The week that was in Thailand news: Keep your teeth in – it’s “Sensible Songkran!”

[rooster59]

The week that was in Thailand news: Keep your teeth in – it’s “Sensible Songkran!”

 

 

Last year Rooster got quite a lot of criticism for being an old fuddy-duddy for hating Songkran so excessively, so this year I have turned over a new, if somewhat belated leaf.

 

I love Songkran. Yikes! The words nearly got stuck in my throat and the cold coffee was almost spewed out over the keyboard. How could one say such a thing. It’s a bit like enjoying Christmas.

 

The reality is that Rooster likes a bit of “sanuk” and I have lived in Thailand long enough to know that it is pointless trying to constantly beat the lovely Thais. So there are times I may as well bite the 9mm shell and join them.

 

Of course there is also a back story; indeed many an ulterior motive exists to my apparent change of heart from last year that saw me flee to Perth, Australia, to play in the Aussie Scrabble Championships as the Thais were wetting themselves silly.

 

Firstly there is no decent Scrabble anywhere around the world this week and secondly with Mrs Rooster and the kids off the premises visiting with up country gran in Loei for a month, staying home in Bangkok seems like the very best idea for the holidays.

 

In truth, Bangkok is actually a great place at Songkran. Like my infinitely better half, a huge number of the population disappears every mid-April to the countryside – it resembles what Phnom Penh must have been like in the 1970s but without the threat of being put to death for being intelligent.

 

There is also very little threat of water splashing unless you count the kids across the soi from chez Rooster who can easily be hoodwinked into believing I have an expensive camera in my pocket with a few well-chosen Thai words of warning.

 

While avoiding places like Silom and Khao San Road is easy as I never go there anyway so yes, count me in,  I love Songkran!

 

Whether others will echo those words over the next ten days or so remains to be seen. About 700 people won’t be here at the end of the holidays thanks to road accidents but I expect most of them will come back and enjoy a good splash in another life later on, so not to worry.

 

The authorities certainly won’t when they announce a 0.7% reduction in the death toll again.

 

This week on Thaivisa the “Songkran circus” was in full swing with the government even proposing that civil servants from the police down (yes it is possible to get lower than the constabulary) being urged to dress up in old style clothes like the hit TV series “Love Destiny” that everybody except me seems to be watching.

 

Crime buster Big Joke – Surachet of the Tourist Police Bureau – donned the attire of a courtier at a function in Bangkok though the Chief of Police Jakthip went for a much funnier costume…his regular tunic.

 

QUOTES – Queen Of The Eastern Seaboard - station chief Pol Col Apichai joined in the holiday revelry by earnestly advising Pattaya women not to go about naked though he stopped short of banning wet t-shirts.

 

And everyone burbled on about having a very “Sensible Songkran” carefree and lovely-jubbly, safe and sound, hunky dory….you name it. It reminded me of that lovely Thai expression “huaro fan ruang” – to laugh until your teeth fall out.

 

After living in Thailand for the best part of four decades I often wonder where I put my dentures.

 

Actually, ever since I was a teacher of Thai culture I have been proposing “Sensible Songkran” and I will let you into a secret – those headlines across Thaivisa this week are all my own work.

 

You see years ago I taught the topic of “Sensible Songkran” to primary school students at my school, Harrow International in Don Meuang. I reminded the nippers of the rich and famous Thai hi-sos, and even some from relatively normal if wealthy foreign backgrounds, how they ought to behave at Songkran according to old fashioned Thai values.

 

We had a list of “Do’s and Don’t’s” to promote politeness and good behavior. Even by 1998, when I started the course, Songkran had gone for the relative sanity of the early 1980s to utter, unbridled, end of the century mayhem.

 

I sometimes wonder if any of those seven and eight year olds remember my pronouncements today as they perhaps tell their own children to be polite at Thai New Year.

 

I wouldn’t hold my breath on that one……as Alan Bennett wrote in his nostalgic play “Forty Years On” (the name of the Harrow School song), most of what I taught in my career probably just went up one Thai trouser leg and down the other.

 

Apart from being sensible we have also been exhorted to be safe at Songkran. Though the authorities who promise us such wonderful “convenience” in return for our compliance actually pay aforesaid lip service to lessening the danger.

