint. This dangerous miscreant needs to be sealed off as much as Bangkok Remand prison was this week. 

 

Finally, a few words about Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder who has been in the news a lot recently, often because he is at the center of conspiracy theories from the anti-vaccine loonies. 

 

Now he has announced his divorce after trying and failing to reconcile irreconcilable differences with Melinda, we were told.

 

A wag of mine said it best when it comes to resolving marital differences especially among the computer elite. His advice to Bill: 

 

Have you tried turning it on and off?

 

Rooster 

 

 

In a thoroughly entertaining week of news on Thaivisa, one of the main stories featured a new Facebook site that was originally called “Let’s Move Abroad”.

 

As getting on for a million Thais signed up in no time,  the bods at the Digital Economy and Society ministry started to panic. 

 

All those Thais moving to the US, South Korea and god forbid the UK! There won’t be anyone left in Siam to prosecute!

 

There were mutterings that having a healthy interest in the outside world was not a bad thing followed by a patriotic backlash.

 

In that spirit - and not because I have had a Biggs or Barrow-style visit from immigration (I keep a low residential profile), Rooster has decided to report his top ten reasons to STAY in Thailand. 

 

Some of my readers may think these are more like the top ten reasons to LEAVE. I make no apology. I was criticized last week by someone who was challenged to explain why he thought Rooster was “dripping with insincerity”. 

 

He couldn’t. A quick search revealed  a ten year “veteran” of Thailand, what older hands call a newbie. And what Rooster refers to as IKEA (Thailand) - I Know Everything About….

 

So for that insincere drip in particular and all the nice people on Thaivisa in general, here is my totally sincere list in no particular order of why staying in Thailand makes so much good sense! Enjoy!

 

1 The Thai people and their sense of humor.

 

Yes, you do need to have a sense of humor to live in Thailand but the people have it in abundance. The Thais have their faults, I’m British so goodness knows I know about my own nation’s shortcomings, but Thai positivity and stoicism more than make up for the negatives. Interactions in the street, in shops, among the small number of Thais who I call close friends and the thousands who I know,  are still a daily pleasure after nearly four decades of residence. They are smart, witty, gracious, kind, considerate and fun to be around. Sanook! Just avoid, as anywhere, lending money….

 

2 Work and play.

 

Thailand is a great place to work and an even better place to go out and enjoy the entertainment. Rooster came here penniless but with hope and ambition. I followed my dreams as you should. Now I’m wealthy in experiences and lucre. I’ve been a teacher of English, a teacher of Thai to Thais, a salesman, a condo flipper, a translator and a journalist. Now with some lockdown experience behind me it could be time to train as a chef. Yes, the sky's the limit when it comes to work with ample opportunities to spend one's hard-earned on enjoyable pursuits (post-pandemic!).

 

3 The Thai roads and motorcycle riding.

 

Yes, I can hear you bang on, what about the carnage. Well, I've done half a million kilometers on the Thai roads with no serious accidents, on bikes or in cars. The roads go everywhere, are by and large free of potholes (except near my wife’s house in Loei…) and there are not many traffic lights (avoid proceeding on green when you’re stopped by one). There are brilliant places to drive off at tangents like caves, temples and hot springs and roadside “resorts” cost as little as 300 - 400 baht a night. On a “steed” make sure you ride very defensively. You should be exhausted at the end of a journey due to concentration. In a car keep your wits about you for motorcycles and plod. Anticipate and you’ll stay alive and kicking!

 

4 Eating out or at home.

 

Thailand remains one of the truly great dining experiences on all levels. Street food is clean and hygienic. I’ve been sick once from dodgy shellfish. There are top quality restaurants at affordable prices everywhere offering food from all over the world. Even McDonalds is a cut above everywhere else! When cooking at home, box clever by shopping at a variety of supermarkets and markets. This way you’ll get the best ingredients and the best prices. Train your wife or husband how to cook your favorites or DIY.

 

5 The Thai health care system

 

Again, you need to be smart here especially if you don’t have insurance. Use freebie pharmacists wisely, don’t buy drugs at private hospitals (connive with doctors), shop around for the best care. Never dismiss the government sector or even local clinics as options. If you can, speak Thai with doctors. If not, pose no leading questions. I’ve had many ailments - some serious - in Thailand but with the odd exception both in and out-patient care has been great. My doctor - a Man City supporter - is one of my closest confidants.  Just don’t get me started on the nurses in case Mrs R learns to read English here…

 

6 Marriage and having children

 

I pity the boring miseries who say only rent in Thailand when it comes to relationships. Dreadful! Thais are loyal and loving wives and husbands if a little prone to throw what us Brits call wobblies every six weeks. Get a doghouse to hide in if you come a cropper. Thailand is a great place to bring up children. My first set still love it though they prefer to live abroad after an international school education. My second set - yes, I did it all over again with a second wife - are in Thai schools and learning so much from their gran in Loei. Have plenty of kids (certainly more than wives) and you won’t go far wrong in kid-friendly Thailand. 

