Monkeywatch - April 2022

[monkeyman 1,604]

Greetings Monkeywatchers, core coon crap for looking in, and welcome to more tales of gloom and doom from Covid City (and maybe the odd April fool.)

TAT has launched a new initiative to attract Indian tourists and expects at least 13,000 of them to arrive this month. The hotel industry has been told to be prepared as they may need to provide up to 500 rooms to accommodate them.

Thailand has been given approval to send trainloads of fruits to China. Guess the little yellow buggers must be missing their visits to Alcazar and Tiffany’s.

A Thai bloke has become the first in the country to become infected with this month’s Covid variant, known as XJ (bet Jaguar will have something to say about that.) Fortunately, the chappie has already made a full recovery despite receiving two doses of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine.

Do you think we should stand for this?...

 

Apparently the French ambassador to Thailand recently gave 3.2 million doses of Covid vaccine to the Thai Prime Minister during a courtesy visit. And yet they’re still telling the rest of us that we only need to have three or four doses. Greasy little weasels.

One of the pleasures of watching YouTube is the videos featuring voice operated subtitles. People checking on Thailand’s Covid rules recently may have been alarmed to learn that they are required to take 80k tests before they’re allowed into the country. Even for Covid crazy Thailand, that sounds a bit over the top.

Police arrested a man in a national park after he was seen using a plastic fork as single-use plastic items are banned from all national parks in Thailand. The man refused to pay the 100,000 baht fine, saying he’d used the fork once before and so it wasn’t single-use. The police accepted that he’d used it twice and so fined him 200,000 baht instead, reminding him that nobody likes a smartarse.

Good to see that the Bamboo Bar is still around…

 

Bar news time, and the light at the end of the tunnel has been extinguished yet again as the dreaded disease will not after all be downgraded to endemic at the beginning of July by the CCSA (the Covid Mafia), which means that some kind of return to normality on the bar scene is no closer. Here’s hoping they change their minds (fat chance.) The only upside, if you can call it that, is that from May 1 alcohol sales will be permitted until midnight in restaurants - so that would be just about anywhere then.

It’s been pointed out that Walking Street did show some signs of life during Songkran, but it was a case of “It’s life Jim, but not as we know it.” Phuket reckons to have had a 30 per cent increase in tourists during this period, which probably equates to about 50 or so extra visitors if they’re lucky.

Slip back through our time portal now and experience the goings-on of 10 years ago with a trio of tittle-tattle from Monkeywatch in April 2012…

“A man is being sought by police after attempting to take an up-skirt photo of a girl in a convenience store in Central Pattaya last Thursday. Perhaps he was just looking up old friends?

 A strange ceremony took place last week when a man held a full Buddhist funeral for his dead cow. Four monks conducted the service and then acted as bearers (or should that be steakholders?)

 Three Thai men were arrested by Banglamung police last Thursday after they stole a gold necklace from a girl in Soi Kao Ta Low. Christ on a bike, how many Thais does it take to steal one bloody necklace?”

Not sure that sign will be enough to lure the punters in…

 

An arrest warrant has been issued for former Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra for misappropriation of government funds. She is of course the sister of Thaksin Shinawatra, another former PM and founder of the Tie Rack tie company. They also had another brother, Frank Shinawatra, who was known as Ol’ Red Eyes due to his proclivity for falling out of bars pissed as a rat. Not a lot of people know that.

The Cambodian tour industry has proudly proclaimed that they plan to make their country “the new Thailand.” However, one of their travel agencies went on to say “But Cambodia will never allow the tourist industry to be based on the former Thai model of go-go clubs, seedy bars with rooms by the hour and rude transvestite cabarets.” Well maybe they will be the new Thailand. They sure as shit won’t be the old one.

Finally, let’s spare a thought for the pensioners of the Pattaya Bridge Club who are still on death row six years after being convicted of owning too many playing cards in contravention of a law apparently introduced by Japanese occupation forces during World War II. Funny old game, innit?

be seeing you

monkeyman