on-on

Tourists everywhere will stop frequenting Big C stores. This is our concern, dude.

The big longtail guy does run a rush hour boat down there, yeah, that's it I'm guessing. I don't know if there are formal hours and I never figured out when it ran, but you see it in the mornings and evenings sporadically heading north out of the pier at Wat Khlong Toei Nok. It also runs between Wat Klong Toei Nok and Wat Bang Kor Bua, a little bit South on the green side, but you can do that by the little hire taxi boat too.

To the question about bikes, depends how full it is. If you drag a bike on and some Thai commuters can't make their trip home you'll probably get the evil eye - the driver's usually too drunk to involve himself in oversight of what goes on though, heh. Once you get to Wat Khlong Toei Nok there are no problems with taking bikes across, though. Get ready for the ferry pier lady, though. She's almost always adamant about making white people take the taxi boats and won't let you on the ferry, heh. I find it all comical and just pay the taxi boat guy the extra few Baht, but some friends I know have (also comical) long-running feuds with her as everyone else on the ferry route lets you take the ferry. Anyway, just some trivia. You won't have any issues. Also, buy something from the lady with the store right on the other side at Bang Krachao, she's super nice =D

I haven't seen an elephant in Bangkok for months, so this policy seems to be working already.

They used to keep them over at the corner of Rama IX and the entrance to the Ram Inthra Expressway - way out Ekkamai, basically. There are a couple of green fields over there in the BMA compound. Ran into the elephants while jogging through the brush a couple of times, scared the hel_l out of me. Ran into the owners too, they tried to sell me yaba, heh. They keep their hooves chained to a tire at night to keep them from roaming. Didn't look at all pleasant for the animals (not counting having to wander up and down Sukhumvit). Glad to hear they're being repatriated to somewhere hopefully more natural. Haven't seen them there in months either, so I hope that's the case.

Always such a good job fleshing out the story over at the Pattaya Paper!

Cat Stuck in Tree

Today a cat was stuck in a tree.

Later it climbed down.

Full story and pictures HERE

-- Pattaya One

2010-06-24

Pattaya One News, the only paper where the headline, attribution and jumpline are longer than the articles, heh.

Thanks for your input however the main point here is that it's the immigration dept., which can have you arrested for not having the correct paperwork and it is also them who can kick you out of the Country, throw you in jail or have a big fine imposed on you. As I do not want any of these options I chose to double check with them.

While this is true, they're not generally on the lookout for labor violations. This is the same reason that they never have any idea what your work permit status is at the airport. I go in and out with a work permit and the only times I've been asked anything have been whether I have a work permit, which I did. I pretended not to understand just to see what they'd say and the response was, "please apply your permit as soon you can." They'd have to raid the school in Nowheresville, Korat looking for people like you, which seems a bit unlikely. Listen to the people telling you how it's actually done and not the people who enjoy quoting the law. We all know what the law is, the unofficial motto of the visa subforum is "THE ANSWER TO ALL QUESTIONS IS: LEAVE THE COUNTRY OR GO TO JAIL". The interesting and educational info is in how it's actually done. And how it's actually done does not at all reflect the law that is being quoted over and over. At this point in the thread you've heard both - you know the law and you know how it's actually done. You just have to choose.

There are, regardless of what people tell you, about fifty million ifs, ands or buts when it comes to working in Thailand and nothing is clear at all about the on-the-ground reality, which changes in application based on time of day and location. As someone said, you'd have to be pretty unlucky to get nailed for working while your paperwork's in. And, as you're finding out, almost every single person who has worked in any industry here (whether it's on expat package with a multinational or as a teacher) has done that at some point because the regulations simply don't permit any other sensible arrangement. Answered a work email without a work permit? Oh God, they'll blacklist you! Terminated at 23:59? Leave that day or they'll put you in jail! Helped clean up the streets without a work permit? Oh God they're going to send DSI after you! THE LAW SAYS SO.

This is too often how Thai Visa's denizens advise people. The grey areas and corruption exist precisely because the laws and regulations cannot logically function as written - it goes hand in hand. You'll be fine, most likely, picking the common sense option, whatever that is for you - unless, of course, you're one of the unlucky punters of Thai Visa who has apparently made an enemy of everyone in the vicinity and who has Thai neighbors peering through the blinds at you and "me missus" eagerly looking for labor violations so that they can rush down and report you and have you deported which, according to many Thai Visa members, is the national pastime of Thailand.

Best of luck with your new job! Or not! Either way, I hope you work things out

^sadly no, all the time there is poverty there will be a supply of the gullible willing to risk all for an amount of money some would spend on a good weekend.

