The week that was in Thailand news: The game of life in “tittifilarious” Thailand.

[rooster59]

The week that was in Thailand news: The game of life in “tittifilarious” Thailand.

 

 

How visitors – even residents – handle officialdom in Thailand will tell you a lot about their character and their knowledge of the country.

 

Haven’t we all met people who constantly harp on about how they are disadvantaged, even put upon, by police, immigration, local officials – you name it – and bemoan that things are not like where they came from as they scream injustice……

 

Usually from the top of their ivory tower.

 

The forums – and Thaivisa is no exception, are full of them. Now, Rooster is not going to lecture you on the do’s and don’ts of dealing with officialdom. Besides I don’t always get it right myself for who could honestly say that they have never lost their Thai rag….even nit noi.

 

Suffice to say that for me, as in most aspects of my meager and humble existence, I treat everything as a game.

 

In the old days I observed the game of life went well when my snooker was good and vice versa. If I could knock in the thirty break – even more on occasion – it was likely to be mirrored in the broader world of Thailand.

 

When I accepted that I would never be Stephen Hendry and embarked on a professional Scrabble career I used metaphors regarding the world’s most popular word game constantly in my life.  I took up Scrabble in 1991 after having been in the kingdom about ten years on and off, mostly on.

 

It helped to order my befuddled mind and gave me focus. While studying the game’s strategy and vocabulary for 16 hours a day for many years – I jest not – helped to give me an alternative life to what my friends at the time called “The Smelly Irishman” – Patpong.

 

By the mid-1990s, trumpet blowing alert, I was rated the 19^th best player in the world. In 1998 I represented Thailand and became the first Champion of Asia and the Pacific. But despite this modest success I was still reminded how useless I was at personal relationships…especially with the Thai wife!

 

The problem was that I frequently let raw emotion enter the melting pot of Thai/Farang spouse interaction. Something I rarely did when dealing with the bureaucrats and civil servants that inevitable stood in the way of my dream or living a life of relative anarchy in Thailand.

 

The game was always paramount and here it seemed like the Olympics. Key for Rooster was the rejection of playing dumb – I always went in forearmed and always used my Thai language skills that were well honed from early days of self-teaching.

 

Much of my skill is playing the Thais at their own game but actually not being one of them – always being the outsider but hopefully knowing at least as much as they about Thai culture!

 

In the early days at least, this was not overly problematical.

 

At roadside motorcycle fleece-points I would not show my license – especially as I didn’t have one in the early days; I would show wallet snapshots of my wife and kids. If an officer pointed out I was in the wrong lane or speeding I would quickly move the conversation onto David Beckham and his latest haircut.

 

At the tax office it was obvious that I was studying Thai and not working – wasn’t it? – when I engaged the assessor in entertaining small talk about how many chilies make a good Som Tam or, if male, the relative merits of  the female civil servant sitting at yonder desk.

 

At immigration praise and promises of free English lessons always guaranteed a cheery greeting of remembrance even when I didn’t have all the necessary paperwork or couldn’t figure out how to fill in the form.

 

In short, I got away with things that no Thai would have managed in a way few Thais, if any, would ever contemplate.

 

So it was this week that I clicked on a story of what you are meant to do when stopped by the police. Admittedly it mainly concerned those dicey occasions when drugs might be planted by serious rogues.

 

But a Thai lawyer was actually suggesting that you demand to see an officer’s empty pockets before consenting to a search. Twaddle – and dangerous twaddle at that – that ignores the realities of Thailand.

 

For Rooster I’d still stick to my Beckhamesque Thai distraction techniques – that would suggest to the rogue “this guy lives here, he’s not a push over, leave him alone and find someone else”.

 

Once again the week on Thaivisa was chock full of reasons to smile and reasons to shake the head in equal measure.

 

Of the former, it was no surprise that the real reason for the now nationwide dartboard shenanigans was gambling. Reading one poster who said he had never seen Thais gambling on darts made me think he must have slipped through a wormhole to an alternative Thai nation on Alpha Centauri.

 

Thais will gamble on anything. Another poster – in his bounteous ignorance – thought that the national lottery was more than enough and Thais didn’t need online betting companies. Expect to see many crackdowns on these as the World Cup of Wagering draws nearer this European summer.

 

Apropos the darts this week also saw the death of 80 year old British comedian Jim Bowen famous for a 17 year TV game show centering on the game. I wonder if Jim – famous for catchphrases like “nothing for two in a bed” - ever knew what the adept ladies of The Smelly Irishman did with darts and balloons?

 

A contact lens wearer, I used to wear spectacles when taking tourists to see that spectacle…just in case!

 

Top drama of the week concerned the Thai man in the wheelchair who busted the door of the lift at Asoke BTS. You had to sympathize.

 

Getting about the streets, escalators and public areas of Bangkok is often a nightmare for the able- bodied and I know from wheeling my little children about in buggies what delightful hazards await the unwary.

 

It was good to see forum curmudgeon and “Voice of the Bedridden” Colin Neil kindly offer to pay his fine though that proved unnecessary as the authorities wisely backed off knowing that their arrangements and procedures for the handicapped are pathetic in the extreme.

 

Speaking of pathetic, the weekly plethora of video clips showing bad driving and bad behavior on the roads continued aplenty.

