The Thai National Hockey Team

Okay, so I know most of you are thinking, "what? Thailand has a hockey team?" and rightly you should as I was greeted with that same response when I told Yui the story I'm about to tell you. I began my morning routine at school by pouring myself a cup of tea, peeling my orange and navigating to the Bangkok Post website to read up on the recent happenings in this crazy country. I was skimming the page when I noticed this headline "Thailand in Olympics-era hockey record". Now this headline was very catchy because of the content that it contained, mainly the words 'Thailand', 'hockey' and 'record' in the same sentence. Needless to say, whoever wrote that article did their job because I was intrigued. I clicked on the article and began reading. Shortly thereafter, I broke down laughing out loud. The first sentence of the article reads as such, "Kazakhstan beat Thailand 52-1 to wrap up their ruthless march through the group stage of the Asian Games ice hockey tournament yesterday. A search of records indicated the game was the highest scoring match in Olympics history". process left the airport in miserable condition necessitating repairs of over $The Thai National Hockey team was beaten by a score of 52-1. Incredible. After spending about a year in total here, I have come to take a certain amount of pride in this country and have begun to feel more connected to the country. When the Olympics were in full swing this past year, Thailand sent one man to the Winter Games and I proudly routed him on even as he finished second-to-last in cross-country skiing. He finished second but it was a hell-of-a-try and he made a showing for himself. And recently I've been embarrassed at the state of the brand-new international airport that Thailand recently unveiled to the world only to discover that the corruption-filled constructionUSD 40 million only three months after construction was completed and it was introduced to the world as the "Pride of Thailand". This saga makes for another blog entry and maybe here soon I'll fill the world in but let's get back to the point of this entry. So, as I feel connected to Thailand I felt a certain bit of embarrassment as I read this article. While I fully understand the challenges and barriers facing the development of an ice hockey team in Thailand, I just simply cannot believe this. How is it possible to lose a hockey game by a score of 52-1? But at the same time, Thailand has many other problems to work on and I think that developing a hockey team is the least of them, so for now we'll simply just have to accept it and take it for what it is...a good laugh.

If you're interested in reading the full article click here.

RM