King’s Regatta, Phuket,Thailand, 4-11 December, 2010.
With only one dead through inhaling his own vomit (officially, a heart attack) the King’s Regatta was not only a great event but a wow of a party, according to participating yachties from as far away as Canada. However, the extra, unscheduled race that took place in a gale on the last day proved to be a tough one.
Sponsored by Shaky Beer Company, the aim of the race was to get yachts and crews as near to Kuhn (Mrs) Pun’s Beach-Side Beer and Sandwich Bar as possible. Billed as a novelty event it ran true to form and the results were novel.
Khun Pun’s bar is midway along one of Kata’s magnificent arched beaches, infamous for deadly surf and powerful undertow, and a well known watering hole for those who can’t afford to stay at Club Med or use their facilities. So, for the race to end at Khun Pun’s place was a bit of coup, a welcome end to a quiet trading period but a busy time for paramedics.
With the surf pounding away, the flotilla of racing yachts set off in the driving gale. Pennants flapping faster than a humming bird's wings, some reached record speeds. Especially the catamarans. Some skippers, suspecting the worst, turned back. Others couldn’t make up their minds and turned back too late. Sideways on, sails now controlled by nature instead of by beefy crew members, they were blown off course.
One headed north and missed the rendezvous at Khun Pun’s by 500 metres. Called Bees K-nees Diver, it dived too steeply, smashed it’s keel and ended up parked on it’s side. Laughing hysterically, the crew scampered away and haven't been seen since. Also having drifted too far north, Miss Sy Gone made a brave effort after narrowly missing a large tree. Her crew seemed in with a chance as they abandoned ship and split for the bar.
To the south of Khun Pun’s place, other yachts made an even bigger splash of it. Three of them plowed into the beach with such force that they found themselves wedged firmly in the sand (and may be moored there for some time).
The catamarans were the clear winners. Arriving on the beach at a high rate of knots, they were perfectly lined up with Khun Pun, rather than her place. Like two wartime Marine Commando vessels, they scythed through the sand and headed straight for her. It was a close call but Yellow Peril nailed the result by a short, snappy spinnaker.
The skipper called out, “Fifteen Shakies” (beers) and Khun Pun set ‘em up. As most of the yachties were drinking to forget, it was going to a long night. A photo taken by Khun Pun shows Yellow Peril nestling amongst her beach furniture. ‘He came so close, so fast, that I thought it was a hostile takeover bid. But high season arrives next week and I would have said no. Or, maybe.’
The booby prize went to a local yacht that ended up about 600 metres south of the bar. Dismasted and looking like a HMS Victory after the Battle of Trafalgar, the crew offered no explanation other than, ‘Before the race started we were smashed.’ They were disqualified and have since filed a protest. When morning revealed the carnage, the Thai flag was still flying from their yardarm.
‘Damn fine effort,’ according to Commander ‘Dopey’ Dave Lifebuoy, the race organizer, who phoned from Bali. (Well, he said he was in Bali.) When asked if the event will be included officially, as a permanent fixture of the King’s Regatta, he replied, ‘Gotta go, mate. I’m wanted in Darwin.’
Monday, 13 December 2010
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
When to panic?
Don’t panic when you hear an announcement that the train you intended to catch is not going to stop at the station nominated by the rail company, at the time specified:even if it will prevent you making a vital connection with another train. Don’t panic. Act.
So there I am, following a miserably sleepless night brought on by worries about making the aforementioned vital connection, standing on a draughty platform at Rotterdam’s roofless and antiquated station. Burdened by my weighty rucksack (how come laptops, guidebooks and peripherals are so bleedin’ ‘eavy?), I’ve already lugged my 15 kilos of wheelie-case down one flight of steps and up another.
But no worries. The board was showing that the 1155 to Brussels ‘Zuid’ was on time, leaving me plenty of time to eat a sandwich made in Belgium upon arrival. Or made in China like everything else. But what was this?
'This’ was an announcement to boldly state that the super-Hi-Speed Thalys (also going to Brussels), though running 45 minutes late, would be along soon. A Thalys 45 minutes late? Lord above. Is nothing sacred? It got worse. An indifferent voice said something like, ‘By the way. Someone has put the train together wrongly and the First Class carriages are at the rear of the train instead of the front. Ons excuses’ (‘Sorry about that’).
My working-class instincts kicked in instantly. Happy as a pig in effluent I watched rich people hauling their designer luggage along the adjacent platform, disgruntlement writ all over their chubby chops. I knew exactly what they were thinking. They were thinking, ‘You just can’t get the staff these days’. Tough!
It got funnier. The Thalys crept into Rotterdam like a high-speed tortoise, and guess what? The flipping First Class carriages were not at the rear of the train but at the front where they so obviously belonged. The tragedy was that I couldn’t see the faces of those affected by the non-change. But I could imagine them and had to stop myself from emitting my Lady MacBeth cackle. Loaded up, off it went as smooth as skins being slid over sausage meat.
Now for the main event. The board showed that my working-class train was still on time - for about three seconds. Then the information disappeared. Gone. In a flash. Just like that. What the f...? My heart skipped a beat as the same indifferent voice said something like, ‘The 1155 to Brussels will not be stopping at Rotterdam today. Ons excuses.’
Ons ex-frigging-cuses? I needed more than that, God dammit, as did many others standing with open mouths, agog, appalled, bewildered. Without hesitation I sprang into action. Grabbing my wheelie-case I hauled it to the steps then lugged it down. But was was this? Younger people, unencumbered by baggage and a heart condition were overtaking me. I tripped up two of them with my walking stick - they didn’t see that coming - but by the time I got to the information desk I was way down the line.
Then, as my forehead leaked sweat down my face and into my beard I heard a voice. A lady staff-member was telling a couple of lady tourists where to go, or what to do and I heard her say, ‘Thalys’. I butted in. ‘To Brussels?‘ ‘Yes sir.’ I shook my fevered brow and all three stepped back to avoid being drenched in manly water. ‘Oh no. The Thalys has gone.’ ‘Oh yes, sir. That was the late Thalys. There is another one here already, but it is going soon. Ask them if you can catch it.’
As the other ladies paused I leaped slowly onto the escalator to platform 1b. Yes, there’s a moving bleeding stairway to the Thalys, steps for the rest of us. I frog-marched myself to the top, did a right and there she was. As I made it onto the empty platform I heard a whistle. That was when I panicked.
Head down, stick in hand, I went into my version of Fifth Gear. The nearest doorway was twenty-five metres away. Further along an arm popped out of another and waved as if to say, ‘Unless you can go faster than that, old fart, you’re going to miss it.’ So I changed into Overdrive and I did not miss it. With the doors snatching at my case I stormed the steps and landed in the space between compartments. ‘Schplunk’ went the doors and off went an on-time Thalys, a TGV intent on reaching three hundred kilometres an hour.
To say I was in a bit of a state is an understatement. Chest heaving and pounding, eyes bulging like a bullfrog trapped in his lady frog's spawn, I leaned against a carriage window. The adjacent door opened soundlessly. Out stepped a man in uniform. Rotund and frowning officiously he said, ‘Ticket.’
Stuttering breathlessly about the frigging train not stopping at Rotterdam today, I offered him my special promotion ‘cheap’ ticket for a non-TGV train to nowhere. His frown deepened. I knew that expression. I’ve been attracting it for about sixty-five years. Here it comes, I thought. ‘You now have to pay...’ But it was not a case of money. ‘Sir,‘ he intoned. ‘You must ask permission before you take this train under those circumstances.‘ HUH?
I could not quite believe my ears but my brain could and it sent a signal to my big mouth. In that so awfully polite English way I found myself saying, ‘I’m dreadfully sorry but time was pressing and I was in a state of panic.’ I’m unsure if his brain processed my state and the use of ‘pressing’, but he had heard the word ‘sorry’. Without further ado he took my case, showed me to a spare seat and after saluting me, left me to count my blessings.
Should you ever be in Rotterdam and your shitty Dutch train to Brussels is cancelled, do not fret. Even if you are already ten minutes late you can still arrive in Brussels twenty-five minutes early. All you have to do is to panic and catch the flying Thalys.
So there I am, following a miserably sleepless night brought on by worries about making the aforementioned vital connection, standing on a draughty platform at Rotterdam’s roofless and antiquated station. Burdened by my weighty rucksack (how come laptops, guidebooks and peripherals are so bleedin’ ‘eavy?), I’ve already lugged my 15 kilos of wheelie-case down one flight of steps and up another.
But no worries. The board was showing that the 1155 to Brussels ‘Zuid’ was on time, leaving me plenty of time to eat a sandwich made in Belgium upon arrival. Or made in China like everything else. But what was this?
'This’ was an announcement to boldly state that the super-Hi-Speed Thalys (also going to Brussels), though running 45 minutes late, would be along soon. A Thalys 45 minutes late? Lord above. Is nothing sacred? It got worse. An indifferent voice said something like, ‘By the way. Someone has put the train together wrongly and the First Class carriages are at the rear of the train instead of the front. Ons excuses’ (‘Sorry about that’).
My working-class instincts kicked in instantly. Happy as a pig in effluent I watched rich people hauling their designer luggage along the adjacent platform, disgruntlement writ all over their chubby chops. I knew exactly what they were thinking. They were thinking, ‘You just can’t get the staff these days’. Tough!
It got funnier. The Thalys crept into Rotterdam like a high-speed tortoise, and guess what? The flipping First Class carriages were not at the rear of the train but at the front where they so obviously belonged. The tragedy was that I couldn’t see the faces of those affected by the non-change. But I could imagine them and had to stop myself from emitting my Lady MacBeth cackle. Loaded up, off it went as smooth as skins being slid over sausage meat.
Now for the main event. The board showed that my working-class train was still on time - for about three seconds. Then the information disappeared. Gone. In a flash. Just like that. What the f...? My heart skipped a beat as the same indifferent voice said something like, ‘The 1155 to Brussels will not be stopping at Rotterdam today. Ons excuses.’
Ons ex-frigging-cuses? I needed more than that, God dammit, as did many others standing with open mouths, agog, appalled, bewildered. Without hesitation I sprang into action. Grabbing my wheelie-case I hauled it to the steps then lugged it down. But was was this? Younger people, unencumbered by baggage and a heart condition were overtaking me. I tripped up two of them with my walking stick - they didn’t see that coming - but by the time I got to the information desk I was way down the line.
Then, as my forehead leaked sweat down my face and into my beard I heard a voice. A lady staff-member was telling a couple of lady tourists where to go, or what to do and I heard her say, ‘Thalys’. I butted in. ‘To Brussels?‘ ‘Yes sir.’ I shook my fevered brow and all three stepped back to avoid being drenched in manly water. ‘Oh no. The Thalys has gone.’ ‘Oh yes, sir. That was the late Thalys. There is another one here already, but it is going soon. Ask them if you can catch it.’
As the other ladies paused I leaped slowly onto the escalator to platform 1b. Yes, there’s a moving bleeding stairway to the Thalys, steps for the rest of us. I frog-marched myself to the top, did a right and there she was. As I made it onto the empty platform I heard a whistle. That was when I panicked.
Head down, stick in hand, I went into my version of Fifth Gear. The nearest doorway was twenty-five metres away. Further along an arm popped out of another and waved as if to say, ‘Unless you can go faster than that, old fart, you’re going to miss it.’ So I changed into Overdrive and I did not miss it. With the doors snatching at my case I stormed the steps and landed in the space between compartments. ‘Schplunk’ went the doors and off went an on-time Thalys, a TGV intent on reaching three hundred kilometres an hour.
To say I was in a bit of a state is an understatement. Chest heaving and pounding, eyes bulging like a bullfrog trapped in his lady frog's spawn, I leaned against a carriage window. The adjacent door opened soundlessly. Out stepped a man in uniform. Rotund and frowning officiously he said, ‘Ticket.’
Stuttering breathlessly about the frigging train not stopping at Rotterdam today, I offered him my special promotion ‘cheap’ ticket for a non-TGV train to nowhere. His frown deepened. I knew that expression. I’ve been attracting it for about sixty-five years. Here it comes, I thought. ‘You now have to pay...’ But it was not a case of money. ‘Sir,‘ he intoned. ‘You must ask permission before you take this train under those circumstances.‘ HUH?
I could not quite believe my ears but my brain could and it sent a signal to my big mouth. In that so awfully polite English way I found myself saying, ‘I’m dreadfully sorry but time was pressing and I was in a state of panic.’ I’m unsure if his brain processed my state and the use of ‘pressing’, but he had heard the word ‘sorry’. Without further ado he took my case, showed me to a spare seat and after saluting me, left me to count my blessings.
Should you ever be in Rotterdam and your shitty Dutch train to Brussels is cancelled, do not fret. Even if you are already ten minutes late you can still arrive in Brussels twenty-five minutes early. All you have to do is to panic and catch the flying Thalys.
Saturday, 9 October 2010
Deeply Ashamed
What have we in the West got to be proud about?
1) The state of the planet?
2) Our addiction to money, drugs and scarce resources?
3) The effect of Christianity?
4) Our democratic political systems?
5) The way we educate our children about values and morality?
6) Of what we did to Iraq?
I watched the BBCs ‘Secret Iraq’ the other night and it made me think about what we really did for that benighted country. So let’s take a good look at number 6 because it speaks volumes about issues 1-5.
Since the invasion it is estimated that about 100,000 Iraqis have been killed, of whom the vast majority were civilians. Exact figures are unknown because no one was counting.
When we invaded nuclear-free Iraq to ‘topple’ Saddam, there was no thought given to what would happen next. There was no plan to protect the civilian population. No plan to govern the country based on the fact that Saddam, by promoting the interests of the ‘bad guys’, the minority Sunnis, over the majority Shiites, had ruled by division.
An insurgency against us, the invaders, and internecine warfare between Iraqis, began simultaneously. The internecine warfare dominated the casualty rates. Within one year of the invasion, 30,000 Iraqis, mainly Sunnis, were dead: murdered, often by Shiite policemen, by killers who were trained and paid to keep order by the Americans, who did not want to promote Sunnis (because of past links to Saddam), nor to keep order themselves.
Into the vacuum created by ‘Christian’ America’s indifference to the plight of any sort of poor moslem, stepped al-Qaida. Within a few months, large areas of Baghdad became ‘no go’ zones. Al-Qaida is Sunni and now it was the turn of the Shiites to die in their hundreds. Outside Baghdad, in the the Sunni city of Anbar, 12,000 al-Qaida fighters paraded, declaring Anbar an Islamic Republic.
It took two assaults by US Marines to take back Anbar. The first, an all-American affair, did not succeed. The second was a joint Sunni-Marine affair, which did. ‘Way to go!’ Oh. Anbar was ruined and thousands of civilians died trapped in their own homes. But note the change of policy.
‘Christian’ America’s indifference to the plight of the ‘bad guys’ was history, a word that goes down badly in America. But by this time, over 3000 Americans were history (dead), which might have had something to do with the policy change. In fact al-Qaida’s brutal attitude to ordinary Iraqis caused (even) the Sunnis to shun them, even to cooperate with the Americans. Called The Awakening, this was a turning point. From then on, Sunnis stopped killing Shiites and began protecting Americans from both insurgents and al-Qaida.
