BANGKOK, Thailand – Shortly before dawn on Monday in an upscale area of Bangkok, a 27-year-old Thai man driving a Ferrari crashed into a policeman on a motorcycle.  The driver dragged him more than 100 yards along the road before fleeing the scene. The policeman, 47-year-old Sgt. Maj. Wichien Glanprasert, was killed. 

The furious reaction to the incident this week has shown one thing above all: most Thais have no faith in their justice system.

‘I don’t believe in Thai justice’
The driver of the car was Vorayuth Yoovidhya, scion of one of the richest families in Thailand. His grandfather, Chaleo Yoovidhya, founded the Red Bull energy drink empire. Forbes magazine ranked the family as Thailand's fourth richest (not including the royal family) earlier this year with a net worth of $5.4 billion.  

Thais know from long experience that the wealthy are rarely held accountable for their crimes. 

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Red Bull heir held over deadly hit-and-run in Ferrari

“As long as you are rich and powerful, you can get away with everything,” said 40-year-old Ubonwan Weeyanond. “I don’t believe in Thai justice, it’s only a privilege for the rich, not for poor people.” 

Vorayuth fled back to his family's compound after the accident – police followed oil streaks for several blocks to the gate of the family mansion.

The family then enlisted the help of local police official Lt. Col. Pannapon Nammuang to concoct a tale that somebody else – the family driver – had been at the wheel when the accident happened, according to Bangkok police.

But online outrage forced the police to change their tune.

Bangkok’s top police official, Lt. Gen. Comronwit Toopgrajank sidelined Pannapon (who denied wrongdoing, but admitted knowing the family well) and declared he would bring the culprit to justice.

"We will not let this police officer die without justice. Believe me," Comronwit said Tuesday. "The truth will prevail in this case. I can guarantee it."

Vorayuth was charged with causing death by reckless driving and escaping arrest by police, but was released on $16,000 bail Tuesday.

Comronwit said that Pannapon, the officer who allegedly tried to cover up the crime, could be fired and brought up on criminal charges, according to a Bangkok Post report on Wednesday.

‘Do they think people are stupid?’
Still, Thais remain skeptical that the wealthy young man will see the inside of a prison cell.

“Thai police often make someone a scapegoat.  They should not cover up the case because how many people in this country have a Ferrari?” said Varattaya Intarakong, a 38-year-old business owner. “Do they think people are stupid? But I believe that this guy will not be jailed.”

This wouldn’t be the first time the child of a wealthy and influential Thai person got off without punishment after committing a crime.

In a notorious case in December 2010, a 16-year-old girl driving a Honda Civic without a license collided with a passenger van that spun out of control. Nine people were killed in the crash. But the girl who caused the crash came from a privileged family and received only a two-year suspended sentence. 

‘Teach him how to be responsible’
Vorayuth's case has generated particular anger because he failed to stop to help the policeman, and tried to get a member of his family's staff to take the blame instead.

Several Thais commented online that people who try to shift the blame onto a scapegoat should not be granted bail.

The dead policeman's brother, Pornanand Glanprasert, said he's particularly bitter about Vorayuth's failure to stop and help.

“I can't accept how the driver hit my brother and sped away. If he hit him and got out of the car immediately, my brother might have survived,” said Pornanand. “When I realized that he’s a son of well-known people, I want his family to teach him how to be responsible, not run away like this.”

‘Double standards’
The issue of "double standards" for the wealthy and privileged is highly politically charged in Thailand. Many Thais argue that the courts sell justice to the highest bidder, and the tattered reputation of Thailand's judiciary has sunk even lower in recent years due to several clumsy political interventions by the courts. 

But the prospects for things to improve appear dim. The current Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm Yubumrung was himself involved in an infamous case a decade ago when several witnesses saw his son, Duang Yubumrung, murder a policeman in a nightclub with a pistol.

Duang went on the run for months, the family invented a mysterious scapegoat who they claimed was actually to blame, and witnesses began changing their testimony -- suddenly declaring that perhaps Duang was not the shooter after all.

When he came out of hiding, Duang was cleared of murder, and despite widespread public revulsion, the distasteful saga did not damage his father's political career.

