WithMarco

in the meantime, NIKON fired off an official announcement declaring they lost more than 130 million $ because of the flooding in their factory in Ayutthaya !

Extraordinary Losses Due to the Flooding in Thailand

http://www.nikon.com/news/2012/0203_01.htm

... i guess now they will think twice before investing in thailand again.

nothing will change as long as Burma is sort of "closed" to mass tourism.

one day Burma will beat the hell out of thailand hands down, go and see by yourself

what they have in store, and instead their government is hellbent on making life harder

for the few tourists left.

and cambodia too, wonderful coastline destinations, all cheap ass pricewise, and yet

they're struggling to bring tourists in.

it will be hard to bring thailand down as long as its neighbours are shooting theirselves

in the foot !

the overpriced Thai Bath will only keep backpackers out, but they're already deserting thailand

since many years anyways, see the crowds in Laos for instance.

once again thailand exists because of a stroke of luck, nobody would have given a shit about

thailand during French Indochina or British Burma ... then the indochina wars, the vietnam war,

the khmer rouges, the junta in burma ... end of the story thailand became the only safe place to go

in the area and withtout having to move a finger .. easy life for the thais ! but one day the party will

be over !

the Thai Bath is absolutely overpriced, anything else comes later.

and talking about ripoffs and scams, please try Vietnam first...

as for the beaches with white sands there's plenty of them in Cambodia, Myanmar, and even southern Vietnam.

but you see, mass tourism is completely off the radar in these places, thailand is perfect for families and for

chavs on their first holiday overseas.

just to make a comparison, where i live here in cambodia at the moment i have crystal clear water, unspoiled islands nearby,

white sand beaches, i'm paying 150$/month to rent a seaview apartment, 0.5$ for a pint of Angkor beer during happy hour,

3$ for a grilled fish dinner on the beach, 0.5$ for a mototaxi ride and 1-2$ for a tuk-tuk ride anywhere, try that in Pattaya or Phuket !

but gullible tourists would complain the place is too dirty, sleazy, hard to reach, and yadda yadda.

same same as the comments i heard in Burma and in Phu Quoc by the way.

well, let these tourists getting scammed in phuket and may they learn a lesson or two.

after all there's a reason why they choose phuket in the first place, this type of tourists are not independent travellers, they would

hardly ride a bus alone in south east china, going off the beaten track in places like cambodia or burma would be a real

"adventure" for them, hahahaha.

Maybe they just don't want "you". They want me.

talking about numbers i'm responsible for having told at least 50 people i know to avoid thailand and to travel elsewhere

and i'm certainly not the only one.

it's time to be more vocal about all this anti-farang sentiment in thailand.

a tourist has been electrocuted in Phuket for god's sake, and nobody gives a rat's shit because a dead farang isn't

even news for the thai medias and once again the international medias are scared about ruining the reputation

of thailand while having no problems with headline about sharks eating europeans in Seychelles.

it's not our fault if thailand is becoming a dangerous cesspool and we're blamed for their failures.

i just hope the new government launches new draconian laws against tourists so that people will finally realize

the grass is a lot greener in the nearby countries and leave thailand to the thais.

I think that in the deep recesses of their mind, they harbor deep-seated feelings of superiority and entitlement, such that they become indignant and incensed by anything they see as the inferior little brown people attempting to restrict their god-given right to do whatever-the-heck they feel like doing.

considering the average literacy standards in Thailand this is not surprising.

how come this doesn't happens in Malaysia, HK, Singapore, Japan, etc ?

i'm so sick of comments like these from deluded farangs who think to be "thai"

just because they bought a condo or married a girl from Isaan.

sorry but none of you will ever be fully accepted as one of them and you know

very well even your half-thai kids will be always called farangs from their pals.

apart rare cases, farangs feel to be superior for very good reasons and it has

nothing to do with having bigger pockets

there are plenty of countries spitting on our faces, thailand is just now doing its best

to top the list.

while i've seen plenty of empty hotels and restaurants in my lasts vivits to thailand

i see a touristic boom anywhere in laos, cambodia, vietnam, and even Burma,

it's clear that tourists are spending their money where they're more appreciated

and they're voting with their feet.

touristically speaking, thailand has nothing at the level of Burma or Angkor Wat,

the party will soon be over one day once the thais neighbours wake up and build

decent infrastructures.

i'm actually living in Cambodia and the number of tourists is booming despite the heavy rains, slow transportations, third world standards and the horrible roads.

frankly i'm more and more surprised reading so many farangs defending thailand for introducing stricter rules.

here i can buy a 12 months visa with no questions asked from any tour operator or guesthouse and renewing it without ever having to leave the country.

i wonder what exactly cambodia is missing compared to thailand, some of you guys should seriously wake up and realize thailand is just hellbent

on booting farangs out.

why staying in a place that clearly stated once again they hate us ?

we're not welcome in Thailand, get over it.

and there's no reason to counter reply saying these rules are the norm elsewhere, we farangs are not Thais and if they want farang money

they better make it easy for us to get in their country or there are so many better and cheaper and easier alternatives already.

we're the ones fueling Thai tourism and therefore we should have special visa laws, as simple as that.

too many guys here are scared about facing the hard truth.

a masterstroke .. yes for Thai propaganda ! and if they do it it's because there's a lot of monet at stake flowing in their pockets.

nothing comes free in Thailand, hahaha !

there's something pathological in the thai psyche. in other asian countries when they can't cover up anymore the government's BS they simply admit their mistakes and make some heads rolling, in thailand this never happens, they would make yet another coup rather than admitting the tourist sector is going down the drain because of widespread scams, overpricing, and third world service industry sold at premium prices. thinking about it, i never ever in my life heard a thai saying he was wrong, if you're lucky they will say they're sorry or blame somebody else.

