Pride and prejudice

Twas the night of yet another Full Moon Party but, having had more than my fill of lunar lunacy, Temporarily Thairish wasn’t going.
I’ve attended several of Koh Pha Ngan’s famous FMPs over the course of the last year, and what little thrill there ever was in watching thousands of sweaty backpackers grooving, grinding and gurning on a dirty, piss-soaked beach has long since been exhausted. The increasingly likely prospect of being searched by the ever-present Thai cops doesn’t hold much appeal either.
Besides which, on this particular evening the moon wasn’t even full. The big event often happens the night before or after the actual full moon in order to accommodate Buddhist holidays and the local mafia’s smuggling schedules.
The angelic Anna was going, however, and if anybody could’ve tempted me to go along to the party, it would’ve been her.
Sadly, I realised that I would’ve been wasting my not very precious time. A bright, bubbly and curvaceous 20-year-old, she’d been hanging around the My Way Bar for a few days, skillfully rebuffing the advances of, well, just about everybody.
An undergraduate student at a prestigious English university, she was fully aware of her physical charms, and a world champion flirt.
She hadn’t once paid for a drink.
As she headed off to get a taxi, all male eyes in the bar regretfully watched her leave. A FMP virgin, she’d been asking around about what to expect at the party, and some parting words of advice seemed to be in order.
“Have fun – but don’t kiss any Irishmen!” Kes the barman called after her.
“Don’t worry – I won’t!” she called back, laughing.
“Don’t kiss any Englishmen!” I instantly retaliated, demonstrating the scalpel-sharp quick wittedness that has made me famous the world over.
“Don’t kiss any French men!” Jacques, the long-haired long tail boatman shouted. (When Kes and I looked at him strangely, he shrugged and said, “Zey are all fuckers! Why you think I left France?”).
As is My Way, now that we’d started the joke, we were going to flog it to death. As usual, there were various different nationalities present in the bar and, at ever increasing volumes, Anna was warned off of all of them.
“Don’t kiss any Scottish men!”
“Don’t kiss any Spaniards!”
“DON’T KISS ANY ITALIANS!”
“DON’T KISS ANY CANADIANS!”
It was Jacques who made the fatal error. “DON’T KISS ANY ISRAELIS!”
The words were no sooner out of his mouth than the four Israelis in the corner of the bar were up and on their feet.
“Hey – what are you saying about Israelis?” one of them demanded angrily.
“Chill out – eet’s juzz a joke,” Jacques replied, before adding under his breath, “you stupeed fucking putain!”
“Yeah, well watch what you’re saying,” he warned, glowering.
“Relax guys,” Kes said. “We’re just ‘avin’ a bit of a larf. Nothing personal.”
The Israelis stood there looking tough for a while, before the collected tuts and sighs of everyone present forced them back to their seats. Ten minutes later they left, and nobody was sorry to see them go.
There was nothing particularly surprising about their behaviour. In the twelve months I’ve been here, I’ve met people from all corners of the globe and it’s amazing how many of them fully live up to their national stereotypes. The Irish, English and Australians are always on the piss. French people are often rude and aloof. Swedes are generally quiet and reserved. Italians are loud and passionate. The Japanese are incomprehensible. The Germans can’t tell jokes. And the Israelis don’t get jokes.
Seriously, most Israelis are patriotic to the point of paranoia. You joke about their country at your peril. This humourlessness is just one of the negative qualities that has earned them probably one of the very worst reputations amongst world travellers. Usually found in groups, they’re widely perceived as rude, pushy, arrogant and complaining.
They’re also renowned for always trying to get a cheaper deal. The Pongs have more or less barred them from staying at the Double Duke – as have many of the other Thai guesthouses. A few weeks ago, I overheard Mrs. Pong telling a group of them that she had no beach-huts available, although I knew that she did.
“I no like de Israeli peoples,” she told me afterwards. “Dey nevva happy. Always problems wit dem. And dey keeniao.” (Keeniao is Thai for “sticky shit” – and it means “tight”).
Of course, that’s just a generalisation. I’ve met some really nice Israelis – especially women. However, while many of them will happily discuss the ins and outs of their country’s political situation with you privately, when they’re in groups they’ll never ever diss their homeland. The reputation for arrogance is also deserved. It’s hardly surprising.
Most of them come to Thailand immediately after finishing their compulsory military service. If you’ve just spent the last few years pushing Palestinians around, it’s hardly surprising that the superior attitude stays with you.
But let’s not just single out the Israelis. Temporarily Thairish is an equal opportunities abuser. Americans are usually renowned for being equally rude, pushy, arrogant and complaining. Funnily enough, though, almost all of the Yanks I’ve encountered in Southeast Asia are the exact opposite of that stereotype. The Americans who are out travelling the world tend to be the ones who want no part of Bush’s Empire.
If anything, they’re apologetic about their nation’s greedy and aggressive behaviour. The rude, pushy, arrogant and complaining ones are all presumably back in the States, watching Fox News. Many of them work in airport security.
As for Canadians, they’re just incredibly anxious to let you know that they’re not American. But you can usually tell anyway. Eh?

Neighbouring Koh Samui hit the international headlines for all the wrong reasons last month with news of the brutal rape and murder of 21-year-old Katherine Horton, a Welsh psychology student, on Lamai Beach on New Year’s Day. In the same week, two Swedish nationals were raped on Samui – one of them a twelve-year-old girl attacked by a member of staff in her hotel, the other a forty-year-old woman raped by two locals behind a temple.
Obviously enough, though, the murder received the most media attention.
Although Horton’s killers were swiftly caught, the Samui police were still widely perceived to have botched the investigation (British detectives had flown over almost immediately and, while they had nothing but praise for their Thai counterparts, the suspicion was that this was mere diplomacy).
