Trending down…
Posted by sideshowBOB | Blog, Reader Submissions | Posted on June 27th, 2009
No. Not the economy but of course it is way down and probably will stay there for some time. I think everyone knows that already. Tourist numbers – way down. Pretty easy to see how many less people there are. I noticed it first on the plane inbound to Bangkok. United is so desperate they are actually selling upgrades to Economy Plus while in flight. I think if they lowered the costs as soon as the plane pushed back from the gate that it might actually work. Airport – was like a ghost town. Exports. Keep falling. About the only number going up is the closures of businesses. From bars, restaurants, go-gos, clubs and factories to whole industrial parks. Maybe Ghost will chime in to let you know how many places closed just this last week in Pattaya.
Carnage reigns.
So enough of that but there is one interesting trend that whilst it goes down is providing Thailand with its best shot of finally bouncing back.
This is not scientific or anything but since most of us rely on Google for everything we do online then it would be tough to argue with Google Trends. Trends shows data based on regions and keywords what is happening in regards to traffic for a particular keyword or keywords.
I simply looked for the trend on the word Thailand.
The first big spike. Tsunami – obviously the biggest one on the chart. I did not go back far enough for SARS but I doubt it would counter the Tsunami disaster. B is the coup. C is the big pedophile, blurry face dude capture. D is nothing but I am not sure how Google chooses to sample things and which news articles it points to but there seems to be no significance behind D at all. E and and the few spikes around it should be easy – airport closure and red shirt mobs. Other spikes around Kai wat yai muu – pig flu.
Overall though the trend is down. I think that is a good thing since it means that there is less bad news because most spikes are always around bad news. The media and the news hungry audiences do not really get off on good news. That is one of the problems with humanity – no one seems to be interested in good news.
So on top of the current level of stability – there is so much other bad news around the world that Thailand is mostly not interesting from a bad news angle. From a news angle Thailand is suddenly boring. I am sure this peeves the local BBC dorks to no extent since they don’t have any puff pieces to push at the moment. Of course there is this article floating around but so far no takers from the mainstream media. Take North Korea, adultery in American politics, British MP expenses, celebrity deaths and now the Iran debacle and Thailand is playing second fiddle to the world.
On the stability thing – Thaksin continues to lose favor. The current government, despite everyone claiming they would not last 3 months, is firmly in place and actually performing governmental duties. Now we have the announcement of the biggest government spend on the economy in Thailand’s history – the Thai Khem Kaeng. Sure graft will happen, pork is on the menu but at the same time there seems to be a middle ground being reached and all the provinces look to be getting a piece of the pie. It might actually work but more importantly the Finance Minister is actually taking a swipe at the elite – funny stuff given that the elite put this government in power to begin with. Here is an excerpt from the Atime’s interview:
ATol: The Democrats were highly critical of Thaksin’s ramped up spending policies and populism while in the opposition. But many see vestiges of his economic legacy in several of your policies, including the sufficiency development funds and 2,000 baht handouts to low-income earners. What did Thaksin get right and how do your policies distinctly differ from his?
KC: He got the people involved, which I think is right. I’m the son of a civil servant, a Ministry of Finance civil servant, and then I was a career banker for almost 20 years, so I have the classic upbringing of the so-called mandarin class.
I’ve been in electoral politics for four years now, fought two elections, and I actually have an increasing not decreasing belief that the general population is more often than not right and that the elite minority, with all their rationality and reason, is often misguided in their self-beliefs.
The fact that Thaksin went out to the broad population I think will serve the country well in the long term. The problem is he did it, frankly, with false and misleading information, which is the dark side of his legacy and also turns something that could be positive for the country potentially into something that is very dangerous. Which is the kind of situation that we’ve had for the last year or so and this government is trying to amend.
So get the people involved, but make sure that they are properly informed, don’t mislead them with false promises and distorted facts, and, above all, don’t in the meantime engage in corruption. I guess what at the end of the day brought down Thaksin and people’s faith in him wasn’t the fact that some of his policies were flawed – and so many of them were flawed in execution, if not in conception – but the fact that at the end of the day people thought whatever good he did was all self-serving.
