BritManToo

Imagine turning up in someone else's country, living in a ghetto, refusing to speak the language or adopt the local customs, expecting businesses and services to cater to your way of life, and not respecting the locals.

Who would do a thing like that, eh?

Immigrants to Europe.

But is it not what many of us do to Thailand. When in Rome Do as the Romans do!

I'm not an immigrant, I'm a tourist.

I doubt any of you are immigrants either.

The balcony "railing" barely comes to his bloody knees:(

Why are balcony railings so ulta-low in the LOS??

The policeman is standing on the roof, no balcony there, so no railings.

It is not like the police have just started these kinds of activities in recent times. They have been conducting raids for various reasons for a very, very long time.

Previously, the Thai police raids were aimed at hassling bar owners, recently the Thai police have changed to hassling foreign customers of bars.

It's a significant change in their bribe collecting.

A number of threads mentioned Spain is cheaper. I haven't been there but is it really cheaper than Bangkok? I be very surprise. If it is there is no reason for Spanish to be here other than for women.

Capital cities are always more expensive than the surrounding country.

So Bangkok is almost certainly more expensive than Spain, but probably cheaper than Madrid.

It would also depend on what you want out of your life,

Spain is certainly cheaper than Thailand in general for bread, cheese, beer and wine (I live there 3 or 4 months each year).

And with 25% Spanish youth unemployment, sex is probably on sale at a discount price too (but I'm not interested in sex, so have no relative costings).

Many of you are confusing 'Riverside' with 'River Market'

Riverside is one bridge along from Loi Krow, and is the Thai restaurant all Thais love to eat at, always extremely crowded, live Thai rock band.

River Market (part of The Dukes), the closest bridge to Loi Krow is Thai fusion food, and not all that good, incredibly expensive.

Good View (next to Riverside), the food is awful, often cold, often the wrong items delivered to your table and overpriced.

I don't know if you know this, the Thai Gov. is talking about cutting two school grades out of the system to save money......it's all about control the sheep.

Free government school effectively ends at age 15 now.

What two grades are they going to cut out?

Are they really considering school ending at age 13?

People don't believe me when I say this.....but in many ways yes I am glad I grew up in a small town in the U.S in the late 1950's and the 1960's.

Just one example....we had a small garden in our backyard and a Pear tree growing on our property.

We had a rear porch with a screen door we never locked.

Our neighbors would bring over such things as ears of corn from their gardens and leave them on our porch for us.

When our Pear tree had more fruit than we could use we would leave Fruit for them.

We shared what extra we had with the neighbors, and they shared with us.

That is the way it was then.

It was a simpler and easier life in some ways then.

Sounds like where I live in Thailand.

The neighbors all share, and include me when I'm here.

The rice, bananas and seasonal fruits are very welcome.

But I never know what to do with the green stuff.

I don't often lock my door either.

Good job the cops weren't in the car park later, watching the chubby kid filming Miss Fluffy ears.

Although It is much more difficult to succeed when of mixed race here it is not impossible and some have reached senior positions such as Mechai Viravaidya who was a deputy minister under Prem and Minister for Tourism under Anand.

Mixed race Thai/Chinese seem to have no problems.

Hmmm, wrote instead of rote and the subsequent criticism from our regular barstool commandos and masters of the English language - I guess that would be similar to the bastardisation of English by the Americans in using 'z' instead of 's' and writing paycheck instead of pay cheque; just two examples in this thread alone.

Bob A. Relaxed in Lampang

I think you should understand there is a difference between regional spellings and ignorance.

But who says playing with Dolls is bad for you as a child? It opens the mind to imagination and also creativity! None of the inventions we have today could be achieved without that. None of the inventions at all would have happened until Man had time and food from farming, and not spending it all in hunting for food. So European Girls are Smarter when it comes to imagination and creativity.

It's generally men that invent stuff, and you don't often find them playing with dolls as children.

The continent and the world weren't scared sh*tless by any of those terror groups you mention.

Can't say I'm scared sh*tless about ISIS either,

And I live in the UK, France, Spain and Thailand.

Fear of Muslims doesn't cross my mind for a second.

More likely to be run down by a car while crossing the road.

PS

If you are male and really want to be fearful of someone, it should be the woman you are sleeping with, she is far more likely to cause you harm than anyone else in the world.

