Escapologist

Web development must be extremely lucrative in Thailand. Porches galore! Wow, he must have been the only web design guy in Thailand!

35 minutes ago, hottrader77 said:

think you can definately say this was not suicide 

 

Unless he paid the killer to do it. Just thought I'd add that in case the police are looking for ideas.

Trump wants to be friends with Russia and Clinton wants war with Russia. Quite important in a discussion about North Korea. Clinton has already proven herself to be serious trouble and that is unlikely to change if she is handed the presidency. The honest headline is "Hilary Clinton and the Threat of Nuclear War". That's a much more palpable proposition.

So, if I understand this opinion piece correctly, if you are doing something voluntarily then you have no right to complain about unexpected consequences? I eat at a restaurant voluntarily but surely I can complain about a dodgy dish? The analogy of eating at someone's house is not correct. Thailand does not provide free holidays to tourists. Many complaints about Thailand are entirely legitimate. Expat white knights, who invariably attempt to justify the unjustifiable, do little more than ingratiate themselves on their new Thai companions. The rest of us see it for what it is.

Seems like Buakaw has more badly damaged pussy than Beach Road.

Myanmar, apparently, is the most generous nation and here is why: "the majority of Myanmarese people are highly devout Theravada Buddhists, regularly giving money and time to ordained monks and nuns, and for the upkeep of temples.". That kind of giving isn't what we imagine when we think of generosity. I think of national and international charity work. Disease, hunger, homelessness, that kind of thing.

In the UK we have drugs, we have mentally unstable people, we have blacks, we have hispanics....... we have everything that america has.

except, we dont have stupid gun laws, and we dont have one mass killing per day

can you see the correlation?

Would a "stupid" gun law be one which disallows licensed gun-ownership and the ability to defend against violent criminals with guns? A law that allows police to take notes whilst paramedics stuff your corpse into a bag? Every man and his dog has a gun in Switzerland. Low crime. Canada, lot's of guns, not many gun murders. Can you see the non-correlation? In Britain, farmer Tony Martin was jailed for defending himself with a gun against repeat burglars (gypsies), who'd invaded his home for the umpteenth time, after the police had refused repeatedly to do anything about them. That's a very "stupid" gun law indeed.

Any 'Western' investigator delivering supremacist rhetoric, in pre-emptive defence of an insular native population, would be sacked on the spot. No questions asked. I wouldn't like to be Burmese in Thailand right now! Incredible stuff.

The editor of The Mirror is just yet another one of these idiots who probably wouldn't have enough self control to step outside his socialist nanny state, wet dream known as The UK.

Love it!

Thailand is a scary place.

Yeah sure, rather go to Egypt, Tunisia, South America, Philippines etc.

Still safer to travel here than go to US.

Who visits an entire country?!

Some of the attitudes on here are disgusting. Boats full of human beings are drifting out at sea desperate and hungry and some of the attitude is "so what, they are Muslims they deserve it" you do know it is the Rohingya that are victims of brutal prejudice in Burma right? Think before you Start spitting your ignorant, racist bile. And Yes I would take them into the uk where despite similar attitudes multi-culturism works.

Multiculturalism has failed in the UK, that much has even been admitted by the head of the "Equalities and Human Rights Commission" although, even without the recently exposed decades-long mass drugging and sexual exploitation of English kids by gangs of Muslim men, this has been obvious to most of us for a long long time. With so many thousands of casualties in the South of Thailand, I can't see that opening the border to potentially nearly a million Muslims will sit well with many Thai citizens. It has been a disaster in England and the Thais would be wise to learn lessons from that. The greatest enemy England faces is the cultural Marxist left and Thailand doesn't seem to have been sufficiently infiltrated by that crowd, yet....

When we speak of crime level back home we usually refer to specific areas. I wouldn't have thought that nationally aggregated crime stats are that useful. In the UK we have an online crime map which shows us crime statistics right down to street level. But the UK government is big and needs to record statistics about everything. Probably not the same in Thailand and so a like-for-like comparison is probably unlikely. I'd say that Thailand can be dangerous for foreigners though unless we wise up on arrival. Knowing what areas to avoid and when to avoid them is always a good start! It's a bit lame to hang about at 3am in drug-pushing-transvestite-hooker central and then complain about crime. One thing that a lot of tourists like me find difficult to deal with though is all the scamming. And, yes, it is conspicuously bad in Thailand. Drives me nuts!

