Riverman63

A few years back me and a mate were flying from UK to Amsterdam for a few days holiday. As we were flying out we had to show our passports to the official at the boarding gate. My mate went first, the official looked at his passport pic, looked at him, waved him through. I was next, he looked at the photo, looked at me then called my mate back.

We had accidentally swapped passports at check in. How on earth did he let my mate through with my passport?

Sent from my iPad using ThaiVisa app

On a similar note, let's hope China don't pull their loan from the USA. It's all global now, no country is an island.....

Coincidently I use Opera 90% of the time. I went to IE one day and looked in History. There was my Opera browsing history. Only thing I can think of is that IE shares some data with other browsers. Maybe MS thought it might be a useful 'feature'

I use CC Cleaner too....

In Chinese, Korean, Thai take aways and restaurants all over the UK you'll hear the patrons refer to the staff as chinks, gooks. Brits will say in normal conversation, lets have a chinkie, let's go down the Pakis etc then there's can I have a 69 please, tooth hurty, hansum man, no munee no hunee in fake Asian accents

Being a dumb ass racist loud mouth is a human failing. It's only hurts when it's a westerner getting the rough end apparently

Ha ha, I feel your pain OP. Reminds me of my dealings with my estate agents. I ring them up to ask them something and they don't know who I am and react to my house selling enquiries like I'm asking them about Nasa schedules. After all that they still don't do anything.

Luckily it's not my health and they don't get paid. This UK btw lol

I didn't realise there were so many retired council planning experts in Pattaya. Come back, your country needs you! ;-)

Climate change, whatever it's cause will change our world. It's a great leveller...

Basically it boils down to decoding. Language is like a computer code. Broken English can be understood fairly easily by filling in the gaps because of the structure of the language. Thai is very different, intonation, context etc being the decoder. Broken Thai is not the same as broken English, it cannot be pieced together. One word of a sentence won't give anyone a clue. The subtleties of the language are very hard to pick up by ear.

As for Thais not even bothering to try to understand, it's fear of looking stupid. You know when someone you've just met at a party says something and you don't understand? You ask them to repeat it 3 times and you still don't know what the hell they're on about. Embarrassing isn't it. So we all just nod and try to get away. Imagine if you knew that it was going to happen in advance, you'd avoid those situations.

It has to be said, though it seems obvious to anyone with half a brain cell. When you are in Thailand you are in a foreign land, a different culture, language, concepts... They are not the same as you. It seems many people just cannot understand this point at all. Thais are not just like you with different faces and accents, they are very different.

It's quite common world wide for men of a certain age to just wander off and abandon their lives. It seems that certain people just cut and paste the same replies on this forum in every thread....

dam_n, you caught me . . . I knew that new fangled cut 'n' paste stuff would catch me out in the end

It wasn't your post I was actually referring to but I see the identical remarks by some in every thread. I agree with most of what you said. It is quite common for middle aged men to just abandon everything and walk away. That's how many end up as farang in the first place!

I'm sure your cut and paste skills are top notch ;-)

It's quite common world wide for men of a certain age to just wander off and abandon their lives. It seems that certain people just cut and paste the same replies on this forum in every thread....

The day of my 50th birthday in Feb when my gf got all the bar girls to sing happy birthday to me. Peering into a cage for my first close up view of a baby tiger when a 7 year old Thai boy held out his hand and said hello. I shook it and said hello sir.

Tuk Tuk rude through Bangkok rush hour traffic, climbing to the top of Ko Larn to see the temple. Swimming under the stars in a roof top swimming pool. Swimming with my Thai gf in another hotel pool under a beautiful tree that dropped blossom into the water and her putting one behind her ear.

Oh and that bloody bird that kept me awake every night in Bangkok, the feathered type before anyone comments!

Now your living it Neo!

Can only talk from my own experience but I found staff, service and attitudes to be great in the hotels I stayed in and they were middle range I guess. One in Pattaya gave us ground floor room, next to swimming pool but said we could have another room if we didn't like it. We didn't and we had another room.

I have no doubt that some people do get bad service. Also, expectations can be high. In UK we have people who will walk into Tesco and expect Harrods like service because they feel they are special. Personally, I walk into a shop, get what I want, pay and leave. I don't want or expect to be treated like god.

Many people stating on this thread that Thai staff should learn English.... errr, isn't there loads of threads here complaining about the Russian invasion? I bet Thai visa Minsk has loads of threads with moaning Russians complaining that Thai hotel staff don't speak Russian.

People constantly moan from their own point of view. Thailand has visitors from all round the world. All with different customs and expectations. It's impossible to please them all and Thais are no different.

In the end, people go to to Thailand to experience Thailand. If you want the USA hospitality, yes sir, no sir, how would you like me to smile sir experience, go to USA.

