Thai Hotel

Thailand has seen coups before, but this is the first one in a long time. If you have been to Thailand recently, or follow the politics, this coup is not surprising for many reasons. Many people see to much corruption at very high levels, the extrajudicial handling of the drug problem, the sale of a major Thai communication asset to a foreign country, the way that the Prime Minister handles his opposition using whatever means to silence them, and for the military, the Muslim uprising in the three southern most provinces. The political fighting in the capitol is further making the military nervous with the now ousted Prime Ministers plays to keep his power, despite a large and vocal group of people that want to see him out.

The military involvement with a Muslim insurrection in the south has to be troubling to them, and they want to open negotiations with the insurgents to work through the problems and come to a peaceful solution. Towards this end, Thailand has for the first time a Muslim General, General Sontai, controlling the military, and who appears now to be the new Prime Minister. Thailand being a mostly Buddhist Country, is very tolerant of minorities and this would seem to be a better track to travel, rather than trying to muscle through the issues using force, which is seen as not working, and counter productive? All Thai people love the King! The Thai King is the longest ruling monarch in the world today, whose 60th anniversary was a huge celebration. When you walk through Bangkok, it is amazing to see all of the Thai people that are wearing yellow shirts proudly proclaiming their love for the King, several weeks after the celebration.

This new Commander of the military is close to the King, and if he has suport of the King, the people will support him as well. No one has been hurt yet! However, it is pretty much assured that in the rush to cover the story, and be the most dramatic and sensational, the international news outlets will wreak more damage on the Thai people than the Coup, or the ousted Prime Minister. Not only will Thailand suffer, but the smaller countries that border Thailand will suffer as well, notably Cambodia and Laos, which receive a lot of overland tourist traffic from Thailand. Tourists that are in Bangkok now are a little nervous, but they will be safe, and will have a great story to tell when they get home. Thailand is a great place to visit, as it always is, and will continue to be. Book your tickets now and come and see the new Bangkok airport, with the current situation, you are sure to find some great rates, for the near future, see you here!

Fred Tittle has lived in resorts his entire life, from the famous Lake Geneva Playboy Club , Aspen Colorado where he was a rock jock for KSPN FM, Waikiki on Oahu in Hawaii and now as a owner of EcoSea Dive in Sihanoukville Cambodia where he teaches PADI and SSI Scuba Diving and runs adventure tours. Fred’s new project www.CheapCharliesHotels.com is basically an excuse to travel more. His main website is www.ecosea.com find his blog at www.ecosea.com/blog/Scuba

Share This

Exercising at home is often the last place you think about when it comes to losing weight, staying fit and just generally maintaining an active lifestyle. In reality, the home has to be one of the most effective and convenient locations to exercise. We spend many ‘dead’ hours in our home, doing next to nothing, watching TV, relaxing and being quite unproductive. In addition, with the lack of spare time to take advantage of the benefits that exercise offers due to our hectic schedules and busy lifestyles, time is one of the most common reasons why we can exercise, even though we know how much we should! Now we can make this so simple. 15-20 minutes is all it takes to get started - to build a solid foundation of strength, endurance, balance and flexibility.

Home however, is the perfect environment to exercise. When shown how to exercise correctly there are hundreds of exercises you can perform at home effectively with minimal or no equipment.

Your greatest asset to working out at home though is motivation and confidence in your ability to perform the exercises safely and effectively.

To set up a basic fitness room in your house, all you would need is the following items:

Fit Ball
Exercise Tubes
1 Pair of Dumbbells
Jump Rope And
Yourself

That’s it! You are ready to go. The above listed equipment offers such an abundance of variety to keep your body stimulated and guessing for years of training at home.

The key to any exercise program, regardless of goals, objectives and equipment is ICV - Intensity, Consistency and Variety. The combination of these three parameters alone will determine your successes.

Intensity - refers to how much effort you put into your training. The best way to monitor your exercise intensity is by measuring your heart rate. Take 2 fingers and place them on the side of your neck. Count the number of ‘pulses’ in 15 seconds a multiply by 4. This will give your beats per minute or BPM.

Consistency - refers to your frequency of exercise. You should be making exercise a part of your ‘daily’ life. Yes that’s right, daily! Whether it is going to the gym, playing tennis, golf, trekking or yoga - whatever it may be.

Variety - this is essential. Constantly varying the stimulus of exercise ensures your body constantly changes, adapts and progresses. I like to sue the analogy of reading a book. If you read the same book over and over again, you are not going to learn anything new, are you?

Fitcorp Asia is also the only organisation in Thailand to offer Online Fitness Training. At a fraction of the cost of one-on-one personal training, OFT allows anyone with internet access can now have access to personalized exercise programming and support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We will discuss this in more details in future articles or log onto www.fitcorpasia.com or www.personaltrainingbangkok.com to learn more on how Fitcorp Asia is innovating the personal fitness industry.

