So I’m back in Thailand for another try at winning the MegaBreak pool tournament. I’ve rented a condo for a month, and am down at the SuperStore to stock up on groceries and household items. Apples, eggs, soap, garbage bags, the regular stuff.

Standing in line at the cash register, I notice that whoever is behind me is purchasing a half dozen toddler outfits. They’re all stacked up, hangers still aligned, like they were just picked up off the rack without any consideration. Partially hidden behind the baby clothes are two pressure cookers, and… four coffee percolators. FOUR. No food, no coffee, just baby clothes and six pressure holding vessels.

Weird.

I’m looking at these pressure cookers, and remembering that’s what was used to bomb the Boston Marathon a few years back, and I wonder if coffee percolators could serve the same purpose. There is no shortage of inexpensive food around here, nor for places to get a cup of coffee. Who in the hell needs four coffee percolators? Perhaps a local caterer, or someone running a restaurant. Certainly not someone here on vacation.

And who is making this purchase? It’s not a local. It’s a young Middle Eastern looking man.

WTF?

Under what conditions does a young man travel from the Middle East to a resort city in Thailand, with a baby, forgets to bring any clothing for the baby, then decides he needs some pressure cookers and coffee percolators?

I’m sure there is a non-nefarious explanation for these purchases as well. But I don’t know what it is. In the past year there have been terrorism warnings for Thailand issued by both the U.S. and Russian embassies. If those threats were legitimate, I would consider the guy in line behind me a person of interest.

It’s probably nothing, just a case of my being over observant, over-informed, and making connections where there are none. Just paranoid? Probably. But maybe not.
It is no crime of course to purchase a pressure cooker of a coffee percolator, or four. But if something goes boom in the next little while, well, I’ll have a suggestion for who to look for…