Dogmatix

I don't think they have made vaping illegal in Thailand yet- just the importation of the equipment. That seems to be why it is on sale so widely. The sellers are not the importers and just pay off the police. Thais are not arrested for vaping. It is just a shake down for foreign tourists.

Russians?

Thai police pathologists are likely to hand over the body with all internal organs removed and dumped somewhere to prevent a proper autopsy overseas. This has happened before when families went to some expense to repatriate bodies.

I get calls from Thais calling from unknown mobile numbers speaking in English with heavy Thai accents. They often repeat my first two names a couple of times asking me to confirm that is me. I shoot back with who are you in Thai and they usually just repeat their own question. I won't talk to an unknown caller who refuses to identify themselves. I hang up and block the number. They could be scammers or tele sales people. If they are legit callers, they will find a way to get their message through to me. When I was less cautious a fake police call center got on to me claiming to be investigating a money laundering and drug dealing scheme and pretended a money transfer had been made by me to one of the suspects. They had my full name, address, 13 digit ID card number, presumably sold to them by someone from a Thai bank or government department. I asked the guy for his name, rank and police unit and told him I would look his details up online and call him back on his office's direct line to verify him. Of course he didn't provide this information but a gave a vague answer about his unit and continue to rabbit on in a threatening way. So I hung up and blocked him. They continued trying to call me for a few weeks after that, using different numbers and voices including a woman, but just hung up without saying anything and blocked the number each time.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14249839/Spanish-student-killed-elephant-knocked-trunk-Thailand.html How sad! A number of foreign tourists are killed by elephants every year at venues where elephants are used as tourist attractions. The government does nothing because there is no political backlash from the “accidental deaths" of random foreigners and elephants a money spinner that may just be abandoned, if no longer profitable. Elephants are wild animals and should be admired from a safe distance.

Thai and British police are only responsible for custody in police cells. Thai police cells are usually just one open cell for men and women together with a concrete floor to sit and sleep on and a bucket in the corner to pee and poop in. Rapes of vulnerable prisoners such as illegal aliens are a common occurrence in Thai police cells with Thai police senior sergeant majors, which seems to be nearly all of them, exercising a medieval droit de seigneur (right of the feudal lord or slave owner) over the helpless captives. British police are probably jealous of the Thai interrogation methods with black plastic bags over the head and a boy in Kalasin who was castrated by police colonels trying to get a confession of motor bike theft. They then hung his body from a tree in a neighboring province to make it look like suicide but his aunt was skeptical about how he lost his balls and why he travelled so far from home to commit suicide. Of course none of the police colonels ever faced appropriate punishment. As we all know, this is all for show. Thai police and their government have no intention of doing anything about this stuff.

How illegal is this in Thailand? Having a Thai gf and acceding to her requests for money for financial support is certainly legal. Faking cancer and death may be over the line, as it demanding money on false pretenses. So could be fraud. But would a Thai court convict for it? What evidence can he present? Is there anything in writing or was it done via unrecorded phone calls? She can just say he was welly lich and loved her. So he sent money money she never even asked for out of love. Then he fell out of love because he found someone else and regretted all the love gifts he sent. Anyway the guy needs to ask himself why he was sending so much money to a prostitute, rather than paying the market rate per session.

The dumbest was the lonely middle aged spinster Thai CEO of the French spectacle lens company in Thailand who transferred millions of dollars, not baht, to an African scamster posing as a handsome Chinese American doctor. She cleaned out her own savings and then the company's Thai bank account and was working on the company's US bank account that she got access to when she was caught.

All blank guns modified to fire live rounds bought online and a home made air gun according to Thai media.

It's not like in England where it may take hours to get a clamp removed after paying a large fine. In Bangkok and Pattaya the cops arrive within a few minutes to removed the clamp after you have paid in the cop shop. Last time I paid 500 baht. So why bother with this tedious rigmarole and risk being arrested for a more serious crime?

Another common scam is a bilingual message purportedly from Thai postal customs saying a package has arrived for you from overseas with some tax to pay. Since Thais now order tons of consumer items from China there is always gonna be a certain percentage of SMS recipients waiting for something coming from China. If they fall for it, the scammers will try to get their bank account details and suck it dry. Another version of the scam involves a phone call to your number with a recorded message in Thai from a “customs official” with a pleasant, polite female voice telling you to click on a click being sent to you by SMS. Thai postal customs repeatedly posts notices advising the public that they don’t send SMSs. They send all notifications about tax on incoming parcels by mail. God knows how much this scam has netted so far. Since scanners now seem able to use Thai mobile numbers, it is a pretty safe bet that mobile phone company staff are involved in the scams in addition to police and other government officials.

I had been transferring money from overseas to make various property investments for about 10 years. That investment project was terminated the day the initial announcement was made. The last investment was made in June 2023. Used to use my Thai credit cards for everything. This year I set up a new debit card arrangement with a foreign bank that allows me to maintain balances in major currencies and the debit card automatically debits the currency of the payment. So I can pay directly in USD, EUR, GBP, HKD, SGD, AUD etc without incurring hefty credit card forex charges. I haven’t used the card for Thai purchases but have used it for overseas tickets and travel and all my online shopping from Amazon, AliExpress, Temu etc. The missus has paid our son’s school fees and her life and health insurance premiums from gifts remitted to her from overseas. With these adjustments my local investment income has been enough to survive for the past year. I sold an overseas property, I had been putting off selling, and am putting the proceeds into a bank account in the name of an offshore company. This is to protect from the possibility of a Thailand introducing global tax in 2026. Income in a company name would only be taxable, if the company paid it to me as a dividend. This is what Thaksin and other wealthy Thais woukd do to avoid global tax on their offshore income.