Here’s hoping for continued stability. This is about the only thing that will help Thailand at this point. There is no way to stoke export demand and tourism is dead for the time being. Sure – the baht could drop, things could get cheap and so on but so far none of that seems to be happening but some people are saying that they are seeing some of the cheapest tickets to Thailand in over 5 years. That is welcome news and could purport to a decent high season.
Either way – Thailand staying out of the search trend is a good thing since we all now the big spike is coming eventually and will probably eclipse any thing to date.
Celebrities are dropping like YP’s prey on Tagged these days. I won’t go through the list but clearly MJ gets the most press. I am just waiting for the bizarre results from the toxicology reports. My vote is he died from Botox injections to his wanker since he was increasingly finding that the underage crowd was tired of the horror show.
All that aside though check this from Korea – where dead celebrities still get sued.
Another good reason to live in Thailand:
A new study says there’s some truth to that. Seriously. According to Dr. Helen Fisher, biological anthropologist and chief scientific adviser to Chemistry.com, regular sex can make you a better worker bee. The dopamine rush from sex improves creativity making you a better problem solver. A boost of oxytocin and vasopressin generate feelings of trust, making you more likely to be a team player. And, a boost in testosterone can make you more confident and competitive.
July 4th party announcement soon. Then July 11 details.
Tshirt sample soon. FYI – we only plan on 50 shirts. Right now we have bookings for 30 of them so if you have not emailed yet to reserve one there is still time.
32 Responses to “Trending down…”
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Translator
Welcome back SSB! Thailand’s traditionally been a relatively stabile nation in a volatile region, and I hope they are edging toward reclaiming that status.
On my recent trip in the region I flew Air Asia, and the plane was packed out. People do need/want to travel, they’re just trying to save every last satang.
However, SalamiPorn Airport had more staff than passengers. Those pricey-designer shops look even more ridiculous than ever nowadays, as passengers and air crew rush past them to get to the gate.
JtB
View all comments by Jack the Bat
I think you’re dead wrong with the stability argument you’re making. The turmoil in Thai politics and the upheavals in the shifting alignments that pass for political parties here has rarely been greater than it is right at this very moment.
The present government is universally viewed as irrelevant and defenseless. The Democrats have been selling off everything they can get their hands on just to retain their status from month to month. Only today the Post was playing up the view that the government was no longer of any importance to anyone and speculating at length which generals would form which new party to take over government and with whom.
Thailand has a military government in all but name, one not unlike Burma’s except that the Thai generals are less decisive. less disciplined, and less inclined to stick together. The Democrats have been a handy cover for the military, nothing more, but their utility is fast fading and the sharks are moving into position to eat whatever may be left.
Buckle up. The mayhem hasn’t even begun.
View all comments by OldAsiaHand
You can bitch all you want about Taksin but until he dies, he is a power, and is never going to go away. He’s pretty young and has a ton of money and we all know what money means here. OAH maybe correct, the mayhem hasn’t begun. I still see a lot of blood in the street coming down the pike.
View all comments by THE MAN
i know what u mean .
took a couple shots for the blog this week of the landmark and dynasty (soi 6) coffee shops/restaurants with exactly 0 customers . knew something looked was missing .
feeling really bad for the thais with 0 to do .
re: MJ croaking . sure makes me want to go out and do the things i always wanted to do like live in bangkok . wait , been there , done that .
guess it’s finally time to spend one year getting my handicap down into the teens , like i’ve been thinking about for a long time…instead of a “year in provence”, a year in the rough .
ps pattaya secrets reports jenny star bar closed which a friend told me was THE biggest katoy bar going…
View all comments by jack dawson
Are they making it easier to get a visa?
My visa expire next week.
I would like to know where is the easiest place to get a One Year Multiple Entry Visa? Can I get it in Bangkok?
View all comments by Katechon
@Kate – I took a visa tun to Laos, and got 2 x 60 days visa which can both be extended by 30day each, equalling 6months.
