The beggars of hua hin

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  Hua hin, Thailand
Wednesday, January 17, 2007

lately i have noticed a surge in the population of beggars in bangkok and also here in hua hin, a somewhat larger town than cha-am and about 20km south of cha-am. oddly, there is not a single beggar anywhere in cha-am. i have never seen a beggar in cha-am but it is impossible to walk down the street in hua hin without encountering these individuals.
 
recently the municipality of hua hin decided that the beggars would adversely affect tourism and so they ordered a police crackdown on the profession. the plan was, roughly speaking, to grab all the beggars in town, throw them into trucks and just haul them away. you may have read in the papers about this ambitious project and you may have read that it did not work and that the beggars are still around and getting stronger but you may not know how all of this came about and so i would like to tell you THE REST OF THE STORY

beggars

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when the police crackdown started and when the first cop confronted the first beggar for the truck ride to oblivion, that beggar did something that neither the cops nor the municipality had anticipated. he pulled out his mobile phone and sms'ed a warning -  a mayday if you will - to his beggar friends and they in turn forwarded the message to their beggar friends and so on and so forth and within minutes the entire beggar population of hua hin had been alerted to the police crackdown. and so it turned out that in the whole of the much hyped crackdown on beggars they nabbed only one beggar. the rest of them, having been duly alerted, just melted away into the general population.
 
however, the event solidified the beggar population and spontaneously amalgamated them into an sms organization so efficient that all following police crackdowns have been complete failures. when you take a new technology and extrapolate it to places where we have not been, you get some strange and unintended consequences.
 
so, anyway, the reason i was in huahin was to visit my buddy khun thongbai who runs a ramshackle little golf shop called tropical golf. it's near the hilton but down the alleyways right there with the whorehouses. i got a new grip on my 3-wood and that grip really improved my stroke with that stick. stopped at palm hills golf club on the way back for 18 holes with my new improved 3-wood and here is how it went.
 
soidog at palm hills on wednesday january 17, 2007
hole 1 par 4, 3-on 2-putt, bogie
hole 2 par 5, 3-on 2-putt, par
hole 3 par 3, 1-on, 2-putt, par
hole 4 par 4, 3-on 1-putt, par
hole 5 par 4, 2-on 2-putt, par
hole 6 par 4, 2-on 1-putt, birdie
hole 7 par 5, 4-on 2-putt, bogie
hole 8 par 3, 2-on 2-putt, bogie
hole 9 par 4, 3-on 3-putt, double bogie
hole 10 par 4, 3-on 1-putt, par
hole 11 par 3, 2-on 2-putt, bogie
hole 12 par 5, 4-on 3-putt double bogie
hole 13 par 4, 3-on 2-putt, bogie
hole 14 par 4, 2-on 2-putt, par
hole 15 par 3, 2-on 2-putt, bogie
hole 16 par 5, 3-on 3-putt, bogie
hole 17 par 4, 3-on 2-putt, bogie
hole 18 par 4, 3-on 2-putt, bogie
total score 72+12=84
that 3-wood was hitting pretty good out there
on the first nine there was a group of 3 germans that had taken slow play to new heights but would not let me play through and on hole number 11 there was a guy practicing his pitching. other than that, mrs lincoln, it was a great round of golf and the caddy was sweet and very friendly as well.
 

 

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