Living In Thailand Blog
Thursday 14th November 2013
There's some fascinating stuff going on in Phuket at the moment and I am following a few stories quite closely. I can think of many different adjectives for Thais, but stubborn and defiant would come quite near to the top of the list.
The Thai attitude towards public space is quite strange. Public space is regarded as being owned by everyone and no one at the same time, and Thais will often claim public space as their own. After many years of setting up his stall in exactly the same place, a Thai street vendor will regard the space as belonging to him. It doesn't, but that's not how they think.
Property developers will even build hotels, resorts, golf courses and private housing on land that doesn't belong to them. If they get caught their buildings will be demolished, and these stories appear often in the Thai press.
Demolition begins of three illegal resorts in Koh Samet
They do the same with parking spaces. I see many public parking spaces that have chairs and other objects left in the road to prevent other people from using them because one person has 'claimed' that space. They have no right to do this, but it doesn't stop them.
There are very few available parking spaces along Patong beach road in Phuket because they are used by tuk-tuk drivers and hire car companies who have claimed the spaces as their own. Even when told to go because the spaces don't belong to them the drivers act defiantly and refuse to leave.
The top policeman in Phuket appears to have changed recently and the new man seems very determined to fix problems that have existed for many years. He announced at the beginning of the month that tuk-tuk drivers must leave the parking spaces in Patong that don't belong to them.
Phuket Top Cop demands tuk-tuks and taxis give up Patong parking spots
From what I can gather, the drivers have been their usual stubborn and defiant selves and have refused to leave. As a result he has upped the ante and ordered the Patong chief of police to get rid of them by the end of the year or face being transferred to another position. Now the pressure is on.
Patong Police chief told to clear parking spaces for tourists - or be transferred
Many Thais have very little respect for authority, including the police. A couple of years ago I saw a traffic cop hold out a clipboard to try to stop a motorcyclist because he wasn't wearing a crash helmet. The motorcyclist simply whacked the clipboard and rode off. This would be a serious offence in another country, but the Thai cop did nothing.
Along with the forthcoming introduction of speed cameras, I am really encouraged by what is happening in Phuket. My hope is that the police in Phuket will set an example that police in other provinces will follow.
Wednesday 13th November 2013
The Land of Smiles.
"But if a smile can hide a myriad of problems, something awfully wrong is brewing in the Thai Kingdom."
This is a quote from a documentary shown on Channel News Asia about the notorious violence that goes on between students from rival technical colleges in Thailand. Last year there were about a hundred incidents every month, and 20 incidents resulted in severe injury or death. The video is available on-line at the following link:
Thailand's Vocational Violence
There is an obsession with university degrees in Thailand but, for many Thais, sending their children to university is too expensive. The perception is that university is seen as something for the rich, or for those who have connections.
If students don't have enough money or can't pass university entrance exams, their only option is vocational training. I am all in favour of teaching young people real skills and think this is a good thing. Girls in Thailand doing vocational training don't seem to have any problems, but many boys do.
An interviewee in the documentary says that this has always been a problem, but that it used to result in fist fights. The students now use all manner of weapons, including guns. One young lad was beaten up and attacked with knives. While holding his hands up to try to protect his head his attackers cut off six of his fingers. Doctors reattached four, but he can't use his hands properly. They also severed tendons in his left shoulder and his left arm is virtually paralysed.
Another lad was suffering from lupus, a disease where the body's immune system attacks healthy cells and tissue. He took a year off school to recover and when he returned he had to walk using crutches. Nonetheless, he was still targeted by students from another college. He was unable to run away and they shot him dead.
These violent clashes sometimes turn into running street battles and when students fire guns at other students on buses innocent bystanders sometimes get caught in the crossfire.
The film points out that Thailand has the highest rate of violence between rival students in the region and the highest homicide rate by firearm in Asia. It also points out that what makes the problem worse in Thailand is easy access to guns.
"There are an estimated 10 million handguns owned by civilians in Thailand, most of them unregistered."
Why does it happen?
The reasons cited in the film, among others, are institutional pride, upholding the image and reputation of their college, testosterone-fuelled stupidity, irrational institutional fervour, a warped sense of honour and an inferiority complex.
A Thai man being interviewed says that Thai society is to blame because there is too much emphasis on power. This gives rise to feelings of inferiority among technical college students, especially when you factor in society's generally negative view of technical colleges.
It's not actually an emphasis on power, but it is the emphasis on status and perceived status that gives rise to many problems in Thai society.
Yes, university students do look down upon vocational students, and yes, the obsession with status and hierarchy does cause problems in Thai society.
With such low self-esteem the only way they can feel better about themselves is by 'winning' battles against students from other colleges. As with many educational establishments in Thailand the academic standards are very low and this doesn't help.
Quote from the documentary:
"These students are aware of the vicious cycle of sub-standard learning and future discrimination, and there is nothing like collective low esteem to fester into a culture of delinquency and violence."
It's really sad that young boys without any violent tendencies who go to technical colleges wanting to learn get dragged into the violence because the culture of violence is so strong. The mere fact that they wear the uniform of one college automatically makes them targets for students from other colleges.
As a tourist visiting Thailand I had no idea about anything like this and had no idea that Thailand was such a violent country. However, after living in Thailand for a while you see many things that tourists don't.
As for the reasons cited for such extreme violence, they don't really hold any water as far as I am concerned. It's commendable for a student to be proud of his educational institution, but to do this there isn't exactly a need to kill or maim other students just because they study elsewhere. Is there? The problem is much wider.
As the film says, it is only a problem with Thai males. Thai females cause very few problems. I would go as far to say that it is some form of mental illness that affects the men, and it affects a lot of them. It's a result of living in a society in which there is so much emphasis on money and status and so few opportunities (often, no opportunities) in life for people lower down in the social hierarchy.
Tuesday 12th November 2013
I just made a small donation to the Red Cross to help with the terrible destruction and loss of life in the Philippines. The reports I've been following on the BBC News site are extremely harrowing. Many of the survivors have no shelter, food or fresh water and they will die if they don't get help soon.
I don't give a lot to charity, and I certainly don't agree with Thai-style merit making, but there are times when I feel it is necessary. I'm not a religious person and don't give for religious reasons. My actions are due to the part of my brain that feels compassion and empathy for other people (or animals) who are suffering.
There are many reasons we can think of for not giving to charity.
