Gilligan In Drag

Thailand must be getting obese, getting their snickers in a snot about fatso pants! Its simple dumbo, if you don't like it then with a flubbery heave to make your own elephant pants ya buncha Sponge Bobs! But noooooo, afraid of that, no easy fat bucks in any o'that so ya leave it to the Chinaman! Its your own fault Tuskar, no peanuts for you!

I filled out their form about a year ago, but they never answered. They are probably only interested in doing business with bars and stores which is what I'd like to know, where are these shops and stores because i will buy beer from them, these beers on this site are nowhere to be found anymore.

Thanks very much for that Ralf! Yeah there's som e good ones and a number I have never tried. The prices are low too!

Yes, I agree that sometimes they are bit old by the time you get to them. When Wish Beer was good I got almost entirely still good tasting beers, but I don't think there was a fifty bottle order that I ever made that didn't have a few bad ones, as in not stored properly and a bit off. Did you use the Oak Wine website I mentioned? They seem too good to be true and I hesitate, not to mention the nearest bank is 30 minutes away and thats the only payment they accept is a cash transfer. Still if I knew they were good I'd buy a few cases of stuff I haven't had in ten years because no one in Thailand will sell their beers despite for some people, those beers being the best in the world. I know, its a matter of taste, and you ask most Brits about Belgian beer and they respond something like "Yuck! Treacley crap!"

I mentioned in my post that I was aware of these beers and they are OK, Makro does not carry Leffe Ruby and Cuvee or any of their others, but yes I pick up a couple bottles of brown and blonde everytime I go to Makro or Tops up here in Roi Et. Villa used to have 4 types of Leffe and now only the blond and the brown. I think my point is I am looking for a way to get access to a wider array of ales and darker beers, such as was once available.

They used to carry these beers but no longer, there are no Trappist beers its just what you can get at the supermrket. They have listings of some of these beers but are constatntly out of stock, it looks as though there is no intention of stocking them.

I was just looking at Villa Market's web page and was glad it looks like I can order a lot of stuff I can't get up in Isaan. However, the selection of beers was really down from what was in the brick and mortar shops themselves say 5 years ago. To my taste buds and particular variety of alcoholism, just lots of the same beers but with different labels, IPA's, lagers and plain wheat beers leaves a lot to be desired. I really like heavier, darker beers, and it seems they are nearly extinct in Thailand now. Beer Lao dark is not really a dark beer in my book but more a lager with a bit of molasses thrown in. I was rather surprised that there were at least a hundred varieties of beer and cider listed on Villa, but not one stout beer. I've long noticed there is a thing about stout in Thailand, it's only ever available at certain bars, Guinness something available in corner shops just about all over the world has never been available in Thailand. Coopers, not my favorite stout but it will do, has seemingly completely vanished. Weinstephaner's line of beers is down to one basic wheat beer in the Tops supermarket in my town and not represented at all on Villa. Schneider Weiss, my favorite German wheat beer alchemist/brewer, makers of the phenomenal tap #6 Aventinus, and Eis Bock disappeared 15 years ago from Foodland, the alcohol section manager said there was a disagreement of some kind between Foodland and the Schneider-Weiss distributor, so the manager said Foodland was cut off. You could order it from Wish Beer, but Wish Beer is completely gutted these days, very little of anything. 7-8 years ago I stopped into Villa Market Tonglor and they had a very good selection of Belgian beers from the Kasteel company. I would be fully satisfied if I could buy those, their coffee Belgian Quadrupel and cherry quad are really pretty excellent I think. The proper Belgian trappist beers, made by actual Catholic Churches, well, maybe that's asking a bit much, but there were a couple of specialty shops who sold them, one European deli meats and cheeses shop on Suk Soi 19 had all the best Belgians, even an array of matching glassware for m,ost of the beers they sold. They went out of business in about 2015 or so. Hell, even Baccara gogo Bar on Soi Cowboy had Orval Trappist and Cactus Bar on Cowboy had a really good Belgian selection, John had Tripel Karamaliet and some others and he'd get new things in and tell you if he knew your were keen. There was the Roach Motel beers as I like to kiddingly call them, Rochefort 10, 8, and 6 the best of the lot at Cactus bar sometimes and in the above mentioned cheese and meats shop on Soi 19. But, Yes, you can get Duvel at Villa, and thats a good one. The basic Leffe's are Ok and they have the blonde and the brown, but Villa used to carry a few others by Leffe that are better I think the Cuvee and . They have Fuller's London Pride, but not their London Porter which used to be fairly easily had in Thailand. OK, thats about it for my sad song, "Oh Where Oh Winely Nag, Hath the Darke Beers Goneth?" Now time to ask about one seller in Thailand that I found and ask if anyone's had a go with them. They are called Oak Wine and incredibly they seem to have just about every kind alcoholic drink on planet earth, including most of the beers I have mentioned in this post. It seems a little too good to be true and they only accept direct bank deposits for payments, so that also makes me wonder if they aren't just on the take. Anyone tried them? Any other suggestions for where to buy beer for delivery, my internet searches are not yeilding anything really.

