goferman

20 hours ago, CHdiver said:

Many Airlines offer you to change your flight to a later date, want to give you a voucher for future use, or delay giving you back your money as long as they can. 

 

EVA said it will take up to 2 months to issue the refund, less service charges. Add to that credit card exchange rate skimming and possibly interest, you're lucky to get 75% back and there's always a chance it'll be zero, as is the case with Virgin. 

4 hours ago, Nong Khai Man said:

Who even NEEDS to carry 20 or 30,000 Baht on A Night Out ??

Obviously, you haven't been to a Chiang Mai KTV! 

If you define prostitution as compromising morals for personal gain then perhaps the real prostitutes are in plain sight

6 hours ago, cmsally said:

Been saying it for a long time, but with the state of the economy and the breakdown of many elements of society, this is going to be happening more often. More people are just going to snap.

 

What's going to happen when sea levels rise and millions of people are displaced, infrastructure destroyed and economies collapse?

Hmmm … sounds a lot like Trump ordering Mexicans to pay for his wall ????

This should spawn new Steph cartoons ...

On 1/23/2017 at 4:09 AM, SicTransit said:

 

No offence but I'm really curious how is it possible to spend 10K baht per day in KL. Five star hotels are 3500 baht per night, dining is not much more expensive than in Bangkok. How?

 

Who said it was all spent in KL? It was the total cost of the visa run. That included air travel (24000 baht), ferries and taxis in addition to the costs you identified.

15 minutes ago, JackThompson said:

 

Makes sense.  Compare wages for comparable jobs in Canada and Thailand.  This is one reason it is outright silly to assume people from G7 and similar nations are coming here "to work." 

 

A few backpackers who want to teach English or windsurfing is being used as the excuse to forfeit billions of baht, and some actually believe the behavior of this little group is the real reason for the "crackdown." 

Exactly ... that's why the Minister needs to know about this and hopefully the situation will actually improve with changes to the visa system in Thailand. And as far as Canada only approving about half of the visa applications it receives, that's a good number considering Jack's comment and the fact the visa is good for 5 years and 6-months at a time.

15 hours ago, SicTransit said:

 

The burden of proving you're not gonna work illegally is tremendous if you apply for a canadian visa with a non-G7 passport. I sure hope thai foreign ministry doesn't take any hints from Canada on this.

 

Not aware of any such burden on Canada's end ... in the past two years i helped both a Thai and a Russian get a 5-year tourist visas for Canada and didn't encounter any problem trying to prove either person was not going to work there. Perhaps there was a problem specific to your case? In any event, the burden of doing a visa run is significant ... my trip to KL last week cost about 40,000 baht and 4 days time. I'd gladly pay that amount directly to Thailand in return for a 5-year tourist visa with 6-month stay periods. 

If you fly from the last know position IGARI towards the waypoint VAMPI, which primary radar data suggests and maintain the same magnetic heading / track from that point on - you will end up over that island!

I tend to believe the eight witnesses on the Maledives, who also spoke of red and blue stripes, more, than any data, which can manipulated easily, and especially when this data comes from the British company Inmarsat, which is well non for its cooperation with secret services. Inmarsat is being offered bei Intercept with the slogan "Special monitoring systems for secret services". And Inmarsat published their so called Ping-data eight weeks after the disappearance of the plane. Until today, there is no single answer from the U.S. regarding their surveillance and more. Since the 8th of March, when the Airport on D.G. was closed for three days, the U.S. fell quiet.

http://www.maldivesf...s-furious-mh370

http://www.maldivesf...370-in-maldives

Actually, the referendum failed, as was expected.

The markets had already factored in that impact.

The more recent gains are subsequent to that.

And India still imposes a 10% import tax:

http://www.kitco.com/news/2014-12-02/KitcoNewsMarketNuggets-December-02.html

Hopefully that tax will be eliminated soon.

here's a link to real time gold prices:

http://www.pmbull.com/gold-price/

and a good link to gold updates:

http://www.kitco.com/

For those who might feel downtrodden by the harsh conditions, here's a story for you:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/laimiki-pewatualuk-nunavut-hunter-survives-5-hour-trek-after-falling-through-ice-1.2853879

OK folks, it's Saturday night and this story is my only entertainment!

So bear with me while i vent on a few issues i had with this article ...

1) The headline and the header didn't quote the General.

The header attributed words to the General without quotations.

Those paraphrases aren't repeated in the story.

So how accurate are the reporter's paraphrases?

2) The headline said no dam which damages the environment will be built.

But all forms of energy development impact the environment at least to some degree.

There are "qualifiers" to remedy this situation, such as "acceptable", "significant", "mitigable", etc.

3) The General fails to back up the reporter's message in the headline and header.

And the header deviates from the headline by diluting "no" to "slim chance".

But this aspect is not expanded on anywhere in the story.

In fact, the only relatively close reference was this quote attributed to the General:

"if a dam cannot be built, then what about building a reservoir?"

In other words, if Project "A" can't be built, what about Project "B"?

How is this interpreted to be a "no" or a "slim chance"?

Therefore, it seems we can assume that all projects will proceed in some form.

4) Let's revisit "slim chance" and the reason given for it in the article.

[Any dam which will destroy natural resources ... slim chance ... b/c [it] will be opposed by the people].

Again, this text was written by the reporter and attributed but not quoted to the General.

The problem is the underlying assumption that people will oppose all projects that impact the environment.

I'd submit that such rationale should be considered highly speculative.

What if a project benefits the people in the vicinity at the expense of the environment?

Who then shall speak out against the project?

Somehow it seems fitting for the reporter to add another paraphrase attributed to the General:

[the government ... urged environmentalists not to raise the issue to stir up trouble]

After reading thousands of messages i can't get this Leonard Cohen song out of my head!

I've yet to see a single mention of this, in international media. It's hard to deal with, but people die, and constantly all over the world. I don't understand this daily obsession, even here on TVF.

Time mag not good enuf??

http://time.com/3487462/thailand-koh-tao-murders-hannah-witheridge-david-miller-zaw-lin-win-zaw-htun/

85% of nothing is still nothing ...

why does this investigation remind me of the search for MH370?