Choscura

They get treated well, generally. The most common thing (thai) people call them is "dek khreung", or "half child" (no, not that they're half a person, the grammar in this case would actually be "child and a half" if it were taken as an indication of number/amount).

Don't use pills or caffeine. your body will stay active despite one and become inactive and run (temporarily) on the other, so you sleep and wake up still tired, or you try not to sleep and wind up zonked on the city bus.

the easiest way to stay alert is to regularly get up, stretch, exercise, and to drink cold water. Both together work best- one or the other by itself works just fine. If you really have to push it for a few days, get some food ever few hours- just a handful of some complex carbohydrate (brown rice, whole wheat bread, fibrous fruits like dates, etc) and some protein and a small amount of fat. The easiest example of this would be to eat a piece of fruit like an apple and have a handful of peanuts or cashews. avoid sugary drinks and food because you'll get a sugar high, your body will rely on that sugar rush and then all that sugar will be used up and you'll crash.

Thai Rak Thai

Thai Gliat Thai

Thai Rak Khon Thai Thii Gliat Khon Thai

Farang ja ngong mot luuy, Mai hai dtong son jai

Farang Thii ja mii arai waa gor ben banya orn.

translation:

Thai people love thai people.

Thai people hate thai people.

Thai people love thai people that hate thai people.

All foreigners are idiots <alternate translation: ignorant>, ignore them.

All foreigners with opinions are mentally handicapped.

This isn't our country and it's not our game. Saying that Thaksin is worse than whats-his-face is now is a moot point. they're both billionaires, so that comparison is moot. They're both educated outside of thailand- so that's a moot point too. Saying that one group or the other is better is moot. Both are using illegal means to oust politicians who may or may not care about them. Thaksin is simply notable because he's the ONLY one to have served a full term in office, and even after being ousted, people want him back because he made life easier for a lot of people with difficult lives.

Welcome to Thailand. Love it, Live it, Leave it alone.

Perfect. Just the kind of sensationalism the kii-nok foreigners here love. Can't wait to see a similar situation on a Thai Soap or any resulting movie.

To be fast...

-Full auto is only uses in military weapons because it is there to help you kill people

-7.62 is a very good all-around bullet for hunting small and medium game (anything from cat-sized to medium-sized deer)

-rifle calibers do not magically change depending on what country the rifle is in

-every rifle only fires one single type of round (there may be different categories of that same round, including but not limited to: quieter versions that work with silencers, versions with heavier or lighter bullets, versions with longer or shorter bullets or other changes in bullet shape and geometry, and versions which have different casings-- better quality casings mean better accuracy, etc)

-using a gun does not make you violent in the same way that cutting up a steak does not train you to butcher your fellow man. opportunity must be matched by intent to commit whatever atrocity.

-depending on where you are, police in Thailand will either a) not care about you owning, carrying, and shooting a rifle or not care but demand money anyway

-buying legally is a pointless endeavor. because if anything happens where you use the gun, legal or not, you're still going to be blamed because thats the only thing foreigners are good for. maybe if you repel a terrorist attack, they'll let you off, and hey, good for you if you do, but if you accidentally hit (and God forbid, kill) a thai person with a stray bullet, game over.

-buying legally funds state-sponsored criminals. everybody here complains about corruption. you do the math.

simple: put the dog on a line. make sure it can't hang itself.

otherwise, get rid of the dog. take responsible care of it or else don't have it.

edit:

to all you cat fanciers, take care of your cats. there is no reason for them to need to go outside your house. if they go out of the house, I would consider them to be strays and not let them back in. I say this from experience. I have three cats that were inside and now are not allowed in the house. they aren't clean unless they're taught to be or else unless you give them regular baths. sure they lick themselves, but that is not 'clean'. to all you westerners with cats, you probably don't understand this, the same way I didn't, but go pet a stray cat in the market somewhere and feel your hand after you pet her and you will understand.

I do like cats better in one way, though: cats don't bark at *anything*.

It is a huge problem here & mostly undereported.

Yes it is a problem here.

And will be so until we get into the same way of thinking as we did back in the West.

I now talk purely about how the society look, think and act about this particular issue.

It also used to be a dark issue back home (just as incest was) that nobody rather wanted to talk about.

As soon as we got it out and people became aware that this was not going away unless it was dealt with properly, then finally things started to happen.

this is going to be a problem. thai society isn't good at dealing with things in the open. everybody wants to look polite, which is kind of funny, because almost nobody actually *is* polite. I'm not saying this is a bad thing: they have an established social system in place which has worked for hundreds (if not thousands) of years- but I am saying that dealing with things in the open is difficult in thai culture.

