Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the Interior Minister and what seems to be a warning to foreigners who could be construed as ‘Behaving Badly’ if you will in Thailand. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post print edition. I took some photos of it; I think we will go ahead and throw the photos of the print edition up on screen so folks can see it but we will go ahead and cite it. The article is titled: Phuket Beach row spurs graft probes. Specifically, so background here, there's a lot of talk about this case. There's apparently a foreign man down in Phuket who is at the centre of this whole thing. Now to be clear, at present these remain accusations so again I can't say with any specificity or any certainty who is to blame or anything if there is any blame in this case. But based on the exact accusations and let's say if the accusations are in fact true, which again I'm not saying they are or not, it remains to be seen, but pending an adjudication, if the accusations prove to be true, I think it's pretty safe to say this is an example of a foreigner behaving badly. I would urge those are watching this video go check out that article for yourself in detail. There are also other articles throughout the internet about this. This story seems to have sort of cropped up and gone viral the last couple of days here in Thailand. Long story short, there seems to be a property disputed issue, we're going to get into that in another video I'm making contemporaneously with this one regarding why Thai property issues are so important especially when you are dealing with the possibility of encroachment on State Property, public land. 

Leaving that aside, again it appears to be a situation, again if the accusations prove correct, where it seems a foreigner may have assaulted someone in the course of them being on what is public property but it is near enough presumably to this person's property that there was some sort of dispute. Again I don't know if the underlying merits to the case are in fact true; we don't know. Again it remains accusation at this time but that said if the accusations are in fact true, if you go look it up it does appear that this is an example of a foreigner behaving badly, and to be clear the accusation is that this person kicked a Thai person on what is apparently state property but there is some encroachment issue regarding the land. Again it's a bit opaque; it's not very clear. Again that's why we have an adjudication process and again it remains accusation. That said, if it's proven true, it's not good behaviour. 

So I thought of making this video after reading this article and quoting directly:  "Phuket Police Chief Major General Sinlert Sukhum said officials would consider a blacklist or Visa revocation against foreigners who break the law in Phuket." Quoting further: “National Police Chief Pol Gen Torsak Sukvimol said yesterday he had ordered the Provincial Police Region 8 and the Phuket Provincial Tourism Police to invest investigate the case. He said the units were told to gather facts surrounding the alleged assault and ensure the investigation against the Swiss man is swift.” Now again having the police sort of chime in on this, that seems kind of par for the course.

That said and the reason for the title of the video is that the Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister seems to be chiming in on this and that's an order of magnitude, that's a different thing. Quoting directly: "Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul yesterday warned foreigners living in Thailand to abide by the law or their visas would be revoked.”

So again, just a general sort of video here, look at the end of the day if you are expecting to behave badly in Thailand just in a general sense and that there won't be any consequences, I think that is a bad assumption. It is not prudent to presume here in Thailand that you are going to be able to "bully" people or cause general problems in a given community and to just be allowed to continue doing that unfettered. I think that is made clear by not only the police personnel who are quoted in this video but again by the Interior Minister himself and bear in mind the Interior Ministry has authority over Immigration; they run the Immigration Police basically. So when the Interior Minister is talking this way it is something all foreigners should take heed because this is a person who can have a tremendous amount of impact on Immigration Policy here in the Kingdom of Thailand.