 

Claiming that Thailand was indeed safe this week was His Quietness the Tourism Minister Weerasak Kowsurat. Problematically, the statement from his own press arm about safety used the non-existent word “assuted”.

 

I do hope he meant assured and not assaulted, but who can be sure these days!

 

Dressed in fetching “ratchathan” pants and white socks he reminded Thais everywhere to be good hosts at Songkran and protect and help those golden eggs, I mean tourists.

 

Make sure they get to ER, he was probably thinking, as he prepared those baskets of fruit and chicken essence in case things go pear shaped like they did for the Owen family two years ago who were attacked and spent Songkran in a Hua Hin hospital.

 

Apropos Apichai’s comments about women covering up Thai/US supermodel Cindy Sirinya Bishop had a few choice words for the victim blamers who like to wear brown and khaki and tell people how to live their lives.

 

In short she told the junta to stick it up their humper….

 

On the subject of whom it was encouraging to see an excellent interview with a prominent Thai pro-democracy activist in a popular Bangkok newspaper. Rangsiman Rome – who I couldn’t possible agree with for the reason that I enjoy my liberty – wins my award for best comment of the week for saying that his aim in life was not to go into politics but just to see the honchos of the NCPO jailed one day.

 

Brave Rangsiman may look to South Korea where Ms Park the former president was jailed for 24 years this week for corruption. He may cast his eyes to Brazil where popular ex-leader Lula faces 12 years after a Supreme Court judgment. He may even have seen the news as Zuma in South Africa battles incarceration.

 

But if he looks in the mirror while shaving he might see Big Too grinning over his shoulder and mouthing the words: “But this is Thailand young man!”

 

Successful or not in their endeavors Rangsiman and his like have the pocket general flustered especially as this time next year he might even be officially accountable. This week he burbled on about the Shinawatra siblings who he said “should be ashamed of themselves” for appearing in public.

 

Bless! Generals like this eschew irony of course but he really should have stopped digging a bunker for himself right there. When asked about Thailand’s former CEO and his sis, Prayut petulantly said in the biggest porky pie of the last seven days: “I don’t think about them”.

 

Providing at least as much regimental light relief as the PM’s latest absurd utterance was the annual hullabaloo that is the army’s draft pick.

 

Every 22 year old lady boy in the country was strutting their stuff and showing their doctor’s certificates to confirm that even if they still pack meat and two veg their tastes are not what it says on their birth details.

 

Most claimed they really wanted to serve King and Country and not dodge the draft but this did look like a decidedly dodgy draft.

 

The recruiting officers, naturally for they are Thai, thought it was hilarious, and the press had the usual up-country field day while all Rooster will say is that if some were pretty…..most were pretty ugly.

 

Not the sort of chap one would take home to mother, as we stiff upper lip British would say.

 

Far less amusing this week was the prevalence of road rage on the nation’s streets that threatens to usurp bad driving in the public consciousness even though three examples of the latter were named for cash prizes in some bizarre Daily News dash-cam awards.

 

Perhaps the “Road Rage Oscars” are next and top of the list for the last seven days goes to the young man who dispatched a taxi driver just around the corner from me in Saphan Mai for cutting him up on Pahonyothin Road where the Green Line is being built.

 

Goodness knows the traffic madness during the construction of these mega projects in Krung Thep is bad enough without going equipped with a knife and a bad attitude and confronting a fellow driver over something so minor as a bit of hooting or cutting in.

 

Frankly, you wouldn’t find Rooster getting out of his car for any reason – unless I saw a ten baht coin in the street, of course.

 

Other road rage featured a pick-up driver kicking a motorist’s windscreen to smithereens probably because he beat her away at the previous lights – nothing would surprise me anymore.

 

With incidents like this my mind goes back to Swanley in Kent in the UK in the 1990s when an older man losing a fight stabbed a young male to death near a roundabout in broad daylight.

 

Billed as road rage that was becoming more prevalent in England at the time, the story took on a far greater significance when it was discovered that the perpetrator was none other than millionaire gangster Kenneth Noye who had got away with killing a cop and was involved in smelting the gold from the infamous Brinks Mat bullion robbery.

