Theyreallrubbish

I guess I'll be the first to say it.

You were not the only guy.

She has several BFs, most of them sending her money and she schedules her time with them.

When you had difficulty coming up with a mere 50k she decided the time invested in you wasn't going to pay off compared to investing that time and energy in some of her other buffalo. So you were kicked to the kerb to free up a place for someone with more money and ideally less emotionally demanding.

If you want to be a total victim the only way to get her back will be to offer a cost-benefit ratio competitive with the other guys she has and can conceivably get. If she speaks Japanese you have to be looking at a minimum 30k a month and giving her plenty of advance warning before coming to Thailand to help her arrange the schedule for everyone and not being so emotionally demanding.

Oh, and thinking it was your idea to give her the money just shows she is a good con artist. She got the money and you think its your idea. Only a skill on her part. The putting the 10k back at the beginning is almost a cliche when it comes to how these girls operate. And introducing you to the family means nothing. Often the whole village can be in on the scam and will greet you as if your visit is really something special even though they may have just waved off another dumb farang brought by the same girls a couple of weeks ago. Again a complete cliche on how the con works. So much of a cliche that I'm thinking this is a troll

Guys like you think that Thai girls are these sub human beings with not emotions.

Do you think this girl never wants to have her own kids ?

do you think this girl never wants to get married ?

do you think this girl would rather be with a drunk Thai guy ?

I don't think all Thai girls are like anything.

I do recognise a pattern of behaviour from the OP's girl of asking for substantial sums of money, using tears and emotional blackmail and dropping him instantly when the money didn't flow fast enough.

If she had dumped him after a series of rows about other matters, or if there had never been a payment of 50,000 just 5 months after meeting him (and the OP seems to be temporary visitor with a job in the west so it seems to have not even been 5 months together, but a couple of weeks together a few times over the 5 months) then my opinion of this particular, individual girl would be different.

But her behaviour has been classic con woman.

I normally date women from different backgrounds than "tour guide" and drop them instantly should any behaviour like the OP's girl's behaviour occur. This is because I DON'T think ALL Thai girls are the same, but use my brain to differentiate. If I thought they were ALL the same I would tolerate this behaviour as so many do, thinking its normal and that any other Thai girl I date would be the same.

Your post indicates an inability to differentiate that Thai people are individuals, of which some are good and some are bad, just like in every other country.

I guess I'll be the first to say it.

You were not the only guy.

She has several BFs, most of them sending her money and she schedules her time with them.

When you had difficulty coming up with a mere 50k she decided the time invested in you wasn't going to pay off compared to investing that time and energy in some of her other buffalo. So you were kicked to the kerb to free up a place for someone with more money and ideally less emotionally demanding.

If you want to be a total victim the only way to get her back will be to offer a cost-benefit ratio competitive with the other guys she has and can conceivably get. If she speaks Japanese you have to be looking at a minimum 30k a month and giving her plenty of advance warning before coming to Thailand to help her arrange the schedule for everyone and not being so emotionally demanding.

Oh, and thinking it was your idea to give her the money just shows she is a good con artist. She got the money and you think its your idea. Only a skill on her part. The putting the 10k back at the beginning is almost a cliche when it comes to how these girls operate. And introducing you to the family means nothing. Often the whole village can be in on the scam and will greet you as if your visit is really something special even though they may have just waved off another dumb farang brought by the same girls a couple of weeks ago. Again a complete cliche on how the con works. So much of a cliche that I'm thinking this is a troll

I went to one of these presentations in Patong. I was just curious to see for myself what the pressure was like and also thought it would be entertaining to watch the salesmen squirm. Just to be safe in case they used drugs on me, I did not carry any credit card. The first salesman was exceedingly handsome. He realized fairly quickly I was a dud prospect and passed me off to a more senior fat bald guy. I won't be going again. They really ought to qualify their "prize winners" better!

I did exactly the same in Pattaya. Thought I'd see how it all works after being accosted to do a survey so many times.

There was large hotel banquet hall full of tables and most of the tables were occupied so the touts were certainly doing their job.

I got the smooth guy initially and he quickly passed me on to an older, somewhat depressed, English chap.

He started his spiel and I listened politely for a while and when he asked if this sounded good to me I told him I had a lot of experience in real estate and just came along to kill some time and see how it was all run.

He then started asking me to review his sales style and asked for advice on how better to sell!

