CharlesHH

Buy and put in SOD... it is proven to grow already and if watered and fertilized correctly should grow at your place just like it did where it came from. Seeding does not seem to work for me.

The black smoke comes from inadequate combustion in the engine. Full combustion usually burns the carbon into a lighter invisible gas which is expelled from the engine nevertheless.

Inadequate combustion comes from dirty engines and dirty filters and combustion adjustments that are wrong for the fuel used. In sum, poor maintenance.

The larger screen does not load the HDMI input nor draw any more power through that socket than a tiny tv being used as a monitor.

I use electronic devices that are basically cheap until they break and then get another and stop worrying about little things.

An important Thailand topic because if Thailand had a "dead beat dad" law forcing the fathers to support with money their children, there would be lots fewer young Thai mothers doing desperate things to get money to care for their children..... abandoned by their fathers.

A DEAD BEAT DAD law in Thailand, strongly enforced, would do more to relieve stressed Thai women/mothers than any other effort.

All the do good people who try to reduce numbers of Thai ladies who work at night, could just agitate for laws to cover Dead Beat Dads and see an immediate improvement in women's lives.

Such a law, if created by Thailand, would not be cultural imperialism; the foreign do gooders, however, do that all the time.

1. The only SURE way to know about cancer of the prostate is biopsy and then that indicates only in the area where the tissue is taken and sampled. The PSA test is only an indicator and not a sure thing nor is the digital exam. Xray type scanning can be a help.

2. Self medicating is always not a good idea, especially based on hearsay, so go to a good doctor. I doubt a real doctor would prescribe nor advise over the phone, maybe for a very trusted dear friend.

3. Enlarged prostate does cause urine flow restriction and reducing the size is very difficult, often requiring surgery; ask a good doctor. It can also negatively affect bowel movement and ejection of bowel waste.

4. Anyone who would leave the proven superior quality of Thailand medical care to go anywhere else should re examine their life priorities and degree of death wish. Money is no good in the casket with your body.

5. Prostate infection, which can yield bloody ejaculate, for example, is devilishly difficult to treat. Antibiotics are given over a long time because the delivery there is so slow and sluggish. The lucky ones do get it finally cured. Direct treatment like injection is dangerous and not done.

6. Retrograde ejaculation, where the ejaculate fluid is directed into the bladder, appears harmless. Some esoteric gurus recommend it.

7. You can have part of your prostate taken out by surgery and retain most of your erection and ejaculation functions. If the whole thing is removed, those problems arise most of the time.

Yes, getting old in body is the pits. (In mind not so bad because you dont know it, smile)

Based on Brit English phrased remarks on the question here about cultural imperialism, one could think that there is something in British culture and character that is predisposed to like to colonize other peoples and nations. Also, when you consider the world spanning vast extent of the height of the British Empire, one could conclude the the Brits were as good at colonizing as any in history. Is that desire to colonize still in the British culture?

I am not speaking about any one Brit person, so this is not a slam on anyone specifically.

America, that is the USA, does its colonizing differently via puppet tyrants and strong men, like Noriega or the Shaw, without often installing an actual USA citizen as the visible governing power person.

What is your opinion?

I see from Google searches that some ThaiVisa.com messages come up as if they were solid and dependable information. However, even on factual information, over half of the messages contain some or a lot of mistaken, erroneous, or dangerous comments. I am thinking of the recent threads on lightning and on electrical plugs. I am not talking about purely opinion comments.

The dangerous ones are not so urgent (the funny one about having a Cambodian stand on the roof to take lightning charges) to deserve flagging, but contain so much misinformation mixed with good information so as to be, at least, unreliable. Yet, some people may think that because of the ThaiVisa source, the messages much be correct. (that is only for people who have not read much B.S. that is standard on ThaiVisa, i.e., new readers)

So, should ThaiVisa take more care to, perhaps, label erroneous messages as OPINION even if they purport, claim, to be factual and yet are not??