- It's not my problem
- It's not my responsibility to help
- Other people will help and my contribution won't make any difference
- As in the case of the Japanese tsunami, Japan is a rich country and doesn't need charity (I also made a small donation after the Japanese tsunami three years ago)
- I'm not giving to any charity that pays its CEO such a huge salary
- The money will end up in the back pockets of corrupt officials and won't get to the people who need it most
- Etc
After the 2004 Asian tsunami an American friend contacted me and asked how he should donate money. He was worried about corruption and, as it turned out, some charity money did indeed end up in the back pockets of corrupt officials.
Some Thais where I live acted directly after the 2004 tsunami. They loaded up their pickup trucks with food, water and blankets, etc, and drove to the affected areas to give out the supplies directly to those who needed them. This is fine, but it is obviously impractical if you live thousands of miles away.
With certain things in life, you just have to believe and trust that other people will do the right thing. The money I gave wasn't much and won't make a difference to my life. That money alone won't make any difference in the Philippines, but if hundreds of thousands of other people do the same thing it will make a difference.
Lots of Filipinos have very difficult lives at the best of times. I went to Manila and Boracay for a vacation in 1997 and saw the country for myself. There is a huge money remittance industry in the Philippines because so many Filipinos work abroad in order to send money home to support their families.
Singapore is full of Filipino maids, there are lots of Filipino teachers in Thailand, and Filipino nurses help to prop up the healthcare systems of Western countries. They've suffered a lot from bad government, extreme weather is a regular occurrence, and occasionally - such as now - the weather causes massive problems.
By the way, donating to charity is a very personal thing and I would never deem to tell anyone else what they should do. As with everything else written here, these are simply my personal views.
I now have a daughter and any parent will understand the bond and unconditional love that exist between parents and children. She arrived late in my life and I don't even know if I will still be around by the time she gets married.
If I am still around and then find out that her her husband knocks her around regularly I wouldn't be very happy, to say the least. In fact, there is nothing that would make me more angry. I would need to extricate her from the situation. However, I'm not Thai and therefore hiring a contract killer to execute her husband probably wouldn't cross my mind.
Mother-in-law admits she ordered killing
The more I follow Thai news, the more it concerns me. I realise, of course, that what happens in the news isn't representative of all Thais but with many news stories there is a common theme.
People the world over have problems, arguments and disputes with other people, but in Thailand these often result in someone being murdered. It seems to be how the Thai mind works. If someone upsets them, they must die.
Guns are everywhere and there is a frightening array of weaponry openly on sale at the local markets. There are several reasons why there are so many guns in Thailand. The military is far larger than it needs to be for political purposes, and soldiers have guns. Sometimes raids are carried out on military munitions depots and these weapons stolen. Sometimes it is the people who carry weapoms legitimately who are bad.
During the United States' war on Communism in Southeast Asia, Thailand was an ally of the USA and there were large US military bases in the country. The Americans sent a huge number or arms to Thailand.
I'm currently re-reading Niels Mulder's 'Thai Images' and he mentions that a lot of weapons came from Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge problems.
The disarmament process in Cambodia has already caused an influx of weapons from Cambodia to Thailand. An AK-47 assault rifle could be bought at the border for Bt200-300.
There are a lot of weapons in the country, many Thais have uncontrollable tempers, life is cheap, law enforcement is weak, and contract killing is just another job for some people.
This is why Thais never say anything if someone is being antisocial - the real reson for the Thai cultural trait of non-confrontation. Justifiably, they are afraid that the person will have a weapon and that they will use it.
Straight after the Preah Vihear temple ruling comes more bad news for the person running Thailand, and also for Yingluck.
Thailand Senate rejects controversial amnesty bill
It would seem that a lot of Thais have had enough of the Shinawatra family. I read recently that Thaksin's son is now being groomed for a role in politics.
Thai politics reaches boiling point once again
Monday 11th November 2013
Thai TV news this evening is dominated by the decision over the disputed area around the Preah Vihear temple on the Thai/Cambodian border.
According to The Nation, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has told the two countries to sort the issue out by themselves peacefully.
World Court rules for Thailand and Cambodia to adopt peaceful means
The BBC report is slightly different and says that Cambodia 'should' have sovereignty over the disputed land. The 'should' confuses me and some Thais won't accept this verdict.
Preah Vihear temple: Disputed land Cambodian, court rules
The Bangkok Post is more succinct.
ICJ backs Cambodia's claim to Preah Vihear temple promontory
I found it strange how each report gave a slightly different flavour to the verdict.
As I understand it, there were originally no borders between the countries in Southeast Asia that we are familiar with now. There were simply centres of power which, over time, changed in importance and expanded and contracted.
In Thailand, for example, Sukothai was a power centre, and then Ayuthaya, and then Bangkok. In the north, Chiang Mai was a power centre and places in the south, such as Nakhon Sri Thammarat and Songkhla were important at different times.
During the colonial period the British and French colonial powers wanted to demarcate the separate countries by drawing up boundaries. I guess that where rivers and other natural objects existed it was fairly easy. However, many areas weren't clearly defined.
At the beginning of the 20th century Siam and the colonial French powers in Cambodia agreed that the border would follow the watershed line of a certain mountain range. I'm not a geographer, but this doesn't sound very exact to me.
"A watershed is the area of land where all of the water that falls in it and drains off of it goes into the same place."
Wouldn't this vary quite a lot depending on the amount of rainfall?
The French drew up the map, presumably because they had better equipment and cartography skills, but they also had a vested interest because Cambodia was a part of French Indochina.
The Thais say that they didn't agree with the map and that the border on the map suddenly deviated in the area around the temple. However, they didn't take any action until 1954 when the French left Cambodia. Thai forces occupied the temple and tried to reclaim it. This didn't go down well with Cambodia and the dispute went to the ICJ in 1962. The ruling came back that the temple belonged to Cambodia.
A few years ago the problems started again and since then there have been occasional violent skirmishes. The dispute now is about the area surrounding the temple, which Thailand say wasn't resolved in the 1962 ruling. The current dispute went back to the ICJ and the result of the ruling was announced today.
It isn't the result that Thailand wanted.
Another murder by a jealous lover in Thailand. This kind of thing happens a lot in the country.
Guard Shoots Girlfriend Then Himself
Sunday 10th November 2013
November is normally the month in which I am least likely to use air-conditioning. This time of year is normally wet and fairly cool in southern Thailand. However, I have A/C running now and we have been running A/C quite a lot recently.
The weather is weird this year. It's 32°C at the moment and what has made the weather so uncomfortable is the sudden rise in humidity. I can sense the moisture in the air, which is normal for this time of year, but normally some large storms would clear the humidity. It was quite wet yesterday, but there still hasn't been any sustained rainfall as there usually is this time of year.