Yes! ISIS affects me almost every day. Every day I travel I need to prove that I'm not a terrorist. I need to show my passport to buy a SIM card so they can track my phone and internet usage just to make sure I won't make a bomb with a remote detonator that uses a SIM card. Then I need to wait for 20 minutes while they activate it, unless I need to wait in a queue, then it's up to an hour of waiting. I need to provide ID to check in to a hotel, just in case I make a bomb in the hotel. I'm being watched, tracked, spied on every step of the way.

30 years ago, hardly anyone traveled, except once a year to Spain for their summer holiday.

No mobile phones, so no waiting for SIMs, no internet either (well just barely with a dialup modem).

There was no need to track or spy on most people, because they didn't go anywhere.

But I'm sure MI5 et al were watching those few that did travel to funny places.

Our children will never know a world we knew in many ways. While this can be offered for every generation there is a particular sort of loss from this religious insurgency. Every single person in Western Civilization has been horribly impacted by DAESH/Jihad terror. From the fallacious trading of liberties for security to the unholy taxation leveled on posterity to pay for wars, surveillance, education, outreach, etc., every single human has been or will be adversely affected by this terror virus.

My dad was born in 1910, the age of steam ocean liners, horse drawn carts.

I will never know the world he knew.

When I was born, there were no computers, we didn't have a television, just radio.

My children will never know the world I knew.

My point being, things change, some for the better, some for the worse.

Generally speaking for us in the west, things have only got better.

Muslim terrorism is a minor blip in the current workings of the western world.

Much less significant than WW1, WW2, Spanish Flu, and the threat of nuclear destruction by Russia and the USA.

For the normal western man in the street, not worth a moments thought.

Cost of the degree would be in the 200k to 500k range for 3 to 5 year course, thats not per yer, thats total

Course fees are around 20k a year at the 'Rajabhat' universities.

Most of their degrees are 4 year courses.

"I would like to apologize" .... "can I pay my 500bht fine while I'm here?"

Journalist writing about educational standards & language proficiency who can't spell 'rote'.

Nice one!

What country did you go to school?

"Rote learning is a memorization technique based on repetition. The idea is that one will be able to quickly recall the meaning of the material the more one repeats it. Some of the alternatives to rote learning include meaningful learning, associative learning, and active learning."

There has always been terrorism in Europe, and probably always will be.

It doesn't seem to be getting any worse.

Only the reasons excuses for the terrorism change.

Just off the top of my head,

IRA, Basque separatists, Red Brigade, Red Army faction aka Baader Meinhof, etc.

They all had their time, now it's ISIS.

They were regional. ISIS is international.

Everything has gone international, part of the globalization of the world.

Why should terrorism get stuck in the past?

There has always been terrorism in Europe, and probably always will be.

It doesn't seem to be getting any worse.

Only the reasons excuses for the terrorism change.

Just off the top of my head,

IRA, Basque separatists, Red Brigade, Red Army faction aka Baader Meinhof, etc.

They all had their time, now it's ISIS.

At this point in time many core manufacturing sectors must mark their products in accordance with EU legislation. Take away the legislation and you take away the mark, google 'CE' marking.

Does England still manufacture anything?

For export?

double post.

Does anyone really think that deep down- a Thai woman likes servicing men- who are mostly drunk; foul mouthed and uncouth.

Isn't that what most women are doing, with most men, all over the world?

Getting drunk and being uncouth is what a man does.

Now the worry is overpopulation and the lack of water and food and invasion of the west by the have nots , believe me you can hide your head in the sand all you like ,but and its a big but , its coming .

Your worry about overpopulation is a false worry.

Probably encouraged by the western governments in an attempt to control you through fear.

Who are these people that are overpopulating the world?

Where is it happening?

Certainly not in the western world, where the populations are dropping as people have less children.

Certainly not in Japan or Thailand, another two countries facing population falls.

So why do you have worries about people in countries you have no connection with.

Assuming there is even a problem in those countries?

Most Thai people cannot swim. Is this because swimming is only available to the rich? Not as far as I can see, there are many places to take your child swimming and for less that a hundred baht. Lots of schools have swimming classes. I don't understand why the majority can't swim. Is it the 'I don't want a suntan and have dark skin' that puts people off learning to swim?

I can offer two explanations,

Less than 100bht, 2 children, then a ticket for mum, that's a days wages or more for many Thais.

Need I also mention, more people who can swim drown while swimming, than the people who can't swim that fall in and drown.

So sad for the parents of the girls.