 

7  The peace and quiet

 

It’s true that the villages can have the odd loudspeaker and Bangkok can be a tad hectic but again, if you are smart, it’s possible to find peace and quiet in Thailand. I’m only a few kms from the center of the capital but I can hear a pin drop (at night!). If something breaks the peace complain about it nicely. Contrary to some opinions that everything in the nation is loud, there are many Thais who will back you up when it comes to noise pollution.

 

8 Thai language

 

Don’t let Thai language be a hindrance to living in the country and never listen to those who say it is too hard or too late to learn. With a little effort Thai is easy to master and foreigners should learn more than taxi Thai. Learn to speak fluently (concentrate on the sounds of the language) and definitely learn to read and even write (predictive text is great to practice that). Mix in all social strata and among all sexes to find role models for your language and willing teachers. Foreigners who speak Thai well enjoy enormous advantages and gain even more respect. Try it and you’ll see I’m right!

 

9 Thai officialdom

 

Go onto a site like Thaivisa and you’ll see one moaner about this aspect of life after another. Ignore them. When dealing with Thai officials smile, be properly dressed and polite. Don’t try and rush things, take a book. If you can, speak Thai and praise them and their country. Even interactions with plod can be positive if you follow the basics and talk about the EPL. Thai offices - the DLT, districts, immigration - are all much improved on what they were years ago. There are less lunch breaks, better systems and more efficient staff. Be positive and friendly - a mantra for living in Thailand.

 

10 Scrabble and hobbies

 

Regular readers of this column will know that I am a professional Scrabble grand master who has represented Thailand on many occasions and has made countless friends after being introduced to the game here. Scrabble may not be your thing but I would suggest whatever it is - a British friend of mine represented the kingdom at Taekwondo - find out how you can get involved. Pursuing a lifelong hobby - whether it is model trains, cycling, gardening - you’ll find like minded Thais and foreigners to develop your passion and make your life more fulfilled. Just be careful of “doll collecting”. 

 

Yes, be positive, don’t limit yourself, avoid the moaners (some might be Thai) who say it can’t be done and above all enjoy your life in Thailand. Don’t compare it to where you’ve come from, make the most of it. And above all….

 

Never leave!

 

Now here are some of the top stories that caught Rooster’s beady eye this week:

 

The big story of the week was news that foreigners will be included in the Thai government’s vaccination program.  

 

The Bangkok police are trialling a new khaki uniform that they hope will be better suited to the climate and meet with public approval. Hopefully the more portly plod will be able to lever themselves into it. 

 

We were told after a survey that 50% of Thais think eating Pad Krapao can ward off Covid. Nonsense! Everyone knows that only durian and garlic - possibly together - can scare everything away!

 

Koh Larn was shut for two weeks from last Wednesday. There were fears that Koh Chang might follow suit. Most people are staying put at home so all this is a moot point.

 

In Khon Kaen a local official made non-mask wearers do squat thrusts instead of paying fines. This was particularly good for the elderly, he said. It's a shame that PM Prayut was not given the option rather than pay a paltry 6K. I’d like to have seen him even more red faced than usual.

 

A cluster of infections at Bangkok's Klong Toei slum caused concern and started a mass vaccination drive. Meanwhile, many in the expat community took to forums to comment after the MoPH said they’d have to wait to get jabbed until Thais had had their turn. Moderna will be available “soon” for 3,000 baht, said a health official.

 

In government news, heroin smuggler Thammanat Prompao was allowed to keep his job because his 1994 conviction was in Australia. The Constitutional Court decided that it's a foreign country and this is Thailand…..

 

The cabinet had a two hour meeting that failed to resolve what to do about THAI airways. The meeting was addressed via video conferencing by Saksayam the transport minister fresh from his bout of Covid caught at a gentlemen’s club and justice minister Somsak who had to quarantine for 14 days after a Songkran party in his honor in Sukhothai resulted in dozens of infections and the death of a woman in Bangkok.

 

Yes, it’s still as crazy as ever in the “upper echelons” as they behave like rats in the sewers. 

 

In Nan, a beautiful province in the north, a pregnant Thai wife went missing and her foreign husband, clearly a Caucasian, was being sought. Blood was found at the house. 

 

The foreign husband, who has a history of violence and charges back in the United States, was later arrested in Chiang Mai.

 

In Pattaya, Sophon Cable TV on Facebook took pictures of and shamed foreigners who were not wearing masks. I’d let them off but fine them for wearing shorts and having their tattooed bellies hanging out. Talk about letting the side down. 

 

And speaking of letting the side down, a foreigner in Hang Dong, Chiang Mai made national news following his petulant antics after he refused to wear a mask and became abusive to police and locals.

 

Also in Pattaya, a Teana went up in flames with the 24 year old owner saying he didn’t have time to retrieve a million baht in cash on the back seat. A likely story!

 

In nearby Bang Saen mayor Lek called for dog owners to show more responsibility and published pictures of a pit bull roaming the resort. Daily News said it looked like the local mafia on the streets!

 

A grisly murder in Bang Lamung was jealousy said the police. It was different from the usual genre in that the wife, 24, clearly did it with multiple stab wounds to her 23 year old hubby who was found naked in the bathroom. 

