JacksonGlurk

I've used both the TG flight and the SQ nonstop from Newark via Singapore quite a few times, each time in business class.

The business class seats in the A340 that are used by both carriers are similar and they are both awful, a joke even among airline staff. They are approximately flat, that much is true, but they are not horizonal by a long shot. When most people in the cabin recline their seats for sleeping, you'd better be real fond of confined spaces or you'll soon be screaming. It's rather like spending 17 hours in an MRI machine, one that you keep sliding out of because of the angle at which you are lying.

As for the service levels, Thai is -- as always -- second rate and slightly amateurish. SQ is the better airline without a doubt, vastly better food and a far more professional cabin staff (probably more competent pilots, too), but to get all that you've got to make the connection over Singapore. It's a great airport, but that adds at least four hours to your total journey time.

The best thing I can say about the TG flight is that its timing are great. It's the first flight into the international terminal at JFK in the morning and then departs at noon when there are virtually no flights either. In both cases you will have the pleasure of a nearly empty terminal, no lines at either immigration or security.

If they were threatening to sue Google in Thailand, they're even dumber than I thought.

No, never mind. That's not possible.

This comment is not aimed at anyone in particular, just a bit of Buddhist thought since we are on the topic of compassion. Offered with the best intentions:

Why be so stingy with compassion? It doesn't cost anything. Allowing yourself to feel sympathy for another's pain is not the same as condoning his actions or excusing him from responsibility. The Buddha taught that knowledge begins with self-scrutiny. Understanding one's self naturally leads to compassion for others. If you don't believe it, try Vipassana meditation. Conversely, the more adamantly you withhold compassion from another person, the more suffering you reveal in yourself. So when you see someone die an unfortunate death, what is it in your own psyche that prevents you from expressing compassion? Fear of death and the emotions surrounding it? Insecurity about your own life? Resentment towards other? It's Dharma 101.

And, as a nation, Thailand has applied Dharma 101 to the point of becoming comatose. You sound like an outtake from 'The Karate Kid.'

Utter and total crap.

The usual big-mouth, smug, self-important, big-shot Thai shooting off his mouth to impress the peasants as to how powerful he and his buddies are (subtext: stay in line and tug on your forelocks a lot because even huge, international companies bow down to our power). The poor jerk doesn't know one site from another and, just as a matter of interest, there is no such thing as 'a criminal lawsuit' either.

I purchased about twenty million baht offshore nearly a year ago and have been holding it there ever since, rolling it over in monthly time deposit. The interest rate has averaged about 8%, which is attractive for holding cash in any currency. Anyway, for various reasons, I recently decided to sell the THB position and was surprised when I was quoted the Thai domestic sell rate. I tried three other major banks, two in the US and one in the UK. Same deal.

whom are you trying to bullshit my friend?

What an arrogant jerk you are.....

I was trying to help the previous poster, and frankly I don't give a stuff what you think. I'm not selling anything and I'm not buying anything. I offered him some information in passing and you feel the need for some totally unknown reason to jump in and call me a liar. It's people like you that make what otherwise would be a casual exchange of observations so unpleasant.

Get stuffed, you idiot.

Even if you found a way to move baht into an offshore account, believe-it-or-not you almost certainly could not sell it at the so-called offshore rate.

I purchased about twenty million baht offshore nearly a year ago and have been holding it there ever since, rolling it over in monthly time deposit. The interest rate has averaged about 8%, which is attractive for holding cash in any currency. Anyway, for various reasons, I recently decided to sell the THB position and was surprised when I was quoted the Thai domestic sell rate. I tried three other major banks, two in the US and one in the UK. Same deal.

And each time I questioned the rate and pointed to the Reuters wire which carried an offshore rate neary 10% better than the domestic rate they were offerring, I got the same answer: the so-called offshore rate is for interbank transaction only and doesn't apply to transactions by individuals. Yes, I know that doesn't make any sense at all, but a total of four major banks gave me exactly the same answer. After that, I gave up.

...I suppose the big question is - Why the shift in thinking?...

