The week that was in Thailand news: No excuses are better than a bad one!

[rooster59]

The week that was in Thailand news: No excuses are better than a bad one!

 

 

The more I read and comment on the Thai news the more I have come to appreciate that this is truly the land of excuses. I wouldn’t mind so much if they were remotely plausible or had a semblance of sense. Mostly they are just absurd!

Officials, especially those with ties on, white coats or brown uniforms, come out with some gems that have the titter-o-meter at full tilt;  humor is the only merit we ever glean when these glib authorities open their brazen bouches.

Surely George Washington had it spot on when he admonished an errant niece with the phrase: “It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one…”

Well, I suppose that while that would be something that a man who couldn’t lie might say it is very unlikely that such honorable qualities reside with any certainty in the average politico or policeman in LOST (Land of Som Tam).

But excuses are not just the domain of officialdom. Every crime story in Thailand lists them alongside the more certain evidence. No matter how nonsensical the excuse the press seems to deem them as an intrinsic part of the story.

Now Rooster is not saying that the Thais have a monopoly on excuses – it is just that they seem to have made a national sport out of them every bit as part of society as Muay Thai. Excuses for accidents, excuses for crime, excuses for failure, excuses for….well read on….

Carrying the can as the main culprit in the excuse of the week in the last seven days had to be the reason for the appalling mess at Wong Amat beach in Pattaya. Now, no one in their right mind expects Pattaya to be clean (except the tourism minister where right mind, anyhow, smacks of oxymoron-ism).

But….the excuse for the filthy sewage spewing out all over the beach was none other than a squirrel. Sadly the creature could not even speak up for itself and offer another Thai favorite, the denial, as it had been fried in a junction box controlling the pooh-flow to the ocean.

It made the excuses of the metropolitan police chief in the Thai Bev payment scandal – where the chief was alleged to have squirreled away 50,000 baht a month – look positively tame in comparison.

Following on and  perhaps not needed, was a rather fawning article from Thaivisa’s Nation partners that seemed to take chief Sanit’s excuses at face value rather than drill down and question him further.

Sure, the ombudsman has given the him an airy wrap on the knuckles but the Thaivisa forum was rife with adverse comment on what many saw as a white-wash article, a synonym for excuse as we all know!

Sanit has, however, dodged a bullet here – something all decent policemen are advised to practice. But the message is clear and is an indication of the way Thai society works – no direct sanction but a clear inference that something was amiss.

All delivered with a Thai smile, the one that says “so watch your step in the future, laddie” as my commanding officer in the CCF at school used to say

One man who has bucked the trend of giving excuses is the general PM. He did give one nearly three years ago when he muttered something about usurping an elected government being for the good of the people – such was the lawlessness on the streets of Bangkok at the time that Rooster bought that one…..at least for a while.

Now, enjoying more power even than my missus, he eschews excuses and complains when others use them. We were never even going to hear that the purchase of Chinese submarines was necessary for national security.

We were just treated to the throw-away line that if the government bought two the politburo would toss in the third one for free. Unlike the subs themselves the plan is unlikely to sink without a trace.

You had to laugh – that is a deal even Subway might baulk at!

As if to show up the Thais for merely offering excuses came the apologies from UK and Australian media who had defamed the Hmong kids calling them thieves last year after the infamous watch robbery incident of a tourist at Doi Suthep.

I make no excuses for referring to this in the column not that I see it as news in any way but I was intrigued that the British Consulate was involved in simultaneously getting apologies from several British and down under tabloids. Not an easy thing to do.

What are they up to? Smoothing the way for flogging off more British owned real estate to line the pockets of Whitehall – or trying to gain some more credibility ahead of plans to fleece their countrymen further with continued online visa shenanigans?

Their attempt to hoodwink the long suffering British residents of Thailand with a bargain basement visa online service – 50K for five and 10K per person thereafter – was every bit an excuse for poor service as the Australian announcement that they were selling their Sathorn site off to developers.

I thought there was nothing more moan-worthy than a British resident abroad until I read the comments on the Thaivisa forum from the Aussies about their own embassy.

I’m meeting the UK ambassador this week – I hope he doesn’t offer up any excuses why we have now dropped to number two in the whinging stakes.

Offering excuses aplenty this week was a story that had it occurred in the West might have been called “Filler-gate.”

This Thai drama was an excuse-a-minute-fest as a belligerent and official looking woman was caught on tape tearing strips off pump attendants for being unable to open the cap on her Honda Airblade.

Unable to do it herself she then called the police and later compounded her idiocy by seeking a defamation charge against the poster of the clip!

It really is such a shame that Thai law seems to side so heavily with the allegedly defamed in the face of all certainty provided by the actual evidence of their unpleasantness! Thais online lapped it up – here was a “Lady Kai” style poser claiming she knew someone in the police and riding a bike rather than a Benz!

