Orac

I hate to break it to you, but 30k isn't going to feed 250 to 300 people. I was married in an Issan village wedding in February at the cost of 100k baht. I can't give you a breakdown of how much was spent on various things, but I can tell you what we had.

Roughly 300 people

2 huge pigs

Unknown amount of chickens

Various other food

Lots and lots of beer and Thai whiskey

1 main wedding cake and 12 smaller wedding cakes (John at Peppers Bakery in Ubon did an AMAZING job with this!)

Photographer

A singer and 4 dancing girls (complete with a huge stage with monster speakers and lots of lights)

A deejay for 2 days

2 different wedding outfits for both my wife and I

7 Monks

A marching band

Police

Thai Army guys

I think that's about it, but I may be leaving some things out. Yes, it was a bit expensive, but nothing compared to the price of an American wedding. The way I figured it, it was a one-time thing, so I wasn't going to concern myself with the price. I just wanted something memorable where everyone would have a good time.

Best of luck with the wedding plans!

you seem to have missed off the Green Hawk display cost???

This is a problem for most countries in the world, especially those with large welfare systems and will become more acute as time goes on.

No Thanks. Worked in HKG for years and had my fill of Filipino english, and Nanny's-kids ended up worse off in my opinion.

Malaysian on the other hand may be a better sell.

I know there are a lot of Filipinos in HGK, the nanny you talk about was well educated? If we talk about accent they would be interviewed anyway so if someone did not like their accent they would not have to hire them. A lot of them speak with an American accent and it is hard to tell on the phone that they are not American. There are a lot of call centers in the Philippines so the employers must be able to hire people with good English.

You think that a kid who was learning English from a Filipino English speaker could not get a good foundation for his/her English?

Sounds like there might be a risk of the kid picking up an american accent - now that would be an embarrassment, lol.

To be fair, you do seem to be on to something here - good nannys are hard to find and an english speaking one at a reasonable rate would be worthwhile in my opinion though I do think that having at least a fair grasp of Thai would be essential. Maybe that is the bit that is missing here - either the Thai language for a Philipino or, as Beano suggests, the many chinese who need their english improving a bit. All you need is a language school for the improvements!

Some may differ with your belief that the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima wasn't intenionally killing civilians.

Good try, but every country killed civilians in warfare back then.

The US does not intentionally target civilians in modern times, but Bin Ladin did until justice was served.

Precisely. What's odd is this simple fact must be explained over and over and over.

So if OBL/AQ had been targetting someone or a group of people specifically who were in the WTC on 9/11 then it would have been acceptable as anyone else caught up in it could have been passed off as collateral damage??

I thought all the Donner Kebab places in England were Greek not Turkish?

Anyway to make sure you get the authentic taste of an English Donner it needs to be eaten at 2am in the morning when you're on the way home from a club completely p1ssed after drinking 10 pints of lager.

........And then throw it all up in a shop doorway, or someone's front garden

aah the memories!

There is a yellow burger van at the top of LK Metro opposite Club Blu that also does an excellent late night lamb donner kebab.

Glad to here things are going well for you Tom.

My wife is from a small village - Phraphuthabat - near Si Chiang Mai and I spend quite a bit of time there. Great part of the world!

Firstly, how could it be any worse? A photo would shut up a lot of people.

Secondly, the fact that you think your government lies to you and you don't care is quite amazing.

... And if the US DID release a photograph of the departed OBL the first thing the fringe would say is that it is a Photoshop-ped fake.

I would be very surprised if the powers that be are lying about the substance of the claims here, namely that OBL was killed here.

The only other options I can think of are either he died some time ago but, if so, why would either US or AQ keep quiet about it or he is still alive which would be a huge risk to take by the US if they were found out to be wrong.

I am sure I saw book once about a bloke claiming to be on a mission from God who was killed by a military superpower and then came back to life - apparently he gathered quite a following.

The death photo of Osama is proven to be fake !

The facial expression and beard are very reminiscent of a 1998 image of bin Laden, the first picture shown below. Next to it, we show the original resolution of the "corpse" image as we've seen it (197 by 263 pixels), "flopped" 180 degrees on the horizontal axis to conform to the original 1998 image's beard orientation. The third image is a blended image of the two, with the "corpse" image at 100 percent opacity below the original image at 43 percent opacity. The way the images "lock" in place at the mouth, beard and nose indicates that the image circulating on the Web and foreign television outlets is nothing but a clumsy fake.

photo here and here (graphic)

I have removed the word official from the "title" of this post, as there is no official photo of a death Osama Bin Laden. Such claim is false and misleading.

I am shocked that there is a fake picture circulating on the internet - you will be telling us that there is other information out there that has been made up as well next. I just don't know who to trust anymore!

Ahram online reported that protesters marched in Cairo from a mosque to a Coptic cathedral calling for the freeing of Camilia Shehata and any other Copt whom, according to them, has converted to Islam and was locked in the monastery. Protesters held banners and chanted for the protection of any Muslim convert.