On the subject of air-conditioners I wanted good units for my house and asked a number of Thais which brands they recommended. Everyone, without any exceptions, said Mitsubishi. Well, actually, they said Mitsu because Thais abbreviate the hell out of everything.
I went for Mitsubushi and I also went for inverter technology. A/C units with inverters are more expensive, but there are benefits and the long term savings should outweigh the higher initial cost.
A/C units have a closed loop feedback system to control the temperature. In regular units the compressor is either on or off. When they are on they run at full speed and they are noisy. The continual cycling between on and off also causes wear.
Inverter units run all the time, but at varying speeds. They tend to be quieter and there isn't so much wear. They are also more efficient and use a lot less electricity.
This house is a lot larger than our rented house, we have six A/C units compared to one, and our electricity bill is the same. However, we have had a few problems.
The units upstairs have worked flawlessly, but there are two downstairs in the same room that we use very rarely. When we turned them on a few months ago, one didn't work. The inverter units have a lit more electronics inside and it turns out that a jing-jok (small house lizard) had crawled into the compressor and been fried on a PCB.
This was fixed under guarantee and the PCB was replaced. We then had a problem with the other unit. When the technician came he checked the one that had just been repaired and found that it had the same problem again.
These two units have hardly been used, but we have had three problems. The technician told me that he has seen a lot of problems with inverter units because of the extra electronics. At other houses there have been problems with rats getting inside the compressors.
He advised me to look into getting some wire mesh cages made to place over the compressors to try to stop jing-joks getting inside. I haven't done this yet, but if I have to start paying for repairs out of my own pocket every time a house lizard shorts out the electronics it is going to get expensive.
Breakfast was a special treat this morning. My wife's home-made bagels were superb. To be honest I wasn't expecting them to be as good as the ones from TOPS, but they were actually better. They cost a fraction of the price and we can make them any time. There are three branches of TOPS in town. Only one branch ever has bagels, and only very occasionally. You can guarantee that when you really want bagels they won't have any. I'm really pleased that this little bagel-making experiment has been a success.
It has also made her feel good about herself. I have found over the years that many Thais females have low self-esteem. She is no exception and I am always trying to give her self-esteem a boost.
She used the recipe from Susan's Awesome Bagels. This recipe was for more bagels than we wanted so we just halved everything.
Some recipes included a few unusual ingredients and one just sounded too sweet, first adding honey to the dough and then adding sugar to the water when boiling the bagels. The recipe at Susan's Cooking School worked fine.
The wife made bread for my parents when they were here at the beginning of the year. I asked my Mum whether she ever makes bread and she said no. It's so easy to get good bread in England made by professional bakers that it just isn't worth the effort. I figure there are four reasons why you make things yourself:
- You love cooking
- Your own food is significantly better
- Your own food is significantly cheaper
- You can't buy something that you want to eat
Terrible scenes from the Philippines and reports of hundreds, maybe thousands, dead.
Typhoon Haiyan: Hundreds feared dead in Philippines
Philippine typhoon death toll could reach 10,000
After hitting Vietnam it looks as if it will swing up into China, rather than down into Thailand.
Does Phuket have the highest road traffic accident rate in Thailand? I haven't seen any statistics, but I wouldn't be surprised if it does.
Thai, Foreign students injured in Phuket's road accident
Phuket tour bus plunges off Patong hill, 44 students injured
One killed in Phuket construction work truck crash
Lots of tourists seem to be having problems in Pattaya lately.
Gang Beat Tourist Unconscious and Rob Him
Saturday 9th November 2013
Recently I was telling a Thai girl how I now have problems with the food in Thailand. She was surprised. She told me that she has a farang friend and he loves Thai food. I asked how often he visits and it turns out that he spends a couple of weeks a year in Thailand. Big deal. My response was that if he came to live in Thailand for 10 years he might think a little differently.
I loved the food as a tourist and I ate Thai food all the time for about two years after I moved to Thailand. However, there is so little variety that I soon got bored with it. I still eat it, but I don't want to eat it all the time. My wife is the same and breakfast is a particular problem.
Earlier this year I was in TOPS and saw some bagels. I bought some, along with smoked salmon and cream cheese, and introduced her to one of my favourite breakfast meals. She loved it.
This is not a cheap meal in Thailand. The bagels are Bt40 each, and the cream cheese and salmon are imported, thus expensive. The other problem is that I can only buy bagels when TOPS has some, and that is only very occasionally.
Last week we picked up some frozen packets of smoked salmon at a bargain price. The price was a fraction of the price at TOPS and the quality is the same. The next problem was that we couldn't find bagels anywhere.
Even buying fresh bread can be a problem at times. If I go shopping early the bread on display is often from the previous day and that day's bread won't be ready until a lot later. In our local branch of Tesco there is rarely any fresh bread on display - just packets of sliced bread.
This is one of the downsides of living in a country where the staple is rice. There are hundreds of different kinds of rice and chili sauce for sale, but try finding some good fresh bread or a jar of pickle.
We have a Western style kitchen with an oven. This was a big priority for me because I wanted to eat roast dinners and very few Thai homes have an oven. My wife enjoys making bread and I figured that it couldn't be too difficult to make bagels. A wonderful thing about the Internet is that whatever you want to make there are hundreds of recipes.
She prefers watching Youtube videos so that she can actually see what needs to be done. There are lots of English videos about making bagels, but we couldn't find anything in Thai. I had to help her with the translation, but she soon understood what to do.
Compared to bread it seems that the only difference with bagels is boiling them for a few minutes before baking, which isn't necessary for bread. She's making the dough as I write and tomorrow morning we should be eating fresh cream cheese bagels.
Food is a big consideration when deciding where to live in Thailand. I'm sure that it wouldn't be a problem buying bagels in parts of Thailand where there are lots of expats, but it is in my neck of the woods.
I also bought an automatic breadmaker. This can be filled with ingredients and the timer set before we go to bed and it will make fresh bread automatically ready for breakfast time. Alternatively, it can be used just to knead dough for pizzas and bagels, etc.
The ingredients - flour, yeast, sesame seeds, etc - are all available to buy locally. It's a good thing that my wife enjoys baking. She did a course earlier this year at the local college community. The courses are only available to Thais and the charge for vocational training is the princely sum of Bt1 per hour. Girls tend to go for cookery classes and the young boys learn how to fix cars, etc.
