Travel to Isaan to see Thailand as it should be. Simple life, genuine people and the most unspoiled area of Thailand. Isaan encompasses these cities and more: Ubon Ratchathani, Sisaket, Mukdahan, Udonthani, Khon Kaen, Roi-Et, Yasothan.. I bring humorous stories, notes, and photos to Isaan Style as a teacher living in Isaan.
To all the readers of Isaan Style, well the three or 4 people that sometimes drop by. I am happy to report that I will be taking a sabbatical for a while.
I don’t know how long it will be and it could be forever we will just have to wait and see.
To everyone who has commented over the past 5 years thank you and hopefully one day I will be back posting again. I will leave with a picture of the most amazing girl in my life, Nong Ja. She is an amazing girl and I love her to bits. Here she is sleeping with her family of dolls.
I am sure this could upset a few people but I am sure many others will support my views. It is something that many don’t sit on the fence on.
The other night I was watching Lateline, an Australian news show and they had Secretary General Salil Shetty of Amnesty International on for an interview.
You can watch the interview at this link though it is an edited version for some reason and not the full interview I watched.
First and foremost to Salil Shetty, go fu#k yourself. I sat and listened to this idiot bad mouth my country. How about making more of an effort and cleaning up your own country being India. India is a disgrace when it comes to human rights and listening to this asshole say,
“Australia's treatment of asylum seekers and Indigenous people is deeply disturbing and an international embarrassment,” pissed me off.
Asylum seekers, in Australia you are either for or against them. I am against.
I agree that people have the right to flee a country when their lives are in danger, their country is being torn apart by war and so forth.
What I do not agree with is the complaints from these NGO’s that claim Australia is wrong in housing asylum seekers in detention centres like Shetty did.
“Australia's treatment of asylum seekers and refugees is simply not acceptable and indeed illegal” he has said.
“Australia's simply in breach of international refugee law and there's no getting around it.”
“So the idea of detention is fundamentally against international refugee conventions. So it's fine to do an ID check and a screening but you cannot put people in mandatory detention centres. They can be put in the community and that's how it's done across the world.”
I am sorry but I do not agree. These people would not be easy to screen. I mean if they have no documents at all, and even if they do. How does immigration verify their claims of who they are?
Just put them into the general population, house and feed them, give them an allowance until they check out or are deported, you have to be kidding me.
So some of these people and families have been in detention for years, in one case a family has been in detention for nearly 5 years. I am sorry but so be it. If you stay there for 10 years, so be it. If you do not like it, then return to your country and take the cards that are dealt to you.
He said this, "Conditions are very bad there. Even for the very young people. Every day - they're having sleeping pills to treat depression. Mental health conditions are appalling with self-harm cases increasing and suicide."
And we are to blame, Australia. We as Australians shoved them on a boat or a plane and made them seek asylum in Australia. They choose to seek asylum in Australia, then sit down and shut up and in due process you will be either accepted as an asylum seeker or deported. It’s as simple as that.
When I have seen the protests in the detention centres and the detainees destroying property, I truly want to take a baton and beat the living hell out of them. Am I a racist? Am I inhumane? Maybe I am.
When I read that asylum seekers couldn’t be deported as they were hostile and made threats before boarding a plane, simple, bound and gag them, tie them up and throw them on the plane.
What I don’t understand are the asylum claims of people who come by air, they fly into Australia and one of the parts of getting a visa for Australia is, “you will not claim asylum”. That is pretty simple and shut to me.
So when someone does do this, cuff them, gag and hood them, inject them with a relaxant if necessary and remove them from Australian shores. Am I a racist? Maybe I am.
And then Shetty has a stab at Australia for the Aborigines. He travelled to a place called Utopia and said this.
"Devastating, I've been to many places in bad shape in Africa, Asia and Latin America but what makes it stark here is when you remind yourself you're actually in one of the richest countries in the world."
He was appalled at the lack of basics in the town, running water, electricity and so on. He went on about how wanting to move these towns into areas where all the things above were available, but then said that Aboriginals are part of the land. I understand that but if they don't want to leave what can we do, force them?
