Token

Well even for a sceptic, it all sounds dubious. I wonder about exported organic food - that comes from Thailand and ends up on supermarket shelves in the west. And if the dubious practices occur in Thailand it must surely happen in other developing countries - and that's where western supermarkets get a lot of their organic produce!

I think I would trust the big companies, they are the one who have to the most to lose if they are caught cheating. For the small producers, I know a couple of them, they all say the same thing :"I'm an honest guy but I can tell you the guy next door is spraying pesticide when nobody's watching ..."

Now if you look in Pantip, there is a group of people who sponsor organic growers. You have to pay in advance, the growers send you regularly cartons of veggie but the catch is you can't chose. It seems to work ...

The first paragraph; maybe that's true but what kind of monitoring goes on in Thailand? Can we really take any producer, large or small, on trust alone - do they monitor like in western countries (if that does indeed happen)?

The second paragraph: I don't understand any of this.

No no, you are not wrong. Paper bags are made of wood, trees. And trees and grow again. It's called renewable. Plastic is made of oil and thus not renewable.

So paper bags are good for the environment, not only because they are biodegradable, but also because they are made of renewable sources.

One more time, to be clear, most things we make, and packaging in this case, are deleterious to the environment. Paper bags are energy hogs and thus have a pretty high carbon footprint. It takes quite a bit of fossil fuels to make them. And the manufacture of them damages water quality to a significant extent. They really are not environmentally friendly. While paper pulp can be regrown, the fossil fuels require to do that are significant.

Biodegradable bags have the advantage over paper in water pollution (ignoring the polluting effects of fertilizer, that is), but they still are energy hogs, and the quality of the bags suffer in comparison to other plastic bags.

Plastic shopping bags have disposal problems, can damage sea life, and can clutter up drains and such. Their manufacture releases slightly more air pollutants than the manufacture of paper, but not to a great extent. They do not take as much energy to produce as paper.

Reusable bags have probably the least impact on the environment, but they are not suited for every usage, and they require more active action by the user.

Paper, as it is made today, is almost certainly not the answer. Probably, some combination of reusable and plastic bags would work the best, particularly with one caveat. Recycling. Recycling plastic bags would be even more energy efficient. But that takes a commitment from government, industry, and the population at large. Does Thailand have the mindset to do this? Would Thais bother to separate the trash into rubbish and recyclables? In California, this is pretty much a part of the culture as well as a viable business. And for different reasons, in the Philippines, there is some recycling. The destitute, often children, scour the dumps to pull out anything which can be recycled for a few pesos.

Without recycling, from a purely environmental standpoint, plastic shopping bags edge out paper and maybe slightly edge out biodegradable plastic, depending on your focus. But with recycling, plastic bags hold a much better edge. But if Thailand does not have recycling centers, if the people are not willing to go to the effort, then the fact that plastic bags can be recycled means nothing.

I think charging for shopping bags is one good step. But a concerted effort by the government in conjunction with industry to make recycling viable and profitable is needed to get the Thai people behind the effort. Perhaps using that 1 baht charge for a bag should not go to the store, but to the government to help develop the recycling industry would be a good step.

As plastics are here to stay, and with ever increasing use and volume, what should be the obvious answer to most is both biodegradeable and reusable plastics in whatever form: bags, bottles, computers etc. Then if they are not reused and/or eventually end up in the environment, which they will, then they will not last a thousand years, just a few months. Of course, there might be chemical contamination issues here but it's the best solution to environmental buildup until completely non-toxic biodegradeable bags are developed and that will be very soon, if not already.

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the problem with reusable bags is that you need to regularly sanitize them to prevent crosss contamination of food that you keep putting in the bags if they are used for shopping.

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That is why I have a "dirty" box and a "clean" box each full of Big C bags. (The boxes are old Leo boxes ) The "dirty" ones originally contained cold food, or packaged meat products, etc - anything that could contain water or blood, etc. They are used for dirty jobs - wrapping up smelly stuff before throwing it away.

The "clean" bags are those that contained dry shopping and can be used again for shopping at Makro (where they don't give out bags).

