mick220675

I can sens your frustration Tofer, I also spend my time picking up rubbish from the front of our house and from around my wife's shop. 

Some things in Thailand change very slowly, it took years for the dog meat cars to be stopped. The crazy burning and rubbish dumping is still going on despite the last kings efforts to educate citizens about the need to protect the environment.

My daughters school dose educate students about the environment, but when they return home to see mum and dad dumping rubbish everywhere  and burning every thing they can, its going to be slow progress.

On 2/8/2018 at 2:30 PM, cooked said:

In our village in Buriram province  I'll never learn Thai as everyone speaks Lao (Isaan). As mentioned above, many older people don't really understand Thai, which is why they are such easy targets for land grabbers, they'll sign anything.

In the next village going east towards Buriram they speak Khmer. You don't really hear much Lao in Buriram itslef.

T My wife heard racist remarks about Lao speakers in BigC this morning and made the cash registers rattle, she is Isaan first, then from Buriram, then Thai.

Going West from here everyone speaks Lao when possible.

There have been so many waves of invasion, slave settlement and struggles with colonising powers (by which I mean the Burmese, Laotians and the Cambodians, not the 'colonial powers' that everyone is so eager to jump on as the source of all evil these days), that the origins of the Thai people are difficult to understand.

However, if you are talking about the race called Thai or Tai, then this has been more or less sorted out long ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_people

Before moving to Thailand I spent 2 years learning as much Thai as possible only  to find in our village no one speaks it. But with so many similarity's with Lao it did help a lot, but Khmer is very different and after spending 12 years in our village 6 km from Cambodia I can only say a hand full of words.

It is interesting you talk about Khmer speakers talking bad about Lao speakers in Buriram big C. Our village is around 80% Khmer and 20% Lao, the Khmer say the Lao talk down to them. I have been told that Khmer speakers are not as clean as the Lao speakers and the Lao  speakers are dirty by the Khmer speakers. It is strange but there is defiantly some form of discrimination between them.

Go with your wife to the local amphoe office and obtain a letter giving you permission from you wife to take your son out of the country. It cost me 20 baht.

I have taken my daughter out of the country 2 times and never been asked for the letter, but its better to be safe. I will be taking my daughter to the UK in April and will get a new letter just in case.

I should say my daughter has my surname on her passport.

https://www.homepro.co.th/product/1039360

Have a look in homepro at the above, it could be a possibility.

In our area the police are getting serious, they are charging each farm 500 baht to let them burn there sugar.

The wife's farther runs a sugar cutting operation for our local factory. His team must have cut over 50 farms so far this year. The police love him, its Johnnie walker for breakfast in our local police station.

The residents of Bangkok are very lucky to have reasonable water. There are hundreds of thousands possibly millions of Thais whose government water is supplied from lakes unfiltered which runs out during the dry season. Many Thais live in villages like my village with no government water.

When I spent a year living in Bangkok we filtered our tap water and drank it. Now our drinking water is filtered rain water. If we run out of rain water we filter our well water.

In our village the plastic pollution is not from water bottles, but from the unlimited supply from plastic bags. But the real pollution is from the insane field burning. 

2 minutes ago, transam said:

Perhaps Thai taste buds are different from a farangs, so the beers in LOS are up Thai folks street..When I see and smell what Thai folk eat l could be right..

Maybe you are right, but if you you think the Thai food is bad try visiting a Cambodian village for your lunch. Maybe that's why they need stronger tasting beer, to cover up the taste of the spiders.

I live in a border village and many of the locals do like the Cambodian beers, especially the price.

Recently Cheers has introduced rice-berry beer that is darker in colour with a less sweet taste than the average Thai beer. So maybe in time they may start to offer a beer like to beer Lao dark.

I struggle to understand the tax on beers in Thailand, but it is clear that one of the Thai company's need to start making a decent beer.

This week I was in Cambodia, I could still get 5 cans of 8% black panther for 100 baht. Beer Lao dark is nice but not as nice as the Cambodian dark beers.

It can not be impossible for a Thai brewer to make a decent beer when there neighbours are producing vastly superior beers. Instead the Thai brewers think its a good idea to make a strawberry beer. If Cambodians and the people of Laos want and are willing to buy a good beer then Thais would buy a decent beer.

Come on Thailand give use a decent beer (at a competitive price).

Our village would need to be connected to the government water before the farmers could enjoy free water.

I have visited a friend in Khonkaen hospital and was impressed. It is a lot better than Buriram's government hospital (staff are good but it is overcrowded and dirty)..

Black toes that sounds a bit worrying, glad your OK now.

1 hour ago, simoh1490 said:

Even before the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia to overthrow the Khmer Rouge, Khmer people unhappy with the Khmer Rouge had fled Cambodia and settled in Thailand, mostly near the border as early as the late 1960's. As the flow of Khmer became heavier the Thai government set up refugee camps along the border and eventually these contained tens of thousands of displaced Khmer. Eventually the KR was overthrown but many of the Khmer settled in Thailand, by this time many had grown familes that included Thai spouses and the children were eventually given Thai ID cards. Today, in many areas along that border and even further inland there are entire communities of Khmer speaking  families where the Khmer language is primary.

