BestBitterPhuket

Why say something when you don't have anything to say? Just wait. Several times we have been told that they "had him/they" and every time they let them go. Can you imagine how this feels for the families of the victims?

Good, but please replace the prisons chiefs that has already had proved that they can't do the job.

At least the Chinese are destroying the threat of their own Muslims, instead of nurturing them and giving them more and more say, like in naive Europe.

In my book, the best beers for value are Young's Special London Ale, bottle conditioned, 6.4% abv, great taste and at 169bht for 500ml, and Fuller's ESB (500ml), which is a legendary beer, at 159bht at Tesco. Murphy's Stout at 105bht for 500ml is good value too. Old Golden Hen (500ml) from Morland's at 145bht is below the magic 150bht limit. So was the canned Bombardier.

I recently had Brain's SA Smooth (brewery from Wales) on tap in Phuket at 160bht (not even happy hour)

Like many clever people on TV first said, this case will never be solved. Look now. It will not be solved but the Thai olive will say that a "foreigner did it". And leave it with that. By the way, have they DNA tested the local policemen yet?

Well done! This type of crime is so damaging. They need to let foreigners entering Thailand know that ATM scams and card forgery will lead you to die in prison (and uncomfortable one).

Deport him! It will be the best for Thailand and him. This guy is the kind of foreign filth that is attracted to Thailand. Ban and remove the sex industry that caters to foreigners in Thailand, and these garbage people and criminals will stop coming to Thailand. The sex industry attracts foreign garbage like dog manure attracts flies.

What a load on nonsense! There is no way that Assad would allow thousands of jihadists to enter Syria to fight his already badly battered army. I cringed when I read this.

The place is gonna be cheap -

World media will forever label Thailand as poorly to the extreme policed .

Rightly or wrongly.

This is really looking bad for the Thai economy .

The sad thing is when outsiders see a police so incompetent and untrustworthy, then they will instantly believe that other government organizations are equally incompetent and untrustworthy, whether rightly or wrongly so. An honest an capable police force is the cornerstone in any developed country. In successful countries like US, Japan, Singapore and EU, the police officers are low paid, but honest and with pride in their jobs. They are not motivated by money and none of them are multimillionaires like some of the thai police men.

The place is gonna be cheap -

World media will forever label Thailand as poorly to the extreme policed .

Rightly or wrongly.

This is really looking bad for the Thai economy .

The sad thing is when outsiders see a police so incompetent and untrustworthy, then they will instantly believe that other government organizations are equally inx

UK myst demand that Scotland Yard gets involved to oversee the investigation. It will benefit Thailand as well because the police here obviously needs to learn about proper procedures and conduct. The UK government can't accept what has now happened.

The junta has to reform the police and it's going to be difficult. Without police reforms such reforms as the drive against corruption will fail again, and failure of the reforms means that the threat of Thaksin coming back and more instability. They have to do it. Take down the police completely. Change everything including the uniforms.

The police has no shame and no pride. Only they can be blamed for their failure. Only they. These excuses make them look even more useless.

This case has made it more obvious that the junta needs to overhaul the police completely. No reform in Thailand will stick otherwise. If the country is going to develop, the police needs to do so as well. Look at the singapore police force. Their pay is low (except from the high ranking officers), but they are 100% honest and pride is their driving force. They catch criminals. In Thailand the police are driven by greed and many are criminals themselves who sometimes catch other criminals. My advice. Talk to singapore and get their help on police reforms. They have been there and done it....successfully.

So he has been cleared based on an interview only? Really? All DNA testing should be done again, by Army doctors and all the samples protected by soldiers and sent to singapore for testing. You can't trust the police in this case. The conduct of the police in this case has been horrifying. I didn't think they could stoop this low.

Angry Thais will teach him a lesson.

Why did the thai police let him go? He has committed numerous immigration offenses? They could put him in a cell until he is sent out.

It is interesting to notice how these mayors and governors always use phrases like its not my responsibility or it can't be solved. Is it a case of can't or won't?

I've been following this from the very beginning and what I am sick of is the constant RTP bashing in this thread, and others like these.

It seems from reading peoples comments that they have years of law enforcement experience & consider themselves to be Sherlock Holmes. If you bashers think you can do a decent job then why don't you get yourself to Koh Tao and lend them a hand?

As someone who has experience in law enforcement I can tell you, investigating a murder and gathering evidence to show to the court is not easy.

How can you preserve evidence on a beach as best you can without compromising it when the sea can wash away vital bits?

How are you going to identify witnesses if none are willing to come forward?

The murder didn't occur directly underneath a CCTV camera, so how are you going to know how many suspects you're looking for or what they look like?

How are you going to lock down an island with many entry/exit points with a limited amount of officers?

What tasks are you going to prioritise when you used your finite amount of officers, and your nearest back up is 2 hours away with the sea in between?

People have been saying it's a Thai, Burmese, influential person who committed the murder. I ask you where is your evidence to support your theory? Gut feelings and hearsay don't hold up in a court of law I'm afraid.

Oh and not all Thai police officers are corrupt, so why tar them with the same brush? You guys won't like it if people say retired Farang men only come to Thailand to marry young Thai women would you?

My grandfather did not die in the line of duty on a drug raid just to be labeled bent.

Rant over

It seems like the only real evidential lead is the seaman. Finding the match can takes hours to years, it's unfortunately just a waiting game now.

You must have been blindfolded, every minute you have been in Thailand and all your information about the country comes from tourist brochures. That's the impression you give. Beyond naive...

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I'd like to know what % of those wealthy "Thai's" are actually "Thai-Chinese" . . . I'm guessing a fairly large proportion. But they're "Thai", so that doesn't count I guess.

And your point is?

The point being, that for a country that is so xenophobic against foreigners in general and proud that they have "never been colonized", the integration of the "Chinese" (for example) into the "Thai" population has gone so deep and is rarely remarked upon, that's all.

That same "integration" certainly doesn't seem to have happened with the mixing of Thai(s) and other nationalities so far, caucasians for example . . . maybe it's still early days.

Same in Malaysia , the Chinese Malay has all the money the native Malay has nothing, like Thailand.

Total nonsense! The share between Malays and Chinese in Malaysia is almost 50:50 now, but that is not because of the Malays business acumen, but racist policies favouring them. The Malaysian Indians however....

You guys are killing me with your first-world problems. I am in the sticks of Songkhla now and the only options are Leo, Chang and (reduced bottle size) Singha. It's even hard to find Heineken. It's a real beer nightmare.

Log on to www.wishbeer.com which offers more than 300 different beers from UK, US, Belgium, Japan, Denmark, Norway etc. Prices are quite similar to supermarkets and if your order is more than 2000bht they will send for free. I have ordered from them several times and I was very happy. Beers are packed and handled well and arrive in time. UK breweries such as Fuller's, Well's, Young's, Courage, Whychwood are represented.

These are some of the items I noticed during my recent visit to the Villa beer section:

These, I haven't seen mentioned here before:

Wadworth The Beer Kitchen-Villa.jpg

This one, mentioned her in the past:

Imperial Russian Stout-Villa-279b.jpg

This one, a perennial favorite and probably the best beer for the price in Thailand:

Young's Double Choc Stout-Villa-139b.jpg

The Beer Kitchen is a boutique or craft spin off from Wadworth brewery. I have tried all of the above, except the beer aged in whiskey barrels. They are all good, but not as good as the Hook Norton's, St Austell or Sambrook's in that price range.

The Courage Russian Stout scores very high in the rankings at beeradvocate.com and ratebeer.com. I think it's good, but there are better imperial stouts out there. It is much better than the dreadful Lion's Stout though.