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The Bangkok Pundit’s latest on Thaksin, Hun Sen, Cambodia, Thailand and the Monarchy

 

The following appears on the the Bangkok Pundit blog; if you want to know more, click on this link, read the blog then work backwards through the recent blogs, all of which seem to deal with Thailand’s relationship with Cambodia.

Kasit : Thaksin Wants to Overthrow the Monarchy; Destroy Thailand

Nov. 15 2009 – 07:00 am
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AP:

Thaksin “is using a helping hand from a neighboring country as a tool to overthrow the monarchy and the Thai government,” Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya said Friday in Bangkok.

AFP also has a quote from Kasit:

“Thaksin feels he must destroy Thailand and collaborate with Hun Sen.”

BP: Yes, our Foreign Minister….

Oil

 

My 5:30 a.m. alarm for work on Friday morning came waaaay too early.

I had a couple of invitations to go out on Thursday night; the one that seemed most likely to come to fruition was with Jason — a farang from out of town who was here just a few weeks ago.  He wanted to get together, but he had a date for the movies.

I sent him a message that said that I had to work early Friday morning, so my plan for Thursday night was simple — I was gonna go to the bar early and barfine quickly.  It was unlikely I would see him because I was hoping to be at home smashing some poor little Isaan girl before the credits were rolling on the movie 2012.

And I had a very specific plan.

SET stable

More amusing shit from Not the Nation:

http://notthenation.com/pages/news/getnews.php?id=846

Thai thinking: If business is bad, move the statues

This article from the Bangkok Post doesn’t even seem odd to me after five years here in the Land of Superstition:

‘Demons’ to be relocated at airport

* Published: 10/11/2009 at 12:00 AM

* Newspaper section: News

Twelve “demon statues” at Suvarnabhumi airport believed to have brought bad luck to shopkeepers will be moved at a cost of one million baht.

The Farang Are Coming 6.0 and hanging with the Snuggler

My phone rang the other day. It was my pal Terry saying that he was in town and keen to get together.

We found each other at Country Road in Soi Cowboy but only stayed long enough to down a single pitcher before moving on. We hit a couple of go gos. From memory the first stop was Tilac, followed by Shark Bar.

There was a stunning girl at Shark Bar; she was twenty years old and slender with perfect skin and a stunning smile. No baby, no tattoos.

Cool.

To “Tony from California”

I dropped into the Big Mango Bar last night for a bit of dinner and some beer.

Nigel, the manager, approached me and said that “Tony from California” had been in the night before and paid for a beer for me to be supplied on my next visit in.

I just wanted to say “Thanks!”   I enjoyed a tasty pint of Tiger with my nachos and fish fingers while I shot a dozen games of pool.

The Farang Are Coming 6.0 — Happy Loi Krathong!

Today’s blog post has a history that goes back about a year.

November 2008

In November last year BigDan was here from the US.  From memory, he and I got out together two or three times; at least one night on Soi Cowboy and another night in Nana.

Back then my favorite go go dancer was still a go go dancer and I was seriously considering trying to retire her from the chrome pole.  I was thinking about whether to invite her to move in with me or maybe even suggest getting married and possibly moving  back to the US or Australia together.    At that point, although I knew a fair bit about E-boy (the guy she now lives with in Europe) I didn’t realize that he was so far ahead of me in the race for my favorite go go dancer.  In November last year she was still dominating my thoughts.

At the time BigDan had his own obsession in the form of a Thai girl he had hooked up with here in Bangkok, and he was trying to sort out for himself whether she was “the one” for him, so we had a bit in common and a lot to talk about.

Another thing we had in common was our enjoyment of go gos and the girls working in them.

The night we spent in Nana last year included stops at a number of go go bars, but the final stop of the night was at Carousel.

In Carousel I focused my attention on a server named Nan who was playful and pretty.  I bought her a few drinks, then paid her bar.  She changed clothes and then she, Danny and I went out to Soi 4 to grab a taxi.  BigDan was gonna go to his hotel and I was gonna take Nan home.

On that night, almost exactly a year ago, just as we were opening the door of the taxi my phone rang.  I was surprised to see my favorite go go dancer’s name pop up on the display.  She wanted to come to my place.

I looked at Nan.  It’d been months since I’d had sex with anyone except my favorite go go dancer — Nan was sexy enough and fun enough that I was planning on breaking my monogamy.

But, as I mentioned already, at the time I was really all about my favorite go go dancer.  There was no way I was gonna say no to her.

So I apologized to Nan, explained quickly what had happened, and said I’d try to make it up to her another day.  Danny hopped in the taxi and Nan took off in the other direction.

