Guderian

Meanwhile, the sixteen cannabis cafes on the street were doing a roaring trade, lol.

Much as I sympathise with your situation vis-a-vis Thailand's daft defamation law, I just hope you realise that it's illegal to let a property for less than a month via Airbnb in Thailand? In the village where I live, we've occasionally had cases with people letting out their houses via Airbnb for short stays and the guests causing problems for permanent residents due to inconsiderate parking and making excessive noise at night. We've taken the owners responsible to court several times now and we always win as the law is clear, though as usual in Thailand getting people to enforce and respect it is a different matter.

Before getting worked up about the diesel standard or emissions from new cars they need to tell the testing centres that any vehicle failing to meet the required standard will not be passed and unable to renew its road tax and compulsory insurance. I've seen old trucks being tested and emitting clouds of black smoke, but they just end up being waved through, so what was the point of the testing? Start enforcing the existing rules properly before you make new ones.

Make things simple and change the headline to tell the truth, lol: Massive extortion network within the govt itself now probed by massive extortion network

I should have thought the only two viable industries Russia has left by now are oil and armaments, neither of which is one of Thailand's strong points. Probably just hoping they can persuade Mad Vlad to take some of their unsold rice harvest in exchange for some oil, discreetly delivered in an unmarked tanker with its transponder switched off, of course.

Thanks, that's what I'll do.

Is this north or south of Bangkok Hospital? I've got an appointment on Wednesday and if it's south of the hospital then it will be easier for me to use Third Road and Soi Photisan rather than Sukhumvit.

It's what the Cornish call tourists, basically ants. Much the same thing as people in East Anglia calling them grockles.

Lol, funnily enough I went for a walk along Dongtan Beach yesterday afternoon for the first time this high season. This is what I wrote to my brother back in the UK in my daily missive: "It was a nice, warm sunny afternoon, though a bit sticky, and the emmets were out in force down Jomtien way. My goodness, but there are some strange looking people around. The next time they want to film one of those post-apocalyptic films with lots of bizarre mutants all they need to do is go to Dongtan Beach during high season, no need for any special effects."

The last time I looked, the Thai government deposit insurance runs to a measly one million Baht per account. So to be safe, just make sure none of your accounts has over a million in it and, in theory at least, you can't lose a satang. Of course, a run on a major bank here would probably trigger a currency crisis, and your safe stash of Baht would then be worth a lot less in USD terms. Swings and roundabouts...

Inconsiderate parking is endemic in Thailand. I used to get quite annoyed by it, but now every time I'm back in the UK for a month I see that things are often no better there. Something generational maybe?

We had over an inch of rain in Pattaya yesterday afternoon. Very welcome, too, the garden will have loved it, and the fish seemed happy too.

I've thought about using this service, but I'm always apprehensive that I might arrive and find that there's nobody at the RP place. If it was manned by Immigration cops then I'd feel more certain that someone would always be around, but as it's evidently a private company I don't feel that sense of assurance.

Why not just go to the Soi 9 cop shop and ask?

I thought it had already been reduced to 300 billion Baht. Anyway, after the politicians and administrators take their share, the Thai public will be lucky to see 100 billion Baht.

Wilbur Smith said that he was more afraid of leopards than of lions. Not many lions to worry about in Hua Hin, but leopards are much less hygienic animals and any bite or scratch from one will likely get badly infected.

Please do, the Baht would tumble, expats and tourists would love it and flock here.

Yes, I remember that, it was very creepy. AFAICR, they did away with it when the e-visa scheme got up and running. After that, it was great going through Cham Yeam as the bent IO's couldn't demand extra kickbacks any more as you already had the visa. You had to take pity, though, on the poor souls who hadn't used the e-visa system and were still trying to negotiate and bribe their way through.

A very long time ago, when I was working in West Africa, we came home one night to find the street blocked by a giant python. The road could take two cars side-by-side, then there was a grass verge on both sides and a storm ditch. The python was so big that all you could see was its body on the road, the head was already down in the ditch on one side while the tail still had to emerge from the ditch on the other. That was one big snake.

Well if Khun Sukanya can afford 4 or 5 million Baht for a BMW Z4, I don't think paying a 12,000 Baht fine for her naughty Lithuanian boyfriend is going to worry her too much.

Now now, just because it's full of Russians there's no need to get racist, lol.

Is this some form of German humour, sarcasm or irony?

Unless Sterling and the Euro have somehow become magically connected to the USD, then it's a weakening of the THB, not a strengthening of the USD. And that is consistent with my hypothesis that it may be at least partly due to a major reduction in expat remittances into Thailand across all the main currencies.

Could the Baht's decline since the start of the year be in any way linked to the fact that hundreds of thousands of expats are no longer remitting money into Thai Baht on a regular basis due to the taxation uncertainty?

Why make such a fuss about a recently started project? The neverending traffic mess on Sukhumvit by the Soi Wat Bun junction has been going on much longer, causes just as much delay, and shows no sign of ever ending.