We often hear about the ‘image of the country’, relating to high profile criminal cases (the Koh Tao murders for instance); when husbands get cheated out of their life’s savings (the BBC’s Jonathan Head recently covered this topic), or when nasty videos go viral such as the latest beat-down of foreigners in Phuket. Thailand’s image, we are told numerous times, has taken another beating itself. A beating shared and Liked thousands and thousands of times. Bad for the image of Thailandseems like a lame apology, a kind of insincere schoolboy ‘sorry’ by the government, the press, and countless Thai apologizers using social media.