James Goyder's blog

Taking a fight on two hours notice...

2011-06-15T22:03:00.000-07:00

Something which most readers of this blog probably aren't aware of is that I like training Muay Thai, I try and do it at least three or four times a week i I can, and I've had a few fights although the last one was over two years ago.

Anyway I ended up taking a Muay Thai fight at two hours notice yesterday despite being well out of shape, having made absolutely no preparations and still being slightly under the effects of a major cold. Here's what I wrote last night...

I haven't trained since last thursday because I have been ill and I was in two minds about whether to train this afternoon because I didn't feel 100% but I decided it might help to sweat the last remnants of the illness out.

I turned up to Jitti nice and early at 3pm because I wanted to instigate a new running regime. I haven't run in over a month, when I train I just tend to skip, and I've got a bit of fat around my waste which I want to get rid of so I ran for 30 minutes and then skipped for about 20 and then as Jitti was wrapping my hands, which he likes to do, he asked me if I wanted to fight sometime. I responded positively and he asked me i I wanted to fight at MBK that night and i said 'why not?'

I unwrapped my hands, had something to eat,made up some lie to my girlfriend about meeting a friend and got on the MRT to go to MBK.

I got there at 5:40 and my fight was at 6 so by the time I had filled in the paperwork there was about 5 minutes for me to stretch and have my rub down and then I was on.

I thought, despite having only trained about 5 times in the previous month, that I might be able to manage 3 rounds. My corner wanted me to come out throwing elbows but it was obviously the other guys first fight because he went in under the ropes (Muay Thai fighters always go over, unlike boxers) and he had made a real effort with his wai kru, firing arrows at me and stuff, so I felt a bit sorry for him and didn't want to really f**k him up.

I think I slightly got the better of the first round, I blocked 100% of his kicks and kicked his standing leg out a couple of times when he tried throwing high kicks which put him on his arse and I was quite pleased with.

I push kicked him a couple of times which was quite effective but decided that there was basically no point employing techniques which would score points but not hurt as there was no way I would make it to a decision so decided to embark upon 'operation haymaker'.

Unfortunately this wasn't a huge success and there must have been a pretty entertaining, if not exactly technically pleasing, exchange at the end of which he was still standing and I was exhausted.

I tried throwing a few body shots which landed and might have taken the wind out of him but not enough to justify jumping on him and exploding in a 'finish him or collapse from exhaustion trying' style flurry which was basically my gameplan going into the fight.

As soon as the bell went at the end of round one i knew there was no way I would win the fight. I had had some success with low kicks, sweeps and body shots but none of these techniques were likely to help me get a stoppage anytime soon.

I basically just told them in the corner 'Neuay mak me, mai mee keng' I'm very tired, no have strength but there wasn't a huge amount anyone could do about it at this stage. In hindsight perhaps I should have faked some sort of fit?

I think I was able to sweep him again in the second round. I remember the ref diving in dramatically to stop me kicking him while he was down but I had already turned my back and was heading towards the opposite corner to get as much of a rest as possible before he got up and wanted to fight again.

I think I might have connected cleanly a couple of times myself but he was landing way too many clean shots due to my complete absence of either head movement or lateral movement. I was quite pleased that none of them hurt me or came close to knocking me down, but being punched in the head is still not good, either from a technical or a physical perspective.

Eventually he just went mental and threw a comb ination of about 50 punches, knees and elbows, backing me into the corner. One of the elbows connected good and I needed three stitches above my ear afterwards but I had my hands up and my leg bent across to block the knees so he wasn't really getting through with anything meaningful.

I was hoping to just let him punch himself out but I knew that even if he did I would still probably be tireder than him so wasn't holding out any home of actually winning the fight.

Unfortunately the referee foiled my brilliant plan by stepping in to give me a standing count. I could have stayed in the corner all day as none of the shots really bothered me although I do have some red marks on my forehead now so a few elbows must have got through.

He counted to ten (or maybe it was only 8 i wasn't really conce ntrating..) and I leaned back on the ropes just to get the maximum rest possible, thinking I would need all my energy just to finish the round but then he went and stopped the fight which I was a bit annoyed about at the time, although it probably wasn't a bad thing in the long run.

I failed to tell my girlfriend I was fighting because I only had about a minute to grab my stuff when I went home and I knew she would kick up a fuss. I was hoping to get away with it but the marks on my forehead screwed me over and she got really upset and started crying and says she isn't going to talk to me for a week.

I'm still going to train tomorrow, I just won't be able to spar because of the stitches so there's no real harm done. I just feel a bit embarassed because I live here and I go to the fights all the time so people recognize me and it wasn't a very impressive performance.

I think that I definitely fight better when I train regularly than when I don't. Who would have thought it?

Muay Thai Premier League

2011-06-02T01:21:00.000-07:00

A press conference was called this afternoon to announce a prestigious new Muay Thai competition, the Muay Thai Premier League.

There will be 40 fighters, 32 males divided into four weight categories and eight females. Eight events will be held in the US, China, Australia and Thailand with the first event scheduled for LA in September. The season is scheduled to run until May with another season starting in September.

The MPL is offering 250 million Baht in prize money and will also film a documentary series entitled 'Into the Fire'. Events will be aired on ESPN Star Sports, Eurosport and Fox Sport and will be broadcast live in the US, a first for Muay Thai.

Amongst the fighters to sign contracts today were Saenchai Sinbi Muaythai (sor Kingstar) and Kevin Ross who will be in the 66kg category, Yodsaenklai Fairtex who will fight in the 72 kgs category and Kaoklai Kaennorsing who will fight in the 81kgs category.

A superfight between Buakaw Por Pramuk and Dzhabar Askherov will also be taking place.

For more information visit: www.thempl.tv

A Layman's Look at the Reporting of Protest Numbers in Thailand

2011-05-19T19:17:00.000-07:00

I have never been mathematically minded and would much prefer to defer to the knowledge of someone who is when it comes to guesstimating the quantity of protesters at recent rallys in Thailand.

However the lack of consistency among the mainstream media at present is shocking, it seems that people are plucking numbers out of nowhere and the figures being reported bear little to no relation to what is actually happening at the protests.

Here is a photo comparing the 19th February protest at Democracy Monument (left) with the 19th May protest at Rachaprasong (right):

I have deliberately loaded a hi res version so that you can click on it and enlarge it which you will need to do in order to appreciate my point. Bear in mind that both were taken in mid afternoon and in both cases numbers were reported to have increased after the photos were taken.

There is absolutely no doubt that the crowd in the photo on the right is much, much bigger than the crowd on the left. With so much misinformation already out there I don't want to hazard a guess as to whether there are five times as many people, ten times as many people etc but without a shadow of a doubt, there are more people.

Now lets look at the reporting of the two protests. The Nation gives the February 19th number as 'an estimated 20,000' and the May 19th number as 'over 10,000'.

It's not just the media. The police 'estimated 30,000' protesters at the February 19th rally and according to The Nation, 'Special Branch police said there were about 10,000 demonstrators at 4:30 pm' at the May 19th rally.

And yet, as I think my pictures prove conclusively, there were more people at the May 19th rally than the February 19th rally, a lot more.

I know calculating crowd numbers is not an exact science but the level of miss-information at present is astounding, to the extent that no-one seems to know whether there were 10,000 protesters or 100,000 protesters at yesterday's rally.

I appreciate that numbers fluctuate throughout the day and that, although the bulk of the protesters tend to be in front of the stage, there are always more adjacent to and behind it. We are never going to know exactly how many people are at a protest but looking at the main crowd is, in my opinion, the most accurate way to estimate.

With that in mind I would be very interested to hear what people's estimates for each rally were based on the above photos. See if you can do a bit better than The Nation or the police...

UDD protest & anniversary of 91 deaths 19/5/11

2011-05-19T04:39:00.000-07:00

This was by far the most poignant of any of the protests I have been to because there were people present who had either lost loved ones or been shot themselves 365 days ago.

There was a police presence but it was very low key. These protests generally police themselves with people assigned to control the crowd and direct the traffic. I actually think that the level of control which the red shirts exert over the people at these protests is tantamount to a calculated insult to the authorities, basically sending a strong message that their presence is superfluous.

For instance at around 2pm a significant crowd had already gathered around a vehicle containing red shirt leaders and a small speaker system. At one point Worawut Wichaidit broke off from

giving a speech to start conducting traffic and managed to manouvre two large lorries into place which would form the basis of the stage and sound system.

The crowd was packed and every time a lorry needed to complete a new turn a different section of people had to be moved out the way but the operation was carried out with almost military efficiency and the entire stage and speaker system sprung up in a matter of minutes.

They seemed to have a bit more difficulty with the banners but eventually one saying 'peaceful protesters not terrorists' in English was erected above another carrying pictures of some of the 91 dead with a message in Thai along the lines of 'don't let them die in vain'.

Reminders of the massacre which had occurred in almost the exact same area 365 days ago were every where. There was a man holding a Japanese flag who sat solemnly still in honour of the Reuters cameraman Hiro Muramoto who was killed. I felt I might have detected an undercurrent of anger not present at previous protests but it was almost imperceptible and might just have been my imagination.

There was plenty for people to be angry about though as no-one has been held accountable for any of the deaths so far with the army adamant that one of its soldiers did not fire the fatal bullet which killed Muramoto. You can read a report from Reuters (Muramoto's employer) here containing the following paragraph which seems unusually outspoken for a news agency:

The military has repeatedly insisted that soldiers were not responsible for any of the deaths and injuries during the violence, a claim most independent observers consider implausible.

Suwanna Jamta rawong, from Bangkok, (left) was shot in the inside upper leg last year,

"I was with a journalist from Italy (presumably Fabio Polenghi) and he warned me to turn back because it was dangerous but we were both shot and he died. The red shirts took care of me and gave me some money as compensation for my injuries" she said.

I couldn't exactly ask her to show me a bullet wound on her upper inner thigh but there was no mistaking where the bullet had struck Sittipong, 20, also from Bangkok.

He had been shot in the eye and the bullets trajectory had taken it out through the back of his head. His Mother was with him in this pic (right) but he was able to walk around independently and to answer my basic questions so it was difficult to gauge exactly how the injury had affected him, beyond taking a huge chunk out of his head.

I've found that people at red shirt rallies often claim to be from Bangkok but, when pressed further, will admit that they are actually from elsewhere but work in the capital. Perhaps protesters do now want to perpetuate the (fairly accurate in my experience...) stereotype that they all come from the north of Thailand.

The most upsetting sights of all were the parents sitting quietly behind photos of children who had lost their lives a year ago. This woman (right) from Konkaen seemed permanently on the verge of tears. Her 36 year old son, Kawin Tamoen, was killed exactly a year ago on nearby Rama IV Road. Revisiting the scene of his death in such a public manner must have been an extremely traumatic experience for her.

The crowd was impressive in the afternoon and, according to reliable eyewitnesses grew even further in the evening. This picture was taken at around 3pm and shows thousands of red shirts stretching as far as the eye can see. Supposedly the numbers had doubled by 8pm.

With the election looming large on the horizon and the red shirt party, Pheu Thai, about to hit the campaign trail the implications of such a large scale gathering are obvious.

The political connotations of the protest should not detract from the fact that, for some, it was also a wake. The dispute between the opposing factions in Thailand looks set to rumble on, perhaps indefinitely, but we must not forget that this time last year 91 lives were lost in the process.

Muay Thai at the Channel 7 Stadium

2011-05-02T23:35:00.000-07:00

Although I don't live that far from Chatuchak Park I've never been to the Channel 7 Stadium on a Sunday before because, well, why would you when the you can just watch the fights on the TV?

I had a couple of old friends from the UK in town last weekend though and they wanted to go and see a Muay Thai show. I told them they could either go to one of the big stadiums and pay around 1,500 Baht each, and I wouldn't be going with them, or we could all go to the Channel 7 Stadium together on Sunday and watch the fights for free and, unsurprisingly, they went or the latter option.

We got there almost 45 minutes early and there was already a large group of people waiting to be let in. After about a 10 minute wait we were let into the compound and the stadium, which is basically like a giant warehouse, was already packed.

Some Thai guy said something about 'VIP' and ushered us towards the seats, he then said something about paying 100 Baht each which seemed fairly reasonable but he handed us off onto a Channel 7 employee who took us into a back room and tried to demand we give him 1,000 Baht.

I just laughed at him and we all walked off and went to find somewhere to stand. There's an area which is caged off in front of the ring where people can sit cross legged and you get a decent view from there but this was already full so we went to stand against one of the walls.

It was a bit frustrating at time because the cameraman in the corner blocked the centre of the ring but we got to see most of the action. The atmosphere was absolutely fantastic, you don't really get to gauge just how good it is by watching the fights on the TV.

The gambling was incessant and I was surprised by how complicated it got, they were offering odds like 5/4. I'd assumed that Thai gamblers would just stick to the basics like 2/1, 3/1, 4/1 etc, it was almost like watching the floor at a stock exchange in action.

The first fight of the day was absolutely epic, it was two 116 lbs fighters, I couldn't be bothered to try and translate the fight card which was in Thai but one of them was from Kiatmoo 9.

The entire place erupted when a fighter who was behind started to come back, having so many people gambling creates a similar atmosphere to having two partisan sets of fans supporting the fighters.

I've never been to Ratchadamnern but I've been to Lumpini and a few smaller stadiums and having the expensive 'farang' seats at the front spoils the atmosphere a bit. Here the entire stadium is absolutely packed with Thais, to the extent that the fighters need to practically shove people aside and fight through the crowd just to get to the ring.

There are 4 or 5 televised fights, but knockouts are pretty rare so you are virtually guaranteed at least an hour of Muay Thai. They had a couple of fillers at the end with 100lbs fighters, presumably in case there were lots of KOs and they needed more footage to fill the broadcast.

If anyone wants to see some top class Muay Thai in Bangkok and doesn't want to pay for the privilege than I would highly recommend heading to Chatuchak Park (BTS: Mo Chit) at around 1pm on a Sunday. You can take a 10 Baht motorcycle taxi from the park itself, just ask for 'Muay Thai' or 'TV Jet' and they will know exactly what you mean.

Last night on the border

2011-04-28T08:53:00.000-07:00

After a week covering the border conflict I am heading back to Bangkok tomorrow. I'm not making enough money out of selling stories, photos radio interviews etc to justify renting a room and bike here any longer and I need to get back to my normal life.

Since the excitement of getting caught up in the bombardment on Tuesday it has been comparatively quiet. The BM-21 missiles also did some serious damage in the Kap Chong area that day as you can see from the slideshow here.

The house which had been completely destroyed belonged to the 'Poo Yai Ban' (village head). He wasn't in it at the time but one of his neighbours was killed, apparently there was a large quantity of cash stashed in the house and he was trying to salvage bundles of burned bank notes.

There's a lot more Western media on the scene now, AP, AFP, Al Jazeera etc so there doesn't seem quite as much point me being here as there did for the first couple of days when there were no other Western journalists.

I bumped into an old friend from Kantharalak while photographing the burned out house yesterday. He was one of the soldiers who had taken me in on suspicion of being a spy, you can read all about it here. I guess he might be involved in military intelligence but he had been really warm and friendly and made that experience a lot less stressful than it would otherwise have been. It was good to see him again and made me feel like a real veteran, he asked me if I was still getting around on a scooter and laughed when I told him I was.

It actually happened again today. One of the Thai journalists who is staying with me managed to get out to the front lines at Prasat Ta Kwai (although he decided the footage he got is too sensitive to even release) so I thought I would at least give it a go. I managed to get a bit further north than I did last time but ran into a checkpoint manned by the local volunteers who told me, in not particularly friendly terms, to go away. They weren't as impressed by the media pass I had been issued with as I thought they would be.

I drove in the opposite direction but came across a soldier sitting in an armoured vehicle keeping an eye out who signalled for me to turn around. I had no idea how close i was to Cambodia at this point and the shelling had been incessant from about 4am until 8am that morning and could have started up again at any moment.

I also knew that I was within range because the BM-21 which had made a well publicized hole in the road was well behind me and I was scanning the area for potential places to take cover even as I drove.

When I got back on the main road I was stopped by another group of volunteers who clearly didn't believe me when I told them I was a journalist and took a load of photos of me and the bike and got my name and telephone number. On the road back to Prasat I was pulled over agin, this time by the Or Bor Tor (local village leader) who had received a phone call to warn him that there was a suspicious westerner posing as a journalist.

Fortunately he had a bit more common sense and after asking me a few questions and taking a couple of pictures he let me get on with it. I think it is probably the scooter which gets me in trouble, people expect the media to drive around in teams in reasonably expensive cars but my budget won't stretch that far.

I saw on the news that a few local people have been taken into custody on suspicion of espionage, the newspapers were good enough to name and shame them, and there seems to be a climate of suspicion which wasn't so noticeable earlier in the week.

It's actually not a straightforward issue and I think there is a distinction between sharing information that will cost lives and passing on information in order to save lives. If they were giving away the actual positions of the Thai military to the Cambodians to attack then they obviously deserve to be punished but a lot of people have friends and family on the other side of the border and I don't think giving them a call or text message to warn them about a potential attack constitutes betraying your country. I'm glad that I've never been faced with that particular dilemma, although I did hear a lot of people in Cambodia texted their friends in Thailand to warn them when the BM-21 launchers were about to be deployed.

