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When I ride, I don't split lanes if cars have enough room to change lanes so easily. I only split if the traffic is quite bad and going very slowly with very little room between cars. Splitting lanes like this rider was doing is insane and asking for trouble. I don't care what country it might be in. The car driver also displayed amazingly bad driving as well... (not to mention the immoral act of fleeing the scene of where they may have just killed someone, for all they know) Just another day on the roads in a big city. Pretty much the same in any big city I've ever been in, whether Tokyo, Bangkok, Manila, Paris, Milano, London, New Delhi, Lahore, Los Angeles, New York, Kunming, etc...

What I would think the most egregious action of the entire incident, you, as an "ex-magistrate", don't even bother to mention! Or would you consider a policeman trying "to pursue" an accusation of hit and run, unreasonable and belligerent?? (Even though policemen don't pursue anything, they simply issue a legal notice of an accusation and the alleged offender's requirements thereunto. "Pursuing" a charge/an accusation is what the role of the court and the prosecutor is.) Very curious as to where you were a magistrate....

Just curious... how does technology make sexual union redundant? I, for one, get no sexual satisfaction from technology. Could that be some kind of fetish?? I truly don't get it.

Every country has laws that people agree or disagree on. I don't think it is an unusual law for students on study visas to be banned from working or opening/operating a business. The reason for their visa is study, not work. There are work visas and business visas for those purposes. Not sure why you may think that is a stupid law. If categories of visas are stupid, then just let everyone in for whatever purpose they desire? You are apparently not well informed on university degrees and their usefulness. The Chinese girl who I mentioned, was in a program for a degree in Thai language. So, you'd esteem a degree in Thai language from any run of the mill European university over a Thai university just because of your perception of Thai education? There are a number of programs in Thailand that are very decent even on an international level. I even know of at least one program at a mid tier Thai university that is completely run by foreigners, from the Dean and Department Head to every professor, most of whom are members of a well respected (throughout the world and top level universities) international organization pertaining to their program. You need to look at specific programs if you care about an education in any specific field, which any meaningful employer would know. But if you only care about a piece of paper that says you finished uni, then I suppose your generalization would hold ok. I wouldn't say excellent programs is the norm for their international programs, but using such a broad brush to dismiss Thai university degrees altogether is about as informed and rational as the rest of your comment.

A Thai who had just arrived from Chiangmai is not a local....

Of course, this is with the assumption of illegal work, which I don't even know this article was actually even truly talking about.... With that assumption, add a 5 or 10 year ban with that deportation. I think that would make a lot of people think twice before doing such stupid things, although, of course, it wouldn't deter all of them. I knew a Korean who risked their university education by teaching Korean part time at a local language school. She ended up banned and lost her study opportunities and wasted 3 years of study time at Thammasat. Another student, a Chinese girl that I knew, decided she would open a little Chinese restaurant with her Chinese boyfriend (both studying at Kasetsart Uni). They also got booted and lost the years of time they spent toward getting a uni degree. It made the foreign students in those universities think a lot more about trying to make a few extra baht while they were here for studies. I remember back in the early 2000's (in Mae Sot) seeing trucks with cages on the back, loaded up (and I mean jam packed) with Burmese illegals being hauled back to Burma. They definitely didn't look thrilled with their situation. I'm sure some will just come back, but with their names being on the naughty list, I'd imagine it deterred a lot of others from trying to cross back in again.

Yes, I agree. And at the same time as I prefer to do business in my native language... at the same time, I prefer to support the local people, so I would choose an agency run by locals. I do the same in my hometown too. But too each his own. If it is legal, then I don't see the point of the article and any sort of complaining by anybody at all. Unfortunately, the article was not clear at all about this. I don't know the intricacies of the law, but as I mentioned, I look for businesses run by locals anyway, so it isn't something that I care to know about or spend time trying to figure out.... Of course there are exceptions to every "rule". I definitely will go to a business owned by anyone if it is a service or product that isn't being filled to my satisfaction by a local.

"This issue", could be the issue of Phuket having been a "lawless land" for a long time. I know a Thai woman, now a Colonel in the army, who, some years ago, dated the son of the Mayor of Phuket. She left him due to how uneasy she felt with the level of lawlessness involving his family and Phuket. She didn't feel safe at all with the knowledge and experiences she found herself surrounded by. Some of the stories I heard are truly mind-numbing. That place has been the epitome of lawlessness for a VERY long time. It isn't anytime soon about to become the world-class family resort area that Pattaya is so renowned for! 😇

