zthyadat

they can always drink in their rooms. Theres more to Phuket than its bars

When u travel to a foreiogn country you should repsect and learn of the customs which far to few tourists seem to do.

I would say this can run both ways...

"The citizens and administration of a country should respect the customs and religious beliefs of the guests they have invited for the purpose of relieving them of their money."

Easy to say what other people should do, isn't it?

Thailand have have the French to build and run the Nuclear facilities. I think France have the most nuclear power experience than any other counties. From memory, 70% of French electric comes from nuclear. This should be acceptable to ThaiVisa members, I suppose.

God how I love answering Piengrudee's trolls...

Aside from the fact that nuclear is not a particularly safe or economical option, are the French going to be given total control in building and running the plants, or will they still be working for Thai politicians and civil servants with vested interests? Will the site foremen be Thai or French? The workers? The French advisors/contractors can have all the expertise you like, but if vested interests become involved (ie: a Thai person in a powerful position sees an opportunity to steal piles of money from the project), then the French will just be flapping their gums and shrugging their shoulders, and letting it slide because the contract is worth so much to both the French and the Thais.

If the country can't build runways that don't crack, (and an airport with toilet facilities), what do you reckon the chances are of building a reliable nuclear reactor?

It is ridiculous, laughable, arrogant, silly and deluded to imagine that Thailand could even dream of handling a nuke plant.

Very sad yet predictable. I read an article in the Post sometime back about the adverse effect that thai tv has on the behaviour of the nation and this tragic event is one of them. The academic who wrote the article stressed how in the absence of the parents( usually working away and grand parents asleep) that the tv was the biggest educator/role model for young children. What we see in thai tv is mirrored in everyday life. Take your pick from violence, unable to communicate always shoutings, upper class characters referring to their maids has lower class, shootings and my favourite the digustingly white faces of the leads actors.

Then when the adverts come on we are bombarded with whitening creams and beauty products, at which point the tv gets turned over to watch more soaps. Have you ever been watching thai soaps and they keep flicking over the channels at adverts but dont return to the original programme when the adverts are finished. They may return 10 mins later and just pick up the storyline like they never left it. The reason they can do this is because every soap on every channel on every day is near enough the same storyline. Handsome (white skinned) hero, beautiful (white skinned) leading lady, evil (white skinned junky) mother, A katoey (white skinned), a midget ( skin colour optional), a gang of thugs with machetes (always brown skinned) and a Tom (usually white skinned) who none of the other cast realise that she is a tom.

The storylines include dying people in hospital who always make miraculous recoveries in time for next weeks show, vendettas, men attacking women etc. We should not discuss the acting skills of these characters because there are none. It reminds me of old time vauderville, where the actors had to over emphasise facial expressions so the people at the back of the auditorium could see. In short its mind numbing <deleted>.

Coming from a country who have a 'watershed' time of 9pm for certain programmes supplemented by parental guidance i now understand , after being here 7 years, how dangerous the goggle box is. In thailand the tv is the biggest cause for a disfunctioning society. There is no choice what to watch, the shows sponsors dictate the storylines which means they are all the same. Give a young child ubc and he will end up watching programmes like 'Animal Planet' and english speaking cartoons. Wheen a child on channels 3 5 7 9 11 and this will inevitably go in some way to determine his future behaviour.

The tv should be used to inform and educate the masses not dumb them down. My two young children are not allowed to watch any of the thai channels until such a time that they are able to decide for them selves what is right and wrong. It is obvious that the people cannot in general decipher what should be taken light heartedly and what tv should be believed. It is the governments responsibility to protect its citizens, so do the country a favour and turn this crap off.....

I agree in a small part in theory of some of your thoughts but TV is a reflection of society and not the other way around. The issues of light skin, lower class was all much worse here in Thailand BEFORE TV. Also, advertisers are not deciding what people watch but are TV programmers are programming for what people WANT to watch to make more money from advertisers. It is illogical to think they don't want the most popular program.

All the talk of the internet and TV being harmful is nothing new. The same was said about Radio and even books hundreds of years ago and not to mention things such as plays and other forms of art & entertainment. Many of these same books and plays that were condemned back in the day are considered some of the greatest works today. Oh yea, let us not forget the evils of music because that too has been such a negative impact on our children be it rock, country, rap or classical. Music has also been condemned though out the ages.

