Image from Burapha University

Necessity is truly the mother of invention, so when the going gets tough because of the 2011 Thailand Floods, the Thais get floatin' on a DIY boat made from water bottles.

Thai Flood Hacks is a Tumblr blog that collects the ingenuity of the Thai people in dealing with the 3-month-old flood. A few more pics:

Image: Noppol Tuntikul

Flood-proof tuk tuk. Image: kanok

Floating Toilet. Image: Bangkok Post

Homemade jetski

See more at Thai Flood Hacks - via Makeshift

The Maeklong Market has been in business for decades. When they built a railroad right through it, vendors saw no reason to move, or to even give up space for the train, which comes through eight times every day. The second part of the video shows the Damnoen Saduak floating market in central Thailand. This lush video was produced by Terje Sorgjerd, who also brought us The Aurora.

Previously: Train in a Bangkok Market

This video is like a Hollywood sports film (The Mighty Ducks, Hoosiers, A League of Their Own) condensed into five minutes. It’s a true story that took place in the village of Koh Panyee, Thailand in 1986, dramatized by the ad agency Leo Burnett & Arc Worldwide for Thai Military Bank. -via reddit

For the embassy in Bangkok, winning achieved two goals: helping Lockheed and keeping the Russians from selling planes. There was, however, a small complication with the terms — the Thai government didn’t want to pay cash. Instead, it proposed trading 80,000 stockpiled tons of frozen chicken.

“Embassy contacts said that until Lockheed Martin offered a proposal to sell F-16s that included countertrade, the (Thai government) could not seriously consider its offer. Contacts also suggested that an offer that included an agreement to buy Thai chicken would be especially welcome,” the embassy said in a March 2005 cable setting the scene for the competition.

Link via Geekosystem | Photo: US Air Force

Oddity Central has a fascinating look at the Thai Wat Bang Phra Tattoo Festival:

Each year, tattooed devotees come to Wat Bang Phra temple, a place famous for its tattoo masters, to pay their respects to the art of Sak Yant, in a special ceremony known as Wai Khru. Attended by tens of thousands of people, the event becomes quite a spectacle when the animal spirit possessions begin.

At one point, a loud and frightening growl is heard from somewhere in that sea of people, but only foreigners seem to react to it. Then monkey sounds are heard, and people start running towards the temple – specifically towards the shrine of Luang Poh Pern, a respected tattoo artist who served at Wat Bang Phra – waving their arms in the air and yelling like crazy. They are in fact being possessed by the animals tattooed on their bodies. If they have a tiger tattoo, they start growling, if it’s a snake, they start crawling on the ground, but eventually they all start running like crazy toward the shrine.

Link (Photo: Paula Bronstein)

At several sites across the country, commercial aquariums and animal parks are painting their animals in panda colors to keep up visitor numbers in the face of tougher competition — as well as educate people about the threats elephants and crocodiles face in the wild.

Mr. Kamla, a 25-year-old crocodile-handler, fielded a barrage of questions from schoolchildren recently at Buengchawark Underwater Sea Paradise as he and a colleague painted a three-month-old Siamese crocodile in panda colors.

“They’re an endangered species, too, like the panda, so we hope some of our knowledge will trickle down,” Mr. Kamla says.

Prasit Vejprasit, an administrator at the aquarium, says busloads of schoolchildren — the mainstay of the aquarium’s business — continue coming to the site, a couple of hours’ travel northwest of Bangkok, encouraged in large part by the panda-colored crocs. He says teachers often call to confirm the aquarium is still painting crocodiles before sending their classes.

The children seem to enjoy the novelty. “Most crocodiles are scary but this one is cute,” says Siripob Dara, 9 years old, before he asks Mr. Kamla how long it can grow and what it eats.

Link -via Dark Roasted Blend

(Image credit: James Hookway/The Wall Street Journal)

Previously at Neatorama: Panda-painted Elephants

What kid hasn’t fantasized about rolling out of bed onto a waterslide into a pool?  I know I have. This one’s for real, not from a bedroom but from the top balcony of a three-story vacation villa in Koh Samui, Thailand. And it’s not some wimpy waterslide, but a 256-ft-long whopper, with a double loop like a real waterpark slide.

Link – via gizmodo

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Marilyn Terrell.

