Purdey

That must be the reason temples are packed to the gills with tourists taking pics of statues I guess. Take a look at the tourists in Majorca packing out the churches and cathedrals and emptying the bars. The UK has some brilliant churches and historic buildings that tourists visit in droves. Mind you, there are also loads of museums and art galleries to keep them amused. Now, if only Thailand had anything like that art and culture that wasn't priced double for tourists maybe more would be interested. It's like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

And neither did I.

Common sense says wear a mask. Young kids maybe impervious to disease but passing it on to older people is simply unthinking.

Too much reliance on tourism leads to chopping and changing to attract people and then push them away. Spending money on human development then easing rules for business would garner a much better return for the country.

What Thais call "len share" has been around forever. It isn't simply greed but Thais have so few opportunities to make decent money the returns look attractive and if friends invest, they feel more secure. Using a famous person means, to investors, that it must be trustworthy. There are many stories of successful investors circulating and in the first round many will be happy. They just can't imagine how it will end. |e|

He was an idol for many in Thailand. RIP

While it hasn't happened to me, I would be concerned if a stamp were missing as, I think, they will certainly get you on the way out and say you overstayed. Immigration don't have an onerous job, checking the passport details, the visa and stamping you in. Immediately checking the passport before leaving the area is the best advice, but don't show anger.

It's hot, it's wet. No policeman wants to solve Bangkok's parking problems. Never met anyone who knows it's illegal to park closer than 30 feet from the corner of a junction. A topic of discussion over the years has been the high number of cul de sacs in Bangkok. These make it impossible to escape main road jams by nipping through a soi. As the hub of illegal, collapsing buildings and flaming bars, the guv'nor should consider taking opportunities to knock them down to build shortcut roads. As for multistorey carparks, there's some near BTS stations but very few. The BMA could make a bit of cash by investing in them or licensing private companies to build them.

Interesting. I know many with a master's degree and never heard of them offering services... Woody Allen's "The Whore of Mensa" maybe worth a read.

All politicians are corrupt. As a Thai farmer explained to me, “they greedily eat the whole pie, Thaksin shared some of the pie with us”.

I agree with people here who say Thaksin should shut up. He won elections without ever doing anything for Thailand. Just grabbed everything for himself. I don't care if he created village-managed microcredit development funds, low-interest agricultural loans, direct injections of cash into village development funds (the SML scheme), infrastructure development, and the One Tambon One Product (OTOP), rural small and medium enterprise development program. I don't see why people kept voting for him when he did nothing for the country but grow GDP from THB4.9 trillion at the end of 2001 to THB7.1 trillion at the end of 2006. It is obviously a joke that between 2000 and 2004, income in the poorest part of the country, the northeast, rose 40% while nationwide poverty fell from 21.3% to 11.3%. bah humbug, poppycock! It must be a lie that Thaksin balanced the national budget, producing fiscal surpluses for 2003 to 2005. Show me the receipts! I mean, for god's sake, who cares if lottery sales of approximately 70 billion baht (US$2 billion) were used for social projects, including the "One District, One Scholarship" program which provided one student from a low-income family in each district with a scholarship to study overseas. it's nuts that people love him for that and voted overwhelmingly for him. Even more bizarre, he did nothing for people other than initiate subsidized universal health care and low-cost universal access to anti-retroviral HIV medication (ARVs). Like Obamacare, but not really, following governments tried to ban Thaksin's 30-baht/visit universal healthcare program but were prevented by ordinary people. So what if the program helped increase access to healthcare from 76% of the population to 96% of the population? So what? No one thinks that is important if he is a criminal. Yes stupid people think he was a hero to some for ensuring the number of people living with HIV/AIDS as well as the overall prevalence rate noticeably declined, as fewer were being infected. Pshaw! Can't understand why he was so popular! He was so corrupt he introduced reforms included learning reform and related curricular decentralization, mostly through greater use of holistic education and less use of rote learning. But people like rote learning, don't they? Deserves to never be in office again for that. What was his point in intiating a policy to encourage renewable energy and energy conservation? It was great that Thaksin-era energy policies were reversed following the 2006 coup. So all of us in ASEAN Now should be constantly shocked he won elections by landslides. There was no reason for it. Rant over.

All this bad luck means I have to buy lottery tickets soon.

Can't help wonder what role she played in making him ungrateful. Surprised there are no relatives as Thais have large families. Maybe bad blood among them.

Being born a man doesn't automatically qualify you to be a father. Many Thai men cannot hold in their frustration and anger. I blame their parents. The habit of making male children the light of their lives and forgiving them their temper makes those boys terrible adults.

To be honest, based on what we saw under previous governments, I am not sure there will be an improvement should he go.

Wait a sec... 25 years in prison but must pay almost 8m Baht in compensation in 20 years? Shirley shome mishtake?

He looks like he is about to dump. ????

How can they tell he was actually in the national park when the fish were caught? It doesn't matter where he was photographed, the onus should be on the police to have evidence he caught them inside the park and not a 100 metres outside the limit. Will the captain and crew simply affirm it so they get off?

All the stories here seen based on marrying a bar girl. Doesn't anyone think of talking to educated women or are educated women not interested?

Playing both sides has been Thailand's strategy for a long time. Most of the billionaires here have Chinese heritage so no doubt they hope no invasion will happen here. I am surprised that all these joint exercises take place in Thailand but none take place in Hainan or Hawaii or California. After all, Thailand has an aircraft carrier....

I presume that if in England, a pensioner would receive the cost of living allowance that is not available for British pensioners in Thailand.

Wonder it it has a tick tock sound from its tummy as it wanders around?

Was the driver's nickname "Boss" by any chance? A souped up car sound like the modus operandi of the infamous Red Bull rich kid. Will this driver be apprehended and be punished?

Not sure how to deny he removed documents when there is a photo. As Trump was not known to read anything, it cannot be his library.

Curious story. So this guy either came to Thailand with a fishing rod or acquired one here from a Thai shop without the Thai owner pointing to local Thai laws about fishing. He then asked around where he could hire a Thai fishing boat. A Thai must have told him to talk to the Thai captain of a Thai boat. They reached an agreement on the price of the fishing expedition in Thai waters (which is is common tourist activity around the world). The Thai captain takes him to a place in a Thai national park without hesitation where he could fish without the Thai captail explaining that fishing in a Thai national park is illegal. Thais expected the foreigner to know something he had not been told by anyone. The only reason I can think for Thai ire is that they know he knew it was illegal and did it anyway because it is legal in his country. Do we know that they know that he knew that he knowingly broke the law?