Newley Purnell

Last night A and I attended Thai Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont’s first major address to the foreign press since he took office following the September 19 military coup. In a wide-ranging speech followed by a question and answer session, the PM and his cabinet members outlined their plans for holding new elections — and touched on a host of other issues.

The photo above — and I apologize for its poor quality — is of PM Surayud seated on the dais. (Click on the image for a bigger version.)

The IHT’s Tom Fuller has some analysis of the PM’s remarks (notably Surayud’s proclamation that Shariah law could be imposed in the restive south), while The Nation’s also got some details regarding the evening.

Seth Mydans had a good story in yesterday’s IHT:

It was a smiling coup for the Land of Smiles, quick, neat, bloodless and broadly popular among the citizens of Bangkok. For several days, the tanks in the streets were a sort of petting zoo as families brought their children to climb onto the big, friendly machines.

Now, six weeks later, the tanks are gone, the mess of politics has reasserted itself and the generals are fumbling a bit with their new image as managers. People have begun to complain that these fix-it men have not yet produced what one foreign political analyst called “instant democracy.”

(Emphasis mine.)

New Mandala:

It was only a matter of time before more stories about the planned filming of Rambo IV: In The Serpent’s Eye started seeping out. This action flick is slated to be “shot” in a Thai national park in the far north over the coming dry season. The global media just gorges on this kind of story and, well, why not?

According to a Sydney Morning Herald report headlined “No violence please, we’re Thais“, director of the Thailand Film Office, Wanasiri Morakul, has said:

We have warned them that any violence has to be reasonable because we care about young people.

In another report, this time by the Associated Press via WTOP, Wanasiri continues:

Some scenes might be a little bit violent, so we asked them not to make it too violent because if we say that the ethnic minorities are violent, it might be inappropriate.

According to the reports, in this fourth installment of the Rambo franchise the title character has retired to Bangkok. Rather than haunting the bars, or running a gem racket, Rambo is, according to the plot leaks, working as a military boat repairer in the “City of Angels”. I guess they needed some reasonable justification for putting him in Thailand. In so many ways, though, being a boat repairer is pretty far-fetched. Why couldn’t they play it safe? Couldn’t they make him a sports instructor at ISB? An English teacher at ECC? Or a restaurant owner down Sukhumwit way? Those are the sorts of things that the average retired American soldier ends up doing in Thailand.

But I digress, Rambo isn’t average. It shouldn’t need repeating - we all accept that realism isn’t the strong point of this remarkable cinematic franchise.

(Emphasis mine.)

Related: Rambo: Coming to Bangkok (and Burma)

Last night A and I had the pleasure of meeting up with Claire and Frans [their Flickr site; Frans's site], my good friends since college. They’re in Bangkok for a few days on their way to Bhutan. (Yes, I am utterly roiling with jealousy that they’re going there).

We ate at Baan Khanitha; if you ask me, the highlight of our meal was the yam som o — spicy pomelo salad with shrimp and chicken. Our other dishes — a yellow chicken curry, a steamed whole fish, and more — were also tasty. For dessert, the mango with sticky rice, while perhaps not as sublime as my favorite khao niaow ma muang joint on soi Thong Lor, was also quite succulent.

Safe travels, Claire and Frans, and thanks for paying ole uncle Newley a visit in Krungthep.

Bangkok’s brand-new airport. That’s the subject of my latest Gridskipper post.

How to carry a bucket and drive a motorbike at the same time. Awesome.

The tag says it all:

“ASIAN SIZE XL.”

I bought this pair of shorts here in Bangkok recently. If you’re a large person like me and you’ve ever tried to buy clothing in Asia, you’ll appreciate the fact that Adidas has seen fit to label these bad boys honestly. An XL in Asia is perhaps an M in America.

Related photos of me being large and in charge in the far east and elsewhere outside of North America:

Looking silly in Jakarta.

With Mammoth and Dong and the Gin Long Crew in Kaohsiung, Taiwan (somewhat embarrasingly, I’m wearing the same tee in this pic — but hey, I was on a long trip).

Next to a microscopic Opel in Ireland circa 2002.

Standing next to a chair in the north of Vietnam

With a food vendor in central Ecuador

And with a gaggle of girls in Quito.

Torrential rains hit Bangkok last night; I ended up stuck in a Starbucks — stupidly sans umbrella or even rain jacket — until the storm abated. I snapped these pics on my way back to my apartment. As you can see, there was some serious flooding. And more may be in store…

Austin Considine and I have a story in today’s New York Times travel section about Thailand, tourism, and the recent military coup.

Legendary Timesman R.W. (Johnny) Apple Jr. has shuffled off this mortal coil.

Quoth the Times’s Todd Purdum:

R. W. Apple Jr., who in more than 40 years as a correspondent and editor at The New York Times wrote from more than 100 countries about war and revolution, politics and government, food and drink, and the revenge of living well, died yesterday in Washington. He was 71.

The cause was complications of thoracic cancer.

With his Dickensian byline, Churchillian brio and Falstaffian appetites, Mr. Apple, who was known as Johnny, was a singular presence at The Times almost from the moment he joined the metropolitan staff in 1963. He remained a colorful figure as new generations of journalists around him grew more pallid, and his encyclopedic knowledge, grace of expression — and above all his expense account — were the envy of his competitors, imitators and peers.

Mr. Apple enjoyed a career like no other in the modern era of The Times. He was the paper’s bureau chief in Albany, Lagos, Nairobi, Saigon, Moscow, London and Washington. He covered 10 presidential elections and more than 20 national nominating conventions. He led The Times’s coverage of the Vietnam War for two and a half years in the 1960’s and of the Persian Gulf war a generation later, chronicling the Iranian revolution in between.