The problem is people ... if not TV then we would find another "thing" to blame little Johnny's problems on.

And why should TV be for only education and information?!?!? Why cannot it it be for what people want it to be such as entertainment? Are the masses so stupid that it must be dictated to them what they should and should not watch or have a right to watch?

"TV is a reflection of society and not the other way around"

Is this your opinion or a statement of fact? Does history make men or men make history? The answer is that it works in both directions (so life is imitating art imitating life imitating art imitating Elvis). There have been many studies on the impact of entertainment on behaviour and it has been found many times over that a lot of behaviour ans a sense of social norms is learned from media. The soaps are a reflection of real life? The families and characters are almost entirely dysfunctional -is this the way most people are in Thailand? I doubt there are quite so many rapes in real life per capita (though I could be wrong), but it engenders an acceptability. Often after the rape, the girl sleeps next to the man who raped her, and when she awakes is still frightened of him, but cowed and almost respectful. Maybe that is the way it is in "real" life, but only because those who behave that way don't know any other way. A few characters who break the societal norms might help to expose viewers to new ways of looking at things. It doesn't have to be a "messaqe", it can just be a character who doesn't behave predictably - a few new twists in the plot.

"The issues of light skin, lower class was all much worse here in Thailand BEFORE TV."

Really? Your gut feeling again, or a statement based on some evidence? You were in Thailand BEFORE TV? Or you have read studies about the before and after of television entertainment in Thailand?

But given that in the 20 years I have been here, the number and range of whitening products have grown exponentially, I find it hard to believe that light skin was a bigger issue before - I don't see how it could possibly be a bigger issue than it is now.

"Advertisers are not deciding what people watch but are TV programmers are programming for what people WANT to watch to make more money from advertisers."

Have you ever worked with Thai advertisers? I suspect not, because I have and can assure you that their involvement in the production of TV shows, magazine articles, etc., can run very deep. They see it as the one who pays the piper calls the tune - if we start letting pipers choose their own tunes, the natural order of things will be disrupted and the world as we know it will collapse. Trust me on this one, they can and do dictate all sorts of things, including storyline.

And this nonsense about what people WANT to watch - there is no quicker way of dumbing down a population than to give them what they want - to pander to their infertile imaginations - or to an advertiser's perception of what they want. When money is the only concern, quality suffers. Money's level is in the gutter, basically. It is, or should be the job of good producers, writers and directors to produce something the people didn't know they wanted (because they couldn't imagine it themselves), but something that challenges and entertains them. This would be an important aspect of encouraging the people of this country to start thinking for themselves.

You might want to try to educate yourself more on these subjects.

Sorry Mr jcbangkok, but how am I to do this exactly? I have worked in media for decades, so have a pretty reasonable background on the subject, along with a considerable amount of reading. (And what is your knowledge on the subject? I believe I already asked that but got no direct reply)

What I did above was question some of your assertions, and, giving you the benefit of the doubt as an intelligent, reasonable person, was prepared to hear well-argued answers. Sorry if you didn't have any responses ready to go that would have cut me down to size for daring to challenge you, but simply telling me that I need to try and educate myself more doesn't go a long way to making me look ill-informed or stupid. It does however go a long way to making you look like a petty-minded fellow who sees discussion as some sort of peeing contest. Pretty disappointing really.

Sex should be free, and not paid.

"Should be" is a nice thought... but since paid sex has existed for at least as long as recorded history, it looks like it is here to stay.

If North Korea can have nuclear energy, why not Thailand? I don't think Thailand is less advance than North Korea.

Who said it was a good idea for NK to have nuclear power or bombs?

Surely you can't be a real person - your comments just smack of troll... But just in case you are real...

All rules and regulations are for sale in Thailand if the price is right. For example: Missing rivets on the wings of your commercial aircraft? Your building is twice as tall as regulations allow? Fire regulations won't let you lock the fire escape doors of your factory (to prevent workers from sneaking extra breaks)? A bribe to the inspector will make all those problems go away...

I have come to realise that many people here actually believe that the problem genuinely goes away if the right person is bribed, as if cash or compliance are the two options within the natural laws of the universe... And by some miracle the plane won't crash, the ten story building that is supposed to be five stories won't collapse, and the factory employees won't burn to death in a fire.