I think this is wonderful. Thailand understands the need for vocational training and has set up programme where (mostly young) people can learn real skills very cheaply. The big contradiction in Thailand is that those people with real skills are then ignored by employers because they don't have degrees and employers will only employ graduates, many of whom have no real skills in the real world.
My wife can rustle up a pretty good roast dinner and her pizzas are also good. They are not as good as the pizzas from authentic pizzerias in Bangkok, but locally we only have places such as Pizza Hut and The Pizza Company and her pizzas are far better than their 'pizzas'.
A few people who have used my Hat Yai travel guide have contacted me as a result of e-mailing various hotels and not getting replies. They normally ask me to confirm that the e-mail addresses are valid. They normally are.
On one occasion I went to one of the guilty hotels and had a chat with a lady on reception. It's quite a big hotel and it deals with a lot of customers. I asked what the hotel e-mail address is and she confirmed that it was the one I already had.
I then explained that people had sent e-mails but not received any replies. She told me that no one checks the e-mails. That would explain it then. There are exceptions, of course, but many Thais still haven't really got the hang of e-mails and doing business on-line, even though more and more businesses have websites.
Some Singaporean friends gave us a food processor on their last visit because they know my wife likes to bake. Unfortunately, it got dropped between Singapore and Thailand and now needs some repairs.
I sent Bosch Thailand an e-mail via their website about two months ago, but no one replied. I decided to chase it up today and telephoned their service centre. The guy I spoke to was very helpful and has promised that one of their service representatives will call me on Monday. Whether anyone will call me or not remains to be seen, but the service today was fine.
Before I came to Thailand I sent some e-mails about jobs. No one replied. I called a water pump manufacturer in Bangkok with a query. They asked me to send an e-mail, which I did. No one replied. I sent another. No one replied.
Last week we were checking out kindergartens and found a place with a website. The site had a contact page and I contacted them with some queries. No one replied.
If you contact an organisation or business in Thailand you may find that the response is prompt and efficient. On the other hand, if no one replies don't worry too much because you're not the only one.
When people write to tell me that they haven't received a reply to their e-mail my advice is to call the organisation directly. Thais normally respond to phone calls, but you could run into language problems. Very few foreigners speak Thai, very few Thais speak English proficiently, and even if your Thai is normally acceptable many Thais have a habit of refusing to listen to foreigners speaking Thai.
Friday 8th November 2013
Phuket, on the Andaman coast, has had some flooding recently and now Hua Hin on the Gulf coast is having the same problem.
This report says that waves in the Gulf of Thailand were as high as four metres earlier today. I wouldn't fancy being on a boat going between Samui and the mainland in these conditions. This kind of weather may result in cancelled boat schedules anyway.
The deep south has still had very little rain. There was some very heavy rain this evening but - the same as every other recent downpour - it only lasted for about an hour. There has been no sustained heavy rainfall so far this rainy season.
During October 2010 just before the big flood, the rain didn't really stop. There were some occasional breaks, but if it did stop raining it would rain heavily again 40 minutes later. An incredible amount of water came down from the clouds.
The big weather news today is that Typhoon Haiyan (which is being referred to as a Monster Storm by the media) has hit the Philippines and is heading towards Vietnam. This is the usual trajectory and sometimes there is still enough force in these big storms to do damage when they hit Thailand. At other times they fizzle out before getting to Thailand.
Monster storm roars into Philippines
Thursday 7th November 2013
If you have driven in Thailand you will not be surprised by the daily carnage that takes place on Thai roads. If you have taught English in Thailand the following report will not come as any surprise.
Thailand ranks near bottom in English proficiency: survey
Once you have taken a look at what goes on within the education system it isn't too diificult to work out what the problems are and what needs to be done to fix them.
However, Thais always know best and the arrogant attitudes that exist won't permit any changes to be made. The system of rote learning teaches students to remember tense structures and vocabulary, but many are completely unable to form sentences even after 12 years (or more) of 'studying' English. Many Thai teachers teaching English don't have a grasp of the language and teach students their own bad habits.
I have seen books written by Thai authors about learning English and the books are full of grammatical errors, despite the authors being PhDs in English and having lots of letters after their names.
The education system is all about remembering facts, regurtitating them in an exam (often multiple choice type questions), and then getting a certificate. The focus on high school education is purely to get the kids into university. There is no focus on actually educating people and many degrees are practically worthless. Notable exceptions are in the field of medical science. Once again, it's all about image over substance.
If overall grades at an educational institution are low the easier option is to lower the bar rather than to raise the standards. This is all about image and saving face. No matter how bad standards are, students will still get their bits of paper and the reputation of the education establishment will be saved.
Foreign teachers in the country are a mixed bunch. Some really do try to make a difference, but many are in Thailand purely for the lifestyle. The ones who do try to make a difference can't beat the system and if they try they will only be beaten down eventually.
There is an obsession with paper qualifications in the country, specifically university degrees, and all Thai universities now require lecturers to be PhDs. This is the only yardstick used in Thailand. They will happily employ monkeys with Mickey Mouse degrees who don't have a clue, but won't look at anyone else no matter what experience they have or how effective they are as teachers.
Qualifications with a high value abroad will not even be considered in Thailand if they aren't degrees. Thais seem to be under the mistaken impression that Thai degrees are the equivalent of foreign degrees.
Discipline in Thai schools is normally awful and it isn't unusual to see students sleeping in class. The tragedy is that they actually spend a lot of time in classrooms. It is fairly normal for Thai students to go to tutoring classes after they finish school. They then go home and do their school homework.
They always look tired because many don't have any free time to do the things that students their age should do. When they are tired they can't concentrate and thus they don't learn anything. The students, their parents and their teachers seem to be under the impression that the amount of time spent in the classroom is related to how much students will learn.
This is not the case because they waste so much time. If they had more time to do the normal activities that children do and spent half as much time in school learning effectively they would be much better off.
The curriculum has obviously been designed by several separate groups who all have their own agendas and who never speak to each other. A lot of time is spent on subjects that won't help the students at all later in life, but there are other reasons for devoting time to these subjects.
The problems with Thai schools and Thai roads are similar. There are now so many different problems that the task of solving them will be a huge.
Thais with money simply bypass the standard education system altogether by sending their children abroad or to good private schools in Thailand for their education. This is expensive, however, and is not an option for most people.
Wednesday 6th November 2013
Even though the economy in Burma is booming and many Burmese workers have returned home there are still quite a few left in Thailand.
After the 2004 tsunami, Khaolak and parts of Phuket were devastated. It took an army of construction workers to rebuild these places and most of the workers I met were Burmese. They are cheaper than Thai workers and they will do anything.
