Wednesday, July 19, 2006

In the G/House!


This must be the Chiang Mai crib for Fitty's boyz when they tour Asia.
I'm guessing the roadies get lodged down the alley from here, at the Backpackers' Guesthouse.

Monday, July 17, 2006

Warning Box, Part II



I told you that other one was mild. Let's just call this one "unfiltered", shall we?

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Thai Teak Monkey Sex!





Apparently some monkeys can swing without vines.

A tip o' the Sardonic pith helmet to B.A., just because.

Monday, July 10, 2006

Yellow Peril

Most of the hotels I've been quartered in here issue two standard glass deposit bottles of Singha Drinking Water per day. At the Moon & Sun Hotel in Chiang Rai, I worked up the temerity (and the vocabulary) to ask for an extra one. This is what I got (click to enlarge):



Three words you never want to see on a bottle of water in the Third World are "special", "yellow", and "surprise".

Saturday, July 08, 2006

Warning Box

The anti-smoking campaign is another area where Thais have enjoyed great success. If you want to buy a pack of smokes, you need to look for a sign reading "Cigarettes Available Here". By law, the packs themselves cannot be visible to customers; they're usually kept behind a cardboard or metal sheet. You need to say exactly what you want, because they can't show you what brands they have. Once you succeed in ferreting out your brand, this is your reward:



This is one of twelve warning graphics in rotation here; file this one under "mild". And guess what? The anti-smoking effort has been very effective. You see far fewer smokers here than you'd expect for an Asian country. The combination of graphic warning boxes, strict sales regulations, and um, death, seems to work: the Thai smoking rate continues to decline. Philip Morris has been trying to quash the regulations since they were first proposed four years ago, but thankfully without much to show for their efforts.

A flick of the Sardonic cigarette lighter to the Thai Ministry of Public Health!