Kerryd

Pathetic.
Remember when they took the 750 Baht "Departure tax" and hid it in the cost of airline tickets (the airline charges you the tax as a part of the ticket price and remits the money to the gov't).

Then a couple years ago Anutin whined that "foreigners" were skipping out on their hospital bills and they (the hospitals) had lost around 300 million baht.

So they proposed a new tax be added to airline tickets to cover those costs. At a time when they were getting nearly 40 million "arrivals" every year.

10 (TEN) baht per ticket would have easily covered that cost. So what did they do ? Decided to levy a THREE HUNDRED baht tax instead. 

So instead of collecting 400 million (to offset the 300 mil in unpaid hospital bills) the gov't want to collect 12 BILLION in new revenue. Gee, I wonder where the surplus 11,700,000,000 baht would go ?

And now they want ANOTHER 300 baht per ticket because they are getting too many tourists ??? Gee, that's another 12 bil in the kitty. I wonder whose pockets that will go into.

I wonder what their Chinese masters will think about that (unless the tax is only applied to tickets NOT coming from mainland China of course).

It is NOT "Thai culture".

If you think it is then you have NO idea what "Thai culture" really is.

The endless water fights have evolved from the traditional Thai Songkran celebration. Originally, it was a celebration of the end of the "dry season" and a time when wandering Buddhist monks would find a temple to settle down at during the coming rainy season (from back in the times before paved roads and trains and cars and such. When cart paths would turned into muddy quagmires for months at a time) In the old days, monks would often leave their temple at the start of the dry season and walk to - somewhere else. You still see that to this day. I often pass lone monks or small groups of them walking along a road somewhere in the middle of nowhere, on their way to a new temple or somewhere that needed more monks.

Thais would celebrate by washing the feet of their parents/grandparents/elders and thanking them for all they've done.
It is also a time when people would wash/clean Buddha statues in temples. (Basically like a big "spring cleaning".)
People would dab a bit of powder on other people's faces and use their fingers to sprinkle a little bit of water on the heads of others (symbolically "washing" them).

It was never a "endless water fight from dusk 'till dawn".

It was also a ONE day event, which would start in the Northwest (Mae Hong Son/Chiang Mai area), then the next day would move to provinces a bit South and East and the next day it would be in other provinces further South and further East and so on.
(Songkran dates back to the days when most people had to walk or ride in carts pulled by water buffalo. And of course, no phones or mail or even telegraph back then. Hence why it would start in one place and slowly work it's way across the country.)

Took about a week. 1 day each in different areas of the country. It's still like that in some places though now they too have "water fights". Couple years ago I was in a small village in Sa Kaeo during Songkran and basically the entire "festival" was held at a local temple. People did the feet washing and thanking their elders in their homes before going to the temple to wash the statues and clean their family "chedis". In the afternoon there was party and "water fight" in a grassy area that quickly turned into a mud pit. The kids and young adults played and the older folks sat at tables around the "fight" eating and drinking while music blared from huge speakers.

And that was it. No one was throwing water outside the temple grounds or in the village. And the next day, things were back to normal.

And then the tourists came along and basically ruined it because they thought it would be more fun to throw water at other people than to "lightly sprinkle" some on people's heads (as was the custom before).

And that led to Songkran turning into a massive water fight, mainly in touristy areas (which tells you it is NOT about "Thai culture").

And then it expanded to being 3 days in some places. I remember that in Pattaya when they started "playing water" the day before the "official" day up to the day after. (And that made people a bit "salty" even then !)

Then it expanded to starting the same day in Pattaya as it traditionally started in the Northwest. And it went for a week. 

Now it's nearly 10 days ! People started throwing water on Soi 7 a few days ago and the "official" day is the 19th.

3 days - OK.
10 days - no thanks.
(Many of my Thai friends went back to their home villages for a week to celebrate in the Traditional way and get away from the city.)

 

Quote

It is believed the pair got drunk with other holidaymakers on the island of Koh Tao on March 18 before he vanished.

Quote

 

By

Monica CharsleyNews Reporter

09:17, 12 Apr 2024

UPDATED10:02, 12 APR 2024

 

So the guy goes missing on 18 March and NO ONE reports it ?
Not even his girlfriend ?
What happened to her ?
Why didn't this make the news - until nearly a month later ? And in a UK "media site" of course.

Funny, the Mirror article says she "posted several tributes online to her partner." 
Must be on a private platform or on a different profile. No public posts on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. 

