News Forum - Drunken tourist brawl erupts in Phuket, sparks online outrage (video)

[Thaiger]

A wild street brawl involving foreign tourists outside Cafe del Mar in Kamala has set social media ablaze, reigniting debates over the type of visitors Phuket is attracting. The 1-minute, 37-second clip, shared by the โหดจัง จังหวัดภูเก็ต Facebook page today, February 14, captures the chaotic fight, with drunk tourists trading punches as stunned onlookers watched. … …

The story Drunken tourist brawl erupts in Phuket, sparks online outrage (video) as seen on Thaiger News.

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[ChrisS]

Phuket like Pattaya still attracting the cream of the cream I see . There seemed to be a LOT of very ineffective security people there, par for the course in Thailand though Security seem to either do absolutely  nothing or if there is a gang of them and only one protagonist beat the sh*ite out of them.

[AussieBob]

TAT is happy as the proverbial pig as their bonuses for the numbers roll in, while Thais are angry at the type of tourist that is coming these days. One day there will be a nexus point and TAT will be seen for what they are - unaccountable public servants getting money for doing SFA (other than scam tourist junket trips and events).  There is only a few reasons these types are coming to Thailand - sex, drugs and party party party. They aint coming to see the culture that TAT spends a fortune 'advertising' worldwide. 

[ParaMagic]

I've always been surprised that more of this doesn't go on... These "tourists" need to fear being jailed, deported and utterly ruined financially (meaning held accountable for damages etc.) lest this will only escalate? Establishment ownership needs to also be put on notice... signage with warnings, disclosures of legal, financial consequences must be made visible at these types of establishments. In other words, patrons need to be made clear there will be consequences for their stupidity... 

Edited February 14 by ParaMagic

[Fanta]

26 minutes ago, ParaMagic said:

I've always been surprised that more of this doesn't go on... These "tourists" need to fear being jailed, deported and utterly ruined financially (meaning held accountable for damages etc.) lest this will only escalate? Establishment ownership needs to also be put on notice... signage with warnings, disclosures of legal, financial consequences must be made visible at these types of establishments. In other words, patrons need to be made clear there will be consequences for their stupidity... 

I loath a nanny state and believe individuals are ultimately responsible for their own actions. That said, establishments need to have something resembling safe serving laws. Pouring drinks down the throats of already drunk people for profit means you also share some responsibility for the consequences. Just saying…

[Skip]

24 minutes ago, Fanta said:

I loath a nanny state and believe individuals are ultimately responsible for their own actions. That said, establishments need to have something resembling safe serving laws. Pouring drinks down the throats of already drunk people for profit means you also share some responsibility for the consequences. Just saying…

BS... individuals can "JUST SAY NO" without forcing any venue to babysit them... 

[Fanta]

26 minutes ago, Skip said:

BS... individuals can "JUST SAY NO" without forcing any venue to babysit them... 

That’s somewhat true but alcohol loosens inhibitions and sometimes overly drunk people do things they later regret. Your existence attests to that. 

[Skip]

10 minutes ago, Fanta said:

That’s somewhat true but alcohol loosens inhibitions and sometimes overly drunk people do things they later regret. 

Spoken like the true drunk that you are... the rest of us can behave both sober and after a few drinks... try it sometime.

[Fanta]

1 hour ago, Skip said:

Spoken like the true drunk that you are... the rest of us can behave both sober and after a few drinks... try it sometime.

And lose the boundless joy of crawling home naked through the darkened city streets? Not on your life, teetotaller. 

[Ramanathan.P]

The fight has really cause a great loss to that poor old man who is trying to sell some bouquet flowers during that night to make some income. Poor guy just holding them with frustrations

[ParaMagic]

20 hours ago, Skip said:

BS... individuals can "JUST SAY NO" without forcing any venue to babysit them... 

The venue wouldn't be babysitting them... just putting them on notice when they clearly are unable to just say no. I agree with Fanta, I'm not a fan of over policing this either. Ultimately, if the vendors and the community at large are happy to have this happen.. then fine, so be it. In fact, maybe this is a good idea to give all of the stupid people a place to go... that way they can just beat the Shitte out of each other?

[cowslip]

inevitable side-effect of overtourism

[AussieBob]

On 2/15/2025 at 6:15 AM, ParaMagic said:

I've always been surprised that more of this doesn't go on... These "tourists" need to fear being jailed, deported and utterly ruined financially (meaning held accountable for damages etc.) lest this will only escalate? Establishment ownership needs to also be put on notice... signage with warnings, disclosures of legal, financial consequences must be made visible at these types of establishments. In other words, patrons need to be made clear there will be consequences for their stupidity... 

