MangoZeen

Sunday afternoon some 5000 anti-government demonstrators broke through police barricades at Makkhawan bridge and marched to the Bangkok residence of Privy Council President Prem Tinsulanonda. 
 
Despite the heavy rain the protesters led by the Democratic Alliance Against Dictatorship exhibited the fiery temper of mob rule or god moo and proceeded to hurl missiles including chairs over […]

This low season appears to have reached previously unknown depths. The high air ticket costs have priced Thailand out of the budget of many tourists and the rising baht has decimated the ranks of the casual residents of Pattaya.

 Everytime I enter a bar I feel like a RAF pilot returned to the barracks after a […]

The Thai Tourist Board paints a pretty picture of the Land of Smiles and with good reason. The nation is blessed with beaches, ancient ruins, and forest mountains. The positives outweigh the negatives, however the authorities tend to rosy up the vision of their country and evaded issues of importance such as Dengue Fever.

This rainy […]

Early Sunday morning the police blocked Pattaya’s major streets for the annual marathon. Runners started before dawn to escape the enervating powers of the tropical sun, otherwise the 26 miles would be shortened to a single kilometer.
When I was in high school, I ran cross-country.

5K-10K. Not anymore.
My friends and I have a standing challenge for […]

JFK was supposedly the fastest speaker in the English language. Whereas expert typists can tap out 120 words per minute, JFK could string over 300 words in a minute as opposed to GW Bush’s lastest press conference, where he hemmed and hawed like a schoolboy caught smoking pot on a Church outing.

JFK is the recognized […]

Why do cemeteries have fences around them?
Because everyone is dying to get in.
It’s the exact opposite for prison.

Okay, this joke isn’t so funny to adults and neither is the appearance of a ghost in Bangkok’s Crime Suppression Division, where several guests of the state have experienced sleepless nights due to the unwanted presence of a […]

13 has been considered bad luck for centuries. The Turks effectively banned the number from their language. Vikings feared that if 13 guests sat to dinner, all of them would die within a year under the curse of Loki, their god of mischief. Some humans reject this belief and Manhattan has both East and West […]

Family members have a strange way of showing up unannounced in Thailand. The lineage of cousins can extend to the son of someone’s aunt who used to go to school with your wife’s second uncle. On one occasion three teenage monks stopped for a visit. My 16 year-old nephew, Beer, knew one of their uncles. […]

“I have nothing against Christ. It’s your Christians I hate.” This remark has been attributed to Saladin. I fell the same way about most religions except beer-worshippers.

“Every day is Beermas.” My mate Nick declared with the fervor of a suicide beer-drinker. I’m an apostate Catholic. I don’t believe in God, Jesus, or an afterlife and […]

Most tourists to Thailand are fascinated by the food cart selling with fried insects ie crickets, grubs, cockroaches, scorpions, and several unidentified members of the insect species, although most react with revulsion and Thais revel in daring westerners to cross that culinary line in hopes of seeing witness the European upchuck the crawly creatures as if they were rehearsing […]