impulse

I'm wondering how tourist numbers will be affected when the killing ends in Ukraine and Russkies and Ukes can go back home and not be sent to die.

As I mentioned above, they could add the tax to plane tickets and do a refund in the airport while Thai (and other exempt) people are waiting for their luggage. Show your boarding pass and passport and they hand you 300 baht and stamp your BP so it can't be used twice. Eezy Peezy. And they'd increase the take if they made the queues real long so the well heeled wouldn't bother. They could probably also do rebates with QR payment systems where you scan your BP and take the funds into your smartphone. Thai people like rebates...

I always wear long pants and a collared shirt in public in Thailand, except at the beach and at the pool. Edit: Got a kick looking for pics of pit stains and there are actually companies that sell shirts with pre-printed sweat stains. Up to $350 for a T. LGN is selling shirts with printed-on sweat stains for $350

Most Thais don't sweat like a falang.

I love Songkran shirts in the heat because they don't show sweat like a solid or striped shirt. I buy enough every season to last for a couple of years because they're not really made to last. In between seasons, I can always go to the BoBae market near Hua Lampong train station and buy more. They're even cheaper in the off season. I get compliments all the time for the shirts back in the USA.

Sure you can. Thai people love a rebate. They can take their international boarding pass with their Thai passport and queue up for a 300 baht rebate while they're waiting for their luggage. Same with anybody holding a WP. Though I don't know many of them who would get their panties in a wad over a $9 fee. I'm already paying over $150 in taxes on every airline ticket. Another $9? Big whoop.

It's more along the lines of putting a temporary hold on paying them while they audit the veracity of the charges. Which is what any properly run business would do if they discovered some of their employees were paying bogus invoices. It's nice to have some adult oversight for a change.

I don't mind paying the 300 baht as long as it's easy to pay, with no queuing up. And no SNAFUs if paying it online. Just add it to the airline ticket.

if anyone takes the train, bring a mask. The open windows can let in a lot of dust, especially during some agriculture seasons. You may not need it, but you'll be real glad you have one if you do.

I love K-Buri. For the river, the history and just kicking back. It was my favorite weekend getaway when I worked in Bangkok. I try to get up there for a day or 3 whenever I'm in Thailand. Take the train at least your first time, just to say you rode on the Death Railway. And stay right on the river the first trip, though there are great hotels in town, a short walk. That top photo in the OP is pretty old. There's a massive temple to the right of the bridge (and has been for a looong time) and there's a faux WW2 camp on the left side of the bridge. Highly recommended to spend a few days, and make your way to Hellfire Pass for more history, especially Aussies, Brits and Kiwis. Don't forget to visit the Allied cemeteries and read some of the touching markers. Visit the night market near the train station for food, except on Saturday night when the night market is under the Skywalk at the river. Great examples of Thai street food. I stock up and snack for a few days back at the hotel. I also recommend renting a kayak and have them drop you a few miles north of town and paddle and float back. Great wilderness experience. Shameless plug... Seat61.com is a great source of travel info to get there and back.

It's hard to tell which of these minor judges just hate Trump, which of them have wives (or kids) that work for the NGOs, and which are just stoopid. DOGE will let us know, but it may take some time to train the AI. Then it'll take Bondi some time to follow up. In the meantime, Roberts just saved taxpayers from wasting a ton of money.

Apple says it’s fixing a technical bug that caused its voice-to-text system to briefly replace the word “racist” with the word “Trump.” Some iPhone users had reported on Tuesday that when they spoke the word “racist” using Apple’s voice dictation feature, the system automatically typed in “Trump” before quickly correcting to the word “racist.” The company on Tuesday acknowledged the glitch that it said was causing its system to incorrectly suggest the word “Trump” when users spoke words with “r” consonants, and said it was rolling out a fix. Apple fixing bug that caused dictation feature to type the word ‘Trump’ when users said ‘racist’ | CNN Business That "fix" should include the names of the employees they kicked to the curb. Nobody's buying their excuse. (Except those with the syndrome)

Is that like those German guys who laughed at him for saying they'd made a mistake tying their energy future to gas from Russia? Who's laughing now that the German economy is pretty much in the toilet?

