astanhope

The silly thing is the fact that these businesses give out a ticket at all.

You drive into Big C or Lotus Tesco Superstore, a guy in a uniform hands you a ticket. When you leave you hand the same ticket to another guy in a uniform. It's nice to be employing two more people, but the purpose of the ticket round-robin escapes me to this day.

Perhaps the entire purpose of the procedure is to occasionally collect the 240 baht fine?

I would imagine that Xanax is a very important tool to help break the methamphetamine addiction cycle.

These initial problems are not "show stoppers" and will be overcome without much difficulty.

This plane and those its engineering inspires are what will lead the industry for the next 40 to 60 years. There's never been any safer commercial aircraft.

These early crises are par for the course for such a big project. I predict most of us choosing Dreamliner flights over alternatives when given the choice within five years.

I've been stopped while driving with my Massachusetts driver's license several times.

The only time I was hassled about not having a Thai or international license was at a roadblock setup just after the tollbooths northbound across from Don Muang. It was an early Sunday morning and there were 18 motorcycle cops harvesting farang coming out of the tolls. (The farang to Thai ratio on paid highways in the wee hours seems unusually high, incidentally...)

Anyway - having been allegedly caught "on laser" going 90 MPH I was asked for my license.

"Where's your International Driver's License? You're going to have to come down to the station with me... Or..."

I got out 500 baht and handed it to him.

He made a little "come on" gesture with his hand - more, please!

I only had another 500 on me and I gave it to him.

He handed me back one of the 500s and waved me on.

Am I misreading this?

Did he not book his flight four days after that body was pulled from the water?

Dextromethorphan (DXM) is a cough suppressant and is in most cough syrups. It is relatively safe, even in the high amounts required for intoxication. The intoxication it produces is "dissociative" and akin to ketamine or PCP. I would think that the danger associated with its use lies in injuring oneself in the immediately environment by falling or drowning, etc.

I don't think that getting high with dextromethorphan is a trend in Thailand.

In the South - [pause for racial slurs from the peanut gallery] - cough syrup containing codeine (and DXM) is used in a horrid brew made with kratom leaves and Coca-Cola. It would appear that the high sought from this brew is of the opioid variety, derived from both the kratom alkaloids and the codeine. The kratom alkaloids and codeine are also relatively safe, but addictive - but as opioids could potentially suppress breathing to the point of causing death. This is the mechanism behind most opioid overdose deaths.

It is not likely that cough syrup with the standard ingredients has caused the deaths in Pakistan. If the deceased were addicts, it is even less likely that they would have died from codeine overdoses, because as addicts their tolerance to opioids would be elevated.

One explanation might be that the manufacturer substituted for codeine or added another far more powerful (and possibly far less expensive) opioid like morphine, heroin or fentanyl (or opium, as suggested by linno) to either cut costs or to make their product more appealing to the addict community. Having read no more than the article above, sitting here in my armchair, that would be my guess as to the underlying story.

Something very similar happened in Chiang Mai perhaps ten years ago.

Two Australian men were found dead in a hotel room where they had been drinking all day - and apparently snorting heroin. The police determined that they overdosed on heroin potentiated by acute alcohol intoxication.

It always seemed like a weird way to accidentally die to me - and, indeed, I wonder how close to the truth this explanation was.

Could that first photo really be the boat that was carrying 20+ people?

A tourist visa can be arranged, then?

They will be traveling from Russia.

They are under the impression that the Thai embassies/consulates in St Petersburg and Tashkent will not issue any such visa.

Assuming that she must arrive and enter with the 15 day visa on arrival, what is her next course of action?

If they do a visa run to a neighboring capital, what sort of visa should she expect to get from the consulate there?

I have an American friend [uSA passport] arriving in Thailand soon with his paramour - a citizen of Uzbekistan. They are not married. He is in his late 40s... She is in her early 20s.

He'll get the standard 30 days on arrival in BKK, but it appears that she can only expect 14 or 15 days on arrival.

My question is:

Once they are in with 30 days and 14/15 days respectively, if they do a visa run in a nearby capital, HE will of course be able to get his 90 day visa... Is it possible on the visa run for HER to get a 90 day visa? He/they can show more than adequate financial means.

