Temp

To me, the PM Somchai is a troll.

You're losing it, right? But then again maybe not since your only objective in life seems to be your business. As long as you can get your mail transferred the rest of the world, and certainly not serious ideological matters of governance, really doesn't matter.

Quite honestly, I feel embarrassed being a falang by the whining and moaning by some people here about having some petty problems. If you can not understand that the struggle on both sides by most is a serious one and that your little "problems" really are minuscule in all of what is going on I feel sorry for you. I really think some of the comments both in media and in fora made by westerners is somewhat symptomatic of what you get from people living in todays populistic democracies of the west. The average Joe in them really seem to be getting more infantile by the year. I think this might have something to do with the fact that the responsibilities that used to belong to the family now belong to the State. A State that in more and more ways wants to act like a parent unto its citizens. It is also hard to ignore the fact that capitalism is very important in western societies, and thinking of a link to the fact that one of the first words children learns after "mama" is "mine" is tempting.

Cheers

Turkish Airlines just informed me that their flight TK60 that left Istanbul 25/11 23:40 has landed 3.5 hours ago at U-Tapao airbase.

It had been diverted to Singapore and the passengers had stayed in some hotel there. Reportedly the plane is supposed to take

return passengers that were supposed to leave Suvarnabhumi Airport with it.

Cheers

Temp

Hello

I have one problem I would like to take care of in Thailand before I leave for some months. Had it not been for the fact that the Internet subscription is in my girlfriends name and that she have house and land from before, also in her name, it would not be such a big deal I think. I just do not want a small claim from True to escalate into something big involving her land while we stay in Europe.

The case: After getting Internet from True there were a lot of problems with having normal Internet functionality. As I am an advanced users and need normal Internet functionality, not just www, I was on True from day one to fix it. One can not say the Internet in Thailand is working good, but at least the major issues I had problems with was resolved after about two months around beginning of May when True say they switched backbone provider for TIG. They have answered a lot of e-mails during our troubleshooting of the problems I was having. They can not in any way seem to respond by e-mail to the e-mail I sent them demanding a price reduction for the period I could not use Internet normally. We have now come to a stance. I say I do not pay before they answer the e-mail. It has been now been two months since I first said that and they still have not answered. They are of course up to their usual tricks and call to "fix the problem", ask what the problem was and inform they have no guarantee for speed, say they will answer the e-mail, offer to send someone to look at the problem, e.t.c. I guess most people that have had a problem with Too know the drill. Now I think enough is enough and tomorrow I will go to their office and cancel my subscription. I will give them a letter regarding the reason for my cancellation. I will also pay the amount that I find reasonable. 50% for the time I used most of my time to try and figure out what the hel_l was wrong with my connection, and 100% for the "normal" period with only the same problems that everyone have with Internet in Thailand; corrupted packets, packet loss, low bandwidth and DNS issues. I will not pay the fee for violating the 1-year clause of the contract as it is my opinion that I have done what I can to come to terms with True but do not have time to play their games anymore. I will demand a receipt for the letter and the money.

What is the normal procedure for disputed claims in Thailand? What can I expect after that if they are really sore about me cancelling my Internet with them and they want the rest of the money? What can I do to make sure they do not get money I mean they are not entitled to. I really think there is a department dealing with consumer issues and think I have the link somewhere. Would a complaint there be the correct response to True? Hope someone have some knowledge or experiences to share.

Temp

Thanks for the suggestions. I should have elaborated and responded sooner but I have been a bit hard pressed for time getting everything in order before me and my girlfriend leaves for some months. I was really thinking more along the lines of what could be brought in to fill up any free quota of the 40kg we can take as luggage on the plane. Can be things construed as gifts or as personal things not intended for sale. If possible to expect a more than 7000baht profit for something with a total weight of 20kg that can be defended as that is the average shipping cost if not by boat. Looking for light and small things. Gold and jewelry in modest amounts is one thing maybe? I guess everyone who does this, and yes I know someone who does this, knows this. The person I know though have customers already and takes clothes. Seems strange if the profit is really amazing though and I do not have the customers so looking for other things. Still have a couple of days if anyone have some golden advice to share. Good advice Heng, and yes I am thinking a bit along those lines, but that is for the long run. For now only looking for small things to bring that is easily sold and with good profit. And not drugs no.

soihok:

Care to elaborate on that one?

