meadish_sweetball

As usual the Thai Haters come out in force.

I seem to have very little problems, maybe i don't go in with a 'white supremist' attitude.

Don't know why PoodMaiDai, Jackr and the like don't go back to where they came from if they hate Thais and Thailand so much..oh yeh they were losers there too

I so agree. By the way, whatever you do, don't buy a Mitsubishi air conditioner! Terrible quality. Panasonic much better: includes a free fan and Hello Kitty handlebar covers for your scooter.

The above reads like typical trip advisor reviews, ranging from excellent to well under par. It seems I was perhaps misinformed about the demise of the last business, and thats the danger of hearsay but one thing is clear from the above reviews...the service is not upto standard, and a business can not survive if service is not tip top because there are too many inpatient farangs here....good service is indemic to the Western world and if we dont like something, or we are waiting THEN 9 times out of ten we will stand up and make it known.

So my conclusion here, is the people saying they had a great time at the cat house are simply being sympathetic to her cause and her personality and not offering an unbiased opinion.

People simply have different opinions or ideas about what type of place they like.

I, and many people I know, appreciate a friendly/familiar atmosphere over 'well-oiled' impersonal service. The place I regularly return to on one of Thailand's islands is run by a small family with a couple of Burmese staff. Food orders are not seldom misunderstood or forgot, but if you have a modicum of patience, it is fixed. And the upside is that you feel at home there, and the smiles you get are genuine rather than something learned out of a service manual. What's good is also that the place is not super popular, but it attracts people like us, so the whole place always feels nice and warm, a bit like coming home.

So, horses for courses, I think.

If you want to try Goenka style Vipassana, I believe they have a center in Lamphun province. Check their schedule to see when the course with English instruction starts.

As far as I am aware, most meditation courses do not allow simultaneous yoga practice. The reason for this is the same reason as if you would participate in a scientific study evaluating a medication or therapy - the scientist (in this case yourself) wants to be sure about what method/medicine it is you are testing, and properly attribute any effects or insights you may get from the practice.

Wat Rampoeng in Chiang Mai offer Vipassana meditation retreats too, but teach a slightly different method. If you go there, you will need to participate in and learn some rituals. It also tends to get a bit crowded at times due to its good reputation and possibly also its ease of access.

I sometimes also feel a bit awkward doing these things, but not awkward enough that I let it become a hindrance to my practice, which I feel is really useful.

The way I see it, meditation practice itself (in Vipassana) is about examining the nature of experienced reality.

The Buddha was the guy who came up with the method for this, and your meditation teacher is the guy who is helping you when you are learning the method - so it makes sense to pay respect I think.

Jack Kornfield said he felt similarly when he first came to the monastery in Thailand. To come to terms with it, he made himself observe something in the person that was truly worthy of respect and then bow to that - for example, when he bowed to another monk there who was a rice farmer with little education, he bowed to the wrinkles in his eyes from plowing the fields in the hot sun. Most people have some trait you can respect if you look for it. You get the drift.

Truthfulness is crucial, but flexibility and openness are also good traits to cultivate.

I haven't been to any Goenka retreats (the method Sheryl mentioned) myself, but I know a handful of other people who have, and all of them have been positive about the experience. The method has its critics too, though.

Where can I get my toaster repaired?

I think the Francia boxes at Rimping are decent. Haven't really shopped around much though.

And those women still usually do most of the housework, plan your social life, do your errands, cook, whatever. I wonder how many men, in their 20s even pay for dates these days? I understand for many people on this forum, due to their age (if you are over 65 or 75, maybe you took care of your wife more financially) but did any of you actually have wives who stayed home and did nothing (no kids), no money of her own for anything? I think that is not very acceptable these days, not many women would look forward to being a stay-at-home wife, childless, and doing nothing. However, if there are some, I guess YOU chose that situation, because you wanted it for some reason, and you knew what the laws were/are regarding sharing property upon divorce. (I will admit some people could get stuck with a sick spouse, or got somehow stuck with some situation you did not expect. However, this is true for women also, who get stuck with a sick spouse who can't work, or doesn't work for many reasons, or who goes into debt doing stupid things, who gambles, who is an alcoholic, many things we can't always predict.)

And I am not sure I understand, why so many men who feel burned by this, resentful about their divorce,

I'm guessing you are well under 50 years old.

My former wife 50 when she divorced me, contributed no money to the house, nothing at all, 100% paid for by me.

Her own money, well she had a gold card on my account, and could spend whatever she wanted along with about 12k (UKP) tax free from the government.

