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Being that the topic is what it is... I would guess by the context that he meant that the people who put the coins in their ears are the dimwits. Not sure how or why you might read between the lines to come to such possible conclusions as you did, otherwise unless you have such a low view of Thai people...?

Then fire him, blacklist him, publicize his name and photo, and have him publicly flogged.

Personally, I'd be all for corporal punishment. And I'd give the father of the child first dibs to be the one to mete out the whipping or caning, if he wanted. And it should be done in front of city hall for all to see. It would be good to televise it as well. People need very explicit examples, especially around here! It seems to be such a common story of abuse in the schools. I am quite surprised there aren't more cases of fathers going to get justice on their own. If they didn't deal out some pretty severe punishment and it were my child, the perpetrator would definitely wish they had given him a more severe punishment by the time I was done with him. 40 centimeters above ground? As far as I'm concerned some of these guys, especially the sexual predators, are lucky they aren't a meter UNDERground.

I sure wouldn't bet on that. Maybe relocated to another school at worst.

That's fair.

I wasn't coming from a position of being "all defensive", at all. There was no offense to defend, that I can see, other than against what I believe are objective facts. I was simply pointing out what I believe is true. I may have read between the lines a bit too much in what I thought was your insinuation. Perhaps it's from being so accustomed to seeing seemingly every Tom, Dick, and Harry expat having some sort of hang-up or insecurity and in some bizarre way feel the need to bash, belittle, and berate everything American as being worse than everywhere else on the planet, not that there isn't plenty to gripe about, as Americans themselves know a LOT better than anyone else.... I did not suggest that this happens more in the US than other countries, as you say. I actually said nearly the exact opposite. No doubt, attractive women often get special treatment in many settings. I agree. I took exception with what you said re "An attractive female in the US can easily talk her way out of getting a speeding ticket." That is utter nonsense, as I explained before. As for just what it was that got the woman in the story some sort of special treatment... I have no idea. I don't pretend to be able to read the minds and hearts, i.e., motives, of anyone where it is not explicitly clear. She, having experienced the interaction directly and being completely unbiased and not immoderately proud of her language competency :P, apparently thought it was due to her English fluency. Regardless of the source, that is a plausible idea. Others, with their subjective idea of her being attractive, thought that was the reason, which is also plausible. Who knows..... It very well may have been an innocent mistake of someone speaking with her and not being able to detect an accent, assumed she was an American.... I have no idea. If that were not the case, I don't know why they would have mistakenly directed her to a place where only Americans could go. So, that seems to be more plausible to me. I have experienced many people who are horrible at detecting accents, even when I think the accent is quite pronounced. It is eminently likely we will never know which is the case in this situation and I couldn't care less.

What is a "Chinese person"? In an article like this, he should be referred to by his nationality IMO. If this guy is a naturalized (as we call it in America, not sure if that's an international way of saying that) Thai citizen from China (i.e., a Thai citizen who was originally a Chinese citizen), the xenophobia and insecurity of the Thai press is on about as clear display as possible here. NOBODY ever refers to me as Icelandic or Canadian because that's where my family is from... and NOBODY ever refers to any of my family, who are naturalized US citizens, as Icelandic or Canadian. That would be ridiculous, we are all Americans and none of us would ever think of describing ourselves as Icelandic or Canadian without further clarification. Of course, I don't know anything more than what the summary of the article said, but it sure would appear that this guy is Thai. What Chinese person has such a clearly Thai name? He may originally be from China, but I highly doubt he is Chinese. It would be acceptable to call him Chinese Thai or as many people in Thailand seem to prefer, Thai Chinese (I think the difference likely came from grammatical differences in the English and Thai languages, with the modifier coming before or after the noun). There are some explanations of usage, hows and whys, in referring to people of mixed backgrounds (heritage, ethnicity, and nationality) by various writing guides, of which much of journalism appears to be completely ignorant of these days.... One could refer to the the New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, the MLA Manual, the New Oxford Style Manual, the Chicago Manual of Style, or the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) (which I'm most familiar with, having been forced into it for academic publishing purposes along with the Linguistic Society of America's Style Sheet, a guide with a more narrow focus for a specific field of study). On this issue, although I think it is still incomplete, since there seems to be a tendency to mix ethnicity or region with nationality, the APA guide gives a fair explanation that is helpful in being clear when writing about people of mixed background, if you're interested (if you even read this far! lol). https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-language/racial-ethnic-minorities