Ferraris and fiery crashes around Asia
Monday's incident is just the latest in a series of Ferrari crashes in Asia that have exposed national political divisions.

In Singapore, where many residents are concerned about the level of immigration, particularly from mainland China, there was widespread outrage over an accident in May. A wealthy Chinese man crashed his Ferrari at high speed into a taxi, killing himself, the taxi driver and a Japanese woman who was a passenger in the taxi. 

And in China an explosive story concerning another Ferrari crash is creating a political storm in Beijing.

The South China Morning Post reported this week that a Ferrari crash in March -- which was swiftly covered up -- killed Ling Gu, the 23-year-old son of one of Chinese President Hu Jintao’s most trusted aides, Ling Jihua.  

The younger Ling was allegedly driving recklessly with two semi-naked girls when the crash happened, leaving one of them paralyzed, according the newspaper.

The newspaper says his father's political career was damaged by his attempts to cover up the crash. Perhaps it’s a sign that even China's powerful have less impunity than Thailand's wealthy.

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BANGKOK, Thailand – If you are a teen with a sexual urge, what should you do?

It's a question faced by young people across the world, and one met with many responses.

So high school seniors in Thailand were perplexed this year when they were asked for the answer in a nationwide multiple-choice test for students hoping to win a coveted place at university. They were given five possible options to choose from:

A: Call friends to go play football (soccer)

B: Talk to your family

C: Try to sleep

D: Go out with a friend of the opposite sex

E: Invite a close friend to see a movie

Most students had no idea how to respond. And it quickly became clear that they were not the only ones who struggled to identify the right answer. Parents and teachers were equally baffled.

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The story soon attracted national media attention, and Thai educational experts were interviewed to share their insights. But even they seemed uncertain. The tentative consensus was that students were probably expected to pick option B — “Talk to your family.”

It seemed like the answer adults might want to hear, even though most teenagers in the real world would be appalled at the very idea of discussing their sexual urges with their parents. The most realistic answer was probably option D — go on a date.

So there was widespread incredulity when the preferred answer was eventually revealed by Dr. Samphan Phanphrut, head of the national exam board that drew up the tests. It was option A —“Call friends to go play football.” Regardless of whether they were male or female, Thai youth were supposed to deal with sexual urges by playing soccer.

For many Thais, the key lesson learned from the saga had nothing to do with soccer. Rather, it was that Thai officials have a total lack of understanding about the lives of teenagers and the importance of sensible sex education.

Growing teen pregnancy problem
It's an issue that is causing increasing problems in this Southeast Asian country.

"The number of pregnant teenagers is growing every year. And they are getting younger and younger," said Apiradee Chappanapong of Plan Thailand, an NGO that champions children's rights and education.

In fact, Thailand has the second-highest pregnancy rate among 15-19 year-olds in the world, according to the government’s Office of Welfare Promotion, Protection and Empowerment of Vulnerable Groups. (South Africa has the highest rate).

The issues in Thailand are complex. Contrary to the country's image as a hedonistic sex tourism destination, Thai culture remains highly conservative, but premarital sex is widespread although many older Thais regard it as taboo. (As a result, underage girls are often pressured to marry, especially in rural areas.)

This conservatism means subject is rarely discussed in Thai families, and as the debacle over this year's university exams demonstrated, schools are also failing to teach Thai youth what they need to know.

Many teachers and education ministry bureaucrats refuse to acknowledge that premarital sex is a reality. Instead of teaching teenagers how to avoid pregnancy through the use of contraception, they preach abstinence. And when Thai teenagers become pregnant, they often have nobody to turn to. Legal abortion is only available to teenagers if their parents approve, and many Thai girls don't consider that an option.

“I don’t think my school taught me enough about sex education,” said Nat who asked not to reveal her full name, a 17-year-old who became pregnant after running away from her home in an area of northern Thailand where traditional values remain strong.

Unable to get a legal abortion because she was estranged from her parents, she chose the dangerous option of ordering abortion pills online and taking them without any medical supervision. She told me she suffered severe vaginal bleeding afterwards.

