razino

Install Dtac App on Android Play Store, login then go to "Jaidee" then find Jaidee Day Giveaway. You can extend upto 180 days with just 15 baht fee.

This is nothing compared to Singapore.

Or Peninsular Malaysia (Johor, Melaka and Selangor the worst) on the last few days. Reading up to 790 was recorded.

I'm riding a BMW F650 1994 carb model. In Malaysia we have RON 97 and RON 92 and never heard of gasohol. On my way to and fro Surat Thani for this year 3 Nation Charity Ride last week, I filled up with Gasohol 95 (92 RON is sufficient for mine). I can swear the bike runs great, smoother, better low and mid range, easier to starts etc. Now I wish we have petrol + ethanol here.

the map is a little too small I think...

RIP and condolence to the families...

Thanks Nuk...

Old power clique suspected of being behind Bangkok bomb attacks: source

A security source at the Government House said the old power clique was behind the simultaneous bomb attacks in Bangkok.

The source from an intelligence agency said the intelligence agencies had learnt about the plan of the old clique to create disturbance toward the yearend.

The source said Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont was on the standby in Bangkok because he expected the attacks.

The Nation

Calm down....and take precautions...whatever necessary...

Razino, did the loop three weeks back on an Africa Twin. Just a couple of places where the bridges were damaged last year that have not been paved yet. Just watch for loose sand. Quite a bit of the road from Pai has been widened and is smooth. The old hardtop comes back into play after the bus stop at the ridgeline before heading down towards Mae Hong Song. We took a shortcut at Khun Yuam and came back into Chiang Mai that way. The best wild Mexican sunflowers are along a road that tees off to the left (north) 12 km east of Khun Yuam.

Almost did the loop 2 weeks ago. No problem at all. Mae Teang-Pai-MHS-Khun Yuan-Mae Sariang and wondered off to Mae Sot-Umphang-Mae Sot-Tak

The best IMHO is Mae Sot-Umphang and the most adventuroeus is Mae Sariang - Mae Sot.

The short cut from Khun Yuam to Chiang Mai, is it accesible with sportbike? Thanks

Visa on entry to Burma 250 Baht or 5US$

Wrong. It was changed to 500 Baht or 10 USD a few months ago for the day pass for Tachilek, just like it has been for the Mae Sot/Myawaddy border for some time now.

Confirm 500 baht at Mae Sot to enter Myawadi. I was there 2 weeks ago...

Schackster - sorry to be getting back to you so late. Lopburi3 is correct - visa is single entry, for 60 days (according to the stamp I received at Immigration after flying back into Bangkok).

I met Schackster recently. He managed to get a 90 days single entry and still grumbling.....

Malaysia is working, but very slow.

Mind you "normal" here is slow anyway.

They always refer me to their "speed test" site when I complain.

Today there is a 30sec delay before the speed test even start..............

They cannot blame that on International connections, the site is down in KL.

By comparison the Thaivisa speed test starts instantateously and gives better readings,

so an problems here in Malaysia are home grown.

Depends on the area. I am at Pandan and on the next morning after the quake it was no connection to streamyx at all but by late afternoon I was able to connect tho' the line was a bit slow. In less than 24 hours it's back to normal for me here at 512kbps (RM66.00) package.

Just did it on our Honda Steed 400 and it was fine. No big problems anywhere on the Loop... some minor construction here and there, but that's about it.

Good time to go see the flowers. They are in full bloom now.

Will there be any problem with 1300cc sportbike? Thanks

ETA 14 December 2006

On what should be a less complicated question.

I am a US citizen going to Thailand in November for a 20 day vacation.

I have never needed a visa for short vacations in the past, including last year, do I need tourist visa now?

Thank you,

John R.

No. I think...

IMHO.. it's "same-same"....even local muslim volunteers are targeted everyday...

90 days maximum stay on VOA in six months, can go in and out, then have to wait for another 90 days OR apply for tourist visa...let see..3 months there..3 months back home...3 months there...3 months home again...sound reasonable...do I get it right?

I don't know if this is relevent but Malaysian SIM cards on roaming in the South are still being blocked as of 30th Dec 2005. But my registered Orange pre-paid was working fine at Betong Yala.

I wonder why thailand hasnt been hit yet at a tourist location ...

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Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...........!!!!

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We, the Malaysian bikers, have at least 3 coming charity bike ride in Thailand, 2 at the South (Betong and Songkhla) and one at Chiang Mai. We hope the situation will get better and better in Thailand. No politics.... no war..only bikes...

"Who is benefitting from the current status".......

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The golden question!!!!!

I've been thinking of the same thing all this while...

The government is not gaining...the general public - muslim and non-muslim alike - is not benefitting...how about the authorities? The bandit? The crooks?

Hmmm......