 

Finally, infidelity was also at the source of my favorite story of the week. 

 

A hapless food delivery guy went to the Loei police to say that he had made several transfers to a “sideline” girl he met on Twitter who he had wanted to get in the sack.

 

After 14,000 baht had gone one way, she blocked him. The cops explained patiently that this was prostitution and he’d have to take this one on the chin. 

 

He rode off on his motorcycle into the Isaan sunset to make his next delivery.

 

Hopefully just a little wiser about some of the pitfalls Thailand can throw up.

 

And hopefully not wanting to leave.

 

Rooster 

 

 

 

 

Deep within the bowels - appropriately enough - of Government House there exists a hotline phone.

 

It used to be red, white and blue with a nice yellow cord. These days it's decked out in khaki and is monogrammed with the initials P.O., letters that also appear on an elaborate “chair” for the comfort of the phone user. 

 

It was used earlier this week for a call from a man known universally as Uncle Too (translated as ‘yer mother’s brother who grabbed something that wasn’t his’). He was calling a certain DPM….

 

Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring….

 

“Hello Big Nut? Uncle here, my goodness that took you a long time to answer. Hope you weren’t otherwise engaged talking behind my back.

 

“Uncle, my Lord. How delightful to hear from you. Always a respectful pleasure. Diss you my Lord? Absolutely not! The delay in picking up was because I was “graaping” the phone as a matter of fact in advance of this most welcome chat. Need some help with the 6,000 baht fine, sir!?”

 

“Less of the one liners, Big Nut. Remember that the PM is akin to God and a health minister doesn't want to be just another senator to make up the numbers".

 

“Even a vital political supporter such as moi,  my Lord?

 

“Erm, look here AC. I’ve got a couple of pressing matters.”

 

“Time to steamroller the opposition again?, sir”.

 

“No, our friends in the courts are managing that just fine. About the 6,000 baht, it all worked out a treat. Brother Aswin played his part and now I look like one of the people again. ‘er indoors had some spare cash from the daughters’ defamation fund so there was no need for an expenses form.

 

“Three cheers for General Aswin, eh sir; let’s arrange to give him a couple of extra parks.  Something pressing, you said?”

 

“Yes, Vlad over in Moscow has been in touch with some Sputnik stuff. I told him we’ve got our own spaceships circling Mars as we speak but he mentioned vaccines, first I’ve heard of it. This got me thinking and Vlad told me all about him and a chap called Navalny and how that worked out so well. 

 

“The upshot is I’ve decided to become a Covid Czar. Vlad said be careful if anyone tries to take me in the woods with the missus and the twins. Consequently I’m taking you off the Covid Caper.

 

“It had to happen, my Lord. Frankly, I’m glad. All those dirty farang without masks one has to deal with, making me quite queasy it was. 

 

“Yes, well I’m sure you’re busy with all the ganja stuff. How’s it coming along?”

 

“Absolutely, spliffing if you’ll pardon the pun, my Lord. No one or no thing is getting remotely high except me and the wife’s “joint account”. I've started calling her Maryjane you know!”

 

“Weed better pass over that”.

 

“Very good my Lord! PPE - Prayut Puns Exceptionally! Yes all this economic growth is tremendous and will certainly benefit the coffers.

 

“The coppers? Surely they should wait in line, I must have a work with old specsaver Big Pat at Pathumwan”.

 

 

A year ago in this very column Rooster spoke about the “Phony War” in relation to the pandemic. Twelve months later it feels like hostilities have well and truly begun.

 

The Phony War for people like me who were not around when WWII began in September 1939 was the following eight month period when it really was all quiet on the Western Front. People like my mother in the east end of London wondered when or even if it would kick off. They were soon cowering in the Underground tunnels before returning to what was left of their houses.

 

Last April many things didn’t seem to add up. Why were places like Italy and Iran so desperate? Why had Thailand seemingly escaped the worst? Was tourism minister Pipat right that the wind would blow the virus away by Songkran…..

 

Even when sporadic outbreaks occurred later in the year, even when the market in Samut Sakhon threw up so many cases it seemed that Thailand had escaped the worst and the government might have actually done something good for a change.

 

We could all follow suit and be just a little bit smug. Not now.

 

Yesterday there were 2,839 cases and eight deaths. And they are only the ones we know about. The country is in lockdown and curfew in all but name.

 

I feel confident that the Thai public health service has - despite the irrelevance of head honcho Big Nut Anutin - made some good decisions and is coping well. But for how long?

 

The vaccine rollout is increasingly looking like the mother of Thai cock-ups. A rural medical chief slammed the government on Friday for mismanagement and poor decision making saying that Thailand was at the back of the vaccine queue worldwide. 

 

Of particular concern to this columnist is the large number of people - particularly on Thaivisa’s Facebook arm, far less so on the forum - who insist the pandemic is a hoax. I saw one who called Thaivisa scaremongers! Then there are those who spread malicious and idiotic nonsense about vaccines, people who believe they have a right to free speech.

