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Rescheduled Memorial for Gator Student Leaps in Front of Skytrain in Suicide Bid Baht Strengthens to Six-Year High vs. US$ Thai "Street Food" Makes Bloomberg Thailand in Medical Tourism News Again Update on "Generous" George Pipas U.S. to Roll Out E-Passports August 14th Hadiths: Source of the Conflict? Twenty-One Years On: Arriving in Asia Floods, Volcanoes, and Earthquakes American Arrested Here for Sensational Murder in the U.S. Update on the Hare and Hound Restaurant THAI Airlines Reports Demand on London Route Remains High Office Bar & Grill Sports Broadcast Schedule * * * * * * * * * * Just a reminder you can sign-up for free to receive the BangkokAtoZ.com Updates (plain text) e-mail to always know when I add something new to the site or modify it in some important way. A great way to be sure YOU don't miss something of interest, best of all is that this service is absolutely FREE! * * * * * * * * * * Rescheduled Memorial for Gator Unfortunately, I learned of an order from authorities in the Thonglor Police District for bars in that district, which includes all of Washington Square, to close last Saturday in honor of Her Majesty the Queen's birthday shortly after I had uploaded last Friday's column, one story in which was an announcement there would be a memorial -- more on the order of a celebratory commemoration -- for the recently passed-away Gator. The day this column is scheduled to go up is eight days before the rescheduled memorial, which will be held at the Texas Lone Staar at 2:00 P.M. Saturday, August 26, 2006. I hope. I also hope none of you came to the Square the 12th only to find the Lone Staar locked. Check my home page at http://BangkokAtoZ.com before you light out, as if there is any change I will put it there the moment I learn of it. [Sunday, August 13, 2006] * * * * * * * * * * of Skytrain in Suicide Bid A university student made an apparent attempt to kill himself by throwing himself in front of an arriving Skytrain on the eastbound side at the Asoke Station yesterday, Saturday the 12th, reportedly about 8:20 A.M. Though seriously injured, he survived. When he recovers, maybe he'll give matters a re-think. Services were suspended for about an hour. This is the first such incident since the Skytrain opened in late 1999, an enviable and commendable record. The report I read in the Bangkok Post titled "Man hurt after jumping in front of skytrain in suicide bid" is a bit confusing; it says traffic between the two stations adjacent to Asoke Station, i.e., Nana Station and Phrom Phong [at The Emporium] was halted, which gives the impression the rest of the routes were unaffected. I don't know how far service was disrupted for sure, but a friend who attempted to board a westbound train at the Soi Onnut Station, the eastern terminus of that line, said there were several announcements made in Thai, and people gradually began making their way back down to the street. My friend doesn't speak Thai so couldn't understand the announcements, but as he had been there long enough for at least one train to arrive, he knew something must be wrong. Soi Onnut Station is the fourth station east of Soke -- and the third east of Phrom Phong Station. A comment about the announcements: While it can be argued that foreigners living hear ought to learn enough Thai to be able to understand announcements, first of all, many don't, rightly or wrongly, and, second of all, there are very many foreigners who visit here and who can't really be expected to understand much, if any, of the local language. On board the carriages the announcements of the next station are given in Thai and English via what I assume to be recorded. Perhaps Skytrain authorities could consider having a package of other basic announcements. The announcements wouldn't have to be detailed -- in this case, a simple "Service is temporarily suspended; we apologize for any inconvenience" would cover any instance in which service was indeed disrupted. Other languages, especially regional ones, would be nice, too. In any case -- the young man did survive, and good for that. The newspaper story also said a Skytrain authority "defended" the system's safety procedures. I don't think anyone at the company has to defend a remarkably good safety record. [Sunday, August 11, 2006] * * * * * * * * * * Baht Strengthens to Six-Year High vs. US$ The baht was reported yesterday to have reached its highest level against the U.S. dollar in six years at US$1.00 = THB37.34 -- though why apparently is a matter of some differences of opinion. (Other sources put the rate at slightly different levels, but not different enough to matter unless you're a really serious currency speculator.) Whatever the reason for the currency's strengthening, which has been slow, gradual, but for the most part steady for quite some time now, from the Thai perspective the current exchange rate is much better -- in some ways, if not all -- than when the baht hit its weakest point against the greenback in the wake of the 1997 economic crisis: about 58 baht to the dollar. Not being an economist myself, these currency fluctuations have a bit of smoke-and-mirror quality to them for me. About the only thing I can say with certainty is I sure liked, from an admittedly selfish point of view, getting 58 baht for each dollar from my income, which is in U.S. dollars and comes from the U.S. Like it far more than I do the current rate. I read an article online yesterday that addressed mainland China's heated economy, an article that didn't mention Thailand by name, but in which the author was taking the currently contrarian view that if the Chinese economy -- the fourth-largest in the world -- doesn't cool down, the 1997 economic crisis could look like a mere hiccup compared to any hard landing for that economy. The author didn't seem at all optimistic any soft landing is possible, let alone likely. With