Archive for November, 2008
The Great Bargain
Soon it’s all over, be it with a whimper or bloody beats of drums. Doesn’t really matter. The Tourism Authority has anyway quite a task ahead. The good news? Without great bargains the crisis will linger on even longer. The PAD turn out to be next year’s tourists’ biggest friend. Finally you’ll have again beaches
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Of Foreigners As Political Bargaining Tools & The King’s Birthday Speech
The Thai crisis, holding a country hostage and bringing tens of thousands of stuck travelers to despair, is unique in many ways. The most outstanding singularity: The protesters brazen egoism due to their god-given sense of choseness: “We and nobody else.” No sincere foreign world leader would like to be seen shaking hands with a
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“Things Are Not Yet Bad Enough”
Tens of thousands of people stuck, a country on the brink, bloodshed looming and the impossibility of making sense of anything anymore – but the crisis is not yet bad enough for the military to enter the fray. That’s what a well placed security official tells absolutely: “We wait for things to get really bad.
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Oops, But Thaksin Just Got A Boost
No live-blogging and updating today. It was the probably busiest day of my life. And sorry for the good-hearted Southerners who tried to do good deeds and were therefore commanded by PAD chief demagogue Sondhi Limthongkul today for having “temporarily left their jobs, farms and homes to help support the PAD movement.” Without those Southerners
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Bangkok Airport Survival Guide
+++ Update: Tourist Hotline: 1672 +++ Bangkok’s international Suvarnabhumi Airport is effectively locked down since 11 am Wednesday morning, after a last Iran Air plane with pilgrims heading to Mecca was allowed to take off. By now even THAI’s domestic air traffic via Don Mueang Airport – inbound & outbound – has come to a
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PAD Shut Down Suvarnabhumi
Here it comes, the escalation: The self-righteous PAD manage to shut down Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi international airport, as The Nation reports. I don’t think the “reds” can hold themselves back much longer. But if you listen to the PAD’s top leadership, there’s justice in this move: “We have tried to pressure the government for more than
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Real-Time: Que Sera, Sera
Another of Thailand’s longest days has begun and right on the outset the authorities got duped by the same old snaky tactics. Anti-government protesters of the People’s Alliance for Democracy PAD cut power lines to parliament. Security forces retreated and the PAD set up mobile stages. Completely déjà vu and predictable … TOC meanwhile, belonging
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Poll: What Will Happen
Can’t count all the D-Days and days of reckoning and judgement anymore. But here we go again. Our self-described moral & political liberators, the People’s Alliance for Democracy PAD, seem more determined than ever and launch another final attempt to topple an all but disputed, elected government. As The Nation observed, the “thinned-down (…) cultish”
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Hunted Thaksin’s Masterplan?
Not that Thailand has a history of respecting extradition treaties. Look at the foot-dragging exercises surrounding the extradition atempts of accused Russian arms dealer Victor Bout. Thailand is generally quick to act when her or the reputation of her powers that be are at stake. So what about extradition attempts to catch Thaksin Shinawatra and
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A Klong Toey Slum Walk
Ever been to Bangkok’s largest slum Klong Toey? Not to its fresh market. But to the forbidden world behind, the home and working place of tens of thousands of underprivileged. Klong Toey is a city within the city, an unending labyrinth of cramped huts, open sewers and playing children, surrounded by a two meter high
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