Posts Tagged ‘Thailand’
Pic of the Day
Click to enlarge — REUTERS/Kerek Wongsa
Buddhist monks pray at the Wat Phra Dhammakaya temple in Pathum Thani province, north of Bangkok on Makha Bucha Day February 25, 2013. Makha Bucha Day honors Buddha and his teachings, and falls on the full moon day of the third lunar month.
Human composition, pattern recognition.
Meat-loving Thais turn into self-mutilating vegetarians for festival
Thailand is not an easy country in which to be vegetarian. But once a year the country’s avid meat eaters lay down their spicy meat stir-fries in favour of vegetables and meat substitutes.
During the annual ten-day “Tesagin Kin Pak” vegetarian festival, yellow flags representing Buddhism and good moral conduct flutter in the wind above entire neighborhoods, while tiny mobile street carts with a lone yellow flag advertise vegetarian-friendly food.
Glistening tofu, noodles with bean sprouts, desserts made with sesame and ginger and steaming hot vegetable broths abound…
Every year during the ninth Chinese lunar month, the country’s Thai-Chinese community…observe ten days of abstinence.
Eating meat, having sex, drinking alcohol and other habits thought to be vices and pollutants of the body and mind are cut out entirely by the truly devoted, who also wear only white. The belief is that nine gods come down from heaven to inspect the earth and record the good and bad deeds people commit…
The festival in Phuket starts out sounding just as tame.. Although meat is not on the menu, the rituals involved in the event are unusually bloody. During the celebrations, many of the devotees go into trances and have the flesh of their mouths pierced…all in the name of ritual purification.
Thailand coppers find roasted fetuses stashed in luggage
WARNING: Click on photo for unpleasant image from arrest scene
A British man has been arrested in Thailand after being found with six foetuses that had been roasted and covered in gold leaf as part of a black magic spirit ritual.
The corpses of the unborn baby boys were found packed in a suitcase in his hotel room in Bangkok’s Chinatown district.
Chow Hok Kuen, 28, who holds a British passport but is of Taiwanese origin, confessed to police that he had bought the foetuses several days earlier for almost £4,000. The source of the foetuses is unclear.
He said he intended to smuggle them to Taiwan where they would be sold for as much as six times what he paid on the internet to people who believe that their possession would bring wealth and good luck.
The man told police that that he was hired by another Taiwanese man, named Kun Yichen, who regularly travelled to Thailand to collect the ritualistic foetuses. Worship of the foetuses — observed by some on the Chinese community — is a Buddhist-animist practice known as Kuman Thong that is described in ancient Thai manuscripts…
Lore has it that if the owner reveres the ritual foetus, its spirit will warn and protect its possessor of danger. In practice the foetuses have been replaced by wooden effigies…
Officers made the gruesome discovery in the hotel in the Yaowarat district of Bangkok, where they found that the foetuses had also been tattooed and were adorned with religious threads.
You have to love transubstantiation.
Honda crushing new cars ruined in Thailand floods
After floodwaters receded at the Honda factory in Ayutthaya province
In an effort to prove that no flood damaged vehicles will be sold to customers, the Honda factory in Thailand’s Ayutthaya province began destroying over 1,000 cars. The factory was one of the hardest hit by the several months of record flooding, which only receded a few weeks ago. The devastating floods were the worst the country experienced in 50 years and left over 700 people dead. According to AFP, the scrapping process is expected to take one month.
Honda’s production was disrupted from the floods and only recently returned to normal. According to AP, American Honda Executive Vice President John Mendel says it will not be until March that dealers will be fully restocked.
Aerial images of the submerged cars in the Honda lot provided powerful visuals of the effects of the severe flooding on businesses…The area is home to large production centers for global car and computer industries. According to Bloomberg, Toyota had to suspend local production of its Camry and Prius lines, and Apple faced delays in parts used for Mac computers. Western Digital shares hit a year low in October and is now working to regain their losses, according to Reuters.
Not that anyone in the United States would have to worry about buying a car leftover from a flood, eh?
Pic of the day
Vehicles at the Honda car factory in Ayutthaya, central Thailand, are covered in mud as floodwaters recede.
If you’re buying an almost new Honda in the next 3-6 months, look under the seats for silt, first. 
Anthropocene disaster in Southeast Asia heads for Bangkok
As some of Thailand’s worst flooding in half a century bears down on Bangkok — submerging cities, industrial parks and ancient temples as it comes — experts in water management are blaming human activity for turning an unusually heavy monsoon season into a disaster.
The main factors, they say, are deforestation, overbuilding in catchment areas, the damming and diversion of natural waterways, urban sprawl, and the filling-in of canals, combined with bad planning. Warnings to the authorities, they say, have been in vain.
“I have tried to inform them many times, but they tell me I am a crazy man,” said Smith Dharmasaroja, former director general of the Thai Meteorological Department, who is famous here for predicting a major tsunami years before the one that devastated coastal towns in 2004.
The monsoon season this year has brought disaster to Cambodia, the Philippines and Vietnam as well as Thailand, where 283 people are reported to have died.
Thousands of people have been displaced as typhoons have battered the Philippines, and the country’s steep rice terraces of Banaue are reported to have been damaged by mudslides.
