Kerryd

at 5:00 am.

And more of a "kwaii fight" than a "cat fight" !
 

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" The Department of Disease Control, Ministry of Public Health, revealed the situation of COVID-19 patients over the past week. The trend of the outbreak has begun to decrease and is lower than the number of patients in the same period of the past 2 years. It is expected that the outbreak in the previous week from the large gathering of people during the Songkran Festival can be found throughout the year and patients are found according to the season."

https://ddc.moph.go.th/brc/news.php?news=52560&deptcode=brc

Quote

"Today (8 May 2025), Dr. Panumas Yanawetsakul, Director-General of the Department of Disease Control, revealed the COVID-19 situation in Thailand for this week. From 4-8 May 2025, the Department of Disease Control received reports of 7,013 patients and 1 death. The highest rate of infection was found in the 0-4 age group, followed by the 30-39 age group and the 20-29 age group, respectively. The deceased were aged 60 and over. For the COVID-19 situation in Thailand from 1 January to 8 May 2025, there were a total of 41,197 patients and 15 deaths."

Quote

"As for the influenza situation from January 1 - May 8, 2025, there were a total of 322,991 influenza patients, with an illness rate of 497.58 per 100,000 people. There were 43 reported deaths. Influenza patients tended to increase slightly during the Songkran Festival (between April 13 - 26, 2025)."

So there was a small spike during the Songkran season and there could be a minor increase during the rainy season.

And here I was tricked into believing that it was the "Free 60 day" stamps that were responsible for all the problems in Pattaya and Phuket !

Surely this group must actually be foreigners posing as locals because we know locals would never act like this !

Those are MORTAR rounds - not "grenade rounds".
Can they get ANY stupider ?

So he was trying to board a domestic flight in Phuket, but they don't say where he was heading.

Without knowing where he got those rounds, it's hard to say if it's discarded ammunition from the Vietnam war, or the Cambodian civil war, or even old WW2 munitions. 

There are many shops around the country that have ancient vehicles and equipment left over from WW2 and Vietnam. I've seen a number of them selling old ammunition cans (they make great tool boxes or for other uses where you need a sturdy, waterproof container).

He may have browsed one of those shops and found the rounds in a can. Or sitting on a shelf for that matter. I would not be surprised.

The 82mm round appears to be weathered, but not rusted. Likely stored in someone's shed for the last 50 years.
The 60mm round appears to be quite deteriorated. Likely spent a lot of time in the ground before being dug up.

Without the original paint and markings, it's hard to tell from that photo if those are inert (i.e. training rounds with no explosive warheads) or if they are live rounds.
Training rounds are generally (in the West) painted blue so that everyone knows they aren't "live".
And you normally only find them on training ranges.

If they are live, they could have explosive, white phosphorus or "parachute flare" components.
Due to their age, the warhead components could be very unstable.

But he must have known what they were and to bring them on ANY flight was incredibly stupid.

"Back in the day" people (soldiers) loved finding the discarded 82mm parachute flare rounds. When fired, the entire round blasts into the sky for a couple hundred meters then the "parachute" pops open and the flare ignites, lighting up a large area of the ground below it for a few minutes.

The lower casing of the round falls back to the ground obviously but it's "clean" (no explosives or phosphorus) and the "cup" makes a great beer stein. (Though in Canada it's illegal to remove those from a training range. Yet a lot of people seemed to have them in their "man caves" back then.)

On one hand they gripe about all the "zero dollar" Chinese tourists and on the other they gripe when there are fewer of those "zero dollar" tourists.

Many Chinese are on tours, often sponsored in part by the factories they work for, where they pay for the entire holiday up front - in China.

The tour agency then makes deals with airlines, hotels, restaurants, attractions and even shopping malls to get the lowest (cheapest) possible deals for those groups.

