June 2004 102nd Issue

Hua Hin Jazz Festival 2004

JAZZ by the Beach is the main slogan for the 3rd annual Hua Hin Jazz Festival which is scheduled for June 04 to 06, not June 18 to 20 as previously advised by the Tourism Authority of Thailand.
Hilton Hua Hin Resort & Spa general manager, Mr Dirk De Cuyper, said 20,000 visitors are expected to attend this year’s event, bringing much-appreciated extra business to the town during a month where bookings were historically low.

Anantara Resort & Spa, Hyatt Regency Hua Hin, Hilton Hua Hin Resort & Spa, Evason Hua Hin Resort & Spa, Sofitel Central Hua Hin Resort and Hua Hin Marriott Resort are offering a special room rate of US$99 plus plus for guests attending the festival.

“I’d like to recommend early booking because already we can see a trend for people to book not just one night, as in previous years, but two or three, because they want to take in all the concerts” Mr De Cuyper told TTG Daily News last month.

This year, the main stage will be on the beach. There will also be a Jazz Alley all the way from the railway station right down to the beach.

Lively Jazz & Lovely Meal Hua Hin Beachside
June 4 & 5 complimenting Hua Hin Jazz Festival

To compliment the Hua Hin Jazz Festival, Let's Sea, Hua Hin’s Beach Restaurant presents Bossanova Jazz and Latin Jazz, live by Thailand’s leading new generation jazz musicians:

Nob Prateepasen, the pianist and the head of Royal Navy Jazz Band, graduated with Master of Music Composition from Boston Conservatory, and Jazz Arranging from Berklee College of Music.

Changton Kunjara Na Ayudhaya, the guitarist, who has just returned from USA. After he earned the diploma of Professional Music from Berklee College of Music, Changton set up a Latin Jazz band and got many opportunities to perform with some popular original Latin Jazz artists such as Victor Mendoza.

Tawat Kaewsamak, the percussionist, graduated from the Royal Navy School of Music. He is now drummer of The Royal Navy Jazz Band.
Last but not least Niran Iamsa-ard is now saxophonist and clarinetist of The National Symphony Orchestra.

Nob, Changton, and Tawat will perform during 20.00-23.00 hrs. on Friday, June 4, 2004 while Niran, Changton and Tawat will show on Saturday, June 5 at the same time.

The Jazz at Let’s Sea will be a simply relaxing way to blend with the sea alfresco concept of the food service and the atmosphere at Hua Hin’s beachside. This perfect blend will offer you an unforgettable experience no matter if you come with a group of friends, family, your beloved one or alone. Advance reservation will be highly recommended. Just call 0-3253 6022 or
e-mail info.huahin@letussea.com

Chalachol at Dusit Hua Hin

Fresh from showing his talent at hairstyling exhibitions around the world, Mr. Somsak Chalachol returned to Bangkok to establish Chalachol Hair Studios all over the capital in 1990.
Fourteen years later and the company’s pledge to offer service, sincerity and satisfaction has met with great success, meaning Chalachol can count well-known people from all walks of life amongst their customers. Leading Thai celebrities from stage and screen, important public figures, as well as fashion-conscious well-heeled members of the younger generation, choose to put their hair in the hands of Chalachol’s stylists, safe in the knowledge that every strand of their beloved locks will receive the very best treatment.
Now, with their guest’s expectation of quality in mind, The Beauty Salon at Dusit Resort & Polo Club, Hua Hin has teamed up with Chalachol Hair Studio to offer advice and pander to all your hair and beauty needs, from hairstyling, waxing, straightening, colouring, highlighting and treatments, through to skin and facial treatments, manicures and pedicures.
Be it a trim or a whole new look that you’re after, rest assured that in the care of Chalachol’s professional stylists and beauticians you will leave looking and feeling great.
The Beauty Salon, incorporating Chalachol Hair Studio, at Dusit Resort & Polo Club is open daily from 10.00am – 7.00pm, except on Wednesdays.
For reservations and more information, please feel free to call 0 3244 2100 extension 2189.

