Thailand Pretty

The Thailand International Motor Expo continues for another week in the Impact Arena Challenger halls - somewhat nervously since one of the biggest anti-Shinawatra protests is in full roar just a few kilometres away, at the sprawling government complex on Chaeng Wattana Road.

Few if any of the people visiting the car show seem the least bit worried, however. Everyone is strolling among the flashy cars and spotlit sales booths in perfect harmony, reconciled in the belief that they all deserve to own one of these fine vehicles, or maybe two.

Of course that's just the people who are actually there to see the cars. Discerning observers will notice a few other things:

• All the "pretties", as they call the babes posing with the autos, look the same. Clearly they've all been to the same beauty salon and plastic surgeon. They're all giant bosom, with hair in giant ringlets and giant eyelashes ideal for shooing off flies.
• This is now official: One cameraman in nine hasn't the slightest intention of taking a picture of a car. If they get a picture of a car, it's because it accidentally appears in the background their pictures of the pretties - maybe a glimpse of a hubcap in an extreme close-up of an upper thigh. "This 'pretty mania' has become a fad at the motor shows," says a veteran motoring journalist, who swears he's only there to see the cars.
• Seven of those nine cameramen are middle-aged amateurs, attending the event solely to see the pretties, who oblige their lust with a smile and a telling turn of the thigh. These guys know where their cameras' focus rings and shutter buttons are, and that's about it - assuming they're not relying entirely on a camera phone.
• The really outrageously expensive cars with a dramatic lighting, dry-ice fog and flocks of pretties get all the headlines and all the rubes' attention, but the vehicles that sell best at these shows are always priced under Bt800,000. Billionaires don't go to car shows.
• You can try all you like to chat with someone about politics and they probably won't know who Yingluck is. The browsers are totally focused on how they can finance the purchase of one of these beauties (a car, not a pretty).
• The salesmen at these shows, among the most gifted con artists in the world, make buying a staggeringly pricey Porsche sound as painlessly easy as grabbing some meatballs off a street vendor.
• There is no traffic on the highway outbound to Impact, perhaps in part because of the protests in the neighbourhood. But that doesn't mean no one is going to the auto show. They just got there ahead of you and not a single spot is left in the parking lot.
• Inside the Challenger halls it's as packed as Rajdamnoen Avenue on any recent Friday night. But the real scrums are only around the pretties, and you can walk around them quite comfortably. God help you, though, if you want to get a picture of some thigh.