I see some important errors even on the dedicated LOCKED category of supposedly the best information.

Or, maybe we should just relax and enjoy the wild, wide ranging messages as humor from people absolutely sure their B.S. is fact?

If your eyes did not cross reading Pib's message, then you already know your answer.

Otherwise, just buy the 750 +- watt supply and relax. The difference in money is small compared to the peace of mind with your data.

Note, your UPS backup should be the larger one, too, and there the cost is really a factor to upgrade.

This is a case of "a house too far" instead of a bridge like the movie.

The problem with a gain directional antenna is the loss in the wire leading from the antenna down to the supply source, the router. You are dealing with small wattages and likely most is lost in 100 foot of cable going to antenna.

Why not use the WiFi in the exercise room if any ?

WiFi is short range for good reasons, and you are extremely unlikely to do anything to receive your home WiFi at that distance and with those barriers, houses.

But, my 3BB router WiFi box is much stronger than the best D-Link with range extended model or one other brand, forgot.

Any vehicle that will hold your party and gear is OK. There are almost no places on any kind of road that require 4 wheel drive nor winch. if the tiny trail is too muddy for regular car, you will likely get stuck with a 4 wheel sooner or later, too. Just walk past the bad mud which only comes very far away from paved roads.

I like to rent a Toyota van and driver to give me and mine lots of room inside and good air cond.

If you have diesel the prices are kept down and availability is great due to govt needing to keep big trucks running deliveries.

I have one 110 foot tower and another at about 80ft behind my Thai suburb home. The tall one has some minor spiky metal points sticking out on top to try to obtain the benefits of discharging a lightning charge before it builds up to full strength. Science says that technique lowers risk of a heavy strike and also says that lightning will hit the taller tower and that height tower will provide 100% protection for other shorter objects, like a house, that are within over 200 ft of it. Science has been wrong.

In various places I have lived in USA, I have had my towers or antennas hit full force three times and partial hit twice more. I can tell you about those strikes but unfortunately my experiences may not apply to other situations nor occurrences. That is my point.... that definitive knowledge about lightning is not yet possible. Some say tall metal towers "draw" lightning to them and others say that the tower will bleed off a big charge by providing smaller dissimilar charge amounts all the time to dissipate and thus reduce the number of big hits.

We do know that a heavy real direct hit carries very high voltages and enough current to overload the largest practical wire. It melts welded joints and lots of other metal sometimes too. The discharges are often pulsing with several discharges within less than a second. The greatest danger is the superheating and thus fire of burnable objects it heats rapidly. If the strike passes through your body, the flesh is burned, like fire, and your bodily electrical system is disrupted, sometimes causing fainting in the brain or stopping of the heart. People report flying thru the air, but that could be the thunder air expansion around them or even powerful muscle contractions that make the people jump unusual distances. Violent muscle contractions are typical.

The electric power is said to come from air molecules rubbing against each other and the atoms off-loading electrons so that air and water droplets gain more electrons than the earth has, creating a difference of charge between the sky and the earth. When that charge builds up greater than the insulating air can insulate, lightning strikes. The discharge temporarily quiets down the difference in electron loads, but due to air turbulence, like the stuff that tosses you around in an airplane and the speaker says "turbulence," more electrons are massaged around and a new charge builds up.* The more turbulence, the more lightning. Some say that very dusty air can rub electrons and cause lightning, too. Rain drops carry a charge and as they hit the earth, that charge is dissipated, so maybe a lot of rain will calm down lots of lightning. Or maybe not.

*A vigorous rubbing massage can also cause a dissimilar charge to build up between the masseuse and her victim and that is part of the reason massage books say to keep at least one hand on the victim body all the time so the charge will not build up. You can vigorously rub a wool cloth with a plastic rod and then get sparks between the two items. This is another reason why there are so many cautions about lightning.

