mfd101

So let's advertize it and receive a reward (10 million extra visitors in 2024) ... Noone in this country every learns.

If we stand back from the petty details and the pettiness that accompanies them, this is on the whole good for Thailand. Clean up the messes of the past & move on. Even the Constitutional Court & the Electoral bodies will be learning about how to move with the times. Which can only be good for Pita & MFP.

Quite apart from choice of airport, choice of desk (male vs female) can be important. My experience, including for annual renewal of stay, is that women officers are often difficult & prickly & looking for a problem. This is not necessarily because they're after a bribe. More to impress the male boss with their professional competence & toughness.

Just a normal day's work for the wunnerful ladyboys of Thai Land. And the usual ridiculous tourists.

No mention of when or even if the other unknown millions of farmers without title to the land on which they have slaved all their lives will receive their land title. The current 25000 titles are referred to as 'a gesture'. Let's hope that's not the end of the matter.

Codswallop. Ancestor worship? Family before all else? The world is in motion but perhaps you hadn't noticed. Things change, people move on. Are things better? Some are, some not. Get used to it.

Ah, now there's a thought ...

Well, there's some revolutionary thoughts. The key is to turn them in to revolutionary action over the next 30 years ...

If this works out properly - ie not deflected by bureaucratic corruption, incompetence or dillydallying - it will make a big difference to my family here in deepest Isaan. The main difference will be psychological: greater security produces greater confidence & enhances ability to plan a better future. Passivity & helplessness diminish.

True, but the long-term determination and competence required are not exactly common in this wunnerful country.

The only way you can reform ANY bureaucracy - civilian or military - is by REDUCING their budget ie squeeze where it hurts. They hate it, but it works. But to do that, a government has to be strong, competent and confident ...

Visiting BKK last week the traffic was closer to gridlock than I've ever seen it.

It all went according to plan. Excellent demonstration for the children and parents of basic safety issues.

No, we had only the first 2 shots way back early on (at least in Thailand). Decided to await the latest vaccs for the latest variants, but the latter keep changing so the vaccs keep moving to the right ...

So, covid-catching in BKK is becoming a family tradition for my b/f & me. Last April we returned home from a week in BANGERS with our 3rd bout. The first 2 a year or so earlier in Surin were nothing to worry about - just tired & feeling down for a couple of days. Last April it was considerably worse - lasted 2 weeks of fatigue for both of us and my taste buds & sense of smell mostly disappeared and have stayed that way. This week in BKK my b/f developed the latest (JN.1) symptoms - hacking cough & stuffy nose. Lasted 3 days, now 99% recovered - so not real bad. Now I have it with similar symptoms though the cough is very mild and it's mostly stuffy nose - managed with Decolgen & Strepsils. Deaths in Usofa? Mmmmm, a whole nation of fat unhealthy people ...

Most of the Amazonian cities - not to mention their Nth American cousins - died off on the arrival of Europeans from 1492 on, killed off - IN ADVANCE OF THE EUROPEANS' ACTUAL ARRIVAL in the cities - by the European diseases (smallpox inter al) that travelled ahead of them. So all the Europeans saw when they got to the Amazon was empty rainforest and, in the north, empty cityscapes.

Thai 'tourists' are their own worst enemy. They assume that flouting the law as they do at home is the norm also in 'Western' countries.

As we were reminded just the other day, almost anything might in Japanese folklore be thought quite reasonably to cause an earthquake &/or tsunami.

Not obvious to me why anyone who claims to know about 'classical' music would want to hear any large modern symphony orchestra playing Bach, when his orchestral musics were written for whatever he had to hand - never more than 15 or 20 players - and of course on a different set of instruments tuned rather differently. You may be listening to Karajan but you're not listening to Bach.

The obvious demographic effect of fertility rates dropping below 2.1 all around the world (Africa hasn't got there yet) is that - assuming the broad accuracy of the statistics re numbers of sons and incidence of homosexuality - the number of homosexuals should already be reducing steadily everywhere. So the golden 'gay' years of the Western world may be receding. And the 'more and more seem to be homosexuals' is an effect of liberalizing social attitudes, which obscures the actual reduction - if that's what it is - in overall numbers. In about 20 years the picture should be clearer. Meanwhile the homophobes will be waiting breathlessly.

You're assuming there's only 'one way to be born with' a particular characteristic ie it must be genetic. But there's another way to be 'born with': that is, something unusual that happens in the womb. You are then 'born with' whatever the effect is but it's not genetic. In the case of male homosexuality, there's plenty of statistical evidence that the more male babies a woman produces over time, the more likely the boy is to be homosexual. That doesn't mean that a single male produced (such as me) cannot be homosexual or that any younger son will necessarily be homosexual. It means that the likelihood is greater and gets bigger and bigger with each successive boy that a given woman produces. The reasons are hypothesised to relate to fetal development of the embryo at the stage - a few weeks after fertilisation - when the original 'female' embryo (which all embryos start out as) undergoes the processes to become male. In a small number of instances the process is not completed for a variety of reasons and a homosexually-oriented baby results. The baby may be male or female according to the particular 'irregularity' that has occurred. For those who are interested in actual information - as opposed to nonsense and prejudice - a good starting point would be to browse the Wikipedia entries for 'Sexual differentiation in humans' and 'Biology and sexual orientation'. There are a hundred and one scientific books and papers to read on the subject.

TAT's strength is propaganda, not maths.

So that's all splendid (in theory) for the offspring of the Upper Middle Classes & the wealthy, almost the only ones who (currently) get near a tertiary education institution. But for the other 95% of the population, you have to start with the 5- and 6-year olds first along with their teachers, then work your way up from there. It's gonna be a long haul!

On that basis very few people here on AN would have anything to worry about. Whether we would still need - in practice - to make a tax declaration in Thailand each year remains to be seen.

Given the audience, why wouldn't it?