Quotacious

"The mood here is one of unspeakable sadness. Rove's very presence these past six-and-one-half years has been a source of joy and light, not just to the jaded Beltway insider such as myself, but to the children who frolic behind him, hoping to catch one of the sweets which fall naturally from his doughy pantaloons. 'Turd piñata!' they shout."

— John Oliver (The Daily Show)

450 Tigers From Sri Racha Zoo Seized By Gov't

The Sri Racha Tiger Zoo (website), a major tourist attraction about 20 miles away from central Pattaya, has had its 450 tigers confiscated by authorities over charges of illegal breeding and exporting of the big and rare cats.

I would have thought that any facility that breeds endangered species and highlights them and their plight to the public would be a good thing overall, regardless of whether or not the distasteful practice of killing some tigers for commercial gain was being practiced there. However, this comment over at ThaiVisa.com was very informative:

"Additionally, with their factory-style breeding, they failed miserably to take into account the extremely delicate nature of the tiger gene pool, potentially damaging any future chances for successful, appropriate breeding to truly help this beautiful but highly endangered species."

So, as enjoyable a place as Sri Racha was, it is obviously a good thing to be put out of this business which is purportedly detrimental to tigers.

For those of you still wanting the opportunity to play with tigers, like you were able to do at Sri Racha Zoo, you can go to the Pattaya Crocodile Farm, or Nong Nooch Tropical Gardens. Both places have tigers there which you can pet and enjoy.

Photo credit: Mikejc1.

Lesbian Lovers Lamentable Leap

Two teenage lovers (two girls... a rarity in Thailand) got in a fight and decided to do a base jump — one broken heart following the other — off of the Pratumnak Mountain scenic overlook, a popular nighttime hangout spot for Pattaya's teen crowd.

Fortunately both girls bounced fairly well, and were released from the hospital, reunited and generally unharmed.

Town In Town Hotel Going Bye-Bye

In a city like Pattaya, with almost a hundred beachfront hotels nice and close to all the gogo bars and restaurants and shopping of Beach Road, I've never been able to figure out why anybody thought building the Town-In-Town hotel was a good idea: A nondescript 360-room hotel with no redeeming features or appeal, situated far down a drab sidestreet miles back from the beach in a rather barren, depressed neighborhood, with no view, and far away from any of the city's main attractions. (Well, unless you count Foodland... a place that certainly tops my personal list of places to visit.)

Anyway, the hotel is now being converted into serviced apartments, which seems to be the new property gimmick here in the world's fastest-moving real estate market. Good idea, that: If you are having trouble selling one room at $20 per night, try combining 3 rooms together into 1 small apartment, and then sell that in 1-month blocks at $60 per night.

Daily Report: Damn You Evil Bob, Part 2

Managed to get up a bit earlier... but not much. Still got a late start to work. I cooked some stir fry vegetables for lunch.

Willie came by this afternoon, and we hung around and had a few beers. He and his friends are trying to build the world's fastest motorcycle. The "Vision One" project will go 200 MPH, and (what I suppose will be named) the "Vision Two" project will go twice as fast.

In the evening, it was off to Shooters where I hung out with Bob and Manfred. A fellow named Jeff from Michigan walked in and joined the party. When he found out my name, he said, "Jil? With one L, right?" Yup: One of my regular readers had run in to me... a rare treat. Willie joined us later in the evening.

Anyway, we sat around, Bob served tostadas, the drinks flowed, the drink bell was rung endlessly, we took turns buying rounds, and had a great time all evening.

So the diet starts back up again tomorrow.

Oh: Also, Bob (from Texas, in case you didn't know) keeps playing this Toby Keith song on the jukebox, "I Love This Bar" ("No cover charge, come as you are. Hmmm hmmm hmmm, I love this bar."), and now I can't get the song out of my head. Damn you again, Evil Bob.

Thursday Babe Blogging

This week's babe is Ahm... very cute. I'm going to have to have a vote at the end of this year to pick a "J.I.P. Babe of 2007" from among all of this year's babes... so therefore, keep in mind which is your favorite, and then at the end of the year, we'll have a vote, and then after all the votes are counted, I'll go ahead and pick my own favorite and crown her champion instead. Heh.

Photo courtesy of teenee.com.

Coalition Forces Discard Guns, Throw Bullets

I always scoff a little bit when far-right bloggers complain about how media outlets reporting from Iraq highlight the violence and downplay the progress being made, or denigrate and malign troop operations and highlight their mistakes or transgressions.

