They're already 5 hours into the new year in Thailand.

Happy New Year 2026 Thailand 🇹🇭 pic.twitter.com/tc4oJkEMYt

— Pretty Cities (@PrettyCitiesX) December 31, 2025

It is 2026. It's okay to go to bed now.

"An Earthquake Rocks Myanmar and Thailand/The 7.7-magnitude quake caused widespread damage in a country already in chaos because of civil war."

The New York Times reports, with many photographs and videos. Free-access link.

"The king of Thailand has married the deputy head of his personal security detail, and given her the title of queen..."

"King Maha Vajiralongkorn, 66....  has been married and divorced three times before and has seven children. A royal statement said: King Vajiralongkorn 'has decided to promote General Suthida Vajiralongkorn Na Ayudhya, his royal consort, to become Queen Suthida and she will hold royal title and status as part of the royal family.'... In 2014 Vajiralongkorn appointed Suthida Tidjai, a former flight attendant for Thai Airways, as the deputy commander of his bodyguard unit. He made her a full general in the army in December 2016."

BBC reports.

Travel ads ensure that we'll never get honest articles about travel.

I was already skeptical about this NYT article, "Five Tips to Give Kids Some Culture and a Vacation at the Same Time/Traveling with the whole family is a great way to open your children's eyes to a world beyond their front door — but that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun, too. Here’s how." But my bullshit meter shot up when I got to paragraph 4:

If you’re in Thailand, for example, try making and flying traditional chula or pakpao kites. Other activities include creating clay sculptures modeled on the local wildlife, or making potpourri from local leaves and flowers. Both activities will help kids get familiar with indigenous animals and plants. Check with your hotel concierge or travel agent, or search TripAdvisor for local arts fairs, craft events for kids, or local artisans that open their shops to visitors eager to learn about the culture, not just shop for souvenirs.

All right, clearly the NYT isn't writing for average Americans who are trying to give kids some culture mixed with fun when they have a couple week for vacation. It's writing for the subset of its readers who would travel all the way to Thailand with children, stay at a hotel with a concierge, and then feel it's a good use of time to do crafts (like making little clay elephants) that are easily done at home or in kindergarten class. I agree that's a better use of time than shopping for souvenirs, but maybe the best use of time is not going to Thailand (with children!) in the first place. Why subject children to all the time-consuming burdens of traveling to such distant places? Why take on the burden of managing them and devoting your efforts to making all the expense and effort seem worth it?

Well, the answer lies immediately below that 4th paragraph. I've done a screen shot. Click to enlarge and clarify:



It's an ad for a cruise line, luring you to "More Asia. More Memories" where you can "Experience the wonders of Asia's rich history and vibrant modern cities. All while enjoying the classic style and comfort we're known for...."

There's no serious analysis of whether it's a good idea to take your children to Asia. You're just stuck with inane propaganda: It's "a great way to open your children's eyes to a world beyond their front door." Lots of time on a plane (or a luxury cruise?!) and then making it educational and fun with packaged crafts related to the local flora and fauna? There's no serious inquiry into whether these long trips are good for children in the first place. If they are as good as they need to be to be worth it, than isn't it terrible that only rich kids get to do it? How about leveling the playing field? Take your kids to American cities and national and state parks, and donate the money you save to enriching life for poor children.

Better yet, have your children devote themselves to charitable services to the poor in your own town. That's a greater way to open your children's eyes to a world beyond their front door.

"They should spend time in a monastery. It's for their protection. It's like they died but now have been reborn."

Said Seewad Sompiangjai, identified as "grandfather of Night" in the BBC article "Thai cave boys ordained in Buddhist ceremony." Night is the name of one of the rescued boys.

The group will spend nine days living in a monastery, a tradition for males in Thailand who experience adversity....

This step is intended to be a "spiritual cleansing" for the group, and to fulfil a promise by the families to remember one of the divers who died in the rescue operation....

One of the boys, Adul Sam-on, will not be joining the rest of the "Wild Boars" football team as he is a Christian. Their coach Ekkapol "Ake" Chantawong, 25, will join them for the same period of time but as a fully fledged monk rather than a novice.

The coach had spent time in a monastery as a novice before this. Although he has attracted some criticism for taking the boys into the cave, he is also credited with helping them through the ordeal by reportedly teaching them meditation techniques to help them stay calm and use as little air as possible.

