Docno

Did you ever think that maybe he was just a prick from the start and the weed turned him into a reasonable human being? And yes, I'll take science over 'one guy in the towing business'...

Well, at least the money is going to 'The State', which clearly means it will be used for the betterment of Koh Samui and the well-being of its people... WAIT - wrong forum (wrong reality?)

The Chinese government is no doubt guilty of severe human rights abuses in Xinjiang, but the Chinese have had (an imperial) presence there for more than 2000 years, and the area was fully 'absorbed' into China in 1759. That's just 52 years after Scotland lost its independence in the Acts of Union. It's actually the same year that the French were cut off from Quebec in Canada, and the Canadiens were 'absorbed' into British North America. Many of Russia's non-ethnically-Russian republics were absorbed into Russia in the 19th century (and many willingly). Hawaiians were forced to join the US in that century as well. There are many instances around the world of peoples of different ethnicity/religion/culture being absorbed into larger nation-states, willingly or not, and many of the ones we don't question happened more recently than Xinjiang.

Many years ago, my gf (at the time) and I went to Siem Reap with another couple and had some 'happy pizza' there. My gf ended up throwing up (bit of a buzzkill for me), but I was otherwise very happy. The other girl felt absolutely nothing. But the other guy had a strong paranoid reaction, believing there were Khmer Rouge guerillas prowling outside his hotel rooming window. It was his first time trying this, so maybe he just wasn't ready for it. He didn't mix with any prescription meds and he wasn't much of a drinker. Just goes to show different people can have very different reactions even when other meds aren't in the mix. I wonder if this was the first time for this lassie too...

Yep ... Filipino and Indonesian is sometimes a challenge because they are both Austronesian, but they can still often be distinguished (without hearing their accent). Cambodians, Thais, and Burmese all come from very different ancestral lines that are more distinct than those of western European nations. Then again, after being in SE Asia for 25 years, you pick these things up. At least throw in a Vietnamese and a Lao to make it more challenging!

Yep, this silly story, unworthy of an article, is disrupting my day when I woke up to read about the latest disaster in the Middle East.

"There's no way these biases are as entrenched in the general population as they are in sex tourism centers like Pattaya and Phuket" Fallacious reasoning. You're missing the key confound in your logic which is that it is mostly in these places where Thais will come into direct contact with these people so they are just as liable to form these impressions on their own without any prompting from Caucasians as you seem to suggest. I spend a lot of time in Singapore where there is a large South Asian worker population and only a relative handful of Caucasians, and the girls here (local, Filipina, Thai, Indonesian etc) will all talk about some of these issues re Indians (and not all Indian, mind you). So these 'stereotypes' are more the product of experience than the 'evil influence' of Westerners, as you would like to think.

I suspect this was not his first head injury...

"She noticed a black, four-door pickup truck waiting in the jam when a group of teenagers on a motorcycle approached and began knocking on the pickup's window, trying to force the driver out of the vehicle." Lesson of the day: don't jump to assumptions.

Getting things tossed out on procedural grounds is usually much faster (and easier) than trying to fight the criminal allegations themselves, especially if things are murky on either side. Of course, it doesn't clear your reputation, but that may not be his priority at the moment.

Yeah - they have to keep guns at home to protect themselves from intruders and train their kids how to respond in the event of a mass shooting, but at least they're 'free'. /sarcasm off

You do know that rape and sexual assault are very different, right? (Sexual assault is a much broader category). Also, reporting to police and reporting in the media can vary widely across countries

I doubt he asked to see her ID beforehand.... Anyway, there can be many factors at play (opportunity, drugs impairing judgment, resentment as being rejected by farang women in the past, the exoticness of someone from a different race/nationality, etc).

It is a feminist over-simplification to suggest that rape is about power rather than sexual gratification (of course, nobody has ever suggested it's about 'intimacy'). If it were just about power, we would find that 50 year-olds are just as likely to be raped as teens. But that's not the case. According to the NSVRC, "Most female victims of completed rape (79.6%) experienced their first rape before the age of 25; 42.2% experienced their first completed rape before the age of 18 years." Of course, it's complex and there are often other motives such as anger/resentment in the mix.

Lots of Thai bashing going on here. Yeah, there are Thais who are abusive to animals and there are 'industries' that need a hell of a lot of reform (though remember we're talking about a developing country here). I've seen a lot worse in other countries. And I've seen a lot of Thais who are more caring toward animals than the typical people I knew back home. Case in point: my Thai ex-gf heard a dog get hit by a car outside her shop one night and brought him in and nursed him back to relative health (including having to wipe his @ss etc) ... slept outside with him at night for several days. I bought a doggy wheel-chair for him too. She named him chokedee ('lucky') ... seems to be the name for such occasions. I don't know many people who would gone to so much trouble as her.