edwardandtubs

Does this mean an end to the queue jumping problems?

The nonsense has already started around here in residential Bangkok with little bar stewards chucking water all over people. Someone should give them a good clip round the ear.

There are protests all over the world whenever there is a international summit of any importance. There were much bigger and more disruptive (for ordinary people) protests in London at the recent G20 summit. Will that lead to a massive decrease in tourism to London? Of course not! The impact will be negligible. The impact on tourism from this ASEAN summit cancellation will also be negligible. To even start to compare it to the closure of an international airport that disrupted the holidays of hundreds of thousands of people is just silly.

I also had the misfortune to recieve a rather angry phonecall after talking to some school girls recently.

I distinctly remember not touching them but can't for the life of me remember if my errect penis was showing?

Maybe some kind of faux pas particular to Thai society?

Dude combined with your avatar that leaves a seriously bad mental image.

Funniest two posts I've seen on thaivisa for a long time. Just irony I hope...

To be honest the subject is embarrassingly easy. A university student should be able to find his own topic of interest and come up with his own ideas instead of being assigned a topic by a teacher and getting ideas off of forum posters. Come up with your own, more challenging, topic and you'll get more respect from your teacher and other students.

There's so much you could cover:

Soi dogs

Street food hawkers

Prostitution

Traffic

Pollution

Football supporters

Beer

Pubs

The Tube

Fish and chip shops

There's ten for you.

You said, you were just 10 minutes in the club. So you just came to the club to tell her the message of her on/off boyfriend. Are you their employee? How long did you drive to the club and back home? What message? Why did not he tell her that message? Does he wants that you apologizes to her?

Read back :-

I did say it was on my way home. So I was not put out to pass on a message. This for a man who has helped me out on previous occasions. Also I have said why I passed on the message.

Come on, G54. First you mess up a fledgling relationship with a Thai woman by strolling into her place of work to give her a load of fruit. Now you p- off another Thai woman by strolling up to her in a club to spy on her/pass on messages on behalf of an on/off boyfriend. Don't you learn from your mistakes? Generally women don't appreciate a lot of attention being drawn to their private lives as it leads to gossip and rumours.

Get your facts right. Was not me with the fruit. I do not know where you got that from.

She was not being spied on. The message was in answer from her original call and that is all I will say. Your speculation is so way off the mark it is incredible.

Apologies for the mistake (originally made by another poster) about the fruit. As for this message, why didn't he just call her or send her an SMS? Can't you see how a woman might not want some guy wondering up to her in a club? It seems this "friend" of yours is using you. You need to tell him where to go.

I have spoken to many Thai women who say they will stay at home during Songkran because they don't want men touching their body in the street. During Songkran a basic principle of civilised behaviour gets thrown out the window - the principle that you need consent to touch another person's body. I can't see the the "sanuk" in assaulting and sexually assaulting people in the street.

You said, you were just 10 minutes in the club. So you just came to the club to tell her the message of her on/off boyfriend. Are you their employee? How long did you drive to the club and back home? What message? Why did not he tell her that message? Does he wants that you apologizes to her?

Read back :-

I did say it was on my way home. So I was not put out to pass on a message. This for a man who has helped me out on previous occasions. Also I have said why I passed on the message.

Come on, G54. First you mess up a fledgling relationship with a Thai woman by strolling into her place of work to give her a load of fruit. Now you p- off another Thai woman by strolling up to her in a club to spy on her/pass on messages on behalf of an on/off boyfriend. Don't you learn from your mistakes? Generally women don't appreciate a lot of attention being drawn to their private lives as it leads to gossip and rumours.

I know it's old news that there's a visa scam going on in Aranyaprathet, but on a recent visa run I was surprised at how this little mafia operation seems to have completely corrupted the whole town so that it's now impossible to avoid if you're doing an independent visa run. In the past the orange-shirted moto driver offered to get me a visa but I declined and that was the end of that. On this occasion there was a goon waiting at an intersection before the border to Cambodia and after an exchange of nods with the moto driver I was taken to the fake Cambodian Consulate.

This building is surprisingly convincing-looking and had about five official-looking guys claiming to represent Cambodia. I ignored them and told my driver to go to the border but the mafia goon claiming to represent Cambodia said that visas were not available at the border. When I continued to ignore him and tell the driver to go to the border the goon told me they had moved the border! I then firmly told the driver to go to the border quickly and the goons gave him a nod of permission to leave. I wasn't fooled because I knew what to expect but I'm sure many people are being tricked and intimidated into handing over cash for an overpriced visa. Are the visas they're issuing even valid? If not the victim would have to pay for yet another visa at the border.

I told my driver to hurry up and no more BS so he took me to the border but about 100 metres before the official road block there was another goon and another exchange of head nodding. He stopped in front of another, smaller, fake Cambodian Consulate and yet more goons trying to sell me a visa. I told them I wasn't interested in their BS and they shouted obscenities at me as I walked away.

I find it surprising that the Thai authorities are allowing this. Given how much this mafia outfit has spent on employees and buildings, they must be very confident that their operation will be allowed to continue. I'm sure it isn't difficult to bribe the local police but this is going on in full view of the army and immigration authorities. It's bad for Thailand's reputation that the corruption is even worse on the Thai side of the border than the Cambodian side. Given the number of tourists who must be getting scammed here, I would have thought someone in Bangkok would want to stamp this out but obviously they just couldn't care less. It's only a matter of time before these aggressive goons seriously injure or kill a tourist and then the story will be all over the media. It should be stamped out before this happens.

Find a real woman instead, instead of a stuck-up-bi'atch.

