inaktive

While I do not like Russian politics nor Putin

I can understand Thailand's reaction as USA seems to be trying to reinstall the Shin gangs and calling them democratic

to be honest they did win all elections they did run in even against the HiSo that still runs the country.

doesnt mean they did a good job but thats not required from a democratic government ;-)

perhaps next time not drink the laokao before the shooting ?

They should go after "more wealthy" Tourists and not after more Tourists.

Less Numbers and more spending per person is much better sustainable than more and less spending per person !

Somewhat off topic... relevant all the same

Zika is around for at least 60 Years but as long as it was only Africa and other poor Places noone in the Media cared.

Doesnt mean the Pharma companies didnt see that outbreak coming because it was spreading for years now.

Everyone who works in Pharma did see it jump from africa to asia and micronesia and then to south america.

it was just a question of when it would reach countries wealthy enough so a vaccine will make money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zika_virus

now that its at the US Border its all bit Media frenzy but even a year ago when it was already running crazy in many places like Brasil the media didnt care.

Why didn't you fund it last year?

You know they are working on the Zika Vaccine for years already thats why they are nearly done ?

After 2007 all the Vaccine companies did start their research because it was just a matter of time and the first will be a megaseller.

But Vaccines take a lot of time to design and test.

The first Trials of Dengue Vaccines are now more than 10 yearsold and the vaccines are still not on market and perfected.

If they had one ready dont you think they would sell it and corner that market as fast as possible ? with a average of 3 doses per person needed it would be a megaseller with around 2.5 BILLION people living in countries with dengue right now. Even at a low price of say 5$ per dose thats 7.5 BILLION $ in just one year and the first can most likely charge a lot more !

And who tells you i didnt invest in that ;-)

Somewhat off topic... relevant all the same

Zika is around for at least 60 Years but as long as it was only Africa and other poor Places noone in the Media cared.

Doesnt mean the Pharma companies didnt see that outbreak coming because it was spreading for years now.

Everyone who works in Pharma did see it jump from africa to asia and micronesia and then to south america.

it was just a question of when it would reach countries wealthy enough so a vaccine will make money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zika_virus

now that its at the US Border its all bit Media frenzy but even a year ago when it was already running crazy in many places like Brasil the media didnt care.

When will they start to tell us how many Hotel Nights the Tourists spend instead of arrival numbers ?

Thats the interesting number !

numbers don't mean anything. Interesting would be the generated money. But those figures.....please don't ask for...

The article says up 9.1%, which sounds about right. Total numbers up 15%, but the Chinese are known to spend a bit less than the other tourists and not stay for as long, so that all makes sense.

the Article does say they AIM for 9.1% more Money this year not that it was so in January ...

also since they have no way of knowing how much a Tourist does spend the number of nights spend in Hotels is most likely the best indicator they have.

Only for the all incl Tourists they pretty much know what they spend and all the rest they have no idea. No Restaurant , Shop or Bar does note on their recipts if the customer was a Tourist or a Thai so they cant tell that to the government either.

we will see how it does turn out in the end

the problem is not the guns its the mentality of the locals that value lifes less than saving face

When will they start to tell us how many Hotel Nights the Tourists spend instead of arrival numbers ?

Thats the interesting number !

The only safe reliable hotel discount booking website is AGODA

Booking.com and agoda.com are now one Company !!!!

expedia is in my experience also very reliable and often up to 50% cheaper if you can combine a airticket and a hotel booking. And no you dont need to book them together but you have around 30 days after after you book the plane to book Hotels and Rentalcars and such at a discount

Some Thai men are mentally like a 5 year old boy, be careful around them when they are drunk.

sometimes i wonder if you really need that SOME in your sentence ;-)

to be honest the only people in thailand that regularly use condoms are bargirls in tourist areas i think

Students, Officeworkers having an affair or BF and all the locals i did meet so far didnt use them and didnt want to use them and really didnt care about the consequenses of their actions.

also they dont go to a doctor if the feel like they have a STD because someone could talk or see them there and they would lose face ...

i am still surprised ( but also very happy ) that they didnt start going after thailands cashcow number 1 aka the tourists so far.

just a handfull of well placed bombs in tourist areas would halt and cripple tourism for years and really really hurt the thai economy ( never forget all in tourism accounts for around 20% of the Thai GDP ).

and it doesnt matter how hard the military tries to stop them it is pretty much impossible to stop a determinded and skilled bomber for blowing up what he wants to blow up so they cant be stopped really.

and you dont need big teams , much money or such to run a effective bombing campain because all you need ia a single not even that big bomb every few month at some touristplace thats weak on security in that moment.

a single guy/girl could do that all alone and if he isnt talking about it and just doing it nice and quiet noone will catch him for a long long time.

and after 20 years of killing down there i am sure there is some people that have lost family and have the skills required but so far not the idea or will to run a effective terror campaign.

noone cares if they blow up another military checkpoint or school but if a tourist place goes up in flames all will look there.

for me thats just matter of time till they start to do that because they really cant win a open fight versus the army and sooner or later they will see that.