The noise comes from the highly heated air expanding around the bolt and then coming back to strike against other air, making thunder. If you hear the thunder at the same time as the flash, you should check for your toasted body parts; guesses say that if you time the time between the flash and the thunder, you can estimate the distance of that lightning bolt from your position, a second for every one thousand feet or so. Check the math.

My worst hit sent a four foot diameter bright orange ball from the window across the room toward a wall of wooden doors. That is quite a thing to see because the huge thunder noise came at the same time. The heat boiled the copper coating on some steel wire and left little cooled bubble marks and vaporized other #12AWG wire. The charge went to my ground rod but also all through my wood house, burning out every light bulb (most turned off) and shooting the old fashioned round ceramic fuses out of the box and across the room like bullets. The arcs from one metal object in the room to another one were a maximum of 8 inches; there were three.

People report that on a boat or in a large open field, the hair on their arms and head will stand out with a charge on their bodies; often they are soon struck. Some say to lay flat on the earth if you can not get inside a house or even the caddy shelter shack, and it is surely bad to get under a tree. I saw an automobile struck with a bright flash around it and the usual line of bright light above it coming from the sky. The car was unhurt maybe due to its insulating rubber tires. Some say lightning bolts come from the earth upward; others from top down; and others say the two meet in the middle.

There is a lightning discharge somewhere in the world so often as to say that the activity is continuous**. Some locations have many more strikes often due to weather conditions there causing more thunderstorms. There are almost no dependable stats about how many massages are happening around the world at the same time, but the exchange of electrons is the same, almost.

I hope this very brief introduction to lightning has helped you....... especially to learn "weasel words" like almost, typically, sometimes, and probably. There could be a prize for the first person to count all the weasel words in this essay, but maybe not.

**Check out the difference between "continuous" and "continual;" certainly the activity is continual, but more like it is continuous.

I can wait to read all the refutations of fact from people with even more time on their hands than me.

1. double insulation is only as good as the insulation... that breaks down and a ground is then needed very much.

2. If the voltage is large enough to overcome skin and other resistance, ONLY THEN will amperage flow and provide the dangerous shock

3. Alphabet soup does not help the novice.

4. The normal ground rod in Thailand is about 4 feet long and made of a steel rod coated with copper; solid copper rod is too soft to pound in and needlessly expensive.

5. I answered the plug question in detail in another message on this thread.

I felt adding some facts to the wildly crazy opinions and false advice here about electrical safety is a good response to some of the errors listed here. The dedicated electric site link also is an embarrassment of errors and half baked opinions, some of them dangerous.

The average person is in a bind in Thailand because reading ThaiVisa could kill them and hiring an unknown Thai electrician could kill them.

WHY IS GROUNDING (EARTHING) IMPORTANT ?

Having an electrical connection between the metal case enclosure of an appliance, like a washer, and ground is an important safety necessity because sometimes something fails inside the appliance and some or lots of voltage is diverted onto the metal case. If a person touches the electrified case and provides an electrical path to ground, electricity will flow through the person. The person may be insulated from what the electricity thinks is a ground, like wearing rubber boots, and will escape harm.

Electric energy of the 220 VAC amount can kill if the flow is through a vital organ like the heart... which beats because the body's electricity triggers it. Other than death, the flow can burn the flesh similar to fire. You will hear of many stories of survival and dismissing of danger. Who wants to take a chance based on hearsay.

Connection to the ground is best done with a long metal rod, 4 ft or more,pushed into earth, soil, with a wire running to the case of the appliance. You can find a short piece of this wire, with green insulation on it, coming out of the case of washers, dryers, air conditioners, and so on. Thai practice is to either ignore that wire or screw it into a concrete/brick wall nearby; that is NOT a sufficient ground.

Remember that walking in water on the street or home floor can conduct electricity if somehow a hot electric wire is also touching the water. During the flood several people died that way.

Actually ...

First up ... a double insulated appliance requires no earthing.

Tis not the voltage that kills you, but the amperage. Different countries set their safety limits differently.

