The week that was in Thailand news: Thailand – nice to see you, to see you nice.

[rooster59]

The week that was in Thailand news: Thailand – nice to see you, to see you nice.

 

 

While Yingluck was, perhaps regretfully, going one way, Rooster was thankfully going the other.

Since as long as I can remember it is always with a sense of relief that I return to Thailand after visiting the land of my birth for my annual summer sojourn.

Ms Shinawatra, it appears, is set to seek asylum in the United Kingdom. I have always loved that term – for while the land where the old queen still rules could hardly be free of the term “nut-house”, there are certainly times when one’s sanity in living permanently in the East is tested to the limit.

Just that for me there has never been any doubt about where is home; my heart has been ensnared by Krung Thep since I was barely out of teen diapers.

Yingluck may well be watching the “nights drawing in” as my Thai born son says about London. May well be donning dark glasses to do a little food shopping at Fortnum’s, for all I know. While I snigger from afar thankful of my relative anonymity if not my relative poverty.

A holiday in Blighty always has its moments.

Those balmy bank holiday afternoons when temperatures in places you have never heard of top 30 degrees. Followed by the next morning when the clouds roll in and Londoners exchange shirtsleeves for heavy coats in August.

To the joy of seeing one’s beloved team humiliated at Wembley not once but twice. To the price of a slab of mature Cheddar in Lidl’s not requiring a second mortgage.

But cheese notwithstanding, Yingluck is welcome to the United Kingdom and rather like her exiled brother I am sure she will grow to envy yours truly as I get caught in the monsoon rain on my motorbike as the Ratchayothin traffic remains at a standstill for several more years amid the mythical promise of the Green Line.

Such is the nest that I have feathered and such is the certainty of our mutual and respective fates in very different social strata in very different parts of the world.

Bashing this out as Etihad whisks me back to Thailand, I am left to muse on another week completely dominated by the flight of the former PM and the abject absurdity of all the Thai officials falling over themselves in a desperate attempt to appear the most idiotic.

His Generalness and his minging minions who would love nothing better than to gag us are invariably the butt of the gags. In fact they put the “n” in gagsters.

I am sure that the much missed UK comic and entertainer Bruce Forsythe who died in August would have had an appropriate one liner for this sideshow in Siam.

Ms S appears to have fled in everything from a private jet to a Toyota Vios. Maybe the head honchos spirited her out in the cunningly marked police car. Or the local som tam seller who has an uncle at the border.

Did I mention the cuddly toy?

Frankly, who gives a mouse dropping chili for how she left or where she is. Amid all the titter-fest that is Thailand I thought there was only one sane voice – a Nation comment piece, would you believe - that sensibly reminded us that the Thais need to prosecute people for what they do not who they are.

One who has had to take that mantra on his well-known chin is presenter Sorrayuth who this week had his 13 year embezzling conviction upheld.

While in other crime news – and perhaps shifting some of the heat from what those masters of the Siamese straight face refer to as their judicial system – it was the UK police blamed this time for their meddling in the case of the Koh Tao murders.

Scotland Yard, you will recall, had sent over two of their finest for a couple of weeks at the Oriental but now the UK’s National Crime Agency has said they acted unlawfully as their actions helped secure the Burmese accused a death sentence.

Talk about plod putting their foot in it – it really takes some going to upstage the Thai police at that but the Bobbies were more than a match for the BiBs in this grand national fiasco that rivals Aintree in 1993.

All this buffoonery liberally exercised on either side of the globe was best summed up by deputy PM Tanasak who told reporters in the shadow of the Sydney Opera House after a Thai “khon” masked drama show that the Thai “government practices the rule of law”.

While the dancers must have been grateful of the masks to hide their grins, Rooster had a sly smirk at the double entendre use of the word “practice”.

Except in giving us a laugh, they never seem to make it perfect.

On the lighter side of life it was no surprise to see the story emanating from QUOTES or the Queen of the Eastern Seaboard, where a hotel employee, who in most countries would have been praised for doing the right thing, handed in money he found spewing out of an ATM.

Not to be sneezed at, it was 69,000 baht to be precise. Rooster wasn’t sure whether to hail his honesty or his idiocy as he handed over the wads of cash to the dubious safe keeping of the local constabulary.

Let’s just hope he got a receipt and the bank – whoever they are – sees him right.

Similarly stretching the bounds of incredulity were two foreigners who seemed to have forgotten that CCTV has in fact made its way, albeit belatedly, into the arsenal – read pop-gun – of what passes for Thai police procedures.

Some on Thaivisa forum would say the cameras, when they are working, are the only means by which the constabulary have any chance of making an arrest, a matter clearly overlooked by the American ex-serviceman who robbed a downtown gold shop of some rings earlier in the week.

Described first as a “khaek khao”, with the translator going for “Arab”, it was later revealed that the man in the cap was just a whitey up to mischief. The cops followed him from shop to bike to house with the only surprise being that it was a full 24 hours before he was in custardy.