I worked for a company and we built housing for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in remote parts of Australia. It was government expenditure and what I witnessed with my own eyes was deplorable, heartbreaking and baffling at times.
I remember one house that we had handed over just days before and we were called back to it (This is where you make big money) to repair doors that had been ripped off, holes in the walls and windows smashed. This happened a lot. We had a crew that virtually did maintenance on brand new housing.
I agree that what happened to the Aboriginals years ago by white settlers and governments gone by were wrong. I cannot ever put myself in their feet as I am not black. But I do know for years and years now, government after government have tried in many ways to make their quality of life better.
Anyway, back to Salil Shetty. I as an Australian am repulsed that you come to my country and then offload your verbal tripe. Especially when you own country of India is a disgrace, people who beat others to death as they are from a cast of the wrong level and married, burning people as they believe them to still be witches, the slums and poverty, the blatant corruption, the underage prostitution and the treatment of women.
So Shetty, go to India, and preach you drivel there, tell your country their failings and try to make India a rung higher on the ladder leading out of the sewer tank.
And I am not sure about an international organisation that collects donations and then pays the leaving secretary general £533,103 pounds or 4 times her yearly wage. And another ex-gratia payment to another person who resigned of £320,000 pounds. That is a lot of money and I am sure could have been used much better to champion fight for human rights that Amnesty International go on about.
I wonder for each dollar donated how much of that dollar actually hits the ground and helps the people it was intended for. I have read that between 50 and 80% of money donated can be eaten up before it reaches the people who need it the most.
I have been having a lot of fun of late reading about a foreigner living in Pattaya, who seems to be a huge scam artist from what I have read the last few days.
It all started when I was reading a website I really like called Pattaya Days. It is written by Spike who is quick witted very funny. He is also an excellent photographer and his site has a broad range of pictures when polo isn’t being played.
Spike shows that people do live normally in what most see as the seedy seaside city of Pattaya, full of go-go bars and corruption. Spike and his wife go about their days as normal folk do across the world every day.
Anyway, I am going off track here. Spike posted a blog titled, “More Noyes noise”
It was a funny piece about his wife finding him a job but he is happily retired. It was a position as editor for Pattaya Times Newspaper. The owner of this paper is Drew Noyes. And Spike had found some very interesting things to read about Drew Noyes at AndrewDrummond.com who is a very thorough journalist and leaves no stones unturned and is not scared of going after so called “big fish.”
Drew Noyes has threatened Andrew Drummond and his family, and at times Noyes comes across as bizarre.
Here are some links to Andrew’s site and some articles about Mr. Noyes.
It is about Noyes and his no show at a court hearing on a libel suit after Noyes claimed a well-known Dutchman in the Pattaya was wanted for drugs trafficking.
Apparently Noyes had to ‘Insight into the Criminal Proceedings for Foreigners in Thailand,” instead.
It also covers many of Noyes claims that seem to always turn out to be a little farfetched. He continually amends ads and other claims as he is challenged. All interesting reading.
Here he writes about well known porn producer American Tony Poer (I had never heard of him until reading this) He is one of the sex tourists that pray on upcountry Thai girls and video them and degrade them and post their images all over the WWW.
Tony Poer was arrested. They raided his apartment and found drugs, a loaded gun and an out of date Thai visa. Plus all his equipment for making pornography which is also illegal.
Then the story gets interesting as one paper claimed, “He faced 20 years in jail.” But apparently within 24hrs he was back on the streets and could be there today.
Apparently Mr. Noyes and his company of lawyers secured bail for Poer of only 200,000 baht.
Then all the newspaper articles relating to Poer’s arrest disappeared. One paper simply said “all newspapers were asked to remove online references to Poer.”
An excellent read and goes back to a story in 1995 where Noyes gets himself into hot water back in the states and a myriad or lies just continue on and on.
And the articles just keep coming and they get better and better with more facts that just seem to dig a bigger hole for Noyes.
