HEADLINES [click on headline to view story]:

More moaning Muppets

Beside the seaside

All equally to blame

Dogs in Pattaya

Fancy a chess match?

- Editorial Comment -

More moaning Muppets

Editor,
Constructive criticism is one thing, finicky fault finding another. “Tendency to whining and complaining is the surest sign of a small soul and inferior intellect.” ~ Lord Jeffrey. I thank the P. Mail for an arena that allows expose of Moaning Muppets, and my friend Jack Tighe for baiting examples. It is dismaying that people can be so arrogant as to enter someone’s home and criticize this, that and the other. Astounding is that Ray Standiford can advertise his conceit, thinking it is to “refine, educate and enlighten”. He is American, I believe. Perhaps he should learn what US author J. Fulbright said: “There are two Americas. One is self-critical, the other self-righteous; One is inquiring, the other pontificating…” Mr S should also know that rudeness is a weak man’s imitation of strength, and it only takes a few poor specimens of people of any country to get all a bad name.
TC

Beside the seaside

Dear Editor,
Such excitement in Pattaya! All this talk of monorails and the like, it’s a thrill a minute, innit?
Personally, I hope that the idea of trams along Beach Road hasn’t been shelved permanently. Ah, just imagine: clean, green, exciting machines, brightly decorated, plying their trade up and down the promenade. It brings a tear to the eye just picturing it...
In fact, why stop there? I propose going back to this area’s original and ancient name - Brak Phu (with a hard ‘â’ - as in prostate.) Then the next step would be to construct a high steel tower that tourists could ascent to view, well, nothing in particular - but it would be fun anyway! There could be a zoo and an aquarium in the buildings below the tower. And places for brass bands to play, ‘tiddley-om-pom-pom.’
Just a thought.
Yours faithfully,
Harry Flanagan

All equally to blame

Sir,
If the young 13-year-old-girl who was allegedly raped by schoolboys had not been riding around on her motorbike (which she was technically too young to do), she more than likely would not have found herself attacked by a group of boys.
Parents, schools and police are all equally to blame for not preventing children from driving motorbikes and are largely responsible for the many injuries and deaths thereby caused.
Isaan Nick
Buriram

Dogs in Pattaya

Dear Editor,
I have lived in Pattaya now for 10 years and feel it is time something is done about the stray dog and unsupervised dogs on the streets who cause many accidents and problems. Just rounding them up and ineffectual steralisation, or placing them in the grossly overcrowded dog concentration camps like Tony’s is not the answer. Instead a systematic eradication of these mutts should go ahead immediately using humane injections. That is what the dog home in Chiang Mai does to 70% of the dogs it receives, most due to serious illness and disease, the rest are sterilised and then placed with caring families.
I am a dog owner myself but my dog is always supervised, does not wander the streets and has regular health checks and shots. But I am fed up with the owner of many local dogs who don’t care what happens with their pets or the carnage they cause.
Perhaps it’s the owners who should be put down?
Sincerely,
John Liddell

Fancy a chess match?

Dear Editor;
On Beach Road in front of the new center, we have a very nice promenade. Here, there is many a fine place for chess players, and it is used very much by Thai and farangs. But not all chess players know about it. Perhaps this letter will let people know that if they fancy a chess match, here is one place they might find one.
Best Greetings,
A Farang