A Thai police force has begun taking a monkey dressed in officer’s uniform on patrol each day to help improve relations with Muslim separatists.

Trainers taught Santisuk, which means peace in Thai, to pick up coconuts and he now lends a hand collecting the fruit with residents.

The monkey also helps supervise a police checkpoint and his boss says he has made it a much happier place. Motorists now stop to play with Santisuk, rather than getting angry at the hold-up.

Other forces are now considering introducing monkeys to better their image in the troubled province.

Link

The dessert was delicious: the bananas were chewy, the pineapple sweet and tart, the coconut ice cream rich, cold, and creamy, and the peanuts added the perfect amount of crunch and toasted flavor and the drop of milk brought all of the flavors together.

The bun? It got soggy pretty quickly (as I suspected) and if I ate it any slower, we would have had a real mess on our hands.

But it was a nice take on a portable sundae, minus the paper or plastic cup to throw out at the end! I kept thinking that it would have been interesting with a toasted bun.

If you toast that bread long enough, pretty soon you’ll invent the ice cream cone. Link -via J-Walk Blog

The night of the full moon in November is known as Loy Krathong Day in Thailand.

Loy is “to float” and Krathong is a “leaf cup” usually made of banana leaf as one often sees in the market. The leaf cup is used to hold something. Loy Krathong is, therefore, the floating of lights in a leaf cup. During October and November, all the rivers and canals in the lowlands are flooded and the waters in some places overflow their banks. The rainy season is now in a sense over. It is the time of rejoicing for the weather is fair after the rains.

In this video, 100,000 illuminated rafts fill the Mae Klong River. Link

Eric Wahlgren of AOL’s Daily Finance has the story of medical tourism:

Like some 47 million other Americans, Nancy Sowa (pictured) doesn’t have health insurance. So when her doctors last year told her she needed a total hip replacement, the office manager for a non-profit did what a growing number of U.S. citizens are doing: She headed abroad. At Wockhardt Hospital in Bangalore, India, the 56-year-old was put up in a hospital "suite" far swankier than what she would typically find in the U.S., with a computer, fridge, cable TV, sitting area and an extra bed for her travel companion.

More to the point, the two-hour surgery in July, performed by an orthopedic surgeon trained in the U.S. and Australia, was a success. Four months later, the Durham, N.C. resident is feeling like her old self again, going for long hikes and planning her next vacation. The final tab for the procedure, including rehabilitative therapy and round-trip airfare for two? $12,000. That’s a fraction of the $45,000 to $90,000 she had been told the surgery would cost at home.

"I wouldn’t have been able to do the surgery in the United States," says Sowa. "I didn’t have to explore taking out a second mortgage or tapping family members because I had this other option."

Link

The Chiang Mai Yi Peng Festival is an Buddhist holy day in Thailand. That evening, celebrants send send burning lanterns aloft, floating on hot air. According to YouTube user bugzila:

[...]it is the great festival of Lanna duly succeeded from ancient age. “Yi Peng” or full-moon day of second lunar month of Lanna villagers is corresponding to the full-moon day of 12th month of central region during the end of raining season and beginning of cold season when the climate is very nice and fair. One tradition of Lanna other than Loi Kra Thong on the river is to light up the lantern and float up in the sky based on their belief that to pay worship to Phra Ket Kaew Julamanee in the heaven or to relief one’ bad luck for more auspicious life.

Via Urlesque

This ad for the Thai Insurance Company features children from the Srisangwan School for the disabled, a project of the Princess Mother’s Volunteer Foundation. Link -via b3ta

Slathering them in white watercolour paint, the keepers at the Ayutthaya Elephant Kraal then paraded the five elephants before schoolchildren in an effort to remind Thailand that its elephants have needs, too.

The furore was sparked after the nation became fascinated with the birth of a female panda cub to pandas Lin Hui and Xuang Xuang at Chiang Mai zoo.

The Bangkok Post also reported that a 20 million baht (£355,800) snow house was being built for the panda family at the zoo.

Link -via Unique Daily

Australian artist Brooke Bobridge, who is currently living in Bangkok, Thailand, took a series of graffiti by local and international artists imploring passer-bys NOT to feed the elephants. They want to discourage "elephant begging" where the pachyderms are used to part tourists from their dollars (or technically, bahts).

