“…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.
Friday, 12 March 2010
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.
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