 

Top forum comment of the week referred to the story about an Australian man who had taken a hooker (not a rugby player incidentally) to his room and been relieved of $4,900 dollars he had lying about. Wag “Champers”, referring to disgraced antipodean cricket captain Smith, said it topically best when commenting:

 

“More Aussie ball tampering”.

 

Of course he may not have been Australian at all…he looked more Austrian!

 

Such tongue in cheek skullduggery was part of my April Fool’s Day offering last Sunday about the banning of “Connect Four” that appeared next to this very column.

 

Of course, many posters twigged right away which was hardly surprising given the obvious clues Rooster laid before all and sundry.

 

While the Australian/Austrian conundrum could have been overlooked who in their right mind was not going to see through the misunderstanding of “You Bet” or the blatant reference to spokesman Khun Lorlen Wantheeneungmesa (Mr Joke on April 1st) and his “handy brown envelopes”.

 

My thanks to the moderators who were ready to remove posts from all those who caught on straight away and further “khop khuns” to the many posters who played along with some superb and amusing fun of their own.

 

As I warned in this column the week before, I accept that the basic premise of the story, especially in Thailand with its bridge and dartboards, could well have been true. But most of all I want to express my truly heartfelt appreciation for the comments of those who were genuinely hoodwinked by the hoax.

 

You made my Sunday……even if my teeth fell out.

 

Rooster.

 

 

-- © Copyright Thai Visa News 2018-04-07

[Andrew Dwyer]

Thanks Rooster, as always you brought a smile to my face !!

[nausea]

I just got this weirdest feeling of déjà vu.

[maccastime]

A great read good sense of humour there Rooster. As for Songkran I have experienced it in Pattaya twice, never ever again goes on far too long. Most of the drunken farangs pitching ice cold water about, if asked what is Songkran they would have no idea. Better off celebrating Songkran in quiter towns like Hua Hin it goes for 1 or 2 days. A few of my expat mates in Pattaya get out at this time of year either head back to Uk or Aus

[Tradewind777]

Good story telling as always Rooster. From the fancy dress code to LB soldiers, one never has to look far to find irony and giggle-worthy content in the LoS. That you capture it with such deftness melded with British humour is a good start to the new week ahead. Happy Songkran Rooster and to all TV regulars. Will tune in this time next week to hear about the weird true and freaky (W.T.F) that happened over the holiday.

[masuk]

Here in Chiang Mai it's a fun time for all.  Yes, there are a few drunken farangs, but they stay at their end of town.

 

 

[JRUSA]

3 hours ago, maccastime said:

A great read good sense of humour there Rooster. As for Songkran I have experienced it in Pattaya twice, never ever again goes on far too long. Most of the drunken farangs pitching ice cold water about, if asked what is Songkran they would have no idea. Better off celebrating Songkran in quiter towns like Hua Hin it goes for 1 or 2 days. A few of my expat mates in Pattaya get out at this time of year either head back to Uk or Aus

Question... I'm not a night person, is it safe before noon to venture out to get groceries... or should I truly get weeks worth Tuesday...with 55,000 baht hearing aids water in the ear is not my friend..

[maccastime]

1 hour ago, JRUSA said:

Question... I'm not a night person, is it safe before noon to venture out to get groceries... or should I truly get weeks worth Tuesday...with 55,000 baht hearing aids water in the ear is not my friend..

The water throwing may even start the official day before so I would suggest try to avoid bar areas if you want to stay dry at any time of day. Or you will get drenched

[The manic]

5 hours ago, maccastime said:

A great read good sense of humour there Rooster. As for Songkran I have experienced it in Pattaya twice, never ever again goes on far too long. Most of the drunken farangs pitching ice cold water about, if asked what is Songkran they would have no idea. Better off celebrating Songkran in quiter towns like Hua Hin it goes for 1 or 2 days. A few of my expat mates in Pattaya get out at this time of year either head back to Uk or Aus

last year I went to Saigon,the year before,Hanoi, this year, Hainan, 

[Jonmarleesco]

5 hours ago, maccastime said:

A great read good sense of humour there Rooster. As for Songkran I have experienced it in Pattaya twice, never ever again goes on far too long. Most of the drunken farangs pitching ice cold water about, if asked what is Songkran they would have no idea. Better off celebrating Songkran in quiter towns like Hua Hin it goes for 1 or 2 days. A few of my expat mates in Pattaya get out at this time of year either head back to Uk or Aus

'Better off celebrating Songkran in quiter towns like Hua Hin it goes for 1 or 2 days.'