I couldn’t believe what I read and reread the story a few times. Is Noyes really this much of a fraudster? All these investors that have been ripped off cannot be lying.
It is in this article that Noyes becomes bizarre with a threat of “stop stalking and defaming him, and remove all references to him and his companies or he will talk to “influential people” and ask them to do whatever to stop all this once and for all.”
Here Drummond reveals articles stolen in full form other publications and used in Pattaya Times, Noyes’s newspaper. They have been lifted word for word and a new name attached in most cases. Absolutely hilarious.
And totally bizarre is when Noyes prints in The Pattaya Times, Andrew Drummond Sought By Police on the 07/10/2011.
This goes into two Filipina girls who were showered with promises and came to work for Noyes and it all turned to crap, again a great read.
I won’t go into all the other things I have read on social networking sites and the likes of Teak Door that who is referred to by Andrew as Eric or aka Dirty Dog. Dirty Dog seems to be rabid at times and some of his rants are bewildering and leaving you wondering if he is all there.
All I can say is this has been great reading, I have had hours of fun and look forward as I am sure there is so much more to come. I can only ask that if anyone has information or complaints in dealing with Drew Noyes send them onto Andrew Drummond as I am sure he would appreciate them.
Great reporting Andrew and I look forward of more to come.
I always get a very good laugh from reading the Thai newspapers. I am often left shaking my head at stories but always put it down to, “This is Thailand” or TIT.
One such story was in today’s Bangkok Post, it’s a crap paper like the other English language newspaper The Nation but every now and then you get a gem of a story like this.
The heading was, “100 Escaped Crocodiles ‘Not Fierce’”.
Straight away when I read this I nearly fell off my chair laughing, but then I thought they were maybe freshwater crocodiles so clicked on the link and went to the story.
The crocodiles have escaped from a crocodile farm in Uthai Thani province; the floods have caused havoc across parts of Thailand.
When I read this in the first paragraph I again pissed myself laughing.
“The Wildlife and Plant Conservation Department has sought to calm fears that the animals may attack people.”
I was thinking “How” and when I read on next I just laughed more.
"It (WPCD) says crocodiles raised in captivity have no instinct to attack humans."
Haha, how bloody funny is that! No instinct to attack humans. These people are absolute bloody stark raving mad lunatics. Crocodiles are prehistoric creatures and I am sure they will take a chunk out anything their jaws can snap at.
Then Mr. Thirapat Prayoonsit, the department's deputy chief of WPCD said some of the following.
“Most of the escaped crocodiles are young and less than a metre long.”
“They prefer to live in still water and avoid strong currents.”
But his best quote is this;
"Please do not panic. The crocodiles are not fierce like those living in the wild. On the contrary, they are rather scared of people."
Great! So I will see Mr Prayoonsit wading around chest deep water with some beef in his hands trying to capture these non fierce and scared of human crocodiles.
What I am amazed at is that there was not a word of doubt in the article. It seems no journalist challenged Mr. Prayoonsit and asked, “Are you an expert in crocodilian behaviour and can you guarantee they will not attack a human?” Or Crocodiles have been around since the dinosaurs and have survived on instincts; don’t you think these instincts will kick in quickly?
The good news is this. The crocodile farm is paying a whopping 3,000 baht per animal captured and returned. I hope the people who find them barter a better price or kill them, eat them and then sell their skin for a much better profit.
Sadly three of five tigers living at the crocodile park drowned, two were evacuated but the other three were not so lucky. What I don’t understand is how this could happen as it had been predicted for at least a week the flood waters.
Anyway, so don’t panic, the 100 odd non fierce crocodiles will not harm you but may want to play roll around in the water or a game of fetch or something like that.
Amazing Thailand, opps now it is Miracle Thailand. I forgot!
I have to admit as I cannot tell a lie, I am in love with an amazing women and it isn’t Miss Noot or Nong Ja.
I have written about her before on this blog so she really isn’t a secret.
How could I love someone else? It is hard not to and I am not the only one that is smitten by her, she has hundreds of thousands of admiring fans.
