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Thai Visa is absolutely the best place to come for this type of advice. There are a bunch of retired obstetricians hanging out, ready and qualified to dispense free counseling, on this and many other matters.

And not only are we retired obstetricians who are completely up to date with the latest developments in that field, we are also highly experienced astral projectors who, through extra-sensory perception, can see the insides of your gf even without imaging equipment and can guage her blood and urine to see the markers for pregnancy!!

By the way, for those who are too literal to understand that the last paragraph was an attempt at irony, THE LAST PARAGRAPH WAS AN ATTEMPT AT IRONY.

The best explanation of this is the lack of linked up government in Thailand (and in many other countries). The labor law enforcers do not know about visa law. So they don't care.

Before the arrival of "big data," this used to happen in the USA. There was the story back in the 1980s of the restaurant owner of European citizenship who was audited by the Internal Revenue (IRS) while his kitchen staff were arrested by INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service). The INS did not realize that the restaurant owner was not a US citizen and his green card had long ago run out!

My god. For a country that does very little to acknowledge or at least protect tourists (aka foreigners), you can't see ANY discussion of Thailand's macro economy without significant mention of tourism.

Surely tourism accounts for a larger percentage than they would have us believe?

Tourism only represents 6% of GDP in Thailand. It is highly visible and probably has a larger effect on the poor than industries such as manufacturing (44% approx of the economy) because of its labor intensity and fluidity.

There are reasons why tourism seems to appear in economic discussions a lot more than other sectors, such as manufacturing. It is because some of the features of tourism (sensitivity to security, unrest, exchange rates, transport) are precisely those that also affect foreign direct investment.

Given that tourism only represents 6% of the economy, we should be thankful that the country has a police force devoted to tourists (few other countries have bothered to do that).

Where's the quality control on the handing out of master keys? How does he have access to the cctv footage? That should be verboten.

This is only incidentally a story about a staffer who turned out to be a thief or a tourist who was prepared to chase down a crime committed against her.

The real story here is about:

a) really bad operations management in the hotel which does not control master keys, allows a janitor access to CCTV etc

really bad human resources management in the hotel that hired a janitor who is a thief. Generally, such behavior is repeated and often there are issues in the person's background (gambling, addiction etc) that should have come out in the hiring process and certainly under the day-to-day management.

c) highly likely that there was also really bad customer relations in the hotel. Given it was likely that the thief was a repeat offender, there were invariably previous offences which were never looked into by the hotel. In any case, the fact that a hotel will not manage its staff properly invariably means that they do not give a damn about their customers.

He knows he copied Starbucks. We know he copied Starbucks. Everyone knows he copies Starbucks.

Telling fibs about his inspiration for the logo evaporated any sympathy I felt for him..... and I really loathe Starbucks.

He should have played the sympathy card himself. Saying how the big nasty coffee corporation (which Starbucks is) has stolen his business and so he was just trying to get a little back to feed his family.

Copying is a difficult concept, as anyone who even has a passing acquaintance with copyright and patent issues. And large companies are known to copy others, infringe on copyright and patents. But as they have the big bucks, they can outspend the small guy in money for lawyers and take the case to appeal after appeal until the opposition's money runs out. Do you think that large companies never "told fibs" about where the inspiration for either their logos or their software came from?

But here is something to think about: Imagine the situation was reversed and Starbucks had copied the local coffee vendor. Do you think he would have any real redress? He would not be able to afford to defend himself.

Do you believe that everything about Starbucks was invented by that company and its contractors, that they never copied or "got inspiration" from some other source?

If your answer is no, do you therefore believe that there is justice in such a system where the big guys can copy as much as they want and the small guys cannot and are unable to get redress?

Hmmmm the Scottish guy is wearing a Rangers FC top.

Chances of the two Irish guys being Celtic fans and this being an argument stemmed from football/religion? Very high in my opinion.

As an Irish guy myself, I have never heard an Irish person who claimed to be a Glasgow Celtic fan!

Most likely it was the usual nonsense - one drunk meets two drunks and a fight breaks out whereby the two drunks win.

Having said that, I was not there and did not witness it. They could all have been sober and the Scottish guy claimed that the Body of Christ was in the host according to the "transubstantiation" view whereas the Irish guys held to the "insubstantiation" view. But somehow I doubt that explanation!

