Groongthep

As a newsworthy item, right now as I am writing this, Exxon Mobile just announced it's 2nd quarter results, which are a quarterly record profit of almost 12 billion dollars ( the exact amount was $11,970,000,000). The Corporation distributed a total of $10.1 billion to shareholders in the second quarter through dividends of $2.1 billion and share purchases to reduce shares outstanding of $8.0 billion. I am not positive but I think that this may be a quarterly record profit for any corporation.

Making money is what a company is supposed to do. They pay back the profits to the shareholders (who are the owners) through dividends. There are hundreds of thousands of us who are not tycoons or oil barrons who own shares in these companies. I'm quite happy they are doing well. BTW, the four big oil majors, Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco, BP and Shell, combined control less than 10% of the world's oil reserves. If they are doing so well can you imagine how much the OPEC countries must be making?

There are a scant few Thai restaurants in the US (and outside of Thiland in general I would imagine) that cater to a mostly Thai crowd.

It is not possible to have many restaurants in the US that serve primarily a Thai crowd. There are only 200,000 Thai Americans, and most of these live in LA. The number of Thais in America is just minuscule, they are only about 1 percent of the entire Asian American population.

Exactly, and that's reason why there are so few authentic Thai restaurants in the US. Once again, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that there aren't some good Thai restaurants out there, I'm simply saying that the vast majority (say 95% or more) are in the business of catering to western tastes and do no serve Thai food that tastes the same as it does in Thailand. Just ask the staff, they'll even tell you so.

...... I have also heard that soon they will be charging for Hotmail which has so far been free.

You are using the free Hotmail service. You are not their customer because you pay them nothing. How can you compain about something that someone is giving you for free?

I was hoping this was a joke.

I am a girl, 21, and have lived in NYC on and off for about 7 years, and have lived here in BKK for one, and NYC BY FAR is much safer then BKK.. It is so much cleaner, safer, etc. You can go out at night late as you want (alone as agirl) and you are safe. here in bkk, no way, not safe at all. I mean you dont go out in harlem or brooklyn like that, but in NYC its much safer then BKK.

Last time I looked Brooklyn and Harlem were still parts of NYC. Here in Bangkok would you walk alone through Khlong Toei at night?

Umm no actually you are wrong. Harlem and Brooklyn are considered there own city, such as harlem and brooklyn. thats why NYC is an ISLAND where brooklyn is south of the ISLAND and Harlem is in the NORTH. Just to set you straight. I lived there almost all my life. and BANGKOK is not safe , esp for foreign women. I have experienced much unsafe things here already. where in NY, i never have. So please get your facts stragiht.

Nonsense. New York City comprises five boroughs: The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. Harlem is on the north side of Manhattan. Source: The official government of New York City website nyc.gov

I am a girl, 21, and have lived in NYC on and off for about 7 years, and have lived here in BKK for one, and NYC BY FAR is much safer then BKK.. It is so much cleaner, safer, etc. You can go out at night late as you want (alone as agirl) and you are safe. here in bkk, no way, not safe at all. I mean you dont go out in harlem or brooklyn like that, but in NYC its much safer then BKK.

Last time I looked Brooklyn and Harlem were still parts of NYC. Here in Bangkok would you walk alone through Khlong Toei at night?

Authentic Thai restaurants have thrived on the U.S. west coast for a long time. Los Angeles has the largest population of ethnic Thais outside of Thailand, and named an area "Thaitown", near Hollywood, about 6 years ago. (L.A. also has the largest Chinese and Mexican populatins outside of their home countries). Despite the Thaitown designation, the best Thai restaurant in L.A. is Saldadang, which is in Pasadena. Jitlada or Basil Thai Restaurant are excellent San Francisco Thai restaurants. The best Thai restaurant in Honolulu, hands down, is Keo's.

I agree that many Thai restaurants have thrived on the US west coast for a long time but I can't agree that many are too "authentic". As a general rule you can usually tell how authentic the food is at any ethnic restaurant by the number of patrons of that ethnicity who eat there. In other words, if you see a lot of Chinese people eating in a particular Chinese restaurant or a lot of Mexican people eating in a particular Mexican restaurant then you can usually assume with a fair amount of accuracy that the Chinese and Mexican food at those two places is at least reasonably authentic. There are a scant few Thai restaurants in the US (and outside of Thiland in general I would imagine) that cater to a mostly Thai crowd. While you are correct that there have been many Thai restaurants on the US West Coast for many years, only a very small percent serve food anything close to authentic. I have a pretty good idea as I have eaten at sh#tloads of them in Southern California, Northern California, Seattle, Las Vegas, Honolulu and Phoenix which are the places with the largest populations of Thais in the western US. I've also eaten at Thai restaurants in Chicago, Houston and Miami which also have significant Thai populations. Seldom do you see overseas Thais eating at any Thai restaurant outside of those very few neighborhoods where many Thais and Lao live. Thaitown in LA is a notable exception but that place is fairly unique. Most Thais in the US have not conglomerated into "Thai" neighborhoods like Thaitown but have rather dispersed throughout the community.