 

It’s time not just to rid social media of such people but for governments to look at making it a crime to say such things, a bit like some nations have laws to rein in Holocaust deniers.

 

Pandemic and vaccine deniers need at the very least to be called out at every opportunity and possibly banned and prosecuted. 

 

For them the Phony War worldwide continues despite all the evidence to the contrary. Yet they are the phonies. As well as the people who click “like” on their drivel.

 

I remember well in the very first throes of the pandemic my own skepticism. It caused a torrent of abuse. But when it became obvious that I was wrong I was sensible enough to quickly change tack. Now I not only see the error of my ways, I have not only eaten humble pie but feel that serious action is needed against those who pooh-pooh the pandemic.

 

It was a hectic week on Thaivisa with many interesting stories filling our columns both pandemic and non-pandemic related.

 

Many expats in Thailand were up in arms about the decision to make tests for entering Phuket free for Thais but 500 baht for foreigners. Previously it was 300 baht for all so understandably the dual pricing argument reared its decidedly ugly head. 

 

While it is reasonable that people who have not necessarily paid into the public health system should pay why should the price be bumped up to cover Thais? All in all it was yet another money grabbing embarrassment of a PR disaster. 

 

Potential tourists would take one look at a debacle like that and think, I’ll go somewhere else where I won’t be ripped off. All for the sake of a few thousand baht. Pathetic.

 

Rooster would not go to Phuket under such circumstances. I’ve turned back from National Parks when the staff failed to comprehend that I was holding a residence certificate and work permit. I once suggested to Mrs R that I get in the boot and hide to get through the gate. 

 

She agreed rather too readily for my liking filling me with fear that she might “forget” I was in the back!

 

The health ministry said that Sinovac was safe but its efficacy when compared to other vaccines needs to be transparently announced so that people can make clear choices.

 

Except of course that in Thailand there is very little choice. Wait or wait, to be precise. And that wait is June when locally made AstraZeneca may or may not be available and may or may not be fully effective against the variants that will surely emerge by then. 

 

The PM, meanwhile, seemed delighted that such an upstanding member of the international community as V. Putin was going to help the Thais out with his Sputnik VAX. Maybe it's OK but I’d rather not have anything to do with that murdering tyrant (Putin, not Uncle Too, incidentally). And by all accounts it’s not even cheap!

 

Earlier in the week political strategist Songkhram Kitlertphairot of the Puea Chat opposition party laid into the premier and his cronies blaming Prayut for the death of his compatriots.

 

Meanwhile the embattled leader - barking nonsense as is his forte - defended the vaccination plans, said it was not slow and was not favoring one vaccine over another. 

 

As my eight year old said - the naughty misguided little girl - “Liar Liar Khaki Pants on Fire!”

 

Pictures in the Thai press showed a sad looking Pattaya. On what should have been the celebration of “Wan Lai” that always follows Songkran, the resort was deserted.

 

Up in Chaing Mai pictures of exhausted medical personnel at a field hospital brought home to netizens the reality of the pandemic for health workers.

 

Anutin went to Hua Hin where there were nearly 1000 virus cases, handed out supplies and claimed everything was under control, as many officials did this week.

 

Good news came for parents with word that the school term would not be delayed from May 17th. But there was a rather hefty caveat about having the pandemic under control. Expect a June 1st start at the earliest.

 

Pipat revised his foreign arrivals for 2021 figure by half. He’s starting to get close to reality. Zero will be about the correct figure give or take a few thousand. 

 

An online survey conducted on Chinese people suggested that 93% would look to the Thai vaccine rollout before making a holiday decision to come to Thailand. More than half those polled listed Thailand as their #1 destination though a third said they’d wait six months after the end of quarantine before holidaying in the Land of Smiles. 

 

Foreigners living in Thailand came in for a bit of standard blame. Two teachers at what appeared to be a bilingual school in Samut Prakan caused an outbreak after they brought the virus back from a bar in Phuket. They had attended a “goodbye teachers” event at which there was a lot of hugging. Sounded rather American!

 

While in Koh Samui, Thai news site Manager pointed their finger at foreigners who were not wearing masks at Mae Nam market.

 

Twenty thousand baht fines were in place though the court only ordered the first person prosecuted  to pay 4,000 baht (reduced to 2K on admission). The governor of Udon Thani then followed suit with a 20K order of his own.

 

Scandals this week were rather tame with a Facebook page claiming that first a policeman then secondly a forestry official had taken their wives on joyrides in state owned helicopters. 

 

The second did not look like a wife and her claim that all the pictures were taken on the ground looked dubious when a mountain with clouds appeared outside the helicopter window.

 

A whopper on a chopper!

 

Rooster went to town on a story about a Thai teacher on an exchange at a school in New South Wales. 

 

Somchai arrived in suit and tie on day one and was told he was a tad overdressed by a buddy teacher in shorts and open neck shirt. Further “revelation" followed when there was no one to respect at the flagpole at 8am and the kids enjoyed sport rather than endless lessons, as they would in Thai school. 

