luangtom

I guess the marriage issue matters differently to different folks from different parts of Thailand. My wife of forty-years and I lived together for a number of months before we got married. It was no big deal. My wife's sisters and now nieces have not all had formal marriages either. My wife's mother told me that it was her philosophy and that of her children that if one sleeps together, then that is marriage. All have told me it is a waste of money to throw the big party and blow-out to show-off. Instead, we gave my mother-in-law funds to remodel or add-on to her home. No demands for marriage-money, no demands for marriage-gold. As I said, we have been married forty years now. The only reason we are "officially" married is for her to get to the USA more easily. Had I a job in Thailand years ago, I doubt the marriage factor would have played into it. It was best to get a marriage-certificate for travel and for showing dependency in the USA.

Hey, don't feel bad. We have an estimated 11-million illegals residing in the USA right now. Less than 2% of them are here due to political asylum. The majority, 98%, are here illegally for purely economic reasons. Don't feel bad at all. And here, the illegals get free medical-care, free educations for their children and help with food, shelter and whatever else the programs have. Don't feel bad about a mere 100-K.

not a single guy here married a hi-so girl? just lower trash issan/bargirls with kids before..

i almost never see this back home in the west but in thailand it's everywhere..

amazing thailand....

Just lower trash Isaan girls....well, friend, I bet you only frequent pubs to find your girl-friends and are the not most cordial gent when doing so. Your attitude and opinion of Isaan girls is like saying all the West End girls suck for drugs. You haffta get outta the pubs to meet real people, male and female in Thailand. How did you attain this wonderful opinion of the Isaan?

Have to say, I am blessed with some fairly good inlaws. The father-in-law passed before I was in the picture, so no comments on him. The mother-in-law is my first encounter with an angel on Earth. She was the kindest, most loving person I have ever met. She passed a few years back, but the years I was around her were outstanding. She asked for help once in the thirty-years that I knew her. Meds that we demanded she get. So, we helped with those. Once and once, only. The two brothers-in-law have never asked for a thing. They get all upset when we do get them new tools or whatever. They are carpenters. The sisters-in-law have never asked for a thing and there were four of them, now three. We helped nieces and a nephew go to post-high-school venues, but were not asked to do so. All in all, I have been very fortunate. This year with the flooding in the Isaan, we were called to be told that the dikes where our home is built gave way and needed repair. This is the only request for financial help we have ever been really asked outright for. It impacts our home in the Isaan, so we will do what we can. We may miss one stay there to pay for the repairs while we are gone. Nope, I cannot complain at all about my inlaws.

Oh, my, where do these people get educated? Water-pushers? Boats to push the water to the sea? Are there truly any hydrologists or any other experts that do reside in Thailand? Why do these people not get educated by the Dutch that deal with below-sea-level structures all of the time? Oh, my.......

If this is the first tropical-depression to hit Thailand so far this year, what of the flooding that already occurred in the NE? Where did that water come from? We lost the dikes at our farm a month ago due to rains. First time in forty-years that this has occurred. Tell the folks in Sakon Nakhon province that their rains and floods were a figment of their imaginations. Oh, my.....

Just look at what is happening in the USA in recent months and you will see a whole world of racists and race-baiters that are of African origin. The recent trials that involved Black victims and Black perpetrators show the slant of being politically-correct in the USA right now. As some posters have said, if the subject in this ad would have been painted White, not one word of racism would have been touted by supposed civil rights groups. Enough is enough. Just hope that the Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright patrols do not infiltrate the rest of the world. It is a sad state of affairs............

I formerly ran Emergency Services stateside for a group of small communties. It covered both police and paramedics for first-response (ambulances). When staying in Thailand, I thought it would be workable to help initiate and help organize such services in rural Thailand. It was a total failure and disaster. Those that did volunteer did so for the US-made uniforms and equipment issue. Period. Not one completed the basic-course or was there any commitment to do so. I thought that I had a grasp of the language and of the psyche of the villagers. NOT. I will never attempt to assume that the Thai citizen thinks at all like a small-town citizen elsewhere in the world. No grasp of life-saving, no grasp of human-understanding and no attempt to change and learn either. I guess I am only here for an occasional binge-drinking bout and free cigarettes and free meals. I will never waste my time and emotion trying again. I will never stay here full-time, either, as I have health-issues and this is certainly not the place to have to deal with them in a rural-setting.

The international news agencies are still on about Boston and CNN has a " special " almost everyday but no mention of tragedies like this other than locally and Channel New Asia

Agreed. The media in the USA does not even tell its viewers and readers that thousands have died in the past decade in the "restive South" of Thailand. It gets nary a bit of air-time. Sad world when so many die and are deemed unimportant.

I thought that it was difficult to attain a firearm in Thailand. Everyone bashes America for its ease in getting firearms and yet Thailand has a higher rate of gun-violence with its more restrictive firearms laws. Does this mean that the bad-guys do not follow the laws? Imagine that......

Can we all say "singing the same song, again"? Big brother had his elite-card scheme to bilk the privileged out of their money and now little sister is proposing the same thing using different words. How about some original thought on the part of the current government and not a repeat of big brother's schemes. Truly, what does Thailand have to offer the elite that they so desire to draw in and scam?

Why not give Myanmar a Nobel Prize? They gave Obama one for not yet doing anything. He had just taken office and still has troops stationed in over one-hundred different countries. A Peace Prize....

I believe all nations have corruption, in varying degrees. While the overt passing of money in the West may not be as obvious, there still exists a level of corruption. One of the most obvious, here, in the West is that political favor seems to be blatant, rather than pure monetary gain.