I bumped into a farang in Prasat who told me he had seen me on Thai TV that morning running at high speed away from the camera. At first I was cynical but he described exactly what I had been wearing, right down to my camera bag. I remember the moment well, it was when a soldier shouted 'BM-21' and everyone, including myself, legged it . Fair play to which ever cameraman stuck around to film that particular footage.

I had the presence of mind to take a picture of some retreating reporters when I was lying down by a ditch but whoever filmed me must have been standing right out in the open. Maybe he didn't know what a BM-21 was but the massive craters these things had caused in Ban Phum Saron were fresh in my mind, as was the jagged bit of flesh I'd found in one of them.

A ceasefire was announced today but it was arranged by the local military and not at a diplomatic level and absolutely no-one believes it will last. Someone suggested it might have been arranged purely to give Cambodian migrant workers stuck in Thailand a window of opportunity to get home. Here are some of them at the police station, apparently they had been picking mangos in Thailand and the Thai authorities were trying to help them get back across the border.

There was a major thunderstorm which lasted for about four hours tonight so it is more difficult to gauge whether there has been any fighting but apart from reports of small arms fire at Prasat Ta Kwai it seems to have been quiet. Gunfire at Prasat Ta Kwai is pretty standard, the soldiers there are only 500 metres away and are always shooting at each other but there are a lot of trees between them and I am not sure whether anyone ever actually gets shot. All the wounded soldiers I have seen admitted to hospital have been injured by artillery.

I hope the ceasefire lasts but I suspect it won't. If both sets of troops are given firm orders that under no circumstances are they too fire unless fired upon the situation should settle quite quickly but whether there is a genuine political desire from either side for this to happen remains to be seen.

This morning I was woken up just after 4am by the heaviest barrage yet. Don't know what tomorrow morning will bring but whatever happens I won't be hear to witness it.

The New Zealander Caught In The Crossfire

2011-04-28T00:30:00.001-07:00

The border war between Thailand and Cambodia has been escalating over the course of the last six days and one New Zealand man found himself inadvertently caught up in the fighting.
George Wood, 69, has a home in the Phanom Dong Rak area, where some of the most intense artillery exchanges have been taking place. He was born and bred in Invercargill but has been based in Thailand for the last 25 years.
Although almost everyone else has fled the area the fearless pensioner remained in his home for four nights while shells and rockets whistled overhead,
“The Thai army have the howitzer near me they have three or four tanks and mortars as well and you can hear them firing, they are only a few hundred metres from my house. I’ve heard gunfire every day and the Cambodian artillery has been landing about five kilometres from here,” he said.
After four sleepless nights with intermittent electricity he is now sleeping on the floor in a municipal building in nearby Nikom while he waits to see whether the fighting will intensify,
“I’m not scared but you have to face reality and the situation is escalating. There is the possibility of the Cambodians working out where the guns are and I’m only a few hundred metres from there. At 9pm on Sunday night I heard a cluster of explosions which were definitely incoming and sounded quite close. I was the only one left in the area and I stayed four nights during the fighting but I am not staying here anymore. I’m brave but I’m not stupid,” he said.
It is not just Wood’s home which is in the firing line, it is also his homemade factory where he is able to make a living manufacturing bricks which retail for 15 Baht each,
“I‘ve got a block press for making interlocking cement blocks. In 2004 I made a factory out of bamboo and thatchings and started making blocks, but the bamboo and thatchings only lasted about six months before it all fell down. Last year I got the foundations ready to rebuild it and I put the columns up and I was busy putting the steel trusses up for the roof when all this happened,” he said.
Being able to understand both the Cambodian and Thai languages Woods is in a position to give an insight into the mentality of his neighbours who also find themselves caught up in the conflict,
“The people in the border area are proud of being Thai but they have strong Cambodia roots. In most cases their grandparents were Cambodian and they know that. At the Songkran festival a couple of weeks ago the Thais and Cambodians were all celebrating together at Prasat Ta Muang which is the temple they are now fighting over. They even use the Cambodian language (Khmer) around here, it’s the language of the markets and if two Thai people have a conversation it is normally in Khmer,” he said.
If Wood appears to be taking this outbreak of fighting in his stride it is probably because he has been in the border area long enough to remember the last major Cambodian conflict during the days of the Khmer Rouge,
“When I first came here in the late 80s and early 90s I used to visit Cambodian people in the refugee camps because some of them have relatives in New Zealand. I knew guys who were actually fighting on the Khmer Rouge. The tins of oil donated by the aid agencies for the refugees used to be sold off and I remember being able to buy them in shops in Thailand. I love this area it’s a beautiful place, it really is. The people are kind, friendly. This is just another episode, it’s frustrating but you’ve just got to live with it.”

The exact location of George Wood’s factory and house has been kept deliberately vague to avoid allowing precise identification of potential military targets.

Day six slideshow

2011-04-27T05:10:00.000-07:00

To see the original (without side clipped) click here.

Fisherman, farmers, soldiers and refugees...

2011-04-26T11:05:00.000-07:00

see the original (without right hand side cut off) here

Border Conflict Day Five: Bombs and Bomb Shelters

2011-04-26T06:11:00.000-07:00

The day started quietly. I revisited the school on Soi ? where I had observed the Thai howizters on Saturday. They were long gone but the damage they had done to a school outbuilding was far worse than anything I saw as a result of shelling from Cambodia.

Most of the windows and all the doors had been blown off the main school building and this outbuilding had been dedimated, pages of kids text books with recent colouring in were littered all over the floor. I wanted to explore as far afield as I could and I found the track to Prahan Ta Kaboey, there was a group of black shirts who were taking a break and warned me not to go any closer.

A bit further down the road I found an old Thai man, everyone else had evacuated but he had lots of cats and dogs and couldn't leave them. I didn't want to ask him how old he was so I asked him how long he had been there for and he just said, 'long time'

I also asked him if he was scared adn why he didn't leave and he just shrugged and said he had to care of the animals, I wish my Thai was good enough to have properly interviewed him, I would lvoe to have heard his story.

After a bit more off road exploring I found a couple of tanks but I think they were a long way from the front line because everyone was very relaxed and let me take photos. It's all countryside and I am sure it would be possible to sneak into Cambodia, a couple of journalists actually asked me about this, but I wouldn't want to risk being blown up by a mine leftover from the Khmer Rouge or arrested for being a spy.

At 1:30 I heard my first explosion of the day, accom panied by the sounds of jets overheard which might or might not have been a coincidence. There were a couple more explosions, coming from the Prasat Ta Kraboey area but I left to see if I could get closer to the front line at Prasat Ta Muang.

In Bang Nong Kana they were filling sand bags and putting up bomb shelters, I took a few pics little suspecting that I would be running for my life and diving into that very same shelter later that day.

I got as far as the barbed wire roadblock but they wouldn't let anyone through. I saw a Thai photo grapher I knew taking pics of a shelter near the roadblock so went for a chat. A load of ambulances turned up but they were dropping odd drink and water and supplies, then there was a shout and the ambulance crews ran for their vehicles and drove off while everyone else piled in the shelter. To start with the journalists were staying on the outside and filming taking pics but after a couple of minutes they were elbowing the locals out the way.

You could hear the sound of the Cambodian artillery but nothing seemed to be landing near and it was all quite relaxed, although I for one was certainly aware that 11 shells had fallen in this small village on Sunday, even if only one of them actually went off.

The artillery died down but a couple of vehicles had sped fast at a speed which suggested they contained injured soldiers and I decided to check out the hospital. By the entrance to Ban Nong Kana was a check point and a lot of the Thai media had retreated here. For some reason even though less than a km away people were in shelters here everyone was standing about in the open.

I also met a farang called John (Here he is sitting casually at his computer while all the Thai journalists take cover in a ditch), who had a flak jacket, a proper hard hat and had been wounded in the line of duty several times. Instead of staying in a hotel he was sleeping in a hammock here because it was as close to the front line as he could get and he had brought a healthy supply of beer which we got stuck into while we waited for something to happen, we didn't have to wait long.

Seconds after this picture was taken one of the soldiers shouted 'MB 21' and everyone ran for their lives, either taking cover in the ditch or running even further away into the fields. It's difficult to distinguish between incoming and outgoing but there was definitely some incoming and it sounded disconcertingly close, I heard a whizzing noise which was new to me.

I showed the soldier who took me round the shell holes on Sunday a picture of damage in Ban Phum Saron, a 10ft wide crater and a destroyed house, and he took one look at it and said 'MB 21' so I had a healthy respect for these things. Given that the 75mm shells didn't explode most of the time you would need one to basically hit you on the head so I wasn't too fussed about these but the mention of MB 21 was enough to set the pulse rating.

I think one landed in a field close by and failed to go off, but there were a few pillars of smoke coming from a couple of kilometers away. Despite the bomb ardment there were a couple of farmers who stayed in the field with their buffalos the whole time, even when shells were landing in neighbouring fields, I guess for some people life just goes on. Once the firing had stopped I headed back towards Praset Ta Moang and discovered a house which had taken a direct hit on Ban Nong Kana. It was empty and didn't belong to anyone, so no real harm done once again.

I managed to take a couple of photos of it when the Cambodians started firing again and everyone through themselves to the floor. Given that I knew that I was lying down less than 10 metres away from where a shell had landed half an hour ago this was not a particularly good moment.

Lying on the ground or out in the open during incoming fire is not a particularly pleasant sensation. Even though I knew that statistically there was a 99.9% chance I would be ok I wasn't inclined to hang around (although I did take a quick photo, the dog doesn't look too bothered...) and when the firing stopped for a second and someone ran and jumped on their bike I did the same thing and followed him.

I was going to get the hell out of there and hit the main road but he drove at breakneck speed to the same bomb shelter I had photographed earlier and dived in there so I did exactly the same The bomb shelter felt like a jacuzzi in the Ritz after lying in the dirt by the side of the road and I felt completely safe. All the people who had stayed were middle aged to elderly men, many of whom had ancient rifles strung over their shoulders. They looked after me really well, kept offering me bottles of water and seemed genuinely excited to have a journalist in their midst.

When this bomb ardment ended I headed back to where the journalists had been camped on the edge of the village but they had all gone by this stage, probably to somewhere a little further away from the fighting.

I kept stopping and talking to locals, partly because I was about to run out of petrol and urgently needed to find somewhere to buy some, and by luck got pointed in the direction of another shell in Ban Kok Asuat.

This one had landed harmlessly in the ground and failed to go off. The firing had been pretty much constant since 2:30pm when I first had to shelter but it all seemed to be heading from Thailand towards Cambodia. At a school about 3 km from where I found the unexploded shell there were people playing table tennis out in the open and there were people milling around in all of the villages.

I found this group sitting in a hole in the ground. Personally I would have wanted something with a substantial and preferably sandbag covered roof over my head but they seemed to be content. One of them even walked slowly up the road with me to show me where the shell had landed and didn't seem remotely concerned about the possibility of another one heading his way.

Everywhere I went I encountered cheerful, defiant people. I guess the fact that, so far, Thai civilians seem to have been completely unharmed helps but I think in some ways a war can bring out the best in people. There was something very noble and dignified about these 60 year old men who probably lived in these villages all their lives and had stayed behind to defend their homes when everyone else had fled to the safety of refugee camps.

There is no doubt in my mind though that Thailand has fired far, far more shells and artillery into Cambodia then has come in the opposite direction and if this war goes on I think there will be a lot of suffering on the Cambodian side of the border.

Is it a war, a border conflict or just a series of skirmishes?

2011-04-25T08:05:00.000-07:00

After a frustrating day trying to clarify various rumours, and getting through almost three tanks of petrol in the process, I finally got to witness the warfare first hand this evening.

The Thai artillery sprang into action at around 6:30pm and was going for approximately two hours, firing around 30-50 shells by my estimation.

It appears that small arms fighting on the front line could be fairly relentless but it is difficult to judge because it seems to be inaudible from a distance. What almost everyone seems to agree on is that nothing happened this morning, although I heard someone say they heard gunfire and explosions throughout the night last night.

Fighting definitely started up again at 2pm in the Prasat Ta Muang area, although I think it must have been very localized. Apparently one Thai soldier did die today but only as a result of wounds sustained yesterda

I got to Phanom Dang Rak Hospital at about 8pm this evening moments before the second of two wounded Thai soldiers was admitted. There was also another soldier who had either been wounded or was sick, impossible to judge, and all three were eventually moved in an ambulance, probably to Surin hospital.

Apparently both the soldiers were on the front lines at Prasat Ta Muang and Prasat Ta Krabay and sustained their injuries as a result of explosives, I think possibly mortar shells, but am unsure about the exact translation.

I've read a couple of reports along the lines of 'Thailand and Cambodia on brink of all out war' but for me this is no more than sensationalism.

Given that the two sets of soldiers have been trying to kill each other on and off or four days now you could probably define it as a war, but the situation certainly doesn't appear set to dramatically change.

A war normally has a purpose: the US waged war on Iraq to get rid of Saddam Hussein, the US waged war on the Taliban/Afghanistan to try and catch Osama Bin Laden, Hitler invaded Poland because he wanted to rule it etc.

By contrast neither Thailand nor Cambodia seems to have a specific strategic goal. While Thailand would doubtless like to own all three temples outright, the country's rulers are highly unlikely to attempt to take them by force for fear of being ostracized by the international community.

However while there may be no obvious military strategy there doesn't seem to be an immediate end in sight either. Surely negotiating a ceasefire should be as simple as both sets of soldiers being told to stay put and stop shooting at each other? This shouldn't be that difficult a deal to broker.

At present there is no real purpose to the fighting between Thailand and Cambodia, it is just a potentially endless cycle of provocation and retaliation. Implicit in the idea that the two sides are 'on the brink of all out war' is the concept that the priorities are going to change, that Thailand is going to try and invade and occupy Cambodia or something

I know that the debate over the involv- ement of third party observers complicates matters but couldn't the two sides first agree to a ceasefire between themselves and then worry about the third party issue at a later date?

Back in February when fighting flared up in and around Preah Vihear a ceasefire was rapidly announced and promptly breached before being effectively renegotiated. Have diplomatic relations between the two countries deteriorated to the point that negotiation is no longer possible?

At least 50,000 people have been evacuated on both sides of the border. They are facing a fourth consecutive night in temporary accommodation and are entitled to be aggrieved that negotiations to end the fighting are not even scheduled to start for another three days.

Confusion reins on day four of border conflict

2011-04-25T04:13:00.000-07:00

I have got through almost two tanks of petrol and travelled hundreds of kilometres trying to establish what exactly has happened today.

As I said in my previous post I was in the Ta Muang and Ban Nong Kana areas between approximately 11am and 1pm today and was under the impression that nothing had happened since yesterday afternoon.

I didn't ask anyone if there had been any fighting in the last couple of hours because I had no reason to, I hadn't heard anything myself and I hadn't heard about anything from anyone else either and everyone in those two areas seemed to be very relaxed.

I was told at 2:30pm by a fellow journalist that he had heard reports of shells being fired from the Thai side of the border approximately half an hour earlier in the Ta Muang area but when I drove out to Nikon all the journalists and soldiers were under the impression that there had been no fighting since yesterday.

I Even towards Panom Dong Rak the police were adamant there had been nothing since yesterday, this was at about 3pm.

I then drove to the border crossing at Chong Chom because I knew the area had been evacuated and wanted to see with my own eyes what was going on. There were a handful of people around and even a couple of stalls at the border market were open and a slight sense of desperation hang hang the air, I felt very sorry for the traders.

Normally the market would be full of Thais and Cambodians but with the border shut and the area evacuated it was dead and trade was virtually non existent yet, despite this, a couple of them still persevered.

I got as as as the makeshift military checkpoint which was manned by the black shirted soldiers. They are the ones on the front line at the sharp end of any Thai military operation, doing the modern day equivalent of the hand to hand combat. It is pretty rare to see one, let alone talk to one, but they were manning the checkpoint and one of the confirmed that fighting had broken out at Prasat Ta Muang at 2pm. he was so specific that I am inclined to believe this.

One thing that strikes me as odd is that after three days of heavy artillery the Thai howizters have been remarkably quiet for the last 24 hours, despite the provocation of the Cambodan shelling yesterday afternoon. Is this a show of restraint from Thailand or the calm before the storm?

I also just spoke to someone who heard noises similar to artillery fire at around 6:20pm so I am off to investigate. I'm going to have covered something like 300km by the end of the day at this rate.

Further Fighting on Monday

2011-04-25T00:57:00.000-07:00

Reports of fighting carrying on today, some of them more credible than others.

This Bangkok Post story claims that there was heavy fighting in the area I was in this morning:

http://www.bangkokpost.com/breakingnews/233612/border-clash-continues-for-4th-day

(see previous blog post) I didn't hear a thing and when I got there at around 10:30am everyone seemed very chilled out.

However I did just hear a reliable report of a shell being fired from the Ta Neang area at around 2:30pm.

All quiet on the Eastern front

2011-04-25T00:10:00.000-07:00

Nothing to report today. I did get an opportunity to get out past Panom Dong Rak to Ta Mieng and Ban Nong Kana.

Ban Nong Kana bore the brunt of the Cambodian 'onslaught' yesterday afternoon which consisted of 11 shells, about 80% of which failed to explode.

Apparently the Cambodian army are using 75mm shells which they are firing from a distance of approximately 7km away, the border is around 5km away from Ban Nong Kana.

One of the soldiers I spoke to speculated that the shells might be so old that they were no longer effective.

I went on a tour of shell holes and every single one of them had landed in the ground, no structures or buildings were damaged and definitely no people.

