Dogmatix

NZ also on the CDC list despite 2 years of national isolation with zero COVID policy.

Definitely no risk of Putin’s nuclear missiles coming to Thailand, unless the aged Soviet guiding system goes wrong.

So with input from the US embassy CDC also doesn’t believe Thailand’s miraculously low case numbers. Thailand - hub of fake news.

Right. These tangental uses of non-THC cannabis, which are widely available in other countries, are of little or no interest to tourists. Recreational use could be a big money spinner like it is in Amsterdam where it accounts for something like 30% of the tourist arrivals. But the government would see it as a backpacker thing and they only want tourists who stay in 5-star hotels.

There are some items that people buy on Ebay from Thailand because they are specialialty items made in the country that are cheaper than elsewhere e.g. certain types of jewellery and leather gun holsters. But other high price items, I guess most buyers will lose interest when they see they will be coming from Thailand like many sellers refuse to ship to Thailand, Nigeria etc.

In order to get established as an onshore business in Thailand Paypal has been determined to destroy the offshore business it had with accounts in Thailand. I have mainly only used Paypal for online shopping overseas. Because of all this rubbish I have replaced it whether possible with credit card payments. What remains is some Ebay sellers who only accept Paypal. The local Thai market can't be worth much to Paypal because Thai online buyers are willing to transfer money online and send a slip on LINE, thereby having no protection from fraudulent sellers. It would have been better for them to keep what they had, not try to go onshore for small benefit and refuse to engage with the Thai authorities.

I got an email saying that they had informed me my account was dormant because it had been dormant for 2 years and that they were previously going to close it down but had decided to keep it open. It is complete BS. My account has been used several times this year and I never received the notice that it would be closed down.

Some government person was saying they may be breaking Thai law. So they could be arrested on their return home, if they survive. The UK said the same but the lady foreign secretary was encouraging Brits to go and fight nonetheless.

The Chinese vaccines don't seem to be effective at all against delta and omicron. So Thais who have had 2x SV + 2x PF are only double vaccinated, not boosted.

A step in the right direction at last. Probably getting worried about facing secondary sanctions.

Thailand has never had a functioning democracy and has a questionable human rights record in the south and elsewhere. It also supports the Burmese junta, China in Xinjiang and Tibet and is friends with Russia. The only concern for them is loss of tourism revenue and exports and a handful of Thai expats in Ukraine. But Don should we wary of secondary sanctions. He can ask their buddies at Hwa Wei, if he doesn’t know what that means.

She is probably one of the better English teachers. That’s why she gets this job. But it’s very sad they put up someone so dense she thinks she teaches in a “skoon” and makes mistakes in every line of a simple text. It’s also childish simple Enlish for kids of that age in addition to teaching them incorrect pronunciation, grammar and syntax. These are 10 year olds who have probably been learning English for more than 3 years. At that age in my French classes I had learnt all the tenses and had a broad enough vocab to read proper texts, not nonsense like that.

If found to be infected, after taking a rapid antigen test, doctors will provide medications, such as Favipiravir, Fah Talai Jone Thai herbal medicine or others, depending on the symptoms exhibited, such as a fever, a cough or a runny nose. The scheme is expected to begin nationwide on March 1st. A drug that has not shown to be effective in international studies and herbal remedies is all they offer. Favipiravir held back from marketing as a COVID therapy by Fujifilm which owns the copyright because the studies were unconvincing. Thailand bought the pills from the Chinese licensee. There are effective treatments from Merck, Pfizer et al but Thailand doesn't have any of them. So it just offers placebos.

Yes. The sentence was for importing a sizeable quantity of a class 1 drug. Perhaps she got the death penalty at first because she withdrew her confession and plead not guilty. A guilty plea, confession and cooperation would normally only get the death penalty in an heinous crime where the suspect’s cooperation was of no use. No information is provided about the trial, the charges or defense, if she pleaded not guilty.

Tanyawadeee school seems not to do due diligence on foreign teachers as they hired Nettles with a criminal record in the US. Demanding home country police clearance would have avoided that. The kindergarten was also happy to hire a 19 year old girl with no qualifications as a teacher. Parents take note.