That means you do not reuse the bags used for carrying 'wet' food. And what do you do to replace those re-used plastic bags if they can't be used in the kitchen peddle bin?

No, it means I do use the bags that had carried 'wet' food, but once only when I need to wrap up something that's even nastier. I wouldn't use a bag that may have traces of blood or vegetable matter in it for anything else. I wouldn't bother trying to clean it either.

I use Champion 'Dual Tie' black plastic bags for the kitchen garbage bin as the Big C bags aren't big enough. Well, sometimes they are - when you buy 2 lots of 6 kitchen rolls wrapped in plastic the girl often digs out a really huge Big C bag to put them in.

I never run out of those normal size bags, clean or 'dirty', as Big C usually gives me a dozen or more every visit.

And if you arrange your shopping on the conveyor belt so that you alternate meat, dry goods, frozen food, dry goods, vegetables, dry goods, smelly goods,... the poor girl can't sort them and you get dozens of free bags, each only half full.

But using all these non-biodegradeable plastic bags is not helping the environment is it? You have developed a method of saving a bit of cash but done almost nothing to reduce significantly the number of persistent bags that you throw away. You are just replacing the re-used bags with black plastic bags. Next time u go to Makro - why don't u buy some biodegradable plastic bags (they have handles and come in at least 2 sizes - sandwich and bin and are as cheap as the normal ones) and use these instead of the black bags? they can even be reused to further reduce throw-aways.

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the problem with reusable bags is that you need to regularly sanitize them to prevent crosss contamination of food that you keep putting in the bags if they are used for shopping.

<snip>

That is why I have a "dirty" box and a "clean" box each full of Big C bags. (The boxes are old Leo boxes ) The "dirty" ones originally contained cold food, or packaged meat products, etc - anything that could contain water or blood, etc. They are used for dirty jobs - wrapping up smelly stuff before throwing it away.

The "clean" bags are those that contained dry shopping and can be used again for shopping at Makro (where they don't give out bags).

That means you do not reuse the bags used for carrying 'wet' food. And what do you do to replace those re-used plastic bags if they can't be used in the kitchen peddle bin?

However, you are right in saying that plastic reusable bags in a dumpsite are not carbon neutral. But this is a good thing. THey are carbon "minus," so-to-speak. They lock up carbon and keep it from getting into the air. This is called sequestration, and it is a major goal among the global-warming scientists.

How can non-biodegradeable plastics be carbon minus when they are manufactured from fossil fuels? Also they don't 'lock' away carbon indefinitely - they will chemically degrade over time, releasing carbon - it just takes much longer than biodegradeable ones.

I still believe that if only shopping bags are made reusable then it will make only a miniscule difference to plastic accumulation - particularly as the current plastic supermarket bags are almost universally reused as rubbish bags. The rubbish bags would need to be made reusable and that would be a big sanitary issue and not feasible. Given the option I would choose biodegradable as the only really viable alterantive to the current plastic bags but I will compromise and say that the answer is bags that are both biodegradeable and reusable!

Read up on sequestration and then get back to me.

And you can't have it both ways. Either the bags degrade and don't take up landfill space, or they are essentially inert and for all practical purposes, keep carbon out of the air. Or at least, they can keep it out of the air during the time frame we need to be able to come up with better ways to address the issue.

(And they are "carbon-minus" because they took carbon out of the air, albeit it millions of years ago.)

In my humble opinion, get off the minor issue of sanitation (minor in terms of environmental impact) and get a grasp of the science on the issue. Or don't, if you don't want to, and go on believing the hype.

You don't have to be patronising, I know enough about sequestration - it would help if you focussed on the individual issues I have raised instead of obviously trying to avoid them. You seem transfixed on carbon footprints - they are not the only issue here. Change your limited mind-set and deal with more practical issues and some more important ones for Thailand like accumulation in the environment, which is at least as important and, in fact, is the reason behind the original article. In Thailand it's not mainly about carbon footprints, it's about non-degradeable plastic bags choking rivers, seas, gutters, wasteland and the countryside for hundreds of years. And these plastic bags are not only the ones you can use for shopping at supermarkets, they are numerous types.

