jing jing

Wow, this is a real heartbreaker of a situation and I feel for you, Lodes... I know just what you mean about seeing your baby being sick and getting jabbed by needles, not to dwell on that but it really will make a grown man cry. Chin up however, as babies are remarkably resilient little buggers, and your beautiful little Samantha will be right as rain in short order and have no memory whatsoever of her early difficulties.

As to your financial dispute/dilemma with Samitivej -- I cannot believe that they would keep your baby, have you thrown in jail, or any such thing. It would seem to me that after they have rendered the required medical services and your Samantha is ready to go home, then that would be the time for you to sit down and hammer out a negotiated payment plan, not now while you and your family are emotionally drained and making sure your little one is receiving the care she needs.

My kids were both born at Paolo Memorial, a fantastic place located just between the Saphan Kwai BTS station and Big C -- the first one a normal delivery and the second a c-section due to breech presentation. We paid a small deposit to secure the package in both cases and the balance due when we took our babies home. At no time was money discussed while mom and baby were under the care of medical professionals, that is, they didn't require payment prior to our leaving the facility.

For now try to forget about lawyers and million baht bills (ridiculous!) and rest assured that at the end of the ordeal, something reasonable will be worked out so that you can pay what you are able to pay and the hospital admins don't lose face.

Congratulations to you, to her mom, and best wishes to little Samantha for a happy, healthy future!

My two boys have Western given names and Thai nicknames. In Thailand everyone goes by their nickname anyways, but in the event my kids end up going to school, living, and/or working in the West they'll be good to go, namewise. I don't think you need dual purpose names because your kids will as a matter of course be called by their Thai nicknames, or cheu len, here in Thailand.

Fair comment, JJ, and a mouth watering description.

But every country has its quota of thick waisted, stumpy legged, stocky women too.

They're commonly known as the workers who keep the wheels of industry turning.

No hope for the plain janes of becoming the protegee of a prosperous farang .

They're all out there clocking the stunners and vying for place.

Besides, the pretty ones who are born poor there have a commodity which is not only short lived but can soon become a burden.

Unless they have special talents they'll be shovelled into the machine to use the only thing they have to offer.

Would love to debate the topic re: the universal exploitation of poor, beautiful women with you at a biergarten of your choosing, Herr qwertz (BTW shouldn't that be qwerty or have I been reading too much Nabokov? ) but on the topic at hand - a tribute to the beauty of Thai women - you are thinking a bit too much, or maybe just thinking with the big head rather than the small head as this thread has inspired me to do.

...Sorry fellas (and ladies) if this view offends but quite apart from the horizontal aspect I like good company and a bit of intelligent conversation...

That's what your good buddies (mates as you english chaps would say) are for. Beautiful women are designed for other things...

All seriousness aside, I tend to agree with the OP. Born in Puerto Rico, travelled the world, and lived in SoCal most of my life so I've seen my share of beauties, but Thai women in general are blessed with what are in my opinion the sexiest physical characteristics known to mankind, complemented in most cases by a rather pleasant way of presenting themselves.

I make no judgement on their intellectual capacities or lack thereof, as that would be off topic and irrelevant anyway, since if I'm looking for an interesting debate on current events or the meaning of life I'll probably head to the pub instead of the bedroom.

To be more specific about what I personally find attractive about Thai ladies, may I submit for your consideration their amazing petite hourglass figures (tiny waists combined with perfectly proportioned hips and round firm gluteii -- yummmm!), thick manes of silky jet black hair, sublimely soft honey colored skin, ultra clean, tidy, sweet smelling private parts, and... well... y'all get my drift, eh?

Hitting the sauce a bit early today, are we?

I'm by no means an expert in Thai but have managed to pick up a fair amount in a relatively short period of time, and can make myself understood in most situations that don't require sophisticated expressions or specialized vocabulary. What I've realized is that in order to effectively communicate in Thai there are 3 critical aspects of the language in which you need to attain a certain level of proficiency before things will start coming together for you:

1. Vowel sounds - there are a number of vowels in Thai which are rather subtle and have no English equivalent, and as Meadish so eloquently explained, using a slightly wrong vowel sound completely changes the meaning of the word.