Temp

I believe that incompetency is a greater or at least equal problem to that of triggerhappy officials. I do not think I am alone in thinking that the inaccessibility of a large number of websites that simply seem to time out might be related to undersirable sideeffects from incompetent officials tinkering with the implementation of censorship. I do not think Thailand officially blocks yahoo mail, but it is a fact that it has been inaccessible for me(not the login site, but the domain set up for the mailbox) the last month. Before that there were also a lot of problems with accessing mail at yahoos servers. As I will not be here for so much longer this period I simply will not start trying to resolve this matter with the True(false?) "support" team, as I am sure one might be looking at several months of correspondance, visits from "engineers" that disrupt your schedule and so on. I can use alternative ways to reach the servers anyway.

Of course the real problem is the mindset of people that censor.

Temp

Hello

I was wondering if anyone had any advice regarding what to buy in Thailand and sell in Europe to ensure a good profit upon sale. As I have stayed as a student in Thailand and not had work income and my girlfriend having been occupied with other matters this seems like a sensible option to supplement our personal economy now that we are going to Europe for some time. I have stayed more than one year outside my country and the law in my country says that in such cases it is allowed to bring personal belongings and such back home without paying taxes. I know that there are people doing this so I ask: What to buy in order to not be stuck with something useless, impossible to sell? Also interesting to know what others that have done similar before think would yield the best profit of course.

Cheers

Temp

It's hard to criticise addicts who become pushers (as much as I'd like to) when their own addiction criminalises them (for possession) anyway. We need a better way of dealing with addicts than this.

"Steven"

Believe it or not, I agree.

Believe it or not, I have some controversial views regarding the subject.

I find the whole issue of controlled or illegal substances a bit silly as it involves one or more persons telling one or more persons:"You are not going to eat, drink, smoke, inject or otherwise consume that with your own body or there will be hel_l to pay. Sure there is a lot of money involved, but that happens during any prohibition? A lot of the social problems arise from the high costs that again arise from the prohibition. Also a lot of things that will have similar effect are not prohibited because they are less known or not popular. There are some flower seeds and some spices that will have an effect similar to some of the prohibited drugs. Yet again it is difficult to outlaw the mushrooms that grow in the wild both in Europe and many more kinds here in Thailand that have effects similar to LSD, or outlaw hemp where it grows naturally in the wild. In the west arguments for legislation are often of the socioeconomic type, but I do not see where that fits with the ridiculously harsh sentencing in Asian countries. Countries like Thailand goes from BIG producers of poppy to having some of the strictest laws in the world in about 50 years.:-) Wonder if outside pressure have anything to do with that? It was alright before to make money for the west from drugs, but that changed didn't it. Also interesting that China once outlawed coffee. Didn't wan't people to wake up maybe or maybe it had something to do with already wealthy families concerned with tea growing not wanting to loose money?

Does anyone know know what kind of arguments are presented for why a death sentence is warranted for a specific crime in an asian country? I guess they have some kind of discussion about the graveness of the crime and other lines of thought as exists in the west and don't just grab "death sentence" out of thin air? Anyone?

Temp

Oh my god.

When do these people realize that the war is over? I cannot stand those insurgencies - nobody gains, and it makes life or normal people intolerable. Expect a new round of persecution of Hmong in Laos.

Sure. We should have said the same in 1940 : "the war is over. So why bother ?"

It's not an insurgency. It's simply "resistance" against a gvt of killers, mafioso style with a touch of stalinism, who continue to hunt down Hmong people, even now.

However, I agree with you, the war is over, indeed. The US have had already betrayed and abandoned Hmong and freedom fighthers (useless tools, and rather embarassing, after the pull back from Vietnam in 70's).

So, it's just another betrayal.

There will be probably other.

It's a shame.

Oh good. The second post today that sums up what I would like to say so I don't have to say it.:-)

Yes I bet the Lao government is very pleased with USAs actions. Interestingly enough though most non-gowernment laotians that I have spoken with in the past say they HATE USA. I wonder why.....................