I use that word advisedly as rather him than me coming to such a sticky end in a Thai jail, a fate that awaits the other Darwinian Dodo foreigner in Pattaya who thought it necessary to use pepper spray during The Heist of the Wine Coolers.

I get how it can be upsetting if you need a drink when the afternoon shutters come down at 7-11 but this seemed a tad like overkill. It begged the question as to what we might see next – armed robbery for a bag of locusts, perhaps.

Also from the resort where the news never sleeps comes what I expect to be the first of many stories centering on the latest wonder of the modern world, namely Her Hole-i-ness the Pattaya Tunnel.

Some tanked up Thais whizzing through this dolphin encrusted marvel of futuristic engineering claimed that ratatat noises emanating from their car was gunfire rather than a dodgy exhaust.

Such has been the prevalence of shootings on the roads this year that we should all be surprised if it was indeed just the clatter of the latter.

Not tooled up but nevertheless as mad as Thai hell was the north eastern woman in a car at the center of my favorite story of the week.

This was the Thai nurse and wife, unusually eschewing armory, who had found out that her two timing hospital hubby was seeing his “gik” on the other side of Surin.

Described as “just another day in Thailand” the disgruntled missus laid in wait then rammed the cavorting duo with her car before a passing reporter happened to drop by and offer his assistance.

The woman was now content though some forum newbies to Thailand- baffling us old timers - suggested a crime had actually been committed! Attempted vehicular homicide? Nah….this was just Thai wife with right on her side folks!

The ‘mia luang’ had made her point and importantly got it out of her system, while the husband and his bit on the side had fled the scene without the former even losing his manhood to a duck’s dinner.

The only damage done was to the cars – and given the nature of the roads they’d be smashed up by teatime anyway.

And so to this week’s joint Rooster award. The “Pie in the Sky” (PITS) prize goes to the dreamers who announced a budget of just 28 billion baht to connect Rayong to Don Muang via Pattaya and Swampy with a high speed train. Multiply that by four and I may believe.

The PITS also goes to chief Sanit and his merry band of met men who are apparently making it their mission to clean up the Nana area of Bangkok. While it was clear that the story about the “illegals of color” referred to the Soi 3 side of Sukhumvit it can hardly be said that Soi 4 opposite is all that far behind in the shady characters’ stakes.

Especially when you consider many of those characters hail from Lumpini nick.

Finally, on a personal note it is spiffing if not spliffing to be back in Thailand despite some success in England.

Finishing 21st in the World Scrabble Championship in Nottingham was not too bad; not arguing excessively with my grown up children a plus; and keeping the column going as the mercury plummeted a fair achievement.

In fact…..didn’t he do well!


Rooster

 

 

-- © Copyright Thai Visa News 2017-09-03

[Marvo]

Keep it up Rooster! Love the prose.
Don't get to read much "proper" english here in the Land of Short-cuts.

 

[Ossy]

1 hour ago, Marvo said:

Keep it up Rooster! Love the prose.
Don't get to read much "proper" english here in the Land of Short-cuts.

 

Hear here!

[Mark mark]

Goooo Rooster !!! Nice One !!! ... I have been splitting MY Holls between Melaka the REAL Multi Cultural, and Yes, DEFINATLY FRIENDLY !!! If I could be so brash as to admit something as positive as that here,  Spot down here alongside the Straits, ...

 

And then Australia my Birth Place, where I probably will get a course On “Pandering to the Nanny State” and getting it “Right” !,… As well as “Not taking responsibility for my own actions” ! ….  Like it is all the Government Fault !!! Right ??? ....

 

But well, Blighty would be OK also, and well, Germany, for some present day Truth, and a Bit less Efficiency than before, ….  The Trains do not run on time any more ... Most of them ? Have been Privatized, so they now Run the Good Privatization, “Track Work” … 10 to 15 Minutes behind time, …  So make sure that you have More than that, on you Connections if you do go there. 

 

… Or Southern France which last time I went there, really quite surprised me, firstly by talking to me quite happily in English !!! (Like I would not like to try this anywhere Up North there ??? I think ???)  …. AND by Running all of their Trains on time as well !!! Like making the Germans Look Slack !!!  ... And well we all have heard about your UK Trains !!!  ....

 

Oh ? Ms. Y S ? Who is she ??? … I hope that someone has warned her about the UK Trains !!!

 

Got about a Month and a half to go …. And On On. Mark, … then back to the Vios, and Her in Doors.

[Mark mark]

Well, Thai Country side !!! ... It is actual ME in Doors, ...  and her Our doors !!! .... Growing stuff !!! Quite an Honourable pursuit ... Like "Him Up there at the Palace" .... Right, ...  or networking, or doing Business  ... Like TIT .... The roles have been revered !!! ...From a Foreign point of View any way, ..but what they, have always been doing it like this I think !!! ???