So, because you're an American, you speak for all American men??? That is one heck of a generalization. It may be the case that men (EVERYWHERE) are "easily enamored by a pretty face (and a hot body)", the insinuation that America is more this way (both being enamored and that of giving exceptional treatment to such women) than other countries throughout the world is just plain and simple BS. And in my experience, although limited to 20 some-odd countries, I'd say that this is less likely to happen in America than nearly every country I've gotten to know to some degree. There is such an extreme push to treat women "equally" in America, I believe this kind of behavior is MUCH more limited than most of the world's countries. An attractive female in the US CANNOT "easily talk her way out of getting a speeding ticket". You apparently don't know many police officers and how a woman attempting to use her beauty to get out of things is more likely to guarantee a woman a ticket than not, by the vast majority of officers. I'm guessing that you must be reliving a time of your youth many decades ago when what you describe may have been more likely than these days. Virtually everyone I know in America despise, to the nth degree, women who try to use their beauty to gain an advantage!

The more overstays, the more cash flow via penalties....

<deleted> kind of priority is that!??? Earning money?? A 13 year old? How about her needing to be in school, not earning money!?

You're right, I misunderstood. I understood your question "Do you believe me?" to be applying to the whole of the story, after which it was asked, and I was pointing out that there is much more to the story than what you wrote and if the multitude of other details were included, then one might become more inclined to believe those parts of the story that may be more difficult to believe if they were taken on their own. Of course, nobody can plausibly refute that the two items you extracted from the whole, taken on their own with no other evidence, would have an extremely low probability of having happened, as have many things when they are disassociated from the entirety of their historical context.

That's a good deduction, since the article says she's from Uganda....

Kind of curious where Nigeria comes into the picture...? The article says she is Ugandan.

No problem. Your comment doesn't come across as an attack at all. I would just say that your hypothetical story is very different from the story of Christianity, which it is apparent you are making the comparison to. More than 500 people witnessed "Coolguy" alive after he died and came back to life. And on top of that, many of those who witnessed him come back to life, went on to horrific deaths due to them not recanting the facts of what they witnessed. How many people do you know would insist on something like that all the way to being tortured and killed for it? And "Coolguy" also somehow happened to fulfill hundreds of prophecies made from hundreds of years past. There is a lot more to the story... that said, no doubt that some people would still have a hard time believing it for whatever personal beliefs/reasons they may have.

It is hypocritical foolishness.

Not sure what something that appears to be improbable to someone has to do with being publicly derisive toward their belief. Just because something appears to be improbable, does that now require people to publicly or personally deride the sincere and well-meaning beliefs of others, particularly when they are not demanding the one to whom it appears to be improbable to also believe it? It's kind of the opposite of the demand that is of late being kowtowed to re using certain pronouns of any individuals preference and if you don't, retribution is coming your way. If you publicly or personally deride that preference/belief, you better watch your back. For some reason, condescension of religious beliefs is not only tolerated in this forum, it is encouraged by the writers of articles posted on it. Very sad IMO.

I agree with the gist of what you say, except that it falls flat in defining Christianity with Kenneth Copeland and Benny Hinn, who are considered by mainline and orthodox Christianity to be heretics and blasphemers - not Christian. There will always be aberrations in any given belief that to which a group adheres. That there are these kind of outliers that appear to hijack a belief system and turn it into something self-serving should be no surprise. I don't think it is particularly predominate in the USA, although that is where there is plenty of money and thereby plenty of media coverage and ability to propagate, thus they become more well known. These kind of snake oil salesmen are all over the world in big numbers and I'd be willing to bet that they are in every belief system. But I do agree with the gist of "Christianity has gone that way" that you mentioned, in that there seems to be more of a prevalence of self-serving and working hard to get ahead/wealthy/more comfortable than what it appears the Jesus of Christianity taught, to be sacrificial of oneself in loving and helping others.