The Cambodian army is obviously not as well equipped in this region as it is in Preah Vihear, if you go back to the beginning of this blog you will see the sort of damage the Cambodian artillery did in the Ban Phum Saron area.

This would also explain why the soldiers operating the 155mm howitzers were so relaxed about the possibility of incoming fire, it doesn't appear that the Cambodian army has the capacity to fire far enough into Thailand to reach them at present.

After the 45 minute barrage of 155mm shells on Sunday morning firing 11 shells, most of which were duds, seems like something of a token gesture.

Cambodia captures mentally ill spies and microchipped dog (!)

2011-04-24T08:22:00.000-07:00

According to the Khmerization blog Cambodian news website CEN (Cambodia Express News) is reporting that a micro chipped dog equipped with a spy camera as well as two scandily clad women and two timber traders (all claiming to be mentally illl) have been captured and accused of spying.

I simply can't do this story justice myself so here is the original:

Cambodian troops have claimed that they have captured 2 male and 2 female Thai spies and one dog micro-chipped with a spy camera during the three days of fighting.

They claimed that yesterday, 2 female Thai spies pretended to be mentally ill wearing only a Leo underwear, but when they were captured they were found to be wearing a tiny camera on their fingers disguising as a ring. A Thai dog that strayed into a Cambodian military base was also found to have been micro-chipped with a spy camera after it was captured by Cambodian troops.

They said 2 Thai-speaking Cambodian males pretending to be timber traders were captured after venturing into a Cambodian military base. They pretended to be mentally ill and destitute by begging from the Cambodian soldiers before they were captured today.

They were all sent to the Cambodian Command Headquarter for interrogations.

Thanks once again to Khmerization for translating this interesting story.

Another day another barrage...

2011-04-24T05:17:00.000-07:00

The first sounds of fighting came just after 10am this morning. I was in Prassart so there might have been some small arms exchanged prior to this but the Thai artillery didn't kick into action until just after 10am.

The barrage lasted for approximately 45 minutes (impossible to know exactly when it stopped because I was riding a motorbike). I discovered another three howitzers, which looked identical to the ones yesterday and appeared to be using the same shells, although you can't see them clearly in any of my photos.

This time no-one was allowed close to the guns and one of the locals, presumably after conducting an extensive visual examination, accused me of not being Thai and I was told to go away.

The distinctive sound of the howitzers firing was audible every couple of minutes when I actually stopped to listen although as I was riding a bike for much of the time I can't be sure of the exact intervals.

No-one I spoke to in the Nikon and Naeng Mut area had seen or heard any artillery of any description coming from Cambodia. None of the soldiers I saw seemed remotely concerned about the possibility of incoming fire, there were no sandbags or shelters, which leads me to believe that they were confident the Cambodian soldiers lacked the firepower to reach that far inside the border.

I have heard from other journalists of some damage being sustained in the Ban Nong Ka Na area but I haven't had a chance to verify these reports myself.

I was also told that a Cambodian spy was killed near to the Ta Mieng temple last night. An Englishmen I know received a text from someone in England whose father in law is a police man and village leader and saw a Cambodian spy and shot him. There is no way to verify this either and it has not been reported anywhere else.

I was interviewed by Al Jazeera this afternoon and they asked me about Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's comments today:

"I've communicated with the military frequently. We realise that this is an important issue of every Thai person, to protect our sovereignty. At the same time, we will not fall in the trap of the Cambodian side. They are trying to make this issue bigger, and trying to show that this matter cannot be solve on the bilateral level."

I suspect the reason that Thailand is reluctant to involve third party adjudicators is that they still feel hard done by after the 1962 International Court of Justice ruling which awarded Preah Vihear to Cambodia. The ruling was so contentious that one member of the ICJ, Australian justice Sir Percy Spender, broke ranks to condemn the decision with the following comments:

'Whether the Mixed Commission did or did not delimit the Dangrek, the truth, in my opinion, is that the frontier line on that mountain range is today the line of the watershed.

The Court however has upheld a frontier line which is not the line of the watershed, one which in the critical area of the Temple is an entirely different one. This finds its justification in the application of the concepts of recognition or acquiescence.

With profound respect for the Court, I am obliged to say that in my judgment, as a result of a misapplication of these concepts and an inadmissible extension of them, territory, the sovereignty in which, both by treaty and by the decision of the body appointed under treaty to determine the frontier line, is Thailand's, now becomes vested in Cambodia.'

In this context it is understandable that Thailand should be so reluctant to leave an issue as important as border demarcation to a third party who might rule, unfairly or otherwise, in Cambodia's favour.

Abhisit also refers to the Cambodians setting a 'trap' by which he presumably means they are engineering a military conflict in a contrived attempt to accelerate the process of involving independent international observers with a view to an eventual third party adjudication.

Regardless of who fired first it is clear that, when provoked, Thailand is more than willing to retaliate with a show of military strength. I would be very interested to know what the situation is on the Cambodian side of the border. The Thais are adamant that they are only interested in specific military targets and the troops I observed were being given specific co-ordinates with which to aim the howitzers. However regardless of how accurate the Thai artillery is the hundreds of shells which have already been launched must have made a significant impact on, at the very least, the Cambodian landscape.

Interest in the British media is still very low. The Telegraph, who two days ago found room for this article: Royal wedding: King of Cambodia to miss out after failing to answer invitation told me that they didn't want any copy because 'only ten people had been killed.'

Meanwhile The Daily Mail, who ran this article yesterday 'Sorry, I'm busy!' King of Cambodia snubs Royal Wedding for 'something more important' said that it would take 'an English person to lose a leg' before they would be sufficiently interested to run anything.

It appears that the King of Cambodia potentially failing to attend the royal wedding is more important in the eyes of certain elements of the mainstream UK media than three days of sustained fighting between two countries popular with English tourists.

Lalleepad Wake, 31, from Ban Sakon (near to the border at Chong Chom), was in Prasset with her English husband and two children earlier today and found time to speak to me,

'I can remember problems like this when I was a little girl but only inside Cambodia when there were communists. I have two children, 13 and 8, and we were evacuated from our home yesterday and slept in a school last night. I'm not really scared. The old people are scared because they have seen it before but for all the kids it is exciting, the old people are worried though. A lot of people here have Cambodian family and friends and just want the fighting to finish,' she said.

Everyone in this area seems to speak a form of Khmer and the links between Thailand and Cambodia are extremely strong. A woman staying in the same resort as me, who has three children by her German husband, looks distinctly Cambodian and told me that when she returns from Cambodia she is often asked to sing Thai pop songs in order to prove that she is actually Thai.

However in the Naeng Mut region, which is a little further inland, locals were enthusiastically helping the Thai army to move its ammunition. I asked one of them why and he replied simply, 'I am Thai, I support Thailand'.

Thailand Cambodia border conflict pics

2011-04-23T01:12:00.001-07:00

Thailand Cambodia border conflict Phanom Dong Rak / Surin region

2011-04-22T21:30:00.000-07:00

I have been up close to the Thai artillery at a Soi ? School which is somewhere near Naeng Mut (I think).

The first sounds of artillery fire were reported at about 6:30am. I didn't arrive on the scene until about 9:30 but the guns were firing continously at about 15 minute intervals. Judging from the empty casings which had been stacked around 100 M-11 shells had been fired as of 11am.

There were three 155mm guns all firing M-11 shells. There was a crowd of local people who were doing most of the unloading and manual work for the soldiers. I had to resist an urge to join in, it's instinctive to want to help people carry a heavy load but I didn't want to contribute to the potential death of Cambodians.

There was no sign of any artillery

coming from Cambodia and no-one I spoke to had seen or heard any but I have been told that the Thai army have a greater range. Everyone was so casual, it was a hot day and a lot of the soldiers had makeshift bandanas and t-shirts on, that they must have been completely confident that the Cambodian artillery was not capable of reaching them.

People were posing for photos by the missiles and generally hanging around and the atmosphere was quite convivial. I wasn't allowed to have a look at the refugee camp at Phanom Dong Rak but no-one seemed to mind me being here, even though there was no other media.

It's difficult to take photos of the guns actually firing because the noise is incredible and the vibrations are enough to knock you back. The first time I tried I almost got blown off my feet, after that I had to settle for covering my ears like everyone else. The windows of all the army trucks which were parked nearby were badly cracked as a result of the impact of the shells being launched.

When I left hundreds more shells were being systematically unloaded, whether as a precaution or because they are going to be used imminently I don't know but the ones nearest the guns were all having the casings removed so that they were ready to launch. I am going to head back to the school now, I'll do another update in a couple of hours.

English language idiosyncracies on the streets of Bangkok

2011-03-11T04:37:00.000-08:00

I am regularly amused and occasionally amazed by the misuse of the English language which I encounter on a daily basis while out and about in the nation’s capital. At first I assumed that this was largely caused by well meaning people whose grasp of the English language fell a little short of fluent trying to be a bit too clever with their slogans or posters. However the more time I spend here the more I begin to detect the work of someone who speaks excellent English but has a healthy sense of humour.

I can imagine how an advertisement can come to carry the slogan ’hopefully you’ll find original super special road it’s so great future’ because the intended optimistic message is fairly obvious even if the exact wording leaves a little to be desired. One t-shirt monikor which leaves me much more mystified reads, ‘Dear Santa it was my crazy Mother’s fault’. In this instance the actual use of English is refreshingly clear but the exact message the t-shirt is attempting to convey is anything but.

There seems to be a bit of a trend for ‘funny’ t-shirts. Be it a picture of two overweight people struggling to have intercourse with one another above a caption reading ‘Mission Impossible’ or a picture of a husband wife with the words ‘Game Over’ more and more people, obviously oblivious to the fact that even the best joke will eventually wear thin, appear willing to spend entire days walking around with the same single entendre on their chest.

There are very few circumstances under which a t-shirt can be genuinely funny and it is almost always all about context. For instance an obese person walking around with something along the lines of ‘I beat anorexia’ emblazoned across their chest is quite amusing, at least the first couple of times you see it.

T-shirts in Thailand occasionally make me laugh but rarely for reasons the wearer would appreciate or understand. I don’t know where the person I saw driving a scooter along Sukhumvit got a top which had ‘Spring Break Afghanistan 1995′ on the back but it certainly brought a smile to my face. My all-time favourite was one being worn by quite an attractive young Thai girl which bore the simple slogan, ‘unregistered sex offender’

One which I found a little more disturbing carried the message ‘I swear I didn’t know she was six’ accompanied by a picture of a child’s shoe. It was being worn by a slightly overweight Thai man at the Muay Thai and I remember hoping that he had brought the t-shirt at random rather than had it made up specially to celebrate avoiding some sort of criminal conviction based on that particular line of defence.

It’s not just t-shirts. Anyone that has walked up and down Sukhumvit enough time will have seen the stall selling adult DVDS accompanied by a large cardboard sign with the words ‘Porno. It was wonderful. It was perfect’ inscribed on it in felt tip. Presumably this is a problem with tense and the message is meant to be that the dirty movies on offer are both ‘wonderful’ and ‘perfect’.

Whenever I read it I can’t help thinking it’s meant to imply that the actors and actresses involved had really enjoyed themselves. I’ve never been tempted to buy any of this filth, friends inform me that you can download that sort of stuff for free anyway, but if I did I think I would be reassured to know that the protagonists had had a good time.

This article originally appeared on Asian Correspondent

Extradition process for alleged Phuket murderer unlikely to be swift

2011-03-11T04:36:00.000-08:00

by James Goyder

The crime that Lee Aldhouse is alleged to have committed sent shockwaves through the close knit community of Muay Thai tourists and expats who frequent the Freedom Bar in Rawai.

In the early hours of the morning on Saturday August 14 Aldhouse started a fight with DaShawn Longfellow, a US Marine who had served with distinction in Iraq and was recuperating from an injury he had sustained in the line of duty.

Witnesses in the Freedom Bar, located opposite Rawai Beach, say that after the initial scuffle Aldhouse marched into a nearby 7-11 and stole two knives which he walked out of the store brandishing. CCTV footage was subsequently released showing a man closely resembling Aldhouse demanding the weapons from a startled member of staff who hands over knives usually used for cutting sausages.

A few hours later Longfellow returned to his bungalow after a late night trip to 7-11 only to find Aldhouse had spotted him and followed him back. Another fight broke out but this time Longfellow was stabbed and died from his wounds. His Thai girflriend, who is presumably the prosecution’s star witness, was inside the bungalow but claims when she came out she found Longfellow lying on the ground with Aldhouse standing over him holding two knives.

At this point she began to scream and Aldhouse fled, pausing only to discard at least one of the knives, which will presumably also form a crucial part of the prosecution’s evidence.

A massive manhunt was launched with police in Phuket repeatedly claiming that they were absolutely certain their suspect was still on the island. It wasn’t until a week later that a British newspaper discovered that Aldhouse had been remanded in custody after entering the country at Heathrow. He was only detained because he had breached his license after being released following a prison sentence for armed robbery a few years earlier.

It appears that Aldhouse fled from Phuket with the assistance of his Thai girlfriend and made his way into Cambodia. The girlfriend has subsequently co-operated with police enquiries into his escape and is also likely to be a witness in the case for extradition. Once it emerged that Aldhouse was in custody in the UK the Phuket police confidently announced that they expected him to be back in Phuket within a week, it now appears that the process could take a little bit longer.

According to a report on the Phuket Gazette website it could take years of legal wrangling before it is decided whether Aldhouse will be extradited to Thailand to stand trial. The fact that Longfellow is a former US Marine who received a Purple Heart has not gone unnoticed by the US authorities who are believed to have offered forensic assistance in order to help the Thai police build their case.

Longfellow’s family and friends will be pleased that, for the time being at least, the prime suspect in his murder is incarcerated. A swift resolution appears extremely unlikely with a third hearing currently scheduled for March 28. The prosecutor in Thailand will presumably have to present compelling evidence of Aldhouse’s guilt as well as offering assurances that in the event of an extradition he will not face the death penalty. Aldhouse’s lawyers, for their part, will surely find no shortage of arguments as to why their client should be allowed to remain at liberty in the UK.

The Aldhouse case is reminiscent of the one involving Belgian Sam Van Treeck who was released on bail while awaiting trial for the murder of Chompoonut Kobram. The Phuket based dive instructor was stabbed almost 150 times in an apartment in Pattaya. Van Treeck fled the country and is currently living as a free man in his native Belgium.

This article originally appeared on Asian Correspondent

Jean Claude Van Damme to fight Somluck Khamsing in Thailand’s National Stadium

2011-03-11T04:34:00.000-08:00

It seems that the long awaited Muay Thai / kickboxing bout between ’90s movie star Jean Claude Van Damme and Olympic gold medal winning boxer Somluck Khamsing might be heading to Thailand.

The two originally signed a contract in December 2009 with the bout expected to take place in Las Vegas but it has been repeatedly delayed with many fight fans skeptical that the contest would ever materialize.

Van Damme is best known for his role in action movies such as Bloodsport, Hard Target and Kickboxer, which was famously set in Thailand. Khamsing became the first Thai ever to win a gold medal at the Olympics, courtesy of a clean sweep in the featherweight category in 1996. Although he is primarily a boxer he has had a number of Muay Thai bouts, fighting at the King’s Cup on at least two occasions.

In this photo provided by Universal City Studios, international martial arts expert Jean-Claude Van Damme, left, stars as a soldier out to avenge the death of his brother in this scene from the film, "Lionheart", 1990. Pic: AP.

A world renowned actor, Van Damme did enjoy some success as a Karate fighter and kickboxer but has not competed at any level since 1981. He was also widely reported to have suffered a minor heart attack last October although his representatives strenuously denied this story.

Various venues had been suggested with Russia the most recent but it now appears that the bout could take place at the National Stadium in Bangkok in November 2011. If the fight does go ahead, which given all the previous postponements is far from guaranteed, it will be interesting to see whether the Thai public are sufficiently interested to fill what is one of the biggest stadiums in the country.

Aged 38, Khamsing has a considerable advantage in both age and experience. Van Damme might have held a world title in karate and fared well in a couple of kickboxing competitions but the standard in these disciplines is nowhere near as high as that in amateur boxing, the sport in which Khamsing once excelled. The biggest challenge for the Olympic gold medallist will be presented by his opponent’s superior size, Van Damme could conceivably be 20kg heavier when they step inside the ring.

It seems that Phillip Wong, who owns the world famous Fairtex chain of Muay Thai gyms, is now the main sponsor for the fight which might explain why the venue has been switched to Thailand. There is also the issue of sanctioning as the Nevada State Athletic Commission, who have jurisdiction over Las Vegas where the fight was initially supposed to take place, might be reluctant to allow a 50 year old who has suffered from mental health problems in the past (Van Damme was once diagnosed with a bi polar disorder) to take part in any sort of a licensed professional fight.

Van Damme will presumably spend time training for the fight at one of the Fairtex gyms which will provide some valuable publicity for Wong in return for his sponsorship. It will be interesting to see how much interest there is in Thailand. Khamsing has appeared in movies himself and is well known but Van Damme is probably not as much of an attraction here as he would be in the West. It may be arguably the freakshow fight of the century but from a sporting point of view there is little to recommend this contest and filling a venue as vast as the national stadium in Bangkok will be no easy task.

