jts-khorat

We know, because the leaves of a non-adult cannabis plant do not contain any THC; smoking them will give you nothing. However, they contain minerals etc in the same way, salad does, so in Isaan the leaves and stems are often put into chicken soup. A more western take on smoothies or teas with leaves, read on from the header 'The nutritional value of fan leaves': https://www.cannaconnection.com/blog/19208-cannabis-fan-leaves-what-they-are-and-how-to-use-them "Green tea" as you insinuate would therefore actually not be the worst idea.

Sorry, ma answer in the post above was also to you. Frozen, because it breaks up the cell walls, as crushing or blending the leaves does. You are right about the citric acid and I have had people telling me, that just masticating it in the lime juice for a good while is enough, no boiling or simmering needed at all (which I have not tried yet, I am not in Thailand currently).

Especially the bulk leaves bought online I would not trust for chemical residuals. Washing as @Lacessit wrote is of course the first step. Do not boil the leaves in water only, then you only get whatever leaches from the cracked cell walls into the liquid, you do not extract the majority of the alcaloids (while the resulting tea still tastes as horrible as the extraction would). I have simply boiled everything in lime juice in the past, and have gotten an effect; but I have read now, that this already destroys some of the alcaloids over 90 Celsius (however I am not a chemist). To manage expectations: this is not a modern pain medication, where you take it and it switches off the pain in minutes. Oncome can be slow, I normally feel it after a good hour. My theory is that it is not very good at reaching those opioid receptors in the brain quickly. I would rather use it for chronic pain situations, where quickness of action is not needed, but somebody would rather want a pain-free afternoon or evening to go about their business.

Do not mix your Kratom with the medicines you listed! Do not mix it with alcohol. Planting a tree is likely taking to long for you (see my previous post). But Kratom can be bought easily in Thailand, surely also in Bangkok, again with the caveat, that you need to be careful how the trees were brought up (insecticide, chemicals, etc). Be aware, that Kratom leaves are legal in Thailand and can be legally consumed or traded, selling finished Kratom tea however seemingly not. There just have been a number of arrests of people making Kratom tea in Phuket on a larger scale. So DIY it is then: the Kratom leaves contain the alkaloids, yes, but they need to be extracted. You could just chew them down as the Thais do, but they are very bitter (the more bitter, the more of the alkaloids they have). These alkaloids are not water-soluble, so you must let the dried or frozen leaves (to break open the cell walls) masticate in an extraction liquid after crushing them in your hands to fine pieces: lemon or lime juice are the easiest alternatives in Thailand, if you just chew them, this is your stomach acid and will work not very efficient compared to the lime juice. You either let the leaves sit in this liquid for a while, or you simmer it (not over 90 Celsius); no extraordinate amounts are needed, the lime juice must just get everywhere in the plant material, so a liquidy paste is enough. Separate the plant material from the liquid, by letting everything run through a sieve. Be prepared for it tasting quite horrible, so people come up with all kinds of tricks to make it palatable. We have a date palm, and chewing a very sweet date just after a sip annihilates the bitter taste a bit; others mix it in honey, various juices, herbal teas or with M-150, many more concoctions can be found on the internet. Even though there are people out there that supposedly can get used to the taste (or even profess to like it), I have had never had a Kratom tea that was nice to consume by any stretch of the imagination. As others have written, pain relief can be several hours, so I would not consume more than the extract of a handful of leaves once daily in acute pain phases, cycling it off immediately when its medicinal properties are unneeded. People taking it for the supposed high: either they have been ingesting so much more than me, or they really do not know the high of a real psychedelic; you might feel for a few minutes very slightly stoned and floaty in the best case, maybe have a few golden light sprinkles when you close your eyes (not sure downing this nasty concoction is worth the effort then). Besides pain management, maybe a good usage would be: your mind will feel calmed, and you could sit still in meditation for several hours as completely physically pain-free. Of course there is the 5th Precept, so you would have to have your own opinion if this is an intoxicant clouding the mind leading to heedless actions.