Such was the better state of affairs by 2007, but only in the American zone. The British, ‘controlling‘ the south, were in big trouble. The city of Basra was slipping out of control. Because of moral and actual poverty (Britain’s inability to reinforce their own forces or even equip them properly), Shiite militias were set to drive them out of the city. Lack of forces and resources meant that the British army couldn’t stop them.
The retreat was covered by a political agreement. ‘You get out and if you don’t come back, we won’t kill you.‘ The British, in order to protect themselves rather than the people of Basra, got out and didn’t go back. Having sustained many casualties I expect that the average British squaddy was disgusted by the political agreement.
In Basra, as in Baghdad some two years earlier, the killing of Iraqis by Iraqis, especially of women by religious fanatics backed by Iran, began in ernest. A combined Iraqi and American force rushed south and set about retaking control of Basra. Deeply ashamed, the British offered to help. The Iraqi prime minister told them, no thanks.
All that can be said about the allied invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam was that, unlike the British, and at the expense of untold thousands of Iraqi civilians, the Americans were not actually defeated. I expect they’ll end up with lion’s share of Iraqi oil. Mission accomplished?
Our children might learn about all this, eventually, if anyone is left to teach history. We try to educate our children about values and morality by our own example, and then along comes something like Iraq. Later we profess amazement that they don’t seem to know the difference between right and wrong.
As for our democratic political systems, issue number 4, they allowed politicians to take us to war without first seeking our permission. All protests were squashed and ignored.
Because of our addictions to money and ever dwindling energy resources, issue number 2, it can be argued that to maintain Western lifestyles, our leaders are willing to go to war to secure supplies. If Iraq produced as much cocaine as Columbia, I shudder to think how much money the private contractors hired by America would be making by now.
Issue number 2 is linked to the morality factor in issue number 5, as well as to issue number 1: the Big Issue. Ergo, the acquisition and the burning of fossil fuels is wrecking the planet.
Issue number 7 may turn out to be something about, not caring about the Big Issue because we’ll all be dead beforehand. And fcuk the kids.
1) The state of the planet?
2) Our addiction to money, drugs and scarce resources?
3) The effect of Christianity?
4) Our democratic political systems?
5) The way we educate our children about values and morality?
6) Of what we did to Iraq?
I watched the BBCs ‘Secret Iraq’ the other night and it made me think about what we really did for that benighted country. So let’s take a good look at number 6 because it speaks volumes about issues 1-5.
Since the invasion it is estimated that about 100,000 Iraqis have been killed, of whom the vast majority were civilians. Exact figures are unknown because no one was counting.
When we invaded nuclear-free Iraq to ‘topple’ Saddam, there was no thought given to what would happen next. There was no plan to protect the civilian population. No plan to govern the country based on the fact that Saddam, by promoting the interests of the ‘bad guys’, the minority Sunnis, over the majority Shiites, had ruled by division.
An insurgency against us, the invaders, and internecine warfare between Iraqis, began simultaneously. The internecine warfare dominated the casualty rates. Within one year of the invasion, 30,000 Iraqis, mainly Sunnis, were dead: murdered, often by Shiite policemen, by killers who were trained and paid to keep order by the Americans, who did not want to promote Sunnis (because of past links to Saddam), nor to keep order themselves.
Into the vacuum created by ‘Christian’ America’s indifference to the plight of any sort of poor moslem, stepped al-Qaida. Within a few months, large areas of Baghdad became ‘no go’ zones. Al-Qaida is Sunni and now it was the turn of the Shiites to die in their hundreds. Outside Baghdad, in the the Sunni city of Anbar, 12,000 al-Qaida fighters paraded, declaring Anbar an Islamic Republic.
It took two assaults by US Marines to take back Anbar. The first, an all-American affair, did not succeed. The second was a joint Sunni-Marine affair, which did. ‘Way to go!’ Oh. Anbar was ruined and thousands of civilians died trapped in their own homes. But note the change of policy.
‘Christian’ America’s indifference to the plight of the ‘bad guys’ was history, a word that goes down badly in America. But by this time, over 3000 Americans were history (dead), which might have had something to do with the policy change. In fact al-Qaida’s brutal attitude to ordinary Iraqis caused (even) the Sunnis to shun them, even to cooperate with the Americans. Called The Awakening, this was a turning point. From then on, Sunnis stopped killing Shiites and began protecting Americans from both insurgents and al-Qaida.
Such was the better state of affairs by 2007, but only in the American zone. The British, ‘controlling‘ the south, were in big trouble. The city of Basra was slipping out of control. Because of moral and actual poverty (Britain’s inability to reinforce their own forces or even equip them properly), Shiite militias were set to drive them out of the city. Lack of forces and resources meant that the British army couldn’t stop them.
The retreat was covered by a political agreement. ‘You get out and if you don’t come back, we won’t kill you.‘ The British, in order to protect themselves rather than the people of Basra, got out and didn’t go back. Having sustained many casualties I expect that the average British squaddy was disgusted by the political agreement.
In Basra, as in Baghdad some two years earlier, the killing of Iraqis by Iraqis, especially of women by religious fanatics backed by Iran, began in ernest. A combined Iraqi and American force rushed south and set about retaking control of Basra. Deeply ashamed, the British offered to help. The Iraqi prime minister told them, no thanks.
All that can be said about the allied invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam was that, unlike the British, and at the expense of untold thousands of Iraqi civilians, the Americans were not actually defeated. I expect they’ll end up with lion’s share of Iraqi oil. Mission accomplished?
Our children might learn about all this, eventually, if anyone is left to teach history. We try to educate our children about values and morality by our own example, and then along comes something like Iraq. Later we profess amazement that they don’t seem to know the difference between right and wrong.
As for our democratic political systems, issue number 4, they allowed politicians to take us to war without first seeking our permission. All protests were squashed and ignored.
Because of our addictions to money and ever dwindling energy resources, issue number 2, it can be argued that to maintain Western lifestyles, our leaders are willing to go to war to secure supplies. If Iraq produced as much cocaine as Columbia, I shudder to think how much money the private contractors hired by America would be making by now.
Issue number 2 is linked to the morality factor in issue number 5, as well as to issue number 1: the Big Issue. Ergo, the acquisition and the burning of fossil fuels is wrecking the planet.
Issue number 7 may turn out to be something about, not caring about the Big Issue because we’ll all be dead beforehand. And fcuk the kids.
Thursday, 5 August 2010
They're 'Killing us Softly'.
As our children ingest oily exhaust particles into their noses in order not to breathe properly, or as we expel them into handkerchiefs as we drive to the gym to fight the fight against self-inflicted obesity, please spare a thought for other victims of our advanced industrial society.
In a heavily populated area of the Netherlands, a company that sterilizes medical equipment recently had its production license revoked. Their plant was found to be emitting high concentrations of cancer-causing ethylene oxide. An official investigation revealed that the company should not have been given a license to operate.
My local media source never did publish any more information, perhaps because the Dutch are phlegmatic about industrial accidents involving chemicals. There are more chemical plants to shake a stick at in Holland, plants that, because of emissions, give credence to the slogan, 'Jobs for a short life'.
My environmentally friendly friend, Reno, reckons the closure means that when we who live in the Netherlands get cancer from everyday chemical emissions, we can can no longer be certain that it will be cut out of us with a clean scalpel. He added, 'Ain't that a bummer?'
Remember Bophal, India? In 1984, through criminal neglect, about 40 tons of toxic gas (methyl isocyanate) was released into the air above the town. Its instant effect killed 4000 people. To-date, about 15,000 have died. Countless others contracted a variety of serious diseases.
Through manipulation of Indian law, western directors of the company were never brought to justice. Local directors, some now in the 70’s, have just been tried and found guilty. They can expect to be jailed for two years. If tried in the west they could have been expected to do their time in a prison with facilities similar to a 5 star hotel. As for the victims, some think it’s their bad luck for living in India.
And yet, remember Buncefield, England 2005? "Grave safety failures” (from the official report) caused a spectacular explosion at an oil depot. 250,000 litres of petrol leaked from one of its tanks. Following a bang that was heard 200 kilometres away, 43 people were injured and dozens of homes and business premises destroyed. The bang even frightened animals and a Staffordshire terrior pee'd on his owners legs.
Big Oil owns the Buncefield site. A British court ruled that “good practice guidance” was not being followed; “insufficient awareness” was at the heart of the safety culture at the plant. They were fined a few million pounds and no one is going to jail. Reno was scathing. 'Oops! There goes the small change and the tip for the waiter.' With that I found myself yawning. You too? Sorry about that.
In the meantime, even as we nod off, Big Oil is polluting Alaska, Nigeria, China, Indonesia and God knows where else. Mighty BP, bless 'em for their British heritage, has been trying to unsystematically wreck the eco system of the entire Gulf of Mexico single-handedly. Boom! Eleven dead and 50,000 barrels of oil spewing into the sea every day for almost three months. Tcha. Such a waste!
BP are awash with first-class minds from top universities, yet seemed not to have a plan to counter the effect of, arguably, the greatest spill in history. Reno said, 'I don't know about you but in the event of disaster, such as walking through town on a busy Saturday afternoon in winter and my pants fall down, I have a back-up plan called 'Long-Johns'.
Speaking of first-class minds: in 2007, soon after he became CEO of BP and during a lecture to business students at Stanford University, a certain Mr Tony Hayward said, “There are too many people trying to save the world.” With a First Class degree in Geology and a PhD from Edinburgh University, business students with Republican tendencies lapped up Mr Hayward's pearls of wisdom. "Way to go, Tony!"
Big Oil, lest we forget, suck out oil on our behalf and as cheaply as they can. It is unprofitable to follow “good practice guidance” because we, end-users of their dead-end product, demand cheap fuel to get us to and from the gym. Oh. Did you know that there are thousands of abandoned oil wells on the seabed of the Mexican Gulf? Experts - the silly people who are trying to save the world - say that Big Oil is creating an environmental minefield. Boom! Chain reaction comes to mind. What happens then? Goodbye Gulf Stream? That'll cool our ardor.
This latest spill may cost BP anything upwards of $30 billion. But they say they’ll survive and come out of it smarter and stronger. Reno said, ‘I'm no mathematician, but speaking of profits, if they can afford such a huge amount of money without a sidewards glance, should their end products be as expensive as they are?' I told him, 'Market forces, shareholders and pension plans, dopey,' and he apologized.
Remember when chemicals released in Switzerland killed all the fish in the German section of the Rhine? (Don’t laugh!) And what about the plastic vortex in the Pacific that's twice the size of Texas…Damn it, I’ve got tears in my eyes and I’ve lost the thread. Oh yes. How about Trafigura, those caring, sharing people who paid criminals to dump their toxic waste in Ivory Coast? 30,000 Africans became ill...Africa! I know what you’re saying. Stuff happens in Africa! Indeed: thanks to us and our advanced industrial society.
Actually, I really wanted to talk about drug companies profiting from overpricing…No. Make that the giant agricultural corporations who drench crops in pesticides. Or food producers such as Nestlé. We used to call them Nestle and I loved their products. They brought us the Milky Bar Kid, remember? They also convinced African women that their powder (formula) was much more beneficial than breast milk. Of course they were only thinking of the children…Sorry, I’m dropping off. Will someone nudge me when something important happens?
In fact don't bother. I need a rest from all this negative stuff. You too? Let's doze peacefully, safe in the knowledge that whatever disaster befalls someone, somewhere, it will be papered over before we are fully awake, or dead. Tomorrow we can watch TV and applaud creative corporate adverts featuring frolicking dolphin pods, rainbows, organic butterflies and wholesome eco-goodness.
So I said to Reno, 'We are so lucky to be living in an advanced industrial society, a society where Tony Hayward and other captains of industry work hard to enrich our lives, rather than themselves.' I can't tell you what Reno said in reply. It might keep you awake. Sweet dreams, my dears.
In a heavily populated area of the Netherlands, a company that sterilizes medical equipment recently had its production license revoked. Their plant was found to be emitting high concentrations of cancer-causing ethylene oxide. An official investigation revealed that the company should not have been given a license to operate.
My local media source never did publish any more information, perhaps because the Dutch are phlegmatic about industrial accidents involving chemicals. There are more chemical plants to shake a stick at in Holland, plants that, because of emissions, give credence to the slogan, 'Jobs for a short life'.
My environmentally friendly friend, Reno, reckons the closure means that when we who live in the Netherlands get cancer from everyday chemical emissions, we can can no longer be certain that it will be cut out of us with a clean scalpel. He added, 'Ain't that a bummer?'
Remember Bophal, India? In 1984, through criminal neglect, about 40 tons of toxic gas (methyl isocyanate) was released into the air above the town. Its instant effect killed 4000 people. To-date, about 15,000 have died. Countless others contracted a variety of serious diseases.
Through manipulation of Indian law, western directors of the company were never brought to justice. Local directors, some now in the 70’s, have just been tried and found guilty. They can expect to be jailed for two years. If tried in the west they could have been expected to do their time in a prison with facilities similar to a 5 star hotel. As for the victims, some think it’s their bad luck for living in India.
And yet, remember Buncefield, England 2005? "Grave safety failures” (from the official report) caused a spectacular explosion at an oil depot. 250,000 litres of petrol leaked from one of its tanks. Following a bang that was heard 200 kilometres away, 43 people were injured and dozens of homes and business premises destroyed. The bang even frightened animals and a Staffordshire terrior pee'd on his owners legs.
Big Oil owns the Buncefield site. A British court ruled that “good practice guidance” was not being followed; “insufficient awareness” was at the heart of the safety culture at the plant. They were fined a few million pounds and no one is going to jail. Reno was scathing. 'Oops! There goes the small change and the tip for the waiter.' With that I found myself yawning. You too? Sorry about that.
In the meantime, even as we nod off, Big Oil is polluting Alaska, Nigeria, China, Indonesia and God knows where else. Mighty BP, bless 'em for their British heritage, has been trying to unsystematically wreck the eco system of the entire Gulf of Mexico single-handedly. Boom! Eleven dead and 50,000 barrels of oil spewing into the sea every day for almost three months. Tcha. Such a waste!
BP are awash with first-class minds from top universities, yet seemed not to have a plan to counter the effect of, arguably, the greatest spill in history. Reno said, 'I don't know about you but in the event of disaster, such as walking through town on a busy Saturday afternoon in winter and my pants fall down, I have a back-up plan called 'Long-Johns'.
Speaking of first-class minds: in 2007, soon after he became CEO of BP and during a lecture to business students at Stanford University, a certain Mr Tony Hayward said, “There are too many people trying to save the world.” With a First Class degree in Geology and a PhD from Edinburgh University, business students with Republican tendencies lapped up Mr Hayward's pearls of wisdom. "Way to go, Tony!"
Big Oil, lest we forget, suck out oil on our behalf and as cheaply as they can. It is unprofitable to follow “good practice guidance” because we, end-users of their dead-end product, demand cheap fuel to get us to and from the gym. Oh. Did you know that there are thousands of abandoned oil wells on the seabed of the Mexican Gulf? Experts - the silly people who are trying to save the world - say that Big Oil is creating an environmental minefield. Boom! Chain reaction comes to mind. What happens then? Goodbye Gulf Stream? That'll cool our ardor.