The overwhelming majority of US Thai restaurants have dumbed down their menus to cater to what they think Americans want. They are after all businesses and are trying to make money. Don't get me wrong, often the food can be good but rarely is it authentic. The overwhelming number of patrons in these westernized versions are non-Thais and, let's face it, unless you have spent a lot of time in Thailand as most of us here on TV have you are not going to like authentic Thai food at first. Only after having gotten used to it does the average westerner gain a taste for the real thing. It's not just the heat of the chilies, but the unusually large amount of garlic and other herbs and fish sauce and yes, MSG that give the real thing a distinct sharpness or "rot chart" that you almost never get at Thai restaurants in California, Washington or Hawaii. Sometimes there may be an item or two on the menu that is pretty authentic but not very often.

I have not eaten at Saladang or Jitlada so they may indeed be authentic, I can't say since I haven't been there but the many other Thai restaurants I have eaten at in California are pretty sorry. I have eaten at Keo's in Hawaii and even though the restaurant is a beautiful place the food is nothing like any Thai restaurant I have ever eaten at in Thailand. I personally think they s*ck. Same goes for the literally dozens of Thai restaurants I have eaten at in the Seattle area. All these places have real Thai cooks but prepare the same old tired out westernized Thai food. I speak Thai reasonably well and usually strike up a conversation with the staff when I go into these places. It's amazing how often you hear, as Ulysses G. has already said, that they don't even like their own food. They just cook it as they think the locals want it. Oddly enough, probably the most authentic Thai place I have ever eaten at in the US, complete with concrete floor, plastic chairs, cheap plates and silverware and a hand painted sign that simply said "Thai Food" was in Fort Smith, Arkansas. The food was genuine Mom and Pop shophouse-style Thai food. The woman who ran the place told me she grew a lot of the ingredients herself. The one time I was there I was the only person in the near full joint who wasn't of Thai or Lao decent. Fort Smith has an unusually large Lao, Thai and Vietnamese population owing to the fact that nearby Fort Chaffee was an entrance camp for the huge amount of Southeast Asian refugees and immigrants who came into the US at the end of the Vietnam war. (You'll probably not be surprised that may Thais passed themselves off as Lao refugees in order to get into the US - but that's another topic.) Many of these people found the rivers and forests in that part of the Ozarks similar to their homes in Laos, Vietnam and Thailand and so just stayed in the area. Like Thaitown in LA however this place is rather unique. Your run-of-the-mill Thai joint in most US cities is IMHO rather lame and far from anything authentic.

OK, all of you who are connected to Thai restaurants outside of Thailand can flame away.

Too young for Medicare. Too old for women to care.

I once used 'Molten Lava" on my face but found it much too hot.

What is it with all the geezers hitting Bangkok just now...I mean, do any Thais even know who these old crouners are?

stop being agist

But OP does bring up a point, last month was Air Supply (I am old but come on really), this month Paul Anka and crew. What's next, Tina Turner, one of the Gibb brothers that hasn't died?

When will we get some real acts here, something people born after the Vietnam war might relate too.

Face it, there just aren't many world class acts from any age group willing to play Bangkok. Usually, their ticket prices are out of reach to the average person here. They end up getting small crowds, less publicity and less money.

do you remove your shoes before entering your home ?

Yes, and if my girlfriend is there I sometimes remove the rest of my clothing as well.

Am I the only one who thinks Cheap Charlies is an horrendous place to drink?

Not at all. Way over-rated. Interesting decor, but it's outdoors, no air-con, no protection from heat/rain, laughable "tables" smaller than what most people call stools, no table service (queuing at a bar for a drink in Thailand <deleted>), way too popular with people who can just afford to be there and/or have just read about it in their Lonely Planet, and a name that would make most people cringe. I'd imagine the owners of Tapas, Charlie Browns, etc love having freeloaders use their toilets too.

I can tolerate the place for a beer or two if forced, but it wouldn't make my top 1000. The things people do to save 10B.... The fact it makes it into so many travel guides makes me wonder how many travel guide authors have ever even been there. Buying booze from the supermarket, and sitting pretty much anywhere is at least one step up IMHO. I'm not a bar snob (far from it), but you need to draw a line somewhere, and Cheap Charlies falls far short of it.

