Kitsune

a lot of new factories these days try to be green with solar cells on their roof, Toyota in Chachoensao for example

That is called green washing

I hear you, Thailand is victim of its own success.

Hordes of tourists are flocking every year.

Some hotels just don't make the effort anymore, they fill up rooms anyway.

As fresh renewed flesh is needed to keep the husband going, wife number one gradually becomes a glorified mum, while Sami indulges in younger nubile. Divorce is highly unpopular because seen as a failure, and divorced women as damaged good.

When the wife is the jealous type and she finds out, the husband gets his willy cut off and fed to the ducks but he does not need to worry; Bangkok is the capital of penis surgery so he just has to be faster than the duck

Kids will learn that if you don't love your wife, you have to live in lies all your life to keep face, or have your penis fed to ducks, and they will have in turn dysfunctional families.

To have a go at alternative energy sources, Thailand has to be able to keep its green activists alive.

Unfortunately there seems to be a mysteriously high rate of murders in this field.(20 in 10 years).

So may be not a good subject to be debated openly

http://www.radford.edu/~wkovarik/envhist/GlobalWitnessChart.2002-2011.jpg

Yes it's called industrialization, office/factory workers don't smile, farmers (and yes construction workers like on the photos too) do.

"And, as for the men, trouble only arises when they forget the social context of the relationship and become delusional about its true nature, If they do not want to be part of the Old Sexpats Club, then they should not play the game"

Very well put article !

For the Thai education system, I second that;

- Thai universities are nowhere near the top 10 or even 50 of best in the world (I think Chula is 101th), hence you need to leave the country to get decent higher education.

- As for International Schools Patana & ISB; yes they have a very high level students, and get better exams results than average Europe/ US, but it's easy to understand when you realize that 99% of their kids come from well-off expats privileged families who can offer high standard extra curriculum activities (great holidays, fantastic surrounding, selected friends) and if a kid is from the 1% and is a low achiever, the school does not make much effort to help him and just boot him out, so they keep their grade level high.

Mmmhh.. so your topic is not about Songkran vs Christmas YET it is called Songkran vs Christmas ...

I am in Bangkok and as Farang every year, I am told by everyone I meet that I absolutely need to rush to Kao san road, get drunk, half-naked and soaked.

It makes great reports on the evening news, watched by old Thai men who fantasize about younger so-called loose Farang girls and other farang countries who can't wait to get their plane ticket to join the fun and play with wet shirt girls .

Kan San Road is definitely where the BEST songkran is (so I am told)

I personally see that every year it evolves in more alcohol, sex and casualties, so it would be more like a Thai Spring Break (nearly same time) than Christmas.

the monetisation and modernisation has been steady and gradual in the 20 yrs i've been here - in line with the growing economy. but i think the biggest change here occurred in the early 2000's somewhere around 2001-2004... the relaxed and easy going nature that i'd always felt was quintessentially thai seemed to evaporate sometime in that era.....might just be me mind you...

+1

Sorry but speaking without actual figures, is only a matter of personal impression

If you think/feel that there are exactly as many cars as 10 years ago, i am not going to argue about and your impression or feelings.

Please do continue to believe that Bangkok is traffic and pollution free and it has not changed one bit, I am sure it make you feel good

Pardon me for asking bluntly but, are you intoxicated or do you just have very weak reading comprehension skills?

Where do you get this nonsense about me believing there are exactly as many cars as 10 years ago? Where did you read anything even slightly similar to me saying or suggesting I believe Bangkok is traffic and pollution free and it has not changed one bit?

And why would it make me feel good to believe something absurd and idiotic and in complete contradiction with obvious and objective fact?

I am drunk high, have very low comprehension skills but can recognize the huge impact of speedy unruled development, something others are still struggling to comprehend and acknowledge....weird eh ?

Something someone said reminded me of an actual observation I had forgotten about. When I first arrived in Bangkok, there were three tall building that towered above all the shophouses. There was the Indra Hotel, the Dusit Thani Hotel and the Chokchai Building which later became the Laemthong Bank in the 80s, I believe.

In this regard I guess Bangkok has changed just a bit.

And at the bottom of the buildings, at the rate of 1200 new cars every day for the last 3 years, nothing changed ?

First of all, the OP's question was about Thailand, not just Bangkok (nor Kao San Road).

Secondly, of course many things about Bangkok (particularly physical aspects like high rise buildings in size, number and dispersion) have changed in the last few decades - I watched it transform myself - only a complete ignoramus would not recognize that.