2. Vowel length - even if you get the sound just right, using a long vowel instead of a short one or vice versa will also change the meaning of the word.

3. The five tones - again, even if you get the vowel sound and length right, using the wrong tone will change the meaning of the word into something that makes no sense to a Thai person.

If you ever get serious about learning the language to any significant degree of proficiency, in my opinion there is no substitute for attending a proper Thai language class where you will be forced to converse in Thai for several hours a day over a period of at least a few weeks. Thai spouses' occasional help with a word or two here and there will not produce the desired result.

Incidentally, as others have indicated, simply using one word will rarely be effective in getting your meaning across in Thai, or most other languages for that matter. Asking where the bathroom is - hawng naam yuu tii nai krap? - or I would like a fork - kaw sawm nawy krap (please forgive the unorthodox transliteration ) are much more easily understood when couched in the phrases commonly used for such requests.

I'm American too, not that it matters for purposes of this discussion, and it seems obvious enough to me that the USA does not generally involve itself in the internal affairs of other sovereign nations for altruitstic reasons. We send the Marines, Special Forces, and/or CIA over when the government in its infinite wisdom has decided there is something vital to our own economic interests at stake.

If anything good ever happens to another country as a result of our intervention, well, that's probably just an unintended consequence.

After WW2 we sent a brilliant statistician named Deming over to help the Japanese rebuild their industries and teach them a little something about quality control. I reckon they learned that lesson even better than we'd probably hoped.

You might be interested to know that I voted for Bush twice.

What a surprise, ehh?

And Dakhar, I did say "majority of Thai women you guys have". Sorry I didn't highlight the word "majority" for you.

TG, I see you've got another couple of mental giants on the line here. How do you find the patience to debate these folks? A two-time Bush voter and a fella who's obsessed with the dimensions of male genitalia....

As for the OP, why generalize about an entire population from the bizarre behavior of one individual? Can't you just for a moment put yourself in the shoes of the poor underpaid schmuck who has to deal with the less than pleasant characters that comprise a large proportion of the farang tourist population in Bangkok? Wouldn't it irk you if day in and day out you had to haggle over 50 baht with all manner of obnoxious, sloppy, foul-smelling punters who, by coincidence of birth in a country with a currency worth 70 times as much as the local one, believe they are some sort of superior race? Throw an obligatory tattoed rental girlfriend into the mix and that'll impress the locals even more, right?

And what does any of this have to do with Thai logic, or the lack thereof?

It's the cultural differences that attracted many people to Thailand in the first place, so why do those same people then turn around and lament the fact that Thai people often see things differently than westerners?

After spending a year or two in country is it really so difficult to figure out how things work here, or why Thai people sometimes act the way they do?

If you think dealing with Thai people is challenging, imagine how an arrogant foreign person who couldn't speak any English might get treated in many areas of Texas or Mississippi, and you'll realize how tolerant and accomodating the Thai people really are. As for their logic, well..... maybe you need to think outside the western box a little bit to understand it, but rest assured there are reasons behind everybody's behaviour even though they may not be immediately obvious to the casual observer.

The alternative is to negotiate -- if they ask for 400 say you only have 200. In my experience they're happy with that. Sure you're still being ripped off, you know it, and that's a lousy feeling but at least it lessens the blow somewhat.

enigmatic

I hear what you all are saying but in Thailand it's like asking for ice water in hel_l.

Everyone has their values and beliefs based on their expierences in life. Mine has led me to the conclusion that aquiring software in this fashion is ok. Many opinions are different than mine due to the expierences others have had in their lives.

If all this makes me a bad person then so be it. Put my picture up on the wall next to Bin Ladin, Hitler and Al Capone. You guys are trying to soak up the water from a burst dam with a sponge.

