virtualtraveller

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.

Hello,

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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