The man in the photo is a nice guy. He hardly speaks any Thai and I doubt that he had much of an education, however, he's a cheerful soul and he always gives me a big smile when I see him.
He is given all the jobs that no one else wants to do. When the rubbish bins fill up, people put their rubbish on the street, but the bin men won't collect rubbish on the street. No one thinks to put it in the bins once the bins have been emptied and there was a problem recently after a huge pile of trash had accumulated.
It was my Burmese friend who was tasked to clear it up.
After that someone ordered lots of topsoil for their garden. The delivery driver dumped it all over the street, making it difficult for people to drive past. Once again, it was my friend who got the job of cleaning up someone else's mess. He always smiles, he never complains, he lives in the workers' 'camp', which is just a squalid, mosquito-infested assortment of ramshackle huts made from pieces of scrap wood and corrugated iron, and I would imagine that his wages are very low.
It was meeting people like this when I used to come to Thailand for vacations that made me love Thailand. They had very little materially, but they seemed happy and seemed to have the right attitude to life.
Now that I have lived in Thailand for a while I have seen the other side of the coin. There are a lot of greedy people and lots of people who have no consideration for others. However, I still meet good people.
My wife's motorbike suffered yet another flat tyre recently. It hardly gets used these days and the tyres are always going flat. I took it to the same guy who has fixed it before. He has converted the front of his house into a garage and always seems busy fixing motorbikes.
He charges so little that it is almost embarrassing at times. His little enterprise is more like a charitable organisation than a business and he hasn't got a greedy vein in his body, even when a farang turns up at his door. Many Thais charges foreign customers higher prices than they do Thai customers.
I guess that he has enough to live on and he isn't greedy for more. Other Thais talk about Sufficiency Economy, but he actually lives it. By not always grasping for more he is far more Buddhist than many un-Buddhist Thais who believe that to be Buddhist all they have to do is go to the temple occasionally to make merit.
You meet lots of different kinds of people in Thailand, both good and bad. Greed causes a lot of problems, but you often find that the greediest people are those that have plenty of money already. Wealth, religion, education, sexuality, etc, have nothing to do with a person being good or bad.
I treat all people the same at first and after that I treat them in accordance with how they treat me. My relationships with Thais who think the only reason I exist is for them to rip me off don't tend to last very long.
Yet another foreign tourist meets a Thai with a knife in Pattaya.
Para-Sailing Boy Stabs Korean Tourist
It's crazy. The assailants need to start spending some jail time, instead of being given a Bt500 fine and then released.
Tuesday 5th November 2013
Apparently the captain of the recently capsized ferry was high on drugs, the ferry was severely overloaded, there weren't enough lifejackets, and the pumps onboard the boat to drain water didn't work. This sounds about par for the course for passenger transport operators in Thailand.
Pattaya ferry captain confesses to drug use
Ferry tragedy prompts safety call
Regardless of whether you travel by bus, van, taxi or boat in Thailand, the safety of the passengers is never a concern to the driver. The exception is air travel, which is governed by international safety regulations. Train travel isn't too bad, although there are derailments occasionally.
The following is someone else's description of what it is like to travel by minivan in Thailand. On the minivan trip he describes, where the van crashed, a Filipino singer living in Thailand was killed.
"My Thai girlfriend and I were sitting in the back of the van with Ms Polido. The driver was going very fast - I'd say about 130 to 150kmh; the road was slippery from the rain. The van slid a little at one point, but the driver managed to correct the vehicle. Then it slid again, and he lost control," Mr Menning said.
"It was worse than the the worst nightmare I've ever had," he said.
The full article is here:
Phuket expats risking lives on the road to stay in paradise
This is no exaggeration. Whenever you travel by road in Thailand, especially by minivan, you put your life at risk. I've been in fully loaded minivans that have been driven at 160kmh or more. It's terrifying and if there is an accident at that speed the occupants of the van won't stand a chance.
The bit in the article about the vans being monitored by GPS and the control centre calling the drivers to tell them to slow down if they are driving too fast is complete garbage. A good starting point with these deadly vans would be to limit their speed to 80kmh. It wouldn't stop every problem, but it would help a lot.
Monday 4th November 2013
Thailand captivates many first time visitors, and I was no exception.
From an early age I loved travelling and spent my teenage years visiting the Greek islands. In 1982 I started working for an oil services company called Sperry Sun. I had just finished my tertiary education and only had two things in mind - earning a decent salary and travelling. I figured that the oil services industry would give me both.
Sperry Sun had recruited a new intake of trainee directional surveyors for work that they anticipated would come from West Africa. However, the new work never came to fruition and they ended up laying off the people they had recruited six months previously. It was very much a hire and fire culture.
I went home and then started a career with IBM that would last 19 years. After I had started my new job, Sperry got in touch again and asked me to return. They had already trained me to run down-hole directional surveys and once again they needed more people. By this time I knew that there was no security in that line of work and told them no.
In my short oil services career I got to spend a month in Saudi Arabia. There was always lots of work out there and it was a good place to send new hires to get experience. Back then there were no problems with the Muslim world, as there are now, and it was a wonderful experience. It's not a country that many Westerners get the opportunity to visit and I consider myself quite fortunate.
My only regret is that I went just prior to developing an interest in photography (no pun) and therefore I have no photographs from my month in the Middle East.
While in that line of work I met many experienced oil service workers. They earned good money and worked very unconventional shift patterns. Depending on where they were working they might have worked two months solid, but then get a whole month off. I met guys who used to spend their month off in Thailand and they raved about the country.
My desire to visit Thailand started to grow and I bought some books about the country. In the early 80's it was still a frontier destination for Europeans. I didn't know anyone who had been and High Street travel agents had no offerings for Thailand.
In 1987 the Tourist Authority of Thailand (TAT) initiated a special 'Visit Thailand' campaign to boost tourism in the country and to commemorate the King's 60th birthday. They held an event at London's Barbican centre, which I attended, and it was a really magical experience.
There was a tuk-tuk, Thai food, Thai dancers and lots of other objects and symbols from Thailand. I had never seen anything as exotic as this in my entire life and I was completely hooked.
I was working in the City of London at the time and one of my customers was the Thai Farmers Bank, next to Cannon Street Station (now known as Kasikornbank). I used to love going there and chatting with the Thai staff about Thailand.
At IBM I worked with a like-minded guy who had done some travelling in the Far East. We started to plan a trip and after a few false starts that trip finally came together in November 1987. I had to find a specialist travel agent to arrange the flights. It started a love affair with Thailand that went on for years.