Unfortunately the Police are 'under instruction' not to harshly punish tourists as it is bad for the economy. The best example is recently up north where a certain group were terrorising everyone in the Province for months and when finally they crossed the line in  hospital and people made social media complaints, the local Police arrested a few and deported them. They said they were told by Provincial Boss not to be too hard on them. Same same everywhere in Thailand - the authorities want to money they bring and dont care about the problems they cause. 

[Manu]

Drunken young people on holiday having a "fight". Saturday night all over the world. Big deal.

[23RD]

Those Russian draft dodgers have plenty of fight in them. 

[Khunmark]

Hot weather, pole dancers, loud music, cocktail buckets, extended closing hours, large groups of young men.

What could possibly go wrong?

[23RD]

9 minutes ago, Khunmark said:

Hot weather, pole dancers, loud music, cocktail buckets, extended closing hours, large groups of young men.

What could possibly go wrong?

Sounds like Magaluf.

[ParaMagic]

14 hours ago, AussieBob said:

Unfortunately the Police are 'under instruction' not to harshly punish tourists as it is bad for the economy. The best example is recently up north where a certain group were terrorising everyone in the Province for months and when finally they crossed the line in  hospital and people made social media complaints, the local Police arrested a few and deported them. They said they were told by Provincial Boss not to be too hard on them. Same same everywhere in Thailand - the authorities want to money they bring and dont care about the problems they cause. 

Thanks for this.... Going to quote you on this... this is worth reposting for sure. 

[ParaMagic]

10 hours ago, 23RD said:

Those Russian draft dodgers have plenty of fight in them. 

Great Point!

[ParaMagic]

20 hours ago, cowslip said:

inevitable side-effect of overtourism

Could be... I would opine that if the Thai community at large (vendors/leaders/police etc.) took more responsible measures to manage all of this, it could remain a win-win for everyone. 

[cowslip]

34 minutes ago, ParaMagic said:

Could be... I would opine that if the Thai community at large (vendors/leaders/police etc.) took more responsible measures to manage all of this, it could remain a win-win for everyone. 

You should read yr news - even the Thai government are concerned about over tourism and have been trying to deal with it. the problem is that te new tourists - are largely on shorter haul flights than before and are booking packe=ages in the well know touristy areas - so places like Phuket and getting hugely over crowded but lesser know places are still down on preCovid numbers. It's an imbalance that  local hotel organisations don't know how to deal with as it's never happened before.

[ParaMagic]

6 hours ago, cowslip said:

You should read yr news - even the Thai government are concerned about over tourism and have been trying to deal with it. the problem is that te new tourists - are largely on shorter haul flights than before and are booking packe=ages in the well know touristy areas - so places like Phuket and getting hugely over crowded but lesser know places are still down on preCovid numbers. It's an imbalance that  local hotel organisations don't know how to deal with as it's never happened before.

Maybe it's being planned this way? A way of managing all of these rowdy tour package folks? I have to say, sounds like it might be a good solution to put this type of crowd in one or two places... and leave the rest of Thailand alone?

[AussieBob]

On 2/17/2025 at 1:52 AM, ParaMagic said:

Could be... I would opine that if the Thai community at large (vendors/leaders/police etc.) took more responsible measures to manage all of this, it could remain a win-win for everyone. 

Unfortunately that logical suggestion will not work in Thailand. Thailand has a few (very few) extremely wealthy huge 'families' that go back 100s of years - the current and previous PM are examples of being family members of the wealthy and powerful.  He who is not spoken about sits above all this, but the top 1% in Thailand own, control and run 98+% of what happens here. This is a system whereby they do not 'feel' the problems caused by over-tourism (or other things like shoddy building practices etc etc etc), but they make the money - because it all trickles up to them. They own the hotel franchises - they own the car franchises - they own all the means of production and transport - everything. There are no foreign companies in Thailand - the local office of anything (Honda, Dell, Apple, Google, etc etc.) are Thai franchises majority owned by Thais - which are all members of those families.  Amazon and Paypal refused to agree to those terms - thus they dont exist as such in Thailand - many others too. The 'rules' claimed to protect the interests of local Thais are actually all about protecting the interests of the wealthy Thai families.

Not only are there more Generals in Thailand that in USA, there are also more Millionaires - it all flows up here and no one is going to be allowed to come in and succeed. Harley Davidson and Subaru are just two of many examples of failed 'companies' who tried to do business here and would not sell their souls to the wealthy families here. John Deer is an example of a company that did play along, and they were nailed for corruption by USA FCPA regulations - more who do business here are now under examination. 