This latest spill may cost BP anything upwards of $30 billion. But they say they’ll survive and come out of it smarter and stronger. Reno said, ‘I'm no mathematician, but speaking of profits, if they can afford such a huge amount of money without a sidewards glance, should their end products be as expensive as they are?' I told him, 'Market forces, shareholders and pension plans, dopey,' and he apologized.
Remember when chemicals released in Switzerland killed all the fish in the German section of the Rhine? (Don’t laugh!) And what about the plastic vortex in the Pacific that's twice the size of Texas…Damn it, I’ve got tears in my eyes and I’ve lost the thread. Oh yes. How about Trafigura, those caring, sharing people who paid criminals to dump their toxic waste in Ivory Coast? 30,000 Africans became ill...Africa! I know what you’re saying. Stuff happens in Africa! Indeed: thanks to us and our advanced industrial society.
Actually, I really wanted to talk about drug companies profiting from overpricing…No. Make that the giant agricultural corporations who drench crops in pesticides. Or food producers such as Nestlé. We used to call them Nestle and I loved their products. They brought us the Milky Bar Kid, remember? They also convinced African women that their powder (formula) was much more beneficial than breast milk. Of course they were only thinking of the children…Sorry, I’m dropping off. Will someone nudge me when something important happens?
In fact don't bother. I need a rest from all this negative stuff. You too? Let's doze peacefully, safe in the knowledge that whatever disaster befalls someone, somewhere, it will be papered over before we are fully awake, or dead. Tomorrow we can watch TV and applaud creative corporate adverts featuring frolicking dolphin pods, rainbows, organic butterflies and wholesome eco-goodness.
So I said to Reno, 'We are so lucky to be living in an advanced industrial society, a society where Tony Hayward and other captains of industry work hard to enrich our lives, rather than themselves.' I can't tell you what Reno said in reply. It might keep you awake. Sweet dreams, my dears.
Thursday, 10 June 2010
Failed States: Pug-Ugly 10:10
‘Failed State’ has become an American cliché. When international affairs are not going their way, American establishments lash out. The first thing they do to foreign States that won’t toe their line is first label them ‘rogue’, then, ‘failed’. When the offending State has worn both labels long enough they send in the marines.
Not that failed States need worry too much. America also has a reputation for losing wars against them miserably – Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia. Or they lose the peace – Iraq, with Afghanistan to follow.
George W. Bush and his neo-cons learned nothing from previous debacles. ‘History? It’s in the past, God damn it.’ In order to avenge 9/11 they attacked ‘failed’ Afghanistan for sheltering ‘successful’ Osama Bin Laden, and missed the target abjectly. Then they falsely linked him to ‘rogue’ Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and claimed that the second Gulf War was a crusade waged against him, personally: in the name of freedom, democracy and oil, of course.
Medieval popes had the same attitude towards Saladin and his successors, and set out to resurrect the Holy Land via a series of crusades. If you, like George W, are unsure of events, Google ‘The Crusades’ and weep.
Now to the subject of one big failed State: America. Democracy is no longer the right word to describe America’s political system. The American model is an example of how the World should not be run. America has become a dictatorship by bosses (of giant corporations). Using unimaginable wealth and influence they ‘persuade’ half-witted politicians to create laws favourable to corporations as opposed to their own big State.
Look at the evidence: on behalf of Big Banks, their politicians (and ours) deregulated the banking sector and turned it into a destructive monster. Bad laws helped bankers accumulate vast wealth, even as their banks were failing, and/or, ruining State economies. Look at Big Oil and the drilling rights they secured to exploit Alaska and to take up dangerous deep drilling. After cocking its snoot at those who were trying to preserve the environment, Big Oil prospered even more.
America is close to anarchic failure, as predicted by fiction writers and filmmakers. America is part-ruled by shadowy figures occupying penthouses atop ivory towers overlooking Wall Street. Do you think they’ll care if America implodes? They’ve probably laid bets on it imploding.
But anarchic failure? Yes. Look at Detroit. Look at all the rust bucket states. Look at New Orleans. Look at the southern states awash in light crude. Look at California. With an economy bigger than many countries, California is in an advanced state of failure. Like the citizens of Mogadishu and Kabul, Californians can't get out of the place quick enough.
‘Law and order is set to break down’, say America’s rich. Look at the hundreds of gated communities being built to protect them. They’re scared to death of having to live among the poor of their own country.
If you think that these are blips and not iconic examples of chronic failure of America and the West’s political and capitalist systems, you are wrong. Having been a rogue political State for a very long time - look at its disgraceful record in propping up or installing sympathetic dictators in Latin America – who, I’d like to know, is going to slap the ‘failed’ label on America? Tony Blair?
State failure is not only confined to America. Deregulation of the banking sector, mismanagement of economic systems and false accounting have dragged Europe into the same quagmire. Some States in the European Union are set to fail by default, if they haven’t already. The EU as an entity is in a terrible state. Economies are shot to hell. Unemployment is rife and the validity of the euro in its comfort zone is in grave doubt. Other than because they followed the American model, why is that?
To qualify for entry into the eurozone, certain sovereign States deliberately falsified the state of their economic situations. To facilitate entry they used ‘creative’ accounting. To ensure the short-term political success of the eurozone, politicians turned blind eyes. The eurozone was built on sand.
Inedible euro-chickens are coming home to roost. Efforts at correcting the current financial debt crisis by spending cuts and increased taxation will have a drastic effect on European society, but not on the bankers, the corporatists, or the rich. The people who will bear the brunt will be those who cannot avoid paying taxes, the ones most affected by cuts. Riots (in Greece) are a foretaste. Resentment is building.
So do we only have the politicians to blame? No. Voters are to blame, namely, those who voted for political parties that promised to lower taxes, increase benefits, protect values of homes, currencies, pensions and shares. I.E. parties daft enough to borrow money on international markets to do precisely that!
I didn’t vote for any of them. Having no faith in free markets I haven’t voted for years. The idea of government dominated by the likes of the people who ran Lehman, or run BP, BA and Ryan Air, disgusts me. Deep down I’m a Marx and Engels-man, minus the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ angle. A Socialist cum Luddite, I would smash machines in order to save jobs.
So who would I vote for? I’d vote for any party that vowed to abolish the House of Lords, plus, following the demise of our gracious Queen, dump the Monarchy. In contrast to America’s madly conservative Republicans, my republican-minded party would nationalise banks, public transport, energy and water companies and, in their spare time, wage warfare against car, oil and other climate-polluting companies. They would redistribute wealth and if the rich kicked up a fuss, impose a tax on the rarefied air that they breathe.
Thus, (thanks be to God, I hear some say) I have no one to vote for.
So instead of avidly anticipating social revolution, I am destined to merely watch as modern States, in this so-called developed World, slip into an amoral vacuum and fail by default. I can do nothing to change this pug-ugly mess, except incite you, the voter, to pull your head out of your arse and vote with your heart instead of your calculating brain!
Not that failed States need worry too much. America also has a reputation for losing wars against them miserably – Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia. Or they lose the peace – Iraq, with Afghanistan to follow.
George W. Bush and his neo-cons learned nothing from previous debacles. ‘History? It’s in the past, God damn it.’ In order to avenge 9/11 they attacked ‘failed’ Afghanistan for sheltering ‘successful’ Osama Bin Laden, and missed the target abjectly. Then they falsely linked him to ‘rogue’ Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and claimed that the second Gulf War was a crusade waged against him, personally: in the name of freedom, democracy and oil, of course.
Medieval popes had the same attitude towards Saladin and his successors, and set out to resurrect the Holy Land via a series of crusades. If you, like George W, are unsure of events, Google ‘The Crusades’ and weep.
Now to the subject of one big failed State: America. Democracy is no longer the right word to describe America’s political system. The American model is an example of how the World should not be run. America has become a dictatorship by bosses (of giant corporations). Using unimaginable wealth and influence they ‘persuade’ half-witted politicians to create laws favourable to corporations as opposed to their own big State.
Look at the evidence: on behalf of Big Banks, their politicians (and ours) deregulated the banking sector and turned it into a destructive monster. Bad laws helped bankers accumulate vast wealth, even as their banks were failing, and/or, ruining State economies. Look at Big Oil and the drilling rights they secured to exploit Alaska and to take up dangerous deep drilling. After cocking its snoot at those who were trying to preserve the environment, Big Oil prospered even more.
America is close to anarchic failure, as predicted by fiction writers and filmmakers. America is part-ruled by shadowy figures occupying penthouses atop ivory towers overlooking Wall Street. Do you think they’ll care if America implodes? They’ve probably laid bets on it imploding.
But anarchic failure? Yes. Look at Detroit. Look at all the rust bucket states. Look at New Orleans. Look at the southern states awash in light crude. Look at California. With an economy bigger than many countries, California is in an advanced state of failure. Like the citizens of Mogadishu and Kabul, Californians can't get out of the place quick enough.
‘Law and order is set to break down’, say America’s rich. Look at the hundreds of gated communities being built to protect them. They’re scared to death of having to live among the poor of their own country.
If you think that these are blips and not iconic examples of chronic failure of America and the West’s political and capitalist systems, you are wrong. Having been a rogue political State for a very long time - look at its disgraceful record in propping up or installing sympathetic dictators in Latin America – who, I’d like to know, is going to slap the ‘failed’ label on America? Tony Blair?
State failure is not only confined to America. Deregulation of the banking sector, mismanagement of economic systems and false accounting have dragged Europe into the same quagmire. Some States in the European Union are set to fail by default, if they haven’t already. The EU as an entity is in a terrible state. Economies are shot to hell. Unemployment is rife and the validity of the euro in its comfort zone is in grave doubt. Other than because they followed the American model, why is that?
To qualify for entry into the eurozone, certain sovereign States deliberately falsified the state of their economic situations. To facilitate entry they used ‘creative’ accounting. To ensure the short-term political success of the eurozone, politicians turned blind eyes. The eurozone was built on sand.
Inedible euro-chickens are coming home to roost. Efforts at correcting the current financial debt crisis by spending cuts and increased taxation will have a drastic effect on European society, but not on the bankers, the corporatists, or the rich. The people who will bear the brunt will be those who cannot avoid paying taxes, the ones most affected by cuts. Riots (in Greece) are a foretaste. Resentment is building.
So do we only have the politicians to blame? No. Voters are to blame, namely, those who voted for political parties that promised to lower taxes, increase benefits, protect values of homes, currencies, pensions and shares. I.E. parties daft enough to borrow money on international markets to do precisely that!
I didn’t vote for any of them. Having no faith in free markets I haven’t voted for years. The idea of government dominated by the likes of the people who ran Lehman, or run BP, BA and Ryan Air, disgusts me. Deep down I’m a Marx and Engels-man, minus the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ angle. A Socialist cum Luddite, I would smash machines in order to save jobs.
So who would I vote for? I’d vote for any party that vowed to abolish the House of Lords, plus, following the demise of our gracious Queen, dump the Monarchy. In contrast to America’s madly conservative Republicans, my republican-minded party would nationalise banks, public transport, energy and water companies and, in their spare time, wage warfare against car, oil and other climate-polluting companies. They would redistribute wealth and if the rich kicked up a fuss, impose a tax on the rarefied air that they breathe.
Thus, (thanks be to God, I hear some say) I have no one to vote for.
So instead of avidly anticipating social revolution, I am destined to merely watch as modern States, in this so-called developed World, slip into an amoral vacuum and fail by default. I can do nothing to change this pug-ugly mess, except incite you, the voter, to pull your head out of your arse and vote with your heart instead of your calculating brain!
Wednesday, 19 May 2010
Where's the Thai Smile Now?
Where’s the Thai Smile Now?
(I thought at first that this Blog post may have been overtaken by today’s events in Thailand, but it hasn’t.) When I flew out of Phuket on May 6, I was not looking out of the porthole in expectation of seeing a man in a red shirt catapulting a homemade rocket at an Airbus in take-off mode. Phuket was peaceful enough.
But I did have a lump in my throat. Would there be a Thailand to come back to? That question remains.
When the leaders of the protagonists of the protracted clash between the Red Shirts and the Thai government met for their live TV debates, the famous Thai smile was in evidence. No longer. Recent images portray serious, determined, resigned and anxious faces. The men to whom they belong knew there would be more pools of Thai blood on the streets of Bangkok. And they were right.
Though famous for their smiles, the Thais have always been a nation of fighters. Ask the Burmese, ask the Lao, ask any of their neighbours whose borders they crossed in the name of conquest. All will confirm how determinedly Thais fight.
As a result of past military successes, the country’s north and north-eastern regions are largely populated by ancestors of people who were forced out of their own countries to become slaves of the Thais. In the region called Isan, the now nationalised ex-slaves still speak a Lao dialect, and they are physically different to those who consider themselves to be the ‘real’, ethnic Thais. And the ethnic Thais never let them forget what they regard as ‘shortcomings’.
When the northerners descended on Bangkok the majority of the populace regarded them as aliens. The two groups had no common ground. But after two months of mingling under very difficult circumstances, many of the poor of Bangkok, who number in the millions, realised that they and the northerners might have more common ground than they thought.
This common ground may yet give birth to a new political movement.
From a humanistic point of view my sympathies are with the Red Shirts. I’m not talking about their ill-advised leaders who told them to splash fresh blood around, nor about the cynical, super-rich, would-be dictator who bribed them and financed a cadre of ‘guns-for-hire’ to go to Bangkok and cause mayhem. My sympathy is with the ordinary protestors, those who have many genuine grievances.
Thai governments ignore the plight of northerners, who are neglected, abused, exploited and, as a result of grossly unequal distribution of wealth, abjectly poverty-stricken. And sadly enough, the vast majority of ethnic Thais, especially those belonging to the burgeoning middle-class, plus the elitists (supported by the Yellow Shirts), don’t give a damn.
I believe this attitude ensures that Thailand must reap the rotten harvest that the ethnic Thais have sown, now and in the future.
The Thai military leadership is a reflection of an elitist establishment. The army has more generals and ex-generals cum politicians than it knows what to do with. They know, above all, where their bread is buttered and, therefore, it was not unexpected that at some stage Thai soldiers would be ordered to start killing the un-influential aliens from the north. Neither would it surprise me that when the military seemed hesitant about attacking its own citizens, a power struggle was being played out; a price was being demanded. Though we might never know what or how much it was, or if the amount has now been paid, it has at least been agreed.
The worst aspect of all this is that the very real grievances of Thailand’s poor, and in spite of the recent confrontation, will not be on the agenda of the Thai establishment - elected or otherwise - now or in the foreseeable future. This failure to accept responsibility for the downtrodden, or to fix any of Thailand’s chronic social and development problems is going to lead to much more trouble.
I expect the current crises to be repeated, especially as millions of Bangkok’s poor, many of whom are from the north, become more aware through better education, the internet and social networking. As and when this happens, the Thai establishment will be confronted by people nursing immense anger. The thing to watch out for is when they find proper and worthy leaders.
At the next election the Reds will vote for a government that is sympathetic to the cause of Thaksin Shinawatra. And they will win, which is why the army, backed by the Yellow Shirts and the elite, may not allow it.