I am more than happy being married to my Falang wife most friends we know who are married to Thai woman are always moaning that they have no money most are my age 62 and have a Thai son/daughter below 6 years of age do I need say any more NO !!!!!!!!!!

very well said, I am in same boat my friend, couple of minutes she cried, " Momi ngn" I dont have money....thanks pal

Remember the parable told by the philosopher and Nobel prize winner, Bertrand Russell about the turkey who is very happy that the farmer provides a nice shelter and comes every morning and gives him food. As it happens every day and there is no change in the farmer's behaviour, the turkey makes the mistake of assuming that the future will always be the same as the past and learns his lesson too late when the farmer slips out the cleaver to chop his head off at Christmas.

The move came after students protested against the Faculty of Science's insistence on uniforms by producing posters of two students in uniform having sex.

I fail to see the connection here between wearing uniforms and having sex.

One was wearing the uniform while the other was playing along

It is very hard to advise you as it is not clear what your current situation is with respect to family or dependants and what you need from any potential investments.

For instance, if you have dependents who you would like to leave money to when you die, that would call for a different investment strategy than if you just wanted to maximise your income for the rest of your natural life.

As it is not clear what your age is, it is not clear whether you are eligible for purchasing one of those retirement bonds that would give you a guaranteed income for the rest of your life.

Not knowing anything about you, all I can do is to advise the following:

- invest in one or more properties that can be rented out very easily. Make sure that you put aside money for refurbishment. You could purchase 2 bed apartments and then let them out long term to the local authority who use it for housing the needy - in certain countries (such as the UK) the local authority take care of everything.

- always keep a balance of cash that would keep you going for at least 6 months or preferably one year.

- 500,000 pound or dollars is not really enough to keep you going for the rest of your life even if you invest it well and are very lucky. I would strongly suggest that you continue working at something (english teaching, something online) so that you don't eat into your investment capital.

- if you were to invest even 25% of the money in Thailand, make sure that you have your social contributions paid up to date as you are going to need to avail of it in the future! The trouble with investing 25% is that you lose some and then have to supplement the investment with more and then you are sucked dry.

- leaving the money in cash is complete lunacy - very low interest rates will mean that you will have to eat into your capital from day one.

Possibly the best response for Thai people is for someone to write a crystal clear refutation of this policeman's position and to get everyone to "like" it.

If sufficient people "like" it, they cannot arrest them all.

It is also good to see that Atilla the Hun was still teaching "Political Science" at the Police College when this gentleman was studying there!

You need to use locks marked TSA. They have a seperate keyhole and only airport bag checkers have a key for it. Apparently....If not they will just cut them off if they want to have a look in your bags.

People put locks on their bags because they believe it is so easy for someone to put illegal narcotics in your bag and use your bag to smuggle the dope to another country.

I have no way of knowing just how easy this is or how often it happens, if ever. But I don't take chances, especially when the penalties are high and the law enforcement in parts of Asia is, ahem, different.

I either use separate TSA locks or TSA locks that are built into the suitcase - there is one brand that designs this into a suitcase that is made of aluminum. And the case is sealed when shut properly and so impossible to even cut the case or otherwise hide the drugs in another compartment in the case. As the suitcase lasts for years, I bought one - it even doubles as a "safe" in those hotels where safes don't exist. You just make sure that there is other stuff in the case so that it is heavy - the thief would have to carry out the entire case or make a huge amount of noise trying to break open the locks. Not impossible but enough to make him/her seek out a softer target

I have done most of the physically demanding jobs there are - loading fire bricks in a factory, building work, digging trenches, mixing cement by hand, agriculture work, pitching bails by pitchfork to the top of a loaded truck, loading and unloading silage etc.

But by far the hardest was when I was a labourer for a scaffolding company in an oil refinery in Germany. All we did was load,unload, carry and lift heavy scaffolding poles all day for the scaffolders. We only had a 30 minute break for lunch and two smoke breaks per day. After a few months I became huge and probably still have muscles from that time. It was also dangerous - a chap died from a fall a few days after I left. And I never got my last pay packet because I did not give two month's notice.

Actually this video is only of amateurs in the game of getting money from tourists. The customs officers in BALI play a much more serious game to extort much higher amounts of money, which is to claim that there are drugs in your case. You get taken to a room and they let you stew for a while. They claim that their "probe" that they put inside your case has sensed drugs (whatever that means!). Frightened tourist at this stage will pay whatever. If not, they will let him stew for a while, like 6 hours while they "wait for expert" or "wait for equipment" or some other such nonsense. They can always plant some power on you anyway.