Last year over 880,000 Russians chose Thailand as their holidays destination, which is twice lower than the previous year.

When Russians stop coming to Thailand, you know Thai tourism is in trouble.

No ruble true trouble

thats very much the problem.

the ruble did loose about 2/3 of its value in the last 2 years and that means thailand now costs them 3 times as much as 2013 ... and i wouldnt fly to thailand if the price would now tripple either

to be honest i did meet some poor russians but that was in pattaya ...

phuket or krabi most are well off to rich and behave accordingly nowadays.

Unless you speak with them for some longer time you will often not even notice they are russians (they do have a slavic dialect but they could often also be Finns , Poles or such)

most of them where very well behaved , educated and did really spend lots of money there.

totaly different people than the russians you find on a turkisch or eqyptian beach and in the all incl resorts most other places

If you say so Comrade....

Fersh'd did je learnin zjour englischz?

be sure i am neighter Russian nor do i like them very much as a German.

Still the ones i did meet in thailand outside of pattaya where the "better" kind and well behaved and educated

i do very much believe that there is many bad russians out there but i didnt meet many in thailand. i do meet a lot more of them in europe !

to be honest i did meet some poor russians but that was in pattaya ...

phuket or krabi most are well off to rich and behave accordingly nowadays.

Unless you speak with them for some longer time you will often not even notice they are russians (they do have a slavic dialect but they could often also be Finns , Poles or such)

most of them where very well behaved , educated and did really spend lots of money there.

totaly different people than the russians you find on a turkisch or eqyptian beach and in the all incl resorts most other places

sounds like a good idea ... but i don't expect it to get into the Constitution

Isn't 10 a little early? Maybe 12 or 13 (puberty) would be more appropriate?

I can tell you that in germany they do start sex education even more early in public school and thats good !

at 12 or 13 its often too late nowadays because many will already have sex

why do i now after nearly 2 years of army rule see some Stuff happening that i like ?

Like the responsibilty the PM is asking for in all thais or now that law ? is perhaps something happening that is good ?

But i do see big Problems getting parents or Teacher to really talk with the kids

Anyway, I say good on Thailand for doing the right thing and booting out that troublemaker!

I am curious. He was planning to do the show in French, I assume?

So there are enough Francophones in Phuket who dig the Quenelle to support such a show?

From what I can read on the internet from the French community in Phuket, it seems there are quite a number of "French" people there whose views are similar to Dieudonné's

It's not astonishing. There are also plenty of French people who share the view of French extreme-right Marine Le Pen on arabs and moslems. Some also think the former Ministry of Justice (she's black) should go back to her tree and eat bananas. Unfortunately, no country is imune to racism and stupidity.

.

What amazes me, when I see all the arab and black people rejoicing at Dieudonné's antisemistic jokes, is that they don't understand that the next victims of racism may well be themselves. It has already (re)started in France with a resurgence of hatred against arabs and moslems after the terrorist attacks.

DELETED

So far in france the "democatic parties" managed to keep the far right "FN" out of power but it does look like this year perhaps was the last time they managed that ... in the last votes FN did score around 40% of the voters in the secondary votings and only because the rest did everywhere manage to just field one candidate a landslide victory was stopped. Give them one more terrorist attack and its will be 51+% FN and the french voting system pretty much gives them free reign to do what they want !

But the problem is they (the french arabs) dont believe anything can happen to them. They remind me of "arabs and turks" in germany that say that now they are around 5 million and they are so many nothing can happen ... DELETED And i see no Superpower doing anything should because they all have problem with their muslims (ok the americans not but they believe they have them) and i dont see russia ( 20 years terrorist wars in the south ), China (already in a semi war in several provinces) , France ( every night fighting some some suburbs ) , UK ( already having sharia courts in some towns and many unhappy voters ) or the USA say a word if someone starts to "fix" that problem. Even the superliberal Countries like Sveden have enough of that DELETED

Jeez, if anybody is deserving of a mob beatdown it is these fools. I hope the female victim makes a full recovery and is brave enough to help put these savages away forevrr

Since they are all underage i do expect 3-5 years max in that case ....

it is just the cheap oil .... and after 5 years of shrink of their exports they get more and more dependent on Tourists to bring in hard currency

Are you just pulling this out of your arse, or do you have a 5 year / adjusted for inflation / rate of Foreign Currency Inflow data set to refer to?