And you really think Thailand can handle a nuclear power plant? The country has shown itself incapable of properly handling tall buildings, international airports, automobiles, etc. etc. and you reckon nuclear power is a good idea?

We cannot expect 100% freedom in everything in life. Sometime it is OK to have a little control on us.

What a very Confucian line of thought... But not all of us feel the need or desire for a big daddy to tell us what to do and to look after us throughout our entire lives... (It's interesting to consider that this line of thought has much to do with the popularity of people like Thaksin.)

So you are willing to relinquish "little control" over your own life to someone else? Who? Someone you believe to be wiser than yourself? Someone you trust - like a politician?

In a true democracy we theoretically control each other. Again, in theory, the representatives are selected by the people and are supposed to act on the people's will - therefore we govern each other through our exchangeable representatives. (This is an ideal of course, and in practice rarely works out this way.)

However, the conception of democracy in Thailand and in many other Asian countries appears to be that you vote in a "strong man" (who eventually becomes a "strongman"), who will take a firm hand in running the country, like a big daddy looking after his millions of children - and of course since he is the daddy, he is expected to exert discipline, but also show benevolence. In exchange for all this "hard work and sacrifice", Daddy gets the most comfy chair and is also not to be questioned. The only democratic aspect is that the people get to choose who gets to be Big Daddy - though of course, once chosen and handed so much blind obeisance, they can be tough to get rid of.

I wonder if they will identify the 150b international transaction ATM fee as being unfair?!...somehow I think not!

or the charge they make you pay for changing small change into notes, and the fee i was once charged for paying in 3000 baht in small change into my account, apparently to pay for the time and energy taken to count the money that was already counted and bagged ready for the teller to put it on their money scales.

International fee is beyond Bank of Thailand jurisdiction.

Anyway, you people can afford it.

Here you go again K. Rucharee, you assume that all farang are rich and therefore should pay more, regardless of fairness.

So let me ask you a question, do you believe rich Thai people should pay higher bank fees? Look forward to your answer.

Has anyone ever met Khun Rucharee to determine that she is a she and actually Thai? One suspects that "she" is some bored retired farang bloke who likes to get a rise out of the oft-times sanctimonious and blustery membership of Thaivisa... Out goes the bait and fifty fish fight to swallow it first...

How many people working for the DSI drive Mercedes or live in large mansions?

None. They all came to work on bicycle/free bus, and live in the free police flats behind police stations.

Those that did had all followed Khun Thaksin to shin Corp already.

Rucharee, please don't call Thaksin "Khun" - it makes him sound like someone worthy of respect.

Maybe, just maybe, the Red-shirt managed to steal it for the second time.

Why not, they did it in the 1st time.

It is almost impossible for the DSI to steal it themselves, as they are the law enforcer themselves.

Are you serious???? The law enforcers as you call them are the worst culprits.

Being ironic I believe - nobody is that stupid.

Lack of environmental controls helps to keep Thailand competitive in the Global market. It is unlikely that Foreign investors care.

Yes, dumping toxic crap into waterways and lowering the IQs and lifespans of your population really help to maintain that competitive edge.

Unfortunately, this is a really common occurrence. There seems to be a mentality that once your deposit money is in the landlord's bank account, they feel like it is theirs and if they give any of it back to you it is a gift - and a painful for one for them at that.

Mind you, it may have been the agency that ripped you off - this belief that it is perfectly okay to cheat people out of money if you can get away with it is and probably always has been far too prevalent in Thailand.

It isn't surprising when you consider that most of the elite make their money from playing on a very unlevel field, and police and politicians just take whatever they can get their hands on.

With a long-standing system like that in place (for centuries), people all the way down the chain see no reason why they shouldn't get a piece of the action. And while foreigners who are out of the country may be easier to cheat, it also happens to Thais, so it isn't a racial thing - simply a matter of opportunity.

Not that contracts do any good unless you are willing to spend the time, money and heartache to fight in court, but it is true that where there are two languages involved in a contract, the Thai one shall be deemed as the accurate one. You could still sue in civil court for being deliberately misled, but that may not work out favourably.

It is essential that any Thai contract be read over by someone you trust who understands Thai - and in fact, you can even have the English version notarized (at your expense of course), stating that its terms are identical to the Thai one - then they have no wiggle room and you can sue and win.

