Gecko123

You've really been drinking the kool-aid, bro. With both fists.

The fact that he was doing this with multiple children on school grounds during school hours at an international school - all factors which increase his risk of being caught - suggests to me that he is likely a very impulsive individual who has difficulty controlling this behavior, which raises the odds that additional earlier incidents have occurred.

Not sure if individuals convicted of sex crimes and sex crimes against children in Thailand are necessarily at higher risk of physical violence from other inmates as they are in the West. Not saying that Thai inmates are more tolerant of sex crimes, just questioning whether the common belief that sex crime inmates are at high risk of being killed or injured by other inmates is applicable to Thai prisons. If anyone has any insights into Thai prison culture regarding this matter, please comment.

Kudos to the teacher who overheard the children discussing the sexual abuse and took prompt action.

Very consistent with a suicide. Victim had history of depression. Securing your own hands behind your back is done to prevent natural instinct to struggle with noose. Totally feasible to secure your hands behind your own back, especially with zip tie type restraints. Handcuffs could also be used to secure one's own hands behind back. Choice of remote hilltop durian grove is consistent with melancholia/depression. Cloth over head may have been done out of consideration of person finding the body. Painkillers found may have been used to dull senses in anticipation of pain. Finding wallet, cash, painkillers and personal items set apart from body at site is not consistent with a homicide.

Need to read full article. First three paragraphs make it sound like the cop summarily executed the daughter's boyfriend, but there was an altercation immediately before the shooting, allegedly initiated by the boyfriend.

The eggplant is broiled - not baked - at relatively low temperature, and coated with olive oil which prevents sticking. Google tells me: "some parchment papers are treated with toxic PFAS or bleached with chlorine..." and "...is coated with a thin layer of silicone." I'm gonna take a pass, but thanks for the suggestion.

There is a pragmatic efficiency algorithm in play. The minor inconvenience of the customer already being served is weighed against the value of answering another customer's quick question. If the quick question devolves into a protracted problem, usually they're told to wait until the shopkeeper is finished with you. Foreigners sometimes interrupt a Thai person's transaction to ask a quick question, so works both ways. Thai person may sometimes be deferred to over a foreigner due to their status as a long time customer, known member of the community, friendship, or comfort level due to ease of communication, but have never felt this was due to racial discrimination. I've had lots of situations in repair shops where I show up out of the blue with my weedwacker or lawn mower and the mechanic will stop whatever they were working on and start diagnosing my problem. Some of it is they want to engage the customer so that they don't get frustrated, walk out of the store, and thus lose the sale. Hope this is helpful. I would not take the advice to become unduly assertive in these situation; there's a cultural difference which once you get used to it, makes a lot of sense. P.S. you are misusing the word racist which means a belief that a given race is superior to another.

I make hummus all the time too. Thai eggplant is great for making baba ganoush as well. Absolutely delicious with carrot sticks. I broil the olive oil brushed eggplant at maybe 160-170 C until caramelized. LOL, think this is baba ganoush, but might be hummus. Travel snack.

I remember when the only beach chairs available for rent were those horribly uncomfortable ones with a narrow wooden frame and itchy canvas to sit on. From the looks of the chairs in the photos, they've made a lot of progress in terms of offering nicer chairs for rent. Curious what the going rate to rent a beach chair like those featured in the photos is?

Not trying to play devil's advocate here, but are you basing the above assessment on doe-eyed verbal assurances from your wife or is there a tried and tested track record in the care-giver department? It's hard to believe that your Thai wife would have the capacity to take care of three elderly or incapacitated foreigners. The other issue you need to consider is that at home "elder care" standards in Thailand are pretty rudimentary: bed, TV at foot of bed, bed pan, help walking to the bathroom, rice porridge, etc., so when a Thai person says they'd be willing to take of an elderly person, there may be a huge gap between the level of care they are picturing they will deliver and what you are envisioning. Other factors to consider would be the number of people needed to assist in the transportation and moving of say a 100 kg foreigner. You're probably going to need at least 2 people if not 3-4 to get someone safely into a wheel chair and then into a car for a visit to the hospital. The other thing I would mention is that Thailand's population is aging very quickly, and finding quality at home nursing and assisted living helpers is probably going to be increasingly expensive and difficult to arrange. Frankly, I have been a long-time skeptic that Thailand is the promised land for elder care and that "elder respect" is in the genetic code of Thai people. Might have been true 100 years ago, but nowadays my strong advice would be to beware of nursing home marketing hype peddling this shop-worn myth to unsuspecting foreign potential customers.

