The week that was in Thailand news: Wan nee, wan thee neung Mesaa na khrap!

 

 

April the First is many journalists’ idea of a fun day to work. Finding something to hit a funny bone and perhaps even hoodwink the general public is always fun giving a reporter rein to let go from the serious business of generally attempting to get facts correct.

 

Of course in this era of fake news the consumer should be on their guard daily as many sites exist throughout the world with the sole intention of spreading complete falsehood 24/7 for clicks and kicks.

 

Throw in a country like Thailand into that mix of journalistic merriment and mayhem and you have a recipe for eyebrow raising confusion not just at the beginning of April but virtually every day of the year. I am sure today is no different – I mean would you stake your life on all but one of today’s offerings that you might read on Thaivisa today being true?

 

On any given day there are usually many that stretch incredulity to the breaking point. Try it!

 

In my first year as a Thaivisa writer I “borrowed” a friend’s April Fool from many years back. A reporter on a Hounslow free newspaper he had enraged the locals when he said that due to overcrowding at Heathrow the M4 motorway was to be used at selected times as an additional runway. It was a simple matter to do the same with Don Muang and the tollway.

 

My intention was to entertain rather than trick but it is amazing how many fell into the trap nonetheless. In my second year it was all too easy to do likewise with a spoof Songkran water throwing ban – welcomed by many of course as undoubtedly true.

 

My news editor has always been careful about anything too serious on April 1st – he told me that a few years back when the site told readers they could get their visas renewed at 7/11 he was inundated for further information.

 

Even ten months later he was still getting inquiries about how to go about it. Such people probably still believe that spaghetti grows on trees in Italy, as the BBC once famously told its patrons.

 

This week on Thaivisa – not necessarily today – we were once again asked to seriously question the veracity of what we read as Amazing Thailand gave us news aplenty to stretch the boundaries of incredulity.

 

And, unfortunately, it was not all humorous by any means.

 

Top billing had to go to Deputy PM Prawit who announced that the watch scandal was over. “You and whose army?” went up the chorus and rightly so as I would have thought it might have possibly been up to investigators to exonerate him…not his fugliness.

 

But there we have Thailand in a nutshell at times; the blind attempting to lead the blind down blind alleys often employing the tactic of repetition and delay to help make things disappear under that thickest of shag pile that is the Thai rug.

 

Yes, all the Rolex have gone back to his impoverished pals, we were asked to believe, and now he can get back to the serious problem of convincing the electorate that he and his cronies are not as guilty as predecessors of having their sticky fingers in porky pies.

 

One man who must have thought that he had got his March/April calendar skewwhiff was labor rights activist Andy Hall. The exile has now been slapped with a disgraceful 10 million baht compensation bill to pay the pineapple firm he outed for shady labor practices.

 

Though this is a bill that is never likely to be paid it is a reminder of the pathetic nature of the Thai courts who oftentimes see justice as a mere inconvenience to be circumvented for the sake of face and sheer bloody-minded vindictiveness.

 

Apropos, how utterly ridiculous it was to see earlier in the week that a person who left a negative online comment about a Pattaya restaurant is facing legal action. Whilst fully appreciating that individuals and organizations should have recourse to redress maliciousness, this hardly falls into that category.

 

The restaurant should be named and shamed and shunned not for the reason behind the bad posting but for not taking the post on the chin and being diplomatic in handling it with something approaching aplomb. Their very actions speak volumes and such an establishment would never get my custom no matter how acceptable the food.

 

An organization that also never got my baht was Uber who have now quit Thailand and SE Asia selling up to Grab – who won’t get a call from me either. Thailand is one place that needs an almost completely unregulated taxi service as much as yesterday’s Som Tam.

 

Grab – or Uber – may be the answer to real rogues abroad – like those scandalous Black Cab shysters in London who think they can charge what they like because they have “The Knowledge”. Bangkok – in my opinion - has some of the best taxi drivers in the world offering a friendly and extremely reasonable and value for money service.

 

Alright, many will say Rooster has got his rose tinted “wen” on back to front and sideways but I beg to buck the trend of all the Thai bashers who see the “chauffeurs” (as they are referred to in the Thai print media) as one notch down or up from the police.

 

A forum poster even had call to castigate me for defending Pattaya’s cabbies. I was actually just saying it was fair to say that the story about an honest one there was genuine. Frankly, I don’t have a clue about cabs in Pattaya as in 35 years I have only ever taken such transport in Bangkok.

 

Also down in QUOTES – the Queen Of The Eastern Seaboard – we had the denouement to the affair of the western love-makers who went for it on a pipe in March. The couple managed to slip through the fingers of chief Apichai (sorry for the nasty image) and return to “Russia With Love” though he will still go after the person who posted the video who offended something much worse than public morals – the image of the resort.

 

Managing to engage in the kind of “snogging” that meets with public approval was the tattooed lady who managed to fish her Indian looking “friend” out of that black stuff some Pattayans call the sea following an early morning (read late night) dip of folly.

 

He didn’t look as though he particularly wanted saving though the headline writer reminded us that this was a great place to be saved by the “Kiss of Life” from a Thai woman.

 

Top story of the week on Thaivisa was about as far removed from April the First as is possible – especially as it is one of the oldest of apocryphal tales told in Thailand.

 

The story of the westerner who claimed he had lost everything at the hands of his Thai wife and her family came with all the baggage of a Thai soap. The American, or so I was told, hanged himself just meters from where he had burned down his own house.

 

And not just that – the message was there for all to see scribbled on a water tower wall next to his swinging and lifeless body. The sleuths of Thaivisa continued to claim cover-up because he had handcuffed his hands behind his back. What were they expecting? – that he tie them in front of his body so he could save himself with ease?