 

Not even that. A day and done. 

[ericthai]

7 hours ago, Jonmarleesco said:

'Better off celebrating Songkran in quiter towns like Hua Hin it goes for 1 or 2 days.'

 

Not even that. A day and done. 

I always enjoyed bangkok during song kran, no traffic, very few people. There is a chance of getting wet if walking around, but not much if you dont go near tourist areas.  

[The manic]

On 4/8/2018 at 11:14 AM, masuk said:

Here in Chiang Mai it's a fun time for all.  Yes, there are a few drunken farangs, but they stay at their end of town.

 

 

The water thrown in CM is fetid ditchwater.

[Aussie69]

The week that was in Thailand news: Keep your teeth in – it’s “Sensible Songkran!”
 

 
Last year Rooster got quite a lot of criticism for being an old fuddy-duddy for hating Songkran so excessively, so this year I have turned over a new, if somewhat belated leaf.
 
I love Songkran. Yikes! The words nearly got stuck in my throat and the cold coffee was almost spewed out over the keyboard. How could one say such a thing. It’s a bit like enjoying Christmas.
 
The reality is that Rooster likes a bit of “sanuk” and I have lived in Thailand long enough to know that it is pointless trying to constantly beat the lovely Thais. So there are times I may as well bite the 9mm shell and join them.
 
Of course there is also a back story; indeed many an ulterior motive exists to my apparent change of heart from last year that saw me flee to Perth, Australia, to play in the Aussie Scrabble Championships as the Thais were wetting themselves silly.
 
Firstly there is no decent Scrabble anywhere around the world this week and secondly with Mrs Rooster and the kids off the premises visiting with up country gran in Loei for a month, staying home in Bangkok seems like the very best idea for the holidays.
 
In truth, Bangkok is actually a great place at Songkran. Like my infinitely better half, a huge number of the population disappears every mid-April to the countryside – it resembles what Phnom Penh must have been like in the 1970s but without the threat of being put to death for being intelligent.
 
There is also very little threat of water splashing unless you count the kids across the soi from chez Rooster who can easily be hoodwinked into believing I have an expensive camera in my pocket with a few well-chosen Thai words of warning.
 
While avoiding places like Silom and Khao San Road is easy as I never go there anyway so yes, count me in,  I love Songkran!
 
Whether others will echo those words over the next ten days or so remains to be seen. About 700 people won’t be here at the end of the holidays thanks to road accidents but I expect most of them will come back and enjoy a good splash in another life later on, so not to worry.
 
The authorities certainly won’t when they announce a 0.7% reduction in the death toll again.
 
This week on Thaivisa the “Songkran circus” was in full swing with the government even proposing that civil servants from the police down (yes it is possible to get lower than the constabulary) being urged to dress up in old style clothes like the hit TV series “Love Destiny” that everybody except me seems to be watching.
 
Crime buster Big Joke – Surachet of the Tourist Police Bureau – donned the attire of a courtier at a function in Bangkok though the Chief of Police Jakthip went for a much funnier costume…his regular tunic.
 
QUOTES – Queen Of The Eastern Seaboard - station chief Pol Col Apichai joined in the holiday revelry by earnestly advising Pattaya women not to go about naked though he stopped short of banning wet t-shirts.
 
And everyone burbled on about having a very “Sensible Songkran” carefree and lovely-jubbly, safe and sound, hunky dory….you name it. It reminded me of that lovely Thai expression “huaro fan ruang” – to laugh until your teeth fall out.
 
After living in Thailand for the best part of four decades I often wonder where I put my dentures.
 
Actually, ever since I was a teacher of Thai culture I have been proposing “Sensible Songkran” and I will let you into a secret – those headlines across Thaivisa this week are all my own work.
 
