Stilgherrian » Thailand

A recursive photo from Bangkok

Stilgherrian — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 10:03:24 +0000

This is my photo of ’Pong taking this photo in Bangkok. Recursion is always an interesting phenomenon.

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Stilgherrian in Thailand: photographic evidence

Stilgherrian — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 06:17:10 +0000

Speaking of my journey to Thailand, ’Pong has just published a bunch of photos of me he took there, only one of which you’ve seen before. Some of them are not particularly flattering.

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Everything is better on ice…

Stilgherrian — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 06:03:30 +0000

When I went to Thailand last year, Thai Airways International was generally excellent — except for their choice of in-flight movies. Sorry, but even after a couple glasses of wine and several brandies High School Musical is a piece of shit.

I’d originally guessed that it was only screened because it somehow matched the Thai sense of sentimentality. But no. I soon discovered it was such a success — it even won an Emmy! — that Disney made a sequel with the imaginative title High School Musical 2.

I was really, really hoping that was going to be the end of the story. But no (again). Touring Australia in April and May is… High School Musical: The Ice Tour.

Sadly, this show doesn’t involve the dentally-perfect racially-balanced lead characters in some meth-fuelled rampage but… yes… ice skates. Somebody get me a bucket.

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John Denver karaoke sparks Thai killing spree

Stilgherrian — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 20:19:21 +0000

“I warned these people about their noisy karaoke parties,” said Weenus Chumkamnerd, 52, after his arrest. “I said if they carried on I would go down and shoot them. I had told them if I couldn’t talk sense into them I would come back and finish them off.”

A neighbour said that the karaoke group normally sang Thai pop and southern Thai ballads, but one particular western tune could be heard often — John Denver’s Country Roads… the neighbour said the revellers had been singing it over and over again.

Khun Weenus was so furious with their awful singing that he didn’t notice he’d murdered his own brother-in-law. (Thanks for letting my know, Richard.)

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“Tom Yum Goong Disease”

Stilgherrian — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 01:46:00 +0000

’Pong’s photos of the urban decay in Bangkok are much better than mine.

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Tub wan solves all world problems

Stilgherrian — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 00:04:13 +0000

Everyone needs to know — you need to know — that the answer to all of the world’s problems is tub wan (ตับหวาน). I learned this after wide-ranging discussions in Bangkok with ’Pong’s friends. And about six bottles of whiskey. So it must be true.

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Send the wife in first, eh Thaksin?

Stilgherrian — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 21:47:08 +0000

Perhaps my Prediction number 6 for 2008 won’t come true. The wife of former Thai president Thaksin Shinawatra, returned to Bangkok yesterday and was immediately taken to the Supreme Court to face corruption charges. Pojaman Shinawatra, 51, was charged with using her husband’s influence to buy real estate at one-third its value. She was released on bail of 5 million baht ($171,400) and ordered not to leave the country.

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Predictions for 2008

Stilgherrian — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 22:14:12 +0000

OK, I’m meant to be clever, so here are my predictions for 2008. The Snarky Platypus didn’t help me with these, as we decided we had better things to do on New Year’s Eve (gin and tonic, for example). So blame me alone.

The Joy of Chairman Rudd’s Iced VoVo Revolution will be dulled by the end of January when they take some stupid actions which demonstrate that they are, after all, politicians like all others. Actually, this has already happened with the announcement of mandatory Internet filtering by ISPs. I’ll write more about that soon.
At least one member of the (former) Howard cabinet will be charged with a criminal offence over something they did in office. I’d like it to be Brendan Nelson, because that deal to buy $6 billion worth of Super Hornet fighter aircraft stinks — mostly because the air force doesn’t want them and the process was, erm, rushed to say the least. However I suspect it might be something to do with the AWB scandal.
Channel 7 will continue to win the Australian TV ratings. Channel 9 will fail to reinvent itself now that its owned by an investment vehicle and not a media proprietor.
Telstra will be forced to separate its wholesale and retail businesses. Meanwhile the Sol Trujilo-led management team will continue to play nasty with the government, causing them to be increasingly sidelined — especially over the Rudd government’s new broadband rollout.
Barack Obama will win the US Presidential election. I know Hillary Clinton is currently the favourite, but I have the gut feeling that the Oprah factor will be important, and that Hillary’s dirty washing will be aired.
When former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra returns from self-imposed exile on 14 February the new government, which is a coalition led by a Thaksin-supporting party, will somehow drop the corruption charges against him. Another military coup will follow.
At least one Australian company will suffer a major leak of its customers’ private data, prompting new laws on dealing with such things (like they already have in California).
We’ll finally figure out what the Storm Botnet, the world’s largest network of hacked computers, is for. My guess: whatever the hell the designer’s paying clients want it to be for.