I'm sick of hearing this "as long as there is poverty" routine. Is poverty an excuse for murder? For rape? For violent assault/gang violence? Drug smuggling is just as much a threat - just on a mass basis! So why is it so much more "understandable"? Harsh penalties are in order, lack of means notwithstanding. (But I do agree that you'd think LE would have some interest in tailing these mules to find the higher-ups.)

You should rent Maria, Full of Grace. It's a good movie!

Interestingly enough True are now offering a 3G Micro Sim on their website. However strangely enough they are not offering a unlimited data plan with it as they do with the iphone. Gotta be some Thai logic in that somewhere.

If I had to guess, I'd guess that the increased price has to do with the lifetime value of a customer who won't have minutes and SMS overages. They probably modeled out that to make the service viable for a customer using only data, who can only generate overages (overage fees being a huge revenue source for industries like this), they had to charge X amount with Y cap. I mean Thailand has some dumb marketing, but this kind of pricing was really common in the US when AirCards first came out for pretty similar reasons - also because they know they can charge a premium thanks to low competition, so why not charge for it (similar to Sprint's original EVDO rollout in America, for example). In the US the aircards were charging the equivalent of about THB 2,000 a month 2-3 years ago for access that was bandwidth limited. Obviously just a guess, so who knows.

I can say as a True 3G user that sometime last month or so they 3G coverage went up dramatically. One of the various self-proclaimed journalists mentioned noticing this out in the provinces around Bangkok on Twitter (I honestly forget who), so I assume something actually changed.

I am assuming that if you order a machine online and it has a problem you can just take it into any authorised Apple reseller and they will fix it under the warranty?

Yes Apple warranty is worldwide any service centre worldwide will repair it under warranty. That is another plus about Apple Computers over some of the other cheaper brands.

The language reads kind of cleverly, so I'm unsure, but my single experience with Apple support on an iPod (with a three year AppleCare warranty) was excellent - except that the iPod and the warranty were registered in the US and they said it had to be serviced there. Then they said they wouldn't ship the standard RMA box internationally, so I had to have the box mailed to me, stick the iPod in it, mail it back inside another box, have it mailed to Apple and wait for the response.

I don't know the applied differences between AppleCare for Macs and iPods and this may have been changed since then - or it may be different when you buy in Thailand. I'm a new Mac owner and they told me that I could take it anywhere in the world, but I just haven't tried yet. Still, I'd want to have someone I know tell me that they bought one in one country and got it serviced in another without any trouble before I believed it, heh.

The unanswered question hanging in the air there is whether THAI is also planning on giving away a free flight for every flight booked (obviously not, but whether they're planning any structured promotion). It'd have been nice for the reporter to have asked the obvious question there and done a bit more story on the context - if only to report on the squirming THAI representative's response to the questions.

They forgot to include the part where he's a massive douchebag who beat women, pulled knives and guns on friends and was generally out of his mind.

Perhaps another Siam Sunrays campaign will do the trick again.

The tsunami warnings occurred because people were flying in from all over the world to help out and staying long-term, this was a local cleanup that lasted a day. You'll always hear about some guy who something happened to here on Thai Visa, and the tsunami stories are no exception, but I know a lot of people here and no one has ever been scooped up and sent home for helping Thai people that I'm aware of personally and I frankly doubt that it happens ever, except maybe in some isolated case involving personal vendettas or who knows what. The Burmese and others, on the other hand, were deported at the time, but that's a separate issue.

Anyhow, I was at this weekend's cleanup from 09:00 and received nothing but thank yous, wais, an absurd number of photo requests and questions from journalists. Still, I spent the vast majority of my time ignoring the zoo, talking to the Thai people cleaning with me and smiling and laughing back and forth. No one was bothering anyone about work permits or whatever other persecution complex-inspired fears that are typically bandied about on here. Police, military and even the Bangkok Governor walked right by and either smiled or didn't take note of the various farangs scrubbing, sweeping and picking up trash.

Thai Visa members have a level of paranoia consistent with what you read in articles about the red shirts heading home and worried that at every train station or bus stop they're going to be massacred - and at least they have some grounding for their concerns (though that's a different topic). My general belief, which has proved absolutely correct for years now, is to completely ignore the imagined obsession with persecuting farangs that is the pastime of a disturbing number of expat internet denizens and to actually just go do what feels like the right thing to do. I'd advise during the next cleanup that worrying about being snatched up for not having a work permit should be way the heck down your list, though it does make a great excuse for not helping out if you're just plain lazy or don't give a dam_n

Best mexican in BKK is La Monita. Their location was right near ground zero. Go by & see Billy & O for a great meal.

