thecyclist

And for a moment I thought you were asking about the water splashing ,baby powder in your mouth and nose action. I am still traumatized from the one year I didn't flee Thailand over Songkran.

5555 you are the first to notice.Kudos to you.

Only Asian foreigners require that. We Farangs stand out as it is, natural branding. You, you, you farang.

That was around 9 years ago on a TV. Funny that in the banks where I was refused ,they spoke English. Spoke/ had to speak Thai in the one where I got my debit card.

Depends on where you are. Best is the deep south, only one day. Bangkok only 3 days. Isan for a week. Pattaya forever. A trip to Cambodia to escape this BS, maybe.

That is true, but then she might have to get a low paid job. Too old to go back into the sex trade, if that's where she met him.

That is exactly what I did on Thonlor, 4 said no, the fifth one said yes.

Nose picking in public ,even waiters in restaurants, is a Thai thing. They do it a lot, they dig deep, and they examine the product of their labor.

You're probably right, because they are all dirty. And the dirtiest of them all is the de facto PM.

BB, big boss has billions, BJ only millions,$of course. Millions in Baht any mid-level cop can acquire. Very little through official salary. Is that enough to stay out of prison? A lot has to do with the power within the top brass and "friends" in high places in government. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Trink would be delighted to hear that he had historical significance. He was full of himself.

Trink did write about Pattaya. I think once a month or so he would visit, and devote a few paragraphs to sin city.

Card first, money second is nuts, if you are used to the Thai system, which is always money first. When I moved to Vietnam and got my Vietcombank debit card, I thought the bloody machine was malfunctioning, hadn't given me any cash ,went into the bank to complain. The lady came with me to investigate and an honest Vietnamese was holding up my cash, asking who that belonged to. They probably thought I was senile. I thought what an idiotic system they have an Vietnam.

Some people need to grow a brain. Unfortunately that isn't possible yet. AI might open up new possibilities, so don't despair .

The suspenders looked sexy too. Sexy man Pattaya. Probably inspired the song.

Probably felt sorry for the "veteran ", or didn't want to outright fire someone who had worked for them for 40 years.

Was he really fired? They terminated his night owl column, but he kept doing his book reviews for ages after that.

Farang = Caucasian in denotation ,that is rubbish. Nothing to do with being a snow flake. All about what the average Thai means when he uses the word.

That's probably why he kept repeating and insisting that he never accepted anything more than a free diet coke on his rounds.

Not that much changed in the eighties, but the construction boom started a lot earlier than 2000.I would say late eighties to the crash in 1997 was the most rapid development. Lots of high rises went up, the expressways and skytrain ,and ,worst of all, one shopping mall after the other was built. It all came crashing down with the Tom Yum Kung crisis of 1997. Took a few years for the economy to pick up again, but the changes after 2000 weren't as "dramatic " as the ones in the nineties.

Not an abomination, but, yeah, lots of cliches. Especially the one he regurgitated over and over again about the Thailand old hand, a status reserved for only a select few, those that had been in LOS for over 2 decades. He fancied himself as the Supreme old hand ,who can bestow this status on other insiders. Without this knighthood you didn't really know what was going on in the kingdom. He started out at the evening sister paper of the Bangkok Post, Bangkok Mail or something. His weekly column in that rag was a lot better, fewer cliches and more inside tips for mongers. When that paper folded, he was transferred to the post, and had to "tone down " his nightlife reports, no more tips of where to find the cheapest hookers, instead weekly warnings about relationships with bargirls. He was very proud of the fact that he was married to a school teacher.I saw him several times walking down Sukhumvit. Once he and his wife were sitting in front of me in a movie theater. His wife was as unappealing as he was. ,if that is possible. But she wasn't a bargirl.

Oh ,they most definitely want the "foreign exchange ", us in person not so much. If there only was a way to have us arrive at the airport, hand over our cash, and fly straight back to farangland.

Yes, I applied for one during that brief period, right after they reintroduced the 90 day TV.With it came a new webpage/application form that was absurdly complicated and frustrating. Took me countless attempts and 9 hours of my time to success. The Vietnamese must have realized how impossible that system was, because they quickly reverted back to the old system. Of course, if money is no object you can always go through an agency, and save some time. But that whole system of agents in cahoots with corrupt officials who are often from the same family is so rotten, that, unless absolutely necessary I do not want to give them my money. They fleeced us during Covid lockdowns when it was necessary to go through agents They fleeced many on the way out. A disgusting spectacle, a feeding frenzy, that makes officials/agents in Thailand angels in comparison.

555.A very good reason for staying away.

The owner must be an ex-hooker. They don't like Thai speaking farang. Bad for business.