Like scenes from a ’sapaghetti’-Eastern or a high-tieng duel in “Showdown at the Hokey Corral”.

John LeFevre just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time last night and offers an excellent report on Thailand’s latest public failure of law & order. Hundreds of traders rioted when police descended on the Patpong Night Market in a show of force aimed at clamping down on trading in pirated goods.

Foreigners in the infamous yet popular tourist area – as well those staying at the Montien Hotel – were treated to yet another display of the famous Thai tendency to avoid direct confrontation and the resulting loss of face by simply smiling and saying “mai pen rai“…… and then resorting to riots, destruction of property and that current tourist high-season favourite – security forces firing their guns in the air to clear a rampaging mob.

When a riot of noise and color is less a flamboyant description of sights and sounds and more a riot.

Coming so soon after the widely televised, blogged, Tweeted, emailed, YouTubed and flickred (is that even a word?) Red Shirt Songkran debacle; less than a year since the various battles and sieges involving the PAD ended the reign of the previous government; and barely three years since yet another bloodless coup ended Thaksin’s premiership, one has to wonder if Thailand will succeed only in carving itself an untidy little niche as the Hubbub Hub of Asia.

Same Same But Dehiscent

Thailand has for years been trying to get the USA to change the “Priority Watch List” status with which it has been lumbered as punishment for a range of alleged intellectual property rights infringements. PM Abhisit has come right out in public several times and said Thailand’s efforts to stamp out product piracy have been wanting.

The prosecution of particularly public, press-pleasing police pogroms against product piracy as a preface to major international conferences is nothing new in Thailand.  Patpong is meters away from the Dusit Thani Hotel, host of the emergency ASEAN summit on influenza A(H1N1). And besides, Patpong provides a pair of Ps. As does a….

Ping Pong Show With Fireworks

The way things have been going in recent years, it would not be a complete surprise if some enterprising soul combined one rather hackneyed stereotype of Thai tourism – the ping pong show – with an even more worrying yet less-famous feature of politics, leaving us afflicted with a result known as “The Thunderclapper“.

Thailand continues to earn its label as the “Detroit of the East”, albeit for some of the wrong reasons. The monicker originally referred to Thailand’s role as a major regional producer of motor vehicles, parts and accessories but in recent years has become worryingly accurate, thanks to a number of high-profile events involving guns.

“Weather Is Nice, Wish You Were Here With Ballistic Kevlar”

The disturbing but rather unsurprising results of mixing foreigners, angry Thai policemen, and alcohol blaze across international headlines every few years and there has been a recent rash of incidents involving police allegedly trying to catch drug gangs doing deals in department store parking lots.

These, however, all pale (…rider – heh) rather into insignificance compared to the April 17 attack on the car of PAD leader Sondhi Limthongkul.

Extreme Adventure Tourism Hub of Asia?

There was, naturally enough, quite a lot of excitement about the foreigner’s head found swinging by a cord under a bridge in Bangkok just over two months ago.

Over the weekend, the rather unpalatably-named ”Phi Phi poisoning” case left two young foreign women dead and a third ill.

On Monday, a distraught estranged husband shot dead his wife and two other Thais at her business in Bangkok’s Khao Sarn Road, injuring a Swedish bystander in the process.

Today, a Swiss woman was found strangled to death on a beach on the island of Krabi.

Small groups of soldiers in riot gear are positioned at key points for about a kilometre in every direction surrounding the Dusit Thani Hotel.

Given the way Indonesia and the Philippines have quietened down over the last couple of decades, Thailand may well be the last hope in the region for travellers seeking adventure.