You see years ago I taught the topic of “Sensible Songkran” to primary school students at my school, Harrow International in Don Meuang. I reminded the nippers of the rich and famous Thai hi-sos, and even some from relatively normal if wealthy foreign backgrounds, how they ought to behave at Songkran according to old fashioned Thai values.
 
We had a list of “Do’s and Don’t’s” to promote politeness and good behavior. Even by 1998, when I started the course, Songkran had gone for the relative sanity of the early 1980s to utter, unbridled, end of the century mayhem.
 
I sometimes wonder if any of those seven and eight year olds remember my pronouncements today as they perhaps tell their own children to be polite at Thai New Year.
 
I wouldn’t hold my breath on that one……as Alan Bennett wrote in his nostalgic play “Forty Years On” (the name of the Harrow School song), most of what I taught in my career probably just went up one Thai trouser leg and down the other.
 
Apart from being sensible we have also been exhorted to be safe at Songkran. Though the authorities who promise us such wonderful “convenience” in return for our compliance actually pay aforesaid lip service to lessening the danger.
 
Claiming that Thailand was indeed safe this week was His Quietness the Tourism Minister Weerasak Kowsurat. Problematically, the statement from his own press arm about safety used the non-existent word “assuted”.
 
I do hope he meant assured and not assaulted, but who can be sure these days!
 
Dressed in fetching “ratchathan” pants and white socks he reminded Thais everywhere to be good hosts at Songkran and protect and help those golden eggs, I mean tourists.
 
Make sure they get to ER, he was probably thinking, as he prepared those baskets of fruit and chicken essence in case things go pear shaped like they did for the Owen family two years ago who were attacked and spent Songkran in a Hua Hin hospital.
 
Apropos Apichai’s comments about women covering up Thai/US supermodel Cindy Sirinya Bishop had a few choice words for the victim blamers who like to wear brown and khaki and tell people how to live their lives.
 
In short she told the junta to stick it up their humper….
 
On the subject of whom it was encouraging to see an excellent interview with a prominent Thai pro-democracy activist in a popular Bangkok newspaper. Rangsiman Rome – who I couldn’t possible agree with for the reason that I enjoy my liberty – wins my award for best comment of the week for saying that his aim in life was not to go into politics but just to see the honchos of the NCPO jailed one day.
 
Brave Rangsiman may look to South Korea where Ms Park the former president was jailed for 24 years this week for corruption. He may cast his eyes to Brazil where popular ex-leader Lula faces 12 years after a Supreme Court judgment. He may even have seen the news as Zuma in South Africa battles incarceration.
 
But if he looks in the mirror while shaving he might see Big Too grinning over his shoulder and mouthing the words: “But this is Thailand young man!”
 
Successful or not in their endeavors Rangsiman and his like have the pocket general flustered especially as this time next year he might even be officially accountable. This week he burbled on about the Shinawatra siblings who he said “should be ashamed of themselves” for appearing in public.
 
Bless! Generals like this eschew irony of course but he really should have stopped digging a bunker for himself right there. When asked about Thailand’s former CEO and his sis, Prayut petulantly said in the biggest porky pie of the last seven days: “I don’t think about them”.
 
Providing at least as much regimental light relief as the PM’s latest absurd utterance was the annual hullabaloo that is the army’s draft pick.
 
Every 22 year old lady boy in the country was strutting their stuff and showing their doctor’s certificates to confirm that even if they still pack meat and two veg their tastes are not what it says on their birth details.
 
Most claimed they really wanted to serve King and Country and not dodge the draft but this did look like a decidedly dodgy draft.
 
The recruiting officers, naturally for they are Thai, thought it was hilarious, and the press had the usual up-country field day while all Rooster will say is that if some were pretty…..most were pretty ugly.
 
Not the sort of chap one would take home to mother, as we stiff upper lip British would say.
 
Far less amusing this week was the prevalence of road rage on the nation’s streets that threatens to usurp bad driving in the public consciousness even though three examples of the latter were named for cash prizes in some bizarre Daily News dash-cam awards.
 
Perhaps the “Road Rage Oscars” are next and top of the list for the last seven days goes to the young man who dispatched a taxi driver just around the corner from me in Saphan Mai for cutting him up on Pahonyothin Road where the Green Line is being built.
 
