Despite pedaling the “Land of Smiles and Sanuk” line for as long as we care to remember, some survey by a global dating-focused social networking site has deemed us to be, well, not so fun. We rank a lowly 12th in their list of World’s Most Fun Nations, below even those miserable Brits and dour Germans.
While we’d argue that people using dating websites might not be the happiest bunch in the first place, we’re worried that Thais claim to have fun only 10.2 days a month. Was it just bad timing? While Thailand scores very well on alcohol consumption surveys, thank you very much, we are currently facing the prospect of two booze-interrupted weekends in a row. Two! One of which involves politics; and we all know how little fun that is.
It’s not just the temporary lack of booze, though. There are longer term problems on our mind, as well. The government just noticed we might run out of energy next month. Apparently the gas men in Myanmar are having the month of April off—triggering fears that we may all have to do our bit and crank down the air con during the hottest month of the year. A terrifying, not fun at all, prospect if there ever was one.
Of course, the biggest problem of all is that we have to maintain this image as the land of sanuk. It takes a lot of time and effort to constantly update our Instagram accounts with pictures of us pulling funny faces and eating fun and delicious Magnums. And then there’s the hours we spend carefully tending our Facebook accounts, hunting for the right funny video of a cute kitten, commenting on funny soap operas and posting cute, funny photos from weddings. That’s before we even get into managing twelve simultaneous conversations on Line, carefully curating fun stickers every second of our waking lives. We’re surprised we managed ten days of fun, all this fun admin is a real drag.
Obviously the cabinet and the TAT have taken this threat to our image very seriously with a new campaign entitled “YOU BETTER HAVE FUN!” The police have created a new crack squad of “Fun Agents” made up of dwarves, transgender (male to female only) comedians and endangered animals on motorcycles. If all else fails, they may even consider “Operation Chalerm,” which would consist of handing out free booze to all.
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