5th JUNE VISAKHA BUCHA DAY
This significant celebration is held to comemmorate the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and death. This auspicious day is celebrated up and down the country with ceremonies and meritmaking performed. These activities are centred around a temple with a candle light procession in the evening.

You Can't Make Capuccino Going Down a Mountain

Mountain Biking in Thailand
— By Antonio Graceffo —

When I was six years old, my uncle Ira took me on my first roller coaster. The rickety little, metal car seemed to take forever to make its slow way up the steep hill that rose above Coney Island Amusement Park. When I thought we could go no higher, and when the city of Brooklyn lay impossibly far below us, like a child’s toy, the break released, and we plummeted. The little car came tearing down the hill, sending our hearts to our throats. It was terrifying. I screamed. I cried. I prayed. When it was over, Uncle Ira asked me. “What did you think?” I was so shaken, that I could barely speak. “Let's do it again.” I begged.
We like to be scared, terrified, and exhilarated. Today, they call that near-death feeling and the tingling sensation in your right arm an adrenaline rush. And if you’re an adrenaline junkie, luckily, Thailand has just the activity for you, off road, down hill, mountain biking.
One of the wonderful things about living in Thailand is that the country is so well developed, in terms of infrastructure. Pretty much anywhere you want to go in Thailand there is a nice, paved road to take you there. So, I had never found any reason to take my lightweight racing bicycle “off road.”
But for maniac Off Road mountain bike enthusiasts, like Aidan Schmer, of Siam Bicycle Adventure, going off road is more than just another option. It’s a way of life. “We do this every day.” Said Aiden, referring to the four hour long off road bike tour he was planning to take me on. I was apprehensive when Aiden showed me the bike I would be riding. It seemed so high tech. I still remember when a ten speed bicycle, with fat tyres, and a rigid steel frame, weighing forty pounds was the cutting edge of technology. All you had to do was put some baseball cards in the spokes, to make a motorcycle engine noise, and you would be the envy of all the other kids on the block. But apparently bicycles had grown up a lot since I was twelve years old.
The bike Aiden showed me had shock-absorbers on the front fork, a huge spring, to cushion the ride, under the saddle, settings for rigid or flexible riding, twenty-four speeds, with indexed gear shifters in the handle bars, and most importantly, breaks so powerful that they could stop the run-away inflation of the Brazilian economy.
“Does it also make cappuccino?” I asked.
“It could.” Said Aiden. “But that feature costs extra.”
From the way Aiden stressed that I shouldn’t toss the bicycle over the side of the mountain when I got frustrated, and I did get frustrated, I gleamed that these bikes were probably pretty expensive. But one of the advantages of going with a tour group is that they provide you with the bike. They also give you a helmet, eye-protection, and gloves. Additionally, tour companies can help you find the best routs to ride on, and provide you with transportation. Aiden picked me right up at Rose Guesthouse, in an air-conditioned vehicle, and even stopped at Seven Eleven on the way to the tour. He made me pay for my own coffee, however. If only the bike had had that cappuccino attachment, I could have saved some money.
As a road cyclist, doing a mountain, to me, usually meant cycling up a near vertical hill, straining and huffing. But for these off road guys, the only part of the mountain that interested them was the ride down. So, we drove all the way to the top of the mountain, and then had a class in bike handling.