The people who traditionally have valued and developed the world famous so-called Thai stick, Mango Thai and Lao Gold as they are known today and among many other lines are the Phu Tai and ethnic Lao of Isaan and they hail from both countries, however Thailand has had more exposure to other regions and farmers have mixed the more inbred and unique lines they still keep in remote parts of Laos with probably indicas for better yields and faster flowering at the expense of quality of the effects. Still incredible weed has been grown here for centuries and still does, just not avaiolable in your average shop in Thailand. But You can still grow your own of those varieties. There's a pot landrace preservation society called Zomia that also sells other lines that Angus doesn't carry and they also have excellent photos of various southeast Asian drug varieties that are still grown and seeds of which they sell from Thailand, Cambodia, and India. They are based in Bangkok as well, but looks like they will have to close up and it will all disappear again and you'll have to go into the hills of Nakorn Si Thammarat yourself and get your own seeds of Grandma's Tanaosri Red Star or Meun Sri!

Haha! Strictly Lao and Honduran sativa! Get yourself a couple seeds from Angus who sells very reasonably priced amazing landrace and heirlooms from all over the world and probably about 15-20 different Thai, Burmese and Lao lineages, The Real Seed Company and Quick Seeds are run by him. Thailand will be stupid about all of this and illegalize pot but they wil carry on not making a fuss about it in Laos.