The other massive problem is that most ordinary ethnic Thais will be less than enthralled by the prospect of being governed by a government sympathetic to the northern Reds, and especially one that harbours a desire to reinstate northern born Mr Shinawatra as de-facto leader. Should that happen, protest and violence instigated by the Yellow Shirt movement would begin immediately.
(If the Red Shirts had seized power and tried to restore the fortunes of Mr Shinawatra, Thailand would now be on a steeply descending road to hell.)
Thailand’s future looks bleak. Unless a Thai government genuinely commits itself to improving the lot of Thailand’s poverty-stricken majority and, at the same time placating the middle class and the power mongers of the elite, there will be more of the violence we have just witnessed to follow. In fact what we have witnessed will seem like a girl guide’s picnic.
To me, Thailand as a nation is on course to fail. Unless Thailand cleverly changes course, and I don’t think it can, the lovely, welcoming Thai smile from a people ‘we’ love will fade away. It will become history, even mythology, based on nostalgic stories recounted by ancient travellers. And the lump in my throat will become a boulder.
(I thought at first that this Blog post may have been overtaken by today’s events in Thailand, but it hasn’t.) When I flew out of Phuket on May 6, I was not looking out of the porthole in expectation of seeing a man in a red shirt catapulting a homemade rocket at an Airbus in take-off mode. Phuket was peaceful enough.
But I did have a lump in my throat. Would there be a Thailand to come back to? That question remains.
When the leaders of the protagonists of the protracted clash between the Red Shirts and the Thai government met for their live TV debates, the famous Thai smile was in evidence. No longer. Recent images portray serious, determined, resigned and anxious faces. The men to whom they belong knew there would be more pools of Thai blood on the streets of Bangkok. And they were right.
Though famous for their smiles, the Thais have always been a nation of fighters. Ask the Burmese, ask the Lao, ask any of their neighbours whose borders they crossed in the name of conquest. All will confirm how determinedly Thais fight.
As a result of past military successes, the country’s north and north-eastern regions are largely populated by ancestors of people who were forced out of their own countries to become slaves of the Thais. In the region called Isan, the now nationalised ex-slaves still speak a Lao dialect, and they are physically different to those who consider themselves to be the ‘real’, ethnic Thais. And the ethnic Thais never let them forget what they regard as ‘shortcomings’.
When the northerners descended on Bangkok the majority of the populace regarded them as aliens. The two groups had no common ground. But after two months of mingling under very difficult circumstances, many of the poor of Bangkok, who number in the millions, realised that they and the northerners might have more common ground than they thought.
This common ground may yet give birth to a new political movement.
From a humanistic point of view my sympathies are with the Red Shirts. I’m not talking about their ill-advised leaders who told them to splash fresh blood around, nor about the cynical, super-rich, would-be dictator who bribed them and financed a cadre of ‘guns-for-hire’ to go to Bangkok and cause mayhem. My sympathy is with the ordinary protestors, those who have many genuine grievances.
Thai governments ignore the plight of northerners, who are neglected, abused, exploited and, as a result of grossly unequal distribution of wealth, abjectly poverty-stricken. And sadly enough, the vast majority of ethnic Thais, especially those belonging to the burgeoning middle-class, plus the elitists (supported by the Yellow Shirts), don’t give a damn.
I believe this attitude ensures that Thailand must reap the rotten harvest that the ethnic Thais have sown, now and in the future.
The Thai military leadership is a reflection of an elitist establishment. The army has more generals and ex-generals cum politicians than it knows what to do with. They know, above all, where their bread is buttered and, therefore, it was not unexpected that at some stage Thai soldiers would be ordered to start killing the un-influential aliens from the north. Neither would it surprise me that when the military seemed hesitant about attacking its own citizens, a power struggle was being played out; a price was being demanded. Though we might never know what or how much it was, or if the amount has now been paid, it has at least been agreed.
The worst aspect of all this is that the very real grievances of Thailand’s poor, and in spite of the recent confrontation, will not be on the agenda of the Thai establishment - elected or otherwise - now or in the foreseeable future. This failure to accept responsibility for the downtrodden, or to fix any of Thailand’s chronic social and development problems is going to lead to much more trouble.
I expect the current crises to be repeated, especially as millions of Bangkok’s poor, many of whom are from the north, become more aware through better education, the internet and social networking. As and when this happens, the Thai establishment will be confronted by people nursing immense anger. The thing to watch out for is when they find proper and worthy leaders.
At the next election the Reds will vote for a government that is sympathetic to the cause of Thaksin Shinawatra. And they will win, which is why the army, backed by the Yellow Shirts and the elite, may not allow it.
The other massive problem is that most ordinary ethnic Thais will be less than enthralled by the prospect of being governed by a government sympathetic to the northern Reds, and especially one that harbours a desire to reinstate northern born Mr Shinawatra as de-facto leader. Should that happen, protest and violence instigated by the Yellow Shirt movement would begin immediately.
(If the Red Shirts had seized power and tried to restore the fortunes of Mr Shinawatra, Thailand would now be on a steeply descending road to hell.)
Thailand’s future looks bleak. Unless a Thai government genuinely commits itself to improving the lot of Thailand’s poverty-stricken majority and, at the same time placating the middle class and the power mongers of the elite, there will be more of the violence we have just witnessed to follow. In fact what we have witnessed will seem like a girl guide’s picnic.
To me, Thailand as a nation is on course to fail. Unless Thailand cleverly changes course, and I don’t think it can, the lovely, welcoming Thai smile from a people ‘we’ love will fade away. It will become history, even mythology, based on nostalgic stories recounted by ancient travellers. And the lump in my throat will become a boulder.
Tuesday, 20 April 2010
Thailand – How to Lose Friends and influence nobody
Even after the blood-letting of April 10, Thailand’s Red Shirts continue to disrupt Bangkok. The Yellow Shirts are preparing themselves for entering into the affray. The threat of more violence remains. If the Reds move up the road into the business and banking district based on Silom, the army will stop them. Or not, as the case may be.
Staggeringly incompetent, the police will sit it out. A respected Thai commentator recently wrote of the Thai police. “No matter who wins this crazy Thai politics of colours, justice is a pipe dream when the police force remains decadently corrupt.” Bangkok Post, March 27, 2010.
He didn’t write that the military establishment is also corrupt. Plus, it can’t keep its nose out of politics. The army is in the process of dividing itself between coloured political camps with vested interests, hence the doubt about who will stop who. This makes the prospect of civil war a distinct possibility.
The world watched in horror as first, the supporters of one of these political groups, ex-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s 'Reds', splashed tainted fresh blood onto selected Bangkok venues. Then, as one of the worst led armies in the world made a complete hash of trying to remove the Reds from one of their strong points. The death toll is now 25, including 5 soldiers, some of whom were almost certainly killed by paid assassins.
Paid by whom? They were probably paid by Red Shirt leaders, who administer fighting funds provided by Thaksin Shinawatra. Tragically, should this sad bunch of criminally-minded cretins manage to oust the current government and take control of the nation, they will try to reinstall Shinawtra as Prime Minister. He will make a mockery of good governance and Thailand will become a democracy in name only.
The question is, who would want to deal with a man that some brave Thai commentators liken to a common kleptomaniac? Others fear him, hedge their bets and stay silent. When he came to power he tackled the drug problem ‘with extreme prejudice’. People ‘involved’ died in what can only be described as ‘extra-judicial killings’. If he gets back into power his critics will need to watch their backs. Paid assassins come cheap in this country.
So the world is watching as Thailand’s loopy political crisis goes on and on. If Thailand’s Reds or Yellows shut the international airport again in the name of politics, or there is just one more military coup, the international penny will drop and Thailand will be declared ‘basket case’.
Bombs and grenades have been going off all over the country; like today in Chiang Mai, for instance. Before the big ‘kick-off’ on April 10, there were 20-odd explosions in Bangkok. And Thailand got lucky. Only one foreigner – a Japanese journalist - was killed. Had a grenade been launched into the back-packer community on Khao San Road and a few young tourists been found lying in pools of their own blood, the penny would have taken on the attributes of a lead weight.
I don’t know what to make of Thailand these days, but the fearsome Siamese cat is well and truly out of the bag. It is now understood that Thailand’s raging over-development is completely unsustainable; that Bangkok’s pollution is a killer. Early Spring found parts of the North and North East of the country enveloped in smog. Farmers burn off crop residue, an old practice that cannot be easily changed for financial reasons.
In addition, speculators set fire to badly depleted forested areas so that they can appropriate land illegally and plant, or build, something that will make money for them. Because they are protected by people in high places, no one can stop it happening. The smog affects thousands. Hospitals are stretched dealing with people with breathing difficulties. It costs millions to treat them and the same story will be repeated next year. Expats flee their homes and head south, but not too far south.
Three provinces in the deep south of Thailand, once part of old Malaya, are largely populated by neglected and discontented Muslims. There is an undeclared war going on between ‘separatist militants’, tomorrows ‘freedom fighters’, and the Thai military. Atrocities have been committed by both sides. Informed opinion suggests that coup-happy generals are heavy-cack-handedly dealing with the problem. More than 5000 lives have been lost. A rubber-tapper was killed yesterday.
Here in Kata (Phuket) I had a nice view of a thickly wooded hill. Gone. Not the hill, just the aspect. Bulldozers and a JCB are ripping a deep scar that covers at least an acre. ‘Someone’ is sticking up yet another condominium.
Phuket City now has two bus stations, one old, one brand new. The brand new one is not yet open because there is a political/financial row about who will run it. There’s a brand new wet fish market to replace the old one. Supposed to open in July, it probably won’t. There’s a dispute about rents to be charged (gouged) and not one tenant has signed up.
The southern highway leading to Phuket and elsewhere is very dangerous. Tourists are being transported along a road that was built without any attempt to minimise the, often fatal, result of countless accidents. On the main highway the central reservation is often a ditch, with trees in it. In places the ditch is lined with concrete.
Over the Thai (New Year) Songkran festival, seven days in total, there were more than 3500 road accidents. 361 people were killed. The southern province of Nakhon Si Thammarat recorded the most accidents.
In my opinion, responsible guidebooks should advise foreign travellers not to use the trans-Thai bus services. The guides are written with political correctness in mind. Don’t be fooled. Read between the lines. When they say, for instance, ‘the city, town or village is not particularly attractive’, they mean it’s a bloody mess. If they write it’s ‘slightly dodgy’ they mean, ‘watch where you’re going and take extra care’.
Two American tourists I met went to Phuket City for the day (“to see the Sino-Portuguese-inspired architecture”). They were back in less than three hours. ‘Shoddy’ was the kindest word they could come up with.
The ubiquitous concrete shop-houses that line most towns and many village road look bad enough, but when you look up you will see an amazing lash-up. The overhead electricity cables that line every road are as tangled as cooked spaghetti after it has been tumble-dried. When service engineers arrive to work on the supply, don’t look! Wearing flip-flops and without safety helmets, they climb up unsecured bamboo ladders to unhook, fix, then hook ‘em back up. Connections loop across roads. ‘Pirates’ tap into the supply as and when necessity demands.
Pavements are mostly non-existent in non-tourist areas and unnavigable where they exist. The Tourist Authority of Thailand promote the country as ‘family-friendly’. Absolute nonsense. Mothers pushing pushchairs face an obstacle course of electricity posts, potholes, drains, parked cars, restaurant furniture, elephants and curb stones that are half-a-metre high. Wheelchair users take their chances on the roads. If you walk down town or city roads with young children, put reins on them. (They’ll love the elephants. Animal rights activists will freak out.)
Thailand is failing. Anyone looking at this country and applying a modicum of common sense to its problems will tell you that at some stage, something’s got to give, that Thailand is going to have to pay a heavy price for such wanton miss-management.
If Thailand’s domestic political problems are massive, internationally they continue to shoot themselves in both feet. They’ve recently expelled and trucked 4000 refugees back to Communist Laos, expressly against the wishes and advice of the UN, NGOs and the USA. Needless to say, the USA created the problem during the war they were supposed to be waging in Vietnam.
Thailand has recently refused an entry visa to the sister of the Dalai Lama, kow-towing to their powerful and unprincipled Chinese neighbour. And who else, other than China and North Korea, does business with the brutal Burmese military junta? Successive Thai governments do business with the brutal Burmese military junta. And let’s not talk about collusion between businessmen and politicians that facilitates exploitation of refugees from that sad country.
It occurs to me that this sort of insensitive, non-co-operative, international bad-attitude ensures that the Thais are losing friends fast. I was once one of those friends. As a retiree, I intended to divide my time between Thailand and Europe. I leave here in May and I’m quite undecided about coming back.
Staggeringly incompetent, the police will sit it out. A respected Thai commentator recently wrote of the Thai police. “No matter who wins this crazy Thai politics of colours, justice is a pipe dream when the police force remains decadently corrupt.” Bangkok Post, March 27, 2010.
He didn’t write that the military establishment is also corrupt. Plus, it can’t keep its nose out of politics. The army is in the process of dividing itself between coloured political camps with vested interests, hence the doubt about who will stop who. This makes the prospect of civil war a distinct possibility.
The world watched in horror as first, the supporters of one of these political groups, ex-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s 'Reds', splashed tainted fresh blood onto selected Bangkok venues. Then, as one of the worst led armies in the world made a complete hash of trying to remove the Reds from one of their strong points. The death toll is now 25, including 5 soldiers, some of whom were almost certainly killed by paid assassins.
Paid by whom? They were probably paid by Red Shirt leaders, who administer fighting funds provided by Thaksin Shinawatra. Tragically, should this sad bunch of criminally-minded cretins manage to oust the current government and take control of the nation, they will try to reinstall Shinawtra as Prime Minister. He will make a mockery of good governance and Thailand will become a democracy in name only.
The question is, who would want to deal with a man that some brave Thai commentators liken to a common kleptomaniac? Others fear him, hedge their bets and stay silent. When he came to power he tackled the drug problem ‘with extreme prejudice’. People ‘involved’ died in what can only be described as ‘extra-judicial killings’. If he gets back into power his critics will need to watch their backs. Paid assassins come cheap in this country.
So the world is watching as Thailand’s loopy political crisis goes on and on. If Thailand’s Reds or Yellows shut the international airport again in the name of politics, or there is just one more military coup, the international penny will drop and Thailand will be declared ‘basket case’.
Bombs and grenades have been going off all over the country; like today in Chiang Mai, for instance. Before the big ‘kick-off’ on April 10, there were 20-odd explosions in Bangkok. And Thailand got lucky. Only one foreigner – a Japanese journalist - was killed. Had a grenade been launched into the back-packer community on Khao San Road and a few young tourists been found lying in pools of their own blood, the penny would have taken on the attributes of a lead weight.
I don’t know what to make of Thailand these days, but the fearsome Siamese cat is well and truly out of the bag. It is now understood that Thailand’s raging over-development is completely unsustainable; that Bangkok’s pollution is a killer. Early Spring found parts of the North and North East of the country enveloped in smog. Farmers burn off crop residue, an old practice that cannot be easily changed for financial reasons.