Thailand's expanding trade ties with China, the Kingdom could be hurt even worse than it would have been, say, five years ago -- and back then it would have been major hurt, I take it. Foreign tourists bringing in dollars are bound to wish the strengthening would at least slow down! [Sunday, August 13, 2006] * * * * * * * * * * Thai "Street Food" Makes Bloomberg Up before dawn this morning, I fired up my computer and went into Yahoo to look at the personalized headlines in the "My Yahoo" service, and was interested to see a link to a Bloomberg story by that media outlet's London-based food critic, Richard Vines, titled "Bangkok Street Food Can Vie With Luxury Dining: Richard Vines." Rather a fan of Bangkok's street food myself, I immediately clicked on the link to read the story in this august news source about such food in my adopted hometown. I could have spared myself the trouble. It turns out the headline is entirely misleading. First and foremost, the only time Vines talks about real, honest-to-goodness street food is in the story's second paragraph, which is all of about forty words long. That paragraph focuses on a study that found Thailand to be the number one location for Britons suffering food poisoning -- hardly an inducement to anyone, Briton or otherwise, to sample Bangkok's street food. Second, the entire rest of the story is about Bangkok's non-street food, starting with a discussion of an open-on-two-sides restaurant near the Sukhumvit-Soi Asoke intersection. The other places discussed? Here's the list:
Sukhothai It can be argued, not entirely incorrectly, that eating in a place such as Suda is very similar to eating street food. But street food is served off carts, some mobile (most, in fact), some set up in one location daily, then disassembled, packed up, and moved out until the following day. [The latter sometimes even offer folding tables and squat plastic stools. Upscale stuff -- but hardly the Sukhothai.] Eating street food in an air-conditioned restaurant in a five-star hotel isn't possible, no matter how much Vines or anyone else loves the food at the Sukhothai. Italian food? French food? In a story about Bangkok's street food??? The fact is that one need not go to some fancy-dancy place to get excellent -- and genuine -- street food in Bangkok. If anything, street vendors of all sorts, including those catering to hungry diners, are a nuisance at times, clogging the sidewalks as they so often do. On the other hand, if you fancy some tom yam goong (not "gong," as Vines romanized it), that very same ubiquitous presence is nice indeed. While I can't vouch for the accuracy of the study Vines cites, I will agree with the underlying idea that caution is very much the order of the day when dining off a street vendor's cart. Basic hygiene and cleanliness aren't what one ought to expect. My own advice to visiting friends and family members is to avoid street food unless someone they know and trust can point them to a particular vendor or they are going to be here long enough for their bodies to adjust to the local intestinal microbes and the like, or, better still, both. (As an aside, every time I've visited America since moving out here East of Suez, my tummy has given me fits for at least the first several days. Why? -- my belly's used to Asian bugs, not Texas ones!) I eat street food fairly regularly, and have everywhere I've lived in Asia over the past two decades. And I doubt I've been even faintly ill as a result more than a handful of times. I know I've been stricken hard only once, that here in Bangkok early on, but even that was short-lived. Running at both ends and suffering pretty severe cramps, I rushed to a clinic where a doctor shot me up with some wonder medicine that had me pretty well straightened out in about twenty or thirty minutes. After a sound night's sleep and being careful to take the entire prescribed course of medicine the doctor had given me, I was just fine. Whoever wrote the story for the Bloomberg story must not have even read it. [Monday, August 14, 2006] * * * * * * * * * * Thailand in Medical Tourism News Again On a far more positive (and more important) note, the Kingdom's increasing medical tourism made the news in the form of an AFP story just over a week ago headlined "In Thailand, foreigners find new fertility options." (The story link takes you to the Yahoo! News site, as you can't read it on the AFP site without paying 1.50 euros.) It's no longer only the much cheaper prices here compared to some other places (especially those such as the U.S.) and the allure of combining a trip to the doctor with a holiday in an exotic land that appeal to foreigners. It's also because some procedures available here aren't elsewhere because they're too controversial or are available elsewhere, but at prohibitive prices. One prime example of controversial procedures available here is screening embryos to choose a baby by sex, through a procedure known as PGD. (Sex determination isn't the only function of PGD, however.) To screen an embryo to choose by sex is out-and-out forbidden by law in many countries, and while medical personnel here do not universally endorse it, some do -- and it's legal. While this particular news story focuses on controversial/illegal-elsewhere procedures, those aren't all that are available here. Many procedures that are perfectly legal in just about every country are available here, at world-class facilities with equally excellent personnel and equipment. The number one operative word for those? Cheap. And the number two goes back to getting treatment then having a holiday. Particularly in the case of people in the U.S. (but not only there), one can pay to fly here, have, say, plastic surgery, spend two or three days recovering, then flying off to some Thailand tourist domestic destination (or, for that matter, a regional one), spend a week there, then fly back to the U.S. -- for less than having the