sibeymai

May I recommend you have a surgical separation, say 50-50, then you'll give and receive twice the pleasure. May I suggest attaching the excess 50% ON YOUR FOREHEAD.

Superstitious pilots will have great trouble avoiding the cracks in the pavement.

BTW SFOKEVIN.....I thought that graph was the glide slope into Suwanabhumi......

walking on the beach with all those valuables.....obviously didn't want to leave them at home lest a burglar happen by.

I'm pleased to report that in the last few days the footpath at Phra Khanong BTS has been leveled with sand and this morning I found that a section has been raised and concreted. Expect the rest to follow suit, along with all other areas currently disfigured by those blue pipes, I would expect.

Was reading past posts on this thread and someone mentioned California and it struck me that due to the poor state of the pavements here Thailand will probably miss out on what is arguably California's greatest contribution to modern society....skateboards and rollerblades.

Such a pity....wouldn't we all love to see bikini clad Thai babes speeding down the sidewalks, a la Santa Monica, Venice Beach ? Surely Thai's would embrace this American culture just as readily as everything else American. If only there was a smooth sidewalk.......

good point WILKO. One thing for sure, no need to alter my choice of night entertainment venues yet if all they can do is successfully co-ordinate the destruction of garbage bins. Really too subtle for JI. There was nothing subtle about the bombing of Bali, or other JI targets.

Sounds more like a scapegoat to me, one that is unlikely to cause as many ripples as other scapegoats who could be blamed. Don't think the CNS will be blaming Thaksin any time soon since they got their fingers burned by the CNN interview in retaliation.

JI may not take kindly to being blamed for something they probably didn't do and go about setting the record straight. If you're going to be blamed, better to be blamed for something you did do, right ?

Maybe I will rethink those night time venues after all.

nope...it's risen in value because you only need 34 baht to buy a dollar.....not 36 baht.

When the falang from your home country sitting next to you in the bar starts talking about your home country and you say "mai pen rai" and return to watching the television

Try Australia's Triple J station if you like to hear the latest tunes commercial free. Check out their web site to get an idea of the type of music they play. They bill themselves as the "youth network" but have quite a few older listeners who don;t like the commercial pop major record labels promote.

http://www.triplej.net.au/

Banana boat versus jet ski......manoeuverability of banana boat - virtually nil (since it is being towed)....manoeuverability of jet ski - comparitively infinite. Don't need to be Einstein to figure out who's at fault here. Navigation regulations require all vessels to be responsible for collision avoidance. If the jet ski rider died/was injured the banana boat operator would be guilty. In this case, since the victim was on the banana boat the jet ski rider is guilty, drunk or sober. End of story.

Has anyone considered that the guy might have rented the jet ski when he was sober (if he was in fact drunk at the time of the accident) ? Not really fair to blame the Thai jet ski operator.

The use of all personal water craft (PWCs) was banned in Sydney Harbour several years ago due to the reckless disregard for safe navigation by users, despite users haveing to be licensed, the craft registered and patrols by enforcement officers. Even with such regulation and enforcement in place it was observed that many users somehow became lawless when operating PWCs and fatalities were going to be inevitable. As a foseshore resident and frequent user of the harbour I must say the ban was most appreciated.

Actually I prefer it served Petchburi Road style....who needs a plate, or a bowl for that matter.

This is one of the best questions I've seen posed on TV. Disappointing that it's not being taken more seriously.......some of us don't have the time to travel to CM for the pew khao poo ying.....and wouldn't mind practicing our Japanese over a bowl of sushi. Some definitive answers appreciated....please.

I have a sister-in-law who until recently worked ain sales at Central Chid Lom. Her monthly salary was 5,000Bt. goes a long way to explaining how the owners can employ so many staff......and why they can buy new Benzs every year. For the priviledge of working at Central she was paying more than 1.000Bt a month to live in a 2x3 metre shoe box on the corner of Chid Lom and Petchburi Road.

Thankfully she has left Central and now earns 20,000Bt or more a month and stays with my wife and I.

Some of the Thais I see driving BMWs and Benzs may have earned it, but unfortunately it appears to me there are many who see no problem in deriving wealth from slavery.

Yes, you need a non-immigrant O visa. Not sure if they issue in Thailand. Seems to be a lot of talk in the forum about having to go back to your home country. Your wife will most probably need a tourist visa to go with you. But since you are oficially married getting a visa should be no problem provided you complete all the necessary paperwork.

I usually keep my phones for a few years and have just bought a Samsung SGH-D900 which is my first non-Nokia phone in about 10 years. Thought it was state of the art.......but the iPhone has just blown it away.

Could be true. Currently having great difficulty accessing web sites outside of Thailand through True.

Wouldn't touch a HP/Compaq with a 10 foot barge pole. After sales service in BKK sucks. Bought a new model Presario and the main board failed less then three weeks later. Then HP took 5 weeks to ship a new board into Thailand to fix it.

Stick with IBM/Lenovo....state of the art technology and with the resources to back it up.

I can't decide which is the more entertaining......GF's threads and posts.......or the posts of her fan club. Either way TV is better for both.

Not surprising to see the poll results.

Thanks MEEMAITHAI for reminding us just why Isaan women can be so beautiful and make such good life long partners. I've not seen the absolute purity of these women expressed so clearly.

But it might be difficult to explain to my secretary what tears of joy are and that I'm not really upset about something. Guess I shouldn't be reading the forum at the office during lunch.

I've had one of each....good and bad. It's writings such as yours and others in praise of Isaan women which gave me the courage to go back a second time. It was worth it.