The NYT article on the ordination puts the focus not on the boys' spiritual journey but on the debt owed to Saman Gunan, the Thai SEAL who died:

Their ordination was full of reminders of the former Thai Navy SEAL member Saman Gunan, 38, a volunteer diver who died while placing oxygen tanks to be used in their rescue. A large portrait of Mr. Saman was displayed....

Phra Mahapaivan Worravanno, a Buddhist monk and writer from Wat Soi Thong in Bangkok, said.... “When it comes to these boys and their coach, they said they would ordain for Lieutenant Commander Saman Gunan, because the man is their benefactor; he sacrificed himself to help them,” Phra Mahapaivan said. “Ordaining for Lieutenant Commander Saman Gunan is the Wild Boars’ way to show their gratitude and thanks.”...

“For the Wild Boars, they will ordain to redeem vows that their parents made, and more important, they will ordain in order to consign merit to Lieutenant Commander Saman Gunan’s soul,” said Anyatida Musittavee, 32, an office worker in Bangkok. “I think this is a great thing.”

Any questions about religious freedom here or is knowing that the Christian boy was left out enough?

"Today is D-Day. At 10 a.m. today (0300 GMT) 13 foreign divers went in to extract the children along with 5 Thai navy SEALs."

The Daily Beast reports:

The rescue mission began after rain showers soaked the Tham Luang Cave area in northern Chiang Rai province for the past 24 hours, heightening the risks in what the governor has called a “war with water and time” to save the team....

Weather.com forecast sustained thunderstorms lasting through Sunday and Monday, with further stormy weather expected for around the next two weeks....

To escape, the children must dive through dark, narrow passageways sometimes no more than two-feet wide, that have challenged some of the world’s leading cave divers. A former member of Thailand’s SEAL unit died during a dive on Thursday night....

ADDED: More information, with excellent graphics at BBC:

There are some parts of the route where the diver must remove the air tank to get through a narrow space, but you can see in the graphic that the boy will not be wearing a tank at all. He only needs to wear a mask and swim forward while tied to a man in front and followed by a man behind him. The boy's mask is a full-face mask, which, we're told, is "easier for novice divers than traditional respirators."

AND: "At least two of a group of boys trapped inside a cave in northern Thailand for two weeks have been been successfully brought out, reports say." Wonderful!!

UPDATE: "Four boys have reached chamber three and will walk out of the cave shortly..."

Thanakorn Siripaiboon, charged with lese majeste for mocking the king's dog.

Thanakorn, who faces a 37-year sentence, is 27. King Bhumibol Adulyadej is 88. Whether Bhumibol cares what is said about his dog, I don't know, but "Prosecutions have soared since the army, which styles itself as the champion of the monarchy, grabbed power in a coup last year."

The dog is Tongdaeng, an adopted stray, "is praised for her loyalty and obedience, has been used to outline [the king's] vision of how Thais should behave." There's an animated movie about Tongdaeng that's #2 at the Thai box office.

Meanwhile, as long as we're talking about Thailand:

"If you buy prawns or shrimp from Thailand, you will be buying the produce of slave labor," Aidan McQuade, director of Anti-Slavery International [said].....

U.S. customs records show the shrimp made its way into the supply chains of major U.S. food stores and retailers such as Wal-Mart, Kroger, Whole Foods, Dollar General and Petco, along with restaurants such as Red Lobster and Olive Garden. It also entered the supply chains of some of America's best-known seafood brands and pet foods, including Chicken of the Sea and Fancy Feast....

"A prominent Thai fortuneteller accused of insulting the monarchy has died in custody..."

"The fortuneteller, Suriyan Sujaritpalawong, known by the name 'Mor Yong,' died of a blood infection Saturday at the military prison where he had been detained since mid-October...."

Mor Yong was known as a celebrity fortuneteller popular with officialdom and the Thai elite.... The case focuses on sponsorship of mass biking events arranged to honor Thailand's king and queen, and accuses the suspects of allegedly seeking kickbacks and other benefits in connection to the events....

"A Top Thai Tattoo Artist Who Said His Tattoos Conferred Invincibility Has Been Murdered."

"'He has many disciples and followers,' local police colonel Chalaermwuth Wongwiangchan said. 'He has traveled to apply the yant to many celebrities around the country and has also traveled [to meet his customers] abroad.'"