I used to go to Cheap Charlies back in the late 80's and early 90's when the clientele there and the Sukhumvit Soi 11 area in general were much different than they are today. In those days the patrons were made up mostly of oilfield workers, merchant seamen, military men on leave, workers on holiday from contract jobs in the Middle East or Africa, one of the few resident expats or maybe even a backpackers or two. There were many fewer retired old-farts in Thailand in those days. The bar and in fact Bangkok in general seemed rather exotic to me at that time. Cheap Charlies was usually just a place people went to for a few drinks before heading out to somewhere else. It was a much more boisterous place and was not a destination in it's own right like it is now. It was written up in Lonely Planet back then (I think by Joe Cummings) when that publication actually contained a lot of useful information and well before it became the focus of contempt by many of my contemporaries as it has become now. Over the years, the bar itself has pretty much remained unchanged but the neighborhood around it and the customers have definitely been yuppified. I think it remains in the guidebooks just because it has been there so long. They just never bothered to document the transformation that occurred around the place.

After reading reviews of NY pizza, I was looking forward to trying their product at the Suk. Soi 3-5 branch.

However, every time I look at their pizza slices in the window on offer, I am turned off.

The pizza looks like it is 30 hours old. Maybe I will work up the courage one of these

I guess that's a good deal if you're really hungry, but I think I'd rather buy a 50 baht slice at Ronny's, or at Bamboo Bar across from the Grace Hotel. It's not as if I'm going to eat more than 2 slices at a time anyway. If I'm gonna spend over 200 baht on pizza I'd rather get a whole pizza, freshly made, that I can take home and eat the next day.

I tried that New York Style Pizza place about a week ago too and I agree that the pizzas in the window look old and not too appetizing. If you go in and order an entire pizza though they will make a new one for you fresh. I was with two friends that night who helped me eat one and we all agreed that it wasn't bad. No, not as good as real New York pizza but things continue to improve little by little in this respect. As for the pizzas at the little shop outside the Bamboo Bar on Soi 3 across from the Grace I have tried them several times and have always been (really) disappointed. The shop right next to him however IMHO makes the best shwarma I have had in the whole "Little Arabia" neighborhood around Suk Soi 3. He is 10 baht higher (60 baht vs 50 at most places) but the quality makes it well worth the small extra expense.

I also think you can pay using credit card from the 12Call website but that is the worst web site I have ever seen and not very user friendly.

You cannot top up from the 12Call website. It's useless.

For those who can read Thai there's a very useful book on the subject, คนไทยมาจากไหน by Sujit Wongtet, which examines historical, cultural and linguistic evidence, and complements the linked Wikipedia article very nicely.

the commonly held belief is that the Thai's migrated from China about 700 years ago

That was once the accepted view and was what used to be taught in schools (may be still is!?), so many people will still only have that version of history.

For those who can't read Thai, the first 3 chapter's of David K Wyatt's Thailand- A Short History goes into detail on the origin of the Thai (tai) peoples. As KhaoMiaw has said the general belief is that the Thai people of today originated from Southeastern China some many hundreds of years ago. Since that time they have mixed with the Mon, Khmer, Burmese, Indian, Middle Eastern, and various other original ethnic groups in central Southeast Asia. Later years brought new waves of immigration from China, mostly again from southeast China and the island of Hainan The very earliest evidence of humans in Thailand comes from the Ban Chiang site in Udon where artifacts have been dated as far back as the broze age (4420-3400 BC). Most of the ethnic Lao in today's Isaan were forcibly moved there from areas of present day Laos during the second or third reign of the present Chakri Dynasty around 1820 to 1840 AD.

Wow, there are a lot of us with Illinois and Texas connections. I grew up in Illinois (but not in Chicago) about 150 miles west in Rock Island We didn't have a "southern" accent like they do in the more southern part of the state. At least that's what I thought before some trips back there made me notice some definate "country" sounding terminology. At 18 went to college in Texas for 2 years; came back and finished college at Northern Illinois Uni.. After that moved back to Texas (Austin) for a year or 2 before joining the Navy. Did 4 years in the service mostly in Hawaii but stationed in Rhode Isand, San Diego and Seattle for short periods too. Got out, became a Merchant Seaman and have never had a permanent home for more than a year or two in any one place since. My home of record for the last 22 years has been Seattle but I only spend short periods of time there each time I get off a ship. Have been coming to Thailand 2 or 3 times a years for 1 to 2 months periods every year since 1988. Am now 52 years old. Scored 50% - a Yankee, but just barely.

Oh come on PB. You mean you didn't find the topics of Smegma or Tata Young's nationality Tata Young intellectually stimulating? This is like a paradise for mensa members.