 

Rooster faithfully translated the spirit of the Aussie words with a little journalistic licence added.

 

In my youth I spent a year and more in Oz and learned to speak Ocker at Tubemakers of Western Australia in Perth. There everyone complained about the management with one shop floor co-worker telling me they were so bad that they started with the letter A.

 

Abysmal? Nah, mate. Awful, no way blue. Okay, I give up, I said.

 

Abnoxious, that’s what they are mate. Bladdy abnoxious. 

 

Perhaps surprisingly, given all that is going on in the world, the big story of the week was about Giant the Ban Dog, a kind of pit bull, that was taken to Wat Bang Lamung by his new owner to apologize to the corpse of his previous master who he had savaged to death. 

 

The wife of the deceased inquired as to his well-being before Giant made his excuses and left the “khor khama” ceremony muzzled and tail wagging. 

 

Whoever said it’s a dog’s life in Thailand was not far wrong. 

 

There was also great interest in CNN Travel's updated list of the 50 top “foods” in the world.

 

Massaman curry maintained it’s #1 spot but both Fish and Chips from the UK and buttered toast and marmite beat out Som Tam. 

 

How durian was not on the list I shall never know!

 

Finally, the Pak Kret police were obliged to take action after a YouTuber dressed as a Spartan armed with a spear spooked the locals while on a motorcycle at a red light in their jurisdiction. 

 

His elaborate head armour invoked one of three fines though it seemed a little unfair.

 

Not wearing a helmet.

 

Rooster

 

 

It was certainly a grim week for Thailand with one item of bad news after another. 

 

With the emergence of the so-called UK variant of coronavirus I was a bit reluctant to go out to Makro to do my pre-Songkran panic-buy stocking up on enough baked beans and cheese to last the week in isolation. My annual water avoiding quarantine.

 

Hailing from the sceptred isle I was a tad concerned that the shelf packers might inquire as to my provenance and I might let slip, as I made a grab for the HP Sauce, that I was born in Kent. 

 

I could see myself being thrown out despite wearing a mask. But all was good as I loaded the paniers of the Rooster-mobile and headed back to Ratchayothin with supplies aplenty.

 

I had hoped to actually get out this coming week safe in the knowledge that Songkran had effectively been banned again. I felt it unlikely that anyone would randomly come up and respectfully wet my head with lustral water. 

 

But the outbreaks of Covid in Bangkok and the banning of ANY form of frivolity mean that the closest I’ll get to the great outdoors will be a Big Mac meal with jumbo protective clothing and a side order of Chai Chana. 

 

It should be a joyous time of the year. Mrs Rooster and the chicks were hurried out of the coop on Wednesday amid fears that provincial travel might suddenly be banned. She’ll be in Loei for five weeks leaving me to stew in my own juice. A kind of cock au vin. 

 

It soon emerged that my fears about missing the boat in dispatching the family were unfounded. PM Prayut and DPM Anutin were actually in favor of packing everyone off up-country to spread the virus. Who was I to question their bounteous wisdom….

 

I just told the missus to try not to hack in the direction of Yai (who is falling apart with diabetes and old age in her sixties) when scooping the maggots off the nutritious pla ra. 

 

The CCSA promptly closed most things down in 41 provinces and a Chula “top doc” told us how to quarantine at home. 

 

For Rooster this seemed like teaching one’s gran to suck eggs or as the Thais say, sorn jorakhae hai wai naam (teaching a croc to swim).

 

I checked all the vital ingredients of seven days++ of isolation.

 

Fodder. Check. Netflix. Check. Bill paid for True EPL package. Check. Call to friend on the same corridor to make sure he’d got the beers in. Check. 

 

So back to the latest misery outside as my editor sent me translation after translation with Covid, pandemic, restrictions, ban, VAX, no tourism and scary in the headlines. 

 

Dr Yong warned that this year would be 170 times worse than last. Thanks doc, appreciate that!

 

Prayut - increasingly looking like a retired general out of his depth - muttered something about whatever will be will be.

 

He had hoped that his appearance in Bang Pa-in to open a section of the new elevated road to Korat would focus attention away from the misery onto his AI - Amazing Infrastructure.

 

Not a bit of it - all the Thai reporters wanted to know was about clusters and cock-ups and why a third of his ministers were spreading virus to the population after popping in to see “ee noo” (little mice) in Thong Lor nightclubs. 

 

Chuwit went on Facebook to call on the senators and cops to “come clean”.

 

The legendary finger pointing, soapy massage visiting, greasy TV show presenting, bar destroying, park making wannabe politician and playboy appeared grey and withered - well past his sell-by. 

 

But he did have a point about one rule for the proles and another for the pols. 

 

All the bad news in Krung Thep was soon flooding nationwide. In Hua Hin where they’d hoped to attract some Songkran tourists, there were 30% cancellations of hotels and as of today (Sunday) more than 140 virus cases.  News that there would be a million people at the airport there by 2025 got swallowed up in the bigger picture.

 

On Wednesday Rooster went to a hospital to reschedule an appointment and saw the queues at the testing “drive-in”. The Police Hospital was swamped after RTP HQ had an outbreak. The lines there looked like a cluster waiting to happen.

