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The German should have given the old school two finger salute instead - the Thais would have returned to have their photograph taken.

There's something fishy about this anyway - rarely do Thai motorcyclists (especially those driving fast) look in their mirrors, so how did they know they were given the middle finger?

The "phobic about older blokes having younger Thai wives, and don't realise that they'll be referred to as an old geezer before they know it" brigade.

Too this day I still live by the old rule....

The best woman for a man is half his age plus 8 years.

But that means when I'm 90.........45 + 8 = 53. Sorry, that's just not doable.

I've had a couple of these psycho bitches from hell in my life. Put up with too much for too long before I finally told them to eff off and stay effed off - one was assisted by a boot up the arse, the second got a suitcase of cut up clothes (hers), cut up photos and general memorabilia, hammered cellphone, and some uric acid.

You should try it - it'll freak the bejesus out of her.

I can do psycho real good.

Edit: A an afterthought, do everything to her before she does it to you, as well as everything above. Call/email her friends, workmates and employers. Visit her parents and demand compensation for mental torture, raise such a song and dance that she'll run a mile. Pre-empt everything she's threatened and launch a pre-emptive strike.

One thing psychos understand and fear is psychotic behaviour from others.

If you're using MSWord, look at Unicode or ASCII characters. Look in "help" and you'll see what's available. It would seem that most characters you would need are there. You could probably write macros or shortcuts to call these characters up more easily than pressing 3 or 5 keys to call up the code.

If you people were not what we think you are, you would not be so wound up about it. Methinks you doth protest too much. Funnily enough, yet another Farang has just been arrested for this kind of behaviour: http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/659815-pattaya-tourist-police-arrest-german-fake-policeman-and-suspected-child-molester/

If you are Thai, you really shouldn't generalise about farang being all the same. We farang on TV would never dream of making any generalisations about Thai people.

A rolled up newspaper will do the trick. Only need to use it once and show it a few more times for effect - works with kids too.

In the good ol USA it happens every day but we call it kickbacks not corruption.

Same same.

I read that annually about 900 US government officials are found guilty of bribery and/or corruption. That's the ones that are caught so I assume it's the tip of the iceberg.

Probably the same in most western countries - the difference being that when caught in the west we usually prosecute. Thailand has a habit of promoting them instead.

Edit: Here's the data - actually more like 1,200 per annum. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004900.html

One regularly hears strange pronunciations such as Druck and Tree or coffee.

At the Rumpho food cart market there is a guy selling duck. He has photos of various dishes with captions. Some are duck and some are druck.

Most of the girls in the Bars at Rhompo can say duck with an F and no R pretty fluently though.

I once mentioned this and someone told me that it's only the uneducated thais that don't pronounce the R's it's very much like how some ppl just speak terribly and spell like crap.

That's a huge generalisation that has a slight basis in truth. If somebody from London pronounces thousands as "fousands", is that a product of no education? Or what about if you pronounce forty as "fordy".?

The L and R thing in Thai is better compared to casual and formal. My wife speaks lazy casual Thai, but man.....you should hear her "telephone" voice when speaking to officials or shop assistants. She wasn't born with a silver spoon, but she does a bloody good impression of a Princess....bless her soul!

It is not just Thais, but just about all Asians who have trouble with Rs and Ls.

Not only do they leave the sound out, in many cases they exchange the R for L sound and visa versa ie problem becomes plobrem!

I help several Thai students learn to speak English and I have found a diagram that shows the position of the tongue while making both the R and L sounds.

When they really concentrate, they can get it right, but it is an effort.

I hope in time it will become natural to them.

That's a good chart - thanks for that.

I helped a friend of my wife to brush up her pronunciation for a job interview. After a few days I finally got her to say "Fred fried fried rice on Friday" correctly. She got the L's, R's and the C correct. When she said it correctly for the first time I said "Great!!....what did Fred Fry?". The immediate answer, with a huge smile on her face was "Flied Lie". Go figure.