Question that immediately jumped out... What would happen if something happens to you? Despite their current vitality, over time they are going to be increasingly dependent on you, and if for whatever reason you can no longer manage their care, sounds like they might find themselves to be in a fairly vulnerable position.

I don't see how you're going to get rid of recreational use without re-criminalization, and I don't see how backtracking on this issue is politically viable. Every time I hear the argument that "the cat is already out of the bag" and too much economic damage will be done if legalization is reversed, I have to chuckle. It makes me think about some of the road widening projects I've seen over the years where the road widening effectively destroyed road side businesses by eliminating parking and walkways. I remember in particular years ago when they widened the road on Koh Chang, and there was this bar that was in the way. After the road was widened you could literally sit at the end of the bar and reach up and touch cars as they drove by. In Thailand, there seems to be an "eminent domain" and "common good" mentality which doesn't hesitate before running roughshod over business and financial interests when it is deemed necessary or in the common good. Westerners also seem to think that the Thai government can be tied up in court for decades when business or financial interests are harmed, which more often than not does not appear to be the case. Those rules don't seem to apply in Thailand. I also think that those who are arguing that recreational use will continue to flourish because doctors will just start handing out rubber stamped prescriptions for cannabis are kidding themselves. It's my guess that medical prescriptions will be closely monitored, and doctors in cahoots with cannabis shops will quickly find that their cannabis prescription writing privileges have been revoked.

I think I know the apparatus he's using, even though I've never looked at one up close. Farmers usually use it to spray pesticides and it shoots a stream about eight meters. It's usually mounted on some type of trap wagon and another guy manages the long hose and sprays the crop. It's much more efficient than using a backpack sprayer, but from what I've seen, the guy doing the application is getting a very high exposure to pesticides in the process, especially if the wind is blowing in the wrong direction. I've never seen that apparatus used to spray trees, especially in a residential area. Because he's spraying vertically rather than horizontally, I imagine the possibility of overspray is quite high, again, especially if the wind is blowing in the wrong direction. A mist of pesticide over your car, outdoor furniture, swimming pool, vegetable garden, etc. isn't exactly healthy, especially if there are children in the household. I don't know what to tell you. Pesticide applications kind of come with the territory in rural Thailand, but due to the proximity to your house, that guy needs to be actively exploring ways to minimize overspray and annoyance of his neighbors. Reducing the concentration of application, reducing the pressure of the spray stream, reducing the atomization of the application, paying careful attention to wind direction, or giving advanced notice (not just 10 minutes beforehand) are possible ways to reduce your exposure.

I think you and your wife handled the situation admirably well. It took me well over a decade of trial and error to realize that the non-confrontational conversational approach generally works best in resolving disputes with neighbors. It's hard to picture what he has rigged up to spray his orchard, but it sounds like it's pretty high pressured and may be resulting in over spray. If the odor is especially strong, I would try to find out what he's spraying and talk to him about making sure he isn't using an excessive concentration of the chemical. The other thing that might be worth looking into is using a drone to spray. I doubt there are any laws about spraying in a residential area, but if he is using a jerry-rigged spraying device that results in excessive airborne pesticide, you might be able to get help from puu yai or local officials to get him to change his application equipment.

Are you sleeping more than usual or going through a period of low physical activity? That can cause lightheadedness if you get out of bed or stand up too quickly. Also, low blood pressure can cause dizziness.

