jts-khorat

It is those same locals who make the really big amounts of money that can be earned in a concentrated amusement mile. Property prices for those who own are astronomic. Nobody would want to change that. But this is not just Bangkok: as many city planners around the world have found, better to have the 'amusement zone' concentrated, than a noisy bar here or a loud disco there. Also much easier to police, as this is for obvious reasons also always a crime hotspot (maybe this will change one day, if weed instead of alcohol would become the preferred drug in usage).

Is your 'grow up' also hypothetical, partially joking? You are quite the joker, it seems. If not, let it then be known as fact, that with my wording "another one who doesn't know" I must have been very obviously joking in the same way as you, as *everybody* knows this already, no? Or are you maybe also one of those pesky adolescents? Good that we cleared that up, like the future mature adults we both likely will be.

To sit for years in IDC, on top of whatever conviction he gets, until he somehow gets the money he did not have before to pay for a flight extremely inflated in price? What kind of sense does that make?

Not having the money for a flight back and trying to achieve a deportation will probably lead to the worst possible outcome for anybody. Western embassies will not help, if you are convicted of a violent act, besides consular assictance during your time in IDC (however long that will take, I heard of literally years). And this is what Ubonjoe wrote about this: https://aseannow.com/topic/1095179-who-pays-when-your-deported/

Another one who does not know how deportation works. The flight back home is not free, quite the opposite.

Ouch! It would be interesting, who really backs Phuket Peninsula Estate Co. and the 100 Rai of beachfront land they acquired (and are seemingly about to loose completely). One thing is for sure, it is unlikely to just be their director, Pimphan Surintarangkul, who has doen little but play golf if one looks up the name. Either way, steaming * has hit the fan and is about to fly around. Latest now it really does not matter any more, if the Swiss man can settle with the doctor.

I am not sure I understand the outrage. LSD is not a drug with a high addiction potential like Ya Ba. For example, there are forms of LSD that are currently (still) legal in Germany (1v-LSD); they are a biological precursor, which means, that they are converted in the body after consumption to the regular LSD-25. There are shops where you can buy it openly, or you get it sent by post. On a quick assumption, this would be a fairly easy way to also have it arrive in Thailand, if not carried right in luggage. 75 sheets is merely the size of a small paper notepad, and it is an odorless drug, so basically zero risk of attracting any attention during transport. On top of it, if it is not actual LSD-25 but one of the pre-drugs, I would be unsure if it is even on the list of forbidden substances in Thailand; you need a fairly good laboratory to determine this. I guess the court case will tell us. I am a lot less sure about the 25 extacy pills, but even if one counts 5 months of dealing activity, this is a fairly small amount he finally got caught with. They also would have quite the small volume and fit in a tiny plastic bag, so to me this still sounds like somebody who brought a stash with him to finance his holiday. Quite stupid, sure, but hardly the crime of the century or a major dealer by any imagination. This is something where I would guess that Thai police is much more knowledgeable and that dealing with recognizable "pills" was what got this guy caught.

Quite daring, to write such a statement...

You would not wonder if you knew how well connected the father of the doctor is, not just on Phuket, but particularly there. Have your wife read you some of his entries from his Facebook page. He obviously, as a decade-long political activist, knows exactly how to start a very effective media campaign and how to energize the locals. https://www.facebook.com/chaiyachot.uttamang/ Nothing wrong with that, if that was my daughter, I would do exactly the same. The Swiss man rejected the offer of apologizing before calling the police himself, so he really brought this unto himself. But of course, as many here stated, this is a class thing. First, of the Swiss guy threatening with his "good connections", only to be steamrolled by the Thai side he attacked with their infinitely better ones. "Som nam na" comes to mind (however deportation seems a bit too strong a resolution for it). My guess: it will not actually end in deportation; but the pound of flesh will be a considerable amount and it can be doubtful, if the business of the Swiss man can go on like this. This reminds me very much of the owner of Shark Disco in Patong, all too many years back -- at the time by far the most successful place at Soi Bangla and the blueprint for all later discos to follow. After being publicly in the face of the local business interests, that disco never opened up after again, with quite the media campaign preceding its quick demise.

It does not seem that you have followed local news a lot. We are well, well beyond that stage...

You do live there and you want your stay be more comfortable (socially and emotionally). Having a chit chat would be the normal human repsonse to this really not complicated issue. Of course, if you are somebody better than them, go on and be all bothered about them looking at you. My guess is, wherever you live, you will have similar issues, because a change of place to stay still brings yourself in your head with it. So you do you -- but let's not forget, it was you who came here and asked for advice.

Believe me, in Thailand they do as well. After all the talking about all of their last and future meals, so with luck we rank very far down the list. But why not have a nice chat with them when leisure time allows? Thais are very friendly and their job is boring as hell, so they will appreciate it. Would make the weird feeling of the OP go away as well, his mind state might improve with more social/human interaction.

You misunderstand. The woman lost face, very publicly, and her father is extremely well connected with business interests on Phuket, with national media and politics. Serious offense has been taken, so a pound of flesh will be taken. Believe me, on Phuket there is currently little more newsworthy than this, with so many prominent figures now having taken public positions. One could discuss, if this will go too far for the actual crime committed, for example the local chief of immigration has already publicly stated that the Swiss guy will be deported if found guilty of this assault. This is quite the heavy opening gambit, isn't it? He is simply toast, or in the best scenario will be a lot poorer after this when the dust has settled (that it might go in this direction is suggested by the statement of the doctor, that she will spend all money of any settlement to "beach beautification" on Phuket, which will spread the love locally; a very artful Thai solution, mehinks).