Stickboy, if he still exists, took down the article posted when she was first arrested which alleged police found 4 other boxes similar to the offending package at her residence. Obviously police got her to sign a confession that she knowingly participated in the drug smuggling and dealing. We have no means of knowing where the truth lies. Could’ve been involved or may be a completely innocent victim of somewhere in between. She doesn’t seem to have profited financially at all from the drug dealing but unfortunately for her became besotted with a total dirt bag who, some say was known, at least to others, as the party drug dealer in Samui. Did he twist her arm to help him out, knowing she was too starry eyed to refuse. Who knows? Drug dealing in Samui and the islands is the turf of local police and their proxy gangs, as is the smuggling of liquor and other criminal activities. Dirt Bag Nettles claims in his twisted narcissistic narrative that he undercut prices and sold much purer dope. This would have brought his network to the attention of the cops. They eventually seem to have caught up with his accomplice at the school after the package was found in the school mail room and the police were called. He may have blown the whole thing in exchange for being let off the hook by arrangement of the school owner trying to keep the school out of the limelight. So the police were probably watching Ashley at the Hot Biscuit and watching packages that came through the mail addressed to the biscuit. This one probably didn’t need a signature, as why would you pay extra for Royal Mail signature required when you use a false addressee to send illicit substances. But the cops staged the delivery and told the possibly fake postman to be sure to get her signature as evidence. So police were amenable to keeping the school out of the story as long as they got a nice bust resulting in a death sentence for their records and put an end to the competition. The death sentence seems to have been because it was a class 1 drug and 250gm is apparently a large quantity of that stuff which I had never heard of before - enough for 4,000 doses. Plus there was evidence presented by prosecutors, whether true or false, of prior shipments and willful involvement and of course the confession. The Samui court has a record of disregarding retractions of confessions made under duress by foreigners with no knowledge of Thai, as in the case of the 2B. Anyway it is not clear that she retracted the confession.

That might explain why she first got a death sentence. It does seem to me something is missing from the story.

Hard to say how much, if anything, she knew about the bf’s drug smuggling enterprise from the information available. Maybe she knew something because it had been going on for a while but maybe not. Thai courts anyway still happy to convict on confessions suspects can’t read extracted under torture or duress after the 2B case. The bf knew the scheme was blown after the package was found at the school and the other teacher implicated, although his case was whitewashed to save school reputation which is now in tatters anyway. The police must have known Ashley was the gf of Nettles and that the biscuit shop was his. He continued with the scheme trying to scrape the last bucks out of it, putting her at risk, knowing the cops were in to them.

Good summary. It's all very weird. Don't international schools do background checks on teachers? A home country police clearance is needed for PR and Thai citizenship. I would have thought an expensive international would want to make the same effort to protect its students from rapists, pedos, druggies etc. Burying US$60k in a hole in the ground in Thailand before going off to Ukraine also seems odd in a man who was used to trading cryptos you can access from anywher Feel sorry for Ashley. She seems genuinely young and naive. It is not clear whether she knew or had an idea what Nettles was up to. She obviously joined in with his high octane party life style and must have noticed he was spending more cash than a teacher could afford and probably knew he was doing drugs. Maybe did some too but not necessarily so. She does seem to have been of a Basset hound following her master around and taking all types of abuse from the arrogant sod. It is quite possible that she had no idea what was in the package or what was going on. Even if she did, it is hard to understand why the court sentenced her to death for smuggling a fairly small quantity of MDMD. The death penalty is not mandatory for drug smuggling and is normally handed down in far more serious cases. With any luck the Russians have blown Nettles to smithereens by now.

You may be right about the greater pernickity attention to detail paid by women. There were certainly mainly women at the MOI when I applied, including the head of the nationality section. But the impetus behind the cabinet resolution is part of the long running power play by the MOI to take more functions away from the police that has been going on ever since the police force was taken out of the MOI and put under the PM's office. Mostly its about money as well as power, as the MOI resents the police having any functions seen as revenue generators.

We are already at 30k reported cases including ATKs but, since most people without severe symptoms are not reporting positive ATK results or not testing at all, the real numbers must be well in excess of 100,000 daily cases already. So Dr Yong is not predicting the future, just stating what is already here. What a genius.

A non story, if ever I saw one. No change is coming. My father came here once and never got used to the name Thailand. He always called it Siam and the people, including my missus, Siamese.

Hope they've got work permits. They will be easy pickings for Immigration police after publicising their names.

One option would be to change her name by deed pool in the UK to get the new passport. Then travel to Thailand at her convenience and change to her married name in ID tabien baan and passport. Back in the UK she can change back to her married name by deed pool. If she travels to Thailand without getting her UK passport back, she won't be able to board a flight to get back to the UK. The UK embassy won't give her a Britsh visa because she is a UK citizen with a valid passport still on record. This whole HMPO stunt is pretty outrageous and has cause huge hassels for innocent citizens. A friend who is a naturalized Thai and has a Thai name in his Thai passport managed to squeak by for another 10 years by failing to disclose his Thai citizenship on the application form. They are supposed to check that the Brit passport has a Thai visa in it but the girl from the outsource agency obviously didn't bother. That is an offence though and not something I would recommend, especially for naturalzed Brits living in the UK who could be criminally prosecuted and even stripped of nationality and deported. My friend doesn't care much about his UK citizenship any more though.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/02/harvard-experts-expect-new-wave-of-long-covid-cases/ This Harvard article suggests that long COVID caused by the omicron variant is a very distinct possibility, although it is still too early to tell.