It’s about three years since the project to build Thailand’s tallest residential building, the 91 floor Ocean 1, was announced. Since the announcement, nothing much has happened and most people, including myself, assumed that the project was dead. Indeed, I was rather rude about the development more than a year ago, and it looks like I owe Bruno Pingel and his team an apology. Because construction is about to commence!!

We know this, because someone has published a mail from Rob Astbury, the sales manager, where he said (in December 2009) “Last week we signed a contract with one of the largest construction companies in China and it is planned for construction to start in February 2010. It is anticipated the building will be compete in four years.” Excellent news indeed!

For reasons that are not entirely clear, I decide to make the 45 minute journey to the Khao Kheow Open Zoo. It is has the word “open” in the name, not because it is open and will happily take your 100 baht entrance fee, but because many of the animals are in open enclosures which theoretically should make for happier beasts; even though they would probably rather be thundering majestically across the plains and being eaten by predators.

It’s a while since I last visited, and the impression I get is that there is now more concrete and fewer animals; and that nothing has been maintained in the year or so since my last visit. I sure as hell didn’t risk going to the toilets. Even so, if you have never been, it’s worth a trip.

You can drive round the zoo in your own car, or sit in an open bus along with dozens of sweating tourists. So I took my car, and first stop was an area full of deer.

First, you need to stand on the sand next to the sea with a long lens.

Poor old Thailand is having a bit of trouble with its image at the moment. There are the red shirts threatening rallies to overthrow the government. The yellow shirts are making grumbling noises in the background; and we all know what they can do if they feel like causing some trouble. There have been grenades in Bangkok and the usual tally of bombs, mayhem and murder in the southern promises. To an outsider it might seem that a weekend break at the Somalia Holiday Inn (no relation) would be preferable to coming to the Land of Smiles.

Thank goodness that’s over. For weeks we have been waiting for the decision on Thaksin’s frozen assets. Friday was Judgement Day, and the judges spent 5 hours reading out their conclusions.

The end result was a that $1.4 billion of his assets were confiscated by the state; but that still leaves nearly a billion that was not seized, so the man won’t starve. The response to the verdict from Thaksin was predictable. He did his usual impression of a baby throwing toys out of a pram, with a statement that can be summarised as being “Me! Me! Poor me!”. His supporters seemed disinterested in the fact that he had been found guilty on many counts of abusing power to enrich himself; claiming, with some justification, that all Thai politicians are corrupt, so why pick on Thaksin? So they vow to fight on, for something that is not entirely clear, but they call it democracy; which can be interpreted locally as meaning that whoever can buy the most votes wins. To reinforce the message that the party isn’t over till the fat lady explodes, four grenades were thrown at Bangkok Bank outlets last night.

Excellent name for a movie or a computer game I think.

But in this case it refers to the latest enterprise from our wonderful police force, intended to eradicate the hooker/pimp/drug dealing fraternity that inhabits the beach road in Pattaya. “Crackdowns” are common place here and have three recurring features. Firstly, they are announced with great fanfare. Secondly, they never last more than a day. And finally they always spectacularly fail to resolve the problem they are meant to be addressing.

This latest crackdown, like so many before it, was aimed at the hookers rather than the more nasty pimps and drug dealers who are likely to be armed with something pointy, or even a gun; and are therefore best left alone. Anyway, it is more fun to round up sixty hookers (two thirds women, one third men pretending to be women), take them all down to the police station, relieve them of some cash; and then deliver them back where they came from so they can continue plying their trade (with increased vigour to cover the fine they have just paid).

Other than boosting police funds, no doubt the boys in brown felt that a small fine and a telling-off would be enough to persuade these sad people that they should stop being a hooker and go and do something else, like chartered accountancy or, more realistically, begging.

But a quick check on beach road this morning confirmed that nothing had changed:

Photography has a set of unofficial rules, repeated frequently by the monthly camera rags under different headings to fool you into believing there is something new to be read. One of these rules states that you should keep your shutter speed higher than the focal length of your lens. This assumes that you actually know the focal length of your camera, or actually give a shit about producing a photo which has any degree of sharpness. Judging on output, Billy can stop reading now, although I am sure his fragrant and talented wife knows exactly what I am talking about.

So if your lens is 50mm, keep your shutter speed higher than 1/50th second. 150mm; more than 1/150th second; and so on. All this assumes your subject is static. If it is moving, then other considerations come into play. Polo, for example, has a horse moving vertically and horizontally at the same time. I shoot with a 300mm lens, but 1/300th second is not enough to give a sharp image. So I use 1/640th which is fast enough to freeze the rider and most of the horse, but still provides some blurring of the hooves and lower leg to give a sense of action.

So if you look closely at this shot:

As the proprietor of this throbbing organ, I am approached almost daily with tempting offers, many of which I find it hard to refuse. Even now, the postal network is straining under the load of transporting assorted dubious medications to my door, and my limited savings are being invested in a variety of schemes with new friends from Nigeria who honestly intend sending me large amounts of cash soon.

And now this, from someone called Pam. I know she is called Pam because she starts her message with:

Every year I suffer a little peak of stress when my visa renewal comes around. 90% of this is caused by the knowledge I will have to descend into the bowels of hell that is the immigration office and queue, often with people who have clearly not washed for a while, for several hours. And 8% is caused by the fear that immigration might say “no”, and I will have to leave this fine country which I am so lucky to call my home. And 2% is rounding errors.