In addition, speculators set fire to badly depleted forested areas so that they can appropriate land illegally and plant, or build, something that will make money for them. Because they are protected by people in high places, no one can stop it happening. The smog affects thousands. Hospitals are stretched dealing with people with breathing difficulties. It costs millions to treat them and the same story will be repeated next year. Expats flee their homes and head south, but not too far south.
Three provinces in the deep south of Thailand, once part of old Malaya, are largely populated by neglected and discontented Muslims. There is an undeclared war going on between ‘separatist militants’, tomorrows ‘freedom fighters’, and the Thai military. Atrocities have been committed by both sides. Informed opinion suggests that coup-happy generals are heavy-cack-handedly dealing with the problem. More than 5000 lives have been lost. A rubber-tapper was killed yesterday.
Here in Kata (Phuket) I had a nice view of a thickly wooded hill. Gone. Not the hill, just the aspect. Bulldozers and a JCB are ripping a deep scar that covers at least an acre. ‘Someone’ is sticking up yet another condominium.
Phuket City now has two bus stations, one old, one brand new. The brand new one is not yet open because there is a political/financial row about who will run it. There’s a brand new wet fish market to replace the old one. Supposed to open in July, it probably won’t. There’s a dispute about rents to be charged (gouged) and not one tenant has signed up.
The southern highway leading to Phuket and elsewhere is very dangerous. Tourists are being transported along a road that was built without any attempt to minimise the, often fatal, result of countless accidents. On the main highway the central reservation is often a ditch, with trees in it. In places the ditch is lined with concrete.
Over the Thai (New Year) Songkran festival, seven days in total, there were more than 3500 road accidents. 361 people were killed. The southern province of Nakhon Si Thammarat recorded the most accidents.
In my opinion, responsible guidebooks should advise foreign travellers not to use the trans-Thai bus services. The guides are written with political correctness in mind. Don’t be fooled. Read between the lines. When they say, for instance, ‘the city, town or village is not particularly attractive’, they mean it’s a bloody mess. If they write it’s ‘slightly dodgy’ they mean, ‘watch where you’re going and take extra care’.
Two American tourists I met went to Phuket City for the day (“to see the Sino-Portuguese-inspired architecture”). They were back in less than three hours. ‘Shoddy’ was the kindest word they could come up with.
The ubiquitous concrete shop-houses that line most towns and many village road look bad enough, but when you look up you will see an amazing lash-up. The overhead electricity cables that line every road are as tangled as cooked spaghetti after it has been tumble-dried. When service engineers arrive to work on the supply, don’t look! Wearing flip-flops and without safety helmets, they climb up unsecured bamboo ladders to unhook, fix, then hook ‘em back up. Connections loop across roads. ‘Pirates’ tap into the supply as and when necessity demands.
Pavements are mostly non-existent in non-tourist areas and unnavigable where they exist. The Tourist Authority of Thailand promote the country as ‘family-friendly’. Absolute nonsense. Mothers pushing pushchairs face an obstacle course of electricity posts, potholes, drains, parked cars, restaurant furniture, elephants and curb stones that are half-a-metre high. Wheelchair users take their chances on the roads. If you walk down town or city roads with young children, put reins on them. (They’ll love the elephants. Animal rights activists will freak out.)
Thailand is failing. Anyone looking at this country and applying a modicum of common sense to its problems will tell you that at some stage, something’s got to give, that Thailand is going to have to pay a heavy price for such wanton miss-management.
If Thailand’s domestic political problems are massive, internationally they continue to shoot themselves in both feet. They’ve recently expelled and trucked 4000 refugees back to Communist Laos, expressly against the wishes and advice of the UN, NGOs and the USA. Needless to say, the USA created the problem during the war they were supposed to be waging in Vietnam.
Thailand has recently refused an entry visa to the sister of the Dalai Lama, kow-towing to their powerful and unprincipled Chinese neighbour. And who else, other than China and North Korea, does business with the brutal Burmese military junta? Successive Thai governments do business with the brutal Burmese military junta. And let’s not talk about collusion between businessmen and politicians that facilitates exploitation of refugees from that sad country.
It occurs to me that this sort of insensitive, non-co-operative, international bad-attitude ensures that the Thais are losing friends fast. I was once one of those friends. As a retiree, I intended to divide my time between Thailand and Europe. I leave here in May and I’m quite undecided about coming back.
Friday, 12 March 2010
Thailand. Pug-ugly rating: 9.8
“…No one (in Thailand) is interested in reversing course from what has become an ad hoc, do-as-you-please system bereft of any semblance of democratic process or rule of law. Political instability, corruption, indecisiveness and political abandonment appear to flourish unabated…”
And, “Thailand must build national unity and co-operation if it is to avoid the threat of deteriorating into a failed state.”
Both comments above were written recently by influential Thais and appeared in the Bangkok Post, Thailand’s highly respected English language newspaper. As if all that were not enough, there also exists the possibility of civil war.
Excuse me, Mr Dickens, but the people of Thailand are experiencing “…the worst of times.”
More bad news 1: “The Public Health Ministry found that nearly 100,000 people had fallen ill from the smog shrouding eight provinces in the North and warned that more would be affected if the situation persists…hundreds of thousands of face masks sent…one hundred thousand patients visited 19 hospitals for treatment.”
More bad news 2: (Also hanging in the air) “Expectation…as the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (the Red Shirts) begins its attempt to unseat the government…State of Emergency…Security forces on the streets and in blocking positions on routes from the North” (kitted out with face masks, presumably).
By the end of my 6-day visit to Bangkok I was thinking of Mad Max. Was I in a sub-world city of a country close to Armageddon? I know Bangkok is just another capital city in a chaotic, over-populated and vulgarised world, but to stop myself from going completely mad I needed a mental antidote. So I thought about Mumbai, telling myself that Bangkok is not that bad; which is debateable. Bangkok? I’m writing it off. It’s too pug-ugly for words.
For a left leaning, capitalism hating, liberal-socialist like me, to live here in Thailand would be problematical. Last year I was thinking about doing precisely that. I checked my finances and figured out that I could do it. But living here means me becoming indifferent to the plight of common Thais, this country’s uneducated and exploited serfs. If I didn’t become indifferent I would become very angry. And that’s bad for me.
Have you noticed how the rich take crap in their strides? They have made an art form out of indifference to suffering. The rich of this poor, benighted country are a-typical. They don’t live hard, destitute, unsanitary lives that blight polite Thai society. They live in condos, or nice houses in gated communities, popping out for dinners at restaurants selling ‘Royal Thai cuisine’. They ride to plush offices in air-conditioned cars leaving the chauffeur to contend with parking and traffic jams. Meanwhile, beggars and labourers from the North and North East crawl along pavements and subsist in unsanitary slums.
I wonder how many of Thailand’s burgeoning Middle Class sit back and, after reading the Business News section of the Bangkok Post, start dreaming about owing an English Premier Division football club. To achieve something like that – it’s been done already – the qualities needed are, no morals, no conscience, the gift of the gab and the instincts of jewellery thief.
First and foremost such a person needs to know who has influence and how much to pay that person for their services. If they don’t have enough money to buy influence then the Thai dream of a full belly during a life at the top will fade into the smoggy distance. The rich know that if they don’t have enough money to achieve their ambitions, they have to get it. Anyway they can.
Which is where Thaksin Shinawatra comes into this story.
Not only did Thaksin Shinawatra know who, and how much, to pay, he accumulated enough money to buy the loyalty of millions of ordinary Thais from the North and North Eastern regions of this country. Mr Shinawatra was also glib enough to fire the imaginations of millions of his country’s horribly exploited countrymen and women. They now believe that he will crush all those who have traditionally exploited them i.e. the rich, the landowners, the aristocracy and their ilk. This man has convinced them that their, and their country’s, future is in his hands. I don’t know if he told them that one day they would all get to own an English Premier League football club but they act as if he did.
Therefore, to those who still ruthlessly exploit Thailand’s millions of poorly educated peasants to accumulate vast wealth, Thaksin Shinawatra is a dangerous man. That’s why there was a military coup in 2006. That’s why the exploiters pushed the army into staging the coup that ousted him when he was Prime Minister.
But they made a dreadful mistake. They did it while he was out of the country, and although Thaksin Shinawatra was ousted, he was not ousted out of the game, not by a long chalk.
So now his supporters, the misinformed dreamers who believe he is their saviour, are streaming into Bangkok. Their aim is to topple those who benefited from Thaksin Shinawatra’s misfortune – namely the new government – and install their own, even by democratic means. In other words, they believe that without any help from the army that they can win the election that would have to be called.
This new government would try to pardon their de-facto leader for his conviction for hiding his assets, and/or, for appropriating assets that may really have belonged to the Kingdom of Thailand. They would put him back in power. They would do this because they know that some of those assets will be coming their way, one way or another. Ideologically, they also believe that he would break the relentless grip on power that is held by the rich and powerful.
The hard question is: would this be a good or bad thing for Thailand?
As one influential Thai indicated above, Thailand is a lawless country riddled with vice, injustice and corruption on a grand scale. The longer I stay here the notion of ‘failed state’ begins to sound realistic. Thailand may not yet be a failed state but it’s a country that has taken more wrong turns than any country should. Twenty-odd military coups since World War II? That’s got to be some sort of record.
So which way is it going to go and is Thailand a failed state already? It’s debatable. Politically and economically there is massive instability and if confidence in the system (rampant capitalism) collapses, the consequences could be catastrophic. For sure, all hell would break loose.
And it might just happen following events this weekend.
And, “Thailand must build national unity and co-operation if it is to avoid the threat of deteriorating into a failed state.”
Both comments above were written recently by influential Thais and appeared in the Bangkok Post, Thailand’s highly respected English language newspaper. As if all that were not enough, there also exists the possibility of civil war.
Excuse me, Mr Dickens, but the people of Thailand are experiencing “…the worst of times.”
More bad news 1: “The Public Health Ministry found that nearly 100,000 people had fallen ill from the smog shrouding eight provinces in the North and warned that more would be affected if the situation persists…hundreds of thousands of face masks sent…one hundred thousand patients visited 19 hospitals for treatment.”
More bad news 2: (Also hanging in the air) “Expectation…as the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (the Red Shirts) begins its attempt to unseat the government…State of Emergency…Security forces on the streets and in blocking positions on routes from the North” (kitted out with face masks, presumably).
By the end of my 6-day visit to Bangkok I was thinking of Mad Max. Was I in a sub-world city of a country close to Armageddon? I know Bangkok is just another capital city in a chaotic, over-populated and vulgarised world, but to stop myself from going completely mad I needed a mental antidote. So I thought about Mumbai, telling myself that Bangkok is not that bad; which is debateable. Bangkok? I’m writing it off. It’s too pug-ugly for words.
For a left leaning, capitalism hating, liberal-socialist like me, to live here in Thailand would be problematical. Last year I was thinking about doing precisely that. I checked my finances and figured out that I could do it. But living here means me becoming indifferent to the plight of common Thais, this country’s uneducated and exploited serfs. If I didn’t become indifferent I would become very angry. And that’s bad for me.
Have you noticed how the rich take crap in their strides? They have made an art form out of indifference to suffering. The rich of this poor, benighted country are a-typical. They don’t live hard, destitute, unsanitary lives that blight polite Thai society. They live in condos, or nice houses in gated communities, popping out for dinners at restaurants selling ‘Royal Thai cuisine’. They ride to plush offices in air-conditioned cars leaving the chauffeur to contend with parking and traffic jams. Meanwhile, beggars and labourers from the North and North East crawl along pavements and subsist in unsanitary slums.
I wonder how many of Thailand’s burgeoning Middle Class sit back and, after reading the Business News section of the Bangkok Post, start dreaming about owing an English Premier Division football club. To achieve something like that – it’s been done already – the qualities needed are, no morals, no conscience, the gift of the gab and the instincts of jewellery thief.
First and foremost such a person needs to know who has influence and how much to pay that person for their services. If they don’t have enough money to buy influence then the Thai dream of a full belly during a life at the top will fade into the smoggy distance. The rich know that if they don’t have enough money to achieve their ambitions, they have to get it. Anyway they can.
Which is where Thaksin Shinawatra comes into this story.
Not only did Thaksin Shinawatra know who, and how much, to pay, he accumulated enough money to buy the loyalty of millions of ordinary Thais from the North and North Eastern regions of this country. Mr Shinawatra was also glib enough to fire the imaginations of millions of his country’s horribly exploited countrymen and women. They now believe that he will crush all those who have traditionally exploited them i.e. the rich, the landowners, the aristocracy and their ilk. This man has convinced them that their, and their country’s, future is in his hands. I don’t know if he told them that one day they would all get to own an English Premier League football club but they act as if he did.
Therefore, to those who still ruthlessly exploit Thailand’s millions of poorly educated peasants to accumulate vast wealth, Thaksin Shinawatra is a dangerous man. That’s why there was a military coup in 2006. That’s why the exploiters pushed the army into staging the coup that ousted him when he was Prime Minister.
But they made a dreadful mistake. They did it while he was out of the country, and although Thaksin Shinawatra was ousted, he was not ousted out of the game, not by a long chalk.
So now his supporters, the misinformed dreamers who believe he is their saviour, are streaming into Bangkok. Their aim is to topple those who benefited from Thaksin Shinawatra’s misfortune – namely the new government – and install their own, even by democratic means. In other words, they believe that without any help from the army that they can win the election that would have to be called.
This new government would try to pardon their de-facto leader for his conviction for hiding his assets, and/or, for appropriating assets that may really have belonged to the Kingdom of Thailand. They would put him back in power. They would do this because they know that some of those assets will be coming their way, one way or another. Ideologically, they also believe that he would break the relentless grip on power that is held by the rich and powerful.
The hard question is: would this be a good or bad thing for Thailand?
As one influential Thai indicated above, Thailand is a lawless country riddled with vice, injustice and corruption on a grand scale. The longer I stay here the notion of ‘failed state’ begins to sound realistic. Thailand may not yet be a failed state but it’s a country that has taken more wrong turns than any country should. Twenty-odd military coups since World War II? That’s got to be some sort of record.
So which way is it going to go and is Thailand a failed state already? It’s debatable. Politically and economically there is massive instability and if confidence in the system (rampant capitalism) collapses, the consequences could be catastrophic. For sure, all hell would break loose.
And it might just happen following events this weekend.
Pug-Ugly 2.5: Phuket. Jaded jewel in the Andaman Sea
The new development on Phuket where I’m renting an apartment looks great in the brochure, as does Phuket generally. The owners promote the development on the local Tourism TV Channel and it looks even better. Notwithstanding the accompanying, overhead and in-your-face electrical supply system that isn’t shown in the film and fails about once a week, it doesn’t look too bad in real life: especially the gardens, which are vibrantly green thanks to judicious watering, please note.
But media images and physical appearances can be misleading on this jaded jewel set in the Andaman Sea. Electrical outages on Phuket are common and affect everyone. At a recent media presentation at Phuket City Police Station, there was concern when the meeting, presided over by the Provincial Police Commander, had to be cut short when the power supply failed.
The island’s H2O supply is, dare I say, based on troubled waters? The government-controlled water supply from reservoirs and desalination has to be supplemented by private water companies. There is one such company located on this development. When the supply fails and liquid resembling wet rust puther forth, turning white flannels brown, owners are informed and they must shop for water.
Hotel, restaurant, shop and apartment proprietors phone ‘our’ private water company and order a delivery. It can only be bought in 2500 litre amounts and the company transport it in huge plastic containers that sit precariously on the backs of old, diesel-belching trucks, or in decrepit-looking mini-tankers. From dawn until very late at night, hard-working ‘Gungha Dins’ connect up pipes from truck to pre-installed water-tanks and with help from super-noisy auxiliary engines, fill ‘em up. 2,500 litres costs 250 baht, about five pounds or euros.
Their labour costs will be low and vehicle fuel may be bought on the black market, and I suspect they have the best tax lawyer on the planet. But how the private water company makes a profit is beyond my understanding. We commoners buy “Filtered and hygienically sterilized using ultra-violet light and ozonated” water in 10 litre plastic bottles. 10 litres of “Green Drinking Water” (‘Green’ is the name of this environmentally aware company) cost 10 Baht, slightly more than nothing. By comparison, the cheapest water in supermarkets costs 10 Baht per litre.
The water company sell a lot because locals, believing it to be tainted, are reluctant to use tap water. Unlike in tourist hotels and restaurants, they especially don’t cook with it. The Thais are fussy about how their food tastes.
We have had no rain for two months and everybody is getting worried. The amount of water needed just for existing developments and resorts on Phuket is astounding. A nearby hotel, one of dozens, has three hundred rooms with showers and/or baths and/or Jacuzzis, and even though it sits on the beach, there are six swimming pools. They’re building more. And more. And more. Bigger and better resorts are going up everywhere and for the sake of appearances, all gardens have to be vibrantly green.
Although my furnished apartment is in a building less than two years old, it’s showing signs of wear. One can assume that local building regulations are not strictly enforced, if they exist. There are no cavity walls. There is no insulation whatsoever. This means that the (32 C. plus) outside heat pours in, turning rooms into saunas. By lunchtime I am sitting in a pool of sweat and I have to shut doors and windows, put on the air-conditioning and keep it on. Energy pours out of the windows.
Although my apartment has two outside walls, the builders have not used either to site the air-con’s outlet. Resembling a large storage heater it occupies about one third of my balcony. Step out through the sliding French windows and the blasts of hot air it expels into the street are of sufficient force to expel you with it. There are dozens like mine. Most are unoccupied and have been throughout the High Season. This may be a blessing. If all the flimflam apartments on this island were occupied I shudder to think how many times per week the electricity supply would fail.
I hope and pray that the electric water heater in the bathroom is properly earthed. Since I’ve been here a young tourist was electrocuted while taking a shower in a similar ‘new’ development and died. As for the sliding French windows, they are so poorly made and fitted that a gentle breeze causes them to rattle. A brisk breeze makes them shake mightily. A proper wind and they’d end up on my bed, which I’ve moved further into the room.
One hundred metres away there is another new development. It’s almost identical. Also completed two years ago and consisting of thirty or so shop-houses and apartments it is completely unoccupied. This is not unusual. There are unfinished and unoccupied buildings all over the place. Opposite it is wasteland. Used as a market twice a week there is also a community (slum) whose occupants live in huts made from corrugated iron and what looks like asbestos. They tap into the electricity supply. Where they get their water from is anyone’s guess.
At the rear of my apartment block there is a row of single story dwellings, the back of which butt up to a separating fence. There is a drainage ditch. It’s a catch-all feature. What doesn’t get thrown into it is not worth mentioning and what gets thrown into it is unmentionable.
Then there’s the vice, the bars with their sad bargirls and demanding pimps. Phuket is pug-ugly in places. I feel that Phuket, this jaded jewel, is fading fast. I feel that I shouldn’t be here because I’m hastening the process.
But media images and physical appearances can be misleading on this jaded jewel set in the Andaman Sea. Electrical outages on Phuket are common and affect everyone. At a recent media presentation at Phuket City Police Station, there was concern when the meeting, presided over by the Provincial Police Commander, had to be cut short when the power supply failed.
The island’s H2O supply is, dare I say, based on troubled waters? The government-controlled water supply from reservoirs and desalination has to be supplemented by private water companies. There is one such company located on this development. When the supply fails and liquid resembling wet rust puther forth, turning white flannels brown, owners are informed and they must shop for water.
Hotel, restaurant, shop and apartment proprietors phone ‘our’ private water company and order a delivery. It can only be bought in 2500 litre amounts and the company transport it in huge plastic containers that sit precariously on the backs of old, diesel-belching trucks, or in decrepit-looking mini-tankers. From dawn until very late at night, hard-working ‘Gungha Dins’ connect up pipes from truck to pre-installed water-tanks and with help from super-noisy auxiliary engines, fill ‘em up. 2,500 litres costs 250 baht, about five pounds or euros.
Their labour costs will be low and vehicle fuel may be bought on the black market, and I suspect they have the best tax lawyer on the planet. But how the private water company makes a profit is beyond my understanding. We commoners buy “Filtered and hygienically sterilized using ultra-violet light and ozonated” water in 10 litre plastic bottles. 10 litres of “Green Drinking Water” (‘Green’ is the name of this environmentally aware company) cost 10 Baht, slightly more than nothing. By comparison, the cheapest water in supermarkets costs 10 Baht per litre.
The water company sell a lot because locals, believing it to be tainted, are reluctant to use tap water. Unlike in tourist hotels and restaurants, they especially don’t cook with it. The Thais are fussy about how their food tastes.
We have had no rain for two months and everybody is getting worried. The amount of water needed just for existing developments and resorts on Phuket is astounding. A nearby hotel, one of dozens, has three hundred rooms with showers and/or baths and/or Jacuzzis, and even though it sits on the beach, there are six swimming pools. They’re building more. And more. And more. Bigger and better resorts are going up everywhere and for the sake of appearances, all gardens have to be vibrantly green.
Although my furnished apartment is in a building less than two years old, it’s showing signs of wear. One can assume that local building regulations are not strictly enforced, if they exist. There are no cavity walls. There is no insulation whatsoever. This means that the (32 C. plus) outside heat pours in, turning rooms into saunas. By lunchtime I am sitting in a pool of sweat and I have to shut doors and windows, put on the air-conditioning and keep it on. Energy pours out of the windows.
Although my apartment has two outside walls, the builders have not used either to site the air-con’s outlet. Resembling a large storage heater it occupies about one third of my balcony. Step out through the sliding French windows and the blasts of hot air it expels into the street are of sufficient force to expel you with it. There are dozens like mine. Most are unoccupied and have been throughout the High Season. This may be a blessing. If all the flimflam apartments on this island were occupied I shudder to think how many times per week the electricity supply would fail.
I hope and pray that the electric water heater in the bathroom is properly earthed. Since I’ve been here a young tourist was electrocuted while taking a shower in a similar ‘new’ development and died. As for the sliding French windows, they are so poorly made and fitted that a gentle breeze causes them to rattle. A brisk breeze makes them shake mightily. A proper wind and they’d end up on my bed, which I’ve moved further into the room.
One hundred metres away there is another new development. It’s almost identical. Also completed two years ago and consisting of thirty or so shop-houses and apartments it is completely unoccupied. This is not unusual. There are unfinished and unoccupied buildings all over the place. Opposite it is wasteland. Used as a market twice a week there is also a community (slum) whose occupants live in huts made from corrugated iron and what looks like asbestos. They tap into the electricity supply. Where they get their water from is anyone’s guess.
At the rear of my apartment block there is a row of single story dwellings, the back of which butt up to a separating fence. There is a drainage ditch. It’s a catch-all feature. What doesn’t get thrown into it is not worth mentioning and what gets thrown into it is unmentionable.
Then there’s the vice, the bars with their sad bargirls and demanding pimps. Phuket is pug-ugly in places. I feel that Phuket, this jaded jewel, is fading fast. I feel that I shouldn’t be here because I’m hastening the process.
Monday, 8 March 2010
Pug-Ugly 2: Thai Stakes are High
Paris may not be France but pug-ugly Bangkok epitomises Thailand. As my taxi crossed the great Chao Phraya River and filtered like a shark among red snappers into the city, I had no idea I was in for such a treat. It was nearly ten pm, January 3, 2010, when I caught site of the illuminations still in place since the Thai king’s birthday celebrations back in early December.
Tiny fairy lights, no bigger than large sequins, had been laced around branches of hundreds of roadside trees. It was a magical effect. Aah, I thought as I wiped a tear from an eye. Bangkok! After an absence of 21 years I was finally back in Bangkok.
The taxi-driver quickly wiped out my attack of positive nostalgia. I thought we’d arrived at my destination in Siam Square and we were fairly close. But having agreed to use his meter at the Southern Bus Terminal he demonstrated that legislation to protect consumers had not cured the predatory instincts of Bangkok’s taxi drivers. He pointed ahead as if to say, it’s just there. I went to pay. He looked at my Baht banknotes and whined, ‘Have no change,’ the usual ruse to gouge extra from sucker tourists.
Not only that. He had pointed ahead as if to the entrance to the narrow ‘soi’ (street) where I would find my guesthouse. I paid, he sped off chuckling to himself how he’d out-smarted yet another stupid ‘farang’, as they call all foreigners. But the entrance to the soi was not just ahead. I’d been dumped. So I asked directions of a senior police officer – senior enough to have his own driver - whose car happened to be parked just inside the false entrance to the soi, which was the entrance to business premises. The senior officer couldn’t understand my shaky Thai and neither he nor his driver spoke English.
After a short walkabout I found the soi and my guesthouse, only to discover after a warm welcome that my reserved room had ‘gone’ already. The 12-hour bus ride from Phuket was two hours and forty minutes behind schedule and they assumed I was a ‘no show’. ‘No problem, sir, there is another guesthouse near and tomorrow we give you a free breakfast.’
As I lay on my bed staring at the swishing ceiling fan I told myself, ‘No doubt about it. You’re back in the ruined city of Bangkok.’
Forty-odd years ago they filled in Bangkok’s canals in order to turn waterways into a grid system of roads. The Americans played a big part in this and it must have looked great watching progress from helicopters en route to Laos or Cambodia to fight secret wars related to the main event in Vietnam. As in Vietnam, the Yanks failed again and the grid system led to the chaos that is Bangkok’s traffic. Plus, Bangkok was built on a swamp and subsidence based on weight of concrete poured is endemic. Roads constantly crack, potholes resemble canyons and abandoned buildings are still sinking.
After they had ruined the possibility of a workable road system, city planners caught an endemic disease. ‘Monstrous Building Syndrome’ (MBS) afflicted every architect, foreign or otherwise, and monstrous buildings went up everywhere. If it couldn’t be described as ‘monstrous’ it wasn’t going to get built. To make matters worse they’ve now connected the monstrous buildings by elevated highways. Built over the tops of jammed roads, slip roads provide access and egress but if you don’t have a motor vehicle, don’t expect to get there.
So I said to my mate, Nakhon, as we toured the city in a tuk-tuk driven by an illegal Burmese refugee that he’d found living in a filled in canal tunnel, “It’s as if you Thais believe that only buildings, elevated highways, plus buying and selling cars and houses are the only things that pay. What about infrastructure to match development?”
“It doesn’t pay.”
“Affordable public housing?”
“It doesn’t pay.”
“Health, safety and hygiene?”
“They don’t pay.”
“Pedestrian precincts, places where cars are banned?”
“Only inside shops and shopping malls. Pavements don’t pay, either. Take the one I crawl along every day...”
“Hang on. It’s as if you’re saying, if we farangs want improvements, let us and other foreign investors pay.”
“Now you’re talking.”
To me, the only noticeable improvement has been in Mass Rapid Transport (MRT). Tourists interested in the seedier side of Bangkok smile broadly when they learn that even though these MRT systems are limited in scope, the planners have actually managed to link them up with Bangkok’s three biggest red-light districts. Now that’s pragmatism at it’s very best.
The MRT systems do not go to and from city airports, or to the main railway stations, or to three out of four bus terminals. Try getting to bus terminal Mo Chit 2 with luggage. The elevated railway (Skytrain) goes to Mo Chit 1 station but to get to Mo Chit 2 you either walk about a kilometre across a park, or take a damn taxi.
They may never link up with the new International airport. There are too many powerful vested interests (taxi-mafia?) involved. Guidebooks inform would-be tourists that a train service to the inner city should have been in place by 2008. Some say it will become operable later this year. Nobody should bet on it. But should the Skytrain happen to be going your way it is an air-conditioned pleasure to use.
The downside to it is where they’ve built it. It runs over the top of some of the busiest roads in the city and creates what can only be described as tunnels from hell. Made of concrete, the structure’s base forms a roof over the roads and traps traffic noise and CO2 fumes, which exaggerates the already stifling heat. I suspect that CO2 and noise levels in the tunnels are harmful, which might be why an increasing number of city-dwellers and traffic police wear face masks.
Bangkok is a failed city. Visit it out of curiosity, if you must, but don’t linger because you’ll only serve to make it worse. Oh! It’s just been reported that there are an estimated 400,000 stray dogs in Bangkok and that cases of rabies are on the increase.
Tiny fairy lights, no bigger than large sequins, had been laced around branches of hundreds of roadside trees. It was a magical effect. Aah, I thought as I wiped a tear from an eye. Bangkok! After an absence of 21 years I was finally back in Bangkok.
The taxi-driver quickly wiped out my attack of positive nostalgia. I thought we’d arrived at my destination in Siam Square and we were fairly close. But having agreed to use his meter at the Southern Bus Terminal he demonstrated that legislation to protect consumers had not cured the predatory instincts of Bangkok’s taxi drivers. He pointed ahead as if to say, it’s just there. I went to pay. He looked at my Baht banknotes and whined, ‘Have no change,’ the usual ruse to gouge extra from sucker tourists.
Not only that. He had pointed ahead as if to the entrance to the narrow ‘soi’ (street) where I would find my guesthouse. I paid, he sped off chuckling to himself how he’d out-smarted yet another stupid ‘farang’, as they call all foreigners. But the entrance to the soi was not just ahead. I’d been dumped. So I asked directions of a senior police officer – senior enough to have his own driver - whose car happened to be parked just inside the false entrance to the soi, which was the entrance to business premises. The senior officer couldn’t understand my shaky Thai and neither he nor his driver spoke English.
After a short walkabout I found the soi and my guesthouse, only to discover after a warm welcome that my reserved room had ‘gone’ already. The 12-hour bus ride from Phuket was two hours and forty minutes behind schedule and they assumed I was a ‘no show’. ‘No problem, sir, there is another guesthouse near and tomorrow we give you a free breakfast.’
As I lay on my bed staring at the swishing ceiling fan I told myself, ‘No doubt about it. You’re back in the ruined city of Bangkok.’
Forty-odd years ago they filled in Bangkok’s canals in order to turn waterways into a grid system of roads. The Americans played a big part in this and it must have looked great watching progress from helicopters en route to Laos or Cambodia to fight secret wars related to the main event in Vietnam. As in Vietnam, the Yanks failed again and the grid system led to the chaos that is Bangkok’s traffic. Plus, Bangkok was built on a swamp and subsidence based on weight of concrete poured is endemic. Roads constantly crack, potholes resemble canyons and abandoned buildings are still sinking.
