Thailand Rules!

It should have come as little surprise when Thailand achieved world leadership. After America collapsed into bankruptcy when the dollar dropped to three to the baht extremist militant warlords cut the country into their own fiefdoms and practiced their personal political or religious doctrines unfettered. Canada and Mexico built walls to keep fleeing moderates out, the cost of which caused them to form a union joined by a West Coast strip and turned them to isolationism. The former USSR and it’s satellites formed a ‘Soccer Federation” where they bought and imported every team in the world above the standard of Udon Thani Juniors and turned their backs on the world and their faces to the TV screen.

China, with the world at it’s feet, dropped the ball badly. Trapped coal miners dug through into an underground bunker containing a new biological weapon that permanently sterilized anyone it came in contact with; releasing it into the atmosphere. The plan had been to secretly expose the Indian sub-continent to it, something they still did with reserve stocks but as their own population growth plummeted they extended the Great Wall along all its boundaries, also to keep illegal immigrants out. Millions of Chinese-made bulldozers died during the construction devastating the economy.
Within a generation South America went back to tribalism, the lost cocaine industry costing more than anyone anticipated, and an unrestrained Africa slaughtered friend and foe alike. Both continents cheerfully restored human sacrifice as the obvious way to bring on rain- which fell in abundance.

A somewhat wary Thailand accepted Europe’s offer of the sole UN Security Council position, no way would the French, Germans, British et al, allow any of their neighbours near it; and summonsed their wisest minds to draw up a plan to restore the planet. Unfortunately the wisest minds were battling with such problems as placating the generals after the latest coup, trying to justify their abbot’s latest public venture into the joys of his mia noi or still explaining how dog meat came to be served in a zoo restaurant several decades earlier. In other words Thailand had never cared a whit for anything outside it’s borders and international responsibility did not come easily.
Deciding, as always, to place the greatest responsibility in the hands of the least competent the Thai government appointed a Nana Plaza mama-san as ambassador to the UN, virtually a position that offered world presidency.

Mama-san Noi made no effort to explain how her name bore little relationship to her actual size and soon set about attracting financial contributions from the other members. When a London tabloid newspaper caught her with her head in the lap of an elderly African delegate while busily videoing with her mobile phone camera she merely said that training films were essential for Isaan girls venturing on a new career.
Soon recalled for a reluctance to share her additional income (or any other) with her sponsors she later hired a burnt out Farang newspaper columnist to write a best selling “tell all” expose that broke several governments and more marriages.

Some what bemused the Thai government, consisting as usual of  the descendants of fleeing  Kuomintang survivors who had managed to convince the Thais they were Thai by the simple expediency of changing their names, looked around for a solution. Anyone with any serious stake in the country was understandably reluctant to leave. Memories of a former Prime Minister who had made the mistake of accepting an invitation to address the UN in New York remained. Finally senior public servants were approached and threatened with public disgrace for imaginary crimes, their real ones would draw too much attention to any accuser, unless they accepted well paid positions to run the world; the UN by this stage having moved it’s head quarters to Singapore. It was decided that the salaries paid to delegates and their staff would not be considered unusual there.

The public servants soon brought the world back into the black, financially speaking, by imposing a world wide minimum wage of a hundred baht a day. This doubled the wage in countries like Laos and Cambodia while restoring full employment to Australia and the EU when Indonesia and Brazil, an extension of the neo-Aztec Empire, subcontracted their fashionable training shoe manufacturing contracts out. The World’s religious leaders rejoiced as sex tourism disappeared; every country soon offering cheap prostitution to those of it’s citizens who could afford it.

Unfortunately the new prosperity never flowed to Thailand. Anyone from the cities making any money placed it in Caribbean bank accounts and in the villages any new wealth was treated with suspicion in case some of it flowed down to the Hills Tribes people, the Burmese and other intruders who had lacked the wit to adopt Thai names.
Expats continued to drink too much and write exquisitely worded letters to the Bangkok Post explaining why no one with any sense would want to live in Thailand. They then went to the Immigration Department with another crock of shit explaining why their visas should be renewed.
After a while the Thais either forgot or ignored their new position in the world and just carried on as usual.

© Julian. All rights reserved by the author.