Showing posts with label thaksin shinawatra. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thaksin shinawatra. Show all posts

Friday 20 May 2011

Yesterday


Yesterday along Sukhumvit I was interrupted by the sounds of pickup trucks in procession  tooting their horns. I was interrupted from my thoughts by the music and dancing in the back with smiles and large clapping foam hands. 


I realised it was a year ago that the massacre took place. Once they had passed, I started crying because I hadn't heard that cheerful sound in Bangkok since the rallies of last year took place, and because those same people had their friends and relatives mown down by Royal Thai Army sniper shots to the head.

Yet still they return from the provinces of Isaan demanding reform, with the same heart and infectious joy that is impossible not to love. I cried a few minutes, wiped my tears and then went about my business. It was good to see you again. 

I want you to know the gap is closing. Time is on our side.


Monday 17 December 2007

Is this minty?

Most people know that Thailand is my spiritual home and where my daughter waits for me. I've never caught more natural smiles than while walking through Klong Toey market than in any other place on the planet - I've always felt more at home with the underprivileged and the people of Isan than the plutocratic and plundering Bangkok ruling elite such as the former Prime Minister Taksin Shinawatra (Owner of Man City Football Club) who is under investigation for human rights abuses including those 3000 or so extra judicial killings a few years back.

No, I don't mean the smiles that are laid on in the environment of the 'White Collar' classes which you can read more about over here. I mean the smiles that are free, simple, unpretentious and generous of life.

I deeply regret what the West did by selling electrification and the automobile into Siam. An idyllic and rural paradise on earth that can still be glimpsed today in out of town places and where the people in the past, were in harmony with their environment, where they turned from agrarian littering of discarded banana skins and coconuts that decomposed naturally into the environment, to plastic bag throwers that blight most of the cities of S.E. Asia

But this ad I stumbled across earlier is I believe not a showcase example of this wonderful country, and as we talked about over here could well be yet another example of latent racism. Thailand you are bigger and better than this. It is my belief the creatives tried to put the right message in at the beginning, when I thought it was starting to look like a WORLD CLASS AD.