<br>

<br>i am against any violence and dont break any lawys ......but my friend glock 17 is waiting for scum like these guys.....this is a shame for Thailand and a shame for the Police to let gangs driving armed and dangerous around.<br><br>Protect yourself and buy a gun!!!!...legal...and if not posible ,buy it the other way..maybey stupid,but i could not come up whit a better idea.<br>

<br><br>@Kamluan: "... <b>Protect yourself and buy a gun!!!!...legal...and if not posible ,buy it the other way..maybey stupid</b>..."  INDEEED, that is really a stupid comment!<br>

so you guys want people to work for 12hrs a day for a pittance in order to make you rich, how's that different from slavery or outsourcing to burma and laos ?

and then you wonder why Thaksin won by a landslide ?

there's just too much money flowing in Phuket.

you rich tourists are to blame for all this, you can't pretend a former shithole fishermen village to remain indifferent to wealthy european tourists

and their luxury villas spending in one morning what the thais earn in a month.

spain, portugal, italy, greece, croatia did the same in the past 20 yrs and tourists moved en mass elsewhere.

it will be the same for thailand, see how many are flocking in vietnam, laos, and cambodia and the only thing they see

in thailand is Suvarnabhumi airport.

airlines are adapting as well, there are now direct flights from europe to Hanoi, Saigon, and Phnom Penh.

Bangkok is no more the "hub" of SE asia, that's Kuala Lumpur eventually and it's cheaper too with air asia and malaysia airlines.

come to cambodia !

no visa hassles, cost of life 30-40% less than thailand, cheap booze, cheap apartments, cheap girls.

who cares, phuket is dead since a long time, what you have now just the rotting corpse.

better Thaksin than Obama.

can forangs legally own guns. Not mickey mouse ones i mean big proper american and english made guns. like glock 17's smith and wessons. M16's ????

i like guns BOOM BOOM

i don't think legally you can but in cambodia everything is possible as long as you pay enough, suffice to say one of the tourist attractions in Phnom Penh

are places where you can shoot with different rifles and even portable rockets.

You can lead a horse to water...

exactly my same experience with other scams.

so many fresh farangs think to be smartass but when they go abroad they're just a fish out of water

and get scammed as soon as they set foot off their banana boat.

no point in trying to educate them, they don't want and they think they don't need and they see you

as a paranoid negative expat bugger or just as a plain loser who can't enjoy thailand as they do.

Good bye then.

sorry but he's right, tell me of another country where an entrepreneur running a legal business and hiring local employees has

to make silly visa runs and being treated as second or third class citizen in order to have a work permit and all the other

paperwork needed for his company.

many farangs will sell their business to thai buyers and these businesses will go down the drain as the thai

are simply not cut to run a business targeting farangs, i've seen this scenario plenty of times, after all there's a good

reason if it's farangs opening bars and pubs and restaurants and not the thais.

i can't remember a single successful french restaurant or irish pub run by a Thai and guess why ...

i've met many farangs in vietnam and cambodia who moved from thailand and they're pretty happy, tourism is rising fast, and it's

a lot easier and safer to run a biz there.

Why do these morons keep hiring the jetskis?

Surely everyone now knows what goes on, stop hiring them and they go bust simple!!!!

after years of living and traveling abroad i concluded that tourists going in holiday do

all the shit they would never dare to do at home as they are vacationing and they "must" have fun

at any cost, no matter if they break a leg or get scammed, it's all fun for them, even getting badly scammed

might be part of the adventure i'm afraid...

no wonder many thais think farangs are all crazy &lt;deleted&gt;.

i tried in vain to warn a few first timers in pattaya about all the scams in town and all i've got is being told

i'm too negative or paranoid and that they're in holiday and want to have fun.

i don't waste my time anymore warning people, they will learn the lesson on their skin, serves them right.

no problems with visas here, just pay and go, the way it should be ... isn't it just a tax for farangs after all ?

prices are quite cheaper than thailand, but you won't find much variety about minimarkets and supermarkets,

and no tesco and carrefour, but plenty of western imported food, wine is as cheap as 3$/bottle up to 100s of $,

beer is good and cheap and you can also find thai and lao brands.

sihanoukville is a joke compared to pattaya or hua hin or ... and phnom penh is no match with bangkok or chiang mai

but it's a vibrant and rough place, plenty of expats and nightlife.

i miss many things of thailand but at the moment i'm pretty happy here and the people is quite more friendly and down to

heart.

scams abound but are pretty obvious for anyone experienced with SE asia, and they're not too much pushy.

security can be a problem and the police is a big joke.

hospitals are scary places but in phnom penh now there are many private foreign hospitals (not cheap).

compared to years ago this country it's changing, but not as fast as it should be.

sihanoukville could become the new pattaya for instance if they just wanted to but so far it's just a big mess.

why not HongKong or Singapore or Malaysia ?

i'm moving into development of apps for mobile platforms and i'm wondering too where to setup my biz and thailand is definitely out of question,

just too many hassles, taxes, and visa BS.

I have it on good authority that is far easier and less bureaucratic to get long-stay visas and work permits in China than in Thailand. Now Thais tend to be very proud of their country. Wonder how they think when it's pointed out that they look more insular, paranoid and bureaucratic than the world's largest and most notorious Communist Dictatorship?

absolutely.

i lived and worked in china and it was relatively easy, and same for some friends of mine who got a student visa.

oh and if you pay them well there's also plenty of visa agencies involved in dodgy operations and gray areas...

as far as farang visas are concerned, only myanmar beats thailand.

so what will they do with the tens of thousands of burmese, lao, and khmers working for a pittance in thailand ?

or do the new regulations only apply to farangs ?

too little, too late.

nothing will ever change in thailand.