In Australia the ELCB's (Earth Leakage Circuit Breakers) are set @ 30 mA. Different countries have different names for the similiar device.

As for earthing, the acceptable earthing rod is made of copper as it doesn't rust and a place which does receive some moisture to ensure better connectivity.

But, we can agree on something ... "Remember that walking in water on the street or home floor can conduct electricity if somehow a hot electric wire is also touching the water. During the flood several people died that way."

... and yes, I'm a qualified electrician.

But all this is a mute point ... because we are not answering the OP's question.

I am overjoyed that I hit such a sensitive nerve among thaivisa readers, even being listed as a popular topic on front page.

So many Westerners have written defending themselves from their cultural imperialist personal practices. One fellow even went so far as to declare himself superior to Thai people. What a arrogant puffed up looney! But he was just voicing what the vast number of foreigners believe and yet live in Thailand long term.

But, thank you to the writers here for standing up for my points, a slim number of stalwarts. ThaiVisa exists to extend and support cultural imperialism. I sure hope Thai do not read it because they would rightly resent foreigners more than they do. Just thank Buddha you are allowed into such a peaceful live-and-let-live culture. Now, stop trying to mess it up.

I used the overloaded motorbike example because it pointed out the foolishness of a newly arriving America thinking he would be able to affect Thai behavior. That is what is funny and the look on the police faces when this guy stalks in to straighten everything out. His motive may have been humanitarian, but his chance of success is zero due to a combination of common accepted practice in riding bikes and often necessity for moving around.

Lets look at why a Thai family will risk harm by overloading a bike. Westernized development put the family in this position.

Western development, seeming like a good thing, brought assemble line paying work to Thailand. With that, and an ignorant Thai government not protecting rural life and farmers, the family leaves the ease of village life, where BTW they only need to walk, not ride, because everything is close by.

Leaving the village, the family discovers that nothing is close by... the kids school is way over there needing bike transportation, his work place is far from where they can afford to live needing bike transport, and she shops in a different place needing bike transport. Now, they can barely afford one bike, so everyone gets on the one bike.... now necessary to cope with the "good life" Westernization brought to them.

Then there are the good hearted Westerners bringing inoculations and extending life for Thai. How many of these inoculations are against Western-induced diseases. Remember measles and American Indians. So, thank you for the foreign diseases and then the expensive inoculations needed.

Westerners use their knee jerk reactions to Thailand based on their Western home practices. They do not look at the deeper way other nations and cultures.... and PEOPLE... are disrupted. Many of those disruptions make lots of money for the Westerners, like McDonalds, but by the lure of "the better West," they just make lovely slim Thai children FAT. The 7-11 makes money off Thai poverty by selling, at vastly inflated prices, products in the smallest containers. Thank you West for allowing us to buy baby powder in tiny bottles for a price-per-ounce huge inflation over a big bottle cost.

Western help is often exploitation, not help.

WHY IS GROUNDING (EARTHING) IMPORTANT ?

Having an electrical connection between the metal case enclosure of an appliance, like a washer, and ground is an important safety necessity because sometimes something fails inside the appliance and some or lots of voltage is diverted onto the metal case. If a person touches the electrified case and provides an electrical path to ground, electricity will flow through the person. The person may be insulated from what the electricity thinks is a ground, like wearing rubber boots, and will escape harm.

Electric energy of the 220 VAC amount can kill if the flow is through a vital organ like the heart... which beats because the body's electricity triggers it. Other than death, the flow can burn the flesh similar to fire. You will hear of many stories of survival and dismissing of danger. Who wants to take a chance based on hearsay.

Connection to the ground is best done with a long metal rod, 4 ft or more,pushed into earth, soil, with a wire running to the case of the appliance. You can find a short piece of this wire, with green insulation on it, coming out of the case of washers, dryers, air conditioners, and so on. Thai practice is to either ignore that wire or screw it into a concrete/brick wall nearby; that is NOT a sufficient ground.

