I'll stop with the bad news about things in Thailand to instead focus on something that is pretty amazing when you consider the population and relatively small size of Thailand. One of their citizens, who also just seems to be a guy that is good at everything, set the world record for skydiving from height above Antarctica.
I can't even imagine the logistics involved in pulling something like this off.
Not only did he do a really high jump which for some reason the height has not been published but he did it in HALO form (high altitude low opening) that is commonly used by paramilitary forces during military operations.
The man's name is Dr. Thanaborworn but it commonly known as "Super Tum." He was the first Thai HALO certified skydiver and has done a lot with that certification including skydiving over Mt. Everest and very far north in Norway. How he gets the funds to pull these things off is anyone's guess, but by looking at his resume it seems as though this guy just succeeds at anything and everything he attempts.
Not only does he do super-cool stuff but he is also a professor at a University somewhere. They are quite covert with his information and I don't know why that is.
He is, like many Thai people, extremely patriotic though and just before hitting the ground with his record-setting jump he deployed a secondary enormous Thai flag.
I don't know if "Super Tum" was in on it but the Thai government didn't waste any time politicizing this for the global audience claiming that Dr. Thanaborworn did this jump in order to honor the soldiers that have died in the clashes that have taken place with Cambodia in recent years.
I could do without the politics coming into play but it is nice to see something good about Thailand in the news lately. It seems like everything is bad news these days and a lot of bad criticism comes towards the country I have called home for quite a few years now.
Congratulations to Dr Tum for doing something that most of us could only imagine I guess.
I went skydiving a couple of times back in Texas before I left the United States and it was two of the most exhilarating experiences of my life. This was years ago and it was also extremely expensive in that it cost nearly $500 per jump and this was just from a very small prop plane flying at quite a low altitude in a very controlled environment. Seeing as how what Super Tum did is not something that is even offered to anyone and he would have had to procure his own plane, his own crew, his own photographers, not to mention his own transportation to and from Antarctica, I can't even imagine how much this little adventure of his must have cost.
I suspect that the Thai government might have had a big part in funding this and this is why the political messaging ended up in there as well. I guess that is one way to get the world to look at it because that conflict at the Cambodia border is still going on but the world isn't really paying attention to it anymore.
We don't really even talk about it here in Thailand anymore either.
There isn't a lot of information available about the specifics of the jump and this is why Guinness hasn't yet confirmed the record and this is kind of funny to me because Thailand has a bit of a tradition of not really asking permission before they make certain claims on behalf of international organization that they have no part in.
I was able to find out that this has been attempted before in 1997 and all 3 of the skydivers involved in it died in their attempt. I would imagine that all technology, including skydiving technology, has improved a great deal since then.