mfd101

The obvious reason for few or no Americans having been released is their continuing usefulness as hostages: The US Administration is the only government able to lean on the Israelis sufficiently to keep making concessions ...

(Yawn). Does it matter?

You too can be rescued! Flippers and oxygen tank optional.

She's Thai. You'ld think she'ld know better!

If you look at a map of the lake and surrounds, it's not obvious what the point of a new bridge might be. As for protecting the ecology of the lake ...

74 and I'm not attracted to disgusting processed foods but I'm trying to cut down on the more attractive ones (muesli, granola, rolled oats; lovely little cakes at Amazon & Starbucks; sugar of all kinds; boiled white rice (sigh) ... ). As far as I'm aware I'm doing fine.

Well, quelle surprise!

Oh isn't she luvly! cringe cringe.

My point was & is that what makes a country interesting is what makes it different. What our wunnerful modernity imposes is universal sameness, so everyone might just as well stay at home. That's why tourism is a self-defeating industry: The more successful it is, the more quickly it destroys the reasons why people want to visit.

Good luck with that.

And so, if boring Falangs have their way, what's interesting and different in Thailand will slowly be eliminated and you might as well stay in your boring little suburb in Falangland.

You've never seen them for yourself?

Not sure what people are complaining about. For those who live on disgusting processed foods the cumulative cost of food over time will be much less because of the reduction in your life expectancy.

I always visit Kinokuniya whenever I'm in BKK. Always struck by how few people are visiting, but there are always at least a few Thais.

So I can come out from under the bed? (It's been a while, what with the plague and so on!)

Why would you be (already) using such an expensive transfer method (poor exchange rates + atm costs)?

Oh dear! Perhaps they could buy a Chinese submarine instead.

Noone seems to have mentioned that the people who get the 600+ baht old-age payment are mostly people who have spent their lives NOT in the formal economy - piece workers, part-timers of all kinds, and of course millions of peasants in rural villages. And they have their own 'informal' arrangements out in the villages eg My PILs (just a little older than me) have paid a few baht monthly for many years in to the village 'life insurance' (my term) fund. When they die, their 2 youngest sons (including my partner) will receive some 200,000 baht out of the village fund. (That is, if it hasn't already been stolen by the village Head Person.)

I hadn't realised we had come so far!

Hope they can find their way thru the great Pacific. Left hand down a bit!

So much time & energy poured down the drain of tourism ... If only Thai governments and people devoted themselves to lifting education & productivity outcomes so they could lift their country out of the Third World/Second World borderlands.

I suspect that Thailand needs a Chinese-style simplified writing revolution ... One SIL (age 40) has 'been to university' (here in Surin - about school-leaving level, I should think). Is there a book in her little house? Not one. But the 2 small children - bright as a button - have a mobile phone each. Another SIL (mid-40s and intelligent, hard-working in a BKK factory) told me she tried to read a book once but it was SO boring ...

I gained at least an hour a day - probably 2 hours - to spend wasting time on Facebook.

And all of them following the very best of air safety practices ...

I guess they found the torpedoes couldn't reach all the way upriver.