Remember that walking in water on the street or home floor can conduct electricity if somehow a hot electric wire is also touching the water. During the flood several people died that way.

1. What is a "little white cord"??? Is that a wire with a white insulating covering? Useless info without specifics.

2. A normal UPS, like sold to use with a computer, are little use with a high wattage appliance like a refrig, washer, or iron used for clothes wrinkles. The UPS batteries are not strong enuf to run high wattage appliances and will just fail.

3. The most important thing in your list is a clothes washer which is most dangerous without a ground due to it and you being wet.

PLEASE LISTEN.... A "power strip" is a plastic container housing with several sockets in it and a two wire/two pin plug coming out of it. There can be 4 or more sockets and the design of the sockets can be of the Universal type which will take most known plugs, BUT THAT POWER STRIP HAS NO GROUND. Some power strips sold with the addition of a "spike protector" have a three wire/three pin plug coming out of it.

Some of the cheaper of these "spike protectors" do not have the third wire connected to anything inside the plastic container housing. Others can be plugged into a two wire wall socket via an adapter and that provides no ground, or a three wire wall socket where the third pin behind the cover plate has no ground wire connected... just not there. You obtain no protection with no ground.

Reading comments here I must say that only one person shows enuf knowledge to deal effectively with lightning installations. Example... welding to make connections from one metal or one metal wire to another will melt with lightning electric flow and are useless in a lightning protection system. Clamping, yes. Welding, no.

All EU plugs are rated for 13 amps, how many amps are te Thai 3 pin plugs rated for?

Chuckle..
They may have grounded it, 'cause they are as smart as anyone, just different, but a govt. crew in C. Mai, WELDED the roof metal beams.. rafters.. with a little white cord!
UPS sounds like a good one in the sockets with more than one appliance.
Our Thai hosts ran the washer on a power strip.. no ground nessary.. (?)

Note I made minor correction to #13. Add note now... your UPS needs to plug into a GROUNDED SOCKET, with a wire on the third pin that goes to real ground. UPS will pass electric power but its filtering function will be compromised with no ground.

Japan uses 100 volts in places.

Standard voltage in Thailand is 220 VAC or up to 240 officially. Also look at the photos someone put on here.

Original Thailand electrical outlet, socket on the wall, is two round holes that, surprise, take two round pin plugs. This socket contains no ground and thus is useless for spike protector outlet strips sold in Thailand which need a ground on the third pin.

Some Thailand sockets are two vertical holes, taking two vertical flat pins on the plug. No ground.

New Thailand sockets have a third pin and the third pin is ground. Sometimes there is no ground wire connected behind the socket and that means "three pins with no ground."

IMPORTANT, you can not obtain 110-120 VAC, volts like in USA, by any method from a 220 VAC Thailand socket.

Is there any country in the world, still on 110V, apart from the USA?

One thing I noticed about power boards after my first unlucky purchase. It had a 3-pin plug at the end of the cable, but there was no earth connected to the board.

Yes, there are still 6 different plugs used on domestic electrical equipment.

My UPS comes with 3-pin outlets at the rear, and is good for all my electronic gear, plus surge protector and battery. It's a 'SYNDOME' which I bought in Pantip Plaza.

Standard voltage in Thailand is 220 VAC or up to 240 officially. Also look at the photos someone put on here.

Original Thailand electrical outlet, socket on the wall, is two round holes that, surprise, take two round pin plugs. This socket contains no ground and thus is useless for spike protector outlet strips sold in Thailand which need a ground on the third pin.

Some Thailand sockets are two vertical holes, taking two vertical flat pins on the plug. No ground.

New Thailand sockets have a third pin and the third pin is ground. Sometimes there is no ground wire connected behind the socket and that means "three pins with no ground."

IMPORTANT, you can not obtain 110-120 VAC, volts like in USA, by branching off of a 220 VAC Thailand socket. You can use a transformer to make that change.