If one of the attendants had been a lady boy you would have had a Thai soap right there.

Sure she was made to look stupid – she brought it all on herself. The attendants – as Thais often do to smooth things over – apologized at thye local nick for having the temerity to breath.

Naturally, the keyboard warriors of Thaivisa forum were out in force to condemn this latest outburst of overt Thai rudeness but the prevalence of cameras are to blame for making it look like an epidemic of bad manners.

Maybe my rose tinted specs need adjusting but I still see more calm Thais than angry ones in the course of my daily and nightly rounds – frankly, it is the almost total absence of the “are you looking at my pint” brigade that makes me feel good in my adoptive homeland.

But as if to prove me both right – and perhaps wrong – in those assessments, came a double header of violence exacted against the clergy. Rather than meting it out here were our orange clad friends on the receiving end of a drunk copper’s slap and an angry dad who used his foot on an abbot’s head.

The drunken “daap” thought the monk was an imposter and got him in a headlock while the father of three placed his size sevens on the 77 year old abbot for giving him fish curry rather than Jaffa cakes, or whatever it is that the Thais consider a delicacy.

I got the feeling that the Thai press were going in search of these stories to provide a bit of balance after a year absolutely filled with monks behaving badly stories. Well, that’s probably the reporters’ excuse.

Offering absolutely no excuses – not yet at least – was the policeman’s son arrested on the eastern seaboard for dispatching an annoying mortal with a cue in a snooker hall. Hopefully, the CCTV and the public exposure will mean that nasty piece of work having his brown potted by the pink for a good few years in clink.

While no one would have expected an excuse from the wife in Pattaya out drinking with her husband who thought it was a jolly good jape to mention his need for a “gik” in front of friends. Had I been drunk or stupid enough to say such a thing in front of my own better three quarters, I would probably just go meekly outside and pull the trigger as the Brits used to do in the days when they were still honorable.

And so to this week’s Rooster awards. Firstly for “Services to Happiness” I would like to commend the junta for getting Thailand up to 32nd on the UN world happiness index. Ok, it was only up one place from 33rd last year but at least at this rate we should be number one by the time democracy is restored.

Norway was top and Switzerland was fourth so it was with some Schadenfreude that we saw a national of the former robbed of a wallet by a “gay recidivist” in Pattaya and one of the latter relieved of 500,000 baht in a Nong Khai house burglary.

Maybe they should have stayed in Europe where their happiness might have been guaranteed and where it surely would have been cooler, something that was now too late for the Swiss “cowman” who sadly passed away from the heat in Tak.

Finally as we gear up for the annual carnage that is Songkran it was interesting to see a tragic accident with a vague difference in Kalasin. A man had loaded up his old car with a pile of vegetation for his cattle. So high was the bundle that he could see nothing from the rear window as he reversed at speed along the hard shoulder.

In no time he had flattened and killed a woman who had got off a bus thinking, incidentally, that he had gone over a rock. Not for him to blame the cuddly toys or cushions many Thais have obliterating their rear view.

Grass was his ready-made excuse.

 

Rooster

 

 

 

-- © Copyright Thai Visa News 2017-03-26

[dotpoom]

"Why use 10 words....when you can use 10,000".. (or should that be the other way round)?

[Khon Kaen Dave]

The most pathetic thing, that comes out of the mouths of the stupid,and are convinced that this is a developed country, is that they actually believe that we believe them.

Listen, my friends, i was good at spewing out all sorts of Tom Pepper, when i was a youngster, but nothing like the crap, that comes out of the so called , educated idiots here.

[rkidlad]

I had a great one recently. Supposed to have a delivery guy come from 4-6pm. He calls my missus at about 1 saying he's at our condo and waiting. My missus explains that we said we'd be available from 4-6 and the said company agreed. He said he knew, but he tried calling us before to say he was early but my missus didn't pick up. She asked how many times he called, and he said he called twice and she didn't pick up. Missus explained how incoming and missed calls work and he absoltsultey never called or even attempted to. He insisted he called and asked what's he supposed to do now? Missus told him she didn't care and complained to his bosses. Best bit was that I was the one that had to meet him after this whole sordid affair. 

 

If you allow people to say silly lies without any real consequences, they will. It will get so bad that they'll begin to believe their own BS. After that, you'll have to deal with their anger issues when you call them on their blatant BS. We normally knock this kind of behaviour on he head when people are kids. 

 

My advice when dealing with these kind of people - don't do it during hot season. 

[jabis]

5 hours ago, rkidlad said:

... longwinded educational story recapped....

My advice when dealing with these kind of people - don't do it

 

[lvr181]

" I would like to commend the junta for getting Thailand up to 32nd on the UN world happiness index. Ok, it was only up one place from 33rd last year but at least at this rate we should be number one by the time democracy is restored."

 

You are an optimist!