There's also a pretty important consideration that gets ignored and thrown under the bus: The dangers of prohibition. Recreational drug use can harm some, but so do governments that propagandize their people and render them that much more confused and ignorant in that process, or so can driving a car harm people. Supernovas explode with the power to annihilate whole local star clusters, but also provide the material to form new worlds. Get used to it, Shiva. the god of destruction is not worshipped by 100's of millions of people in India for no reason, its a profound and prevasive aspect of life that the polite genteel gardners of the western world think they can get under control by spraying their gardens with pesticides. When governments embark on drug wars and prohibitions you are effectively spraying your people with pesticides adding something equally as dangerous as rampant drug abuse if not more so to the whole mix. Its not like no one knew that even 100 years ago either and its often what you read as to why they stopped alcohol prohibition in the west: its doesn't work and and creates more problems than it solves. Prohibition is already a long discredited way to control the harmful effects of mass recreational drug use on society if it ever is sincerely carried out to protect society, and personally I don't think it is done for that purpose. It is clearly useful as a political tool, social control, and for the profit of entities like colonial and neo-colonial entites and drug companies, branches of government and criminal elites. It is NEVER done to protect you, lets not be naive, there are no governments that exist or who have ever existed that were sincerely that interested in their citizen's welfare. It isn't their job, its your job if you want to live your life fully as a sentient sensible adult human being and if you think the government is able to protect you from reality even if it wanted to, realities like there are many chemical compounds and plants that change people's behavior in ways that may be dangerous, then you have been duped into helping them very actively not help you. As we well know from the Iran-Contra scandal in the United States in the 1980's, an illegal drug market is a great way for rogue actors in government and military to get funding they need to run wars and other projects without approval, public knowledge and oversight. So in our weak efforts, efforts that seem these days to have completely failed, to have representative and transparent government that genuinely serves their people throughout the world, drug prohibitions add even more problems to the human problems with running sovereign nations that treat its citizenry with due respect and are corrosive towards those ends of an accountable government which acts with purpose that is clear to all making for a life that without intervention and stupid nannying is actually genuinely safer and better for everyone. People wax all snarky-barky on the forum whenever the cannabis legalization in Thailand topic comes up, "Oh, they just wanna make a bunch of money!" The same can be said for illegalization, just that who makes the money will be different. If its illegal then who makes the money changes hands those in government and business who are positioned to profit from illegal sales will benefit. making weed illegal is not to save the children and adults of Thailand, if they were interested in that, other more key things would be prioritized such as banning toxic chemicals, chemicals banned all over the world no less, but used ubiquitously in food, agriculture. Or working to effectively ensure people have clean air and water. Or how about protecting people from predatory doctors and pharmacies with malpractice laws. Or how about instilling in people good basic health and safety awareness, or tryin gto create a system that does not run on corruption so that laws protecting people from harmful pollutants, food and medication will be enforced and Thailand can honestly test foods and drugs for harm creating capabilities. Theres plenty of dangerous chemical compounds galore everytime you step into a shop or market or supermarket. Really, cannabis and alcohol are scapegoats, even though of course one must be judicious in their use. But that goes without saying for anything. The health of Thai people is very poor, among the worst in Asia. Anywhere you go in Thailand you are exposed to life shortening levels of agricultural poisons, a witches brew of compounds in the air from burning refuse and exposed in the cities to clouds of auto-motive exhausts from easily solvable traffic problems. But there is no will to solve these problems because Thailand like many countries is hopelessly corrupt and because of that the mentality is theres no immediate gain or opportunity to be gained from solving those problems. Apparently there is somethingto be had from this cannabis legalization re-criminalization game or it would ne all shrugged off. In addition to providing bad actors with illegal markets and their attendant inflated prices, With drug prohibitions in place, drugs can be used as a way for government and law enforcement to falsely imprison, fine and smear who ever they like. We all know in urban areas everywhere that the police can and do plant drugs on people who have broken no laws whenever they want to target someone to be taken down or merely fined. Someone's occasional use of a recreational substance can be a way of completely removing them from their well earned and capable positions. So, OK go ahead, re-criminalize cannabis and hand law enforcement another tool to abuse their positions for their own gain and society's loss. And then there's workplace and law enforcement drug testing that prohibition gives you. And apart from the obviosu it has the unfortunate effect of having normalized the situation whereby people forefeit their right human right to privacy and bodily autonomy and now your boss or the government or the police can then have some not insignificant control over your neurochemistry, its not just the big bad government or law enforcement standing between you and your brain, its your buddy you work with and say good morning to everyday. Prohibition via drug testing then sets up these subtly corrosive and insidious relationships like a cancer within the society. People like to recall the old communist regimes where social empowerment and cohesion was shattered, even down down to the family level by snitch networks. To me it seems the drug test is another species of this found in the post communist uni-polar world soon to become multi again. The drug test is also a routine way that law enforcement can arbitrarily extract fines whenever they like and detain who they like. We are conditioned by the high-techness and scientific glamor of it to carry on in the media and to each other and ourselves as though testing were actually a legitimate means to control the problem of drug use. Its a gizmo, wow! It must be the answer to the problem of determining whose on drugs and who isn't. It clearly is not, its very well known drug tests do not have high enough levels of accuracy and people who do not use drugs can be subject to life ruining consequences should a law enforcement operative run a money saving or god forbid counterfeit and completely arbitrary drug test and get a false result. But we now mostly accept drug testing and naively think, and you deny the flakiness of drug tests and assure yorurself well I don't use drugs I have nothing to fear and this will help create a safe world and put the druggies in jail and rehab where they belong and all will be well. Just because you have a piece of technology doesn't mean you have anything legit. It could be anything and you don;t know how