Gaccha

This is very interesting. Can you say whether books are available for this specific test?

I actually started the other thread that you reference , but I was not keen on doing the test as I thought without knowing what was in the test it would be a waste of money.

Thanks.

James

I just bought your book today. I am keen to provide constructive crticism and ideas but that might take a few weeks or even months. What timescale are you on; when do you have to get edition 2 done?

Looks good so far. As a test I checked the index to see if it offered the following English grammar phrases:

"just as"

"as if"

"only" (and no more)

"only" (just)

"only" (about)

I was pleased with what I saw.

ya, i dont really take a political stand. It is a Thai issue, not mine, and its rather complicated.

Crikey, it's not like a tourist to show no interest in the country they are visiting...

It must come as a shock to find the window smashed in the air conditioned limousine life you live in the core West. You see none of the wretched poverty that you help to create, notice none of the suffering, that you do nothing to alleviate. Just so long as little Lucy and John have a well-deserved rest in a paradise island to recover from their stressful (and mind-numbing) lives of 9-5 in a paper factory in Slough.

I suggest you look into the matter a little more.

Ive got a trip planned for Thailand in slightly over two weeks time and i am unsure of a few things at the moment.

Firstly, i am not sure if the international airport will be open, or more like open long enough in that time for my plane to land in BKK. I understand that no one knows the answer to this question. But is it possible for it to be closed for that long?

Secondly, what are the various ways this situation could play out? Lets say the Airport is open and running, should I still go to Thailand? Will there be enough unrest that tourists should refrain from going? or will you be ok if you avoid hotspots?

If there is a coup, is that a good thing for me? or will the pro government supportors clash with the PAD? I have read that the pro government supporters have had a few rallies themselves, what is the feeling in Thailand? Is there going to be a civil war?

At this moment In time I will give this maybe a couple of days and see how things go before making any major decicions, but I am considering canceling my flight and choosing a different destination.

So, what are my chances?

It is like death alley here right now. A tank is crashing through my bathroom and bullets are flying above my head as I write this reply. There are packs of dogs eating the corpses of dead white tourists, who have not been taken to be sold as slave gimps at the open market at Mo Chit.

Obviously, if you can avoid being taken hostage when you land at the military airport then you need to make a run for the Government House, it is the only safe location right now in the city. Bring the family, but don't forget to wear covert body armour. As a Brit, you are like a bullet magnet.

I may not be able to reply any further as an armoured scorpion light tank is taking out my communication capabilities.

But on the bright side, there are quite cheap tickets to the Kylie Minogue concert tonight. Just don't go unarmed.

I would say your chances are better than 50/50. Just kiss your family goodbye in case you don't make it back.

very good post thank you

The movement of the top elements of the government to Chiang Mai creates a new dynamic. It now makes it impossible for the First Army to initiate the coup as taking only Bangkok is no longer enough.

Presumably the coup will be sometime next week so lets start to call in our positions near military bases.

The Third Army is in charge of Chiang Mai and is headquartered in Phitsanulok. Is anyone living there? If anyone see any vehicles come out of these building then write on the fourm...

In the meantime, you can always watch Thai army TV: http://www.tv5.co.th/newss/military.php

This is a serious situation!

We are being held hostage in Thailand.

There are thousands of people placed in hotels in and around Bangkok who are not able to leave and go back to their home countries. Many of these people are in dire straits as it was the end of their holidays and they are now out of money. They can not afford to stay in Thailand any longer. Eventhough Thai Airways are taking care of food and accomodation, stranded passengers still need to contact work, home and relatives but this has to be on own expense. Many have to go back to work.

We were told this morning that it will take at least ten days before people will be able to go home. We can not wait that long. This situation is destroying lives.

This is an urgent call for the press to get involved so that International help can be called upon. If you have contact with the press, please get in touch. We are stranded at the Ambasador City Hotel in Pattaya. Around 10 different nationalities are involved. Please help us get home.

Oh please, save me the hyperbole. Just relax. They are sorting out flights via military airports for you. You are being fed, and accommodated for free. Your work back home can and will wait.

The press can do nothing. What do you expect-- a platoon of British soldiers to arrive to save you from your desperate position.

