McMagus

In 8 years only stopped twice on the road and never whilst walking...old and bald.

Interesting replies so far ... so many assumptions.... so many fatuous replies. I am not too sure as to the amount borrowed but we are talking about a young family ... I have met them, nice young chap, works himself into the ground, wife and small son. He usually gets around 7000 B a month maybe a bit more if he can get some OT. He doesn't drink (maybe the occasional Leo), does not gamble, doesn't womanise. I've seen their 'flat'. One crappy room in the middle of nowhere for 3000 B a month + power etc., etc. They live in BKK .. that is where he can get some work. So don't go lecturing me about him trying to maintain face and have the latest TV etc. Your replies indicate the depth of your understanding. My point is..these practices are clearly exploitative and in the west there are often ways to circumvent loan sharks. My questions were to do with any experiences Tv members may have had and any constructive advice to see how they can get out of their spiraling debt.

I suggest if you have nothing constructive to offer then keep your opinions to yourself.

"Interesting replies so far ... so many assumptions.... so many fatuous replies."

"So don't go lecturing me about him trying to maintain face and have the latest TV etc"

"Your replies indicate the depth of your understanding."

"I suggest if you have nothing constructive to offer then keep your opinions to yourself."

Interesting comments by the OP, somewhat perplexing coming from a man who wrote the following, not so long back,

"A couple of observations; One thing probably is clear and that is the degree to which Thais burden themselves with personal debt, whether it be in BKK for the latest iphone or out in the sticks for a new pickup etc"

"They do seem to like borrowing from all and sundry."

The above is taken from this thread,

http://www.thaivisa....le/page__st__25

My memory does still function and I can still remember what I say.... There is no arguing about Thai household debt.... if you read the post with even a modicome comprehension you would have seen that the thrust of the post was to find out about members' experiences. A couple of other observations ... I think forum rules require you to use the QUOTE button not selective quotations... also, in what way has you post contributed to the discussion thread?

Interesting replies so far ... so many assumptions.... so many fatuous replies. I am not too sure as to the amount borrowed but we are talking about a young family ... I have met them, nice young chap, works himself into the ground, wife and small son. He usually gets around 7000 B a month maybe a bit more if he can get some OT. He doesn't drink (maybe the occasional Leo), does not gamble, doesn't womanise. I've seen their 'flat'. One crappy room in the middle of nowhere for 3000 B a month + power etc., etc. They live in BKK .. that is where he can get some work. So don't go lecturing me about him trying to maintain face and have the latest TV etc. Your replies indicate the depth of your understanding. My point is..these practices are clearly exploitative and in the west there are often ways to circumvent loan sharks. My questions were to do with any experiences Tv members may have had and any constructive advice to see how they can get out of their spiraling debt.

I suggest if you have nothing constructive to offer then keep your opinions to yourself.

They can learn to dance. There are a lot of opportunities for dancers in Thailand. It is a good weekly wage and they also receive tips. I am of course not referring to anything illegal. Dancers at trade shows and the like.

Well done, another brilliant thought provoking response.

Interesting replies so far ... so many assumptions.... so many fatuous replies. I am not too sure as to the amount borrowed but we are talking about a young family ... I have met them, nice young chap, works himself into the ground, wife and small son. He usually gets around 7000 B a month maybe a bit more if he can get some OT. He doesn't drink (maybe the occasional Leo), does not gamble, doesn't womanise. I've seen their 'flat'. One crappy room in the middle of nowhere for 3000 B a month + power etc., etc. They live in BKK .. that is where he can get some work. So don't go lecturing me about him trying to maintain face and have the latest TV etc. Your replies indicate the depth of your understanding. My point is..these practices are clearly exploitative and in the west there are often ways to circumvent loan sharks. My questions were to do with any experiences Tv members may have had and any constructive advice to see how they can get out of their spiraling debt.

I suggest if you have nothing constructive to offer then keep your opinions to yourself.

<so I pushed back >

Hmmmmm. One of the things I enjoy about changing trains at Siam is standing in the middle of the doorway and stopping them trying to push on ( I have the body mass to do it ), LOL!

I don't think that makes you "grouchy", just standing for good manners.

However, if you became a "grumpy" old man/ woman, you could have a tv show and make lots of money ( like they do in the UK and Oz ).

Hmm, are you planning on changing the behavioral characteristics of everyone in Thailand, one at a time!

I think you read something into my post that I didn't write. I enjoy blocking the rude, bad mannered "pushers", but I have no illusions that I'm educating them.

Same as when I was in Saudi and they kept pushing into the bank queue, I'd go and shout at them, but I had no reason to believe that they'd change their ways- made me feel better though.

Right, got the picture, so your home grown culture dominates, regardless of where you are?

Hmmm... up to a point I think so. In Pakistan it is OK to burn your wife if the dowry isn't high enough ... not a custom I would necessarily support. Similarly, there are some customs here I will NEVER support. A case in point. I will NEVER give up my seat to a Thai on public transport because, it is quite likely that it could then be given in turn to a child. Sure it is their culture to give seats to monks, children, pregnant women then the old in that order. That's fine for their culture and if they want to do that.... fine... but not me.