Because the L and R are interchangeable or can be dropped or skipped to a great extent, particularly in everyday street/casual talk. In much the same way that we can swap a D and a T or not sound a G at the end of a word, or even drop the last letter of many words.

Once you lose the hangup about trying to get the L or R correct and realise it doesn't really matter - no problems. You just have to listen in context and even though "who" Krai can sound the same as "egg" kai, take it in context and it's all sweet.

In fact, if I ever emphasize the R in many Thai words, the Thais are really lost. They even complain about "hiso" speakers who really nail the R's - they're considered the equivalent of BBC posh. The R's are actually hard on a Thai's ear - or so I've been told.

I always thought that there was no way that I would say l for r but found myself saying อะไล recently, I think that it is rather natural. I try to be more careful since. It doesn't happen with initial consonants though, I roll those 'Rrrrs ' like a Scotsman; but no! alas, I have to admit I probably do say เหลอ for หรือ when not thinking

I don't write Thai, so transliterated. If I say sa-wat-dee krup, and really nail the R to the point of rolling it, they think I'm taking the piss.

Listened to a hiso announcer at Central Plaza once (advertising and modelling underwear, so I had to listen) and she was nailing the R's - my wife described it as nails running down a blackboard to her. Even to me it sounded strange and OTT. A bit like a British Peer with a plum in his mouth - ok for 5 minutes, but more than that and it grates!

Because the L and R are interchangeable or can be dropped or skipped to a great extent, particularly in everyday street/casual talk. In much the same way that we can swap a D and a T or not sound a G at the end of a word, or even drop the last letter of many words.

Once you lose the hangup about trying to get the L or R correct and realise it doesn't really matter - no problems. You just have to listen in context and even though "who" Krai can sound the same as "egg" kai, take it in context and it's all sweet.

In fact, if I ever emphasize the R in many Thai words, the Thais are really lost. They even complain about "hiso" speakers who really nail the R's - they're considered the equivalent of BBC posh. The R's are actually hard on a Thai's ear - or so I've been told.

EDIT: There are many sounds in Thai that we don't have in English that we do the same thing with when we speak Thai - we don't see the importance to differentiate but the Thais do. We don't have a Bp or a Dt or a Ng sound, so if we don't nail them in Thai we are saying totally different words, just like their R's and L's in English. Flied Lice is the same as Fried Rice to them:

Dang = loud

Dtaang = money

Bai = leaf (or bisexual)

Bpai = go

Noo = young person/child

Nguu = snake

So if we don't nail the Dt or the Bp and say a lazy D or B in all the contexts, it confuses the hell out of them. Mai mee dtaang (don't have money) said mai mee dang equals "don't have loud".

I've been waiting for a subject like this to ask a News Question.

Remember a Government (Transport ??) Minister, maybe a year or 2 ago whose house was robbed.

Initially said something like 2 million went missing, but the thieves said ... heck not ... they couldn't carry all his money out?

Who was that guy?

What happened to him?

I just asked the Thain gf and she say she doesn't know ... the story just went quiet?

thanks ...

And some of the bundles of 1,000B notes that were recovered had serial numbers that the DSI had traced to a French company that won a contract to build a mortorway or bridge or something. There was allegedly 100 million baht stacked to the ceiling in his house and the thieves could only get away with 10 million or so - and the muppets got caught.

The general theory in the press was that the story would die in a few month - I certainly haven't heard any outcome.

They have their ear tuned to English from a Farang customer. They then get a surprise when you speak Thai. We all speak it with a variety of accents so they are not prepared. We probably speak our Thai too fast as well.

Try saying in Thai, hello, how are you, it's hot eh?, the food delicious na? etc. Most of us trying to speak/learn Thai can get these across reasonably fluently.

Then they have a chance to focus on your accent and are "waiting" for more Thai. So make your order, and they will understand. While they're getting your order, practice your small talk.