Kratom is well known to have side effects when used in large quantities and can create an opiod-like addiction pattern if used improperly, eg in large amounts ofer a stretch of time. Everybody knows this (I assume). The example your article lists show a very egregious mishandling of this substance (9-fold of the deadly level in the blood, this guy must have consumed Kratom by the kilo), all the other numbers they quote cite multi-drug use as main reason of death. This does not wonder, as Kratom is often used to try to get over serious opioid addiction, as it binds to the same receptors and can block them for other substances like fentanyl or heroin. The high of course is incomparably less, so serious addicts often rather create parallel consumption habits instead of the intended replacement strategy; however, if disciplined, this strategy has released many from their addiction and especially in the USA there is often little other way to be able to self-treat such an addiction for people shut out from the health system. But if you have a seasoned fentanyl addict found dead who has also traces of Kratom in his blood, is the reason for his death really (also) Kratom? Listing it this way is simply disingenious. The USA has such a confused drug policy, that it would not wonder me, if a relatively (!) harmless drug like Kratom could be forbidden, because it is also consumed by fentanyl users. To those using Kratom in Thailand: if you follow simple usage rules, it is generally harmless; it is a medicine, not a party drug, treat it as such. The one thing I would worry much, much more is chemicals (insecticide etc) on the plant leaves; consume from a known source, or plant your own tree. They grow surprisingly fast and if they have enough water, are quite hardy; enough good leaves for one average consumer can be had around year 2-3 after planting, I know, because our garden in Isaan has one I planted for the pain management of my father in law.

Not to sound too headmasterly, but the first priority for you should be to improve your ability to communicate with your doctor(s). You mention a wife, but if there is still a language barrier, take somebody with you who can translate for you well. You seem to have a number of potentially serious illnesses and no effective health insurance. Neither knowing why medicine was prescribed to you in the first place, and later removed from the schedule again, is both quite worrisome, because you might fall in some kind of expensive intervention quite needlessly, because you did not have proper preventive care. Then filling up on meds you privately think you need form a pharmacy, again seemingly without much discussion with the specialist there why you would or should do this... I see a pattern, and I guess you do to. Of course I wish you all the best.

Toads are easily differentiated by their warts on their body; there is one very common large species in Thailand, the Indian Common Toad; Thais are calling them Kangkok. They have large glands behing their back, from which they secrete a poisonous substance: do not touch your eyes if you have touched them! In Thailand, I know of no cases where they were eaten, but in some parts of Cambodia, they are a delicacy. Poisonings are not uncommon if the glands and sexual organs in the body are not properly removed (and they can lead to death). Their large tadpoles can be eaten though, and often are. Licking their poison glands or ingesting otherwise excreted Bufotoxin is supposedly psychedelic. I personally have not tried it and frankly know nobody who has. So maybe they are not a productive species for that -- maybe somebody more knowledgeable can report on this? Another much smaller species commonly described by Thais as toad are the Üng. They are actually a frog, the Darkside Narrowmouth Frog, and not poisonous at all. If attacked or taken in the hand, they blow themselves up until they are round and too big for chicken and other predators to eat. They are commonly eaten cooked in a soup, bones and intestines and all, after coming out in mass at the beginning of the raining season. Their consistency can be a little bit slimy, but they are making a healthy and protein-rich food which no person in Isaan will walk past without having a bowl. The very big toad-like looking frogs sold in the market are Chinese Edible Frogs, and as such also not poisonous. They are easy to propagate, eat relatively cheap food (and also their smaller siblings if the enclosure is too small) while at the same time being very meaty and sold surprisingly expensive per kilo weight: many Isaan families making good money breeding them. Best eaten grilled.

If similar visa-free access is your goal, Thailand already offers it to you: a quick swim over the Mekong guarantees you free and unlimited entry to the whole country. Checks by border police are minimal, so chances are very high that you would get in unhindered, checks in-country are also happeing seldomly, so you could make a living here for years or decades. I am sure, similarly easy access can be gained from the Burma side. My guess, you will notice quickly that the life of an illegal immigrant is not quite as rosy as you seem to assume 🙃

Looks like a Brown Tree Frog or one of the related tree frog species. Maybe a juvenile (no size scale in the fotos), and it looks additionally quite badly emaciated with an injured back. You can buy them in the market, dried, and they are quite yummy/crunchy, to be eaten bones and all.