However, you are right in saying that plastic reusable bags in a dumpsite are not carbon neutral. But this is a good thing. THey are carbon "minus," so-to-speak. They lock up carbon and keep it from getting into the air. This is called sequestration, and it is a major goal among the global-warming scientists.

How can non-biodegradeable plastics be carbon minus when they are manufactured from fossil fuels? Also they don't 'lock' away carbon indefinitely - they will chemically degrade over time, releasing carbon - it just takes much longer than biodegradeable ones.

I still believe that if only shopping bags are made reusable then it will make only a miniscule difference to plastic accumulation - particularly as the current plastic supermarket bags are almost universally reused as rubbish bags. The rubbish bags would need to be made reusable and that would be a big sanitary issue and not feasible. Given the option I would choose biodegradable as the only really viable alterantive to the current plastic bags but I will compromise and say that the answer is bags that are both biodegradeable and reusable!

Well I don't know about u but I don't put food down my underwear. How do u know that reusable bags have a lower carbon footprint than biodegradeable ones?

No, but bits of, shall we say "processed" foods get there!

I have a hard copy report right here which goes into it. I know that doesn't do you much good, but so be it.

In a nutshell, though, biodegradable bags put the carbon right back into the atmosphere. This gets sucked up in new plants, which are then used to make new bags. Seems carbon neutral, right? However that neglects to take into account the cost of manufacturing and transport. A biodegradable bag goes through some significant processing to get from a corn kernel to a bag, and that costs energy. Then transport takes more energy. And this is done theoretically four times a year given a 3-month degradation timeline. A reusable bag captures more carbon per bag, then holds it for longer. But most off all, the energy needed to make one reusable bag which might last for two or three years is far less than making a biodegradable bag four times a year.

Couple that with the fact that this presumes that one biodegradable bag equals on reusable bag. That is not the case. While that bag is happily degrading, more bags need to be made to be used in the meantime, using up even more energy. Given that people shop several times a week, that means that one reusable shopping bag might be the equivalent of an eventual total of 312 biodegradable (3 bags per week X 52 weeks per year X 2 years).

I don't think u understood my answer above - the problem with reusable bags is that you need to regularly sanitize them to prevent crosss contamination of food that you keep putting in the bags if they are used for shopping.

I realise what you mean about relative carbon footprints of the 2 types of bag, but:

1. Reusable bags do not, long-term, fully address the problem of plastic residues ending up either in land-fill sites or in the oceans as many reusable bags are made from non-biodegradable plastics - which also means they are not carbon neutral. The additional load of deteregent to wash the bags also has to be factored in - or the carbon footprint of medical attention from the bugs.

2. Reusable bags are not always reused effectively - and may not be used for anything like 2-3 years. At least we can put an end-use and, more importantly, an environmental time-limit on a biodegradable bag.

3. Reusable bags do not substitute for most plastic bags - such as single use in packaging of food and manufactured products. For example, I can't see you persuading a food vendor to start washing out bags returned by his customers, or a supermarket reusing the wrapping from chocolate box diligently returned from a recycling bin.

I think if we think globally, reusable bags are Ok for shopping at Tescos but would do little for the whole issue of plastic bag substitution around the world. Biodegradable bags wouldn't be carbon neutral but at least would prevent build-up of plastics in the environment, which is the main purpose of the original article.

So if they were directed to the web site, you could have one web page exclusively in Russian to cater for our ex- Soviet friends because I wonder if they feel comfortable asking for these in 7-11 ?

I heard the Ruskies like fur-lined booties.

Nah mate ! You must have heard about these and thought about fleece

but they took the fur off

http://sheepskincondoms.org/

No - but I did hear that Ozzies like those sheepskin condoms without removing them from the sheep. In shitu so to speak.

So if they were directed to the web site, you could have one web page exclusively in Russian to cater for our ex- Soviet friends because I wonder if they feel comfortable asking for these in 7-11 ?

I heard the Ruskies like fur-lined booties.

A recent news report warns against recycled bags due to build-up of bacterial contamination - unless you wash them regularly - and hence spill more detergent into the environment:

http://www.dailymail...&referrer=yahoo

I'm afraid biodegradebale it is - they are easily found cheaply in many supermarkets in Thailand.