Relax. It seems from your post, that your only expenses are the telephone calls. That must mean your cost of living here is less than back at home. Just use your debit card at the atms for goodness sake. Don't be so pathetic.

• Reports of military movements near Bangkok? (when/who?)
  

• Military explanation for these movements (e.g. scheduled exercise, any evidence for this?)
  
  

• Royal Thai Army Special Forces units start to move from Lopburi province to Bangkok (when?)
  

• Arrival of first units in Bangkok (probably Special Forces).
  

• Army-owned television broadcaster Channel 5 cease scheduled programming (when?)
  

Although it looks like I seemed flippant, I am very interested in 'watching' the coup in 'real-time' via the internet. Can any forum members who live near army bases keep us informed.

The First Army, which is located the closest to Bangkok, is most likely to start the coup. It takes around 2 hours for its first units to reach the key installations in Bangkok. We know this by looking at the timeline of the first coup.

So, as a starting question, does anyone live across the road from the Special Forces base in Lopburi?

The Commander of the First Army is clearly pro-coup as he has undermined his boss on record by speaking up the possibility of a coup even without the the support of the Army Commander.

Okay, please call in your geographic positions.

We are taking the night train from Trang up to Bangkok on Sat arriving on sunday the 30th.

Now the plan WAS, we would get off and hualalumpong and taxi over to khaosan, stay there for the night and leave on our plane on the first...

Now who knows when we will get our flight out, but my question is, should we be getting off and hualaumpong? Or should we get off at another station? Do you think Khaosan would be safe? My husband is Thai and he thinks it would be the safest place b/c it is majority foreigners....but last time I was there it was seemed very close to the government house.

I guess what I need to know is where should we stay and where should we get off the train? If by some miracle the airport is open and running on the first I can imagine it will be hel_l trying to get there, so maybe we should stay closer? Is anywhere truly safe? I really have no idea so any guidance is much appreciated.

You have nothing to fear but fear itself. You may proceed with your original plan. Your stay at khao san may turn out to be rather long-- perhaps you should ask for a long stay discount.

If you fancy a day trip, then I recommend a walk to Government House. The PAD demonstrators will let you through all the way to the government house. I thoroughly enjoyed my stroll in the grounds.

In order to maximise your democratic involvement in possible future events I have set out a guide of things to watch out for in any possible coup attempt. If you can, fill in the answers to the questions and post them on the site as the coup unfolds. Just print out this page and fill in the questions as you wander around the capital and watch your TV set. (you have a higher chance of completing the questions if you stay at home) Enjoy!

Predicting coup

• When has army issued assurances that the military would not seize power? (times/place)
  

• Any contradictory statements by different members of military/police? (times/place)
  

• Unsupportive middle-ranking army officers reassigned by the army high command? (times/place)
  

• Reports of military movements near Bangkok? (when/who?)
  

• Military explanation for these movements (e.g. scheduled exercise, any evidence for this?)
  
  

Predicting trigger for coup

• Times when PM is out of country?
  

• Times when the auspicious number 9 is common.
  

Exact moments of coup

• Royal Thai Army Special Forces units start to move from Lopburi province to Bangkok (when?)
  

• Any audience with Head of State (what reason given).
  

• Arrival of first units in Bangkok (probably Special Forces).
  

• Army-owned television broadcaster Channel 5 cease scheduled programming (when?)
  

• Military arrests Deputy Prime Minister in charge of national security, Defence Minister, Police Chiefs (when?)
  

• National radio, terrestrial TV, cable TV and some satellite broadcasters taken off air shortly after.
  

• Declaration of a state of emergency (by who? Counter-coup attempt? middle-ranking officer !?)
  

• Head of Public Relations for Army-owned television station Channel 5 makes the first announcements. (what? who?)
  

• Foreign news channels, such as BBC World, CNN, CNBC and Bloomberg Television taken off air?
  

• The Army declared martial law nationwide?
  

• Army ordering all soldiers to report to their barracks and banned troop movements unauthorised by the central command?
  

• Television footage showing troops in armored personnel carriers and on the streets of Bangkok? (what time? Which units?)
  

• Many soldiers and military vehicles wearing strips of yellow cloth ?
  

• Government offices and banks to be closed ? (until when?)
  

• Leader of the coup to meet Head of State (who? when?)
  