Is Shopee going to stop selling canes for the express purpose of flogging small children? https://shopee.co.th/product/135174251/4881545040?gads_t_sig=VTJGc2RHVmtYMTlxTFVSVVRrdENkVzBLS2xuUGZzMlQ5NjlFWklmRkZjVFBSbU5TZUJMVTY2b2czYmhDaHBRM3l4Qm4xb0tXTHlWMFAxaXhvWnlkV29RZVdZOUJQUWo0NVlPbi9taGpPbUhuUVRZbGtxSW9XSTltWDFzaDIxbGw

Teachers unions in the UK came up with similar arguments in the 70s and 80s trying to resist the abolition of corporal punishment in schools. My experience of corporal punishment at school was that it was at best dished out in a totally arbitrary and unfair manner and, at worst (and this was sadly only too common) was administered purely for the perverse sexual pleasure of teachers and prefects doing the beatings. Floggings at home and at school did nothing to encourage better behaviour but instilled a deep hatred and resentment for the beaters and a disrespect for authority which proved itself irresponsible.

"By converting USD into Thai Baht, these investigations involve substantial considerations, both financially and politically, as the NACC seeks to address the impunity that allegations like Thaksin's can represent." I wonder what this para was supposed to mean. Seems like a non-sequitur produced by the AI scrambler.

Nonsense article that made it to the front page of the Post.

A rambling, uninformative article that only says what is not being changed in this bill but says notice about how it will change alcohol laws.

Kindergarten classrooms and other areas need CCTV to investigate and deter abuse by teachers like this. There are good reasons why Singapore has just made CCTV compulsory in all areas in preschools except for bathrooms. In my kid’s expensive international school two teachers had to be fired for persistent bad behaviour towards a class of 3 year olds that was short of abuse but often amounted to quite nasty intimidation. It took a long time for parents to get the school to take action, as the instinctive reaction was to protect teachers and reject parents’ complaints as unfounded. But finally common sense prevailed and the two witches were shown the door. There is always a certain percentage of teachers that will go rotten, if allowed to by complacent school managements. Parents of young children need to be constantly vigilant for any sudden behavioral changes like not wanting to go to school any more or becoming quiet and withdrawn. It can happen in the poorest state school or the most expensive international school. Don’t take any BS from school management, if you need to take action.

Never knew Thai massage could be used as a form of execution or assisted suicide. I don't suppose Mr Tuck or Ms Chanida did either.

What happened is pretty clear. Thaksin dreamed up a hair brained scheme whereby he took a gamble that India would have another drought and would not be able to supply the export market with rice. So Thaksin would be able to corner the market and push the rice price up, making money for himself and cronies and maybe allowing the Thai government to make some too. Farmers would benefit up front from a high fixed price from the government. India had no drought, recorded a bumper harvest with record exports and Thaksin lost his bet and but still made big money from crooked deals where rice was exported to fake Chinese state entities at loss making big discounts and sold back to the Thai government at the rice pledging price. Farmers lost out because Yingluck dissolved the government on Thaksin's orders without giving enough time to the finance minister, former stock jockey Kittirat, to enact legislation allowing the government to borrow enough money to finish paying farmers for rice already pledged. This led to a number of suicides amongst farmers. Yingluck's role in all this. She authorized the whole scam as president of the Rice Commission. Even though she only attended two meetings of the Rice Commission, she was fully culpable and deserves to serve her full sentence without parole.

Sad for the poor children. The cops seemed to have used a man sized snake catching device on him.

So he went native. Bad idea.

Boob jobs are a very competitive business in Thailand with back street clinics competing on price and materials. I remember a story about a ladyboy in Pattaya whose new boobs got infected and had to be removed including the nipples. Inside the surgeon found not silicone sacs but knotted condoms filled with saline solution. Silicone carries risks too and was banned for breast augmentation in the US for 14 years but later re-allowed under commercial lobbying pressure. Leaking silicone can cause serious problems, requiring the removal not only of the ruptured sacs but of previously healthy breast tissue permeated by dangerous liquid silicone. The result is a flat as a pancake look and possibly no nipples. Do due diligence on the procedure and its risks before making a decision. If the breasts look fine already and it is not a case of reconstruction after breast cancer surgery, I would say leave well alone.

Yes. But justice delayed is justice denied. A South African teacher who was a serial homosexual rapist at my old school in Edinburgh and another school there is now in his late 80s and cannot be extradited to face justice in Scotland because there are now too many rape charges pending against him in South Africa from his later career in South Africa that he cannot live long enough to face justice for all his rapes. The common practice of schools then and now, even at international schools in Thailand, is to hush up scandals by offering to give the offenders a reference, if they will resign and go quietly which allows them to continue the offences in other schools. A glowing reference for the rapist at my old school was written by the headmaster, who was himself fired for sexual abuse including homosexual molestation and sadism plus alcoholism a few years later. It is amazing what parents were expected to pay for.

Zero tolerance for any type of child abuser. I suffered from homosexual harassment by a teacher at a very expensive and famous school in Scotland, that produced at least one PM, for over a year and many boys suffered physical abuse and even homosexual rape from various teachers there. The school is still facing legal cases and paying damages for what happened in the 70s and 80s. There was just an abuse case at my child's costly school in Thailand where very young children were intimidated by farang and Thai teachers. It is way short of sexual abuse but should not have happened. Patents need to keep an eye out for abuse at all Thai schools from the free and cheapest to the most expensive. Bullying by other kids and abuse by teachers are rife everywhere.