Both of those statements have been disproven by more up to date studies.

Something's causing the massive increase. And the people I trust the least to do the investigation are those on the hook for $ hundreds of billions of liability if it turns out to be their product. Whether that's Big Farma or Big Food or even cell phone radiation. We deserve to know.

Maybe. But the death rates in the USA were decreasing steadily long before the MMR vaccine came out in 1971. Most people seem to think that was due to improved sanitation and living conditions, and would have continued to drop with or without the MMR. I don't claim to know the answer. I want our health experts to dig into it, free of the corrupting influence of those profiting from it. In countries with deplorable sanitary conditions, they obviously may need a different calculation.

Someone needs to explain the massive increase in the rate of autism and other chronic childhood (and adult) diseases that we've seen over the past 50 years. It may not be vaccines causing it. But I kinda want to know. There are too many entities trying to squelch the data, good, bad and indifferent. I'm hoping RFK Jr digs into the data. It's out there. We just need smart people not paid by moneyed interests to dig into it. A little help from the AI community would be handy, too.

That's a pretty concise summary of the state of things. They really screwed the pooch with the mRNAs. (Those are my words, not from any specific sources)

The condo owner obviously rents his place out, not the building owner. I don't know how the numbers shake out in Thailand, but back home, the developers often rent out unsold units to generate a little revenue. Which makes it tough to complain and get any resolution when it's the developer and not a single unit owner.

From the linked article: Officials did not answer questions regarding the patient’s specific age, any other health issues, or details about the patient’s schooling in a press conference jointly hosted by Covenant Health and the City of Lubbock Public Health on Wednesday. That's a little light on details given how many students in Texas came across the border in the past few years, from countries where the MMR vaccination rate is low and underlying health issues abound. Especially when the OP is blaming anti-vaxxers for the death. Often, there's a reason they go light on the details. If they want to push a narrative.

Nope. I follow the news. That's Tara Reade back when she was hot. She deserves the $100M for all the stress that did that to her. But she should get the money from Joe personally and from the Dem party. Not the US taxpayers.

When I'm walking through a dodgy area, I take a few 20 baht notes out of my wallet and put them in my shirt pocket. I've never been accosted like in the OP, but I often peel off one of the 20's to the beggars that I pass all the time. That's in Khlong Toei when I lived near Asoke, and in Chinatown where I stay on my visits nowadays. I still use cash for 99% of my daily purchases (By the numbers. I pull out the plastic for high value purchases)

Levis Dockers and songkran shirts (my favorite shirts) are 150 baht in Bangkok (if you can even find the songkran shirts back home). I don't know if the Dockers are used, fake or factory rejects, but they look fine to me. I've bought a bunch of them. 2 pairs are cheaper than a Mickey-D's burger at the airport.

I'd vote for a $5 million citizenship program, as long as they do a meaningful criminal background check.

Every month, I make a round trip from north China to Bangkok and almost every month the planes (usually 737-800 and A320) are full. And I haven't noticed a drop in the number of flights to select from. The ticket price varies by season and special holiday (as do the hotel rates). I think the discrepancy lies in the "94% increase in cancellations". That's nowhere near the same thing as a 94% drop in passengers. Very few people cancel a flight after they've been charged for it. I've only done that once in the past 22 months because it cost more to do a change than to cancel my flight and get another. I did have the airline cancel one flight but they got me on the same flight next day. If only 1 in a hundred flights get cancelled, then 1.94 flights in a hundred isn't a huge number. And on an aside, traveling with the Chinese airlines (where I'm often the only laowai on the plane) has gotten pretty pleasant over the past 25 years since my first flight on a Chinese airline. Back then, it was not pleasant. Nowadays, it's fine.