Same for Theo. Of the nearly 20 "Theo Bailey" Facebook profiles I looked at - none are this guy.

I find it really hard to believe that he'd be out drinking with his girlfriend of 10 years, go missing, be found dead the next morning - and she makes NO mention of it ? Until it appears in the Mirror a month later ?

(Keep in mind that media sites like the Mirror and Sun "buy" people's "horror travel stories" and "buff" them before publishing them. One advertisement I saw proclaimed they'd "pay for your holiday" if you had a good(horror) story to tell.)

And no - there's no way "they" could cover this up for a month.  (I just found a Twitter post about this from a lawyer in the UK dated 30 March - with no links or references to where he heard it from. I responded to his tweet and asked where he got his information from.)

Funny, literally no information about "Theo Bailey" other than he's 31.
But we know she's a teaching assistant from Chelmsford and who she's working for and where (Welwyn Garden City, Hertsfordshire).

No mention of where he came from, or his job, or even if his parents were notified or what happened to his body.
And the article says:

"The authorities said that the case "was still open", however, no arrests have been made at this time."

"Thai police said they are waiting for the post-mortem results."

Riiiight.
I looked and no "GoFundMe" - kind of hard to start asking for money a month after the event happened. 

Lots of unanswered questions.

Likely drunk, passed out, hit his head on the sidewalk. Bled for a bit, sat up, taxi guy sees him and calls for help.

I remember back in the late 90s when bars had to close by 6am but were allowed to open again at 10 (which just meant they turned off the lights and music and put the customer's "bin cups" below the counter and continued serving them).
I used to jog from my hotel down to Walking Street then around the far end and up to the Big Buddha and back to the hotel.

One morning I jogged past the bar I'd been drinking in a few hours earlier and there was a drunk passed out on the side of that little path across from the Marine Bar (that goes past where the Blues Factory used to be and comes out behind the Marine Hotel).
He was off to the side of the path with his head in the little rain gutter, people sitting on bar stools behind him. Staff in the bars looking bored (or sleeping) and no one paying any attention to the guy.

Just another morning in Pattaya. Probably happens somewhere in the city literally every night. 

On 4/13/2024 at 2:19 PM, OneMoreFarang said:

Imagine all those TM6 administrators who store and analyze all those papers. There must be big warehouses full of them.

What should all those people do if there wouldn't be the TM6 anymore? 

That was exactly why they said they stopped requiring them at the airports a couple years ago. Seems all those forms were going into boxes when then went into warehouses where they've been stacked and stored ever since they first started making those forms.

I thought they'd stopped using them everywhere though and was a bit surprised when I came into Thailand from Cambodia (at Aranyaprathet) last Nov and had to fill one out.

And many forms at Immigration still ask for your "TM.6" number - which people who arrive by air can't give because - no TM.6. So if people arriving by Air don't have to enter a TM.6 number - why expect anyone else to do it ? Especially as most arrivals are by air. Makes the whole "TM.6" requirement pretty redundant.

And the information on them was pretty much useless for the most part. Age and nationality was probably the only useful data. You can bet most people lied about their income level and had no clue what their address in Thailand was going to be.
 

2 hours ago, pomchop said:

it also does not seem credible that thai staff would try and scam him with his thai wife there to argue his case...seems most thai gals who pay the bills for farangs go over the bills in detail and quickly call out any overcharge.

Yeah, when I'm out with my Thai friends at a bar or restaurant, the staff usually automatically hand the bill to one of the women who then goes through it line by line, pays it and then tells the rest of us how much we owe her (even splits - even for the "foreigner").

And NO - bars don't charge "ladydrink prices" if some foreigner comes in with a woman - unless she works at that bar ! Then they will usually check with the woman to make sure her companion will be OK with that. (Yes - I have seen that many, many times.)

And the fact that the "wife" apparently did NOT dispute the bill - or jump in on the side of her husband - is telling. Almost like maybe she was "more than familiar" with that place perhaps ?

6 beer at 130 each is 780 bath by itself. If she had 2 beer herself in the time it took him to drink 6, that would bring the bill to 1,040 baht. 

(And being he is German, one might assume he wasn't drinking the cheapest, crappiest beer they had. Not sure what the "best" beer is or what most Germans would prefer but I doubt it's "a small glass of your warmest and cheapest draft "lite" beer".)

As most of these problems seem to be happening in Phuket, maybe the easiest solution would be to demolish the bridge and push the island further out into the sea and then pretend it doesn't really exist.