that test actually comes by its results, its all completely opaque to the average person and the agencies and the compaines that make these tests can hide behind that. They don't even have to make legitmate tests, in most countries such as the United States that even have supposed consumer standards checks, the outfits are wholly corrupted. Why bother with selling a real test. Just pay some person with a science degree 2 thousand dollars and presto you have a test that without fail and in 15 minutes tells you whether someone has taken an illegal drug. Or consider how far you are going to get in Thailand investigating and challenging whether even a fake test was conducted, all the police have to do is say, "This is a drug test...and the drug test says you took an illegal drug...you'll have to give up your green papaya shaver manufacturing enterprise to us because you'll be in for quite awhile." Just ask Americans about that kin dof thing, how now the government routinely seizes all of your assets and has railroaded many innocent people, ruined them and never returned what was wrongfully seized from them because of a drug charge. there som ehorrific ironies afloat such as in one case traces of cocaine were found on crisp bank notes foun din a safe of one successful balck american business man and his defense attornies presented studies that found that because there is so much illegal drug running done by unmonitored military and government organizations in the United States, there is enough cocaine on every US dollar to incriminate and seize the assets of anyone they choose. So yeah, great, run a drug war and prohibition Thailand. The story of this man who was run in and had yachts and homes and his business empire and assets seized because of a drug test is to be found in the highly recommended two volume memoirs, Volume 1-Phikal and Volume 2-Tikal of the discoverer of the benefits of MDMA, and inventor of hundreds of psychoactive compunds the experimental neuro-pharmacologist Alexander Shulgin. Shulgin himself was an eminently thoughtful and articulate and humane advocate for human freedom and potential. He experimented on himself and his friends and chronicalled in voluninous detailed the findings of the beneficial effects of compounds he created at his home laboratory funded by royalties he'd gained earlier in his career working for Dole Pineapple and his salary as a professor and public speaker at UC Berkeley in California. His interest was in psychoactive compounds long before they were in the public eye and concern, and so he got out of working as a chemist in big agriculture as soon as he could. But despite being among the very few given license to investigate and create psychoactive chemicals by the US government, the DEA decided eventually to go in and tear his lab apart and end his activities by prosecuting him to destroy his work and even ban his book which detailed to the public the effects and methods to synthesize just about anything he found or made himself. The power of a mandate of a drug prohibition gave the DEA, the agency charged with fighting the drug war against the whole world the overeach to go in and bust up the research. The library of Alexander (Shulgin) has been burned to the ground and decades have now passed in which the befits and nature of the human mind may forever remain obscured. And then there is the way that drug testing has opened pandora's box to use flakey technologies to be able to predict or even read a person's mind for pre-crime and of course as we know there is much discussion by governments and law enforcement authorities about how a pre-crime or a test result saying you were about to commit a crime will be tantamount in the future to having actually done the crime. To me it would seem that drug testing is a similar operation. Your crime of having been inebriated and thus a danger to yourself and others is not otherwise apparent. So you have to take the drug test which in effect says, you are a danger before the fact, its a type of pre-crime indicator in many cases. And also, not to mention, that drug testing, like background checks and monitoring employee internet activities is used as a shabby substitute for critical thinking and evaluative skills, and distracts probably all companies to some degree from spending time and resources and getting actually competent management who are foscused on actually able to evaluate employee work and performance and actual behavior on the job. The society that is on drugs and "on" prohibition, as prohibition is just as capable of creating a deluded nation as a drugs are hallucinates as it runs the drug test, the surreptitious background check, the application gathered look at an employee's comments and other activities on internet. The normalization of superfluous and glamorous high tech tools with limited benefit especially in places like Thailand where critical and evaluative skills are under developed no doubt lowers the quality of life for everyone. Indeed ruling institutions and individuals do not want people to have the ability to evaluate performance and behavior lest their managerial class begin to turn those well honed workplace skills against them. So, you give them the drug that is drug tests and multi-choice personality investigation quizzes and monitor their twitter posts in lieu. its also no doubt a lot more fun and inspiring for managers to get to play god and say lets see if Nigel was smoking dope on the weekend and ask him to submit a drug test rather than going through the monotony of actually looking at what he is doing and having to weigh many considerations as to whether he's helping the company or organization or govt branch that pays him. You can just save all that headache and hours of boredom by doing a simple and fun drug test with lots of cool bells and whistles and colors and charts and then be able to proclaim with complete conviction, "Ah ha! He uses drugs! And he talks a load of crap that i don't appreciate on facebook! I knew he was on drugs! He's out of here! I don't care that he is the star developer!" How much does it matter if your star developer tests positive for cocaine and marijuana, especially if you never ran a test you'd never have known. Just the act of running a test for drugs is an admission that there is no obvious problem with your employee's performance in the first place. So thanks to drug prohibition its now acceptable for management to go through the motions of monitoring the effectiveness of their employees, its essentially a ritual substituting for real discernment: is the employee an asset in his actual behavior and real contributions. I have never worked under any Thai manager, and I have worked under many, who could evaluate the quality of anyone's work or understand the value or liability to the work environment of employees in their charge. They look at anything but, they understand almost everything but is this work he's doing good or not. Yet the discussion here on the threads and in media and by the government ignores the dire price to be paid by society as a whole for a drug war or prohibition. They seem blithely unaware despite the precedent despite the semi-detente in the west regarding recreational cannabis. The end of alcohol prohibition in the United States left us with that conclusion, that was nearly a century ago yet as soon as alcohol prohibition ended JD Anslinger picked up the reigns and fired the fuel of hysteria against cannabis. But as that all begin sto end Thailand not only makes a false move to undo it but it decides to say no actually screw all that. It really seems to doubly affirm their commitment to harming their population to using prohibition for political gain and enriching themselves and their overlords.