We started off in Bangkok, flew down to Surat Thani, got a ferry to Samui island, returned to Bangkok, went to Pattaya, and then returned to Bangkok for our flight home. At the time Samui hardly had any development at all. There was no airport and it was so quiet that I got really bored. Conversely, Pattaya was a huge amount of fun but, as I said previously, the fun disappeared soon afterwards.
Much later, when I had had about as much as I could take of work and living in the UK I decided to quit my job and leave the UK. It wasn't an easy thing to do and caused me a lot of anxiety at the time, but one thing I never had to worry about was deciding where to go. There was only ever going to be one place. That was 10 years ago. I'm still in the same place, but my feelings have changed significantly.
From being absolutely besotted with Thailand, I am now ambivalent. Thailand has allowed me to have a lifestyle that I would never have been able to obtain in the UK. For that I am very grateful, but I am now very aware of the negative aspects of the country that I had previously failed to see. And some of those negative aspects are very significant. Why did I fail to see them previously?
Thais are obsessed with image. There are many problems in the country, but the only time these problems cause any concern is when they start to hurt the country's image. For this reason, many social problems are hushed up or hidden from view and Thais themselves are reluctant to discuss social problems with foreigners because they think they are being disloyal or unpatriotic.
It therefore takes a long time to start to see how things really are and what you see on the surface is never representative of the reality underneath. In my case, this started to happen after about four years. If someone were to ask me how long they should stay in Thailand, I would suggest four years. Shorter stays may leave you wanting more, and longer stays will probably make you cynical.
After my eyes had been opened my first reaction was to leave, but where would I go? I had no intention of returning to the UK and no interest in living in any developed country. I had visited some other developing countries in Southeast Asia (the Philippines and Malaysia) and knew I didn't want to live in those places.
The only place that appealed was Bali, but when I started to look deeper I realised that Bali also had lots of problems. Websites such as Fugly Bali and Nasty Bali were enough to put me off. I came to the conclusion that nowhere is perfect and that everywhere has problems so I just stayed in Thailand.
If I knew then what I know now, would I still have come to Thailand? I'm really not sure. It would be easy to say no, but if I had gone anywhere else I would also have found problems that I wasn't aware of at first.
What are the good things about Thailand?
The first point to make is that nothing I considered good as a tourist apply now. When friends from abroad visit Thailand with their tourist hats on I find that I have very little in common with them. I consider most things that they want to do boring and just don't see things from the same perspective as tourists. The things I enjoyed doing as a tourist became boring a long time ago.
I earned good money in the UK and up until I was almost 40 I was quite selfish. I wanted to live in a detached houses, wanted to travel, wanted to eat out often, wanted to own Porsches, etc. I did all these things.
When I hit 40 I had started to change. Loneliness had started to be a problem and I felt like settling down. However, many doors had already been closed. I wasn't attracted to women my own age and the younger girls I was attracted to simply weren't interested. In fact, many were horrified to think that an older man had found them attractive.
In addition to physical attraction, if you want to have a family there are biological reasons why younger women are more suitable. Age isn't a big consideration with men, but it is with women.
In Thailand most girls don't have an issue with big age gaps (some do) and you find that the doors that were closed back home suddenly start opening. Foreign men over 40 - and in some cases a lot older - find that there are opportunities in Thailand to marry young, attractive girls and to start families, whereas those opportunities were simply non-existent in their home countries.
I have a young attractive wife, a daughter, and a son on the way. Before I left the UK I had all but given up on the idea of being able to have a family.
I've also ended up with the type of house that I could never have had in the UK. This was never my intention, but it happened as a result of getting married and then getting flooded.
To own this kind of a house in the UK I would need to be earning a big salary, and to earn a big salary I would need to do the kind of job that wouldn't allow me to spend much time enjoying the house I had bought. In Thailand I can live in a very comfortable house and still not have to work.
When people talk about work/life balance, there is simply no comparison between my life in Thailand and my old life in the UK. I don't have the same amount of dispensable income that I used to have, but my quality of life is just so much better.
The weather also makes a difference to my state of mind. It gets too hot at times, but there is air conditioning to deal with that. I don't mind cold weather too much, but the lack of sunlight in the UK during the winter months really depressed me. Going to work in the dark, returning home in the dark, and not seeing any sunshine for months on end didn't work for me at all.
There are some very pleasant middle class people in Thailand. During my time working at the local university I met a lot of good people and my neighbours now are good people.
Looking at the disadvantages, there is a wild (almost anarchic) side to Thailand and very weak (often non-existent) law enforcement. This is evident immediately as you start driving in Thailand and this is why I get so upset about driving standards in Thailand.
You may meet the perfect girl, have a perfect family, live in a perfect house, have a perfect lifestyle, and it could all be wiped out in an instant when a moron driving a tour bus at high speed decides that he isn't going to stop at a set of red traffic lights.
He knows that he won't be prosecuted for breaking any laws and he knows that if he causes an accident he is unlikely to face any real punishment. This is what makes Thailand insane. What does it say about the justice system when a Thai gets fined Bt500 for stabbing a foreign tourist?
You have opportunities to start a family, but Thailand isn't a safe place for children and the education system has been officially ranked as the poorest in Southeast Asia. It is a joke. There are also very few real career opportunities in Thailand and most salaries are also a joke. The good jobs only go to people with the right family connections.
Middle class educated Thais are generally fine, but they are still a minority group. There is a huge peasant underclass and even though it is no crime to be poor, it is mostly Thais from the poorer classes that cause problems in society.
There are many shootings and stabbings in Thailand, and most of the time the motive for murder is trivial. Many Thai men are prone to violence and the red mist descends very easily. When this happens they can't control their actions and the result is often fatal. I have to think about this all the time.
Southern Man Arrested for Stabbing Omani Tourist
Up until a few years ago I could never understand why Thais would never say anything when other people were being extremely antisocial or obnoxious. If you read about Thai cultural behaviour you will see that part of the culture is being non-confrontational, but why?
The reason is that antisocial, obnoxious Thais are normally also highly vindictive. If they are confronted they will seek revenge on the person who confronted them, sometimes with fatal results. In most cases the culture of non-confrontation is purely an act of self-preservation.
If you are in your house and a neighbour consistently plays loud music or races a pickup truck up and down the road outside your house you can't do anything. I lived like this for two years when we rented a house in an area full of urban peasants.
