DirkGently

I fly economy with a bottle of red wine and some of 'mothers little helpers'. Never a problem sleeping and more money to spend on my holiday.

Taxis drivers are bad the world over.

Rather than giving them the finger (thereby showing them that all the yellow shirts in the world don't make you a decent person) wouldn't it have been better to say, in Thai, as the yellow shirt shows you have lived here long enough to grasp the language, "I'll give you 250 baht and no more!"

Good to see you checked the internet to discover a price for a taxi. Instead of learning how to say that you want the meter turned on. Try learning "I'm not a tourist that wants to go to the moon, just a person that wants to go home with the meter on." This will save you a lot of dressing in yellow.

Thai wine is fit for nothing more than getting paint off brushes.

Home. Dry. Quiet.

Thais stare. We see it as rude, they do not. Simple.

On my wife's first trip to the UK I had to remind her that people do not take kindly to being stared at.

Other Thais do it to her when we are off the well worn track and she speaks English to me.

There was a guy on this forum complaing about "racism" because he was stared at. He was real tool who described how he stared back.

Do as I do. I look surprised when I catch them. They either look away or grin. Either way the situation has been diffused.

What the hel_l! Maybe you looked loose and easy to them.

Putting the price up to make it more exclusive is just so ###### Thai. They whip themselves up to be VIP, exclusive, selected or part of some unseen 'crowd'. Pathetic really. I guess the muppets in charge of card sales/damage limitation think that everyone is as shallow as they are.

I agree farangs are the worst and most over the top water throwers.

As for bombs, well i just don't know. Whlst it is true that Muslims are at the fore front of the finger pointing list when it comes to the 1st January bombs. Let's not forget that is their formost method of communication.

I would not fancy being around the most popular tourist sites. Just a couple of miffed Muslims could prove a disaster.

While we don't like to see the truth, the truth points at Islam and it's adherants for these bombs. The present gov can't find muslims guilty as it would point to their failings in the south, as they try and control muslim terrorists.

Pony tails on men are just wrong.

To add to this, I find my hair grows quicker, (or is it because they are cheaper) but small wounds heal slower. A cut on my leg took forever to cure.

Does anybody do that? I thought it was part of the game. I lie to them at every chance I get.

I can never cease to be amazed by those that claim that they see a sky pixie. There IS NO GOD.

Why can't other people see that.

As for bible thupers or , as I call them, the just plain deluded, if they took themselves to darkest Issan, where many of the girls they scare are from, and did someting worthwhile, instead of scaring them, I may have a tiny amount of respect for them.

If I was out and father Tony and his mob started with their nonsense I would have to tell them, if it became 'physical' then all the better.

The PROOF that god has never existed can be summed up in 3 words. Hitler, Bush, Muslims.

When creationists do there "AHH! HA! You cant prove your point so that is the proof of god", rubbish. I always want to ask, when you are a kid and there is a strange knock or bang that you cant explain, is that proof of monsters in the closet?

Once again! THERE IS NO GOD. I hope that helps.

I didn't know that AVG was not up to scratch. Why is it so well recommended?

photos of bush

kyosukens reply read like this to me "ndaddja jd nvadsvahsd hgjh hhbhkb ljiiqjsjgsg 41 //42 hchsbcbcnlz zone alarm ,mqqqwwwwkw 234567890"

All I know is I rarely get spyware or anything nasty.

It asks me to confirm a few things from time to time, but not often enough to bother me.

Is there a better free version out there that works well with AVG, I trust that is also not crap now?

Insect and weed killer are the number one way that Asian females do them selves in. It's true. I wonder if there is a cultural reason foe this.

Do they wish to remain pretty in death? Is it because its cheap? or is it perceived as painless? The latter would certainly not be true. I imagine it would be very painful and drawn out. Which leads to another question, do they wish to suffer before they go?

It seems frangs take the quick way out, bullet, high jump or train track.

Interesting and worthy of discussion.

WHAT? Sex in Pattaya. No way! This must be a wind up! It's a decent place.

Well done Patters Police.

Seriously though! What hypocrisy. The whole city is based on illegal acts.

Thailand is a joke sometimes.

If Dubai is bad/awful/dirty/overcrowded then I will have to reach for my dictionary to describe. Abu Dhabi airport.

Abu Dhabi is...

abominable, amiss, atrocious, awful, bad news*, beastly, blah*, bottom out, bummer*, careless, cheap, cheesy*, crappy*, cruddy*, crummy*, defective, deficient, diddly*, dissatisfactory, downer*, dreadful, erroneous, fallacious, faulty, garbage, god-awful, gross*, grungy*, icky*, imperfect, inadequate, incorrect, inferior, junky*, lousy*, not good, off, poor, raunchy*, rough, sad, scuzzy, sleazeball, sleazy, slipshod, stinking, substandard, synthetic, the pits*, unacceptable, unsatisfactory

AHHH! Thats better.

You all have me confused with the use of the word 'bar'. What kind of bars are we talking about here?

Nana plaza type bars? Not much hope of a decent girl there.

Sports bars along Sukhumvit? A mine field to be sure, but not impossible. Decent office types do venture into those places.

Thai bars. I have been to a few places where it was proberbly 100/1 Thai/Farang. No problems as long as your smartly dressed and not too obvious that your on the pull. i doubt Thai men fancy the extra competition.

I have known ladies from all 3 venus. The hooker, The office girl that wanted a little help and support and the pleasent girl that lives with her mum and would like a farang boyfriend, but would never venture in to a farang bar.

Meeting good, decent women is not too much of a challenge here in Thailand because they are everywhere. To meet them just join a gym, go bowling, smile at a girl on the BTS, get chatting with the girl on a market stall (some do speak english) or compliment her laptop in starbucks.