Your observations regarding 3 years of car sales and a tiny sliver of the city that is built for a tiny sector of the city aren't necessary to know that (and indeed are extremely superficial indicators, at best).

Sorry but speaking without actual figures, is only a matter of personal impression

If you think/feel that there are exactly as many cars as 10 years ago, i am not going to argue about and your impression or feelings.

Please do continue to believe that Bangkok is traffic and pollution free and it has not changed one bit, I am sure it make you feel good

Something someone said reminded me of an actual observation I had forgotten about. When I first arrived in Bangkok, there were three tall building that towered above all the shophouses. There was the Indra Hotel, the Dusit Thani Hotel and the Chokchai Building which later became the Laemthong Bank in the 80s, I believe.

In this regard I guess Bangkok has changed just a bit.

And at the bottom of the buildings, at the rate of 1200 new cars every day for the last 3 years, nothing changed ?

The singular thing that saddens me is the massive obsession with wealth and trinkets. I didn't really notice it 11 years ago when I arrived but I suppose then, I was looking at everything with rose coloured spectacles.

Even in my local village its all about "show", something that wasn't predominant when I arrived here. There seems to be an attitude throughout the majority that "F##k you if I,m alright" and it has changed the way I look at people now.

It has also changed me for the worst I fear, as I seem to be more and more distant from the values I was taught growing up. I would be reluctant to stop and help someone at an accident scene in Thailand. At home this thought would never cross my mind. I seem to be numb to the constant corruption and greed and now when I hear or see something that is totally ludicrous and is way beyond the scope of reasonable, I find my self saying "mai pen rai" and to be honest thinking like this goes against everything I was taught.

I have adopted the attitude "you can't change it so why bother" but it does unsettle me.

Money and wealth seems to be the end goal here. It wasn't predominant in my village all those years back but it sure as hell is here and alive today.

It frightens me also when I think, given all the strings attached, I would not stop to help in a road accident either. This country is changing and also changing us and not for the better

Kao san rd is the micro replica of what is happening in the rest of Bangkok and even the country yes.

Because of it position as a bustling hub for foreigners it gives a very good perspective of the impact of foreign investment in LOS

I just literally LOLed.

I am glad I made you laugh

Kao san rd is the micro replica of what is happening in the rest of Bangkok and even the country yes.

Because of it position as a bustling hub for foreigners it gives a very good perspective of the impact of foreign investment in LOS

The changes are dramatic physically:

- Bangkok used to be called the Venice of the East, you could take a boat to go anywhere

- Trees were everywhere

- obviously less buildings/high rises, cars (1200 new cars per day in Bangkok alone) , pollution, people, etc

But the most striking change is in the population: In the last 10-15 years Thai population has changed from gentle Buddhist farmers to office workers. Rice crops in Provinces are deserted and children of farmers preferred to come to Bangkok and become factory or office workers.

On the BTS office workers play with their Ipad and totally ignore old people standing on the BTS at rush hour, whereas farmers would have given to their last Bahts to help someone in need.

Hmmm...romanticize or idealize much?

Buddhist farmers have been known to be less than generous or compassionate and your paternalistic generalization notwithstanding, they are not of a single mind and character or event close to it.

By the way, to the degree that actual people - not tour guides - ever really have called Bangkok (or Ayutthaya) "Venice of the East" (who would actually say that?) that was based on the situation 100 years ago. I don't know when you got here but when I got here in 81 the Klongs had largely long been covered and you could NOT "take a boat anywhere" - or even most places. Moreover trees were NOT everywhere or anything remotely similar - indeed Bangkok was known to be a city with VERY little green space - something reported and commented on occasion in Thai press at the time.

10 Years ago I remember coming to Bangkok in a family run guest house in Kao San Road, and being quite sick.

On her own initiative the owner had been to the shop and got me medication, she absolutely refused that I pay her back. The place fell like staying at your grandma, old wooden house superbly kept very hot in the summer indeed but so pretty and the grandma was indeed taking care of you like you were family.

I came back last year because a friend of mine wanted to stay in Kao San road so I took him there. The place was closed, the old lady had died and her son refuses to run the guesthouse anymore, he explained to me the all area is now run by mafia and prostitution and he refuse to be part of it.

So we went to look for other place and got in Rambrutti Village, one of this new cheap place with swimming pool that backpackers love. The staff is unbelievably rude, apparently they are always full anyway, so they don't give a damn about their customers and treat everyone like dirt.