I gave him some advice, (standard Dale Carnegie stuff, so I hope I didn't create a monster) then he thanked me and said I could still have the prize (which was a stay in one of their resorts if I remember correctly) and the free food, but I decided to leave as it was all a bit depressing and seedy.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/cornyn-wh...usegov-hint-yes

After all they must be "fishy" to want to live anywhere outside the Glorious Motherland and to not support the Dear Leader and do their patriotic duty of paying their share to ensure that Goldman Sachs never loses money on a risky bet.

With the US penchant for extra-territorial action expect jackboots at the door any moment.

Hope their papers are in order and their party membership is in good standing.

If anyone complains again about Thai police surveys at least they haven't yet set up a database for citizens to inform on one another

What is the import duty on books and DVDs?

Surely customs can't charge more than the official rate?

Coming from Bangkok to Chiang Mai on the bus last night my staff told me that so many people were sneezing the bus driver stopped the bus and made everyone buy masks to be allowed back on.

They were probably sneezing from the aircon, but interesting to hear he actually stopped the bus and kicked everyone off

Good to get the warning. Thanks everyone

I've been watching the progress of a house being built from my hotel room the last month or so, I've been keeping a record with my camera evey so often. Noticed this prgression a couple of days ago.

Taken on the 29th

Taken on the 30th

Taken about an hour or 2 later on the 30th

Sorry about the small size, you may need to download. If you didn't notice anything strange, well youlve probably been in thailand a while, but where I come from once a wall is in place it generally stays there permanently, or until someone does renovations.

Just another one of those little differences in cultures that makes this place so interesting

I've seen this many times before. Its a result of the Thai workers just putting in stuff as soon as its delivered.

I once wandered around the construction site of a 5 star hotel and it was still mostly concrete frame but on the ground floor they had installed the expensive plate glass floor to ceiling walls and doors. Of course they were getting filthy as they moved construction materials into the building and it was only a matter of time before they'd be chipped, scratched and then cracked.

I was with the foreign project manager and he started shouting at his Thai foreman about why the hel_l they'd installed the glass and the reply was just a shrug and "They were delivered today"

Had to take them all out of course.

So they probably built this wall then realised that something else had to go in first so had to take down the wall.

I've also seen Thai owners change the specifications of a building midway through construction many times, regardless of the cost implications. They see a wall and don't like it and order it moved or changed

What to Buy in the Night Bazaar

Nothing

If you have to buy something touristy, I suggest you buy it at the Sunday walking market, where the prices are somewhat less than the Tourist Bazaar. You may even see some locals walking around the Sunday market aswell.

Would not recommend buying any electronics over here, they are usually the same price or more than in wester countries. Plus good luck getting any warrenties fullfilled from your home country, plus you might buy a fake if your not careful.

I agree with freddy. Look, but don't buy. The walking street markets that happen on weekends are usually cheaper, but you really need to shop and compare. Walking street markets are when the city closes sections of the city to vehicle traffic in the evening.

I would ONLY buy hand crafted goods that I can't find at home. Clothing you can usually buy cheaper at home when it goes on sale. The same goes for footwear. I get stuff from Walmart in Canada that is much cheaper than what I would spend in Thailand.

As others have already mentioned, electronics are usually cheaper in North America. I can't speak for the UK or Australia.

Huh? IanForbes you apparently have not had to purchase clothes in Europe. Clothes are way cheaper here than in Europe or America. I can't say about Canada since the last time I was there was 1975. But if you shop at Central or Robinsons then of course prices are high. I love shopping for clothes or shoes in Thailand because they are dirt cheap!

Not the case in the UK now.

Last time we went (Xmas) my wife had a field day with good quality clothes that WERE CHEAPER and BETTER QUALITY than you can buy here

I'd agree with this. To give an example, at the very lowest end, a white cotton T-shirt. ASDA in the UK sells three 100% cotton white T-shirts that are actually good quality for one pound 99, about 106 Baht. In Tesco Lotus in the Thailand the cheapest white T-shirt is polyester rubbish and is 69 Baht for one.

The fact that he handed over one cent makes me think that the whole thing is intended to be sarcastic and highlight the uselessness of the police in that even with video images they claim they lack the resources to investigate the crime.

The presence of multiple cultures and/or nationalities/ethnic groups under single government has historically usually led to failure, sometimes bloody failure as Yugoslavia and Rwanda are recent examples.