Really no different than pretending that prostitution doesn't exist in Pattaya or that corruption doesn't exist in the police and gov't. 

All they have to do is say "Phuket no longer exists" and everyone will (apparently) just believe it and carry on and then the officials won't have to deal with problem !

Note the taxi-guy admitted he was making a U-Turn, probably without using any signals to warn people behind him of his intentions.
After all, why let people know you are about to stop in the middle of a busy road so you can cut in front of other people going the other way ?

I had a wipe-out in Sisaket about 10 years ago from the same thing. Old couple on a scooter in the far left "shoulder" lane. I'm in the left "traffic" lane. Scooter suddenly moves into the lane in front of me. Road is clear (no traffice/obstructions) so I move into the right lane.
Scooter suddenly crosses into the right lane as well and then turns crosswise and stops right in front of me. I'd been watching and the old guy never once checked his mirrors or tried to signal and his brake light was probably burnt out as it never came on either.
I'd moved to the far right of the right lane when he suddenly turned barely 5 meters ahead of me. I tried to swerve to the right (into the oncoming lane which was clear) and ended up clipping his front tire. His scooter was knocked over and I went for a tumble, skidding down the road and shedding bike parts for 50 meters.

In the end, I had to pay a 400 baht fine for "being involved in a motorcycle accident" and so did the old guy. Seems he had no insurance, no registration, no license and no helmet (and no signal or brake lights) - but I had Class 1 Insurance so that made everything my fault. 

And you want to bet they don't check the taxi-driver to see if he was drunk - or stoned ? 

Had an accident about 3 years ago in Rayong. Guy ran a stop sign right in front of me and I ended up slamming into the rear of his truck at about 60 km/h. Thought for sure I was a dead man.
At the hospital they took blood to check if I'd been drinking (I hadn't had a drink in a week actually). 

NEVER checked him because HE never went to the hospital and the police never checked where he'd been or what he'd been doing. (I suspect he'd been at lunch and probably had a few beer which is why he ran the stop sign. His dash cam showed him not even slowing down at the intersection and then his truck went for a spin when I hit him.)

In the end I had to pay all my bills (medical and repair) and he paid for his own repairs and that was it. Even though his own video showed him running the stop sign.

I was told that because "I hit him" it wasn't his fault ! And that if I'd been 1 second faster and "he hit me" - then it would have been his fault !

I pointed out that would have still meant he ran the stop sign and if he'd hit me, I probably would have died. Didn't matter, the report was already written and approved and nothing was going to change it.

He's an AUSTRIAN, his name is Helmut, not "Helmul" and he is a "BitCoin" trader/scammer (most Bitcoin is basically just a scam, trading real cash for virtual "coins" that can disappear in a flash).

https://www.facebook.com/helmut.obritzberger.1/about

It happens ALL over the country. The monkeys are NOT friendly. They are vicious.

They will tear open bags in vehicles, they will try to grab stuff from people, they will literally attack people if they think they have food.

They will also attack small pets and children.

Last November I was at Wat Chakan in Sa Kaeo. A friend was going up the long stairway and a couple monkeys tried to attack him and he is a fairly large fellow.

I had to stay with the motorcycles to keep the monkeys from tearing the seats and yanking wires/ cables.

The vendors had long sticks they'd use to shoo the monkeys away. But as soon as they turned their backs the critters would be trying to steal whatever they could get their claws on.

At a couple national parks we visited last year, the caretakers also used slingshots to scare the monkeys away, especially when they got too aggressive around people.

If this was a " western" country people would be screaming for animal control to deal with them. Which would mean live- trapping and relocating some (in some places) or simply shooting/ euthanizing them in other places.

And here's a clue. If those Thais on that beach were not shooting those monkeys with sling shots, you would not be sitting on that beach at all.

I've ridden my Click to Korat - loaded with my camping gear and knobby "off road" tires. Also have ridden to Chanthaburi a couple times (with the camping gear) as well.

It's not so bad. Wear a long sleeved shirt and gloves (and helmet of course). Get a thermos cup and insulated "hangar sleeve" so you can have a cold drink dangling from the "hook" that you can sip on while sitting at an intersection.

A couple Thai friends of mine had nothing to do during the big Covid shutdown in '20/'21 so they did a grand tour of Thailand. 10,000 kms over 6 weeks I think it was. On a Honda Monkey and a Vespa. With camping gear.

I think there is (or was) was a "125cc" club of some kind whose goal was to visit every province in the country - riding nothing larger than 125cc scooters.

From a trip to Chanthaburi last year.