I used a Swiss guys company that run out of On-Nut Tesco carpark.
Ill try and dig out the web address for you
They were quite good, despite me having to share my airspace with a complete bunch of cunts on the 9hour van ride. Im sure they said the same about me
@JackDawson – Say it aint so. I was planning on spending my birthday there next Sunday. Any further clarification on this anyone? Since that has failed, I might have to take Prufrock along to the ‘bring your grandmothers night’ at NungLen instead. Oh joy.
@SSB – On the subject of cheap flights, a friend of mine recently got a return from London to BKK with Emirates for a shade over 400GBP. That cannot, repeat cannot be sniffed at.
View all comments by Young Penfold
@Kate again. I think it might of been here, or over at ThaiVisa, someone said that they have extended the free visas ‘promotion’
If you get a double-entry from Laos, that saves you 2000 of the queens-husbands sheets.
Put it another way…..
A Soapie @ Colonze2 + 100 baht tip
100 bags of SomTam from the old woman at the end of my soi
8-9 large bottles of Sangsom from the 7/11
A fuckload of condoms (I dont wear them anywhere near enough)
50 trips from 1 end of the BTS to the other
A shade under 3 trips to Lolitas
Fortnights supply of hair wax
I could go on…….
View all comments by Young Penfold
http://www.airline-network.co.uk
I am flying some pals out for the 1 yr party from Heathrow.
Stop over in Mumbai for 1.5 hours….. £375 each!
The company is Jet Air?
China Airlines have been empty recently also. They have even started to cancel flights 4 days before departure.
View all comments by Daywalker
oah – let’s be clear on what I said. I did not say the government was doing the right thing but they have stayed in power and at least they are functioning. for the 3 thaksin puppet governments we went through nothing got done. I also did not say shit was not coming – it is but for now things are stable. months of stability – no matter what is coming will be good. I am clearly aware of how bad things can get but at the same time perception is reality. when nothing bad is happening then it looks like things are okay. right now all the bad in the world is more interesting than thailand. a few months ago this was not the case.
man – true. but he overplayed his hand and he went down a few notches. he may come back but it wont be for a while. how much do u even hear him talked about right now? hardly ever compared to a few months ago.
k – no. and that is a huge problem. starting companies here, getting work permits and so on is a huge pain in the ass and a big problem for thailand. I have always said this and they need to lighten up and even allow people to simply pay for a work permit. how many tech workers can work from anywhere and would work here if they did not have to put up with visa run silliness. they should even just make a remote worker visa.
View all comments by sideshowBOB
@DW – Whenever I’ve flown, I always use http://www.ebookers.com
The flights seem to be pretty much exact same price give or take few coins with both websites.
Cheapest return I’ve ever seen, was a few weeks/a month back while looking for a friend of mine, and it was with JetAir for 319 of Queens Elizabeths finest sheets. 4Star hotel deals including flights for 600-700quid for a fortnights stay.
What Im hearing from my friends in UK, is not that they don’t have any money to spend, but those who do, are afraid to spend it, and they are holding onto it, and cutting back on luxuries such as holidays until things smooth over
View all comments by Young Penfold
No news did not last long, front pageof the BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8122124.stm
View all comments by Deano
d – to some extent the south of thailand is white noise. no one really cares about it except for the people in the south or the families of those getting killed. apart from when thaksin killed a container full of people – news of the south never creates any google spikes from what I can tell. Of course BBC, the purveyor of all things bad, loves to make sure everyone is aware of this type of stuff but for the rest of the world and those here in Thailand – this is a non event. so I personally don’t count this as a bump in the current stability.
View all comments by sideshowBOB
Hi All,
Calm down: Chicks with dicks were swinging on the poles at Jenny’s last night.
Also, on the visas, the gov’t has indeed extended the free tourists visas promotion until June 10 next year. Free ones are restricted to single-entry visas only. Want 2 entries and you gotta pay.
