Mr Derek

There's a painfully meticulous document about Re-entry on Immigration's Public Guide page: https://bangkok.immigration.go.th/en/onlineservice-and-publicguide/ The estimated processing times are hilarious.

Where does one find these 'immigration updates'?

I heard the four were apprehended after having driven 10 hours along route M3 which heads directly towards Ukraine - they were about 100 km from the Ukraine border when they were caught. Not sure where else they could have been heading? Turning off towards Belarus perhaps, but that makes less sense...

No examples given. Usually it is just a case of flirtation, which is apparently a crime nowadays in the UK. Women have lost the ability to give a firm and unequivocal no to a guy - they just simply don't know how to do it. Instead they now go running to authority and claim to be a victim. Society is breaking down as a result.

Use operant conditioning. Ask her if she's lost some weight and tell her she looks great. Do that often enough and she'll come to associate flattery with weight loss. Then she'll lose weight on her own account because she likes the flattery. Women are easy to manage.

Have to wonder how accurate some of the measurements are though...

Expect to see the birthrate fall as women devote themselves to their careers and gays choose hedonism over procreation.

Cambodia is the problem at the moment and the airstream is coming from that direction. https://firms2.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#d:today;l:fires_all,street;@103.0,14.5,6.6z

That was the whole point of the Constitution, as rewritten. Did Munin not understand that at the time and speak out then? Why is everybody now pretending to be surprised by this? Does everyone really have such a shallow understanding of the established power dynamics here?

The only surprising thing is how it is possible that Pita didn't know this would happen - he was educated at Harvard... ah, wait... now I get it... Harvard teaches only lefty utopianism...

They daren't crack down on the farmers for fear of revolution. Look what's happening in France at the moment. That's partly due to environmental regulations.

More parks and green areas to counter the urban heat island effect would help - they just keep building on every available space and the city is getting denser. Then the problem is too many vehicles. And when the farmers start burning that will be an even bigger problem. Lack of foresight and control as usual.

I got a new passport and had the stamps transferred at CW. A senior officer told me emphatically that I could do the next 90 days online. Not true. It was rejected. I went in to CW to do it. 90 day queue in the afternoon (got ticket at 1.0 pm) was insanely long - not done until after 5.0. On the plus side, Java sparrows now seem to be common on the grass verges along Chaeng Wattana Soi 7. Bizarrely, this is probably now the best place in the world to see this endangered species.

How would Penang port "facilitate seamless cargo transport" across the Kra, which is about 700km away? What 'spillover'? The Kra route is simply meant to speed up the global east-west shipping route. If a ship has to make two additional loading/unloading stops in Thailand, why would it then pull into Penang? It will mean less business for Penang if anything, as the Kra link will not make it quicker for ships to reach Penang from the east. This is all just nonsensical hype to generate funding. They should look to the Dawei debacle, which was a waste of billions of dollars because nobody dared ask common-sense questions. The Dawei 'land bridge' was meant to provide a boost for Laem Chabang at the other end. They've forgotten about all that?

I took the pink line from Minburi most of the way and back the other day and it was fine (didn't notice any swaying or bumpiness). Funnily enough though, at one of the stations, I was looking closely at the brackets by which the power line is attached to the concrete. There are vertical slots in the concrete every couple of metres into which are fitted brackets holding the power line, but only half of the slots had brackets. I was wondering why they had used only half the available slots (or why the concrete was constructed with twice as many slots than were needed). I guess they thought they would save some time and money on the brackets...

In an unprecedented turn of events, a trip to Chaeng Wattana last week was without problems. I did a transfer of stamps to a new passport and an extension on the same queue ticket. You still need both forms though, and two sets of passport copies, but only one set of bank stuff (for just the transfer of stamps, you do need the same bank stuff as for an extension, which the requirements list that accompanies the form doesn't mention). I was told that with a new passport you can do the next 90 days online and don't have to go in (contrary to general opinion around here). We'll see about that. Also, the new pink line is now working, which is a boon.

So there's no need for two separate processes: transfer stamps and extension renewal? Can all be done in one visit to CW with a new passport? I can just easily imagine turning up at CW for extension renewal and after 4 hours wait they say 'no no must get stamps transferred first'...

They might say that but do they actually do so? Is it set down somewhere in writing that we are obliged to follow up by other means if the online system doesn't work before the deadline+grace period - in other words, that it is our responsibility to make sure they do their jobs? I'm thinking that if there's a record of making the application, then we're covered, and it's up to them when they get around to processing it - fine, let them take as long as they want. Once we've made the application (and had an email receipt for it) then we shouldn't have to worry about deadlines after that at all.

If we've made the online application on time, and there is proof of that on the system, why should we worry about not receiving confirmation in time? Has anyone ever been penalised because CW failed to process the online application?

I had one on the recommendation of this forum. Or rather, it was a sigmoidoscopy, at a private hospital in Bangkok, for 11,000 baht, which ought to have been easier and I opted for no sedative. It was a catastrophe. First, for some reason they forced me to lie on my left side when it would have made far more sense to lie on my right to avoid the pressure bearing down on the sigmoid. We argued about this for five minutes but they wouldn't have it. The operation was excruciatingly painful - I had to call out to stop when I saw something bulging at the top of my abdomen like the thing in Alien - I had never known pain like that before. I guess the doctor forgot it was supposed to be a sigmoidoscopy and was going all the way. The procedure found nothing, simply diagnosed IBS, so it was a waste of time and money. The most disastrous thing was that the sodium phosphate prep they gave me (two bottles of "Swiff") instantly wrecked my kidneys - I felt ill immediately and that proved to be stage 4 kidney disease. My kidneys were fine before. It was another hospital that diagnosed that. The doctor who did the operation was in denial and said it was just indigestion. Information on the internet says that sodium phosphate can indeed by harmful to kidneys. Your mileage will vary, but I no longer have any confidence in the medical profession at all. In any case, don't let them give you Swiff.

You certainly have an octopus-like grip on this thread - you have made 568 posts so far.

Amusing, but mainly ignorant. It was the Turks who had the empire in this region. The British merely held a mandate for a while. The Arabs got much of the territory back as Lawrence had promised. Unfortunately, the Jews pushed in and here we are.

By allowing the Palestinians an independent state. Then there will be no need for Hamas to exist. Try it. If it doesn't work and Hamas still keeps fighting (why would they?), then there is justifiable excuse for ethnic cleansing. Until then, there is no excuse.

That's about the most ignorant and obnoxious statement I've ever seen on this forum.

It's a word. As used by Zionists themselves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Zionist_Congress Nice try but I'm not even anti-Zionist. My vote is for a two-state solution. It's their determination to take over and ethnically cleanse the whole region that I am against.