They arrive, stay in their hotels until it's time to go to an attraction (admission already paid), go to a restaurant (2-3 meal choices only, 1 beer or soda pop), maybe go to an "adult" venue for an hour (admission paid, choice of 1 beer or soda pop) and then back to the hotel. Next day, same thing, maybe with some beach time or a boat ride.

5 days later it's back to the airport and home and the only money they've spent is maybe if they bought a souvenir at a shopping mall or duty free shop.

I remember about 20 years ago (2005/6ish) when they started arriving by the double-decker bus loads.
Spoke to some resort owners, restaurant and go-go bar owners I knew at the time.

They made enough from the tour groups to pay the bills basically. If they charged any less, they'd lose money. Seems they thought that getting all those tourists into their (hotel/restaurant/go-go bar) would generate tons of extra money in "extras" (i.e. ordering more booze or room service or more dishes at the restaurants) but no - those tourists weren't spending a yuan they didn't have to.

Hence the term "zero dollar tourists". 

I remember sitting in Polo watching 50+ tourists (male and female) come in, each would order a beer or coke, they would sit for 1 hour (literally to the minute) and then leave. Half of them never even touched their (beer or coke).

At Polo (back then) the girls did choreographed dance routines and some "special" shows. Like the one were a girl strips off her panties, stretches them out like a sling-shot and fires them at a customer. Then strips off another panty and does it again while the service staff run around collecting the panties (and tips). The dancer usually had a dozen or so pair of panties on so it wasn't like they were nasty, sweaty, smelly old critch rags but you should have seen the Chinese when she fired a pair at them.

You'd swear she was throwing live hand grenades or venomous snakes at them the way they jump out of their chairs to avoid being touched by the flying panties.

One night the girl fired a pair at me and you could see the Chinese tourists were all looking to see who she'd targetted. I caught them in mid-air, crumpled them in my hand, brought them to my face and took a long, deep sniff (they smelled like fabric softener from the laundry). I already knew what to expect as I used to be a regular there when I was working overseas.

I then put the panties in a shirt pocket and took a smug sip of my (Jack-Coke) like it was no big deal.
(One of the service staff would come along to collect the panties and I'd give her a 20 baht tip for the dancer. Naturally none of the Chinese tourists were tipping anything to anyone.)

And yeah - it is the start of "low season" traditionally as it warms up back in the "Western" countries that used to make up the bulk of the tourists here. Tourist-related businesses usually see a large drop in customers between May-Oct.

Which is another reason I think Thailand started trying to bring in massive numbers of Indian and Chinese tourists who, for the most part, come from a similar climate or from areas where "winter" isn't as harsh as in other places.
The kind of people who would go on holiday any time of the year.

It makes the "arrivals" numbers look good, but it doesn't seem to be doing all that much for the economy. Look at all the abandoned housing and condo projects and lack of new big ticket construction like new malls or hotels.

Because the powers that be aren't making a ton of money off those Indian and Chinese tourists. Not like they used to make when the majority of the tourists were from "Western" countries and the Thais called them "2 week millionaires" because for 2 weeks (the average stay) they spent like they were all millionaires and then went home again.

The "Boom" days of Pattaya (and other places). So many sick buffalo owe their lives and health to those days !

Makes me wonder who is taking care of them now ?

Most of my friends are Thai and when we go anywhere, someone has a bottle (or 6) of Regency.
We go to a restaurant or the dining area of a resort and everyone starts putting bottles of Regency on the table. No "bottle" or "opening" fees. Just have to pay for the mix.

But if we go to a large party that's being sponsored by someone (like a wedding or ordination ceremony) then they will usually have a never ending supply of Sang Som for the free-loaders while some people pull out their own stash of Regency.

And a couple of us usually have a bottle or 3 of Jack Daniels as well.

But Regency isn't sold in large quantities in the big stores (Villa, Big C, Makro, Friendship, Foodland) and almost never in 7-Eleven.
Once in a blue moon I see a bottle in Tops or Villa and snatch it right away. 
About 350 baht for the 350cl bottles, but the 700cl bottles are 950 baht for some reason.

