1 week Ago
It seems the Thai authorities are determined to open casinos as part of a large entertainment complex. The casino debate has been going on for decades during which an estimated 100 committees have been set up to mull, ponder, reflect, ruminate and even excogitate the pros and cons only to decide not to come to a decision. It's an old chestnut, but might actually happen this time.
If the casinos do go ahead one suspects the current illegal dens won't conveniently disappear overnight. There's an establishment in Don Muang which police swooped on in April this year. It turned out it had been raided and shut down at least 10 times in recent years.
Somehow it magically reopens after each closure without anybody noticing. Raids on gambling dens have provided entertaining news over the years. One such incident in Bangkok back in 1984 prompted considerable mirth.
The raid netted scores of gamblers who all suffered a case of collective amnesia. A member of parliament who was apprehended at the scene couldn't even remember his name or how he happened to be in the gambling den. The stress of parliamentary sessions had clearly taken its toll.
The reason so many people were nabbed in this raid was because an overweight gentleman got stuck in the turnstyle gate that was supposed to be an escape route. He was wedged so tight police eventually had to use a sledgehammer to free him. Fancy a flutter? When it comes to betting in Thailand just about anything that moves is fair game for a flutter, from frogs leaping to caterpillars crawling and cockroaches dancing.
There have even been reports on people betting on hedgehog racing, although admittedly you require a bit of patience for that. A couple of years ago there was a celebrated raid on farmers gambling at a beetle fight in northern Phrae province. Police later held an hilarious press conference where they displayed the evidence which included the grand sum of 100 baht allegedly used for gambling, the offending beetles and two ice cream cartons in which the beetles were temporarily housed.
Zoo quest My favourite gambling story occurred in the 1980s featuring the unlikely setting of Dusit Zoo in Bangkok. Police raided a house near the zoo one night and arrested 23 people for gambling. It turned out that all of those arrested worked at the zoo.
The following morning an embarrassed senior zoo-person had to rush to the police station to bail out the workers. Because of the non-appearance of the staff, many animals at the zoo hadn't been fed and the hungry creatures were kicking up such a racket that everyone in the neighbourhood was complaining about the dreadful noise. Bang-Bang Unfortunately gambling often ends up in what the late Post columnist Ayumongkol used to call "Bang-Bang Fever" .
.. and he was not talking about fireworks.
The following line from an old western movie highlights the unpalatable truth about high stakes gambling: "A Smith and Wesson beats four aces." Sneaky serpent It's getting hard to avoid snake stories these days. PostScript recently carried an item concerning a gentlemen in Samut Prakan who was bitten by a King Cobra in a very sensitive area when he sat on the toilet.
Several readers have informed me that since reading that cautionary tale they now inspect the toilet bowl just a little more thoroughly than before. This week there's a tale from a school in Bueng Kan province in the Northeast when students attending a "snake awareness session" experienced a little more than they bargained for. A wildlife trainer was just about to show the pupils how to correctly handle a snake when a cobra was accidentally released and the serpent promptly slithered up the trainer's ankle, working its way into his trousers.
With the cobra hissing like mad the trainer remained remarkably calm and helped by an assistant very slowly took off his trousers and removed the snake. Any sudden movement could have ended in a fatal bite. The assistant called it "an important learning experience.
" I think he left out the word "terrifying". Snakes and bladders It's not just cobras. Pythons regularly make the news in Thailand, sometimes in an unorthodox manner.
In the 1980s a woman used to do the rounds of Patpong bars as an "exotic snake dancer." Her serpent of choice was a large python which would slither all over her while she danced to Boney M or whatever was popular at that time. To be fair to the snake it looked suitably bored with the proceedings.
However, on one occasion the python suffered a stomach upset and left a most unpleasant deposit on the stage. That proved too much for even the most hardened Patpong patrons who headed for the exit while the poor dancer was left to clean up the malodorous mess. Just good friends Another python made the news in the 1990s when a Thai actress revealed to the media that she shared her bed every night with her pet python.
She featured on all the local front pages sitting on the bed lovingly stroking her slithery soulmate. The actress said the python didn't misbehave and never wet the bed. Perhaps the most telling response came from the boyfriend of the actress who was said to be looking for a "less complicated" relationship.
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