Apolitical Thai Hangover Causes & Cures

The real art these days in Thailand is to say something by not saying it. What cannot be said can still be said, just chose a careful wording. Some say though that some are still too cautious. As a trusted friend advised: “The boundaries have been stretched enough to allow you more space to roam.” Well, I don’t trust the “Thai spring” yet. There’s no Thai spring far and wide and I wouldn’t be surprised if all of a sudden reactionary hard-hitting forces take over again, killing all dissent and throwing the kingdom back into even darker ages. Common sense is hard to find in these divisive times. Just look what’s going on with our costly dowsing rods aka GT200.

They’re a con, a fraud, a crime, reports the Bangkok Post, but our honorable army defiantly insists they’re working. It’s encouraging to say the least that there’s an open conflict between the civilian and army leadership. Our dear prime minister, all diplomat, implicitly called the dowsing rods a fraud. Without actually being aware of it even our dear army chef confirmed they’re hardly working. The device had performed some 300 rounds successfully over the past few years, Anupong Paojinda was quoted as saying. Some 535 devices are used in the violence-plagued south. Do the math. Meaning, roughly every second device worked once over the past few years …

There’s actually no difference between a soldier trying to detect bombs holding a GT200 and a Big Mac … This is Thailand. If you dare to and have the backing you can just stand there and say something is true even though the whole world knows it is not. Anyway, this blatant mockery of sanity and reason makes it an even bigger pleasure to introduce Chef Tummy, an American and chef dedicated to adventurous Thai cooking who will hopefully become a regular writer on aB.com with his focus on Thai food culture. Trying to stay sane we have to have some more positive content on this site. Got a politics hangover? It’s good to stay away from politics – Thai politics! – once in a while. And Chef Tummy may have an answer or two:

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February 19, 2010 | Filed Under Being Farang, Culture & Arts, Food & Drink, TTT - Top Thai Things, Travel & Tourism | 4 Comments 

Dr. Saul: Thailand & The Desire Economy

Dr. Saul Kruggerand, the renowned Ph.D. economist and native of South Africa, whom we last heard from in his article titled Thailand to Tackle World’s Desire Deficit in which he outlined the present economic structure of Thailand’s Desire Sector (DS) along with an insightful and detailed estimate of the Desire Sector’s current contribution to Thailand’s overall GNP. In today’s post Dr. Saul analyzes Thailand’s plan to target and develop Thailand’s Desire Economy Sector in order to re-stimulate & maximize Thailand’s GNP.

“Dr. Saul,” as he is affectionately called by his students, having focused his highly-tuned analytical skills on the present structure and dimensions of the Thailand’s Desire Sector, now follows with a detailed analysis of the radical and heretofore overlooked proposal the Thailand government made at the recent G-20 and Apec meetings to further develop the Desire Sector of the Thai economy in order to help reduce the World’s Desire Deficit (WDD) as well as to make a surprisingly significant contribution to the re-stimulation of overall economic growth in Southeast Asia and the world.

Dr. Saul is himself a Yesbel Laureate with his Ph.D. from the prestigious London School of Economics LSE. Dr. Saul has worked with or along with the World Bank, IMF, Goldman Sachs, the Dubai Sovereign Fund, AIG Hedge Fund Division and George Soros. A generous grant from the Chuwit Foundation in Bangkok where Dr. Saul is the director of research and senior fellow has helped to fund Dr. Saul’s recent studies in this area. And now, without further introduction, here is

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January 26, 2010 | Filed Under Being Farang, Business & Economics, Culture Shock, Nightlife & Entertainment, Survey / Poll, Travel & Tourism | 27 Comments 

Urinators Anonymous

They’re one of my favorite spots in Thailand, one of the kingdom’s most romantic places, the hot springs of Hin Dat an hour’s drive northwest of Kanchanaburi. To cut a long story short: The public bath with beautiful hot spring water pools are open from 6 am to 10 pm each day. Enjoy a relaxing bath in the hot thermal water with this distinct odor of rotten eggs, i.e. sulphur. After that enjoy a bath in the refreshing little stream bubbling just alongside. And again, and again. Pure idyll. And maybe a massage.

