DualSportBiker

2 hours ago, DirtyHarry55 said:

Total 4 reviews you try make it sound like he wrote Hundreds and what was the fake comment exactly I don't get it?

"modern-day slave labour" or do you think that is justified in some way?

42 minutes ago, rexall said:

Bull-oney!  "Acceptable" is a very subjective, slippery sort of word here.  Acceptable to whom and on what basis?  First of all, it is highly unlikely that "Look, a sexpat!" will "tarnish" one's reputation, whatever that is supposed to mean. It may be stupid and unkind and unfortunate, but should we jail and fine the tourist for for being an idiot? Watch your mouth, or the man comes and takes you away!   I'm not a lawyer, but I am pretty sure that defamation and slander--at least in the U.S.--depend on actual, provable damages, usually financial, as a result of the statements. Just being annoyed and/or embarrassed does not really constitute damage. Anyway, like it or not, there is a lot of leeway as long as the statements are clearly expressed as an opinion rather than as a fact. Obviously that doesn't apply in Thailand or in other societies still clinging to medieval "honor culture."  "You can't say about my mamma!!!!   Grrrrrr!!!  Thems fight'in words!!!"

It must be fun living in a country you consider medieval. Win many friends telling them they are backward?

My analogy was just that, an attempt to make the process of events the hotel went through relatable. I don't believe that you would not react to a blatant and public slander of such a magnitude, I know I would because they are fight'in words as you put it. Defamation laws exist in many countries, not just here, "In the UK, defamation allows freedom of speech to prosper but keeps a check on telling lies that could damage someone’s reputation or business." Notice the language states 'could' not 'proven to'. I reject your position that his statements were expressed as an opinion. That is a weak excuse for unfounded and unwarranted slander. The guy clearly lashed out 'cause he was angry and he went too far. If it were not for the likely damage to Thailand's reputation, the muppet should be whipped.

7 minutes ago, fxe1200 said:

They cannot write an honest review of a hotel,

How is accusation of 'modern day slavery' an honest review?

3 hours ago, LeamchabangLarry said:

It's official.

We got the finger point

Do you know the site? http://www.thaispointingatthings.com/ not updated for a while, but that's all down to user contribution...

17 hours ago, bodga said:

tell them that when theyre  driving also

A friend of mine was removed from his bike by a falling tree. Killed him instantly and left the bike untouched.

3 hours ago, Pottinger said:

2003? That old story was around in the '80s when they used to switch traffic direction on Sukhumvit and Petchburi almost by the month.

During the 90s a French consortium did a test of automated lights which worked pretty well. The RTP said that gecko poop shorted out the cables making it unreliable and declined to buy it. Now, as we all know we have the RTP to be reliably incapable of addressing traffic issues...

Holland struggles with coastal flooding and has done for centuries. Its infrastructure grew based on known flooding and its sole source of excess water is the North Sea. Holland gets a fraction of the rain Thailand does and that rain is more evenly spread throughout the year.

Thailand developed along rivers as the main routes for people and goods. Their houses were built to survive floods. Rains were more predictable than now and higher levels of forestation meant the excess water moved slower and was absorbed faster. Floods refreshed the soils and were good for cultivation of crops. Flooding was never seen as a significant problem that needed conquering as they had benefits and could be mitigated by simple steps. Thailand's towns and cities were firmly established before the impact of deforestation and change in rains started to combine and be problematic. Additionally, more critical infrastructure is now at ground level; roads, components of the power grid, and modern houses.

As for reservoirs, there are many of them here. A bevy of new ones were built in the '90s. My firm was contracted to do stereo photography and GIS analysis of a number of areas to locate the best natural areas to augment and turn into dams. There are still people protesting their creation as they lost land to compulsory purchase orders. Does Thailand need more? Perhaps. Rainfall is not as predictable as it was 30 years ago. Just the reduction of flights from Covid has impacted weather-forecast accuracy due to reduction of chemtrails temperature variations with clearer skies. This years forecast is for a normal amount of monsoon rain, but with most back-loaded into the last month of the season. So far, that prediction is not wholly inaccurate.

