RamblingSam

I'm now haunted by visions of the highly improbable and frightening sight of Falangs in Thailand, limbo-dancing ... If they are wearing their usual revoltingly baggy shorts, I think it would get banned pretty quickly!

Thailand is one of those countries which (as many Thais will proudly point out) wasn't/hasn't been 'colonised' by for instance, the British or French. It's written language does not use the alphabet, but 'symbols' which differ from others around it, Most of these 'symbols' have multiple meanings and trying to 'fit' the sentence structure 'we' use which comes with the alphabet, is not easy. I'm reminded of one example when one of the Kings of Thailand attended a very important international meeting around WW1, and was shocked to discover that 'falangs' thought that the Thai national flag has a mouse, rather than an elephant on it! The flag was then promptly changed to what it is now. If historically, only that far back, you can get misunderstandings as basic as that, it's I suppose not surprising that there aren't any decent language translators available!

I've never visited Phuket, but have other parts of Thailand. I think the word 'Envy' should replace that of 'greed', and I think a fair number of tourists treat Thais as if they are 2nd/3rd-class citizens very much like many 17th-19th century European colonials did. On the other hand, Thailand has always been very 'inward-looking', values the fact that it was never Colonised as was the case with virtually all the countries that surrounded it. If, Thailand got those running it's tourist industry to be intensively trained by their European and American counterparts, so they knew first hand how 'differently' tourism industry operates outside Thailand, and then gave these people the 'Teeth' to change things via regulations in Thailand, many more people would visit the country. This is of course a rather generalised view of how things currently are,

Polls can total more than 100%, if they are multiple-choice ones, and this is an example of such a poll. I do though think one of the questions has been 'rigged' by asking 'When asked about how much faith and confidence they have that Thailand’s
democracy with the King as the head of state can solve current problems and conflicts, 68 percent said they were very confident in the country’s system, whereas 32 percent said they were not. ... Surely, this should read 'the current government' and not 'democracy with the King as the head of state' ... I would have thought the newspaper is 'treading on eggshells', wording it as they have!

Some would also say, they are somewhat disconcerted as to where they are going next!

We are talking about a country which is very proud about not having been colonised by the empire-building French, Portuguese, Spanish, British and Russians. Many falangs turn up in Thailand, steeped in our country's taught histories of being 'colonisers', or are from a country which is now a superpower. I would not be at all surprised if many Thais feel that us falangs are trying to 'impose' or worse, 'control' Thailand by stealth. I can to some extent understand why Thais might think this way, as up until the not too distant past, Thailand watched on as all of it's colonised neighbours were systematically abused by their falang 'overlords' who then hauled off what profits they made, out of these countries.

The P4P scheme stinks and is disgusting. I would have thought that unless these people who are willing to put the welfare of people before what they earn, you wouldn't have anyone working outside more populated areas .... They should be seeing their earnings increase, not reduced! Whoever implemented the P4P scheme should be told to go and do this job themselves for about a year, on the pay that the P4P scheme operates.

I suspect, the reason why the Chinese arriving in Phuket prefer to come on all prepaid holidays may well be because the tour operator in China, is 'managed' by one of China's 'Politico's' seeking to oversee what their customers are exposed to in a non-communist environment. Mind you, on the other hand these tourists may well have heard of Thailand's reputation for scams etc, and go for a tour package that advertises itself as reducing the risk of customers getting ripped off .... whilst the operator is actually 'milking off' it's customers behind their backs!

From what I'm aware of many of these 'All in' package holidays, much of money goes to the travel organisers and the money for whatever trips, events are paid for, goes to 'falangs' who then probably sub-contract these out to Thais at as cheap as possible prices. While it may well mean that in theory tourists might not get'ripped off' their money goes to a much smaller and 'select' number of Thai's than would normally be the case, as the travel organisers and their cronies want to keep as much of the tourist's money as they can. Maybe I am being excessively cynical, but seems to be my impression of how these organisers operate!