• Fighting within army, police? (gunfire? public contradictory addresses?)
  

----

Awwwww.. this totally suxx...... mm gues i will use any ATM... i guess i'm juss paranoid of it swallowing my debit card....

They are not likely to swallow your card. The main *unique* danger are the banks intra-communications sometimes fail so you can't withdraw your cash for a day, except from your own bank. So always keep about 2,000 bahts spare so you can afford a room, buy a meal or two and feel comfortable until the banks come back on line.

is there anyway i can accuire a list of HSBC atm's in bangkok...with their addresses...or nearby landmarks.... or should i juss call up their customer care once i land in bangkok? I'm travelling with my international debit card..and if i use their Atm's... i get no transaction charge...

ofcourse have checked out their website and googled it.. but nuthing been helpfull till now...

Well, I reckon there are three HSBC atms in Bangkok, all within 2metres of each other. HSBC has precisely one location in Thailand, a skyscraper on the road on the south side of Lumphini Park. So get off at Sala Daeng BTS and walk East for 4 minutes.

So the ATM addresses are:

Left side of

The Front Lobby of

HSBC HQ Bangkok

nr. Lumphini Park

Centre of

The Front Lobby of

HSBC HQ Bangkok

nr. Lumphini Park

Right side of

The Front Lobby of

HSBC HQ Bangkok

nr. Lumphini Park

I recommend using your card in any ATM machines. The bank charges are remarkably low here.

Also, let me point out that the Ladies forum is a forum for women to talk about issues concerning women in Thailand. We have been discussing just that.

Yes, yes. But what are "women"? The author below explains how sex (male vs. female) is a product of the discourse of gender (and not the other way around). Recommended reading.

"All Made Up: Performance Theory and the New Anthropology of Sex and Gender", Rosalind C. Morris, Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 24, (1995), pp. 567-592

i understand, i am super analytical and am often accused of pretentiousness as well. The way you write does come off as patronizing at first, but I see your points nevertheless.

I know I know, but what do I do? Obviously, if it was just a one-to-one exchange I could dump the rhetorical style and make it much more pithy. But I want to persuade casual readers that I am right (and I am right... ). And even when I lay out my argument with so much exposition, even going to the (patronising) length of asking people to read my post again, I still find third parties not not 'getting' my points.

Anyway, I fear we are both liberals in a world awash with bigotry , prejudice, ignorance, ill-informed chronic inanane stupidity. Not that anyone on this forum would fit into those categories... perhaps.

...which neatly brings me back to the topic. For all new girls coming across beach boys. Look out, as you would look out in a nightclub in Luton, and hold back fro safety reasons, but don't hold back because you fear a label.

pretentious much? i believe there is a whole spectrum between girls who take their time and carefully choose their sex partners with good intention in addition to lust, and those who do so carelessly without regard to the boy's relationship status, culture, or potential diseases etc. (just as there is a spectrum with men). you could refer to the two ends of the spectrum as madonna and whore if you like, but that implies a religious or at least moralistic perspective that preaches that a woman is more of a sinner the more notches she adds to her belt. i do not care about the moral aspects beyond the fact that i think girls (and boys) should not hurt others- ie. they should make an effort to scope out the situation first and see if there is already a significant other who would feel betrayed by their physical pleasure. they should also realize that coming into a culture with very different traditions and norms, they have a responsibility to respect those, and they should take into consideration how not respecting them reflects on fellow female visitors. the madonna/whore dicotomy is not really on topic anyway- the topic (as i have had to repeat throughout the thread) was intended to warn the more innocent and vulnerable of girls who travel to thailand that there is a very definite game on, and the players are professionals wearing very deceptive masks. similar to the numerous warnings everywhere to the farang men who come and play a similar but more transparent game with bar girls.

I like this post. Except the first sentence/question

You have spotted the important point, that it is a game. The control of the idea means someone is controlling who thinks what. Your question is to ask why. Instead, depressingly, your question was to ask if my reply was 'pretentious'. You feel I am claiming undeserved self-importance in what I wrote.

My post, was deconstructing the language of the girlx post, not to psychoanlayse girlx (on an armchair or otherwise). I, of course, do no psychoanalyse in my post. On the contrary, it is a language analyse (a la Foucalt). I have no idea what girlx is really thinking.