Yes Thailand can be a dangerous place but there are many others too. Look at all the problems in Egypt recently. People still flock there and have to be told to leave even when people are killing each other in the streets. Jamaica has walled tourist towns.... people still go.

Let Thailand be Thailand. If you don't like it, don't go

Oh and when you go back to Bangkok, take a tuk tuk ride through peak time traffic. We couldn't get a taxi to take us from the Palace to Lumphini Park side of town at that time of day but a tuk tuk driver was game.

Yes it was noisy, yes there were fumes and traffic snarl ups, yes the driver weaved in and out of traffic but it was hell of a thrill ride and what a way to see the city. I felt like I was in a James Bond movie. Felt alive. Do it!

I think the best thing you can do when you are holidaying in Thailand is leave your expectations behind and just take the ride.

I was lucky, my gf is originally from Thailand and her family took us to the River Kwai, the amazing Buddha Statues at Wat Phai Rong Wua etc. I visited umpteen beautiful temples and climbed to one at the top of the hill on Ko Larn. 250 steps in a heavy heat but it was worth it.

The hotel I stayed at in Bangkok was fairly cheap but quite posh, clean and professional. The name alludes me at the mo but it was just up from Lumphini Park on Soi Lang Suan.

It's a shame you were at the park when a demo was taking place, I spent a Monday morning walking around trying to avoid the giant lizards that live there. Nice and relaxing.

I also had some great price hotels in Pattaya, very clean and professional with great swimming pools. Especially the one on the roof opposite Big C. Nothing like a swim under the stars

Sounds like you planned for someone else's holiday. I booked all the hotels via Expedia.com. I ignored all the very negative and positive reviews and concentrated on the run of the mill comments. Much like you should do on here mate ;-)

I'm not saying that Thais do not do these things, I'm saying that it's not just a Thai thing. It's a human thing. Happens everywhere

If you are in the UK and you end up laying bleeding on the floor after being stabbed by a chav, don't feel too relieved when bystanders pull out their phones..... they're mostly going to video you to show their mates.

The world had grown cynical and detached. You Thai bashers should get out a little more

Excellent photos mate. Keep sharing and ignore the rent a prats.

Stepping outside the safety zone is what leads to a great photo. You should enter the cobra pic into a competition or try and sell it to a magazine

A tragic and violent waste of life perpetrated by someone with testosterone poisoning. Happens all round the world but the usual Thai hating racists are about again

I love the way some people here attribute the stupid things some Thai people do as being because they have low iq or because they are Thai. It's a fine example of racist attitudes.

Whenever I visited my relatives house when I was a kid in UK, they'd have the tv on all day blaring in the background. Friends families did the same. They were all Brits. Bugger all to do with Thais or Thailand. Some people live that way. Not a race issue

Yep. It's endemic everywhere.

But, I don't think the OP explicitly contended that it was just a Thai thing.

I agree, the OP doesn't but others have. So many people seem to have a sneering, superior attitude to Thais here, makes me wonder what they're doing in the country. There are stupid people all over the world. You cannot escape them, wherever you go.

I guess a lot of people leave the tv on all day in case they miss something. They dip in and out. Me, I hardly ever watch tv these days. Brain rot and propaganda

I love the way some people here attribute the stupid things some Thai people do as being because they have low iq or because they are Thai. It's a fine example of racist attitudes.

Whenever I visited my relatives house when I was a kid in UK, they'd have the tv on all day blaring in the background. Friends families did the same. They were all Brits. Bugger all to do with Thais or Thailand. Some people live that way. Not a race issue

I swam in the sea off the main beach of Pattaya a few months back, didn't see anything dirty about the water and suffered no illness whatsoever in my stay there.

I remember in 70s at home in Wales swimming amongst visible raw sewerage occasionally and coal dust washing up. Now that is filth.

Those Welsh beaches are lovely now, they even film Doctor Who there

Some excellent videos in this thread. Thanks

I had some decent tasting and decent priced chips in Tiger Zoo. There is plenty around, I was surprised

Not a large island, I spent a day there and I think I saw most of what was on offer. Beautiful beaches and clear seas. Me and my Thai gf hired a taxi up to the temple on the hill. I climbed the 250 steep, sometimes vertical steps to the shrine in the top.

Amazing views from those steps of the bay below. About half way up I couldn't breathe due to heat and effort. I thought, I'd rather die here than on the shop floor in work so I was quite relaxed.

Meanwhile my gf talked to the monks. One asked, next time you come can you bring me a flag?

My gf replied, yes I will bring you a Welsh flag... The monk replied, what about Manchester United!

Great place. Well worth a visit and I'm still alive