Bangkok Barry

And four Spanish supermarket beers for the price of one in Thailand. As for wine, it's so cheap that they have a Songkran-style festival where they throw wine over each other instead of water.

Yet he returned. Darwin Award contender.

Thai language is tonal, yet many Thais are absolutely tone deaf when it comes to singing. And some even get onto tv to sing completely off-key. It's one of those Thai things that is impossible to understand.

If the car was a Nissan or Ford, would the headline have said so? I think not. But a BMW somehow is relevant. Strange.

Photography is different, in my opinion. People are less likely to buy photos in their millions, and to take those photos costs money to get there to do it. Using photos for free that someone has probably spent a great deal of money and time to secure doesn't promote their work to the same extent. But then, I work in the media and know sports photographers, so I might have a distorted point of view.

,,,, as he was driving too fast and too close to the vehicle in front. But of course, in Thailand it is always someone else's fault.

It's a funny old world where you can be fined for, effectively, promoting someone's songs. maybe inspiring folk to go out and buy it. I've never understood that concept. Fine someone for giving them free advertising

Like every other law in Thailand, it is ignored and next-to-never enforced. Just another pointless law that allows corruption to exist within Thailand's largest criminal organisation should they choose to 'crack down' on anyone.

Something I buy by the case from near Kalasin IO.

Both strictly for the ladies, methinks.

If the women were there voluntarily, how were they being exploited?

I see your point. But if the case does go to court there might often be a monetary compensation to the victim anyway. The Thais just cut out the middleman, the courts. Or there might not. With the Thai way, there is. I saw a different form of justice, after a good for nothing nephew came into the house one night and stole some items, including a phone from beside where my wife was sleeping (I was away at the time), after I'd banned him from the house. No police were involved, but he was sent off to the army for a year.

I don't have a particular favourite, and keep a supply of different beers in the fridge. I suppose, if I had to name the best, I'd say Tapper and Leo 8, but I'll also have Singha or Chang or Leo or Caribou Lager or Dunkel now and then. But Thailand is a beer desert, even with all the recent overpriced local 'craft' beers, when compared to Europe, even the USA these days. I am from the UK where you can walk into most pubs and find two or three beers you've never seen before, go to the next pub and repeat, and the next and the next. The variety is infinite.

When I was back in the UK I found that in a shop that had a rotating selection of beers, three for a fiver. And loved it. As you are clearly a man of good taste I will seek out your Thai recommendation.

You forgot Dunkel. I didn't like dark beers but tried theirs and now it's one of my go-to choices.

Thailand to a T. Hub of Apathy.

I witnessed something so bizarre that many years later I still doubt what I saw. I was walking along London's Oxford Street, and coming the opposite way was a totally naked man carrying what looked like a large advertising board by his side. And no-one was taking the slightest notice. It was like a tv skit to get peoples reaction, but I saw no cameras and no reaction. I'm still baffled by it. A 'friend' has seen staged videos taken in Germany of a totally naked woman walking in a shopping street, with the same non-reaction. Maybe this chap just wanted to be a video star.

I didn't write that it is. I was following up on a post about a Thai act and said it didn't compare well to what music was in the past. Going off-topic, I admit, comparing listening to Thai music to old western music. I was just offering a point of view, if that's okay with you.

There's a difference between being stuck in the past and comparing then and now. Then was better, as anyone who experienced the 60s music scene would probably agree. The days when people instead of computers composed music and car alarm 'music' didn't exist.

When you grew up watching live The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Roy Orbison.... the list is endless. So, no thanks. Spoiled rotten when young.

Nothing new to see here. When it rains heavily in Thai cities there is massive flooding, be it Phuket or Pattaya or Bangkok or elsewhere, because the authorities have not built the infrastructure to deal with what is a common occurrence year after year after year. But it isn't just a Thai thing, Asia has man-rain rather than the pissy stuff other parts of the world has most of the time.

Agreed.

Some facts 1.Thailand has always attracted slightly odd foreigners, many with outstanding talents but uncomfortable with their lives in the West 2.The numbers of foreigners have increased hugely over the last forty years or so. The profile has also changed essentially from upper middle class to lower middle class and working class.The numbers from what used to be called the criminal class has also increased. Yes. Exactly my point. Why does Thailand attract them? Many come here as they can't keep up with the higher standards back home and so feel more comfortable with, let's say, the less demanding society here. They don't have to try so hard to keep up appearances and can 'get away' with things in Thailand that they wouldn't be able to back home. I am often reminded of what a Korean tv producer I worked with said, summing up the country in just six words - the standards here are so low. That clearly suits many.

I'm old enough to remember when there was only one place I could go to in Stockholm to cash traveller cheques. Come to that, I'm old enough to remember when there was only one place in NYC where you could exchange foreign currency. Hard to believe now, isn't it. I remember the 'miracle' when I first used a UK credit card to draw money at a Bangkok ATM. Times change.

The OP first needs to ask why Thailand attracts so many of the people he writes about. There are other countries in the region which do not.