I was inspired to write a poem:

Win them all, you can't.
Even with yant.

"The world’s most experienced penis reattachment surgeons can be found in Thailand..."

"... where, during the 1970s, an estimated one hundred vengeful Thai wives, spurred by media coverage of a prominent 1973 case, sliced off the penises of their adulterous husbands as they slept. When a suitably equipped microsurgeon was on hand to reattach the errant appendage, the men were able to resume philandering within a matter of months. Though probably with reduced success: The penises, though operative, were shorter, numb, and often only partway erectable. The most serious complication, in the Thai attacks, was infection. Two of the wives flushed the penises down the toilet, forcing their husbands to grope for their lost manhood inside the septic tank. (Incredibly, both were found, cleaned, cleaned some more, and reattached.) More commonly, the women would hurl the penis out the window. In the cases described in 'Surgical Management of an Epidemic of Penile Amputations in Siam,' all the recovered penises were 'grossly contaminated.' Better that than eaten by livestock. Many rural Thai homes are elevated on pilings, with the family’s pigs, chickens, and ducks tending to mill about seeking shade in the space underneath. It is not, oddly, the pigs, but rather the ducks, that the castrated Thai must worry about. The paper does not provide the exact number of penises eaten by ducks, but the author says there have been enough over the years to prompt the coining of a popular saying: 'I better get home or the ducks will have something to eat.'"

I'm reading "Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex," by Mary Roach.

45% of the monks in Thailand are obese.

They're eating what they collect from the public, but the alms-givers are giving them fattening things, apparently.

Tsunami deaths.

Terrible, tragic pictures of the dead appear today. The NYT paper edition has a photograph of a floor covered with the bodies of children. With colorful blankets wrapped around them, and one boy's arm reaching over to another's shoulder, they would look as though they were sleeping, were it not for the grieving woman in the corner.

The NYT reports:

The deaths from the disaster - which climbed today to more than 35,000 and many unaccounted for as Sri Lanka and Indonesia increased their confirmed tolls - came into sharper relief on a day when it seemed increasingly clear that at least a third of the dead were children, according to estimates by aid officials...

The realization began to emerge today that the dead included an exceptionally high number of children who, aid officials suggested, were least able to grab onto trees or boats when the deadly waves smashed through villages and over beaches. Children make up at least half the population of Asia.

Were children more vulnerable than others? If children are half (or more) of the population and a third of the dead, they might appear to be less vulnerable. But many who died were those who were out in boats when the waves hit, and many were tourists in search of peace on remote, tiny islands:

"All of the fishermen who went to sea haven't come back," said Yusuf Ismail, a spokesman for the president [of Somalia].

In Thailand, the government said 918 people had died, 7,396 were injured and thousands were missing, mostly on small resort islands or among boatloads of recreational divers who had headed out to sea in the morning before the wave struck...

The smaller island of Phi Phi Lei, which was the scene of the movie "The Beach," starring Leonardo DiCaprio, was reported to have been mostly leveled. On another small island, the proprietors of the elite Phra Thong Resort said only 70 of 170 guests were accounted for."

The incongruous appearance of Leonardo DiCaprio in so many of the news stories may strike some as an offensive intrusion of our obsession with glamorous celebrities, but I think the real point here is that the movie stirred travelers' interest in the remote islands of Thailand. See this "eco tourism" site about Phra Thong (which is translated as "Golden Buddha"). Here's the Golden Buddha Beach Resort's site, which still has its original material, with an added note:

PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR UPDATED INFORMATION ABOUT THE RECENT TIDAL WAVE AND ITS IMPACT ON GOLDEN BUDDHA BEACH.

Nothing happens on clicking, though. Here, at least now, are some pictures of the resort:

The concept of Golden Buddha Beach was about putting dreams into reality. This special corner of Thailand is managed quite differently to other resorts. Those that wanted their own property and also to be a part of retaining Koh Phra Thong's natural environment could purchase from an ecologically-minded property developer, Lost Horizons.

Presumably, these things are all truly lost now, along with many of the people drawn to a place that promised the most beautiful, peaceful escape.

There is great sadness for all who have died -- the vacationers in search of peace, the fishermen out on a day's work, and the many children and ordinary people near their homes.