Misterwhisper

Which country in the world with a land area somewhat smaller than France sees a benefit in maintaining 77 tiny provinces?

I know the answer: Thailand!

The reason? Local bureaucrats and politicians demand their own little fiefdoms that they can prey on financially.

Another case of "Amazing Thailand" indeed. As if 76 provinces weren't already more than enough.

I thought we already had plenty of "local traditions" on display in "cultural areas" around Bangkok such as Nana Plaza, Soi Cowboy, Ratchadapisek Road, Patpong et al....

I always have been flabbergasted how cheap it is in this country to have someone "whacked" and even more so how many willing contractors one can find to carry out the job without any scruples. Life has absolutely no value in this realm. And they call themselves Buddhists.

And yet another hub for Bangkok: Super Skywalk Hub of the World

"...written lists of massive telephone numbers."

or should that have been: "...massive written lists of telephone numbers"???

Perhaps a disgruntled customer was the mastermind behind the killing... really really bad coffee can even turn the most benign person into a revengeful beast.

And the second report about a horrific traffic accident involving a minivan/bus in one single day! All you can do is only shake your head in resignation, because nothing will ever change in this country. Road safety and driving instruction are foreign concepts.

Do a little test with your taxi driver: As he whizzes you to your destination at breakneck speed, ask him about individual traffic signs and what they mean. You'll be lucky if he gets 1 out of 10 right. Traffic signs are just there to decorate roadsides and serve no tangible purpose.

Another great example that many of these minivan drivers have absolutely no common sense for steering a vehicle nor regard for their passengers' (and their own) lifes.

A sensible driver would immediately hit the brake when blinded by oncoming lights.

Hilarious! And so true. However, instead of "irrelevant" I would have sued the adjective "superfluous".

Luckily, the kingdom - and Bangkok in particular - is not yet suffering from a shortage in "Krispy Kreme" doughnuts. That certainly would trigger riots.

I went to "Foodland" supermarket last week. The shelves were devoid of any local brands of cooking oil, which was surprising, because the supermarket chain usually sells bottles at a higher mark-up than stores like "Big-C" or "Tesco". My neighborhood mom-and-pop store had run out of cooking oil 2 weeks ago. There definitely is a crisis at hand, which is even more surprising when you consider how may million of acres of agricultural land in this country are dedicated to oil palm plantations.

Needless to say that I couldn't even get a single bottle of rice bran cooking oil. Thailand is the worldwide largest exporter of rice, thus certainly there must be enough bran to produce cooking oil.

Another story breaks as the government reports to have IMPORTED 300,000 tons of palm olein for refining it into cooking oil. The olein was distributed to a number of manufacturers who claim they have used it up and distributed. I am not too concerned about that. What I am concerned about is that 1 litre of cooking palm oil is price-capped at 47 Baht. Yet it sells - if available - at up to 70 Baht. Who accepted subsidised olein imports for refining and subsequent distribution and who overcharged their distributors so they have to ask up to 70 Baht for a bottle in order to make a profit?

As always in this country, somebody takes advantage and thinks they can get away with it. They usually do.

"Unprecedented numbers". Well, at least they have become a bit more cautious in their statements and don't actually cite figures anymore in order to save themselves the embarrassment when not even close the targeted numbers of protesters turn up.

In any case, it once again will be a huuuuuge inconvenience for Bangkok businesspeople, shoppers and residents alike. This time everyone even can look forward to 1 million of red origami cranes being dumped in the streets by those clowns. Who's going to clean up afterwards? It certainly won't be the Redshirts.

With their poor choice of protesting venue the Redshirts will only succeed in further alienating local people. Wouldn't it make more sense if they staged their protests in the inner cities of their home provinces like Korat, Buriram, Khonkaen, et al? You know why not? because that really would erode their support base beyond repair. Nobody (and that is, NOBODY!) wants to be constantly harrassed by that bunch, not even their own sympathisers.

That happens when you shell out antibiotics to patients like you'd dispense candies without any control whether they'll actually finish the full course, because charging inflated hospital prices for those drugs is more important than deciding whether they are actually absolutely necessary or not. I was frequently flabbergasted when I received a bagful of yellow, pink, green and red antibiotic pills and capsules just for presenting with a light fever. I equally frequently declined to the great shock of the "treating" doctors. Like in many other developing countries antibiotics are unfortunately regarded as cure-it-alls.

Was there any doubt at any time that both Cambodian and Thai elements were playing the nationalistic card? I think not.

Listen to local people if you want to gain some insight what's going on at the border. They are the ones who suffer from all this nationalistic BS.

The PAD - devolved since its inception as a force FOR democracy into a bunch of nationalistic fanatics - have outstayed their welcome both in Bangkok AND in the affected border districts. Good to know their star is waning.

It's about time to send their geriatric leaders to a remote nursing home. "Grumpy old men" tend to destroy more than they can "fix" with their outdated points-of-view and self-righteous attitudes. I am not talking about the likes of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Those were funny "grumpy old men". The actual lot are just miserable, hateful and completely out of touch with reality.

Send in the brave warriors of the so-called Thai Patriots Network and let them sort it out. They are the ones who seem most keen on a war with out neighbour anyway.