The fight will take place under modified Muay Thai rules and elbows will be banned, presumably in order to minimalize the risk of Van Damme getting cut. It would be easy to write it off as a publicity stunt but it appears to be something that Van Damme genuinely wants to do. He appears to have become more contemplative and introspective in his work in recent years and his career has taken a dramatically different turn. The all action movies of the ’80s and ’90s have been replaced by some more serious, less slapstick efforts such as Until Death, in which he plays a cop addicted to heroin, and JCVD, in which he plays a semi fictionalized version of himself. Perhaps doing a professional fight is all a part of his quest to be taken a little more seriously by people.

If the fight does go ahead there will be widespread media attention and it could be a major boost for the burgeoning Muay Thai tourism industry in Thailand. Although they will not please the purists match ups such as this, where a difference in size potentially compensates for a disparity in experience, can actually be quite exciting. If Khamsing and Van Damme do eventually step inside of the ring it should make for an extremely entertaining evening.

www.twitter.com/jamesgoyder

Thanks to Science of the 8 Limbs for bringing this to my attention. If you are interested in Muay Thai this is one of the best websites out there.

This article originally appeared on Asian Correspondent

Can a Thai govt agency really absolve the government?

2011-03-11T04:33:00.000-08:00

The investigation into the shooting of Reuters cameraman Hiro Muramoto is already being described as a ‘whitewash‘ but in many ways the findings are utterly predictable.

The army, who were originally accused of the shooting, are a group which is representative of, answerable to and ultimately controlled by the government. As the situation on the Cambodian border has clearly demonstrated, when the army takes any sort of action it does so with the implicit approval of the government behind it.

Of course it is possible for rogue soldiers to act independently, whether out of malice or incompetence, but this is not something which governments will readily admit to. At no stage in the debate as to which side was responsible for starting the recent series of skirmishes around the Preah Vihear Temple has the government ever issued a statement to undermine the army or to suggest that an individual soldier or group of soldiers might have acted without authorization.

It is clear that the army and the government are inexorably linked, you simply cannot separate one from the other. Under these circumstances how can the Department of Special Investigations (DSI) which conducted the investigation into the death of Muramoto retain any credibility? The DSI is a part of the Justice Ministry which, just like the army, is an arm of the government.

No wonder the investigation is being dismissed as a ‘whitewash’. The murder of a foreign member of the media on Thai soil is a major embarrassment for Thailand and, with pressure mounting on the current coalition government, has the potential to be an extremely incendiary political issue. Had it been proven conclusively that the army did fire the fatal shots, international scrutiny on the government handling of the red shirt protests last year would have increased dramatically.

As you can see from the letter above the UDD are already attempting to encourage the international community to condemn the government’s handling of last year’s protests, in which 91 people lost their lives. As one of only two foreigners to have been killed, Muramoto’s death, along with that of fellow journalist Fabio Polenghi, is sadly more significant than that of any of the 89 others.

If it had been proven definitively that someone on the state payroll did fire the fatal shot it could have also been a fatal blow to a government which already appears to be on its last legs. Even if the Bangkok Post had not published an article suggesting that an original report, which found the army culpable, had been cynically repressed, the results of the DSI enquiry would still be far from satisfactory.

The only way that the government could have legitimately absolved itself of blame for the death of Muramoto would have been to appoint an independent group, preferably from a foreign country, give it access to all the pertinent evidence and then ask it to act as an ombudsman.

Accusations of a ‘whitewash’ were inevitable from the moment the government made the decision to keep this particular investigation in house. We did not know who killed Hiro Muramoto before the investigation began and the majority of impartial observers will feel that we are no closer to the truth now that the investigation has ended.

This article originally appeared on Asian Correspondent

How Thailand could teach England a thing or two about football

2011-03-11T04:29:00.000-08:00

I just got back from the Thai Premier League game between Bangkok Glass and Muangthong United. The football was nondescript, the game finished 0-0. The stadium was unremarkable, an entire side of the pitch was missing a stand. The atmosphere though was absolutely phenomenal.

At one end were the home fans, stacked in a stand which is three tiers high, at the opposite end were the travelling Muangthong United fans and the two opposing sets of supporters did not stop singing for the entire 90 minutes. Then, when a game which had been conspicuosly lacking in action came to a disappointing conclusion, they remained in the stadium for an additional 10 minutes purely to participate in a singing competition.

Having been brought up attending games in the increasingly sterile atmosphere of the English Premier League this was an absolute joy to behold. Me and my Dad had always made a point of making plenty of noise at Arsenal games but as ticket prices got higher the people joining in became fewer and further between, gradually replaced by a new breed of fan who resented anyone standing up or singing or doing anything to encroach on their expensively acquired view of the game.

In English football this is the reality of the 21st century. Sold out stadiums full of people who are only able to afford the exorbitant ticket prices because either the company is paying or they are rapidly approaching retirement and have some savings to spend.

As the ticket prices rise so the football clubs revenue rises accordingly and the standard of football on offer in England is higher than historically it has ever been. Thai football simply cannot compete with that and if you are only interested in seeing household names play high quality football than I suggest you try and find a thousand pounds with which to buy a season ticket at an English club.

If, however, you like your football with a little bit of passion and don’t feel entirely comfortable sitting in silence in vast soulless stadiums then I cannot recommend the Thai Premier League highly enough.

A season ticket with one of the top teams in Thailand generally costs no more than 2,000 baht (about GBP40), less than the cost of a single ticket to a top tier game in England. You can drink beer in the stadium, meaning that you are free to buy and consume alcohol at any point during the match, as opposed to the English Premier league where you are effectively given a 15 minute window of opportunity at half time to buy an overpriced drink which you are not even allowed to take to your seat.

For me what really makes the experience of watching a football game in the Thai Premier League superior to that of going to a game in the English Premier League is the atmosphere. Despite, or perhaps because of, the affordability which makes football in Thailand accessible to almost anyone the crowds can often put on a better show than the players.

Whereas in England people will sit with their arms folded wondering why they aren’t witnessing the winning performance they feel their £100 ticket entitles them to, in Thailand the crowds are much more inclined to make their own entertainment.

I never cease to wonder at the people who will leave closely contested matches well before the final whistle in an attempt to beat the crowds. If someone is more concerned with a smooth journey home than the outcome of the match why bother going to so much time and expense to attend in the first place?

Admittedly this is less of an issue when a stadium contains 10,000 people rather than 50,000 but at the end of tonight’s match between Bangkok Glass and Muangthong United the majority of the supporters remained in the ground for a good ten minutes after the final whistle, firstly to applaud both sets of teams off the pitch and secondly to engage in a back and forth singing contest.

This sort of thing simply does not happen in the English Premier League these days, barring a few pockets of enterprising away supporters. The last league game I attended before today was at the Emirates at Christmas time when Arsenal beat Chelsea 3-1. It was one of the most important wins that 60,000 capacity stadium has ever witnessed but The Bangkok Glass supporters today carried on singing inside the stadium following their goalless draw long after every single Arsenal fan at that Chelsea game would have gone home.

The cheapest season ticket at Arsenal costs £893, but there is already a 40,000 long waiting list. The cheapest season ticket at Bangkok Glass costs 1,400 Baht and they are in sale in the club shop today. That’s why I love Thai football.

This article originally appeared on Asian Correspondent

A tourist’s guide to watching Muay Thai in Thailand

2011-03-11T04:26:00.000-08:00

Muay Thai is the national sport of Thailand and a trip to a stadium to witness the ‘science of the two limbs’ is an essential part of many tourist’s experience.

Unfortunately the reputation of Muay Thai shows here have been slightly soured in recent years for two reasons; the first is the propensity of promoters to charge foreigners around 10 times what the cost of a ticket to a local person would be, the second is the proliferation of Muay Thai tourism which has resulted in numerous foreigners, many of them beginners, wanting to take part in a professional Muay Thai fight.

It is difficult finding suitable opponents for tourists who have trained for a month and are looking to find a fight at the end of it. Thai people don’t tend to dip their toes into the water when it comes to Muay Thai, they will generally start fighting professionally at the age of six or seven and will have accumulated several hundred fights by the time they have reached their twenties.

Muay Thai is generally a full time job and the vast majority of fighters will train full time for around 30 hours a week. This makes it difficult to find suitable opponents for foreigners, particularly those that are over 75 kgs, which is about the maximum a reasonably fit Thai man is likely to weigh.

Promoters tend to take one of two approaches to this problem, they will either find a Thai person with minimal experience who is happy to get in the ring for a small sum of money but has little to no interest in winning or they will find an experienced Thai fighter who is substantially smaller than their foreign opponent.

The former will generally go down at the earliest available opportunity, which is probably why you hear people suggesting that a lot of fights here are fixed, but the latter will almost always put up a good fight and more often than not will emerge victorious.

These can actually be some of the most entertaining fights and the sight of a skilled Thai fighter giving a Western opponent with a 20 kg+ weight advantage the run around inside the ring is a joy to behold.

If you go to a Muay Thai show in any of the traditional tourist areas such as Phuket or Koh Samui expect to see at least a couple of these type of fights. You can generally judge how close or competitive any contest will be by the activity amongst the Thai gamblers who always stand in a group. If they are all standing still with their arms folded it means the fight is a foregone conclusion, if there is frantic gambling activity with fingers being waved and animated gesticulation then the fight is close.

Be aware when deciding to bet that as a foreigner you will not generally get offered odds, just a straight choice between red and blue with the ‘bookmaker’ always betting on the favourite. This means that the odds are heavily stacked against you, by all means have a bet for fun, but be aware that you are probably betting with someone who has an in insider’s knowledge of the fighters in question.

The ‘tourist’ style Muay Thai shows can actually be a lot of fun and have a certain entertainment value which the more elite promotions sometimes lack. However if you want to see real Muay Thai, some of the best fighters the country has to offer going head to head, your best bet is Bangkok.

There are two main stadiums in Bangkok, Rajadamnern and Lumpini, and the stadium champions at each are generally considered to be the best in their weight class in Thailand. The fights at both venues will almost always be well matched and feature two highly skilled fighters of a similar weight. Like most stadiums in Thailand Rajadamnern allows women to fight but for superstitious reasons Lumpini still does not.

It is important to try and understand the scoring system in order to properly enjoy a Muay Thai match because the vast majority of fights are decided on points and this dictates almost every aspect of the fighter’s behaviour.

The first two rounds are typically used as a feeling out process as both fighters look for holes in the other’s defence that they can exploit in the later rounds. Rounds three and four are where the action is as both fighters pick up the pace, and, most importantly of all, attempt to catch the eye of the watching judges.

If one fighter has already established an unassailable lead on the scorecards then round five can be a bit of a non event, with both unwilling to engage. Likewise if the fight is extremely close the two fighters will also be reluctant to be too aggressive in the final round for fear of giving the impression that they believe they are losing.

If you don’t have a basic understanding of the scoring system then some of this behaviour can seem a little bizarre. In terms of fighting etiquette Muay Thai is very different from boxing , MMA, K-1 or any of the fight sports which are popular in the Western world.

You can find a comprehensive guide to the Muay Thai scoring system here: part one / part two

Expect to pay anything from 1,000 to 2,000 Baht to attend a Muay Thai show as a foreigner. In return for this you will normally get to witness around 10 fights although be warned that the first couple and possibly the last one might feature fairly young children.

It is a little known fact among visitors to Thailand that it is actually possible to watch some top Muay Thai fighters in action for free. Every Sunday the Channel 7 Stadium at Chatuchak Park hosts a show which is also broadcast on live TV and admission is free. The fights usually start soon after 1pm.

There is also the Queen’s Cup, in August, and the King’s Cup, in December, which are held every year in Sanam Luang Park, very close to the Koh San Road. It is worth checking on the internet for the exact date if you are in Bangkok in either of these months as these shows tend to feature some of the best foreign fighters in Thailand.

You can see a detailed schedule for shows at all the main stadiums here.

This article originally appeared on Asian Correspondent

Muangthong United change coach before season has even started

2011-03-11T04:23:00.000-08:00

Incredible scenes at Thai Premier League Champion’s Muangthong United as new coach Carlos Roberto Carvalho was removed from his post yesterday before their Thai Premier League season has even started.

Carvalho, who was only appointed last month, will be replaced by club owner Robert Procureur, pictured in black shirt. It is the second time in consecutive months that the Thai Premier League champion’s have parted ways with a head coach. Rene Deseyaere was sacked in January despite having just been named Head Coach of the year after leading the team to the TPL title, the Thai FA Cup Final and the AFC Cup semi final.

There are certainly some strange goings on at Muangthong and fans will be entitled to wonder what sort of shape their side is in going into their first TPL fixture of the season away to Bangkok Glass on Saturday. Carvalho’s crime was to lose to Chonburi in the King’s Trophy and to get knocked out of the AFC Champions League after losing a play-off match against Indonesian Champion’s Sriwijaya on penalties.

Carvalho is being retained as a Technical Director meaning that the club’s owner, Procuruer, finds himself temporarily in charge of team affairs for the second successive month. There cannot be many instances in the history of football when a team’s head coach has been removed from his role after just two matches and the Brazilian, pictured wearing a baseball cap, can consider himself unlucky.

Muangthong have won the TPL for three consecutive seasons but are going through a period of massive transition at present. This pre season saw 15 players leave the Thunderdome including Thai internationals Ronnachai Rangsiyo and Teeratep Winothai and top foreign player Mohamed Koné who averaged a goal every other game in the TPL winning campaign.

There have been a number of new signings, most notably former Fulham defenders Zesh Rehman and Tony Kallio and prolific goal poacher Anon Sangsanoi but it would be difficult for even the most optimistic of Muangthong fans to argue that they will be starting the new season in better shape than they finished the last one.

Procureur is only in temporary charge and a full time replacement for Carvalho is likely to be appointed within a couple of weeks Former Thai national team manager Peter Withe has been linked with the job, although insiders say that a move for the Englishman is unlikely to materialize and Henrique Calisto, who currently manages the Vietnam national team, is seen as the favourite.

Many fans felt that Carvalho, who had previously been in charge of Bangkok Glass, was not the right man for the job and will be pleased that the club have acted so quickly. The sacking of Desayaere remains more of a mystery and, unsurprisingly given how successful he was at Muangthong, he is already back in work with Division One side Chang Mai.

Muangthong United’s first TPL game of the season is against Bangkok Glass at the Leo Stadium on Saturday, 6pm KO. Tickets are still available and the game will be being broadcast live on True Sport 2.

Anyone interested in English language news on Thai football should visit one of these two excellent websites: Thai Fussball or Thai League Football.

This article originally appeared on Asian Correspondent

A tourist’s guide to watching Muay Thai in Thailand

2011-03-11T03:52:00.000-08:00

Muay Thai is the national sport of Thailand and a trip to a stadium to witness the ‘science of the two limbs’ is an essential part of many tourist’s experience.

You can find a comprehensive guide to the Muay Thai scoring system here: part one / part two

You can see a detailed schedule for shows at all the main stadiums here.

This article originally appeared on Asian Correspondent

Inter-school violence and the value of life in Thailand

2011-03-11T03:51:00.000-08:00

When I was school boy violent threats, generally of a far fetched nature, were a matter of routine, but occasions on which anyone came to actual physical harm were few and far between.

The most extreme example I can remember is when someone on their way to a school disco had their arm broken by a notorious local character who was widely referred to as ‘mental Mickey’. At the time it was a big deal, charges were pressed and the subject was addressed in a solemn school assembly.

There was another occasion when someone saw fit to taunt a car full of passers-by from the safety of the back seat of the school bus. Unfortunately for him the incident occurred a couple of hundred metres from his stop and when he got off the bus he was accosted by a group of irate young men and received a black eye for his troubles.

These isolated incidents are the most extreme I can remember from those 15 years of full-time education. Admittedly I grew up in a relatively rural area in the south of England but if fights between rival schools were occurring regularly elsewhere they seldom made the news.

I could be completely confident that on the numerous occasions when I offended one of my peers and was told I was ‘dead’ there was no chance whatsoever of him actually following through with his threat. In schools in Thailand the threat of violence is obviously far more real. Here are a selection of stories which have made the English language news:

Boy, aged 9, killed in Thai school gang shooting

Guns and gangs not child’s play

Vocational School Shooting Leaves 1 Killed and 2 Injured

Three teens arrested for fatal brawl

Vocational Student Killed in Brawl

Another vocational student wounded in gunplay

Bystander knifed, 17 arrested in new student rioting flareup

I have also witnessed numerous reports on the Thai news which have not made it into the English language media, including CCTV footage of a teenager being kicked to death by a gang in an internet cafe.

The issue has predictably provoked a lot of soul searching amongst authorities in Thailand. Principals of affected schools have repeatedly been called to parliament and solutions, including a rural retreat for rival gang leaders, have been proposed. It has also been suggested that the schools themselves are to blame for deliberately engendering an academic environment which can lead to students displaying certain tribalistic tendencies.

Education is clearly the key to solving this particular problem but I do not think that rivalry between schools is necessarily a bad thing and pupils should not be discouraged from feeling a fierce affinity to their place of education.

What concerns me the most about all these instances is the utter disregard for human life. I cannot think of a single example at any of the schools I attended of a peer dying and if something like that had happened the entire local community would have been devastated.

The majority of these attacks were premeditated and involved young people carrying knives and guns with the express intent of using them to harm another person, regardless of whether they set out to kill or not they must have been well aware that this was a possible outcome.

The issue extends beyond instances of inter-school violence. Whether it be riding a motorcycle at high speed without a helmet or having unprotected sex, young people in Thailand seem to have a far more relaxed view of risk than their Western contemporaries would.

