CharlesHH

Som... has provided a perfect example of cultural imperialism.

There are some of western cultures that Thailand should borrow including equality, human rights and rational thinking. Also, Thai women should not be so submissive to their man. I think those would benefit Thailand a great deal. It is quite alright to state opinion isn't it?

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 ...

Actually I am kinda saying that if the West supplies a motorcycle to Thailand, and a Thai uses it to pull a plow, the Westerner should keep his mouth shut if all he can do is condemn this usage of the bike just because HE just KNOWS how a bike should be used. Not everything in Thailand is "up to you."

So what the OP is saying is that if the world or particularly the west invents or discovers something like a motorcycle, they shouldnt explain how to use it safely.

So if Thailand buys a nuclear reactor from the west, insisting that they use it safely equates to imperialism. Hmmmm

Not so easy, but so necessary to UNlearn, like you say. Actually, many posts I read indicate Westerners can not and do not want to unlearn but to make Thailand over into their crappy place they left. I say Why do that?

When someone has spent 50 years or more living their life to a certain set of rules and behaviour, it isnt easy to adjust to a whole new concept and different set of rules and priorities.

I find its better not to sit in judgement but to make allowances for people to adjust. Some do some dont.

Its not easy unlearning !

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 ?

Well designed lightning protection outlet strips or UPS will not degrade anything related to the AC voltage and not the speed of the telephone data line. NONE.

The little illuminated ON switch does consume electricity in the form of light and heat and will add a tiny amount to your electric cost. However, imagine all those little switch lights all over the world wasting electricity by glowing should be a great amount all added up.

In fact, just add up the electrical usage if everything is turned off but is on standby power, ready for a remote to turn the device fully ON. The total is surprising...........add stereo, 3 tv, microwave and other clocks, things batteries being charged, cable box, computer on sleep, lighted switches on outlet strips, and hundreds of other things would be for a typical American home would be about 90 watts. The cost would be the same as running a 100 watt incandescent light bulb, non fluorescent, all the time, all day, all year. Think of the waste.

Look folks, if your electrical socket has ONLY TWO PINS, two holes for the plugs to go into, YOU DO NOT HAVE A GROUND.

If you have no ground, none of your expensive or cheap spike protectors or UPS boxes will really protect what is plugged into them. With lightning, never say never, but all these protection outlet strips and UPS work by diverting a surge of electricity on the AC lines to ground. A few have things like MOVs which will clamp off high spikes of extra voltage on the AC lines, but almost all of all "lightning protection" or surge protection devices NEED A GROUND or will not work.

THE POINT IS THE LACK OF A GROUND at the electrical socket, the outlet, on the wall.

Why not just go the Korat immigration office and ask your questions? You want to do this legally and thus exposing your story to authorities will be no long term harm. Ask the experts, not hearsay on this venue.

It is not uncommon for a woman or a man to lose lots of interest in sex after marriage. This does happen, but the 'why' is a tuff question; maybe it has to do with the fun of illicit sex before and the boredom of same same afterward. If it happens, likely there is no genuine, non faked, cure although psychotherapy could be tried and sexual pills, like Viagra, are not stimulants and there is no known real sex stimulant to make a person turn hot from cold.

Your alternatives in your case are to visit ladies who work at night, get a gik, move a second or third woman into your home and share, fund and have a mia noi, or use self satisfaction..... or some combination. Divorce is another sad answer.

Whatever an Akka is, there are cultures like the Bhutanese where women are more sexually liberated and aggressive, but no one race or location has a corner on sexually hot women. In your case, you tried before you bought, but still feel things went wrong. Sorry for your situation.

-Lightning's choice of spots to hit....... there is no way to predict; a man with a golf club over his shoulder in an open field surrounded by trees seems almost as likely as a 1000 foot tower, certainly a possibility. The theory is that dis similar charge builds up between the ground and the clouds due to the friction of air molecules moving against each other, static electricity. When the charge is big enuf, what that is can be disputed, there will be a spark, a discharge, a lightning strike.

-Many Thai houses are made of non metallic roofing material and concrete/brick walls. That material does not conduct as well as metal, even when wet, so there is some protection to such houses.

-A house can be fitted with lightning rods with big cables to ground, but another type of "protection" is a tall metal tower nearby. That could be a two story tower holding a water tank which could be a more likely target to take a hit and spare the house. There is no absolute protection.