 

The lady at Viphavadee Hospital reception was telling a Chinese man’s go-between that they still didn’t have any VAX to sell. On Saturday Thaivisa reported it was taking longer than expected to allow private hospitals to jab to follow “international standards”.

 

Nonsense - methinks the delays are just to allow locally produced vaccine in June onto the market as a kind of white knight saving the day to make certain people look rosy. 

 

Quarantine of 14 days was announced in many provinces for people arriving from the capital and four other risky jangwats. Good luck with enforcing that with Mrs R in Loei. 

 

Nightclubs were shut and alcohol banned in many places. Field hospitals were set up everywhere. Songkran - or what was left of it - is now but a distant memory. 

 

The laurels that Thailand had rested on are now crumpled beyond recognition. Poor testing regimes (surprising for a "testing" regime) and slow vaccine rollout are now coming home to roost. As are having utter incompetents in charge of the government.

 

It almost became a “by-the-by” that Covid cases were going through the roof and the worst fears of the medics were becoming a stark reality. 

 

Hunker down, get the tea on, and find out how to watch The Masters in Thailand. Then finish The Serpent on Netflix - a reminder of better days in Thailand when all we had to worry about was being drugged, robbed, dumped in Pattaya and set on fire by serial killers….

 

Elsewhere in Thailand the air pollution continued despite rains. A Sky News report in the UK concentrating on Chiang Mai spoke of 32,000 premature deaths from respiratory and other diseases in Thailand calling it a “public health emergency”. They mentioned fires….

 

That other public health emergency was set to hit consumer spending by 100 billion baht despite my efforts at Makro. 

 

A dozen Bangkok hospitals stopped virus testing amid shortages and 559 Covid cases were reported Friday. 

 

Fortunately there was still some news to make us smile. A monitor lizard went stir-crazy in a 7-Eleven mounting the shelves in a viral video of the week. 

 

Though it was not such happy news for a moggie who had gone missing and was found by her distraught owner swallowed whole by a replete python out back of the house. 

 

Finally, the probation department on Koh Samui have found a great use for foreigners caught drink driving. 

 

Rather than punishing them they have arranged for them to teach English. One report showed a German called Mr N delivering a lesson to the smiling ladies.

 

A German teaching English?? yelled many on Facebook though it seemed a perfectly good idea to me. 

 

Especially as I taught Thai in Thailand for 20 years!

 

Not bad for a miscreant from Kent.

 

Rooster

 

 

 

When the time came to pull the curtain down on a twenty year career at two major international schools in Bangkok in 2013, Rooster received plenty of well-intentioned plaudits.

 

People made nice speeches about the positive effect I’d had on thousands of Thai and foreign children promoting Thailand and Thai culture. How I’d been successful in raising safety standards on school trips. An altogether good - if slightly unusual - egg.

 

I was clutching a Parker pen in gratitude from the headmaster for 15 years service when I walked out of the school gates for the last time. 

 

I had a healthy bank balance and at 52 there was no need to ever work again. I had memories of parental consultations with movie heartthrobs who wai-ed ME. A former Miss Universe thanked me for re-introducing her errant teenager to his Thai heritage. A female prime minister had even given me an envelope with cash in and the honor of a selfie, now framed and hung proudly next to my bathroom.

 

There were letters from kids, honorable mentions everywhere as I crossed the road and came within inches of being run over ten seconds into retirement. It felt good to be alive if only just.

 

So why was it in the restaurant over the road that acted as the teachers’ Friday afternoon drinks venue, musing before my friends arrived for a final round, I felt that two decades of my life had been mostly wasted.

 

Why didn’t I speak up more when proselytizing headmasters spouted their nonsense about God and religion? Why didn’t I go out on a limb to promote the benefits of atheism and science? Why did I remain so silent about the nonsensical facts based approach to learning that even top dollar international schools get so wrong? Why didn’t I beg the school to look at Finland and stop claiming that the British know best and homework is more important than family time!?

 

Why did I feel that even in my specialist area I had perpetuated the idea of a Thai stereotype. In my heart I was critical but for the sake of my salary, for the good of the team, to avoid waves, I had toed the line. 

 

Yes, just like in my own schoolboy school days I’d been a lackey. An anarchist at heart but a pathetic lackey all the same who made no difference to anything except my bank balance.  

 

One of the pupils I really let down was a boy who, as you are about to discover very relevantly, was nicknamed Big. 

 

Big seemed a friendly enough 12 year old who had just arrived from Thai school and was bewildered by English. The school needed his parents’ money.

 

Every day I would see him when I knocked off between 5 and 6 pm still sitting alone on some steps looking forlorn. Usually eating an ice-cream or yet another packet of snacks.

 

His folks wouldn’t be along till 6pm. Then the driver would load him into the back and take him off to the maid to supervise extra homework.

 

Big was huge. Already morbidly obese. Left to his own devices by parents who thought they were doing him a favor by spending a million baht a year on his education and hundreds of baht a day on his sugary snacks that were killing him as sure as if I went up to him and blew his brains out on the tuck-shop steps.

