Thai Days: Herds of Zebras Sweeping Majestically Around the Shrines and Spirit Houses

Hugh Paxton’s Blog, like many visitors to Thailand I suspect, has often wondered “What’s with all these zebras?”

The zebras I refer to are carved of wood and huge herds inhabit or surround Thai spirit houses or shrines. The wooden elephants that mingle with the zebras are understandable. Elephants are not just Thailand’s national animal but some believe that elephants can act as ambassadors to the gods bearing supplicants’ wishes heavenwards and tangible results (mainly winning lottery ticket numbers) back down to earth.

But zebras?

Why? For three years I have pondered the question.

Today, thanks to archaeologist, Prof. Srisak Vanliphodom, I learned the truth.

Zebras are safe!

Why?

Because they are black and white! Like pedestrian (zebra) crossings!

Anybody who has attempted to get from one side of a Bangkok street to the other using these pedestrian facilities and has been hospitalized or simply scared witless by colour blind hot-rodders, motorbike taxis in a hurry, emergency service vehicles with defective sirens ( or anybody else in a car actually) might question the logic of this link-age.

Speaking as a man who narrowly escaped death just yesterday I certainly do. But perhaps that sort of thing wouldn’t happen if I offered the ghosts a zebra. Must give it a try!

Thai Days: Our guards!

hugh Paxton’s blog is accustomed to extremes of temperature but I must say the last week here in Bangkok has been cooking. 40 degrees plus, a day. People have reacted in different ways. In Thai Village the gardeners maintain their momentum and do what they are paid to do without breaking a sweat. We have lots of security guards because somebody important lives here and somebody else more important owns some of the properties. The guards comprise a mixed company. There’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’ (Rodel’s name for him. not mine) who looks so gently relaxed it always feels a shame to wake him to open the gate, there’s ‘hard bastard’ because he looks like the last guard on earth you would want to argue with but if you give him a strawberry smoothie then he’s a really hard bastard who will defend you to the death, there’s an army conscript and I’m really glad he’s here rather than fighting sour islamic militants in the far south. He spends his guarding days with the Thai kids teaching them guitar or chatting with his girl. Not a man cut out for war. As a security guard he’s pretty useless but he doesn’t have to do anything. There are no security risks in Thai Village. Security guard number four? He’s a slice of Thai cake! He spends his evenings chatting to my daughter and eating bees. There are quite a lot of bees around at the moment and he eats them. Catches them in flight and crunches them up.

The long hot evenings smoulder past. Guard four munches bees and does 48 hour shifts but still retains a wicked smile. Annabel and I are providing essential relief supplies. Smoothies, cool drinks, rice and chicken…no bees!That’s his business.

People are waiting for rain and a break in the weather. A splash of cool. No sign of that just yet.

On an irrelevant but interesting note I heard an extraordinary smashing and bashing at my front door. It was far too heavy to be one one of my dopey cats – I thought a motor scooter had had an accident. It was in fact a very large monitor lizard trying to break through the door to eat my cats. Given the disgraceful behaviour of my cats this evening, I wish I had let it in.

Cheers from a hot Bangkok

Hugh

Thai Days: my name is Hugh Paxton

Hugh Paxton’s Blog is really comfortable with my name. I’ve had it all my life. I feel like a Hugh Paxton. I AM a Hugh Paxton.

The problem that constantly crops up, however, is the spelling of ‘Hugh’. And ‘Paxton’. And the fact that as soon as I have tried to spell it out over a telephone the conversation rapidly deteriorates into the tower of Babel. It usually doesn’t even start with Hugh. it starts with Paxton.

This phone call was concluded just before I started writing this blog post.

Me: “Sawadee Khrap.” (Hello in Thai)

Her: “Sawadee Khaaaa” (Hello back in Thai)

Me: “My name is Hugh Paxton.”

Her: “What is your last name?”

Me: “Paxton. P-A-X-T-O-N.”

Her: “P for P?”

Me: “Perfect! A perfect “P” and an “A’ as in ‘And’ and an “X” as in “Sex” and a “T” like tea or Thailand.”

TEN MINUTES LATER:

Me: Hugh Paxton. H-U-G-H

Her: Huge?

Me: No. “H”-“U”-…

Her: “I transfer you. Sank you.”

Me: ” No please! Don’t do that! We are almost there! ‘H’ as in ‘Hello'” Hello? Hello? Hello? Utter bastards on wheels! She’s transferred me!”

A new her: “Sawadee Khaaaaaa!”

Me: “Sawadee Krap. My name is Hugh Paxton…”

Her: “Wat? Can you spell your last name?”

Me: “P. P. P! Hello?”

