The week that was in Thailand News: More wild-western than western

[rooster59]

The week that was in Thailand News: More wild-western than western

Gerry Carter

It was looking midweek like my column would have to be cancelled such was the dearth of news when up popped a mega media event seemingly from nowhere.

Professor Wanchai clearly woke up on Wednesday a bit upset as he drove to work at his university in northern Bangkok and shot two colleagues, also professors.

At last the Thai public had a case to get their hungry TV and social media teeth into. This was not alcohol fuelled youth shooting one another or Ya Ba crazed parents assaulting their children or even jealous lovers murdering each other. Those are hardly even news anymore to the battle hardened Thai populace.

No, this was the respectable doing the unacceptable. An ajarn, a man with a degree (though it may emerge that it was the suggestion the professor didn’t have one that caused the unprofessorial-like behavior in the first place).

Just as the hunt was getting going in the written press the errant prof was cornered in of all places a “curtain” hotel, or so it looked. If the millions of TV viewers watching the drama unfold thought it was going to be a “short-time” stand-off they were wrong. This was now a TV and online streaming event and there was no turning back.

Police brought in students, relatives, colleagues, young and old, all imploring the professor to give himself up as he held the murder weapon from the day before to his head next to his getaway vehicle. It did strike me as a bit dangerous to be standing there but the cheering of some heartfelt pleas seemed to give a more festival and less ferocious tone to the atmosphere.

Though one of the pleading students had been given a bullet proof vest – perhaps leading skeptics to think she might be in danger having complained about the prof’s low grades before….

No, we thought, here was respect and love for the double murderer as they begged him to see sense through their megaphones – I would not have been surprised to see the family dog trot over to lick him on the nose and say all was forgiven.

From noon to night the media event of the year rolled on with TV station chiefs perhaps wondering if this soap might interfere with the ones scheduled for later. Not to worry, though, the ratings for either were bound to be top notch.

Finally Professor Wanchai – we all knew his name even if we couldn’t recall those of his victims - ended it all…with the cameras soon relaying the proverbial pool of blood and the ultimately pointless effort to help him to hospital.

I doubt my sister in law was the only person in Thailand who noted the academic’s Nissan license number, 3398, for lottery purposes.

As the dust settled it was all vaguely reminiscent of OJ Simpson’s televised flight from justice in the US in the 1990s and police killer Raoul Moat’s UK TV denouement when footballer Gazza turned up with a fishing rod and some cans of lager to talk the murderer round.

Then on Friday PM Prayut spoke out calling the incident “a lesson for Thai society”. Veiled criticism of the police and media was given along with advice to parents, teachers and the general public along the lines of controlling emotions and adopting anger management.

A media watchdog group had earlier said they had acted too slowly to stop the circus – they were probably too engrossed like the rest of the public.

Yes, the Thais proved once again that you couldn’t make it up. Many posters on Thaivisa seemed to indicate that millions of viewers were ‘losers’ for showing such morbid interest in the professor’s demise rather like rubberneckers at an accident.

But to me having a good grisly gawk has always seemed like pretty normal human nature (or what legendary City of Angels columnist Bernard Trink used to refer to as MAN-URE). Though I accept, maybe I have just been in Thailand too long.

The event was indeed so huge that it did what nothing else had managed to do this year, namely upstage the Leicester City football team and their victory parade in Bangkok.

The Thai owned English Premier League champions showed they had learnt their collective lessons after last year’s visit when scandals involved three of their now sacked players who got into mischief with phones and prostitutes.

They are doing all the right things this time around. Sponsors King Power have clearly upgraded their PR people from those ‘duty free’ to ones with lots of duties.

Meanwhile, Thaivisa posters who have called for updates when criminal miscreants are finally sentenced, were starting to get their wish albeit in the case of the chicken rice seller caught on CCTV knifing “Whitey” the dog to death in Ramkhamhaeng rather than the outstanding murders and street assaults of recent weeks.

The man was given four months, reduced to two on admission, with the boss of the Soi Dogs’ Foundation saying it was too little and his wife saying, in mitigation, the dog had bitten their young child.

Thai news watchers will be following with great interest the eventual sentencing – if any – of rich people who kill others in cars, children of police who don’t seem to like handicapped bread sellers (whether it was premeditated or not), murderous monks and wicked step parents to name but a few. Not to mention the fate of the young man who enjoyed kicking the old “whitey” lady already on the ground

Maybe my feeling that many of these will get severe sentences is just my rose tinted specs somehow doing the talking but if I see another “they’ll get a 500 baht fine and a slap on the wrist” post I think I shall scream.