Tesla chose Malaysia as its Regional Hub for manufacturing and supply, as did Google and many others recently. They both have a distribution, data centre and support business majority owned by the Thais, but they are just two of the many companies who decided not to sell out to the wealthy Thai families. More and more companies are going in that direction - the old Thai corrupt family business model that failed in Japan is starting to fail in Thailand.  Do the wealthy families here give a rat's rear end about the problems of over-tourism? Not a snowflake in Hell's chance they do - they will play the media game a bit, but they do not give a sheite and they will not allow any changes that will cost them business. 

They did not let Pita Limjaroenrat and the Future Forward Party take over Government after the election in 2023, and they got rid of Srettha Thavisin (previous PM) because he was not following orders.  Speaking of following orders, the Thai military is a part of the problem - the senior members are tightly controlled so that the majority of Generals are from those wealthy families. Their job is to protect the KIng and his family, and the other wealthy families in Thailand. Whenever things look to be going in the wrong direction, they have another Junta and take over for a while. 

IMO in about 9-10 years when Pita Limjaroenrat and Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit are no longer banned from running for Office, there will be massive changes in Thailand as together they will win an election hands down.  However, having said that, as the Thai economy continues to crash and burn because of the inherent structural problems mentioned above, things might come to a head sooner rather than later. Or perhaps the powerful wealthy families will yet again come up with something to maintain their control - IMO Thaksin coming back and his daughter becoming PM is leading up to something big. 

[ParaMagic]

15 hours ago, AussieBob said:

Unfortunately that logical suggestion will not work in Thailand. Thailand has a few (very few) extremely wealthy huge 'families' that go back 100s of years - the current and previous PM are examples of being family members of the wealthy and powerful.  He who is not spoken about sits above all this, but the top 1% in Thailand own, control and run 98+% of what happens here. This is a system whereby they do not 'feel' the problems caused by over-tourism (or other things like shoddy building practices etc etc etc), but they make the money - because it all trickles up to them. They own the hotel franchises - they own the car franchises - they own all the means of production and transport - everything. There are no foreign companies in Thailand - the local office of anything (Honda, Dell, Apple, Google, etc etc.) are Thai franchises majority owned by Thais - which are all members of those families.  Amazon and Paypal refused to agree to those terms - thus they dont exist as such in Thailand - many others too. The 'rules' claimed to protect the interests of local Thais are actually all about protecting the interests of the wealthy Thai families.

Not only are there more Generals in Thailand that in USA, there are also more Millionaires - it all flows up here and no one is going to be allowed to come in and succeed. Harley Davidson and Subaru are just two of many examples of failed 'companies' who tried to do business here and would not sell their souls to the wealthy families here. John Deer is an example of a company that did play along, and they were nailed for corruption by USA FCPA regulations - more who do business here are now under examination. 

Tesla chose Malaysia as its Regional Hub for manufacturing and supply, as did Google and many others recently. They both have a distribution, data centre and support business majority owned by the Thais, but they are just two of the many companies who decided not to sell out to the wealthy Thai families. More and more companies are going in that direction - the old Thai corrupt family business model that failed in Japan is starting to fail in Thailand.  Do the wealthy families here give a rat's rear end about the problems of over-tourism? Not a snowflake in Hell's chance they do - they will play the media game a bit, but they do not give a sheite and they will not allow any changes that will cost them business. 

They did not let Pita Limjaroenrat and the Future Forward Party take over Government after the election in 2023, and they got rid of Srettha Thavisin (previous PM) because he was not following orders.  Speaking of following orders, the Thai military is a part of the problem - the senior members are tightly controlled so that the majority of Generals are from those wealthy families. Their job is to protect the KIng and his family, and the other wealthy families in Thailand. Whenever things look to be going in the wrong direction, they have another Junta and take over for a while. 

IMO in about 9-10 years when Pita Limjaroenrat and Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit are no longer banned from running for Office, there will be massive changes in Thailand as together they will win an election hands down.  However, having said that, as the Thai economy continues to crash and burn because of the inherent structural problems mentioned above, things might come to a head sooner rather than later. Or perhaps the powerful wealthy families will yet again come up with something to maintain their control - IMO Thaksin coming back and his daughter becoming PM is leading up to something big. 

Wow! Thanks for taking the time to give that insider's understanding. If I am being honest, I rather agree with Thai's continuing to hold power within their own country (I am proud of Thailand never succumbing to one of the imperial powers). In American politics they have a euphemism, or maybe a pretense is a better word, called the Trickle Down Effect. It's all bs in America, because it never actually happens. However, I do see it happening here in Thailand. I have no critical analysis or data points or citations for you, just my own personal anecdotal, subjective view. Final point I'd like to make, and again speaking subjectively, after a cursory look at Thai politics thus far (paying attention now for a couple of years), I wouldn't point to the Thaksin clan as being the preferred solution. Just my two cents on the matter. Thanks again for that in depth explanation... that really explains a lot. 

[cowslip]

 

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