In the West human life is regarded as absolutely sacred but in Thailand it is not held in nearly such high regard. The never mind / mai pen lai attitude which has helped the Kingdom develop its reputation as the ‘land of smiles’ appears to also extend to existence itself. Perhaps a syllabus on the subject of ‘the value of life’ should be added to the Thai curriculum because this could the most important lesson that any young person could learn.

This article originally appeared on Asian Correspondent

The curious case of the two Buriram football clubs

2011-03-11T03:28:00.000-08:00

The margins between sport and politics often get blurred. In Italy Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is hoping that, after some extensive investment, his AC Milan team will do well enough this season to deflect attention from some of his other alleged extra curricular activities.

You only need to glance at some of the names in the Thai Premier League table to realize that the importance of football here stretches beyond the realm of the sporting; Police United, Army United, Navy, TOT and Bangkok Glass are all teams in the top tier of Thai football. Interest in the game is growing and everyone wants a piece of the action whether they be the nation’s navy or a telecommunications company.

An unusual situation has arisen in Buriram. A rural town with a population of just 28,000 might seem like a surprising location for a Thai Premier League team but this time next year Buriram could well boast two. One of the teams, Buriram PEA, was bought while the other, Buriram FC, has been built.

When Thai politician Newin Chidchob decided to to bring elite football to Buriram he didn’t want to wait to develop an existing side so he purchased Ayutthaya PEA and moved the club lock, stock and barrel to Buriram in a move which did not prove popular in Ayutthaya itself.

Newin Chidchob and his wife Karuna own two football clubs in Buriram. Pic: AP.

This sort of thing is not unprecedented in the world of sport. In the UK Wimbledon FC were moved from south London to Milton Keynes and became the MK Dons while in American sport, where there tends to be less spectrum for smaller sides to get promoted into the major leagues, relocations are comparatively common.

The interesting thing about the situation in Buriram is that there is a second club which began life in a local league but is now well on its way towards the top tier of Thai football. The team is called simply Buriram FC and the chairman is none other then Karuna Chidchob, Newin’s wife. There is a fascinating interview with her in The Nation in which she discusses her involvement with both Buriram teams.

The two clubs work so closely together that a significant proportion of Buriram FC’s squad is loaned from their local ‘rivals’ while one player, Dudu, was unceremoniously fired by Buriram PEA after refusing to make a loan move to Buriram FC.

Fans of rival football teams have called into question the ethics of this arrangement and questioned whether it is appropriate for two clubs in the same competition to have such a close relationship. At present the issue is on the backburner as Buriram FC are only in Division One but if they manage to achieve promotion to the Thai Premier League the situation will come under even closer scrutiny.

In Europe UEFA has introduced a rule prohibiting one company from owning or controlling two or more clubs competing in the same competition while in England the Premier League states that an owner must have no involvement in the day to day running of any other Premier League or Football League club.

The discrepancy between the UEFA regulations and the Premier League regulations is an interesting one because under the UEFA regulations the situation at Buriram would be acceptable provided the club’s were owned by different entities. If, for instance, Buriram FC was in Karuna’s name and Buriram PEA was in Newin’s name there would not be an issue.

Under Premier League regulations however Karuna’s role as cheerleader for the Buriram PEA fans (see Nation article) could probably be construed as involvement in the day-to-day running of the club.

Is there any reason why a husband and wife should not both be allowed to each own a team in the same division? Another way of looking at the question would be to ask whether if two football club owner’s decided to enter into a romantic relationship with each other, one of them should be forced to sell their club? I believe the answer to both questions is probably no.

Fans of rival teams have expressed concern that a situation could conceivably arise with Buriram PEA playing against Buriram FC on the final day of the season needing only a point to win the league. With such close ties between the two clubs could Buriram FC’s players and management be relied upon to make a genuine effort to win the football match? At some stage the Thai Premier League is probably going to have to take stance in order to ensure that such a set of circumstances cannot arise.

The one thing to be said for the current situation is that there is total transparency. No-one is under the illusion that the proximity between Buriram PEA and Buriram FC is purely geographical and the relationship that the clubs have is very well publicized. In a country in which people are out on the streets demonstrating about the influence of an ‘invisible hand’ on the existing government the importance of this cannot be overstated.

This issue will need to be addressed if Buriram FC ever do get promoted, something which looks a distinct possibility at present. With the two clubs in the same division Karuna Chidchob’s position as Buriram FC chairman would no longer be compatible with her status as Buriram PEA’s most famous fan.

It will be interesting to see if it is left to the authorities to make a ruling on this or if the two clubs can come to some sort of satisfactory arrangement between themselves. In the meantime the real winners are the people of Buriram who suddenly find themselves with a choice of two successful football teams to support.

This article originally appeared on Asian Correspondent

Asian Correspondent

2011-02-23T02:58:00.000-08:00

I am writing a blog for the Asian Correspondent website

The American Red Shirts

2011-02-20T22:37:00.000-08:00

I met two American protestors at Democracy Monument on Saturday. They are both teachers in China who happened to be passing through Bangkok at the time of the march. This is what they had to say for themselves:

Paddy McShane (middle):

I happened to be in Bangkok but I studied the red shirts at uni and i generally think that any movement that supports freedom or more freeedom I am in favour of.

They are not in favour of the current government and anything i can do to help them i will even if its being the only two white kids at the march and if theres a picture of two americans at the protest back in my home country regardless of whether anything knows anything about the issue they might read about and see that this is something worth supporting and that our government should help out those all around the world who want more democracy.

I understand that Thaksin has a corruption issue which is something to be considered but the people who you get with democracy aren't always the best, the alternative is a military coup and regardless of who it is that person is not as good as somebody who is democractically elected.

I used to live in france and i used to protest with the french communist party and every time i see a movement where the people''s power is more important than that of a monarch or a military government i am in support of it. I don't know the depth and the breadth of the issue, i don't know there entire platform to be honest but what i do know is that they are a better alternative to any heavy handed government.

The government which comes in could be equally heavy handed. If you look at the Islamic revolution in 1979 would I have marched with them and said 'death to the Shar' and then look what happened? It's hard to say but I want to err on the side of helping people to make their country a better place for democracy.

Zack Smith (right):

In my time in Thailand we have met so many nice people and we want them to have freedom instead of being prosecuted. We want to help the country and help the people.

Evidence of cluster bombs found in Cambodia

2011-02-20T04:08:00.000-08:00

I've highlighted some claims made by the Cambodian government which have subsequently been found to be false so it's only fair I draw attention to a Thai claim which is also looking a little dubious.

Both sides have accused the other of using cluster bombs, a serious allegation because although Thailand and Cambodia are not among the countries which have signed up to the Convention on Cluster Bombs use of them still represents a serious breach of wartime etiquette.

This is from Wikipedia:

Because cluster bombs release many small bomblets over a wide area they pose risks to civilians both during attacks and afterwards. During attacks the weapons are prone to indiscriminate effects, especially in populated areas. Unexploded bomblets can kill or maim civilians long after a conflict has ended. Unexploded submunitions are costly to locate and remove.

Colonel Veerachon Sukondhadhpatipak, deputy spokesman for the Thai Army, strenuosly denied having used cluster bombs and blamed a Cambodian cluster bomb for the death of Sgt Thanakorn Poonperm.

In what can only be described as a decent bit of journalism the brilliantly named Hurley Scroggins has discovered clear evidence of the use of cluster bombs in Cambodia, including a civilian who has been maimed by one.

The story was on the front cover of this morning's Bangkok Post and you can read it here.

Red Shirt protest at Democracy Monument slide show

2011-02-19T05:09:00.001-08:00

You get a better view if you see the original slideshow.

Red Shirt protest at Democracy Monument

2011-02-19T03:55:00.000-08:00

I just got back from the most recent red shirt protest and these are my thoughts on it...

I didn't interview any red shirts this week because I interviewed one last week and I can't imagine their political views have changed that much in the last seven days (insert your own yellow shirt joke here...)

I got off the BTS at Chit Lom which was probably a mistake as the traffic to the Democracy Monument was virtually at a standstill but I was able to hitch a ride with a series of red shirt trucks which was entertaining. When the traffic slowed to a halt I just hopped off and walked and as soon as it speeded up sufficiently to overtake me someone would offer a lift.

There was one which had a drunk guy (not pictured..) who was swigging out of a bottle of Sangsom. I think this behaviour would conform to the stereotpye that many 'educated' Bangkok circles have of red shirts as being rough, rural, heavy drinking types although in all the protests I have been to I have seen very little drinking and virtually no drunkeness.

Inbetween taking slugs of whisky this guy was shouting at passers by in the hope of getting a supportive wave. He was generally targetting food sellers and motorcycle taxi drivers, the type of people you might stereotypically expect to be red shirts, and some, but by no means all, responded positively.

There was one young 'hi-so' looking Thai lady walking in the opposite direction who was wearing a bright pink t shirt and, perhaps mistaking it for red, he decided to shout something at her. The look of disgust on her face was absolutely priceless. If a tramp somehow managed to break into a Beverley Hills nightclub and proposition Paris Hilton I imagine he would be dismissed with exactly the same sort of facial expression. Next time the 'hi-so' lady is having a meal with all her friends from university I am sure she will delight in telling them how digusted she was when a drunken red shirt shouted at her.

There were nowhere near as many people at the rally as I had been led to expect. The AFP are reporting 8,000 which I think might be an exaggeration. It was noticeable that there was some imagery relating to the recent revolution in Egypt, I spotted a guy wearing an anti Mubarak T-shirt and there was a protestor dressed up like an Arabic terrorist (see picture) who I imagine was hoping to draw paralells between the political situations in Thailand and Egypt.

All these protests tent to be self policed by a well organized security team ans this one was no different. When Jatuporn Prompan made his way to the stage he was escorted by a team of about 20 security guards, I think more to protect him from his adoring crowd than any sort of physical threat. I was quite close to him when he was sitting down in the shade on the stage and he looked like he was under quite a lot of stress.

People were bringing him cold drinks and towels as well as packets of strepsils, perhaps his voice is giving out due to the volume of speeches he is making at present. He was also looking at texts on his mobile phone, from Thaksin matbe?

I spoke briefly to UDD spokesperson Thida Thawornseth who showed me a letter that is being sent to every single foreign ambassador condemning the, 'state enforced culture of violence, intimidation and repression inflicted by a minority of ruling elite interests on members of the red shirt movement and their families'. You can read it in full if you visit my photo album.

It is very difficult to estimate numbers at these protests but you only need to look at the crowd in front of the main stage to get a feel for how many people were in attendance. There were some protesters behind the stage too but not nearly as many.

I also met two young Americans who identified themselves as red shirts. The 'farangs' who I seen interviewed at these protests in the past tend to fall into the 'my wife's from Isan and I'm here for a laugh' category. These two were extremely well spoken and gave an extremely coherent argument in support of the red shirt movement. I will publish the interview with them on this website in the next 24 hours.

You can read an interview I did with a red shirt at Ratchadapisek last week here. He claims that the red shirt protestors receive no financial help and some people have even had to sell land in order to pay for the trips to Bangkok. This would certainly explain why today's rally, which was the second in consecutive weeks, was not as well attended as had been anticipated.

Simon McMenemy: From Sussex to Manila and Back Again

2011-02-18T08:38:00.000-08:00

James Goyder meets Simon McMenemy, who packed more into 2010 than most people manage in a decade.

2010 was not a vintage year for English managers. Roy Hodgson and Steve McClaren are the latest to fall by the wayside with the quest to find a homegrown successor to Fabio Capello looking increasingly doomed due to the dearth of qualified candidates.

One English manager whose reputation has been significantly enhanced over the course of the past 12 months is Simon McMenemy. He began the year as assistant manager at Worthing Town in the Isthmian League Division One South and ended it by taking the Philippines to the semi finals of the AFF Suzuki Cup, the second leg of which was witnessed by an incredible 88,000 fans.

As footballing stories go this is one of the most incredible you are ever likely to hear but it is not just about one man’s extraordinary ascent up the managerial ladder, it is also about how an entire nation learned to love the beautiful game.

A year ago no-one outside of Sussex would have been familiar with McMenemy’s name while few people in the Philippines were even aware that the country had a football team. When a chance phone call with a former player led to the 33 year old former Haywards Heath manager being offered the head coach job expectations were low and interest was even lower as he recalls,

“During the press conference before the Suzuki Cup the other coaches were discussing how many goals they would score against the Philippines. It wasn’t a case of whether they would win the game it was all about goal difference. No-one asked me any questions,” he said

McMenemy was appointed with a mandate to qualify for the Suzuki Cup something he succeeded in doing courtesy of a 5-0 win over East Timor and two hard fought draws with Cambodia and Laos. The Philippines showed glimpses in these performances of a couple of the qualities which would eventually endear them to football fans across the region. First and foremost the resolute defending which allowed them to keep a clean sheet against Cambodia and secondly the never say die attitude with which the team was able to overcome a 2-0 deficit to draw 2-2 with Laos thanks to James Younghusband’s dramatic 94th minute equalizer.

This strike proved decisive as McMenemy’s side only qualified for the Suzuki Cup courtesy of a superior goal difference to Cambodia. The last time the Philippines had reached the finals of this, or any major competition, was in 2007 when they finished bottom of the group after failing to score a single goal.

In this context it was hardly surprising that rival managers were licking their lips in anticipation of a morale boosting margin of victory against McMenemy’s underdogs but he and his team had other ideas,

“We were considered whipping boys and I think that worked in our favour, we knew we had a bit more than just being whipping boys. Amongst the team and the staff there was a belief that we were capable of doing things against good teams but we’d never been in a situation where anyone else believed in us,” he said.

The Philippines success was not built on belief alone, although the confidence McMenemy instilled in his players was clearly a factor. It was built on the sort of defensive solidity which had been conspicuous by its absence at the team’s last Suzuki Cup outing when they finished the tournament with a sorry sounding goal difference of minus eight. This time around, under the astute guidance of their new manager, the players were under no illusions as to what was required of them,

“We played very differently in the qualifiers to the way we did in the group stages. In the qualifiers we were playing against lesser opposition so we knew if we played the game in their half it meant if they gave it away we would have the chance to score goals so we pressed very high up the field and tried to steal the ball off them in their half. When it came to the Suzuki Cup we knew we weren’t going to dictate play against Singapore or Vietnam or even Myanmar, they are good sides who knock the ball around well. We had to play to our strengths,” he said.

After weeks of painstaking preparation McMenemy’s team, which featured only three full time professionals, were ready to test their mettle against some of the top talent in South East Asia,

“We were always going to be a defensive side and it is no coincidence that we conceded the least goals in that tournament and that’s something I’m pleased I had an input in. We had a lot of players who came in at the last minute so the system had to be understandable to everybody. It can’t be a technical 3-5-2 with attacking wide guys because unless they play like that at their club they won’t get it,” he said.

The team’s success was built around playing two banks of four and being difficult to break down, a strategy which McMenemy devised himself,

“It had to be very simple and given the size of the players and their fitness levels and their will to win playing a defensive 4-4-2 was very straightforward. You can look around and know where your partner is which gives you your position. It makes it very easy for players coming in the day before a tournament to fit into and know when to step out and when to stay in,” he said.

The first team to face the Philippines was Singapore who had won the Suzuki Cup three times and were ranked among the tournament favourites. The match was far tighter than had been expected and with 93 minutes played Singapore were protecting a slender one goal lead as McMenemy recalls,

“They’ve got some very good players and some very experienced players but for all the good work they did they didn’t break us down. We played it very tight a very defensive 4-4-2 with two banks of four on the edge of the box and said ‘come and break us down’ and they couldn’t do it. We always thought at 1-0 if we get one chance we can get back in this and with 94 minutes gone I pushed a couple of big boys up top, classic route one, the keepers come out and punched it and Chris Greatwich managed to stick it past him,” he said.

Although the result itself ranked as a major surprise the game was far less one sided than pundits had been predicting and the Philippines received widespread praise for their performance, not least from the opposition manager,

“We thought we were good enough to get an equalizer and their coach came over to me at the end of the game and said, ‘you deserved everything you got out of that game’ and that was enough praise for me because it was seen as a huge shock. We watched the game the next day and the commentators were saying, ‘that’s incredible and the likes of that won’t be seen again’,” he said.

The commentators in question can be added to the growing list of people who were guilty of underestimating the Philippines. Three days later McMenemy’s men went one better, defeating reigning champion’s Vietnam 2-0 in front of 40,000 home fans in Hanoi thanks to goals from Greatwich and Phil Younghusband.

“When the final whistle went I was stunned because the performance they put in was something else. It is a moment I will never forget for as long as I live. You can tell how significant a win it was by looking at the players. I was new to the team I had only been head coach for three or four months so I was new to South East Asian football but the captain, Ali Borromeo, he’s been playing for the best part of ten years for the Philippines and as soon as he heard the final whistle he burst into tears and started hugging everyone. This is a guy who is hard as nails and doesn’t show any emotion,” he said.

A 0-0 draw with Myanmar secured qualification to the semi finals of the Suzuki Cup, an amazing achievement for the footballing minnow of the Philippines who had never in their history been beyond the group stages.

Unfortunately by this stage cracks were beginning to show, not in McMenemy’s closely knit group of players, but within the upper echelons of the Philippines Football Federation (PFF). A major blow was dealt when it was discovered that the Philippines did not have any suitable stadia to host the semi final meaning that both legs would be played in Indonesia’s intimidating 88,000 capacity Gelora Bung Karno Stadium.