In honor of his passing, I thought I’d point out his superb story about eating in Bangkok that was published this time last year. Don’t miss it.

Apple also penned an article about ten notable restaurants world-wide that was due to appear this fall; it’s been published posthumously.

My latest Gridskipper post is about a talk and book signing that Tony and Maureen Wheeler, founders of the Lonely Planet guide book empire, gave here in Bangkok on Monday night.

Perhaps this has something to do with coup-related Western media censorship, but A and I saw this on TV recently here in Bangkok. The full text of this screen — which appears sporadically for 30 seconds or so during English-language commercials that feature non-political content on the cable provider UBC — reads:

Please be advised that there may be short disruptions to our satellite transmission due to sun outages from Tue 26 September to Wed 4 October from 06:00 to 15:00 due to a “sun outage”. This is a natural phenomenon that may affect our signal for a few minutes - after which normal transmission will resume. We apologise for any inconvenience.

And here’s the Thai version, for what it’s worth.

What in God’s name is a “sun outage”? Is UBC talking about solar flares? If this is a natural phenomenon, how the hell do they know when, precisely, it’ll occur? Am I going crazy here or what?

Thailand now has an interim Prime Minister. Surayud Chulanont, a retired army general, was appointed yesterday.

BBC:

Thailand prime minister sworn in

The IHT’s Seth Mydans and Tom Fuller:

Thailand’s junta said Friday that it would not interfere with the workings of the interim government it has promised to appoint. But it said it reserved the right to fire the government in exceptional circumstances.

Peter Kneisel, writing in the Boston Globe, provides some history on coups in Thailand:

Never leave home in autumn. In Thailand, it is a dangerous time for an embattled leader to travel outside the kingdom and a surprising oversight by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra that led to his overthrow. He had used his fortune to consolidate power, but neglected to firm up his popularity as he fiddled with the military promotion lists. The lists are leaked in September and published in October. Generals get restless in October, particularly if their careers are at risk.

Asia Sentinel:

The naming of retired Gen Surayud Chulanont as interim Prime Minister will cement the impression that the coup was a royal affair

Reuters:

Thai taxi rams into tank in apparent coup protest

The Nation:

The persistent myth of the ‘good’ coup

Bangkok Pundit:

COMMENT: No matter how Thailand/coup leaders/Gen Surayud tries to paint this the military are yet to withdraw from politics - the military’s position is further entrenched with the new Constitution also approved today. I also don’t imagine he will impress most businessman with his first statement in his office:

“We will concentrate on the self-sufficiency economy that His Majesty the King advocates,” he told a news conference. “We won’t concentrate so much on the
GDP numbers. We would rather look into the indicators of people’s happiness and prosperity.”

Nevertheless, Gen Surayud was not chosen to pacify businessman or the international community, but for the domestic audience. He is no technocrat with economic and legal experience, but his distinct advantage is his good reputation in Thailand. This will give him a longer honeymoon period than almost any other military appointed civilian PM in Thailand would have, but he has a tough road ahead of him and the best he can do is come out the situation with his reputation intact. The first thing he will have to learn in his short political career is his popularity will partly depend on economic performance, that is simply politics whether he is an elected PM or not.

The big news in Bangkok today is that the city’s long-awaited new airport has finally opened.

– CNN:

Bangkok opens much-delayed air hub

– Spluch:

World class airport with no air-conditioning?

– More airport photos at 2Bangkok.com.

– The award for best airport story goes to the IHT’s Tom Fuller:

Key passages:

The official inauguration of Suvarnabhumi, which is pronounced Sawana-poom, will be the latest in what has become a sort of Asian ritual in recent years: As national economies rise, governments discard the crowded, often improvised old airports and open giant, gleaming replacements. In Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and now Bangkok the new airports are the cathedrals of international air travel, with soaring glass facades and cavernous departure halls.

But the official opening of Suvarnabhumi on Thursday comes with some added baggage, and not the kind that passengers carry to check-in counters. This is political baggage.

The airport project floundered for about 40 years before Thaksin Shinawatra came to power in 2001. Thaksin, a leader whose motto could have been “I don’t want to hear excuses,” pushed through the airport’s construction and sought to open it before elections that were to be held in October or November.

Those elections were called off last week when military leaders removed Thaksin from power. Now, with the prime minister gone, the airport has become a symbol of the ambivalence that the country feels toward him.

While Thaksin was appreciated for an aggressive, can-do style that brought universal health care to the country and paid back the debts owed to the International Monetary Fund, Thaksin also came to be seen as too aggressive in a country that highly values politeness. And his administration was dogged by allegations of conflicts of interest and corruption.

“He got it done. No other government was able to do it,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a professor of political science at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok who has written about the airport. “On the other hand he cheated along the way and took a lot for his cronies.”

And:

In terms of geography, the move is a step down. Don Muang means “city on a hill” while the area around Suvarnabhumi used to be called cobra swamp before being given its present name, which means golden land. Don Muang will handle cargo and some catering for a few weeks or months and then will be used for charter and government flights.

“Cobra swamp.” Awesome.

(Emphasis mine.)

Other stories:

– Ismail Wolff has an op-ed in the NYT recounting his experience of the coup here in Bangkok:

The Silk Revolution

– AP:

Thailand’s coup leaders struggle for acceptance abroad

And last but certainly not least:

– BBC:

Thai generals ban go-go dancers

– Here’re more pics on a Thai Web site.

Only in Thailand, my friends. Only in Thailand.

I’ve got a new story over at Tripmaster Monkey. It’s called “My First Coup.”