virtualtraveller

He should have run to Cambodia, they would never have extradited him! I read somewhere that the Canadian authorities billed him about 1 million (yes 1 million) baht a month for security and policing services while he was out on bail, times that by 13 years... it would have been much better for him to 'invest' all that with Hun Sen, he would never have sent him back to horrible Thailand.

I suppose he could pay a mob to appeal for his pardon, a petition perhaps, or push for a return a previous constitution that sets the rules back to pre-1996 ;-)

Nah, they're not bright enough for such a shrewd move.

Hun Sen, (Drug wars) Thaksin, UDD... thugs the lot of them. They deserve each other, let them run a marvellous, upstanding, law abiding country like Cambodia.

The sword is mightier than then pen?

Is anyone else having sheer frustration and deadlock in trying to get their bank cards sent to THailand from UK banks.

Recently I lost my Barclays Bank card, called the helpline, ordered a new one, it never arrived. Ordered another one, it too never arrived. Back UK in September went into local branch, asked to collect card from there, no can do, only will send to an address. OK, waste of time requesting a third card (seems there wasn't even a card on the account so no other option). It too never arrived, then I called their Premier help line only to be told that Barclays will not send cards to Thailand, and probably didn't despatch any of the first three! They can't explain to me either why they do not have a policy of courier sending billed to my account, as Lloyds have done in the past. Final solution is to change addresses to my mothers (reluctant to do so since banks value a consist address), and have her send it. Meanwhile I hadn't bothered to renew or use my Barclaycard (credit card) for same reason, finally did change addresses and have one sent to me mum's except when she tried yesterday to get it couriered, all courier companies refused. Apparently they are no longer permitted to carry cards, everything gets X-rayed and bank cards get destroyed.

SO, HOW THE F*&K DOES ONE GET A BANK CARD REPLACED WHEN LIVING IN THAILAND!!! There's 80, 000 Britons living here apparently, many living off sterling with addresses here, haven't been back to the UK in ages. What to do???

Any clues....

Both sides have a point, 6,000 baht still isn't much for a much sought after work permit, but it's typical rip off mentality of the officials if the increase were to be 200%, say. The net result of course is that people will just go underground, not bother with a work permit and do the visa run thing.

It just boggles my mind that these highly paid officials sit around a boardroom table and come up with such nonsense right in the middle of a recession when they need to make the country as investment friendly as possible. Sure another 3000 or 5000 baht is nothing to a multinational, nice way to nickle and dime us foreigners but it clearly tells us all, 'we want you to come here and be squeezed of every dollar you have'.

What they should be doing is relaxing the work permit stipulations, regardless of the unfair hike I would happily fork out 6,000 baht each for 10 work permits for foreigners to work as English language copywriters in my business. It's a job THais can't do, but there's demand, I'm growing and bringing a lot of forex to this country and generating jobs (for people with lots of Thai dependents) in the midst of a recession. It's time they cut us a break.

What gets me is that it gives ISPs enormous power to decide what you can and cannot see. There is no abuse mechanism here to fine ISPs for mis-applying the law. So, I want to kill a competitor's website, I post something bad on his webboard, complain to the ISP who immediately block it before the comment is moderated and then they have to try to get it 'unblocked' which could take months.

Or, ISPs are less than scrupulous (what! here in Thailand, no never), you get your police buddy to pressure them into blocking a competitor's site on spurious grounds and then they have the burden of proof and long winded hassle of getting it unblocked.

And all the while the truly offensive sites (or shall we say, the ones with the info that everyone really wants to read - like a banned biography perhaps) just keep popping up on a new url.

Honestly, the people behind this whole hairbrained attempt to censor the net are exactly that!

P.S. anyone noticed lately that a warning text 'this site has been blocked by the police...' is popping up a lot in the middle of content accidentally, refresh the page and it disappears, suggesting that content filters are now in place, although not working properly, and that my friends is why we have Fourth World Internet speeds at present.

Fugitive ex-Thai PM Thaksin Shinawatra left the United Arab Emirates because he is invited to make official visits to three countries in Africa, Thaksin's former legal advisor Noppadon Pattama said Wednesday.

Don't you just love the fibs this guy talks, does anyone really believe them, I thought only official PMs and Presidents made official visits to countries.