King's been reigning since the late 1940s and now he's in his late 80s and one of the richest men around. Less reason to have the blues when you can afford a life of luxury on the back of brainwashed fans who live in relative poverty. Nice.

and the IRA finally agreeing to talks. The good people of America, who had funded the 'Freedom fighters' for so long had a taste of terrorism and the funding dried up. No money, no bombs.

I always thought the British government gave in to the IRA when they blew up the conservative government conference in Brighton and frightened Margaret Thatcher into surrender.

The IRA frightened Margaret Thatcher into surrender? Oh dear. Thatcher was defiant against terrorists, whether they were funded by the Iranians or by the Americans, and remained so. The weasel who replaced her might have had different ideas, as did Tony Blair who completed the capitulation. It might be useful to read some of Thatcher's speeches as Prime Minister in the years following Brighton.

"only described as “farang,”"

I feel a bit sorry for the Thai 'master-race'. They can be an endearing bunch but they are so terribly ignorant about the world outside of their very small bubble - and globalisation is going to hit them very hard indeed.

"A foreign national is being held for attempted rape on board a Bangkok airways flight." There, no xenophobic epithets required, nice and easy.

Really? You see this ONLY in Thailand?

Sir, You gotta read more!

Parochialism is hardly unique to Thailand, but it is very striking there, and we are commenting on a Thai news article.

"only described as “farang,”"

I feel a bit sorry for the Thai 'master-race'. They can be an endearing bunch but they are so terribly ignorant about the world outside of their very small bubble - and globalisation is going to hit them very hard indeed.

"A foreign national is being held for attempted rape on board a Bangkok airways flight." There, no xenophobic epithets required, nice and easy.

I've only ever visited Thailand as a tourist and, aside from the low-level rip-offs, queue-jumping, etc, I've been robbed a couple of times (card theft from hotel room in Patong and pick-pocketed near Silom), and attacked by a ladyboy scam artist in Chiang Mai. When I've been away from the tourist traps, I've mainly been done by tuk tuk drivers pulling a fast one. Small fries but still annoying and unacceptable. Apart from Chiang Mai though, I've only ever felt physically threatened by the damned soi dogs and, in that respect, I usually feel safer in Thailand than at home in the UK.

So, from my strictly tourist perspective, my opinion is that there are obvious pros and cons, in terms of trouble and strife, when visiting Thailand. You claim to have had no trouble in 36 years of living there but it would be interesting to hear what issues other long term expats have encountered e.g. effective lack of rights, business dealings, handling unsatisfactory services or building work etc. There are plenty of horror stories and, sadly, plenty of expats who seek to play them down by automatically blaming the victim: 'the foreigner made a Thai lose face and so he had it coming', etc, excuses so utterly ludicrous that they would never be uttered back home but which are sometimes, nonetheless, given by expats in Thailand.

One quick point. The idea, that foreign victims of criminality in Thailand typically deserve it, is a pretty hateful one and it seems to have made its debut in this thread. I can understand a Thai-supremacist coming out with that kind of nonsense but quite why the holier-than-though mob needs to repeat it remains a mystery.

Cameron is in no position to halt EU immigration and is only saying any of this because his electoral lies and deceit on this issue were exposed last week by Boris Johnson.

Free movement of persons is basic concept of EU. It cannot be changed ...

Do British citizens realize that Britain on its own = outside the EU, means nothing in geopolitics and global world?

Also, today we can only guess what will happen with Northern Ireland in 10-20 years.

British Empire definitely started falling apart after WW1.

What about Great Britain? We were almost there few weeks ago. Maybe it is beginning of the end ...

Nationalism is destructive same as expecting too much ...

The UK is one of the largest economies on Earth and will still trade with the EU after secession - as do other countries who are not members. The difference will be that the UK will trade without the EU's approval and with anyone - as it always did beforehand.

Do non-Brits realise that British citizens have lost their democracy to a anti-democratic socialist bureaucracy which began life posing as a trading-agreement?

Your mention of the British Empire is interesting in the context of the EU because the EU is already teetering on the edge of its own destruction. Because it is a failed model and an anachronism. Run by ex-communists who are accountable to nobody. Want to elect different legislators? Tough luck! If you wish to see what happens when such an artificial political project goes pear-shaped then look no further than the Balkans.

Earlier this year I viewed an online video of an Indian woman, a school teacher, 'self-immolating' during a political protest to do with working conditions. Something I clicked on out of curiosity and turned out to be a very big mistake on my part. Perhaps the worst thing I've ever seen and it affected me for many months afterwards. That's just no way to go. Very sad that the Thai woman did not have an emotional support network to straighten her head out. It's only money and certainly not worth dying for. Especially not in that way; which is a very great possibility for her. Crazy stuff.

