The week that was in Thailand News: Sanuk amid adversity in the land of the ‘Care Bears’

[rooster59]

The week that was in Thailand News: Sanuk amid adversity in the land of the ‘Care Bears’

It is often said that for Thais nothing is worth doing unless it has an element of fun.

And you can always trust the Thais to find some good old fashioned ‘sanuk’ even in the face of adversity.

As the country continued to reel from the aftershocks of street attacks and crime came the charming “Care Bear” initiative in Pattaya designed to assure the public and visitors alike that all was well in the Land of Smiles.

A placard toting, one hundred strong entourage descended on Walking Street to holler loud and clear to “stop attacking tourists”.

That bit was even written In English just to make sure the undoubtedly bewildered tourists knew what all the fuss was about as they sipped their ale.

And the fun bit amid all the police uniforms and insignia?

Well that was two rather sheepish looking gendarmes dressed in bear outfits proclaiming “Mister Care Khun” on their fluffy orange and white exterior. With guardians like this it appears certain that attacks will indeed be a thing of the past.

Meanwhile in Bangkok the tourist police were unveiling a new ‘tourist police box’ outside MBK to report crimes. Such was the fanfare and hope for the future and positivity that soon there will probably be no crime at all and the box will have to be pulled down for lack of use.

A wordsmith seemed to have been behind the tourist police logo with a smiling cartoon cop on the side with an all “S’s”motto featuring words like ‘secure’ and ‘service’. Surely they should have included ‘sanuk’ as the smiling tourists using the box seemed to be having as much fun as the locals.

Amid the positivity the incident of the ‘good Samaritans’ who had kindly helped a Swedish lady to her feet after a motorbike accident, before robbing her and taking off, was quickly relegated to the back pages as yesterday’s news.

As usual, there was much to smile about in the Thai news of the last week and while much of it was those kind of knowing smiles exhibited by people who have been in the country a while who witness the ‘quaintness’ of Thai ways there were indeed some rib-ticklingly good laughs thrown in.

Many will have cracked a sly grin (rather than bothering with outrage as shown by some Thaivisa posters) at the apparent contrition of Benz driver Janepop who ordained into holy orders at least temporarily.

His advisors – for the heir to the Lenso fortune really should have some – might have warned him against joining an institution on the receiving end of quite a bit of bad press recently what with murders and extortion rackets committed by the clergy.

Still Janepop knows best though at least seven charges are expected in the case of driving his Benz into a Ford when two undergraduate students were killed.

Though Janepop had no need to flee the scene, or perhaps couldn’t due to injury, the same could not be said of the driver of another Benz in Chiang Mai who police say rear ended a pick-up killing two unfortunate local ladies.

A passport was found of a British man but the mystery deepened as the English press reported the driver was an Australian and the Thai press said a German man was about to go to the station.

It seemed half of the north was keen to own up though a few days late might of course help with the sobriety test. While the case prompted Thailand watchers to ponder the alarming idea that fleeing the scene may, interestingly, be catching….

At least tourism minister Khun Kobkarn was on the ball with her observation that the serious fires on Doi Suthep, also near the northern capital, would definitely not affect the tourism industry. I was looking for the bit in the upbeat article that might say “so long as visitors don’t breathe in.”

Other fires in Samui, all in the country’s reputed worst heatwave in decades that has killed nearly three dozen, were blamed on the nearest scapegoats to hand, in this case the farmers not the closest migrants on hand.

Banks in the Hua Hin and Cha Am area had a mixed week – police called to one (a bit like the famous Hatton Garden jewelry heist in London a while back) found nothing wrong at all. I mean, like London, it was only an alarm, no need to look inside was there?

If they had they might have spotted a 10 million baht theft. Alarms also rang at another bank’s Bangkok HQ but that one, it emerged, was always going off even when the vibrating lorries went by….

This time the thieves had successfully forced the back of an ATM encased in an auto spares shop but couldn’t extricate the millions in cash and left empty handed. One was left to think that the shop owner seemed to have a better idea about bank security than the banks entrusted with our money.