As for Zimbabwe, I wonder why Thaksin hasn't been there sooner, him and Mugabe would fit hand in glove, Mugabe could give him more tips on how to steal elections, Thaksin could give him some money...

speaking as an ex Zimbabwean myself

Man, I could complain every week about the hopeless internet service in this country! Compared to the UK where you get reliable broadband (4mb standard) AND cable TV AND free local calls for about £18 (under 1000 baht), whereas here I pay 1600 baht for bad Cable (UBC), another 2000 baht for an almost reliable (1mb min.) business package and still pay for local calls.

In fact, since I run an internet business from home I've resorted to using two ISPs, Maxnet's 3mb/2000 baht business package, and also TOTs home 4mb shared/800 baht package on a separate line, switching between the two using wifi. Neither give more than 80% up-time. In the evenings TOT slows to about 70kb, during the day both run to 3mb, but often they time out when I access some sites. The speedtest shows a fast download, but the averate time for a page to load is 2-3 secs.

Bizarrely, sometimes the internet radio streams fine, and skype conversations are possible but I cannot access websites (ie via the international gateway). Something is definitely up, and I suspect CAT are fiddling with the whole setup.

Here's the thing, this past week both services have been going down, it's not about the speed, it just dies, or goes up and down like a yo-yo, so a page might half load then stop. No way to do business for sure. Worst of all, accessing https (secure) sites is abyssmal, usually it takes up to 10 secs to load a page, sometimes not at all, and this is a sure sign that some sort of spy software is now installed and everything you ever request via the net is being funnelled through some software slowing things down. It get's particularly slow for https because it can't figure out why it can't 'read' the data, thus holding on to the packet of data longer before sending them on.

THEN, yesterday I got this message bizarrely embedded in the middle of a wordpress admin page;

Sorry, the web site you are accessing has been closed by Royal Thai Police due to inappropriateness such as pornography, gambling or contain any information which is deemed to violate national security.

I refreshed the page, and checked the main site, everything fine. This morning a friend emailed to say that when he tried to reply to an email of mine using webmail, he got the same thing.

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.

I suspect that the monkeys installing this software haven't quite got it right and are giving the game away with this warning sign popping up in the wrong places.

All the same, I run a business that brings 1 million baht into Thailand every month and employs about 50. THere is no reason why 1000 other SMEs like might can't exist here in Thailand to compete with the Indians, which of course is a billion baht economic boost. Sadly, I have to say that Thailand is not conducive to running an internet business. Even if I budgeted 10k a month for a dedicated line I would still be experiencing the same problems as everyone else since everything seems to channel through the logjam that CAT are creating.

Certainly they know it's not legally possible, clearly they are simply applying sympathy pressure, and it's likely to lead to conflict, and Thaksin and Co. couldn't care less about bringing the whole house down since they have nothing to lose. How does a govt brand 3 million people as spoilers.

I think the Govt should act sincerely in considering the petition then advise the King to grant a pardon only AFTER Thaksin has done his time, in accordance with the law. The trouble is Thailand has a long history of unequal law, which is why 3 million people signed on believing the King could somehow bend the law for a man so loved.

This whole 'unequal law' syndrome is at the heart of the country's various problems.

In any case, if it were down to a straight pardon decision I don't think it should be given to someone who has shown no remorse, gone on the run and incited divisions.

Then, like the comments above suggest, there are other cases of corruption coming up, so where does that place Thaksin. Another pardon petition. How many times do you pardon a serial crook.

The wording of the petition was also nonsense. It's suggesting that a crook be pardoned because he's best at getting us out of the economic recession. That a fresh election be held because this govt isn't loved or respected. And they're calling that 'democracy!'

Another excuse for the terrible Thailand internet (CAT) to blame their incompetence on. I've experienced slower speeds this week, I use BOTH TOT and MAXNET at home for a home office because neither can be relied on. I'm finding that skype works and internet radio streams but gateway access to sites times out. Accessing secure sites is sometimes impossible. Goes up and down like a yo-yo!

I love the TOT family package, promising 4mb for 799 baht, yes you get 4mb in the day but in evening it's usually less than 100kb, cheaper and faster to use GPRS!

And that speedtest.net (as shown above) is the best tester, it records all your test data so you can later take your ISP to the consumer complaints council, which I encourage everyone to do!!

I can already hear the wheels of investigation clicking into underdrive!

..."we've matched the bullet casings to....we think we know who did it... we have no idea if or when we'll be revealing their identity...arrest warrants have been issued...case goes cold...head of investigation complains his work is being interferred with...police chief transferred to inactive post....stop me if you've heard all this before!

