Commercial empires aren’t exclusive to mainstream business. Successful multinationals exist in underground markets just as well. A textbook example is British Dragon, the Pattaya laboratory that supplied the world with steroids. Ironically, it was conceived as a direct result of the clamp-down on the illicit anabolics trade and found its demise when Thailand increasingly integrated with the international intelligence community. The rise and fall of a shadow empire.
The chance of a lifetime 🙂 Invest 200,000,000 baht very securely in ‘a number of go – go bars’ … live, dream and reside in Thailand with a healthy income. Let’s just ignore the fact that with 200 million baht (about 50 million euro) you and a few generations to come can do that anyway … this type of ad doesn’t exactly bode well anyone involved. Some mother do have ’em 🙂
Today’s car salesman is offering a Lambourghini (sic.) Gallardo for sale for THB 680,000 (about EUR 18,000). With the car clearly a replica, and the model clearly a Countach, just about everything in the ad is inaccurate … except maybe the price 🙂
One of my favorite pass-times in Thailand is looking for local or foreign entrepreneurship. The Land of Smiles offers plenty of opportunity for those with initiative. I’ve come across remarkable local business men and impressive foreign portfolios, which I hope to report on in the future. However, researching this, from time-to-time I also run into a particular subspecies of farang (‘foreigner’) that is always looking for a quick buck, having one over on someone or beating the system. The most amusing scenarios are those that have D I S A S T E R written all over them, with the person involved blissfully unaware. The story I would like to tell you about today involves this car, for sale in Belgium.
In Thailand, everything that is fun and colorful quickly gets highly contagious. A little while ago, I’ve told you about the highly popular Caravan Boy song/video and the Capture, Capture story.. Over the last months, the craze with teenagers has been T26. The origin is the video to a song (below) used on the soundtrack to the Thai movie Miss Happy. The dancing style has gone truly viral, from children to doctors and government officials, everyone is joining in. Some examples and illustrations are available if you continue reading. Sanook maak khrab!
Following the news in Thailand is a lot of fun, really. Not only is a lot of the coverage a lot less filtered (or is it?), for some reasons extremely peculiar stories surface. Take the recent case where a former Aussie Hell’s Angel was abducted and murdered, for instance. Not only does the 21 year old main perpetrator look like he bairly left his mother’s wing, his gang chose to transport the body of the 38 year old victim in a rented pick-up truck … that was fitted with a GPS tracking system. Can’t make stories like that up 🙂
http://pattayaone.net/pattaya-news/219410/australian-abducted-in-pattaya-found-dead-in-sattahip/
The expression “Capture, Capture!” seems to be popular and is frequently used by Thai people, usually followed by laughter. The meaning, and as a result the joke, were always lost on me. The bits and pieces I got was that it was somehow related to a commercial and a ladyboy. Turns out it has quite a funny origin, indeed. Continue reading for the entire story.
