Life In Bangkok

You know life in Bangkok is back to normal when the Bangkok Post starts publishing letters from the expat crowd about noise levels, stray dogs and television.
Lately, the decision by True Visions to drop BBC Entertainment from the Platinum package has been greeted with howls of outrage from subscribers threatening to downgrade to the Gold package [...]

On the 11th I wrote expressing my disappointment that by Veera Prateepchaikul’s admission, the Bangkok Post could not be relied on to provide adequate coverage of Thai Politics.
On Sunday 12th, an excellent letter from George Morgan was published in Postbag;

POST’S FUNCTION IS TO DISTIL
Regarding “A Need to Look at the Bigger Picture”, Postbag, April 8, I was [...]

The Bangkok Post seems to have decided that the story of the Red Shirt protests will be one of disrupting normal life in Bangkok.
So, on Friday April 10th 2009, the paper had screaming headlines in extra large font reading “City Grinds to Halt” - no room for “….a Halt” even.
Yes, the protesters occupied Victory Monument and [...]

The weather has definitely changed, with some pretty heavy thunderstorms in the last few days.
Along with the rain has come an upsurge of demonstrations by the Red Shirts and an accompanying sharp increase in the number of column centimeters dedicated to local politics in the Bangkok Post.
There is still this endless debate about the legitimacy of the [...]

Saturday’s Postbag could have been dubbed the Songkran Alcohol Ban issue, given the number of letters published all of a sudden. I’m sure there has been a steady stream of them, but for whatever reason, the Bangkok Post finally elected to print a few in one go.
There was an interesting spectrum of opinions and it will be [...]

As I often express my opinions on this website, I expect that people will post comments in response. I do have the option of disabling comments, but on the contrary I typically welcome them as they help to develop a conversation, as opposed to a monologue. However, some comments I delete immediately;
1) Pure insults.
2) Where [...]

Last Saturday, Dolly Koghar wrote a letter to Post Bag complaining about the standard of English in My Life on January 8th. She mentioned the article “The 11 Pitfalls of Health” by Dr. Banchob.
I had not even bothered to finish reading the article. My reasoning was simple. Most medical and other research papers are either written in [...]

Tim Boyle wrote an excellent letter to Post Bag today addressing the problem of a lack of shade-giving trees in Bangkok.
Having lived in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, the absence of trees was one of the first things I noticed when I arrived in Bangkok. Nothing has changed in the ensuing 13 years.
Singapore started its campaign [...]

My newspaper finally arrived at 1.12 p.m. today. I was pleased that it had finally arrived, though that faded upon reading the front page reports on the aftermath of the Santika tragedy.
Déjà vu. Some things in Thailand never seem to change.
I moved on to the Editorial and for a while thought that there might be hope [...]

Probably not. Mr. Alan Guignon from Gold Coast, Australia that is.
He has an issue with not being able to benefit from “………glossy advertisements in the Bangkok Post from top hotels promoting generous deals in an effort to fill the many empty rooms”, as these promotions are ”Exclusively for Thais and Local Residents”. (Foreign Tourist Faux Pas)
All [...]