The tattoo's motif, quite obviously, is a kitsune, a many-tailed fox, not a wolf. Why a 16-year old girl would want to have such a dubious symbol on her back, however, escapes me as well.

You might well interpret it that way. However, that is the original Buddhavacana according to Theravada. In case you do not like that, there are many other Buddhist schools to choose from who teach vegetarism or have a sanskritisized concept of Karma; historically starting with Mahayana (of course you have the Bodhisattva concept distinctly changing the Buddha's message), and of course you have all the Vajrayana schools (with all the tantric stuff added). Take your pick, it is a big world!

You quite misunderstand the Five Precepts. They are not meant to be commandments to be followed for moral reasons. Instead, their main reason is that only with a mind unperturbed enough (eg developing enough Sila = morality), it is possible to meditate and during this practice to recognize reality as it truly is, leading to enlightenment (the Eightfold Path). They are nothing but a tool to prepare the mind properly. Therefore, somebody not taking on the path of a monk, or even a serious lay practitioner, has little direct benefit of following the Five Precepts in the sense of a legal paragraph, as there is no grey-bearded man in the sky giving them points for it. People going to the temple take the Five precepts in a formulaic way, only for this day, to demonstrate respect for the monks who are actually following the Precepts permanently. The better reason, for a normal Thai person, to follow a moral path (not necessarily the Five Precepts alone) is the concept of Kamma. Here, being unskillful in one's actions creates immediate negative Kamma, which will need to be lived down during this or the next life. From this concept it makes sense, not to do senseless killing, or killing in a way which accrues this negative Kamma (as you have chosen 'killing' as your example). 'Eating meat' is, however, not killing; monks regularly eat meat, with the rule being, that they cannot take meat offered from an animal killed especially for them and them getting knowledge of this fact -- the negative Kamma accrues solely with the one who did the killing, the reason why butcher is one of the unskillful jobs in Theravada (in previous times, often it were Chinese or Muslims, who took on this occupation for this simple reason). The flipside of the concept of kamma, which you also have observed, is, that you can erase negative Kamma by doing merit. Hence, presents to temples, giving alms during alms round, etc etc. Hence the behaviour of the average Thai makes perfect sense in relation to the tenets of Theravada Buddhism. As I said, if your 'reading up' on Theravada Buddhism has not shown you these connections, you have not scratched on the surface of things enough.

To add: if the OP actually would bring this woman to the UK and she does want to work there, having her ask for a letter of recommendation from her employer, entailing what her work experience is, would be a thing I would do. Past employers, if she can get hold of them and it makes any sense (eg international companies, a surprising number of Thais have worked in the Eastern Seaboard in basic electronics or car manufacture roles, something which could translate into a helpful bullet point in her CV). In Thailand, nobody asks for such a thing, but if she does not want to work money in hand in a Thai restaurant in the UK, some sort of background could be useful, as will be notarized translations of her school certificate (another thing Thais rarely think about, and normally you will have to get them in person from the school itself, if you do not have the originals any more, so quite the bother). Having both was, at least in the beginning, helpful for my wife as she came to Germany.

Which very obviously means, that the "understanding employer" is just another trope brought forward regularly. I have known restaurant owners to give out such letters of intent for a small fee, to satisfy this need, for girls they had never seen before in their life. For the OP speaks, that he met this girl actually employed in a restaurant.

Back here in Germany, my wife does the haircut with an electric clipper; it is easy to do, but would be near unaffordable to somebody a parsimonious as me. 😆 If I am in Isaan, I utilize the endless time my wife spends on the market in the next-bigger village to get a haircut at a barber (he does essentially nothing different to what my wife would do at home, but I have half an hour of 'different' small talk and can catch up on the latest stories going around). A few years ago, that was THB 40, now it is THB 100. No double pricing, just the way prices exploded over the past few years.

Ibuprofen is something very different to Paracetamol, but both have their risks and side effects. If you have kidney issues, do not take Ibuprofen, in a high dose it can lead to immediate renal failure. Paracetamol seems more dangerous to the liver.

