thecyclist

West coast route is more scenic, and more challenging. I would go via Satun.There used to be, and probably still is , a boat from there to Kuala Perlis, and then a very scenic route ,partly along the coast, to Penang.

Cambodia and Vietnam are probably better alternatives.

End of an era.

Kind of agree. Yes, a cold beer, and for a little while longer a nice joint

These Hamas 'faces ' won't be alive much longer, let alone come to Thailand. Israel is not going to rest until they have wiped out Hamas completely.

Red Bull had to pay the cops and the judiciary a lot of money.

Essential for what?To learn how to read a language is essential for reading the language, obviously. It's helpful, but not essential to converse with Thai people. I have met lots of people who were able to do that ,but couldn't read a word. There might be individual differences in how to best approach a tonal language like Thai. In all my years in Thailand I have come across two Farangs who mastered Thai with a native proficiency. One said it is absolutely essential to first master the tones. The other said the exact opposite, don't bother with the tones.

How do you separate reading from writing? You learn how to read a language, you learn how to write it at the same time ,at least to some extent.

I wouldn't say that reading and writing is absolutely essential. It certainly helps, but you can manage without, at least I did. Get a girlfriend that can't speak English, so you are forced to speak it all day, and you will be able to learn it fast. That is the most natural approach of all.

He took part in the murder. He goes to a canine prison.

It's a farang. You can defame Farangs.

Pattaya is one of the driest locations in Thailand. I would often ride my bicycle across the dark side into the hills surrounding Pat, and encounter heavy rain, then return to Pattaya, and not a drop had fallen there.

Both were great in the seventies.

Yep, me too.Junior Wan is trying on the Adolf Hitler look. Suits him just fine. All we need now is his other offspring, forgot his name, the fellow who shot an undercover cop in a nightclub because the guy stared at him (actually Wan and his brother, the cop killer, had been in the habit of beating up people in nightclubs for staring before the fatal incident ) ,fled to Cambodia, till his dad arranged a short stint in the clink ,with a quick release. Isn't there something similar going on with the Shinawatras at the moment.

Wow, quite a tour de force, from gun control to weed, on to brothels to elderly tourists and to spousal visas. You would make a great politician. If you are American, there is an opening for you in Congress. Get in touch with a certain Floridian.

That's because most of the 27 million are here on a short vacation, probably half of them first time visitors, who see only the facade, the smiles, and who don't want to spoil their annual holidays by digging a little deeper and taking a look behind the veneer. If they were to stay here for years like most of the posters on the forum do, they would come to see the reality behind the smiles, the greed, the corruption, the rip-offs, the xenophobia.

I have never tried it, but carrying the bike around the entrance should be possible. Regarding Khao Yai, I regularly biked back and forth through the park when it was still 5 Baht for everyone. Did it once after fees went up to 20 Baht for Thais and 200 Baht for farang..I put 20 Baht on the counter, and he pointed to the sign saying 200.I told him in Thai that I was not interested in the park, only wanted to bike through it, and would be out the other side in a couple of hours, he said Oh, and accepted the 20.if he hadn't I would have turned around, and done my biking somewhere else.

double/triple overcharging on state parks A lot more than triple. Foreigners pay 10 times the amount Thais pay .

There are Thai restaurants run by Thais in Iceland? That is the most amazing part in this story.

Thais are racist towards farangs as well, and not only on Phuket. Southern Thais tend to be slightly more short-tempered .

Have been looking at South and Central America myself, but it looks like even the cheapest countries over there are at least 50% more expensive.

Wow, almost 50000 temper tantrums on Thaivisa.com. You obviously have major issues Instead of ranting and venting on this forum all day, wouldn't it be better to occasionally read a book.

Not, if you want to be a Tiktok star and influencer.

I assume you are a fan of the grifting clown. And while many of his supporters are undereducated (there is an inverse relationship between education and support for the ????,just like there is with Thaksin), not all of his fans are halfwits/fascist..It is an almost inexplicable phenomenon that tens of millions of Americans can support such lying, cheating, all round hideous specimen of homo sapiens Part of it is the bubbles created by modern media. Part of it is the result of 40 years of neoliberalism and hyper capitalism, that has left the working class in the dust, has let to a lot of resentment and anger at the establishment. So they voted first for a black guy ,who presented himself as anti establishment, and when he did not deliver on his promises, switched to the opposite, a white supremacist . Part of it can be explained by research done by the Frankfurt school, a group of German Jewish intellectual ,that fled Nazi Germany, and tried to explain how the land of Beethoven,Kant, and Goethe could descend so fast into the barbarism of the Nazi. They found that there was a streak of authoritarianism in the German social character, that made them susceptible to fascist propaganda ,without actually being fascists. Milgram studies replicated many of their results in his social experiments on obedience to authority, and showed that these tendencies were present in the American social character too. So IMO,it's not about Trump being too much in the head of never Trumpers ,it's about mobilization of people around the world against an increasing trend towards authoritarianism or as the psychologist Eric Fromm called it, an escape from freedom.

They weren't much different till Gingrichwho initiated a sharp turn to the right. Now Rep aren't a real political party anymore. They are a cult in the thralls of an egomaniac. It's a cuckoo 's nest.