The one down side to this plan is that it may result in the closure of more than a few honorary consulates. From Canada to the UK, honoriaries are saying they survive on tourist visa money and w/o it, will have to close. The gov’t supposedly claims they’re going to reimburse the honoraires the funds they lose out on, but the free visas have been available for 3 months and no honorary consulate has gotten a single baht yet.
As for the trend in Pattaya? Was out last night and it was the slowest Friday night I can ever recall. Last Friday night was busy in the places that have stayed busy this low season (Living Dolls 1, Happy, etc.) but last night even those places were dead.
Three go-go owners passed through Living Dolls last night — from Heaven Above, Lollipop and one I forget — and all said they had no customers. Some bars are reporting nightly takes of under 10,000 baht!
Even LD1, where a “bad night” used to be a take 90,000, was down to about 50,000 a night last week and back in the 70s now. When told that, other bar owners said they’d kill for those kinds of takings.
Even the discos were quiet last night. My girl was out with some girl and kateoy friends last night at Lucifer and Insomnia (I was home, drunk and passed out by Insomnia time) and she said the ratio was about 80% female to 20% male in BOTH places. Lucifer I can imagine. That few guys in Insomnia? Amazing.
Lots of pickings boys. Come on down.
Closures? Byblos Club on Soi Diamond — the refuge for the mama and hotties from Coyotee’s after that bar’s purge — has closed. Rumor has it the crew moved to Champagne on Soi LK Metro.
** Mirage’s owners said they’re closing up next week. Why next week and not now I don’t know.
** Club Boesche is formally for sale for the first time, I’m reliably informed.
** Catz, also for sale, is bleeding red ink. The bosses tell me all three partners have been pumping in money to stay afloat each month for several months.
Rumors, by the way, have really started flying in these low times. Word was X-Zone closed last week. But it didn’t. Now the Jenny’s rumor.
Personally, I can’t ever see Jenny’s tanking. That’s were all the Tiffany’s and Alcazar cocks in frocks go after the show.
A 15-year and a 22-year expat told me last night this was the lowest low season they’ve ever seen.
View all comments by Pattaya Ghost
Eva Air LHR – BKK £1350 Business Class and Omni Tower 1000 baht night.
Absolutely the cheapest ever; so not all bad!
Until I get to BKK and throw money at debauchery and pick up the bar tab for that tight-arse ‘Gaywalker’
View all comments by ChelseaBlue
Oh, forgot… My phone was innundated with MJ jokes last night. But the most memorable:
“The news that Michael Jackson died of a heart attack are untrue. He was found in the children’s ward after having a stroke.”
I’m bad. (Really really bad.) I know.
View all comments by Pattaya Ghost
ssb another bump, they are fighting in Si Sa Ket again over that pile of rocks.
View all comments by THE MAN
CB… Business Class?! What’s that like? Is that the one that I walk through to get to 1st Class?
You struggle to pick up a girl (LB) outside Nana… let alone anyones ‘tab’.
Don’t worry son, I’ll take good care of you. I know Bangkok can be a scary place for you kids
View all comments by Daywalker
Flights are cheap from the UK at the moment – 400 GBP will get you to BKK, or a little over. Business class has been slashed by most airlines, between 1000 GBP – 1300 GBP.
The UK is in a ‘recession’, but people are still spending money. From Christmas, there has been a big push for us all to stay in the UK for our holidays this summer. Its cheaper, yeah right!
Following this, I went looking at nearly new, used cars last weekend, & the large Car Supermarket was very busy. The salesman I was talking to said that the last two months have been the busiest on record. The reason? Everybody is staying in the UK for their holidays, going to the south coast etc, so they are buying a nearly new car to go in! Cheap Cheap na!
View all comments by AUK
@SSB
I really didn’t intend to open a discussion as to the quality of the government. That subject is way too depressing to talk about anyway.
My only real point was this: what you’re calling stability is very much just on the surface. Underneath, where the real action is, the political and social environment is as precarious as I ever recall it being here.
