Postcards from Thailand

Vote buying is a long-established tradition in Thailand. You give 500 Baht a head for each constituent to the village headman, who will pass on 200 Baht to each voter to secure their vote, and keep the rest of the money for himself. Et voilà, you’re elected. However, it’s an expensive business – at least 5-10 million Baht [£100-200,000 minimum]. Fortunately, according to Police Colonel Chatchai Rianmek, would-be people’s representatives have found a cheaper way of securing their post: they have their opponents murdered. According to the Police Colonel “killing politicians during the lead-up to an election is a common tactic to eliminate opponents”. He goes on “It’s an inexpensive investment. Gunmen are usually hired for between 100,000 and 300,000 Baht [£2-6,000], depending on how difficult the job is.”

Earlier this month Anon Jaroensuk, a sitting MP. was seriously hurt recently when a bomb planted in the car he was in exploded, and, in a separate incident, Kowit Charoennontasit, mayor of Bang Bua Thong, was shot and killed in front of his home. It seems that election season is upon us once again. At least, this time the candidates will be spending less to win.

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A few years after the new Bangkok airport opened, the rail link to it opened too. The rail link is fast, efficient, and totally useless. It terminates in one of the most congested parts of Bangkok, and there’s no connection to public transport. You have to haul your luggage across a busy road to get to the nearest skytrain station – not much fun in Bangkok’s heat or in the rain – or take a taxi.

Of course, if your flight is in the early hours of the morning – as most flights to Europe are – you’re out of luck with the train: it only runs from 6 a.m. to midnight.

It was obvious when it opened that passenger numbers were low, so in January the operators decided to increase the fare by 50% to 150 Baht (about £3). That means that if there are two of you it’s actually cheaper to take a taxi which will take you in relative comfort to your home or hotel. Even if there’s only one of you, the relative cost difference is marginal if you’re going to have to take a taxi when you get off the train in central Bangkok.

And now it’s reported that passenger numbers are down to 700 per day.

This white elephant apparently cost over 30 billion Baht to build. For that amount of money you could pay the taxi fare of 700 passengers every day for the next 391 years.

(I’m not being completely fair here. The same new line is also used for a commuter service which is proving popular.)

Given that the airport link was destined to failure, why was it built in the first place? What springs to mind? Vast opportunities for graft and corruption? I couldn’t possibly comment.

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There’s a project in the pipeline to build a 50 km elevated walkway in Bangkok. This to me seems to be another crazy project at so many levels.

1. Thai people in general don’t like walking anywhere. The planned routes of the walkway means it would be useful to tourists, though.
2. It would be cheaper and easier to rehabilitate the pavements. Get rid of the food vendors and small stalls that block the pavements making it easier to walk in the road. (Of course, that will never happen since the police collect “rent” from these vendors to supplement their pay packets.) Repair the cracked, uneven paving stones. Get rid of the many, many ‘phone booths – redundant since the advent of the mobile ‘phone – that impede progress. Teach drivers the meaning of the black and white stripes painted on the road so that crossing doesn’t mean a mad dash avoiding the speeding cars. Ban motorcycles from riding on the pavement. Nothing difficult, really.
3. As soon as the walkway opens it will become virtually impassable, crowded with vendors. More tea money for the police, but an inconvenience for the rest of us.

The cost of the walkway is estimated at 15 billion Baht. That’s about 300 million Baht per kilometre. Another, similar project, elsewhere in Bangkok, involves building a 17 km walkway for 59 million Baht per kilometre. That makes 300 million Baht per kilometre seems rather steep. Of course, it’s possible that the nuts and bolts will be of the finest gold and the handrails made of platinum, but I think it perhaps unlikely.  What springs to mind? Vast opportunities for graft and corruption? I couldn’t possibly comment.

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It all starts with a paste. Aromatic plant parts are pounded in a hefty stone mortar; garlic, ginger, lemon grass, galangal, Thai shallots, chillies (red and green) – quintessentially Thai flavours – all get the same treatment. There’s hardly a Thai dish that doesn’t start with a paste, be it a curry, soup, savoury snack, grilled meat or dipping sauce.

When I lived in an apartment in Bangkok I always knew when the neighbours upstairs were cooking: there’s be a steady thwock-thwock-thwock on the ceiling above as the unseen cook squatted on the floor and pounded her paste for that night’s repast.

There are plenty of dishes that we think of as Thai, but are really mutant Chinese food. For example, sweet and sour sauce in Thailand has no cornflour to thicken it, and the soy sauce is replaced by fish sauce. Stir-fried chicken with dried chillies acquires cashew nuts in its Thai incarnation, and soy sauce (again) is supplanted by fish sauce. (The use of fish sauce, rather than soy sauce is a common feature of Thai-Chinese dishes. However, increasingly fish sauce is being replaced by oyster sauce in Thai cuisine. For example, phat gaphao [spicy stir-fried finely choppped meat with holy basil] – virtually Thailand’s national dish, used to be seasoned with fish sauce, but the sweet, saltiness and rich unami taste of oyster sauce is far more prevalent nowadays.)

