The week that was in Thailand news: It’s all about face – saving it or smacking it.

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The week that was in Thailand news: It’s all about face – saving it or smacking it.

 

 

 

For those looking for a window into Thai culture and the relationship hierarchy there was the perfect story this week highlighting the subject in all its glory – though in the case of the incident at the Malin Sky bar that would more appropriately be vainglory.

So much face was at stake it would have made Thotsakan – the ten faced demon antihero of the Thai Ramakien legend – look one dimensional.

We had the major general’s son – who’s mum said he was a really nice boy who wouldn’t hurt a flea – bursting for a piss outside the loos doubtless after a skinful (for most Thais that is a couple of bottles of beer with ice and water over three hours). But the toilets – shock horror – seemed to be roped off because some celebs were relieving themselves.

The son insisted on his rights to slash under the new army constitution but the celebrities seem to have counter-insisted that no one should rub shoulders with them when they are doing their business.

Funny isn’t it when you consider Thai stars usually loved to be looked at!

The guards – read jobsworths – insisted on protocol and the rest is history. The major general’s son winds up in hospital with a fractured jaw and some broken teeth – lost face on several counts.

The story ends up on the desk of the national police chief and prime minister, of course, due to all those famous faces. The bar is shut and the retributions begin with witness tampering becoming a very real likelihood ahead of a trial in the New Year.

I just wanted to say – for gould’s sake Thailand – Grow Up! Share the toilets – go into a cubicle if you’re shy about what you’re packing.

Other celebs and high profile individuals continued to dominate the news this week though once again the news pages of the Thaivisa forum were liberally sprinkled with some genuinely white foreign faces amongst the artificially whitened variety.

Jenphop – the nasty piece of work who crashed his Benz into a Ford incinerating two graduates – walk out of court in much the same way as he walked away from the accident; making no comment to anyone. He’s done the monk bit – that didn’t last, he probably got hungry on the first afternoon. Now he has done what you’d expect – deny everything and apologize to no one, except his mum.

Likewise Nott of “graap my rot” fame was all Instagram smiles as he posed for the cameras at a Buddhist retreat in Chiang Rai. Mum and dad must have been so proud as he ordained – it’s not as if he did anything wrong in assaulting another human being is it.

His car was scratched by an underling for goodness sake – it doesn’t get any worse than that. In next to no time the proletariat who dare to ride motorbikes will be revolting again and we’ll need another coup to keep them in their place.

Still, with all the cases of monks behaving badly this year I expect, unlike Jenphop, Nott will actually raise the standard a notch or two.

Top of the farang wannabes this week was My Mate Nate – an American teacher of English (oxymoron alert) who thought it was a great wheeze to ask Thai men if they were having their period and tell local gusset they looked terrible just to prove his point about poor English standards. The men said yes and the teenage girls smile inanely and agreed.

Poor old Nate thought he had discovered the holy grail but it was just a holy fail. Rooster got the impression the Thais were just agreeing as they often do, and when they turned the corner out of camera-shot probable said:  “Who was that twat?” or vernacular to that effect.

Another jumping on the 30 seconds of fame bandwagon was a foreigner in a helmet speaking what sounded like some Isaan dialect complaining in a Facebook video about paying a 1000 baht fine. I thought the main reason for learning Thai or Lao was to avoid paying fines – or maybe he just forgot the most important thing about language in Thailand – smiling while you’re using it.

Mind you even long term residents of the kingdom forget the bleeding obvious and Rooster does, he says smugly, have a Phd in “fine avoidance” honed after decades of practice at traffic stops.

Sick to death of gratuitous fines were more than a hundred bikers who gathered to air their grievances on Rama IV after one of their number had an altercation with plod.

On this occasion everyone was being asked, as per the police manual on fine extractions (otherwise known as the highway code), to shorten their lives further by keeping to the left hand side of the road. As a biker I can quite understand what they are on about – riding on the left gives us the heebeegeebees whereas driving on the right is much more like just Bee Gees. IE: Staying Alive

Also scurrying around this week trying to avoid the disappearance of said face were the folks at the Ministry of Disinformation – otherwise referred to as tourism and sports.

Lo and behold there seems to be a smidgeon of admission that the way the “zero tours” issue was handled might have actually been an almighty cock-up of the first water. Someone had noticed that billions of Chinese had stopped coming so the wagons were circled and suddenly visa fees were being waived for everyone except North Korean spies and ISIS terrorists.

They have to pay 1,000 baht for visa on arrival – but even that is down from 2K. 

At least it’ll make the Bulgarian panhandlers look good. And before those PC posters who got on their high horses last week to have a go at Rooster about “bashing the Bulgars” I would just like to remind you, it’s called satire.

What most Americans refer to as rudeness.

One person I really would like to be rude to is the judge who, sentencing the man who stomped on his neighbor’s six year old kid, let him off with a suspended sentence. Yes, we understand it was his first offence but vaguely normal people do not usually go about kicking little children’s heads to a pulp.

Five years for vaping or shisha, at least that for saying that the constabulary are corrupt and we see nothing done about men who think it is their Buddha given right to sleep with children committing statutory rape or beat up the young ones in their care.

So to you judge on behalf of the nation’s children I would like to present you with the first Rooster commendation of the week: “The Thanks For Nothing” award.

And so to this week’s other presentations. The “Thoughtfulness” award goes to none other than “Nong Nat” the ever sexy, ever faithful and loving and decidedly better half of greying Harold the US millionaire.

Nong Nat showed her innate kindness this week by saying that she had virtually begged Harold for a divorce because she thought rogering him nightly might bring on a heart attack. His not hers.

As several forum posters pointed out this seemed to defeat the object of what might be Nat’s longer term strategy in the relationship.

Still, I’m sure she means well and if the dreaded day comes when “Harold the Ram” succumbs like a lamb to the slaughter I am sure there will be several forum posters more than willing to take up the slack.

The “Dead Duck in the Water” award is jointly awarded to the company planning to ferry all and sundry across the gulf from Pattaya to Hua Hin and tourists in Koh Samui.

The company came up with some fantastic promotional videos and swanky catamarans but nobody told Somchai to go and check the pier at Bali Hai to see if it could support more than a couple of people. After plans were announced to run the trial service on January 1st, Pattaya residents will undoubtedly now be able to just sleep off their New Year hangovers in the comfort of their own homes.

The tourists on Samui thought it was jolly good jape to ignore the lifeguards on Chaweng as red flags flew and the sea created more froth than a beer poured by a Soi Cowboy bargirl. Ignoring a warning about safety, coming from laissez-faire Thais of all people, has to be the height of crass stupidity!

Final prize this week goes to the DSI. They win the Rooster special commendation award for “Promoting less Reliance on Antibiotics and Sleeping Pills”. When they announced they were giving Phra Dhammachayo a midnight deadline to turn himself in I promptly fell asleep without the need of drugs.

As I am sure the errant embezzler did too, safe in the knowledge that no one will do bugger all.

Quirky picture of the week and best forum comment related to the same story as a Thai schoolteacher thought it would be a good idea to have the children bring in umbrellas to class to stop them cheating in the exams. With this kind of innovative thinking the nation’s youth is in fine hands though Celtic Bhoy, again, said it best when he commented that it was “bad luck to put up an umbrella indoors. They will all fail”.

Finally it was reported that loyal subjects were coming from far and wide to the capital to stock up on framed pictures for businesses, homes and schools of the new monarch, His Majesty King Vajiralongkorn who was proclaimed Rama X.

Long Live the King.