TallGuyJohninBKK

But I'm guessing, the drugs you're using are over the counter variety and not among the many that only hospital pharmacies are legally allowed to dispense here. For example, back in my home country, various antibiotic medications (pills) are by doctor's prescription only, but you can fill those at any regular pharmacy. Here, antibiotics don't require any doctor's order. You can just walk into any pharmacy and buy whatever you want. However, there are many other kinds of drugs that can only be dispensed by a hospital pharmacy, and not an outside retail pharmacy.

And I'd guess, overall, they're long on domestically sourced or generic drugs that can be acquired and used relatively cheaply, and probably short/shorter on imported drugs, including those for which there are no generics, that are going to be more expensive and harder to obtain here.

"He and other suspects who were not yet fully identified by the CIB embezzled 41,045,966.67 baht from the foundation." That would be interesting, to learn who else was in on the Buddhist foundation scamming/skimming -- not that we're likely to hear more about it from the police anytime soon.

I'd say the claim above is quite a bit of PR puffery... IKEA, among others, might take issue with that. I'd never heard of this group before, and when checking, see they're a relative newcomer in Thailand and have just a handful of mostly fashion brand related ventures... and not much in restaurants at all. https://www.tanachira.co.th/ "TANACHIRA Business Overview TANACHIRA Group is the leading Thailand retailer importing world-famous lifestyle and fashion products. We manage three international brands and one self-owned brand." From my reading, their most notable local holding seems to be the local rights for the Finnish home/lifestyle brand Marimekko.

I liked his modern Italian place that used to be on the ground floor of Siam Discovery (I think). Not cheap, but moderately priced for farang, and the food quite nice. Seems though it, and many others (Outback Steakhouse and International House of Pancakes among them), fell victim to the COVID related loss of tourism income and drop in dining out. The wife and I were passing thru Central Embassy in BKK lately, and noticed that the former Harrods restaurant there,which was relatively more expensive, also seems to have disappeared.

Thailand doesn't seem to have a medical prescriptions system... except insofar as doctors order/prescribe drugs for patients that only their own hospitals will dispense. When was the last time anyone here got a written prescription for a controlled, non- OTC drug, took the paper to a retail pharmacy outside the doctor's own hospital, and got it filled by some retail pharmacy somewhere?

I suspect his offer to the authorities is -- just give me the deal Thaksin got, and I'll be in to surrender in a heartbeat! ????

New Thai government policy -- more SEX is needed! ????

Plus, by my count, there appears to be more than TEN various police / government / military folks in the OP's first photo surrounding that very dangerous looking couple sitting in front of them... It's a wonder they didn't call out the SWAT team as well!

I believe it's pretty much SOP here to appoint ministers to jobs at which they have little to no professional experience.

Same same as here with the OP..... ????

I was kind of expecting he would have escaped the Thai police station while the officers went out for lunch or took an afternoon nap... That seems to kind of have been the trend lately....

I didn't realize the Thai medical profession had discovered a new medical procedure to cure patients from their innate fixations with lying and corruption. Thailand truly is an amazing place!

Looks like the latest RTP talking head spoke a bit too soon... The OP announcement here followed the next day (today) by:

Serial killers or the numbers of them is hardly the only indicator of a nation's collective mental health. Especially when the count and source you cite is tallying them all the way back to the year 1900... Also, I'm not sure why you're suddenly bringing the U.S. into this, since my prior comments didn't. And, I'm pretty sure if anyone looked, they'd find Thailand over the years has had far more serial killers than the "4 that [you] can think of." An easy search shows Thailand has had many more, and those are just the ones formally recognized by the dodgy police here: https://coconuts.co/bangkok/features/thailands-most-notorious-serial-killers-by-the-numbers/ "The only one of Thailand’s 10 most infamous serial killers of the past century to match or even eclipse Sararat’s alleged crimes wasn’t a Thai national but rather a charismatic Indian-Vietnamese con artist who also tied up loose ends with poison. Of course, the fact most occurred in the last 20 years suggests others may have gone undiscovered throughout history."

Here's the info I mentioned above about the Amazon announcement of a new and much improved version of the Fire Stick 4K Max: "To start with, Amazon gave attendees a preview of the new Fire TV Stick 4K Max, which promises to be the most powerful Fire TV Stick yet. It includes support for Wi-Fi 6E, Dolby Vision, HDR, HDR10+, and immersive Dolby Atmos audio. The device also features 16GB of storage, which is twice the amount the previous generation of Fire TV Stick had. The Fire TV Stick 4K will retail for $59.99." https://thestreamable.com/news/amazon-unveils-new-fire-tv-sticks-alexa-updates-more-at-fall-product-launch Doubling the internal storage to 16 GB is a good and long overdue move... eliminating the need for folks like myself with the original Fire Stick Max devices to tinker around in getting USB stick storage formatted as added internal storage on those Fire OS 7 devices. Will be interesting to watch -- Amazon has another 'Prime Days" type sales event coming up in mid October, and then the annual big Prime Days sale right after Thanksgiving... Will be interesting to see if the new Fire Stick 4K Max goes on sale for either of those events. Most of the specs for the new 4K Max seem to be pretty much the same as the prior one, except for the doubled internal storage, a slightly faster CPU, and the upgrade to Wifi 6E vs the prior Wifi 6. The new one is also coming with the newer Fire OS 8, which is the equivalent of Android OS 11. https://www.aftvnews.com/comparison-table-of-all-recent-2018-thru-2023-4k-fire-tv-stick-cube-models-1st-gen-vs-2nd-gen-firesticks-4k-vs-4k-max-vs-cube/

And the country's leading legislative "pot-head" as the former Public Health minister now lately having become the new Interior Minister.

If their various deadlines aren't until NEXT year (fall), it doesn't sound like they're on the verge of ANYTHING right now.. contrary to the OP article.

I've never heard of "Thai Smile Bus"? Who the heck are they? Really??? "At present, the company operates 2,500 buses (comprising 2,017 EVs and 483 NGV buses) across 123 routes, authorised by the Department of Land Transport, Ministry of Transport." And of course, the photo accompanying the article showing a big bus painted entirely white with no name or signage on it certainly is going to help folks recognize the provider... ????

The most recent entry on that EN language page of theirs is dated Sept. 6. Here's a more up-to-date version of their forecasts in EN: https://tmd.go.th/en/forecast/daily

The National Enquirer doesn't count.... Nor does being a doorman at some newspaper office....

Too bad the OP article doesn't explain just who is "blondie" in the accompanying photos..... And for that matter, if they arrested a bunch of those involved in this ring, how come NONE of them are actually identified by real name and nationality in the article? When the police arrest some farang for overstaying his visa, those guys typically get identified by name... But here, apparently, police feel these criminals have some right to anonymity?

Or more likely, mental problems lead to uncontrolled anger and violence. Competent mental health services for ordinary Thais in need of them seem to be few and far between here.... and many in need simply go without any meaningful treatment.

So he's a serial bigamist, in addition to all his other endearing qualities???

Probably because usually the contracted party is some part of the big, domestic Thai-Chinese oligarchy club, so they're all playing on the same team in some way or another. But in this case, the contracted party was a foreign entity... not part of the local club for some reason. And as we all know, when it comes to money, Thailand only wants it coming in.... and rarely if ever going out, if they have any say about it.