Jeremy50

Lonely Planet should have died when Tony Wheeler sold it - maybe before.

There was a time when it was an invaluable source of little known information.

It wasn't long until it became popular among the hordes who descended upon East Asia like a plague of locusts.

True. If it isn't in the LP, it's worth checking out. It is sad to see all these young people simply treading the same tired trails that have been followed by millions of others before, falling into the same old traps , being taken in by the same old scams, and being herded onto the same old buses.

Bad move.

They were not committing a crime, they were offering a service that Thais can't offer.

They were taking nobody's job.

Just another excuse to say how bad these foreigners are..................

I know, you can't work without a WP, but at this instance they were harming nobody.

Did you miss the fact that working without a work permit actually is a crime?

The fact that they were 'hurting nobody' is totally irrelevant.

This therefore is an excellent move by the Thai authorities to stop the abuse of the system by non-Thais.

Were you red in the face with self-righteous indignation as you typed this?

Charge fat people extra too, like a US airline tried once

No, just don't let them on the plane.

They burn all the hillside forest around here. The large trees survive, but all small trees, shrubs, and grass just goes up in smoke. All wildlife is fried or has to flee for it's life. It is systematic all over the North East. Someone suggested it was to force wildlife to run into pre-placed nets. The animals are then sold or eaten. Has anyone any answers on the reason for this destruction?

Welcome to the world - these are your parents by the way.

Good on him, tell it how it is.

It is as King Power designed this airport. Domestic fully serviced by moving walkways and no Duty free. International a 2km. hike through shops controlled by King Power and No moving walkways. A disgrace !

They don't understand the concept of duty free, it's supposed to be cheaper, but at Suvanabhumi goods are more expensive than in town. It also looks shabby compared to Heathrow's new terminal 2, which is a smooth, efficient and stress free experience, and I bought a pair of Oakleys at two thirds of the retail price.

'Discover' thainess by all means - but you may wish that you hadn't.

The teachers all get a chance to pat each other on the back for doing such a great job, while the kids miss yet another day of school.

Materialism will march quite happily into any society where there is a moral vacuum. The west gets the blame once again.

Exacerbates what?..........I just got back from England where it was minus 7. Yesterday plus 20 in Udon. What do they do with the blankets

they are given year on year?

"Exacerbates what?.."

It means gets worse, ie "Winter gets worse in Thailands northern region"

A few hundred blankets doesn't go far, even year on year, and at this time of year you would expect England to be cold wouldn't you?

I'd bet it wasn't 20+ at night in Udon, unless Udon has the magical property of retaining the same highest daytime temperature after sunset.

It needs a noun, i.e. Drought exacerbates poverty.

If only more of this sort of thing was happening, the world would be a better place. Boys girls, girls girls, boys boys, it is all good. Instead, the killjoys, and the religious nuts have to step in.

13 years old??? and tipped off by a 15 year old victim, so sad.

Hope they find the ring leader of the gang and serve proper punishment.

But I know asking for proper judgement here is merely a wish that will never come true.

So much to Thainess

If you had been in Bangkok 30 years ago, you would have seen many young girls in the bar areas, 14/15/16, nearly all Soi Cowboy bars had girls this age. It would have been more difficult to find a girl over 20.

However, on Laos girls in the upcountry brothel scene, it's a given that local patrons like them young, virgins are offered for 10000 baht plus.The girls stay about a year and are allowed home to Laos every couple of months. They are not sex slaves, and can turn down any customer they don't like the look of. I know nothing about the Karaoke scene. The popular brothel girls will save a couple of hundred thousand baht in a year. Most of the brothels in Udon Thani and Nong Khai have been closed down in the last year.

celebrities are used to endorse products in every country in the world so why should Thailand be any different

In the west many people show scepticism and indifference towards 'celebs'. Not so here.

Thailand is full of numb nuts. Why bring another? After watching his last interview, insulting the tv host, this guy needs some serious beatings.

Let's hope for your sake Mike doesn't pick up the gauntlet.

Spend an hour looking at air show disaster videos on youtube, and you will never want to go to one of these things in your life, much less take a child to one. I doesn't seem an appropriate activity for children's day, especially when so many travelers have to suffer long delays as a result. Is anyone with a brain in charge here?

It's the brain dead mentality of western people, whose conditioning makes it incapable for them to look outside the box.

These shrines work similarly to accident black spot signs that we have in the west.

If a Thai is driving at a fast speed on a stretch of road and sees one of these shrines, then they are more likely to slow down and thus reduce accidents in this area.

Get it now?

Let's line the road with these animals then. Surely you can't be serious. 'The brain dead' mentality of western people brought road deaths in the west down to an average of 2000 a year per European country during a 20 year period of new road and traffic regulations and strict enforcement. I can assure you it had absolutely nothing to do with plastic animals.

British colonization could'nt be such a bad idea, albeit a hundred years too late.

It seems like an aberration of history that it never actually happened.

PS. This Kent chap would do less harm if he just stayed in and watched porn like everybody else.

That arrogant chubby boy Kim Jong Un would fit right in here.

Despised and belligerent North Korea, and xenophobic brainwashed Thailand. A match made in heaven.

About 26,000 traffic deaths occur in Thailand every year. That means road accidents cause about one death every hour. There are also hundreds of thousands of injured victims, many of them permanently crippled or disabled. This is equivalent to casualties in a moderate-scale war.

All the enjoyment I used to derive from driving is long gone. Driving in Thailand is not fun, it is not to be taken lightly, and one should never assume that the "other guy" knows what he's doing. It is not just the casualty levels that liken driving here, to a small war.

260 000 road deaths during the last 10 years. That's 5 times the number of American soldiers that died during the Vietnam war.

I thought Japanese men liked probing for nuggets.

If you scalp the land this is the result.