Her: “I transfer you.”

Me: “Please! I beg you! We haven’t even started wasting time! Hello? Sawadee krap?”

A new her: “Sawadee kaaaa.”

Etc.

20 minutes later and somebody called Hug Bacon made an appointment to see a doctor. The interesting thing about this exchange is that Hug Bacon will be visiting a doctor called Dr Phattaroyoungphanbumfuk or something like that. My pen ran out of ink at a crucial moment. And I’ve no idea what time my appointment is.

I guess that the point of this story is that some names only cross linguistic boundaries with persistence. And some names will never make it over the borders at all. Lady Gaga? There’s no way that one can go wrong. A six month old baby could say it (without meaning it). Simplicity itself! This might make her popularity understandable. But if she had decided to call herself Mademoiselle Prozxkovky I suspect that her career would have taken a different direction.

As it is, Hugh Paxton, sooner, or usually later, makes it on to paper work and hotel reservations and I’m sure that Hug Bacon will receive the very same high standards of medical attention that would otherwise be directed at some weirdly named freak called Hugh Paxton.

BLOG POST SCRIPT: Come to think of it my name Paxton has not just caused trouble but has saved a fat prostitute from Tahiti from being busted. I was sleeping in a crummy hotel room in Hong Kong’s Chungking Mansion when there was a police raid to nab illegal immigrants. 3 AM the coppers kicked my door in and I was swarmed by small aggressive Chinese yelling “Nam! Nam! Nam!” It took me a while but I then realised they wanted to know my name. “Hugh Paxton,” I said. This drove them into a frenzy. “Pakistan!” they shouted and hauled me out of what passed for a bed. “H-U-G-H” I explained. About twenty minutes later the police let me go and I could not help but notice that everybody in my budget hotel had been arrested and removed. Guests, illegal Pakistani immigrants even the chef. The cooking fires were still on. The hotel caught fire. i decided that enough was enough and spent the next few hours waiting for dawn with a very pleasant, if physically hideous prostitute from Tahiti. She had made good her escape while the Hong Kong coppers were arguing about whether I was a Paxton or a Pakistani.

Thai Days: The Thing!

Hugh Paxton’s Blog has had a lovely day. Bangkok is in high spirits and everybody is hurling water at everybody. It’s Song Khran, the Thai New Year and protocol requires everybody to douse each other in water. There are major risk areas when it comes to water fights. The Khao San road is notorious. I’ll be visiting it tomorrow just to let you know how wet one can get.

But currently I’m sitting on my sofa feeling fairly damp (the women, Thai women are positively evil when it comes to water ambushes, they smile so beautifully and you think ‘Gosh, she loves me!’ and then she pours a bucket of water over your head) and I’m now watching The Thing. My friend Andre accidentally trod on the vendor’s girlfriend. She was on the pavement. She suffered no serious injuries. But the Thing I’m watching now isn’t just a pirate DVD but is a remake of John Carpenter’s classic with a totally different plot and it is in Thai. The wretch assured me it was in English.

Even the monster from outer space is speaking Thai. Blimey! It’s just been incinerated! And its complaining in Thai! While it runs away into the Arctic snow flaming away. I know that it will come back. And there will be more Thai. This is clearly helpful if one wants to learn Thai from outer space. But I don’t want to learn Thai at the moment.

My idea, and it might seem a bit vindictive, is to storm my DVD merchant’s stall and spray the deceitful stinker with lots of water while wishing him a happy Thai New Year.

If you are in Bangkok at the moment don’t venture out with anything that could be destroyed by a bunch of people spraying you with a hose.

That’s it for now!

Cheers!

Hugh

Thai Days: Bombs away

Hugh Paxton’s Blog reports that yesterday simply was not IranianIslamic militant, Saeid Moradi’s day. It all began to go pear shaped when he and two of his colleagues blew the roof of their apartment building on Sukhumvit Soi 71 in central Bangkok. Moradi’s buddies left the shattered premises, hailed a taxi and scarpered leaving Moradi holding the baby – or more accurately the hand grenades. Moradi tried to flag down a ride but no motorists stopped which, given the fact that Moradi’s face was covered in blood and he was holding bombs and standing beside a building that had just exploded, is hardly surprising. Moradi, enraged, lobbed one of his grenades which detonated under a pink taxi (causing minor injuries to the driver). Moradi then fled in the direction of a school and an approaching police car. He threw his remaining explosives at it but the projectile bounced off a pick up truck. A classic case of return to sender. His bomb blew both his legs off and he was arrested. One of his friends was arrested at the airport, the other slipped into Malaysia and last I heard is still at large.