The greater the homogeneity of a society the greater the amount of "social capital" within it and the higher level of trust and civic behaviour that exists. Once people start noticing that a lot of people around them are not like them they begin to withdraw from civic participation and begin to take a more selfish view of their contributions to society. To boil it down, people don't mind paying taxes or doing things to support people who are like them as they can take a "there but for the grace of God" view and naturally are more likely to trust and reward trust to people like themselves.

Its been shown that high trust societies are significantly more prosperous than low trust societies.

Although this doesn't have to be a multi-cultural cause. Witness Thailand, where significant amounts of time, money and energy are wasted trying to prevent people stealing from or cheating you, including your own staff, which is not time or money wasted to the same degree in the West.

The United States is an interesting example as previously it was very aware of this and had a very active program to support civic participation and to encourage homogeneity in a variety of cultural groups to try and overcome the disadvantages of having multiple cultural groups in the country. It helped that until recently the vast majority of Americans were of Western European descent. The pledge of allegiance in schools, the wide variety of volunteer programs and the cultural expectation that an American citizen had a responsibility to be part of an organisation that supported their community were all manifestations of a deliberate program to increase homogeneity and reduce multi-culturalism. Part of that was the patriotic propaganda that many in the rest of the world find amusing or distasteful or alarming depending on their view of America.

However, the rise of the Republican religious right has led to both parties using sub-group politics as a way to try and capture votes and the previous drive to turn everyone into an American has been abandoned. A great tragedy by short sighted politicians in my view that will have negative repercussions for many generations to come.

The UK I believe developed its multi-cultural plans from a different background in that there was no experience of recent mass immigration and it was implicitly assumed that all immigrants would automatically become British just by being there as previous waves of immigrants had, despite the fact that modern immigration is different in terms of numbers, speed and the difference to the home culture to the previous waves. So no plans or programs were put into place to increase integration. When large numbers of non-white, non-European immigrants arrived, surprise surprise they formed ghettoes which quickly reached a critical mass requiring reduced interaction with the native population. The government then retro-actively rationalised this screw up by producing propaganda that multi-culturalism (i.e. completely different groups living within the same borders and barely interacting) was a good thing, in order to cover up its failure in immigration and integration policies.

I'd let her husband know. It's more than likely a gambling problem. Her husband is probably aware of it and has cut off her money.

I thought the same thing. This problem has card playing gambling debt written all over it.

I concur.

Any money given will be lost. And there will probably be a lot more hassle as she tries to get more when she loses the first 25k.

Then you'll have to deal with the fallout when she can't borrow any more from anyone else and it all blows up and the husband finds out a man has been giving money to his wife.

I'll add my experience to the mix.

When I first came I was working as a doctor in a remote village and only the other doctors in the village clinic spoke English so I had to learn Thai and did so and could speak, read and write quite well.

I then moved to Bangkok and fell into a job working for the highest of the "hi-so" families and socialising with their children. This meant that my entire life was now in English despite the fact that I could go several days without speaking to anyone who wasn't Thai. The children of the rich in particular had been sent abroad at age 7 and come back at 25 and so actually had English as their first language. Most of the models and pop stars who hung around in our social group were look krueng and so also had English as a first language. My company took care of everything in my life with secretaries and other staff to arrange everything. I never even changed a light bulb in my house for years as the secretary would arrange company staff to go do it while I was at work.

My Thai completely deteriorated over those years and my ability to write disappeared. In my defense I was in an extremely demanding job with limited free time and so additional language studies just didn't seem to be the best use of the free time I did have

I've now dropped out of the rat race and moved out of Bangkok and now spend more time with non-English speaking Thais and my Thai is beginning to come back, but I can tell I will need to go back and hit the books again to get it anywhere near where it was in my first year here.

So I sympathise with those whose Thai skills are limited as its normal to build a social and work group where you are comfortable, which means English language, which then leads to a reduced need to learn the language which leads on to continuing to build an English speaking social group.

Thai language for most is a hobby rather than a necessity, and as such it has to compete with all the other possible uses of your free time, and the benefit of learning Thai really isn't that high if you have an English speaking Thai social group already established.

I must say I much prefer the new branch. It is away from the moat and the traffic, the food is equally as good and I feel the service is better. You are actually inside a real restaurant with Air Con, nice music and no Tuk-Tuk's roaring past or the smell of exhaust fumes (or moat fumes) wafting over your table.

Lots of parking too.

Although I should probably stop saying good things about the new location as I don't want it to be too busy!

