On Dec 23rd the fine folks of Thailand will be electing a new government. Seems in Sept of 2006 the military didn’t like the way billionaire Prime Minister Mr. Thaksin was running the joint and decided to stage a bit of a coup. So Mr. Thaksin went on the lamb and ended up buying the Manchester United City football team and the people of Thailand get to vote on a new government.
Only there’s a problem in all of this . . .
The military doesn’t think the people of Thailand can handle their booze and vote at the same time so they’ve put a ban on selling booze while the elections are on. From 6pm on Saturday until midnight on Sunday Thailand is dry. Believe me, a couple of friends and I hit bar after bar on Saturday night looking for a place that would serve us some wonderful distilled spirits. The government was taking it pretty serious and stationed cops in many of the bars to make sure that no booze was being sold.
There’s nothing more sad than seeing a city like Bangkok boozeless. No Westerners stumbling down the sois. After hours clubs completely pointless. All in all, not a pretty site.
Of course, we tried to take a reasoned approach to the situation and offered a promise that we would not vote in the election (since we’re not Thai we can’t vote anyway) if we could get a drink but our logic fell on deaf ears.
Instead we spend the evening hopping around town in silly costumes and entertaining the local Bangkokians.
Here’s some photos from the evening:
