Word: bangkok
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...complain that the once-predictable floods needed to nourish their paddies have been disrupted by the two existing Chinese dams - and the cavalcade of future hydropower projects will only make things worse. "You can't talk about the Mekong today without talking about China," says Carl Middleton, a Bangkok-based consultant for environmental watchdog International Rivers Network. "So much that's happening on the river, whether it's economic, social or environmental, can be linked to China's rise...
...calls a "Western sensibility." So far the slate includes a live-action film of the fable Mulan; a martial arts team-up of Jackie Chan and Jet Li; and a remake of the 1954 classic, The Seven Samurai, which transplants Kurosawa's besieged Japanese village to the outskirts of Bangkok and recasts the Japanese fighters as mercenary soldiers, three of whom speak English...
October 1973: a 9-year-old boy, cloistered in a Bangkok compound, flips on the television. No cartoons for him. Instead, the box broadcasts images of Thai students and workers flooding nearby streets to protest the autocratic generals ruling their nation. The boy finds the scenes enthralling, sparking a political awakening unusual in any kid, much less the scion of a privileged Thai-Chinese family. Just three years later, a violent military crackdown would bring this brief experiment in Thai democracy to an end. But by that point, the boy, Abhisit Vejjajiva, was studying overseas in Britain. "I experienced...
...northeastern Thais voted against the draft constitution, a rejection not only of the charter but of the generals who ousted the man they still consider their champion. "Bridging this [urban-rural] divide is Abhisit's biggest challenge," says Chaiwat Satha-Anand, a political scientist at Bangkok's Thammasat University. Even Abhisit, who is trying to court farmers with promises of free education and low-cost health care, acknowledges an old Thai proverb: "Rural voters elect governments; urban voters get rid of them...
...Abhisit proposes to fix that by amending the constitution should he assume the PM post. That could mean yet another referendum. "I have faith that the electorate will do what's right," he says, surprising words perhaps for a Bangkok patrician whose party was overwhelmed by Thaksin's populist tactics six years ago. Whatever happens, at least one former Prime Minister is confident about Thailand's future. "We're good at improvising," says Anand Panyarachun, who steered the nation during two separate stints in the early 1990s. "We may not be as systematic as some other countries in our democracy...