A few reminders of what can happen to you if caught in possession of a banned substance is enough to have you agreeing to whatever they want.

They seem to target particular types - mainly Western persons traveling on their own who are unlikely to have contacts in Indonesia and who are therefore helpless.

while we're at it, might as well include some penalty for the disgusting habit of cab drivers opening the driver side door to spit on the road at traffic lights or when stationary... winder what makes them want to spit so much....hmm...

Personally I would prefer that they open their door to spit rather than not open their door . . . !

And this happened in Pattaya? What is the world coming to? Well there goes the neighbourhood's reputation!

Don't think that this is a disease that you only find in less developed countries or warm or flooded places. The cat belonging to someone I knew in the UK was infected with LS from being in the grass where the local rats ran. Kids could have fallen in that grass and got it too.

And I thought that "Assassination without Investigation" was referring to the way the authorities tend to label suspicious deaths of foreigners in Thailand as accidents or suicide.

Anyone who knows Thailand well and has spent a lot of time there or lived there for a number of years knows such stories.

I have lived in many different countries working mainly for a multinational. Of course you are going to get the usual nonsense from folks in your home (Western) country but put it down to culture and sometimes ignorance. First the culture - Western culture sees payment for sex as abhorrent and having fun sex discretely with a third party while still married but not having sex with the marital partner as betrayal. Also, Western cultures tend to view a 20 year difference in age between a boyfriend/husband and wife/girlfriend as not very acceptable, perhaps even exploitative. Much of the rest of the world (over 80% of the world's population) do not see things in this light.

Now the ignorance: Thailand is known in Western countries as a sex tourist destination and any male going there would be viewed in that light by the friends and relatives back home in the Western country. But actually, if someone were to want to go somewhere where sex is cheaper and often free, many African countries would be candidates for that. Indeed, Cambodia is probably much more of a cheaper sex tourist destination than Thailand and Vietnam probably has more brothels than any country I have visited (although such brothels are for Vietnamese clients only). As anyone who has lived in Thailand will know, Thai culture does not really mind what people get up to as long as it is discretely done. Thai middle-class do not find it acceptable if a man were to bring a bar-girl to a dinner party. In many respects, Thai middle class people are much more keen on keeping up appearances than their Western counterparts while at the same time the men, especially the older wealthier men, keep mistresses or go to prostitutes discretely.

We really are slaves to the Microsoft whip. I have only recently purchased a Windows 7 operating system with Office 2010 as an expensive add-on only to find that MS Access is no longer bundled in the standard 2010 (home and office version). Now I am supposed to buy yet another Windows platform plus new office? I will have to spend even more cash to get MS Access.

This new Office software is internet based (or in the 'cloud' as MS call it), which means that the vast majority of potential users on the planet will not be able to use it because they do not have access to the kind of high-speed stable broadband service to make this sustainable as a solution.

Flight delays are only part of the problem at Suvarnabhumi Airport. The other problem is the huge delays caused by immigration for foreign visitors, especially as they are trying to leave the country. The number of personnel and numbers of desks open at immigration (for foreigners leaving the country) is such that it can take between an hour and an hour and a half to get through. On at least two occasions I have almost missed my flight despite being at the check-in desk 2.5 hours ahead of takeoff.

In our organization we are now advising all our employees, associates, spouses etc to use other international hubs, such as KL, Kong Kong or Chiangi (Singapore) and to avoid Bangkok.

For me the worst nightmare in Bangkok airport is delays in getting to the plane. Even though I have arrived more than two and a half hours before flying time, there have been several occasions where, because of the must be at the gate 30 minutes before takeoff, I could have missed my plane.

THe two sources of delay are at checkin and immigration (leaving the country). Last week I had to spend over an hour on the immigration line - now they herd everyone upstairs and separate everyone into Thai and non-Thai. The foreigner queue was over one hour long, check-in was 40 minutes and the Cebu Pacific announced boarding time for Manila was 40 minutes before takeoff.

Sounds like he was already disrobed

No, his fantasy was to make love in this attire.

And maybe the 35 years old woman wore a Japanese school girl uniform.

Moderator, if you are disgusted, you can delete.

:-)

Sounds like he was already disrobed

No, his fantasy was to make love in this attire.

And maybe the 35 years old woman wore a Japanese school girl uniform.

Moderator, if you are disgusted, you can delete.

:-)

Perhaps he did not expect things to go so far. When she propositioned him, he said that it was alright as long as she did not get into the habit.