<br>Thai beer is good enough anyway!!<img src="http://static.thaivisa.com/forum/public/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif" class="bbc_emoticon" alt=""><br>

<br><br>No it's not, it is commercial mass produced rubbish. Real beer tastes wonderful. <br><br><br>

If the rewards were for good karaoke singing then they must never have paid out.

Very sad yet predictable. I read an article in the Post sometime back about the adverse effect that thai tv has on the behaviour of the nation and this tragic event is one of them. The academic who wrote the article stressed how in the absence of the parents( usually working away and grand parents asleep) that the tv was the biggest educator/role model for young children. What we see in thai tv is mirrored in everyday life. Take your pick from violence, unable to communicate always shoutings, upper class characters referring to their maids has lower class, shootings and my favourite the digustingly white faces of the leads actors.

Then when the adverts come on we are bombarded with whitening creams and beauty products, at which point the tv gets turned over to watch more soaps. Have you ever been watching thai soaps and they keep flicking over the channels at adverts but dont return to the original programme when the adverts are finished. They may return 10 mins later and just pick up the storyline like they never left it. The reason they can do this is because every soap on every channel on every day is near enough the same storyline. Handsome (white skinned) hero, beautiful (white skinned) leading lady, evil (white skinned junky) mother, A katoey (white skinned), a midget ( skin colour optional), a gang of thugs with machetes (always brown skinned) and a Tom (usually white skinned) who none of the other cast realise that she is a tom.

The storylines include dying people in hospital who always make miraculous recoveries in time for next weeks show, vendettas, men attacking women etc. We should not discuss the acting skills of these characters because there are none. It reminds me of old time vauderville, where the actors had to over emphasise facial expressions so the people at the back of the auditorium could see. In short its mind numbing &lt;deleted&gt;.

Coming from a country who have a 'watershed' time of 9pm for certain programmes supplemented by parental guidance i now understand , after being here 7 years, how dangerous the goggle box is. In thailand the tv is the biggest cause for a disfunctioning society. There is no choice what to watch, the shows sponsors dictate the storylines which means they are all the same. Give a young child ubc and he will end up watching programmes like 'Animal Planet' and english speaking cartoons. Wheen a child on channels 3 5 7 9 11 and this will inevitably go in some way to determine his future behaviour.

The tv should be used to inform and educate the masses not dumb them down. My two young children are not allowed to watch any of the thai channels until such a time that they are able to decide for them selves what is right and wrong. It is obvious that the people cannot in general decipher what should be taken light heartedly and what tv should be believed. It is the governments responsibility to protect its citizens, so do the country a favour and turn this crap off.....

I agree in a small part in theory of some of your thoughts but TV is a reflection of society and not the other way around. The issues of light skin, lower class was all much worse here in Thailand BEFORE TV. Also, advertisers are not deciding what people watch but are TV programmers are programming for what people WANT to watch to make more money from advertisers. It is illogical to think they don't want the most popular program.

All the talk of the internet and TV being harmful is nothing new. The same was said about Radio and even books hundreds of years ago and not to mention things such as plays and other forms of art & entertainment. Many of these same books and plays that were condemned back in the day are considered some of the greatest works today. Oh yea, let us not forget the evils of music because that too has been such a negative impact on our children be it rock, country, rap or classical. Music has also been condemned though out the ages.

The problem is people ... if not TV then we would find another "thing" to blame little Johnny's problems on.

And why should TV be for only education and information?!?!? Why cannot it it be for what people want it to be such as entertainment? Are the masses so stupid that it must be dictated to them what they should and should not watch or have a right to watch?

"TV is a reflection of society and not the other way around"

Is this your opinion or a statement of fact? Does history make men or men make history? The answer is that it works in both directions (so life is imitating art imitating life imitating art imitating Elvis). There have been many studies on the impact of entertainment on behaviour and it has been found many times over that a lot of behaviour ans a sense of social norms is learned from media. The soaps are a reflection of real life? The families and characters are almost entirely dysfunctional -is this the way most people are in Thailand? I doubt there are quite so many rapes in real life per capita (though I could be wrong), but it engenders an acceptability. Often after the rape, the girl sleeps next to the man who raped her, and when she awakes is still frightened of him, but cowed and almost respectful. Maybe that is the way it is in "real" life, but only because those who behave that way don't know any other way. A few characters who break the societal norms might help to expose viewers to new ways of looking at things. It doesn't have to be a "messaqe", it can just be a character who doesn't behave predictably - a few new twists in the plot.