I scoff... and then see this kind of stupidity:

"An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she says hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City."

I mean: Are? You? Serious? Are the editors at Agence France-Presse (AFP) so stupid that they don't know what a fired bullet looks like, and were thus fooled by their reporter, Mr. Wissam al-Okali, into publishing this story/photo... or are they really ¦ actually ¦ seriously ¦ willfully ¦ dishonestly trying to artificially amplify bad feelings about the fighting in Iraq... as nutters like Michelle Malkin like to claim? (... and I'll add: As if the real truth and facts weren't enough to accomplish that on their own.)

Well, so far Flip over at Suitably Flip has the best response to this rather serious insult to our intelligence:

Daily Reports: Honey Whiskey

Work went well today. Actually, ever since finishing my trip to New York back in early July, work has gone really well: My work is measured in "lines", and I measure a good day as anything over 2,000 lines. (Most coworkers average about 1,000 lines.) So far, out of the 40 days I've been back, 30 of them have been over 2,000 lines.

I had vegetables in sweet and sour sauce today for lunch; lettuce and a bit of salad dressing (but not too much) for dinner; and, corn on the cob for a late-evening snack. That's pretty good for me. I only spoiled it all by having a snifter of DrambuieA honey and herb-flavoured golden scotch whisky liqueur made from aged malt whisky, heather honey and a secret blend of herbs and spices. The flavor suggests saffron, honey, anise, nutmeg and an herbal earthiness. while watching a neat show on BBC called "Life On Mars", a sci-fi cop drama about a guy from today who gets hit by a car and winds up as a police officer back in 1973.

Cole and Sullivan Sum Up Karl Rove Perfectly

I don't have the brain power to put it down as well as Mr. Cole, so I'll just agree with everything he said in his article, "Why Rove Failed":

[I]n my opinion, the real problem is Rove and company’s complete reliance on gutter politics.

If you look back at every stinking pile of excrement pushed by this administration, in every debate, there had to be an opposition group, the outgroup, to villify in order to push the agenda du jour (as noted in the comments, any disagreement in any form was considered to be treasonous). In every case, they were attacked viciously, with the full-fury of the Wingnuttosphere launching assault after assault until a modest 51% victory was achieved, and a mandate was declared. Anyone who spoke out of turn, or who opposed this administration was confronted by the Voltron formed of an unholy alliance of grass-roots organizations, party flacks, the blogosphere, and cronies in the ideological press (NRO and the Weekly Standard come to mind) as well as talk radio, and phasers were set on smear.

And it works great, especially when you are dealing with a portion of the population who really thinks the media is out to get them and who really are convinced Democrats are a bigger threat than Osama. A few times. Until you get to the point where everyone, due to the varying nature of ideological differences on issues, has felt the wrath of the Rove’s gutter politics.

Instead of forging a permanent coalition, he destroyed the party from within with internecine warfare, and his gutter politics now leave behind a bitter and broken GOP, with differing factions that at best distrust each other, at worst, despise each other (I am actively rooting for a rout of the GOP in the Presidential election in 2008, and voted for Democrats in 2006). Rove’s key to success, his willingness to viciously attack his opponents, was also the key to his and the Republican’s downfall. If he and this administration had stuck to waging their nasty wars against only Democrats and people external to the GOP, I doubt we would be having this conversation. But they couldn’t, because they had no real principles — just issues to win the next little political victory as they moved onward, damned whoever gets in their way. As such, there is no real party left. All the alleged principles are gone — there are no core “conservative beliefs” left — those were all picked off one by one for some short term political victory or another.

Yeah. What he said.

(photo credit: Citypages)

---

UPDATE:

I'll toss in Andrew Sullivan as well, in toto:

The man's legacy is a conservative movement largely discredited and disunited, a president with lower consistent approval ratings than any in modern history, a generational shift to the Democrats, a resurgent al Qaeda, an endless catastrophe in Iraq, a long hard struggle in Afghanistan, a fiscal legacy that means bankrupting America within a decade, and the poisoning of American religion with politics and vice-versa. For this, he got two terms of power — which the GOP used mainly to enrich themselves, their clients and to expand government's reach and and drain on the productive sector. In the re-election, the president with a relatively strong economy, and a war in progress, managed to eke out 51 percent. Why? Because Rove preferred to divide the country and get his 51 percent, than unite it and get America's 60. In a time of grave danger and war, Rove picked party over country. Such a choice was and remains despicable.