Link – via amy sol blog

Bangkok, Thailand, is turning into Gotham City with violence, fatalities, and social upheaval during the "red shirt" riots.

It seems that Batman has now come to the rescue, fighting crime and breaking tension in Bangkok. Although his alias is not Bruce Wayne, he steps up in the time of need for his country. See him in action in this YouTube clip. Go Batman!

Last week, as anti-government protesters clad in crimson stormed the capital’s streets, some guys hijacked a gas truck and parked it in an otherwise quiet neighborhood. They were pursued by soldiers and assumed (according to Thai media reports) that the military wouldn’t fire into an area containing a massive container of liquid fuel.

Then, out of nowhere, Batman steps into the crowd and surveys the scene.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by streetattack.

Macaque monkeys in Lopburi, Thailand, were observed apparently teaching their young how to floss.  These particular monkeys used human hair from visitors to the shrine.  Because the visitors view the monkeys as divine servants, they allow them to pluck their hair. 

Japanese researchers, led by Nobuo Masataka of the University at Kyoto, focused on 7 female Macaque’s each with one year old infants:

“I was surprised because teaching techniques on using tools properly to a third party are said to be an activity carried out only by humans,” he said.

The study focused on the observation of seven female long-tailed macaques and interaction with their off spring at a colony of monkeys near Bangkok in Thailand.

The practice of teeth flossing doubled and became significantly more elaborate when they were in the presence of infant monkeys, suggesting that they were attempting to teach the technique to the young.

“The study is still at the hypothesis stage,” said Professor Masataka.

“We would like to shift our focus to the baby monkeys to check whether the mothers’ actions are effectively helping them learn how to clean their teeth.”

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.

Despite teachers’ efforts to beckon the boy inside, he refused to budge until his mother mentioned her son’s love of superheroes, prompting fireman Sonchai Yoosabai to take a novel approach to the problem.

The rescuer dashed back to his fire station and made a quick change into a Spider-Man costume before returning to the boy, he said.

“I told him Spider-Man is here to rescue you, no monsters are going to attack you and I told him to walk slowly towards me as running could be dangerous,” Somchai told local television.

The young boy immediately stood up and walked into his rescuer’s arms, police said.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.

Ian Welch of Aldershot, Hampshire (U.K.), caught the biggest freshwater fish by rod in Thailand, a record 55 stone (770 pound) freshwater ray! 

It took 90 minutes to land, 13 men to heave it out of the water… and weighed 55 stone when they finally got it to the scales.

So it’s little wonder that when Ian Welch first hooked the record stingray, it almost pulled him into the river.

Mr Welch, who weighs 111/2 stone, said: ‘It dragged me across the boat and would have pulled me in, had my colleague not grabbed my trousers.’

The angler, from Aldershot, Hampshire, was fishing in Thailand when he landed the ray, which is the biggest freshwater fish to be caught with a rod.

The biologist was helping with a stingray tagging programme on the Maeklong River, when he hooked the fish.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.

A Thai woman who calls herself the Scorpion Queen spent the last 33 days in a glass-walled room filled with 5,000 scorpions, successfully breaking her own world record for being cooped up with the venomous creatures.  The room was in a shopping mall in Pattaya, Thailand,  and every eight hours she was allowed a 15-minute break.  Kanchana Ketkeaw was bitten 13 times, but she says she’d do it again if anyone challenged her record.

Link

From the Upcoming Queue, submitted by Marilyn Terrell.

The new cloth masks, which hook behind the ears and cover the mouth and nose, will help "reduce the stress from drivers when they see the police," said Somyos, the Highway Police commander.

To that end, he said, some 200 police booths would also distribute holy water, chewing gum and mints.

He defended his force when asked why drivers needed smiley masks and gum and holy water to calm down when approached by a patrolman.

"The police are not that scary," he said. "When I was in the United States, their highway police seemed to be more fierce than Thai police. I was scared of them."

Link

Photo: Sarot Meksophawannakul/Bangkok Post

According to a report on the newsclip.be Japanese language Thai news site, this sketch is based on the recollections of eyewitnesses, who say the suspect wore a motorcycle helmet at the time of the robbery.

Link