Yes, and your underwear gets a build-up of contaminants if you don't wash it, too. The article does not warn against using reusable bags, but rather points out the need to clean them.

Biodegradable bags certainly have a place, but reusable bags do have a lower carbon footprint.

Well I don't know about u but I don't put food down my underwear. How do u know that reusable bags have a lower carbon footprint than biodegradeable ones?

A recent news report warns against recycled bags due to build-up of bacterial contamination - unless you wash them regularly - and hence spill more detergent into the environment:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1290983/Beware-deadly-toxins-eco-friendly-shopping-bag.html?ITO=1708&referrer=yahoo

I'm afraid biodegradebale it is - they are easily found cheaply in many supermarkets in Thailand.

BJ Restaurant and Bar early 1980.

******* or what?

I don't really expect anyone to do this, certainly not to do this properly, but actually if someone did follow the concept I have in mind, including western style information and customer service, frankly I don't think Thai owners would have a chance to copy it. I am not just talking about a concrete box with condoms, I am talking about creating an environment and experience. As far as blatant whores loitering in the place, they could easily be asked to leave.

The people who go to Pattaya for sex won't dig the 'experience' you envisage. They're out for a few beers and a good shag. Condoms are more of a necessary nuisance - they won't want to spend an afternoon perusing the wares of a condom boutique when they can go off to a bar for a new pick-up, followed by a quick detour to the 7-11. Bangkok might be a better place so that family men can go to spice up their marriages.

Well, even if it was legal and successful, it wouldn't last long - because Thai businessmen would copy the idea and set up shops all over the place. That's why you see loads of shops in Thailand all selling the same things right next to each other. More than one such sex shop would over saturate the market. Nice idea but in any case, these bijou boutiqey type themey affairs seldom last because people in Pattaya usually only go out looking for groceries! Hmmm.... that gives me a great idea - what about cabbages and condoms? Buy me and get one free?

1987 first time and apart from fewer buildings, esp on Thappraya Road, I don't remember it being much different from what it is now. Remember that Thais have very conservative life-styles - their habits and environment don't change much over decades, some say centuries, others say millenia, except maybe for high-rise developments. It still has the same old style clutter, bars, restaurants and taxis as it always had, and that's all Pattaya is in reality.

You must have spent all your time insde a bar back then, and still do now.

Do you remember where the bus station was in 1987? And that there was nothing but rice fields between there and South Road? Mike Hotel and Shopping Mall was there but that was about all besides a Swiss restaurant nearby. The only bars were on Walking Street.

Only Walking Street seems not to have changed that much and it was only around 1996 that it was made a no traffic zone at night as I use to drive down it from work and park the car outside my favourite bar until then.

I didn't go by bus, so wouldn't have been expected to have seen the bus station. Only bars on Walking Street? Well, almost the whole area called 'Boyztown' was certainly there. Are u thinking of 1977? You make it sound like it was a quiet town then, well my recollections were quite different - it seemed as lively as it is now - certainly at night - but then I didn't drive to the bars by car.

1987 first time and apart from fewer buildings, esp on Thappraya Road, I don't remember it being much different from what it is now. Remember that Thais have very conservative life-styles - their habits and environment don't change much over decades, some say centuries, others say millenia, except maybe for high-rise developments. It still has the same old style clutter, bars, restaurants and taxis as it always had, and that's all Pattaya is in reality.

I dont understand how you can say it was not much different in 1987.

There was virtually nothing east of second road. Third road didnt exist and Sukhumvit was a dusty narrow road.

I would say the city has grown to at least 5 times its size since 1987.

The biggest difference though since then is the drive from Bkk. In those days it was a total nightmare which could take 4 or 5 hours sometimes.