No idea what you think you are checkmating about.... I never made any claims about numbers of transactions processed in a single day. I never made any claim about numbers of transactions AT ALL. Or did you perhaps intend to comment to someone else? That said... BTC is often used as a generic term for cryptocurrency. Solana is a cryptocurrency that is newer and more advanced than the original Bitcoin. There are many coins that have developed to be better, in various ways for various purposes, than Bitcoin. Solana, for example, is known to be able to process 65,000 transactions per second (carried out to a whole day, it would be over 5 billion). I believe that is fairly substantial. It is significantly more than the combination of what SWIFT, ACH, RTGS systems, all large banks of the world (JPMorgan, HCBS, etc), Visa, and Mastercard handle in any given day. I believe Bitcoin is in the range of 400-500,000/day, which would be enough to handle all of TARGET2 (Trans-European Automated Real-time Gross Settlement Express Transfer System) transactions. That is significant, but of course, the original coin (Bitcoin) has been far outdone by others thathave come along, (like Solana, Polygon, XRP, Ethereum, etc). There is no need to be dependent solely on Bitcoin. I'm not intending on playing chess, but if we were, it doesn't appear that your idea would equate to a checkmate. But then again, I'm not really sure what you are trying to prove.

Bitcoin is not a company that pays anyone or has consultants....🥸

You quoted somebody else, tagging me as though I said that. I did not. Although, I agree with the sentiment, of course BTC is not about to replace the banks. But, I'm not sure if I'm understanding your statement re BTC being impossible to become a globally used peer to peer electronic cash. Either you have no idea what BTC is, or somehow I'm misunderstanding your statement. BTC is exactly a globally used peer to peer electronic cash! I did a transaction today, as a matter of fact, with a friend thousands of miles away.... Sounds like maybe a miracle happened? I experienced the "impossible"?? This friend travels all over the world (digital nomad), frequently paying for his flights, meals, and hotels with BTC. Seems like the impossible happens regularly! Amazing....

Ya don't say!!😯

I could see this catching on with Thais. And if they could host an international competition like this, they could make it a two day event by having a local event with modified Tuk Tuks running the course the day before!

Why don't they try something that is actually plausible? Maybe that's a stupid question... but sea sports should be a venue they could succeed in. I know they have sailing and jet ski racing, although I rarely hear much at all about them, other than from friends who are involved in them... but what about sea sports like diving, spear fishing, offshore or coastal rowing, canoe ocean racing, wind surfing... world class sea sport competitions... Oops... I just realized the folly of my idea...."world class"🫣🥸 Caveat: There may actually be some international competitions of some of those sports that I don't know about, but if there is, they are sorely under-reported, just like how incredibly under-reported and under-sponsored the Phuket King's Cup Regatta is. It has been around for a long time, maybe I'm missing something... but it seems that it could have been brought to a higher level than at present. It's a high level for the region, but after being around for over 30 years... it just seems that it would have been given higher visibility and support to advance it more. I guess F1 is glitzier? What good is glitz if it is unobtainable?

I have. Have you? And there's Blackrock... They just started a BTC ETF last year. In that extremely short time period, they now own about 2% of all BTC. Convince me that a company that is the largest asset management firm in the world, managing around $9.5 TRILLION USD, is wrong about the value of BTC! Good luck with that. The ignorance people so proudly wave about to the world about BTC is staggering. Just keep right on following along with the talking heads in the mass media and other entities controlled by the banks. They obviously have your best interests at heart, right along with all of the politicians...🙄 They are all here to help you. So, keep right on funneling your money to them in their system. BTC is obviously a scam. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. And when they are as stubborn and arrogant as many BTC deniers, I'm sort of glad they don't drink. They don't deserve the refreshing fulfillment that water gives to one that is on the edge of fatal dehydration. It makes me think of Plato's Allegory of the Cave (in Book Seven of "The Republic "). These ignorant deniers are just like those prisoners preferring to stay in the familiar darkness of the cave than be rescued and come out into the light and learn what their rescuer is trying to explain to them!

There are so many city street circuits already. I'd love to see them do a run from somewhere in Chiangmai province over the winding roads to Maehongson. The road conditions may be less than desirable, but that'd make it that much more interesting! Or maybe a motorcycle race would be amazing to see there. It would be a long course to control, but I can't imagine it would be any more expensive to organize than a race through Bangkok streets.

Many here express the idea that even though such a tragedy, nothing will change. I beg to differ. I believe that in order to get away with the same kind of nonsense, the thickness of brown envelopes may need to change.

Yeah, the headline is a choice, but it does come directly from the article and they do live ($$$) on clicks.... And maybe they enjoy the absurdity of it as much as many in the forum😅

Sounds like a recipe for tyranny to me.... I can easily see people who only look to the here and now and to me, myself, and I not having a problem signing on. They don't care what happens 99 years from now, let alone 50 or less. What does a 60 year old care, as long as he gets an easy income off his property, and with no property tax now, until he dies. I haven't come across many here who plan or even care to think much about the generations that follow, other than maybe their immediate children. Most people I've asked, don't even hardly know much at all about anyone beyond their grandparents, so it makes sense that they wouldn't think much about the future of their own progeny.

To be fair to "Asean" (to which, I'm assuming you mean ASEAN NOW), according to the article, it was the Pattaya officials who said that and not just some concoction that ASEAN NOW came up with. In a paraphrase of what the officials said, the article stated, "The authorities said the beggars were causing damage to the image of the city, which is a world-class tourist destination." (Emphasis added) Definitely agreed on the "😂 " part!