The Monkey's Cheeks are a controlled spillway that uses less-populated land to the East and West of Bangkok. It works pretty well for normal situations. There are volumes of water that no system can handle - that's the problem with increased rainfall. Just ask those brilliant dam-building Brits about the M25 - they can't predict traffic flow...  

17 hours ago, AgentSmith said:

Monkey cheeks? Apparently Thailand has yet to discover actual floodplains. Here's a Dutch example:

 

 

The floodplain is where it says "uiterwaarden" (which sort of means designated areas in which a river can expand into). It's an area usually covered in grass for cows or it's 'nature' left alone. When the water level rises the water first expands into the floodplain before it floods anything else. Of course there are floodplains all along the riverbanks.

 

Because periods of drought are also increasing both in frequency and length the Dutch floodplains are under investigation as possible basins to retain the excess water so there's extra water in dry summers keeping the water level in the river above a certain minimum. I'm no engineer but it will be interesting to see what solutions they come up with.

 

Flooding is getting exceedingly rare in The Netherlands despite rising sea level and more frequent heavy rainfall. Too bad getting the message across to the people of Thailand is a tough cookie.

17 hours ago, samsensam said:

 

flood and drought seem recurring predictable problems and little seems to be done the alleviate the problems by successive governments. maybe it's a daft idea but how about building reservoirs in areas with rain to support the drier areas? as happened in victorian times in the uk when haweswater reservoir was built in the lake district to provide water for mancheter. and how about getting dutch experts to help with flooding prevention?

12 hours ago, jackdd said:

It doesn't affect your safety, but it can still have an impact on you.

Just imagine you have an accident with a motorbike. If he dies, even if it's not your fault, you might think for the rest of your life about if you could have avoided it. Or imagine it is your fault, if he dies you killed a person. With a helmet he might still be alive.

There is more to it than that. Road deaths have economic impact. Some costs are incurred documenting and dealing with it; police and coroner etc. The riders are typically of working age so they reduce production and companies need to hire replacements. Until Covid Thailand has under 1% unemployment so premature death is a driver of inflation. A few years ago there were 20,000 long-standing vacancies across all Amata estates alone! All those could be filled by one year's death toll! There may also be insurance payouts, even the insurance that comes with road tax needs to be funded and paid for.

Then there is the imposition of suffering on the victims family members and friends who have to deal with potentially avoidable death of a relative or loved one. You are dead right about guilt. I almost caused an accident with a biker 30 years ago in the UK and still catch myself reliving the experience when I ride! I stopped my car got out and kicked the curbs cursing myself and shaking from the experience. The biker turned around, came back and asked if I was ok! Top bloke!

15 hours ago, TKDfella said:

I am not a biker so I stand to be corrected but...most of the accidents I've seen or read about have been the lesser cc variety...maybe people on a small m/c acting like it's a big m/c, eh?

Correct. Small bikes are 90%+ of the market and the majority of accidents. Bigger bikes make more of a mess when they crash at high speed. It is easy to blame the bike for the accident if traveling too fast, so this becomes newsworthy... Given the bike test is not a test of any skill on a bike, it is no surprise that having/not having a Thai license is not a factor in accidents.

16 hours ago, fxe1200 said:

That means for a SR 400 with 21HP you will need a license and a Yamaha MT-03 with 42HP you do not need a license. Thai logic.

Most countries around the world use engine capacity for grading licenses. There are exceptions where smaller displacement bikes produce more power than bikes slightly larger. It's hard to set policies for all situations. What would you have them do? It's great that you take any and every chance to tout your superior logic through where you parents made out! You might want to look in the mirror when it comes to questioning reasoning skills.