It worked for me and I'm nothing special.

TS. Nicely spotted my good man.

Once again I will doff my hat to you. Akira ranks in my top 5 films and I used to own some videos of Legend of the overfiend and ghost in the machine (it was a few years ago now so the names may be off alittle). But my point stands, Thais bury their heads in absolute crap comics and yes i have seen a few and had the 'plots' explained to me and they are nonsense.

Like you I can bury a book in a couple of days, but Thais will not read a book in a lifetime. In any language.

A book fair should be just that. A tool to promote reading. With reading comes knowledge and curosity. With comics, such as the Thais read, comes blank stares as they flick from page to page.

They are utterly banned in my house. When the family stay I take the kids book shopping and reward them if they can tell the wife what it's about.

In what way did Zonealarm fail? I have been using it for 3 years with no real problems. I'm not saying it's the best, but it is very good.

Let's not forget the price is right. Free.

livinlos, I may have to side with your differing. I read Frank Miller's work when i was younger and yes I see your point. No doubt you read a selection of novels along side graphic novels.

However, when a person is only exposed to nonsense cartoons about Issan maids or a time travelling girl that has sex with a pharoh, and they are the ones read by adults here, then your brain will not benifit in the same way as a person that has to imagine the impossible in an Arthur C Clarke novel or have to imagine the horrors of war.

I am certain that along side nonsense TV with constant 'boing' sound effects do stifle imagination and creativity.

"We have succeeded to build farang ghetto’s all over Thailand", have we? What is a ghetto? We usually think of black or muslim ghettos in the sense they create a hellish dump for themselves to live in. Most of the places where farangs set up shop seem nice enough. Of course I won't bring Pattaya in to it as that really is a a peice of work.

"We have succeeded in making many Thai’s despise us for what they perceive us to be". Why wasn't I informed? As I walk up and down my rather traditional soi I often sense curosity, indifference and bewilderment, but never hate. If you mean the Thais doing buisness around Patpong or similar venus, then yes they proberbly do. However, the pendulam swings and drunk sex tourists wouldn't be there if Thais were no so eager to take/push the daughters of issan into such a place.

"We have succeeded in creating a complete industry build around getting the farang’s money with whatever means possible". Now this one had me stumped. Are you saying that Thais would never swindle other Thais, only us farangs. Do you really belive that after 17 years? One unpleasent thing I have witnessed in Thaialnd was on a bus back from up country. A pregnant lady got on and sat next to an old lady. They didn't know each other at the start, but soon got chatting. I could tell by gestures the old lady was asking about the baby to be etc etc. After sometime we pulled into a service area and the old lady got off and some words were exchanged between the two and I took it the old lady was offering to get her a drink or something. The pregnant lady got off too a minute or so later. Upon returning the old lady started a fuss and heads up and down the bus spun like mere cats. The pregnat lady had got off and taken the old ladies bag.

So it seems that this industry of cons seems to have been alive and well for some time. I guess the rewards are just larger if you swindle a farang.

Of course the foreign guys with interests in kids do nobody any good and I'm sure Thailand would be a better place without most drunk swaggering farangs, but they are largely only here for a short time and have no real effect.

I think it is better to dewll on the positives. There are a number of charities that have been set up to help the poor and needy, these certainly would not be set up by rich Thais. I'm sure Thais employed in foreign owned companies are grateful.

On a personal note I am certain my wifes family are happy to have me around. My wife has commented many times that her life is much better than she could have expected.

The Op said that some good things have come from farangs being here. I'm interested in what he thinks they are.

Comics at a book fair! Give me strenght.

I am utterly convinced that the reason Thais struggle to think and remain rather imature is because of these sodding comics. Everytime I see a uni student in his early 20's reading one on the BTS, I just want to snatch it out of his hand and thrust a book into it.

I have seen them and all too often they contain childish images with purile storylines. Yet they remain a source of entertainment to Thais from 3 to 30.

I really enjoy these quirky little posts on TV. Anyone having a pop at the Op should just not bother.

Anyway, I had a brush with possible serious injury and saved a child from certain serious injury on a Tesco esculator (the moving staircase type) a while back. My better half and I had a bag of shopping each and stepped onto the esculator, when suddenly there was a crashing sound behind us, as I turned there was a trolly coming towards us, I'd say by this point we had moved only a few feet, with a startled looking Thai man holding on to the trolly. I grabbed the front of the trolly with my free hand, but as the angle became more acute the child that was standing up in the trolly fell forward. At this point I should say how fast all of this happened. I had to wedge my knee against the trolly and grab the kid to stop him from falling forward and out of the trolly. Ok! so by this point everything was stable and we continued down the esculator with the Thai chap saying "solly! solly!" to me and giving my wife a better apology. We got to the floor and I asked in astonishment, What were you thinking? and more to the point, how did you get past the steel pole that is in place to stop such things from happening? He said, to the missus, that he didn't know.

I was far from angry as it seemed so surreal and the wide eyed gaze of the child who may never have seen a farang before, as they had a certain 'rustic appearence' coupled with the fact that the man was unable to grasp the complexities of an esculator, was just getting over the shock of being caught and held by a white guy while out shopping.

In retrospect it could have been very nasty if it was a heavily laden trolly, say with 3 boxes of chang or some other heavy item. To this day I always walk past the steel pole set just before the entrance and wonder how he got past it.

On the subject of esculators, the first esculator in Burma/Myanmar was in a shopping mall. Or at least their version which is very unlike the towers we have here in Thailand. When it opened people came from all over the city and qued up to take a ride.

Why can't I kill off the bloody ants that roam around and bite me?

borrowed from his