The Tourist Authority of Thailand has announced plans to categorize tourists as they arrive in the country and direct them towards destinations appropriate to their perceived ‘quality’.

Minister of Tourist Conformity, Tingtong Bakpakka, told us in an elusive interview “We’re adopting electoral practices from Germany, considering buying trains from Germany, now we’d like to adopt practices from the holiday camps Germany set up in Poland during the war. The aliens can be streamed on arrival into High and Low quality categories using a simple process of means testing.”

Highly qualified immigration officers, most with backgrounds in accounting and fashion, will direct tourists left or right depending on factors such as number of tattoos, shell-suits, sobriety and in-pocket cash.

High-quality tourists, such as those who arrive wearing a tie, will be allowed to roam the country more-or-less freely. Low quality tourists will be bundled onto secure transports and taken to designated ‘ghettos’ such as a specially fenced of stretch of Bangkok’s Sukhumvit Road. Pattaya council have already begun digging a huge moat around the resort to contain tourists deemed ‘especially depraved’, while Koh Tao is to be converted into a maximum-security resort for the three or four Russians expected this year.

Chinese tourists are to be diverted to Chiang Mai where they will be re-educated within specially constructed ramparts dubbed by locals “The Great Wall of Chiang Mai”.

Travel-Blagger Dickie Handcart, speaking as always on behalf of all expats, has welcomed the move. “With tourists corralled into such limited areas, we will literally be able to bombard them into submission with Thainess. They’ll go home more Thai than the Thais.”

Thailand’s premier educational establishment, MahiThammaKorn University, is to introduce the country’s first Coup Studies course in their new Faculty of Proper Democracy.

Head of Faculty, Professor Field-Marshal Somchai ‘Soapy’ Laangsamaawng, thinks it’s high time Thailand’s advanced democratic systems were part of a formal curriculum that would aid their adoption by the rest of the world.  In his opening address, Prof.F.M. Laangsamaawng stated “We welcome foreign-devil students from Europe, the USA and even – after a shower – India, who wish to bring Thai democratic enlightenment to their own backward countries.”

“We have unsurpassed experience in coups – or ‘extra-electoral adjustments’ as they are more properly called -” ‘Old Soapy’ continued, “as well as in drafting, re-drafting, writing, re-writing, un-writing, editing, changing, ignoring and nullifying a wide range of constitutions. The USA has had only one constitution for nearly two hundred and forty years; we’ve had dozens in a third of that time. Tell me then, who has more experience in constitutionation?”

The course in Coup Studies will consist of modules including:

101) Bullets or Ballots – A Live-Fire Exercise.

102) How Many Generals Does It Take to Change a Government?

103) One Man, One Vote – Who Should That Man Be?

104) Persuading the Masses – Lethal and Not-Entirely-Lethal approaches.

105) Concentration Camps – Good or Very Good?

106) The Role of Lynchings in Modern Democratic Discourse.

107) Why International Law is a Waste of Thailand’s Time.

Students enrolling on the course will be expected to follow a dress-code of smart-battlefield-casual – riot gear optional. The 12 values will be recited at the beginning of each hour and each class will elect a leader who will be shot. Students will be encouraged to think critically about the challenges facing Thailand, and then shot.

At the end of the course, survivors graduates will be able to obtain their degree certificates from campus vending machines that accept cash, credit cards and 7-11 stamps.

Responding to complaints of unfair treatment from beach chair vendors, Phuket police, will from tomorrow be fining anyone found using a chair in any of the provinces restaurants.

Police Major Captain General Jobswurt issued a statement “It has come to our attention that customers are lounging around Phuket’s picturesque restaurants, making them look cluttered, untidy and un-Thai.”

The Thai Navy have suggested that customers might be allowed to bring their own chairs, but restaurateurs have complained this might encourage wheelchair users. “The last thing we need is the place cluttered up with disabled people.” said Samonerra Botox, manager of one of Phuket’s leading seafood chains.

Doctor Buttpowk of Patong’s Orthopaedic Hospital and Mobile Clap Clinic welcomed the initiative. “We get endless streams of overweight tourists coming here complaining of piles and varicose veins. Making them stand during meals will help them lose weight and make them healthier.” He espoused. “If we can now just replace all hotel beds with multi-gyms, they will thank us in the long-term.”

And it’s not just foreigners who will reap the benefits as slimmer, more active tourists. Dr Buttpowk  believes the image of fat, rich tourists leads Thai people to associate obesity with wealth and leads them away from the path of ‘sufficiency’. “Pudgy tourists are a bad example, leading Thai people away from their natural, emaciated Thainess,” he told us.

The new rule is not expected to apply to chairs in gold shops provided for police officers sit and consume their doughnuts.