Is this the same one that was braking up with you over bringing her fruit in her office or another...?

I remember that one. The OP is either winding us up or is very accident-prone around women.

Apologies for my lack of clarity on who phoned. It was the same friend who asked me to pass on the message. Seems she phoned him at about 2 a.m. after the club had shut. So maybe an hour after I passed on the message.

So no thanks for passing on a message, she just phones your mate to complain you touched her. Sounds like a snotty stuck up hi-so wannabe and I'd blank her from now.

I am very tactile, do not mix exclusively with bg's ( ) and have never had a complaint in 18 years. Thai's themselves are very tactile. The "but you're a farang" bit...... <deleted>. If they haven't got the class to address you properly (chao dun chart/bathet) then they don't have the class to have grounds to complain. IMNSHO.

My thoughts exactly. All this agonising over whether as a "Farang" you've upset "Thai" sensibilities is BS. Some Thais are very touchy-feely but I personally can't stand people touching me. It's a matter of personal choice, not some big Farang-Thai cultural divide. This "friend" of the OP sounds like he has some backward racist issues about protecting "his" women. Instead of fretting about whether touching a woman's arm was some massive cultural faux pas he should confront his "friend" about his own racist and ungrateful behaviour.

I have bought Acidophilus from GNC.

Which branch? Not available in the Silom branch.

I disagree. Most forms of dancing are somewhat sexually provocative or explicit. These include famous showgirl places lik Moulin Rouge and Vegas. Many specific dances and styles range from hinting at sex to exuding it. These include Tango, Salsa, Rumba, Hip Hop, Fly Dancing, Belly Dancing, ballet, slow dancing, Pole Dancing, and many more. It doesn't matter to me, but to deny that there are sexual elements to dancing just isn't correct.

Good point. I'm sure we all used to love doing the can can as children without any serious long-term ill-effects.

It very obviously wasn't an 'obscene' show in any legal sense. In fact the whole thing sounds like Daily Mail style mock 'outrage' when it was probably just a kid prancing around on a stage.

Sheryl, the email came from FedEx Thailand.

When I said they could keep the package they halved the surcharge so the whole thing cost under 1000 baht which I accepted. The nonsense didn't stop there though as the delivery man arrived asking for 1200 baht. Talk about the left arm not knowing what the right arm's doing! I ended up eventually paying the agreed sum of under 1000 baht though. I'll use standard air mail next time.

GNC doesn't sell them and Infloran is apparently now unavailable in Thailand. Yoghurt doesn't contain the specific strains mentioned and the number of live bacteria is usually much too low to have any effect. The only thing I've seen widely available in Thailand is from an unknown company called Noltec containing Lactobacillus Acidophilus and Bifidobacterium Longum.

I was once on a long distance bus journey and something apparently from mainstream Thai television was showing. It involved boys of less than 10 dressed in "hot pants", dancing in a feminine manner and being told to turn around and shake their bottoms to the audience. The other passengers on the bus seemed to think it was hilarious but I thought it was a bit creepy. Then again, I also remember Jim'll Fixit in the UK got in trouble for fixing it for a boy to act as a male stripper.

Here's the latest nonsense from FedEx:

"Yes, if FedEx clear out package for you, there'll be no storage charge,

but if you run yourself clearance process, the storage charge must be

paid to BFS warehouse.

And the rate of storage charge from first arrival date till today will

be approximately 2,707 THB. (this is approximately charges, validity

till tomorrow released process).

Actually, there'll be service charge, in case it's pending for

confirmation, but FedEx is your clearance agent, there'll be no storage

charges, even it's pending, but if you confirm yourself clearance,

actually, package will be move to other warehouse (BFS) with actual

storage charge payment."

Why should FedEx provide a service for free? Use the post office if you are allowed to for your small import. EMS as others have stated is not bad.

It isn't a question of providing services for free. It's part of the price you pay for FedEx shipping. As their own website states:

"FedEx Express provides standard customs clearance at no extra charge for import shipments."

The issue is that they incorrectly decided that "special" clearance services were required and went ahead with that without my authorisation.

FedEx Thailand are no longer replying to my emails so I've contacted FedEx US and asked the company that sold me the product to do the same. If that doesn't work I'll probably just reorder using international air mail.

That's completely untrue, micky. Zithromax is only currently prescribed for chlamydia. It is not prescribed for gonorrhoea due to the development of resistant strains and has never been prescribed for syphilis. Ignore the keyboard "experts" and get a proper test.

Thanks for the advice Sheryl. I didn't sign anything giving FedEx authorisation to clear it. I just paid the company that sold the supplement and then was called by FedEx Thailand asking what was in the package. They then told me what they were going to do. They didn't ask me and certainly didn't tell me about the 1284 baht surcharge. Here are the last two online tracking entries:

Mar 24, 2009 11:16 AM

Clearance delay

SAMUTPRAKARN TH

Mar 24, 2009 6:11 AM

At dest sort facility

SAMUTPRAKARN TH

I believe SAMUTPRAKARN is where the airport is so it's probably being held by customs in the airport.

I find it a bit over the top that your title suggests that all these charges are FED EX related. Are you 100% sure it doesnt apply to say DHL or TNT or others as well?

If it does, then the term extortion as it relates to FED EX is wrong.

The customs charges are from customs but the "Clearance surcharge THB1284" is a FedEx administrative fee.

I thought I would start a new topic in the General Forum because we're not really talking about health any more, we're talking about FedEx and customs but never mind, mods know best.

Sounds a nightmare. At least I have the option of just ordering again using International Mail so I'm not losing that much. I'll warn as many people as possible not to use these crooks.