MANICHAEAN
04-19-2011, 09:44 AM
The Firmament in Thailand
This week marks the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin making the first ever manned flight into space. The most alarming part is that I can remember it well; the grainy images of the chubby-faced cosmonaut flickering over on the old black and white TV and my dad saying the Americans wouldn't be very happy. He was right.
To put Gagarin's flight into context, it was the year JFK took over at the White House, with the Bay of Pigs fiasco just around the corner. The big movies of the year were West Side Story and The Guns of Navarone, while Patsy Cline's Crazy was on top of the American hit parade and Del Shannon's Runaway was the most popular song in the UK. And a little-known British group had just started playing at the Cavern Club in Liverpool. Now that is a long time ago.
Although Thailand has not exactly been in the forefront of space exploration, a rogue meteorite did hit the Kingdom in 1993. It landed on a plot of land owned by an old lady in Lom Sak district of Phetchabun. She presumed it to be some sort of religious omen from heaven bringing good luck. It soon attracted large crowds of villagers hoping it would reveal the correct lottery numbers.
But the old lady's luck didn't last long. Apparently any alien object that falls out of the sky belongs to the government and the authorities quickly stepped in and confiscated the rock in the name of "scientific research".
However it seems the authorities didn't really know what to do with it either and later returned the rock to the old lady. She promptly locked it up in a large safety deposit box, a curious fate for an historic rock from outer space.
The space story that created the most excitement in Thailand was definitely Skylab, or to use the correct technical term, Sa-Kai-Lap. This was a giant American space station that hurtled to Earth out of control back in 1979.
The Thai-language papers had it heading for Thailand, or more specifically, Bangkok, and predicted all sorts of dire consequences. In the country, the word Sa-Kai-Lap soon became synonymous for anything or anyone out of control: bolshie buffaloes, mad elephants, potty politicians and anyone who appeared a few satang short of a full baht. For the record, Skylab missed Bangkok by a minor matter of 5,000 miles.
As an aside, you might be interested to know that in Thailand a “butterfly” is a man who flits from one girl to another, whilst a “helicopter” is one who hovers for long periods over young girls.
Thus in logical progression “a Sky Lab” became one who was regarded as completely out of control when it came to women.Clearly the Thais take this astronomy business seriously!
There are in fact still sporadic UFO sightings in Thailand and there was a particularly unusual one a few years ago. An enraged Bangkok wife cut off her husband's "thingy," tied it to a helium balloon and launched it skywards, losing it in space forever. It's still probably floating about up there somewhere.
This week marks the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin making the first ever manned flight into space. The most alarming part is that I can remember it well; the grainy images of the chubby-faced cosmonaut flickering over on the old black and white TV and my dad saying the Americans wouldn't be very happy. He was right.
To put Gagarin's flight into context, it was the year JFK took over at the White House, with the Bay of Pigs fiasco just around the corner. The big movies of the year were West Side Story and The Guns of Navarone, while Patsy Cline's Crazy was on top of the American hit parade and Del Shannon's Runaway was the most popular song in the UK. And a little-known British group had just started playing at the Cavern Club in Liverpool. Now that is a long time ago.
Although Thailand has not exactly been in the forefront of space exploration, a rogue meteorite did hit the Kingdom in 1993. It landed on a plot of land owned by an old lady in Lom Sak district of Phetchabun. She presumed it to be some sort of religious omen from heaven bringing good luck. It soon attracted large crowds of villagers hoping it would reveal the correct lottery numbers.
But the old lady's luck didn't last long. Apparently any alien object that falls out of the sky belongs to the government and the authorities quickly stepped in and confiscated the rock in the name of "scientific research".
However it seems the authorities didn't really know what to do with it either and later returned the rock to the old lady. She promptly locked it up in a large safety deposit box, a curious fate for an historic rock from outer space.
The space story that created the most excitement in Thailand was definitely Skylab, or to use the correct technical term, Sa-Kai-Lap. This was a giant American space station that hurtled to Earth out of control back in 1979.
The Thai-language papers had it heading for Thailand, or more specifically, Bangkok, and predicted all sorts of dire consequences. In the country, the word Sa-Kai-Lap soon became synonymous for anything or anyone out of control: bolshie buffaloes, mad elephants, potty politicians and anyone who appeared a few satang short of a full baht. For the record, Skylab missed Bangkok by a minor matter of 5,000 miles.
As an aside, you might be interested to know that in Thailand a “butterfly” is a man who flits from one girl to another, whilst a “helicopter” is one who hovers for long periods over young girls.
Thus in logical progression “a Sky Lab” became one who was regarded as completely out of control when it came to women.Clearly the Thais take this astronomy business seriously!
There are in fact still sporadic UFO sightings in Thailand and there was a particularly unusual one a few years ago. An enraged Bangkok wife cut off her husband's "thingy," tied it to a helium balloon and launched it skywards, losing it in space forever. It's still probably floating about up there somewhere.