After they had ruined the possibility of a workable road system, city planners caught an endemic disease. ‘Monstrous Building Syndrome’ (MBS) afflicted every architect, foreign or otherwise, and monstrous buildings went up everywhere. If it couldn’t be described as ‘monstrous’ it wasn’t going to get built. To make matters worse they’ve now connected the monstrous buildings by elevated highways. Built over the tops of jammed roads, slip roads provide access and egress but if you don’t have a motor vehicle, don’t expect to get there.
So I said to my mate, Nakhon, as we toured the city in a tuk-tuk driven by an illegal Burmese refugee that he’d found living in a filled in canal tunnel, “It’s as if you Thais believe that only buildings, elevated highways, plus buying and selling cars and houses are the only things that pay. What about infrastructure to match development?”
“It doesn’t pay.”
“Affordable public housing?”
“It doesn’t pay.”
“Health, safety and hygiene?”
“They don’t pay.”
“Pedestrian precincts, places where cars are banned?”
“Only inside shops and shopping malls. Pavements don’t pay, either. Take the one I crawl along every day...”
“Hang on. It’s as if you’re saying, if we farangs want improvements, let us and other foreign investors pay.”
“Now you’re talking.”
To me, the only noticeable improvement has been in Mass Rapid Transport (MRT). Tourists interested in the seedier side of Bangkok smile broadly when they learn that even though these MRT systems are limited in scope, the planners have actually managed to link them up with Bangkok’s three biggest red-light districts. Now that’s pragmatism at it’s very best.
The MRT systems do not go to and from city airports, or to the main railway stations, or to three out of four bus terminals. Try getting to bus terminal Mo Chit 2 with luggage. The elevated railway (Skytrain) goes to Mo Chit 1 station but to get to Mo Chit 2 you either walk about a kilometre across a park, or take a damn taxi.
They may never link up with the new International airport. There are too many powerful vested interests (taxi-mafia?) involved. Guidebooks inform would-be tourists that a train service to the inner city should have been in place by 2008. Some say it will become operable later this year. Nobody should bet on it. But should the Skytrain happen to be going your way it is an air-conditioned pleasure to use.
The downside to it is where they’ve built it. It runs over the top of some of the busiest roads in the city and creates what can only be described as tunnels from hell. Made of concrete, the structure’s base forms a roof over the roads and traps traffic noise and CO2 fumes, which exaggerates the already stifling heat. I suspect that CO2 and noise levels in the tunnels are harmful, which might be why an increasing number of city-dwellers and traffic police wear face masks.
Bangkok is a failed city. Visit it out of curiosity, if you must, but don’t linger because you’ll only serve to make it worse. Oh! It’s just been reported that there are an estimated 400,000 stray dogs in Bangkok and that cases of rabies are on the increase.
Thursday, 28 January 2010
Pug-Ugly 1: The Man from Nakhon Nowhere
He’s crawling towards me. Not so much crawling as slithering like a slovenly slug trying to make its way back into a Spanish onion patch. He’s moving so slowly it’s scarcely definable. It must take years to master the technique. But this guy has been at it for years and he’s turned it into fine art.
It’s a hot day so the pavement must be packing 32 degrees C. of heat. He has to be attracting ants, but not cockroaches or rats. Here in Bangkok, rats and cockroaches, ever present and the world’s fastest improving species, are so spoiled for choice they don’t even try to bite lumps out of unwashed human beings crawling along pavements.
With the rim of his plastic begging beaker clamped between his teeth he’s pug-ugly, not a pretty site even to an old admirer like me. Though he’s not as filthy as the matt-black man of Mumbai – see a previous blog – you wouldn’t invite him to tea. Well, not until you’d soaked him in a tub you didn’t intend to use again; scraped him with a sharp, wallpaper removing tool and had him disinfected with Agent Orange.
I recognise him instantly. “Nakhon Shakhon Straphon,” I cry (he was named after his fabled birthplace), “what in the name of an abandoned iconic image from Thailand’s North East are you doing begging on the streets of Bangkok?” The last time I saw him he was working a market in Ubon Rachathani while I was discovering the Emerald Triangle for posterity. He’s impressed that I remember him.
Without spilling a single baht from the beaker he gently rolls over and over until he’s close to the edge of the pavement. “Take the weight off your old legs,” he advises and extols me to sit with my feet in the gutter. As this is Ploenchit Road in downtown Bangkok and jammed to buggery with six lanes of traffic that the authorities shelter from the sun with a Skytrain, I decline. Plus 99% of Bangkok gutter space is occupied by tens of thousands of two-wheelers, and a good place to lose your toes. Is this his intent?
Bending down I pat him on his left arm, the one that doesn’t sport a malformed stump, and invite him to tell me where it started to go wrong. He knows exactly when he began suffering for his art.
“I was five years old when my dad decided that I was the one who would become afflicted with amputations. He was a retired agriculturalist and depression about the old country – we’re originally from Laos - turned him into a rum and amphetamine man. We always needed extra money. My uncle was forced to pawn our last buffalo to pay off debt collectors and we were desperate. He held me down while dad chopped off my lower arm. He did a damn fine job; clean as a whistle and I didn’t feel a thing until I regained consciousness. I remember it throbbing.
“I worked as a one-armed child beggar until I was eight. I was a good-looking kid with a very sad face. Mum used to sit with me in her arms just outside the bus station. For three years we did all right. Then, well, I suppose I lost my poor, innocent, deformed, suffering child-appeal and not enough baht dropped into her cup. We went home with it empty one night and dad lost his rag. This time he chopped off both my feet. Unfortunately he got carried away and I nearly lost my right leg up to my knee. But he'd put us back on track.” He pulled up his ragged trouser leg to show me. He had not exaggerated.
“So why Bangkok?” I asked. “It must have been nicer relaxing on the banks of, say, the Mun River in Ubon” (where we first met) “on your day off.”
“Er, yes it must have been. But as I got older things started to change in Thailand. I found out, for instance, that the government had created the Middle Class; that they were greedy, prone to achieve elite status, yet still had guilty consciences. Well, people like that only come along once in a begging lifetime.
“There was none of their ilk in Ubon so I travelled the Asian Highway looking for them. Eventually I hit the Burmese border at Mae Sot. It’s bad up there, by the way. Fleeing Karen tribesmen; battered and blood stained Burmese monks and poverty-stricken idealists trying to bring down the Burmese junta, all trying to keep as much distance as possible between themselves and the wrath of the Burmese army. Our politician-businessmen don’t help. They suspect that activists have information about illegal dealings with the Burmese authorities; about felling the few remaining hardwood trees and gem trading on behalf of the Thai army, for instance, plus the drugs.
“But there was no money about. Most people up there are worse off than me. So in my quest to find our elusive Middle Class I headed south. Bingo! They’re all here in Bangkok.”
“And here you are. How’s it going, Nakhon?”
“Really well. Take this Bangkok road. It’s not paved with gold but these pavements are a bonus. Pothole free and lovely to crawl along, they’re especially made for tourists visiting the shopping malls. When they see me they can’t believe their eyes. They think they’re back in India and usually cough up. But my theory was right and I get most of my money from the Thai Middle Class. Stuck in traffic jams for the weekend they hop out of their SUVs and throw their change into my beaker. It makes them feel much better about themselves. To my way of thinking I’m involved in a form of social work, which just happens to be very profitable.
“In order to make merit I expanded and now have a syndicate of crippled beggars. We’re a bit like your Protestants used to be. It’s all about the work ethic. We beg from dawn to about nine at night and our turnover runs into thousands of baht per day. Now that my folks have drunk themselves to death, 60% of all revenue is mine. I pay a tuk-tuk driver working the same shift to drop me off and pick we up and, if he has time, he brings me a bowl of fried rice with pork, garlic and Holy Basil. He’s religious and becoming Middle Class. He thinks this charity work-stuff helps him to make merit – you know about ‘merit’, the Buddhist thing?” I nodded, “By this time next year he’ll be doing it for free.
“Each morning I drop off an envelope at the local cop-shop and they never bother me or any other member of my syndicate. Got it sorted.” With that he gives me the famous Thai smile. If he had all his teeth it would look great set against his blackened and scabrous face. “Guess what? I’ve opened a bank account. Saving money at last. But I could use, I mean employ, more cripples.” As I edge further away from the gutter I say,
“Well done, Khun (Mr) Nakhon! What are you going to do with your new-found wealth? Buy some titanium prosthetic legs?”
“Not likely. I’m Middle Class now and can’t go back. I’ve got an iPhone, a flat-screen plasma telly in my hut and I’m saving for a Range Rover.” He sighs. “You may not understand this but solidarity with the syndicate is important. I can’t just walk away from them.”
“Will your Range Rover have tinted windows?”
“Of course. I wouldn’t be seen dead in a car without tinted windows. As soon as I take delivery I’ll drive straight to Nakhon Nowhere to prove to my old chums what a great country we Thais have created.”
Even though it’s against all my principles I drop a few baht in his cup before heading for the nearest bar.
It’s a hot day so the pavement must be packing 32 degrees C. of heat. He has to be attracting ants, but not cockroaches or rats. Here in Bangkok, rats and cockroaches, ever present and the world’s fastest improving species, are so spoiled for choice they don’t even try to bite lumps out of unwashed human beings crawling along pavements.
With the rim of his plastic begging beaker clamped between his teeth he’s pug-ugly, not a pretty site even to an old admirer like me. Though he’s not as filthy as the matt-black man of Mumbai – see a previous blog – you wouldn’t invite him to tea. Well, not until you’d soaked him in a tub you didn’t intend to use again; scraped him with a sharp, wallpaper removing tool and had him disinfected with Agent Orange.
I recognise him instantly. “Nakhon Shakhon Straphon,” I cry (he was named after his fabled birthplace), “what in the name of an abandoned iconic image from Thailand’s North East are you doing begging on the streets of Bangkok?” The last time I saw him he was working a market in Ubon Rachathani while I was discovering the Emerald Triangle for posterity. He’s impressed that I remember him.
Without spilling a single baht from the beaker he gently rolls over and over until he’s close to the edge of the pavement. “Take the weight off your old legs,” he advises and extols me to sit with my feet in the gutter. As this is Ploenchit Road in downtown Bangkok and jammed to buggery with six lanes of traffic that the authorities shelter from the sun with a Skytrain, I decline. Plus 99% of Bangkok gutter space is occupied by tens of thousands of two-wheelers, and a good place to lose your toes. Is this his intent?
Bending down I pat him on his left arm, the one that doesn’t sport a malformed stump, and invite him to tell me where it started to go wrong. He knows exactly when he began suffering for his art.
“I was five years old when my dad decided that I was the one who would become afflicted with amputations. He was a retired agriculturalist and depression about the old country – we’re originally from Laos - turned him into a rum and amphetamine man. We always needed extra money. My uncle was forced to pawn our last buffalo to pay off debt collectors and we were desperate. He held me down while dad chopped off my lower arm. He did a damn fine job; clean as a whistle and I didn’t feel a thing until I regained consciousness. I remember it throbbing.
“I worked as a one-armed child beggar until I was eight. I was a good-looking kid with a very sad face. Mum used to sit with me in her arms just outside the bus station. For three years we did all right. Then, well, I suppose I lost my poor, innocent, deformed, suffering child-appeal and not enough baht dropped into her cup. We went home with it empty one night and dad lost his rag. This time he chopped off both my feet. Unfortunately he got carried away and I nearly lost my right leg up to my knee. But he'd put us back on track.” He pulled up his ragged trouser leg to show me. He had not exaggerated.
“So why Bangkok?” I asked. “It must have been nicer relaxing on the banks of, say, the Mun River in Ubon” (where we first met) “on your day off.”
“Er, yes it must have been. But as I got older things started to change in Thailand. I found out, for instance, that the government had created the Middle Class; that they were greedy, prone to achieve elite status, yet still had guilty consciences. Well, people like that only come along once in a begging lifetime.
“There was none of their ilk in Ubon so I travelled the Asian Highway looking for them. Eventually I hit the Burmese border at Mae Sot. It’s bad up there, by the way. Fleeing Karen tribesmen; battered and blood stained Burmese monks and poverty-stricken idealists trying to bring down the Burmese junta, all trying to keep as much distance as possible between themselves and the wrath of the Burmese army. Our politician-businessmen don’t help. They suspect that activists have information about illegal dealings with the Burmese authorities; about felling the few remaining hardwood trees and gem trading on behalf of the Thai army, for instance, plus the drugs.
“But there was no money about. Most people up there are worse off than me. So in my quest to find our elusive Middle Class I headed south. Bingo! They’re all here in Bangkok.”
“And here you are. How’s it going, Nakhon?”
“Really well. Take this Bangkok road. It’s not paved with gold but these pavements are a bonus. Pothole free and lovely to crawl along, they’re especially made for tourists visiting the shopping malls. When they see me they can’t believe their eyes. They think they’re back in India and usually cough up. But my theory was right and I get most of my money from the Thai Middle Class. Stuck in traffic jams for the weekend they hop out of their SUVs and throw their change into my beaker. It makes them feel much better about themselves. To my way of thinking I’m involved in a form of social work, which just happens to be very profitable.
“In order to make merit I expanded and now have a syndicate of crippled beggars. We’re a bit like your Protestants used to be. It’s all about the work ethic. We beg from dawn to about nine at night and our turnover runs into thousands of baht per day. Now that my folks have drunk themselves to death, 60% of all revenue is mine. I pay a tuk-tuk driver working the same shift to drop me off and pick we up and, if he has time, he brings me a bowl of fried rice with pork, garlic and Holy Basil. He’s religious and becoming Middle Class. He thinks this charity work-stuff helps him to make merit – you know about ‘merit’, the Buddhist thing?” I nodded, “By this time next year he’ll be doing it for free.
“Each morning I drop off an envelope at the local cop-shop and they never bother me or any other member of my syndicate. Got it sorted.” With that he gives me the famous Thai smile. If he had all his teeth it would look great set against his blackened and scabrous face. “Guess what? I’ve opened a bank account. Saving money at last. But I could use, I mean employ, more cripples.” As I edge further away from the gutter I say,
“Well done, Khun (Mr) Nakhon! What are you going to do with your new-found wealth? Buy some titanium prosthetic legs?”
“Not likely. I’m Middle Class now and can’t go back. I’ve got an iPhone, a flat-screen plasma telly in my hut and I’m saving for a Range Rover.” He sighs. “You may not understand this but solidarity with the syndicate is important. I can’t just walk away from them.”
“Will your Range Rover have tinted windows?”
“Of course. I wouldn’t be seen dead in a car without tinted windows. As soon as I take delivery I’ll drive straight to Nakhon Nowhere to prove to my old chums what a great country we Thais have created.”
Even though it’s against all my principles I drop a few baht in his cup before heading for the nearest bar.
Friday, 8 January 2010
Nothing could be finer...
“…than to be (on a beach) in Kata Yai-na in the mor-or-or-ning.” The words in the real song refer to the twin States of Carolina and rather like the way a Texan lady-friend used to massage shit into sh-i-i-et, it’s nice way of doubling the syllable content. And why not? It’s a free country.