 

I often wonder if at 30 plus he is alive today.

 

I could speak to Big in words he could understand and following our conversations I took my concerns up with those in charge of his pastoral care. 

 

I said that this was nothing short of child abuse. Being left till late in the day was one thing. But left to his own devices and even in the company of those who should have been looking after him, he was being fed poison by ignorant hi-so parents who thought they were doing the right thing.

 

That old fat=rich and spending money is doing good nonsense.

 

Not surprisingly my exaltations to bring the parents in and tell them this was child abuse fell on deaf ears. Money was the bottom line. Bums on seats and poor Big’s ample posterior was just another one that paid our wages.

 

It was not just Big I thought about when I retired. There was also the occasion when a very interesting policeman arrived from the UK on an “INSET” day - staff training. 

 

He told the gathered Thai and British faculties that child abuse crossed cultures, crossed the divides of language and countries, was just as prevalent among the rich as the poor.

 

Just as likely to occur in Thailand as the UK. 

 

You could see the eyes roll of Thai and expatriate alike - who was this copper coming to tell us how to do things when everyone knows that Thailand doesn’t have those problems.

 

Yeh, right. For me it was possibly the only INSET that ever engaged my attention. It made me think how the school and MYSELF were in utter denial.

 

Many people think that by shelling out the millions for international school education you get a paragon or educational virtue. Yes, the Astroturf pitches, beautiful auditoriums and science labs with every chemical under the sun look great. You get to hobnob with the stars, increase your child’s social spectrum etc etc….

 

The headmasters’ promises of children who will be the leaders of tomorrow sound wonderful. The roll calls of kids in mortar boards and gowns going to Yale and Oxford, MIT and Cambridge look great. 

 

But the devil is often in the details. I felt we had merely perpetuated the idea of pounding facts into the children. It was where to look and how to interpret information they needed in the IT world of the last two decades. Lip service was paid to this because the bottom line was money and results - feeling wealthy and looking good rather than having true substance. 

 

I’m not saying that Thai schools - even good ones - get it right. Most of them are worse. But just because an international school talks a good game and charges a lot doesn’t make it good. The best may be reasonable, but the second division are often rubbish. 

 

Shop around and be skeptical of the hype - and never forget that you as a parent are the key to your own child’s upbringing. Not some school with a fancy name and Latin on the blazer’s crest.

 

So it was that I was thinking about Big this week when a story about the Thais’ appalling and excessive consumption of sugar was featured by the Thai press. 

 

In their noodles and curries they are dumping totally unnecessary sugar. Children who deserve protection not abuse are being treated to sugary snacks and soda. On average Thais are consuming five times the WHO recommended daily dose.

 

And I say “dose” advisedly. Sugar is a dangerous drug in my view that needs to be regulated far more than at present. 

 

Go to any Thai hospital, as I often do, and you’ll see the diabetes patients lined up. It’s an epidemic that makes Covid look like a walk in the park. 

 

Much of it is brought on by sugar. In addition Thais are getting fatter and fatter from poor diets especially in the more affluent cities. Fast food temptation and pressure is everywhere. Obesity is rampant and hard won lessons from the West are falling on deaf ears in Asia. 

 

Yes, one of my schools had a display about the number of spoonfuls of sugar in a bottle of Coke. Then they let the kids sell it on “Fun Days” to raise money for charity (yet more lip service). 

 

I tried to be more pro-active as a parent. Once on finding that my first wife had stocked the fridge full of Sprite and chocolate I banned those items forever.

 

There was a massive row in which she accused me of heartlessness towards the children. My will prevailed - and a decade later my son thanked me for what I did. 

 

He said it was the only good thing I did……

 

Another story that caught Rooster’s beady eye this week was the fact that 10 million Thais are suffering (mostly in silence) from mental health conditions and one million of these have Bipolar Disorder. 

 

DPM and Health Minister Anutin was togged up in yellow silk giving it the big one on World Bipolar Day. Lots of those empty epithets I’d experienced in my school days were trotted out.

 

Mental health has been a big issue in my family. My own behaviour as someone with a highly addictive personality and well on the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder  ladder was a fair starting point for trouble.

 

In addition I married a Thai woman who I later discovered was an untreated schizophrenic. No wonder the sparks flew and the children fled for cover.

 

My son, a brilliant guy with an amazingly broad knowledge, was also diagnosed in his teenage years.

 

This meant coming out of denial and facing facts. I’d begun my years in Thailand making jokes telling people flippantly that they should “Nang taxi pai Sri Thanya” - take a cab to Thailand’s most well known mental hospital - if they suggested something daft.

 

Just over a decade ago I found myself with my son listening to home truths with a true professional at that very hospital as they tried to help me and my offspring. (My wife had fled in terror on a previous occasion when the doctor said she needed medication. She waited in the car brooding about “them” trying to get their claws in!).  

 

But just like I had failed Big, it was time not to fail my own son. Time to face up to mental health and do something positive. The help was there in Thailand, you just needed to ask. 