"The issues of light skin, lower class was all much worse here in Thailand BEFORE TV."

Really? Your gut feeling again, or a statement based on some evidence? You were in Thailand BEFORE TV? Or you have read studies about the before and after of television entertainment in Thailand?

But given that in the 20 years I have been here, the number and range of whitening products have grown exponentially, I find it hard to believe that light skin was a bigger issue before - I don't see how it could possibly be a bigger issue than it is now.

"Advertisers are not deciding what people watch but are TV programmers are programming for what people WANT to watch to make more money from advertisers."

Have you ever worked with Thai advertisers? I suspect not, because I have and can assure you that their involvement in the production of TV shows, magazine articles, etc., can run very deep. They see it as the one who pays the piper calls the tune - if we start letting pipers choose their own tunes, the natural order of things will be disrupted and the world as we know it will collapse. Trust me on this one, they can and do dictate all sorts of things, including storyline.

And this nonsense about what people WANT to watch - there is no quicker way of dumbing down a population than to give them what they want - to pander to their infertile imaginations - or to an advertiser's perception of what they want. When money is the only concern, quality suffers. Money's level is in the gutter, basically. It is, or should be the job of good producers, writers and directors to produce something the people didn't know they wanted (because they couldn't imagine it themselves), but something that challenges and entertains them. This would be an important aspect of encouraging the people of this country to start thinking for themselves.

yeah , it's the TV's fault not those around her

She killed herself on Thursday evening? Where were her parents? At that age, they shouldn't be unattended long enough to pull something like that. Didn't the brother think anything was wrong? Did he just go watch TV afterward? The girl was declared dead at 3am? What happened in the numerous intervening hours? Was the poor girl dangling somewhere in the house and nobody noticed, or missed her?

The parents said they aren't seeking compensation? Well now, that's good of them, especially seeing as they were unable to take care of their own daughter. Blame it on some TV show, not on the parents - no responsibility to be a proper parent. Here's an idea - how about parents actually monitor and control what garbage their children watch on TV instead of depending on big brother government to do it for them?

Come on folks, there's something wrong with this whole story.

As is so often the case, a Nation story raises more questions than it answers and the reporter seems blissfully unaware of the absence (and necessity) of crucial facts. (I worked for them as an editor some years back and most of the reporters then didn't have a clue what made a good story. It was as if they felt that asking too many questions was impolite - and of course t would take effort, like an extra 20 minutes or worse, firing up your brain.)

of course he is unfazed, the threats are just government lies to give more credence to the continuation of the emergency decree, He knows his life is not in danger, well not from the reds anyway.

And how would you know this, Tony?

FYI, Isaan people are from Thailand, they are Thai unlike Farang.

Farangs at TVF have bf and wives only from good family. Only their maids come from Isaan.

Nonsense... Most of my neighbors have Burmese maids.

My wife did not come from Isaan. Does that mean she automaticly comes from a good family and if she had come from Isaan she would have come from a bad family.

Now about my maid I married her and as I said she does not come from Isaan, In fact she comes from Pihchet [sorry about the spelling] Just today she was telling me about working in the rice fields when she was eleven.

You might want to reconsider your opinon of Isaan Thai''s. For that matter all Thai's.

I think maybe you were missing other people's attempts at humour...

Vote buying is not the only corruption they experience at the hands of the Poo Yai. Who do you think owns the rice mills that end up determining the price that farmers get paid for their rice? And these thieves will happily lend them money at a high rate of interest to buy seeds for the next planting and the cycle continues. And these are the same people who were organising the farmers to go to Bangkok and protest the unfair treatment, when they should be the first ones lined up against the wall.

What the poor up here in Isaan want is fairness.

They know they hold the cards when it comes to an election as this is where most of the population live and therefore governments decided.

That is why the currently unelected members don't want an election anytime soon as they know they will be on the way out.

As was stated earlier, most people here are too busy trying to make ends meet on a daily, weekly basis to have any mental anguish over events several hundred Kms away.

Why does this misunderstanding persist? All of the MPs in the ruling coalition were elected. Perhaps you are thinking of the American system where the people vote for a specific man for president instead of voting for the party they like and the resulting MPs forming a government and appointing a PM from their ranks - usually but not always the party leader. And come to think of it, the US has had one unelected president - Gerald Ford, who didn't receive a single vote from the American public.