The world runs on windows. To make it unavaliable to the poor is almost like withholding food from Africa. I'm not going to jump on that band wagon of Genuine Windows Vista. Bring the price down to something more realistic and I might consider changing my views. Realistic software prices is the best way to stop piracy. Asking people to stop pirating the software is like asking people not to have sex before they are married. It's not going to happen.

I concur. Loved Napster and dig Pantip too. Didn't Bill Gates "steal" the idea for Windows from Apple, who actually "stole" the idea from an old skool IBM engineers?

Fight the power!!

Up to you...

The recessive gene, when present, must be paired with the other parent's dominant or recessive gene to manifest the genetic characteristic in question.

I've never seen a blue-eyed 100 percent Thai person; according to Mendelian principles that would be genetically impossible. However, I've seen a blue-eyed luuk kreung boy who had a brown-eyed German father (whose mother had blue eyes) and a brown-eyed luuk-kreung Thai/American mother (one of whose parents also had blue eyes). That's how the recessive gene works. Any Thai person with true blue eyes - as GuestHouse has desribed - has Western blood somewhere in their ancestry, possibly many generations back and unbeknownst to them.

Incidentally, the boy was stunningly attractive.

Both of my luuk kreung kids have brown eyes (mine are hazel) and very light skin... gee, there's an idea for another topic: which do you prefer, light skin or dark skin in Thailand?

Whao or what was scampy?

Soundman.

I thought a scampy was a type of prawn or shrimp depending on which side of the big pond you come from. It is the dipped and battered and then put into hot oil - from my reading of this thread it is a person who is about to get the same treatment

CB

Sorry, that's tempura -- scampi is sauteed in a lemon garlic butter sauce.

The only thing sadder than blogging and then pimping it on a forum would be reading said blog, so umm... maybe when I run out of bathrooms to clean I'll give it a look. ;-)

Andrew: a good buddy of mine has created a website of Thailand stories (dot com). Check it out if you haven't already done so. You might want to submit some of your work over there.

You must be lucky

I must be very bad

last time i was in Bangkok we had to stop 5 taxis befire we could get one that would turn on the metre!

Sorry, but you must be doing something wrong.

First rule is not to take taxis parked in front of tourist areas, but rather catch one driving in the direction you want to go.

Second rule is be able to speak enough Thai to say where you want to go.

Third rule is act like you know what's up.

I use taxis every day when in Bkk and have never had a problem when following the above rules.

Err... were we talking about possible terrorist attacks in Thailand here or am I

in the wrong thread ?

Eh? Surely you realize that Terrorist attacks in Thailand... no, make that all terrorism, and virtually all of the world's evils in general.... are all related in some way to the Evil American Government?

And if you really get right down to it, aren't the Israelis the ones truly responsible for all the terrorism and evil in the first place? I mean, like that passenger van that was machine-gunned and the passengers murdered by the Islamic radicals down in Yala yesterday -- that was the American Goverment's fault because they support the Israelis who force all Muslims to justifiably kill non-Muslims, or other Muslims from different sects, because of the Palestinian situation.... pretty obvious, isn't it?

All right, that's it... countdown to topic closing in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1....

I understand that sometimes folks need to vent their frustrations, but really, this is another perfect example of how some people are simply unable to adapt to their environment. We are in Asia, obviously - not the West - and there is a different set of cultural norms regarding how personal space is dealt with.

If you ever pay close attention to what's going on you'll notice that there is always a way for you to manoevre in or out of parking spaces and driving situations, although it may require a little more imagination than you are accustomed to using back home.

As is true of many things here in Thailand, I actually prefer the local parking and driving "rules" to the rigid, highly regulated, and strictly enforced ones where I came from -- as long as I am able to take advantage and use them to my own benefit, as is usually the case.