Temp

I know the sites are not blocked like the sites that are being blocked by ICT. But you see this message IS generated by True(in my case) and not the server you try to connect to so in a way they are blocking. Maybe it is because their network is not configured correctly, but it is still a block; you can not get to the server. So maybe they would work on it if people complain and expose it more. I have sent my first mail already. I had to do so using an encrypted SSH tunnel because I could not get to mail.yahoo.com normally. In that case I got a normal the server did not respond and not the message generated by the ISP.

Temp

I just had an idea as I have been getting more and more of this message lately:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Network Error

A communication error occurred: "Operation timed out"

The Web Server may be down, too busy, or experiencing other problems preventing it from responding to requests. You may wish to try again at a later time.

For assistance, contact your network support team.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As have been pointed out by others they are not in a hurry to fix these problems. Maybe they would hurry more if we could make them look stupid outside Thailand? Loose face? We all know it is a long, timeconsuming and aggrevating experience to try to work this out through support. What if everyone sends mail to the host they are trying to reach everytime they get the message. I say this because a number of the sites I can not reach are news sites that could spread the word that they are being blocked somehow by major thai ISPs. Please assist.

Temp

You can add at least Canada, UK, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Holland to that list of countries that filter. They claim to "only" filter sites that distribute child pornography. There are problems with such an approach: The sites in question are not in the countries jurisdictions. There is no way to have a discussion as the list is not available so it is entirely up to the police or NGOs(different suppliers of lists in different countries) to define child pornography without public debate, verification and control by for example court of law; they are police, judge and executioner. In Sweden threats have been made to filter gambling sites and other things from other countries. In Norway there is debate on blocking gambling, pornography and other things that the government don't like already. I know there have been sites unjustly blocked in Denmark and I also know that Sweden blocks a forum discussing Internet security. The blocking of the security forum is not so much unlike Thailand that blocks access to the hompage if Tor development because Tor can make you go places they do not want you to go.

Really, this all has to stop I think. With western countries in bed with censorship who are going to critisize the countries like China and such? I read comments from Norwegians that said, maybe jokingly but nonetheless, they were willing to start armed uproar if a law was enacted that gave the government right to block indecent and for the government troubling content.

The world is going more crazy by the minute!

Temp

Hello

I thin this is standard prosedure for ISPs in Thailand. Same thing happened to me with KSC in Udon Thani. I had to call around to KSC, KSC Chiang Mai(who didn't understand why we were registered in Chiang Mai) and TT/T that operated the line for KSC. They could inform that the configuration had changed. I do seem to remember that this also was a weekend. As in your case it must nhave involved a loooot of people unable to access the Internet and becoming annoyed. Maybe they have some teacher fond of practical joking in the school for network "engineers" or something that teach them this is the correct way? Do first, tell later. Or maybe they are in need of increased revenue from people calling around to find out whay they can not connect?

Temp

It would seem Thailand is not mature enough to comprehend what it takes to participate in international ventures such as the Internet. I would expect that the misconfiguration might cause problems sometimes for the global Internet. Because of that I guess it will be discussed, but I think things might take time. Do you think it will be easuer than for us talking to customer support? I do not because they do not want to change it so they will try to pretend they do not understand. Don't they understand they can not just make up their own unique way of configuring Internet?

Until such time comes remember encryption. I do not think it is against forum policy to inform people about how to communicate securely with sensitive information like passwords and bank information. Such information should of course not be sent in the open and encryted connections like vpn and ssh are very good for this. If you do not have an account to a service that offers this you can google for one and subscribe. There is also the excellent free tor project that offers you an encrypted secure route that your information can travel between your machine and the host you want to connect to. Encryption is not likely to be blocked anytime soon. 1: They don't know what you are transmitting so they can not figure out what to block. 2: They can not block all encrypted traffic because banks and other important institutions rely on it. The encryption will have other obvious sideeffects that many might find beneficial.