I went to meet my favorite go go dancer.

The following day when I saw Danny again he mentioned that he had been impressed by Nan.  He wondered whether it’d be violating any guy-code if he barfined her.

I don’t care if every guy I know barfines the same bargirls that I do… that’s what bar girls do, and if my friends and I happen to have plowed the same fields at different times I reckon that’s just life in the big city.  In this case, I hadn’t actually had sex with Nan — and given my situation with my favorite go go dancer I didn’t figure I was likely to go back after her.

So, I didn’t just give BigDan my blessing, I actually gave him Nan’s phone number so that he didn’t have to go back to the bar to set up a short time with her.

And short time her he did.  A couple days after my aborted bar fine night he took her back to his hotel.  He later reported that they had a good session together, and he would be happy for a repeat performance someday.

A day or two later BigDan went back to America.

Fast forward a year.

November 2009

BigDan is back in Bangkok.  It’s not his first return visit, but it’s the first time I’ve seen him in 12 months.

My favorite go go dancer is gone from my life.  She’s living in Europe with her boyfriend, who seems to be a good guy and is looking after her.

Danny’s girl from last year is out of his life.  She has hooked up with an Aussie bloke.

I’ve been spending a lot of time with a good girl — the snuggler — who is very devoted to me, while my feelings for her best described by words like “fondness”.

For his part, BigDan has found himself a true-to-life good Thai girl who just wants to make him happy, while he finds her fairly attractive but probably not his happily-ever-after girl.

On Monday night — the night of the Loi Krathong Festival — Danny and I made arrangements to get together at Soi Cowboy.

I was with the snuggler on the train when Dan called to make the appointment, and I could sense her disappointment when I told her that I was going out with Danny in the evening.  It was kind of surprising, because normally she doesn’t mind sitting in my room watching TV while I spend a night out sipping Heineken with mates from out of town.

But of course I’d forgotten it was Loi Krathong.

When Danny called me the snuggler and I were riding the train together.  I had to jump off the train before her, so while I had BigDan on the phone, I said to the snuggler that I would be going out at night, tossed her my room key and told her to feel free to enjoy the air conditioning and watch TV in my room — I’d see her around 2 or 3 a.m.

Then I hopped off the train wondering why the snuggler looked so crushed about me going drinking on with a friend from out of town on a Monday night.

It was about two hours later that I had the Homer Simpson “D’oh!” moment and remembered it was Loi Krathong.

I rang the snuggler and confirmed that she wanted to see me around 10 pm so we could join the festivities.

I called Dan to try to re-schedule our appointment to later in the week but his schedule was restricted by work & travel.  It was Monday or not at all.

I explained the situation with the snuggler and the festival, and invited him to join us if he wanted.  We agreed to meet for dinner around 8 and play it by ear after that.

When I finished work I went home and dropped my computer and took off my tie, then headed out still in my work clothes since I probably needed to look a little more scrubbed and polished than normal for the Loi Krathong festivities.

I met BigDan in front of Tilac Bar, and we ordered some food from the Sam’s 2000 menu.  We drank Heineken with dinner and after dinner, and we bar hopped a little.  We started out in Tilac where a very sexy young girl with blonde hair and sequins on her eye lids put on a show for us around 8:45 while it was still pretty slow.  She got a tequila for her trouble.

I thought she looked eminently bar-finable but BigDan wasn’t biting.  It was one drink and out.

We went to Midnite Bar but Dan wasn’t impressed with the talent, although the talent was trying hard to impress him.

We moved to Shark Bar where he seemed equally unimpressed by the general lineup, though he and I both agreed that a fairly anorexic looking little waif wearing #87 and looking like she probably didn’t weigh 36 kilos soaking wet, but sporting a nice little bubble-butt was the pick of the litter.

Eventually it was nearing my ten o’clock commitment with the snuggler and I asked Dan if he wanted to come along.

Sure.

We met the snuggler at my room and sat around talking for half an hour or so before we went out into the street.

Loi Krathong is a water festival where Thai people buy an attractive floating basket of flowers (the krathong) which also has a candle, three incense sticks and a few other things.  Each person makes a wish, floats the krathong on the water and lets the bad things in his or her life float away.

The three of us made the short walk to Benjasiri Park where there are some small man-made lakes.  We spend about an hour on the festivities, first looking around for a while, then finally making our selection of three krathongs (20 baht each), which we took to the water and floated.

It was fairly brief and a bit less ceremonial than previous years have been with me when I’ve celebrated Loi Krathong with different friends.