As a former supreme commander, General Chaiyasit Shinawatra should know the law is pretty clear on this. NO pardon can be given until the individual has served part of his sentence. So, get your cousin to come back and do some jail time then submit your pardon. At this point it's legally not possible to pardon Thaksin and the laws of the land should stand otherwise ever drug running hilltriber will also be entitled to the same thing.

This whole signature thing is merely a show of force.

Who needs eye protection when it's all cloudy!

I'm a travel writer, and I've been following this, I'm incensed. It seems clearly a scam to me, perhaps the evidence is stronger against some than others but clearly King Power are working with the airport police to arrest anyone who is remotely suspicious of shoplifting, opening up graft opportunities. I've written to TAT and King Power and have advised fellow guide writers to make this clear in the books and on websites. The short of it is, fact or fiction, I'm advising my readers NOT TO SHOP IN KING POWER, it's too risky - you might pick up a bottle of booze the step over into an adjacent shop with no marked boundary and suddenly find yourself missing your flight and being at the mercy of airport police. It's really not acceptable for a country that counts on tourism and I'm pretty sure someone high up will eventually put a stop to the practice when King Power start to see it affecting their sales and the government are made aware of repeated bad press over this.

Yesterday it was the most read story on the BCC, which sort of negates millions on advertising spent recently on Discovery Channel to promote Thailand as a safe place. What a pity, we all work so hard to promote this destination and it gets ruined by a few dishonest people at the airport with very poor judgement. I guess the solution is for sites like this and others to relentlessly publicise the fact and bring each new report to the attention of the authorities so they realise just how damaging this is.

Bit of a misleading headline!

Nowhere in the article does it suggest that the Hi-So get first dips, the vaccine is a govt initiative which means they should make it exclusively for hospitals to dispense to risk groups first, though this won't stop the hi-so getting their hands on it first. It's economics really, those who can afford it will pay somehow for first vaccines, but we do finance the 20 baht health scheme so that's our priviledge.

Still, they're talking 3-6 months in the UK before a vaccine is ready, who knows how the virus might have mutated by then. Here in Thailand, it seems to me the vaccine is being rushed, so I'd rather wait.

the other thing is, this is a news story, not a crisis. It's a crisis for containment but so far the death rate is not critical. I mean, how many people die a year from regular flu, this one has killed about 5000 since it broke three months ago, if a 100,000 people worldwide died by the time this flu has faded it would still be less than the annual deaths from cancer, starvation etc. It's good to be prudent but seems to me the best thing you can do is get the treatment (tamiflu) as soon as you display any symptoms of a fever thus minimising the fatality risk.

Also, it's not been made clear whether you build an indefinite resistance once you've caught this flu, in which case it might be better to deliberately get infected now before winter drains your immune system, and take the medicine and use the hospitals before they get overwhelmed and under stocked.

I've not heard stories of rampant scams like these but on the duty free example here I can attest that the 6-weeks in jail and expensive lawyer scam is real, and I suspect does occur from time to time when the 'opportunity' arises.

A good friend of my in Samut Prakarn who also runs a very popular Thai travel website relayed the details (week by week) of a long running case in his local provincial court (which now serves the airport cases) about the poor fellow who was being scammed. Apparently he had been done for shoplifting, having absent-mindedly walked out of the shop holding some face cream. King Power insisted on pressing charges and he ended up spending months in the country on bail defending a measly charge. It sounded improbable to me until it materialised that the lawyer they had recommended was deliberately delaying the case to raise more fees, and to help out his friend - a lady who was renting him a homestay room nearby. It seems the guy was naive to their tricks and went along with the whole procedure. From the first hand accounts of the lawyer's behaviour (oh, solly sir they will not accept my cheque, we must go to the bank otherwise case postponed, of course they get to the bank just a few minutes too late on a Friday afternoon), I can believe it!

Some people are more naive than others but most people from Western countries trust the police's ethics and are understandable reluctant to challenge their word.

But if theis sort of thing was happening regularly you can bet that the released and swindled offender would lodge all sorts of complaints and noises on forums after the indignity of missong flights, missing work, having to pay exhorbitant fines when it materialised their embassy could not get involved, etc....

I was at one of his Chiang Mai mansions last night, Pim was selling off all the contents and my wife and I went along for some bargain hunting. In the end we bought nothing, but I came away with a very strange feeling that something wasn't right about all this.