How would I describe her? She is a work of beauty, absolutely breathtaking in full flight, she is so calm but confident, and she gleams after she goes about her job.
She is 5 years old and weighs about 575kgs. That is large I agree but she is all muscle. She is brown but goes black in colour when lathered in sweat. Okay, I am talking about a horse, and not just any horse. She has captured the attention of the nation. There would be hardly a person who had not heard of her in Australia and also there are many that know of her around the world, she even has her own website.
Black Caviar is known a sprinter, the world’s best sprinter. And she is now in her third year of racing and has captured the hearts of a nation each time she starts. Black Caviar was born on the 18th of August 2006 at 5.20am. Her name was chosen by a co-owner. Black Caviar’s grandmother was Scandinavia and apparently black caviar comes from Scandinavian countries. You can read all about her breeding here. Her colours of salmon with black dots were designed by a co-owners daughter.
Then in 2008 at The Inglis Premier Yearling sales, lot 520 from Swettenham Stud had their horse in the ring.
Top Melbourne trainer Peter Moody had in his words, “I instantly fell in love with her.”
And this, “She just had a presence about her, an action about her, every time she took a stride every part of her body moves. It's like walking down the beach and seeing certain parts of someone's anatomy wiggle or that and you just can't help yourself, you've got to turn round and have a look.”
Moody didn’t have a client or owners in mind so he was on his phone making calls. Probably the luckiest and best phone call these clients have received in their lives.
She cost $210,000 and connections initially put in $35,000 each to cover the purchase fee and training fees for a year. That now is nothing looking at her prize money of $3,595,050 Australian dollars.
But what has captured the nation, is her 14 starts for now 14 wins. She is undefeated and on Saturday past equaled legendary horse Phar Lap’s record. You can watch above her win in the Schillaci Stakes over 1000mtrs and hear the crowd come to voice as she effortlessly strides up to tackle a Sydney raider and top sprinter Karuta Queen who was 5.5kgs lighter.
Karuta Queen’s jockey Tommy Berry said this, "I didn't think I could beat her. I just thought it would be a dream to beat her," "She's a freak (Black Caviar). I couldn't have been going any better and she cantered past me. That will be my biggest thrill."
And Berry said this about a possible rematch in the Group Two Schweppes Stakes (1200m) at Moonee Valley on Cox Plate day. "I don't think there is any point in breaking her heart twice,"
Karuta Queen's trainer Neville Layt said it was a "privilege" to run second to Black Caviar.
"At the 600m I thought 'Tommy son you're in trouble'. She's a freak. She just cantered up to my filly and my filly still ran a great race," Layt said.
"I'm proud to run second to a mare like her. My little filly didn't let me down. She was travelling sweet in the run. That mare is just unbelievable."
Black Caviar racing career started with an explosion. She won her trial easily and people started thinking that she could be special.
Then on April 18th 2009 she had her first race start.
She won by 5 lengths and did it easily and Peter Moody thought, “How good is this horse and how good could she be?”
She then won her second and third races easily. Then onto the home of Melbourne racing at Flemington for her fourth start.
The barriers opened and she knuckled or blundered, hearts went into mouths as her nose nearly touched the ground. She still won the race. She ran a quick time of 1-09.96 for 1200mtrs or 6 furlongs.
Race caller Greg Miles said, “It was probably the first time a horse has got close to her and she looked a little bit vulnerable that day. She still won, but she wasn't right.”
And she wasn’t, Moody had thought something was wrong and was right, Black Caviar had pulled muscles in her chest, and when a horse gets an injury it can mean it will never be back to the horse it was, or may never race again.
Moody spelled her, she goes away to recuperate and heal. She is brought back to the stable ready to race again. Disaster strikes again. She injures her leg and again has to be put out to the spelling paddock.
In nearly a year she had one race start. From the 5th of September 2009 until the 20th of September 2010 she stepped out on the 22nd of January 2010 for a win.
Connections and trainer were worried that this horse with so much talent would never show her potential.