As oppose to chanting for the death of any Christian convert. This is no small fringe protest with 10,000 present. It serves to underline the human right disaster that is about to occur in Egypt should the Islamists get in. Here is the kind of treatment women will encounter if the Muslim brotherhood/Salafists takeover.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nina-burleigh/egypt-and-the-universal-r_b_819178.html

Though I doubt this even figures as a consideration in the minds of the Israel haters who welcome any regime hostile to her and dam_n the consequences for the resident population.

I think I must have read the op differently as, to me, the issue seems to be a group of christians are holding a woman hostage because of her religious beliefs and a group of muslims are protesting for her freedom though I am sure it is more complex than that and is being used as a propaganda tool for both sides.

Safest would be by car and also means i can transport my family around. If I happen to be on a baht bus route and i am going to another destination on its route then i would take the baht bus.

I have no idea how anyone could drive a car around the tourist zone. During most of the day and evening a 10 minute motorcycle trip could easily become 30 minutes or in a car when the streets are gridlocked. I don't know how anyone could have the patience. Often the traffic is so bad even a motorcycle can be held up.

However, I would not live on the dark side without a car. I was looking for an apartment recently and I took a ride east of Sukhumvit. Single narrow lane roads with impatient cars needing to speed past or forcing me to ride faster - no thanks.I'm a habitual tourist zone resident. Sukhumvit Road is enough to keep me away from the dark side. I lived there for 3 months back 5 years ago and the increase in traffic volume is substantial since then - and it was bad enough back then.

Are you suggesting that if, for example, I was going to central with my 2yr old daugter I should stick her on the back of my motorbike rather than take the car which may take a few more minutes.

Having driven a car and bike most days around Pattaya I think yr comments about the traffic are a touch exagerated - sure you do occasionally get held up but not significantly so.

You also really need to ask the question of how practical the different modes of transport are as the safest thing to do would be not to go anywhere. If you restricted yourself to Baht buses then you wouldn't be able to get around very much and would be restricted in where you could go.

I would say the unsafest method of motorised transport would be the motorbike but, if alone, it is by far the most practical. Safest would be by car and also means i can transport my family around. If I happen to be on a baht bus route and i am going to another destination on its route then i would take the baht bus.

Relying on public transport for a few weeks as a tourists is fine but to live here without yr own means of transport must be very restrictive.

Good work boys!

When Israel arrests murders like this, the suspects are usually taken alive and given the benefit of due process. And yet people like you will complain about Israeli brutality.

Interesting postion that you now have.

"Authorities urged the suspects to surrender but only the owner of the home, Amer Abu Ghulah, complied. Al-Breizat threw a grenade at Al-Umari and then shot himself after a brief standoff."

Does it show an occupation as 'prostitute' on african passports?????

I suppose this might depend on whereabouts in Isaan you are - it is a big place. I enjoyed living in my wifes village which was about 45 mins from Nong Khai along the river but the chances of our daughter getting a half decent education there were pretty remote.

We moved to Pattaya last year as it gives us far more access to quality schools - it was a toss up between Chiang Mai and Pattaya but settled on Pattaya because of the beaches (my excuse and i am sticking to it!)

It doesn't say if he was given the beer or G&T that he demanded but, if so, surely this would have made a breath/blood test taken afterwards to be very ambigious.

There is a very real problem of these necklace snatches going on in Pattaya. I know 2 ppl that it has happenned to, one of which ended up in hospital after being dragged off her motorbike.

I was given some very sound advise once (in Cambodia) that if you give someone the opportunity to take something from you then you are partly to blame which basically meant don't flaunt your wealth or let it be known you have something of value on you.

If, being aware of the Jetski problems in Pattaya, I went and rented one and got ripped off I would expect to be ridiculed for it. Same if I decided to sail a yacht to Somalia and inadvertently got killed by pirates I would expect ppl to question what i was doing there in the first place.

Having said that I still smoke, drink and live in Pattaya so maybe I am that fool!

I thought this was another Not the Nation satire piece for a minute there.

Assuming the dates given are correct I wonder where the "Production" between 1992 and 1997 has gone?

There would also be the question of why continue, for five years, to produce the things if there was no intention to either use them or export them?

Found them - apparently they are saving a few for Korea

The US does stockpile a lot of landmines, however — approximately 10.4 million antipersonnel mines and 7.5 million antivehicle mines, the third largest landmine stockpile in the world after China and Russia, according to the IBCL. As of 2002, the stockpile had 1.56 million non-self-destructing landmines, including 1.16 million M14 and M16 antipersonnel mines (which are the ones for any future war in Korea) and about 403,000 Claymore mines. About half of those mines are stored in the continental US. The US military also keeps a substantial number of self-destructing, scatterable antipersonnel mines in South Korea.

From: http://www.globalissues.org/article/79/landmines

So we have 'human rights watch' has found some land mines and has made an assumption as to who laid them.

Could they possibly have been laid someone who is backed by a country who has not signed a treaty against their use, like the USA for instance?

Possibly the HRW could also see fit to condemn whoever it is throwing missiles and bombs at Lybia, from a safe distance of course.