Because you've grown and matured. You've developed real goals and now value concrete accomplishments. Neither of those things play much of a part in life in Thailand, which is why the place appeals so much to untethered, western drifters.

.....Don't let bitter experiences in Pattaya (or any one location in Thailand) make you think it's typical of Thailand.

But it is.

Surely your rose-colored glasses are not so dark that you cannot see you are living in the kind of place where bodies are routinely looted after automobile accidents and plane crashes, and as for other indicators of the state of public morality...well, I assume I don't have to start quoting the daily dispatches about new and ever more inventive forms of corruption by government officials (and those wouold be just the few examples we actually know about and the Englissh-language press has the nuts to print).

The only definition of 'right' that most Thais apply in their daily life is what they can get away with. Don't try to tell me that more developed countries operate the same way. They don't. The difference is this: in the west, corrupt behavior almost always has consequences. In Thailand, it almost never does.

So keep stealing whatever you can, lovely smiling people. Find a few more bodies to loot. Nobody here really gives a hoot.

The Hampton and The height are 2 top end places to view....

The Hampton is nice, but not conviently located for easy access to much of anything. The Height is much better located and new, but shoddily built and empty. The Icon III, much larger and just behind the Height, has been the class of Thonglor for eight or nine years and remains so. All the units are privately owned, but a great many are rented out, mostly to Japanese. Check with the reception desk in the lobby and someone can probably tell you whether anything is available right now.

in Nashville, TN they useta have Crystal burgers that useta be something like White Castle. When out with the grandparents in the 50s couldn't pass an outlet without hookin' down a dozen or so...useta gain lotsa weight spending the Summer at the grandparents'...

Krystal Burger? They are still around and you can find a short article on them in Wikipedia. Apparently there were/are several copycat WC chains in different parts of the US.

There are several in the Atlanta airport, at least two that I know of in the Delta boarding areas. People buy bags of the little critters and bring them onto Delta flights and the aroma drives you crazy if you didn't buy your own bag before you got on.

...If not, what are the passengers rights for flights originating from Bangkok?

Uh...none.

There is no 'investment' at all in so-called high end units here, at least not in the usual sense of the word, because there is absolutely no resale market for expensive codos. None. Nada. Zilch.

You can probably count on two hands the number of Bangkok condos priced above twenty million that have been resold at any price over the past five years in the way usual in the UK or the US -- i.e. from one owner occupant to a new owner occupant. I can't tell you how many large, expensive, empty, and abandoned apartments I know of here.

If you buy a condo in Bangkok and pay much more than ten million for it, you have to be prepared to own it for the rest of your (or its) life. To expect to resell it at all, let alone at a profit, is inconsistent with reality here.

Jackson -some good points ! And how many of these " condos priced above twenty million " can be readily

rented out if you wanted to ?? I suggest not that many - in mind that also makes it a less attractive

investment proposition.....?

This is (more or less) an actual conversation with a wealthy and respected Thai who has hundreds of millionss invested in property in Bangkok:

Thai: We never sell property. We buy codos and rent to farangs. Have five renting for over B300,000 per month.

Me: Wow, that's great. They're all rented now, huh?

Thai: No. All vacant.

Me: But you had them rented before?

Thai: No. Never rented. All new.

Me: How long have you had them?

Thai (thinking): A few years.

Me: And you've never had any tenants in them at all.

Thai (shrugging): Not important. The point is that we own nine codos that rent for more than B300,000.

See how this works?

There is no 'investment' at all in so-called high end units here, at least not in the usual sense of the word, because there is absolutely no resale market for expensive codos. None. Nada. Zilch.

You can probably count on two hands the number of Bangkok condos priced above twenty million that have been resold at any price over the past five years in the way usual in the UK or the US -- i.e. from one owner occupant to a new owner occupant. I can't tell you how many large, expensive, empty, and abandoned apartments I know of here.

If you buy a condo in Bangkok and pay much more than ten million for it, you have to be prepared to own it for the rest of your (or its) life. To expect to resell it at all, let alone at a profit, is inconsistent with reality here.

lol, yes the great lesson of "how to get where you were 15 years ago"

Not necessary. Thais already know exactly how to do that.