Any luck? I'm looking for one too.

if anybody has any info, please post it here!

I don't have the energy to go through point by point your naive and simplistic post, which suggests you very rarely open a newspaper beyond the sports pages or read the news section of Thaivisa, but please, oh please, explain this particular Toxin-credited project:

"Or how about the time that Thaksin audited all the foreign 'companies' that were being created and then ignored to allow old money-bags farangs to live with their (generally) prostitute (usually) isarn girlfriends."

I'm sure all the "old money-bags farangs" and even young, non-loaded farangs with Isaan girlfriends are dying for an answer.

Just as well I'm skint and married, or I may have been up-in-arms about your stereotyping skills.

I'm sorry, but as soon as I saw that your post was from kon kaen I was laughing too hard to really pay attention.

this is getting out of hand. I'm going to give my two cents and get out.

the protesters have a right to protest. that is reasonable. they have a right to express their displeasure. this is all well and good.

however, they don't have a right to shut down a country with their protests. this is unacceptable. and this, like it or not, is what the protesters are attempting to do. so far they've stranded thousands of people trying to get in or out of the country.

then there's the simple fact that the prime minister they're protesting against is, according to everything I've seen, a decent guy. he is highly tolerant of childish behaviour (and make no mistake: taking over two airports, blocking off roads, shooting into crowds, and shutting down public means of communication can at best be called childish behaviour), although this may be him waiting for something. he isn't continuing the ridiculous war on drugs thaksin initiated. he isn't reversing everything thaksin did regardless of it being good or bad, he's doing the right thing as best he can, given his situation.

and above and beyond this, Thaksin legitimately did a lot of good things for thailand. has anybody heard of OLPC, the One Laptop Per Child project? it's a swedesh initiative to get laptops to every child in the world, by developing a cost-efficient useful laptop that children can learn essential computer skills on. Or how about the time that Thaksin audited all the foreign 'companies' that were being created and then ignored to allow old money-bags farangs to live with their (generally) prostitute (usually) isarn girlfriends. I don't see this as a loss, although I can understand how it might have upset some people here. these are legitimately good, decent things that thaksin did for thailand, and this is just a small piece of it. yes, he did bad stuff too. yes, he should be held responsible for that. but the thai politics forced the hands of the new PM to get rid of many of these projects that he couldn't figure out how to take credit for, and thailand suffered as a result. it's still suffering now. are any non-thais aware that the standard fee for a poor family to give birth in a hospital has gone from free (thaksin era) to 8000+ baht? and this is a good thing that he's out? no wonder he's still so popular some places. he had an effect that helped the majority of the people and stepped on some toes that eventually decided to kick him in the legs for it. and the fun thing is, there are people here on this board- I know it, and you know who you are- who are selfish enough to say "well, sure, but he stopped me from breaking the rules, so I hate him anyway."

with this in mind, linking the new prime minister and his mild-mannered (apparently) ways to thaksin... I can't really see anything bad. thaksin did the corruption on his own- this new guy wasn't one of the ones paying him, and he wasn't getting paid by thaksin, so I don't see a problem there. I haven't heard of people getting shot by police for having drugs lately, so I'm much more relieved about that now too. a good improvement over the thaksin era.

so when you look at all this- democratically elected guy, just doing his job, letting people live their lives, putting things back in order, generally- what exactly are they protesting? and how, again, HOW, does it advocate a democracy by the very act of tearing it down and stopping it from functioning?

this is stupid and childish, and I've very little sympathy for the protesters right now. all- not most, but all- the people I've talked to- every single person- has been frustrated with the protesters. most consider them idiots. some say that yes, the government is corrupt and needs to be shook up, but even the people that say this say that what the protesters are doing is wrong.

so why the hel_l *is* this being allowed to continue? I've tried to look as objectively as I can at all the information available to me, and I can't for the life of me figure out any of the answers to the three big questions- what exactly are they protesting, what do they want to accomplish (beyond the PM stepping down- who do they want instead, and a related question- why didn't they vote for him when the elections were held?), and why exactly is it being allowed to continue?

I propose a spin-off to the popular show "the dog whisperer". it should be an angry 180-kilo east-european transvestite with a beard and a 3-foot cast-iron dildo to hit people with when they are stupid. call it "the idiot whisperer". then we take him and the dog whisperer (both) to the guy described in the original post, and make a double episode.

the quickest way to get your point across to a motorbike taxi driver (or tuktuk/songthaew/etc) is to ask him if he thinks you're a retard. thai culture normally won't let them say 'yes' to this. btw, the thai word for 'retard' is 'banya awn' <soft knowledge>.

most of the time, the fact that I'm 2-3 times the size of the average thai keeps the situations defused, but if all else fails, do everything in your power to make his friends think he/she's being unreasonable. act insulted, but act like you're not going to start s|-|][t with him, so why should he with you? you're both reasonable people, after all...

oh, and if he's got a weapon- even if you don't think he'll use it- just do whatever you have to to get out of there in one piece. for all people unfamiliar with dealing with guns, you *always* assume that it's loaded, because thats the worst case, and from there you can only get lucky if things are different than you think.