Temp

Forkinhades

I don't think it would be easy to tell for the ISP, but do you really want to have to call your friends, or they call you every time you need more than the average 1/3 of the bandwidth? It is also specified in user contracts, at least for True HiSpeed, that this is not allowed. But not easy for them to tell I think no. There will be traffic to three different endpoints so only 512/3 would be available for each of you even if watching the same show I think. Not much for streamed broadcasts. Before I came to Thailand I learned of a setup sort of the other way around. There is something that is called a Dreambox and it lets you decode sattelite and stream it to your computer. If set up correctly and if your connection is fast enough for upload you can also stream it to friends over the Internet. Don't know if Dreambox is available in Thailand but I think they're assembled in Asia somewhere.

Cheers

Temp

A_Traveller:

I agree with you when the issue is about censorship and if it is a block by the government I would not say what I say. However many people are experiencing problems that I believe might be related to the problems I am writing about with True. The previous round I had with them was about blocking ICMP as in ping and tracert. After I had written them about the issue and talked with them countless times the block is gone. So I believe they can be swayed if people complain. The problem appears to be that they can not be bothered to configure the network properly for the domain truehisp. Why? Well I do not work for them but as I said maybe they save a lot of bandwidth. This does however make a lot of other things unreliable. Such things would include difficulties in connecting to certain hosts at certain ports and the problems might appear at random.

My specific problem seems random in the same manner that if I use programs that connect to various hosts the connections are frequently dropped. In addition to this portscans show almost all my ports are invisible to the outside world even though I am not using a firewall. The funny thing is that what ports appear as invisible and what ports appear only closed changes for every scan I do. Such issues might just happen to be related to True not being interested in using best-practices when configuring their network except for the business accounts. I have been on their tail about the block of ICMP and it was changed. I have also been on their tail about the redirection/block issue of altavista.com and yahoo.com. Today that was fixed, at least for me as I was moved to a different IP range that does not use the same cache as my former IP range.

My point: It is not easy for everyone to deal with ISPs because it does have some technical aspects that not everyone might be able to pinpoint or explain. If people only give up and do not complain or write in public you can rest assured nothing will change. It sure is funny that while large groups of people complain in the west over plans about giving priority to ISP content on networks it seems possible to sell Internet access here in Thailand and restrict people to mostly use webbrowsing and e-mail without people complaining. People here sure are relaxed.:-)

Cheers

Hello

Sure the problem is with True. I never had problems like I am having with True when using KSC. However when KSC in an attempt to increase capacity during the problem with the underwater cable swithed to using True's network and caches I experienced exactly the same problems as I read about a lot and I also suffer now.

The sad thing though is that there appear to not be any interest in trying to attack this problem with a united effort from suffering True users. I have not had a single reply to my post asking for information about what kind of filtering and blocking they experience on their different accounts. Another thing is that many users simply will not know how to explain these kinds of problems to their ISP or if lucky an "engineer" because many simply do not know enough about computers and Internet to troubleshoot these kinds of problems. This leaves abusive ISPs like True free to carry on their business about not delivering what they sell. They really do know how to configure properly but they are not interested I think because this would mean a lot more applications would work and a steep increase in bandwidth demand. I believe True do not care because with their misconfigured network for home users they are able to conserve a loooot of bandwidth because many simply give up using a lot of programs that can not work.

If any have info please respond to http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=116205 or PM. If everyone who had problems stalked their customer service maybe they would realize they have to provide normal Internet. If noone complains and they are making money why should they change?

Big brother has been watching for a long time already. The scary thing is that technology makes it ever more efficient. The nice thing is that more technologies are developed all the time that use heavy encryption to ensure the privacy of the people. It has always been a race and the governments around the world usually tries to obscure things and not make it a public race. I really wish more people would use heavy encryption for any and all communication unless they feel it would be ok to have a representative of the government sitting beside them every time they type something or every time they open their mouth to speak. That is what people should ask themselves: "Do I want every action or thought or statement ok'd by the government that just happens to be in power in the geographic location I just happen to be in at the moment." The more people that use heavy encryption for everything the more difficult it is to isolate and try to decipher what they think they want to know. Tired of hearing the worn out: "If you have nothing to hide then why do you worry". Unfortunately it can be a big challenge for people that only use computers without knowing to much about them to secure their communications. Things are improving though if only people wise up.

