The week that was in Thailand news: The more things change the more they stay the same

[rooster59]

The week that was in Thailand news: The more things change the more they stay the same

 

Thaivisa unveiled its new logo this week

 

Change seemed to be in the air throughout Thailand this week. A mayor was dumped, nearly 2000 vans were declared illegal and horror of all horrors...our favorite news website got a fresh and "fruity" new look! 

 

The stress of change can cause palpitations of all sorts so no wonder that many posters were thrilled that marijuana might be legal in the kingdom one day. Just to calm the nerves!

 

But while the portents of change seemed to be everywhere, for those watching Thailand who know its past as well as its present there was perhaps an equal sense of foreboding that the more things change the more they stay the same.

 

I once met a Thai woman who said that it was her claim to fame that she had slept with Don Bon Jovi. I do wish she had told me that before I took her "out" for the night.

 

Their lyrics of the same title as my "Sunday sermon"  got me thinking about all the change being proposed and that which became fait accompli this week. Some of it occurred with little consultation which always makes change more acerbic. 

 

The first change - and a story that has featured at the top of the news for the best part of two weeks -  was decidedly unwelcome for two unfortunate people in Phrae. I say change but it was more of what the Thais see as a transition; the transition of one life to another. 

 

The murder of British man Alan Hogg and his Thai spouse, both in their sixties, caused much understandable fury and more than a little forum unease especially among the expats the other side of 50 living in rural Thailand with a few bob to their name and nearby relatives whose motives they doubt. 

 

Mr Hogg, who had clearly acquired some degree of wealth, was shot while his wife was dispatched with a few hammer blows before the brother of the Thai woman - who else? many asked rhetorically - and his two in cahoots used a backhoe to bury the bodies by a creek in the expansive and expensive garden. 

 

How they hoped to get away with it - especially after the easy paper trail created by flogging the victim's new pick-up to someone from Laos - is anybody's guess. Getting away with it does seem to be too much planning for the average Thai murderer who prefers the here and now of some financial gain and puts their trust in tomorrow looking after itself. 

 

Forum content was its usual mix of bias, trolling and assorted drivel based on erroneous nonsense displayed as fact, racism and hearsay all washed down with decidedly unhealthy chasers of Thai bashing. I tired of it after a few pages.

 

Similar banal and pointless comment regarding the "price of a life" accompanied the news that the parents of the four year old mauled to death by a neighbor's three dogs had asked the canines' owner for a million baht for starters. 

 

Contrary to what a lot of posters believe this is quite a lot of money in Thailand. The cash settlement is not meant to represent the value of a life - who in their right mind can put a figure on that? It is there to settle to a degree and inform the judge's decision in the criminal case. Too many posters, in my view, lost sight of the real topic here - that of the lack of safety of our children from these ghastly, so called pets.... one a wolf in poodle's clothing.

 

The change to the look of the Thaivisa website was a forum topic up there in importance among those with nothing better to do that complain for the sake of complaining. I'm not toeing the party line here - only the missus gets away with telling Rooster what to do - but to me it seemed like the keyboard warriors were getting their bar stool knickers in a twist over nothing. 

 

A kind of storm trooper in a teacup.

 

Besides, being a person who would happily live on durian if it could be proven to sustain life all by itself, I loved the new logo. What could be more synonymous with Thailand especially with its corruption that does pong a bit....

 

Anyway, so long as Thaivisa with its love of the color purple doesn't rename by favorite city the Big Mangosteen I am not going to lose any sleep over it. The same could be said of journo colleague Andrew Biggs writing in one of the Bangkok Post's Sunday supplements that changed its own format recently. We'll just carry on writing regardless come rain or shine or the next military government.

 

Change of an entirely different sort caused much forum comment in the story where a 7/11 staffer returned the residue of a 100 baht rather than the proffered 1000. CCTV caught the female assistant in a lie in which she tried to sidetrack the aging customer and tossed the large note deep under the counter. 

 

Once again to hear some posters you would think that every Thai is out to screw every farang at every possible opportunity.

 

Screw in the sense of con I might add.

 

Personally I usually experience more mistakes in my change in my annual three weeks in England than in the whole of the rest of the year in Thailand. I don't find Thais any worse or better at reckoning numbers than any nationality and I certainly don't think they are any more untrustworthy than the rest of the human race who I have all regarded with deep suspicion since my knees came up to a takkataen. 

 

Though I do concede that the threat of most Thai bosses to take discrepancies in the till from salaries makes shop staff here especially careful. 