According to Aiden, the Master Yoda of bike riding, your body position and bike handling skills are the most important aspects of riding, to prevent injuries. The body position is actually a bit counter-intuitive, and may take some getting used to. But listen to the instructors, because they know what they are talking about.
You'll need to keep your body low and your weight back. Grip the saddle with your thighs. The reason why people fall is because their front tyre turns, hitting the downward sloping trail at some angle other than dead on. Hold the handlebars firmly, but don’t lock your elbows, or become rigid. Always use both breaks at the same time. Shift easily before hitting a hill, not after hitting it. Aiden alerted us to changes in the terrain, informing us when to change gears. When you encounter a stone, or some other obstacle, it is important to speed up, unnecessary braking seemed to be one of the major causes of falls. Look at the trail only a few metres ahead of you, not the person in front of you. Avoid deep sand or ruts. Always ride on the crown of a rut.
“Oh yeah,” Said Aiden. “And don't pick your nose while riding. If you need to pick your nose or make a photo, come to a complete stop first. And don’t put your feet down, and stop like the Flintstones. Use your brakes.”
It was a lot to take in. And I began to drift off to sleep. But, I snapped instantly awake when Aiden said. “Now, when you fall...”
“When? Don't you mean if?” I corrected.
“WHEN you fall...” He repeated, making it clear that falling was an inevitable part of downhill riding. “Don’t put your arms out, with your hands palms down, and try to break the fall that way. Instead, you want to tuck, and roll on your shoulder.”
When we finally started, I was so nervous. It was too much to remember. And the ride just seemed stupidly dangerous to me. Why would anyone want to risk falling off a bike? I wondered. Aiden stressed to me, a number of times, the importance of wearing a long-sleeved shirt. But, being a macho jungle man, adventure writer, wearing long-sleeved became a point of contention between us. In the end, I acquiesced, and I was glad that I had. Not ten minutes into the ride, I went right over the handlebars. I got cut a little, on my right arm, but mostly my pride was hurt. Wearing a shirt prevented gravel from becoming imbedded in my skin.
At that point I absolutely hated this failed suicide attempt, which these deranged persons had made into a sport.
Around the next corner, there was a lookout, where I could see the city of Chiang Mai a thousand feet below. The view was breath taking. I relaxed a little, and my body position got better. When my body position got better, I developed more control. More control meant, less worry. Less worry meant more fun. Now I could begin to appreciate the natural beauty around me. There was bamboo and lychee growing right beside the trail. It was strange to find myself in the jungle, but rolling on two wheels. And, I was glad that I hadn’t put baseball cards in the spokes, because I was able to hear the song of the tropical birds, and the cicadas, whose constant drone reminded me of Tibetan monks, adding a note of exoticism to our folly.
Of course, the goal of all down hill riders is speed. The better your control, the faster you can go. Barreling down that hill was like the roller coaster ride with my uncle Ira, so many years ago. But it was better. This wasn’t a ride, in an amusement park. This was real life, and we were completely involved. The trip was unpredictable. Anything could happen. A stone or tree could jump out in front of you, and you had to react. It was much more like those race car games in an arcade. You had to stay alert, constantly shifting, changing, braking and steering. It was exhausting. But in a strange meditative way, the deep attention forced you to be present in the moment. The time spent coming down that hill was time lived and experienced, not time that slipped away, unnoticed.
And just like that roller coaster ride with my uncle Ira, it was over too soon. We reached the bottom, and pedaled home. “Can we go again?” I asked.

