Chalard

But all of the other countries listed require visas, while a majority of nationalities don't need any visa to enter Thailand?

So why bother joining? Seems it would just cause more administrative costs with no benefit as most tourist just get a 30 day stamp upon arrival (no visa required)

Really do not understand the negative comments at all???

I have to agree with you. Also the other countries listed in the scheme, don't have an airport hub. Many people fly to Thailand before going to Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos.

Well I don't know about Laos but you can fly into Vietnam and Malaysia and go to other destinations from them. Not sure if they get flights from many other nations in Cambodia.

I have to agree with you on the short term it might not work out for the other countries but they are all capable of upgrading their airports to international standards and probably not on a swamp. In the long run Thailand will lose.

Malaysia wasn't included in the agreement. "Five countries - Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar - agreed in 2005 to relax immigration procedures to attract more non-Asean visitors to the region under the framework of Ayeyawady-Chao Phraya-Mekong Economic Cooperation. They created the "Five Countries One Destination" campaign and ACMEC Single Visa to attract tourists from outside the region, especially from Europe, North America and Australia."

Out of the countries listed, Vietnam is the only one you can fly to directly to that I know of from Taipei, Hong Kong or Japan (North American flights). I don't really know about European or Australian flights though.

You can fly directly from Oz to HCM. Not sure about Hanoi.

Insisting on the truth can be considered cultural insensitivity in this part of the world.

Likewise in Egypt & the Middle East.

Easily do-able. Anyone ever take the jet boats from Hong Kong to Macau?

http://en.wikipedia...._Sheung_Wan.JPG

Yep, the boat service is great.

But where are the casino's in HH & Pattaya???

" The spokesperson at the forensic laboratory at Ramathibodi Hospital, which conducted the autopsies on the bodies of the two women, today confirmed that she had heard of the reports identifying DEET as the possible poison that killed the two women.

However, she declined to comment, citing a request from the Belanger family to not publicly reveal any details of the case".

More like a "request" from TAT.

The Canadian Embassy has already confirmed the families request not to reveal the autopsy results at this stage of the investigation - how about getting your facts right.

No wonder you have a username "Simple1"!!! 'Jaltsc' is just taking the piss out of the quote with his inverted commas.

In the photo accompanying the OP in this thread, what are the odd markings on the inside of the guy's arm at the elbow???

More broadly, I'd like to think justice will be done. But considering this IS Thailand, I'd be betting my money that this guy never serves a single day in jail based on any future sentencing...

BTW, now I realize, the above OP article makes absolutely NO mention of the guy's custody status... Is he in jail overnight? Did he get released on bail? Is he back at home comfortably sleeping in his cozy bed???

If you observe the picture more carefully, there's 3 lines going diagonally across the photo (Trademark???). Probably there to stop it being cut & pasted (pirated) into an article for elsewhere or whatever.

He will probably end up pleading guilty to a lesser version of man-slaughter. Most likely a 3 year suspended sentence, 200 - 400 hours of community work, make merit once per year for three years, and make compensation with the family of the deceased.

How do I know?

This exact scenario happened to a business aquaintance of mine. Drunk, drove his Benz into a motorcycle, killed the driver, drove off, sobered up and handed himself into the police station the next day.

This scenario is a little different (a little bit more high profile presumably).!!! The cops followed the killer to his house right there & then.!!! Anyway, only time will tell.!!!

Anuchai denied that police tried to help Worrayuth by testing his blood alcohol level in the afternoon although the accident happened early in the morning. He said the test was conducted later in the day because investigators conducted several tests, including collecting DNA samples and fingerprints inside the Ferrari car.

Shocking statement. Do they really think people are that stupid?

If the kid had been drinking a lot the night before, there would still be alcohol in the blood system in the afternoon anyway. A Pathologist can easily determine what the blood alcohol was at the time of the accident. Interesting times ahead!!! Better get Porntip on the case!!!

Also...the guy is 27. I think we can stop calling him a "kid" for chrissakes. He's well into adulthood.

And when you drag the body / bike for 200 metres!!!!!

Why have they waited to run such tests?

They have waited for all this flash flood water which is coming Sept 2 - 5 that is free, instead of using the precious stored water!!! lol...............

RIP Stephen, this story has gotten me thinking that maybe its time for me to say goodbye to Thailand. It was great 20 years ago but the last 5 have been bad....Lots of crimes against use Farlangs. I think there is becoming an even greater gap between the haves and the have nots....Even my brother in law who owned me 100,000 baht stiffed me.....While in the same breath he was showing the other brothers his new 2.4 million baht BMW...when my wife said something he threated her and our 8 year old daughter with physical violence....Hence I going to sell our house in Payoon Beach and give Thailand the kiss off...I don't mind getting ripped off so much as someone threating my family.....Like I told the brother....Paybacks a bitch...