Threatening somebody to get shot, believably, in front of a witness (there were two women) and then going on to threaten them further in presence of police would make this quite the bother also in a Western country. As would attacking somebody from behind and unprovoked, which proves malice. The added dimension in Thailand is, that he quoted his 'big' connections, but there he is very, very obviously outgunned. Here, obviously, the outcome will be a lot harsher than in a western coutnry -- but if you try to use 'connections', you should/would be well aware that this could backfire this way.

😕 Is English your first language? Your question does not make any sense, it is immediately obvious that I do not. And indeed you are linking to the same Facebook account that I did, so your post does not bring any added value to mine either. 😕

If anybody wants to witness how a tsunami of negative public opinion is created, really artfully and in the span of mere hours, you can have a look at the Facebook page of the father of the doctor that got assaulted. It is all in Thai, but pictures speak a thousand words. https://www.facebook.com/chaiyachot.uttamang/ As I mentioned in a post in the other thread, in Thailand your good connections are only worth something if the other side does not have better ones. This guy, if you go through his older posts long before the incident, has good connections... a poet, experienced with national media, decade-long political activist, and on top of that, birds nests are a gigantic business on Phuket right going back into "old money". This Swiss guy really did pick a fight with the wrong Thai girl on his steps and by insisting that he will not apologize in presence of the police called after the incident, has opened the gates to hell. A very good lesson on how not to behave in Thailand. I will find it very instructive, how this thing will end, making a public apology likely does not scratch the surface of effort necessary to get this under control for the Swiss guy (and he still has not realized it, if one listens to what he said).

Supplementing might be necessary, if the diet really does not provide enough magnesium, I give you that. However, 100g cooked rice has 12mg, ground pork 30 etc -- something like snapper has even 40 mg/100g. With two or in Thailand even three full hot meals and a varied healthy diet, I see little problem for any foreigner here hitting 400mg of magnesium if there follows 100mg of it in a green smoothie at evening time. The benefit of the smoothie would be, that it makes the magnesium in its natural context easily consumable at an amount one would rarely incorporate normally (who eats 2-3 bananas every evening indeed?). Either way, if worried, I would rather eat pumpkin seeds as a snack on top of my normal diet and evening smoothie, which are very easily and cheaply bought in Thailand, than having a (cheap) supplement with likely very little bioavailability.

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Many of the shops -- as are many bars, especially those run by the police or other influential local figures -- are obvious fronts for laundering all the brown envelopes. They will be more than fine, as long as this money flows upwards. This, I am sure is not different to the west, where cannabis dispensiaries are now fronts for organized groups who made their money with more serious stuff and now take the great chance of being able to diversify into legality in a simple way. The other number of businesses wholly unaffected by the law change are outlets for serious large-scale producers, who will see a lot of small competition die. They are financed by the right people to begin with, so they have the funds to hire staff that writes the prescriptions themselves (where they have not done already), so they would actually gain from this law change. Still, the government is that unorganized and has the beer lobby to contend with (richer and better-connected families you cannot imagine), so it is to be seen which hand will be in the till, which in the end is the only deciding factor. This is a big-stake game and small growers and entrepreneur businessmen are simply surfing the giant wave or become collateral damage. Nobody spares a second thought about them, or what tourists might think about it.

Obviously I had not read the rest of the thread before my answer above, the villa owner already to have been proven to have encroached on public land. So poeple in high places are movoing with speed... Answering @alien365: I have. But I have never filmed myself doing it and then handed the evidence of my wrongdoing to the police myself, because I was that stuck-up that I thought I was 100% in the right. By kicking a doctor and not a bargirl, he clearly attacked the wrong person. This is simply Thailand, and as a business man he really should know that contacts in high places only help if the other side does not have better ones. My assumption is: had it not gained that much publicity, the doctor's father and the police chief would have sat together in some expensive restaurant and talked it through, with the Swiss guy still coming out the loser in this situation. Maybe an apology and wai, but no financial retribution. Now that he is seen as the aggressor, and Phuket immigration handing out red yand yellow notices for infractions, even his visa status might be in danger, and with it his whole business. On top he pissed off the owner of the villa who will now need his boundaries reset (maybe the worse thing, depending on who that is). This will get really expensive and arduous to get out of for the Swiss guy.

The beachfront is to the north. By Thai law, a beach must be publicly acessible, so if pleople plant gardens there, they are actually encroaching. Having such a case go to a court of law ,might get very interesting (not) for the owner of the villas, so I guess somebody renting will be reigned in quickly.

I am sure they wanted to invite you for a neighborly drink. Russians (or Ukrainians for that matter) are friendly that way: they never drink alone. A lot of them can speak passable english, so why not participate?

Interestingly, a lot of fruit easily available in Thailand are very high in magnesium: bananas, durian, fried plantains, jackfruit, guavas, etc. I have seen recommendations to have a smoothie in the evening, maybe half an hour before bed time (if you have no issues with sugar). A good time to also put in all that nasty raw broccoli we all are supposed to consume in heaps as we age, for the Spermidine. I can report, the taste of a banana-broccoli smoothie is actually acceptable, if barely so.

All the big dispensaries in Phuket have a doctor for the prescriptions on staff. The question is, how stringent is it controlled, that those receiving the prescription have the necessary ailments? Will foreign prescriptions be allowed to be able to access the tourist market? So far I have seen no list of illnesses that this new medicinal cannabis is supposed to be for. As always, everything is hearsay and prending a complete u-turn. This is where I see the grey area and the brown envelopes.

ChatGPT is great, isn't it. If only it would not make 90% of our bull<deleted> office jobs superfluous and soon will send us into unemployment, that is...