Okay...and that supposed to support your first post?

I liked the story in the first paragraph. I could share at least a dozen more as nice. And I could also share many stories that would indicate (like your second paragraph was presumably meant to do) change for the worse. But what I can't do is say I ever saw - over 31 years all around Thailand - what you apparently saw on your visit to Kao San Road in 2003.

By the way, Kao San Road is probably the absolute worst place in the entire country to gain virtually any useful understanding of Thailand.

To the contrary I think Kao San road encapsulate everything that is changing in this country

Supporting my first post would be pointless, you read romanticism, when I refer to Thailand industrialization.

The changes are dramatic physically:

- Bangkok used to be called the Venice of the East, you could take a boat to go anywhere

- Trees were everywhere

- obviously less buildings/high rises, cars (1200 new cars per day in Bangkok alone) , pollution, people, etc

But the most striking change is in the population: In the last 10-15 years Thai population has changed from gentle Buddhist farmers to office workers. Rice crops in Provinces are deserted and children of farmers preferred to come to Bangkok and become factory or office workers.

On the BTS office workers play with their Ipad and totally ignore old people standing on the BTS at rush hour, whereas farmers would have given to their last Bahts to help someone in need.

Hmmm...romanticize or idealize much?

Buddhist farmers have been known to be less than generous or compassionate and your paternalistic generalization notwithstanding, they are not of a single mind and character or event close to it.

By the way, to the degree that actual people - not tour guides - ever really have called Bangkok (or Ayutthaya) "Venice of the East" (who would actually say that?) that was based on the situation 100 years ago. I don't know when you got here but when I got here in 81 the Klongs had largely long been covered and you could NOT "take a boat anywhere" - or even most places. Moreover trees were NOT everywhere or anything remotely similar - indeed Bangkok was known to be a city with VERY little green space - something reported and commented on occasion in Thai press at the time.

10 Years ago I remember coming to Bangkok in a family run guest house in Kao San Road, and being quite sick.

On her own initiative the owner had been to the shop and got me medication, she absolutely refused that I pay her back. The place fell like staying at your grandma, old wooden house superbly kept very hot in the summer indeed but so pretty and the grandma was indeed taking care of you like you were family.

I came back last year because a friend of mine wanted to stay in Kao San road so I took him there. The place was closed, the old lady had died and her son refuses to run the guesthouse anymore, he explained to me the all area is now run by mafia and prostitution and he refuse to be part of it.

So we went to look for other place and got in Rambrutti Village, one of this new cheap place with swimming pool that backpackers love. The staff is unbelievably rude, apparently they are always full anyway, so they don't give a damn about their customers and treat everyone like dirt.

The changes are dramatic physically:

- Bangkok used to be called the Venice of the East, you could take a boat to go anywhere

- Trees were everywhere

- obviously less buildings/high rises, cars (1200 new cars per day in Bangkok alone) , pollution, people, etc

But the most striking change is in the population: In the last 10-15 years Thai population has changed from gentle Buddhist farmers to office workers. Rice crops in Provinces are deserted and children of farmers preferred to come to Bangkok and become factory or office workers.

On the BTS office workers play with their Ipad and totally ignore old people standing on the BTS at rush hour, whereas farmers would have given to their last Bahts to help someone in need.

Because you don't see them all year round and live somewhere else.

Any country you visit for holidays feels great.

A war is very unlikely ...

What Kim Jon Un is trying to achieve is media hysteria to hit South Korea's economy. Investors in South Korea are already losing confidence, as explained in this NY Times article

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/world/asia/tensions-with-north-korea-unsettle-south-korean-economy.html?_r=0

There have been lots of reports of locally produced vegetables being sold in supermarkets that come with labels like "pesticide free" or "organic" and supposedly have some kind of government certification, but in fact, are none of the things they're labeled to be.

At least some Thai farmers are smart enough to realize that labeling their products in that way can help command higher profits and prices for them. But this being Thailand, they don't need to worry too much about anyone from the government doing anything to interfere with their deception.

It's a particularly bad scam, because it makes people like me who would otherwise be inclined to buy such products instead choose to avoid them or at least not prefer them, since it's pretty hard here to believe any such health or safety claims being made here. There is NO dependable truth in advertising or product labeling in Thailand, especially when it comes to food products.

Yes you are right I have seen them too in supermarket these new labels which are meaningless and are just marketing such as "Free from pesticide" or "healthy" or "farm fresh". I don't trust them either, i prefer to deal direct with the producer