I think you read the wrong things then. Theravada Buddhism in itself is actually quite a logical setup and its basic tenets are reflected well in Thai/Isaan culture. But the same as you would not expect anybody in the west to eat only fish or beaver meat on Fridays or pray to a specific different saint each day or do daily bible studies in the circle of your family each evening, obviously popular culture is unlikely to have ever been an exact match to religious orthodoxy. It is not different in Thailand.

I think you are quite wrong, both in regard to western law and how a Thai court would see the situation. A minor not able to give legally consent would also not be able to be responsible for "lying" about their age. To determine the truth correctly is therefore solely the duty of the adult. "Ignorance does not protect from punishment". You might have heard this snetence before. Two Thais have already been charged with the trafficling offense of the girls working in that bar. This does not absolve any customer, but it shows that the Thai courts will be definitely involved -- in a best case scenario for him it might lessen his penalty to the lower end of the range prescribed by law.

What a weird thing to say -- especially coming from a guy living as an immigrant in a far-away country (mainly for the temples, I bet). You must have a twisted mind to read this from my post. Blocked, as any interaction with somebody as bigoted and nasty as you can only darken my soul.

Close call! I am happy you are ok. That's why it is important to always have a few extra kamma points squirreled away, from one moment to the next, you might need them.

Weird thing is, for a long time, nearly every day boatloads of people were coming to Thailand from the Rohingyia regions of Burma. The Thais dragged the boats out to sea so they starved to death, or had little concentration camps with mass graves on site. I sure prefer a more civilized way of dealing with immigrants fleeing persecution, instead of naked barbarism and siding with dictatorships.

The question really only is: how old was the girl and was she able to legally give consent. The question, if he intentionally targeted minors would only come up to determine, if he will be placed in the lower or higher part of the penalty range. It would not be different in a German, UK or US court of law. As I said before, as there was no backroom deal with the police before it going to press suggests to me, that the girls in question were likely a lot less than 18.

Legal age to be in a bar (working or otherwise) is 21; the girls are obviously not employed as prostitutes, but as 'entertainers'. Age of consent is 15 with knowledge and agreement of the parents as legal guardians (expect a marriage to be following really, really soon and I have never seen that between a Thai-Farang couple, while it is still quite common in Isaan between Thais). A girl under 15 is statutory rape as nobody would be able to legally give consent. This still seems to create a grey area in the mind of some between 15 and older, but trust me, that does not really exist. Real consent by the girl herself is possible as soon as she becomes a legal adult, eg at 18.

This is definitely not how Thailand works... but I am sure you know that, too. If those girls were in a open bar in Hua Hin, you can bet, that police was directly involved, either as hidden co-owners or by asking for bribes. Such a business will always have protection. Now, "other" police has come down from Bangkok to clean up the local mess, as often is the case (there has been a very similar case with Velvet Bar in Patong a year ago). Local police are put in inactive posts until the dust settles. Thai bar owners often get a slap on the wrist, the Swiss partner in Patong also had ample time to leave the country, so nothing will happen to them. One here asked, how this guy was identified. There are a suprising number of cameras in Thailand, which work when the need arises. But more likely, he indeed either used a credit card to settle his bill (there was a list of customers caught this way in Patong, which seems outright stupid, because those girls were clearly and visibly not 21), or brought the girls back to the hotel where he obviously was checked in with his passport (the girls would have told police, to which hotels they were taken). This is not a Sherlock Holmes job at all. Some here position themselves, that he could not have known. I agree, if the girls in this case were 17, but if this makes the news and somebody was arrested instead of a backroom deal, it is unlikely. "Ingorance does not protect from puinishment of the law" -- the guy was 35, so maybe naive, but he can ponder this question at length from immigration jail.

Sorry, German here, so gloves in German are literally Handschuhe = handshoes. I hope I was still understood. 😉 But as you say quite correctly, it can seem near impossible kill them. The Thais normally press them down with their ubiquitous large brooms, so as not to need to touch them while dismembering them. They then also use the broom to remove them from the house in a safe way.