And so I googled the incident (we all knew about the shooting) and opened up the weird world of mr Dubie. It didn't surprise me, the man was fabulously rich and the house full of expensive stuff, but strangely none of it was used. Everything was still in its boxes, other than all the art and antiques and furniture.

Pim (his Thai wife/partner) appeared to be a real sweetie but you can't help being suspicious of a 30 year old girl who talked casually about disposing of this mansion for 50 million baht, and the other homes in Chiang Mai, or 'my home in Hawaii'. She didn't seem in the least bit melancholy about disposing of memories of her deceased hubby, and talked excitedly about spending Christmas in Europe with her friends, lots of them. Maybe this is a Thai way of dealing with death, but I just didn't get the impression she was sadly widowed.

The walls of the house were full of pictures of the two of them jetsetting, in Egypt, skiing, in front of the Taj Mahal, and plenty of pictures with gurus and 'spiritual men', which piqued my interest. There were also lots of pics of his charity involvement, mainly Pim posing with 'adopted kids' or official delegate pictures of the conferences he was involved with. I didn't ask Pim anything about him, too embarrassed.

What made the biggest impression was that everything seemed to be the result of one sudden massive spending spree, like someone who's suddenly won the lottery; loads of useless material items - the kind you give as gifts - and plenty of appliances and gadgets that had never been unpacked. It struck me as rather odd, and Pim seemed to know the exact value of each and had a set 'discounted price' for each. For a 30 year old she seemed remarkably in touch with large figures. She also referred to everything in the singular possessive; 'my golf clubs', 'my swimming pool I had added', 'my 22 rai of farm land I bought because I didn't like all the muck falling in the pool when the farmers burnt the land'... yet she was genuine, attractive, intelligent and well spoken, just the sort of girl I'd immediately want to ask out on a date.

I suspected there's a lot more to this than meets the eye and this guy is turning out to have quite a fabulously fascinating background, good or bad.

We've been herer before, some Thai buearacrat stands up on his soapbox and makes an announcement without due consultation to all parties regarding the real impact, and lax law enforcement means it never gets effectively followed through. Calls made by a Thai friend last week to the CHiang Mai immigration department, TAT office and tourist police revealed that non of them knew anything about it - says alot for the organisational structure doesn't it.

Here's what I predict will happen;

1. Those who could afford to get the money together and paperwork in order to get a non-imm visa will

2. Those who can barely afford to fly home to get a decent visa will go elsewhere (Cambodia, Philippines), and frankly, Thailand can do without them.

3. Those who are in a position to take advantage of the situation by accepting bribes to 'overlook' the 3 visa renewals, will.

4. The overal tourist spend in Thailand will barely register a dip.

5. Within a couple of years they will announce similar tightening on issuing non-imm visas again and again to the same people.

It will all come out in the wash, some people will find themselves without tenants and regular customers but it will be a marginal impact on the greater economy. As always, those determined to stay here will get more resourceful, schools will provide letters for non-imm visas (without actually apply eventually for the wp), in order to keep teachers.

Remember, the opinions mostly expressed in this string are from those who typicall survive on visa runs, they are but a fraction of the foreigners living here and a mere blimp on the 12 million tourists who visit Thailand every year.

Thailand might be a 'budget kind of place attracting budget kinds of people' but I think they have every right to get strict.

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Cheers

I'm not sure how many others on this forum use Loxinfo's IPstar stellite system for ADSL but unfortunately if you live outside of Bangkok or the CBD of large cities, then this is your only option for hi-speed internet. It's farily reliable but costly and when things go wrong their customers services is laughably bad. Here is an account of my recent experiences. Points 11 and 12 are beyond belief but not surprising in Thailand.

1. April 2004: I contacted Media Magic company, the only Chiang Mai agent for installing IPstar, as it was the only option for ADSL in my suburb. They originally quoted me 20,000 baht to install which I rejected as too expensive and then they eventually lowered this to 8000 baht. I was told that this doesn’t buy the equipment - it is just the installation fee and perpetual leasing of the dish and modem.

2. May 2004: techincian arrives, tells me where he wants to place it in my garden, tells ME to arrange a standing pole for mounting and the leaves. I know nothing about construction, I assume every installation requires this pole so I called them back asking if they knew of a sub-contractor for the job. The responded with a quote of 6000 baht for this simple job. I refused and eventually found a company who did it for only 1000 baht (all it was, was a 2 meter pole set in two feet of concrete!).