You might also like to read the interesting predictions from The Australian (not really predictions, but obvious events following on from their news calendar), advertising agency JWT, Peter Black and Rachel Polanskis, and predictions about toy names for 2008.

What are your predictions for 2008? And how do you think mine rate?

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Unreliable Bangkok 9: Train

Stilgherrian — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 05:20:53 +0000

’Pong’s movie Bangkok Express slices through the city at the height of the motorway. Yes, you can see urban decay, but it’s abstract, in the distance. The train slices the city differently: just above human eye level.

The photos I took from the train in Bangkok reminded me that a sign at Ashfield Station in Sydney has got it all wrong. That sign tells us that railway stations are for catching trains — and if I’m not catching a train right at that moment then I’m not welcome. I might be a terrorist. Move on, nothing to see here.

Bullshit.

Railways are the Grand Physical Arteries of the Industrial Age. While we can catch trains at a station, yes, we can also pause to marvel at this expression of industrial confidence. Railway signalling, for me, was a childhood geeky fascination. How do you keep this whole system running without crashing? Switching, signalling, communication, plans, timetables — all the things that computers do, but laid out before you on a scale you can comprehend.

And, as this photo (above) reminds us, in many countries today the railways are still all of that, and more. Here, they’re a walking path, a playground, a rubbish dump — the streets of Bangkok are swept clean daily, but not the railway — and in some cases a home. Where officially-sanctioned housing ends at the edge of railway land, the slum begins. Clearly, it’s been there for years.

CityRail, how dare you narrow the horizons of the next generation, so the railways are nothing more than a place to be herded, sheep-like, from point A to point B. They’re our railways, and if we want to stand and watch for a while, we will.

[P.S. Out of 9 "Unreliable Bangkok" pieces so far, at least 3 have featured transport. I suspect it's because being a passenger gives you time to pause a reflect upon what you're seeing.]

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Unreliable Bangkok 8: Henge

Stilgherrian — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 07:02:16 +0000

When the Thai economy was booming in the early 1990s, construction started on a 60km high-speed elevated train and motorway link from central Bangkok to the international airport at Don Mueang. However when the currency collapsed in 1997-98, work was abandoned.

These stained concrete fragments (pictured) are all that remains of the Bangkok Elevated Road and Train System (BERTS) or Hopewell project. They line the old diesel-fuelled railway through northern Bangkok like a modernist Stonehenge.

Meanwhile the new international airport has been built at Suvarnabhumi and the Suvarnabhumi Airport Link is under construction, currently expected to be completed in November 2008.

Bangkok is filled with abandoned building projects from the late 1990s.

One (pictured right) reached a height of around 40 storeys, and many of the curved balconies were completed, before work just stopped. Since all of them were abandoned around the same time, all these abandoned buildings have their concrete stained to exactly the same shade of dark grey.

However there is growth in Bangkok, plenty of it. I shall return to this theme…

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Unreliable Bangkok 7: East

Stilgherrian — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 11:52:58 +0000

For just one day in Thailand, we got out of the 10-million-person wonder that is Bangkok and headed East to Rayong. We had lunch with ’Pong’s parents. Over a mountain of ultra-fresh seafood and a bottle of rum, we watched this view. Need I say more?

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Unreliable Bangkok 6: Haircut

Stilgherrian — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 13:10:38 +0000

In the Old City of Bangkok, on the afternoon of Wednesday 28 November 2007, this barber (pictured) gave me the best haircut I’ve ever had.

It wasn’t because I looked particularly handsome afterwards, though it was an improvement. It was the meticulous care and attention shown.

’Pong took the photo with a proper camera, not a telephone. He’s got a better eye than me, too, and he’s certainly captured the mood.

I’m a dag when it comes to haircuts.

When I used to be cool (roughly 1990 to 1993), I’d go to a “proper” salon. Often it was the highly-fashionable Swerve Haircutters on Rundle Street, Adelaide. That’d set me back $40 — back then! I suspect my affection for Swerve was more about having my hair washed in a sensual scalp massage by a certain very attractive young apprentice. Lately, though, it’s all been about practicality: a #2 crop or a short back and sides at the local Lebanese barber.

On my second full day in Bangkok, I realised I needed a haircut. Badly. We stumbled across one barber in our wanderings near the Grand Palace, but as we entered the darkened shop an old woman chased us out again. “No-one here. Come back tomorrow!” Ah yes, Thailand is a superstitious country, and it’s inauspicious to cut your hair on a Wednesday. Nevertheless, a little further down the street was a less-superstitious barber.

So why was this haircut so good?

The neat and tidy shop was treat enough, with proper leather and cast iron chairs, and mirrors correctly placed to afford full view of the proceedings. But that was only the beginning. The green cape was clean and unworn. The barber’s tools were neatly arrayed under the Buddha’s protection. And the haircut itself was prefaced with the application of talc across my head to better lubricate the clippers.