Three senior cops have since been suspended from active duty – most notably Police Colonel Arkhom Saisamai, the Samui chief of police, who apparently failed to inspect the crime scene until more than 24 hours after the event.
While the local police force may have been slow to react, though, other sections of the Thai justice system went into hyper-speed. Normally it takes several months for murder cases to reach the courts, but the two young fishermen responsible for Horton’s killing were tried and sentenced to death within less than three weeks.
The fact that Prime Minister Thaksin publicly called for them to be executed for “bringing shame to Thailand,” and tarnishing the nation’s tourism industry, may have speeded up the process somewhat.
There was also the fact that Katherine Horton was a beautiful young woman cut down in the prime of her life. In stark contrast, the three men accused of murdering 57-year-old British tourist James Edward Hall on Koh Chang on Christmas Day have yet to see the inside of a courtroom.
Predictably, the guilty fishermen, Bualoi Phothisit (23) and Wichai Somkhaoyai (24), have now appealed their death penalties. Their lawyers are citing the lack of eye witnesses, and the fact that the pair confessed out of a genuine sense of remorse, rather than because of any overwhelming evidence against them. While it’s hard to feel any compassion for them (they knocked her unconscious with a wooden stick before raping her, and then dumped her body in the sea), the swiftness of their trial and sentencing was questionable to say the least. Complaints have also been made about Thaksin interfering in a judicial matter.
Their appeal is unlikely to be successful. In the post-tsunami era, damaging tourism is about the worst crime you can commit in Thailand. Koh Samui gets almost a million visitors annually, and anybody who does anything to threaten this lucrative industry receives absolutely no sympathy from the natives.
It’s obvious that the authorities wanted this particular case over, done with and out of the papers as quickly as possible. Even the locals don’t want to talk about it.
I’ve asked several Thais what they thought about the case, and every single one of them claimed not to have even heard about it, before either clamming up or swiftly changing the subject. They don’t want to know.
However, there may be even more bad publicity to come. As I write, six bodies have just been found floating in the sea off Suratthani and Chumpon provinces (just across the water from Samui). The two women and four men had each been blindfolded with a piece of red cloth, their hands were tied behind them, and they’d been shot in the forehead.
Sounds like the work of the Mafia but, with the bodies having floated in the water for about a week, it’s not yet known if they were Thais or farangs.
If they turn out to be Thais there’ll probably be no more mention of it.
When he’s not busy publicly calling for the swift executions of murderers, Prime Minister Thaksin is undoubtedly spending much of his time figuring out what to do with the staggering 73 billion baht (several truckloads of cash in any currency) which he and his children have just made from selling their telecommunications company Shin Corp to Singapore’s Temasek Holdings.
The whole deal has been controversial from the beginning. When rumours first began to circulate that he might be selling the company, Thaksin totally denied it.
When the deal was eventually confirmed, he put his hands up in the air and blamed it on his kids – stating that two of his children, who held a majority share in Shin Corp, wanted to sell their shares to end persistent accusations that the company has benefited from certain government policies.
Happily for the Prime Minister and his kids, the share deal was concluded on the same day that an amendment to the Alien Business Law became effective. Under the new amendment, the maximum foreign holding allowed in a Thai company has been increased from 25% to 49%. Without it, the sale of Shin Corp wouldn’t have been able to go through.
There’s national outrage, and security concerns,  that the Thai satellite broadcasting and television frequencies are now going to be controlled by foreigners. But there’s even greater protest over the fact that, thanks to a legal loophole, neither Thaksin nor his children will have to pay a single baht in tax on the 73 billion.
Not that anybody’s benefiting from certain government policies, mind.
In fairness to Thaksin, he’s not being mean with his windfall. Last month he launched his own reality TV show in which he meets with impoverished farmers and villagers, discusses their problems and misfortunes, and then hands them over sums of money or plots of land.
He’s also planning to throw a free street feast for more than 30,000 people in his home town of Chiang Mai in a homage to his late mother. The feast will be organised along a 500-metre stretch of road, with forty tents being set up, and tasty local delicacies like namprik noom, khaeb moo and kaeng hungle on the menu. Two thousand people each from 22 districts and two sub-districts are to be invited as representatives. Along with a load of monks.
Cynics are saying that this is just another of the Prime Minister’s populist publicity stunts, designed to win the hearts and minds (and stomachs) of the poorly educated rural voters who keep him in power.
Somehow or other, though, I doubt that Thaksin gives a flying fuck what they’re saying about him.
Personally, I’m starting to think that the man’s some kind of genius.
Temporarily Thairish spent some time in Pattaya recently and, just as soon as my parents are too old, blind and infirm to read this magazine, I’ll tell you all about it.
Briefly, though, the seaside resort is famous as a “Disneyland for adults,” and it was easy enough to see why. Essentially one big city-sized brothel, the place was crawling with elderly and arthritic farangs, swanning around with Thai women young enough to be their grandchildren.
Unsurprisingly, it’s a boomtown for companies like Pfizer, Eli Lilly and GlaxoSmithKline. Sales of pills like Viagra, Cialis and Levitra are enormous there. The pharmaceutical pirates do well too.
Of course, while this is good news for big business, it’s pretty bad news for the overworked prostitutes. Less than a decade ago, a girl could bring an elderly westerner back to his hotel, and have business completed in anywhere between five and twenty minutes.
Nowadays, thanks to a small, blue, diamond-shaped pill, their clients can go for hours and hours, whatever their age. It used to be the whores who promised to “love you long time.” These days, thanks to the miracles of modern science, it’s the clients who can go all night.
“Viagra!” one young working girl spat, when I asked her about it. “Now dey nevva happy. And because dey pay one tousan’ baht for de pill, dey no wanna pay you light.”
It’s a hard life. Really hard.