 

People do the strangest things in suicide and this was not one of them.

 

Forty pages of comments on the forum and Facebook followed the story as everyone pretty much forgot the victim and threw in their two-penneth about the Thai women of their own acquaintance.

 

What is left to be said? Anyone who claims that Thai women are angelic because they go to the temple is as idiotic as those that bash because a bar girl once ripped them off. I ploughed through many of the comments and found not one that enlightened me on the human condition in any way whatsoever.

 

The more interesting back-story to this affair is the disconnection for foreigners living in the kingdom and the provision that exists for those suffering mental health conditions. Help is out there but with many Thais themselves preferring to sweep mental conditions under that shag pile there remains little hope that westerners could find their way to places like Sri Thanya, Bangkok’s oldest “rong ban baa”.

 

Having known relatives with mental health problems I would say that there is help out there, especially in Bangkok, and it is worth persevering if someone close to you is suffering in this way.

 

The week came to a conclusion with illnesses of a far more long standing and no less troublesome nature rearing their ugly heads once more. The British health service warned about picking up some strain of “super resistant gonorrhea” in Thailand after a man returned to his partner with a case that no drugs could treat.

 

Years ago Rooster used to visit a dear old chap called Dr Dixon – or as my friends liked to refer to him……Dicks-on. He had a surgery with another Brit partner between Sois 5 and 7 in Bangkok’s upper Sukhumvit Road.

 

Once while doing a precautionary examination of the Rooster todger he whipped out a huge pair of scissors from under the couch saying “only joking!” Earlier at this initial exploratory meeting, he had drawn a diagram on his desktop in magic marker of what might be happening in what he called “the pipe”.

 

Then came the best one of all – when he inadvertently dropped the slide with the specimen he peered over his glasses cheekily and announced in his Etonian tones: “Not to worry, sir. Jam side up…”

 

Naturally, problems downstairs are no laughing matter and one felt obliged to keep a straight face despite the charming old world bedside manner of this legend of Bangkok, long since gone.

 

Also nabbed this week though not by a British wife was the Swiss man caught entering Thailand illegally after others were entered by him in his homeland where he was known to have HIV. What is the charge named on the Interpol notice I wonder?

 

Does it constitute assault with a deadly weapon, perhaps?

 

On a lighter note two stories caught my eye. The first concerned a group of tourists pictured with a stack of ten baht coins playing cards with diving apparatus under the sea. The Thai authorities must have been pretty confident that this was not Krabi as some online had suggested because you could be sure they would go after the posters whether they were seriously gambling or just winding everyone up.

 

I liked the headline about gambling under the sea that could land the miscreants in hot water. With the temperatures in Thailand shooting up recently that is exactly what the sea here is like already!

 

It was also amusing, and not altogether surprising, to see billions wiped off the share price of the energy drink Carabao. Their shocking cock-ups in the draws for the Carabao Cup football tournament in England hardly inspired confidence in the company.

 

Rooster used to drink only Lipo in the days when they had prizes in the lids – oh, how I remember the ecstasy of getting 5 baht back once…..These days I am committed to M-150 and am still amazed that they keep the price down to a bargain basement 10 baht a hit.

 

Posters have, in recent years, been calling for a boycott of Red Bull because of the shenanigans of Boss the company heir.

 

I wonder if those same people in their Thai language oblivion still go into 7/11……

 

……and ask for a bottle of Krathing Daeng?

 

Rooster

 

 

-- © Copyright Thai Visa News 2018-03-31

34 minutes ago, rooster59 said:

What is left to be said? Anyone who claims that Thai women are angelic because they go to the temple is as idiotic as those that bash because a bar girl once ripped them off.

Spot on.......!!

1 hour ago, rooster59 said:

skewwhiff

The two Ws do not look right. Should it not be hyphenated, or two separate words. Must ask Susie Dent.

1 minute ago, wgdanson said:

The two Ws do not look right. Should it not be hyphenated, or two separate words. Must ask Susie Dent.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/skew-whiff

 

Edited March 31, 20188 yr by wgdanson

16 hours ago, rooster59 said:

I liked the headline about gambling under the sea that could land the miscreants in hot water.

Reminded me of a recent TV news story about flash floods in Cairns, Australia.

The junior reporter on the spot described the situation as fluid. Neither he, nor the studio, seemed to notice. 

17 hours ago, rooster59 said:

I ploughed through many of the comments and found not one that enlightened me on the human condition in any way whatsoever.

I'll give you points for endurance on that one Rooster...

I gave up before page 10.

30 minutes ago, Jonah Tenner said:

I'll give you points for endurance on that one Rooster...

I gave up before page 10.

I didn't make it past page one and am wondering, how many pages the news about "connect four" or as we call it "4 x 4" will generate, as it sounds quiet realistic but i couldn't imagine the last two phrases lasting longer than april the first..

18 hours ago, rooster59 said:

forum poster even had call to castigate me for defending Pattaya’s cabbies.

A better April Fool's statement would have been " Apichai, chief of Pattaya Plod was quoted as saying without the regular contributions from the meterless taximeters the local police force would have to buy its own air con units."

Did Rooster write today's contribution? He seems a bit more serious today.

We all visited Dr. Dixon in those days! You captured him perfectly!

 

Wish I knew more of his biography and how to wound up here...

A tough read!!!

 

5 hours ago, Stevemercer said:

Did Rooster write today's contribution? He seems a bit more serious today.

He did. He was feeling a bit more serious this week...perhaps the connect four story drained the humor out of him....

Thanks for the entertaining read.

Geezer

In my day it was "Pinch, punch, first day of the month - AND NO RETURNS"

"Jam side up" 5555 Luv it!

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