Our local lad, bless him to the core of his Leb-boy heart, operates his hair clippers with a robust, masculine boldness. I’m sure that like many blokes he harbours certain fears of any gentleness with another male. There’s no such insecurity in Bangkok. With a light, almost caressing touch of his fingers, my Thai barber held a fine cream-coloured comb against the skin of my neck with one hand, using it as a guide while he operated the clippers with the other.

Those clippers had been cleaned and oiled immediately before use, too, and they purred. Nothing like the harsh buzz I was familiar with.

As he moved from the base of my neck upwards, the barber gradually shifted the angle of the comb, so the hair at the sides of my head was graded — short at the bottom, longer at the top.

After 20 minutes of careful work, I was the proud owner of a haircut just like any army officer. Or, for that matter, any Thai schoolboy. Except possibly with a little more grey hair showing. Price: 80 baht, or about AUD$2.60.

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Unreliable Bangkok 5: Polite

Stilgherrian — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 01:40:47 +0000

One of the most important differences between Bangkok and Sydney is that Bangkok isn’t full of arseholes. I’ve already mentioned that Skytrain security staff are helpful. Unlike CityRail’s. But it goes way beyond that…

In virtually every bar in Bangkok, you don’t pay for your drinks up front. You sit, you order your drinks, they go on your tab, you consume, you enjoy the company of your friends. And when you’re ready to leave, then you get the bill. In virtually every Australian bar, though, you pay for your drinks in cash at the time of serving, thank you very much.

In other words, Australian pubs operate under the assumption that you’re the kind of arsehole who’d leave without paying.

Is this because Thais are more trusting? Or gullible? No, it’s because Thais are more trustworthy people.

Because they’re not arseholes.

If you look at the photo (above), you’ll see a dustpan and broom leaning against the concrete post on the left. They belong to the street sweeper. She (all the street sweepers I saw were women in practical straw hats) leaves them there at the end of the day, unlocked, and knows that they’ll still be there when she needs them again the next morning.

You simply can’t do that in Sydney because you can almost guarantee that the dustpan and broom would be either (1) stolen (who steals a dustpan?), (2) vandalised (what sort of desperate arsehole does that?), or (3) thrown into the canal “as a laugh”.

Because, as I say, Sydney is full of arseholes.

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Thai worker-owned brothel turns 1

Stilgherrian — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 01:40:37 +0000

Something I didn’t see in Thailand, because we didn’t go to Chiang Mai, but worth mentioning. Thailand’s first worker-owned sex bar, fully compliant with local labour laws, has just celebrated its first birthday.

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Unreliable Bangkok 4: Lust

Stilgherrian — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 03:51:33 +0000

Leena Jangjanya (ลีนา จังจรรจา, pictured above) is the most beautiful, most sexy woman in all of Thailand.

She’s usually just called Leena Jang, and since she’s a candidate in Sunday’s Thai general election her posters are everywhere in Bangkok’s northern suburbs. There’s three versions, including one in her graduation robes (law) and one where she’s looking like a successful businesswoman in white. You can see them both below.

But for me, that first image is the killer. The pink blouse! Those alluring eyes! The hair!

Julie Bishop, you’re so dumped!

The densest concentration of Leena posters is around the Chatuchak weekend markets — a massive concentration of more than 15,000 stalls over 1.1 square kilometres where it would seem Leena has her strongest support base. She’s seen as fighting for the poor and “ordinary people”, people such as the stallholders, and fighting against corruption.

I guess she’s a bit like Pauline Hanson without the racism. Or a left-wing Bronwyn Bishop, if that’s possible.

Apart from the legal foundation and her political ambitions, Leena runs a cosmetic business.

One of ’Pong’s friends, a political journalist, tells me Leena doesn’t have a hope in hell of getting elected. Still, she has profile.

It was interesting hearing the Thai perspective on Australia’s federal election, which took place only a few days before I arrived in Bangkok. While many Australian commentators were talking about “Me-too Rudd”, supposedly identical to John Howard in all significant policies, Thai commentators could see real differences.

One late-night talk show host was even jealous that Australians had choices. Thais, he said, could really only choose between different sets of cronies. Rudd, he said, was very different from Howard: he was signing Kyoto, getting out of Iraq and apologising to the Aborigines. The me-too of economic issues didn’t get a mention.

And yes, Chairman Rudd’s skills in Mandarin were mentioned a lot in the newspapers, as was the Malaysian heritage of our Minister for Climate Change, Senator Penny Wong.

Whichever set of cronies gets elected tomorrow, they’ll be engaging with an Australia whose eyes are, once more, on the region instead of being focused solely on Washington. I get the feeling they’re expecting big changes.