And what about safety ? Take off your rose colored glasses jing jing. I prefer Thailand as well that's why i live here with my wife and 3 children. But the longer i am here the more i am amazed at some of the stupid, lazy and just plain ignorant moves the Thais make on the roads. I have to consider the safety of my 3 children before anything else. I do agree there is a system here and i do my best to conform. But it's time for the masses to practice some basic spatial awareness or continue the carnage that now exists. Do you have children here jing jing ?? Regards.AT

Yes, Austhaied, I have kids here. In fact I just drove today from Bangkok to Surin with my 2 week old son (we put the 16 month old on a train with his nanny) and no, he wasn't in a car seat for the entire distance. I've done many kilometers of driving both cars and motorbikes in Thailand as well as all over Europe and North America, and I agree that you really need to be on your toes here as people will do things we really wouldn't expect them to do back in Farangistan. Every time I hit the road for a long haul I have at least one close call and usually see some carnage along the way.

Don't get me wrong -- I don't believe that there is no danger on the roads here, or that the system couldn't stand some improvement. It's just that I have somehow gotten accustomed to the way things are, made certain adjustments in my attitude towards them, and am now fairly comfortable with the Thai transportation situation.

My wife, on the other hand, spends most of her time in sheer terror while I'm at the wheel.

I understand that sometimes folks need to vent their frustrations, but really, this is another perfect example of how some people are simply unable to adapt to their environment. We are in Asia, obviously - not the West - and there is a different set of cultural norms regarding how personal space is dealt with.

If you ever pay close attention to what's going on you'll notice that there is always a way for you to manoevre in or out of parking spaces and driving situations, although it may require a little more imagination than you are accustomed to using back home.

As is true of many things here in Thailand, I actually prefer the local parking and driving "rules" to the rigid, highly regulated, and strictly enforced ones where I came from -- as long as I am able to take advantage and use them to my own benefit, as is usually the case.

Get a multipoint on-demand electric water heater and mount it under the sink -- you can then have hot water for your sink and tub. Steibel Eltron makes a couple of different models.

I think that little bit of chaos is what a lot of people like here

For sure... personally I thrive on it, and all the people I know who are happy here are able to function well in an unstructured environment. By the same token, almost all the gripes I see from folks who look at Thailand in a negative light are related to the lack of fixed, predictable, Western-style rules.

If you're happy operating in an environment where the rules are... shall we say, flexible... then chances are you'll love this place.

Love Thai!!!!

Learning how to converse in Thai now.

Planning to go BKK on Oct.

Planning to find alternatives to learn Thai characters (and I found here)

Meeting thai lovers here...

Yep, Thailand is a great place to be. People, food, culture, lifestyle... for those things and a whole lot more, Land of Smiles is hard to beat.

There are some folks who moved here and then found out they couldn't adapt. It's not for everyone... you need to be comfortable living in a slightly chaotic environment. If you are flexible and enjoy a little less structured style of dealing with everyday life you can be very happy in Thailand.

I'm a Thai lover too!

I don't recall ever having checked someone's profile to find out personal information about them.

First of all, as a previous poster has said, I'm not looking for a date here. Aside from that, the internet is notorious for enabling people to pose as someone they are not, so whatever information they may provide is not really credible... surely some folks are honest but others are not. Also I've noticed that on all public internet forums there is inevitably a certain contingent of truly creepy types who are not above using personal information in ways that are not very nice, so in my opinion you'd have to be fairly naive to provide the tossers with the tidbits they're looking for.

Anyway, it's probably more interesting if some things are left to the imagination.

Why do they do it? Because they can. It all depends on whose money they are spending; my wife has a certain monthly household budget to work with and doesn't order any more than necessary unless I say dinner's on me, in which case the bill will be 500 baht for 4 people instead of 150 baht.

Rates have already been cut by almost 1 percent and the baht continues to appreciate, now trading at something like 32.75 to the dollar and getting stronger by the day. I wonder, how much of a rate cut does he think will be necessary to do the job?

PS I have not seen the use of kon (คน) in "Phom yaarge pai dauy (kon) khrap" ผมอยากไปด้วย (คน) ครับ - what does คน mean in this case or is it a polite/persuasion particle like na or khrap ?

It's just an optional component of the overall expression with ด้วย.

Hmm, I always thought it was ด้วยกัน (gan) not คน (kon). Is that entirely incorrect?