The entity commonly referred to as 'Culture Gap' should never be underestimated. This has nothing to do with superficial differences, such as Thais eating with forks and spoons instead of knives and forks, and wai-ing instead of shaking hands. These types of difference are insignificant.
What it really means is living in a society where the belief and value systems are completely different to the belief and value systems in your home country. Sometimes this can be insignificant, and sometimes not.
It doesn't bother me that we have a spirit shelf in our house and that on monk days my wife gives the spirits offerings so that they take care of the house and its occupants. If this makes her feel better it is fine with me and I'm not affected.
Furthermore, I had some problems with the UK value system when I lived in England, specifically the relationship most Brits have with alcohol. When people meet in the UK they get drunk. If something good happens they get drunk. If something bad happens they get drunk. If people work hard and their employer wants to treat them, everyone goes out and gets drunk.
Alcohol never really suited me, but there was intense peer pressure to drink in the UK. In Thailand where I have always associated with teetotal Thai females there was no peer pressure and I gave up drinking.
On the other hand, some parts of the Thai value system do bother me. My naive way of thinking is that nothing else matters in life if you and/or your family get killed in a road accident. This is why I bang on about driving standards in Thailand so much.
I therefore believe that road safety is very important. However, when you see how many Thai drivers drive it is obvious that road safety isn't important to them. When you see how little law enforcement there is on Thai roads it is obvious that road safety isn't important to the police. And if the police aren't bothered it can only be because Thai society at large isn't bothered.
But how can this be? How can there be so little importance placed on preserving human life and how can Thai society accept such a high death rate caused by road traffic accidents? I find myself asking questions to which there are no answers and I find myself being a lone dissenting voice. This is very difficult.
It is at those times when your values and beliefs differ so much to the values and beliefs of everyone else in the society in which you live that you realise just how big the culture gap is. This is one of the things that can make living in Thailand very difficult for certain people who come from Western societies.
Of course, this also depends on how different people think. I am aware that many foreigners living in Thailand enjoy the very things that drive me crazy. Some foreigners are more suited to life in Thailand than others and depending on the type of person you are, you may have problems in Thailand or you may not.
Anyone thinking about moving Thailand should do some serious self-analysis in order to ascertain whether living in Thailand is right for them. Lots of people enjoy their new lives in Thailand, however, there are also quite a few who end up jumping off tall buildings in Pattaya.
Six more tourists killed in Thailand:
Six killed in Pattaya ferry accident
The Bangkok Post says seven:
Seven die as Pattaya ferry capsizes
Here's the BBC report. The BBC says that the boat was carrying far too many people. Overloading passenger vehicles and boats is a common problem in Thailand.
Several killed as Thai ferry sinks off Pattaya
I try to ignore Thai politics these days, but this amnesty bill that the government is trying to force through is heading towards huge problems in the country.
Apparently, Lil' Sis was in tears today because all she wants everyone to do is forgive and forget so that the country can move on. Aaah, what a nice lady.
Tearful PM calls for forgiving
Of course, Thai politicians can never simply stick to the truth and everyone knows that what is being done is being done to benefit one person and one person alone, no matter how much strife is created. The political situation in Thailand, with something like 18 changes to the constitution since 1932 and numerous coup d'état, is terminally sick.
It also strikes me that the person elected for the difficult job of running a country should be chosen for their skills in performing that particular job and not because of their surname. Only in Thailand.
Sunday 3rd November 2013
Ten years ago on this very day I arrived in Thailand. I left the UK on 22nd September 2003 and my first stop was Singapore, where I stayed with my brother for a while, making one side trip to Bali in Indonesia.
On 19th October I left Singapore and took a bus to Melaka in Malaysia. I have never really enjoyed trips to Malaysia that much, but some places are interesting. Places such as Melaka and Penang have a lot of colonial history and are interesting places to visit for a few days.
On the 21st October I took another bus to KL. I had booked a hotel on-line and it looked OK on the website. However, when I got there I found that the hotel was disgusting. My tiny room had no windows and it was really depressing. There was lots of sexual activity going on and this could be heard easily through the paper-thin walls.
The place made me feel ill and after staying there one night I had to get out. The next hotel was over my budget, but it was a lot better. This was my second trip to KL and no better than the first. Visiting Bangkok was always fun, but KL has never made me feel very excited.
On 24th October 2003 I travelled to Penang from KL and stayed in Georgetown. Penang is an interesting little place with lots of history. My father did his national service in Malaya in the late 50's and Penang was an R&R stop for servicemen during 'The Malayan Emergency'. Whenever I visit Penang I see old buildings that I'm sure haven't changed since he was there.
In Singapore everything has been gentrified and modernised, thus there is very little that is original. That isn't the case in Penang where there are lots of old interesting buildings that haven't been touched. As an added bonus, there are some really good Indian restaurants.
On 27th October 2003 I took a ferry from Penang to Langkawi. I had woken up with a raging sore throat that morning and had started to feel really ill. I found an authentic Chinese pharmacy in Georgetown and asked for something to help, imagining that the pharmacist would concoct some ancient Chinese medicine made from herbs and other exotic ingredients. Instead, she gave me a packet of Strepsils.
Langkawi is quite a pleasant little island, but I was feeling too ill to enjoy it. After I started to feel better I met a couple of Japanese sisters and went off with them. One of the girls offered me a crisp and as I put my hand in the bag to take one a monkey appeared from nowhere and bit the bag. It also bit my finger, drawing blood.
I thought about rabies but didn't go to hospital. A local man made some kind of solution that looked like tar and applied it to the bite. I was OK, but since then I have acquired a taste for bananas and enjoy swinging on tyres.
I hired a car and drove around Langkawi a little. There are lots of long-tailed macaques on the island and the alpha males leading each troop get really aggressive. When they open their mouths to show off their teeth they are quite frightening.
Nothing much went right in Malaysia and when I visited the Langkawi cable car hoping for an aerial ride it was closed due to bad weather. Needless to say, I was pleased to leave Malaysia and left on the ferry to Satun on 3rd November 2003.
It was my 7th trip to Thailand, but there was a big difference on that particular trip. For once I didn't have a return date or return ticket and I wasn't sure how long I would be in the country. I've been in Thailand ever since, only leaving briefly for a few trips to Malaysia and Singapore.
Because I had visited Thailand several times as a tourist I thought I knew about the country, but with hindsight I knew absolutely nothing. It took roughly another four years of living permanently in Thailand and studying the language and cultural behaviour before I even started to scratch the surface.
Of course, my views about Thailand and Thais are very different now compared to when I first arrived. I will write more about this later.