Contact the author at: antonio_graceffo@hotmail.com

Contact Siam Bicycle Adventure at: aidanparagliding@hotmail.com

Bikers Help School

In mid May the collaberation of two motorcycle clubs, the Headstone Riders and Speed Limit Thirty raised over 16,000 baht to construct an annex to the cafeteria of Baan Nong Plup Vihaya School, which is west of Hua Hin 33km from Pala-U waterfall. More than one hundred people turned up to assist with the construction and a general clean up of the surrounding area. Another 8,000 baht is still required to pour a concrete floor. If anyone is interested in helping or needs further information please contact Bob at the Headstone Riders M.C. on 01-7729296. The Headstone Riders meet at Easy Rider pub on the canal road, and the Speed Limit Thirty club is aptly named as its a club for fans of antique motorcycles.

ASIA TIMES online www.atimes.com

AIDS pulls up at the crossroads of Asia
By Henry Hoenig

UDOMXAI, Laos - A historic trading outpost, Muang Xai, as the locals call this town, has long been at a crossroads of regional commerce. Now, as it is being transformed into a 21st-century transportation hub, the character of its trade is being transformed as well - not always for the better.

Under plans financed by the Asian Development Bank and individual member countries, this remote area eventually will link Kunming, China, to Bangkok and ultimately Phnom Penh and Ho Chi Minh City; Hanoi to northern Myanmar and ultimately Yangon. As a matter of geographical fate, all of these routes will intersect in Udomxai, bringing to town large numbers of men from regions with some of the world’s worst AIDS epidemics, men who frequently engage in high-risk activities. It will further fuel the sex trade and create “enormous potential for the rapid spread of HIV”, a United Nations Development Program (UNDP) report said.

Udomxai has long been a place where ethnic-minority hill tribes come to sell tree bark and bamboo shoots and whatever else they can gather from the jungles of this rugged region. Now it is also a place where young hill-tribe girls come to sell sex.

As the daylight fades, tractor-trailer trucks line up along the main strip. Inside a karaoke club at one of the town’s several Chinese hotels, Noy, a pretty, shell-shocked 14-year-old girl, braces herself for another night of work. Like everyone else in her Kamu village, Noy had never heard of AIDS or the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes it before she arrived in town just 10 days earlier. She first heard it mentioned, she said, after being coerced into selling her body to Chinese and Laotian truck drivers and businessmen - up to 10 men a night.

Not that it will do her any good. She has no idea how a person gets infected. Many experts fear that if Noy catches HIV she will have plenty of company.

They use phrases such as “unseen epidemic” and “wholesale destruction” to describe the dangers facing the hill tribes of northern Laos, which make up 90 percent of the area’s population. Udomxai is ground zero, the most dangerous of several potential HIV/AIDS “hot spots” identified by the United Nations. No one really knows how many people in the area now have HIV, but the number is believed to be rising quickly. The only statistics are so outdated and unrepresentative that they are dismissed as nearly irrelevant. A more comprehensive study is now being conducted, but so far, a lack of money for testing has made it a guessing game.

The question is an urgent one. The hill tribes’ isolation has protected them from the AIDS epidemics that literally surround them in neighbouring countries. Until now.

“We really need to work hard and fast,” said Lee-Nah Hsu, manager of the UNDP’s Southeast Asia HIV and Development Project, who went so far as to compare the situation to sub-Saharan Africa before catastrophe struck. AIDS “is there, but it will take time before we can get some concrete numbers out. By the time the information gets out, it might be too late,” he said.

The minority hill tribes in northern Laos are especially vulnerable; the poorest and most isolated people in a poor and isolated country. Many already are enduring tremendous upheaval, including forced relocation as part of government efforts to eradicate opium-growing and slash-and-burn agriculture.

They are being dragged from a subsistence living into a cash economy but have few ways to earn additional money. One result has been an increase in the prostitution and trafficking of hill-tribe girls both within northern Laos and to China and Thailand.

Commercial sex has become commonplace as tens of thousands of foreign workers, mostly Chinese men, have crossed the border in recent years to work on new dams and roads, and the number of Chinese and Laotian truck drivers carrying Chinese goods across the border has increased. Yet AIDS awareness is low, and the area’s few hospitals would provide little comfort - never mind retroviral drugs - to AIDS sufferers were a widespread outbreak to occur.

At this point, local health-care officials said, those in Udomxai who are known to have contracted HIV generally were told so only after appearing at the hospital with their first AIDS symptoms. Then they simply returned home to die.

“There is the potential for some of these groups to be both physically and culturally wiped out, because you are dealing with small populations,” said anthropologist David Feingold, an expert on hill tribes, trafficking and HIV/AIDS with UNESCO’s (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) Bangkok office.

One indication of the potential for an HIV epidemic is the high rate of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) among so-called “service girls” - defined as any girl working in a restaurant, nightclub or guesthouse - in Vientiane and two lowland southern provinces, where awareness of HIV and condoms is considered relatively high. A 2000 survey sponsored by the National Committee for the Control of AIDS found that 39 percent of 800 service girls had at least one STD. Not all service girls sell sex - only 65 percent reported doing so in the previous year - so the rate of STD infection among those who do is likely much higher. Condom use, of course, was found to be rare.

