HEADLINES [click on headline to view story]:

Shut down TTM

About respect and rules

Grumpy old attention seekers

So what happened to the smoking ban?

Okay, I give up

Shut down TTM

Editor;
Life in Pattaya has taken a sad bump with the new no-smoking laws. I can attest to this by my own reactions.
I do not frequent bars on a regular basis, but I do enjoy going to a couple of bars in Pattaya to visit with friends and watch football or Formula 1 racing. That is, up until now. I can no longer go to these places to enjoy sports or friendship, because I am no longer allowed to smoke while having my drink. So now that the new laws are in force, I guess I’ll have to join the no-smoking crowd.
Now that I am a no-smoker, I think it’s time for all of us non-smokers to stand up for our rights and demand that the government quit being hypocritical, and eliminate, do away with, close down the “Thai Tobacco Monopoly”. If it is now against the law to smoke in certain places, and fines or jail time will be imposed on violators, so I would assume it is a criminal offence. Therefore, it is time to eliminate the source, no matter that it will cost the government billions of baht in lost revenue. After all, it is the government that is telling us smoking is bad for you, so you can’t smoke here. I would like to see all non smokers (hopefully in the millions) join together on April 1 at 10:00 hrs in front of the Thai Tobacco Monopoly on Sukhumvit Soi 4, and stop all shipments from leaving the site, and demand the place be shut down. “You’re ruining our health”.
Someone who cares

About respect and rules

Editor;
Every country has its rules; I respect that, but not everybody can know the rules of all countries. So, it might be an idea to display some rules before something has to be done.
Last week I had to go for immigration to make a new visa. Being in the office for about 15 minutes a man comes to tell me I cannot make visa with a shirt with no sleeves, so I go out to buy another shirt. Okay, let’s call that a rule, but don t talk about respect; you don t find that in the way people dress. Many “farang” come from countries 20 degrees colder than here, so it is possible they use this kind of shirt.
Coming back fully dressed I go to the desk for making a new visa where for the first time there is a reference to a dress code: “please, dress properly” (sounds like a request). Then my pictures for making a new visa are out of the question, because of wearing the same kind of shirt.
Going out again to make new pictures (close to immigration) I see the shop has some very simple signs about what kind off clothes are needed for making a picture everybody is happy with. Maybe something for immigration to check out.
Back to the desk with the right pictures, the man who sent me for a shirt comes to the lady at the desk to tell how bad I am and with 4 people they start to tell my lady that I am wrong all the way.
That is what we call a lack of respect; they make her feel really embarrassed and bad while my brain is still clear and I can be responsible for all my deeds.
Rules I have to respect; but respect you have to earn.
Dutchie
Majestic, Jomtien

Grumpy old attention seekers

Editor,
Did someone call Pattaya ‘Fun City’? Who would know it from the sour gripes that come via the letters page. The moaners are knocked; then the knockers in turn get moaned about.
“Be less reverential and positive,” Raymond Standiford told a previous week’s moaner knocker, and said he will always say when he sees something that needs improving. As things anywhere can always be improved, he must be in a perpetual state of boorishness. By definition, his philosophy translates to: “Be more disrespectful and negative!” He calls this ‘constructive’!?
In the 14th March issue we had Lloyd Bonafide telling us that civility has “drained” from Thai society. Is this the same US ex-soldier of the same name that is quoted on Wikipedia as saying: “There is something about having a child and a gun in the same house that gives an adrenaline rush”? That mentality explains why only recently in his country there were four school shootings in one week! And this person dare criticize other societies!?!
In the same issue we had another of Don Aleman’s almost weekly drones. A few weeks back his great “new idea” on law and order in Pattaya was that the authorities should ensure there is a policeman on every corner, which economically advanced countries can’t afford to do. Then there is the fact that policemen with nothing to do can become pretty petty, and before long you’d have ‘police state’ complaints (probably from Mr Aleman). I understand he’s from England, where street violence and house burglaries are so common that police often don’t bother to investigate them. The only problem I’ve had in the ten years I’ve been in Pattaya is with a condo management committee chairman who constantly lies and seeks to cheat the people he is supposed to represent. He’s farang by the way.
Some complaints are valid - many about noise have been - but one asks why people come to a developing country, decide to make it their new home and then moan about this, that and the other. In other words, they want Utopia at developing country prices. It’s a fair bet they also want company that they can’t get where they come from. My view is that grumpy old attention seekers of this sort are akin to a starving dog that has been fed a juicy pork chop, but which then complains because it prefers steak. The way I see it, you can moan if you must and also knock the moaners, but surely you can’t moan about knockers.
Tony Crossley

So what happened to the smoking ban?

Editor;
So what happened to the smoking ban? I remember visiting some go-go bars in Walking Street just after the ban and thought how wonderful it was to sit there breathing in clean air instead of second hand poisonous fumes, although I did notice a lack of customers and thought that soon some of these bars will have to close down. I paid a return visit to the same bars last week and it seems that things are back to normal. In the first bar the boss was openly puffing away, giving the green light to his customers, another had the ash trays out encouraging the nicotine addicts, as did a third bar I visited, which stank of old tobacco smoke. All these bars had ‘No Smoking’ stickers on the doors and walls. What a joke.
John
Soi Khao Noi

Okay, I give up

Editor;
Okay, okay, I give up! Although I never said smoking was good, nor did I say smoking bans were bad, some mis-readers, (read - out of context) decided I had.
Plainly smoking is bad and I support bans - clear so far? It in fact is responsible for, not “Dr. M’s” estimate of 438,000 deaths a year, but, according to the latest AMA survey, 1.62 million early demises! Considering what ignorant, messy, smelly, no gooders we smokers are, then the upstanding non smoking citizenry should be happy to be rid of our lot.
Yes, tobacco acreage can be converted to other food crops but we have more than enough food now - many warehouses bulging and some perishable items, rotting and thrown away! Twenty years ago we told the farmers in Afghanistan to grow corn and wheat, not poppies, and they are still rolling around, on the ground, laughing.
I can’t disagree with Dr. M’s statement that vehicles harmful emissions are primarily “articulate matter” (hell, I don’t even know what this means), but when I get a mouthful/lungful of these “articulate matters”, I choke, cough, and, sometimes, spit.
Dr. M spoke of other “unsavory” practices, namely, wars, prostitution and drugs. Pornography, a form of non touch, visual prostitution accounts for conservatively 60% of all internet hits. Take the lovely ladies out of the Pattaya bars, go-go venues, and massage parlors and create pasture land. War and drugs along with the above, also “unsavory”, in any country, provide more jobs and income than any 10 of the top industries combined.
Facing facts and reality, not just what we like, is difficult. Sure, Dr. M’s want-to-be world is the ideal, but it is not the same world most of us live in - we just don’t wish to admit it.
Possibly, we could put a bounty on the “pelts” of smokers, prostitutes, drinkers, drug users/sellers, pornographers, weapons manufacturers, tobacco company executives, and a special award for people who say, and know the meaning of words such as “demeaning, unsavory (I think this one means anyone who doesn’t like what I like), invaginate?, attrition, pernicious and, the best - “fiscal discentives”? He really must be a doctor as I cannot understand most of these words.
Finally, I solemnly promise: To avoid venues featuring scantily clad/naked women/men; To stop smoking; To stop drinking beverages containing alcohol; To only use my internet access for religious reasons; To avoid war; To say only that which is acceptable in mixed company; & To stop lying.
Don Aleman

Letters published in the Mailbag of Pattaya Mail
are also published here.