Closed Sunday.

Agree with this. You can find La Monita at http://www.lamonita.com or by going to Phloen Chit BTS and exiting to Mahathun Plaza, then walking to the back end of the complex.

Mexican food threads have a tendency to get a bit heated, so I'll also say that you definitely will not go wrong to visit Tacos & Salsa either, which is on Sukhumvit near Soi 22 - or on the web at http://tacosandsalsa.com. Los Cabos is good for a few of their combo plates and specialty items, particularly their chile relleno, and has the coolest building and grounds of all the restaurants (worth going just to hang out in the house). Sunrise and Sabroso are both much closer to fast food Mexican that you might find at Taco Bell or Taco Cabana back in America. This is from the point of view of a native Tex-Mex eater, so if you're from Mexico or prefer a different variety of Mexican your opinion may vary greatly.

Best of luck!

Good lord, you guys are arguing over who called who a spastic now?

It's illegal in Thailand and punishable by jail. Welcome to Democracy.

Anyone who has dealt with Thai IT will tell you not to worry about getting caught using a VPN randomly. Unless you pissed someone off in advance there's literally 0 chance of anyone noticing.

Dear Thaksin,

There is no pit in hel_l low enough for you. Your role in the suffering of Thailand will be a permanent stain on Thai history. A human travesty.

I`m just wondering how Abhisit is going to look after this,as his handling of all this has been pretty inept if indeed he was in control, He has something in common with Thaksin as they are both on amnesty internationals human rights list.

Farangs were clamoring for a crackdown like this when there were 60,000 or 70,000 people at the protests. What's going on now is awful, but it could have been a hel_l of a lot worse with 5 or 6 times as many people doing the same things that are being done now. It's good he waited in my opinion, it gave all the "oh it's just the maid collecting her protest money" people time to filter out.

I can't believe a rumored crackdown actually happened. I had become completely desensitized to the coconut telegraph. I genuinely hope there's minimal or no injury or loss of life on either side, but that's a pretty tall order with this much activity.

I am not going to bother looking up any of these incidents. The question that was asked was name one incident of legitimate protest where the US government shot protesters. I don't therefore see how things that are described as "race riots" can be legitimate protests.

:invents imaginary new criteria under which acts of protest aren't legitimate and therefore punishable by death:

This is the goal of fascists everywhere as Kristallnacht is repeated and democracy is usurped. Should fascists be rewarded for their treason?

It's a nice buzzword to just yell fascist or communist at things, but look around you - there are functional societies all around the world that don't embrace our Western ideals of How A Country Must Govern Itself. I'm completely disinterested in emotionally provocative poo-flinging, I just want whatever works best for Thailand. If the end result of your "democracy" is year after year of street wars while the poor suffer and the country devolves into anarchy as the national identity tears along partisan lines then I think an alternative approach to governing is preferable pragmatically, so long as the end result of that approach isn't worse than the anarchy it replaces (i.e. I wouldn't want to live under Pinochet, but Lee Kuan Yew? Sure.). Actual freedom and philosophical freedom are two entirely different things. The freedom to vote is relatively meaningless if the pragmatic result is a never-ending series of coups followed by political violence and economic instability that end up with undemocratic governments. My logic ont his is unassailable, frankly, unless you appeal to abstract philosophical concerns, which don't matter much when you can't eat and your neighborhood is riddled with random gunfire week after week.

many thai do believe as i do.... that had the stop action been applied way back whence the redshirts began its unlawful gathering and demonstration.... many lives including those uninvolved bystanders would have been saved....

That's because they want the immediate problem to stop, they're not thinking about the long-term underlying problem which would not have been solved by an immediate crackdown.

That said, and back to the topic of economics, I agree that things in the tourism sector will probably clear up within six months to a year after this ends, if it ends with some kind of resolution that allows a return to normalcy. I consult with one company that advertises very high end tourism, cost-wise, and they're experiencing about a 20% falloff. Fortunately they don't have a giant staff and huge installations to maintain like a hotel, so their situation is better and survivable, provided that things clear up in the near or medium term. I suspect most people are in this boat. Still, it's going to be lean times for a lot of people and a lot of workers are going to be heading back to the province for a while. It's unfortunate, but currently survivable. If it carries on 6 more months, a year, at anything like this pace or if there's no resolution and things just devolve into a decentralized insurgency that's even scarier because it blankets the country then it's another story entirely. I have no idea what will happen, but currently I'm medium- and long-term optimistic.