I didn't mind her getting 1/2 my pension, not a problem. I did mind her getting 100% of my our house and stopping me ever seeing my our children again. I'm guessing this is what upsets many men here, losing access to their home and their children.

I don't really care about the money, it would have been nice to see my 4 children, but oh well ...............

Yes I am resentful, home lost, children lost ........ would you be OK with losing those?

if you start a relationship with somebody by spoonfeeding them, they will expect to be spoonfed.

The word

spiritual has evolved (no pun intended) to be associated with the private realm of thought and experience while the word religious is tied solely to the public realm of membership in a religious institution with official denominational doctrines.

Wikipedia, Merriam-Webster and Longman all disagree with your definition of spiritual.

The term spirituality lacks a definitive definition,^[1][2] although social scientists have defined spirituality as the search for "the sacred," where "the sacred" is broadly defined as that which is set apart from the ordinary and worthy of veneration.^[3]

The use of the term "spirituality" has changed throughout the ages.^[4] In modern times spirituality is often separated from religion,^[5] and connotes a blend of humanistic psychology with mystical and esoteric traditions and eastern religions aimed at personal well-being and personal development.^[6]

This is from Merriam Webster:

¹spir·i·tu·aladjective \ˈspir-i-chə-wəl, -i-chəl, -ich-wəl\

1

: of, relating to, consisting of, or affecting the spirit : incorporeal <spiritual needs>

2

a : of or relating to sacred matters <spiritual songs>

b : ecclesiastical rather than lay or temporal <spiritual authority> <lords spiritual>

3

: concerned with religious values

--

Longman:

spir‧i‧tu‧al

1 relating to your spirit rather than to your body or mind:

Painting helps fill a spiritual need for beauty.

spiritual values

2 relating to religion [= religious]:

Islam was inspired by the teachings of the spiritual leader Mohammed.

3 somebody's spiritual home a place where you feel you belong because you share the ideas and attitudes of that society

—spiritually adjective

So we are left wondering what exactly it is that YOU do that you consider spiritual - and also, since you repeatedly are doing the usual Dawkins-style ridiculing, maybe you could also explain why you would do anything like that, since science only talks about a body, most definitely not about a spirit or soul. So why do stuff to meet a need of an entity or aspect of yourself that you cannot prove exists?

QUOTE:

Have you ever earnestly tried consistently turning the other cheek or loving your enemies - just for one day?

Ah, but that is the new testament - the people who sometimes quote this , are the same people who have a much older holy book, the old testament, that speeks about "an eye for an eye".

Ah! Religions! If they had not killed millions of people, I would call them funny, in a Monty Pythonesque way.

Religions, greed, jealousy, violence, materialism,... are all childhood diseases of humanity.

Wait another 10.000 years, eventually we will grow up (or disappear).

The way I see it, negative mental traits in human nature kills people - ego, greed, fear, anger, judgement. Religions are not a prerequisite for this to happen, and nothing, as far as I can see, tells us that absent religion, there would be no wars or no mass killings.

The worst mass slaughters so far in history were committed by people who were not religiously motivated - nazism, communism etc.

In terms of making good excuse for killing and hurting others, ideologies seem to be right up there with religions, if not worse. And the way I see it, just like religions, ideologies are not the root cause, rather, they are symptoms of the less appealing side of human nature when amplified by numbers.

Thumbs up for Jungle Flight. Haven't tried King of Flight.

Why do almost all of the TVF posters automatically assume this admittedly liberal anti capitalist gadfly, Andy Hall, is unbiased and accurate in his reporting on Natural Fruits? Have you looked into Natural Fruits complaint against him? He has an agenda. He is paid to attack, any and all, for profit capitalist companies. That is how he makes his living. He has damaged Natural Fruits reputation and hurt their sales by his accusations. Likewise, he has damaged Thailand's reputation. What is Nautral Fruit and Thailand by extension, suppose to do? Stand by idly while their reputation and livelihood is defamed and attacked? Natural Fruit isn't a multinational conglomerate. They are a relatively small, environmentally friendly business that provides steady employment for around 500 to 600 employees. I know the TVF posters are a highly educated group and it puzzles me why most of you just automatically suspend your natural scepticism when the issue involves an attack on a for profit business. What would you do if your company and livelihood were attacked? Yes Natural Fruits hires temporary migrant workers but they also employ over 500 full time regular workers and pay them a fair wage and benefits. Why would you support the destruction of the lives of these people and their families. If Andy Hall and Andrew Drummond had their way that is exactly what would happen. Andrew Drummond should go back to Australia and address the internal problems and issues Australia has as should Andy Hall go back to Finland and work on improving Finland. Leave Thailand and Natural Fruits alone.

