Two more reasons...

Two more reasons I love living in The Big Mango -

Anti-Smoking capaign:
The Thai government has launched a vigorous anti-smoking campaign after the King, in a speech to the Thai Parliament, stated that Thais must do more to stop smoking. So there are funny commercials on TV where a guy tries to light up in a restaurant, but the waitress, instead of filling his water glass, pours the water on his cigarrette. But the best part are the equivalent of the Surgeon General's warnings that are on cigarrette packages back home. Instead of a stearn message about the possible health issues with smoking, they have photos of skulls, wrinkled old women smoking, tar-stained teeth, a respirator, and best of all, black lungs. A not-so subtle reminder about the issues of lighting up. I will try to get a picture of one of the packs and post it on here in the near future.

6:00 pm:
Every day at 6 pm in Thailand, the Thai flag is lowered for the evening. Therefore, at this time, every activity in Thailand is interrupted as the National Anthem is played. All TV shows are interrupted, songs are interrrupted mid-verse on the radio, and so on. One of my first experiences with this happened when I was here two years ago. I had just crossed the border back into Thailand from Laos, and as I was in the back of a truck waiting to get to the next town. 6 pm hit, a man working at the border crossing blew a whistle, and everyone stood up in the truck to salute the flag. I didn't know what was going on until after the song was halfway over. My second experience was riding home from work in the bus one day. The radio was on, and the song "Feel Good Inc." by the Gorillaz had just finished (a really good song, in my opinion) and some rather sappy ballad in Thai was playing. All of a sudden, right in the middle of the song, the national anthem begins playing. The Anthem finished, and the song resumed in progress. The third time was by far the most interesting, and I really wish I had had my camera with me. I had gone to the Hua Mark sports center, the centerpiece of which is Rajamangala Stadium, seen in some of the pictures below. The Hua Mark sports center is a pretty nice facility, complete with running tracks, cycling tracks, the stadium mentioned above, a cycling track, lots of takraw courts, (a sport that seems to be a hybrid of volleyball and soccer, played with a ball made of wicker), and an indoor sports facility amongst many other things. The architechture looks like one would expect the architechture to look like had Bangkok made a bid for the 1968 or 1972 Olympics (I don't know if they did,) and hosted the 1998 Pan-Asian games. Anyhow, I go there to run every now and again or else just to watch people playing Takraw, which is immensely entertaining. I was walking around one early evening, and there was a massive aerobics session going on, with hundreds of people participating. Leading it was a lady-boy looking figure (I'll discuss more about the ambiguous nature of gender in Thai society in a future posting,) showing everybody what to do while dancing atop a very large bank of speakers blaring out annoying, fast-paced aerobics music. Anyhow, 6 pm came. Everyone running stopped in their tracks. The soccer and takraw games ceased immediately. The aerobics music cut off, and the Thai National Anthem started playing. As soon as it was over and the flag had been lowered, everything resumed again as if nothing had happened.
It's good to know that the US doesn't have a monopoly over hokey, excessive, over-the top nationalist flag worshipping.
Hail progress!