3. After installing the system, they then had to return three times in five weeks to replace ‘faulty modems’ before it worked reliably.

4. From June until April 2005 the system worked mostly reliably, all through the rainy season, but sometimes not at the guaranteed 256k.

5. In May 2005 the system become very unstable and frequently dropped out, sometimes up to 10 times a day and occasionally for several hours, this created havoc for my design team uploading sites, and distorted my monthly download allocation (meaning I had to pay more).

6. During this time I contacted support several times, but got tired of being kept on the phone to Bangkok (at my expense) for up to an hour at time while they did diagnostics. In the end it was usually found to be their gateway that was down. Eventually I gave up on this and preferred to patiently wait for it to come back on.

7. Also during this time I kept a log of every time it failed and on most occasions called their local office and asked their staff member (khun Walaiporn) to also log the complaint.

8. At the end of May I returned their invoice unpaid with a faxed letter committing to pay once they had given me a satisfactory answer about their future reliability. Since I am to move house soon I need to decide whether to change to a competitor.

9. The complaint went unanswered and so I submitted the letter directly to their local office and demanded action. They then emailed me saying they couldn’t refund me (I had never actually asked for a refund), but offered 50 free hours of dial up, with no explanation about their faulty gateway.

10. During June the system has returned to normal and is 95% reliable.

11. Since I am moving house I then asked Media Magic to come and transfer the dish to the new premises and again they quoted me 8000 baht! This is an outrageous expense for moving equipment, considering it is the same as the original setup fee (which they justified as insurance against their investment in the equipment). The job took the technician only 3 hours last time so I can calculate they are ripping us off with a rate of more than 2500 baht per hour!!

12. In the meantime my wife has discovered they are running a special offer to new subscribers for 3000 baht, so in the end we simply cancelled the old subscription and signed up for a new one to overcome the problem, but it did involve plenty of unneccessary paperwork.

13. Then yesterday I received a reminder for the outstanding June subs but the accounts department, with prefect bad timing, had screwed up and invoiced me this time for an amount of about 10,000 suggesting that I hadn’t paid for the past three months (the previous reminder stated only 3000 baht).

14. To date, I still have not received any further response from CSLoxinfo despite sending them a copy of this draft.

Considering all of the above, and the fact that this service is 3000 baht a month for only 256k (twice as expensive as conventional ADSL), I really would not recommend this service to anyone. Unfortunately, for those people outside of the main city centres, it is the only option for ADSL and I think CSLoxinfo are taking advantage of this. Our business does web development and this service just isn’t good enough to maintain the standards that our overseas customers demand.

This is a big dilemma in Chiang Mai, because there are plenty of very poor Hilltribe people and children who end up on the streets and get sucked in by a mafia who force them to sell flowers. These people are exploitable and exploited. They also have been taught nothing about morals and come from a background where there is no law saying what age you can have sex, in fact many are married off very young or are running away from such a fate.

These people are so poor and desperate they will do anything to get money, and when a paedophile comes along - bingo, you have a perfect match. The big problem is, the children see nothing wrong with what they are doing, and though they may not be consenting to sex for enjoyment they certainly do relish the financial rewards and therefore tend to keep quiet about what's going on for fear of losing their gravy train.

Obviously this calls for some serious social worker input and the Thai authorities and police afford very little priority to Hill tribes, whom many see as a lower 'caste' and 'non-citizens' (indeed a lot of the abused are refugees from Burma).

Much that Paedophilia is deplorable, this is a complex issue that requires understanding of the background. Yes the Paedophiles need to be nailed and clear messages should be sent out, but where's there's supply and demand the problem will persist.

I recently got involved in a case where a rumour about paedophiles targeting a certain massage shop outside of which young flowers selling girls gathered, threatened the future of the shop. Yes some of the flower girls were involved with an identified paedophile but the shop itself was a charity that provided work to young hilltribe women in order to keep the out of prostitution. Shop was extending its charitable services (mainly food and a TV lounge) to the flower girls and unwittingly got implicated.

A US Law enforcement officer was involved, local media jumped to conclusions that the shop owner was 'selling sex with young girls' - it was all mixed up, luckily I was able to clear the well meaning shop owner and get a signed ID of the Paedophile for the law enforcement guy.

These things need to be considered.

More about CHiang Mai at www.1stopchiangmai.com