This column is dedicated to an attractive young lady in a tight-fitting white Leo beer shirt who, five years ago, raced over to my table as I sat down in a beer bar on Khon Kaen's Khao Nieo Road.
I do not describe the place as a "bar beer". Despite losing many things over the years — muscle mass, short-term memory — I haven't lost my ability to place noun adjuncts before the nouns they modify. But let's get back to that little lady being suffocated by her T-shirt.
As my Thai colleagues mulled over a menu, she turned to me and fluttered her eyebrows. Alas, I thought at the time, your flutter is in vain, for I was firmly a Heineken man, and I knew where the conversation was heading.
"Sir, what would you like to drink? A Leo beer?"
"I'll have a Heineken, please."
You could have heard a mango slice dipped in chilli and sugar drop.
"You don't want Leo?"
"I don't want Leo."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure."
"But I work for Leo."
"Wonderful. And I'll have a Heineken."
"You don't want to try Leo?"
"I've already tried it."
"You want to try it again?"
"No."
"Why not? Don't you like it?"
"I like Heineken better."
Silence. Another mango slice. Another offensive.
"Pee … order it for my sake, will you? If you don't order it I won't make my quota."
"Then I'll order one for you to drink, but I'll have a Heineken."
Eyes to the sky. "I can't drink on the job."
"And I can't drink Leo. So we're even."
Skip five years into the future, and the National Committee for Peace and Order is alarmed at road toll statistics, where 80% of all road deaths in this country are attributed to alcohol. As a measure to reduce the road toll, it was announced the NCPO would instigate laws to eradicate the scourge of beer bars — namely, the Leo girls.
Chai-yo!
At last, five years later, she gets her comeuppance.
Not just Leo. Chang. Singha, too. The Bacardi Breezer girls. The Spy Cooler women. Girls with tight T-shirts and big boots (not a spelling mistake) who jostle their ways through beer bars pouncing on customers, deciding which beer they will drink in order to make their quota. They are the equivalent of a brutal headmistress, and that's not somebody you want to encounter in a pub, unless you're in one of those Silom leather bars popular among Scandinavian embassy staff.
I heartily congratulate the NCPO for ridding Thailand of the likes of her, though there will no doubt be rumblings of discontent about bullying military types shoving petite little Leo girls out of a job.
Thailand is already rather draconian when it comes to sales of alcohol, and you would think the top brass may have learned from their mistakes in the past when it comes to laws about alcohol.
Restricting just doesn't work. Banning the sale of liquor between the crucial hours of 2pm and 5pm hasn't stopped anybody or anything … other than the flow of tourists to Malaysia and Singapore. And it is true; it's not difficult to make a single bottle stretch across those three dry hours, especially if one is in easy reach of hospital pharmacies, paint stores or Nigerians on Sukhumvit street corners.
If the NCPO gets its way — and let's face it, who will argue with them? — there will be no more girls in Leo T-shirts dictating your drinking habits.
But wait. There is more good news.
Happy Hours are soon to be a thing of the past, or at least illegal in Thailand. Apparently, and this is coming from the top, they encourage people in bars to … drink.
I don't have a problem with that either. Thailand has never come to terms with the concept of a Happy Hour.
Let's say I go to a bar at 6.45pm and order my usual Triple Screwdriver with a Dash of Orange Juice in a Separate Glass, henceforth known as a TSDOJSG for brevity's sake.
One of three things will happen:
1. One TSDOJSG appears. I drink it, then order another, assuming it is the freebie. How many years have I been here? And still I assume? It's not the freebie. I am charged for two drinks and then, when it is time to leave, another two drinks mysteriously appear.
These are the two freebies for the two drinks I have already paid for.
I am obliged to down those two TSDOJSGs in record time, thus doubling the amount of alcohol I expected to drink. I know, I know … if only all of life's problems were as sweet.
2. Two TSDOJSGs appear at the same time. By the time I get around to the second one (ie one minute and 45 seconds), the ice has melted, and is there anything worse in life than diluted alcohol? Speaking of which …
3. One tSDOJSG will appear. Note the lower-case "t" in that abbreviation? That's because there is nothing triple about it. I immediately regret not having popped my magnifying glass into my Superdry manbag, as that is the only device that will aid in detecting the vodka.
In short; Thailand doesn't get the concept. So begone with it, I say.
And the big picture? Will ridding Thai society of Leo girls and Happy Hours do anything to reduce the terrible road toll in this country?
Of course it won't. I know, because I grew up in a society that was soaked in alcohol, namely Australia in the late 1970s.
We Aussies are no different from Thais. We, too, love to get alcoholic and obnoxious and shout and turn up music and throw punches and then drive cars and motorbikes and kill ourselves and others. So what did the government and Australian states do back then?
They didn't restrict alcohol. They just introduced tough laws and enforced them. What the government did was make us scared of being caught — and out of pocket when we were.
With random breath testing, Aussies regardless of social standing or wealth were hauled into booze buses, facing the ignominy of appearing in court and having their licences suspended. Even court judges got busted. And the fines were hefty.
Could that happen here? I suspect busting people regardless of social standing and wealth may be a little like asking Thais to give up eating som tam, but we could at least give the parts about hefty fines and loss of driving licences a try. For as of this moment, nobody is scared of drink-driving in this country.
One more thing. If the police need any tough no-holds-barred manpower to run this strict crackdown, I would look no further than Khao Nieo Road in Khon Kaen. There's at least one lady up there just dying to get back at loud-mouthed opinionated farang. n