Many conservative Thais deny that outdated and incompetent education is the problem. They say Thai teenagers are being corrupted by dangerous modern influences such as racy movies, social media and Internet chat rooms. Facebook was even cited as one of the causes of Thailand's growing teenage pregnancy crisis in a recent study by the National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB). 

Dangerous illegal abortions
Another controversial issue is whether Thailand's abortion laws should be reformed. Approximately 95 percent of Thais are Buddhists, according to the CIA World Factbook, who believe taking any life is a sin. Officially, abortion is illegal except in cases of rape, incest or underage sex, or when the mother's physical or mental health is at risk.

Even when women have a legitimate reason to undergo a legal abortion in Thai hospitals, many are deterred by the judgmental attitude of doctors and nurses, according to 39-year-old activist Supatra Panuthut, who counsels women with unplanned pregnancies at Sahathai Foundation in Bangkok.

For most women who want to terminate a pregnancy, the only option is to do so illegally. In many cases, abortions are conducted using unsafe procedures and in unsanitary conditions. In a notorious case in 2010, more than 2,000 aborted fetuses were discovered at a temple in Bangkok after locals complained of an unpleasant smell. Earlier this April, a five-month-old fetus was found dumped in a hospital bathroom. Newborn babies have also been found abandoned in bus shelters and garbage bins.

A small number of abortion clinics run by NGOs providing safe and compassionate treatment occupy a legal grey area: they are technically illegal, but the authorities have generally allowed them to operate, as long as they do not promote their services too openly.

But recently police raided one of these clinics after a well-known model told the media she had an abortion there. Panuthut fears the raid will end up discouraging some women from seeking abortions at responsible clinics and could lead to more unsafe backstreet abortions.

It seems unlikely that the law will be changed to allow more Thai women to legally terminate their pregnancies. Successive Thai governments have shown no enthusiasm for such a controversial move, and indeed some Thais want to see the law tightened even further so that abortion is totally outlawed.

Coping with unwanted pregnancies
Meanwhile, out of the approximately 250,000 Thai teenagers who become pregnant each year, half of them seek abortions, according to Dr. Yongyut Wongpiromsarn, Senior Expert in Mental Health, Thai Ministry of Public Health.

That means more than 100,000 children are being born each year to teenage mothers who in many cases cannot properly look after them.

Often these children are raised by their grandparents or other relatives, rather than their biological mothers.

This was how Panida Saengjan coped when she became pregnant at the age of 16 while she was a high school student in Bangkok. She told me she was terrified of the dangers of an illegal abortion, but admitted she was also too immature to look after her baby, a boy she named Haroon.

Now 4 years old, Haroon has been raised by Saengjan's mother. When I met them at their home, Saengjan was laughing and playing with Haroon, whom she said was more like a little brother to her than a son.

Many teenage mothers end up giving their children to foster homes. Palm, an 18-year-old I interviewed who spoke on the condition of anonymity, wept as she told me about how she had to give away her 5-month-old son after her boyfriend broke up with her.

Government officials insist they are taking the problem of teen pregnancy seriously. But while Thai bureaucrats remain so detached from reality that they consider it appropriate to tell teenagers to choose soccer instead of sex, there seems little prospect of a sensible solution any time soon. 
 

Ploy Bunluesilp is the NBC News Bureau Producer in Bangkok. She has reported from Myanmar five times since 2006. She was most recently on assignment in Yangon, Myanmar’s commercial capital, in early December for U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s meeting with pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

YANGON, Myanmar – A thumping rock and hip hop beat, entranced teenagers clutching beer cans, hundreds of people smiling happily – it sure wasn't the Myanmar I am used to.

I've had plenty of memorable experiences in Myanmar, most of them unpleasant. I've been kicked out of the country by officials not once, but twice.

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In 2007, when journalists were forbidden from covering the so-called "Saffron Uprising," I posed as a tourist to get into the country and played cat-and-mouse with the security forces to grab some footage when escalating political protests, initially led by monks, were crushed by the military. I watched soldiers beat cowering Burmese men and women with batons on the streets of the capital. It was an exceptionally dangerous time: a Japanese journalist was among those killed. 
 