 

Fortunately my son, through medication and counselling continued in the UK, is managing to make the best of his life. 

 

And you’ll never find his dad making a joke of mental health again.

 

A joke is what April Fool’s day was in Thailand this year. Thaivisa got the ball rolling on March 31st with a genuine story (I think!) about the Crime Suppression Division banning news organizations from ribaldry under the threat of five years in jail for spreading fake news. 

 

It was a pity because both my editor and I had some great wind-up ideas as good as those in the past about visa extensions at 7-Eleven and jail terms for playing Connect Four on Pattaya bar tops. 

 

I guess my story about Thailand being the hub of hubcap production - yes, a Liverpool firm wanted to move their entire production facility to a Samut Prakan Industrial estate - will have to wait for another year.

 

The ban did not stop us from having some jibes against the authorities , however, though we valued our personal liberty. Amusingly a Thai got in on the act by claiming that police engineers would repair your broken down car for free nationwide  - just call such-and-such a number.

 

Plod predictable, and following their warning, took a dim view especially as they had said that April Fool’s was not Thai culture.

 

Damn those Western influences!

 

In Myanmar the situation has become increasingly dire. A reported 500 people - many of them young children - have been shot and bombed to death by the junta. Meanwhile the Thai military  scandalously sent reps to an armed forces party while Prayut showed his true colors - khaki. Under the guise of keeping a diplomatic watch out on the neighbors he defended the attendance at the junket. Utterly shameless.

 

Now Thailand is facing the consequences with incursions of thousands fleeing bombardments in Karen state areas. Prayut spoke of humanitarianism but Sky and others (including my own sources on the ground) said the refugees were being forced back. 

 

With Covid throwing a further spanner into the works, this “international” story is going to have major implications for Thailand. 

 

In New York the authorities reached the final steps in the legalization of marijuana for recreational use. Some changes will take the best part of two years to implement but it is a major step in emptying the jails of (usually black) people who like herbs. 

 

Thailand please  take notice, as your “legalization” promises are looking like hollow ones that will continue to necessitate the absurd and wasteful “War On Drugs” that is an almighty waste of money, resources and lives. 

 

Back in Thailand the approved Covid jabs tourists will need to avoid 10 day quarantine (and ONLY do 7) were announced. Interestingly Sinovac was there of course but nothing from Russia, a country the Thai tourism minister has been bigging up for the much hyped April 1st, July 1st, October 1st and January 1st staged return to mass tourism. 

 

Staged being the operative word as their pronouncements should be taken as much with a pinch of salt as a whole pack of Saxa. 

 

Transport minister Saksayam Chidchob appeared at an event in Bang Pa-In celebrating his dream - the 120 kmph speed limit on certain roads. Lord knows what the safety activists thought of that as the appalling carnage continued on the roads ahead of the lip-service-fest that is the Songkran crackdown.

 

Apropos, Plod is now able to implement RTP chief Gen Suwat “Big Pat” Chaengyodsuk’s much heralded “transparent” alcohol and speeding checkpoints. Mobile CCTV was promised to keep an eye on plod as well as the motorists. 

 

Suwat was also in the news as underling (though much more charismatic and handsome) Lt-Gen Surachate “Big Joke” Hakparn took up his advisory role at RTP HQ.

 

The Thai media said it was all smiles but their picture showed what looked like trepidation on the face of BJ; no wonder when police reform is his bag and those around him will be hoping that he falls flat on his face. 

 

The Thai tourism minister Pipat indicated that his policies included land based safety and ensuring that tourists would no longer be ripped off. All previous tourism ministers tried that and all failed. Pipat will too but such is the dearth of political talent available to his boss that he’ll probably keep his job longer than them. It was also reported that 1.45 million jobs in tourism had been lost due to the pandemic.

 

In crime news in the north east of Thailand a tanker driver stabbed his wife at a gas station then led plod and 50 rescue foundation vehicles on a chase encompassing Khon Kaen and Udon Thani before his tires were shot out. 

 

In Chiang Mai a man and his wife were found in a car after he apparently stabbed her to death then committed suicide by lighting a fire in the sealed up vehicle. 

 

In eastern Bangkok the netizens were enraged when a flimsy paper sign advised pedestrians they would be electrocuted if they touched the handrail on a road bridge. “Use the other rail” seemed to be the advice before the local authority “swooped” into action. 

 

In Pattaya the irate ones came out after a post about red worms coming out of the taps. The authorities declared the water supply safe.

 

Finally, tragedy struck in Surat Thani after a 12 year old boy was killed and five friends injured when lightning struck during heavy rain while they were having a happy game of after school football. 

 

At my school they brought in lightning meters for all outdoor activities both on and off campus. 

 

What should have been a positive step turned into a farce as activities and sports were ruined by teachers telling kids to stop then start again according to the meter’s readings.

 

Like in Surat Thani it would have been better just to show some common sense during storms and when lightning is in the area. 

 

At my school we made a rod for our own backs under the guise of improvement.

 

Yet another failure to look back on. 

 

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