But I’m not in America. I’m on the holiday island of Phuket in Thailand and Kata Yai is my nearest beach. Although it has a reputation for sustaining a freewheeling business culture Thailand isn’t quite such a free country. Take, for example the 5th of December 2009, the King of Thailand’s 82nd birthday, a time to celebrate. TV images focused on Bangkok, a sea of unpolluted patriotism. Love and support for His Majesty is genuine and far-reaching: as were restrictions on what everybody else should be, or not be, doing.
One thing we holidaying foreigners on Phuket weren’t doing was raising a glass to toast His Majesty’s long life and to wish him better health than he has enjoyed recently. Millions of thirsty tourists were left wondering how a royal birthday could thwart a Right Royal Thirst-day. The restrictions affected the sale of alcohol and many tourists were shocked to find that the convivial watering hole they’d just discovered was shuttered up, as much in the dark as they themselves. Some may have noted that the restrictions resembled western Puritanism in its nay-nay days of yester-yore.
I walked to an outside bar near where I’m staying, a bar where conviviality is plentiful. In the gloom sat three waitresses eating and chatting at the table nearest the road. Instead of the usual smiles and shouts of welcome one rose slowly. ‘Cannot serve beer. It is our King’s birthday,’ she said. ‘Very sorry.’ Seeing tears rolling down my cheeks she cocked her head to one side and asked, ‘You think Thais are crazy?’ ‘Not crazy,’ I blubbed, ‘but some of us foreigners think birthdays should be celebrated with a drink or two. Never mind. Let’s drink to the King tomorrow,’ and I walked home to begin a sleepless night.
I suspect this mark of respect for His Majesty has a negative effect on the micro-economy, the bit of that millions of Thais depend on. The reward for working at the sharp end of Thailand’s service sector ranges from small to abysmal and on the 5th of December many wouldn’t have earned the extra money they often send home to their families. Meanwhile, the tourists wandered around baffled. Thailand’s tourist industry has taken a few knocks recently (there may be more to come) and in my opinion, restricting the sale of alcohol on the King’s birthday didn’t help.
Sometime the following afternoon I (finally) awoke. Feeling unusually well I took a high tea of muesli, coconut flavoured yogurt and a sweet Thai banana. Then I went to the northern tip of Kata’s crescent-shaped beach, Kata Yai to paddle in the off-turquoise shallows - my very favourite leisure pastime – and that was when I reflected that in the twenty-odd years of visiting Thailand quite a few things have not yet changed for the better.
My apartment – in a new development – has regular power cuts and water-pressure glitches that turn the supply the colour of Mekong river mud. Decrepit diesel-powered delivery trucks make a constant racket and belch out fumes that rise up to my balcony. Tuk-tuk drivers encourage ambling tourists to jump aside for their own safety. Dogs that no one seems to own chase motorbikes randomly and howl through hot and lonely nights.
There’s no local bus service between beaches and places of interest and the public service from Kata to Phuket Town is unnecessarily exciting. These half-open sided cattle trucks – they are not buses - wouldn’t look out of place in Afghanistan. Driven by Kamikazi-type drivers with misplaced panache they struggle up steep hills and creak as they round twisty bends. Worse, the last truck is safely parked up before it gets dark. Apparently this situation won’t get any better until the ‘tuk-tuk Mafia’ give a proposed bus service their blessing. Don’t watch this space.
And so on, and that’s just the tip of the melting Thai iceberg. But it’s treated as minor stuff by most tourists here and I suppose it is as they sit on the beach, cold beer to hand, awaiting yet another magnificent sunset.
Something has changed: the tourists themselves. As Thailand’s developers follow the Spanish model by building dozens of up-market apartments and resort hotels without planning permission; ripping out and scarring delightfully wooded hills in the process without improving the infrastructure, they merely imitate western corporate venality that is wrapped in the bundle labelled ‘profitable progress’. So one can expect to encounter up-market tourists? No. They’re tucked-up – pun intended – in their up-market resorts paying whacky races prices to international corporations who profit from tax breaks and a plentiful supply of cheap labour.
Like Lehman Brothers, some will fail for the same greedy reasons, even as they encourage their (entrapped) guests to contribute absolutely zilch to the micro-economy. Give me a black flag…
Then there are the down-market tourists who, whenever they’re allowed to, support the micro-economy massively. Best exemplified by working-class heroes and heroines in shorts and singlets (as we used to call vests without sleeves) you encounter them on the ‘buses’. Or as they stumble along pulverised pavements or, when pavements suddenly disappear and they are forced onto scary, potholed roads in flip-flops. Sporting colourful tattoos I fear for them, for I am unsure that they know where they really tread.
(I also have a bad feeling about colourful tattoos. Before I’m passed on to the great massage parlour On High, they may be as commonplace as female genital mutilation in sub-Saharan Africa, and twice as distasteful.)
You see, Thai governments come and go but they don’t change one iota. The latest may or may not be as corrupt or useless as some of the others, but it has a reputation for being weak, and weak governments create vacuums for powerful institutions to step into. This government spends a lot of time looking over its shoulder in fear, fear of the return of the last but one Prime Minster, a convicted corporate-type criminal who seems to have modelled himself on Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi. (He’s the pouting Mussolini-clone and as distasteful a model as you can copy.) Having created a vacuum by leaving the country the Thai-clone was ejected from office during the latest military coup. They’ve had 20-odd coups since the end of the World War II.
But it’s not just the government who are afraid of him. Many Thais fear that with help from super influential friends who they regard as enemies of Thailand, he will reinstall himself as pocket dictator. So the poor health of the King is of great concern. The succession may not go smoothly and Thailand may find itself in the middle of some sort of revolution.
All the baffled tourists on whom Thailand depends heavily will dislike this as much as they dislike disrupted flights because of closed airports, dry royal birthdays, pulverised pavements, scary roads and being ripped off and threatened by ‘tuk-tuk Mafias’. But, as ever, the upmarket tourists know what’s going on and none of this is a problem - for them. They don’t ‘do’ hazardous short journeys on pot-holed roads and they don’t get stuck in foreign airports. If, when or even before the sh-i-i-et hits the fan, they’ll be gone in puffs of jet-smoke: along with the speculators – sorry, investors – and despoilers - sorry, developers.
But the down-market tourists may not know what’s going on and when they realise it’s time to flee the scene they might find themselves paying to be ferried to airports by rapacious transport operatives escorted by tanks. Tanks? Why not? ‘They’ say that the Thai army – and institutions in Thailand don’t come any more powerful than the Thai army – are sure to have business interests in the transport sector, as do the police.
Upon arrival at one of Bangkok’s two international airports – one is surplus to requirements - and assuming at least one of them is open, they’ll be left to sweat it out in hot and crowded lounges as at least one airport suffers a prolonged power cut. Er, an international airport surplus to requirements? Surely not! Oh yes. The Thais might not be able to lay and maintain a moderately inexpensive pavement, nor provide a decent bus service between resorts and towns on a major tourist destination like Phuket, but they have no problem building spare and ruinously expensive international airports.
But what a country for both up and down-market tourists! The food is still great and even if the beer is sometimes more expensive than mock-Irish pubs in Paris, the choice of copy-brand products is as plentiful as ever, together with boxes of (generic?) Viagra sold alongside them. (No. I did not.) The seas are still turquoise, warmed by weather that’s as hot as a four bar electric fire. Now why am I here?
So Carolina, the song, came into my head and I substituted Kata Yai. As I sang I cocked my head to one side and heard a lonely old seadog start to howl. Obviously I’d gone a syllable too far. And shit might be shi-i-i-et but I definitely prefer Thailand to Texas.
But I’m not in America. I’m on the holiday island of Phuket in Thailand and Kata Yai is my nearest beach. Although it has a reputation for sustaining a freewheeling business culture Thailand isn’t quite such a free country. Take, for example the 5th of December 2009, the King of Thailand’s 82nd birthday, a time to celebrate. TV images focused on Bangkok, a sea of unpolluted patriotism. Love and support for His Majesty is genuine and far-reaching: as were restrictions on what everybody else should be, or not be, doing.
One thing we holidaying foreigners on Phuket weren’t doing was raising a glass to toast His Majesty’s long life and to wish him better health than he has enjoyed recently. Millions of thirsty tourists were left wondering how a royal birthday could thwart a Right Royal Thirst-day. The restrictions affected the sale of alcohol and many tourists were shocked to find that the convivial watering hole they’d just discovered was shuttered up, as much in the dark as they themselves. Some may have noted that the restrictions resembled western Puritanism in its nay-nay days of yester-yore.
I walked to an outside bar near where I’m staying, a bar where conviviality is plentiful. In the gloom sat three waitresses eating and chatting at the table nearest the road. Instead of the usual smiles and shouts of welcome one rose slowly. ‘Cannot serve beer. It is our King’s birthday,’ she said. ‘Very sorry.’ Seeing tears rolling down my cheeks she cocked her head to one side and asked, ‘You think Thais are crazy?’ ‘Not crazy,’ I blubbed, ‘but some of us foreigners think birthdays should be celebrated with a drink or two. Never mind. Let’s drink to the King tomorrow,’ and I walked home to begin a sleepless night.
I suspect this mark of respect for His Majesty has a negative effect on the micro-economy, the bit of that millions of Thais depend on. The reward for working at the sharp end of Thailand’s service sector ranges from small to abysmal and on the 5th of December many wouldn’t have earned the extra money they often send home to their families. Meanwhile, the tourists wandered around baffled. Thailand’s tourist industry has taken a few knocks recently (there may be more to come) and in my opinion, restricting the sale of alcohol on the King’s birthday didn’t help.
Sometime the following afternoon I (finally) awoke. Feeling unusually well I took a high tea of muesli, coconut flavoured yogurt and a sweet Thai banana. Then I went to the northern tip of Kata’s crescent-shaped beach, Kata Yai to paddle in the off-turquoise shallows - my very favourite leisure pastime – and that was when I reflected that in the twenty-odd years of visiting Thailand quite a few things have not yet changed for the better.
My apartment – in a new development – has regular power cuts and water-pressure glitches that turn the supply the colour of Mekong river mud. Decrepit diesel-powered delivery trucks make a constant racket and belch out fumes that rise up to my balcony. Tuk-tuk drivers encourage ambling tourists to jump aside for their own safety. Dogs that no one seems to own chase motorbikes randomly and howl through hot and lonely nights.
There’s no local bus service between beaches and places of interest and the public service from Kata to Phuket Town is unnecessarily exciting. These half-open sided cattle trucks – they are not buses - wouldn’t look out of place in Afghanistan. Driven by Kamikazi-type drivers with misplaced panache they struggle up steep hills and creak as they round twisty bends. Worse, the last truck is safely parked up before it gets dark. Apparently this situation won’t get any better until the ‘tuk-tuk Mafia’ give a proposed bus service their blessing. Don’t watch this space.
And so on, and that’s just the tip of the melting Thai iceberg. But it’s treated as minor stuff by most tourists here and I suppose it is as they sit on the beach, cold beer to hand, awaiting yet another magnificent sunset.
Something has changed: the tourists themselves. As Thailand’s developers follow the Spanish model by building dozens of up-market apartments and resort hotels without planning permission; ripping out and scarring delightfully wooded hills in the process without improving the infrastructure, they merely imitate western corporate venality that is wrapped in the bundle labelled ‘profitable progress’. So one can expect to encounter up-market tourists? No. They’re tucked-up – pun intended – in their up-market resorts paying whacky races prices to international corporations who profit from tax breaks and a plentiful supply of cheap labour.
Like Lehman Brothers, some will fail for the same greedy reasons, even as they encourage their (entrapped) guests to contribute absolutely zilch to the micro-economy. Give me a black flag…
Then there are the down-market tourists who, whenever they’re allowed to, support the micro-economy massively. Best exemplified by working-class heroes and heroines in shorts and singlets (as we used to call vests without sleeves) you encounter them on the ‘buses’. Or as they stumble along pulverised pavements or, when pavements suddenly disappear and they are forced onto scary, potholed roads in flip-flops. Sporting colourful tattoos I fear for them, for I am unsure that they know where they really tread.
(I also have a bad feeling about colourful tattoos. Before I’m passed on to the great massage parlour On High, they may be as commonplace as female genital mutilation in sub-Saharan Africa, and twice as distasteful.)
You see, Thai governments come and go but they don’t change one iota. The latest may or may not be as corrupt or useless as some of the others, but it has a reputation for being weak, and weak governments create vacuums for powerful institutions to step into. This government spends a lot of time looking over its shoulder in fear, fear of the return of the last but one Prime Minster, a convicted corporate-type criminal who seems to have modelled himself on Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi. (He’s the pouting Mussolini-clone and as distasteful a model as you can copy.) Having created a vacuum by leaving the country the Thai-clone was ejected from office during the latest military coup. They’ve had 20-odd coups since the end of the World War II.
But it’s not just the government who are afraid of him. Many Thais fear that with help from super influential friends who they regard as enemies of Thailand, he will reinstall himself as pocket dictator. So the poor health of the King is of great concern. The succession may not go smoothly and Thailand may find itself in the middle of some sort of revolution.
All the baffled tourists on whom Thailand depends heavily will dislike this as much as they dislike disrupted flights because of closed airports, dry royal birthdays, pulverised pavements, scary roads and being ripped off and threatened by ‘tuk-tuk Mafias’. But, as ever, the upmarket tourists know what’s going on and none of this is a problem - for them. They don’t ‘do’ hazardous short journeys on pot-holed roads and they don’t get stuck in foreign airports. If, when or even before the sh-i-i-et hits the fan, they’ll be gone in puffs of jet-smoke: along with the speculators – sorry, investors – and despoilers - sorry, developers.
But the down-market tourists may not know what’s going on and when they realise it’s time to flee the scene they might find themselves paying to be ferried to airports by rapacious transport operatives escorted by tanks. Tanks? Why not? ‘They’ say that the Thai army – and institutions in Thailand don’t come any more powerful than the Thai army – are sure to have business interests in the transport sector, as do the police.
Upon arrival at one of Bangkok’s two international airports – one is surplus to requirements - and assuming at least one of them is open, they’ll be left to sweat it out in hot and crowded lounges as at least one airport suffers a prolonged power cut. Er, an international airport surplus to requirements? Surely not! Oh yes. The Thais might not be able to lay and maintain a moderately inexpensive pavement, nor provide a decent bus service between resorts and towns on a major tourist destination like Phuket, but they have no problem building spare and ruinously expensive international airports.
But what a country for both up and down-market tourists! The food is still great and even if the beer is sometimes more expensive than mock-Irish pubs in Paris, the choice of copy-brand products is as plentiful as ever, together with boxes of (generic?) Viagra sold alongside them. (No. I did not.) The seas are still turquoise, warmed by weather that’s as hot as a four bar electric fire. Now why am I here?
So Carolina, the song, came into my head and I substituted Kata Yai. As I sang I cocked my head to one side and heard a lonely old seadog start to howl. Obviously I’d gone a syllable too far. And shit might be shi-i-i-et but I definitely prefer Thailand to Texas.
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