TIT. Hopefully karma is quick & swift in this situation. Good luck

This is from BUSINESS WEEK:

"Mr. Eric Mark Levine served as the Chief Executive Officer of California Wow Experience Public Company Limited and served as its Chairman. Mr. Levine holds a Doctor of Philosphy in Sport Science from Mannin University , UK."

Google "Mannin University" and there is evidence that there is no such university! How can one have a PhD from a NON EXISTENT University!

Levine is as fake as his as Uni degree. Just looking at the guy every time i saw his picture somewhere, posing off with his hi-so other half. A very cunning person, that's why CW is a public company & he can't get sued when it fails.

He's just like a lot of Thai's with their fake degrees from the US Universities that you can buy!!! He went bust up in HK years ago & brought his bogus scheme to Thailand & suckered a lot of people in unfortunately.

I suppose Bangkok Bank can sell all the equipment to get some of their money back.

Apparently, Mr. Levine enjoys a modest, almost frugal, lifestyle:

http://www.designsig...ic-levine-home/

http://www.nytimes.c...h-thailand.html

http://www.nytimes.c...uket_index.html

Oh... and he's still a Canadian.

Well you can see where everybody's membership money went!!!!! lol...................

How it's possible to go bankrupt with the prices they charged is beyond me. The whole setup looks like it was a giant scam from day one.

All multi-location fitness centers like Cal WOW are scams. Some are just better managed than others. They all rely on overselling, and people's tendencies to get all motivated about fitness, and then fade away back to eating chocolate bars in a month (week?) or two, albeit with a long-term contract to pay, or a big one-time membershipfee gone. Hence the high-pressure to 'Sign today'. They know if you have a chance to cool off, you won't pay the price.

For them to stay in business, they need to carefully balance new sucker customer acquisition against overhead and upkeep, which is why the places are so often in disrepair...

Find a good locally owned community gym, pay monthly, and do your best to stay motivated. Better (and WAY cheaper) in the long run.

The septic tank that manages/d them, went bust in either HK or Sth Korea or somewhere else.

Just another greedy american. Hope everybody takes him to the cleaners.

The world can do without these greedy people ruining good peoples lives.

Karma. Som nom nar.............

Canadian... he is

Apologies. Pretty close really!!! lol............

Is it even legal for somebody touring the US on a tourist visa to be attending , as the major drawcard, what could be deemed to be politically motivated rallies like the one described in the OP ?

It seems he isn't there to visit the Grand Canyon and Disneyland like a toursit, but is instead there to create a public nuisance and rub certain Thai politicians, businessman and others faces in it. I know of at least one Western democracy closely aligned with the US that would not tolerate such activity by a tourist and would revoke the Toursit Visa and send the individual packing immediately.

Good point , he is accepting funds for dinners and the such. This would violate his tourist visa. Needs a work permit.

Maybe all the Americans that are on TV can lodge a complaint with the Bangkok Embassy about his illegal work in the US. No double standards allowed. Seeing all legal working foreigners in Thailand have to have a WP.

On the contrary, it shows he puts public safety ahead of his outreach activity.

I commend Dr. Thaksin for his consideration of the safety of others.

Thaksin lost face big time, plain and simple and I am loving it! He is a criminal, convicted while his brother in law was PM and under a Constitution that came forth through a Referendum. Shame so many people in Thailand are blinded by this creep and his dynasty.

The big difference for him is that in the US he cannot send his thugs to attack his opponents and silence them.

Brilliant.

Are the yellow shirts now causing problems in the U.S? What next a blockade of the Los Angeles Airport? I bet that if 2,000 Americans conducted themselves the same way in Thailand they would quickly be rounded up, thrown into jail and deported.

No kidding; another example of Thai double standards. If they want to protest they should do it in their own country.

How would they react if a couple thousand westerners converged on wireless road to protest Obama or Bush etc? I think we all know the answer to that one.

Probably these Thai's are legal naturalized citizens, not like in Thailand where most foreigners are regarded as 2nd class citizens.

I think it's an inspired move; the Great Coward taking his infamous disappearing act on tour. Wonderful.

Where is the next destination he'll be showing his amazing avoidance skills? (Or not, as it were)

I think if he went to the Falklands, the penguins would throw rocks at him.

Your attempt at a swipe fails as penguins have wings adapted for swimming. The wings are not capable of throwing anything.

Sadly the penguin population is endangered due to overfishing by the local and foreign fisheries.

Well mr smarty britches, the clever penguins would kick / flick stones at him. lol.

See where 'fighting for democracy' and 'freedom-of-speech' gets you ?

The b*stards hold up signs with malicious messages, and scream insults, and you can't roll burning car-tires or throw grenades back at them, or send in the ronin !

How dare people hold a view, that isn't Dear Leader's, perhaps they need a new US-Constitution too !

Brilliant.