Rove is one of the worst political strategists in recent times. He took a chance to realign the country and to unite it in a war — and threw it away in a binge of hate-filled niche campaigning, polarization and short-term expediency. His divisive politics and elevation of corrupt mediocrities to every branch of government has turned an entire generation off the conservative label. And rightly so. It will take another generation to recover from the toxins he has injected, with the president's eager approval, into the political culture and into the conservative soul.

You're One Dead Duck

Two Cambodians were arrested on a bus coming to Pattaya from Northern Thailand carrying over 6,000 yaa-baa pills. (Yaa = "pill", baa = "crazy".) That many pills is pretty much a guaranteed death sentence in the Thai legal system.

So maybe that's the new plan: Thai drug dealers are getting Cambodians to do the dangerous work. It sort of makes sense. If you're making millions, why not pay even as much as half of those millions to keep yourself as distant from the drugs (and the cops) as possible? When you're risking your life, the more insurance you can get, the better.

Well, anyway, congratulations to the Pattaya Police Department for the great catch. I'm sure it's only a week's worth of pills... but it's still substantial.

p.s. Question: I've always wondered why the people who make yaa-baa don't change the pill style once in a while. The red triangles are so ubiquitous that cops barely have to try to find them. Why not change shapes and colors each month, or even make them look like Tylenol pills? In the end, it probably wouldn't save you from jail, but it may pass casual inspetion.

Daily Report: Chicken Fried Distraction

Up at my usual hour... 9:00. I have to fix that. My sleeping/waking times come in phases about 3 or 4 weeks at a time... going from bright and early (6:00) to frustratingly late (10:30). Alarm clocks have nothing to do with it; bedtime only slightly more.

Work went well today. Maid Go made vegetable teriyaki for lunch, which was pretty enjoyable. (I was going to try to eat it in 3 separate sittings, a la the "small meal plan", but instead I ate just one medium-sized plateful.)

In the evening, I went out to Shooters to hang out with Bob and Manfred. Every Tuesday, Bob gives away free food — so I probably would have been better off staying home with my diet — and tonight he was giving away free chicken fried steak sandwiches with extra-thick gravy. Damn you Evil Bob.

Well, I did only eat half of a sandwich instead of a whole one.

So the diet starts back up again tomorrow, I guess.

I see that the Thai Baht has continued its snail-like (likely meaningless) upward climb for yet another 2 days. It's gone from a low of 33.6 baht to the dollar up to 34.1 over the last 4 business days. Oh, I can't tell you how much it would mean to me to see the baht back up to is original 40-to-the-dollar level. As it stands right now, with the strong baht, I've been losing about 40,000 baht ($1,200) per month from my income compared to what I was getting before... and of course, as with all people, that 40,000 missing baht is the 40,000 most enjoyable baht: The baht spent on fun / miscellaneous / lavish doodads; or, if you're like I was... renting expensive houses. (Sigh. I miss the old place.)

Online Dating In Thailand

I was reading this article via Thaivisa.com in The Nation newspaper yesterday about the number... but more surprisingly the quality... of Thai women who are using internet dating services to meet foreign men on the internet.

Apparently while Bangkok and Pattaya's GoGo Bars are where the poor and uneducated Thai girls go in the hopes of finding a foreign (farang) man to take care of them, online matchmaking services have become the purview of the well-educated.

If there is one thing that every Thai lady knows how to say in English, it is "Thai man no good!" The article above makes that point oh-so-clear. The feminists and the do-gooders from the Western world blast "the bar scene" as evil exploitation of Thai girls (and many problems do exist and abuses happen) but they often fail to see that the vast majority of bar-employed Thai girls (only in the touristed/foreign areas... I will be clear on that) are happily turning to prostitution because (1) Buddhist society doesn't consider sex/prostitution to be the sinful practice it is deemed to be in Christian societies; (2) the ugliest farm girl with a third grade education working in a GoGo Bar makes about the same money as a high-school teacher in Thailand, while the prettiest girls make as much as a surgeon; and, (3) they really are looking for Mr. America (or Mr. Right from some other dream-world destination) to come and take them away from abusive husbands, drunk boyfriends, demanding fathers, and lazy brothers.

It only makes sense that those Thai women who are better off would want the same opportunities the bar girls have... admittedly without the prostitution or the immediate need to put food on the table as well. Hence, the spectatular rise of these online find-me-a-man services.