So, was my claim I made important? Well, I appear to have been misunderstood by sbk. I was saying that this thread would not exist if girlx was able to break away from the ideas that she so well presents in the post above. Someone, somewhere, have imposed the ideas of tramps and beach boys and by there imposition has affected how you behave. I said don't let them. So was my post important? It could not have been more important. I question the very foundation for the entire thread.

I remain a devoted fan of many of girlx's astutely observed comments throughout the forum.

The bit I highlighted was exactly what I wanted to hear. That is what my post aimed to conclude. When I said Madonna/Whore, I was not, of course, applying my own morality, but placing the two extremist, unspoken positions of the ideas. If you spit out the extremes you can often attack the preposterous core of many 'truths' in the world. I think girlx has just done that.

I am hoping the thread will conclude:

1. don't class girls as tramps

2. don't class boys as beach boys

3. be aware of a new environment where you are unfamiliar with its workings

4. don't get brainwashed by social codes derived from 'common sense'

5. enjoy your time on the beach

Thus, don't listen to any dip$hit trying to say that the fine-featured chinese-like appearance is the 'true siamese' phenotype- its just the appearance thats made the thai ruling classes horny.

I really enjoyed this post, except I literally don't understand the last sentence. The appearance has made them horny? They have sexual desires because of their appearance? Did I skip a line or something?

well the topic is not about tramps but rather normal nice girls who inadvertently fall "in love" with the bad boys of the beach. but i agree, there are many "tramps" throwing themselves at guys on the islands and elsewhere, and it makes it difficult and dangerous for the rest of us because a lot of (ignorant) thai men will assume we are all up for it even when we are not. the tramps also provide an unending supply of ready, willing, and nubile flesh which perpetuates this situation of the boys treating the girl of the moment like crap simply because they can. it's not the implied immorality that bothers me, it's the lack of understanding of the local culture (by the girls) and their effects on it. similar to the full moon partiers' disregard for thai culture and the local environment.

ah...but it is the implied morality that bothers you. You are reinforcing it. You are aware of the discourse of good girl/bad girl (madonna/whore) and you are depending on it for your analysis.

So lets look where it comes from. In a social sense a female must be a hypocrite. As a strategy, admitting to vast numbers of sexual partners and a liberal attitude is catastrophic for her chances of finding a long time mate unless she is so stunning that her looks enable her to keep the guy (at least until the inevitable children are old). The alternative strategy, practised out of necessity by most females of the human species, is along a line of continuum from virgin to whore. In the West the line heads towards whore as they entice the male with the possibility of sex but also must ensure he feels they do not sleep around. The worst case scenario for a male is to be cuckolded. So a male's preference is for all women to be whores except his one. She must only be with him. And noone else. So the rational strategy of every woman must be to claim to be a madonna (unconvincing in the West, so a mild adaption is made, perhaps 3 or 4 boys now seems reasonable) but to behave as a 'tramp'.

So lets deconstruct Girlx. Girlx is falling for a very powerful and seductive dichochomous discourse of either whore or madonna. Either a tramp or nice girl. Indeed, it is so dangerous for a girl to admit to a sleeping around (cf. boys) that even on this forum it is unlikely that any girl/woman on this forum will admit to it, unless strictly anonymous, yet every indicator out there says all women in the West are at it. If you are now offended by this last sentence, it shows just how powerful this discourse is. It should not offend you in a liberal, secular way of thinking, but I am questioning how many men you sleep with, and this will damage your long-term relational prospects.

But surely it is only an idea, it doesn't matter. But it really matters. Ideas control the way you behave. They are so powerful, every woman who has gone with a 'beach boy' (another idea) is keen to retrospectively morally justify their position. Current academic thinking, is that all actions have no moral deicision, but are a moral construction is retroactively applied. "I slept with him as he was different from the usual boys".

You will now need to read this again.

Is there anything that can be done? Yes, you can fight the discourse of ideational relationships with a discursive analysis. Look out for the intellectual gymnastics that people perfrom to show they are on the right side of morality and, in this case, not the tramp.

It is remarkable how far this goes. If I said 'gender' is socially constructed you would probably say 'of course'. But what if I said your 'sex' is socially constructed. That is 'sex'(girl or boy) is not a brute truth, it is not a scientific fact that can be ticked off by objective indicators... How does that tickle you?

