Post 303: After Songkran .....

The Songkran Festival marks the end of the dry season in Thailand and this morning, sure enough, it’s bloody raining. None of your British drizzle, this is a full-on monsoon and the first rain that I‘ve seen since arriving. It makes a welcome change from the blistering heat and despite the flooding of roads and residences, everybody just seems to go about their day as normal. The only real downside to the rain is my camera. It survived the many drenchings that is received over Songkran but has been temporarily defeated by the rain. It will dry out eventually and at least the photographs already taken are safe ….. mai pen rai

I’ve suffered from tonsillitis and glandular fever before, admittedly when I was much younger, but at least I knew exactly what to expect. You begin by feeling crap, then the tonsils begin to swell and the throat eventually closes. This is closely followed by swelling of the more southerly organs but I knew that the antibiotics would solve the problem and that within a few days, normal service will be resumed. What I’d forgotten about was the fatigue that follows. Maybe it’s just that I’m a lot older now, but even dragging my arse out of bed in a morning seems difficult. As a result, I’ve spent the past couple of days mooching around and catching far too much of the BBC World News.

It’s not difficult to see that an election is looming back home. Concerned for the welfare of UK Citizens abroad, Gordon Brown is apparently deploying the Royal Navy to rescue holidaymakers stranded in the South of Spain. Holidaymakers stranded in the South of Spain where they went in order to temporarily escape from jobs that they probably hate. I’m sorry, but I’m not really feeling their pain. Then, Gordon Brown is seemingly overcome with anger at the actions of Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs apparently sold a shed load of CDO’s to one group of customers and negative Hedging Contracts to others. I know that he’s partially sighted but what I didn’t know was that he also had a restricted sense of smell and short-term memory loss. While he was encouraging ‘Light Touch Regulation’ and busy counting the abundant tax revenues coming into the Treasury from his "Favourite Bank", the coffee had been wafting beneath his nose but he’d chosen not to smell it. Are we to believe that Goldman Sachs were the only Investment Bank with their noses in these two particular troughs? No. But the Government don't own any part of Goldman Sachs and they're hardly likely to take themselves to court are they? The man protests too much me thinks …. mai pen rai

Bored with Brown’s false anger and concern, I’ve now switched to following the news on Thai TV. Most of the coverage concerns the Red Shirt demonstrations in Bangkok. With hours of coverage and disjointed Thai commentary, I haven’t got a clue what’s really happening. To me, it’s just fun playing the most difficult game of "Where’s Wally" that you could possibly imagine …. mai pen rai

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