OK, so they can manage to plan finance and get a concrete agreement on something of little interest to most Thais and falangs, but they seem to be incapable of doing something of far greater importance such as dealing with the flooding around Bangkok!

I have just been looking at some English (UK) to Thai dictionaries, thesaurus's and dictionary the right and wrong way of using English ..... I have to say that the greatest failing of all of these is that they do a very poor job of describing how words and letters of the alphabet are pronounced. Without that very fundamental being taught first, all the rest is going to be a huge waste of time

As for 8 weeks of (hopefully!) intensive tutoring being of any use, they are living in cloud Cookoo-land, even if those being taught already (by Thai standards) a good standard of written and spoken English.

OK I'll willingly accept that Brits are bloody lazy when comes to learning ANY other language and some Europeans (eg the Dutch) speak better English than most Brits do!!!

No, not American football with all that protective gear... British Rugby tackles much 'better', players are only allowed to come off the pitch when serious damage has been done! Seriously though, this'type' of person will try any trick 'get their kicks', so Thai agencies being able to get checks done this way, means they have access to reliable, high-quality info, which sex offenders can't argue about. International agreements take time to ratify, but thank the Gods that things are at long last being done about this!

I'm not that clued-up regarding the historical background of this region, but looking around elsewhere, and the conflicts suffered in Ireland, the Croatian and Serbian region, Cyprus, parts of Malasia and Indonesia, one common theme seems to be religious intolerance, and a lack of knowlege regarding how other countries who could potentially suffer conflict, have managed to settle their differences and agree to disagree. Maybe if a delegation of people from both sides of the divide, had the chance of visiting countries where things are a lot more stable, so they can see and hear how they have settled their differences, and talk together, maybe some kind of agreement can be obtained?

Of course the religious and political millitants (from both sides) will absolutely hate this, but then, if they weren't as narrow-minded, they too would be part of this debate. Look what happened in Ireland, the women there, rose up and kicked off against what their menfolk had been doing for decades, and off the back of that, things began to get a lot better in Ireland. Women in religious and political groups rarely have the 'voice' they should be entitled to, but on the other hand as the Greek tragic play 'Lystrata' shows - where the women said to their warriors, "If you want your 'rations', you've got to give up fighting" - they could be well be the 'Force' which could have a positive impact on this conflict. Mind you, the Greek tactic wasn't what the Irish women employed, they just showed the up their men as being a bunch of narrow-minded morons.

Just love the H&S in this photo ... (or lack of!)

If this is true, could his parents, or some other family member got this 'Fixed' for him?

One way or another this is about destroying someone's 'Face', something very important in Thai society/culture?

Suggest 'fund-raise' instead of 'take over' ... which could also mean/imply that Ladyboys have taken over ownership of a hotel!

As for the Orphanage, is this also the Friar Ray school for the disabled? It's an excellent school which puts to shame similar schools in Europe due to the quality of teaching and trying to find work for them when they leave. I wonder how many here, realise that one of Thailand's paralympic competitors also lives there?

One alternative would be to impose a maximum on the amount of natural and synthetic sugars allowed per 100g/100ml, and gradually reduce these figures over a period of years. You can get 'Diet' versions of drinks, so such a marketing strategy isn't impossible.

Quite why someone would want to remain looking young or live longer, when you have something like Diabetes, somewhat baffles me; Surely spending his money on anti Diabetes treatments is going to extend and improve the quality of his life further than any stem-cell potions will. On the other hand, seeking advice from Cliff Richard or/and the Dali Llama, (and not because they both have strongly religious views) is likely to have a far more positive impact on his life, than wasting it on the snake-oil doctors dishing out stem-cell preparations?

