newnative

Totally agree. I never saw the need even from the get-go and it's certainly not needed or wanted now, except possibly by Republicans. It has literally turned US Presidential elections into travesties where only the 'swing' states are deemed important and 'safe' states are pretty much ignored by the candidates. Ludicrous that the will of the voters was ignored in 2016--two million more voters wanted Clinton over Trump and a handful of votes in a few states were able to flip the cursed Electoral College. Another handful of votes here and there and Trump could have won in 2020, even though he lost the popular vote by 7 million. Madness. Ditto for the 2000 election with Gore getting more votes than Bush--we would have been spared 8 years of the Cheney presidency. Time for US presidential elections to listen to the voters and not the cursed EC--the voters are usually right.

She did beat him in the 'actual vote' so the polls were correct. Trump was saved by the cursed Electoral College. In two presidential runs, he has never gotten even 50% of the vote. Lost to Clinton by 2 million actual votes and Biden by 7 million--after Americans had seen Trump's very poor job as President for four years. Always embarrassing when an incumbent President loses with all the perks he has going for him being President. With oodles of serious criminal indictments hanging over his head, I can't see him doing any better in 2024, likely worse. Way too much baggage for most sane voters.

Yes. And, apparently, not just you.

Total nonsense. The court should throw out both petitions.

They need to work way faster and 24 hours a day. The work they are doing by the North Pattaya Road intersection is a huge bottleneck causing long traffic tie-ups.

Absolutely disgraceful. Sets a horrible precedent. How are laws relating to the government ever going to be allowed to be amended if the lawmakers are prohibited from even bringing up some subjects for debate? In my opinion, the worst part of Section 112 is the part that allows anyone to acuse anyone else of violating 112. So ripe to be abused, with a prime example this very court case. Don't like someone, accuse them of violating Section 112. It should only be the Royal Bureau, or whatever it is called, to decide to invoke Section 112 and bring charges. How is asking for that completely sensible change attempting to topple the monarchy? Just ludicrous. Thai spouse is probably even more digusted than I am.

Good idea. But, as others have said, it should include Canada, NZ, and OZ.

Exactly.

Couldn't agree more. The only time I would ever ask 'why' to any government official in Thailand would be if I got an answer I didn't agree with or didn't think was correct--and maybe not even then. Somebody tells me at Immigration, 'No, you don't need to draw us a map of where your place of residence is located', I'm not going to ask why I don't need to do this. I'm going to say a polite 'thank you' and exit stage right.

But, on the bright side, if they bought a property in Thailand they always had a roof they owned over their heads, come what may, as long as they paid the condo fees and utiities. Not a bad thing if one is planning to be here for the duration. The last condo my spouse and I owned, in a higher-end project, had fairly high condo fees of about 5000 baht a month and our electric and water was, I don't think, ever more than 3000 baht. So, around 8,000 baht a month, or less. About $229 American dollars. Very cheap to be living in a very nice ocean-front condo in Pattaya.

Yes, one of those mysteries of life. Just what is it about Pattaya? Like you, I can't imagine myself following, say, all the news of Peoria, and then commenting on everything I read. Makes absolutely no sense. But here we are, every single day, with all these hopeless Pattaya wannabes reading anything and everything Pattaya focused and commenting left, right, and sideways. And, of course, usually totally clueless with whatever they say. But, thank goodness, at least they have the Just Can't Quit Pattaya Fan Club. Doubt there's one for Peoria.

You again. You seem to be solely focused on Pattaya and its supposed bad crime. Never mind that crime in Pattaya mostly falls into what would be considered petty crime in most places. Never mind that Pattaya is the 15th most visited city in the world, according to Mastercard, and with that many visitors some crime can be expected. Never mind that most of the 'crime' stories on Asean Now--someone has a gold chain snatched, so-and-so arrested for drug possession, another so-and-so a victim of this or that scam, etc.--would likely not warrant one line in any newspaper anywhere else in the world. With Asean Now and its expat reader focus, a clueless tourist having a gold chain stolen on Beach Road is apparently breaking news of the highest import, sometimes leading the AN news of the day. We can all respond with variations of 'What an idiot' or 'Another heinous crime in "family-friendly" Pattaya', but it doesn't add any importance to what is still a petty crime. Of course, some serious crimes do occur in Pattaya. And, Bangkok. And, Chiang Mai. And, Phuket. True for places big and small. Teenager shoots up a mall--but not in Pattaya. Some Swiss guy murdered his Thai wife recently--but not in Pattaya. A British teacher was just arrested for sexually molesting some of his young students--but, not in Pattaya. Crimes also happen elsewhere, too. You were the one who made the preposterous statement in your earlier 'Part 1' thread that, what was it, 95% of the crime in Thailand occurs in Pattaya. And, even more preposterous, you stated that you based your idiotic, incorrect, damaging statistic on what you read in Asean Now. Once more, here you are again, with Part 2. What exactly is the point of Part 2, other than more Pattaya bashing? Wasn't it all covered to death in Part 1? Nothing better to do with yourself? Apparently not.