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/25D...2120BEA180F.htm

Al-Qaida: Wrong answers to real problems

By Soumayya Ghannoushi

Once again I watched the nauseous devastation and massacre, this time in the heart of my city, near the universities and libraries, where I have spent much of my adult life.

Madrid and Bali, Casablanca and Riyadh, I have come to predict al-Qaida's responsibility for a given criminal act through the following test. If I find myself at a loss for an answer to the questions: "Why the innocent?" and "For what purpose?", then, in all likelihood, the crime is of al-Qaida's doing.

The absurd, random mass carnage of young and old, male and female is its trademark. Residential buildings, tourist resorts, rush hour trains and crowded buses turn into grand spectacles of mass murder where no heed is paid to the victim's identity and the extent of his/her responsibility for the policies of a country defined as the enemy. The boundaries between the world of politics and that of organised crime are blurred, as political demands get wedded to criminal methods.

Al-Qaida, it must be said, is no pioneer in this field. For although it founds its ideology on religious references and speaks a language overwhelmed by religious symbols, al-Qaida falls largely within the modern tradition of revolutionary anarchists - from the Jacobins and the Bolsheviks down to latter-day Marxist guerrillas like the Baadr-Meinhoff Gang.

Destruction as a passion

Like these modern revolutionary nihilists, al-Qaida warriors subscribe to an instrumentalist logic that recognises no distinction between the legitimate and illegitimate, thereby sanctioning acts of terror for the attainment of their ends. Like them, they are more interested in the act of destruction than its effects. As the father of Russian anarchism Mikhail Bakunin put it, 'the passion for destruction is also a creative passion'.

Al-Qaida is also a revival of the radical currents that surfaced in Islamic history from time to time only to be defeated by moderate mainstream Islam led by the Ulama (scholars). In particular, they appear to be a continuation of Kharijite thought with its dualistic puritanical conception of the world and the community of Muslims and of Gnostic underground organisations like the Assassins and Qaramita, who sought to disrupt the stability of Muslim societies through acts of terrorism.

Al-Qaida would be best seen as a mixture of these political and ideological strands. Apart from the ideological justifications it takes recourse to, one would, indeed, be hard put to find much that distinguishes it from Latin American anarchist groups. Their acts share the same destructive ferocity, the same absurdity. The difference is that where one finds its ideological legitimacy in Marxism, the other seeks it in the Islamic religion.

Islam misinterpreted

How can the murder of the innocent be perpetuated in the name of a religion that likens the loss of one human life to the loss of humanity at large? How can Islam be said to sanction such acts of aggression when it openly forbids revenge and declares in no less than five Quranic chapters that: "No bearer of a burden bears the burden of another"?

How can the killing of ordinary men and women going about their business be permissible when even the battlefield has been regulated by the strictest moral code: "Destroy not fruit trees, nor fertile land in your paths. Be just, and spare the feelings of the vanquished. Respect all religious persons who live in hermitages or convents and spare their edifices"?

Perhaps the one thing al-Qaida militants have proven good at, apart from the shedding of innocent blood, is fanning the flames of hostility to Islam and Muslims. From the darkness of their caves and hiding places, these self-appointed spokesmen for about one and a half billion Muslims worldwide have excelled in stirring latent negative images of Islam within the Western psyche. Through their senseless crimes, Islam, in the minds of most, has become a euphemism for mass slaughter and destruction. Thanks to them, racism, bigotry and Islamophobia could rear its ugly head unashamedly in broad day light.

The terrible irony is that Muslims currently find themselves helplessly trapped between two fundamentalisms, between Bush's hammer and Bin Laden's anvil, hostages to an extreme right wing American administration, aggressively seeking to impose its expansionist and hegemonic will over the region at gunpoint, and to a cluster of violent, wild fringe groups, lacking in political experience or sound religious understanding.

'Us' and 'them'

Although the two claim to be combating each other, the reality is that they are working in unison, one providing the justifications the other desperately needs for its fanaticism, ferocity and savagery.

No wonder, it didn't take the neo-conservative world supremacists long to spot the immense opportunities 11 September handed them. Their puritanical missionary belief in being God's instruments on earth and grand imperial ambitions could now be realised through shameless emotional blackmail and bogus moral claims.

The two share a shallow, myopic, dualistic conception of the world populated by 'us' and 'them' in Bush's language, 'believers' and 'non-believers' in Bin Laden's. Al-Zarqawi and his fellows then brandish the sword of excommunication (takfir) against the Muslim body itself in an endless orgy of maiming and mutilation.

Some are to be expelled, because they are Shia, others because they are Sufis, or Mu'tazilites (rationalists) and so on in a perpetual elimination process that spares no one but a handful of puritan elects from its deadly reach.