Here is my idea what to do:

Stop hiring migrant workers for peanuts - either make sure they get fair wages or hire locals at fair wages instead: raise the prices of the products if required, then use your ethical stance as a selling point versus your competition.

You know it makes more sense than shooting down somebody who is just pointing out conditions that you would never want to live under yourself.

It's very hard to guess from phonetics, but maybe he is saying เหมาเต็มก็ได้

"Hire full/complete also can"

meaning something like

Could hire for the whole day

Could hire the whole car

if it really sounds like 'gadoy' rather than 'gaw dye' he may be putting on a funny accent, which may also be why he laughs.

...or the 'gadoy' meaning 'female private part' in Khmer is correct, in which case he's saying something like 'might as well hire the entire pussy'... more likely to elicit a laugh.

Many people who are born here are nominally Buddhists, but do not even try to keep the precepts, nor do they meditate or attempt to be mindful in everyday life to the best of their ability. They do the things that they saw their parents and elders do when growing up, some of which are based on Buddhist concepts (many Thais are great at giving and try hard not to cause upset with their speech or actions, for example), but ultimately, they just tend to get on with their lives in Samsara. There are exceptions, of course, and it's great when you come across somebody who is.

Still, I would not base my idea of Buddhism on the average Thai off the street.

If you want to know what it's about, learn the basics and apply it in your life. Give it an honest go, see if it makes a difference. If it doesn't, carry on.

Thailand is not a haven for investment, it is xenophobic, has a justice system that is corruptible, a police force that has no bearing on justice except lining its own pockets and certainly with no regard to the law except how they can twist it for gain, a government that is possibly the MOST corrupt of all time for Thailand which is already near the bottom of the heap of corruption infested countries and a local government system that is borne from it. It has no way for foreign management to own their own homes never mind longer staying expatriates, it is almost impossible to get civil or criminal or civil justice here and no respect for the law of contract - the most basic of business requirements. It has a policy of refusing to allow you to take you investment out of the country and anyway the tax offices are so biased it is most unlikely you will make any profit anyway. There is no logic, no honesty, no morality and the thing they are most proud of is their Thai Culture that brought them to this state of affairs. The workers are lazy, ignorant through lack of education and anything beyond repetitive work is way beyond 90% of them - also they have extended family with hundreds of mothers, fathers, grandmothers, and grandfathers that fall sick and die with alarming regularity - I guess most of those must be adoptive parents? anyway a good excuse for a day off. The labour laws and just about everything else is loaded against business.

It is a safe haven for foreign investment if by that she means foreigners will likely end up in the investment graveyard along with their bodies after the mafia have finished screwing every asset off them. No I don't think so ex-Ms Thaksin - that sounds like a load of ........

Just say what you really feel..... :-) Just kidding, you have pretty much nailed the issues. After a long time here, I am amazed that anyone would invest one dollar here. Big international businesses seem to do ok such as Honda, but I think they are somewhat immune to the lower level shakedowns. Of course Pepsi cannot be very happy now.....Perhaps large companies wishing to invest here could contact them !!

Not saying any one is right or wrong but there sure is a lot of negativity posted here about Thailand.

The one thing all the nay sayers have in common is they do not recommend another country which has similar low labor costs.

This a request to borrow money for the government's use in infrastructure projects. It isn't an invitation to invest in business which you could do by buying stocks. The Thai government is well known for its corruption, and for massive amounts of money disappearing when first targeted for infrastructure.

Anyone who'd loan the Thai government money with it's corruption and unstable government would be downright foolish.

Not necessarily; they could be corrupt, too.

Customs appear to be blocking many, possibly all, shipments from iherb.com since a couple of weeks back, not just the ones sent by courier. In response, Iherb has temporarily removed the courier company shipping options from their website, and only list the regular mail option as available now.

But it looks like even regular mail shipments from iherb are blocked.

Based on info from the Iherb website, Iherb are currently trying to negotiate with Thai customs to find out the reasons for the blocking, and how/if it can be solved.

My personal favourite is not funny to most of you... TRAMS - it means 'nonsense' or 'poppycock' in Swedish.

Almost none of the shops who sell fish oil seem to keep it cold? Don't any of you wonder or worry about that?