Well, I would say that there is a very obvious reason why these nurses are still employed as part-time staff, which is because once they get classified as full-time, they can apply for much better-paid jobs in Private hospitals. The solution is as obvious as the nose on the front of my face; nurses are people whom are generally taken for granted as they invairably enter the job because they want to improve the quality of life, of those who suffer illnesses, and many people don't really realise how valuable they are, until you need them. Undoubtably it will soon be 'discovered' that those in the more qualified medical professions have been seeing their earnings increase at a far faster rate than those below them, which will just fuel the nurse's feelings that they are more poorly paid than they initially thought they were, and then this may well turn into a far more corrosive situation.

I'm thinking this video would be much better if it also showed some of these old expats wandering around and frequenting the remaining bars.

“We are world leaders in providing economically desperate Asian women and unhealthy Western food. As governor I promise that these men will be taken care of.” ... says Bangkok Governor Sukhumband Paribatra.

Surely, these men should have noticed that their favorite bargirls were moving out elsewhere over the past 10 years, or these senior expats were so addled they couldn't remember what they'd heard a few hours later?

Presumably, and hopefully, the bar-girls and especially their Mamasan's aren't the same ones working there back in the 80's and earlier?! The thought of that being the case, just doesn't bear thinking about!!

The Thai rice farmers certainly still deserve a better price or bigger share of what the rice eventually sells for, than they were getting, prior to this scheme; somehow some mechanism needs to be devised to deliver this, which doesn't involve the Millers and Middle-men. Maybe what is needed, is officials 'in the field' who are the equivelent of a weights & measures dept, which have the duty of

a: Assessing how much Rai of rice is being grown in their Tambon,

b: Whilst the crop's gathered in, he/she oversees the weighing and bagging into containers supplied by the dept. If the volume collected, does not tally with what is expected, a rat will be smelt.

c: Once bagged and officially tagged and the farmers receive a receipt stating the quantity bagged, the amounts are then sent onto a 'Rice Payments Board'

d: When the middlemen or millers buy the rice, once the farmer has received that money, he sends in his payment receipt from the bank, into the 'Rice payments Board' and the subsidy is sent directly to the farmer's bank account.

e: No middlemen or millers involved in the subsidy payment, they cannot palm-off imported rice as Thai.

f: The farmer, has to prove he has received his payment in full from the middle-man or miller, before the Rice board will pay out, so they cannot claw back some of that money off the farmer.

It might add to the adminitstrating bill, but I'm guessing, the cost incurred would be far less than the money 'lost' via the present system. Also, the farmers probably have more power, which in my mind, isn't a bad thing.

Maybe the reason why the Thai telecomms companies aren't that interested in going to 3G is because of they are having problems sourcing s/hand 3G systems from companies outside Thailand? Ha ha ha! ... On the other hand, it could well be that they are aware that the vast majority of their users - in the poor rural areas - would not be happy coughing up the more expensive mobile network charges, and would much prefer the present network coverage and strength, to be better than it currently is?

If as you all say, the taxi fares are so high, why are some of you still living or going there, instead of somewhere else in Thailand? Surely, if someone from each Falang country, contacted all their major travel agencies, advertising the name and number of decent-priced Taxis, and also pointing out what IS a reasonable Bt per Km rate, these taxis would very soon realise they have to moderate their fares.

I also would have thought it would not be very difficult/expensive to 'buy' some advertising space on ThaiVisa, local newspapers websites etc, listing the phone numbers of taxis that deliver good service at XXX Bt per Km? Just moaning about the situation, without DOING something about it, just means that the Taxi Mafia will carry on the same as usual. Admittedly I don't live in Thailand, but I certainly do visit, but being disabled, I rent a car rather than rely on on Taxis etc.

Ah, another way of commercialising another service which could provided by the locals. There's going to be a lot of haggling and back-handers floating around to assist the politicians as to whom gets the contract. Only in Thailand, could it take as long as it's going to take, to get the high-speed train running, to decide what is going to be in a lunch-box! Can only presume the ghosts of the Monty Python team and Spike Milligan, are residing in Thailand!