BACK IN BANGKOK

14th - 20th Dec 2021

The latest (muffled) news on Thai TV

I must be getting old and unadventurous as I find myself going back to familiar places and not exploring new ones. Thus many of the places photographed here were probably shown on previous Thailand blogs. I suppose the main difference this time around is that Bangkok is suffering a lack of tourists so things are not so 'vibrant'. Following a total lockdown earlier ths year, including a total ban on alcohol (and we think we had it bad in UK!) many shops, hotels, bars and restaurants went bust or just closed down. As tourists were 'cautiously' allowed back, me included, things began to pick up a bit until "BANG!", they made it more difficult again. A real 'shot in the foot'. Well done Thailand.

Left: Phat Phong Street three years ago. The epicentre of Bangkok debauchery, its Night Market was always packed with punters looking for a bargain fake watch or a lively, stimulating and 'original' cultural show. Helpful and accommodating 'hostesses' were in abundance and the bars were humming.

Right: Phat Phong now. Oh dear! What a difference a bug makes. I was hoping, to stay at a hotel on Silom Road called The Narai as I have done on previous visits as it was a) very comfortable with a great bar providing musical entertainment plus an excellent restaurant b) central for travel and c) real value for money at about £30 pn. It is another casualty of 'Covid' and has closed. Bah!

Of course the main thing you notice here now is that everyone is face-masked everywhere. I believe it is the law and you can be fined if caught with a naked face (unless sitting down eating or drinking where, as we have agreed, this virus does not operate). Tourists follow suit, although asking around I have not heard of anyone who has been fined and I have certainly never attracted any comment when I 'accidently' forget to wear mine over my mouth and nose....just around my throat in case of ambush by the 'mask police'.

The Thais put up with this unquestioningly. Much more so even than the TIMs in UK. They are fervent 'maskies'. As with the Vietnamese, they are an exceedingly charming, polite and helpful people. However they are brought up to respect and obey authority, or their bosses, and comply regardless of whether what they are told to do is right or wrong or even counter-productive. They do not seem ever to ask themselves, or others, the question 'why'? They are very bright people and quick to learn, but robotically educated and trained 'by rote'. Things to them are rather 'black and white' (if it's not a criminal offence to use that expression nowadays!). Hence, as well as being compliant and submissive, lateral and original thinking are not their strong points. For example, they would  never understand the concept of the party game 'Charades', but it is why Ho Chi Minh & Co. managed to get supplies down the trail from North to South Vietnam during the war. If a North Vietnamese officer commanded "Nguyen Thi Bonk Ho, you take this 100kg artillery shell 500 miles down to Viet Cong comrades in South, now go!". "Yes comrade I go quick quick" would have been the reply. Can you imagine what a British squaddie would have said? Somehing along the lines of "you must be f*****g taking the piss, Sir!" (or an American GI would merely have blown his officer up). Another example, was given to me by a lady who taught English to Vietnamese in Saigon. The students, aged in their 20s, were very diligent and quick to learn. At the end of the course the teacher asked them "what is your opinion of the course?". She was greeted with blank stares. When pressed to answer the reply was "but you have not taught us that". Opinions? A dangerous question.

After a while it becomes rather dispiriting, indeed depressing, to be in a country where nobody dares to show their face. One of the joys and uplifting sights in Thailand used to be the many pretty girls you saw on the streets. Now you are confronted by a faceless society of zombies. On the other hand that girl may have a lovely figure but, who knows, she might be concealing the fizzog of a gargoyle! Masking the whole population is no small matter. It is not just a minor uncomfortable inconvenience. It is social death. I worry that it will never end. Anyway, enough of my philosophising.

I went to the Esplanade Mall (left), a vast emporium in the north of the city to see the Bangkok version of the virtual reality museum 'Art in Paradise'. I visited the Pattaya version a few years ago and was impressed. This Mall has six levels, is immaculate inside and has shops which sell just about anything you can think of. The 'Art in Paradise' was on the 4th floor (I read). I got there. It was closed! I was told it had been closed for over 6 months (Covid 19 of course) and no sign of reopening. Various internet sites are still advertising it. Bah again! 

Right: In many of these establishments there are 'covid detecting stations' positioned at the entrances. Some are manned, most  not. They are multi-function temperature taking, UR code tracking, hand-sanitiser dispensing facilities, plus 'warning' notices. You rarely see anybody using them, and if manned the most you are asked to do is put your hand over the electric thermometer thingy. Again, more for virtuous display than useful purpose.

Travelling around the city using the Mass Rail Transport (MRT) or Skytrain (BTS), the overhead equivalents of London's Underground, is a joy. The stations and trains are immaculately clean, electronic signage always shows where you are going both in the trains and on platforms, the ticketing system is efficient and simple and, above all, cheap

Left: You rarely see any passenger who is not head down on their smart-phone.

Being Christmas time, carols were being played at the station platforms. Actually it was either 'Yingo Bells' or, over and over again, 'The Twelve Days of Keesmah' sung rather delightfully by a female Thai warbler. It was delightful for the first few times but began to pall a bit after the umpteenth rendition. 

I revisited the famous Chatuchak Weekend Market. This vast market, possibly the biggest in the world, covers 37 acres and has in excess of 15,000 'shops' divided into sectors. A map (right) is necessary to give you half a chance of finding something you want.

Left: Darth Vader was standing outside the MRT station when I arrived. I never did find out what he was selling, or advertising, but he enjoyed having his photo taken and gave me a cheery wave with his lightsabre. He was still there when I returned 2 hours later.