identical procedure done in the U.S., particularly in the more expensive places. The Asia News Network also did a piece on the subject, including interviewing my former partner in BangkokAtoZ.com, "Doctor" Dennis -- a nickname, as he's not a doctor at all -- who is involved in the medical tourism business. (And yes, I invested with him.) I searched the ANN website, but couldn't find the piece. There is a cautionary note: legal recourse should something go awry is not nearly as available here as it in some -- not all, but some -- other countries. That note made, how likely is it a doctor will mess up a simple face-lift or the like? Not very, I imagine. I mean a genuine screw-up, not a case such as when a sixty-year old guy gets a face-lift expecting to look eighteen afterwards is furious the doctor failed to achieve that impossible goal. (Of course, the doctor has an ethical responsibility to make it absolutely clear that magic doesn't enter medicine.) All in all, if you're thinking about any of these services, Thailand is certainly well worth considering visiting. [Monday, August 14, 2006] * * * * * * * * * * Update on "Generous" George Pipas Spoke with George, proprietor of the Texas Lone Staar in Washington Square, on the phone at his home in Florida Saturday night; I called to ask how his recovery from a spinal operation was coming along. It seems there has been a further problem identified, one that will require a second operation sometime this week, though George didn't know exactly when he'll have to go under the knife again. Despite the necessity of a second surgery, George did say he still feels much better than he did before the first one, so that's good news. Should I learn more before uploading this to the Internet, I'll be sure to add it here. [Monday, August 14, 2006] * * * * * * * * * * U.S. to Roll Out E-Passports August 14th The U.S. will begin introducing e-passports today [U.S. time], a kind of passport that continues to stir controversy because quite a few people feel the personal data about the owner of the passport contained in an embedded chip is not secure. The technology isn't new. It depends on using RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips embedded in the passport that contains the person's name, date of birth, address, and so forth. The chip can be read with a special scanner. The idea is to speed up the process for travelers passing through passport control at airports, sea ports, and land borders. I frankly have serious doubt's about U.S. authorities' insistence the new passports are 100% safe, as too many experts on the technology involved have said devices that can read the data from some distance away can be bought on the open market relatively cheaply -- the number US$30,000 springs to mind, if memory serves me, from something I read awhile back. The other day I read the data will be encrypted in such a way that it can't be altered. The example given was the bad guys can't get your date, remove your photo, then substitute in one of their own guy's photo in place of yours. That does seem to address that concern well, at least until some hacker figures out a way around the encryption. However, even if hackers never can alter the data, just for someone with no business knowing it at all is still a grave threat. Forget terrorists; what about organized criminal rings -- professional house burglars, for example. No one would like to think such a gang knew he or she had left town, knowledge practically begging the crooks to go clean their house out. Some experts recommend you never use your street address -- but what if using a postbox address isn't an option? I don't think the U.S. allows such an address for a passport, or it wasn't allowed when I got my first passport years ago. (Heck, I used to use a postbox address on my Texas driver's license, that state authorities halted that a good while back.) Even if you can use a postbox address, it doesn't mean the possibility is eliminated. True, if your name is "Sally Smith" and you live in a metropolitan area of millions and millions, the bad guys might find it too much trouble to figure out just which of the scads of Sally Smiths in the area is the one away. But if your name is something, say, such as "Igor Davanovich" and you live in Dry Gulch, Texas, population 670, that's another matter -- especially if Dry Gulch isn't too far from your point of departure. A quick check of the phone book will reveal your address unless you don't have a phone (not likely these days) or you have an unlisted number (easily possible, but a lot of folks do list their numbers -- and addresses). It's not that I oppose the idea -- I don't. But just recently I read about a comparable technology that requires a transmission distance of no more than a millimeter. (Never mind the application discussed where I read about this technology; it had nothing to do with the current topic.) That seems far better than having chips that can be read anywhere from 30 to 80 feet (I've read a variety of numbers within that range) away. It seems the government is moving into questionable -- at best -- technological solutions to improved security. On the upside, holders of U.S. passports won't have to replace them until they expire anyway. In my own case, my passport is good for several years to come -- heck, it may "outlive" me! -- so neither I nor anyone else in the same situation has any immediate concern. I was chatting about this recently with a friend, a guy who is rather paranoid about authorities. While I feel the concern he raised falls in the arena of paranoia, I'll go ahead and mention it. He pointed out that if the reader is small enough for a policeman to carry in his pocket, that policeman could easily mingle in a crowd while his reader records information of anyone in range carrying a passport. When I pointed out that a crowd in a shopping mall isn't likely going to have very many people in it