As for targetting eBay users, do you have a link? Not doing that but have been thinking a little about something similar. Oh well, if I can not do it then I guess it will have to be done in my girlfriends name.

Cheers

Temp

Like a lot of other people I have come to be fed up with True. An alternative of course when you become fed up with someone is to get the particular service delivered from someone else. This does not really fix the problem though unless a large number of people does the same thing and the original problem will remain unfixed for those unable to change or not technically smart enough to ask the right questions about why application x does not work with their Internet access. So I have come to the conclusion that it is better to try to start to expose the kind of problems people are experiencing with True and stay with them and just keep demanding a normal Internet access. True is so big in Thailand that if they are allowed to run everything their way chances are that smaller ISPs will follow suit and implement their service in just as bad way as True. It is even possible to become affected by True even though you subscribe to another company because it is so big and packets might have to travel through their networks even though you are not their customer(correct me if I am wrong on this last one but it should be common sense I think, not backed up).

The main problem: It appears that I am behind a True firewall and I am being routed via two private network IPs, 10.169.60.1 and 192.168.1.1. They have already done two other BIG no-nos in the recent past when it comes to configuring an ISP network, namely blocking ping and traceroute. It gets a bit technical if explaining but blocking ping and blocking traceroute and assigning private network IPs to routers that handle traffic to and from Internet is a very very bad idea. It simply breaks the way Internet was designed to operate. They have since stopped blocking traceroute and ping it appears but I still get results from online portscans indicating that I am firewalled and my route to Internet still includes IPs reserved for private networks. Now it is not possible to use just any online portscan for this because of the way the network is configured. Almost every portscan out there will only see the IP of the firewall or proxy. The online portscanner at www.grc.com however is able to see the IP assigned to my local machine. The extremely funny thing about the results from the portscan is that they are different every single time. By that I mean that all ports except a few that all people are likely to use, like 21, 80 and 119 are constantly changing their status from simply closed to stealthed. A stealthed port is a port that does not give any indication of it's or the machines presence on the Internet when you probe it. Explained in layman terms it works ok to surf the web but trying to use any other software like servers, P2P, groupware and such really sucks. Now which explanations from True are correct(My guess none):

1. We have a firewall but we are not blocking anything.

2. We do not have a firewall.

3. We block tracert and ping because we want to protect our network and users from viruses.

4. Having the End-To-End ATM ping test from your modem fail is perfectly normal.

Of course I made the big mistake when reporting this issue to True of reporting two problems at once. I also reported the problem about blocked subdomains at yahoo.com and altavista.com. Thus they have of course concentrated on this issue and not the issue of the firewalling that I believe they are very reluctant to do anything about. The problem with yahoo is also funny though. Now there appears only to be a block if you use the True proxy. The really funny thing is that if connecting directly and searching for something at www.altavista.com you will get a redirect page the first time that redirects you to www.yahoo.com. ROFL. My guess is that it happens whenever the searchpage is not in their cache but I am not really interested. They should fix it. They did of course during our discussions try to blame the issue on most parties other than True. MICT, Altavista, Yahoo, the user and so on were all possible sources for the redirect page, but they were still "checking".

The major ISP in a +66 million people country should not be allowed to continue to operate like this. I am very curious as to wether this applies to all True hispeed Internet subscribers and if it applies to other ISPs and other packages. I hope therefore that different people can respond and say the following:

1. What kind of package you have with which ISP.

2. Your apprx. location.

3. If you can run tracert and ping to foreign domains.

4. If you also get mostly stealthed ports when scanning at www.grc.com The test you are looking for is called Shields UP!. After the intro you have to scroll down to select it again and then on the next page click "Proceed". After this you can run test on "All service ports" Is it the same every time? Are the ports stealthed as they appeart to be from my location? You have to disable your own firewall of course in order to know if it is you or True that are doing the blocking.

5. Do you have any strange problems running P2P apps or groupware that requires specific ports to be controlled by the communicating machines?

Your information and input will be greatly appreciated. I have also registered a subdomain at www.bravehost.com that I and others through me can use to publish facts about problems that exists with the True network that they refuse to correct. This site can be found at true-lies.bravehost.com but I have not presented anything there yet.