Certainly the balaclava clad, axe wielding nutter who needed money for a drugs’ fix and who drove off in a German lady’s car should be kept off the Sam Roi Yot beach for a while even if he looked more scary when he took the balaclava off.

Sandra, the European lady visiting her boyfriend in Thailand and out taking their terriers for a swim looked calm, collected and very Germanic. This kind of thing always makes me think of Rowan Atkinson’s line about the Germans having no word for fluffy….very impressive resilience Sandra; and yet another tourist who avoided hospitalization in the Hua Hin area, well done!

The COWPAT (or Crap-Of-Week-Post-About-Thailand) award went to the journalist who decided to tell us all who might have been here for a few years or longer that Bangkok is becoming too westernized. This after four months in the capital, no less. Coming from “What’s on in Sukhumvit?” I suppose we were hardly likely to get an objective, well informed view, but still….

Talking of Krung Thep, Bangkokians can look forward to the opening of the purple line in a few months while residents of Hua Hin and the eastern seaboard were left to dream about the possibility of much faster trains to the capital with building perhaps starting as early as next year.

Soon they will be able to race to Bangkok just in time to get stuck in our famous gridlocked traffic now made worse by the very building of all those new train lines! Ah Bangkok…it’ll be great when it’s finished.

Top of the Thai lovers behaving badly charts this week was the stock trader whose mum said her “boy” had lost a lot of money on the markets recently. Ok, I get the upset, I have a fondness for lucre likewise, but was it really necessary to beat your eight month pregnant wife over the head first before jumping a dozen floors? Fortunately she lived and fortunately he missed the swimming pool’s deep end.

Men who took their mistresses and girlfriends out with guns and knives before topping themselves showed that jealousy was alive and kicking even if none of them were anymore. A Korat lady told her husband she was going out shopping but the next he saw of her was with his best friend in a pool of blood in a local resort room.

While the knife was the preferred method of a Bangkok man who did the only thing possible when your university girlfriend refuses to get back together with you – stab her 15 times and go and hang yourself from a curtain rail. Now if he had been a professor he would have known to end it all with a bit more public panache.

Much needed whimsical relief was afforded to us this week by news that legislation to stop teenage drinking had resulted in an increase rather than a decrease in youths taking to the bottle. Not that that is funny in itself of course. No, it was the notion that banning booze sales within 300 meters of schools and the like would actually have any effect at all….it begged the question as to whether lawmakers were a bit tipsy when they came up with that bright idea.

Or maybe it was just that no one could find a place in crowded Thai cities that was less than 300 meters from a school. That must be it.

Finally the best laugh of the week was the innovative street vendors of Pratunam’s packed pavements who found a cunningly devious and particularly Thai way of circumventing the ban on hawking their wares on the overcrowded sidewalks.

They moved their carts into the road instead.

More proof, thank goodness, that the capital has a long way to go before it can claim to be westernized.

-- 2016-05-22

[elgordo38]

115 members oops sorry users reading this topic and no replies. Guess they are all speechless like me.

Edited May 22, 2016 by elgordo38

[cpofc]

I used to like Bernard Trink and never failed to read what he had to say, he was an articulate and knowledgeable bloke. Not to mention entertaining. I still reckon he made a mistake after the BP canned his 'Night Owl' Column and gave him his marching orders. He went to running his own website but made the fatal error of having a 'Pay-Gate'. Had he done like Thaivisa did and built it up to receive money from advertising and not 'membership' he may well be still around.

And the Manure thing? For those who don't know.

huMAN natURE

[micmichd]

115 members oops sorry users reading this topic and no replies. Guess they are all speechless like me.

Not speechless, just a long long article to read in the summer heat.

Yes, you're here in a hot country. Isn't thar what you came here for (wherever you came from) Yes, it's multicultural as can be. Do you think else they would let you live like they do? Yes, there's different subcultures here, some modernized, some rather antique. Isn't that what you love about the place? This City of Angels is simply a great place to be, you're invited to make it a better place of living for all Thais, and even for yourself. And yes, Thailand belongs to Thai people. Hard working people, you should know.

