NOT QUITE THE NEWS
As consumers begin to tighten their belts amid the global economic slump, there are people who still can't resist paying hundreds of baht for roasted rats and live snakes.
"Have our sales suffered? Not at all. People keep visiting my stall to buy these animals," Sala Prompim, a roasted rat and cobra vendor in Suphan Buri province told a reporter when asked whether the economic crisis was affecting his roadside business.
Mr Sala has been selling the animals on highway 304 for more than 10 years now. His family members catch the rats and cobras from paddy fields and bushes. The rat's internal organs are removed before it is roasted. The cobras are kept in boxes waiting for customers to buy them alive.
With rising demand from exotic food lovers, rats and cobras have become rare, making them much harder to catch over the past few years and pushing up their prices, the vendor said.
"A kilo of roasted rats can now fetch 150-160 baht compared with pork, which is sold at 80-90 baht a kilo in the market. The price of a live cobra ranges from 500-600 baht," he said.
The high prices have not discouraged rat and cobra eaters from purchasing them, said Mr Sala. What worries him most is not the economic crisis and the possible drop in sales, but the disappearance of rats and cobras from Suphan Buri rice fields due to too many people catching them.
Thaksin offered a job in Africa
The government of the Central African Republic is reportedly thinking of inviting convicted fugitive Thaksin Shinawatra to head its poverty reduction programme.
The African nation ranks among the top 10 poorest countries in the world and has been trying very hard to get rid of poverty, the local newspaper L'Evenementiel has reported.
News about the Supreme Court's conviction of Thaksin last week and his plan to seek political asylum in Britain came just when the republic's foreign affairs advisory office was looking for someone to help them out with their poverty reduction scheme.
The office nominated the convicted former prime minister as chairman of the national poverty reduction scheme for his experience in having come up with many such controversial projects to help the poor in Thailand.
President Francois Bozize reportedly backed the idea without even knowing about Thaksin's One Tambon One Product or the Village Fund schemes.
The daily quoted a source close to Mr Bozize as saying the president felt sympathy for Thaksin, who has been seeking asylum in London since August, because Mr Bozize himself had sought political asylum in France for two years.
Thaksin was also nominated to become the president's adviser on the Central African Republic's bureaucratic reform, according to L'Evenementiel.
No such thing as a free meal
There are many ways one can get free meals in Bangkok. Wearing a police uniform and acting like one can pay off as well.
With a fake police outfit and a Crime Suppression Division name card, Siridet Huangmak, 22, had repeatedly fooled the owner of his favourite restaurant in the Makkasan area into serving him food and beverages free of charge.
His latest escapade was on Wednesday, but this time the restaurant owner had had enough and called police to have the imposter arrested.
When police moved in to arrest Mr Siridet, who was enjoying his free meal and drinks, he resisted and claimed he was the deputy commander of the CSD's special task force division.
Police then alerted the division's commander, who rushed to the restaurant and told them Mr Siridet was not his deputy.
A search of his car found another bogus police uniform, with the name Pol Cap Siridet Huangmak stitched on it, along with a fake gun, a pair of handcuffs and a ham radio.
Mr Siridet, a bank employee, admitted the items belonged to him, but said he had only used them to deceive traffic police to avoid being fined. Police charged him with counterfeiting official documents.
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