I find it hard to believe this is offensive to that many Thais, theres a certain type looking for any excuse though I suppose. The media is maybe overdue for a Thais are offended by a foreign movie or other entertainment that has to do with Thailand kind of furor like The Hang Over II or a Lady Gaga concert being cancelled because she mentioned fake rolexes or that old Yul Bryner movie that shall go unnamed because of forum rules. Too bad a story isn't run how some tourist hotels run by Thais do not admit mixed race guests particularly Thai women or Asian with non-Asian guests. Thais offending Thais and Asians with racism and it creates a lot more hurt than a silly video. Its happened to me and my wife and once a freind was here on holiday with his Chinese-American wife and they were turned away from several Khao San Road guest houses. They say they are worried how it looks to the other guests. Another reason I don't holiday here even though I live here Considering how universally disliked Indians seem to be in Thailand, this is pretty mild payback, it really is no money no honey if you are an Indian tourist I can imagine. They should make their next video and call it Thailand Really Luv Me Jing Jing! And I Love Thailand Long Time Too Mutt!

She got elect-oh-cuted! Yeah, elect-oh-cuted numbah 1 oafuhdonist who almost die on holiday in Thailand by duh elect-oh-cute poll and by the pole on Instahgram, ya, very good! Very cute! Yeah Thailand have electro polls too before but they cancelled by cute people don't want a general electoh-cutions, because they want to be numbah 1 cute people who say, why we need electro polls, you just buy some batteries and run solar cell and wind powah, why already you serious about dangerous electoh-polls and high voteage wires!

I might drink a bit more, but what i want to to drink is unavailable. You cannot order beer from online anymore, and you have to do that upcountry if you want anything more than a Full Moon IPA or Chang or Leo. It's illegal unless you join some club, and even those are run out of Hong Kong so no care for anything but making a buck. I like the cheaper and what I think are much better European beers than trendy craft beers and thats the only alternative to Chang-Singh-Leo as far as beer. The Thai craft beer people make beer as boring as Chang-Singh-Leo, I'm sure they wanna be them. Really kind of a tragedy beers like Schneider Weisse's Aventinus, which was easily available in supermarkets like Foodland can't even be had from online beer clubs that seem more interested in selling other types of alcohol. The Thai craft breweries selling lager, wheat beer and IPA have pushed off the shelves even standards like Duvel in my supermarket, the latest casualty to the war on alcohol. Other fine Belgian beers like Triple Karmelite, all of the trappist beers, the Kasteel line of excellent beers much better than "craft" beer thats often easily twice the price and more, these are all nowhere to be found anymore. I was even in a famous craft beer bar in Bangkok, I asked the bartender about whether they had any Belgian beers she just gave me this cold look and walked away without saying anything. There was also one OK wine that somehow dodged the series of taxation increases on wine which was available at Lotus, It was Australian and went for 380 a bottle but disappeared up country about 4 months ago never to return. So I don't just buy something else, I just simply don't drink then. I think the distributors think they can accpet some kickbacks from the major companies and push everyone into drinking Chang-Singha-Leo, not me.

Yeah, I concur, regarding Dr Anna, she's excellent, though I've only ever seen her once, and didn't have anything very complex, I just had some new growths all over my back that I wanted to have checked and i didn't want to run the gauntlet/crap shoot and be unlucky again and get an insane probably fake doctor mad experimentalist at Bumrungrad, I've had problems with that for other issues. Though to be fair I got a good skin cancer doctor at Bumrungrad for something that was starting to get out of hand and 8 years later no issues. Anyway, Dr Anna, removed a bunch of non serious skin tags and other crap from my back, and my impression from that visit was she really is the picture of intelligence, thoughtfulness and seeming integrity that you want from a doctor. Quite good at expressing herself in English and understanding too. I've only ever been to her once but I'm sold on her, if I ever have any issues again I'm making a bee-line to her office and I pray she lives a works for quite awhile longer, there are very few like her out there.

Thats good to hear Liquorice, thank you for attending to this thread, with Ubon Joe having passed away, glad to see others are showing similar kindness and care about the expat community, I truly appreciate it. But, yes, I was wondering about that, who has the majprity of the power in making the decision to extend our stay. I had an additional problem as well, my go to office date is for a Saturday when I'm pretty sure they are closed, I finally called to ask about the Saturday come to office date and they told me the visa extension had already arrived. Perhaps they called by couldn't get through or it all fell through the cracks. Oh well...sure glad there wasn't an issue and that I'd have to go to Savanakhet and get a new multi, bummer you have to show them 400k now. A recent report confirmed that, but at least it does not have to be seasoned for 3 months (our Immigration branch office only, most offices its 2 months, people need to ask their branch office and not assume it is the same everywhere). The report on this forum from a few weeks ago said he topped up his savings account only a few days before going to the Thai consulate in Savanakhet. Also, he said that's only for multi entry non-O spouse, single entry 1 month spouse non-O's only require 20k, but if I was you I'd read around on this forum and double check. All the best everyone, take care.

Yes, as do i, but this time they told me to wait until the day my 90 day reporting time had arrived which was 2 days before my stay expired. I explained I'd feel more comfortable to do it before and they said no, wait. Thinking about your reply actually I now understand it. It is not a relief actually, I'm at the end of the consideration period and yes I understand I will not be on overstay during that time, the issue is that time is just about up and they still haven't contacted us. I don't assume they will approve my application as you seem to. They never promise to contact us at all but the they have the last three years. What they do say everytime is "Come to the office on the day the consideration period is finished." I have often wondered what happens next if i don;t get the extension and the consideration period has ended. I may soon find out.

Thanks Licorice. That's relief, I was really starting to panic this evening.