Or .. do you not understand that relatively speaking, the slight variations in the tourist trade are a drop in the bucket compared to massive agricultural and manufacturing exports?

Oh the Thai Visa Self Important Brigade, always trying to prove how the Kingdom is but a kite at the end of their mighty string, and should they depart ===>

"The sky is falling, the sky is falling"

555

Having a bad day or are you like this every day!

If by that you mean ... having studied and worked in economic and finance circles, in a role as a decision maker for firms with sales in excess of $250,000,000 USD annually .. am I driven by empirical data and not "Look Ma, I pulled this 'fact' out of my arse???"

Yes. And very, very happy in that.

(Example) Thailand exported 10.8 million tons of milled rice valued at US$5.37 billion in 2014.

Do you really believe that Tom the Pom's contribution to the Pattaya Chang Gang is worth a piss hole in the snow compared to that?

Sorry to bore you with the facts ... please return to viewing Fox News.

Did you even READ and understood the Article ?

Thailands Exports are contracting for years. Not even the Government says otherwise ...

They do make less and less money exporting stuff because the volume is of their exports is going down and a country like Thailand need either the Exports or Tourism so they can get "hard currency" to pay for stuff they buy from places where they need to pay in $ or Euros or such. Like Smartphones , TVs, machineries and tools , oil , etc.

"

The value of farm products from Thailand fell 7.4 percent last year led by plunging rubber, rice and frozen/processed seafood shipments, that fell 16 percent, 15.2 percent and 14.5 percent respectively.

Thailand’s industry goods exports also fell by 4 percent despite a 4.3 gain in automotive exports, accounting for 14.6 percent of total exports in 2015, according to the ministry’s report.

"

and it is very nice that "Thailand exported 10.8 million tons of milled rice valued at US$5.37 billion in 2014" but in 2015 is was 16% less. Thats all the Article and me are saying and they only made a Surplus (first in 5 years) because the Imports (that does include OIL!) fell more than the Exports did fall.

and the 5.37 BILLION $ they made 2014 exporting Rice is nothing compared to the 72.2 BILLION $ they made from Tourism in the same year !

https://www.wttc.org/-/media/files/reports/economic%20impact%20research/countries%202015/thailand2015.pdf

Sure the Average Joe sitting in a Bar is not important because he doesnt spent that much cash .. but he and his 30 Million other Tourists Buddies TOGETHER are good for over 5 Million JOBs (direct and indirect) and that means that about 14.3% of the Thais working only have a JOB because of the Tourists and a total of 19.3 % of the GDP are based on Tourism ! Thats pretty much 1 in 5 THB made in Thailand!

And they do expect it to rise to over 25% of the GDP in the next 10 years !!!!

So where are my numbers wrong ? Isn't Exports shrinking for years ? Isnt the TOTAL of Tourism already pretty much whats keeping Thailand afloat financially ? Isnt the Role of tourism in Thiland not getting bigger and bigger each year ?

For the Rich in BKK perhaps the individual Tourist is not important but for the average Joe on the street they should be because in pretty much every family some live of Tourism and if they loose these Jobs it will be bad. And if the small people dont have cash anymore or/and cant pay their credits the Rich will notice that too because it is many many small people ....

it is just the cheap oil .... and after 5 years of shrink of their exports they get more and more dependent on Tourists to bring in hard currency

@NKM

I see you playing devils advocate but I don't see you really disagreeing. You were careful to say that my numbers were a total contradiction to what the OP claimed - (not you) . So For the record TAT released numbers saying tourist arrivals in 2015 were 29,8 million versus 24.8 million in 2014. Direct revenues from international tourism were THB 1.44 trillion in 2015 versus THB 1.15 trillion in 2014. ( note those are direct revenues , so money in the bank - not zero baht tourists)

We can all speculate that TAT is lying yada yada yada but those are probably the best numbers that anyone can get. They say tourism is up and the money generated by tourism is up. When you look at those numbers in % terms international tourist arrivals grew 20% and the the direct revenues grew 25% .