Despite all of this, still no spraying or smoking has been done recently in the moo ban. How expensive are those smoking machines? Instead they build fake observation towers at the village entrance which must have cost half the price of a single floor 2 bedroom house.

OMG what village are we talking about here? Is it anywhere near Tumbon Chagkphong in Amphur Klaeng where I am intending to settle with my girlfriend from end-October? Would I be signing my death warrant were I to proceed with my plans? Where/what is the "moo ban"??

"moo ban" is thai for "neighborhood" or "block".

my first thought:

this is sick. this is horrible, stupid reporting done to keep the length of the story as short as possible in an attempt to completely glaze over it.

my second thought:

thai prison is exactly what someone who would do this deserves.

my third though:

I hope the police catch the bastard.

my fourth thought:

it can't take, long, they're only a foot away from finding the owner of the leg.

I guess you'll all be left to your imaginations.

I can't honestly think of why this is a big deal. who cares? if you're going after the girl and you get her, you don't need her to wear short/tight clothes like that because you'll probably see her without them, and if you're going after a girl like that and can't get her, why are you even bothering going after her? get real, leave her alone, and stick to the bargirls.

another dengue case to report, my SO was diagnosed with it early yesterday morning. she's on antibiotics (the size of horse pills!) and paracetamol, I'm getting her to eat as much as I dare and she's drinking plenty of water. also I got my hands on some very good mosquito repellent and we are using that to keep her from spreading the disease.

I'll update more if anything else of note happens, but be careful people. I was floored when she was diagnosed, because I'd joked wit her about being diagnosed with all sorts of horrible diseases earlier, and dengue was one of them. just a big shocker.

watching the video, I can't bring myself to really feel sorry for anybody involved in this mess. I don't feel sorry for the guy for dying. sure it sucks, but thats life, it ends. I don't feel sorry for the thai girl. she's got it made, as she stands right now. I'm not sorry for the rest of the family. sure it seems unfair on the surface, but this is reality biting them in the shiny surgical plastics, not some huge horrible injustice that has been perpetrated against them.

none of this is newsworthy. if I ever meet the thai wife there, I'll buy her a pint (or whatever she wants to drink) and give her a toast for putting up with the most annoying section of the most annoying class of the most annoying state of one of the most obnoxious countries on earth for so long.

as that *blank* in the video said,

If I could deport her I would

some people need to be deported from the states. but the problem is that most of them are from the states, and need to be deported because they have absolutely no perspective.

I may stop by. +1

use common sense. old ladies aren't going to give you a pickle massage, and young ladies running about in their undies probably don't know how to give any other type. rule of thumb: don't ask for what isn't offered. if it's available, you will be offered.

I'm going to put in two cents and shut up about this.

the war on drugs is two-fold: first, there is the side of the people that legitimately want to get rid of the drugs. the do-gooders in the government, and they really do exist and believe in what they're doing, but suffer from a crippling amount of ignorance. these are the guys that follow their 'elders/betters' who actually suggest these nonsense policies.

the second group of people are the people who profit from the drug wars. this doesn't mean they're drug dealers or drug lords: this is just as much the police who get huge budget increases to deal with the 'drug problem'. it's a self-sustaining mess wherever it is, be it in the west or in southeast asia or in africa, etc. the drug lords and the police end up pulling in the same direction and usually get more money for it- the politicians throw more money at the police in the form of better weapons, higher training budgets, etc (remember, these guys do usually like what they do for a living), higher pay, better benefits (medical, dental, insurance, etc), and the drug lords get away with charging an arm and a leg for generally really simple chemicals that are easily and cheaply produced, so they make a 10,000% profit on the stuff.

I say we just tell the sods that the only people flying low enough to rattle the windows are taliban, and if they want to make themselves a better target, by all means...

In an attempt to plan as much as is umanly possible I have literally thought about my spending down to the last beer. So here goes. If anybody would like to point out any miscalculation on my part I'd be ever so grats. All figures are monthly.

2 bedroom house or 1 bedroom apt. 7k or buy for 2m bht

Vegertarian diet with fruit everyday and fresh veg. 6k Cooking at home, very little processed food.