In another popular post we discussed Thai household debt and the way Thais borrow from Peter to pay Paul. I have a friend whose family member went to a loan shark to borrow in order to pay for school fees etc., etc. ... he earns less than 10,000B a month. With repayments at over 200 B a DAY and rising if he cannot pay, what chance does he and his young family have of ever getting out of the clutches of these low life scum.

My questions to Tv members are..what experiences have you or friends had with these vermin? Are there any legitimate loan consolidation schemes around? What advice would you give to help these people get out of their spiraling debts.

May the forks be with you

I got a Thai crew who can build it. They put in culverts on a road recently. So happens, the same crew put in culverts at the exact same spot 4 months ago, but these new ones are 4 cm larger diameter. And before the prior culverts got put in, there were culverts (1st of 3 sets) which were smaller than the subsequent two sets of culverts. The same crew put in culverts downtown, and then found out, after the first storm, that they weren't plumbed to enable water to flow. In every case, the earlier set of culverts had to be dug up, removed, and a new set put in place.

Am not sure, but they may be the same set of contractor/builders who got the contract to put polished granite on all the downtown sidewalks (I'm sure they're also friends with the town governor, who gets a 30% cut from all contracts awarded). Trouble with the sidewalks was: when they're wet, they're dangerously slippery. Same contractor was hired, a few months later, to get a crew to grind the shiny surfaces of the granite, to render them non-slippery.

Are these they types of Thai builders who we'll get to build a nuke reactor?

free booklet: Why Thailand Should Not Go Nuclear

Thank you for including the link, such an interesting and informative piece. I think it sums up much of the feelings posted here.

hopefully this will lead to a democratic solution eh guys?

Any democratic solution at the moment will be anyway more democratic than what we have now.....

You heroes are not really an example of democracy

Your views are fantastic... keeps me up all night having a good laugh.

I attended a public forum a few years ago and an academic from one of the universities in all seriousness said and I quote..

'We keep giving them democratic elections but they keep voting in the wrong people'.

Clearly he was not talking about Democrat victories.

Well, for starters PTT caused the greatest oil spillage in Oz maritime history from its platforms off the N.W. coat of Australia and had to pay zillions.... the cause was lack of oversight and cost cutting. I have to smile at people who say that everything will be OK because things will somehow be treated differently because it is NUCLEAR...or not to worry because they will bring in western specialists.

It was PTTEP Australasia in the Montara Field to be precise and it was a Seadrill jack-up drilling rig, the West Atlas on site that was crewed mainly by Westerners in particular Aussies. Very few Thais involved in the drilling.

Yes I am aware of the connections, I think it helps make my point though, that whether it is Thai, U.S. or Australians, they are all capable of stuffing things up as easily as the next man. And in the famous words of the goons....

Neddy: 'Little does he know I am as sane as the next man'.

Eccles: 'Little does he know I'm the next man'.

They can't even get a foottie stadium ready for the FIFA cup and he wants to push forward with a nuclear reactor. If there is a problem(leak), he will probably have helicopters come in to push out the radioactive particles from he area! This guy needs to be muzzled or maybe keep him busy by giving him the idea to build a glorious museum highlighting all of Thailand's scientific and technological achievements.

I was in Singapore for 5 days and all I heard on the news channels was talk about Thailand not being ready for FIFA and how embarrassing this was for the country. The anchors on one occasion also joked that when they do the F1 race the racing surface probably won't be ready or there will be sinkholes. They said maybe it will turn into a demolition derby race.

So you base your decision-making on ill-natured and ill-informed television commentary from a foreign country on an unrelated topic? How much research have you done into the Thai nuclear industry? Do you have any comparative data on industrial safety at Thai manufacturing plants compared to other countries? How does the safety record of PTT compare to its peers?SC

Well, for starters PTT caused the greatest oil spillage in Oz maritime history from its platforms off the N.W. coat of Australia and had to pay zillions.... the cause was lack of oversight and cost cutting. I have to smile at people who say that everything will be OK because things will somehow be treated differently because it is NUCLEAR...or not to worry because they will bring in western specialists. I can't begin to understand the breathtaking naivety of such statements. Maybe they could bring in the likes of Union Carbide who handled Bhopal so spectacularly, or those in charge of Three Mile Island, or maybe Fukushima, or perhaps the experts in charge of the Exon Valdez, or, more locally the organisers who figured out how to open the underground in BKK then realised they had no trains. It is in the nature of man to be exploitative and make money... that is my opinion. It therefore follows that strong and transparent checks and balances in the public domain need to be in place to ensure public safety. Thailand does not operate in this way. Even here on Tv

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/555350-government-urged-to-release-facts-about-rayong-industrial-estate-accidents/

As for getting any information .... if you believe half of what you are told by this crowd (or any other crowd in power) then you are in fairy land. IMHO if the Japanese can stuff it up so badly then the Thais will do a better job .... of stuffing it up that is.

On another post I commented that Thais, owing to their culture, suppress so many of their emotions. As for anger, they have never learned how to modulate anger. In fact any show of anger will result in loss of face. It really is an immature putrid combination of a cultural value gone wrong. This can and does happen in other cultures but here the combination of ego, face, and their culture really is a poisonous mix. Hope he rots in jail and looks forward to his next incarnation.