 

Apropos, I was once given two salaries instead of one at my Bangkok international school. I waited, more out of quest for amusement than dishonesty, until the finance director - an ignorant expat who sat with his feet up on the table reading the Daily Telegraph  - came sheepishly to inquire whether I had received an unexpected bonus that month.

 

"Really?" I said with a thinly veiled mock innocence and a mockney smile.  But when he had the cheek to ask me go to the bank myself to rectify the situation I advised him to be quick sharp in doing that himself - in case I suddenly had an urge to spend it and mention to his English spouse that I knew he was cheating on her. 

 

Of course I would never really do that, but when Rooster's hackles are up you'd better watch out as I can react and fight worse than a transgender soi dog. 

 

Fortunately I have usually managed to keep my cool in Thailand, a quality that has kept me out of police clutches and jail even though I have not always been a good choir boy singing from everyone else's hymn sheet. Displaying the very worst side of the "Jai Yen" divide this week were two westerners down Pattaya way giving a garage owner a piece of their vacuous minds over some noise complaint.

 

This time the "Topless Farangs" story degenerated into wholesale forum battery of Scots, Brits, and white South Africans and Rhodesians, even though I don't thing such a place even exists anymore.  The pedantic - in the mother of all thread derailing attempts - even suggested that the term "topless" could only refer to a woman.

 

Being a professional Scrabble player I am glad we don't have to provide meanings with our plays for points - I'd hate to lose a turn because topless could be a man too. Moves were made this week to make OK an official Scrabble word though I think the behavior of the farangs down in Pattaya would be more commensurate with the other proposed two letter addition - EW. 

 

Further change is in the air as the Thai government desperately tries to make up for lost time - like about six decades - in making marijuana legal. Bless; places like the US and Canada have given them a whiff - so to speak - of the profits to be made so now the clamor is to get medical use okay-ed within eight months time. 

 

I told the wife this week that I can feel a medical condition coming on. I can't put my finger on it yet but I fear it could be serious. Epilepsy perhaps. I mean I often have fits when Mrs Rooster is in my immediate vicinity and it is not uncommon for me to appear unconscious when requests are made for money. 

 

My long suffering mother used to say that my dad would turn his hearing aid down when he knew he was about to be asked for the housekeeping.

 

Seriously, there are a lot of people in Thailand who seem to be getting a bit cross these days so I think the sooner they make this most pleasant of herbs legal the better. Though it may need to come with the caveat of restricting some its more potent strains to those of us long suffering epileptics.

 

Also needing a course in chillax this week was the nurse caught on video yanking an old man with emphysema in his hospital bed. The hospital circled the wagons and a nursing chief even had the temerity to defend his members for being overworked. Then an orderly was being decidedly disorderly in another hospital when he dumped an outpatient from the gurney onto the walkway. 

 

If he can't handle a mobile stretcher I hope he never gets upgraded to driving an ambulance as the road carnage is already making those hospitals and morgues full to bursting. 

 

On the subject of which the World Bank this week advised change. They want Thailand to think carefully about the economic impact of a further half million road deaths over the next 24 years. A study suggested that GDP could go through the roof if people were more productive, that is to say not lying in the morgue. They obviously haven't seen my Thai father-in-law' s work ethic.

 

Asking for the Thais to have this level of advance planning is vaguely absurd and poster "KMartinHandyman" hit the nail on the head and gets my comment of the week award with: "The giveaway to the plan is that it's projected over 24 years. I'm not sure this country has a 24 day plan". 

 

Meanwhile public enemy number one the minivan drivers - if one excludes some in the government and the police - were up in arms this week. No, I don't mean they were actually armed, the guns and baseball bats they keep under the dash is old news. This week we had their gripes, supported by a Thai Rath columnist that it was unfair for them to have to stop using ten year old un-roadworthy vehicles with three and a half wheels. 

 

If another one of these kamikaze gets too close to me on my motorbike, worrying about the age of their van might be the least of their concerns. 

 

The biggest personnel change this week was also personal. Big Too seemed to have taken a distinct dislike to the Pattaya mayor Anan, a fellow general of sorts. Prayut used Article 44 to get Anan and his minions to immediately clear their desks at City Hall but it was perhaps his replacement that caused the most raising of eyebrows. 

 

This was Sontaya Kunplome (or any one of a dozen ways to spell his surname) who was Tourism and Sports Minister under Thaksin in 2002 and Minister of Culture in 2012. The current president of Pattaya United FC has clearly been brought in to kick some butt rather than footballs and propel QUOTES - the Queen Of The Eastern Seaboard - to that family friendly, lady boy free land of milk and EEC honey the junta so desire. 