Several of us shared a rather lengthy discussion on the safety threats of a disintegrating runway in the original article's thread at Suvarnabhumi Airport Runway Crisis Deepens, http://www.thaivisa....-crisis-deepens … see posts #130 and #146 at http://www.thaivisa....s/page__st__125

The not so short summary:

• The failure described in the original article cited above sounds as a “punching” failure, which is a structural failure; not the micro-cracking in all concrete structures, due to the shrinkage to which all concrete is subject (designed for, expected and acceptable);
  
• A "punching" failure is likely a consequence of poor foundations and subsoil conditions, rather than a failure of the concrete runway slab itself, which is generally pretty burly stuff;
  
• Poor foundations and subsoil conditions would not generally be associated with bad engineering design, but more likely a consequence of construction defects;
  
• The construction defects of all kinds could occur, but defects that could cause failures as this would likely be expansion and contraction of the clayey soils upon which the runway is built, typical of marshlands in alluvial planes, as is the site selected for Suvarnabhumi Airport (the absolute worse soils upon which to build anything ... other than a swamp, of course);
  
• The unstable soil beneath the runway would be most likely caused by:
  
  • Defective fill materials;
    
  • Insufficient compaction of the fill materials; or,
    
  • Defective subsoil drainage system (installed to prevent underground water intrusion, which causes clayey soils to expand and contract with tremendous pressures);
    

  [*]A runway as this is unlikely to dramatically fail, as in the sinkholes into which some mistakenly imagine a landing aircraft would fall; it is more likely that whole slabs of the runway (in this case, a 60cm x 60cm slab) will separate from the monolithic slab, which is what runways are supposed to be; these fractured slabs would remain suspended, roughly in place (though structurally failed), by adjoining concrete to which it is connected by steel reinforcing bars placed in the concrete slab itself;

  [*]A risk occurs when the edges of the large cracks around the separated slab agitate against each other (due to wheel loads, or the unstable soils beneath pushing up and down), causing small chunks of concrete to break off;

  [*]These concrete chunks might be sucked into the engine intake at maximum takeoff thrust, or might be chipped into an engine intake by the front nose gear; modern jet engines are designed to take a whole frozen goose through the intake at full power, and puke it out the exhaust appearing as refried beans slammed through a spaghetti strainer at Mach 2; not sure how that works with concrete chunks, which are a bit harder than frozen goose beaks and eyeballs.

My fear is that failures as this, if they are the “punching” failures described in the original article, are not isolated, but merely the symptoms of widespread deficiencies beneath the runway structure -- the real problem; that the cracking could continue and eventually reduce the runway to a series of loosely connected floating concrete slabs producing a never-ending stream of concrete debris at their edges.

Paving over them at the surface with high-strength epoxy grout only conceals the failures, and does nothing to correct the underlying problem. This might not end soon.

Thank you Swillowbee. Very professional and educational post.

Back in 1993-4, there was an article in "The Nation" saying they were sand capping the whole area at B500/m3. I was building a golf course nearby & good quality sand was costing us B180/m3. Someone made a shirt load of money on just this aspect alone. But what quality sand was used, i don't know. If the sand was coarse, good. If it was fine sand, than that could be the cause of many a problem & especially if there is no drainage pipe coming from it.

51 million tourists per year ??? 139,700 /day just the 700 is 5 plane loads.

where are they all staying ?

the average plane has about 150 passengers... do the maths

Amazingingly popular Thailand according to TAT.

what aload of BS Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport pax up 15%, cargo up 2% in Jun-2012

Thailand's Bangkok Suvarnabhumi International Airport passenger numbers up 15% - traffic highlights for Jun-2012:

Passenger numbers: 4.0 million, +15.2% year-on-year;

Domestic: 915,427, +32.4%;

International: 3.1 million,+11.0%;

Cargo volume: 115,420 tonnes, +1.6%

Domestic: 3942 tonnes, -3.8%;

International: 111,478 tonnes, +1.8%;

Aircraft movements: 24,801, +10.3%;

Domestic: 6730, +23.5%;

International: 18,071, +6.1%.

Source http://centreforavia...jun-2012-164611

Yep, TAT love telling porky pies.

HM is the ONLY person in this country to whom EVERYONE listens.

People may listen, but unfortunately most do not follow what the King has said / recommended. Interesting times ahead for Thailand.

I don't understand what flashlights and light reflectors have to do with this.

Anything to reduce the practice of drunk driving is good, but has anyone here actually seen a breathalizer used in Thailand? I haven't. And what are the penalties for drunk DUI?

I got tested in Silom Rd midweek at 10pm earlier this year. Had had a few beers but ok. Mai me ben har.

Bill used to umpire us many a year ago & we would catch up each year when the ANZAC CUP was played at Kanch.

A legend in his own lifetime & will be missed by all at the Thailand Tigers who knew him.

RIP mate & condolences to the familys.

Last time i flew to the US (LAX), the queue to get to the Immigration Officer was 2 hours. Bangkok is nothing to complain about.