Perhaps the Defence Ministry should start selling some of the 2 gazillion generals on ebay to raise some funds for those projected purchases. I am sure quite a few people around the world would love to display a Thai army general on their mantelpiece; something with which to impress visitors and house guests: "Look what I recently got myself, a real Thai general!"

Can I make an advance booking now, please? :jap:

"...so that he could return to Thailand to develop the country."

Let's analyse that, shall we? What the poor fugitive means is: "return to Thailand, sweep my jail term under the carpet, then let me develop the country after the motto '1 Baht for you, 1,000 Baht for me and my cronies, 1 Baht for you, 1,000 Baht for me and my cronies..."

QUOTE: "Piyasuda said Thailand had about 10 Thai tour guides who spoke Russian well."

Hm, "about" in my understanding means "approximatelY", i.e. there could be only 8 Russian-speaking Thai tour guides, or there could be 12.

How many Russian tourists vivited Thailand last year? "About" 380,000, I think. Well, probably not all of them required a tour guide. But let's say it was only 10%, then these "about 10" local tour guides would be burdened with 3,800 tourists each over the course of one year. Quite a workload per guide.

Furthermore, "about 10" Russian-speaking tour guides to cover hundreds, if not thousands, of tourist attractions and historical sites all spread out over a country roughly the size of France? Oh my, really looks like the Russian tourist sector is completely saturated in terms of tour guide density.

I once had the doubtful pleasure of joining a visiting couple from Germany on a tour of the ancient city of Sukhothai, which they had booked. The group was led by a local, supposedly "German-speaking" tour guide. Her pronunciation was so dismal, her sentence structure so utterly garbled that my visitors and I (also a native German speaker) decided to split from the group and I gave my guests a tour of the old city myself. Luckily I wasn't caught, otherwise I probably would have been arrested and fined as an "illegal tour guide".

I hail from the southern German city of Ulm. It's not particularly large ("about" 150,000 inhabitants), but looks back at a history of well over 1,000 years. A plethora of historical monuments dot the city and there is a tourism office that can provide guides in every imaginable language. Basically all of them are native speakers (i.e. nationals) of their respective countries. Thai tour groups get a Thai tour guide. Ukrainians and Russians get a Russian. Visitors from Taiwan or mainland China get a Chinese. And so forth.

My point is: All of these native guides are licensed and are permitted to work legally. It is important to have a tour guide who can parlay in your own language. If not, or if the guide's foreign language ability is utterly dismal, visitors will lose out on a lot of information. Moreover, these guides will not lead their groups into dubious shops where they coax their guests into buying stuff at grossly inflated prices so they can pocket handsome commissions from the shop operators. THAT and ONLY THAT, I am afraid, is THE SOLE OBJECTIVE of a good many local tour guides in Thailand, and NOT to furnish their groups with interesting knowledge abut the culture and history of the kingdom that they can take back home with them.

And another hub, and another hub, and another hub, and another hub, and... it's laughable, really.

The ICC took up its work, I believe, in 2001. Thailand did not ratified its charter, presumably because in 2001 somebody was in power in this country who perhaps thought it might clash with his activities as a "beacon of true democracy".

Surprise, surprise!

The point, I believe, is that the public are already suggesting that such a law would be only providing the police with (yet another) channel to fill their pockets. So much for the utterly devastating reputation the BiB have among those they are supposed to "protect and serve". Needless to say that this reputation, sadly, is entirely deserved.

Still shaking with excited nostalgia remembering an exchange rate of 56 THB to the greenback in December 1997. Then it was well above the 40 THB mark for several years before gradually weakening to 38 THB. From there on it was all downhill, but hey, above 30 THB to the $ is still better than the fixed exchange rate of 25 THB to the buck that prevailed literally for decades before the economic meltdown of August 1997.

"In Loei, two Matthayom 4 students often played truant and became pregnant. They were forced out of their school. Fortunately for them, though, their parents were very understanding. They took care of their grandchildren so that their daughters could go back to school after having their babies."

Hm, Mathayom 4. That means they were about 14 -15 years old. Now, were those students "often truant" or "often pregnant" or both? And what happened to the probably equally young inseminators (i.e. fathers of the children)? Got away as usual, eh? And how "understanding" does one have as a responsible parent? Did those parents educate their daughter about effective birth control after the first grandchild from a daughter that has hardly shed her own baby fat? Probably not, because more than likely they don't know anything about birth control themselves.

The injustice is of course that those girls were "forced out" of their school and it goes to show the archaic norms to which this society still adheres. It's ALWAYS the girl's fault and the stigma is entirely hers. Meanwhile, most school administrators and/or teachers would blush with shame if they were asked by a young student about sex and/or birth control. It's still largely a taboo subject. One sometimes wonders where those 65 million Thais came from, making this country one of the most densely-populated on Earth. All perhaps grew as "makhaleephon", the fruit of a mythical tree that grow in the shape of a human being. When ripe, they fall to the ground and simply walk away. Ask any monk about "makhaleephon", if you don't believe me. it's reminiscent of our version, i.e. a stork delivers babies to one's doorstep, albeit [most of us] have stopped believing in that tale when we were about 8-10 years old, because that is usually the age when formal sex education starts.