Poor old Rambo. Not only is he a full-time hero at 61 years old, but he received death threats while in action in the highly volatile Thai-Burmese border.

Sylvester Stallone has been telling reporters that on the set of his latest franchise-revival, he was met with some animosity from the locals, which is hardly surprising given that he was filming a multi-million-dollar movie in an area of extreme instability.

It sounds like one of those surreal situations in which the line between movie and reality become blurred.

Stallone said, “It's the most brutal regime in the world and the most secretive. It has an oppressive regime that keeps all riches for themselves. Everyone is forced into drugs or prostitution or slavery. People are escaping all the time from Burma, coming over with gaping, maggot-infested wounds, their ears being cut off. You saw a lot of suffering, a lot of malnutrition. We were on the Salween River and we were told to get out because we were going to be shot.”

It’s interesting that Stallone hasn’t had anything to say about the protests going on in Myanmar. You’d have thought that the actor standing up now and doing his bit would be great publicity for the forthcoming Rambo movie.

What’s surprising is that he’s so surprised that the situation in Myanmar is like that. You’d have thought Rambo would be clued up on these things.

Techno' tags: Thailand, Burma, Rambo

“Are you a ladyboy?”

Have you ever been asked that old chestnut? Luckily, nobody has ever queries my gender, but then, I don’t happen to be a pretty Thai girl.

Picture the scene: You’re a Thai girl, out with your friends, drinking, dancing, enjoying yourself, when two drunk farang tourists approach you and start talking to you. Out of nowhere, one of them asks if you are a man.

It sounds like a far-fetched scenario, but it’s one that I’ve come across too many times in Thailand. The two guys I saw in Patong last night were just average kids, but they thought it was hilarious to ask a cute girl if she was a ladyboy. One of the guys went so far as to examine the straightness of the girl’s arms as “proof”. And then after all of that he started hitting on the poor girl.

To her credit, she took it all without getting angry, but she was clearly bemused at this guy’s drunken approach to coupling. This isn’t an isolated incident though; it’s happened to friends of mine.

What is it with some tourists and this bizarre way of chatting up girls? I think the Internet is part of the problem. There are entire web pages, no, websites devoted to ways to tell if a girl is a ladyboy and other curious topics. People must read these websites before they come to Thailand and think it’s some sort of real-life quiz show that everybody here plays.

I don’t have a problem with tourists for the most part, but it’s the yobs-on-tour I dislike. The level of disrespect shown to the locals is inhuman. Most of the time, the Thais just brush it off with a smile.

In Patong, disrespecting the locals (no matter who is in the right) is the sort of thing that can, in some circumstances, get tourists beaten up. Patong can be a scandalous place. The more I see of it, the more certain aspects of it disgust me. I wouldn’t go so far as saying everybody in Patong is a scumbag, but there are some real lowlife locals serving some real lowlife tourists. From the tuk tuk mafia to the ruthless Jet Ski operators, this place is a real carnival by day and night.

For cheap drinks and late-night parties, it’s about the only place I’ve found on Phuket that’s consistent.

Techno' tags: Thailand, Phuket, Patong

Ever considered ingesting mosquito repellent? Probably not, but that’s exactly what youths in Southern Thailand are doing in the latest bizarre drug craze to sweep the region. Krathom leaves are a prohibited indigenous plant that people often use as a mild narcotic. There are krathom busts almost every week in Southern Thailand.

Some bright spark came up with the idea of getting his kicks by mixing krathom leaves, cough medicine, mosquito repellent and Coca-Cola into a potent cocktail. It’s known as “four time a hundred” and it’s thought to have originated from the Deep South where it’s widely believed to be a major cause of unrest among Thai youths. The theory is that they use this cocktail and then become insurgents.

Although I’m yet to see proof of this theory, the popularity of this drug among Thais makes me wonder about the effect it has on society.

Even more disturbing is that youths have been upgrading their concoction to “five time a hundred” with the addition of the powder from fluorescent lightbulbs. Apparently they smash the lightbulbs up and collect the powder; you can imagine how dangerous this drug is.

A Kom Chad Luek report quoted a user as saying that the lightbulb powder improved the taste and made him feel “strong”.

Techno' tags: Thailand, Southern Thailand

I finally have a reason to enjoy nightlife in Phuket. Club Lime on the beach road in Patong will host two drum ’n’ bass nights a month on the second and fourth Wednesdays. The night is called Bass Load and the first event is October 10 with guest DJ T-Base. On October 24 the guest will be DJ Marco from Australia.

The resident DJ for both nights is a familiar face. Come down if you’re in the area.

Another date for your diaries is DJ Nakadia playing at the same venue October 12. There's no cover charge and I think it will be phenomenally busy. I give Nakadia some stick sometimes but she's promised me that this time will be better than the last event I saw her play at (Timeout, RCA) when everything seemed to go wrong.

Whether she's great this time or not, it's still a decent party on an island where decent parties are few and far between.

I’m not keen on all these music reunions. A piece of me died when Take That and The Spice Girls reformed, but aside from terrible pop music, the recent trend of legends of music – The Who, The Stooges, Led Zeppelin – getting back together begs the question, “Why?” Some things are best left untouched to preserve their legacy.

At least bands like Pink Floyd and The Stone Roses look like they won’t end up succumbing to some sort of nostalgic reunion, but when I read today that The Sex Pistols have reformed – again – I struggled to see the point.

They’ve done this whole reunion thing two or three times in the past already, and for me, it’s done nothing but destroy their image. Last year they sold the rights to their entire back catalogue to Universal, and now they’ve re-recorded “Back in the UK” to appear on the compilation album Guitar Hero III: Legends Of Rock. Rock?! This is lunacy.

“I like [Guitar Hero] because my friends' kids like it. And I like what kids like,” said Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones.

Are these guys going senile? I guess real problem is people like me who think The Sex Pistols are still 20-year-old kids wreaking havoc. These guys have families now. Anyone in the UK interested can catch lives show at Brixton Academy (November 8, 9, 12, 19) and Manchester MEN Arena (17).

Techno' tags: The Sex Pistols