Nobody is "butt hurt", except perhaps you. No need to apologize when it seems pretty clear that you are not particularly feeling apologetic. It comes across as "butt hurt" and highly disingenuous. Not saying you are, only saying it comes across that way. Did I "even need to bring Miranda rights into the discussion"? No. Did I say that I needed to? No, I didn't. Was it relevant to the comment that I was replying to? Yes, very much so. Did you bother reading the comment that I was replying to, in order to understand why I may have brought it up? I don't know, but it doesn't appear so. If you were only trying to clarify the issue, my bad for misunderstanding your intention. Other than chalking it up to toxic social media sort of nonsense, it was quite confusing as to why you would feel the need to critique my comment with what seemed like an unneeded correction, stating that a right in American law would not apply in Thailand. I figured that's a given that anyone would grasp. My somewhat lengthy comment before had much more context, which I felt made my point quite clear already. You reiterated my point after your critique of what you felt was the unnecessary injection of Miranda rights into the conversation, even though I believe it was relevant, due to the original comment to which I was replying. Since I felt like my comment was exceedingly clear, your "statement to clarify" seemed like an out of place, overly critical and unneeded comment that I took to be like the typical kind of critical toxic crap seemingly spawning everywhere on social media (of which this forum is so commonly a perfect example). If that wasn't your intention, I'm sorry for misinterpreting your comment.

Your grasp of English seems to continue to evade you. You never said anything about quotation marks before, but now you are saying that you did. And I apparently fell for "it" (not really sure what "it" is) "hook line and sinker"? Nobody, that I'm aware of, believed that "tarnishing the image of Pattaya" is an offence. You yourself mentioned the reason they were arrested. Tarnishing Pattaya's image was an effect of the perpetrators' activities. It was not an offence they were arrested for, so, I don't know why you bothered to mention that irrelevant point. You seem to still think your idea that the issue of Pattaya having a world class tourism image to protect was only clickbait in the headline and not mentioned in the article is accurate, even though I quoted directly from the article (NOT the headline), two instances where it was very specifically stated. As far as the translator's lack of quoting the exact statements, I don't think that is required (but it appears that this is highly important to you). His paraphrase of what "the authorities" (specifically, Chonburi Immigration, Pattaya City officials, and the Chonburi Provincial Social Development and Human Security Office) said should be good enough. Of course, that assumes the translator is doing his job at least half way decently. Just in case "paraphrasing" is a foreign concept to you, "paraphrasing" involves restating the original statement in different words, capturing the essence or meaning while not using the exact wording of the original statement. Do you seriously think that Pattaya officials are beyond thinking that Pattaya has a world class tourism image that needs to be protected and might say such a thing? You could "be forgiven for not understanding everything written on this forum"? Again... reading comprehension would greatly assist you in understanding the example you provided. You quote part of what I said, minus the exception statement in the middle of my statement, which explains what you failed to understand. You say that I gave a "clear explanation of exactly why (I) think tourists want to go there" after stating, "I have no idea why tourists want to go there". No, I did not. I gave an exception, clearly stated as such, to one aspect of tourism for which I could understand SOME would want to visit Pattaya. Please read the entire statement again, carefully -- "I have no idea why tourists want to go there, other than the ones who enjoy that sort of sleazy environment." (Emphasis added to help you grasp the meaning) If you can't understand simple things like these, It's difficult to fathom how you get along day to day. Apologies accepted if you were drinking heavily at the time, woke up on the wrong side of the bed, or some other such thing.... This is tiresome... Go ahead and respond if you like. I don't see any use in banging my head against a wall anymore, when it seems like you are either being intellectually dishonest, purposely difficult, or just can't grasp clear concepts in decent enough English. Unless, of course, maybe you get it now? That would be refreshing.

Perhaps English isn't your best language, although your comment is written well enough, your reading comprehension appears to be severely lacking, if you indeed read the article at all. The very beginning of the article refutes your claims in spades. "Crackdowns" of this sort are for protection and they specified what exactly they want to protect! "Pattaya authorities detained several illegal immigrant beggars on Thursday to protect the city’s world-class tourism image. At 6:00 PM on September 26th, Chonburi Immigration, Pattaya City officials, and the Chonburi Provincial Social Development and Human Security Office, jointly launched a crackdown on illegal immigrants begging in Pattaya. The authorities said the beggars were causing damage to the image of the city, which is a world-class tourist destination." Of course there are some very nice places within Pattaya city limits, but with the amount of filth (in many ways) there, I understand why my (Thai) friends, who own properties there, have moved away from the city they lived in for many years. It has become much less than desirable. With soooooo many nicer places to visit, I have no idea why tourists want to go there, other than the ones who enjoy that sort of sleazy environment.

The delusion is fascinating

OMG How shocking!