After months of insisting she was on top of the problem, Mrs Kobkarn last week admitted she wasn't. It could prove important, because the first step to a cure is admitting there is a disease.
Until last week no one admitted it, where by "no one" we mean not a single important person from the prime minister all the way down the line to ... oh, say, the head of the Thai Hotels Association. To be fair, Ms Supawan sees a problem, but for her, not for the tourists. If visitors to Thailand continue getting smashed, crashed and bashed, it means, "We will lose business to our rivals" who must not be named but who are the 3M corporation of developing destinations, Maldives, Myanmar and Malaysia.