zaphod reborn

2 hours ago, AsiaHand said:

As a person born in Texas with an Indian grandmother from Chihauhau Mexico I was brought up on real Tex-Mex food.California style is OK but a little too cheesy where as in Texas we rely more on the con-corne flavor ,very spicy and only corn tortillas ,The flour tortillas are for the yankee tourist..If you ever get a chance go to a Chili Cook Off in Texas and sample all as it burns a hole in your gut then washing it down with lots and lots of ice cold bee

There is as much authentic Mex in Cali as in Texas, but it isn't in the white suburbs where Cal Mex chains like El Torito, Chevy's and Baja Fresh flourish.  It's in the barrios of SF's Mission district, East LA and Barrio Logan in San Diego.  Chili is a Tex-Mex creation and an art form to cook.  I think the dish I enjoyed most when traveling through Texas was the chile rellenos of El Paso.

1 minute ago, Silurian said:

 

Funny, this argument tends to disappear when it is regarding the Steele Dossier. I guess it is a sort of "pick and choose" option.

 

 

The law as it applies to oppo research is quite murky and I'm not sure anyone wants to take up a prosecution where the law is so unclear.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/07/12/can-it-be-a-crime-to-do-opposition-research-by-asking-foreigners-for-information/?utm_term=.75a4d0123578

The Steele Dossier is actually a product of an American oppo research company.  Fusion GPS is a Washingon DC firm which had been in business for about 6 years.  It was originally hired by The Washingon Free Beacon, a conservative blog, to do oppo research on several GOP candidates, but stopped when Trump won the primary.  They were subsequently hired by the Clinton campaign and contracted with UK spy Steele, to complete the research assignment.  The fact that Clinton's campaign hired a US oppo research company makes prosecution even more difficult.   

31 minutes ago, lovelomsak said:

I went to this thread because I have been having tortillas craving lately. The pics here reminded me it is near to impossible to get what I call a real corn tortilla. I crave a stack of warm fresh corn tortilla  wrapped in a hot warm cloth,that when I take one out of the towel steam comes  off it.Pure corn no wheat. Have not seen these for years.

 I remember a bakery near the Belmar  Hotel They had bags of dry kernels of corn . They dropped the corn in a hopper ground it made tortilla's from them and baked them all in the same open air room.Could watch them made from the street. Real tortillas not what these guys and it seems all others sell to us now.

Totally agree.  You can only get dried out hulks of cardboard in Thailand, no real corn tortillas.  This means you can't get authentic street tacos or enchiladas that are any good.  The key to making masa harina is that the corn needs to be soaked in lime (calcium hydroxide).  It is then rinsed which removes the lime and husks, and then grind the corn kernals.  I recall years ago there was a thread about making homemade corn tortillas.

So, the solution was to replace the visa stamps with stickers.

Quote

26 July - The Thai embassy in Myanmar has replaced visa stamps with visa stickers after fake stamps were discovered at immigration checkpoints in Tak and Sa Kaeo recently, according to immigration officials.

 I guess RTP has a selective memory when it comes to the corruption of embassy officials.

https://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/663955-mfa-to-quickly-solve-the-missing-visa-stamps-500-stickers-disappear-from-thai-consulate-in-lao-pdr/

https://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/662970-suvarnabhumi-immigration-arrest-russian-for-using-stolen-visa-label/

2 hours ago, ukrules said:

Pol. Maj. Gen. Surachate Hakparn : It's not the warehouses where they're stored that you should be looking for.

 

You should be looking for the massive factories where they goods are manufactured.

 

Of course this would be pointless because I think we all know that you already know exactly where these factories are and who owns and operates them - you and your colleagues always have known.

 

Why only go after the low hanging fruit ? Get them all.....

 

Also - Tourist Police - why is this a tourist police matter ? It should be way higher up than that.

 

I hope Trump sanctions and taxes your asses back to the stone age.

Exactly.  When Thailand adopted tough child labor laws, Nike and Adidas moved their factories from Thailand to Vietnam and Indonesia.  Any athletic shoe manufacturers remaining in Thailand (with the exception of Bloch dance shoes) are producing pirated goods.

2 hours ago, Deli said:

 

Sorry, this is B.S. Officially the Vietnam War started in 1955 and the Germans where still recovering from WW II and definitely not traveling to Pattaya, prior to 55.

Umm, they're talking about US involvement in the Vietnam war which started in 1960, and didn't become substantial until the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964.  I have talked to ex-pats who landed in the 50's, and they relate that almost all the sexpats and tourists prior to '64 were German.  There is a verified written account of this at www.bangkokeyes.com

2 hours ago, watcharacters said:

 

Again, I wonder why  news of this sort is of any interest to TVF members or  expats living in Thai.

