FloridaExport

Am I the only one who cannot find the name of the former board member in the article? Obviously the name has been revealed to the police in order to file the complaint, so I am guessing it is not mentioned because he is a minor?

The reason there isn't a name there is because libel laws are the only laws that that hold any weight in this country (besides LM although it is similar in spirit). This means that if you accuse someone of something, you sure as hell better have very good proof. Otherwise you are going to jail. It keeps the rich in power because if you accuse them of something that might cause a loss of face, their lawyers will hit you with a defamation lawsuit (which is punishable by time in jail) so fast that you won't know what happened.

Any chance Indonesia is poised to have a surge in US seafood exports if Thailand is kept at Tier 3? If so, it would be a pretty smart move on their part to free a ton of Thai slaves right before the report is due to come out. Makes them look like a great upstanding country while hurting potential competition.

It looks like they plan on running at a loss for the next 2.5 years at least. It will probably get worse when all these people without jobs start taking more free vacations. Not even taking into account the new sanctions that will require more cost by the airline.

Any chance there will be well marked fire exits that aren't chained up? That would be new and innovative for a mall here.

So he won't be prosecuted for stealing and giving thailand a bad name?

He isn't the one giving Thailand a bad name. Shame on the media for reporting this! (obvious sarcasm for those who missed it)

RIP. and Thai bashers are always complaining.

Pretty stupid comment considering it is actually news in Florida instead of a daily occurrence like it is here. By the way, Florida has an average of 12.3 road fatalities per 100,000 people. Thailand's (under reported) rate is over 3 times higher at 38.1 per 100,000 people. I'm guessing it would be closer to 4 or 5 times higher if they listed people who died within 30 days of the accident in the hospital.

Glad you got a good smile and wink out of 8 people dying and a few others getting injured though.

I was watching a popular US television show with a very well educated Thai lawyer. In the scene we were watching, a woman was doing a live television interview and accused a prominent general of raping her. The Thai lawyer looked at me completely shocked and said, "She can't say that! She would be thrown in jail for libel!"

After regaining my composer, I had to explain that the person going to jail in this scenario would not be the woman reporting the rape. This was a huge eye opener for me. I wasn't aware of the severity of the libel laws in this country. It's a very strong incentive against reporting powerful people breaking the law.

Any clue what that special form was called? I've just made another trip back from the immigration office, and the answer was still no. Every Thai person that I've talked to said that they probably just wanted a bribe, but the number quoted was stupidly high.

I can't believe there isn't any flexibility on their end for the date.

Thanks for the quick response. It confirms my worst fears that no matter what I do, this will be an expensive process. Either changing the airline tickets or starting the entire visa/work permit procedure would be horrible.

Any clue how long it usually takes? I have a little under 3 weeks before I'm due to depart.

I have a valid work permit that was recently renewed. My visa expires this week and I am currently sitting in immigration to get it extended.

I'm being told that I will get a 30 day stamp and I will need to be in town on April 20th to get a 1 year stamp. The problem is that I will be out of town until May, and I really don't want to change my vacation plans if at all possible.

Has anyone ever dealt with this? They claim they need 30 days and not a minute more or less to upgrade my stamp. The lady in my office says I'll need to come back over 2 weeks early or start a whole new visa. Please tell me if there is a way around this.

Apostasy (converting from Islam to another religion) is an offense punishable by death under Sharia law. No wonder they got the hell out of that backwards poophole of a country. It would be more civil for the Thai authorities to put them to death than to send them back to Pakistan where they would still be put to death but in a more brutal fashion.

Also, for clarification, Pakistan doesn't officially put anyone to death for Apostasy, but there are people who take those kinds of things into their own hands.

The reason drivers refuse to go to high traffic areas isn't the time it takes, it is because they are working without getting paid the same hourly rate. Imagine if you boss walked in every 30 minutes or so with a task that didn't pay as much as your normal rate despite taking nearly identical effort. That's what everyone in Thailand asks taxi drivers to do when they want to go to destinations in high traffic areas. It's a stupid entitled notion that seems to be universally shared by the public.

I've been saying for a long time that taxis need a better calculated meter that actually goes up when they are stuck in traffic. It also needs a setting that will make it so that if the taxi goes over, say, 100 kilometers per hour, they start start to lose money (it doesn't run backwards, it just gets capped or gives fewer baht per kilometer). This might actually promote safer driving.

If you even out the incentives to go to all locations, the drivers will magically take people where they want to go.

I find it funny that they are calling a sink a face washing basin. If people in this country would learn proper hygiene, they would realize that all the farangs are as disgusted by them not washing their hands after dropping a deuce as they are at the Chinese tourists.

People wash there bacteria infested dirty hands in the basins after wiping their arse.

No they don't.

Nice but the Thai shopping malls even can't keep the emergency doors clear from vendors, passenger boats don't have lifevests and are still being overloaded. Motorbikes still drive against traffic.

Is the Thai tsunami alarmsystem finally working now?

Even when the doors are clear of vendors, they are often chained shut.

Fifth up from the bottom in Asia, if I understand this poorly written article correctly.

I had the same interpretation.

It would be nice if they increased the capacity overseas and upped the allowed bandwidth before throttling begins. The bandwidth within the country seems to be more than enough.

It would be helpful to mention why this bill will affect the junkyards. Is it outlawing junkyards? Is it putting restrictions on the kinds of disgusting chemicals they can just spill onto the ground? Are they just scared of the name of the bill? A google search on the bill title with "Thailand" added to the end didn't help. The first two hits were from Seattle.

That's kind of what I was thinking. It stopped after closing out my browser, but now it is doing some other funny stuff. Thanks for the advice.

When I type www.thaivisa.com into my browser, I get redirected to a different site. What could be causing this? It seems like something intended to be a scam.

It was always illegal, wasn't it? I understand that certain events have shown a dark side to the practice, but it stands to reason that the fact that it is and was illegal is part of the problem. I fail to see how a well regulated legal surrogacy with background checks on potential parents would be a bad idea. I would think poor women with few job skills would be better off making money from surrogacy than turning to certain other professions that the Thais are well known for.

There are plenty of people who are incapable of conceiving for whatever reason but want children that are biologically theirs. People will still do surrogacy in Thailand. Yelling that it is illegal isn't going to change that. Making rules to protect the parents and the surrogates might at least keep the undesirables away.

I'm fairly interested in this as well. I am only interested in speeding up live sporting programs provided by Watch ESPN or a slingbox-like device located in the US (it's called a Vulkano).

I recently bought the 18down/1.8up Mbps package from True, and it seems worse than my previous internet which was provided by the condo and came from ToT. My international speeds are absolutely terrible (usually less than 1Mbps and very uneven), and I've been trying quite a few things I've read on this forum to speed them up.

I've tried lowering the MTU on my router (Cisco EPC3825).

This didn't seem to make any difference over several tests (1450 down to 1400). I also downloaded a program called SG TCP Optimizer that pings several websites. It said that 1500 MTU was my optimal setting.

I've tried connecting straight from bridge mode.

This didn't change the streaming quality.

I've tried changing my DNS server to Google's servers.

This appeared to have no effect on my streaming quality.

I find it very interesting that Bad Kitty believes that one should be able to get speeds up to 50% of the advertised speed to the US. Does anyone have more suggestions or resources to correct the problem? I was under the impression that True had better speed than ToT.