2 hours ago, Bender Rodriguez said:

are there more death with big bikes or the regular 125CC whatevers on the road...

 

can you go onto highway with big bike ?

I can't find any publicly available data. Certainly more deaths on bikes under 400 cc, even under 150. However, as a percentage of bikes, hard to tell. Big bike accidents are more newsworthy - the bikes are usually traveling faster and make more of a mess. Given the relative rarity of big bikes, they are good 'examples' of how big bikes are dangerous... 

Big bikes have no special road privileges here. Highways and tollways are off-limits as are tunnels and bridges sign-posted 'no bikes'. Having said that, I crossed the Bhumibol 1 and 2 bridges a few years back. Stopped at the lights for Phu Chao road with a Snoopy. The cop in the booth walked across and pulled the Snoopy over - let me go...

This is the correct approach as it is understandable to your GF and her kid. It is non-confrontational which is how a Thai would handle it.

If the kid is studying still, you just need to pay the apartment. If not working, play the responsible father role and state your goal is to create a responsible and sensible adult. If the son is working, sweeten the pay-package with just enough to be persuasive.

Do not think that the solution is cost-free...

1 hour ago, AndyAndyAndy said:

You have to make him financially independent at first. So make him find a job. In front of your GF you can play it as "I'm being a father to him and caring for him/raising him right". First you will start encouraging him to find a job. He sleep all day and play games on telephone. So you will come with some consequences. Start cutting him off money/sources etc. If GF doesn't like it you can always play "being responsible father". Sooner or later his life will be so unbearable that he will find a job. It usually involves in living in different city (you see 90% of working thai traveling at friday/sunday home). So he will move out as a result of finding a job. Or he will find local job and once he is financially independent it is easy to kick him out. Again you can play responsible father card with helping find him a rent apartment "so he start his new adult life" and taking him for a furniture buying trips.

 

You can play it as ''kicking him out' and GF will make your life hell for hating her family. Or you can be responsible father figure raising her son and caring for her family who is trying to give him good start to his new life and it will be OK.

On 7/27/2020 at 10:45 PM, Acrylic said:

I agree with you. Many blame China because China is convenient scapegoat for their falling. We know white people is racist toward Asian especially Chinese. Having Trump as President doesn't help either because China dare to rise to challenge America hegemony. That's given they won't let this chance to bash China and Chinese until the end of the world. 

If China was the paragon of virtue its awful government claims to be, people would look for another bogeyman. I make the small effort to separate the Chinese people from their despotic government. The CCP is the chewing gum on the world's boot...

18 hours ago, node said:

Something is off with this maths. Interviewed 1459 folks, 90% have this option, that is 1313 said this, of a population of 70,000,000 Thais, that is .00188% of the population;

not 90% of Thai people, as the headline stated

Can you spell clueless? A poll is a representative sample, so when 90% of a sample states "x", it can be extrapolated that 90% of the population at large will also say "x". There are constraints attached to the percentages called margin of error and confidence level. You can learn about them by using this Internet to read stuff wat cleva people wrote for you to improve yourself and learn a little about stuff you should have learned about at high school...

Which muppet told you that? Dig below the surface of the bike accident stats and you'll see a pattern of early morning commuters and after-work riders rushing home. The vast majority are scooter riders on local rides riding with scant attention added to their severe lack of skills and abject lack of road strategy.

People who take riding bikes seriously don't get painted with the same brush, especially by people who can't be arsed to understand what they are talking about.

14 hours ago, rwill said:

No matter whose fault it is if you enjoy living it is best not to ride motorbikes in Thailand.

22 hours ago, colinneil said:

Yes of course the truck driver was driving properly.????????????????

Had to be the farang in the wrong, when have you ever heard a Thai admit they were wrong?

Sure have. Most times I get bumped into they admit they are wrong. Perhaps you wear your attitude so visibly they react to that...