 

Why people get upset about those who overstay is a mystery to me.

 

I simply could not care less about it.

 

I have no sympathy for overstayers, but conducting dozens of weekly random checks to ferret out overstayers is unreasonable, harassing, and a waste of resources.  It is an authoritarian tactic aimed at the expat community.  The focus should be following up on foreigners who entered on visa-exempt entry and never left, but should never just be random police raids.

1 hour ago, webfact said:

The resort city’s seedy reputation is said to have originated during the Vietnam war, when American troops stationed in the region started to visit what was then a sleepy fishing village, becoming so taken by the local hospitality that they returned in ever greater numbers.

That's a frequently cited myth.  Yes, Pattaya's reputation grew during the Vietnam war, but it was a destination frequented by German tourists prior to the war.

17 hours ago, DepDavid said:

Wrong. Regardless if the tractor driver decided to stand naked and do a dance on it clearly and without question the idiot in the white truck is at fault. If the silver truck was speeding and it could be proven then excessive speed would be a contributing factor not the cause. Don’t go into traffic law. 

Sorry, but the reversing manuever requires the highest standard of care, even more than moving a vehicle out of its lane to the left or right, and making a turn.  The farmer was reversing his tractor, encroaching on a lane of travel while hugging the shoulder and is 100% at fault.

9 hours ago, whaleboneman said:

Hey litigator.

1) the tractor was reversing to avoid getting creamed

2) tractor was in the correct lane (they drive on the left in Thailand)

3) look at the video again and you may see that tractor was clearing weeds off the road

4) "governmental work signs, no warning signs, no road work uniforms"  You are having a laugh now aren't you?

5) You probably did better when you were a litigator and had people explain what happened rather than relying on video

1) it doesn't matter why he was reversing - the driver of a reversing vehicle has the highest standard of care to make sure that the manuever can be executed safely

2) the tractor was being operated on the shoulder, but encroaching on the lane of traffic which is a statutory violation with a presumption of negligence; also, the tractor was being operated against traffic, and only the reversing manuever made the tractor proceed with the flow of tractor

3) unless the operator is with the highways division, he enjoys no protection of the law for his conduct while doing so, as he is unable to avail himself of proper safety requirements

4)  http://aspa.mfa.go.th/TPIF/rural roads.pdf  The priority for ordinary road maintenance is "road failure".  In this situation, does any encroaching vegetation block highway vision, or reduces the ability to use the road shoulder as a safety valve.  In this case, the answer is a resounding "no".  This is a poor farmer who may have been just testing his tractor.  I can't see any purpose of removing the scant vegetation, which didn't even encroach on the paved shoulder.

5) While often adequate warning of work on the side of the road is not given, there are regulations requiring it, and, if not followed, result in fault of the accident being placed on the maintenance workers, and not the driver of a vehicle.

6) Why then did litigators spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to creat accident reconstruction videos and struggling to get them into evidence. 

7 minutes ago, colinneil said:

Watch the video again, his blade is on the ground scraping vegetation.

If you cannot see that, then i hope you are not driving on the roads.

It doesn't matter.  Unless he's been engaged by the province's DLT to clear the shoulders, he enjoys no protection from his own negligence.  A freelancer do-gooder cannot be expected to follow any DLT road maintenance standards regarding road safety.

1 hour ago, webfact said:

He suggested it be named the Safety and Security Tourism Thailand Office and be in charge of raising standards to match the best international standards.

Accuracy in naming the agency would require it to be called the Tourism Safety Tea Money and Bribery Collection Agency.  Just another money grab from an industry that is seen as highly lucrative and with heavy foreign ownership/investment.

1 hour ago, colinneil said:

You surely are not serious with that comment!!

If you are serious, you have no idea.

Around the country they use tractors with front blades to clear back vegetation growing out onto the road.

That is exactly what the tractor driver was doing.

Also this is Thailand, forget about safety signs etc, it just does not happen.

Pickup entering from the side road was 100% to blame for the accident, nobody else.

Article says he's a farmer.  I don't see any vegetation that needs to be removed from the shoulder of the road.  FAIL!

Quote

He said Phannipha Thanonyai, 23, was killed when the arched entrance of The Grand Bang Na housing estate collapsed onto the front of the truck.

Yes, blame the arched entrance.  The truck and its driver are obviously not at fault.

5 hours ago, Chris Lawrence said:

What ever happened to the Flood Mitigation Plan drawn up by Thai's leading expert about 2005? The reason no one will touch this is because there is so much tea money in the system to prevent logic happening.

But monkey cheeks can solve the problem.  ?

Dams, reservoirs, hydroelectric plants, aqueducts, satellites . . . don't make us think and plan.  Much easier to get kickbacks from digging monkey cheeks.