I suppose this all enforces their possible belief in preordained destiny. They can do what they want as nothing will change their destiny. I don't know if this is their view but if it is then its possible they use the same philosophy towards their children.

I like this. Let me add.

The dead ones are not around to be aware that they made a mistake. You can't see dead people around the place indicating the accident they experienced so if you are one of the lucky live ones you conclude there is no risk. You only see alive people. So you literally don't see the problem. Everyone you see has not been killed in a car crash, ergo, there is no danger.

We westerners know otherwise through extraordinary amounts of indoctrination.

I ask again, if you have a finite amount of resources do you spend it in the way that maximises the numbers to survive or because of some irrational basis such as fear, public opinion. Look at the UK, the government policies on safety literally make no sense. We all know that. This is because they follow the following rules:

1. respond to public fear, no matter how silly

2. if see danger, danger must be reduced to zero, or at least to the extent that a report can say "it will never happen again"

3. if danger is not observed, ignore

e.g. police officers are not allowed to ride bicycles in the UK without special training, I am not joking. This is a known danger. Police cannot approach a scene where there is a gunman, since there is a threat to their lives. But, as the astute among you will readily notice, both these safegueards, actually generate new dangers. For example, no police on the scene means more innocent members of the public can be shot at by the gunman. No police riding on a bicycle, then robbers can wander around with greater ease and increase their crime waves. These are unknown dangers (they are non-linear) so they fall into category 3 above.

A more topical asburdity: the Somalian pirates are able to track the big oil tankers because of the delicious irony that the tankers must use international homing beacons, for safety reasons.

Lets roleplay:

You are the Minister of Transport. You know that most train crash victims die from falling out the train windows during a crash. Do you make the train windows unbreakable? If you do this, thereby saving lives over the average number of accidents, it does mean you sending to their deaths anyone trapped in a train fire who cannot break the windows to escape. Well, what do you do? (All information in this roleplay is true and the government has decided, but you have to guess what they decided. How do you think they decided? With what logic? Should irrational fears be part of the policy making process?)

Bring this back to Thailand, how would you allocate resources?

I was shocked/amazed at the number of police and ambulances that showed up--at least three.

In the Bangkok Post, there are reports of the response vehicle members shooting at each other to get to the patient first. Hilarious.

That is interesting. According to wikipedia, which cites the CIA factbook, thais are just about now a minority:

"Tai (including Lao, who make up about ⅓ of the Thai population) 75%, Chinese 14%, other 11%"

...if we accept anyone who doesn't think they are something else are Thai.

What cities in Thailand are we 'not allowed' to enter?

Without access to the article you are attempting to read things into ... we are all left guessing as to what was meant.

I mean the refugee 'camps' that are, in fact, fully functioning towns and cities. They have roads, hospitals, schools, pleasant views of the countryside. But you can't enter. And they are not on your google map.

Fear. Risk. Danger. Fear. Danger. Help.

If you want to be wrapped in cotton wool then you are in the wrong country. It seems to me the danger is greatly exaggerated. In Thailand around 15,000 a year die in road deaths. In the UK, around 5,000. About the same populations. So, you scream, that is 10,000 unnecessary deaths.

But how are you comparing? By number of deaths per numbers of journeys made? By number of deaths per numbers of commuters? By number of deaths per total commuter distance? By number of deaths per numbers of cars on the road? By number of deaths per length of road? By numbers of deaths per distance travelled by cars? It may be the number of deaths in bangkok ain't that bad. Why? Because precisely because they are not lured into a false sense of security they have a bit of sense about them. They look around and assess the dangers.

Lets look at staid UK: around 1 person dies a year now in train crashes (ignore level crossing deaths, these come to around 60). Yet they still want to waste money to make trains safer. Why? Because a crash will make the news (it is a big, one-off event), generating fear and so demands for greater safety. Also, crucially it is out of the passengers hands, so it is a less morally acceptable way to die (with a car they are driving it so that is more acceptable). Obviously, the money on rail improvements should go on more efficient ways to save lives.