carrying their passports, my friend did bring up another point I hadn't considered: "Well, yeah -- but next thing you know you'll have to have a chip in your driver's license and social security card!" And I had to concede that's entirely possible, and that people are far more likely to have one or the other or both of them with them on a routine basis. Even so, I don't see any problem of anyone knowing I'm knocking about The Emporium; who really cares? Oh -- there's one more thing everyone will be unhappy about the new passport: it's 97-dollar price tag, a 30-buck increase over current rates. And to think I was unhappy when a 12-buck "security fee" was slapped on the cost of a passport a few years ago, since no one seemed to know just what the security fee means. (The $97 does include that fee.) Anyway, I sure as heck hope the U.S. government is right and that my (and others') concerns are unfounded. One thing's for sure: the controversy is highly unlikely to end anytime soon. [Monday, August 14, 2006] * * * * * * * * * * Hadiths: Source of the Conflict? This afternoon I happened to decide on a whim to stop in The Bourbon Street Restaurant to eat a light lunch and peruse a newspaper. It turned out to be an informative hour or so. The Nation had a piece on its Op-Ed Page in its dead-tree edition (but not online) that caught my eye, a piece from The Washington Post about a month ago titled "Sexism deleted in Turkey." (The link takes you directly to the article in The Washington Post.) The author, one Mustafa Akyol, claims that over 90% of Islamic law -- sharia law -- is based on commentaries written a couple centuries after the death of Mohammed. In other words, that law, if Akyol is correct, isn't based on the teachings of the Koran (hey, I'm sticking with the traditional romanization) but on the opinions of writers who didn't even have the chance to ask The Prophet himself just what he meant by such-and-such a passage. To put this into contemporary Christian terms, that's akin to if in a couple millennia from now people were reading the interpretations of a Jimmy Swaggart (et al) of the Bible and holding that those interpretations are the Word of God. No, they wouldn't be. They would be the Reverend Swaggart's opinions regarding the meaning of the Word of God. As far as I know, The Good Reverend has never climbed a mount and chatted directly with the Lord. And neither, it seems, did the writers of the hadiths -- the opinions of later writers about just what passages of the Koran meant. Intrigued, I did some research, albeit limited. I know or have known a few (very few) Muslims, and none of them abided the extremes of terrorism, so I have been perplexed, especially since 9/11, wondering why the bits of the Koran I read didn't say the stuff illiterate, self-appointed preachers of the faith of Islam spout to their congregations. Maybe -- just maybe, Mohammed himself never advocated such positions. Among what I read is that he was famous for honoring his wives and championing sexual equality. If so, consider these hadiths:
I found these in more than one place, not just in the article, so I assume these are accurate renditions of the originals. One doubts ministries of religion would misquote them. In English, yet. (Satisfy yourself: do a web search then follow -- and read -- some of the links that come up for the term "hadiths." Such ideas hardly give a gal a fighting chance, do they? Nor are they indicative of any great tendency towards openness and tolerance. Let me say this: I am NOT attacking Islam. Quite the contrary: I'm defending it, at least as much as a person not a member of the faith and not a religious scholar can, and the basis that much as Christianity (the religion in which I was raised) has been perverted by misguided minds over the centuries all too often, so it seems may well be the case with the teachings of Mohammed. Right here in Thailand a year or two ago the authorities said they found out-and-out fabricated translations of the Koran justifying the violence, indirectly, in the troubled Deep South of the Kingdom. At the time, I had my doubts about that claim. Tonight, my doubts are greatly reduced. The long and the short of all this is that if I'm reading it right, the West's enemy isn't Islam, as represented in the Koran itself, but interpretations of the faith inscribed therein. Yes, reports from a great many friends who've spent time in various Muslim lands and whose reports I trust say non-Muslims are merely tolerated, not accepted. Then again, I can take you to any number of towns, especially small burgs, in America where, for instance, there are no Blacks -- nor are they wanted -- nor are they welcome. (Or Latinos, or Poles, or . . . for that matter, Caucasians, in some places.) I hope to goodness the commentary I read is correct, as it appears to be. I have long been troubled by the contradictions between my limited experience with Muslims and the apparent -- apparent until tonight, that is -- militancy of Islam. If the commentary is right, we're not looking at the militancy of Islam, but at the corruption of that faith. Food for thought, anyway -- and particularly applicable food for anyone concerned about the sectarian violence here in Thailand (as any visitor should be). [Monday, August 14, 2006] * * * * * * * * * * Twenty-One Years On: Arriving in Asia It's about 11:20 A.M. as I write -- just minutes away from my first setting foot on Asian soil, which I did at Narita Airport near Tokyo almost precisely twenty-one years ago. It was a Thursday afternoon as the flight as our Thai Airways 747 touched down about 2:00 P.M., Japanese time. (I was traveling with a fellow graduate, the two of us en route to Tianjin, China to take up teaching posts. Neither of us had ever been to Asia.) It was hot, and owing to rain earlier in the day, quite steamy, which turned out to be a major factor in our four-hour layover: the air-conditioning in the