The vast stock of common denominators is ignored, that which tears and divides is sought. These would rather see the world turn into an ever- raging battlefield, Muslim societies into blazing scenes of sectarian schism and civil war in a region rich in ethnic, religious, sectarian and linguistic diversity.

I daily use London's trains and buses and could have been one of Thursday bombings' victims. I hardly think that killing or maiming me would have aided the causes the bombers claim to defend. The truth is that these narrow-minded fanatics are a scourge to the causes they purport to champion.

Ask any Iraqi or Palestinian if the bombing of the innocent in Bali, Casablanca, or London has helped alleviate their suffering. If anything, they have handed their oppressors with an open permit to butcher and destroy, safe in the knowledge that blame has been shifted from them to their victims.

Just causes, unjust means

So, Sharon demolishes the homes of Palestinians, expropriates their lands and sends his helicopters to massacre them in their hundreds in the name of combating terrorism. Arab regimes stifle dissenting voices, imprison and assassinate in the name of resisting terrorism. American tanks and gunships invade, occupy, kill and rampage, all in the name of terrorism.

Al-Qaida's mindless acts have turned the aggressor, who colonises, massacres and pillages, into a victim. For all their material vulnerability, victims have a very powerful asset: their moral case as innocent victims. Perhaps, this is the cruellest dimension to these senseless crimes: That the powerless has been stripped even of his victimhood. Even this has been appropriated by the powerful.

The causes al-Qaida extremists speak for are certainly just causes. The sanctioning of genocide and occupation in Palestine, slaughter of hundreds of thousands in Iraq through exposure to depleted Uranium and years of barbaric sanctions first, then through bombing and shelling without bothering to count the dead, brutal invasion of the country, destruction of its infrastructure and humiliation of its people undoubtedly rank among modern history’s bloodiest crimes and darkest tragedies.

But the mindless killing of the innocent in Madrid, or New York is the wrong answer to these real grievances. These are illegitimate responses to legitimate causes. Just as occupation is morally and politically deplorable, so, too, is this blind aggression masquerading as Jihad.

Soumayya Ghannoushi is a researcher in the history of ideas at the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London.

The opinions expressed here are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position or have the endorsement of Aljazeera.

good, most of us want to get rid of pm and trt and others but the real solution is to put fence on LOC betn malaysia and Thailand first. then get one by one situation handled by army - no NGO and  HR activits.

bring life to normal by evading gurrilas in forest touching to malaysia.

its like kashmir region for india -------

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the culprits are right there at the cities... not in the jungle...they don't have to hit and run...because we just don't know who they are or pretend we don't...way out... just blame the easiest targets...

To be a little more PC, Patani wasn't an independent Malay kingdom prior to 1902. It may have enjoyed some short periods as a self decared independent state (by the local sultan of course) similar to it's neighbor Malay state of Kedar, it has for the most part over the last 200 years been in a 'buffer' condition among Siamese, Burmese, and Colonial British conflict/claims, paying vassel tributes to one/other in some form or another.

Not implying that it wasn't independent in the sense of economics and market, but certainly not to the long-term autonomy and prestige that the title kingdom would infer.

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thanks for adding the history facts....the forum needs more facts than fictions....

note: typo kedar = kedah

Some Pondoks (Islamic schools) prey upon poor and uneducated kids (ripe for nurturing hatred) are the nucleus of the problem. They start by preaching hatred and alienation to innocent kids and later (combined with localised or 'formed' socio economic conditions) eventually produce a few who apparently believe murdering innocent people and becoming a so-called "martyr" is far preferrable to the dismal life alternatives presented, formed and nurtured. Similar to programming a cult member. Sick sick sick   

Allow me to add a bit more to this. Pattani was originally an independent Malay kingom. Since its annexation by Thailand in 1902, the mostly Muslim and Malay-speaking locals have experienced a fair bit of discrimination and neglect by the central government.

For many years the army and the police have been fighting over lucrative rackets in the South such as oil smuggling, prostitution and gambling, with each side embarrassing the other by burning down schools, stealing weapons, etc, and blaming it all on separatists. Hence Thaksin's statement at the beginning of the current crisis that it wasn't caused by separatists. As an ex-police officer, he knew very well what had been going on in the past.

But he didn't know the wider picture - that for years the Saudis and others have been funding Thai Muslim clerics to study at overseas madrassas (religious schools) where their minds are poisoned with Wahhabi fundamentalist extremism. These clerics then come home and teach their religious hatred combined with separatism to the gullible kids studying at the local ponoh schools.

The end result is a pretty complicated picture with no single, cohesive group responsible, deep distrust of the authorities, and the government doesn't know "who is behind it." Of course they don't. The government is always looking for the proverbial "third hand" or "fifth column" or "influential person" - some group that can easily be identified.

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Very well said.....and intelligent....