Guderian

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!

He should get on the next flight to Pakistan and have a look at what real Hellish weather will do to your country.

And there was me hoping it might be the residents of Yensabai condo beating up some noisy foreign motorbike racers at 4:00 in the morning, lol!

Given the Immigration rules, even for this new visa, plus the deadly Thai roads, plus the deadly Thai drunken men, plus TAT's ability to attract only the dregs of Indian and Middle Eastern motorbike racer wannabe tourists, I should think the only people who'd be happy to spend a million dollars/pounds/euros on property in Thailand are those who are desperate to launder their ill-gotten gains. After all, the old adage still holds true after all these years, you should only invest in Thailand what you can afford to lose. So now on the one hand we've got the RTP telling us we should be worried about farang criminals posing as tourists arriving this high season, while on the other hand the Thai government is actively trying to encourage Chinese criminal tourists to settle here.

So tomato flu is nothing to do with tomatoes - that's going to confuse a lot of people, lol...

Terminal 4??? The last time I flew, back in the halcyon pre-pandemic days of 2019, Swampy only had one terminal. Did they really build three more terminals over the last few years, and how do you know which one your flight goes from as my current ticket to fly out next weekend doesn't mention a terminal?

8 Baht is still cheaper than what I'm charged for leccy in my flat back in the UK, I gather it's more like 12 Baht/kWh these days, and that will soon go up by another 30% by all accounts with the price cap. I'm just glad that I'm not there very much, and certainly not this winter!

RTP want quality tourists not criminals in 22/23 high season That's the same as the Mafia moaning that the people they shake down for a living are too trashy, lol!

Let me guess: the judge is either a relative or close friend of the accused. Conflict of interest is a concept that doesn't exist in Thailand, I know this first-hand as the lawyer I was using in a case finally admitted to me that he was also acting for the other party!!! That was when he learnt what the Order of the Boot meant.

OK, it's Bang Saen rather than Pattaya, but it might have floated up the coast from here rather than being washed down a river as the article claims. I thought it was quite amusing, anyway, though I'll bet it was scary for whoever found it. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11135453/Dead-body-Thai-beach-turns-470-ultra-realistic-sex-doll.html

Amazing, given the rich pickings in tea money that were there to be had. Perhaps their new friend in Government House, who's now new best friends with MBS, has ordered the cops to lay off the Arabs?

500 units??? My koi carp pond, waterfall and garden lighting probably uses that much in a month!

Yes, and take it one step further, that will be bad for the wider economy. And what does the government do when the economy is at risk? Why it throws money at the problem, of course, usually in the way of price caps or subsidies. They may as well avoid the unpleasantness to come and simply announce a French-style price cap now, rather than wait until public opinion forces them to do so.

...but what is the switch in your car that puts both indicators going at the same time for then? It's obviously a park-anywhere switch so that you can let others know you're exercising your right as a free Thai citizen to do as you bleeding well like! Someone once told me that it was a hazard warning indicator, but that's obviously nonsense or else every car in the country would have it going all the time.

Looks like it might be time for them to hire Lt. Colonel Thaksin Shinawatra so that he can teach them all about the Tak Bai manoeuvre.

What a pointless article, no useful or interesting numbers at all in it. So how many Chinese tourists are arriving in Thailand every week, surely you must know that if you've bothered writing the rest of this blather? I also read that the mandatory quarantine period on return to China is 3 weeks in a state-run camp, not sure of the cost, but how many people can afford to lose 3 weeks off work after taking a 2-week break? Not many, even in the rich West, and don't forget just how poor China still is, with a GDP per head that's lower than Thailand's. Only the vast population and the extremely wealthy small minority (it has a Gini coefficient of 0.47, compared with an average of 0.31 across wealthy nations) give us the impression that it's a well-off country nowadays. https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-per-capita/ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-29/china-needs-cut-to-inequality-for-common-prosperity-pboc-s-cai

Count yourself lucky you were allowed inside! At Jomtien Immigration these days you're just left to stand in a queue outside, regardless of whether it's baking sun or pouring with rain. It certainly makes doing stuff online, or using an agent if that's not possible, much more attractive.

Doesn't this all come down in the end to public liability insurance? If companies and business premises were forced to have adequate cover then this kind of sad story would be much rarer. But the very idea that a company or, Buddha forfend, a branch of the government, might actually be held responsible for tragedies that they directly or indirectly play a part in is still taboo here. I've got 1.5 million Baht of liability insurance on my house just in case someone who comes here or is doing a job here gets hurt, and it costs peanuts. Come on Thailand, you can do better than this.

They dug up South Pattaya Road for most of last year, ostensibly to bury all the overhead cables, yet they're still very much there. Did they dig the road up and then forget why?

Some classic pointing in those photos, the cops are clearly taking this case very seriously, lol.

I know a guy who had it done a few months ago in Bangkok Hospital Pattaya. He was pleased with the results and, although it's not a comfortable experience having something stuck up your willy (unless you're into sounding, lol), he didn't mention any pain. The cost was 200K Baht which his local medical insurance picked up. He had to wear a pee bag for a week afterwards but after that was removed everything was fine. I also read that it's good for just 5 years, but as it's a new procedure they may just be guessing on the safe side of things there. I also checked the price in a UK private hospital and that was £5K to £6K, so about the same. The days of Thailand being a cheap medical destination are well and truly over, at least for us Brits.

I gave myself a nasty burn while cooking a few months ago, and well remember how painful it was and how long it took to heal up properly (it still hasn't really, as the skin that was there has been replaced with scar tissue). My heart goes out to the dead, but also to the poor people leaving the club and who were actually on fire, my Buddha but they will need some help after that. Horrifying, the newspaper-that-must-not-be-quoted had a video of the scene earlier this morning, I don't know if it's still there and, of course, I can't link to it.

And there was me thinking he's probably in the vanguard of TAT's never-ending search for "Quality Tourists" to visit Thailand, lol.