international waiting area was out. And given the prevalence of large glass windows on practically every side, intensifying the afternoon sun's heat, it was plain hot! The flight over had been fantastic, but I guess that comes with any such "first-ever" experience. The Thai flight from DFW Airport to Tokyo remains one of the very best I've ever taken. The service and the food -- yes, the food, airline food -- were both exceptional. For starters, my friend and I had independently, um, "celebrated" the night before, celebrated to considerable excess. We were, in a way, glad to leave my family and his girlfriend, so we could collapse into our economy-class seats. Once airborne, we asked the steward for badly-needed coffee. When he returned, he swept down a tray with our coffee and what turned out to be two Bloody Marys, which we hadn't ordered, and said so. He smiled, and said, "I thought you gentleman might need one." Now that's my kind of steward! A few hours (and several Bloody Marys!) later, after we had departed SeaTac Airport in Seattle, the steward came around with lunch. I don't remember exactly what I had, other than it was some Thai fish dish with a white cream sauce that was to die for. I mean, I would have happily paid a premium price for it in a restaurant, it was so good. AND it was served on real china, with real silverware. (Find that today, huh.) Other things had added to our overall very high opinion of the airline, or at least of that flight. My buddy decided he could ask for something no airline could possibly provide, at least not to economy-class passengers: Dom Perignon. He snagged our harried steward -- the plane was packed and there was a shortage of cabin brew -- and made his request. we both nearly fainted when the steward returned, not with two glasses of the bubbly, but two glasses and an entire bottle of the stuff. He apologetically asked if we minded his leaving us a bottle since the crew was short-handed. "HELL NO!!!" Well, that's what we thought, though we tried to be oh-so-cool in "graciously" honoring his request. It was all we could do to pour the damned stuff, we were so excited. One thing we hadn't understood when we bought our deeply-discounted one-way tickets to Hongkong was that the Tokyo-Hongkong leg was to be via Cathay Pacific, the flagship carrier of The Pearl of the Orient. So you can imagine our disappointment when we boarded what had to be the oldest jet in that esteemed carrier's entire fleet. But even that turned out to be just fine. If was raining shortly before we landed at the fabled, and now closed, Kai Tak Airport in the Crown colony (which it then still was), and we thought we weren't going to get to see that magnificent city's splendid night-time view as we made our landing, scheduled for about 8:30 P.M. In the event, however, our plane broke out of the bottom of an extremely thick cloud layer maybe 5,000 feet above the South China Sea as we approached the airport from the south, Hongkong Island and the Kowloon Peninsula spread out, the lights epitomizing the cliché "jewels on a bed of velvet." It was positively breathtaking. Now, we had congratulated ourselves for getting our tickets to Hongkong for under $600 in a Thai Airways Royal Orchid special that included airfare, two nights and three days at a hotel on Nathan Road, the major north-south artery of the Kowloon Peninsula, American breakfast, a half-day tour, and airport transfers. The last turned out to be stunning. We expected to be bundled aboard a bus with other arriving passengers, then riding around until we arrived out our particular hotel, other passengers getting off at their respective hotels along the way. But our reception was far grander than that. We went out to the curb, as instructed, and were stunned to see a liveried chauffeur with a sign with our names on it. We couldn't believe he could possibly be there for us -- there simply had to be a mistake. Nonetheless, we approached him, and he was indeed there to deliver us to our hotel, and was accompanied by a beautiful Chinese lady (about whom more shortly) -- accompanied in a stretch Mercedes-Benz limousine! "Agog" barely begins to describe us when the reality set in. It began raining rather heavily again as we departed for the short ride to the hotel. Both Nick (my friend) and I was overwhelmed by the sights beyond our windows. The entire ride the lady was giving us a quick introduction to the glorious city, and described the hotel, it's neighborhood, and the game plan. I had fallen in love with her the second I saw her, and her throaty voice added to her allure. She reminded me of a 1950's-era torch singer, someone such as Edie Adams. My very own "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing," in the [beautiful, seductive] flesh. After we arrived at the Imperial, I could barely check in quickly enough so I could turn my attention back to this vision of loveliness. Secretly, I hoped Nick, who I had horned in front of, had all manner of difficulty checking in -- some question about his passport, anything, anything at all, to delay my inevitable parting from this ravenous beauty. I was having trouble not fainting, so excited was I. I don't have the slightest recollection of anything she said -- until her parting words. Nick had gotten checked in all too soon, and he and the bellboy were waiting so we could go to our room and drop off our luggage. So, reluctantly, I prepared to take my leave. The lady smiled as she took out her business card, turning it over and writing what she said was her home phone number, then saying, "Enjoy your stay in Hongkong, and if you need anything -- anything at all -- just call me. Anytime. That's my home number." My heartbeat was so fast it made the Starship Enterprise going full-bore warp Factor Nine seem like a slow-poke. Delirious? Who? Me? Hardly -- unless you raise it to the nth degree! Until I turned the card over to learn her name, so I could