Goodness knows the traffic madness during the construction of these mega projects in Krung Thep is bad enough without going equipped with a knife and a bad attitude and confronting a fellow driver over something so minor as a bit of hooting or cutting in.
 
Frankly, you wouldn’t find Rooster getting out of his car for any reason – unless I saw a ten baht coin in the street, of course.
 
Other road rage featured a pick-up driver kicking a motorist’s windscreen to smithereens probably because he beat her away at the previous lights – nothing would surprise me anymore.
 
With incidents like this my mind goes back to Swanley in Kent in the UK in the 1990s when an older man losing a fight stabbed a young male to death near a roundabout in broad daylight.
 
Billed as road rage that was becoming more prevalent in England at the time, the story took on a far greater significance when it was discovered that the perpetrator was none other than millionaire gangster Kenneth Noye who had got away with killing a cop and was involved in smelting the gold from the infamous Brinks Mat bullion robbery.
 
Top forum comment of the week referred to the story about an Australian man who had taken a hooker (not a rugby player incidentally) to his room and been relieved of $4,900 dollars he had lying about. Wag “Champers”, referring to disgraced antipodean cricket captain Smith, said it topically best when commenting:
 
“More Aussie ball tampering”.
 
Of course he may not have been Australian at all…he looked more Austrian!
 
Such tongue in cheek skullduggery was part of my April Fool’s Day offering last Sunday about the banning of “Connect Four” that appeared next to this very column.
 
Of course, many posters twigged right away which was hardly surprising given the obvious clues Rooster laid before all and sundry.
 
While the Australian/Austrian conundrum could have been overlooked who in their right mind was not going to see through the misunderstanding of “You Bet” or the blatant reference to spokesman Khun Lorlen Wantheeneungmesa (Mr Joke on April 1st) and his “handy brown envelopes”.
 
My thanks to the moderators who were ready to remove posts from all those who caught on straight away and further “khop khuns” to the many posters who played along with some superb and amusing fun of their own.
 
As I warned in this column the week before, I accept that the basic premise of the story, especially in Thailand with its bridge and dartboards, could well have been true. But most of all I want to express my truly heartfelt appreciation for the comments of those who were genuinely hoodwinked by the hoax.
 
You made my Sunday……even if my teeth fell out.
 
Rooster.
 
  -- [emoji767] Copyright Thai Visa News 2018-04-07

Always excellent weekly round ups. BTW have you ever seen the documentary 'Word Wars' (2004).? I think you like.

[dbrenn]

Modern Songkran is a vile abomination of a once charming festival.

[Jane Dough]

On 4/13/2018 at 3:40 PM, Aussie69 said:

On 4/7/2018 at 4:35 PM, rooster59 said:

The week that was in Thailand news: Keep your teeth in – it’s “Sensible Songkran!”
 

 
Last year Rooster got quite a lot of criticism for being an old fuddy-duddy for hating Songkran so excessively, so this year I have turned over a new, if somewhat belated leaf.
 
I love Songkran. Yikes! The words nearly got stuck in my throat and the cold coffee was almost spewed out over the keyboard. How could one say such a thing. It’s a bit like enjoying Christmas.
 
The reality is that Rooster likes a bit of “sanuk” and I have lived in Thailand long enough to know that it is pointless trying to constantly beat the lovely Thais. So there are times I may as well bite the 9mm shell and join them.
 
Of course there is also a back story; indeed many an ulterior motive exists to my apparent change of heart from last year that saw me flee to Perth, Australia, to play in the Aussie Scrabble Championships as the Thais were wetting themselves silly.
 
Firstly there is no decent Scrabble anywhere around the world this week and secondly with Mrs Rooster and the kids off the premises visiting with up country gran in Loei for a month, staying home in Bangkok seems like the very best idea for the holidays.
 
In truth, Bangkok is actually a great place at Songkran. Like my infinitely better half, a huge number of the population disappears every mid-April to the countryside – it resembles what Phnom Penh must have been like in the 1970s but without the threat of being put to death for being intelligent.
 
There is also very little threat of water splashing unless you count the kids across the soi from chez Rooster who can easily be hoodwinked into believing I have an expensive camera in my pocket with a few well-chosen Thai words of warning.
 