A 400,000 baht bank balance would be a new requirement, if thats true. I think you are mixing multi non-O requirements with retirement visa requirements or visa extension requirements. That would be major bad news for many and close a major loophole. Yikes! Because of the COVID border closures, I stopped doing the 1 year multi-entry non-O spouse visit visa at Savannahkhet, so I have been out of the loop for the last three years and on yearly extensions at the local immigration branch. I have checked periodically on here to see that evrything is the same and if there was a change i missed it. Just do a search on here, there should be numerous reports. I was just going to check if people are getting their one year extensions on here or if they are arbitrarily denying people now for whatever reason. I was given a month stamp to wait till my paperwork was processed as usual but this time i am about out of time and they still have not gotten back to me. For the last two years they finished everything in a week but they haven't phoned us yet and its just about time over. Who knows, internal immigration and getting an extension is about a lot of games and gauntlets, so maybe thats all it is or that they are simply busier than before. maybe more people are coming back and applying to stay longer because they think the pandemic restrictions are lifted. In the past here they used to put my employers through the wringer every year, their own government univeristies for whom I used to work. They treat even foreign professors like we are some huge liability, they don't want to give extensions to professors, its actually smoother now that i am not employed in Thailand. So, maybe they just want to make me squirm a bit before they give me the stamp on the last day of my 1 month wait for visa extension. Its part of their job description to make applicants feel unwelcome. Sorry, blah blah blah, right? But my plan B is to go to Savannakhet and if they are now asking for 400,000 that is going to be very tight I barely have above that, it never occurred to me I might need to prove I have 400,000 plus for yet another month. I really hope your info is mistaken.

Zero awareness anywhere in the country about how extremely unhealthy breathing burning plastic is. It wreaks havoc on your endocrine system, neuro development of children and reproductive functions , according to some studies it literally causes young children to go through puberty and be able to give birth at age 10 or 11, causes females to act like men and vice versa. Most of the dogs in our village are dykes, I've noticed. Little data out there as you would expect, they'd rather you were freaked out about COVID to the exclusion of being concerned or doing anything about anything else and of course as we all know and agree, if it is not on the television news it doesn't exist and is a conspiracy theory and is misinformation regardless of what all the research says, what do qualified people know about anyway, right?. In another study (https://factor.niehs.nih.gov/2022/8/science-highlights/burning-plastic) conducted in Guatemala by the conspiracy theorist and misinformationist terrorist Dr. Lisa Thompson from Dept of Public Health at Emory University, in Guatemala where plastic is nearly universally used to kindle cooking fires, burning plastic was concluded by the study to be the single most important cause of mortality accounting for 7 million premature deaths in 2019 alone. A least the govt gives a toss and is listening to what Dr. Thompson has found and will be working with Dr. Thompson to run a national outreach and public awareness campaign. Well, at least we can smoke dope here in Thailand, but d'ya think we;d ever see any kind of health and safety awareness campaign in Thailand or anyhing that is of help to anyone. No, but you get to use computer tablets at school again though, now that the friend of all children Dr. Thaksin has come back and needs money from Thailand again. We lived nearly alone a ways outside of our village and in the last 4 years 5 families have moved out here with us, unable to make ends meet in Bangkok. They despise us because we are straigh talkers around here, something that is not appreciated at all anywhere in Thailand asked them to not burn plastic, I said to one family, "We don't do that around here. Give us your plastic and we will sell it/dispose of it ourselves for you. You make everyone sick including yourselves burning that stuff everyday." they stopped burning plastic, haven't smelled it again for two years and hopefully they are selling it at the local abbator but I get a daggers in the eyes gaze from the dad. I'd be worried hey might end my life premaurely but it has a good chance of doing that have anyway, I have been diagnosed with cancer of the bladder, something that smokers often get and I don't smoke.

Maybe he will be allowed serve as Prime Minister anyway from his prison cell. In the U.S. a president may serve from prison, as you may have heard regarding Onald Rump. I have a feeling though they told Pita to scram for a reason, to make way for Mr. T. Just one of those wild hunches you have...

I've lived in Thailand for the last 24 years, and only been to Phuket once, no incidents when I did go, but the general atmosphere is rather mercenary much less friendly than the rest of the country. I felt somewhat uncomfortable at the pushiness I felt afraid of security in the bars as well. If I want an idyllic tropical island holiday, Indonesia is streets better than Phuket, it doesn't cost that much more to fly down there 8000 baht round trip to Bali and from there you can also explore many other very interesting islands and places if the touristyness of Bali sucks too much, Java, Lombok, Sulawesi, natural environment and traditonal culture in better shape than post-modern consumerist shambles Thailand.