About the only time I hear the term "woke" is on this forum, and almost 100% of the time the discussion has been raised by right-wing nut jobs who have been worked into a tizzy by right-wing nut job media. What an earlier poster wrote about this being a wedge issue designed to distract people from more serious social inequality issues and to pit the underclass against one another is spot on.

Why does Mr Money Bags have to go on a rice diet to meet 800K immigration requirement?

It's a cult. Truth is no longer important. You can only believe he who promises salvation. Study anything about the role propaganda played in the rise of the Third Reich, and you will see how the exact same tactics are being used today by Trump. Fox News and the right wing media eco-system have driven this narrative. Thank God the judicial system is standing up to these lies and valiantly working to hold him and his enablers to account. Those refusing to accept the reality that the election was legitimate are doing so willfully. The only reason they are doing so is in the hopes that Trump will deliver on the false promise that by destroying democracy their interests will be placed above everyone else's. It's a blind, short-sighted dystopian vision of the future which will deliver the exact opposite of what it promises. To Trump's supporters: for God's sake, read your history before it's too late.

I would just like to point out that automobile insurance can play a pivotal role in reinforcing road safety. What distinguishes Thailand from many countries in the West is police enforcement of traffic safety (i.e., ticketing for moving violations, and suspension and revocation of driver's licenses in the event of serious infractions.) But behind this police enforcement are two cornerstones of enforcement which Thailand also lacks. First, it is often difficult to recover damages in the event of death, injury and property loss because the minimum limits of insurance required are frequently inadequate to fully compensate the injured party, and when this is the case, even if civil damages are ordered by the court, it is difficult to recover the damages in real life. So there's a certain culture of impunity about repercussions in the event you cause an accident. If Thailand increased and enforced the minimum liability insurance required, this would help alleviate this problem to a certain degree. Secondly, insurance serves as a means of improving traffic safety by having a driver's point system where drivers are penalized for accidents and moving violations. As the number of points increases, the cost of insurance goes up and in some cases becomes prohibitively expensive to insure, thus providing a major incentive for drivers to avoid accidents and observe traffic safety regulations. So insurance can play an important role in building a culture of road safety.

This is what I think. I think we can all agree that there's certainly been a lot of gold chain snatch thefts in the last couple of years, which appear to have disproportionately affected Indian male tourists. Drugging and robbery crimes seem to disproportionately involve middle-eastern and Indian tourists as well. It's also undeniable that there is a lot of racial animosity directed towards Indians and middle-easterners on this website, with much of it seemingly emanating from the Pattaya forum. (I've long seen this as a sexual playground turf war for dominance between Westerners and other ethnic groups.) If Pattaya's expat community and Western business owners are as vocal in real life as they often are on this forum about their disdain for Indians and middle-easterners, is it not conceivable that this type of racial animosity towards Indian and middle-eastern tourists has seeped into the Thai community? Please don't come back and say Thais hate Indians more than Westerners, as this is patently untrue and just an ill-informed myth. And for God's sake don't trot out that hackneyed chestnut about Thais saying, "If you see a snake and an Indian, kill the Indian first." So I am wondering if a mentality that middle-eastern and Indian tourists are second-class and undesirable tourists and that taking advantage of them either by providing sub-standard service, mistreating, over-charging, or otherwise ripping them off might have taken root, and whether this might not be the underlying root cause of these tensions?

Just FYI, there's a junior official who does a preliminary review before the final review by the senior official in my office. Occasionally, I may have forgotten to photocopy something, but usually everything is in order, so this preliminary review seems to be primarily for the benefit of the senior officer rather than for me. I pre-sign all the pages, and there is usually very little interaction between the junior official and myself. I've never been asked to pay a fee for this "service" above the 1900 baht visa renewal fee. Many many years ago, attempts were made to get me to pay a fee for a verification of residence letter (driver's license renewal), which I always successfully resisted paying. The last two times I've needed this service it's been provided for free, without any effort made to collect a fee. This is as it should be as the driver's license residence letter is needed to conform to licensing requirements, and the police ought to encourage compliance with these requirements whenever possible.) To answer the OP's question: my immigration office has a couple of cute officers.