While avoiding places like Silom and Khao San Road is easy as I never go there anyway so yes, count me in,  I love Songkran!
 
Whether others will echo those words over the next ten days or so remains to be seen. About 700 people won’t be here at the end of the holidays thanks to road accidents but I expect most of them will come back and enjoy a good splash in another life later on, so not to worry.
 
The authorities certainly won’t when they announce a 0.7% reduction in the death toll again.
 
This week on Thaivisa the “Songkran circus” was in full swing with the government even proposing that civil servants from the police down (yes it is possible to get lower than the constabulary) being urged to dress up in old style clothes like the hit TV series “Love Destiny” that everybody except me seems to be watching.
 
Crime buster Big Joke – Surachet of the Tourist Police Bureau – donned the attire of a courtier at a function in Bangkok though the Chief of Police Jakthip went for a much funnier costume…his regular tunic.
 
QUOTES – Queen Of The Eastern Seaboard - station chief Pol Col Apichai joined in the holiday revelry by earnestly advising Pattaya women not to go about naked though he stopped short of banning wet t-shirts.
 
And everyone burbled on about having a very “Sensible Songkran” carefree and lovely-jubbly, safe and sound, hunky dory….you name it. It reminded me of that lovely Thai expression “huaro fan ruang” – to laugh until your teeth fall out.
 
After living in Thailand for the best part of four decades I often wonder where I put my dentures.
 
Actually, ever since I was a teacher of Thai culture I have been proposing “Sensible Songkran” and I will let you into a secret – those headlines across Thaivisa this week are all my own work.
 
You see years ago I taught the topic of “Sensible Songkran” to primary school students at my school, Harrow International in Don Meuang. I reminded the nippers of the rich and famous Thai hi-sos, and even some from relatively normal if wealthy foreign backgrounds, how they ought to behave at Songkran according to old fashioned Thai values.
 
We had a list of “Do’s and Don’t’s” to promote politeness and good behavior. Even by 1998, when I started the course, Songkran had gone for the relative sanity of the early 1980s to utter, unbridled, end of the century mayhem.
 
I sometimes wonder if any of those seven and eight year olds remember my pronouncements today as they perhaps tell their own children to be polite at Thai New Year.
 
I wouldn’t hold my breath on that one……as Alan Bennett wrote in his nostalgic play “Forty Years On” (the name of the Harrow School song), most of what I taught in my career probably just went up one Thai trouser leg and down the other.
 
Apart from being sensible we have also been exhorted to be safe at Songkran. Though the authorities who promise us such wonderful “convenience” in return for our compliance actually pay aforesaid lip service to lessening the danger.
 
Claiming that Thailand was indeed safe this week was His Quietness the Tourism Minister Weerasak Kowsurat. Problematically, the statement from his own press arm about safety used the non-existent word “assuted”.
 
I do hope he meant assured and not assaulted, but who can be sure these days!
 
Dressed in fetching “ratchathan” pants and white socks he reminded Thais everywhere to be good hosts at Songkran and protect and help those golden eggs, I mean tourists.
 
Make sure they get to ER, he was probably thinking, as he prepared those baskets of fruit and chicken essence in case things go pear shaped like they did for the Owen family two years ago who were attacked and spent Songkran in a Hua Hin hospital.
 
Apropos Apichai’s comments about women covering up Thai/US supermodel Cindy Sirinya Bishop had a few choice words for the victim blamers who like to wear brown and khaki and tell people how to live their lives.
 
In short she told the junta to stick it up their humper….
 
On the subject of whom it was encouraging to see an excellent interview with a prominent Thai pro-democracy activist in a popular Bangkok newspaper. Rangsiman Rome – who I couldn’t possible agree with for the reason that I enjoy my liberty – wins my award for best comment of the week for saying that his aim in life was not to go into politics but just to see the honchos of the NCPO jailed one day.
 
Brave Rangsiman may look to South Korea where Ms Park the former president was jailed for 24 years this week for corruption. He may cast his eyes to Brazil where popular ex-leader Lula faces 12 years after a Supreme Court judgment. He may even have seen the news as Zuma in South Africa battles incarceration.
 