"Brown-outs" are the accidental or purposeful reduction of voltage supplied to your home.

Most Thai appliances can work down to about 180 volts (VAC) but the devices which convert the needed 220 VAC to the various voltages INSIDE the appliance are stressed via higher heating which will accelerate their failure.

Most fixed 220VAC electronics devices will heat lots on lower voltages, and parts inside will fail especially if the units are on.

Many modern items use either a "wall transformer" the cube that plugs into the wall and its trailing wire plugs into your device, or a transformer with a wire to plug into the wall and a trailing wire to plug into the device. Read on the transformer case which usually indicates it will work from 100 VAC to 250VAC meaning it should be immune to brown-outs (above 100). These units can just go on running with no expected increased failure rates.

Operating any other device at voltages below about 180 VAC will produce significant heating and a danger of fire, or will just stop working, like a fan.

A cheap way to keep an eye on your voltage is to have one incandescent light bulb turned on, not LED and not fluorescent, and see what the light output is at normal and how it looks at low voltage. A volt meter is better.

Thailand shops sell transformers, called "step up", to install for a whole house or a room which has a meter and a switch on it so if 180VAC is shown coming in, the switch can be turned to another position indicating that it is passing a higher voltage on to the house or room. These devices do work, and local electricians know about them. My family always turned ours to the lowest setting (behind my back) because they reasoned wrongly that the lower the voltage, the lower the cost for electricity.

The opposite is true due to waste electric energy that just heats appliances, etc.

Another danger is total loss of all electric power and then reinstating it. Although this can confuse certain timing circuits, usually it is no harm, EXCEPT if the voltage does not come back on at full 220VAC; then you are at the brown-out problem again. The return of power also can contain a higher than normal voltage; also not good for electrical devices.

It is best to avoid using any device at voltage lower than 180. Just turn them off and wait, or unplug them. Ask more if this is not complete enough.

Standard voltage in Thailand is 220 VAC or up to 240 officially. Also look at the photos someone put on here.

Original Thailand electrical outlet, socket on the wall, is two round holes that, surprise, take two round pin plugs. This socket contains no ground and thus is useless for spike protector outlet strips sold in Thailand which need a ground on the third pin.

Some Thailand sockets are two vertical holes, taking two vertical flat pins on the plug. No ground.

New Thailand sockets have a third pin and the third pin is ground. Sometimes there is no ground wire connected behind the socket and that means "three pins with no ground."

IMPORTANT, you can not obtain 110-120 VAC, volts like in USA, by any method from a 220 VAC Thailand socket.

I took bodhisattva vows from HH the Dalai Lama. There are heavy demands and I am always working to try to do better. However, a part of some Buddhist training involves teachers doing very stern talk, often seeming to take a superior attitude, and even smacks with a cane pole on slacker students.

It is not blasphemy nor bragging to tell the truth.

I am not enlightened, but according to Buddhism, it is my job to help all sentient beings. The challenge on ThaiVisa is to find some of those. Living in Thailand and knowing nothing of, nor caring about, the hugely dominant local belief system, Buddhism, is more cultural imperialism by arrogant "punters" and some "blokes," too. We are all Grasshoppers, respectful at the knees of a teacher.

I will try to do as you say but it is a real challenge for a bodhisattva to do that and something he needs to be constantly aware of and correct. P.S., if you feel "talked down to," then bring yourself up.

Dear Prince Charles, I do understand what you are trying to say.

However consider this.

Thai Language is 'tonal ' ... the tone changes the message or the words substantially.

The 'tone' of your OP is that of superiority ... of one who has reached enlightenment.

And we ... well we appear as just 'Grasshoppers' ... the ignorant masses.

Lower the tone. Talk with us, not to us.

Your words will have more meaning then.

BTW ... the people you refer to are from the USA ... not Americans ...