Most of this applies to areas outside the main entertainment centre. The video clearly shows the city centre similar to what it is today - just a bit less congested but QUALITATIVELY the same. The Germans had their mullet hair-do's and gold jewelry then and now. What I did notice is that the bar girls also had a mullet hair style in those days, but not now. That is about as much progress as we can expect in 23 years.

crapshoot

I remember about 25 years ago in the US there were an abundance of health food restaurants. There was an expose, by one of the news channels, that showed the restaurateurs buying expired vegetables etc since they were really cheap and with the appearance of organic to sell in their restaurants. if you cant trust it in the US I think you might have to look twice here. [by the way, I think they all fixed it in the US after lots of fines and closures

Its pretty corrupt here and this is a good way to increase income. I am sure there a many honest ones but you might have to go to the farm to find them

Nice one! Did they really buy expired veggies to make them look like organic?

I don't understand why anyone would pay 25,000 THB for a condo when for 6,000 you can have your own private house with a garden.

Better security, often more central location, free gym, fewer kids/animals - seems like good reasons to me.

As mentioned above, in the block above your name where the number is and it says "Type", a motorcycle license will say Private Motorcycle and on the back in the lower right corner it would say Private Motorcycle with a picture of a motorcycle.

For an auto license, in the block above your name where the number is and it says "Type", an auto license will say Private Car and on the back on the lower right corner it would say Private Car and show pictures of a auto, pickup truck, and van.

Above is based on me looking right at my permanent/5 year licenses while I write this...and I'm assuming my old, temporary/1 year licenses looked pretty much the same (I can't remember what my temp licenses looked exactly like...too much Beer Chang has affected the memory cells).

Yep exactly as you say except it says "Temporary Car" not private car, but hey same same I'm sure. My Wife and I both took time off work to do this so I cannot really give her any grief about it, tho' it was her job to make everything clear to the administration lady!! oh what a &lt;deleted&gt;' disaster, I'm so mad that I have to get all that bloody paperwork again and more time off work too. Thanks for the reply.

Forget the motorbike - just get a new wife.

All the developers of the concrete coffins should practice regulated capitalism. They should pay a tax that goes directly into a social welfare fund for Thais. They should also establish food banks, and subsidize medical care for the Thais. For every Baht earned by the "visionaries" .05 Baht gets invested into the host Thai community. This formula prevents social uprisings by preventing the less fortunate from falling through the cracks. In addition,this improves the image of the Farang.

Nonsense. Do you really think any tax paid by farangs would end up benefitting the poor in Thailand? A much better option is to build more and more concrete coffins so that the poor from Issan can get jobs. It's the jobs created by farang investment and tourist spending that really benefits the Thais. Unfortunately, some of them don't realise it and have a very bad attitude toward farangs, despite making their whole good living from them.

1987 first time and apart from fewer buildings, esp on Thappraya Road, I don't remember it being much different from what it is now. Remember that Thais have very conservative life-styles - their habits and environment don't change much over decades, some say centuries, others say millenia, except maybe for high-rise developments. It still has the same old style clutter, bars, restaurants and taxis as it always had, and that's all Pattaya is in reality.

I often wonder if you can trust the 'safety' of food produced in Thailand, but especially the 'organic' and 'green' labels that you see on supermarket shelves. I guess there may be some kind of regulation for 'organic' produce but, as with other aspects of life in Thailand, who knows how these regs are monitored and implemented - or is it all just an excuse for raising the price of the produce? Anyone got any real insights into this?

<BR>Its only a matter of time before they seriously start clamping down on expats.<BR>Seriously, with all this bad press and so many bad apples amongst us we should start policing ourselves and doing something positive so Thais can see we aren't all arsonists and pedophiles.... I am amazed they are so tolerant actually.<BR>

<BR><BR>If we seriously started policing ourselves as you put it, despite being unclear as to how this would be achieved, then a great deal more shit would hit the fan and even more bad publicity, unless you want to punish on the quiet, which is even worse. The poor detection rate or conviction rate, partly due to the incompetence of the Thai police and bribe-taking, serves to cover up a lot of crimes committed by farangs. If it was different it would open up an even bigger can of worms. That would be a good thing but hardly a good publicity for us.<BR>

Because plastic bags are used in so many different ways these days, not only supermarket bags, the only solution is to tax non-degradeable plastic bags and make biodegradeable ones much cheaper - maybe even use the tax to do this, although after a while there won't be much tax income generated by it. Banning them, fining users or public education campagns won't work in Thailand - only higher costs will win the day, provided there are cheaper and better substitutes.