Nor, it could be said, is it any more stupid than the loads of condescending comments, regarding one of the majority world religions with the grandiose self-assuming all-knowing statements declaring it to be strange, have any veracity to them and which essentially declare the speaker/writer to be God themselves by declaring such things as silly or strange. To be so incredibly in-your-face rude and very purposely offensive toward so many people says a lot about the character of such writers/commenters. Why people, who likely otherwise profess to be "tolerant" or "open-minded", are so fantastically intolerant and abrasively rude and narrow-minded is a wonder in itself.

You say that the article said that he knew her? and yelled for her? and was in the hall outside the room? I am guessing that you misread the article. If that isn't the case, then you must have read a different article than the one posted. None of those three things you mentioned are in the article and actually quite the opposite things are written. There is nothing in the article to make one believe he knew her. He didn't yell for her, according to the article. It said that she was the one doing the yelling, not him. And she wasn't yelling to him, she was yelling for help because she was just robbed by the purse snatching punks. There doesn't appear to be any hall outside the room according to pics with the article and it mentioned that he saw them turning around an outside corner - nothing about a hall. You also mentioned about purse snatching. You didn't seem to think that they snatched her purse from a motorbike, yet that is exactly what the article says they did. ???? You may want to read the article again, more closely.... or just read the relevant parts that I copied below. "The Dutch victim then came out after finishing bathing to find his cash missing and signs of someone having entered his room. He said he saw the suspects turning around a outside corner, so he ran after them and heard a call for help from Ae. The suspects were able to get away on a motorbike, according to Mr. Christian. Ae, a Thai female victim, told police she saw two skinny male suspects standing about 170 cm and 160 cm aged 20-30 years old running past her. She said she did not raise her guard, thinking the suspects were only the hotel’s guests until the suspects hopped on their motorbike, turned back, and snatched a purse from her before escaping." (bolded emphases mine)

I appears like you're under the impression that he didn't lock his door... but according to the article, it appears that he did have his door and it was "tampered" with. At any rate, your advice is good, although I think that if my door were "FLAMING", I'd be more likely to unlock it and get the heck out of there!

4,000 baht = a wad of cash? Wow, and here I was thinking that I should be making more of my finances, not realizing that I was a wadster! ????

I never mentioned anything on my thoughts regarding hotels rooms being a secure place, but being robbed at a hotel room is far from a common occurrence. I'm sure it happens, but I don't actually recall reading an article of an instance. Being burglarized is not particularly rare though. Of course this was a burglary, but unusual in that the room was occupied at the time. I don't consider hotel rooms, when not occupied, as a secure place to leave valuables, pretty much anywhere in the world. Yes, I do think that a hotel room in Thailand - a very broad generalization - (this of course includes Keemala Phuket, 137 Pillars and Four Seasons in Chiangmai, or Sofitel in BKK along with the cheap backpacker hostels) is, generally speaking, a secure place to leave small sums of cash on the table while one is occupying the room. I guess you can offer me your bridge.

Yes, of course. You are right. I guess I would consider that as obvious and a part of "locking the door" and going without saying.

As I'm sure you know (it appears that you've been on this site for quite a while, putting up with this kind of nonsense), MANY people who comment here seem to have difficulty actually reading with any sort of critical abilities, while at the same time absolutely love to creatively read between the lines, inventing fantastical stories, and cast aspersion regarding the slightest thing that may make themselves feel like they themselves are better than a worm. It kind of reminds me of a guy I know who believes the earth is flat and peddles just about every conspiracy theory that comes his way.

It seems that this guy made that same note to himself. It appears he locked the door and the thieves made there way in anyway. The police, according to the article, found "tampering" - which I'm assuming they meant tampering to the door... but thanks to absolute <deleted> the usual kind of reporting that this article is from, it is impossible to be completely sure exactly what kind of tampering the police found. But it is normal to lock your door, of course, so I would assume this guy did and the tampering was evidenced at the door latch.