[Question re: means: Is "I'm wealthy and this is my girlfriend and I've got her covered." a sufficient show of means or does she need to show her own bank accounts, etc.?]...

Is there a city/consulate that might look more favorably upon an Uzbeki than another?

Finally, if there is no longer visa option for her on one of these visa runs, can she reenter for 14/15 again - or is there further restriction for her here as well?

Thank you!

Adam

--

Boston - Berkeley - Bangkok

OK - this is silly, but I thought of the [attached] joke and was disappointed that only two people I know on Facebook were able to get the joke. Even though I generally eschew puns, I get a kick out of this one.

I expect that more than two people on this board will get the joke!

Good lord - it would be nice if the trend of "more surveillance, all of the time" were to fade away. Unfortunately, it is doubtful that this is going to happen. It would also be great if Thailand simply put its foot down and refused to go down this path - but that seems rather doubtful as well.

I blame Allen Funt.

Electrical hazard-land.

Classic ThaiVisa comment thread here.

I keep expecting to see a comment like:

"NO QUESTION - THERE HAD TO HAVE BEEN THAI WOMEN INVOLVED BECAUSE ALL THAI WOMEN ARE GOLD DIGGERS. BELIEVE ME, I KNOW!"

In my village in Chaiyaphum there is a contingent of older women - age 55 and older, I'd say - who start their day with a bottle of Kratingdaeng fortified with a capful of "Si Sip." As far as I know, that's it for the day for these ladies in terms of alcohol. Some of them may be "maak" (betel) addicts, their house-smocks spattered with the rust colored stains that red betel spit converts into over time on an unwashed garment...

Aside from the cap o'Si Sip crowd, I'd say that serious drinking is mostly a men's sport in the village. Certainly I've known a few [mostly quite young] Isaan women with actual drinking problems in my 24 years between Isaan and Massachusetts. These few Isaan lady problem drinkers have most definitely been the exception rather than the rule in my experience, and have often been ones engaging in other aberrant behavior - self-harm, cutting, yaamaa smoking, excessive promiscuity, etc.

True is supposedly the only network that offers 3G in Chaiyaphum. Do they suck bad enough that it's not worth switching?

So the guy from Right Said Fred, now middle-aged, takes a Thai wife and travels with her, their daughter and some sort of a doppelgänger or decoy, carrying an outrageous inflatable phallus and runs into some trouble at the BTS station...

I must confess that I found the video fascinating.

Often we confuse deportation in the sense of returning a person to a country in regard to a request from that county (eg Assage) and expulsion from a country. It appears Thailand does not distinguish between the two. Is this true BadBanker?

I think you are confusing "deportation" with "extradition."

Just remember it was one lovely British man who jumped ship in New Delhi to return to Cambodia that caused all of this!

Sounds like a job for Captain Benjamin Willard.

In my country, Thailand is completely associated with nice beaches, filled with prostitutes.

My girlfriend is Thai, and lives with me in New Zealand after endless preparation to get her here on the first attempt. I feel sad for her, as I see the look on some peoples faces when they find out she is Thai - they assume that she is a prostitute that I bought here, even though is has a bachelors degree and worked at Suvarnabhumi for 2 years prior to her arrival here.

The NZ media (a generally feminist, anti-male motivated machine) would love to do nothing more than show up all those "dirty men" that go to Thailand, and further demonise Thailand in the eyes of my countrymen. Shame on this pig for arranging child sex tours (which he did, I can confirm), though shame on the media for using deception to demonise a country which does not wholly deserve its reputation.

The New Zealand media is "anti-male motivated?" All of it?

What were the anti-male motives behind this story?

Is the NZ media "anti-gay motivated," as well?

If this story was "anti child-rapist motivated," wouldn't that be a good thing?

How is it that you can confirm that the perpetrator organized sex tours?

Unfortunately my notebook computer was stolen so I must surf via iPhone which means it's a pain in the ass to collect URLs.

What I can give you is a list of latin names to check out.

butea superba

mytragyna speciosa

clitorea ternatea

nymphaea carulea

Check out a friend's website, too..,

Google Atison's Essential Oils

Asked and answered!

Does anyone recall an explosion of a fuel truck of some sort (น้ำมัน) taking place inside Bangkok proper with a number of casualties sometime in the mid or late 1980s?