Two people who put themselves on the line in various altercations got different results.

A brave though perhaps foolhardy Belgian in Satun paid the price of coming between a Thai and his wife on Koh Lipe while a 7 – 11 staffer also in the South grabbed some scissors and stabbed a serial thief. That means he had done it before; he wasn’t there to pinch cornflakes.

Police advised against such drastic action when faced with ruthless robbers but seeing as the thief caught on CCTV looked about seven stone and the 7-11 guy had the physique of a sumo wrestler it seemed as though the odds were in his favor on this one.

Rounding off the serious crimes of the week – and I ignore the latest violations by the taxi drivers of course as space just does not permit – was the murderous fight among Kuwaitis in Pattaya and the continuing saga of the death of the handicapped bread seller in Bangkok as a teenage girl with murder in mind was banged up.

Unlike most of her co-defendants who actually wielded the swords she seemed to have no direct police relatives so it will be fascinating to see how her eventual sentence compares. Though officers were surely correct in their observations that mentioning “I’m gonna <deleted> kill you” was probably not a complaint related to poor customer service.

The furor over a possible radioactive leak in Bangkok seemed to be a storm in a teacup unlike the serious and continuing summer variety throughout the north.

The Geiger counter at the deserted building failed to register a bleep though it made me think that a “Gig-a-counter’ at a condo nearby would have sounded shrill and loud…..

And so to the more light hearted of the week’s news bearing in mind that the sentiments behind the ‘Care Bears’ are really no laughing matter….

Top prize for delusion went to the American who thought he could replicate the 9-11 New York terrorist attacks and prove they were fake by constructing a building in a rice paddy and flying a plane into it for ten million baht. I would have thought that the chance of 9-11 being total bunkum was infinitely more likely than being able to set that up for a mere ten million sobs….

Top prize for entrepreneurial spirit – if not avoiding the labour department – went to the foreign man who posted pics of himself and his son selling burgers. The Thai press called them hamburgers while the sign on the cart advertised ‘vegan’ so something may have been lost in translation if not cuteness as Thais fawned over their loveliness perhaps ahead of dad’s incarceration for taking a local’s job, as some TV posters pointed out miserably.

But it was two weddings – or more precisely a wedding and an engagement - that really hit the spot in this writer’s ‘funny’ news bone this week.

The funny peculiar marriage of Carl the Englishman and his male Thai sweetheart Tony in Prajinburi warmed the heart though the in-laws looking on at the couple clad in nothing but pink looked a bit stone faced for my liking.

One would have thought that the five million baht dowry would have brought out the smiles even though it paled into insignificance behind the 120 million ++ laid out by the celebrity cosmetic surgeon for his ex-patient’s hand in marriage at an engagement in Bangkok.

The bride to be found smiling easy perhaps as much from the thought of that almighty wedge as from the expert surgery on her face. Either way I was glad that the Thaivisa headline writers, who seem to have got more carried away recently, had avoided calling what the famous surgeon had given her as a ‘facial’.

Finally, in a week when clips and videos of all kinds made crusty journos think how ever did we cope in filling the news pages before the days of social media, came the touching image of more than 100 villagers spiritedly cooperating by lifting a two storey house on their collective bare backs and carrying it to another part of town.

A very different house removal and all above board and legal.

Sanuk jing jing khrap!

-- 2016-05-15

[elgordo38]

Sorry a couple BIB prancing around in comedy suits does little to uplift my image of them. This one of a kind display always seems to happen when thing turn sour. When I see them outside my condo arresting rice rocket riders roaring up and down in the evenings and late at night my praise level meter will rise drastically. Until then its all a joke.

[Bluespunk]

"Many will have cracked a sly grin (rather than bothering with outrage as shown by some Thaivisa posters) at the apparent contrition of Benz driver Janepop who ordained into holy orders at least temporarily."

Yep, because it is a constant source of humour to watch the antics of murdering scum bags as they merrily weave their way to a finish line that says all charges dropped because you are rich and influential.