Bills: water 200bht, gas 300bht, electricity 1000bht (fan most of the time, ac in hot season) ADSL 700bht, cable tv(only premier league matters)300bht, tel 200bht = 2700bht......lets say 3k

Scooter. 500bht for gas. 500bht for repairs and eventual replacement. 1k

Health. 500bht. Self insured really. But I almost never get ill.

Things for house 2k, clothes 1k, electronics 1k, books 1k........not into stuff at all. Hard to average out this as a monthly, but this is my best shot. = 5k

Entertainment. I usually drink 3 large beers twice a week. 300bht x2. Bowling daytime 200bht x2. Sports...50bht x4 Hiking 200bht 5/6 beers at home 200bht = 7k

Partner. Dinner out once a week. 1000bht Cinema and cheap meal 600bht = 7k

Travel. Once a year a month traveling with my friend. 20 quid a day backpacking. But minus the costs that I wont be incurring at home, plus a cheap flight or two....lets say 3k a month.

TOTAL 40k a month

Now, by now of course I look a bit anal, but at least........no there is no excuse. But as long as I havent short changed myself anywhere it seems that this 40k will provide me with quite a nice life.

I love reading, nature, exercising, music, chatting with friends. So with the above I really believe that I would have enough of what is needed to live my version at least of the good life.

But have I overlooked anything?

a 4 bedroom house can be had in sancampen for around 2-3000. in san sai it's about 3,000. my house, a town house on the superhighway, is 2 bedrooms and 3,500. if you're drinking the local beer, it's 3 large bottles for about 100, not 300. and how the hel_l can you spend 1000 baht on your gf/bf in just one meal? I don't even know how to do that here. the cinema/cheap meal thing.... the tickets cost about 120 baht. so you're up to 240. a cheap meal is another 360 baht on top of that? no way. a cheap meal here (and a good one) is about 20-40 baht, maybe a bit extra for the whole vegetarian thing but I can't really see spending more than 60 on that.

for chiang mai, you almost never need an aircon. you'll use it maybe 2 weeks during the hot season if you have it, and if you don't have it, it's not a big loss. other than that, with the bills, the gas will be a about right if you cook at home every day with it, the water is cheap here (I get one of those 10-liter things once a week or whenever I need it for 15 baht, so one of those per person? 30 baht a week, tops).

40,000 a month is a ridiculous amount to spend. I can see managing to spend that much if you've got a house and a family to support, but even with two people, 15,000 is a more realistic number for all the stuff you're talking about doing, maybe 25,000 a month if you want to go out and have a nice dinner once or twice a week.

I don't like the idea of the State forcing anyone to do anything. I don't like helmet laws, but I'll always wear one when I ride. I don't like seatbelt laws, but I always put mine on when in a car. I won't smoke a cigarette today, but I don't like the idea that there is a law to prohibit it. I like to choose for myself. But that's not the issue here.

Sorry, I know this is slightly off the main topic but I just wanted to point out that seatbelt and helmet laws, however you feel about them personally, have saved countless lives over the years and even in countries such as Thailand where they are often ignored, those wearing them at the time of their it'll-never-happen-to-me accident have reason to be thankful for being "forced" to wear them. The families of those who exercise their "right to choose" in the face of overwhelming evidence face emotional trauma and often financial ruin when the predicable happens and I feel strongly that where education proves ineffective or simply too slow it's the state's duty to try to get people to protect their well being. Phew!

Back to smoking. I applaud the Thai's for their stance on smoking (guess what, I used to puff on 30 a day too) and am pleased to see that it's not as prevalent here as in many of our neighbours - try buses in China, for example. Hopefully the new laws will lower the appeal of smoking by making it more inconvenient and thereby discourage kids from taking it up in the first place.

If all else fails, try hypnosis. It's worked for me for the past twenty seven years...

two things.

first, it's bad enough to be forced to do something, but I see it as even worse when people tell you to be thankful you were forced to do it.

second, can you recommend a good hypnotist for this somewhere in thailand?

I've got the re-entry permit and everything, but anyway, thanks for the info. I'll post back after I go back home and let anyone interested know how this went.

hey, I've come back to the states for a holiday and have renewed my passport (gotten a new one) and now I need to know about getting my visa's moved over to it, if this is possible at all. so anyway, here's the basic info- I've got US citizenship/passport, a non-immigrant visa which is currently a student visa at payap university, and it's good until november '08, so I'd kind of like to keep the current visa if it's possible.

this normally wouldn't have even come up if the customs officer here hadn't whined about how worn out my passport is, but whatever. it's done, how do I deal with this?

thanks in advance.