As a health and fitness professional for over 10 years, Daniel has personally trained more than 4000 people, on 4 continents towards the achievement of their fitness and lifestyle objectives using his unique holistic and functional approach to lifestyle enhancement. Daniel is a true leader and innovator in the industry.
Daniel draws from an academic background in Human Movement, Exercise Science and Sports Management in Australia & also holds a Diploma in Massage Therapy, & Certificates in Workplace Health Promotion, Personal Training (ACSM) and Australian Training for Fitness Professionals (ATP), Golf Fitness & Conditioning, Postural Analysis, Weight Management & Fat Loss.

Daniel is the founder and CEO of Fitcorp Asia, Thailand’s only Corporate Health & Fitness Solutions Company. “We don’t just conduct personal training, we take pride in our ability to ‘coach’ our clients in all exercise science principles including nutrition and total lifestyle transformation to ensure our clients achieve a holistic goal orientated approach to their personal health and fitness endeavours.”

Share This

I’ve been told I can no longer write about the coup for various magazines in Thailand. As frustrating as this is, I understand the position editors are in.

I don’t want to talk excessively about the coup and the Constitution, but there are still some elements of it that I want to explore. I’ve written a few pieces about the coup on my blog and have taken a keen interest in gaining a better understanding of what has been happening recently.

Not everyone is happy with the way events unfolded after the coup. The September 19 Network Against Coup D’etat are a group who have been expressing a very different viewpoint than we have been led to believe exists in Thailand. The Thai media has been reluctant to put forward this side of the story.

I for one am leaning towards showing my outright support for this group because they seem to represent something about the universal values of human rights and democracy.

Is it true that now we are in a state of martial law that all corruption in Thailand now ceases to exist? Certainly not, and furthermore, some are justifying the actions of the bloodless coup, as it were, by saying that it has avoided violence. Maybe so, but it has overturned democracy. Sometimes violence is a necessary side-product of democracy.

As ugly as it may be, the people need that right to be violent and to protest and stand up for what they believe in. Democracy cannot be expected to be peaceful and Eden-like at all times. Surely this much has been learnt from the past.

The fact remains that the coup leaders have the ability within their power to change the present climate any way they see fit. If the people were to rise up then this could force a situation whereby elections could be called for.

Do not think that by me speaking out against the coup that I am in favour of Thaksin. This is simply not true. Some people seem to be under the impression that the only options are “Thaksin or tanks.” Since when did this become the case? Whilst I understand that Thaksin was a very corrupt, thuggish man, he served many of his 16 million voters effectively. He acted unethically, but let me ask you once more, is a Thaksin-free Thailand now also corruption-free? Not at all.

What also concerns me is that a lot of people are quick to say how this is how Thailand does it, how this is the way that Thai democracy works. This is the exact point of view that supporters of the September 19th Network Against Coup D’etat are fighting against. Thailand has moved on a lot in recent years and the backlash of this is a large group of people who have come to understand universal values of democracy.

The main problem comes with the rural poor. When I said two weeks back about Thailand emulating Western values, I meant amongst the more privileged classes, in the larger cities, where anti-coup movements like this are a reality. The situation is, of course, different for the rural poor who do not care for Western values and only care for how they can immediately benefit from the political situation. This is why they supported Thaksin, because the benefit was very immediate.

Whilst the bigger cities rely on Western practices, on the farms it is not quite like this. This highlights the very real problem of the divide between the elite and the poor.

Furthermore, the rural masses are not interested in freedom of speech. They are only interested, to the best of my understanding, in what they can get here and now, and this comes in the form of superficial benefits. Therefore, what should be key in Thailand should be educating the millions of people who have the power to vote in what that vote actually means.

It’s a very complicated and volatile situation, and one that I often struggle to get my head around. Part of me wants the slightly romantic and unpredictable nature of democracy to be reintroduced, but then how can this democracy be ideally utilized if nobody actually understands what it means? Sometimes I think the Orwellian nightmare is the only solution.

I support the ideal behind what the September 19 Network are saying, but at the same time I am aware that this ideal is far from perfect because it is an ideal for the social elites. If there were no rural classes then fine, the power could be returned to the people more easily, but as it is it seems like the damage done by Thaksin’s educating the masses will take years to fix. Even so, however, I still believe overthrowing the 1997 constitution was not the right thing to do because of the lack of freedom of expression in place now.

The future looks very bleak.

Matt Crook is a Bangkok based writer and editor who relocated to Thailand from the UK in July 2005. His commentary on the Land of Smiles and the issues facing a 23-year-old expat can be found on his personal blog WhatisMatt.com

Share This