 

Top of the pile was the motorcyclist on his phone who was almost given what my children call a face-mould into the back of a car. The headline “Heads Down – Heading for Oblivion” really sums up the people for whom keeping their face out of Facebook is impossible even for a nana-second (that time span when an attractive bar girl stays with an old man who won’t buy her a drink).

 

Pathetic for different reasons was the unseemly compensation bargaining taking place in the north concerning the teacher who drove into the nurse at a Nong Bua Lamphu intersection in February. Yes, I know Thailand and the law and money are inextricably entwined but I still find it horrible that victims find themselves in these invidious positions when they have done nothing wrong except been caught waiting for the lights to change.  

 

Premchai the Panther Popper and Boss the Cop Dragger both followed predictable jungle paths. Public clamor for the heads of both is big especially in the fresher case of the Ital-Thai tycoon’s “Leopard Laap” but forbidding him from leaving the country may only mean one thing – tea with Taksin and his sister at Harrod’s in the near future.

 

Boss, the authorities now conclude, is out of their reach.

 

Bless – he has been for the best part of six years. If he is ever seen officially in Thailand again you can expect that a further huge wedge has exchanged hands to ensure that a subsequent show trial has but one outcome.

 

Most interesting story of the week – for what it didn’t say as much as what it did – was the Pattaya authorities deciding to employ what they called “special forces” to aid and abet those known as “thetsakit” in enforcing the beach smoking ban.

 

The powers that be – City hall not the coastal resources department - have slapped down the notion of 100,000 baht fines and jail as unworkable and replaced it with a perfect opportunity for shadowy figures and jobsworths to extort the unwary – read foreign tourists.

 

It was open season in upper Sukhumvit when similar signs about 2,000 baht fines for throwing litter went up some years ago and QUOTES – the Queen Of The Eastern Seaboard - will be no different.

 

The whole beach smoking saga is a microcosm of Thai life. It began with the supposed altruism of cleaning up the environment convenient missing the real culprit of plastic bottles that would cost too much. It progressed with the chaos and absurdity of jail and ridiculous fines because no one had planned anything. Then it is ultimately resolved by compromise and the possibility of some petty corruption.

 

Within such stories are reasons why half empty people say they want to leave Thailand while the half full brigade like Rooster sit back, smile…….and enjoy the show.

 

The show can be a long hard slog – rather like watching Ken Dodd, the British comedian legend who died this week at 90. He probably would have called Thailand “tittifilarious” though I don’t recall him ever coming to these shores just like another UK comic who I remember inadvertently, perhaps, who called the kingdom “Thigh-land” on a TV game show.

 

And so to this week’s Rooster awards. The “Some Like it Hot” award goes not to those foreign numpties who sit on Thai beaches turning into “gung haengs” but a US man who probably eats such things in his spicy Som Tam.

 

Jason Rupp from New York made the training pay off by winning a chili eating challenge outlasting several Thais no less.

 

His achievement in downing a 45 chili Papaya Salad will always, perhaps unfortunately, mark him down as a man who “loves prik big time”.

 

While the “In Your Face” award for the promotion of tourism goes to Surachet Hakpal, the “Silence of the Lambs” award for the same reason goes to tourist minister Weerasak Kowsurat.

 

Deputy tourist police commissioner Pol Maj Gen Surachet – Big Joke – pops up everywhere these days solving crime after crime with no connection to visitors except the color of their skin, while Weerasak looks like he is visiting another country, perhaps content to let the cops take the limelight while he sips a Pina Colada somewhere there are less Chinese to bother him.

 

Finally the third and most famous figure of the week to meet their maker was a man who was often asked about the existence of God and had his own amusing way to address the issue – Stephen Hawking.

 

The man was an inspiration to millions not least of all Rooster. Though I couldn’t fathom what he was talking about in his Brief History of Time I admired his fight against the odds and leave you with my favorite quote concerning his battle with motor neurone disease since his twenties:

 

“I felt it was very unfair – why should this happen to me,” he wrote.

 

“At the time I thought my life was over and that I would never realize the potential that I felt I had. But now, 50 years later, I can be quietly satisfied with my life”.

 

That, perhaps, is all any of us can hope for.

 

Rooster

 

 

-- © Copyright Thai Visa News 2018-03-17

[bosun]

A great read as always Rooster! This week I especially enjoyed the tribute to Stephen Hawking

[Andrew Dwyer]

Entertaining as always !!

 

[marginline]

Thank you Rooster.

Sir Ken Dodd's passing greatly saddened me but to lose Stephen Hawking too brought tears to my eyes.

Two great personalities and if I may paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson; gentlemen who most certainly succeeded in leaving us with a better world.

[Soi Dog]

Good observations about Thai officialdom.  Although I have not been able to master the language I have still never failed to be impressed by the treatment I have gotten from Thai officials in immigration and in getting my driver’s license.  Of course being a PR helps a great deal at immigration but when I think how a Thai might fare at the hands of DMV officials in the US I cringe.

[jimmy1967]

'In his bounteous ignorance' .... With your permission, I'm using that....with most of my friends...

Great writing and (linked) humor. One of your best of I may say so....but who am I to comment in my bounteous ignorance 555

[The manic]

gung haengs?  what mean? 

[Rhys]

Bernie would be proud..

[roo860]

Bernie would be proud..

Bernie Winters?

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