So, you're a "bodhisattva", or "enlightened one", trying to share your enlightened wisdom with us? Pearls before swine? Everything I've ever read or heard about "enlightenment" or "cosmic consciousness" concludes that the second one thinks he "gets it", that is a sure sign he doesn't get it, and never had it. More maya. Such a one doesn't go around making pompous pronouncements about what others should do or think. Such a one makes no claims for himself. Such a one lives in such a way that his very presence inspires others to live or think differently, without having to say much of anything. Or so I've heard.

Oh my god!

I read the OP, and thought bodhisattva meant some sort of sect or something.

But no, the OP thinks he is ENLIGHTENED.

The OP is lucky that apparently there are no TV forum rules against blasphemy.

Another one for my ignore list.

I have done this for eleven years..........

-have a Thai write travel instructions to give to a taxi man; do not give him a map.

-get a Thai speaking friend on telephone and give phone to taxi man to get info.

-use a well known landmark near where you want to go; example all taxi now know Pantip Plaza.

-have your hotel dispatcher, the man out front calling taxis, tell taxi where u want to go.

-hope that the person the taxi driver is calling on phone knows the route to take.

-have your Thai girl speak to the taxi.

-hire a car and English speaking driver.

-try to call and use same taxi driver for your trips; soon he will learn your needs.

-use skytrain and subway with English signs.

-walk with your own map.

-avoid normal public bus unless you are really good at knowing routes, etc.

I traveled all over Asia without the local languages, not great but necessary, with very few problems caused by languages, but I do smile a bunch, do wai, learn at least ThankYou, and have patience.

More examples of what I am talking about. White Europeans came to N. America and taught the locals how to shoot guns, how to get smallpox from usa gift blankets, and now how to live in semi-concentration camps as their land is despoiled and polluted permanently. Red Chinese went to Tibet and taught the local monks how to get shot when marching for liberation, how to hide their photo of HH the Dalai Lama or be beaten and jailed, and how to destroy over 6000 of their own monasteries with their bare hands.

History will report a vast number of ways stronger, more arrogant folks have forced their "new and better" ideas on the locals who were doing just fine without the new arrivals. Heck, you have to know how much the Moabites welcomed King David who arrived and taught them the talent of the beheading of the locals. So many improvements, so little time.

Well, what u are asking is for the westerner to park his brain at immigration.

What a great idea! I think you are on to something.

But what to do when Thais appear to permenanatly misplace theirs.

This is a little bit like the discussions on hear about electrical wiring. There are rules and regs the world over about how to install this stuff safely, and often Thais don't do it.

All was invented in the west from bloody Faraday onwards. Fuses, ELBs, earthing, three pin, two pin.

Are people seriously saying its imperialism to advise or even insist on the highest safety because the option is to live or die? To know their is a better way and be told to shut I denies a basic human trait.

I can't make up for the apparent lack of knowledge here sometimes and likewise, I have enjoyed learning some of the Thai tricks of the trade.

Where would Thailand be without learning from the outside. Still waiting for the round wheel? Where would man be if we.didn't learn from each other?

"Trompe-l'œil (French for deceive the eye, pronounced [tʁɔ̃p lœj]), which can also be spelled without the hyphen and ligature in English as trompe l'oeil,^[1] is an art technique that uses realistic imagery to create the optical illusion that depicted objects exist in three dimensions. Forced perspective is a comparable illusion in architecture."

Yes in several ways. The photo brings up the injection of the modern into the ancient, the idea that Buddha has us in his hands, that the Western invention airplane is tiny in significance to Buddhism, that photos are fun "trump loy" Anglicized from French term, and that the photo will cause people to think and even ask questions.

Is your avatar related to the topic ?

"Trump loy"?

Oy vey!

the IMPOSITION of Western laws is the maximum of cultural imperialism. Brits were masters of that.

The imposition of Western Laws is different from Cultural Imperialism. CI is the imposition of different customs and traditions and values such as Christian values and holidays. Valentine's Day, Gift giving on birthdays etc.