Songkran can be fun for kids:

If you are working illegally in Pattaya, then it is best to keep a low profile.

Take Mr. Shen Wen Liang, for example. He supports himself by acting as a tour guide for Chinese tour groups; an activity which requires a work permit; which he doesn’t have.

Here is how not to maintain a low profile:

1. Get really pissed.
2. Gather together three bar girls and take them back to the hotel to share with your customers.
3. When reception tells you that you can’t take three girls upstairs (presumably there is a limit of one, or two), lose your temper and threaten to burn down the hotel.
4. Go up to your room and attempt to burn down the hotel by setting fire to it.
5. Act surprised when the police arrive and take you away.

There’s a lesson here, and the lesson is: never try and take three bar girls back to your hotel room. Unless you have a work permit.

Just over a week ago I was celebrating the completion of our new road.

The extended four year construction period was mainly due to ineptitude, but it did include many months of digging, followed by the installation of a new drainage system, presumably to ensure that rainfall would travel through a proper drainage system and not flood the road, or undermine it.

Yesterday was the first test. It rained. A lot. Not hundred year storm sort of rain; but a typical tropical storm which went on for several hours. She who must be obeyed did not fancy her chances getting to and from work in her little car, so I took her in the truck; and the new road was coping just fine with the deluge.

But things were not looking so good this morning.

The army is still taking stock from last Saturday’s clash with the red shirts. Although they claimed that they were mainly equipped to fire rubber bullets, they managed to lose more than 8,000 live rounds during the scuffles, as well as abandoning nine vehicles which were later stripped by the red shirts.

Weirdest, and potentially most dangerous, of all; they lost six anti-aircraft guns and 600 rounds of munitions for same. I would love to ask them why they thought they would need anti-aircraft guns for the purposes of crowd control. One thing is for sure; the army will not risk using helicopters to drop tear gas in future.

When I worked in Bangkok, I spent many hours hanging out with my friend Tic. We had shared interests, poetry gadgets, charity work computer gaming, fine art appreciation women and wine tasting drinking.

We’d sit and drink beer, eye up potential babes, and never make a move. We consumed the latest gadgets for a week or so, before moving on to the latest new thing. For a while we were seriously into radio controlled car racing and ran a monster race track in my condo, much to the annoyance of my maid.

Publishing sensation! Number one on the Portland Times best selling list for three days! Dead author! Translated text! 27 million copies sold!

No shortage of choices for PR blurb to stick on the cover of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy books. Sufficient incentive for a casual browser like me to pick up the first in the series (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) at an airport several months ago. A long enough flight to get through the first one hundred pages in which some mildly interesting characters are introduced, an investigation into the disappearance of a girl becomes the main storyline, and nothing of consequence happens. Pick up the book again from time to time and the investigation seems to be going nowhere, mainly because the characters are too busy having turgid conversations instead of actually doing some investigating. Three hundred pages in, and I give up and stick it back on the shelf. Yesterday I give it another try, and suddenly clues are being found and all sorts of nastiness is being uncovered; and the remaining three hundred plus pages are consumed by the end of the day.

Amongst the dead on the streets of Bangkok on Saturday was a Japanese cameraman working for Reuters. He was shot through the chest by an unknown assailant. A tragedy for sure, but not the first to befall staff from Reuters.

In 2008 the Israelis shot a missile at a jeep in Gaza, killing the cameraman from Reuters inside. The jeep was clearly marked with “Press” written large on the roof.

It’s about to be Songkran again; the Thai new year when people gently splash water on the faces of their loved ones and sprinkle them with talcum powder. Or, in the modern version, spray foul iced water in an attempt to drown anyone who happens to be passing. It’s not gentle any more, and Pattaya will turn into an aquatic battleground for a week.

There is a designated day where everything stops and everyone comes out to play, and I have no problem with that. I will take some photos, either from a safe vantage point with my long lens, or down on the street with a waterproof camera; depending on how much she who must be obeyed wants to get involved.

In January I wrote “I have no idea what it is, but I will probably want it”. Now it is April and I can say with some certainty: “Now I know what it is, I definitely want it”. “It” being the iPad.

Official reviews and feedback from those who have bought one have been overwhelmingly positive, and the announcement last week of a revised operating system coming later in the year will at least stop people whining about how it doesn’t do multi-tasking.

Screaming headlines a couple of days ago, announcing that the evil reds had besieged city halls, including Pattaya. Being the fearless correspondent that I am, I had to check it out. Using she who must be obeyed as my driver, the plan was to drive slowly past city hall and take a couple of photos. We ran the risk of being pulled from the car and badly beaten; but, as you know, I will take any risk in pursuit of a story.

As we came close to the hot spot, it was clear that the fiends had abandoned their siege of the building and were instead camped outside the entrance on the main road. Finally we reached the red stronghold and one of their burly guards appraised us, hiding his obvious menace beneath a smile and an unusual head covering: