OPINION

Bring back water fest of old

Re: "Keep a lid on Songkran" (Editorial, April 13).

In the old days, Chiang Mai was the go-to place for Thais when the Songkran festival approached each year.

In those days, people had small silver cups in their hands and would lightly sprinkle water on each other, and at the same time humbly offered one another New Year's greetings. Consuming alcohol during the festival was also not as acceptable as it is today.

However, nowadays the cups have given way to big buckets, plastic pistols and powerful water pipes that can cause people to cringe and cry in pain when used to splash people. A humble and peaceful festival no longer exists.

Songkran in Chiang Mai nowadays sees women dress skimpily and in flimsy clothes that you can clearly see through.

Especially this year, I spotted a few Western males dressed in triangular swimsuits which covered only their groins, splashing water in the street.

Certainly this is not what it used to be like for this old and beautiful New Year festival.

It would be nice for the Prayut Chan-o-cha government to restore this great festival to what it used to be just a few decades back.

May I suggest that the prime minister looks carefully at the photo on the front page of yesterday's Bangkok Post. It shows a young girl on a motorbike with no helmet and eyes closed as water is being thrown at her. An accident waiting to happen?

In Saturday's editorial, you state: "Moreover, the roads are sometimes to blame because blind spots are not clearly marked."

Similar errors are made in the British press because no blind spot or traffic sign or any other infrastructure can be blamed for an accident. Blind spots do not jump out and knock riders off motorbikes.

An accident can only surely be caused by one or more drivers or riders not paying due attention and care to the ever-changing conditions.

Illustrated comic book-style publications, general titles that may be grouped under the heading "frivolity", and, in particular, frivolous self-help volumes abound in Thai-language editions.

I feel a sad sympathy for the BMA's attempt to fill its new library shelves with a knowledge-based collection outside this category.

There simply aren't any books in some categories and very, very few across the spectrum of knowledge one would encounter in a good English-language library.

Make the building lavishly comfy, fill it with entertaining and amusing fare and voila, there you have a Thai public library.

April 21 was designated the first annual Earth Day starting in 1970. I was there at the Washington Monument in 1970 for the celebration. April 21 is also Queen Elizabeth's birthday, and mine, but that day was picked because it is John Muir's birthday. Muir was one of the greatest environmentalists ever.

He was the driving force behind Yosemite, the second national park in world history (The first was Yellowstone, created with General Sheridan's help, but that's another story). Both are in the United States. After those two parks were established, national parks were created in many countries around the world.

When Muir was a young man, he moved from Scotland to California in the late 19th century. Today's 10 largest formally protected areas in the world were all formally designated in this century.

The top five, by size, are each larger than 1 million square kilometres. They are:

The next five on the list were officially designated by Australia, Greenland/Denmark, British Indian Ocean Territories, Algeria and Kiribati respectively.

Thailand, the US and all other countries worldwide honour certain types of people with accolades. They honour movie actors and actresses with golden statues. They honour rich business people with certificates and easy loans.

They honour military generals with garish medallions, and so on.

However, environmentalists are unimportant from governments' perspective. Their stories aren't studied at schools or universities. There are no parks, bridges, roads, universities or buildings named after environmentalists. But that's OK. Environmentalists don't want to be given glittering statuettes or have airports named for them. They want plants and animals to be given a chance to exist in their natural environment and not be bulldozed over for apartment complexes and shopping malls.

They would rather leave a legacy of forests and clean rivers/oceans than giant buildings and toxicity. An environmentalist would rather see alternative/clean power plants being built, than coal burning factories.

As for newspapers, they devote entire sections to corporate sports, cars, real estate and fashion bling, but barely any column inches to environment-related topics.

Come on, Bangkok Post, let's see an environmental section, showcasing things like alternative energy innovations, parks, tree planting, cleaning oceans, etc.

Don't say there isn't enough environmental news or that readers aren't as interested in such things, because you (editors and others) know there are a wealth of topics that are under-reported.

Every day Indonesia has a TV commercial air on Thai TV that plays Louis Armstrong's singing, What a Wonderful World.

This advertising campaign aims to encourage us to visit Indonesia.

Tell this to the two men about to receive 100 lashes each in Aceh, Indonesia, for admitting "the crime" that they are gay lovers.