The following year I was back again to cover the devastation caused by Cyclone Nargis.  I saw people who literally lost everything – I remember one man who was clutching photographs of his wife and children to help officials find their corpses. Reporters were banned from the whole cyclone-hit area, so again we had to film in secret. Eventually our team was spotted, and police later tracked me down to a hotel in the capital and threw me out of the country.

 

During all of my previous trips, most people I met were terrified to talk, fearing they could be jailed just for speaking to a journalist. Even the guide who took me to the barricaded house where pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was imprisoned begged me not to take photographs, saying it could put him in danger.

So it was wonderful to be able to move freely around Yangon during my last visit, and to find optimistic people unafraid to talk. That alone showed me how profoundly things have changed already.
 
This time I was there on Dec. 2, 2011,  the same day U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Suu Kyi. I went to a huge rock concert, and I had a lot of fun.

Rocking out of a rut
Myanmar has stagnated for decades under the oppressive rule of a paranoid military dictatorship, but over the past year the country has suddenly started to make progress toward greater democracy and freedom of expression – and more tolerance of rock and hip hop.

So I found myself at a nearly-sold-out concert at an indoor stadium in Yangon. Burmese stars belted out rock and hip hop tunes to an audience of girls in tight skirts and young men in skinny jeans, instead of the traditional sarongs usually worn in the country.

The music was full of energy, and got me moving, but there was little boisterous enthusiasm and dancing among the audience – most stayed seated, tapping their feet and nodding their heads to the music.

They were mostly rich kids, teenagers who arrived at the stadium in expensive cars while poor children in tattered clothes collected garbage around the stadium.

“Only rich or middle class people can afford to buy a ticket as you have to spend at least 50 kyats ($7),” a Burmese friend told me. That would be cheap for a concert in most countries, but Myanmar remains mired in poverty and most people earn just a few dollars a day.

There were still plenty of reminders of the old repressive Myanmar: the atmosphere at the concert was not helped by the presence of several stern-looking armed guards.

Singing for change
Backstage the celebrity musicians were hanging out before the concert started, and I met the hip hop group ACID in their room. Their first album, also Myanmar’s first hip hop album, was the country’s best seller in 2000.  But their non-traditional style, lack of deference for authority and controversial lyrics about the hardships of life in Myanmar eventually got them in trouble.

 “Our music was new to people. The government doesn’t like us because we did not follow the traditional style,” said Anegga, a 32-year-old ACID band member who goes by one name.

Two of the band's members were arrested in 2008 for allegedly illegal political activities. One of them, Zayar Thaw, 32, was dressed in shorts, a tee-shirt, a baseball cap and his arms were covered with tattoos – not exactly the traditional Myanmar ideal of a quiet, well-behaved young man.  
 
He was released from prison in May, and told me he still has to watch his words. “I have to be careful about saying things now, Big Brother is watching.” 

But now, the band is back together and ACID is performing again. They are among more than 50 musicians and singers who have pledged their support for the election campaign of Suu Kyi, who has been released after years of house arrest and is now running for a seat in parliament. 

Suu Kyi's musical supporters are producing a special album, with songs designed to raise awareness about politics and encourage people to stand up for their rights. One of the songs contributed by ACID asks: “How can I talk, How can I see, If you close my eyes and ears?”

The musicians hope their songs can help push the boundaries and educate people in their country after 49 years of censorship and military rule.

“Everything for Aung San Suu Kyi, we love to do it for her. We love her,” said female pop singer Than That Win.

After elections in November 2010, which were widely condemned as rigged, Myanmar's ruling generals exchanged their uniforms for civilian suits – but few expected much to change.

Then beginning in October of this year, the government introduced a series of dizzying changes: The new government led by a former general, Thein Sein, eased censorship, released political prisoners, introduced a limited right to strike and protest, and started a dialogue with the Suu Kyi.

The United States has shown its support for the political reforms – Clinton was in town when the concert was held, to see the progress for herself.

Like many Burmese, the musicians worry that the recent changes could be a false dawn. They are optimistic, but still wary.

 “This is the beginning of change in the country," Anegga told me. "We hope nobody will be arrested this time.”   

