Spock

Herb doesn't make you violent. Paranoid or anxious perhaps if you are inexperienced but you're not going to tear your clothes up and start assaulting old men.

I have just had covid in Australia and it was horrible - lasted 12 days and was a whole body experience, not just a sniffle, that left me utterly drained of energy and bed bound. Perhaps the Thai version is less nasty. Makes me wary of visiting Thailand for a month in July for fear of catching it on the flight there or just before returning. Never got a sore throat and an irritating dry cough only really surfaced around day 9 and has not gone away. 700 cases doesn't seem many for a city the size of Bangkok, but as you say, many probably don't test or report the result. I didn't even report mine here.

Not so sure there will be a next time or that Mustafa would want a next time, given he certainly didn't like this time.

The Nigerians dominated foreign prison numbers then. The Brits were second, but largely because of the Hong Kong Chinese on foreign passports whose criminal activities reflected badly on the mother country issuing passports.

Possibly because Thais who can afford to travel to the UK or Europe are wealthy and unlikely to engage in activities unbecoming of people of that class. Whereas all sorts of foreign scum can afford to visit Thailand, Cambodia etc, including folk like this guy whose first reaction to a spot of friction is to do the unthinkable, including harming persons or objects.

What they like to do and what they should do in a crowd control job, particularly one involving tourists, are very different.

Nor are they there to continue the fight. They are there to control the situation not get their rocks off adding to the violence.

If you lot think it's acceptable for bouncers or security guards working in tandem to stomp on the head of someone they have just brought to the ground then you have lost your moral compass. Their job is to prevent violence and defuse a situation, not add to the violence. If the tourist did anything wrong then let law deal with it, which it did and did not find him at fault.

The 'official fare' quoted seems about right.

You might want to ruin Thailand for foreigners by overpaying for services. You mightn't be so sympathetic if it was you paying chased around with a knife.

It's a rip off for a short ride. And once someone produces a knife and tries to use it, any sympathy they might have garnered goes out the window.

You slip them 50 baht as a tip! Hope you are going a long distance as that would be the amount I would pay the ride alone.

I took a brand new Dynavap to Cambodia and could not have been more disappointed in it if I wanted to be. The other problem was that the butane triple flame that you couldn't carry on planes had to be substituted for a candle. The vap went through its cycle of clicking noises, but the draw was acceptable, and the vape underwhelming - no 'smoke' or just the thinnest of wisps. I decided maybe I bought a dud, but couldn't see anything obviously dud about it. Then I lost it.

I always bring cash to avoid these costs.

If you have unlimited money, 1200 baht may seem reasonable. For the rest of us plebs, a metered taxi does just fine.

Why should I tell them? It's her fight not mine.

Tell that to the Russians, not the Thais. I support the Ukrainian struggle, but see this sort of behaviour as totally counter productive in gaining support for the cause.

Protects the mattress and bed linen too.

What sort of reasons?

I don't understand why the operation is not free under the national health system. Anyway, a fool and his money are soon parted.

China? You mean apart from the dictatorial rule, persecution of minorities, 1984 style censorship of history and internet and face recognition spy cameras, slaughter, often torturous, of 20,000,000 dogs a year and the illegal wild life trade reaping organs and body parts for medicines and flesh for exotic foods. Otherwise a wonderful place!

Yes, better that the only news made available for public consumption concerns niceness and goodness, with a ban applied to the publication of anything depressing, dark, cruel or violent. What a wonderful world it would then seem to be.

You've SEEN it! Do tell!

A bungee rope breaking is not a 'little thing'. And if the company had compensated more than just medical expenses and a refund of the fee, they would have avoided the exposure. You might jump off the platform without a 'girly rope', but I and many others sure as hell wouldn't.

I lived in Phuket way back in 1995 for 6 months and disliked it. Also had a car which allowed me to avoid dealing with the transport mafia. The water was pleasant enough but the island was expensive and the local Thais, as opposed to the restaurant and bar staff, were not particularly friendly. Can't see how it would feature high in this list.