It was funny because for years you could buy a 375ml bottle of Jack Daniels for 579 baht - but a 700mm bottle cost 1,249 !
So 2 small bottles would give you 750ml of booze for 1,158 baht.
You'd end up with 50ml more booze and pay 91 baht less.

(They boosted the price of the small bottles awhile ago so buying the small bottles doesn't save you anything.)

I ask my friends where they get their never-ending supplies of Regency and it seems they go to the large alcohol distributors and buy it by the case. (I'm guessing you can have them deliver it by the case as well.)

But I notice my friends usually look closely at the bottles/labels of every bottle they get from a mom&pop store or other outlet.

Apparently there's an active bootleg market where they recycle Regency bottles and fill them with counterfeit (or watered down) booze, slap a new cap on it and glue a new paper label to it and then sell it to those little family shops who will buy the cheapest stuff possible and sell it for full price.

Maybe that's why the big shops don't sell it as often ? 
Not sure about the legitimacy of the stock perhaps ?

I'm sure changing the 60 day free stamp back to a 30 day free stamp will solve all these problems !

It's too bad.

I remember the old Waiters on Wheels, which gave way to Foodpanda, which I guess is giving way to Grab.

Don't like Grab. Can never get the app to accept my address and whenever I try to "find my location" - it thinks I'm 300+ kms away !

Once or twice a year I give it a try and it's the SAME problem - indicating that they simply can't be bothered fixing it.

Can't figure out the "market conditions no longer align with the company's long-term strategic goals" bit.

You're a food delivery company. People are still ordering food online, How does that not align with your "long term strategic goals" ?

What are your "long term strategic goals" if you're a food delivery company that no longer wants to deliver food ?

Oh well, I'm sure the folks at GRAB are rolling on the floor giggling at how rich this is going to make them.

She's probably hoping to get a guest appearance on The White Lotus.

Someone might want to tell her that they finished shooting Season 3 long ago and won't be back for Season 4.

What would he have done if it had of been a Chinese tourist who said it ?

After all, I'm (white) and Canadian so it would be natural for me to say "hi" or "hello" or "how are you ?" in English. Would that be racist if I said "Hi, How are you ?" to the same guy ?

And you can imagine a Chinese person would likely greet the same person by saying something similar in Mandarin (or Cantonese).

Is it then racist for a Thai person to greet me in Thai, knowing full well that I am not Thai ? 

Or maybe, just maybe, somebody's prescription for their "special cream" ran out that morning and they weren't able to get anymore in time ?

 

Did mine online 2 months ago for the first time ever after 10+ years of doing them in person.
Worked like a charm. Can take 2-3 business days for a response. (Mine took 2 days and 5 hours from the time I submitted it.)

From the Immigration website: "2. Procedure for Notification of residence for more than 90 days via the Internet can be report 15 days in advance."
https://www.immigration.go.th/

Just went to the TM.47 site now. Everything is working normally. Punched in my passport number and nationality and it auto-filled a new form for me (not submitting it as I'm good for awhile yet).

Remember - you have to have done a 90 day report at Immigration before, so that your information is in the database.

And - it won't work if you try entering a different address than the one you gave Immigration before.
(If there's a problem, check that you are entering the address online the same way it was on the TM.47 you gave Immigration.)

And it won't work if you have a new passport and haven't gone in to Immigration so they can update it in their system.

Also remember - once you have filled out the information, scroll to the bottom and click the box on the left that says you read and acknowledge the terms and conditions.

Doing the report online means I'll only have to go to Immigation twice a year now (once to apply for my next Extension and then back the next day to pick up my passport with my new Extension stamp).
And I don't have to worry about scheduling my next trip around weekends and holidays (or monsoon rains).

