Jonathan Swift

It helps if you can avoid oncoming traffic.

More likely just an inexperienced rider. Riding a motorbike requires 360º awareness at all times, but who knows why he veered off. Mishandling of the controls?

Fireball XL5/Space City.

It's probably not hard at all, but they have money to spend, and Thailand wants and needs their money. The motorbike rentals need their money. And though your bigoted view may be that they're all "young worthless types" the reality is that each person is an individual, neither all bad nor all good, and this is a manageable nuisance. How to manage it, and what value to place in their tourism, is up to the Thai police and immigration, and they are entitled to make their own judgments, free of bigotry. They may be immature and bad behaved, perhaps can't hold their liquor, but there are no more "worthless" than any other ethnic group of misbehaving tourists.

Unfortunately you can't deport Thais for bad behavior. Certainly we don't want foreigners pouring in and adding to the problem. And I'll add that in my 10 years here most of the idiot drivers that I've seen have been tourists. But I don't live in your village, every place is going to have its local color. I will will not say that every "crazy" Thai driver is equally dangerous, some of them are more like stunt drivers, and know what they're doing.

American here - Americans in the US speak fluent gibberish. "Aks me a question" and "I could of" etc. But your'e right, the few Americans I run into in Thailand are quite understandable.

Yeah, no one buys your whiny poor helpless Brit victim version. They brought it on themselves. When you're directed to leave a bar, duh, you leave. The few times I was ever asked to leave a bar I said nothing other than to clarify the reason if possible. Never threw a punch in the process. Wonder why they were thrown out? Bad behavior? Ya think? And how stupid to you have to be to provoke Thai bouncers? I don't think it's right to beat someone to a pulp, but they could have easily avoided it.

Suspicious story to play on public sympathy. The leg may be 3 cm shorter, but that doesn't mean surgery was "botched", it could be just the way it healed. Your leg will never be the same after that kind of accident. I didn't see anything in the story that would indicate fault on the part of the surgeon. Maybe it WAS the surgeon's fault, but there's not enough info in the story.

More details from yahoo news: https://www.yahoo.com/news/youtube-chef-chopped-boyfriend-dumped-162444115.html

Spanish chef carves up his boyfriend. I'm gonna stick with Thai food.

Wonder of existing expats will be allowed to keep their present limits grandfathered in, I think they did that with earlier retirees

Yes laws should be fairly and equally applied. But I suggest you buy a dictionary. Arabs are not a "race". They're an identifiable ethnic group from a particular region who speak Arabic. The middle east has many culturally diverse Arabic speaking peoples who are not "Arabs". If any Arab tourists exhibit a pattern of bad behavior as a group or groups, calling attention to themselves along with complaints, then it's fair to place that group under scrutiny. Foreigners should respect the country in which they are only a guest. Thailand is entitled to subject foreigners to higher scrutiny for many obvious reasons. In this case bad behavior of one group of foreigners can effect the overall tourist industry and reputation of a region. There is nothing in this story that suggests that any innocent people are being targeted. Have any "Arabs" complained of mistreatment? What about the biker gangs? Outaws, Hell's Angels. Are they a "race" and are they being unfairly targeted? There is nothing wrong with keeping an eye on those whose misbehavior attracts negative attention and going after any lawbreakers. You must be one of those who cries racism any time a farang is prosecuted.

Pretty much everything. You're completely out of touch. If you kept up with news and current events you'd have seen countless statements by law enforcement and political leaders as to the illegality of prostitution, and just because it's tolerated doesn't mean it's still not illegal on the books. This is a debate that is nearly constant amongst authorities. Go back to your beer, leave the intellectual heavy lifting to those who are qualified.

have you noticed that Thais do not bless sneezes, nor do they know what you mean when you say that? Because the blessing of sneezes came from the European mythology of demons entering you when you sneezed, or something like that.

that is a noun. You missed the point of the joke

I don't think the gang names are printed on their passports nor do they write it on any of their forms. "reason for visiting Thailand: Murder and mayhem"

Thailand's version of "Florida man . . . "

Umm, because there are laws that say so?

He likely had some arrangement in place before he made his plans

"They carefully removed the stainless-steel device, providing the much-needed relief". Ummm, "relief"?

And that is the definition of predatory lending.

vanity, status are not limited to Thailand

Oh, so humane of you to sympathize with these murderers. Will you be contributing to their defense then? If there is so much of this terrible injustice and it bothers you so much why are you here? It's their country. They have every right and justification to delegate their priorities as they see fit with regard to foreigners who commit crimes without explaining to you. Plus, you don't know what goes on behind the scenes, the stories that don't make the papers. A crime by a foreigner is news by its very nature. They are often international criminals. Crimes by Thais are not necessarily priority news. How much of what you think is unfair is simply the news media making its own choices? But wasn't there a Thai woman who poisoned a bunch of people? Did the police do their jobs on that one? Kind of proves you wrong, doesn't it? Plenty more examples which you conveniently ignore when you whine about "injustice".

I used to do this in the US, it varies somewhat country to country. As I recall you can put the name of your contact at your hotel and the hotel phone number for person inviting you. I think I used to use a lady friend and her phone number, even if I didn't know her number, I think I used the phone number for my apartment. A lot of times you have to guess at what to put in. You can even make stuff up sometimes. There is no real reason why you won't get it, but if there is any issue they should contact you and inform you what is needed. Thailand is uniquely straddling extremely modern culture as well as extremely backward artifacts. Something to be mindful of ahead of time. As an example, when I file my 90 day report online fully half of the form's lines are left blank, and it goes through like that. In another case, when I had to enter the type of retirement visa, which was non-O, I had to enter OA for the form to progress. Good luck and have fun, cheers.

"the growing needs of tourists." haha. I think we know what will be growing.