FOOT SHOOTING
What a day of nonsenses!
We live in Bangkapi which is, I suppose, to Bangkok as ?Richmond is to London or ?St.Cloud to Paris or whatever. It is, for here, wealthy. We have a huge shopping Center, called The Mall and just up the road are Carrefour and BigC.
Also Makro
We have three good hospitals, schools and a major University-Ramkhamhaeng. In about a month a huge Tesco Lotus Hypermarket
will open..more of that in a moment.
We went to Makro today to buy some Gaz cylinders and a baby-walker. Very hot in Makro..why?
"Oh Makro has taken the decision to turn off the air conditioning as too many people were wandering around in the pleasant ambience without buying anything!!"
Ah well.
So we get to the checkout with our Gaz, a bottle of Chateau Cadillac and a plastic bag of Oysters!
Can I have your card please?
Sorry? What Card?
Oh Makro have decided that they are only selling wholesale now. You must have a Makro Card. So Kunjana turns to the three people behind us in the queue and asks if they will swipe their card. No-one has a card. Kunjana then observes. "I wondered why Makro was empty"...true, it was normally teeming...Makro have managed to tell all their customers to f. off...and Tesco is opening. Another multinational cock-up.....
We wonder how long it will be before Boots closes? Already closed in Japan I gather. Good stuff as at home..but EXPENSIVE!!. Bottle of shower cream downstairs $1.30 bottle.In Boots $4.50. Watsons the HK pharmacy will clean up.
Anyway back to Tesco. They opened a big store down Rama 3 way. As everywhere, there had to be motorcycle taxi ranks. Some bright spark decides there should be one at each side of the store. Unfortunately they give one franchise to a mob run by a policeman and the other to a gang run by a soldier. Result: gunfights in the carpark and customers shot in the store.However they seem to have sorted it for now! We eagerly anticipate the awarding of franchises in Bangkapi.

As to other nonsenses
Well here is a story.
We have two friends called-well I had better not name them-lets say the girl is called Gay and the guy Asoda. She is Thai and he Japanese. They have lived together, on and off, for three or four years. he has some doubtful watch business. There was a great panic a couple of years ago when his Japanese colleagues threatened to move the production to India. She is an orphan. But has a husband who is in jail for dealing 'chemicals'. Asoda thinks he is her brother. Common mistake, here. In the early days life tootled on. Gay, who is 21, went out, drank Johnnie Walker, danced the night away etc. Asoda, who is 60, stayed home, watched unlikely Japanese videos, ate salad and went to work. But there was some other chemistry at work! A couple of years ago Gay started to investigate chemistry more seriously. Mainly she met a guy who was an advanced researcher. So after a while she is doing several tabs a day of what is called here Ya Ba.....literally mad medicine..amphetamines...with a few E tabs thrown in at the discos. A few lines of ice for good measure. She comes out in serious lesions....next we know Asoda is tripping away with her, also the maid and the driver. Kunjana spoke to her today and Gay says. The dogs are not well. Why not asks K. Oh I guess its the amphetamines. What? Well no-one has the energy to buy food for themselves, let alone the dogs, so we give the dogs tabs. They are very thin and their fur is falling out. Oh. What about you? Well I am down to 31 kilos!! And I cannot go out because I am too shy with all these red patches all over me. K reckons they have 2 years unless they pull out of it. Me, being naive about this stuff says...have to do something etc. K says..look I knew half a dozen people or so from school and another 6 from university who did this..they are all dead. Its a Thai problem......................??? I have talked the nights away with them, she says. They don't care. It is happening all over Bangkok and up country too. If the politicians were not making so much money out of the trade they would have to do something...as it is..All the amphetamine factories in Burma are funded by Thais...so..when anyone complains they just shrug. Can't come between a Thai and his money!