newnative

Let's change the headline to "Thailand steps up recruitment of good foreign teachers, especially to teach English."

Newnative here, Reporting in that I slept ok and was not 'terrified'. As others have said, some of our neighborhood dogs are likely louder.

Just another useless scheme--like free metro rides the other week, which squandered a fortune that could have been actually put to good use--like making metro better with longer trains. It's all just publicity to mask that they aren't doing anything, aren't making tough decisions. Let's not forget some years ago they were aiming fire hoses at the sky. Absolutely no progress since then.

I agree. Pattaya offers plenty to do but in a more compact area than Bangkok and that makes it more manageable for year-round living.

Yes, spouse and I wonder how they will ever work in Thailand. I'd like to see how it would handle an extremely busy, 4-way intersection without a traffic light near where I live in the Mabprachan area of Pattaya.

Ideal even without those hobbies.

You keep renting, I'll keep owning, and we'll both live happily ever after.

More than 20 officers needed to make this arrest?

Looks like the police vehicle was on a more minor road and should have stopped before going thru the intersection. But, both vehicles were not paying enough attention.

Agree. Large parts of Europe have pretty much been destroyed by awful, ugly, graffiti pretty much everywhere, on every surface you can think of, both high and low. Just horrible. Thailand doesn't have much--yet--and needs to keep it that way. Once you weakly give in, like Europe, there's no going back. Throw the book at the idiot--and any others caught doing the same thing.

Pattaya Second Road has some of the worst sidewalks of the major roads in Pattaya. There are sections that have no sidewalks at all, or very narrow, utterly useless ones--and this includes some of the nicer parts of the street in the area of Hard Rock Hotel and Centric Sea. Private industry is doing its part--with new hotels and other new businesses, and the renovating of old properties happening on a large scale. The city, as always, is doing what it's best at--going to take a look, shaking its head, and then doing nothing. Parking should be eliminated on both sides of the road and wider sidewalks constructed, with shade trees.

Agree, and why are they wasting time doing a photo op in the first place? Lock 'em up and get back out on the streets.

Well, verifying is one step but hopefully you've done more than that before you hire someone--here or anywhere else, for that matter, especially if money is involved. There are cheats and thieves everywhere--anyone remember Bernie Madoff? For my spouse and myself, we buy here because we like to be owners, not renters. We really hate living in someone else's space. Simple as that--and, life is short. Through twentysome properties here, it's always worked out, actually very nicely. I always say thank goodness we haven't been renting here for 14 years--we'd likely still be in the same 48 sqm View Talay 3 studio we started out with. But, that's us. Real estate is definitely not 'one size fits all. For many, renting can be the better option here.

15MB is a huge amount of money--at least it is for me. Why wouldn't you spend a tiny percentage of that amount to hire a reputable lawyer to look over all the paperwork before you sign anything, answer any and all questions you may have, make sure you are happy and in agreement with all the terms in the paperwork, and be there for you through the entire transaction until its conclusion? This gentleman is not a newbie--from the article, he worked in Bangkok for a number of years. He should not have been so wet-behind-the-ears clueless. Before we hear from the Peanut Gallery, yes, there are reputable lawyers. Before you hire any lawyer, have the lawyer supply you with a copy of their lawyer's license certificate. This should be on an A4 size paper and include a photo and current, valid date showing the lawyer is in good standing with the Lawyers Council. If they won't supply this, look for another lawyer. Spouse and I built a new home last year. First thing we did was buy the land. We are planning to build another home this year--and the first thing we will do is buy the land.

You might want to get on the horn to the mayor of Newport Beach and go to bat for its residents. That city's beach closes from 10 pm until 6 am, depriving not just the midnight workers but those getting off work at 10 pm. Read him the riot act for imposing 'rules on nature'. Then, you might move on to Huntington City, and its beach--open from 5 am to 10 pm. Myrtle Beach? 6 am to 10 pm. Ocean City? 5 am to Midnight. Etc., etc. As I said in my previous post, it's not unusual for beaches to have closing hours.

Absolute nonsense. Of course the city can impose opening and closing hours for the beach if it wants to. And, it should. No reason for people to be on the beach after, say, midnight. Reopen at 5am. Many American beaches aren't open 24 hours, with some closing at 10pm.

Luckily he only killed himself. The rest of us dogged a bullet, or, rather, an idiot.

Insane.

The purpose of eliminating the parking is to gain an extra travel lane to handle the greatly increased traffic of a booming Pattaya. Allowing motorcycles to park in the traffic lane defeats the purpose of eliminating the parking. Obviously, the mayor thinks extra travel lanes on this busy road is a good idea; hence, the odd-even scheme. But, every other day you have bad traffic flow in one of the directions with odd-even. Bite the bullet and do it correctly from the start, on all the major, very congested, roads. Off-street parking needs to be established on these roads--that should have been started years ago. So far the city's done very little with this, and far more needs to be done, both with parking structures and surface parking lots on vacant land not being used. None of this will happen any time soon--if ever--but, as a start, longer no parking lanes, before and after a traffic intersection, should be established to add a third traffic lane so more cars can get through an intersection's traffic cycle, with plenty of no parking length after the intersection to allow time to merge the traffic back into 2 lanes. Traffic is so heavy now that the traffic light cycles have become longer and longer in order to get a certain number of vehicles through on a cycle. A third lane moving cars through an intersection would greatly help.

Yes, let's revisit her application and see if she is actually a genius.

Just bite the bullet and eliminate parking on both sides of the road. Way overdue. This needs to be done for all the major roads, especially North Pattaya. Hire meter maids to patrol the major roads, enforcing the no parking with steep fines, with the meter maids keeping a portion of the fines collected as an incentive. While he was down there, pity the mayor didn't take a look at what a mess Thepprasit is now, including confusing forward arrow markings on sections of the parking lanes, indicating they are actually traffic lanes, but no red and white curb striping.

Spouse has a Samsung S24 phone and he likes it a lot. He gave me his old--well, not really that old, S23. He uses his phone a lot for his job--it has a number of features that are useful for him--I know he uses the pen thing and the translation feature and lord knows what else. He keeps showing me features on the S23 and I use some of them but, for me, I could get along ok with a cheaper phone with fewer features if I had to. I do like the good camera, though. I think it boils down to what you'd be using your phone for--I use my laptop much more than my phone and it's the opposite for my spouse.

Deport all of them immediately, if not sooner. Nothing worse than those impossibly noisy motorcycles. Now go after everyone else with the same noisy, illegal bikes--Thais and foreigners both. Foreigners--deport, and crush the bikes into stylish coffee tables. Thais, can't deport but crush their bikes, too.

Hope those 'new parking regulations' he was overseeing would be no parking on the street and extra traffic lanes added.

Translation: Largely true.