If I'd know years ago that it was going to be that easy. But I read all those stories of people always complaining the system was down or didn't work for some unknown reason.

I should have ignored them and checked it out for myself but wasn't really fussed about it as it normally wasn't a hassle to go to Jomtien once every 3 months anyways.

But I'm beginning to think that it isn't the system that's the problem for most people.

Seems a lot of you forget - This IS Thailand.

Where you can get away with murder by simply bribing the victim's family so they won't press charges (seriously).

A simple accident like this will like result in a small, thin envelope being offered to the old man who will be advised that it would be in his best interest to accept the envelope and forget the incident ever happened.

And that will be the end of it.

Because THAT is how it is done - IN Thailand.

36 minutes ago, JJ-Thailand said:

This is the reason why I have kept a bit over 800,000 Baht in the same Thai bank account since 2017 when I got my O retirement visa. Only use the account for my visa extension every year and have never had any problem. Use an account at another bank for expenses.

Same. I put the 800k in a Fixed Term account back in 2011 and it's been there ever since.
I have another Fixed Term account I use when transferring money from back home and a normal Savings account that I use for my day-to-day needs.

Zero requirement to move your money to a different bank. Even if you changed provinces. Just go to the nearest branch of that bank and have the account "transferred" from your old branch. The account number doesn't change so there's no hassles about the "minimum 400k" business.

I wonder what will happen to the MILLIONS that arrive and "forgot" to fill it out, or didn't know where to find the app (not everyone has a smart phone with internet access and is tech savvy).

Do they all get put into an IDC pen until they figure it out ? Denied entry ? Held by Immigration and put on the next flight out ?

And how many weeks (or days) before a) the system crashes and b) the system is hacked and everyone's information is released onto the internet ?

We know the problems they have/had with the simple 90 Day online report system and that only has to handle maybe what, a few dozen people a day ? (Consider that not everyone uses it and there are 365 days in a year.)

I'm guessing that there will be MASS chaos starting from Day 1 and by Day 7 the program will be "temporarily" suspended because they couldn't handle the volume of people doing the online TM6s as well as the massive numbers of arrivals that didn't do it at all.

Probably not a good time to be flying in to Thailand.

Pattaya usually starts 4-5 days before the "official" start date so you should be prepared starting now.

The "official" dates are 13-15 April.

Get your phone, wallet and money in zip lock bags just to be safe.

Plan your days. Stay away from residential areas (where there may be lots of kids) and bar areas - where there may be lots of girls looking for fun.

Shop and stock up ahead of time if you don't want to step outside between 13-15 April.

Or dress for it and go out loaded for bear with your flowery shirt, flip flops and water gun loaded with ice water.

I think the idea was being used in some places in Japan some time ago as well as China.

And you notice it's not the skinny people who whine about it ? 

It's the obese people who think they should also get a discount so they can eat more for less.

On 4/4/2025 at 8:18 AM, Pouatchee said:

i am looking at the cdn $ and it hasn't been this good in quite a while. Damn I am starting to love these tariffs...

The Cdn $ was around 27 to one around 1 1/2 years ago (according the WISE transfers I've made).
It dropped over 3 baht to the dollar in 18 months and has barely gone up 1 baht in the last 3 months.

And that was before all the tariff nonsense.

But Thailand sets the exchange rates and pegs the baht to the US dollar so it often doesn't matter how strong our dollar is, it still gets less than the US.

When the Conservatives formed the gov't back in '06, our dollar started to recover from the years of Liberal mismanagement. At one point when Chretien and Martin were running things, the dollar dropped to it's lowest ever vs the US $ (0.72 -1) and those two were happy about it !

When Harper took over and the $ started going up, the Liberals whined that it would ruin our economy and there'd be huge job losses.
Never happened.

In fact, in '08 our dollar was trading at par with the US and our economy was fine and there were not job losses, proving just how incompetent the Liberals were. (They'd been trying to depress the value to benefit their rich buddies who paid for labour and resources in Cdn $ and sold it for US$. The weaker the Cdn $, the greater their profits.)

