At the State Railway of Thailand (SRT) headquarters, there is a rather beautiful, slightly impressionistic painting of a steam locomotive chugging diagonally across the frame, towards the viewer. Sadly, the painting’s foreground is damaged, just where the railway tracks are represented. This has led SRT employees to blame the artwork for this year’s 114 derailments.
In response, the SRT held a major merit-making ceremony on Monday. “Personally, I believe Thailand has survived several bad incidents because of divine protection,” the Bangkok Post quoted SRT Governor Prapat Chongsanguan as saying. We’re comforted in the fact that a.) things could have been worse were spirits not keeping a benevolent watch on our trains and b.) the spirits will now refocus their energies and try to do even better in the future.
Prapat said he’d yet to find someone to restore the painting, though. Maybe he could ask THAI Airways for help? THAI Airways is no stranger to derailment (well, skidding off runways in their case) but has some fine artists in its employ to deal with such incidents. Earlier this month, these painters’ mastery of deep, blocky blacks was admired around the world and universally described as the biggest public relations stunt in recent memory. These guys could fix up the SRT’s painting (and reputation) in no time!
This weekend’s car-free day (Sep 22) just happens to be all about trusting your life to either public transportation or our city’s bicycle-friendly streets. We’ve yet to see someone actually use a Pun Pun bike, but we can’t wait to try. Unfortunately, we’ve also yet to see someone selling Pun Pun cards. The hotline assured us (repeatedly) that they would be for sale in Silom (they’re not), while Sukhumbhand patiently explained to the media that cards and refills would not be available through self-service machines because not everyone living in downtown Bangkok has a credit card—very true, they usually have several. Now clearly what the Pun Pun scheme really needs to take off is a merit-making ceremony.
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