View all comments by OldAsiaHand
When has Thai politics ever been anything, but a seething cauldron of competing factions? The beauty of the system is the fact that no one faction really controls things for very long. I think OAH’s observation that the government is just a screen for the boys in green to hide behind is true. Khun Mark’s government could easily be described as a sort of day-to-day administrative appendage for the army. I think its gonna get worse before it gets better.
Although as SSB says, perception is reality and the perception of Thai politics as placid is not going to hurt tourism (particularly Asian package tourism which has been dealt multiple death blows by events in the LOS)
Companies and work permits can be exasperating, but it is currently easier than it was 5 years ago. Mr. T can be partially thanked for that.
D is really bugging me, why the spike then?
View all comments by The Soi Lawyer
guys im coming in next month to give howmuchever of a boost i can , cyu all , book a L shirt 4 me , ill be mailing it in too
View all comments by maximus
Daywalker:You may need a costly and time consuming visa to enter india even as a transfer passenger.
jack dawson: ‘handicap in the teens’? Shouldn’t that be on the michael jackson joke page?
young penfold: Devastated to hear about the brit economy: The streets of pattaya will not be the same- hopefully.
I thought the point about Thaksin was, that like Mussolini, he got things done…..
I wonder what with the economic downturn and cheaper prices I wll be able to get me a girl ‘stunna’ a 9. That being said with the weaker currencies against the baht prices are only slightly cheaper compared to a year ago.
View all comments by The Sandman
Sandman… Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll bear that in mind when they submit their expense claims to me when I’m drunk.
View all comments by Daywalker
@oah. your 2 cents would seem to be validated by the latest link below. surely thaksin is aware of the pending military back room dance card antics and has thrown some fuel (read: hard currency) into that loud, red, rural blender to get the folks on their feet. his lone, fading thread to relevance is his populist pull. without that, he’s just another rich convict on the run. about dime a dozen these days…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8122476.stm
View all comments by 2 week trevor
$703 RT LAX-BKK on expedia.com for a couple months now. I think it’s if you book at least 2 months in advance. On China Airlines.
View all comments by IrishLager
There was stability, until the coup. Tourism numbers have dropped steadily ever since.
Thaksin is an enemy of the corrupt elite. I like that.
View all comments by JJ
The paramedics said Michael never regained his color…
What a coincidence Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson dying on the same day. One played with majors the other played with minors.!!!
View all comments by WPD
From BK Magazine (quoting other sources):
Tourist arrivals June 2008 – 165,000
Tourist arrivals to date June 2009 – 27,000
That is for the WHOLE country. Ouch.
View all comments by bkk22
Those numbers can from an article in The Nation that was filled with bad math. The article did not say “to date” and then the writer went on to say it was a 33% decrease, which it clearly is not.
Apparently the writer didn’t have a calculator handy, which we know is required to determine even the change for an 80 baht item from a 100 baht note.
The figures are obviously down. I seriously doubt they’re down that much, tho.
View all comments by Pattaya Ghost
Finally some good news for the Thai tourism sector…
Kachon – A one year non-imm in Bangkok? Now that’s cute!
View all comments by mart
PG – Byblos looked like it was open today evening. I’ve heard of a one week closure because of underage dancers though. Dunno how accurate the info is, got it from a French friend of Daywalker’s.
View all comments by mart
@Kachon – There is a one year non-immigrant Visa available for Thailand. It is the “O” Visa, for retirement. It is available in the multiple-entry variety. I do believe you need to get it from the Thai Embassy in your home country, but I would check out this information with the Immigration Bureau directly. To qualify, you need to be 50+, and prove a monthly income OR money on deposit, and take a physical and have a criminal background check. After you get the Visa, it is renewable here for 1900 baht/year. The entry stamps (after the renewal) are separate. Multiple entry stamps, good for one year, are 3800 baht. For more info, contact the Immigration Bureau on Soi Suan Plu (just off North Sathorn Road).
This info may not be valid for you, but I cannot know as I don’t know your age. But if not, it might be of help to someone else.
View all comments by Khang