Cheers

Temp

Hello

Does anyone know about any ISPs that offer plans without connection resets at regular intervals? I guess a leased line does not have resets, but a little bit to expensive.:-) Maybe there are some SDSL plans or something out there. Not so easy to find this info on the ISPs homepages so if anyone know anything I would appreciate it. A really stupid policy I think that really puts more load on the network maybe I think.

KSC put their users, at least in Udon Thani, behind a True Internet firewall on 27th. This firewall did not forward the IP to the outside world and almost all ports were blocked except some of the ones "most" people use like 80, 8080, 23 and so on. Of the things that did not work was using ordinary old version of emule without obfuscation, winmx and nntps. They have reconfigured as of friday, but the network quality is so low. A lot of these applications rely on UDP traffic and such being a connectionless protocol a lot of problems arise with a highly congested network. I was able to get emule(newest version) with protocol obfuscation to work and to get winmx working setting up an ssh tunnel. Interesting that one have to use that when KSC denied anything being blocked or maybe they just don´t know what block is.:-o ??

Hello

I have KSC in Udon Thani. Apart from that their service has gone a bit downhill the last few months, my guess after some reconfiguring of the network after KSC was aquired by True, it really became awful 27.december. Before that there had been horrible bandwidth from 8-9 in the morning to 19-20 in the evening with bandwidth down to 20-30kbps on a 1mbit account, frequent disconnects, unstable DNS, unstable autentication servers. On the 27th however it appears they have at least me and I guess most other users as well behind a firewall and are assigning "private IP's" to their customers. What this means is that your machines IP will only be accesible for ports that their firewall forwards and that is restricted to 23/80/443/8080(maybe some additional but at least those). This means that you can only surf WWW and check email. They even block port 119 for Usenet(nntp)!!. So basically I am paying for Internet access but receiving a LAN service with WWW and e-mail.

I wrote an e-mail asking what the issue was and did not receive a reply. I then sent another 6 days later asking if they could answer the first and got a reply that they had sent the problem to "the network for check". So they do not have immidiate access to tech people at KSC that know the difference between providing a firewalled Internet access and a real Internet access?

Any suggestions as to what I should do apart from maybe switching ISP if this isn't rectified soon. Are other ISP's doing the same since the earthquake outside Taiwan?

I guess they could be trying to conserve bandwidth, but there are more sofisticated ways of doing that without restricting people to WWW and e-mail only. I can not believe this for KSC as I believed they mostly had business customers. This is not what I would like to use for my work.

Temp

Also bear in mind that you need a licence to be in a bedroom alone with a Lao woman. No idea what rigmarole this entails but apparently you need to be married or engaged to apply. Friends who have worked in Vientiane were followed around a lot and people have been deported for spending the night with a Lao girl (or boy), not a career enhancing event for expats working there.

The above reminded me of a piece I saved a while back:

RELATIONSHIPS WITH LAO CITIZENS:

"The Lao Government prohibits sexual contact between foreign citizens and Lao nationals except when the two parties have been married in accordance with Lao Family Law. Any foreigner who enters into a sexual relationship with a Lao national may be interrogated, detained, arrested, or jailed. Lao police have confiscated passports and imposed fines of up to $5000 on foreigners who enter into disapproved sexual relationships. The Lao party to the relationship may also be jailed without trial. Foreigners are not permitted to invite Lao nationals of the opposite sex to their hotel rooms; police may raid hotel rooms without notice or consent.

Foreign citizens intending to marry Lao nationals are required by Lao law to obtain prior permission from the Lao Government. The formal application process can take as long as a year. American citizens may obtain information about these requirements from the U.S. Embassy in Vientiane. The Lao Government will not issue a marriage certificate unless the correct procedures are followed. Any attempt to circumvent Lao regulations may result in arrest, imprisonment, a fine of $500-$5000, and deportation. Foreigners who cohabit with or enter into a close relationship with Lao nationals may be accused by Lao authorities of entering an illegal marriage and be subject to the same penalties.