Editorial Comment: Marine safety lost at sea in Pattaya

Bob James
There’s a running joke among long-time Pattaya scuba divers that the reason people have to deploy orange safety balloons when surfacing off the area’s near islands is so the jet skis have something to aim for.
The sad part is, there’s a lot truth in that punch line. Coming to the surface off nearby Koh Larn or Koh Sak can be a nail-biting experience. More than a few times speedboats and jet skis have indeed used the slim orange “sausages” as slalom poles or, in some cases, run directly over large inflatable lift bags meant to signal motorcraft to stay away.
No one it seems, however, was actually taught that. Or, if they were, the drivers of the hundreds of speedboats that ply Pattaya Bay every day don’t care. Nor do Pattaya’s Marine Police or its elected officials for that matter. What else could explain the tragic comedy that has played out in the area’s waters over the last six weeks: Three dead. Nearly five dozen injured. And three well-publicized accidents that have turned one of the city’s main marketing points - its waterfront - into banner headlines warning tourists it’s simply not safe to be in the water here.
Officials will tell you Pattaya has ample marine-safety regulations: Commercial speedboat captains are supposed to have licenses. Boats are supposed to have enough life vests for all passengers. Tour agents are supposed to limit how many people board each vessel. Jet skis are supposed to stay out of swimming area. But as anyone who has lived even a short time in Thailand will tell you, laws matter little relative to the personal rewards those tasked with enforcing them can reap by not doing so.
Failure to uphold existing marine-safety laws led directly to the death of two Chinese tourists and injuries to four dozen others last month when two speedboats collided off Bali Hai Pier. Both boat operators were found to have expired licenses. Neither boat had enough life jackets and the boat on which the two tourists died was grossly over-capacity.
With news agencies across Pattaya’s top tourist base - China - broadcasting the fatal accident, Thai officials did as they usually do: Make condemnations and promise change. But even as they stood up publicly Christmas Eve to announce enhanced safety measures, another boat - this one illegally modified a week after the deadly boat collision - capsized, injuring another 14 foreign tourists. That vessel, it seems, had installed a second deck that made it too top heavy to stay afloat.
The city’s second black eye in three weeks brought out the big guns, in the form of Transport Minister Sophon Saram who dragged Mayor Itthiphol Kunplome and a half-dozen other city and police officials around Bali Hai Pier, pointing out the large number of foreign tourists and the need for a dedicated marine-patrol base.
A crackdown was again promised and again, the next morning, 200 speedboats operating under the aegis of a well-connected passenger-ferry syndicate pulled onto Pattaya Beach as they always did, making the city the only place in the world such a multitude of motorboats are allowed to violate swimming areas with no repercussions.
It should have been no surprise then that another accident was soon to come. This time it was a Russian tourist who, along with three others, were diving and swimming about 300 meters off Koh Larn when one was nearly sliced in half by the propeller of a speedboat taking tourists to Koh Larn. This driver, who like the others was quickly locked up, did not even have a business license. It was the captain’s private vessel and, for a few baht, he moved as many tourists as possible as quickly as possible to the island. Stopping quickly enough to avoid hitting the diver was never an option.
This, of course, prompted even more meetings with Deputy Mayor Ronakit Ekasingh calling in various department heads to figure out how to keep the sea lanes between the mainland and Koh Larn free of dead bodies. Top suggestions included deploying more of those orange buoys / slalom poles and asking beach vendors to advise their swimming and snorkeling customers to stay out from under the props of passing speedboats.
Perhaps Ronakit needs to pay a visit to the island himself. He might be surprised to see that there already are well-marked swimming zones cordoned off with buoys. Not that anyone pays attention to them. Jet skis and speedboats regularly cut through these prohibited zones without fear of a ticket from Marine Police patrols, which have not been seen regularly in the area for years.
Buoys also disappear, as the ones the city initially anchored to the HTMS Kood shipwreck off Koh Sak and later told the Pattaya Mail it would replace - and never did.
It’s now up to responsible boat captains, usually those employed by Pattaya’s foreign-owned dive shops, to sound horns and shout at the jet skis that recklessly fly through the narrow straits between anchored dive boats in order to protect the divers below.
These same captains will tell you that marine safety has been an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms or, even worse, a running joke for years. In 2006, a young Thai woman surfacing from a dive off Koh Larn got her head taken off by a speeding motorboat whose captain ignored (or didn’t understand) the safety balloon.
Clearly, two dead Chinese and a dead Russian are not enough to prompt anything more than talk from city and national officials. And nowhere among these discussions has been the question of enforcement and patrols by Marine Police. If police would patrol the areas they’re supposed to as often as they’re supposed to, the vast majority of problems would be solved. Better (or could we hope even “rigid”?) enforcement of licensing and inspection rules would do the rest.
The question now is how many more have to die before the city makes that happen.

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