There appears to be an undercurrent of racism seeping throughout much of this awful Thread.

Many respondents are disparaging towards the Thai nationals who the “presume” to be guilty of these horrific crimes (more than one crime having occurred). Assumptions, without evidence, having already been made as to the race of the guilty party(s).

I am almost hoping, from a selfish perspective, that the perpetrator was a fellow caucasian under the influence of whatever mind-altering substance many of our Western “kids” indulge in, whilst in LOS.

Better that than another premeditated and callous act on the part of yet another “evil” Thai or Thais - with whom I hope to share my Autumn years, in the not too distant future. Further, my own twenty-something daughter and my own twenty-something son already have their rooms booked on this very island for a few weeks time so better this is an abberation than what appears to becoming a pattern of the "normality" of risks for tourists in what is increasingly difficult to refer to as "The Land of Smiles" anymore

My most sincere condolences and thoughts go out to the loved ones of these victims and my unbearable regret that they have been denied their right to what is ordinarily considered a full lifetime.

As an edit:

Racism is almost invariably a two-way-street and I, for one, would like to see the term "Farang" (which is a disparaging descrition of a "foreigner" which is used and even encouraged to be used by Thai children from the moment they begin uttering their first words) be made to be as intollerable and unacceptable as is the "N" word in much of Western culture, these days (but I ain't holding my breath)

There is an undercurrent of suspicion which is either justified by historical precedent or is not. Issues such as Thai "racism" (your word) towards "farang", a consistent history of Thai-on-tourist murder, and a consistent history of seeming Thai police cover-ups all combine to fuel such suspicion. We shall have wait and see how this case unfolds. Being a subhuman "racist" I will bet on the perpetrator being local. I can see how learning to shuffle the truth under the carpet is good preparation for living in LOS though. Good luck and pray that you are not on the list of the fallen.

You show me an English town with significant numbers of Muslims and I'll show you a town infested with the racially-targeted sexual exploitation of underage poor English girls (euphemistically referred to as "grooming"). Nearly a decade ago, Greater Manchester police banned the airing of a Channel 4 documentary about Muslim paedo gangs in Keighley on grounds that it might interfere with the upcoming elections (and the BNP might take votes from Labour). Well, a quick Google reveals that not much has changed in Keighley as a consequence of Labour's politicisation of the police and local authorities.

Why would the Greater Manchester police ban a Channel 4 documentary about paedo gangs in Yorkshire? How could they? They have no power to ban any TV programme.

You are right, it was West Yorkshire police, Chief Colin Cramphorn, to be precise. Nonetheless, the point about the police stopping the broadcast remains; even if my memory is more than a bit sketchy! Keighley, Bradford, there have been so many discovered cases that it's easy to get confused!

From 2004: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3750557.stm

Why does a grown man need to consult his wife in order to know whether it's okay to be charged the unofficial VAT for non-Thais? I don't live in Thailand and was recently visiting Ayutthaya with a UK-based Filipina. She doesn't speak the lingo and so I did the talking. The Thais assumed she was Thai and she was charged the standard prices whilst I was charged the non-master-race prices. In more globalised societies this is referred to as "racial discrimination". However, when in Rome... I suppose they continue to get away with racial discrimination because visitors are still willing to take the rough with the smooth and are often willing to temporarily suspend their principles because the amounts in question are often relatively insignificant and they don't want to ruin their holidays with unnecessary aggro. The automatic acceptance of this practice by many Thais is, from the perspective of an outsider who was brought up in a relatively fair and principled country, a deeply ugly aspect of Thai culture.

Which grown man needed to consult his wife? I missed that post.

Apologies for misreading one of your responses on the first page Seastallion. My actual point, however, is concerning the outsider's perception of Thailand as a society without principle. A perception which is routinely backed up by good ole in-yer-face examples.

Why does a grown man need to consult his wife in order to know whether it's okay to be charged the unofficial VAT for non-Thais? I don't live in Thailand and was recently visiting Ayutthaya with a UK-based Filipina. She doesn't speak the lingo and so I did the talking. The Thais assumed she was Thai and she was charged the standard prices whilst I was charged the non-master-race prices. In more globalised societies this is referred to as "racial discrimination". However, when in Rome... I suppose they continue to get away with racial discrimination because visitors are still willing to take the rough with the smooth and are often willing to temporarily suspend their principles because the amounts in question are often relatively insignificant and they don't want to ruin their holidays with unnecessary aggro. The automatic acceptance of this practice by many Thais is, from the perspective of an outsider who was brought up in a relatively fair and principled country, a deeply ugly aspect of Thai culture.