So how would I do it. If all things were equal, it's simple. You maximise the amount of lives saved with the amount of money available. If it costs 60,000 pounds per life to cut a road death and 350,000 pounds a life to cut a rail death then you choose, everytime, to save the road death.

So bring this back to Bangkok. The government has a finite amount of resources. Do you spend it on indoctrinating children to be more careful on the road or do you spend it on vital medicine in hospital? Well, what would you do?

In Africa, the most effective way to cut deaths is to persuade people to wash their hands, but this is not glamorous/ sexy enough, so NGOs and charities concentrate on stopping the spread of AIDS etc. Go figure.

Read the original post. It says: Thais 60%.

This implies Thai ethnicity, which I believe doesn't exist. The Tai ethnicity does (at least in ancient times). Tai and Thai are completely different things

Thailand has only been called that since 1939 (except during the Japanese presence). The word Thai refers to the nationality.

I think you're determined to eat your own hand off with this point you are making. I directly quoted the sources that I referenced. They used the word "Thai" and they must as a moral certainty have meant ethnicity. So I think we can draw a close to this digression.

Anyone know the present state of play. In New Barnsley (nee Udon Thani) you would struggle to find any ethnic Thais... but what with the towns and cities on the border with Burma that don't officially exist and we are not allowed to enter you have to wonder what percentage of Thailand is actually Thai.

Those ethnicities were all resident in Siam when the name became Thailand so they are all Thais.

Either the 'internal colonisation' process of the Thai government has been a resounding success or you are using an odd definition of Thai to describe an ethnic "thai"... You don't need to go far-- try Chinatown in Bangkok-- to find 'Thais' (by citizenship) who have an awfully superficial sense of Thainess. Just ask them what they think of the various (unnameable on this website) pillars of society. Or, heck, go South and see what the Muslims think of the Thai requirement, repeated daily on TV, of being Buddhist in order to be a real Thai.

But the quote on the above poster does sum up the government position. The reality is there is no such thing as a 'Thai'. The various backgrounds of Thais are even more varied than the mongrel English.

As for links, come on gentleman, you know academic resources are virtually always unlinkable, they are virtually always pay-to-access.

So, anyone know the current numbers?

Are Thais now a minority in their own country?

In 1987 the figures stood at this:

Thais 60% Lao 25% Chinese 8.6% Hmong,Meo,Khmer 2% Muslims/Malays 3% Other 1.4%

(Source: Adaption of Asia Yearbook 1987, FEER, p6-7)

[Also see: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 23, No. 18 (Apr. 30, 1988), pp. 909-911+913-915+917 ]

What is the current state of play?

With every new retired plumber from Barnsley heading to Udon Thani, these figures must be on the move...

This effectively brings an end to all bookshops.

I've been hearng this on and off for the last 20 years, but most people still much prefer books and I and many experts expect that they will for quite some time.

Same here, been hearing it for at least that long. It's an aesthetic choice. For the forseeable future, market research says a majority of readers the world over will choose paper over plastic film, LCDs, etc.

British Telecom in the early 1980s asked the public in a nationwide questionnaire in the UK, if mobile phones were cheaply available would you want one: the public's response was clear and resounding, well over 95% said no. In 2008, there are more mobile phones than people in the UK.

This is probably more to do with the long-cherished belief in the UK that there was a direct correlation between owning a mobile and being a <deleted>. People were openly ridiculed and occasionally even threatened for using mobiles in public, until around 1995 when some kind of massive paradigm shift seemed to take place. After this mobile phone ownership/use snowballed. I believe Sabaijai is correct: in this instance it's more about an aesthetic choice than the availability of technology (or being perceived as a tosser).

My point was the empirical evidence used in the post above to explain that e-books will never take off cannot be used to predict the future. The second poster's nuancing of the findings by a claim of a paradigm shift in the mobile phone empirical evidence error simply reinforces my point: we simply need a paradigm shift in the ideational relations and then we'll all be using e-books. It is that simple. Asking people if they want e-books or will use e-books is pointless: people don't know what they want. As a better man than me once said: don't give the public what they want, they deserve better.

The right question to ask is "can we see this shift?". I think we can. The poorly designed Amazon reader has hugely outperformed expectations. The new technology has no deficiences and it will simply be a question of price reductions to cause a huge wave of interest. Give it 3 years.