Foreign citizens who wish to become engaged to a Lao national are required to obtain prior permission from the chief of the village where the Lao national resides. Failure to obtain prior permission can result in a fine of $500-$5000. Lao police frequently impose large fines on foreign citizens a few days after they hold an engagement ceremony with a Lao citizen based on the suspicion that the couple probably subsequently had sexual relations out of wedlock."

Source

At least it should save some visa runners a few baht on condoms, although I am sure those in desperate need will be serviced regardless of the above 'rules'.

No doubt where there's a willy there's a way...

Crickey! What a bunch of <deleted>. I went to Lao once and bedded a Lao girl in my hotel room. Worrying to think I could have gone to jail for that.

I liked laos people, although i always give immigration officials a wide birth. They all looked rather miserable if you ask me. The only really pleasurable time I had was sitting on the edge of the Mekong River drinking lao beers and riding around the middle of nowhere on motor bikes with friends.

After my experience, I dont think I would visit Laos again. There's really not much to do.

<deleted>???? why because the lao government don't want people likeyou abuseing their nationals? or maybe you think that it is out of order that they have laws in place to stop sexpats blatantly shagging kids for a fiver and then paradeing around the streets hand in hand like they do in most asian countries. Laos has got it right, its still available but behind closed doors, which in my opinion is right. prostitution should not be on show for kids to see and accept as normal.

how many Laos citizens do you see in the sex trade worldwide compared to thais, flippers, indos or vietnamese???? point made.

but if your intentions are honourable the locals will bend over backwards to help you obtain a marrage licence. me and my wife never had a problem.

Sorry in advance for straying from the topic of the thread. I am very aware of it and I hope I will never do it again.

What does consenting sex between people(adults by varying definition, 15 in Thailand and I think 14 in Laos although difficult to verify) have to do with "shagging kids for a fiver". Do you think it is ok for a government to forbid people a consenting sexual relation because they are from the wrong country? What about wrong religion, ideology, cast, race or any other category one can put people into. I do not have the impression you think this, just making a point.

I definately do not think Laos has got it right. Making laws that adresses one thing to solve a completely different matter have rarely been successfull. I am not sure about how successfull keeping things behind closed doors have been at solving problems either, but it sure is popular in Asia. Children are generally more understanding and tolerable to their surroundings than some "grownups" want them to be. Several studies indicate that what is labeled as "harmfull to minors" is not in the least harmfull to minors, rather it is harmfull to the way the righteous moral minority want the rest of the society to be.

No point made about how many Laotians are in the sextrade although many are here in Isaan. Look at the following figures(Country,population,population density):

Thailand 65,444,371 126/km²

Vietnam 84,238,000 253/km²

Philippines 85,236,913 276/km²

India 1,103,371,000 329/km²

Laos 5,924,000 25/km²

Now why on earth would you think there were as many in the sextrade when there are considerably less people to employ. This might have a little bit to do with the longterm aerial bombing by the USA that has been very successfull at eliminating a lot of people. Why is the median age in Laos so low I wonder? Another factor might also be that very many Laotians are very poor and therefore illequipped to travel. There might also be more problems in getting travel documents and visas for Laotians considering it IS a communist state.

As for honourable intentions I would like you to consider one idom and one quote:

"The road to hel_l is paved with good intentions."

"That government is best which governs least." (Thomas Paine, 1737-1809)

What is honourable is very individual indeed and normally I would think it better for a population if what the elite considers honourable is not applied in the form of law.

I like debate but know this is off-topic in this thread. Sorry. As a closing I would like to add that I have never had any considerable trouble in Laos and have friends there that I have stayed with for some days at a time. Immigration have always been helpfull. Taking a vehicle can be a chore, especially the first time, but after that not so bad.

Good luck

Temp

Could be. It appears though that the crossing from Nong Khai never closed. Closed at night of course but that is normal operation. Just in case anyone was wondering about which crossing I was talking about.

Typical case of: "Do not believe what anyone say and do not trust anyone in Thailand"? I just went to Laos and back. The border is not closed and the immigration officer said they were open yesterday as well. Well TIT and to many people like to speak without veryfying things properly.

Should I then conclude: There are no good set of books in thai for learning english