As rather expected, the market was relatively quiet. Not the heaving mass of tourists, and locals, that I remember. Indeed most of the shops inside the covered areas were closed. There used to be several 'performers' doing odd musical and other things, but they were mostly 'absent without leave'.

Left: This was a shop in the market that I hadn't seen before. It was, as you can see, selling cannabis things to eat. I have no idea what they are like and I certainly wasn't willing to try! I am told that the present Thai Goverment is very 'Methodist' on things like alcohol (and more about that later) and try every which way to make the purchase of it difficult....but they must be rather more relaxed on 'soft' drugs.

Right: Not so many muslims on display here, but at least they are well catered for. Except that when I went to find out what Islamic delicacies were on offer I found it was closed. 

Left: One of my regular haunts on Silom Road. Another 'Oirish Bear' called O'Malleys. No muslims there as far as I could gather, but a pleasant pub nevertheless.

Right: Another stalwart watering hole on Silom Road; Buddy's Bar. Managed by a 'Brit' it attracts many 'ex-pats' and does great nosh, especially delicious are the Swedish meatballs with a spicy gravy, redcurrent sauce and mash. Yum yum. 

Left: Inside Buddy's. Taken when I was there alone. Believe me, it does get quite busy at times and they have a pool table up the stairs at the back. Plus the ubiquitous Premier League football on TV. I may have mentioned this before but there are three things, and only three things, that the rest of the world knows, or takes an interest in, regarding the UK. First and foremost Premier League football, secondly the Royal Family and third, Mr Bean!

Right: A bevy of bemasked beauties offering massage. Every other shop in some streets seems to be a massage parlour. I rarely see any customers visiting.

Stopping here for a breather, and I am well behind writing this drivel, I attach a column from the Daily Telegraph which rather supports my views on face-masks in planes.

ANNABEL FENWICK ELLIOTT

Daily Telegraph. 22nd December 2021

 

22 December 2021 • 2:02pm

Masks on planes forever?

What a ludicrous travesty that

would be

Face masks could become a permanent feature of air travel, despite data showing that they're next to useless in a plane cabin.

I was encouraged to see on Twitter this morning reports from a CNN travel journalist that several of the “cavalier” flight attendants on her BA flight were not wearing masks. “I'm so angry,” Julia Buckley huffed. “I even booked a seat in biz to feel safer, and the danger was in the galley right in front of me.” Looks to me like progress. It has been my fear that muzzle mandates would become another of one of those daft protocols forever absorbed into the permanent aviation safety doctrine, in the same way that, thanks to 9/11, we will never again be able to board a plane with a normal-sized tube of toothpaste in our hand luggage. It’s certainly what White House medical advisor Anthony Fauci suggested over the weekend when asked by ABC whether we’d eventually get to a point where we won’t have to wear masks on planes. “I don’t think so,” he stated.

Of course, there was outrage in response to Buckley’s tweet thread, in which she posted a photo of a maskless cabin crew member standing alone sipping a drink by the coffee machine, and further complained: “Can’t wait for my executive club gift of omicron to take home to the family for Christmas.”

“Crikey. That’s really shocking,” read the first reply. “You would think the cabin crew would be worried about their own safety, if nothing else.” The rest followed a similar theme.
Readers, it’s time for a few fast facts. First, it goes without saying that if Buckley – believing, as presumably she does, that the cloth barrier between her face and the surrounding air really is critical in keeping her safe from Covid – dared, at any point during the flight, to lower her mask in order to eat or drink herself, along with the vast majority of her fellow passengers, then she’s lost the argument, and all logic has left the cabin. Masks either work or they don’t; the virus doesn’t take a break at mealtimes.

I'm on a BA flight where neither the cabin crew nor the pilot are wearing masks as we sit here waiting to take off. Unsurprisingly some of the passengers are following their lead. Can't wait for

my executive club gift of omicron to take home to the family for Christmas

Secondly, it might seem counterintuitive but even if no-one wore masks on flights at all, airline cabins would still provide about the safest environment you can be confined to when it comes to Covid transmission – far, far better than that of a bar, coffee shop or restaurant, where guests are seldom forced to wear them.

Fauci himself conceded this on Sunday. “Even though you have a good filtration system [on planes], I still believe that masks are a prudent thing to do,” he said, offering no more justification, after Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly stated: “I think the case is very strong that masks don’t add much, if anything, in the air cabin environment.”

In reality, thanks to their hospital-grade HEP (high-efficiency particulate) filters, the air inside a plane cabin is changed more than 25 times an hour; a system that removes 99.97 per cent of airborne viruses and bacteria, states the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

The data backs it up. According to the largest real-world study to date, conducted by Delta Air Lines, your chances of being exposed to Covid-19 on a flight whereby every passenger has tested negative (as per the policy on most routes) is less than 0.1 per cent. Separate findings from IATA, from early 2020 – crucially before the use of face masks on flights became common practice – identified just 44 cases of potential coronavirus infections among the 1.2 billion people who travelled by air in that period.

In short, for all the hysteria they attract, planes have never been a hot-bed for Covid transmission, and no scientist pretends otherwise. Rather, that accolade goes to hospitals – far and away your best setting in which to catch the virus – where

   

absolutely everyone is masked up at all times, and have been for the best part of two years.
But such precautions aren’t entirely useless when flying. Those little packages airlines hand out to passengers in their billions – the ones containing surgical masks, gloves and hand sanitisers – have at least been highly effective in reversing the industry’s long-running crusade against single-use plastic.

Indeed, if anyone should be getting their knickers in a twist over how, when and why masks should be used at 37,000 feet, it would rightly be the turtles, all those miles below, who shall be suffocating on them for many decades to come.