There's another angle to consider.

If it's that easy for the thieves to quickly take things from checked in luggage then it's also very easy for them to deposit things into the luggage, e.g. small bombs etc.

Just wonder how well this angle is covered in the security systems, at all airports worldwide?

The bomb security thing is just a joke anyway. Belly cargo - which is commercial cargo that does not belong to the passengers - make up the bulk of the load a commercial aircraft carries and as it is lucrative, it keeps the price of passenger tickets down. But only a very small percentage of the belly cargo is checked.

The security measures inflicted upon passengers is just smoke and mirrors - ineffective against any terrorist with half a brain, who would just ship their bombs as commercial cargo.

Anyone who leaves an iphone in a checked bag deserves to have it stolen....duh.

That is just stupid. Anyone who pays a couple of hundred dollars for a flight deserves to have their belongings protected by the company paid to take care of them. It is this attitude towards corruption - it is the victim's fault - that perpetuates the belief that it is perfectly okay. I suppose you believe that any woman who wears short pants on the streets after midnight deserves to be raped as well? Mustn't tempt others to commit crimes...

Money kills habits. It has been proven times over that if it is made expensive people do it less. Pictures are pictures that over time just get ignored.

Really? It didn't work in Scandanavia...

If they read this post I am sure they can form a commission to come up with new and innovative ways to alienate people and lose potential visitors.

They already have - it's called the TAT.

"The suicide is believed to be resulted from the couple's condition of stress that they had no offspring to care for them."

Isn't that projecting very Thai values onto a German man? Looks like their money situation wasn't too bad, so where was the stress?

It is such a shame that this young woman thought that Thais are such easy pushovers. I am not as much saddened by the crime as I am about her possible sense about and discrimination toward the people of Thailand.. She has no respect for the culture or the people of Thailand.

Sorry Anyse, but you need to address a few delusions... Bear with me, it might be good for you.

Respect for the police of Thailand? Oh please... No, no, they aren't pushovers are they? Honest as the day is long - unless of course you slip them the correct bribe. Sorry, but the boys in brown are known around the world as being hopelessly corrupt - the Thai police force is an international joke.

So forgive this stupid girl for thinking that maybe she could join in and make a little dishonest money herself. (and it is not as if crimes like bag snatching are rare in Phuket - or tourist rape by locals, which oddly enough doesn't get reported nearly as often as it happens) Maybe she read about how last week the tuk tuk drivers in Phuket created a blockade against sailors from the US Navy and didn't get arrested for it and she figured the police here were slack.

And while we are on it, are you surprised after what happened last month if foreigners don't necessarily think of this country and its culture as being advanced, or even civilised? People acting like animals, expressing their political differences through mob violence... And any attempts at discussion just showed two sides unwilling to budge, like little children in a schoolyard.... You believe this behaviour is somehow worthy of respect?

Our humble apologies if the world isn't filled with admiration for Amazing Thailand at the moment, but respect is something you earn, not something you claim as a birthright.

It seems to me that every time Thailand needs to go through a reflection period, criticising themselves perhaps, that suddenly there are lots of stories of foreigners committing fairly minor crimes - suddenly these incidents get covered - in both English and Thai language press (I've spent years working at newspapers here and the choice of smaller stories can be very reactive to the front page events). It is a way for Thais to look outward at the bad in other people (foreigners) when they need to be looking inside themselves. And then they can tell themselves they aren't so bad after all.

Take for example this claim: Police Duty Officer Nitikorn Rawang said too many foreigners were committing insurance fraud in Thailand.

“There are probably around 50 cases [dealt with by Kathu Police] every week,” he said.

So he is saying there are 50 cases of fraud per week? Or does he mean 50 cases of suspected fraud. Okay, if it 50 cases of fraud, then this story isn't news, because they must be arresting and shipping foreigners out by the boatload.

If they aren't arresting them, then why not? If they know it is fraud, how do they know, and why don't they do anything about it? Why is this just coming to light now?

Or are they saying that 50 insurance claims are filed each week? Are there not 50 crimes per week directed at foreign "guests"? How do they know they aren't legitimate?

What the hel_l is this duty officer trying to say exactly? Or is he just talking - making up stats, making assumptions, and generally showing prejudice towards foreigners?

Have the police no respect for the culture or people of Farangland?