Dual nationals are barred from serving the the US Armed Forces unless they renounce their citizenship with the other country.

This must have changed in recent years. When I was in the US Navy from 1980 thru 1984 (a long time ago I admit) there were at lot of foreign nationals serving in the US military particularly Philipinos, Koreans and Mexicans. I also knew a few English and Irish sailors as well. Some had dual nationality but most were 100% foreign nationals. US citizenship was required to be an officer or hold a security clearance however.

An other consequence was the attitude of Thailand during the WWII. The allies asked for the Kingdom help, who then ask for the return of the stolen territories. When the allies refused, Thailand then decided not to take side (as far as I remember, they're never been allied with the Japanese, just neutral.

On December 21, 1941 the Thai government under prime minister Plaek Phibunsonkhram entered into a formal military alliance with Japan allowing them to launch attacks on Burma and Maylaysia ( then Malaya). On January 25, 1942 the Phibun government formally declared war on both Great Britain and the United States.

my thai friend told me that when Tata Young was interviewed and asked what she wanted from Thaskin, she said that she wanted to be a Thai citizen because at the age of 21 the United States made her pick Thai or American citizenship... This makes zero sense to me and I am fairly sure my thai friend misunderstood. Can anyone clarify.

If an American and a Thai have children, can the children keep both citizenships for the rest of their life?

Tata Young Is Not A Thai Citizen

So what? Neither were her relatives Mighty Joe Young

Or Neil Young

Or Robert 'Father Knows Best' Young

Or Andrew Young

Or even Loretta Young

I don't think too many Thais or Americans are going to lose much sleep over it.

Never heard of it. Sorry that's not very helpful except to say it must not have been very well known, as I've been dining around Bangkok longer than most Thais living here have (judging from recent city age stats anyway)! Would like to find a good Malaysian resto in Bangkok however.

I happened upon a Malaysian Restaurant by accident last fall while looking for the temporary Thai Airways office in the Bangkok Union Insurance building on Soi Anumanrajchathon off Surawong Road near Silom. The restaurant, the name of which I never got, is on the east side of Narathiwat Ratchanakharin Road between Surawong and Silom Roads. It has a large Malaysian Flag in the window so it's easy to find. From the Chong Nongsi BTS station walk back across Silom and it will be on the far right across the road divider. There was not a lot of patrons inside when I went in and knowing how quickly businesses close in Bangkok I can't garantee that it's still open. The food was good though. Another option that I just went to a few days ago was recommended to me by another poster here on TV. It's called Kopi Tiam (a very ubiquitous name in Singapore and Malaysia) and is just around the corner on Sukhumvit Soi 26 from the Phrom Phong BTS station on the right side. I had the laksa there which was very good but kind of pricey (for Bangkok) at 120฿.

I am a ศรัทธา of this temple. - ศรัทธา = layperson

The Thai Wat I sometimes visit in the US Wat Atammayatarama uses the term อุบาสก in it's printed "hymnals" when referring to laypeople. I would guess (but am not sure) that it may be synonymous with ศรัทธา

Has anybody here ever suffered from smegma?

I believe the mods should move this topic to the "Cheese Prices in Thailand" thread under the sub-topic "fromunda".

New York city is pretty safe but I think there's more casual violence that isn't reported such as brawls etc.. I see a lot less of that sort of thing in Bangkok. It's very rare that I meet any Thai person that carries a violent chip on their shoulder or at least one that expresses it publicly. I think Bangkok is safer for just that reason.

My feelings exactly. Not just in New York but in most all US cities you'll find a certain type of anti social trouble maker with a chip on his/her shoulder who is actually looking for trouble. A lot of this I believe, is born out of the hip-hop-gangsta mentality that implies that you're not cool if you're not some sort of ill mannered, loud mouth, pushy bad-ass jerk. If you're an American you know the type I'm talking about. They're very common on public transportation in central urban areas, but the small town trailer trash types can be every bit as bad. I don't see nearly as much of this in Thailand as I do in the US so I agree Bangkok seems to be safer for that reason alone.

Most Chinese-Thais originated from Southern China and the dialect they spoke was hakka or hokien and are pretty closely related to the Chinese from Singapore and Taiwanese who originated from that area as well.

For the most part true but not exactly correct. If you ask the average Thai-Chinese you'll find that most of their ancestors (and maybe even some living relatives still) speak the Teochew (Chaozhou) dialect. Teochew is particularly prevalent in Yaowarat. You are correct that there are still many original Hokkien and Hakka speakers and that these two dialects are very common in Singapore even though the Singapore government has instituted a policy of teaching Mandarin in schools these days to standardize the chinese language there.