Then, as if to add insult to injury, the president of the PFF announced that he wanted to replace not just the coach but the entire playing staff with what he promised would be a new and improved team. With the semi final approaching this was not something which either McMenemy or his players should have had to contend with,

“To actually tell the players he was looking to replace them on the eve of the biggest game in their history, I was dumbfounded. It was disappointing for the players not to play the semi final in the Philippines. These are guys that had really gone up against the odds and often beaten the odds and their reward would have been to play in front of their home crowd and that would have been a totally different game because that would have been our stadium, not Indonesia’s 90,000 stadium,” he said.

The previously unknown Filipino players now had a much higher profile as interest in their homeland reached an unprecedented level. This brought with it a new set of problems for McMenemy and his squad,

“It was incredible, absolutely incredible. Once we got to the semi finals you couldn’t walk through the hotel without being stopped 30, 40, 50 times. We couldn’t leave the hotel without security, we couldn’t go to shopping malls, the one time we did people were recognizing us all over the place and we had to leave,” he said.

The Filipino FA was allocated 75 tickets for the first leg which was the designated ‘home’ fixture and 45 tickets for the ‘away’ leg. With Indonesia defending a narrow 1-0 lead the stadium was completely sold out for the second of the two matches which meant 88,000 Indonesian fans were there to cheer on their team,

“I’ll be very lucky to do it again, to be in that environment, it was the ultimate football environment. There was one moment when we were walking around the pitch as you do and I looked around and realized I was the only one on the pitch. I’m on my own in the middle of the pitch looking up at 90,000 fans and everywhere I looked they were booing and putting their fingers up. It was a totally weird moment which I will never forget. It’s difficult to explain the feeling,” he said.

McMenemy was the youngest international manager on the planet at the time and appeared to have the footballing world at his feet but his next match, a little over a month later, would be in much less illustrious surroundings. After returning back to England to celebrate Christmas with his fiancée he suffered the indignity of discovering through a friend on Facebook that he was being replaced as head coach of the Philippines.

Out of work but far from out of love with the game McMenemy has been playing football for Franklands Village in Division One of the Mid Sussex League while he waits for the right job offer to arrive,

“It’s quite comical I suppose. The last stadium my team played in was in front of 90,000 people with fireworks going off over my head and now you’re playing in a village in front of a man and a dog but my playing and my coaching are two separate entities. I would be looking to play a game wherever I was, be it a knock around or a five a side in a leisure centre, and the fact that one of my best mates is the head coach of Franklands Village just means I can come in there and play a bit of football and get to kick a ball around again,” he said.

In fact the comparison is a little disingenuous as these days McMenemy only plays football for fun whereas coaching is very much his career. A series of unfortunate injuries dictated that he would never get to play the game at anything approaching an elite level and as a result his focus has been on training and management since an unusually very early age. It wasn’t until taking charge of the Philippines that he discovered his decade old UEFA B License had actually expired.

There are an increasing number of successful managers in football who, like McMenemy, have not had illustrious playing careers and he feels that never having played the game professionally need not necessarily be an impediment towards a successful coaching career,

“I think there is a belief that having played at a certain level you can automatically coach and I don’t think that is the case at all. I think playing and coaching are two separate things. If your whole life has been built around being a player and that’s taken away you look around and think ‘what can I do?’ and so you go into coaching and it’s almost like a fall back for the pros, whereas with me it’s what I really want to do. I think that makes me more motivated than any coach who has played professionally,” he said.

Michael Weiß has now taken the reigns at the Philippines but McMenemy’s legacy remains intact and 15,000 tickets for a recent home game against Mongolia sold out almost instantly, something which would have been unthinkable a few months ago. Ironically had the national team not fared so well in the Suzuki Cup the PFF would never have been offered the lucrative commercial deal which necessitated the appointment of the German coach. Meanwhile the man who helped build the new found fan base finds himself consigned to the managerial scrap heap.

McMenemy has been here before. He lost a football scholarship to an American university after suffering a mystery head injury, saw a glamorous job with Nike go up in smoke after breaking his leg and, perhaps most traumatically of all, had to deal with the heartbreak of discovering he was never going to fulfill his childhood dream of becoming a professional football player.

In a career which has been largely spent on the periphery of the professional game the 33 year old has had to overcome more adversity than your average footballer will encounter in a lifetime. A lesser man might have given up and walked away long ago but after every setback he came back stronger, just as his Philippines team were able to do when they found themselves losing 2-0 to Laos with 15 minutes to go or a goal down against Singapore in the dying seconds of injury time.

Whether it be taking a team of rank outsiders to a major international tournament or facing up to an extended spell of enforced unemployment McMenemy is the master of making the most of a bad situation. He might never be given the opportunity to finish what he started with the Filipino national team but with interesting offers arriving from around the world he will surely not be out of work for too long.

In a curious quirk of footballing fate while fans in the Philippines are mourning the abrupt departure of the most successful head coach in their nation’s history a team in Hayward’s Heath is relishing having a new striker in their ranks. McMenemy currently has four goals in three games for Frankland’s Village.

This article originally appeared on the excellent In Bed With Maradona website.

Drug Addicts in Thailand to be 'Treated' Next Week

2011-02-17T05:54:00.001-08:00

You can read the original story here.

On the face of it this seems like a positive development. In the wake of Thaksin's 2003 war on drugs harm reduction and rehabilitation programmes were basically abolished in Thailand. This meant that addicts did not have access to needle exchanges and as a result the HIV rate among intraveneous drug users rose dramatically.

In the words of respected drug website avert.org:

Thailand's overriding hard line stance on drug users will continue to seriously hamper any large scale efforts to reduce HIV transmission in this population.

These sentiments were echoed by Human Rights Watch:

Thailand’s fight against human immunodefiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS), for which it has received international praise, has been severely undermined by a climate of fear that has driven injection drug users underground. With respect to drug users the Thai government has rejected similarly effective HIV prevention programs in favor of policies of arbitrary arrest, mass incarceration, and forced drug treatment.

Human rights groups estimate that 2,000 people were unlawfully killed during Thaksin's war on drugs but many are also believed to have contracted HIV after being incarcerated in unhygienic conditions where multiple injecting drug users would often be forced to share a single syringe.

Most civilized countries offer a two tier drug policy. While some argue that decriminalization is the only viable solution it is not one which governments tend to find particularly palatable so firstly there is a law enforcement approach. This dictates that anyone caught transgressing a country's drug laws will be punished accordingly and Thailand has a distinguished record when it comes to catching and imprisoning drug users.

Law enforcement efforts will only ever succeed in scratching the surface of the drug trade. If heroin is widely available in maximum security prisons in the US what hope does Thailand, a country forming one corner of the golden triangle, have of eradicating its illicit use entirely? The answer is 'none at all' but that hasn't stopped the government from launching a 'narcotic eradication strategy'.

Drugs are going to be available, people are going to take them and any coherent drug strategy needs to take this reality into consideration. This is why Thaksin's war on drugs was always destined for failure and ultimately did far more harm than good.

In this context it is necessary for governments to also look at ways of reducing the harm that drug users do, both to themselves and society as a whole. Strategies which have been successfuly employed include providing equipment to facilitate safe injecting practises, prescribing effective substitutes such as methadone and even prescribing actual heroin.

While it sounds encouraging to hear that Thailand is taking steps to address its drug problem through rehabilitation programmes instead of straightforward law enforcement the thinking on the subject still seems to be deeply flawed:

During 20-27 February, 2011, drug abusers in Bangkok will be brought to the rehabilitation centers to get clean. There will be those who are encouraged to receive treatment on their freewill and those who will be forced against their will.

Forcing someone to rehabilitate 'against their will' won't work, it is as simple as that. You can deny a person access to their substance of choice, although as the US prison analogy demonstrates this is much easier said than done, but they will inevitably resume their addiction at the earliest available opportunity.

Attempting to force addicts to enter rehabilitation is actually completely counter productive as it means they are far less likely to identify themselves as drug users in future by either entering a rehabilitation programme voluntarily or attempting to access services such as needle exchanges. This forces them further underground and further away from the help which, conversely, you are attempting to force on them in the first place.

I am using the term drugs generically here but the addictive drugs which are widely available in Thailand are yabba / yabba ice (crystal meth) and heroin. I have more expertise when it comes to the subject of heroin addiction because I researched and wrote an article about it for an English newspaper recently (How the heroin drought will affect the UK) although heroin use is actually far less widespread in Thailand than that of either yabba or yabba ice.

The affects of withdrawal from heroin are so severe that were a non drug user suffering from similar symptoms admitted to hospital they would be instantly admitted to intensive care. Heroin withdrawal in itself can actually be fatal and rehabilitation programmes tend to have at best a 50% success rate, despite the fact that people generally enter them voluntarily.

Attempting to force addicts to cease using drugs is obviously a more humanitarian solution than simply rounding them up and shooting them, which was Thaksin's 2003 strategy, but both policies are incoherent and unlikely to succeed from anything other than a statistical point of view.

For instance if you force an addict into a rehabilitation programme he is likely to resume his habit at the earliest available opportunity but will do everything else in his power to ensure that he can no longer be identified as an addict.

Statistically this might mean that you end up with less addicts but in actuality it just means that addicts are denied access to vital healthcare and harm reduction facilities. This will inevitably result in an increase in HIV infection rates which are already estimated to be well above 50% for IV drug users in Thailand.

From a human rights perspective by far the most worrying aspect is the idea that people who meet a certain set of criteria arbitrarily decided by the authorities should be forced 'against their will' into 'rehabilitation camps'.

This is an absolutely reprehensible strategy which effectively gives the government the power to imprison people without the inconvenience of undergoing any sort of a legal process.

What would be to stop the government from incarcerating the leaders of the red shirts or the yellow shirts by forcing them into one of its rehabilitation programmes? I am not suggesting that this is something which is likely to happen but theoretically it could and, given how politically divided Thailand is at present, that is not a situation which the electorate should tolerate.

Interesting article on Preah Vihear in Phnom Penh Post

2011-02-17T05:45:00.001-08:00

Having been critical of the Phnom Penh Post in my previous post it seems only fair to draw attention to a much more balanced and factual editorial about the ownership of the Preah Vihear temple which appeared on he website today: The view from Cambodia

Confused and misleading claims by Cambodian government / media

2011-02-16T00:53:00.000-08:00

The skirmishes appear set to continue, with reports in Thailand claiming that the Camb odians launched a sustained attack on a position at Por Makhua last night, but the real war now is the diplomatic one.

I started to cover this story with an open mind and the school of thought which said that the conflict was being engineered by the Thai government in order to deflect attention away from its multiple domestic problems seemed to carry some credence.

However the more I see, read and hear the less I am inclined to believe that this is a problem entirely of Thailand’s making.

The Phnom Penh Post have come up with a couple of tub thumping editorials which you can read here:

Thai Claims Are Outrageous

Thailand is not trustworthy

The first article argues that Thailand's GDP is higher, it's population is greater and it's military is superior and, therefore, Thailand must be at fault, an argument so ridiculously simplistic that I am surprised to see it gracing the website of a national newspaper.

This is an extract from the second article:

On June 25, 2008, when he was then an opposition leader, Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva unequivocally said that “Thailand had never accepted the map that Cambodia presented to the World Court in 1962”. He also added that “Thailand intended to seek the return of Preah Vihear when the opportunity arose.

The question is: By what means? The answer was bluntly given on February, 9, 2011, by street opposition leader Sondhi Limthongkul when he urged the Thai military “to seize Cambodian territory, including Angkor Wat, to barter for Preah Vihear Temple”. Democrat-led Thailand clearly chose to become an international outlaw.

Sondhi and his PAD party are currently protesting AGAINST Abhisit's government. They are calling for the Prime Minister's immediate resignation for refusing to carry out a list of their demands.

Yet this article is suggesting that 'Democrat-led Thailand clearly chose to become an international outlaw' because a 'street opposition leader' (Sondhi) said something. This patently makes no sense at all, how could Sondhi's speech possibly be seen to make Thailand an 'international outlaw'? The article appears to be implying that Sondhi somehow speaks for Abhisit which, given that the two are more or less sworn enemies, is a ridiculous concept.

I went into this with an open mind but the more that I hear coming from Cambodia the less I am inclined to believe. For instance a Camodian statement was issued claiming that:

"A wing of our Preah Vihear temple has collapsed as a direct result of the Thai artillery bombardment,"

You can read it on the BBC website here

A Cambodian statement was also issued claiming that:

“There has never been and there will never be Cambodian soldiers at the Temple of Preah Vihear. This has always been a place for worship and tourism,”

You can read it on the ABC News website: here

However according to the Associated Press:

"reporters who reached the cliff-top temple have seen little more than superficial damage to the site"

and

"hundreds of Cambodian soldiers were seen by Associated Press journalists deployed in and around the sprawling temple compound, which was fortified by sandbagged bunkers.

Dressed in military camouflage, some played cards inside the temple’s shaded walls. Some rested on cots or hammocks while others poured new sandbags and stacked them up.

“We’re here to defend it,” said a soldier at the temple, who was inside a sandbagged bunker that was covered with a military tarp. “When the fighting stops, we will go.”

So the Cambodian government lied when they issued a statement claiming that a wing of the temple had collapsed and they lied when they issued a statement denying the presence of soldiers in the temple.

The Thai Claims Are Outrageous article in the Phnom Penh Post appeared less than a week after the Associated Press discovered hundreds of Cambodian soldiers at Preah Vihear temple and contains the following paragraph:

Abhisit also alleged that Cambodia used the world heritage listing of Preah Vihear to house troops and launch attacks on Thai territory. This is another outrageous lie and false propaganda designed to pull the wool over the international community’s eyes and against all reasoning.

Whether attacks were actually launched from Preah Vihear itself we will probably never know but there are photos and video footage of Cambodian troops based in the temple.

There is no doubting the existence of outrageous lies and false propaganda but most of it seems to be coming from Cambodia.

I don't know who attacked first or which country is the aggressor and would want definitive proof before I even thought about coming to a conclusion on the subject. What I do know is that the Cambodian government is in danger of losing all credibility on the issue by repeatedly issuing statements which have subsequently been proven by reliable and independent media sources to be brazen lies.

AFC Cup Fixtures

2011-02-15T12:49:00.000-08:00

Fixtures for the AFC Cup featuring both Chonburi (left) and Muangthong United (right). Muangthong were the loser of ACL Play off 1 (East), you can enlarge the pics by clicking on them or see he full schedule on the AFC website: here.

The obvious highlight is Chonburi's home game with South China on March 16th which could see Nicky Butt and Mateja Kezman start for the travelling team.

Last season Muangthong reached the semi finals of this competition and both teams will be looking to go on a similar run this time around.

Independent article

2011-02-15T12:46:00.000-08:00

An article about my experiences covering the Thailand Cambodia border conflict is on the Independent website: My Week In A Warzone: Covering The Conflict Between Thailand and Cambodia

Valentine's Day

2011-02-14T04:40:00.001-08:00

Valentine's Day means different things in different parts of the world.

In Thailand it inevitably means an outpouring of entirely predictable angst about whether the ocassion will encourage teenagers to have sex / lose their virginity / get pregnant.

The same sensationalist stories basically materialize year after year. Here is a sample of the 2011 vintage:

Police, Thai Health to deter teenage drinking during Valentine’s Day

Thailand ranks second worldwide in teen pregnancies

ABAC Poll: Teens not to lose virginity on Valentine’s Day

I don't know whether this particular phenomenon is unique to Thailand but I have never known Valentine's Day to be accompanied by so much moral apprehension anywhere else.

I is an ocassion where existing romances can be strengthened, salvaged or even sabotaged but by the time February 14th comes around it is probably a bit late in the day to actually attempt to forge a new relationship.

Valentine's Day could, I suppose, be a catalyst for existing couples to take the plunge but does this 'danger' really justify all the conscientious concern? If teenagers are going to have sex then surely there could be worse ocassions for them to do so than February 14th, a day with so much emphasis on monogamy and romance.

From what I can remember of my days as a frustrated teenage virgin I would set my sights firmly on social gatherings where alcohol was widely available and parental presence low or preferably non existent. None of these factors are likely to be in place on Valentine's Day and I would have thought that New Year's Eve would be a far more auspicious date on the calendar for young teens looking to lose their virginity.

What makes the annual Valentine's Day panic here even more ironic is the fact that Thailand must surely be one of the most difficult countries in the world to actually remain a virgin. Most small towns here have more Karoake bars, places where sex is openly sold, than they do regular bars.

The student uniforms are supposedly the sexiest in the world (according to a recent poll) and Thailand remains the discerning sex tourist's destination of choice. It is standard practise for successful Thai men to have mistresses, known as Mia Nois, and brothels masquerading as massage parlours are quite simply everywhere.

Thailand is also one of the easiest countries in the world to live in if your sexuality is unconventional. Whereas in the Western world you are basically either gay or straight in Thailand there is an array of commonly used terms to cover various sexual preferences; lesbian, tom, gay boat, gay bi, katoey etc etc. I can't even keep track of what they all mean.

For 364 days of the year Thailand seems quite at peace with its sexuality making the annual Valentine's Day panic particularly peculiar.

Pictures from red shirt march

2011-02-13T00:46:00.000-08:00

You can get a better look at this slideshow by clicking here.

Red Shirt march

2011-02-13T00:10:00.000-08:00

There was about a kilometre of traffic at Ratcha dapisek for this afternoon's red shirt rally. Very difficult to estimate numbers but 99% of the people stuck in the traffic jam were red shirts as there was a bypass in operation.

