Good afternoon,

Vocational courses are available in Songkhla for as little as one baht per hour and people are rushing to join them to try to find a new skill and a new or second job. Courses include food and dessert preparation, fruit juice making, hairdressing and floristry. Many of these trades offer a route into self-employment and street vending, which was a feature of the 1997 crisis. There will be a need for municipal authorities to adopt a suitably flexible attitude towards managing the burgeoning street level economy as the recession takes firmer hold.

The violence in the South appears to have intensified over the last couple of weeks – today there are stories of five police officers being badly injured when a roadside bomb exploded as they passed by on patrol and six army personnel were injured by another bomb blast in Yala. It is not clear why (if indeed it has at all) the violence has increased. Since the silent coup, the military has had a free hand to do what it likes (as the poor Rohingya refugees have found out) and since they have had little success in the past, there is not much reason to think they are being more successful at keeping the peace now.

An outbreak of Crown-of-Thorns Starfish is damaging coral in a large reef at Phuket. The Starfish are thriving because of demand for their predators, including Parrotfish and Triton’s Trumpets (dunno but look here) which are caught for aquariums. Result: coral-eating heaven for the starry ones.

My article on The Xiongnu has been published at Socyberty.

Back tomorrow.

Remember: the starfish are right!