Word: bangkok
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...cannot be trusted and that locals should not cooperate with the authorities. Now, Thailand is faced with the possibility that the insurgents are expanding their terror campaign into new parts of the country. "These militants are very provocative and getting more indiscriminate," says Sunai Phasuk, a political scientist at Bangkok's Thammasat University. "Their idea appears to be to try and trap Thaksin and the military into a cycle of violence...
...Prime Minister ruled out the idea of retaliating with force against the insurgents. At the same time he ordered a dramatic increase in security at the nation's airports, embassies, and major commercial and tourist centers. Last week, hundreds of checkpoints and surveillance cameras were set up across Bangkok, including on Khao San Road, a tourist strip popular with backpackers. "We must remain vigilant," says one senior military intelligence official. "[The militants now] have the ability to strike anywhere...
...Smith Dharmmasaroj, a Thai official in charge of setting up his country's early-warning system, didn't have to wait for the alert from Hawaii. Ten minutes after the quake struck, he received a phone call from a friend in Bangkok who had felt its tremors. A few minutes later, Dharmmasaroj had confirmed the quake's size and location with seismologists, and then he began working the phones. The result: 40 minutes after the quake, Thai TV and radio networks were broadcasting warnings. In coastal areas, police and soldiers went out on the streets with loudspeakers. But Dharmmasaroj still...
...With the country this year hoping to attract a staggering 15 million visitors?one for every four Thais?one definition of "Thai-ness" is simply "whatever tourists want." Cornwel-Smith rightly condemns plans to demolish old Bangkok neighborhoods to create "Paris-style open vistas" to accommodate both tourists and convenience-store chains. Very Thai? Hardly. But however tourist-oriented Thailand has become, Cornwel-Smith's exhaustive research suggests that perhaps foreigners don't know the country as well as they assume. Despite its freewheeling reputation, Thailand surpasses even Japan in its adherence to stifling social hierarchies?note the national obsession...
...longtime Bangkok resident myself, I find the author too charitable at times. Is the city's Chatpetch Tower really a "post-modernist pastiche" of the ubiquitous Greco-Roman style? Or is it just rubbish, like so much urban Thai architecture? Sometimes, too, the urge to be exhaustive is just plain exhausting, although future social historians will thank Cornwel-Smith for recording how you toughen up a Siamese fighting fish before a bout. (Rather meanly, you "just stir the water.") Encyclopedic in scope, Very Thai is an unapologetic celebration of both the exotic and the everyday, and an affectionate reminder...