Janie close to her driver, online sleuths driven insane

 It all started about two weeks ago when Chonsawat “Ae” Asavahame was spotted picking up actress Janie Thienphosuvan from a production set, and then later they were seen together again at an event at Impact Arena. It seemed awfully cosy for the married man (his wife is singer Nantida Keawbuasai) who also happens to be the son of Vatana Asavahame, the former deputy interior minister who fled Thailand after he got caught skimming money off construction of Samut Prakan’s Klong Dan water-treatment plant.

Janie said the guy with her at Impact was her “driver”, but then this past weekend the Pantip sleuths found a photo of her and Ae taken at a Macau hotel – with Vatana standing between them. Then came another shot of Janie and her “driver” wearing matching caps bearing the letters “JA”, perhaps meaning Janie and Ae. Ae has a picture of the same cap on Instagram. 

Janie has photos there with the hashtag #mbhja. Someone guessed that could be “my beloved honey Janie Ae”. A man’s arm pokes into the frame of some of the pictures. And Janie is the sole follower of an evident ghost account on Instagram with the user name “JNY007”, and all this person ever does is click “like” on the photos that Ae posts. 

The gossip is clogging the air like a Malaysian bush fire, and Janie’s best friends are coughing a lot as they try to avoid the press. Reporters cornered Virithipa “Woonsen” Yamnarm, but all she could say was that it all seems “too bad” and she’s worried about her pal. “We’re both busy working and hardly get to talk about this,” she said. “I think if you guys want to get more about this from her friends, no one will know anything. It’s best if you hear from her.”

As for Nantida, the wife, she kept her cool, saying she’d heard nothing. “I’ll keep you guys posted if there’s any news.” If she was still in the dark, Woody Milintajinda and his co-hosts gave the affair a comprehensive examination on his morning programme on Modernine TV. The Pantip investigation was reviewed in detail, and then Woody revealed that he couldn’t resist calling Ae. 

“He told me he’s really tired of this stuff, so he’ll hold a press conference this week. I asked him whether that’s necessary,” but Ae seems to think matters have got out of hand. 

Somehow, in all this, the fact that Vatana is the “wanted man”, not Ae or Janie, has (pardon the pun) escaped people’s notice. The investigative skills of the so-called “Pantip detectives” have earned praise on the social networks. Time to turn their magnifying glasses and bloodhounds to the trail of the fugitive former deputy minister. That’s a “cold case” that should get hot again.