KhnomKhnom

Thaivisa purports to exist to answer difficult visa questions and other vital "how to live in Thailand" information.

So, why has it grown more and more into a rant outlet and a place for lots of personal complaints.

Is thaivisa really a cheap and partial service to the disgruntled to vent and maybe recover some psychological relief?

It seems lately that rants are at least half of the content. I rant that this is a waste of a good information service.

1. Anything bad happening to a motorbike rider is very good news.

2. Paying directly for a real infraction you did is very cleansing of the soul, immediate cleaning.

3. Traffic police deserve extra money from genuine infractions; their kids need food too.

4. Charging for FAKE infractions must be resisted, primarily by video-ing and putting on Web.

If I were a poor traffic cop, I would let my fellow poor Thai off and let them go IF I could nab a rich foreigner same time.

A real rule, all ALL foreigners here are more wealthy that the average poor Thai.

The one for sure unique ability foreigners have over Thai is the foreigners can complain IN ENGLISH about the smallest thing.

It is a mystery for a train to stop running just at the time people need it. The problem of this specific service ........

-A train schedule must be in place for a long time, at least a year, for people to get used to depending on it.

-P.R. and good signs would help.

-people arriving at midnight are likely to be the most confused, sleepy, bummed out, folks least likely to cope with finding a train.

Tops is if you arrive with lots of bags, getting to and on the train is a huge hassle.

Likely taxi services love the stoppage.

VAT and any kind of sales taxes are known as "regressive" because they take a disproportionate amount of money from the poor, those least able to pay. Anyone suggesting hitting Thailand's poor even harder is a criminal and should be arrested and tried for crimes against humanity.

Yes, I feel strongly about this matter.

Some people cannot accept conditions as they are right now. I for one as an individual, believe there is always

a better way of doing things. For example Making Chili, Traditional way (cook book) Brown the meat off, brown the onions garlic, add the tomatoes, kidney beans, tomato paste, water, chili powder, simmer. ...... My way, throw all the ingredients in a pot, raw meat, onions chopped, garlic tomatoes,kidney beans chili powder, water, heat it up stir frequently, .........comes out the same, looks the same. Takes less time. In fact, being a cook, Chef, I go out of my way to make a variety of meals using the cook book just as a guide, then I modify it incorporating different ingredients to make it different in looks and taste. But when it comes to Thai cooking,......My wife objects to anything added that isn't with the original recipe. For example banana, coconut milk, sweet rice half cooked wrapped in a banana leaf and stemmed for one hour. I said, hey lets try the same recipe using a ripe mango, with cashews...........She flipped, NO WAY!..........Or a Curry, coconut with white breast of chicken with carrots and Peas.........NO WAY!......... My wife cooks traditional Thai food, No variation of any sorts. Nothing creative in the thinking mind. And I think Thais as a whole are like that. Their thinking is, "Its been like this for a hundred years, why do you want to change it now?" Could it be Thais have become so uses to things done the traditional way, any other way has got to be an error! Like some kind of disrespect to past generations. So, in answering to this forum, I don't really want to change Thailand, but rather modify it, enhance it, use creativity to improve the quality, sort of like that TV show, "East meets West. A combine culture coming out through Thai and American cookery. Look at the young generation of Thais, They are getting taller, heavier, I think western foods such as McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and restaurants such as "Dukes" are changing the appearance of the Thais. Its happened in Japan, South Korea, and now here. A simple bowl of rice with a dried up piece of fish, just isn't as appealing as it was 40 years ago.

D I,

Please repost with some punctuation and parragraphs ???

I vote Neverdie as having the most irritating avatar anywhere on the Internet.

This entry invites another in a long string of miserable, grumpy, nasty, unpleasant comments from typists on this venue who are disgusted with all Thai and all Thailand and at the same time are complaining it is so hard to keep living here.

Thaivisa seems to be kept busy with these kinds of messages. A big percentage of the topics and comments, at least since other comments are banned (for good reason), are of the type that invites or encourages slagging on Thailand.

I suspect that the owners of thaivisa could not keep this venue open if all these despicable comments were taken off prior to running on the site. If that is true, thaivisa is little more that a big bitch session, with a few half-baked information/opinions on important topics thrown in. The opening of a thaivisa bar, then, makes lots of sense because that provides another way for the miserable to get together and agree how miserable life is.

I would be ashamed to run these grumpy comments. I sure wish thaivisa were also.

My partners daughter applied for a ground crew job with Thai Airlines not long ago. She was told that she would have to PAY THEM ( thai Airlines)..........I think it was 35000B.

She was told it was for uniform, training costs etc..................I asked her to find out if this money would be refunded after ( lets say ) 12mths service with the company. She got no answer.

If it were a bond to prevent her being trained up and then leaving for another airline I could understand it....................so long as it was refundable after a set time period.

Besides, by this time it was obvious that Thai was in major financial difficulty...........................I told her to forget about any job with Thai Airlines.

I got fed up with silly comments by the time I had read down to yours, so I will unload on you.

World wide, it is not unusual to ask new employees to buy couple of uniforms and pay for other minor start up costs for a new job. Probably her cost was more like 3500 which is reasonable. She owns the uniforms and tools, etc, so why should the airline pay later for what she owns? "A bond" are you kidding, this is not a rocket science job.