Sorry, I should have been clearer: "Doesn't really matter speculating who was behind the bombing."

My point is that whoever the CNS thinks (or knows) is responsible, publicly the CNS will:

A. deny any responsibility themselves,

B. deny it is southern insurgents (making a statement like "it couldn't be the southern insurgents because they would get lost in Bangkok" is pathetic,

C. strenuously deny it could be the responsibility of any international group such as Jemiah Islamiya or Al Q'aeda (want to see tourists disappear faster than a truck driver after an accident ?),

which leaves only two possibilities, both internal to Thailand:

A. a person/group who wants to create political instability in Thailand (could be pro-Thaksin/TRT or any anti-CNS group: pro-democracy group, police, army faction, could Singapore have a gruudge regarding the Temasek debacle ? etc.), or

B. a person/group who has no political motive and just wants to cause public disturbance.

Since a well co-ordinated series of 8 bombs seems to rule out B above, by elimination that leaves A, which could describe a number of groups, incliding JI and Al Q'aeda, however unlikely, and pro-Thaksin/TRT groups as well as others, depending on how wide a net you want to cast.

Which group does the CNS benefit most from blaming ? Branding opposition as "terrorists" has been well demonstrated as an effective political tool, most recently by the United States and allies, but also here in Thailand previously (communists) and elsewhere. If the CNS has no clue who is behind the bombings, their best (but not only) option at this point of time is to blame Thaksin, as any other plausible scenario, especially a scenario involving players external to Thailand would be more destabilising for the CNS and extremely damaging to Thailand than blaming pro-Thaksin. Hard to blame it on B (the non-political bomber) as it's simply not a credible explanation.

Sure it's possible the CNS staged the bombings themselves, but with martial law at their disposal and coming civil/criminal legal cases against Thaksin and his helpers I just don't see how the CNS could benefit. Surely by now the CNS have other means at their disposal to slander Thaksin's reputation further. Although I would expect the CNS to blame Thaksin whoever they knew to be responsible, it seems to me Thaksin is also the most logical and likely choice as well.

Doesn't really matter who was behind the bombing. The CNS will ensure the appropriate "spin" implicates Thaksin to their benefit. Any incidents such as these favour those currently holding power.

If the CNS is really battling subversive elements of the Thaksin regime it has more than enough power under martial law to round up anyone it wants to. The media, whether at the behest of the CNS or not, has done sufficient to discredit Thaksin and TRT. CNS doesn't need to use bombs. Which brings us back to the big question of who and why.

Not the CNS, no need.

Maybe Thaksin, or if not himself directly, then connected third parties trying to destabilise the CNS.

Or possibly, a trial run of a Bangkok bombing campaign by southern insurgents.

Or worse still, Islamic extremists from outside Thailand praticing for a Bali style bombing somewhere in Thailand. If this is the scenario, you can say goodbye to Patpong, Nana or Cowboy sometime soon.

it's actually agarwood mostly, maybe some sandalwood. Arabs burn the agarwod for it's aroma. Good quality agarwood retails for upwards of 20,000Bt a kilo. The jars are agarwood oil. Can also be burned or put on the body as perfume. Top quality oil sells for more than USD30,000 a litre. Both the wood chips and the distilled oil comes from the tree species Aquilaria, which is a native here in Thailand and elsewhere in SE Asia. Locally known as krissana or kritsana. The tree is a protected species but there are people growing them in plantations.

Had the opportunity to assess the voluminous feedback first hand recently. While the design and appearance is definitely a personal preference I was very interested in the operational deficiencies I was expecting to experience. While I was nowhere near as impressed as I was with Hong Kong, and I doubt even after several years of operation Suwarnabhumi will ever equal HK, I did not experience any major deficiencies, apart from what I will call one inconvenience.

Being out of Thailand for several days I decided, based on the reports of rip-off taxi drivers, to drive to the airport and use the long term car park. Finding the location, several kilometres from the terminal, was no problem. However, the entry/exit booths and ticketing is not operational and there are no instructions on where to go to get a ticket. A guy with an electric cart is available to take you to the bus which arrives every 10 minutes or so. The bus then does a 25 minute circuit to the ground floor level of the airport and then back to the bus terminal which is across the road from the long term car park (200m away). Here you have to change busses to another bus which takes you back to the airport terminal but this time to the departures level.

There are no announcements made so for a first time user who doesn't know what's happening will feel a bit panicky on the first bus as there is no indication they need to continue to the bus terminal and change busses, then return to the airport terminal a second time. What's the point of this additional 25-30 minutes of unnecessary travel time. Why not just add the long term car park stop to the route of the second bus ?

The busses are used as local transport by the airport workers. I was the only farang. It didn't help having to listen to the Thais behind me discussing what sort of an idiot would park their car out in the sun for a few days and have the paint fade. Having established that neither of these experts owned a car I further inquired from what experience they had acquired their expert knowledge.

Arrival back in Thailand was easy. Immigration was fast, baggage arrived in a reasonable time and there was no problem with Customs. Knowing the routine now with the busses it was also easy to get back to the car park. At 140Bt a day it was a much better deal than having to contend with a taxi extortionist.

OK, it's never going to be the best airport in the world nor probably even a regional hub. As it is today it is barely better than Don Muang and reportedly already reached it's maximum capacity of 76 (?) movements per hour. A big and unnecessary waste of money, definitely, but it can and does function as an airport.

I wasn't aware that the Yubamrung brothers were visiting Chiang Mai.

and you never find melted chocolates or stale biscuits at Foodland (just in case you didn't know).