Guderian

And they still have those disgustingly unhygienic fingerprint scanners, they were breeding grounds for germs before anyone had ever heard of Covid, but with the winter flu and Covid season kicking off once again my advice is to keep some hand sanitiser handy and use it liberally as soon as your fingerprints have been taken.

Interesting, and do you know who Mohamed Atta is? Just curious.

No doubt, it'll just end up as a festival of Lakorn...

Pedo Putin works for me, lol...

At least they recognised that he was dressed as Dahmer, if he'd gone as a REAL baddie like Mohamed Atta nobody would have had a clue who he was, lol.

I used them last Saturday to take the GF out to dinner in Cafe Blu. It took the driver forever to find my house, even though I'd sent him messages saying where exactly it was, and I ended up having a bit of a rant to the GF about Thai people not being able to read maps. When he eventually arrived and we headed off, I followed the route on the map on the Bolt app and it was complete rubbish, I can understand now why he had so much difficulty finding us. According to the Bolt map, half the time we were either driving through fields or were on a different road altogether, the company needs to have a look at what's going worn as I assume they're just embedding Google maps in the app, but it doesn't work very well.

They were probably high on something, if you've smoked enough weed then even with a samurai sword you're more likely to hurt yourself than others.

There's still plenty of Lays around, but again no salt & vinegar flavour. I found a recipe to make your own salt & vinegar seasoning so if all else fails I'll try adding some of that to a bag of Lays ready salted. If that doesn't work well then I'll go back to making my own crisps from scratch, I did that for many years when I worked the Niger Delta and it was impossible to find any crisps at all.

I've no idea if this is only a Pattaya problem or if it's nationwide, but apart from a few leftover bags it seems that Crunchips have disappeared from the shelves of the supermarkets here. I've tried Lotus, Big C, Friendship, Foodmart and Villa, as well as keeping an eye out in the convenience stores. but to no avail. What's happened, have they pulled out of Thailand? I think the product is actually made in the US and packaged here in Thailand, so is there a major spud shortage in the US? Their salt & vinegar crisps (chips to some) were my favourite, but I can't find them anywhere now other than online at outrageously silly prices. Are they available in one of the farang-oriented places I didn't visit yet, like Foodland or Best, or maybe even Tops? Does anyone know what's going on?

Chuwit might have got more response if he'd sent the brown envelope to President Chairman Xi in Beijing, lol.

At least they haven't got around to blaming it on the dirty farangs yet <rolleyes>. Mind you, we haven't heard from Anutin yet, so I expect we'll be treated to that version as soon as his head pops up above the stupa, lol.

Payback for his mates in ThaiBev and Boon Rawd for the billions they "voluntarily" donated to his Covid recovery fund back in June 2020 to allow the sale of alcohol to resume.

I had a look at a couple of the View Talay Residence buildings many years ago and the build quality is better than average, but because they're relatively small they lack the economies of scale the big condo blocks have their maintenance fees are high and the public amenities are relatively poor. I had a look first at the one next door to View Talay villas and the condo actually had its own garden, which was a first for me. But with 5 or 6 floors of people above you looking out, it was hardly private. It didn't have its own swimming pool, but you could go next door and use the first VT Residence pool which was OK. Then I popped across the road to one of the new blocks which had just been built at the top end of Soi 5. At that time, the maintenance fee there was something like 30 Baht/month/sqm, which would have meant around 5K Baht/month for the condo I liked. Compare that with less than 1K Baht/month where I was living at the time. On top of which, the condo swimming pool was smaller than some private hot tubs I've seen, and there was no rubbish collection, you had to take it down to the communal bins on the ground floor yourself. Needless to say, I looked but went no further, and then decided to buy a house instead. This was back in 2009 or 2010, so a long time ago, and things may have improved.

You can always subscribe to the Al Jazeera English news channel on YouTube for free, assuming you've got a smart TV. It's exactly the same as what Sophon shows, there's a very short advert when you start watching but that's all. Paid for by the Qatar government.

At least they're being honest for a change instead of trying to claim that millions of Chinese tourists are already returning.

Just getting ready for when the vast hordes of unwashed Chinese zero dollar tourists return. May as well skim the usual 30% of the top of the contract while they're waiting.

With the strength of the USD, you'd think he'd at least have been drinking Jack!

They used engineers???

Many years ago, I furnished my seafront pad in Scheveningen with Ikea. Twenty years later, I furnished my villa in Pattaya with Index. My unbiased opinion is that Ikea has a great selection of decent quality furniture, but Index has better quality items, which is also reflected in the price.

I look at wearing a mask as a simple sign of respect for the employees. They either have to wear masks all day long, or else they choose to do so, and the least you can do is respect them by wearing a mask for the 10 or 15 minutes you'll probably be inside.

Time to quickly amend the Lèse-majesté law to include flaunting posters of Prawit's face with a red cross drawn over it, lol.

A few years ago, a Thai friend of mine - and a cop at that! - died when his pick-up truck had an argument with a garbage lorry at a U-turn on Sukhumvit, somewhere near Sattahip. The video you have to watch when you get your drivers licence doesn't say it, but the sensible rule here is to give way to vehicles that are obviously larger and heavier, as it's silly to expect high driving standards from other people, let alone any form of defensive driving. In fact, I'm pretty sure when they're in school they must indoctrinate the kids in a Thai 'aggressive driving' course, lol.

People only have so much money, and they're aware that a lot of it is going to be needed just to heat their homes this coming winter. Add to that a 50%-100%+ rise in air fares for the coming high season and it's hardly surprising that tourists won't be spending as much as they used to. Then there's the obligation that many younger folk feel towards the plant and climate change. I've read several news articles saying that they won't give up foreign travel completely to reduce their carbon footprint, but they're much more serious about the issue than most older people are and will think very hard about whether they really need to travel long haul or take a more local holiday instead, possibly avoiding flying altogether.

Same same but different... I really must get a tee-shirt with that printed on it one of these rainy seasons, lol.

Blimey, and the Bodhi tree is supposed to be one of the most auspicious symbols of Buddhism, given that Siddarta Gautama achieved enlightenment while sitting under one 2,500-odd years ago. This poor motorcyclist must have had some seriously bad karma!