The brook brabbles, the birds are singing and tweeting … Best to be enjoyed close to the opening and closing hours when there are hardly any visitors. So I went there on a Friday night – and guess what, some eager locals were washing out the pools. All the thermal water got pumped off into the stream and the locals were scrubbing the walls. They do that every Friday night, a worker told me. So Saturday morning I tried to be the first in those pools freshly refilled with healthy thermae spring water.

But what a surprise, eager local residents were enjoying the fresh water already! That early! And I thought I’d be alone … It’s still dark, not a ray of sunlight. Local residents relax in the quiet peace of the hot mineral-rich spring water of Hin Dat before the tourists arrive. Only one guy was talking, and I heard him say – obviously not the least bothered that me farang could understand: “Yesterday afternoon, there were so many farangs in the water. God was that water dirty. Now it’s clean again.”

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January 24, 2010 | Filed Under Being Farang, Culture Shock, Sports & Fun, The Thai Mind, Travel & Tourism | 9 Comments 

Where Are The Tourists?

Where are our dear foreign guests who usually invade the kingdom this time around? This is by no means a post backed up by hard facts and figures, but by simple observation and talks with tourists and hoteliers alike. OK, last year’s high season was a non-event after Bangkok’s airport seizures. But don’t only blame the international credit crunch and financial crisis. This holiday season Westerners travel to the Caribbean and Southern Europe, to Turkey and wherever. But not to Thailand.

Occupancy rates in Thailand’s major hotels are miserable. Had a talk with a big shot of the Dusit in Hua Hin and some regular guests who stay there every year. Never seen that place so quiet. Hua Hin’s famous night market is empty compared to previous high seasons. Tweets tourist Bob the “hotel in Cha Am we’ve been staying at every year for the past ten years is also A LOT quieter than usual” – and a friend in Pattaya tells me in December you usually have to push your way through Walking Street. Not this time.

Our honorable leaders prefer to blame external circumstances. But don’t underestimate the ghosts of the airport occupations. Had some family friends coming over from Europe who even thought that the reds – not yellows! – were seizing the airports a year ago and now that the reds announce new demonstrations for January they’re scared if they’ll run into trouble. Friends that told me that back home in Europe many Thailand regulars avoid the kingdom for fear of a new breakdown. Thailand keeps on paying a heavy price for this sort of superficial stability.

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December 23, 2009 | Filed Under Business & Economics, News & Media, Travel & Tourism | 16 Comments 

Top Thai iPhone Apps

An Indian once told me with the cutest of accents: “Women. Who can live with them. Who can live without them.”

Same applies to the iPhone. Who doesn’t have one yet. And if you don’t have one yet, how can you get along without.

The phone’s complex simplicity is astonishing, not to mention the huge resource of applications. Most are trash. There are some jewels out there, some may even facilitate your life in Bangkok. Here are my picks:

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November 25, 2009 | Filed Under Gadgets & Technology, News & Media, TTT - Top Thai Things, Travel & Tourism | 5 Comments 

Abhisit In Wonderland

Hua Hin’s about to be hermetically sealed off from the real world out there. The seaside resort has been cleaned up and adorned for days and starting Tuesday, October 20th, strict checks on vehicles passing through areas around the summit venues will begin. Got no Asean Summit Car Sticker? Don’t even dare to enter town.

Hua Hin’s about to receive Asia’s top political leaders. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Japanese Premier Yukio Hatoyama, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and their counterparts from South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and the Asean member states are expected for an event that was due last December in Chiang Mai. But things happened.

Postponed several times and seriously disrupted during the April mayhem in Pattaya, Thai prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva finally gets the chance to show off a peaceful, sunny Thailand. That’s at least the backdrop in Hua Hin and Cha Am where the 15th Asean Summit is held. With this time no Asian leaders to be airlifted from their hotels. That at least is the plan.

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October 19, 2009 | Filed Under News & Media, Politics, Travel & Tourism | 1 Comment 

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