I find my biggest problem is the same as theirs - when a Thai person starts to speak to you, you expect English and I'm waiting to tune into their specific accent of pidgin. When they speak Thai I have to recalibrate my thinking - often I'll apologise and say I didn't hear properly, say again - don't say you didn't understand because they'll revert to English and you lose the opportunity.

EDIT: Also, be confident in your speech. I have a friend whose accent is diabolical. You'd think he was taught Thai from an Eskimo that learned it from a non-Thai speaking Brazilian Indian TFL teacher. But he speaks it confidently, slowly, and loudly....and he's understood. His hello sounds like saywaart-day-cap, but he gets away with it. He throws in tones that are nearly off the scale but he gets by pretty well due to his confidence.

It has now been decided that the only way to clean up Pattays image is to close down all the newspapers and once a week the police and officials will write a report to be published to the worlds press ,omiting any thing bad that may have happened and pointing out only the good things ,this weeks first edition ,which ran to three whole paragraphs was a great sucess a spokesman said .

....and the first paragraph was dedicated to naming the 18 Officials that wanted to get their name in the paper.

Perhaps the solution then is to have the farang community nominate a group of its most prominent members, to run things for the Thais.

There are so many qualified foreigners to draw upon, aren't there? They could be recruited from the boiler room operators, the developers of poor quality condominiums, the ATM thieves, the unqualified teachers, the sexpats that sit on the barstools of the nation's beer bars, the failures who have fled to Thailand, the pedos that hang out in Boyztown Pattaya, the hotel operators who mistreat and exploit their staff the pensioners who know everything, but who never accomplished anything, etc.

There are tens of millions of honest Thais, just as there are a great many foreigners who are decent and respectable. It is easier to fixate on the negative than it is to consider the positive.

Which sub-category are you in?

When we read, see or hear everyday, whether it be the newspapers, television or the internet forums of all the bad points of the Thai business principles, it is a natural course that the majority of peoples minds will be, ironically, corrupted to expect the worst from every transaction that is done in this country.

Bad news is good news!

Obviously it does happen, a really good post by Thai at Heart (#3) outlines what can happen in the background. Yes, it happens.

On the other hand, I personally can attest to business practices in this country, whether it be through quotations, purchase orders, inspections, after sales, etc which would be regarded as normal anywhere in this world. Unfortunately these are boring, normal and therefore never heard about or presented for comment.................

The thing is very simple to me though. It's about whether people see it as utterly normal about the way they make their living.

Here it has become completely ingrained and in 99% of cases goes completely unpunished. I may be utopian, but normally the majority are honest and the dishonest are a minority. In certain organisations, customs, police, local government, etc, I have a feeling that corrupt versus incorrupt individuals is approaching 50:50 maybe even worse.

To move in ones government career here you pay a little every day, just to stay in your job, let alone pay a lot to move on. It is a cancer.

I think your 50/50 is well off the mark. I'm not saying all officials are corrupt all of the time, but I would say that virtually without exception, every official is corrupt some of the time.

If anybody can find an official that is not corrupt at least part of the time, then that official is destined for nirvana and probably a sainthood.

here's the basic manual - see if you can find the language option - it may well be there.

http://service.us.panasonic.com/OPERMANPDF/DMCFX90.PDF

here's the advanced manual - language setting on page 48

http://service.us.panasonic.com/OPERMANPDF/DMCFX90_ADV.PDF

So the 6 to 10 thousand hookers who are all criminals has nothing to do with this cess pits image ? prostitution is illegal thats why its called the land of smiles.

You're way off - more like 30,000

The Thai government says it's corrupt. The World Bank says it's corrupt. The UN says it's corrupt. The Thai people say it's corrupt.

Working on the Duck theory, it's a Duck.

I just had a look at google and there are dozens of links saying that Panasonic have a language option in the camera. You just have to figure out which option is to change the menu. Google your model number and you're sure to find it.

And if it doesn't have language options, try downloading both an English and Japanese manual and you should be able to compare the manuals to figure out how to use all the features.