Robert Strauss -- a Texas lawyer, confidant to Lyndon Johnson, and one time ambassador to all sorts of places -- was once grilled at a press conference by a particularly aggressive reporter on his insistence on flying first class. This famous exchange resulted:

Q: Mr. Ambassador, why is it you always fly first class?

A: Because, son, they ain't invented nothing better yet.

Amen, Brother Strauss.

Let's complain when things aren't done in a poorer country just like they might be done in a richer country.

Sad fact is you go get drunk and drugged in a so-called developing country and you're taking a bigger risk than in NZ or someplace like that.

Sad fact is that the Thai Police are largely a shower of <deleted>, and beyond extortion and collection of tea money for the boss, usually cannot be relied upon to do their jobs to any level of competency...

Just throw a few empty beer bottles in a dead guy's room and then its problem solved.

Oh dear. Another poster whose broken his rose colored glasses. If this doesn't stop, there won't be any reason left to read Thai Visa anymore....

...it makes them look like mind boggling blithering bufoons....

Right. That's the only implication in this whole story that's actually true.

You'd think these lovely, smiling folks would run out of their gee-aren't-we-the-greatest stuff eventually, but I gather not. There seems to be an an iron law of mathmatics at work here: an inverse ratio between the significance of the country and the amount of self-congratulatory rubbish it puts out.

Well seemed convenient........ of course they cannot say it them selves, so when Perc conveniently laid the "facts" on the table, they published it. It was shrewdly done, the report was saying Singapore is less corrupt, and they therefore bolted on Temasek, and made it look like they were the ones duped (which they were by Thaksin and their own greed)

I didn't get nearly enough sleep last night to try and make sense out of this......

I have not entered for three years but on last entry wife was required to use foreign line (after being told to use US line the previous two years). I would go with her in the foreign line unless told otherwise as believe they can also process you.

We've been entering the US from here for nearly twenty years. In probably 35-40 trips through a half dozen different ports of entry in the States, we have never had that experience.

We go straight to the US Citizen line, I hand over both my US passport and my wife's Thai passport (together with my wife's I-94 for the first ten years and, for the last ten, with her green card), and that's that. I've even taken other Thai passport holders we were traveling with through the US Citizen line on strength of me carrying their passports as well. Never had anyone blink. Not once.

Incidentally, you'll face a comparable problem coming back into Thailand, but we've always gotten the same result here by reversing the circumstances -- i.e. my wife carries her Thai passport and my US one, takes us straight through the Thai Passport Holders line, and that's that. Once again, in literally hundreds of entires to Thailand coming from various destinations, no one here has ever even raised an eyebrow.

Welcome to the short lines.

Let's see now....

Four posts, one of which was the original newspaper story, and two of them are slamming people for judging Thais by...ahem...'western' standards.

Bloody typical.

Air India and Kenya Airways are usually the cheapest.....

And, in my view, with good reason.

JF Funds opened a Vietnam fund toward the end of last year and it was more than ten times oversubscribed. My understanding is that there are not many funds open to thee public and that most if not all of them have followed the same pattern since the marke theret is relatively small and cannot absorb all that much liquidity. Demand for VN equities far exceeds supply at the moment. By the way, the index there is down about 25% in the last three months.

Sometimes I think Thailand would really like to disappear up its own arse, and become a totalitarian state...

"..become.."???

Jeez, where have you been?

The conventional wisdom among film and video people is that plasma provides far better (i.e. more realistic) color reproduction because of the depth of the black scale it can reproduce in comparison to that which is possible on an LCD. In small sizes perhaps the difference isn't really so noticeable, but in large sizes it does become apparent quickly -- which is why large displays are always plasma.

Also, the old plasma burn in thing is an old wives tale, unless of course you intend to leave your set tuned to the same program for about ten years. You certainly shouldn't worry about that.

Still, all that said, I think personal taste has more to do with the choice than anything else. My preference is the Pioneer plasma line. All plasma 720p's. Pioneer also has an 1080p monitor which is breathtaking, but so is the price. The whole Pioneer line is very expensive, but most people in the business agree they are worth every cent.