After reading this article, I was curious, and I went surfing. A website URL given in the article led me to "thailovelinks.com", where a quick search revealed thousands upon thousands of women. I wanted to narrow and qualify my search, but in order to do that, you have to create an account, which I did.

I then searched for girls from Pui's home state of Petchabun. There were 1,800 girls with listings, over 800 with photos, and over 50% of whom had been logged in within the past week.

Think about that for a moment: 1,800. The state of Petchabun has a population of about 500,000 people... 250,000 of whom are women. Out of those 250,000 women — to make the math easier — I'll guess that 180,000 of those women are between the ages of 18 and 50. Out of those 180,000, we'll say that 36,000 (or 20%) of these rural Thai people know how to use a computer... and that is just for this one dating site.

The final number: At least 5% of all eligible-aged Thai women who have been online have at least registered (i.e. expressed a pretty significant interest) to find a Western man to take them away from whatever lives they are currently living.

And the lives they are living comparitively aren't very bad: There are college students, teachers, nurses, small business owners, and even a couple of girls with Masters degrees. It really is astounding.

You can register for free, but if you want to access several advanced features and search options, you can sign up for "Gold" at US$25 per month, or "Platinum" at $30 per month. This website certainly seems to be doing pretty well cash-wise from the farang men looking for Thai women: On the men's side, there are 100 men paying the Platinum rate, and 275 men paying the Gold rate... men who actually live in Thailand. (No idea on the number of men outside of Thailand who are signed up and paying.)

Anyway... thousands of women for hundreds of men: That's good odds, guys. I happen to know that even handsome-man jet-setting Playboy (and this blog's number one fan) Franky The Fireman is online looking for — and meeting — Thai women (quite pretty ones if I do say so myself). Sounds like the internet may be the number one new place to look.

Daily Report: Damn My Luck

I woke up to find a problem.

I've said before that my air conditioner leaks. It's right above the window in my office, and drips past the curtain rod. What happened last night is that the drips hit the curtain rod, ran down the entire length of that curtain rod, made it to the curtain, ran down the length of the curtain, and then onto my second desk, creating a nice puddle right where my phone... my expensive Motorola RAZR phone... was sitting: A sterling example of Murphy's LawWhatever can go wrong, will go wrong. in action.

Well, the phone is almost 3 years old, which in phone dog years is about the equivalent of being 150 years old, and it was a bit beat up... so it's not the worst loss. My new camera in that water... that would have sucked bigguns.

Since I've fallen out of love with fancy mobile phones anyway, and I do have a nice 7.2 mexapixel Cybershot for my photo needs, and additionally I have no interest in mobile web surfing, I'm going back to el-cheapo phones for a while: A plain old Nokia 2626 little candybar of a phone for 3,000 baht.

Anyway, work was terrible today: Monday mornings always are. It took me 5 hours of slogging to finish what normally takes 2½ hours. In the evening, I watched some television.

Oh: To Anonymous Poster (I wish you people had names, I really do) I took your comments about dieting to heart, which is to eat a bunch of small meals each day to avoid getting hungry... a tried-and-true method to losing weight... and ate leftover Fuji today at a rate of one block-of-rice-fish thingy every 2 hours. It worked great, although in the evening I slipped a little bit. I'm also going to start on the basic concept of that "Fat Buster" diet that you mentioned as well, which is about as smart a diet as you can get: Eating all the fruits and vegetables you want, and nothing else. (Well, I'll still have a bit of milk in my coffee in the morning.)

Pattaya Police Volunteers Looking Bad Again

A recent broad-daylight drive-by shooting of a karaoke bar owner caught on video surveillance camera has caused a bit of a stir in Pattaya.

Arrests were quickly made of a gang of men well-known to police... one member of which was an employee of the infamous criminal-infested "Pattaya Police Volunteer" organization. The "Volunteer" gang member would use the police radio given to him by the police department to be a lookout for his other gang members to commit crimes.

Sorry, but after numerous complaints about these law-breaking "pseudo-cops", this Volunteer police organization must be disbanded. It is directly contributing to the lawless and corrupt image that the Pattaya government is trying so hard to leave behind.

Daily Report: Sleeping

I was up at 9:00 and put in a couple of hours of work, but I climbed back into bed and slept most of the day after that.

I hung out with Mike during the evening, and we watched "Mythbusters" on the Discovery Channel.

Daily Report: The Coolest Bar In Pattaya

I started work late, but worked straight through lunch, and finished early. I had some leftover gammon steak as a sandwich for lunch.