The West may not have obvious murder and injury of opponents in the news as often, but it certainly has its share of "apparent heart-attack" victims or "suicide" victims amongst those set to expose someone in power. This goes on especially in the upper levels of national government in the USA.

Votes in the West may not be bought by cash exchanging hands, but it is occurring with special perks for certain districts, small gestures of appreciation like cell-phones or free transport passes and the like. I say most all countries have these problems and some just hide it better than others. It is now a part of human-nature and we allow it to repeat so often that it becomes the standard.

Now airplanes landed in Chiang Mai airport every 10 minutes. I thought something was wrong. Especially check the internet now and found the message.

Annual escapade of COBRA GOLD exercises is the most likely source of the runway activity. US, Thai, and others of the military persuasion doing war-games for their annual event.

I thought that Thailand had gun-control. How can shootings take place when only the military and the police are to have firearms in LOS? It is supposed to be safer that way, isn't it?

It is interesting to read the comments of people that have not dealt with school security, yet profess to be experts on all things they read in the news. School-police work. Some call them School-Resource-Officers, some call them School-Police or many other names. Their presence in a school does quell violence.

I was with a police department in rural, northern Minnesota, not far from Canada. We had school-liason officers and they were put there to stem the presence of gang-related and drug-related problems. The method worked. Gangs and drugs were slowly put into a minimal circumstance in the schools that had the problems. The school-officers also helped the communities they were in. The officers were available to fill-in and deal with vacations, sick-days and personal-time of other officers, without having to hire more officers to fill those voids. The school-officers followed the calendar of the schools, so their times of availability were easy to schedule.

Armed-officers in schools is not a new program. It has been happening in many jurisdictions for years. It is now just getting media attention because the foe of the White House in America, the National Rifle Association, is the most recent promoter of the program. The question now needs to be asked, "Why did the current government administration in Washington DC defund the programs already in place? Why are there funds for over-seas foreign-aid and military incursions, but not for the safety of school children? If officers were to be put in every US school, it would cost the government $5-billion to do so. Our aid to other countries right now is $49-billion, our War on Drugs costs the government $39-billion and the cost to occupy Afghanistan is $111-billion. If we put an end to spending on one of these projects, we could fund school-officers for a decade or more.

Whadda joke! Fake goods coming into Thailand? Give me a break.....one just has to take camera-in-hand and go to Thaprachan area and photograph the fake amulets that vendors sell as "real" and even see "monks" there with their loupes out scanning the fakes, as if they are real and then taking them back to their respective temples and selling them as blessed artifacts. Bringing fake goods into the country.....wow.

Or, check out "amulets" on eBay and see what export of such items hit for prices and the minister truly wishes airlines to warn passengers about bringing fake items into Thailand? Wow, again.....

Yes....but who has confidence in the EU or the USA right now?

I, too, have sleep-apnea. I have been on a CPAP-machine now for about one year. I tried two masks before I settled on the third, almost like a nasal-canula...a nose-pillow. The masks for nose and mouth covering were too restrictive and left me with a ridge dent in my nose's bridge. I use the ramp procedure in getting it up to full-force oxygenation and it works for me. The first two masks were limiting my ability to move about much without having the seal of the mask leak. The nasal-canula type allows me to move about and sleep on side or back. I never did sleep on my belly. I also did lose 40-pounds and that, in itself, helped me alot in my breathing while sleeping and while awake. I could not sleep more than an hour or two at first with any of them, but now can sleep a full 6 to 8 hours without getting up to pee. Before use of the CPAP, I used to get up every two hours or so. Now, I stay the course and do not get up to pee. Good luck.....Craigslist is a good suggestion. An airline neck-pillow also helped me get better sleep while on the CPAP.

I also forgot to mention the fake amulets that are blatantly passed off as real to unsuspecting collectors and tourists or the charge of admission to get into temples, or the two-tier pricing-system or the........T.I.T.

T.I.T. ! One has to love the unashamed stand taken by the purveyors of fake Rolex watches, kayoey cabarets, sex-tours and jet-ski scams telling the world that Lady Gaga's comments are bad for Thailand's image. T.I.T. No need to say more.......WOW.

In a simple sentence, "Do not do it." All of the "whys'" have been listed in other posts. Life will go on without her......

In reading the full copy of the report, which was supplied by a local TV news-team here in Atlanta, one finds that if humans were to ingest the dosage or concentration of the carcinogen needed to reach the level attained by the lab-rats, one would have to drink 1,000-cans of Coca Cola per day for an extended period of time. I do believe this was the State of California garnering air-time to show the world that they truly are the Land of Fruits and Nuts..............

NokAir's web-site is still not reflecting this. It will not sell tickets in April for flights from DM. Instead, it refers you back to Suvarnabhumi for flight-origination and will issue tickets listed as originating from BKK to the NE of Thailand, UTH to be specific.

When I first starting coming to Thailand regularly, there were 44 THB to the $. my friend, that was stationed at the US base in Udon in the early 70s told me there were 2 THB to a nickel so that works out to 40 THB to the $. The lowest point for exchange I remember was about 2005-2006 when there were about 26 or 27 THB to the $. Naturally, that's when my house was under construction.

When I was stationed in Thailand, during the course of the conflict in Vietnam, the baht to dollar ranged around 20 to the dollar. My wife returned to visit her family in 1983 and it was up to 25 per dollar. I returned to visit for the first time in 1998 and it was 54 to the dollar. I never remember it being anywhere close to 40 to the dollar during the 1970's.