thank her using her name. My eye fell upon the writing as I wondered what sort of exotic name she might bear, especially her given name. "Myra," I read. It did not compute. I must be hallucinating, I thought. "Myra" isn't remotely Cantonese. I blinked, re-read the name, doing so several times before I finally had to accept that yes, her given name, at least her English one, was "Myra." "What's wrong with that?" you ask? well, logically -- nothing. Nothing at all. After all, it's my Mother's name. And therein lies the rub. How can I be passionate with a woman whose very name flashes visions of my Mother's face [disapproving, no doubt] before my mind's eye. Deflated? Was I ever -- in spades. And so it was all those years ago I alit on the Asian Continent. [Tuesday, August 15, 2006] * * * * * * * * * * The gorilla of search engines, Google, has rolled out free wifi service in its home city of Mountain View, California. Though the service isn't perfect -- observers reports it can be spotty in enclosed places -- it is a major step in bringing fairly high-speed Internet access to one and all. Could it happen here? Well, Mountain View is a town of a mere 72,000 souls covering an area of just 31 square kilometers, while Bangkok is one of the world's great metropolises containing 8 to 12 million folks (depending on whose guess you believe) that covers something on the order of 1,500 square kilometers, so free wifi service for The City of Angels is an iffy proposition, at best. Google spent about a million dollars to institute the service in Mountain View. Obviously, it would cost far more to set up such a service in Bangkok. But it might be worth it for one of the major players here, if management can see beyond the greed factor. The government is touting a plan to get cheap computers into the hands of all school children. (One can only hope government officials also have a plan to get electricity into all schools!) While computers have many valuable uses independent of Internet access, such access multiplies the usefulness of any computer many-fold. It likely will take a considerable while for the logic to sink in. One has only to remember the experience of hand phone users to know that. Look how long it took CAT, TOT, and the private sector to be dragged (kicking, screaming, and wailing) into the contemporary arena. [When I got here in 1994, the day rate for a telephone call to America was US$3.82 per minute -- versus the current rate of about 13.4 cents per minute now, using the 009 prefix. The current rate is only a bit more than 1/30th the old one.] Not everyone is going to be financially able to rush out and equip themselves with a computer, not even cheap US$100 models the government is attempting to boost; that's as much money as a fair number of folks make in an entire month here. But I'd bet computer sales would go up if one of the major players were to provide free wifi service. Just think of the possibilities. L'il Noi could send e-mails to her various paramours pleading for money to replace the buffalo/pay for Daddy's operation/pay L'il Sis's school fees/whatever -- for FREE! [Thursday, August 17, 2006] * * * * * * * * * * Floods, Volcanoes, and Earthquakes Mother Nature sure has a way of showing her wrath, and lately she's been downright pissed off in this part of the world. Over the last several weeks, a number of places in the western Pacific and Indian Ocean areas have been afflicted, from Okinawa to Ethiopia. I suppose there's not much we can do about volcanoes and earthquakes, fundamental exercises of Nature's power. But what about flooding? China and India, in particular, have been hard-hit by floods of late. Both countries are notoriously poor at disaster planning. (And don't throw Hurricane Katrina in my face; generally, the U.S. is far better than either China or India at preparedness, despite that boondoggle.) Is there something, after all, to the theory of global warming? If such warming is a fact, is there anything people can do to mitigate its effects? An acquaintance of mine has the quaint notion is that all we need to do is to convince the French to stop nuclear testing in the waters south of Indonesia to stop all the flooding, volcanic activity, and earthquakes, for all three of which he balefully blames our Gallic friends! I shouldn't make light of recent events -- upwards of half a million people in India alone have been left homeless as the result of flooding. And Thailand is certainly experiencing far more than its fair share of flooding, with much of the country suffering being under water at various times. At least the severity of hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones seems less this year than last. And that's something. [Thursday, August 17, 2006] * * * * * * * * * * Sensational Murder in the U.S. A Thursday Bangkok Post story reports that "Karr confessed to the killing after his arrest Wednesday at his downtown Bangkok apartment by Thai and American authorities, said Lt. Gen. Suwat Tumrongsiskul, head of Thailand's immigration police." ["Suspect says Ramsey death 'an accident'"] John Mark Karr was arrested Wednesday night by Thai police here in Bangkok as a suspect in the murder of 6-year-old JonBennet Ramsey in Colorado in 1996. The case generated huge news at the time, a cloud of suspicion over JonBennet's parents, John and Patsy Ramsey. (Mrs. Ramsey passed away recently aged 49.) Yesterday's arrest also exploded into a major news story, with CNN International (for example) providing extensive live coverage of events here. Controversy has already arisen over the case. Karr's ex-wife told a U.S. reporter he couldn't have murdered JonBennet, despite his reported confession, as he was with her the entire Christmas season. JonBonnet's body was found in the basement of her home December 26, 1996; she had been reported missing earlier that day. Apparently Karr has raised no legal barriers to his being sent to the U.S.