But to return to curry pastes. One can buy curry pastes in plastic sachets or glass jars in any supermarket, though the range is fairly limited. One can go to the local market where a curry paste vendor will dollop paste into a plastic bag for you to take away. But the dedicated cook will make his/her own. And here begins the first crisis: Thailand has banned the export of a wide range of herbs and vegetables, including Thai basil, peppers, chillies, Thai aubergines, bitter gourds (karelia) and saw tooth coriander. This preemptive move was in an attempt to stop the European Union banning the import of these ingredients because of high levels of pesticide – many of which are banned in Europe – and insect infestation.

(Many Thai people are aware of the issue of high levels of insecticide in food plants. In most supermarkets the “organic” section is both large and prominent. Sometimes it’s hard not to buy organic.)

Thai restaurants overseas now have a problem: they are cut off from their supply of essential ingredients. Some restaurants have taken to buying Vietnamese or Cambodian equivalents – at a higher price. Others have taken to importing pasteurised curry pastes from Thailand. Desperate times, desperate measures.

***

For consumers in Thailand things are also looking grim. Last month shelves were stripped bare of coconut milk. There’s apparently a shortage of coconuts caused by a plague sweeping the nation. Things are so bad that Thailand’s major exporter of coconut milk has halted export better to meet domestic demand.

And for the last couple of weeks there’s been no oil on supermarket shelves. It seems to be a problem based upon a shortage of palm fruit and consumers hoarding palm oil ahead of an impending price rise. It also appears that the government has been directing supplies to large food manufacturers, rather than to the retail market. The shortage of palm oil led consumers to shift to soybean oil. When all that disappeared they stripped the shelves of corn and sunflower oils, too.

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Red and yellow and pink and green
Purple and orange and blue
I can sing a rainbow…

To make life simple political protest in Thailand is colour-coded.

We have the reds – fans of Thaksin (or, at least, fans of the vast handouts he made to poor people from the public purse). They are again staging massive rallies every week (except when there’s a major UK football match on the TV – no I’m not joking) in the retail heart of Bangkok, bringing business to a standstill.

Then there are the yellows – broadly speaking, supporters of the monarchy and of the establishment. When they’re not seizing control of the airport they’re protesting and blocking the traffic around Government House.

Then there’s Santi Asoke (a renegade Buddhist sect) which favours brown. They’re ultranationalists protesting against Cambodia’s claim to a tiny patch of disputed territory on the Thai/Cambodian border.

Members of the Thai Patriots Network – formerly in yellow – are now in blue pyjamas thanks to their having been arrested in the disputed territory and being given new, prison garb to wear by the Cambodian authorities.

The security forces wear green, and the police, brown.

The only colour that hasn’t shown up lately is black, the favoured colour of the paramilitary group that was notionally responsible for protecting the reds during the rallies last year, but was allegedly/apparently/possibly responsible for shooting a few/some/many of the red shirts during the final bloody hours of the protests. However I fear, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, they’ll “be back”.

I could add the saffron robes of the monks, and the white of the nuns.

All very colourful.

It is, however, clear, that political tensions and public protest are rising again. I fear for Thailand’s future.

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The recent Red Shirt protests attracted a handful of Western supporters, most notably an Australian (or Irish Australian as he prefers to be styled), (David) Purcel Conor, who made inflammatory speeches to the assembled rabble, but in English (a language that few of the audience would have understood). In court he made the most diplomatic of statements:

“This country has no authority over me. I’m not under Thai law. I’m only obeying international law. I’m head of the red gang.”

I’m sure that won him a lot of kudos with the judge.

And then there was the English lout, Jeff Savage. He made a highly articulate statement to a media crew (available on YouTube for those who wish to search):

“We’re gonna smash the fucking Central Plaza to shit. We’re gonna steal everything out of it and burn the fucker down. Trust me, get pictures of that fucker. We’re gonna loot everything, gold, watches, everything, and then we’re gonna burn it to the ground.”

And so it came to pass.

This is interesting because it seems to confirm the belief that the arson and ransacking that followed the end of the Red Shirts protests in central Bangkok was premeditated, rather than being an emotional response to events. (In fact, there are plenty of other, uncorroborated reports that the destruction was preplanned.)

Whilst I have little doubt that the Aussie and the Brit deserve to be thrown out of Thailand for good, I find the response of the Thai authorities a little disturbing. (The Pattaya police have suggested that the death penalty is in order.) It appears that Purcel and Savage are being kept in chains, whilst the Red Shirt leaders, who have, admittedly, been arrested, are living a comfortable lifestyle at what appears to be a pleasant resort – sans chains.

There appears to be a clear message to foreigners here: stay the hell out of Thai politics, or you’ll be f**k’dt dealt with severely.

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