No smoking krup... Restaurant and pub owners in Bangkok are - at the last minute as always - rushing to prepare for next month's introduction of laws that prohibit smoking in any public air-conditioned areas. Such legislation is more significant in South East Asian developing countries where the proportion of smokers is much higher, and the outside weather makes a quick fag outside more discomfort than it is worth.

More significant is that unlike Malaysia, where such regulations have been law for several years, but allows for the segregation of smoking and non smoking areas, it seems that this ban is outright, as in Singapore.

Most think that the ban would be toned down as it approached, or that it would be ignored. ..And typically if you can pay off the constabulary to ignore late openings and not-strictly legal going-ons in your establishment, you can probably do the same for smoking...

In Malaysia, the last few years have seen restaurants and bars incorporating outside eating areas, towered over by large metal fans that blast dry-ice type air over patrons, but there has been little of that activity so far in Thailand. Most are waiting to see what happens on the November 1st D-Day...

Apart from locals, the ban may well make it a visit to Thailand far less comfortable to those who just can't kick the habit... and for Thailand tourism to lose one (admittedly small) competitive advantage over Singapore. Then again Thailand's anarchic organization always seems to be able to develop informal and comfortable working solutions when someone's livelhood is threatened...