1 hour ago, visacrack said:

Why did you quote me? You said a lot there, much of what seems right, but failed to address the point made in my post, which appears to be crucial: ie the role that excessive bodyfat plays in each individual development of this disease, and what every obese person can and should do to become slim again. 

Why did I quote you? It would be because you said "I'm convinced they're right" about politicians falsely stating Covid-19 is just a flu. 

Let's start with some basics. Genetic cross-over from animals to humans is a given; it happens. Given enough time and opportunity (accumulated time exposed to animals), moves closer to a certainty. That it happened in China does not make China responsible. The authorities in China delayed the flow of information for sure; they screwed up. However, the chances that they could have curtailed its spread and kept the outbreak in China is small, very small. Blaming China for the disease is ridiculous, blaming their system for failure to address the issue is appropriate, but a global outbreak was inevitable as it took weeks to discover carriers could be asymptomatic.

Blaming China for the lack of fun having a massage with a masseuse in a mask is pathetic on two counts. China can't really be blamed and genuine massages are not impacted by the wearing of a mask.

Now for the conspiracy theories. Covid-19 is not the flu. No doctor, virologist, infectious disease expert, or immunologist has said so. Politicians and armchair 'researchers' aren't qualified to comment. The great sadness of the internet is the false belief that having the capacity to state an opinion means the opinion has some validity. Most don't.

It will take months before the true transmission characteristics of Covid-19 are understood. Those will only be understood after the collaborative work of hundreds of learned medical professionals - not a bunch of self-proclaimed genius armchair researchers griping that their liberties are being stolen by some global conspiracy to rebrand a common flu as a dangerous pandemic. If doing nothing for months and allowing 130,000 to die in the US is not a clear sign that such thoughts are patently wrong, perhaps you'd be better off looking for aliens, Elvis and Hitler partying on the moon in broad daylight. I know another genius who has the coordinates if you're interested...

During a two hour massage I spend over an hour face down or on my side. Why do I need to see the masseuse's face? When some muppet talks too much, either to the masseuse or on the phone, most decent shops will ask them to shut up so all the other customers can relax. If you want more from your massage, fine. That is your choice. Don't conflate a sub-standard massage and a happy-ending with a real massage.

4 hours ago, SuwadeeS said:

First of all, the so called "new normal", I hate it, many people hate it.

Wearing a mask unnatural !!!!!

I like to see the face of people, I like to see the expression when talking to them.

 

For all the discomfort and disadvantage, somebody has to be responsible.

As a matter of fact, its China with all the lies and disinformation.

Why everybody here ignores it?? 

Massage is not fun anymore.

We all have to pay a price because of China.

2 hours ago, visacrack said:

We know this saying of some politicians: Covid is just like a flu. And after following covid developments for months, I'm convinced they're right - provided those affected do not suffer from excessive body fat - or possibly even lifestyle diseases due to it, like diabetes or high blood pressure. 

 

I've read that bodyfat excess prevents the immune system from working properly, in a sense that its agents are being 'prevented to really get there fast to join the action' (or something in that sense). Another aspect was that while eating 'traditionally', we inflict more constant damage on the body's cells than most of us are aware of - and thereby, we keep the immune system busy trying to repair the cells affected, while its full capacity would be needed to fight off an aggression like covid (or flu, for that matter).

 

How do we avoid excessive body fat - in the first place, or reduce it to a healthy level once it's there? Simple: Eat the right diet, and do sufficient sport. The internet told me that a low-carb diet will probably be effective, and my personal experience shows that this is true. That we should do sports five times a week, half an hour each, is probably known - swimming is useful, if you swim with an effort (thus have a raised heartbeat, pulse and breath frequency).

 

If you now ask yourself if all these important covid-related measures that leaders are taking, and on a global basis, are headed in the wrong direction (because they fail to address the true cause), not to mention the untold damage they keep on inflicting on the economy, then there is some evidence that you are right. But due to the classic ignorance of those in power, plus herd effects (and it's not 'herd immunity'), and undue economic considerations (like protecting McDo & co), it is hard to imagine that we will begin to see the light anytime soon. Stock up on masks, and keep your TV in good working order (or what else you spend your homeoffice time with). 