-The problem here in using a UPS with "line filter" or an outlet strip with over voltage clamping, limiting, is that those devices work with a ground. If your house wiring is TWO pin sockets and only two pins, those sockets are not grounded. You can have a three pin cord and plug, but if the socket has no third pin for ground, there is NO ground and all your supposed protection devices will not work correctly. You can also see three pin sockets, but remove the cover plate and see that there is no ground wire attached to the third pin, oops.

-grounded three pin sockets can be installed, but be sure such an installation takes the third wire, the ground, to an actual copper rod in the earth, not screwed to a concrete wall as you see often.

-not a good idea to DIY your own ground installation for the main reason that you do not want your grounding installation to be a "better" ground than the commercial power electric distribution system. Hope to hire a competent electrician; show him a "wire nut" and if he does not know what it is, get a new fellow.

Unplugging is the only near-perfect answer for protection....... but then there is induction....... oh all the things to know.....

Asiantravel, first, there are not millions of Thai faithful to a political party and not even to voting. Party loyalty is purchased, absentee ballots are purchased, and lots of intimidation is around. There are a few thousand Reds funded by Thaksin who purchased their loyalty (and who must be running to find another tit to live on now) within his political machine.

Then, you can see a few Westerner typists on blogs taking a kneejerk reaction to Thailand by applying their own standards to conditions here which are very different. But the Knee Jerks keep spouting "democracy," "elections," "majority" (even tho the reds never got a majority), and so on. Some Knee Jerk national foreign policy mouthpieces, like Kerry, can use this situation here (or "human rights" used on Red China) as a way to 'lord over' another nation.

Big money news media then joins in with their artificially created drama, posing the 'poor and democratic' against the 'rich and powerful.' That is an easy story to write even from the balcony of the 'reporter's' 5 star hotel room and sells easily to Knee Jerks in the West.

Too, Westerners will jump on the bandwagon and become overnight defenders of freedom, democracy (of what kind?), the poor, and other issues and people that they can feel culturally imperialistically superior to in a fake adopted idea of teaching the little brown people how to do things properly. That is an ugly stance and Thai are not fooled and can see thru arrogant Western chest beating as just ignorant and fake.

So there!

They will all mouth similar platitudes - but as long as business interests are safe and there's not mass bloodshed it will be business as usual. The international community is much more worried about Ukraine and the international ramifications than meddlesome domestics of Thailand. Baht seems solid as a rock at the moment as far as Sterling is concerned.

" it will be business as usual "

.

I have no idea how you could possibly reach that conclusion without knowing exactly how the millions who voted for the previous government are going to react to all this?

The pricing is not based on "race" as you mistakenly type.

My advice to you is if this small matter disturbs you, it is a signal to get out of Thailand.

The more I read on ThaiVisa the more I realize what a bunch of sour and grumpy, artificially self important and arrogant blank blank foreigners live here.

CULTURAL IMPERIALISM IS SHAMEFUL. Look it up.

Go Army !

Checking hip boots

I am sorry for your personal unhappiness. I am putting together a booklet with advice for Western men to live with and marry Thai women. I will read all the messages here with great interest and use some of the wisdom herein, when I find some.

The sad situation in Thailand seems to be a Western Man, WM, comes to Thailand filled with the idea of getting himself a little brown servant who he can mold to his will. WM makes little effort to learn about the woman he has connected with and basically says "change to my expectations" because I am paying the bills. That is an untenable distribution of power in a relationship and the seeds for failure are too many to really overcome.

Your description of your Thai wife mirrors millions of Thai who do not share the Dog Eat Dog, competitive, striving world view of the WM. Yes "they" are quite content to live day to day, be surrounded by FAMILY, and set goals that are very short term (one day). These ideas are anathema to the WM who believes in his world view of "constant betterment."

My advice, worth just what you paid for it, is for you to release your captive back to her own culture because you will never get the Thai out of a Thai woman. It is so odd that WM come here because of the admirable traits of the women and then set about immediately trying to make them over into Westernized types, the very types a smart WM will be attempting to escape.

WM at the next stool are complaining they cant get a good hamburger; I say, if you want things to be "just like back home," THEN GO BACK HOME before you take on a good Thai woman and try to bend her to your ideas.