And any stable sober person can easily know that Thailand is not going to let its flagship airline fail, so that is not a consideration.

Having a new employee buy her own uniform makes sense; that avoids the company giving a uniform and the applicant wearing it home, never to return..... free clothes. Shaking my head in wonder about your opinion.

USA destabilized Libya and the whole region. The selfish reason was to keep those nations fighting interior and exterior forces while leaving USA alone. That worked. However, just like every other place the USA has touched (S. America, etc.) and destabilized, the actual ongoing results are a horror for the ordinary people, constant upset and fighting, and broken national economies. This is how USA has ruled for over sixty years, often with the addition of repressive strong-man leaders like Saddam and Noriega that USA inserts, props up, and then takes out. It is how USA has ruled Thailand, too.

Ask Libya people which situation they want........ now or ten yrs ago? And ten years ago they had Gaddafi but also stability and oil was steadily coming out to USA. Now a real mess there, but likely not sending any bombers to the USA for now.

HARMONIZING laws and regs over the ASEAN region will be the major stumbling blocks awaiting. I see it in radio/tv/other frequencies allocations, but harmonizing is likely going to be needed in a huge list of needs and soon.

It was Prayuth who ordered them not to plant additional crops.

Ha! It was the Thaksins that created the rice mess and here is another of their victims. The Thaksins so loved the poor that they made a million more.

In the USA if you are the only possible customer far from the end of the electricity line, YOU pay for the wire to be run to your house. Electricity is not a god given right, it costs money.

Broken generator........... I have in my home a DVD player in my room and provided the identical DVD player to the family room, Thai extended family. Mine still works great; Thai one has been broken so many times it is now beyond repair. Why is that?

I have a pliers that is FIFTY-FIVE YEARS OLD and I still use it often; the new pliers I gave the Thai family last month is now LONG GONE. Why is that?

I say, Why is that? quoting Andy Rooney.

Thailand needs a single Education Czar like Robert Moses was for housing development in NY...... one person with complete power and ability to raise independent funding.

However, we must face fact that current public education K-12 DOES equip Thai to work well in assembly-line or other repetitive work... if they start thinking critically, the whole cheap labor situation may crack and then Thailand has nothing other than rice to offer the world. Then workers can critically analyze their situation of no job.

Good news.

Definitely not a good idea in any medium to large city or going to same.

I have a full time driver with an ok car---- he is called a taxi man and his car is a taxi; he is seldom the very same man, but they all work same.

Visitors are really asking for headaches getting their own car or renting one. .... driving, driving directions, fuel, insurance, OTHER DRIVERS, traffic frustration, getting lost, and then there are the problems of parking and of dealing with a fender bender or worse.

If taxis were rare, ok that is different. If you plan to live very remotely, get a local taxi phone number and call on him or his friends when few taxis seem to be around. OTHERWISE, FORGET YOUR OWN CAR ! No kidding

New headline..... MUSLIMS WORRY THAT CHRISTIAN STATE IS IN USA.

Should a temporary fill in pm and the army be making such huge long term expensive commitments? Shouldn't such thing wait until there is an election and a government is elected. I thought Prayuth's only goal was reform and reconciliation. He appears to have got derailed on his objective or he plans to stay around forever.

Waiting is dependent on there being smarter heads making decisions. Given politics, I doubt that. I trust the General more.

Best to form a good trusting bond with several people now. Write and file with a number of those people your Living Will.

If you can find a law office that will hold it for you, good idea also.

But you are in the hands of others...... trust is a rare thing. There is no guarantee of any actions given you incapacitated.

I have found Thai people to be very much like people everywhere. Thai tend to be more circumspect than some and tend to boil over finally more harshly than some other people. However, other than that, they are just human beings.

Simple fact applying to ALL human beings............. do not trust them.... none of them of any nationality anywhere.

Trust is for children.

$6000/month usd will give a very comfortable life style in BKK and a lavish life a hundred miles out from BKK.

Your best way to "retire" in Thailand is 1. wait until you are 50, retirement age here, or 2. buy a Thai Elite Card twice and then apply for over 50 real retirement.... the Card will keep you free of visa hassles for five years and so on.

I recommend a serviced apt in hi rise in BKK.

More cheese with that whine?

He can whine as much as he likes.

The only thing I'm worried about if he starts disliking certain nationalities.

Then many people here will be in trouble.

Hope we never come to that.......but you never know....................

"Certain nationalities" on tv venue already do not like the PM nor understand the huge job he has keeping Thailand from civil war. That is a fact.

I am embarrassed for the foreigners here so flippantly deriding the PM for imagined faults resulting from foreigners' kneejerk opinions.

I would ask those foreigners typing here the Joe Welch question, "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" I add, "Have you no shame; at long last, have you no shame?"

Built a tight snake fence around a space about 4 meters square in the open, outside with soil as floor.

Squat inside the fence and do your job.

Throw soil over the soil. Add soil from outside as needed.

Use garden hose with high pressure nozzle for cleaning.

Walk away carefully.

This works best the way one would paint a floor... start in the corner most far from the gate and work your way toward the gate morning after morning.

Snake no more.

SIDECARS, sidecars will help.

Help get sidecars for those with bike as only family transport. Make laws favoring sidecars. Put the baby and 6yr old in the side car.

I say SIDECARS, SIDECARS, FOR EVERYONE.