Rancid fish oil is quite detrimental to your health, and it is fairly common with bottles of rancid fish oil on the shelves (based on a large Norwegian study). Transport and storage through the tropics would seem to me to be a bad idea.

That's interesting - but you refer to 'bottles of rancid fish oil', and I wonder if that would similarly apply to fish oil, factory packed, in capsule form, further packed in an airtight container. I do note that the period from date of manufacture to the 'expiry date' on the stuff I use is two years. Assuming it's kept within a reasonable temperature range, would the oil in capsule form be likely to turn rancid?

I guess that depends what a reasonable temperature range is - I don't have that data. But the Norwegian study I mentioned did find a huge percentage of plastic bottles with fish oil capsules on the shelves that had some degree of rancidity. Of course, very slight rancidity is probably not an issue, but once it goes over a certain threshold you'll be worse off than if you taken none.

I think to make sure, you should cut open a capsule and test what the fish oil actually tastes like. If it's OK, it'll just have a mild, oily taste.

(1) P - เอ้ย จะไม่คุยกันเลยหรอ Hey, aren't you going to talk to me?

(2) J- โทษทีครับ I'm sorry.

(3) J - เป็นไงสบายดีป่าว??? How are you, is everything good???

(4) J - พอดีไม่ค่อยได้เช็คดูแถมปิดเสียงและสั่น ของ ลาย อีก เพราะว่าคนที่ร้านมันคุยกันทั้งวัน I don't really check this much, also Line is on mute with vibration, because the people in the shop talk all day.

(5) J - รำคานก้อเลยปิดไปซะเลย เออ โจ้ถึงไทย วันจันทร์ ที่4 เมษา นะคับ I got annoyed, so I turned it off... er... Jo(e) arrives in Thailand on Monday March 4th.

(6) J - แม่ไปรับที่ กทม Mum will go to Bangkok to pick (Joe) up.

(7) J - ว่างๆจะไปหาเด้อ เตรียมพระไว้ให้หน่อยน่ะ I'll come and visit when I'm off. Could you arrange the 'phra' (phra means 'monk(s)', 'Buddha amulet', etc. I'm not sure if this is meant literally or not.)

(8) J - ขอบคุณคับ Thank you.

(9) J - จะเอาอะไรป่ะ??? Do you want anything???

(10) J - รีบๆนะรีบรุด Hurry up, hurry up

(11) P - เอาๆๆๆ Yes, yes, yes (presumably responding to "do you want anything")

(12) P - เด่วส่ง list ไปให้นะ วันนี้ยุ่งมาก วันตรุษจีน I'll send you a list (in a while). Today is really busy, it's Chinese New Year.

I agree. But what I meant in this case was complaining directly to the shopkeeper.

As a Thai, I can say that I would not have made any comments about prices going up...

I often hear Thais (well, mostly Northern Thais, in case they behave differently for some reason?) complaining about price hikes in my everyday life. My hunch is that whether one would comment or not is more a matter of personality than of culture.

I'm not too equine on this hole ordeal, but in the mane, I do hope it can be saddled amicably. Can't help but feel it would behoove us to love our neigh-bors like ourselves.

I guess there are no absolutely crystal clear data on long term exposure in humans. Still, regardless of whether there are negative health effects in humans or not from getting hot takeaway in plastic bags and styrofoam containers, the fact remains that the vast majority of these then go straight in the rubbish and will be burned, causing nasty air pollution.

So since a while back, my family uses stainless steel containers with plastic lids whenever we go to get takeaway. Found them at Index Living Mall in Chiang Mai, in case somebody else is interested.

Would it not also be vipaka if they received help by us, although perhaps of another karmic seed?

Pondering the subject, the workings of karma on a universal (or multi-universal) scale must be complex beyond normal comprehension, so many strands running simultaneously, intersecting and diverging.

If you are in Chiang Mai, you are already in the Golden Triangle, no matter what the tourist authorities attempt to have you believe.

MESmith's suggestion is good. Chiang Saen has nothing to go out of your way for.

If you're heading to Wat Rong Khun (the White Temple), you may need to bring a Thai person as a guide to get in, as they have a sign saying foreigners are not allowed to enter on their own anymore due to several incidents breaching the rules.

In fact, they have signs for just about everything, as well as a speaker system they use to call out in case somebody is seen doing the wrong thing. Somebody in there really likes signs and speakers, and seems to be well and truly stuck in the world of form, perhaps even more than others. It's best not to take it all too seriously.