I've got the doubtful chance to live with one of these families. Yes, they do their duty, they were told to do so. Almost all of them contribute to a society that most of you never ever seen. You don't look behind their eyes. You think they're smiling all the time? Did you ever see them weep? Did you ever notice the sounds, the smells, the music? Did you ever looked into a mirror? You say you're annoyed about the "no money no honey scheme", the way you're treated like ATMs. Listen, that's what you're here for. Thailand gives you everything you ever wanted, everything you missed in your Western countries. So, please don't look down on those that share their lives with you. It's a great country, where folks have big hearts - even the poorest ones do. I'm German, one of those exiled to paradise. And I'll stay here as long as I can - maybe even die here.

Thanks for understanding.

[biggles45]

Thanks for your post, very <deleted> nny and always entertaining

[aneliane]

If you believe that the real challenges for Thailand are about being westernized or not being "westernized", you are sleep -walking.

[CGW]

I used to like Bernard Trink and never failed to read what he had to say, he was an articulate and knowledgeable bloke. Not to mention entertaining. I still reckon he made a mistake after the BP canned his 'Night Owl' Column and gave him his marching orders. He went to running his own website but made the fatal error of having a 'Pay-Gate'. Had he done like Thaivisa did and built it up to receive money from advertising and not 'membership' he may well be still around.

And the Manure thing? For those who don't know.

huMAN natURE

Agree, used to enjoy Trink, mind there was nothing else to read about Thai life from an expat viewpoint to read anywhere else back then!

Always remember one of his quotes "The first fifty years off your life you learn, thereafter you learn what a load of rubbish you have been taught" or words to that effect, I have found this to be so true!

[Howitzer]

I used to like Bernard Trink and never failed to read what he had to say, he was an articulate and knowledgeable bloke. Not to mention entertaining. I still reckon he made a mistake after the BP canned his 'Night Owl' Column and gave him his marching orders. He went to running his own website but made the fatal error of having a 'Pay-Gate'. Had he done like Thaivisa did and built it up to receive money from advertising and not 'membership' he may well be still around.

And the Manure thing? For those who don't know.

huMAN natURE

I thought it was the famed football club that beat crystal palace last night.

[cpofc]

I used to like Bernard Trink and never failed to read what he had to say, he was an articulate and knowledgeable bloke. Not to mention entertaining. I still reckon he made a mistake after the BP canned his 'Night Owl' Column and gave him his marching orders. He went to running his own website but made the fatal error of having a 'Pay-Gate'. Had he done like Thaivisa did and built it up to receive money from advertising and not 'membership' he may well be still around.

And the Manure thing? For those who don't know.

huMAN natURE

I thought it was the famed football club that beat crystal palace last night.

hehehe good one, I'll let that one go through to the keeper, not being a follower of the 'round ball, world game'

actually it was Bernards 'Signature' that he always signed off his column with

[MockingJay]

Phheeeww, almost feels like doing forced labor to read through all this... I don't really think that Thailand's biggest goal is to "claim being westernized" and why should it? There's enough real bad stuff going on right now in western countries that would render all the mentioned events "bearable" in comparison, so why bother trying to "educate" and "westernize" Thailand - a country I still find is a much better and more fun place to live, work and retire at than most western countries.

[tandor]

..I just hope you get to read about your families tragic deaths Mr. Gerry Carter by some heartless, sensationalizing, reporter when the time comes...but I doubt it...you would be dollar-driven like the rest of the press ...ghouls..disgusting....with your pathetic attempt at irony and cynicism has all turned to shitt at the expense of the life of a troubled man.

Why the police never cordoned off the entire block and pushed you pricks back behind the barriers I will never know...saying that; not one of you press persons had the decency to just leave it alone..you had to be the first to see blood...

Well in my humble opinion you all have blood on your hands, as all of those present contributed to his decision to suddenly end it all in front of you..how do you feel now..where is your conscience and morals? You know nothing about death and how and why people take that path.

I hope it haunts you, and those other journalistic professionals, the rest of your lives and gives you trouble sleeping..how dare you compare another humans' demise to a television soap opera!

..and then without as much as pausing for a short breath; you go straight into football...what is this...your brain editing out the bad/sad content and having a bit of jolly old footy to get your/our mind(s) off the tragedy?

Shame..shame on you and all those other press persons present...wake up to yourselves.

Edited May 22, 2016 by tandor

[Jimbo53]

TIT !!!!

[JetsetBkk]

115 members oops sorry users reading this topic and no replies. Guess they are all speechless like me.

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