 

PS: Ironically, some of the 'flu' political protagonistas (Trump or Bolsonaro come to mind) are not exactly delgado themselves...

 

2 hours ago, GeniusFarang said:

What’s sad about this is the government will continue to take freedoms and rights away and turn us into lab rats where we will need to wear masks wherever we go, force businesses to install expensive useless medical equipment, walk through unvetted chemicals, get a vaccine that will be useless (flu vaccine is around but yet we have 65k deaths a year anyways) and no one questions what’s in the vaccine even though is runs through our veins DURRR. They won’t stop until they destroy business and individual freedoms all in the guise of “your safety”. 
 

It’s easy to see that all this is big corporations stepping in to take over and destroy their competition (the small business). Big corps have the funding and the likes of Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Walton’s etc begins their push. When you have that much power, you need more. 
 

They use words like “new normal” and “Covid era” because the want to program the idiots into thinking it’s normal to not have human contact and wear a mask and be afraid of your shadow. It works on many idiots (many commenters I have seen in Thai visa actually) and the low IQ. 
 

If people are actually scared of a Covid flu over Tuberculosis which has killed over 1.5 million last year (without the help of extra hospital funding and lenient CDC guidelines like “guessing the cause of death”) then we have bigger problems heading our way when it comes to government overreach. 
 

The really sad part of this, is that so many who are driven by fear and scared of their own shadows don’t have the ability or basic intelligence to research on their own so they just accept the airplane of pea soup fed by the government and swallow big like they are told.

 

Moral of the story, don’t be an ignorant “Maskhole”.

3 hours ago, richard_smith237 said:

Agreed - its easy to blame the roads here, because lets face it, there is often stuff spilt all over them, oil, grit, sand etc...  then there is the quality of the surface itself.

 

Time to get bored: The UK actually as a ‘British Standard’ for road aggregate - based around abrasion and ‘polishability’ only aggregate which meets a certain ’standard’ is allowed to be used (yes, I know, its boring that I know that) - Thai roads get polished, they are not at the same standard. 

 

That said: the ‘B’ roads in the UK are atrocious and have loads of pot-holes. My father in the UK has to change 1-2 tyres per year due pot-holes damage to the tyres. 

 

Thai roads seem to have fewer pot-holes than the UK, but in general, they are more slippy.

 

 

 

You can see the polished lines when at the right angle.

More interesting is you can see how the majority cut all corners. You will see the 'average line' shines a path into the emergency lane in left-hand corners and creep into the oncoming lane in rights. Obviously that smacks of being total retards, but try explaining that.

Driving here is not taken seriously. How often do you see the elder of a pair on a bike on the pillion? It's amazing to me how somebody would should take responsibility would put their life in the hands of the less experienced person. Now, that is somewhat of an assumption, but it can't alway be that the younger person is more experienced and it is almost always that the younger is riding with an older pillion.

8 hours ago, OneMoreFarang said:

Now try that in a corner - or better don't try it!

Don't try it?? 

Practice it in a car park. Straight, single turn, double turn, dry, wet. That's the difference between car drivers, casual riders and bikers. I've not ridden seriously in a few years - first thing I did was find some empty space and and recalibrate where the edge is. Not because I ride there intentionally, but because it makes me safer. What do you do when you need to brake in a corner? Just hope?

I understand there are a large number of casual riders here. Their riding standards and ethos are their own choice. That is not me. I don't commute or ride to buy some noodles or a couple of bottles of cheap beer. When I ride I ride all day; sun, wind or rain. I retake lessons every so often and I practice so I don't become the subject of a discussion here by people second-guessing how they'd have done it differently - like they ever know what actually happened.