Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Big Joke, that is Surachate “Big Joke” Hakparn, Deputy National Police Chief who we have covered for years actually going back to when he took over the Immigration apparatus here in Thailand. 

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Big Joke checks security of Pattaya Countdown 2024. I was actually there that same night, let me get into this, hold on. Quoting directly: "The City of Pattaya celebrated New Year with a bang as thousands of people flocked to the beach to enjoy the "Pattaya Countdown 2024" event. On December 30, Deputy Commissioner of the Royal Thai Police, Pol Gen Surachate Hakparn, a.k.a "Big Joke" conducted a security inspection at the event venue and the temporary control centre at Wat Yansangwararam in Ban Saray, Chonburi. He arrived by helicopter and greeted the law enforcement officers and the event staff. During his visit, Pol Gen Surachate interacted with some of the attendees and performers at the "Pattaya Countdown 2024" event. He emphasized the importance of Pattaya as a key economic hub in the Eastern region and how events like this helped stimulate the country's economy through tourism and commerce."

Yeah I couldn't agree more. As we have discussed in many videos on this channel, Pattaya sits in the middle of what is called the EEC, the Eastern Economic Corridor which is basically the three provinces of Chonburi, Chachoengsao and Rayong and has sort of been slated as a Specific Zone of Development here in Thailand. But the thing that I think is of real import here, I was actually at this, I was down there at the time, I didn't actually see Pol Gen Surachate but I was kind of wandering around just on my own and yeah I was really happy to see just how well attended this event was. For lack of a better term, I think it is safe to say Thailand we are back, we are back. We have managed to pull back the tourism sector and we have managed to see that it is as vibrant as it was prior to all this shut down and in my opinion nonsense associated with the lockdowns lo these past roughly 3 years. 

So the thing to take away from this video, I think it is worth noting is one, “Big Joke” is around, he is inspecting things. As we have noted in other videos, it looks like he is going to take a more active role in that regard. More to the point is and I think of greater importance to folks who live here and to Thais here operating in the Tourism Sector is yeah it looks like tourism has come back with a bang. As we discussed in another video, the high season, at least 2023, beat targets, it wasn't by much but it did beat the targets and that was not expected. There were a lot of folks who have been downtrodden going into this high season thinking we were going to be looking at a lower than expected 2023 but it looks like we haven't and as we all know, high season kind of always spans 2 years, at least in terms of the calendar years; we are sitting here in January right now which is technically considered still part of high season up until sometime in February. There are no hard and fast lines as to where this begins and ends but it is definitely good news and we will certainly keep you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.