 

Either that or they want less police influence.  Anan was a POL Maj-Gen and if you ask me the government are angling for more direct control of sumptuous Pattaya Pie. 

 

And so to a few Rooster awards. The "Banker of the Week" prize goes to 'top online lawyer' Ratchaphol "Baldy Legal Eagle" Sirisakhon who thankfully informed the Thai public that masturbating while trying to drive could lead to three months in clink.

 

The fact that this applies to both car drivers AND motorcyclists only added to the worry. 

 

He then followed that up with "news" that Thai women could sue for divorce if their husbands post pictures of themselves online with their bits on the side. Ho-hum.

 

The "Nigerians Must Be Quaking In Their Boots" award goes to our old friend Maj-Gen Surachate "Big Joke" Hakpan who on Monday will take up the impressive post of Head of Thai immigration. This is assuming that there are any Nigerians still left in Thailand. The promotion also led to my favorite media one-liner from Khaosod this week: "Bad guys out, Big Joke in".

 

The "Sensitivity to Farang" award goes to Mrs Rooster for only putting me in the proverbial doghouse for three days for failing to waste money on a birthday card this year. At least I remembered the date (thanks to all those post-it notes strategically positioned around the condo in a language she can't really read...)

 

The frosty atmosphere in Ratchayothin at least helped cool the temperatures in a stifling few days in Bangkok. My five year old is home from school for the mid-year break and it is appreciated that the neighbors with little kids are now less inclined to force them to do extra Thai consonant cramming and Kumon now the life forming and vital kindergarten exams are over for a blessed month.

 

And in the air there is less 'greng jai' - that feeling of imposing - meaning that the little ones from the Thai and mixed marriage families can now play together a bit. And do those dastardly un-academic things like paint, mold play-dough and engage in make-believe tea-parties that are frowned on in term time by the pushy parents who won't let kids be kids. 

 

Some things will never change.

 

Rooster

 

 

-- © Copyright Thai Visa News 2018-09-29

[klauskunkel]

15 hours ago, rooster59 said:

she had slept with Don Bon Jovi. I do wish she had told me that before I took her "out" for the night.

Is that Jon's godfather? In that case she must have made you an irrefusable offer...

[Jane Dough]

2 hours ago, klauskunkel said:

Is that Jon's godfather? In that case she must have made you an irrefusable offer...

Oops....showing my musical knowledge once again..

.nothing changes.

[kentrot]

 

Another cleverly worded review of all the things I already read during the past week,

but forgot already .... either willingly or as a result of advancing years.

 

Thank you for the smiles, week after week. I hope your child makes you a lovely spot of imaginary tea to celebrate another rotation on this mortal coil . (Who used to always use that tag?) Maybe in a few months the tea leaves will have some extra zip in them ! 

[nausea]

Always good to get another take on things. Yeah, birthday cards, one sort of depends on a woman for these reminders. As a man, I can say that birthday cards are very low on my priorities.

[CanuckThai]

I'm amazed that a Thai woman would accept a birthday card (unless engraved on a certified gold baht bar).  Make  the ducks are secretly over fed for a few days....

 

[KMartinHandyman]

My wife refers to forgetting dates to be commemorated along with diminishing gifts and celebrations as the promotion being over.

[Andrew Dwyer]

My wife refers to forgetting dates to be commemorated along with diminishing gifts and celebrations as the promotion being over.

My gf says exactly the same usually about how we first met we would go out for dinner now she cooks at home !

“ hmmm finish promotion “

[Old Croc]

On ‎9‎/‎29‎/‎2018 at 7:04 PM, rooster59 said:

The pedantic - in the mother of all thread derailing attempts - even suggested that the term "topless" could only refer to a woman. 

 

Being a professional Scrabble player I am glad we don't have to provide meanings with our plays for points - I'd hate to lose a turn because topless could be a man too.

The pedantic may correctly insist that the word "topless" could also be a man, but if one were to check virtually any dictionary they would inform that the word has become synonymous with a woman naked from the waist up.

To use the word in the headline of a story about a neighborhood noise dispute is sensationalistic journalism reminiscent of an English tabloid.

 

(For the scrabblers, a definition:  Sensationalism is a type of editorial bias in mass media in which events and topics in news stories and pieces are overhyped to present biased impressions on events, which may cause a manipulation to the truth of a story.