Thai Days: Goby Fish’s Dad off the Hook

Hugh Paxton’s Blog is happy to report that Goby Fish’s father has only been given a suspended 15 day sentence and fined 500 Baht (a trivial sum) for causing mass panic and evacuations in Tak province. The Tak business community and tourism industry would have been happier if the man had been hurled into Tak reservoir in a sack filled with wild animals (or ravenous goby fishes) but the court was lenient. The prophet Goby Fish still has a following despite being wrong and his father still thinks he was right. Long story. And very silly. See previous blog post. Cheers and have a happy prophecy-free Tuesday!
Hugh

Thai Days: Pla Bu the prophet “Goby Fish.”

Back in 1974 a young lad nicknamed Pla Bu (Goby Fish) informed his father that he would die in fifteen days. He then asked his father to buy a tape recorder as he had a lot of prophecies to make in his handful of remaining days. Dad didn’t get round to it but when, true to his word, Goby Fish bellied up on day 15, Dad racked his brains and wrote down all that had been told him. Among Goby’s predictions were the 9/11 attacks, the 2004 Asian tsunami, earthquakes and a nuclear war scheduled for 2014.

Dad didn’t tell anybody about his all-knowing son’s wise words until October last year when he decided to broadcast on YouTube. Thais tend to be a bit superstitious and the post went viral with nearly one million hits in the first fifteen days. As Guru columnist Andrew Biggs put it, “On a global scale Goby Fish’s father was as popular as a new Lady Gaga video. Not bad for a video of unparalleled tedium as this 73 year old drones on about the predictions of his son all those years ago.”

Goby Fish didn’t predict that this would involve a massive financial loss or his father’s arrest. Or maybe he did and Dad just missed it or forgot to write it down.

Anyway the prophecy that doomed Tak province to abject ruin involved the following warning.

“At 10 pm on New Ywar’s Eve a massive earthquake will send Bangkok into the sea and the big dam in Tak province will burst, obliterating central Thailand.”

There followed a media frenzy, thousands of tourists cancelled their seasonal holidays in Tak, locals near the dam fled in droves, and the Tak governnor relocated his official New Year celebrations to the dam to show his faith in the dam’s invulnerability.

Of course Goby Fish had blown it. Nothing happened in the dam busting department but authorities estimate that Tak province lost 400 million Baht in tourism revenue.

Back to Andrew Biggs – “The father of this Nostradamus is unrepentant. In the media on Wednesday he reminded us all that “Who said it was last Saturday night? Thailand has lots of new Years – the Chinese New Year, the Indian New year, Songkran…or maybe my son meant the New Year celebrations at the end of this year.” Oh man, enough already!”

The Tak governor has certainly had enough already. A warrant is out for the arrest of Goby Fish’s father who will be facing charges of misleading the public and spreading false information.

Thai Days: Shoot for the moon

Hugh Paxton’s blog watched the lunar eclipse on Saturday evening from the roof of a high rise condo block in central Bangkok. It was a wonderful evening. Sameer, a friend from Nepal had rattled the pans and laid on a banquet, the gin and tonics were iced and abundant, and while the moon slowly vanished, obscured from the sun by the movement of the earth, and the neon glow of the skyscrapers I felt that I was blessed.

Elsewhere in Thailand four people felt a mixture of surprise and agony as they were hit by bullets falling from the night sky. Failing to know that there was an eclipse and staying indoors did not offer immunity. In Nakhon Nayok, a 20 year old student was hit and slightly injured by a bullet that smashed through her roof.

Police believe the gun slingers responsible were “superstitious” people who thought the demon Rahu was swallowing the moon. Not everybody opened fire. Many Thais in rural areas did their bit to fend off Rahu by contenting themselves with letting off firecrackers, beating drums,  or bashing pans or gongs.

Thai Days: Xayaburi dam plan put on hold

Further to Hugh Paxton’s Blog’s last post, I’m happy to inform you that the Xayaburi dam project in Laos has just been suspended following a meeting between officials from four nations that share stretches of the 4,900 km long Mekong river. The proposed dam, which is still under consideration by Laos (where the dam would be built), would displace over 2,000 villagers and severely affect the world’s largest freshwater fishery. Pianporn Deetes of the environmental group International Rivers welcomed the decision of the “Mekong States”.

“With so much at stake, more time is desperately needed so that an informed, participatory and responsible decision can be made,” she said.

Thai Days: On the Wild Side

Hugh Paxton’s Blog has added a new link brucekekule.com Bruce is a wildlife writer and photographer covering S.E.Asia. His latest offering is on gravely endangered Siamese crocodiles.Well worth looking at.