American democracy is far more a facade than Thai democracy. Still, American democracy is the best democracy money can buy.

Because Thai democracy doesn't exist functionally. You can hate our system or you can think as I do that it's captured by industry and riddled with corruption (as are societies everywhere, in indigenous forms), but it doesn't grind to a halt every year and result in some form of violent change of government.

That's why I say that I'm not sure democracy is a necessary outcome here. Stability and rule of law have to be in place first, followed by an orderly transition to self-rule. Plenty of Asian countries have otal facade democracies where one party rules for decades, corrupt to the bone, but if these governments can provide stability, economic growth and don't clamp down too hard on personal and economic freedoms then it's a good stepping stone to democracy. The disappointing thing with Thailand is that it's already gone through this stage and should be a functional democracy. Still, coming from another country I don't feel comfortable dictating that someone else live under an authoritarian system, but I live here and work here and this is my country of residence and I personally wouldn't be bothered by living under a quasi-democratic state like Singapore, Hong Kong, DLP Japan, pre-1990s ROK or the like if it meant social progress for the rural underclasses along with stability and rule of law. Certainly it would be favorable to a country that's burying itself step by step.

Bush

As awful as he was, and I truly believe he is the most awful President we've ever had, I'm glad we didn't oust him in a coup. The institution of democracy can't survive that. Can you imagine what the teabagger and militia movement would be like armed with a legitimate grievance and a powerful martyr patron? We'd be in a situation probably worse than what we're seeing in Thailand. Still, I don't want to digress too far into our politics, but there is an object lesson there involving the respect for institutions. Conservatives have tried every legal club in their bag to unseat Democratic Presidents, but they haven't staged a coup or even attempted one since The Depression era because as bad as things get, even if they could pull it off, they still have respect for the institution and know that it wouldn't be worth inhabiting if it were that tainted. That's the lesson that hasn't been absorbed by society here, or probably more correctly the incentives aren't strong enough yet for the powerful to buy into that lesson. Because of impending events it's still more profitable for them to jockey for position no matter the cost to society.

Even the most civilaized nations periodically have to use

violence to quell their own citizerns run amok. Sad but true.

Some groups just forget, or ignore, the social contract in their zealotry,

and need reigning in the hard way...

That's the authoritarian anti-red point of view and if we asked a red poster they'd have the opposite opinion. Speaking objectively it's irrelevant what either of you thinks about who deserves what or who has to respond how, but speaking personally it's simply not helpful to use provocative prose. All that matters from a 30,000 foot view is that you have a significant portion of the population who has decided that the political system does not work for them and another significant portion of the population who support the existing system, right or wrong on either side. Anytime that happens and no rapprochement can be achieved you're going to inevitably end up with violence filling the gap. Which party is 'right' about the social contract doesn't matter because the wrong party can win just as easily and the end justifies the means speaking pragmatically (if not morally). This has been going on for almost half a decade now and both sides have plenty of blood and mischief on their hands - as do a number of officially unaligned groups and institutions. Many have even switched sides in that time to one side or the other. Who is right? Who is wrong? That hasn't been determined and at different times either side has the upper hand, but the only constant is that it devolves into violence because no political solution has yet prevailed.

This, incidentally, is why datum's solution of an election, while well-intentioned, won't work. For an election to work, the parties involved have to have some chance of accepting the outcome. In Thailand the loser is guaranteed to throw the switch the second they think they have a shot at reversing the result (whether they're successful or not). Until that changes, new elections won't help anything. Yellows, Reds, military - other institutions. None of them are interested in accepting any result other than their winning and they're prepared to use almost any means in order to realize their goal of reversing the result.

Civilised nations do not shoot protesters!!

Sure they do, it's just not a good idea or a good practice. In my country we had military shooting protesters all throughout the sixties, probably into the seventies as well. These days we shoot them with rubber bullets and taze them instead (mostly). The joke would be to harp on us not being civilized, but we were undergoing a period of major civil unrest and national upheaval. Any nation whose national identity is being torn apart is going to be visited by the violence fairy from all sides, as Thailand currently is.

Al Jazeera English usually has excellent coverage, but they're kind of interesting in this coverage and the only major international outlet that's portraying the red shirts somewhat negatively (this is a sentiment some of us have been discussing for weeks). I'm guessing part of this is because their AJE HQ is in Kuala Lumpur and has a completely different outlook than the typical BBC/CNNi editorial staff.