The snuggler and I grabbed some chicken and sausage for a late dinner by the fountain while BigDan walked around and soaked up the atmosphere.  Around midnight we got back together and headed back towards my room.

The snuggler looked a bit surprised when I gave her my room key and said that Danny and I were gonna go out for another couple of hours, but she didn’t complain.   She went to my room while BigDan and I headed back to Soi Cowboy.

I got a call saying that a couple of friends were sitting in the Shadow Bar, so we stopped to have a beer with them.  And it was literally only one beer — one of the guys was getting tired and headed for his hotel; the other one had barfined a girl before our arrival and he was starting to focus on her, so Dan and I moved along.

We poked our heads in at Rawhide, where we stayed for two bottles of beer, but the energy level was a bit lower than usual, so we moved on.

The bars were getting pretty quiet and — maybe because of the holiday — they were fairly empty.  We looked inside Tilac again, but no magic.  We surveyed the pull girls arrayed on the street and finally decided that we should round out our night at Country Road, where I’ve been focused on a girl that seems just that bit cuter and more fun than all the other Bangkok hookers.

Unfortunately my girl wasn’t there.

We ordered a pitcher of beer around 1:50 am, thinking that we had an hour or more before closing, but it was not to be.

At 1:55 the boys in brown showed their faces and just like that Soi Cowboy as closed.

Big Dan and I emptied the pitcher, and were out of the bar by five past one.  We hopped a taxi and went to Nana Plaza.

There wasn’t much doubt about where we were going.

Dan remembered Nan, the Carousel server, from last year.  He was keen to see her again.

We walked up the stairs to the third floor of the Plaza and made the short walk to Carousel.  Walking in I headed for a seat near the left hand stage, where the girls dance naked.  I heard BigDan’s booming voice over the din of music: “Werewolf, let’s sit here!”

I turned and looked to see him taking a seat at a table just inside the door. Okay.

As I sat down he grinned and said, “This is where we sat last time we were here.”

His lucky table I guess.

We hadn’t been sitting ten seconds when it happened.  Eye contact.  BigDan and Nan had spotted each other.

She came over smiling, but I could sense a small bit of indecision about where her attention should be directed.  Dan had banged her last year, but after all, I had barfined her with intent before that.  It’s possible that she wasn’t sure that I was even aware that she’d gone with Danny.

But the interesting thing — and it’s something that Bangkok veterans will be used to, but never ceases to amaze me — is that Danny hadn’t been in that bar in a year, but she recognized him within seconds of him getting in the door.

I had been in Carousel a few times in between but, honestly, I would have never recognized her, though I remembered the event of barfining and bailing last year quite clearly.

In any event, it took only a few seconds for it to become clear to her that it was BigDan who had come looking for her, not me.

She was smiling and sexy, so it didn’t take long for Danny to be sure that he had made the right decision in coming back to see her again.  He bought her a drink, flirted with her briefly, then paid her barfine and she went bounding happily to the back, emerging about three minutes later in a cute white shirt and jeans, looking pleased as punch with her good luck.

There was a bit of talk about BigDan taking her out to celebrate Loi Krathong at the park but it seemed to have been forgotten by the time we reached the taxi — probably because we stopped in Erotica for ten minutes on the way out… the three of us evaluating the small young, seemingly teenage, girls dancing onstage.  The one that I thought looked the cutest also looked like she wasn’t more than 14 years old and all I could think was that I was probably going to hell for lusting after some tiny-bodied child writhing sensualy on-stage.  I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to leave a go go than when we  got out of Erotica Monday night.

In a strange through-the-looking-glass moment we found that once again it was November, once again Nan had been barfined, and once again the three of us were standing in Nana waiting for a taxi.  But this time the phone didn’t ring.

We all got in… me in the front and the happy couple in the back.

The taxi dropped me a couple blocks from my house, then took BigDan and his girl on towards his hotel.

It was 2 a.m.

I walked into my building, went up the lift, but had to knock on the door because I’d given my key to the snuggler.

She opened the door looking a bit bleary-eyed.  The lights and television were off.  She’d been asleep.  It was a cool night and she was tucked in under the covers.

I grabbed a quick shower then tucked in under the covers too.  She rolled over to face me, kissed me, and said “happy Loi Krathong”.  Then we started celebrating.

spooky weekend

Just a quick blog.

This is Halloween weekend.  Bangkok is  not a place to find tons of Halloween celebrations all over town, but most bars and pubs that earn their living from western customers will make an attempt to celebrate.

I thought I’d tell you about the few places I know any details for and invite others to give details of other parties in the comments section.