I asked a lot of people where they were from and the vast majority said Bangkok. However in my experience migrant workers in Thailand often claim to be from the place they are working in, so it is possible that they were all originally from northern Thailand, the red shirt stronghold.

I was fortunate enough to meet one red shirt who spoke fluent English (pictured). He would only give his name as Ronald.

"We have come here because we want democracy, 100% democracy, not a military state. The power comes from the soldiers. We want 100% democracy.

We are asking for a minimum, the smallest thing which every country has, which is democracy. It is natural, it is normal to every country to have democracy.

We want an election but this government is a robbery government so when there is an election they will not do it justly, they will do something strange so they come back again. We do not trust the government.

There is an invisible hand supporting the government and we don’t want that any longer. Everybody knows who the invisible hand is I cannot say who because I will get put in jail.

The yellow shirts have no credibility because before they supported this government and now they want to throw down this government. They are unreliable people. One day you are like that, another day the other day you are like the other side, that is very unreliable and they have no credibility any longer.

I like Thaksin and I would like Thaksin to come back if possible. If Thaksin was corrupt he would not have been able to do many good things for his people in the past. I don’t believe he was involved with corruption. Everybody knows he was doing some things sometime for himself but he had the intention to help the people, especially the poor people.

I would like Thaksin to come back and for the people who killed the people on 19^th May to be punished to bring justice to the people, the leader of the red shirt people in the jail, they are chained, they have no liberty because they are accused of being criminals. It is a very miserable situation.

No-one is paid to be here , the people who come from the provinces they pay a lot of money to come here, for the car for the bus, about 300-500 baht, nobody give them money, they don’t know who to turn to to get that kind of money from. Some people have sold land in order to have money to come here to fight for democracy.

Many yellow shirts have turned to be red shirts because they know their leaders don’t work for sincerity they work for money. The invisible hand must give them a lot of money but now the people know that the invisible hand does not repsect them."

Thai Premier League

2011-02-11T20:08:00.000-08:00

The Thai Premier League kicks off today with four fixtures, all at 6pm.

The pick of the day's matches sees BEC Tero, managed by former West Ham defender Peter Butler, host last season's runners up Buriram PEA. It will be an interesting test for BEC Tero who made a host of pre season signings. Buriram PEA are hotly tipped to win the TPL this time around as last season's champion's, Muangthong United, have sold a couple of key players.

Muangthing United are not in action as they will be in Indonesia for an AFC Champion's League play off against Sriwijaya. Former Fulham defender Zesh Rehman (pictured) is set to make his competitive debut.

Premier League Fixtures (all 6pm KO)

12 Feb 2011

Pattaya Utd vs BGFC
True 69

Insee Police Utd vs TOT
True 161

BEC Tero vsBuriram PEA
True Sport 2

Sriracha vs Samut Songkham
NBT 11

13 Feb 2011

TTM Phichit vs Chiang Rai Utd
T-Sport

If you are interested in Thai football I suggest you check out these two excellent websites:

Thai League Football

Thai Fussball

Southern Thailand

2011-02-11T04:28:00.000-08:00

There really are a lot of shootings in the South of Thailand at the moment.

This is from today:

Two suspected RKK insurgents shot dead in Narathiwat, 3 others die

and this is from yesterday:

Suspected rebels kill 3, torch bodies in car

Thailand Cambodia Border Dispute Slideshow

2011-02-10T23:40:00.000-08:00

As you can see Blogger is cutting off the right hand side of all the photos. To view the slideshow properly in full screen click here.

PAD rally at government house

2011-02-10T21:44:00.000-08:00

I would estimate, and I'm not good with crowd numbers, 2,000 protestors and 500 police.

Here is what a PAD spokesman, who gave his name as Ronayos had to say:

'Abhisit traded the land / territory with Huc Sen for his personal benefit anf the benefit of his party. We do not want any more land from Cambodia like Britain did not want any more land from Argentina but as soon as Argentina attacked the Falklands Britain had to do something. Not like this government who insist on negotiation with no exercise of military force.

We demand three things initially. Firstly abolish the 2000 Memo randum of Unde rstanding. Second we demand the government withdraw from the UNESCO commission for World Heritage Liesting. Third the government muist expel the Cambodian settlers from Thailand at the Cambodian border. The border was settled properly about 100 years ago according to 1904 and 1907 treateis between Thailand and France.

The border was settled already but for the past decade Cambodia under Huc Sen has been quite aggressive and has invaded us or through our governments ignorance. Our government made an MOU with an attachment which is a French map which Thailand never accepted, it is a map with an arbitrary border between Thailand and Cambodia.

Preah Vihear was sentenced (to Cambodia) by the Hague who passed the verdict. We accept that because we are citizens of the world but we think that is not fair. The border has been settled already at that side the border was a natural border and Preah Vihear was beyond that cliff on our side so it is unusual and unfair that the judge at the Hague should make such a strange decision.

I was in the protests two years ago. The Pad do not insist upon who is PM but if any of the politicans are bad they have to go. We demand law and order, we demand fair application of law. Politicians in Britain would not survive illegitimacy or public scrutiny or any scandals. Here no matter how people publically object politicians will unashamedly stay in their seats and won’t go.

I think Abhisit is corrupt because he has allowed the sovereignty of Thailand to be encroached. He is not financially greedy, but he is greedy for power. He wants to stay as PM but he is a puppet of more corrupt politicans such as Suthep and Newin.

Suthep has negotiated with Huc Sen. He is supposed to look after internal security but instead he negotiated with Huc Sen. It is likely he got a deal which was left by Thaksin. Thaksin was selling his telecommunications business in 2005 he would get a lot of money from that and he had an eye on the petroleum industry and its likely that he made a deal with Huc Sen tha the would leave Preah Viharn hill to Cambodia in exchange for business in Cambodia and petroleum in the sea.

Alread Huc Sen has sold the concession for petroleum explorers for offshore petroleum in the Thai gulf. He sold that although it does not legitimately belong to Cambodia. With the map he could draw his Cambodian water territory more into Thailand and it would involve more than 1/3 of the Thai gulf area and that means a lot of petroleum under the sea he has already sold that concession to total, to chevron and some others, it is big money.

We have been tolerant enough for Abhisit to correct what should have been corrected but he has not doen that. To the public he appears nice, he appears good, well articulated but he has not done anything of material.

First we believe that Abhisit has to go because it has been a week that we declared the demand that the government has to go. We will stay here until he goes. If he carried out our three demands then the border problem would have been resolved peacefully but he left it too long and Cambodia had a wicked plot to initate the fighting and then bring the matter to multi party negotiation where Cambodia can manipulate or bribe big petroleum companies and then win more land like when they won preah vihear temple which was an unfair verdict and Huc Sen remembers that successs.

He wants to be an invincible hero for Cambodians, he needs that to stay in power.

We cannot get away from the problem of vote buying, we though Abhisit would reform the country and educate the people out of corrupt practises such as vote buying. Today they are going to pass some law amendments for the number of seats which will increase the number of seats in parliament at the expsnse of the people and for the benefit of themselves, he just wants the Democrat party to get more seats at the next election.

A couple of months ago he passed a law to increase the salary of politicians quite a lot, more than 50% for MPS and for local MPs, this is a bribe to poltiicans.

We do not want war with Cambodia we want our sovereignty back the 67 people who were abducted by Cambodian troops in our territory, this is proof and it is quite unbelievable, Briatain would not allow that to happen with british people at the border or at a doubtful area. They would not allow the Russian or Argentinian government to arrest 7 people at a disputed area and come out on national television to announce they had invaded them.

We want the two to be released but that is an additional hope but we are more interested in official matters.'

Ronayos has a website which you can visit: Anti Thaksin

If you want an idea of where the protests are taking place here is an excellent map which is updated regularly by Richard Barrow: map

There was also a second stage which had virtually no-one in front of it, a band was playing to a crowd of about 10 people which would suggest the PAD were hoping for an even higher turnout.

Judging from the tents a small minority of protestors are in it for the long run. There are plenty of stalls selling / giving away food and around one hundred tents.

I was there shortly after 10am and people seemed to be wandering back towards the main stage from the Rama V statue, a distance of only about 500 metres. If there was some sort of a protest here I think it can only have been a token one.

Scottish Teacher blogging from Kantharalak

2011-02-10T08:13:00.000-08:00

Nick is a teacher in Kantharalak who I first met on Friday night. He is a trained journalist and has a very interesting and well written blog. Having lived and worked in the area for several months he is in a much better position than me to assess the mood among the local people. You can read his account here:

Nicholas Burton blog

The battle may be over but the (PR) war has only just begun...

2011-02-10T07:15:00.000-08:00

It is now over four days since the last shots were fired in anger and it appears that the threat of further military action between Thailand and Cambodia is receding. The physical battle may be over but the war to win the approval of the international community has only just begun.

It is a war which will be fought almost exclusively through the mouthpiece of the world's media and both sides have already begun issuing contradictory statements.

Much of the debate boils down to the question of who fired the first shot, an issue which it is effectively impossible to adjudicate on. Both armies claim to have only ever acted in retaliation but given that two sets of soldiers are on a high state of alert in claustrophobically close proximity to one other it is easy to see how a slight misunderstanding could escalate into a full scale fire fight.

There are a couple of clear discrepancies in Cambodian claims though. The first statement which struck me as improbable was the following, as reported by the AP:

Hun Sen blamed Monday's fighting on Thai troops who he said opened fire as they approached the border to retrieve the bodies of their dead. "One of them was shot dead," he said.

It is now Thursday, there has been no fighting since Monday morning, and yet these dead Thai soldiers have still yet to materialize. When a Thai soldier was killed at Pra Ma Khua at approximately 6am on Saturday morning his body was laid out in the temple in Kantharalak by 3pm that day.

I know that another Thai solder died in hospital in Ubon Ratchatani from wounds sustained during the fighting on Sunday night and he was posthumously promoted to Major. If a Thai soldier had been shot dead, as Huc Sen claimed, surely the body would have been retrieved and a service would have taken place?

And what about 'the bodies of the.. dead' which Huc Sen refers to? The unofficial ceasefire has lasted over four days and it is becoming increasingly less likely that there are bodies on the battlefield which have yet to be retrieved.

There was also an AFP report which I read in the Bangkok Post (you'd think they would have someone on the scene...) stating that,

'Across the border, it was reported that at least 30 Thai troops had died.'

I don't know who 'it was reported by' other than the AFP itself but there has never been any evidence to suggest fatalities of this scale in Thailand.

The most glaring and inept inaccuracy was exposed when the Cambodian foreign ministry claimed that,

"There has never been and there will never be Cambodian soldiers at the temple of Preah Vihear. This has always been a place for worship and tourism."

Within hours of this statement being issued Associated Press journalists arrived on the scene and discovered that there were hundreds of Cambodian soldiers based at the historic temple. You can read the full account here.

Both sides are accusing the other of using cluster bombs and once again these accusations and counter accusations are impossible to either prove or disprove.

Whether the story the Thai government is spinning is entirely accurate is open to conjecture but what we can say with absolute certainty is that the Cambodian version of events is far from factual.

If their leaders are willing to lie about something as fundamental as the presence of troops at the Preah Vihear temple how can any other claims made by the Cambodians in relation to the current conflict be taken seriously?

Kantharalak day five

2011-02-09T04:42:00.000-08:00

I managed to get the motorbike back, it was at Ban Don Ao police station which is practically in Cambodia.

Despite the fact that I now had my journalistic credentials in order they were still reluctant to let me have it and insisted on taking photos of me, the bike, my press pass, everything.

I had a drink with some guys from a Thai TV station late last night who had heard all about what happened yesterday and confirmed that I had been suspected of being a spy.

I had previously thought that any soldiers who caught me trying to get into restricted areas where I wasn't supposed to go in order to take photos would just assume I was a nosy journalist and tell me to go away. It hadn't occurred to me that they would suspect me of gathering information for the Cambodian army and it came as a bit of a shock.

The whole area was calm by this stage and I was planning in dropping the bike off and heading back to Bangkok but I wanted to finally work out where Pua Makhua was first. People were pretty reluctant to tell me but I met a shop keeper who drew a map and it turned out it was the place in the woods with all the checkpoints where I had been turned away. All the members of the media who told me it was possible to get to Pua Makhua obviously hadn't actually tried it themselves.

The field where I had found the shell holes the previous day was only about a kilometre East and there was a path which led West which I thought might give me a route into Pua Makhua, I had seen a soldier disappear down it on a motoribike the previous day. I was a bit apprehensive about being interrogated by the Thai army again and didn't want to push my luck but I had been trying to get to this place for four days and this was my last chance so I proceeded with extreme caution.

After about 50 yards I came to an empty looking military base on the right hand side which had a very alert sentry on duty. He was the only one I had seen so far who was actually crouched behind cover with his weapon pointed, the rest had been a bit more casual which I took to be an indication that this was quite close to where the action had been.

A couple of days ago I would probably have ignored him and driven straight through as the sentry post was about about 20 yards to the right and wasn't blocking the actual track but I decided in light of the previous day's events it probably wasn't worth the risk.

At least I now had a much more specific idea of where everything was and where the fighting had taken place. Por Makua itself must be absolutely tiny, given that lot of local people had not even heard of it and there wasn't even a road leading there, just a dirt track going through the woods.

It seems a strange location for a war, the woods were so peaceful when I was driving through them, I was even stopping to take photos of wildlife.

You can see my photo of a lizard, who didn't seem particularly perturbed by the whole situation, and of some soldiers heading away from the Phu La Oh waterfall, which is in the same woods as Pua Makua. They were probably wondering what a white man on a scooter was taking photos of rocks for, perhaps they are still wondering now? I'd like to visit the waterfall for touristy reasions one day and go for a swim.

I returned the bike to the woman, I washed it, brought a new helmet and had a bit of the bodywork replaced because it had a hole in it. Ironically, given how much abuse the bike got from me, I'm pretty sure the damage occurred when someone reversed into it in the hotel car park in Kantharalak.

Far from being grateful to get her bike back in one piece she decided to rob me blind. She obviously had no intention whatsoever of giving me back my 2,000 Baht deposit and looked surprised when I asked for it. She then proceeded to charge me for an extra day and make up a story about how she had to get a taxi to go and check on the bike and deducted the cost of the fictional taxi from my depsite.

I was already paying double the going rate for the bike because i had been in too much of a hurry on Satruday morning to bother bartering. If anyone is planning on visiting Kantharalak, or renting a bike there do not on any account use the Kantharalak Palace Hotel as the woman there will rip you off shamelessly if you have white skin.

some positive feedback...

2011-02-08T09:32:00.000-08:00

I got some postive feedback from someone called Russell:

I dont know where you are reporting from but it certainly does'nt sound like you are in kantaralak to me.You state'I heard a western voice, which is unusal as there are only about five westerners in the entire town.'Which i find utterly absurd as i myself personally live just outside of kantaralak for 6 months of each year and i know personally of at least 10-15 westerners who live there full time all year round,and can be found on a daily basis in and around town,try the AMAZON coffe shop at the ptt petrol station on the main road(221)on the east of town or try PIZZA4YOU near the muang market at the bus station.
I suppose you are trying to make yourself out as a freelance journalist in the back of beyond struggling in an area totaly unexplored by westerners until you bravely came along.Well Mr Goyder i think you know that is about as far from the truth as you can get and i will be in contact with the BBC world service to let them know of my thoughts about your inacurate postings.
P.S I do hope leave this post on your blog for all who visit to see but some how i very much doubt it.

Not sure what Russell's point is really. His main bone of contention seems to be that I said I only saw about five westerners, which was true. There were three schoolteachers who I interviewed, two guys from Al Jazeera and a Swede staying at the guest house. I did get a couple of concerned messages from Norbert at Pizza 4U who seems like a very nice guy and offered me free pizzza which I never got a chance to claim. Sounds like Russell isn't in Kantharalak and is under the impression that everything is exactly the same as it was when he left it which it isn't. A lot of people have left the town, possibly including many of the 10-15 westerners, and a lot of shops were closed as were the schools, even the 7-11s shut down on Sunday night. I'll drop the BBC a line and let them know to expect an angry phone call from a man with no idea what point he is trying to make.

Kantharalak day four (flashback)

2011-02-08T06:31:00.000-08:00

The most entertaining episode of the entire week occurred last night.

I'm not going to name and shame the person involved but I didn;t sleep well on account of having an army of mosquitos in my room and at 2:30am I heard a western voice, which is unusal as there are only about five westerners in the entire town.

I looked out of the window and it was a member of the media who I won't name and shame. He was obviously so drunk he couldn't remember where his hotel was and he was with some Thai guys on motorbikes who must have been driving him around trying to help him.

I tried saying hello because i had spoken to him quite a bit but he was so far gone I decided he was beyond my help.

The last I saw of him he was waving 1,000 baht at the Thais and going Chitlom, Chitlom (which is a place in Bangkok, about 12 hours drive away) presumably in the drunken hope that one of them would drive him (500 miles) home.

When I first came here my room smelled of sewage but now that aroma has been overwhelmed by the smell of my socks. I should probably have brought more than two pairs but I still consider this a minor victory.

In the unlikely event that any members of the Cambodian military are reading this can you please refrain from shelling the Ban Phum Saron area tonight as I would very much like to be able to return my motoribike in one piece tomorrow...