Bob outside of Walking Street's hippest
and coolest bar, V2O, on Soi Happy.In the evening, it was out to Shooters to hang out with Bob. After that, we went to Walking Street to visit the newest and fanciest bar on the strip: V2O, which is located in the alley leading back to Happy AGoGo. It is an exceptionally neat design and layout, up on the second floor, sitting on top of the beer bars that run the entire length of the left side of the alley, with an open-air seating arrangement and plush booths to relax in, in a complete open-air setting. The exceptionally fancy style of the bar is unfortunately offset by the poorest view of any bar in the city: That being the unadorned and neglected rears of the buildings over on Soi BJ.


The decor in V2O is gorgeous, with
fancy drinks and comfy seating.

The ice bar in V2O is fun... Once.The most notable feature of the bar by a long shot is its "ice room". This is a novelty and gimmick unique to Pattaya and is certainly a fun place to take a Thai girl to watch her freak out: It's a room (with a window facing Walking Street) that has been turned into a walk-in freezer. Inside is a bar made from a monstrous block of ice, upon which are served ice-cold vodka shots. While one cannot dispute the novelty of being able to walk into a 15-below-zero environment in tropical Thailand, the thought of doing it in shorts and a T-shirt (at least more than one time in life) wouldn't occur to most people.

The electrical bill for keeping a room like that — just for the opportunity to serve a couple of flavored vodka shots per hour — has to be exorbitant, and I would expect V2O's "ice room" to have a dubious future... so if you want to take your Thai lady and stand in an (admittedly very fancy) walk-in freezer and knock back vodka shots, you should probably hurry up.


Funny shirt. Typical sentiment
for fellows in Pattaya.After V2O, it was off to TQ2 for Alf's birthday party. The place was quite packed, and I sat with Stan, Mark, Bob, and Alan. TQ2 owner Alf is a faithful reader of this blog, and was very concerned about what I wrote here on Monday. From what I saw and experienced in TQ2 tonight, I can indeed say that the old TQ2 is still around and is still a great place to party. Kudos to Alf for taking feedback, and doing what can to keep TQ2 as warm and welcoming as can be... and I also appreciate Russ and his son taking the time to have a friendly chat as well.

Daily Report: That Day

The future site of Stan's model railroad.I had a good day of work, hitting my goals, and then it was off with Pui to Stan's house.

Stan is building a room upstairs in which he is going to be putting a model railroad. On his recent return from England, he brought with him suitcases upon suitcases of stuff, has had two of his friends do the same, and has more stuff being shipped. Right now, his house is filled to the brim with the project, and Stan's days have been filled with making hundreds of trees and several large model bridges.

It should be quite a thing when it is finished. He is going to be using very special steam-driven trains, instead of the usual electric motor variety.

For dinner, Stan and I, Pui and Mem, went out to Ricky's British restaurant on Soi Buakow and had a very nice dinner. From there (after dropping off Mem at home), we went to Rick's bar and hung out for a couple of hours. (I'm proud to say I drank nothing but water for the entire evening.)

Nicky's Restaurant Review

This evening Mem and Stan, Pui and I drove to Soi Buakhow for some fine British food at Nicky's... which is a little more the standard Pattaya guesthouse upstairs, bar with pool table downstairs to the right, and restaurant with big screen TV to the left. (The only deviation from the standard recipe being that the downstairs room is closed in and air conditioned as compared to the usual open-to-the-street format.)

Prices for food were reasonable, and the dining room was clean and bright with new furniture and pleasant-enough decor. The staff seemed generally competent and the service was error-free. Everything was more than acceptable for an establishment that isn't focused exclusively on food.



Stan and I started off with shrimp cocktails for an appetizer: I had small at 75 baht, and Stan had large at 125 baht. Note to Americans visiting Thailand: Shrimp cocktail in Thailand is served the British way, which is shrimp on lettuce covered with Thousand-Island-style dressing, and is only rarely served the American way, with the horseradish-based cocktail sauce. Regardless though, the small was a very generous size, and the large shrimp cocktail was a meal in itself.

For entreés, the girls had Thai food while Stan had a Yorkshire pudding upon which lay potatoes, some really nice sausages, onions, and gravy. Stan claimed the Yorkshire pudding is as good as you can hope to find in Thailand. I had the gammon steak which was served with peas, fries, and 2 fried eggs, which was a lovely piece ham-style cured pork. (For the diet, I only ate about a qurter of the steak and all of the peas, sampled Stan's platter, and took the rest of it home.)