Karr had been corresponding in
recent months with a professor in Colorado via e-mails about the case, using an
alias. The professor made at least one television documentary about the
case -- one story said one, another said three -- who became suspicious when
Karr's e-mails became what one source was reported to have called "weird."
A story in The Nation headlined
"US
teacher admits he killed child beauty The professor turned over the e-mails to Colorado authorities, who with federal help were able to track their source to here in Bangkok. Karr is also reported to have started teaching in 2nd grade at an international school here in Bangkok just this past Tuesday. It has also been reported that according to an unnamed teacher at another Bangkok school claimed he was sacked from there two weeks ago because he was scaring the children. No doubt the arrest will generate concern among local parents with school-age children. It would be unsurprising if school officials were to try to improve background screening procedures of people applying for a teaching post, though it might not be very easy to check the background of a foreign applicant. In America, the focus will likely return to child beauty pageants, as JonBennet was a beauty queen, following in the footsteps of her Mother, a former Miss West Virginia. In the wake of the murder, there was wide debate about the role and suitability of such pageants. This case has also put pedophilia back in the news. One Associated Press story on the subject is under the headline "Lax laws in parts of Asia aid pedophiles" I read in Yahoo! News is just one example. Locally, it was already back front and center after the arrest of two local teachers on suspicion of at least child abuse and perhaps pedophilia. (That case became even more sensational when people at the accused teachers' publicly backed them soon after their arrests.) In recent years, pressure has been mounting to put a halt to such activities. Thailand, Cambodia, and Indonesia have strengthened their laws and cracked down, to a degree, though there's a ways to go before pedophilia is eliminated. Some countries, including the U.S., have enacted laws allowing prosecutors to go after their nationals suspected of the crime even when the crime occurs in another country. Karr's arrest is a long way from being the final step in this case. Even if he confesses again to U.S. police or in a court, the high-profile nature of the case alone will cause the courts and police to examine any such confession minutely. And though Karr's arrest is already defusing much of the suspicion of the Ramseys -- whose own rather bizarre behavior not only did little to deflect suspicion but actually encouraged it -- it's not entirely dispelled yet. [Friday, August 18, 2006] * * * * * * * * * * Update on the Hare and Hound Restaurant This is a great little restaurant on the south side of Washington Square, owned and run by Dave and his wife, Tuk. Unlike some of the other places around the Square, the Hare and Hound is almost always sedate, and it certainly doesn't get as wild as far as regards drinking, loud music, and the like. It's more of a genuine neighborhood place, one where the emphasis is as much on the food as it is on the drinks -- both of which are reasonably priced, by the way. The food includes both western and Thai dishes (though the online menu doesn't show the Thai dishes). A cheese and port night is held the first Monday of each month 8:00-10:00 P.M.; the set price is 995 baht per person. And no, given cheese prices here, that's not a bad price, not at all. (Dave and I were chatting about those prices just yesterday, in fact.) The Hare and Hound was on Soi Cowboy in its original incarnation. Dave and Tuk closed up shop there some years back, then dropped out of the scene for a good while before showing up in the restaurant's present location. The place is especially popular among fans of football ("soccer" to my fellow Americans), rugby, Formula One auto races, golf, and other sports owing to the 47-inch-screen television the restaurant has, along with three smaller ones. One of the smaller televisions is outside, where there's limited seating, for those who like sitting out in the sticky heat! When there's not a sporting event on, Dave and Tuk are entirely amenable to switching the channel to news, music, whatever. With the satellite system, there are plenty of channels available (including a large number of sports channels). Another service sets the Hare and Hound apart from all the other places in the Square, save one (Bourbon Street Restaurant, just down the way): wifi Internet. I have a friend who spends a few months yearly in Thailand, and he loves the food there (plus he's an avid Formula One fan), and he likes carrying his notebook computer over there from where he stays elsewhere in the Square and setting up shop. If your computer's battery is like mine, with a life measured in just minutes, never mind -- Dave installed some more electrical outlets you can use. Both the wifi service and the use of the electrical outlets are free. Something else that makes the place attractive is its hassle-free atmosphere. None of the waitresses ever ask for a lady drink or in any other way pester a customer. In fact, anytime someone buys one or more of the ladies a drink, it always draws a look of faint surprise. The restaurant's web site is interesting. It has some somewhat unusual pages, such as a list of people who are in town and another one listing people due in. The links page has primarily hotel links. Near the bottom of the homepage there is an odd combination: a Mastercard logo alongside very large, bright red words saying ""AND CASH NO CREDIT." (I'll have to ask Dave or Tuk about that one!) I smiled at another point on the same page, up near the top, where there's the useful information that takeaways are available -- followed immediately below by "FOOD THAT IS." This is a place definitely worth visiting.