Of course the rich and powerful have their own vested interests too, not just the red shirts. When CP undertakes 'contract' farming for eggs for example, the farmer must sell his eggs only to CP as they helped set it up .. sounds fair, but when the contract expires, the farmer has virtually no choice but to continue selling to CP as it is the monopoly... and of course the new prices offered are substantially lower than previously. IMHO, the locus of control is invariably biased towards the big fellas, where they rip the country off in a more or less legal way .. land usage comes to mind. In more developed countries there may be more transparency and public outcry is always available. The rice pledging scheme is just another device to concentrate money making opportunities (and graft) in the hands of a few. It makes little difference to the little guy if he is being shafted by a fascist right wing regime or a left - leaning corrupt machine ... at the end of the day, it still hurts and more to the point... Thailand is the private club of the rich and powerful, red, yellow, puke (sorry puce) or green.

Just my 2 satangs worth...

In reading these articles I feel like I'm stuck in the movie Groundhog Day.

Bugger ... I was going to say that....

I used to win all my fights by about 50 metres now I just keep a low profile and don't look for trouble. I am told that a small water pistol filled with ammonia don't have make their eyes sting.

Also does wonders to your gonads if it starts leaking in your pocket..............

Please don't tell me you would carry it in a handbag...........

.. yeah well, ... as for my gonads they gotta find them first.... my pink umbrella is pretty good too.

I used to win all my fights by about 50 metres now I just keep a low profile and don't look for trouble. I am told that a small water pistol filled with ammonia don't have make their eyes sting.

Ah ha, I can sense a case of 'Yellow Fever'... very easy to catch, with a convoluted and uncertain prognosis. It can often be a long, painful and protracted convalescence. The main thing to do is not to continually revisit the site of the scar. Even though there is a great temptation to pull at the scab to see if it still hurts, invariably the wounds are deeper than initially diagnosed. Most males seem to catch this tropical infection from time to time, some have been known to become reinfected continually and need repatriation to their own country. As the infection runs its course from first signs to full blown infection, it is usual for the patient to spend inordinate amounts of money on a cure. Recent research indicates that the infection is most likely a virus and the vector a member of the opposite sex. The Disease Control Centre in Houston has tentatively named it Pecuniaris Jaunditerious owing to the presence in the patient of a jaundiced view of reality and the vector's need for constant money input. Local ethnic remedies are sometimes effective however caution is advised since reinfection can happen at any time. It is best to let it run its course as it is seldom fatal.

Laos was often called 'The Land of a Million Elephants' and during the American / Vietnam War (choose which side) journalists often renamed it 'The Land of a Million Irrelevants' . Here in LOS where everybody from the tea lady, postman etc., etc is a General, I wonder what Thailand could be called.... The Land of General Irrelevants' ??

I've been here off and on for about 7 years..but not 7 consecutive years. When teaching in international schools we were forbidden to speak Thai so all of the Thai I learned was just from what I could pick up. I can get by, I can tell people where to go in Thai if they are trying to rip me off and I can complement as well. I decided to exercise my old brain by finally going to a language school, but what they teach has little or no bearing to street Thai and some Thai friends in fact have said they would never speak like that. Trying to understand Thai script, but I'm sure it was made difficult on purpose I will keep trying...... it keeps me off the streets.

Ha, I remember dealing with SCB who had at least 5 copies of my passport, WP etc., etc. and when they asked for them again for some dopey reason, I asked where are all my other copies? She said up on the 4th floor. So, not getting angry, I said why don't you go up there and get them? and of course her answer was ..'oh cannot' end of conversation. How the Thai banking system works is an Asian mystery. But as for everything else, it really is a bureaucracy gone mad. I can't begin to imagine doing real business here.

Went to the local Bun Fie recently and loved watching the rockets go high into the sky. Yep a few were drunk as skunks but generally everybody in the village was having a happy time. But then, some out of town guys in their late teens and early 20's got into a bit of a rumble. They went off their faces, smashing beer bottles over each others' heads etc etc. Now I come to my point. These youngsters like a lot of Thais a) cannot bear losing face and don't know how to modulate their anger. This combination + availability of guns is a recipe for disaster. Had there been any guns available that day I am certain that people would have been shot. There have been a couple of times when I have wanted to just deck a pissant little Thai who had it coming to him BUT ... one day when you least expect it.... BAMM ...I am very mindful of things going on around me and know that things here can get very ugly very quickly.

I wouldn't be suprised to see an Assination coming one day.

For the future of this nation and for all the kids in Thailand let's pray for that.

Ah, that would be an assignation you be talking about then,... a meeting or tryst between lovers ... could be interesting.

What a disgrace that these criminals are again to be allowed back into government. What a heinous crime these people committed, belonging to a government that was ousted in a military coup. Off with their heads I say.

There there, calm down.... it could be worse... you could have a Thai passport and have to live here....yep .... a DEMOCRATICALLY elected government was ousted in yet ANOTHER military coup. Movin' right along now ...