Yes our village has some who fled Cambodia during the war, we even have a ex Khmer Rouge soldier (he had no choice fight or die). As you say they were given Thai ID cards. 

My wife's grandparents were born in the village as were there parents. Not having been to school they speak there mother language Khmer.

On 2/1/2018 at 8:03 PM, EricTh said:

 

Yes, Khmer are the real natives of Thailand, there are more articles in that blog that explains this. Click below.

 

http://eastasiaorigin.blogspot.my/2017/06/ethnic-origin-of-cambodians.html

 

The Khmer in Thailand have been assimilated, most of them don't speak Khmer anymore.

Just like the Han Chinese in Thailand who can't speak Chinese anymore.

 

http://eastasiaorigin.blogspot.my/2017/07/main-ethnicities-in-thailand.html

 

 

 

Where I live in southern Buriram Khmer is still spoken by people. Many of the older generation do not speak Thai including my wife's grand parents, when visiting officials they are reliant on there family talking for them.

The locals have always been told they are inferior by the whiter skinned Chinese/Thais and I think they feel they are. When I read the link I was interested that the dark skinned Khmer/Thais could be the original people of Siam

I am going to one today.

I must have been to close to a hundred Thai funerals, the only sombre ones have been children's. I have seen fighting at funerals caused by gambolling and heavy drinking. Last year the army stopped all gambolling in our area, but it is back this year.

In some respects I think Thais have a good way of looking at death. Growing up in the UK death was hidden from children, but hear in Thailand children are exposed to so many funerals it is just part of life.

3 minutes ago, mok199 said:

I will admit we have seen several improvement in Nhong Hong (burriram) a newley paved road was very much welcomed ..all improvments are welcome...

The area I live in has improved much in the last 15 years and that is something that many poor farmers have benefited from. The massive irrigation work had made a big difference. The road building is defiantly welcome.

The problem is while houses are now made from block instead of wood and buffaloes have been replaced with tractors the poor now have very high levels of debt. Until they can make there repayment affordable they will remain poor.

Any thing that helps poor farmers is welcome. But looking at the figures quoted 35 billion is money already budgeted for (irrigation/ crop development etc). The remaining new money 12 billion less the 2 billion for officials leaves 10 billion for the 70,000 villages. If each village has an average of say 200 residents, they will be lucky to get a couple of hundred baht spent on them.

I can only comment on what I see in my village and the people I know and from what I see the biggest problem is debt. When you have 3 or 4 family's living on a 24 rai farm and have made the mistake of borrowing money to buy a tractor of car. They find them self's borrowing against the farm to cover there repayments and in no time the profits from there farming do not cover the repayments.

Not all poor farmers can blame the government for there problems, but when the PM thinks cutting down rubber trees and replacing them with coconut trees is a good idea, it is obvious the government is not qualified to teach farmers how to farm.

Hundreds of years of tradition can not be changed with a new PM. Everyone in a position of power expects to be rewarded financially by those they hold power over.

The current government is no different to any elected, totally corrupt. The people of Thailand understand and accept corruption as long they receive some thing in return.

The government has not been able to help the farmers in the north and north east. Those in the south who supported the coup and expected to be rewarded, have not been. If the Bangkok middle class have benefited from the government, they are outnumbered by those who feel the government is offering no help.

The only way the government can prevent the inevitable is to postpone elections and suppress any dissent. But in doing so they are becoming more disliked by the day. 

420,000,000 pounds/ 18,606,000,000 baht 

If it was my building I would sell it. Lets face it nothing that happens in that building benefits UK citizens living in Thailand. Maybe with that kind of money there staff might start to smile.

6 minutes ago, merlin2002 said:

Why can't number crunchers in Thailand work out a simple thing like percentages.  Their stats are always wrong, it's not exactly a difficult calculation...  

Percentages are like magic in Thailand, no one understands them. The University educated women living opposite our house could not tell me what 10% off 100 is. I think its a way of making sure the banks and money lenders keep control of the farmers.

12 years ago I bought a nice red mail box from the post office. In 12 years its been used twice. My mail can be found in our local petrol station or noodle shop.

A couple of weeks ago my daughters new UK passport was delivered by EMS to a old woman's house in the village. The lady opened it and left it on top of her fridge for two days before I managed to track it down.

It once took The Thai post service 21 days to deliver a bill which had travelled 18km. I accept its not that important but it dose make it more difficult to pay bills if you do not receive a paper copy.

6 minutes ago, JAG said:

4 or 5 days training given with imitation wooden rifles would be the cube root of bugger all use in any widespread conflict. They would last for seconds in a firefight.

 

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if some middle ranking Walt in the regional military isn't playing at raising his own militia...

I live in a area with a large military presence, despite there being a good few work-shy drunks about the army have yet to round anyone up and train them.

The only time any villagers were trained was during the last conflict with Cambodia. The head of our village was also given a M16. I think it was more to prevent any burglary's with so many houses being evacuated.

Regarding the second hand police uniforms, The farmers would have to put on weight if they want them to fit.

When the wife's grandmother was cremated, the remaining ashes and bits of bone gave my wife the winning lottery numbers.

I refused do give her money for the village lottery, 7 years later I am still reminded about it.