After the recent incident in which a Russian tourist was beaten up for declining to buy a fake watch that was being passed off as genuine, a German tourist has been stabbed by a Thai selling fake watches after they bumped into each other on the street. Both incidents took place in Pattaya.
It seems that Thais who are prone to violence, as many are, carry weapons around with them for when they inevitably get into confrontations.
At least the Thai justice system takes these things seriously. For the offence of stabbing a foreign tourist the assailant was fined Bt500 and released. Bt500 is about 16 US dollars.
On my first visit to Pattaya in 1987 the 'Land of Smiles' epithet really seemed genuinely and I had a great time. When I returned in 1992 something had changed, and the change was quite dramatic. Lots of Thais seemed miserable and jaded. Rather than welcoming foreigners, I could already sense an air of resentment. I left quickly and went to Phuket. I have never been back to Pattaya since.
In the last few years I have been on the end of a few quite nasty attacks from Thais and some Thais now have real animosity towards foreigners. News reports of foreign tourists being beaten up and murdered are now unfortunately all too common.
Pattaya News also reports that Thai burglars are now setting fire to the homes of foreigners after robbing them. Nice.
Houses Torched After Robberies
Saturday 2nd November 2013
I read a long time ago that Phuket was to introduce speed cameras, but then nothing happened. However, something seems to be happening now and cameras should be operational from January 2014.
Speed cameras coming to Phuket roads
Many Thais have told me that driving standards in Hat Yai are the worst in Thailand. Drivers there are very aggressive and Thais tell me that this is because southern Thais are jai rawn (hot-headed). I would tend to agree, but whenever I have driven in Phuket it seems even worse than Hat Yai.
One reasons is that minivan drivers in Thailand are notoriously aggressive and because there are so many tourists in Phuket there are a lot of vans. There are also other reasons.
I'm really pleased to hear about these cameras and hope that they will be rolled out soon in other areas of Thailand. The biggest problem for the police will be administering the huge number of speeding fines because so many Thais speed all the time. The cost of Bt16.8 million is insignificant. You can't put a cost on human life, and anyway the cameras will soon pay for themselves.
The speeding fines need to significantly hurt drivers in their pockets so that they will be a deterrent, and Thailand should also introduce a points system. There are many problems at the moment. Firstly, drivers hardly ever get stopped for speeding. If they do, they are fined a very small amount and it isn't a deterrent.
There is no points system and therefore persistent offenders can keep on breaking traffic laws and never lose their licences. With a points system they would lose their licences after accruing so many points. After that they should be jailed if they continue to drive.
This is a step in the right direction, but there is still an extremely long way to go in order to make Thailand's roads safe. Road safety in Thailand is a huge problem and the only way to fix it is by introducing some very tough measures.
Traffic light cameras to catch drivers who routinely run red lights would also be a good move, as would the police clamping down on dangerous and aggressive drivers.
Another argument between Thais and yet another murder. This is how many disagreements are 'resolved' in Thailand.
Phuket taxi driver's feud leads to fatal stabbing
What happened to the rainy season this year?
On this day three years ago in the early hours of the morning a devastating flood hit Hat Yai. October 2010 had been very wet and on many days it hardly stopped raining. Not only was the rain persistent, but it was heavy as well.
By the end of October the flood defences had reached their limit and a large dam or two had reached capacity. Whoever makes these decisions decided that dam water needed to be released for safety reasons and shortly afterwards the damn water arrived in my rented house. Lots of it.
It first started to arrive at around 1am and by daybreak there was two metres of murky brown water downstairs. We were then trapped upstairs inside the house for several days with no electricity, no running water, and only limited supplies of food.
My wife was pregnant, but this was better than having a child to take care of. It was about a month before I bought my car and so I didn't have the hassle of trying to get a car to high ground before the water arrived.
Some new furniture I had bought was ruined and had to be discarded, but we managed to save some stuff. It cost me around Bt30,000 and a lot of hours hard work in the clean up operation. We received Bt5,000 in compensation from the local municipality.
It was the worst natural disaster that I have ever encountered personally. For many local Thais, who had previously been through the big flood of 2000, it was just something normal that happens in Thailand.
Every cloud has a silver lining, so the saying goes, and some good did come out of the flood. I had originally planned to stay in the rented house for several years. The flood arrived a month after moving in and that event made me hate that house. My thoughts turned to buying a house a lot earlier than I had previously anticipated.
My parents came to visit early in 2011 and when they left I took them to the airport. On the way back I spotted a new housing development and went to take a look. I was very impressed and the houses I saw were far better than all the other new houses I had looked out. Importantly, the development was in an area where flooding isn't a problem. This was my biggest concern.
I took my wife to have a look. She also liked the houses and I put a deposit down. Shortly after that, the local property market started to go crazy and had I not decided to buy then, I wouldn't have been able to afford to buy the house that we live in now. With hindsight, the flood actually did me a favour.
There were a couple of good storms last weekend with lots of thunder, lightning and torrential rain, but they didn't last long. One lasted about an hour and the other about two hours. There has been a bit of afternoon rain, but nothing substantial.
It's dry again today and the temperature is almost 32°C. It feels as if the rainy season has finished without there being any rain. November could be wet, but if this dry spell continues it could give the water authority a few problems.
Now that I live in a safe area I want the rain. The storms last week were great fun to watch. Extreme weather is fine, provided that you don't have to go out in it and provided that it doesn't come into or affect your home.
Besides, if you live in Thailand sun and blue skies all the time get boring. I love it during the daytime when the sky turns as black as night, thunder roars, the sky is lit with flashes of thunder, and the heavens open.
Sometimes you see some strange sights in Thailand.
We were driving home from a boring shopping trip today when we saw quite a large snake rearing up on a very busy road as if it was performing in a snake charmer's basket. We passed quickly and I couldn't tell what kind of snake it was, although my wife thought that it was venomous.
The road we were on is extremely busy with a lot of high speed traffic. The snake had attempted to cross the road, but this was always going to be impossible.
Its tail had been run over and it had been stuck to the road with blood and guts, leaving the poor creature still alive. It could no longer move forwards and in desperation all it could do was rear up its head. That's all we saw before we passed by. No doubt that the rest of the snake would have been mashed a few minutes later, at least putting the poor thing out of its misery.
Snakes concern me. I'm not so much worried about being bitten myself, but I worry about my daughter and my cats. For this reason I am no great fan of snakes. However, I don't like to see any animal suffering regardless of how much I like or dislike the particular creature.