As much as I feel bad that people probably won't get to have the person they voted for as PM, there just isn't much of a spirit or will to have a democratic country, in daily life the traditional culture is very much about shut up and do as Pee Chai told you or get out of here. You can't stand up for yourself even a little bit. Do that and have the whole group against you. Just as Thaksin, although he was supposedly and probably more or less elected, bragged that he would do anything in his power not to leave. When he was around You never felt like he even remotely respected democratic principals unless of course it benefitted himself and as i recall he was very open a about that that it was a big ironic joke to him, that you idiots elected me, too bad suckers, the country is mine now! You snooze you lose! I always had this funny feeling all the time that he was just taking the pizz, as they say. I have no idea about Pita, but most people don't respect fairness or democratic principals here or anywhere, you get laughed at by most people in the west. I really don't have much faith Pita would do anything more than be another self-serving wanna be autocrat. People in the west have been so propagandized by nonsense for decades they seem to want a non-elected government. "Democracy?! How quaint! How passé. Run along then and go play on your tricycle!" As you might recall in the U.S., it was revealed in the files hacked from the Democrtic party computers, minutes taken from eeting correspondence between party honchos etc that they hold absolute contempt voters that it is all about controlling the press wining and dining and getting contributions from the big donors. Of course you can glean all of that anyway, but there it was rubbed in your face: your vote means funk all ya buncha bumpkins! Give us your milk money now or we'll beat you up! The voters are the deplorables not just Trump supporters were spoken of in theose kind of terms between party members. As much as I like Robert Kennedy Junior he will. not get my vote as long as he is running under that party, I don;t know what is wrong with him or what kind of game he is playing though I have a few gusses, and he is undermining himself and all of the good things he has been doing fighting corporate crimes against the people. The Democratic party was taken to court over it, how Bernie Sanders won the vote and the voters shafted. That the U.S. presidential candidate is selected was underscored by the court's decision. The judge basically said in essence, "We don't need your crap in this court room! The stinkin voters, gimme a break! The Democratic Party is a private independent organization, a club if you will, and it is entirely up to them what they wanna do, if you don't like it then don't vote for their candidates, end of story, scram get outta heah! Waste my time with your garbage!" The weakness and corruption of many other leaers in the west its hard to believe too that they are the product of any authentic democratic process. Still I stand by Thailand's voters no matter what Pita is really about or how he got where he did. We have to start somehwere and those have got to go, basta ya! As they say to the CIA installed coups year after year when their democratically electd governments are overturned by games, assassinations, coups etc by the United States.

You could see something like this coming as soon as the "yes, but"s started regarding Pita's legitimacy from clearly an illegitimate bunch, the group of appointed senators. If the last 9 years have taught us anything, its that Prayuth and company aren't going to budge and any further election circuses are nothing more than that sorry to say, the election was pretty suspect from the get go. Prawit, though. The Thai people are just being trolled here. Is he not nearly universally disliked, or if not could a more unpopular or unsavory character be chosen as Prayuth's new stand in? Not to mention that he is very closely associated with Prayuth, even having served as a caretaker prime minister for a spell when Prayuth was taking a break as I recall. Seems they're deliberately trying to anger people and provoke unrest.

If you interact with a lot of different people in Asia it often comes up how crap they think your food is. They tell you what it is you eat without having eaten a meal with you. They just assume you eat the same crap that they eat, sugar, msg laden stuff that they don't have the nutritional knowledge or will power to avoid. Its usually something to say because they don't know what else to say to you to challenge you or otherwise have discussion. So it starts with something to the effect of why do you only eat junk food in your country and then things mentioned like pizza or hamburgers actually have more nutritional value than commonly eaten foods in Asia such as a bowl of refined white flour based noodles and minimal amounts of overcooked vegetables and meat and substantial amounts of msg. I enjoy a lot of Chinese food and some of it is bland but still quite excellent, steamed ravioli type pasta stuffed with nothing other than salted greens, delicious and Chinese people in Taiwan gobble thm up, very popular food. You could easily put those on a plate and say "Blah. Yellow people food. So monotonous and the msg makes you bowlegged," or some other bigoted stereotyping. And what on earth is a white person and white person food? I assume that a white person is a person whose genetic line is from a rather wide area of the world which includes areas where such people have migrated, like South America where foods from Africa and the Americas make up a good of everyone's diet. Or North Africa and the Middle East. even some East Indians particularly in the north might construed by a Chinese person as white. A majority of Latin Americans self-identify as white and there are many very spicy and rich foods from those areas like Mexican food. Italian food, bland and boring? So, are their foods all the same and so easily dismissed as complete junk or is it really about putting other people down to feel good about yourself when you can't find anything to feel good about? How pathetic. Ironically, the food displayed looks like the kind of thing you'd get at a Chinese suki joint. Its just dunked in boiling water, can't think of any more bland a method of preparing food than that. Anyway, not everything that is some kind of pungent savory sauce is boring. Is plain steamed rice or bread bland and boring, kind of, but its quite satisfying to eat usually and is essential to a good diet. What are these people eating mostly anyway, florescent colored gummy worms?

