Word: bangkok
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...comparatively inexpensive sex-change operations, where patients faced fees as low as $5,000, as well as looser requirements for pre-surgery psychological counseling. Thailand is now a destination spot for all types of plastic surgery as well as a host of routine medical procedures. Bumrungrad International Hospital in Bangkok is probably Thailand's best-known mecca for medical tourists, boasting patients from "over 190 countries" and an "International Patient Center" with interpreters and an airline ticket counter...
...People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), which has long been intent on erasing from government any influence of billionaire populist Thaksin Shinawatra, who was deposed as Prime Minister in a 2006 army coup. After surrounding Parliament and forcing lawmakers to abandon their work, the PAD moved on to Bangkok's old airport, where a VIP lounge now serves as the makeshift headquarters of current Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat. A brother-in-law of Thaksin, Somchai was evicted from his real office by the protesters, who have besieged Government House for the past three months. (See pictures of Thai people boxing...
...Hollywood writer couldn't make this stuff up. But satire aside, Thailand's leadership crisis is derailing what once was one of the region's most promising economies. Political street violence in Bangkok has claimed several lives over the past couple months, and spooked investors and tourists, on whose dollars Thailand depends. Growth forecasts for 2009 hover at a bleak 3%. But even as these troubles mount, neither the government nor the opposition appears willing to give ground. Somchai has refused to resign, and the PAD vows to keep up its campaign even if it means further tarnishing Thailand...
...Citizen Juling was screened at the Bangkok International Film Festival in September but Thai TV stations have passed on it, even in serialized form - and censors may have the final say on whether it gets a general release. "It is odd that after four years and over 3,000 dead, only one Thai film has been made on the southern unrest," says Ing. "How can we have a peaceful society with real, as opposed to ceremonial, democracy without media literacy...
...telephone address to tens of thousands of his supporters who had gathered in a Bangkok stadium, Thaksin brushed off concerns about his refuge woes. Several countries, he has claimed, have offered him honorary citizenship. Although Thaksin didn't specify his possible future home, the Bahamas did express initial willingness to host the former premier when he fled Thailand this summer after his wife was found guilty of tax evasion. Thai media have also reported that the Central African Republic might take Thaksin in if he's willing to invest some of his fortune in one of Africa's poorest countries...