Ridiculous lawsuit, should have been rejected from the get-go. How can a party or a candidate be prohibited from making any changes to government and laws? Or even just debating the issue? Ludicrous. If the party is disbanded, just start another, like they did before. Move Future Forward. Future Forward Moving. Future Moving Forward. Just keep doing it. The public, especially, the young, will follow you whatever the name of the party is.

If the rider can be found, deport him. Lowlife.

Yeah, right.

Some good advice from other posters. Ignore the usual posters who always question a thread if it concerns anything to do with more than meager amounts of money. Apparently for some, the only farangs living in Thailand are on small pensions with no COLAs and anybody with any money would be living somewhere else. Just an afternoon's drive around Pattaya would put paid to that. My spouse and I built our first house this past year, after renovating two other houses. Three bedroom four bath pool villa outside of Pattaya. Project started in February and finished around October. It was much more stressful than what we thought it would be. The project developer did not provide what we considered to be adequate day to day supervision of the work so we took it upon ourselves to do this--which meantwe were on site almost every day except for a few breaks when we did a little traveling. The massive project you are considering would, of course, take much longer and be much more complicated. No matter how good the construction crew, there will be a lot of work for you, with a lot of decisions to be made and a lot of planning to get things right. In our case, the construction crew would do the work but they first needed to know what to do. For example, we had to come up with the electrical plan, which is more work and more complicated than you might think if you want to get it right. Where exactly do we want plugs? How many? Which light switches need to be two-way? Where will ceiling lights go? How many? Ceiling fans? Etc. Ditto for designing the kitchen and its layout to get it to function at its best and have everything where it should be. Also armoires and vanities--what size, how many drawers, location in the rooms, etc. We did all the designs ourselves. You can hire designers, for example, for the kitchen, but you still need to work with them so you get exactly what you want. Just some examples. Most every day was a new challenge, with a new set of problems to solve. Most of the interaction with the work crews fell to my Thai partner, as I don't speak Thai and the workers had limited English. So, it was a lot of work for him. Is this massive project something you want to take on with the work involved? As others have said, I don't think building the mansion you have pictured is a good idea. I doubt your wife would ever be comfortable living there, to start. I don't think I would, either. And, as a foreigner, I don't think it's a good idea to stick out so much with such a grand dwelling. I, myself, prefer to blend in and not call too much attention to anything I am doing here. Our house, once finished, is very nice but it's surrounded by houses of the same calibre so we don't stand out as a specific target. In your shoes, I would build a house that meets all your needs and fits your lifestyle. If you want a home gym, put it in. We like to swim so a relatively big pool was important for us. I would build a house that has absolutely everything you want and be happy and satisfied with that. You might end up with something in size between your house photo and the house photo shown by another poster. You might also think about having a getaway place, perhaps Bangkok, to break things up from time to time. My spouse and I have a condo in Bangkok and we try to visit about once a month for a change of scenery. Good luck with whatever you decide and keep us posted!

You may not believe TAT forecasts but they're more accurate than not. They were very close, for example, for last year. Some posters focus on TAT changing its forecasts as the year goes on but that is the nature of forecasts; as you have more data, you can fine-tune your forecasts. This is just January; likely the forecast will change a number of times as the year goes on. Normal. Since you have used flight costs in British pounds, it seems you are focused on tourists from Britain. While certainly important for a diverse Thailand tourist demographic, the UK numbers are not a very big factor in Thailand making large increases in tourism numbers. For example, from 2015 to 2019, UK numbers were slightly up for those years. So, not declining but not rising steaply. If that was the case for all countries, Thailand's tourism numbers would just grow modestly each year. Thailand had a record year in 2019 due to large numbers of tourists from nearby Asian countries, including China and India. Nearly 11 milion of the 39 million just from China. Both of those countries showed large percentage increases from 2015 to 2019. To reach its 2024 goal, Thailand will mostly need to rely on visitors from Asian countries coming closer to their 2019 numbers.

So true. And, good day to you, too.

I'm super proud to be a Trump hater, too. And, of course, astounded that anyone would be a Trump supporter and, even more astounded, admit it.

One's still a double murderer and one's still a rapist, even if they both managed to escape doing jail time--although Trump might still end up in jail for other serious crimes he is currently charged with. Do you really want a rapist as President? Can't believe I'm even having to ask that question--that's the state of things in the US. Sad.

You're free to look. I don't need to. As I said before, I'm happy with Judge Kaplan's clarification that Trump was found to have raped Ms. Carroll.

I'll go with the judge's clarification of the court docs. Rapist.

And, with that I rest my case. Enjoy the Kool-Aid.

When it comes to Trump, I'll go with Maya Angelou: 'When someone shows you who they are believe them the first time.'

People who have met him say he stinks. By the way, you might need some help with your sentence, 'People who met him so he's very charming.' ??? As an adult, I'm here to, in your words, 'teach you stuff'. You might want to change 'so' to 'say' and the sentence would make more sense--unless it was suppose to be a 'joke' and once again I didn't see the 'humor'.