The same study found that 1 percent of service girls tested positive for HIV. But the threat is clear: if these practices continue, eventually the numbers of HIV infections will explode, and the virus will move quickly into the general population, as the majority of the girls’ customers are white-collar businessmen and government officials. And given the length of time between HIV infection and the onset of AIDS, as well as the length of time passed since the last survey, it might be happening now.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been scrambling to get the message out in the north but there are almost no mass media - most villages don’t have electricity - and the literacy rate is about 20 percent. So instead of airing television ads, NGO workers are performing skits on public buses and driving into remote mountain villages with battery-powered videocassette recorders (VCRs).

Still, progress has been made, and the Laotian government has been given high marks for its willingness to tackle the problem. AIDS-awareness posters and condom advertisements hang on the walls of virtually every restaurant and nightclub in Udomxai. Buses and songthaew taxis are covered with stickers touting Number One condoms. Old men walk down the street wearing new baseball caps emblazoned with the Number One logo.

Today, most people in Udomxai have at least heard of condoms, something that was not true as recently as a year ago, local health-care officials said. Nevertheless, AIDS awareness among sex workers remains low, said Sihamano Bannavong, communications manager for Public Service International, one of many NGOs active in the area. And there is a great difference between teaching sex workers about condoms and empowering them to demand that reluctant customers use them.

Meanwhile, the job of raising awareness is becoming more difficult. Those men who are wary of HIV/AIDS are increasingly stopping at small roadside restaurants and drink stands in the countryside in search of “clean” girls. Often these places are little more than a thatched hut next to the road, where one or two girls sit staring into a bamboo fire, waiting for customers to stop for a bowl of noodles and a bottle of Beer Lao. Now the men are increasingly buying sex as well as dinner.

These are frequently more than one-time encounters. In fact, Sihamano said, many drivers have “minor wives” at several points along their routes, offering families a regular stipend for the sexual services of their daughters. Just as the men have more than one such relationship, so do the girls. “Of course, they don’t use condoms,” he said.

Officials are particularly worried about Highway 3, which runs from Luang Namtha, near China’s Yunnan province, south to Huay Xai, just across the Mekong River from Thailand’s Chiang Rai province. For most of its 160 kilometers it is little more than a dirt track hacked through jungle floors and carved on to mountainsides, and flanked by hill-tribe villages as yet mostly untouched by the changes seen in Udomxai.

But the road has been designated a major corridor between China and Thailand. Construction has been scheduled to begin for months, and small armies of workers are due to arrive any day. The scale and pace of change in the years ahead will be profound.

Meanwhile, the race is on to warn villagers of the dangers they will soon face. So far the villagers’ worries are few. One Kamu headman said he looked forward to the highway’s completion. He spoke eagerly of such things as cheaper bus fares and shorter travel times to see relatives in other villages.

“Also, we want to see it,” he said of the highway. “We have never seen such a thing before.”

(Copyright 2004 Henry Hoenig. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

Thailand makes its mark in blood
By Marwaan Macan-Markar

The unprecedented scale of violence in Thailand’s south, which resulted in more than 110 deaths in one day last month, has placed the country's Muslim minority in dire straits.

“We are very worried about the situation. There is a lot of tension in the area,” Niti Hassan, president of the Council of Muslim Organizations of Thailand, said in the aftermath of the bloodshed last month. “People are shocked by the attacks. They don’t know who is behind it.”

Most of those killed in the fighting were assailants, whom authorities have identified as young Thai Muslims. But equally as troubling as the bloodshed, said Niti, is the site of the heaviest fighting - the Kru Se Mosque in the southern province of Pattani. More than 30 assailants were killed there after a standoff with heavily armed security forces at the mosque, which is held in high regard by Thai Muslims for its historic value.

“We have learned that the security forces attacked the mosque,” Niti said of the attempt by the government’s troops to force their way into the ancient mosque, where some of the assailants had taken cover.