But no that is only being done to save Lybian lives, right?

Like all the Afgan and Iranian lives that have been and are still being saved by similar actions.

The Lybian rebels must have made some pretty extravagant promises as to who will get cheap oil once they take over the country.

I can't see it being the USA to be fair as, although they haven't signed the UN Treaty, they are pretty close to it and have not been involved with landmines for some time so they claim:

The United States has not used antipersonnel mines since 1991, exported them since 1992, or produced them since 1997.

From: http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/05/08/us-two-thirds-senate-back-landmine-ban

Therefore the West should butt out and leave Asia and the Middle East alone,

Everyone, west included should butt out. If they dont, they eventually become despised and then you get things like terrorism. Either people and societies believe in self determination or they dont. If you believe in self determinism you would be willing to stick up for a choice you didnt agree with but which was a choice of the people. Unfortunately we see mostly mass hypocrisy with silly and erroneous arguments to justify naked interference in another peoples choice.

A good point. Islam has enough divisions within it - the main ones being Sunni and Shia. Throw in the pot a handful of dictators/royal families and the region has plenty of problems to sort out for itself. Of course one solution is to provide a unifying theme that they can all get behind and forget their differences - the 'western' nations have to be very careful how they handle intervention in the region so as not to become the focal point that some are trying to make them.

"On March 8, the Democrats held a high-profile fundraising event to mark the party's 65 years. The party has yet to report to the Election Commission about the sum raised but early reports put the figure over Bt700 million."

That is a huge increase in donations for just one event whent you compare it with 1.38m for the whole of last year and 33m so far this year.

Not that I would possibly question the ability of 4 journalist from the Nation that it took to write the piece

The Iranian tantrum over human rights is also incredibly hypocritical. There are now around 90 Sharia courts in the UK the rulings they give are deemed binding under UK law (<deleted>). So if you are female and Muslim you are again a second class citizen, so much for the suffrogette who got skittled by the King's horse. They could opt not to go through Sharia courts but would no doubt end up in a bin liner under some railway embankment if they dared try. Currently, (thank God) these Sharia courts are only allowed to practice civil law, but the instant they are granted leave to try criminal cases expect Soho to be abandoned over night and a white flag to be flying over Buckingham Palace. So the race is on imho, shove Universal human rights down the throats of insane theocracies before our liberal PC brigade succeed in getting Sharia law shoved down ours.

Iranian hypocrisy indeed!

What has this to do with Iran????

As I understand it these 'courts' in the Uk are little more than a version of arbitration in civil matters that also manifest themselves in many other different formats both in the UK and throughout the world - nobody is being forced to use it and it is purely a decision between two parties that that is the way they wish a disagreement to be resolved. Personally I would not have anything to do with such an entity but, there again, I would not submit to a trial by TV in one of the many forms it takes such as Judge Judy or Judge Joe Brown.

Police issue arrest warrant for Porsche driver murderer

BANGKOK, 27 March 2011 (NNT)- Pathum Thani Police have identified the driver of a brand-new Porsche who brutally crashed into a 17 year-old. The police issued an arrest warrant after he failed to turn himself in to authorities.

Police Lieutenant Colonel Bancha Melert , inspector of the Pathum Thani Police Station and head of the investigation team for the case reveals that the driver of a brand new Porsche Cayman with a license plate of Ngo-1352 had hit a 17 year-old Laotian girl whilst crossing a road in Bang Khu Wat Muang District, Pathum Thani province.

The high-speed hit had brutally cut the gir's body in two. The driver abandoned the car in front of a construction site in Om Kret, Pak Kret, Nonthaburi, where a witness confirmed that the tall, long hair murderer called a cab and fled the area on Friday. The investigation team had gathered finger prints on the steering wheel and other evidence which indicated 58 year-old Supachai Taksintwesurb as the main suspect.

Pol. Lt. Col. Bancha suggested the murderer was not the owner of the car but a family member. The suspect had fled and was not present at the site, leaving the authorities no choice but to issue an arrest warrant for the driver.

-- NNT 2011-03-27

So reports of a young man with long black hair, fair skin with blood on his clothing getting out of a porche with license plate J-1352 and getting into a cab was incorrect. The upper body of a person being removed from the vehicle bearing license plate J-1352 as depicted in videos and pics is unrelated.

Have they located the vehicle with license plate NGO-1352 as yet?

It is not a J but a Thai letter that looks very similar - sorry but don't have thai fonts on my keyboard.

Haven't stayed there myself but I a few friends of mine have stayed in the Dynasty Inn and were quite happy with it - it is virtually next door to Nana Plaza.

Countries in the Middle East deserve the chance to determine their own governments. These popular revolutions are a sea change and the end result is uncertain, but resisting the wave is not really a realistic option.

If they didn't have all the oil or if we had a good alternative to it I would be far more comfortable .

One other thing to remember is that a lot of these countries were 'created' by the western powers in relatively modern times, often by just drawing lines on maps with little consideration for the people and tribes that lived there.