Floods have spread through Cambodia, where the city of Siem Reap is reported to be knee-deep in water, with floodwaters reaching the nearby temples of Angkor.
Thai officials are warning that, in the next few days, Bangkok could be inundated by a combination of heavy floodwaters from the north, unusually high tides and monsoon rains. People in some of the most threatened neighborhoods are building sandbag barriers around their homes and emptying shops of food, drinking water, batteries and candles…
Once the floodwaters reach Bangkok, they will pour into a city that has lost its natural defenses: a huge network of canals that have been filled in — or clogged with garbage — as the city has become an overcrowded behemoth.
As ye sow, so shall ye reap. It doesn’t require warnings on a biblical scale to explain that stupidity and greed combine and grow over time to produce an almighty disaster.
Sleeping Buddha in floodwaters, Ayutthaya province, Thailand
Click on photo to enlarge
Sleeping giant: Villagers row past a submerged ‘leaning Buddha’ statue at a temple which has been flooded after heavy rains.
From the GUARDIAN Eyewitness series.
Parents faraway seeking work, baby suckles directly from cow
An 18-month-old Cambodian boy who has suckled milk directly from a cow daily for more than a month is in fine health, the child’s grandfather said.
The boy, Tha Sophat, made international headlines after his grandfather revealed he had been feeding himself directly from a cow since July when a storm destroyed his home and his parents left for Thailand to find work.
After he stopped breast-feeding from his mother, the boy became ill, said the 46-year-old grandfather.
The boy watched a calf nurse from its mother, and began to do the same thing, feeding directly from the cow each day, Um Oeung added. When the grandfather pulled him away, the boy cried, so he let him continue, Um Oeung told Reuters.
Neighbors and local officials in the village of Pheas in Siem Reap province, about 315 km from the capital Phnom Penh, say they are not happy about the nursing.
“They blame me and have told me not to allow him to suckle from the cow anymore. They say the boy will be ashamed when he grows up and that he will be naughty,” he said on Sunday…
“His health is fine, he is strong and he doesn’t have diarrhea,” said Um Oeung.
He’s ahead of life for so many wee’uns in Southeast Asia. Surely looks like the cow doesn’t mind.
Thailand’s election officials confused by ladyboy ID photos
Thailand’s community of “ladyboys” have complained…they were being marginalized in next week’s general election because their ID card pictures were too confusing for polling officials.
It is the latest in a series of gripes among members of the Trans-Female Association of Thailand which groups transgenders and transsexuals known collectively as “katoeys” or “ladyboys.”
“We have a big problem when we use our identity cards in banks, schools, hospitals and now when we vote,” said Yollada Suanyoc, president of the 2,500-strong organization.
“The picture may show a woman but it says ‘mister’ on the card. Or the picture may show a teenage boy and the person now looks like a woman.”
Everyone in Thailand has to carry a national ID card with them at all times from the age of 15. It is renewed every seven years.
Transgenders and transsexuals are accepted in Thailand more readily than in most other countries, with one new airline hiring only ladyboys as cabin crew. They are especially common in cosmetics shops and health stores and in bars in some of Bangkok’s racier entertainment districts.
“The government says if they change our title and sex, it’s going to make society confused,” she said. “The government worries that they won’t know about our past.”
As usual, it’s the stodgy bureaucrats in government who are confused at best, as likely to be stuck in the treacle of their own ignorance and misunderstanding.
Thai election a toss-up favoring Thaksin Shinawatra’s sister
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission
A general election that was designed to put Thailand political divisions in the past has been upended by the emergence of Yingluck Shinawatra, the sister of Thaksin Shinawatra, the exiled former prime minister, as front runner.
To her supporters 44-year-old Miss Shinawatra, is “pretty, rich, clever, international”.
The businesswoman mother of one has energized the opposition Pheu Thai party ahead of next Sunday’s crucial election and left the ruling Democrats – led by Old Etonian prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva – in the doldrums…
A raft of opinion polls show Pheu Thai (For Thais) opening up a gap that will give them a lead in the 500 seat parliament and maybe even scrape over the magic 251 to allow them to form the government without recruiting smaller coalition allies.
The fresh-faced woman vying to become Thailand’s first female prime minister was a virtual unknown barely a month ago…
Mr Thaksin, 61, who lives in self-imposed exile in Dubai avoiding a two-year jail term for corruption and abuse of power, is widely seen as the power behind his sister. Yesterday he made a barely veiled plea for his return after next weekend’s election. He said. “If we cannot forget the past, we are still talking about the past and there is no way we can move ahead.”
Pheu Thai’s policy pledges are an echo of Mr Thaksin’s tax give-aways during his years in power between 2001 and 2006, before he was ejected in a military coup.
Cheap health-care, a bump in minimum wages and guaranteed prices for rice farmers top the pledges…
Gen Prayuth – a staunch loyalist of ailing 83-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej – has repeatedly said he would keep out of politics and refuted constant speculation of a coup if the election’s outcome is not to the Thai elite’s liking. But Thailand has endured 18 coups or coup attempts since 1932…
Voters are not surprisingly fearful of post-election divisions.
The fact remains that the monarchy – via the military – has pretty much intervened whenever it felt the Thai people didn’t make a democratic decision the King didn’t agree with.
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