So, I took my first holiday in 3 years and came to Thailand for some sun and scuba.
Had the flight from hell from Vancouver to Toyko (screaming infant kicking my chair the whole way and an incontinent bridge troll farting next to me in the window seat for the entire eleven hours. Looked like Jabba the Hutt in sweatpants who'd just been the victim of a drive-by dirty sanchez.)
Get to Narita for a 4 hour layover and a nice rumbler of a quake hits. Not enough to damage anything but enough to get most of the waiting passengers pretty excited. Kinda funny to watch how the different nationalities reacted. The French couple next to me looked like they were going to wet themselves while the Russian grunted, paused for about three seconds and then got stuck back into his bottle of Asahi.
Get to Bangkok and I know something's up because the lineup for immigration is a mile long and it's after midnight. Five durka-durkas straight out of Waiziristan are about four places ahead of me and they all get pulled out of line and taken off to a side room. By now I'm wondering if this is just the normal routine now as there'd been a warning put out about a month ago. It's not until I get to my hotel and turn on the BBC to learn that there'd been a few bombings around town earlier in the day.
I flipped over to the Thai news channel as it tends to be a lot more, shall we say, raw than the stuff out of the West. Sure enough I'm immediately shown footage of some bugger with his legs blown off, flopping about on the street. Turns out this Darwin-award nominee blew his own legs off with a grenade he threw at a passing cab that had refused to stop. (this was after the genius had already whipped a bomb up the street.) The grenade (most likely stencilled ACME) bounced off the cab and right back into our hero's lap.
Now, things here are pretty surreal. The various embassies are all putting out advisories, the Iranians and Israelis and thumbing their noses at one another, and the Thai officials are busy telling everyone that there's nothing to see here, move along. This is not terrorism, damn it!! It's just a couple of disgruntled Iranian expats setting an argument amongst themselves.....with hand grenades and C4.
Crazy! Stay safe, SDR.
Karma is a b!tch...
Quote"Thitima said police had tried to move in and arrest the man after blast by the taxi. According to the Bangkok Post, he threw another grenade at the police that hit a tree and bounced back toward him and exploded, which caused him to lose both his legs."
**Warning**
Graphic!
http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=/watch%3Fv%3Dmnuv81ngoAI%26feature%3Dyoutu.be (http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=/watch%3Fv%3Dmnuv81ngoAI%26feature%3Dyoutu.be)
Quote from: Jarhead0331 on February 17, 2012, 06:56:46 AM
Karma is a b!tch...
Quote"Thitima said police had tried to move in and arrest the man after blast by the taxi. According to the Bangkok Post, he threw another grenade at the police that hit a tree and bounced back toward him and exploded, which caused him to lose both his legs."
**Warning**
Graphic!
http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=/watch%3Fv%3Dmnuv81ngoAI%26feature%3Dyoutu.be (http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=/watch%3Fv%3Dmnuv81ngoAI%26feature%3Dyoutu.be)
Heh. If that's not a case of being hoisted by one's own petard, then I don't know what is!
Is it wrong that I laughed out loud when the camera panned-up to show the dude's jeans hanging from a tree?
^Nope. SDR I am assuming you're back home and snuggled under s fuzzy blanket.
Whoever made those jeans should use that video to advertise their product. The dude's legs are gone, but the jeans look to be intact. Does Timex make jeans??? ::)
They must be a pair of Carhartts.
Quote from: Gusington on February 17, 2012, 10:58:03 AM
^Nope. SDR I am assuming you're back home and snuggled under s fuzzy blanket.
Nope, got two more weeks here. Been pissing down rain since yesterday so I'm hogging the PC in the lobby.
Quote from: Centurion40 on February 17, 2012, 11:00:23 AM
Whoever made those jeans should use that video to advertise their product. The dude's legs are gone, but the jeans look to be intact. Does Timex make jeans??? ::)
Excellent!
Great post SDR, stay safe. Good luck on your scuba.
Another earth-shattering Ka-BOOM today.
This time at a resort hotel in Phuket. Looks like the hotel staff hired untrained kids to maintain the chlorine levels in the hotel swimming pool. Still not sure exactly what happened (and water treatment is my field of expertise) but it looks like they were using calcium hypochlorite as their chlorine source and something either exploded (highly unlikely) or they somehow mixed it with something they shouldn't have and created a massive chlorine gas cloud. I'd guess ammonia. Anyway, looks like a bunch of tourists are in the hospital with severe burns to the eyes and breathing passages.
Quote from: Silent Disapproval Robot on February 17, 2012, 07:51:26 PM
Quote from: Gusington on February 17, 2012, 10:58:03 AM
^Nope. SDR I am assuming you're back home and snuggled under s fuzzy blanket.
Nope, got two more weeks here. Been pissing down rain since yesterday so I'm hogging the PC in the lobby.
You should write some copy for the Thai tourism while you're there. You've REALLY made me interested in going there! ::) :o
Just logged on after taking a long weekend offline.
Stay safe, SDR.
Welcome back LB!
I won't ask how things are going, as I suspect that would be a rather foolish question atm...