Why bother, i have been driving on a uk licence for 20 years ,had 2 accidents, insurance paid no problem, im not giving the thais one penny more than i have to, and that includes license fees ,.

Interesting that insurance paid up no problem. I guess its because its the car that's insured not the driver as it is in the west?

Mine was down as well. Got through to the call center straight away to be told the server was down.

Up again about 10 minutes ago

There's a restaurant I go to quite regularly where the only staff member brave enough to talk to me, even though I speak to them in Thai, is the old woman owner and she tots up the bill by writing it down in front of me and then attempting to add it all up without a calculator.

A Thai attempting maths without their Casio?

I know, I'm always bemused, but maybe she comes from a generation before calculators. I don't see her younger staff using calculators either though

Sadly though, out of the 30 or so times I've been there she's got it wrong on around 15 of those occasions, but as I said, always asking for too little. (Or maybe my mental arithmetic isn't as good as I think it is and I pay her too much!)

I'll add my recommendation. I used to go to the original location quite regularly but have recently moved so I'm near the second location and now go even more regularly!

One thing that stands out is the good job they've done in that location in getting the right attitude into the staff. Very friendly and helpful

Remember that everyone makes mistakes. I work with cash and have made them myself. Sometimes we are being given "wrong change" , rather than being "short changed" on purpose.

There's a restaurant I go to quite regularly where the only staff member brave enough to talk to me, even though I speak to them in Thai, is the old woman owner and she tots up the bill by writing it down in front of me and then attempting to add it all up without a calculator.

About half the time she gets it wrong.

The interesting thing is that she has never got it wrong to the upside but always added it up as too little.

I wonder how many customers correct her and how much money she loses on those who don't.

Well you don't need open a new topic for this... it belongs to the classifieds where people expect to find rental properties ads.

I agree it's an ad, but please explain what harm is doing if it's offered first to forum members here?

I'm afraid I have to disagree. He's not the landlord. He's making forum members aware of an opportunity, not advertising.

He can't put it in the classified ads unless he's acting as an agent for the landlord, which I don't get from the OP

If I was to post that there was a good sale on somewhere, would that be an advert?

One thing they are certainly cutting back on is checkout service. Tesco at Nan seems to have staff standing around doing nothing, (or laughing and talking), while the checkout staff not only try and manage the huge queues at the register, but have to pack the bags as well. I need to shop there every week and gear up for the long wait at the checkout....they seem to have even fewer staff at the busiest times.

I've noticed this as well. Very few checkouts open even at the busy times. I now avoid shopping there if I just need a few items as the wait at the checkout takes longer than the shopping.

Although I have to give them praise as they do have some good special offers. I went in last week and they had a bicycle with mudguards, stand and basket for 950 Baht. I didn't need a bike, but at that price bought one for my staff to run errands nearby. I was in a few days later and saw the same bike at 1699 Baht.

Who is the developer?

My personal opinion from the rendering is that it looks like a CGI building from a disaster movie after the disaster has happened.

Maybe it'll look better in real life

If you buy from the approved used car dealers of the big manufacturers such as ToyotaSure they provide a 1 year warranty with used cars that seems to be pretty close to a manufacturers warranty. The prices aren't really much higher either. I bought a18 month old Fortuner through ToyotaSure to get the warranty and it was cheaper than comparable cars at tents and other dealers which offered negligible warranties

Sounds more plausible that Mr Georgesen is scamming his local press - I don't buy this story at all.

We have all seen the signs. No smoking with a value attached to it.

I find it wholly plausible that a bunch of busybody guards would force you to pay up without bothering to notice that the person didn't have a packet of cigarettes on them. Which then does beg the question, who actually issues and collects the fine? Is the private company allowed to do it, or being an offence to smoke in public places, presumably a copper has to be involved.

These stories are becoming more frequent, but until the system realises that the burden of proof lies with the accuser, they will continue. Random finger pointing and intimidation to extort cash from farang was never out of fashion, but it would appear to be on the increase.

I'm getting the sense that the government is losing control and has lost much of its authority and its ability to impose its authority and all kinds of people are feeling the freedom to be "entrepreneurial"

65000 Baht a month income (presumably tax free) is a heck of a lot of money for Thailand, and retired people typically have lower living expenses than those working due to not having to commute, buy work clothes etc.

Any reason why its set so high? Or is it just another example of the bizarre falacy that Thailand wants to filter out everyone who isn't "quality"?