 
BANGKOK – Carrie Jeffers feared she would never kick her heroin addiction after relapsing repeatedly in her native Michigan. Then she flew to Thailand, and her life changed.

Jeffers, a 37-year-old yoga teacher, says she broke her dependency thanks to treatment at a remote Buddhist temple. The rigorous regime includes meditation and the daily ingestion of a foul-tasting herbal drink that induces projectile vomiting to cleanse the body of toxins.

“I got my strength back slowly but surely after the treatment,” Jeffers said after spending months at Thailand’s Thamkrabok Monastery, a drug rehabilitation center in Saraburi province about 90 miles north of Bangkok.

The center, in the heart of a sunlit forest surrounded by limestone crags, has won a worldwide reputation as a place with harsh but effective addiction treatment and has attracted thousands of foreigners from Europe and the U.S.

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Harsh, but effective
Jeffers said she had been addicted to heroin since the age of 14 and underwent rehab treatment twice in the United States. The fees were $1,000 a day, which, fortunately, were covered by insurance. "A lot of drug addicts don’t have that [insurance] and they get turned away,” she said.

Thamkrabok, by contrast, offers its services for free. And Jeffers said she found it far more effective than rehab in the West.
“At other rehabs they feed you drug after drug; there is no meditation or teaching you to look into yourself,” she said.

Monks at the temple say another key to the success of their treatment is the special tonic, made with 108 herbs according to a secret recipe. 

“I remember feeling a kind of a burning sensation, but it soaked up all the toxins,” said Jeffers, who is now helping teach yoga to foreign patients at the temple.

The Thamkrabok monastery has another rigorous feature: addicts must take a vow swearing that they are 100 percent committed to being drug or alcohol-free. They can only be admitted to the monastery for treatment once; if they break their vow, they are not allowed to return. 
 
Same treatment for celebs to civilians
At Thamkrabok, everyone is treated equally regardless of wealth or status. Patients have to wake up early each morning to clean their bedrooms and bathrooms, and sweep the temple compound. They all wear the same red uniforms and sleep in dormitories on thin mattresses closely packed together.

The detox center is a complex of low-rise whitewash concrete blocks set apart from the main compound, which is dominated by several giant Buddha statues.

"It’s very humbling here. It doesn’t matter who you are, you are using the same bed,” said Jeffers, who plans to return to the U.S. in May.

Some don’t last. Pete Doherty, the controversial British singer and former boyfriend of model Kate Moss, was a patient at the temple but only completed three days in 2004 because he found the treatment too austere. One of the monks told me that Doherty lacked the patience that the treatment required and that he did not enjoy the spartan living conditions.

However, another British musician, Tim Arnold of the band Jocasta, returned home drug-free after completing the treatment. The temple said they have treated other celebrities, but they wanted to keep their names confidential.

The temple has treated more than 100,000 addicts since it started the rehab program in 1959 and about 30 percent of former patients, including Jeffers, become ordained as monks or nuns after completing their treatment to help out the new patients.

Many of the young Thai monks are tough-looking chain-smoking youths with tattoos. They enforce the temple rules and keep new patients in line.

"Only three more minutes, get inside. Just get inside,” one of the monks shouted at patients outside the packed herbal steam bath room during my visit. 

Patients are not allowed to carry money at the temple, in part to prevent them sneaking out to buy drugs. Instead, they buy coupons at the start of the treatment for food, which costs about $6 a day for three meals.

Cleaning body and mind
“When I first arrived, it felt very surreal because we all have preconceived idea of what the monastery or rehab might be – but this is very far away from any kind of imagination,” said Nick Thorp, a musician from London and one of many of the foreigners who found out about the temple through the Internet or from friends who had been treated there.

“They clean up your body and they give some input in your mind,” said 57-year-old Ong Boon Beng from Malaysia, who had been taking opium and heroin for more than three decades before seeking help. “At the other rehabs, you pay money, but it is just like you go for holiday. They give you sleeping pills – that doesn’t help.”

Mike Sarson, a founder of the East West Detox Center in southern England, works with the monastery and sends some patients there. He said about 95 percent of the patients the charity has sent to the temple remain drug-free.