Read up on Cultural imperialism.

This sunny dreamer sounds like a death wish fellow. "Only" 2 accidents! After I broke my shoulder trying to turn at SLOW SPEED on gravel, I have never ridden a bike again. I need only one warning of fate.

Since then, I have asked every motorbike rider I meet and not one has a totally clean accident record; many with broken bones and permanent disabling injuries. I clean up the Thai boys in our family with hydrogen peroxide and watch them wince at no skin from ankle to knee. And, to top it off, they lost one flip flop, too.

If sunny has no dependents, ok. Otherwise, he is wildly irresponsible. Also, he is the kind to zip right in front of my bumper and when I hit him, he will want me to take care of his doctor bills. A fool and his bike are soon parted.

To the OP. It is purely your choice what you wish to wear when riding. It's all about your perception of risk management, the importance of comfort vs skin rash, broken jaw bone etc etc. Not talking here about head on collisions at high speeds (> 120 kmh) - at these speeds, the helmet's the most important piece of equipment.

You are right to not think that accidents won't happen to you (unlike some other posters). The only question that remains then is how much injury you are willing to endure, knowing very well that the more safety gear you have, the less injuries you are likely to have. Only you can answer that question as it's your own body.

Yes I do think an accident could happen at any time but I have to be comfortable otherwise riding a bike is just horrible, I really do not want to have any injury and that is why I drive the way I do, as you already know I do not ever go above 100kph sometimes 120kph if overtaking but rarely, I have only had two minor accidents in 45 yrs of riding bikes so I am rightly confident(not overly confident that I will remain safe, I will not be able to avoid head on's, being rear ended or being side swiped but that is the same for all of us, my speed everyday here on Phuket is between 40/80kph the higher speed is always on a straight clear road, my concentration is 100% whilst driving, yes I have made mistakes but have always avoided a situation because of my speed, hopefully that will continue, as far as gear goes I now have a Tachai jacket(no where near as good as brands like Alpinestars but it's adequate for me, I wear cheap gloves that will give some protection, I am waiting for my full face LS2 crash helmet to arrive, I am very happy to ride in heavyish combat shorts and Crocs(I am looking for some high trainers to replace the crocs or flip flops, maybe one day I will have a bad set too and will wish I had been wearing expensive full gear but for now and the future I am a very happy rider.

Note; I have huge hands and find it impossible to find quality leather gloves that fit, because of my strange feet I am unable to wear motorcycle boots, I just can't get them on!!

If I offend anyone on these threads I apologize, I don't take everything so seriously!!


Sent from my iPad using Thaivisa Connect Thailand

I reported what I did on Tuesday. I came home with the US Embassy "certifying" statement which I will present to Thai authorities very soon. Unless more snide and insulting comments come to me, I will report those activities here also.

Question is, did you use gross or net income and/or, did you tell the whole truth?

Why? you his mother. The OP said he swore the information was correct.

Yup, I wanna be sure my son is doing the right thing!

two weeks if ordinary air mail overseas.

Make one of the Thai a team captain.

Explain to all that he is sub boss and is getting extra something to get them to work right.

Put all the onus on the captain. Work THROUGH a Thai on the job like everywhere else here.

If I want anything done in Thailand, I reserve or assign a Thai to do it. Thai wives are excellent at this especially because the wife wants husband's approval, wants to save him money, and wants job done right as a matter of her personal honor. Tell her she can keep whatever money she saves you. Otherwise, remind her that her monthly allowance is paid to her in part to help with these supervisory jobs. She will love ordering other people around.

A junior person LOVES to boss people more junior than he/she.

other option is to charge one of the working group with a fault by implication, but punish the whole group. Be sure obliquely that all of the group know that THAT ONE screwed up and cost them all. The group will police itself, often.

However, you will NEVER get a Thai to run an electric drill continuously instead of burrum, burrum, burrum in jolts.

Some things one can not change.

The just plain CHARMING as these two girls are is a delight to live in Thailand.

Not pretending, not affected, just cute and helpful. I love Thai people.

Police........... Just pick up the offending motorbike and take it off for govt sale. No need to explain. Just do it.

In two weeks of this, it will be Amazing Thailand how many will finally obey the law.

Go Army !