Thankfully this wasn’t the case. She returned to racing and has humbled all before her. Even the few who held the good old Aussie fighting character like trainer John McNair with top sprinter Haylist.
McNair claimed in May 2009 that Haylist would beat her but to date this hasn’t happened, in four starts has three seconds and a race to forget. Their last race was in Brisbane the BTC Cup and again she lowered his colours in a sensational time of 1-8.85 for the 1200mtrs.
But McNair is a fighter and in September 2011 he again has said, "We've never had the chance to meet Black Caviar at 100 per cent and should that happen and Black Caviar was only a tiny bit off, I'm convinced she'd get rolled."
"She's always had the right barriers and little things have gone her way against us. That's not an excuse because she has won comprehensively. But if they ever get to the stage where we're at the top of our game and she's not totally 100 per cent in every way, then the tables will turn.
"I've had it said to me we should dodge Black Caviar because if she keeps beating Hay List, it would break his heart. But he is not that sort of horse. He never gives up."
Now, balls to McNair as many trainers have dodged races with Black Caviar nominated as they know they cannot win but John being a true Aussie never lies down. One thing I do like are the level heads in the Black Caviar camp. With so many asking, “Is she better than the great Phar Lap.”
Peter Moody said, "Phar Lap kept the nation on its feet during the Depression. I think it's very unfair to him. Nothing will ever equal him."
Co-owner Neil Werrett said, "Phar Lap is in a league of his own but she's a good second."
And jockey Luke Nolen said, "I am thrilled to think they are put in the same company. Phar Lap is the best horse Australian racing has ever seen and had a record of a superstar, whereas she's got a long way to go.”
"If she continues to win like this, then yeah, we can probably start to mention her in the same breath."
She is the best going around today and the great horses of the past are just that. It is like comparing the best AFL football players of 50 years ago to today’s stars, very hard and many different opinions.
I look forward to her going on to her next start that will more than likely be on Cox Plate day at Moonee Valley on October 22nd in the Group Two Schweppes Stakes over 1200mtrs.
Then onto start 16 on November 5th in the 1 million Group 1 Patinack Farm Classic over 1200mtrs at Flemington.
I also look forward to the day she travels abroad and shows the loudmouths from Europe, Americas and such just how good she is.
She has her doubters and critics as she has not raced abroad against the supposed world’s best sprinters. But I like this from Saturday from British trainer Brian Ellison, his Melbourne Cup contender Moyenne Corniche had just ran third in yesterday's Herbert Power race.
He said ''I think everyone knows about her and we've got nothing at home that can beat her. 'The only thing that can beat her is herself.'' And with that not I will sign off. Tomorrow this super-mare will again be up well before the sun while most of us sleep.
The weather has turned bloody cold here in north east Thailand, well it is cold. In the blink of an eye nights are crisp and the need for air-conditioning or even just a fan is not needed.
There was even a discussion on closing the bedroom windows as last night was a little frigid.
Many cannot associate cold and Thailand in the same sentence. But it does get quite cool this time of year, especially November and December. Some nights we might even get single digits.
I feel sorry for all the people sleeping it rough from the floods, all those who are in makeshift tents while their homes are underwater, I can only imagine how cold they feel. Anyway, a good cool temperature food is this. This is a Thai dinner roll. The shop in a straight line from my house is about 200mtrs. The guys opened about a month ago and have been doing great business, and not only from me. They come with processed pork roll and grilled pork and salad and the sauce is a ripper, tomato, chilli and a mayonnaise and then it is whacked under a grilled and comes out warm and crispy.
The crazy part is this; 20 baht a roll or three for 50 baht. That is around $1.70 for 3 rolls. How can they do it so cheap!
Anyway, apart from that nothing else much is happening here in sleepy Ubon Ratchathani. I am going to go back and visit the flood victims this weekend and see how they are faring,
The water levels have dropped but not enough for many to return home.
Brunty
P.S. I forgot about the bottle of Sangsom Thai rum, that didn't come with the rolls but I purchased to have a nip of two as a nightcap and to warm my bones a little.