Khantaralak Day Five

2011-02-08T04:33:00.000-08:00

After four days of driving around looking for trouble I finally found some, although I wasn't as much of an impartial observer as I would have liked to have been.

I've been to ban Phum Saron and the Phu La Oa waterfall (where the soldiers told me to go away) but I wanted to get into Phru Makuea where the bulk of the fighting had been taking place.

I spent the morning on a tour of shell holes, the area is so rural that it is 90% woodland or field, so you really need to enlist the help of a local person to find where the Cambodian ordnance had landed.

There were no shortage of volunteer guides and I found quite a few shell holes, all of which were in utterly harmless places. The one above was probably the biggest and I had to cirumnavigate it on my rental scooter, which I have basically been treating like a quad bike, but none of them were particularly close to houses, the nearest probably fell about 50 metres away, and there was not a Thai military target in sight. I don't believe the Cambodians were deliberately targetting eucalyptus trees or buffalos though, I just think that they have yet to master the art of accurate shelling.

Whereas the previous day I had been ontenterhooks waiting for the bombing to begin today was totally relaxed. The terrain is perfect for being on a bike because there are rough dirt tracks going literally everywhere and I was having a leisurely day exploring and looking for shell holes.

The border is not straight so it is difficult to judge where you are in terms of the two countries but I think i managed to get behind the Phu La Oa waterfall by taking a cross country route which involved driving through one large puddle as well as going around the aforementioned shell hole. I think the hill you can see in the pic might be Phu Makua, I don't know where the smoke comes from.

By this stage no-one had fired a shot in anger for well over 24 hours so in the highly unlikely event that I did drive into Cambodia, which was supposedly only a few kilometres from here, there was much more chance of them laughting at me than firing at me. You can't rally mistake a sunburned white man on a scooter for an invading Thai army.

After a while I decided that the likelihood of me actually arriving anywhere interesting was diminshing so I doubled back, managing to find a route which avoided the puddle and the shell hole. The fields have so many connecting paths that I was starting to seriously contemplate setting up a quad biking tour company here. I ultimately decided the threat of being shelled would probably be a deterrent to tourists although the shell holes could be an attraction.

There were a few people about in the villages and many of them had decided to simply head to their shelters when the bombing started instead of joining the rest of the refugees. I found several shelters with signs of extensive use as well as one wit han abandoned wheelchair by the entrance.

After inspecting all of Sunday's shell sites I wanted to try and visit Por Ma Khua as I had been pointed in the direction of it repeatedly but had never succeeded in actually finding it. I stopped and asked some Thai TV reporters and, in an act of generousity whoch would come back to to haunt him, one of them sorted me out with a press pass, which I didn't have and didn't know I needed.

I was pointed in the right direction, which turned out to be a road I had been down at least 10 times, and stopped to ask for more directions at every available opportunity in case I had simply been missing a turning. Most of the people I asked looked visibly concerned for my safety
which I took to be a sign that this was probably a place worth finding.

Eventually I asked a group of Thai men (the area had been evacuated but there were still pockets of people hanging out by the road) and after ascertaining I was a journalist one of them insisted on phoning his friend who was a soldier.

I wasn't sure whether this was a positive development as I had been hoping to just sneak up on the place and was pretty sure I wouldn't get official authorization. The crowd began to slowly swell as passers by stopped to see what was going on and, realizing a quick getaway would soon be out of the question, I tried to leave but they insisted I wait.

Eventually two soldiers arrived on a motorbike and started to ask me a lot of questions. My Thai is not that hot but I showed them the pass I had been given. It was in Thai and I had no idea what it said, but it seemed to help. I told them I was a journalist for the BBC (I had given two intervews to the world service in the previous 48 hours and freelance is a difficult concept to explain in a foreign language so this was only slightly pushing the point. Also when the BBC phoned me 2o minutes before the live interview I was in my room in Kantharalak because i thought it would sound clearer but they wanted me 'on the scene' so I had to get on my bike and drive at 100 kmph towards Ban Phum Saron in order to ge there in time for the interview so I feel they owe me, especially as the presenter never did actually ask me exactly where I was...)

One of the soldiers then got on the phone and I heard th term Nak Khao (journalist) used. He was very friendly but I was a bit alarmed by the sheer quantity of official sounding conversations concerning me which were taking place.

Soon after another vehicle arrived, contaning a higher ranking soldier and then another containing the police. At this stage I was starting to feel a little out of my depth. There were about twenty people there and at least eight officals of them were either members of the police force or the military. I sensed that this was either going to end in me being give unprecedented photographic access to the battlefield or arrested and it seemed like it might be starting to lean towards the former.

This being Thailand, an extremely bureacratic country, if they went over my papers with a fine toothcomb they were bound to find some sort of discrepancy. Then again I was right out in the Thai countryside with people who had probably never dealt with a Westerner before so I was hoping I could trade off my novelty value.

My motorbike was searched, which wasn't an encouraging sign, and someone in civilian clothing who was probably a police officer demanded to check the photos on my camera, as they were mainly of a journalistic nature I thought this could only enhance my credentials as a legitimate member of the media as opposed to a cunning Canmodian spy.

They telephoned the woman who I rented the motorbike off, I had a brief incomprehensible conversation with here but despite the almost imsurmountable language barrier I strongly got the impression that she was a bit perturbed to get a phone call about her motorbike in the context of me wanting to use it to enter a warzone.

They then asked me about my press pass and I had to admit that I didn't work for Thai TV, which is obviously what it said. The atmosphere was still convivial and quite a few of the Thais and even the soldiers weer taking photos of me, I wasn't sure if this was in the interests if their scrap books or national security.

The soldier with the hat on had been very friendly all along and explained exactly what was going on, unfortunately I didn't understand a word of what he was saying but it sounded encouraging. Before we left a policeman insisted on taking a group pic with my camera which, in hindsight, was a very good idea.

I was instructed to give the keys to my motorbike to a policeman and told, politely, to get in a truck with the three soldiers, one of whom looked like a general. At this stage I hadn't completely given up hope of actually been taken to Por Ma Khua but felt that, on balance, there was probably more chance of something bad happening to me.

I got my hopes up when we headed towards Preu Vihar and pulled into a Wat which I had never seen before but it turned out they were only dropping the high ranking officer who had been summoned off and after that we went straight to Kantharalak police station.

They demanded the memory card from my camera and proceeded to copy everything from it. I asked them why, thinking that someone might steal my photos and publish them but apparently they needed a copy of them for 'security' reasons. Several phone calls were made, taking the total number of people that had been called and told about this to a worryingly high level.

The friendly soldier who had driven me there went into a room where he had a meeting with what looked like a superior office, a couple more phone calls got made and then he told me something along the lines of, 'it's alright you can relax now' I wasn't that stressed in the first place but judging from his tone perhaps I should have been.

The Thai journo who had given me the press pass got summoned and was extremely contrite. I felt bad as he had only been trying to help me but I never asked him for it he just presented it out of the blue. He said something along the lines of 'I only gave it to him because I can guarantee he works for the BBC' but fortunately for him by this stage they were convinced that I was a journalist and not a Cambodian spy.

I was given my own press pass but had to wait another twenty minutes because they were copying everything from my memory card and I mean everything. They got some pictures of a housing development in Phuket, pictures of me and my girlfriend at Loy Kratong and a copy of Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps (which, to be honest, they are more than welcome to). I was quietly confident that I didn't have anything inapproprate on there but it was still a relief when they finally finished copying all 1.05 gigs gave me the memory card back.

A soldier who spoke absolutely no English took me back to my hotel and dropped me off. 'What about my motorbike?' I attempted to ask. He gave me a long and complicated answer, which I didn't understand a word of and then drove off in the distance.

I went to see the woman I had rented the bike off, who was extremely stressed and assured her that the bike was 100% ok. Which was technically true, I just had no idea where it was. I got the owner of the hotel to drive me to Ban Pum Saron, which I thought was the nearest police station to the point i had been picked up at and, given that I had given the keys to a policeman, might be a good bet.

He was a bit apprehensive as his hotel is on the same road as a refugee camp full of people who have fled from Ban Phum Saron in fear of their lives but I persuaded him it was safe, which it was.

The only police station we could find was about 10 miles south of ban Phum Saron and they had no idea what I was talking about, again the language barrier wasn't helping. I suddenly realized that not taking the telephone number of any of the soliders was a massive error, particularly as I had given my number to about five different people.

I was just about to give up and go home, mentally calculating the cost of buying a replacement motorbike, when I remembered the photos. I had two photos on my camera of me posing with the policeman who had driven off on my bike.

I showed it to them and it was greeted with instant recognition 'Aaah Sarawak'. It appeared that this policeman worked somewhere north of Ban Phum Saron, closer to where I had last seen the bike. The taxi drive phoned him and we established the bike was at the police station, although I wouldn't be able to get it until the morning for some reason. I didn't care though I was just relieved I wouldn't have to buy anyone a replacement bike.

I've uploaded a couple of maps, which are the only ones I can find. In the absence of detailed road information it is extremely difficult working out exactly where everything is.

For anyone who is interested in hearing about the actual situation here, instead of my zany adventures, there is very little to report today. No signs of fighting since Monday morning and the general consensus is that this is the end of the actual exchanges, although everyone felt the same way on Sunday before the nost intensive bout of shelling yet.

Assuming nothing happens between now and tomorrow I am heading home. I'm relieved to be in my room instead of in a police cell awaiting deportation, or espionage charges.

On the one hand getting into these scrapes gives me something to write about, on the other hand they are quite stressful as I find the prospect of dealing with Thai bureaucracy a lot scarier than the threat of an errant Cambodian shell.

Khantaralak day four part three

2011-02-07T19:39:00.001-08:00

Here are some photos from the biggest refugee camp in Kant haralak. It's interesting to note that there are about half as many people here as there were on Friday. It appears that a lot of them left after the fighting broke out on Sunday.

Whereas on Friday there was no media, very little by way of bedding (see photos in my first ever post) and people were packed into the two halls there are now tents, blankets and the whole Thai media has been camped out here since the fighting stopped.

Khantaralak day four part two

2011-02-07T05:15:00.000-08:00

I just spoke to a man in town assured me that the Cambodians would attack at 10pm because, according to him, they said they would.

The Combodian commander was educated at West Point so you would imagine he had covered basics such as 'don't tell the other side what time you are planning on attacking' but I am going to keep an eye out just in case.

My camera isn't really good enough to take pictures at night so I can get much more done during the day but there is no sign of a reconciliation and from a media point of view both sides have been antagonizing the other with statements issued today so there is a strong possibility that something might happen.

kantharalak day four

2011-02-06T22:35:00.000-08:00

All my work at the moment is for radio so I am focussing on gettin out and about and gathering information and don't have a lot of time to write.

In the meantime I will upload a few pictures:

A school bus full of water buffalo as farmers take advantage of a lull in the fighting to preserve their livelihood. I asked them if the buffalo were scared and the answer was, 'no, but we are'

Children at the refugee camp at Kantharalak police station chase an unsecure tent which has been blown away by the breeze. there are a few thousand people camped out there who had been sleeping side by side in hall until the tenta arrived, almost all of them are from Ban Phum Saron.

A picture of the King lies on its side in the wreckage of a building in Ban Phum Saron which was hit by a mortar during the fighting on Sunday night. Although there was artillery being fired from Ban Phum Saron it was a kilometre away from here. The Cambodians don't seem to be particularly accurate.

The office doors at the entrance to Prahan Vihat (preah vihear) national park have been blown open. All the buildings have sustained serious damage, this is the place where tourists would normally be queing ro purchase their passes to visit the park. The park offices and surrounding buildings do not seem to have sustained any diredct hits and most of the damage is superficial.

'My bomb shelter's better than your bomb shelter....

This one, also at the national park offices has got a TV in it. There is a tent in the adjoining shelter and judging from the quantity of food and drink stashed there people have been spending a sustained period of time in these shelters. I believe the staff were only evacuated yesterday as Thailand announced the indefinite closure of the national park.

The final outpost on the Thai side of the border. This is as far as the media are allowed to go and appears to be a target as shells have several shells have landed within a 50 yard radius of this shelter. Notice the flower arrangement which has survived the shelling intact.

Early Sunday afternoon when everyone thought the fighting had finished this stall mysteriously appeared selling camouflage clothing, knoves and military gear. It's as if people suddenly felt sufficiently secure to start pretending that they were in the army without the danger of actually getting shot. Once the fighting got underway again this stall was nowhere to be seen but there do seen to be an unecessary amount of people wearing khaki.

The 'home guard' are also out in force old guys with even older rifles slung over their backs. If he doesn't stop a Cambodian invasion nothing will!

Kantharalak day three part two

2011-02-06T10:47:00.000-08:00

I set off for the spot where I had been turned away yesterday assuming that there must be something interesting to see. I was driving for what seemed like miles until I came to the first checkpoint which was unmanned, it was a lovely sunny day and I was enjoying driving my scooter through the woods, although a quod bike might have been more appropriate.

The road came to a fork and I elected to turn left. There was no-one around and it was a bit eerie because there was total silence. By thus stage a ceasefire had been declared and I figured that if fighting had resumed I would have heard it so I wasn't particularly concerned for my own personal safety.

After a couple of miles along a dirt track I spotted some smoke and slowed to a snails pace. There was the remanants of a fire on the left hand side of the road but no sign of a crater so I wasn't entirely sure what caused it.

I soon met a truck full of soldiers heading towards me who very politely told me to 'glap' (go back). I turned around but when I reached the fork in the road and turned back towards the direction I had came from they didn't follow me so I doubled back and decided to explore the other track which they must have taken.

At this stage I was slightly nervous because I might have mildly disobeyed a military command and I didn't want to bump into the same group of soldiers again. Before too long I came to a check point which was manned and was attached to a camp which contained a large number of vehicles.

I had been wondering where all the troops were as I had seen them going to and fro but had yet to see where they were actually based. There was evidence of a large military presence nearby although I only actually saw two people. The sentry who I had a brief chat with and who was confident that the fighting was all over and an officer, I took a photo before they had a chance to tell me I couldn't and then turned around.

This time I turned back towards where I had seen the smoke to see if I could get any further. I passed a jeep heading in the opposite direction and was overtaken by a civilian style truck and they didn't pay me any notice so I obviously wasn't anywhere totally out of bounds.

I finally came to a manned checkpoint and spoke to a soldier there. He was 23 years old from Ubon Ratchatani and had been in the army for three years. He also seemed to think that the fighting had stopped but he did confirm that the remnants of the fire I had seen were caused by a Cambodian shell the previous day.

An officer came over to tell me politely to go away (something of a recurring theme...) and he wasn't sure that the fighting had finished. I had yet to successfuly locate a shop selling sun tan cream in Kantharalak and by this stage my sunburn levels were reaching brutal so I headed home wasted a couple of hours watching rubbish on the TV and booked a flight home for Tuesday, assuming there would be nothing more to report by the border I planned to spend Monday night in Ubon.

At about 7:30pm I went to grab a bit to eat and was sitting by the roadside eating noodles when I noticed that the traffic was intense. The previous day there would not have been a single car but now they were bumper to bumper as far as they eye could see.

I wondered if Kantharalak was always this busy and had only just returned to normality but it is a very small town so I swiftly discounted this. My next theory was that everyone was simultaneously returning to their homes now that the fighting had stopped. I aksed the guy in the guest house if there was so much traffic because people were now 'mai glua' (not afraid). He shook his head and told me it was because they WERE afraid.

It quickly materialized that the Cambodians had started shelling again so I jumped on my bike and headed straight for the border to see if I could see what was going on. The adrenaline was pumping and I spent about 20 minutes driving in circles trying to get out of Kantharalak which I had never tried to do after dark before.

I eventually found the Thai media who were gathered at a suitably safe distance and admiring the ordnance which was flying directly overhead on a non stop basis. It was all one way traffic with two or three shells a minute coming from Ban Phum Saron and another base closer to Kantharalak.

A Thai reporter who spoke rudimentary English assured me that the Cambodian attacks were less visible because there artillery was less effective and was fired at a lower trajectory from closer range. The shells flying over head from the Thai side were all travelling at least 10 kilometres but there was nothing visible coming from Cambodia.

The few villagers who had not fled earlier in the day began to come through and reported seeing or hearing at least 20 Cambodian shells land although there were no casualties at this point. The bombardment came to a stop at around 9:30 pm but given the sheer quanitity of explosives that had been hurled in the direction of Cambodia I was expecting to hear reports of heavy casualites. The first injured Thai soldier came through in the back of a fast moving jeep and an entire fleet of ambulances, sirens blazing headed in the opposite direction.

The camera crews all moved forwards to wait by the ambulances expecting the injured soldiers to arrive any minute. By this stage a crew from Al Jazeera was on the scene, the first Western media I had met in three days in Kantharalak.

The medical team had been briefed extensively and there was an air of tension as everyone must have been wonderign what sort of state the injured soldiers were going to arrive in. Every time a fast moving vehicle emerged from the darkness the cameras would rush to the first ambulance expecting an injured soldier to emerge but they never did. After a while the media, including myself, lost interest and headed off. The fugure at the time was two injured That soldiers but at the time of writing it has risen to 14.

Supposedly the dispute began when the Thais attempted to retrieve dead bodies from the battle field so it is possible there migth be substance to Cambodian claims that they have killed 40 Thai soldiers. I expect the death toll on the Cambodian side to be high given the sheer quantity of shells (at least 100) which weer fired in their direction.