Guderian

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

Enough with the discrimination already... ...a better title would be: Ten years on... still no toilets on Jomtien Beach Dongtan Beach has long had two, but unless they're installing some as part of the new drainage works then I'm not aware of any on Jomtien Beach itself, though you can always cross the road and use the facilities provided by various shops and guest houses for a fee.

Why would you want to pay a 60 Baht taxi fare with a card anyway? This is Thailand, cash is still king.

It's often said that Christian societies are cultures guided by a feeling of guilt, while Buddhist societies are guided by a sense of shame. Hence the importance of not losing face in Thailand, for example. Yet the current crop of Thai politicians are completely shameless. OTOH, since they're all two-faced, maybe losing face isn't such a big issue for them, lol.

The place was dominated by taxi and tuk tuk mafia on my first visit over a quarter of a century ago. It doesn't sound like much has changed, lol.

Me neither. By Huay Yai I assume they mean the Huay Chak Nok reservoir. That one hasn't been full since before the pandemic, and is currently only around half-full at a guess.

You should check with a doctor first to see if it's really the right answer for you, and also to make sure that it's safe for you to take it. It can cause very unpleasant side-effects in some people. It's also not cheap. Maybe try a doctor in one of the international hospitals, and then they can tell you where to get it. I've seen it offered here in both injectable form (once a week) and as tablets (once a day), but as an expensive drug in a scam paradise like SE Asia there will be many useless and potentially dangerous copies around and it would be much safer getting it from a hospital. If you really want to take a chance, then have a look here: https://www.pulse-clinic.com/ozempic-rybelsus-semaglutide-thailand-bangkok-pattaya-phuket-chiang-mai OTOH, if you can wait until 2026, it comes off patent in India and they'll no doubt soon flood the market with cheap generics.

They cleared and bulldozed the land for the new track alongside the existing railway line through Pattaya before the pandemic. OTOH, U-Tapao still only seems to have about two flights a day, so I don't think the railway line is really urgent, lol.