Overall, Ricky's on Soi Buakhow (about halfway between Soi Diana and Pattaya South Road, on the "Third Road" side of the street) is a nice little restaurant serving reasonably-priced, high quality British food. Definitely worth a visit for a middle-of-the-road budget combined with a good appetite.

Told You So: Thai Exports Lost To Neighbors

Back in March, I wrote a post where I predicted that if the Thai Baht continued to strenghten (i.e. drop) against the dollar, it would cause exports in Thailand to drop precipitously due to the high price of Thai goods in comparison with its regional neighbors.

Back then, I wrote:

That, of course brings me to the question: What do I predict is going to happen in the long run?

No other southeast Asian currencies have been following the baht's lead: They are all weak against the Thai baht as well. Therefore Thailand can't take the other Asian economies for a ride. Only the Thai export prices are skyrocketing. This leaves foreign importers of Southeast Asian goods with the choice of going to other countries in Southeast Asia to make their purchases, which leaves Thailand markets vulnerable.

Most foreign importers have a fair amount of faith and consistency in where they obtain their product, and will bear some price fluctuation at the expense of having a consistent and reliable supplier, but given enough incentive (such as they have now), they can and will go looking in other places such as China, Indonesia and Malaysia (and even emerging Viet Nam) for better prices on the things they buy. Thai industries will begin losing their foreign customers to nearby countries with more equitable exchange rates and lower labor costs.

The first Thai industry to lose customers will be the farming sector, second will be the low-end manufactured goods sector, third will be the minerals and natural resources sector, fourth will be the service sector, and fifth and finally (should the exchange rate remain poor for long enough) will be the high-end manufactured goods sector.

[emphasis newly-added]

Of course, someone had to chime in and call what I wrote "uninformed crap":

It's not the end of the world. The sky is not falling. It's just uninformed crap like this that makes people think so.

So, what is now happening with the Thai economy?

Exactly what my "uninformed crap" said would happen.

Bangkok - Thirty-three Thai factories went bankrupt during the first half of 2007, resulting in 9,496 labourers being laid off, media reports said Friday. The Labour Ministry has put another 196 businesses "under watch" for immediate closure in the coming months, The Nation newspaper said.

Among the largest factories to close their doors during the first six months of the year was Silp South East Asia Import Export, a sportswear manufacturer that has been forced to lay off more than 4,000 labourers.

Silp South East Asia's management claimed that it could no longer compete in the garment export sector with countries such as Vietnam and China.

Although Thailand's exports grew 18 per cent in value during the first half of this year, the increases were primarily in higher-tech sectors such as automotive, electronics and electrical appliances.

Lower-tech, labour-intensive industries such as textiles and shoes have lost competitiveness because of a 19-per-cent appreciation of the baht currency against the dollar since January 2006 and higher labour costs compared with rivals such as Vietnam.

[emphasis mine]

Sometimes I have to wait a while, but no matter how long the wait, it's always cool to have my "uninformed crap" proven to be right.

Anyway, I see the baht is slowly creeping upwards against the dollar... but a 2-day 0.5-baht upward creep during a 2-year consistent drop is hardly a trend. It's primarily the worldwide credit industry feeling jittery because of the American housing market. (I wonder if we'll see another version of the 1997 Souteast Asian crash when all of the banks and credit lendors twitch?) Consumer confidence in Thailand is certainly predicting doom and gloom.

Foreign Counterfeiter Arrested

More tourist stupidity.

I fail to imagine how anyone could think that this was a good idea, but here you have it: An Italian tourist decided to photocopy a 1000-baht note ($30) and then to try to use the copies to purchase items. (It seems he had an equally dumb Thai girl along with him who apparently didn't try to discourage him from his stupidity.)

The numbskull thought carrying around a receipt from a currency exchange kiosk showing that he had just recently received cash from them would somehow convince people that his notes weren't counterfeit. Yeah, right.

Well... I suppose I should give him a tiny sliver of a benefit of a doubt: Perhaps a clerk at the exchange kiosk passed along 10 photocopies of a 1000-baht note, and pocketed the originals. Since tourists might have no idea what a "proper" 1000-baht note looks/feels like, it could happen; I doubt it very highly... but it could happen. So, we'll use this story primarily as a warning (1) to not be a retard; and as a distant backup warning, (2) to be careful at the currency exchanges. If the currency you receive from the exchange kiosk in any country on earth feels pretty much the same as a photocopy, take the money you got to the police, and have them look at it instead of going out and trying to spend it.