Not too long ago, Thailand was known as the Kingdom of Siam. It was
a magical and exotic place — the land of “The King and I” and “The
Bridge Over the River Kwai.” It was a land of elephants, spitting
cobras, scorpions, gleaming stars, turquoise-colored water, pristine
white, sandy beaches, coconut plantations and smiling locals who greeted
everyone with the “Sawasdee” or “hello” with hands folded as though in
Yet today at the dawn of the 21st century, Thailand is a nation
adrift — a land and people cut off from their ancient stable and
peaceful Buddhist heritage. It is a nation that seems — unlike the
elephant — to have forgotten its long and treasured past.
|Thailand sunset with a boat.|
While Thailand may well be a center for cutting edge AIDS/HIV and
Malaria research, and even a possible home to a new Panama-style canal
in the next decade, it is also a country beset with problems on a grand
The speculative global economic frenzy that had consumed Thailand
came crashing down along with the Asian financial meltdown in 1997.
Stockbrokers who gleefully had been ordering $500 bottles of wine and
ice cream topped with real flakes of gold were suddenly cast out on the
street — left to wonder where it all went wrong.
Soon after, the Thai people woke up to an even more frightening
nightmare — the virtual cultural colonization of their country by
post-Judeo-Christian Western civilization. Sadly, the Thai people of
1999 are a true casualty of globalization run amok. While not fully
Westernized, the Thais are no longer sufficiently Eastern.
“You can’t go home again,” the poet once wrote. And true to this
proverb, the Thais no longer seem comfortable or “at home” even within
their own homeland.
Time-honored monks sporting brightly colored burnt orange and yellow
robes are routinely seen driving around Bangkok in their Mercedes
Benzes, talking on their cell phones about their latest financial or
other scandals to their leadership.
Issues as diverse as AIDS/HIV, toxic waste, child-adult prostitution,
sexual predators swooping in from Western nations to molest young Thai
children and a plethora of drugs are only the proverbial tip of the
To begin, the Thai parliament routinely adjourns for “lack of
interest” among the MPs (members of parliament). Cultural decay is
legion. The enigmatic 18-year-old Pirinya Kiatbusaba a.k.a. Nong
(Va-Voom) Toom — a transvestite kick boxer that CNN Sports’ Fred Barnes
proclaims to be “Sassy” — dominates the local media and even the back
page of Time magazine. This is the global news Thailand is making these
The entry of women into the brutal sport of kickboxing is seen as
evidence of Thailand “becoming a great nation” according to many sports
Slouching towards Gomorrah
Many Thais see foreign tourism as the Pandora’s Box of their social
“Many foreigners who journey to Thailand come here for the drugs,
they think they can do anything — and they do,” says one Thai
“Europeans are the worst kind of pagans. The last vestiges of
Christianity were in Europe during the 1930s,” adds Baylor film
professor Dr. Michael Korpi, who lived in Thailand while working as a
|Giant Buddhist Statue on Ko Samui island in Thailand.|
“In the near future, Thailand will have to choose between foreign
tourism dollars and preserving what’s left of their traditional
culture. They will have to protect their children from Western
pedophiles, drugs and the worst elements of the post-Christian nihilism
and hedonism the tourists bring with them to Thailand.”
The drug, “Ya Baa,” meaning “Crazy Medicine,” is an amphetamine
currently sweeping through Thailand like a wildfire. One former Thai
parliament member calls it, “the greatest threat to the nation since
Most of the Ya Baa in Thailand is produced in neighboring Burma. The
drug production equipment and main substances used to make Ya Baa –
mainly ephedrine, pseudoephedrine, caffeine and chloroform — come from
The drug is trafficked into Thailand from Laos and Burma via an
elaborate web of small hill-tribe communities scattered around
Thailand’s borders with Burma and Laos.
The largest of these drug trafficking groups is the United Wa State
Army or UWSA — the remnant of the Burmese Communist Party. Their
supreme commander is Wei Sai Kang, who oversees a highly trained and
motivated drug army of 20,000 male and female soldiers.
The U.S. State Department claims that the UWSA is the largest
drug-dealing organization on earth, and has put out a $2 million reward
for the capture of Wei Sai Kang.
Two-thirds of all urban crime in Thailand is drug-related. In 1997,
1.8 million Thais checked into rehabilitation clinics for Ya Baa
addiction. This is two percent of the entire population. Ya Baa use
has risen 900 percent since 1993.
Selling Ya Baa is also an easy way for Thais to get out of debt. Many
are taking that route by selling Ya Baa to pay off their credit cards or
to finance their children’s education.
Suffer the children
Back in Bangkok, far from the Golden Triangle, pedophilia is on the
rise. Its perpetrators are mostly middle-aged European white men. The
victims are most often young, homeless Thai boys. Some European travel
agencies actually sell package tours to Thailand with the expressed
theme of pedophilia.
These European predators, the Thai police claim, choose young Thai
boys because they think they are free from AIDS/HIV. In reality,
Thailand is an AIDS nest — not a haven from AIDS.
|Thailand sunset with two women digging for clams.|
A Thai organization called FACE, “The Coalition to Fight Against
Child Exploitation,” claims that 5,000 foreigners come to Thailand each
year to have sex with children. Some Japanese pedophiles will pay
20,000 Baht ($500 in U.S. dollars) for sex with a little boy. Over the
past three years, FACE has helped to put ten child molesters behind
“Children who are sexually abused themselves often grow up to become
sexual predators against other innocent children. It is a sad and
terrible cycle,” said Captain Pung Polkwamdee of the Royal Thai Police
“Of course, our southern neighbors Singapore and Malaysia don’t have
this problem as they are Islamic countries which would never for a
second tolerate such evils against their own children.”
Anthony LoBaido, WorldNetDaily’s roving international
investigative reporter, has worked as a journalist in Mexico, South
Africa, Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong, Australia, Laos and Cambodia. Having
lived and trained with the elite Special Forces of the South African
Defense Force, he authored “The Third Boer War,” an apocalyptic account
of a future war in South Africa between the global right wing and the
UN/ANC. LoBaido is also a veteran filmmaker, having been hired by former
U.S. President George Bush to produce a documentary on his life, which
was featured on CNN in 1993. Today, LoBaido travels the world over for
WorldNetDaily and its special insider monthly magazine, Dispatches.
This article is a brief summary of Anthony C. LoBaido’s in-depth
report on “Thailand: playground of the amoral West,” to be published,
with photos, in the November issue of Dispatches. WorldNetDaily’s
special insider magazine, Dispatches contains exclusive information not
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