At one point the Cdn $ was worth $1.10 US ! (Didn't stay there long but it was a h3ll of a lot better than 0.72 !)

But !
The US $ was getting almost 37 baht and the Cdn was only getting 32 !

I was a little miffed (as in - pissed off) because I was getting paid in Cdn - wired to my Thai account. We should have been getting more baht to the dollar than the US but because Thailand set the exchange rates (instead of the markets) they deliberately kept the US $ higher.

And as long as the Liberals are running things - it will NOT get any better. Historically, every single time they form the gov't (since the end of WW2) our dollar has lost value and every time another gov't (like the Conservatives) take over, our dollar gains in value.

Sheesh - I just looked - it's at .70 to the US now. Worse than under Chretien and Martin !

But at least companies like Bombardier, Irving Oil, SNC Lavalin, Canadian Steamship Lines and other Liberal sponsors will be happy.

11 pages (so far) about an offensive t-shirt.

Every year I see vendors at events selling full on Nazi regalia (pins, flags, shirts). In Germany and some other places, you'd be arrested for that.
My friends have no clue what it means and don't care. 
Couple months ago my buddy bought a couple Japanese Rising Sun flags because he thought they looked cool.
It seems the Thais have short memories as well (or just never learned about WW2 history which is likely).

And people have worn Che Guevera shirts for decades - in North America - without having a clue about who he really was and what he really did.

What is offensive to you may be completely meaningless to people on the other side of the world that know nothing about the significance of the offensive items.

28 minutes ago, Liverpool Lou said:

Are you a doctor?

Doctor, no. And cleary you are not either.

However I've been a trained Emergency First Aid attendant (Level A) since I was 17 and during basic training my nickname actually was "Doc"  (still tattooed on my arm) as I knew more than the instructors teaching us First Aid.

Not to mention having been in the hospital (for operations) a couple times myself.

Here's a clue - "multiple skull fractures and bleeding on the brain" - yet no IV's connected and the "family member" is wiping his (unbandaged) head with a cloth. Riiiggghhhttt.

But in another photo (in the DailyMail) - the same people around him but suddenly he has an IV, a hand in a bag, oxygen tube in the nose.

But LOOK at the hospital bed. Notice anything funny about it ?

Like how it says "Paramount" on the end ?
You know - "Paramount Healthcare Services" - in the UK !


This is the exact same bed.

Yeah - get a brain. Seriously.

I was admitted last year to get minor wrist surgery and they had IVs and tubes stuck everywhere.
Same when I went in for shoulder surgery 6 years ago. Spent 3 days in the hospital with IVs hooked up even though I was concious and walking around and eating. Sheesh, I had 3 small incisions in my shoulder and the amount of bandaging they had on it made me look like a hunchback.

And yes, the local media literally DO report pretty much ANY incident involving a foreigner. Especially one as serious as this, with Russians supposedly arrested as well.

Here's another clue.

LOOK at the guy in the bed.

Now LOOK at the pics of the guy who is in an airport and the one of him under a tree.

Literally the only resemblance is they both have "5 day beards".
The guy in the hospital bed looks 15 years younger than the other guy.

But hey - like I said for the last few stories like this.

Surely some of you live in Phuket and can go to the hospital and take some flowers to the guy ?

From the sounds of it, there should be a dozen Brits in the Phuket hospital right now.

And no - you do not have to be a family member or on a list to go see someone.

And if you try that excuse I'll know your full of it. I've visited people - and had people visit me - and never had anyone turned away or been told there's a "list" of who can or can't visit someone.

 

Facts ????
WHAT FACTS ?

A story in a Brit Tabloid that specialises in selling "vacation horror stories" and was NOT reported in ANY local media is your "facts" ?

Gahd - no wonder this world is in such poor shape.