The violence in Pattani was part of what appeared to be coordinated attacks at dawn on 11 police stations and security checkpoints in three of Thailand’s predominantly Muslim provinces, Yala, Songkhla and Pattani. The other two provinces in the area with substantial Muslim populations are Narathiwat and Satun.

According to Thai journalists reporting from the south, the authorities have identified some of the assailants as Muslim teenagers from the local communities. “They had few guns, with some only having knives,” Supalak Ganjanakhundee of The Nation daily newspaper told Inter Press Service.

Since the attacks occurred, Thai television stations have been broadcasting to the country graphic images of the scale of the bloodshed in the provinces, which border Malaysia, including footage of the bodies of the assailants scattered on the ground and covered with blood.
Estimates of the numbers killed have reached 113, but that is expected to rise, officials told the media. Of that number, 107 have been identified as assailants, while five of the dead were soldiers and two were policemen.

The government of Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra appears to be in some discomfort after the bloodshed, yet that has not muted its sense of achievement at the security forces’ success in confronting the assailants with minimum casualties.

“The government sees this as a tragic event. And we are bothered that the people who attacked were Thai people,” Jakrapob Penkair, the government spokesman, said. “These militants deliberately planned the attacks in 11 spots that were symbols of government authority, and we had to respond.”

But there were two areas of “progress”, he added. “We lost very few in the attacks, but they lost more.”

Just as important, he revealed, was the fact that the authorities “were tipped off by people in the neighbourhood” about the impending attacks. “This reflects the faith of the people in the government’s efforts in the south.”

However, Jakrapob admitted that while the assailants are “Muslim youth from the area”, the “mastermind [behind the attacks] remains unknown”.

This week’s attack has taken to a new level the violence that for months has punctuated the lives of people living in southern Thailand, analysts say.

“It is more violent than what we have witnessed in the past, particularly going back to late 2002 when the government pulled the army out of the south,” Chris Baker, an author of books on Thai politics and economics, explained during an interview.

For Kavi Chongkittavorn, a senior editor and columnist for The Nation, the clashes and the death toll that followed, “one of the single biggest incidents in Thai history in the south”. And with no end in sight, he warned that worse could follow: “With this, the conflict in the south will change. We are moving towards a very pivotal period.”

In early January, unknown assailants stormed an army camp in the country’s southern region and stole a substantial quantity of arms, including 380 M-16 rifles, seven rocket-propelled grenade launchers, two M-60 machine-guns and 24 pistols.

The attacks have not ceased since then, as school buildings have been torched and police posts hit.
Lives have not been spared either. Soldiers, policemen, Buddhist monks and government officials are among the estimated 70 people who have been killed by unidentified attackers between January 4 and the beginning of May.

At regular intervals, the government has pointed the finger at various groups it claims to be responsible for the attacks, ranging from Thai Muslim separatists, who were once active in the south, to people linked to criminal organizations.

Even a Muslim group in the region that has been identified by security officials as spearheading a campaign of terror across Southeast Asia has been named.

Bangkok, meanwhile, has put forth theories about the involvement of Thai Muslim separatist groups such as the Pattani United Liberation Organization (PULO, also known as the New Pattani United Liberation Organization). But Muslims from the south are not convinced.

Their skepticism stems from the change in PULO and other separatist groups after the government prevailed over these groups in the 1980s. PULO, one of the oldest southern separatist groups, began its struggle in the early 1970s.

Thai Muslims, who account for some 6 million of the country’s 63 million population, most of whom are Buddhists, have long complained that the Thai government has ignored developing the southern region. They also cite discrimination in educational opportunities, as well as other issues that distance them from others in the country.

But what largely sets these Muslims apart from the rest of the Thais is their unique history, cultural traditions and language, which is Yawi, a dialect of Malay. Just more than a century ago, the five predominantly Muslim provinces belonged to the kingdom of Pattani, which was annexed in 1902 by Siam, as Thailand was then known.

“The Muslims will only feel more bitter and more alienated if it is revealed that the way the security forces responded to the attack was excessive,” said Kavi, senior editor at The Nation. “It will only help breed new recruits for future attacks.”

(Inter Press Service)

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