What many do not see in that Numbers is that they count a package tour at full list value and a solo traveler at the price of the Hotel he books. they dont know where you eat, where you drink, what taxis you use or where you get a massage and what money you send . So counting like that a package tourist is preferable for the stats even if he only spends half or less that a solo traveler in the country

German Government is PAYING then in Cash to go home.

That does include the Ticket and some extra ...

Also they do now run a marketing campaing aimed a Potential refugees telling them how bad it is here ... and that "Newsreport" is part of it.

sadly only a handfull so far took the free ticket and cash and did travel back home ... but with news like that it is the plan to discourage many not to come here at all.

Mama is a brand that has rejected innovation and improvement at every turn. When the trend is toward healthier, Mama has done NOTHING. Their noodles are still fried, and loaded up with too much salt, and tons of MSG. Moroheiya, and some of the other brands are far, far superior products. Mama continues to embrace mediocrity, as if it was their mantra, with zero regard to health, or healthy alternatives. They deserve to lose market share. They are about as innovative as Thai Air and Prayuth.

It is amazing, how one guy many year ago,made a comment that he felt ill after eating a meal. He questioned that maybe it was too much salt, or maybe MSG. Not one government health agency in the world has ever said MSG was bad, even to this day. I could care less whether or not you want to use it or not, but find a compelling reason first please, not an off the wall comment that your neighbors friend down the street told you after a secret handshake. The USDA in the states can not find any scientific proof that it causes any problems. Look it up.

There have been countless studies done, that prove the harmful effects of MSG. Do you actually listen and trust the advice of the USDA? I don't. Most don't. They are not a reliable source of information, as they are in the pocket of industry. Most government agencies are in the pockets of industry. They are not your protector. Don't count on them for help. If you want to eat MSG, no problem. Eat it to your hearts content. Just don't deny the possibility that it is harmful. Just keep an open mind.

The glutamate industry is fully aware of the harmful effects of MSG, that it is a toxic substance. They know that ingesting their toxin can cause diabetes, adrenal gland malfunction, seizures, high blood pressure, excessive weight gain, stroke and other health problems. If you eat MSG and experience any of these conditions, then you need to immediately eliminate MSG from your diet.

http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/harmful-effects-of-monosodium-glutamate-msg/

And from the National Institute of Health:

MSG can induce detectable neuronal injury if incubated for a prolonged period of time. Further studies may determine whether cell injury induced by low doses of MSG share other characteristics with previously reported glutamate toxicity, e.g. reduced by removal of the extracellular Ca2+ [16] and blockade by glutamate antagonists.

In conclusion, our studies suggest that the headaches caused by MSG intake may be related to its injurious effect on brain neurons. Although the brain does not register pain because of the lack of nociceptors, the increase of intracranial pressure due to cell swelling is well known to cause headaches. There are some possible ways, e.g. taking Vitamin C or pre-exposure to a low dose of MSG, that may either prevent or reduce the side effects of MSG.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2802046/

if you believe websites like

www.globalhealingcenter.com

that are into some shady esoteric semisience about food and whats good for you sure MSG is bad ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2014/08/25/no-msg-isnt-bad-for-you/

http://www.yalescientific.org/2011/04/is-msg-bad-for-you/

http://authoritynutrition.com/msg-good-or-bad/

http://greatist.com/grow/why-msg-has-a-bad-rap

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/its-the-umami-stupid-why-the-truth-about-msg-is-so-easy-to-swallow-180947626/?no-ist

http://www.cnet.com/news/is-msg-really-all-that-bad-for-you/

Pretty much all Studies except one where did did inject MICE with MSG direct into the brain showed it is fine. That one was sone in 1969 and is still pretty much the only one quoted in the anti MSG articles ... the about 2000 follow studies noone cares about.

sure if you eat TOO much (like about 30 times the normal dayly dose a chinese gets but if i eat 30 times the Sugar or Fat i normally have i will not feel that well either !) its most likely not that good like EVERYTHING ELSE.

The anti-GMO movement did start as a RACIST thing in the US to combat the big rise of chinese takeout food in the '60 !!!

I do know for a fact its used in german food a lot too for about as long as in Chinese food but we use it in a liquid form and not as a powder. Strangly noone ever complained about that ? Why ? Because german food never was a big thread to US Restaurants and Fast Food places so no reason to even mention it ... (i didnt find the english wiki page to it https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggi-W%C3%BCrze ) . Its pretty much MSG , Spices and Salt in liquid form and we use it for 130 years now.