Washington Square [Friday, August 18, 2006] * * * * * * * * * * Today's Bangkok Post has a story headlined "Erawan secures three sites for Ibis budget hotel development" reporting the locally-listed Erawan Group plans a total of ten new budget hotels, starting with one each in Bangkok, Pattaya, and Phuket. These first hotels will be Ibis hotels Erawan will manage under contract to Accor, owner of the Ibis brand. As Erawan plans to target travelers wanting rooms in the 1,000-1,500 baht range, this is good news for people with modest budgets. There currently two Ibis hotels in Thailand, both in Bangkok, according to Accor's website. (I was interested to see that both offered rates as low as 800 baht at Ibis Siam and 950 baht at Ibis Huamark.) At today's exchange rate that works out to US$26.60-39.90, very reasonable rates. While I've never stayed in an Ibis hotel, I have stayed in other Accor hotels and found them to be quite nice. The story doesn't say where in each city the hotels will be located. Since the news story mentions Bangkok's new airport, perhaps Erawan plans to build a hotel near it. (Management at Erawan must be confident the new airport will be fully operational by the time the hotel opens for business.) There are cheaper hotels, even right here in my neighborhood, where there are a couple hotels that charge a measly 400-500 baht per night. Though people do sometimes live in such hotels -- I did once upon a time years ago -- it's not exactly families they attract, catering as they do to those wanting a place for, um, "illicit activities." In other words, not the sort of place where you would plop your Mother for her three-week holiday to visit you! Similarly, there are a lot of bars and restaurant-bars that offer a limited number of rooms upstairs, though the same considerations are there. The 1,000-baht range is about as cheap as you can expect to get a truly nice room in Bangkok, especially central Bangkok. There was one point the story mentioned that raised my curiosity: it said the folks at Erawan want to target the budget traveler and the business traveler, two types of travelers I've always thought of being rather different from each other. But maybe companies are tightening their travel budgets and sending their people to less expensive hotels than might once have been the case. Of course, backpackers probably won't be flocking to any of the new Ibis hotels! [Friday, August 18, 2006] * * * * * * * * * * on London Route Remains High It came as a pleasant surprise this morning to read a Bangkok Post story headlined "THAI says demand for UK flights healthy despite scare" reporting that not only has demand continued to be strong on the route, one of the airline's most profitable, but has increased sense August 10th, the date the bomb plot was foiled by British authorities. Travelers appear to have taken the threat in stride. Of course, the intended targets were flights between the U.K. and the U.S., not between the U.K. and other destinations. An official for the airline said the twice-daily flights are currently carrying over 80% capacity, a respectable number indeed. The airline industry in Asia is widely said to be the fastest-growing in the world, and that isn't surprising. Just yesterday I had a long chat with my Sister on the phone, and one of the items she commented on was that there are more and more television shows, magazine articles, and the like focusing on Asia, including Thailand -- making, in this case, Americans more aware of various exotic Oriental destinations. Further, two of the four largest economies in the world are found in China and Japan. Business expansion seems to be increasing, if anything, on the regional level, with all manner of bilateral and multilateral deals being set up -- meaning that much more business travel, both within the region and between Asia and other parts of the world. It was really nice to read this story. Bravo to all those anonymous passengers who basically took the attitude of "Stick it; I'm going to London anyway!" I imagine folks in the U.K., even those whose livelihoods aren't dependent on foreign travelers, appreciate it, too. [Friday, August 18, 2006] * * * * * * * * * * Office Bar & Grill Sports Broadcast Schedule Here's the sports broadcast for the Office Bar & Grill's -- and Mojos -- for today through next Wednesday.
These two popular spots just off
Sukhumvit Soi 33 are opposite each other inside the sub-soi right beside Degas
Bar, which fronts onto Soi 33 itself. There's a small car park behind the
two places.
Fri 18
17.00
Cricket
England v Pakistan 4th Test
Day 2 LIVE
17.30
NRL
Bulldogs v Broncos
20.00
AFL
Pt
Adelaide v Collingwood
Sat 19
12.00
Cricket
India v SA 3rd ODI
LIVE
12.30
Rugby
Tri Nations NZ v Australia
LIVE
17.00
Cricket
England v Pakistan 4th Test
Day 3 LIVE
18.40
Soccer
Sheffield v Liverpool
LIVE
20.55
Soccer
Arsenal v Aston Villa
LIVE
20.55
Soccer
Everton v Watford
LIVE
22.00
AFL
Western Bulldogs v Adelaide
23.10
Soccer
Bolton v Tottenham
LIVE
Sun 20
11.30
AFL
Brisbane v West Coast
13.30
NRL
Dragons v Tigers
16.00
Bikes
Moto GP all races
LIVE
17.00
Cricket
England v Pakistan 4th Test
Day 4 LIVE
19.25
Soccer
Man U v Fulham
LIVE
22.00
Soccer
Chelsea v Man City
LIVE
22.00
AFL
Kangaroos v Melbourne
Mon 21
15.30
Cricket
Sri Lanka v India 4th ODI
LIVE
17.00
Cricket
England v Pakistan 4th Test
Day 5 LIVE
Tues
22
15.30
Basketball
World Championship Greece v Australia
LIVE
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