Its not just the selling times. The whole lower alcohol content part of the alcohol market is a shambles at this point. There seems to be no sign of bottoming out either. Its ironic you can order pot online, see th ads for it etc but not beer. The advertising ban is really on over-reach. Retailers and bars should be allowed to advertise to customers what they have and how much it costs. But as it stands, you cannot look up on internet before you go and find out who has what and how much it costs. Its kind of like you are not suppose to want anything other than Chang, Singha, Leo and Heineken and a few assorted brands of Thai whiskey (rum) and some sweet some sweet ladies drinks, Spy, Smirnoffs lemon and some others. But in actuality that is not the case, most venues often offer other things, Thai micro brew stuff, which i don't caare for personally, rather bored of the style of IPA and wheat non of which have the subtle flair of say some long established European beer makers. though not many except perhaps in Bangkok where some places offer an impressive selection. Our Makro up country dropped their Fullers line of ales and a few other interesting and good value tings like Savannah cider from South Africa. Tops has really squeezed out the interesting beer section nearly entirely, this gradual quarterly expansion of Chang and Singha, till theres now this narrow band at the end o the aisle. They hung a strip of mini bags of dried squid concealing behind it a couple of dusty bottles of something that should be there ront and center the unqiue and excellent Duvel beer from Belgium so that one is nearly finihsed being slyly pushed out and many will just forget about it. But a drinks menu online is a violation of advertizing to them. As is a listing on a supermarkets website. Everything in the supermarket is listed and can be ordered for delivery, but not beer Seems that that would benefit the major alcohol companies quite a bit, what they would like more than anything I would guess is that there would be no need to say/ask what anyone sells, that there'd only be the same few things that they manufacture everywhere. Its an ugly patch on the country's image for tourists that they have only tatty wine coolers and the irregularly brewed Singha, "What will this batch taste of, mildew dish rag or toouch low quality hops or faintly of sugar and cabbage? Chang is drinkable if boring. Of course if you are just in Thailand for the girls who cares you hardly notice the boring drinks and vaguely nauseating alcohol. But its the government that is always bangin on about how the want Thailand to be for high class foreigners only, but all you are going to offer is Pattaya beer bar selction of drinks , "Hab Strawberry Spy, Bacardi Seaweed-Mango, and Leo! And Japanese craft beer small bottle, you give me 450 baht!" Of course plenty of alternatives are available but you have to physically go out and search for them or have a number of evenings of nasty drinks. Like other things the tourists ar in for a raw deal because they don't have the time here to suss out where to go for what they may want. If you are truly wealthy of course I suppose you are getting exquisite wines and champange and money is no object so you can shrug off the fact that the pricess are 3x now due to the latest in an endin series of tax increases on what they are back home. How many of the hi-sos even bother with Thailand? If were them, I be going to places where I could get nice alcohol because it is appreciated and supported in those countries, Spain and Italy for wines, Germany and Belgium for good beers or even my home home good old USA, where tons of beers have finally established themselves after we had a long period of what Thailand is going through now with a few insipid 3 percent beers like Bud, Bud light, Miller and Coors about your only choice. In most of us Ynaks minds, there was no such thing as anything else, beer was a mono-culture an the differenc eof beer was what tribe you belonged to because the marketing brainwshed you into it. I am someone unique and i own a gun so I drink Coors! I am proud to be gay so I drink Miller! I'm Joe Avergae so I drink Bud! I'm a bull terrier owner and an alcoh so I drink Bud light! I remember under Thaksin, there was talk in the media that they were going to require that stores turn the cans and bottles so that the labels would not be visible and by that not "advertise." That shows you the mentality, that there are some in the ministries who just want it banned period, don't seem bold enough to go that far. Though I'm sure Singha Beers is pleased about that situation, It makes it impossible to find any competing specialty alcohols, particularly imported ones like say Belgian beers, the outrageous levels of taxation on such make it so that few want to buy them and very few shops or supermarkets if any at this point carry them. There seems to be some problem with stouts as well. Stouts are a rather basic species inhabiting the beers and ale eco-sphere, they even have a good presence in countries that are supposedly more hostile to alcohol than Thailand is, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore where you can get Guiness in many places and major lager beer makers like Bintang of Indonesia, kind of the Boon Rawd of Indo make a decent stout but here it is the stouts that the supermarkets are inevitably always dropping from their inventory, its like the dark skin prejudice gets unconciously transferrred to beer. I nag the and they order it and carry it for a month and then, "No, nobody buy that beer sir." Well, so then where is it? Were the irish stout leprechauns stealing it during the night? OK, granted, they have cottoned onto IPAs and wheat beers but to me those are starting to look like lager that is expensive. You vill eat the bugs, take our cheap yaba tablets, drink factory lager, sniff zee paint thinner, own nothing and be happy!