Guderian

Arriving at Heathrow T2 last August with a new UK passport I was annoyed to find that - yet again, as it had happened repeatedly with the old one - the e-gate facial recognition system didn't work so I was directed to go and queue to see a human being (only one on duty) at the arrivals counter. If it had just been me, fair enough, maybe my passport was dodgy or my face too weird for a computer to be able to process it, lol, but no, I reckoned that around 20% of passengers were being rejected, all of them with UK passports. I got chatting with my neighbours in the long and winding queue, and several of them were pretty irate as they also had brand new passports and were frequent flyers, so this nonsense was a regular event for them. I only hope the Thai system works better than whatever it is that the UK Border Force are using but, given the poor history of customer-facing Thai IT projects, I wouldn't bet on it.

Google Lens is certain that it's an example of Anisoneura aluco... https://pictureinsect.com/wiki/Anisoneura_aluco.html

Try Meat Stuff on Thepprasit Soi 8... https://meatstuffpattaya.com/

So how many of you turkeys are voting for Thanksgiving? lmao

The tour buses, minibuses and Baht buses don't help, but the problem is simply the sheer volume of traffic, especially at weekends and on holidays, which the roads simply were never meant to handle. Of course, the dummkopfs in City Hall don't help, look at the huge mess they've created on Thepprasit which was once easily the fastest way to get to the beach from Sukhumvit. Long-term, though, I guess they'll watch what happens with the congestion charging scheme soon to be started in Bangkok and, if that's a success, we can probably expect to see something similar here.

Ye Gods! Whose mother just died? lol These sad chaps really look like they could use a good night out on the tiles!

Have they changed the address again or is it simply down full-time? I'm trying to book an appointment online, which worked fine a year ago. Google tells me the URL is: https://chonburi.imm.police.go.th/ which looks about right though the HTML code is riddled with bugs. When I try to access the Pattaya Services section it just gives me this garbage: Is there a working URL or are they having a bad week/month/year? I have another national website address, https://www.immigration.go.th/en/#serviceonline but under the book appointment section there's no mention of Jomtien/Pattaya.Chonburi. Have our noble Immigration cops on Soi 5 given up on that handy option now?

Good news, that should see the back of the 2:00 to 5:00 no booze sales rule, a few Sangsom and Cokes with lunch will make Khru's boring afternoon drawl pass much faster! lol

They missed a chance there and should have called it the Thailand Immigration Technology System. Visitors would love the acronym, lol.

Money for nothing but the chicks ain't free! lol

Meanwhile, the TMD website says there's zero chance of rain in Pattaya for the next few days....

They're probably renting out spaces to the vendors in the Soi 9 cop shop car park, lol.

Anybody who's bought a house here using the company route will understand full well that the DBD knows exactly what's going on with foreigners and nominee Thai shareholders, all this guff about building new analytical systems is just smoke and mirrors.

Forget about the beauty nonsense, there weren't enough public toilets when it opened 18 years ago and TAT has steadfastly ignored the thousands of complains every year since then as there still aren't enough public toilets. Basic functionality always trumps aesthetics.

...and a small portion, no more than 30%, used to provide ex-gratia payments to selected politicians for services rendered to Lord Thaksin the Thai people.

That sounds like half the young blokes arriving in Thailand these days. I wonder how many of them want to 'open a restaurant' but lack the cash to do so? Thailand is just a bad story and a wasted life waiting to happen for certain people.

There's a public building on Pattaya Beach Road by Soi 9, you should try setting up camp there in the car park, I'm sure they'll give you a warm welcome.

It makes a change, I suppose, from past mayors whose interest in foreign lands mainly extended to sending food parcels and money to a famous relative on the run in Cambodia, lol.

RIP. From the report, it sounds like he was a bit mentally unbalanced as well as physically disabled. Whether he really meant to drown himself or if it was a case of him not fully understanding what was going on and it ending in tragedy is probably moot. Nobody else was involved and, indeed, it sounds like quite a few people tried to help him before he met his end.

So they'll sit in the cop shop for an hour playing with their phones instead of sitting somewhere else playing with their phones. Does it really matter, it's not exactly a harsh punishment?

What's the big deal? Cannabis is readily available in the UK, even if not from hundreds of shops with large fluorescent weed signs outside like in Thailand, lol.

Yep, and he chose exactly the right audience of gullible idiots to present this nonsense to.

Lucky you. A warm, sunny climate is very important to me, but returning home is definitely not an attractive option... lol

There's a lot of truth in what the Pinay lady says, at least in short to medium term relationships. Long-term/lifetime relationships are probably a different matter. I'd say that the reason is largely cultural, it's much easier for most Westerners to relate to and understand the motivations of a Filipina who can speak English and was brought up as a Christian, we have many similar concepts like being driven by a sense of guilt far more than a sense of shame. It just means that building a lasting, meaningful relationship with a Thai lady can take a long time, and it's not always going to work out well. As an aside, I found out something a while back that shocked me a bit, my 41-year-old TGF of the last 17-odd years (and sometimes very odd with her, lol) now has a 3-year-old brother. Her father separated from her mother (though they're not divorced, of course, that would mean losing face) a long time ago. When he retired from the cops about 6 years ago he built a house in his home-province of Phitsanulok and took a mia noi, a cracking young bird in her late 20's. Three years ago, they had a son, who's now my GF's half-brother. How weird is that? I admire the Thai flexibility in these matters, the way that nobody criticises or condemns it, I wonder if that could happen in the PI?

My gosh, all this effort and focus on foreign criminals must be exhausting, it's a good job the Thai people are all so completely honest and law abiding or the RTP could never handle the workload! lol