But if he looks in the mirror while shaving he might see Big Too grinning over his shoulder and mouthing the words: “But this is Thailand young man!”
 
Successful or not in their endeavors Rangsiman and his like have the pocket general flustered especially as this time next year he might even be officially accountable. This week he burbled on about the Shinawatra siblings who he said “should be ashamed of themselves” for appearing in public.
 
Bless! Generals like this eschew irony of course but he really should have stopped digging a bunker for himself right there. When asked about Thailand’s former CEO and his sis, Prayut petulantly said in the biggest porky pie of the last seven days: “I don’t think about them”.
 
Providing at least as much regimental light relief as the PM’s latest absurd utterance was the annual hullabaloo that is the army’s draft pick.
 
Every 22 year old lady boy in the country was strutting their stuff and showing their doctor’s certificates to confirm that even if they still pack meat and two veg their tastes are not what it says on their birth details.
 
Most claimed they really wanted to serve King and Country and not dodge the draft but this did look like a decidedly dodgy draft.
 
The recruiting officers, naturally for they are Thai, thought it was hilarious, and the press had the usual up-country field day while all Rooster will say is that if some were pretty…..most were pretty ugly.
 
Not the sort of chap one would take home to mother, as we stiff upper lip British would say.
 
Far less amusing this week was the prevalence of road rage on the nation’s streets that threatens to usurp bad driving in the public consciousness even though three examples of the latter were named for cash prizes in some bizarre Daily News dash-cam awards.
 
Perhaps the “Road Rage Oscars” are next and top of the list for the last seven days goes to the young man who dispatched a taxi driver just around the corner from me in Saphan Mai for cutting him up on Pahonyothin Road where the Green Line is being built.
 
Goodness knows the traffic madness during the construction of these mega projects in Krung Thep is bad enough without going equipped with a knife and a bad attitude and confronting a fellow driver over something so minor as a bit of hooting or cutting in.
 
Frankly, you wouldn’t find Rooster getting out of his car for any reason – unless I saw a ten baht coin in the street, of course.
 
Other road rage featured a pick-up driver kicking a motorist’s windscreen to smithereens probably because he beat her away at the previous lights – nothing would surprise me anymore.
 
With incidents like this my mind goes back to Swanley in Kent in the UK in the 1990s when an older man losing a fight stabbed a young male to death near a roundabout in broad daylight.
 
Billed as road rage that was becoming more prevalent in England at the time, the story took on a far greater significance when it was discovered that the perpetrator was none other than millionaire gangster Kenneth Noye who had got away with killing a cop and was involved in smelting the gold from the infamous Brinks Mat bullion robbery.
 
Top forum comment of the week referred to the story about an Australian man who had taken a hooker (not a rugby player incidentally) to his room and been relieved of $4,900 dollars he had lying about. Wag “Champers”, referring to disgraced antipodean cricket captain Smith, said it topically best when commenting:
 
“More Aussie ball tampering”.
 
Of course he may not have been Australian at all…he looked more Austrian!
 
Such tongue in cheek skullduggery was part of my April Fool’s Day offering last Sunday about the banning of “Connect Four” that appeared next to this very column.
 
Of course, many posters twigged right away which was hardly surprising given the obvious clues Rooster laid before all and sundry.
 
While the Australian/Austrian conundrum could have been overlooked who in their right mind was not going to see through the misunderstanding of “You Bet” or the blatant reference to spokesman Khun Lorlen Wantheeneungmesa (Mr Joke on April 1st) and his “handy brown envelopes”.
 
My thanks to the moderators who were ready to remove posts from all those who caught on straight away and further “khop khuns” to the many posters who played along with some superb and amusing fun of their own.
 
As I warned in this column the week before, I accept that the basic premise of the story, especially in Thailand with its bridge and dartboards, could well have been true. But most of all I want to express my truly heartfelt appreciation for the comments of those who were genuinely hoodwinked by the hoax.
 
You made my Sunday……even if my teeth fell out.
 
Rooster.
 
  -- Copyright Thai Visa News 2018-04-07

Always excellent weekly round ups. BTW have you ever seen the documentary 'Word Wars' (2004).? I think you like.

Seen it? I personally know virtually everyone in it!