From ANDREW DRUMMOND, BangkokNovember 16 2011 Officials of Pattaya’s Consumer Protection unit have appealed again to the outgoing President of the city’s biggest Rotary Club to attend city hall for an interview over complaints that he has scammed scores of foreigners out of their holiday and retirement homes.As the list of angry victims of the ‘Emerald Palace’ […]
FROM ANDREW DRUMMOND, BANGKOK November 17 2011 The outgoing President of a Pattaya Rotary Club reacted with vengeance today after allegations that he scammed scores of foreigners out of their homes, and cheated them on rents. 63-yr-old Richard Haughton ordered water and electricity to be cut off from residents from his Lake Villas project in Pattaya […]
OUT OF TOWN – DIARYFrom ANDREW DRUMMOND,November 15 2011 Joseph McCluskey, aged 74, is a charming and witty Scotsman from Ayr – ‘Rabbie Burns Country’ – and has lived in ‘The Village’, Pattaya, since he retired from teaching.He admits at his age obviously his faculties have waned a bit. He has Parkinson’s disease, sometimes gets […]
A Flying Sporran Enquiry, BangkokNovember 9th 2011 (Updated 11-11-11) The British President of a Rotary Club in Thailand has reportedly been detained and had his passport confiscated after being accused of swindling foreign property investors out of millions of pounds. Richard Haughton, 63, a former Tupperware salesman, from Birmingham, was cautioned by officers of the Department of Special Investigation from Chonburi […]
Bangkok Diary From Andrew Drummond, Bangkok, November 6th As the flood waters spill their way towards the city there are a lot of unhappy bunnies camped out in one of Bangkok’s most expensive condominiums having undergone their own ‘annus horibilis’. I’m talking here about residents of Le Raffiné (refined or sophisticated) in Sukhumvit Soi 24 […]
Well it had to happen sooner or later I guess. The ‘Adolf Hitler’ video has another new script this time featuring both American Drew Noyes and his friend Dane Niels Colov, both of whom have newspapers, property companies, and legal offices in Pattaya. This comes to you courtesy of ‘Pattayascams’. I don’t know who they […]
A British blogger known as Spike Tennyson, who ran a website called ‘Pattayadays’ has apparently fled Thailand after he claims he received threats to his personal safety by Jeff Savage – the Briton caught on video threatening to burn down Central World during the red-shirt troubles in Bangkok. Jeff Savage, 48, from Tonbridge, Kent, pleaded guilty to breaching […]
Having been reporting on Thailand’s floods and the price of eggs now it’s time to take a break. Whose fault was the flooding? Was it the fault of Thai government, the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority, the Irrigation authorities, Yingluck herself? I needed to turn to my old bête noire the ‘Pattaya Times’ on the eastern seaboard for some […]
From ANDREW DRUMMOND, Bangkok, October 24 2011 A British editor holding together the Pattaya Times newspaper – apparently a partner paper of the Bangkok Post – has quit amid a controversy over the paper’s widespread ‘lifting’ of most of its material from a variety of journalists and news organisations worldwide.His resignation follows the departure of the paper’s […]
Got suited up last night to head for the British Embassy hosted QBP at the Erawan Hotel. In the middle of Sukhumvit I was diverted. And then, after the whispered’ You even more hamsum today andloo’, the sound of ‘God Save the Queen’ was soon far from my mind.QBP? Yes QBP. Its apparently Embassy speak for the Queen’s Birthday Party […]
Andrew Drummond is a British independent journalist and occasional television documentary maker. He is a former Fleet Street, London, journalist having worked at the Evening Standard, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, News of the World, Observer and The Times.