thailien8

Anywhere could be next.

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###### right! Even though our increasingly toxic prime minister has assured us not to worry because Bkk. is safe somehow I am not convinced. I read that Bangla Road in Patong, Phuket has been turned into a walking street in the evening due to concern about vehicle bombs. Good idea! I only wish similar precautions would be taken in tourist areas in Bkk. It would be extremely easy and immensely reassuring if Soi Cowboy were blocked off at both ends so no motor vehicles could enter at night, weaving dangerously through the tipsy tourists. Do they really need to drive on such an obvious walking street? Then of course there is the horrendous firetrap that is Nana Plaza. One moderate-size vehicle bomb would wreak unbelievable carnage and basically destroy a significant portion of Thailand's precious tourism industry. Especially maddening at Nana is the vehicle barrier, complete with sign forbidding motorcycle parking inside, which is ignominiously pushed aside and ignored, completely opening up the entrance to the Plaza to any would-be car or motorcycle bomber. Though I used to hate the Patpong market, now I like it because it effectively keeps all vehicles out of Patpong One. Now if they would just block off Patpong Two....

Ok, these places are only for low-class sex tourists and bargirls, you say. Who cares about them??? Well then, what about the lack of preventive security on Skytrain and Subway? Anyone with a bomb in a backpack, as in the London and recent Bali bombings, is free to walk right on in and explode. In the Manila, Philippines mass transit system, a much more effective security system is in place. Anyone who wants to ride must first have his bag(s) opened and inspected, as well as being patted down to check for explosive belts. The New York City subway has tightened security similarly. Granted, this procedure slows down the lines of passengers somewhat and is not foolproof, but it is far better than the "mai bpen rai" attitude of "it can't happen here because it hasn't happened here yet" still prevalent in benighted Bangkok.

Now when I'm driving my car I actually want to see motorcyclists get smashed. No respect for 'em. What sort of person have I become?

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Yes, sad but true, I share your sentiments. I haven't been on the back of a moto taxi for a decade in Bkk. ever since one of the geeks dumped me on the pavement as he was making a sharp turn at too high speed on a wet road. Now when talk turns to Bkk. traffic adventures, I must admit I take great pleasure in relating at length and in morbid detail the best accident I ever saw, in which a moto nutcase was wiped out due to his own reckless driving.

It seems to me that most Bkk. drivers are actually OK. However, the lunatic fringe are allowed to go on their merry way, endangering themselves and many others near them. A typical lunatic moto driver will be going the wrong way, on the wrong side of the road, without a helmet, looking about 14 and probably unlicensed. He will be smoking a cigarette, wearing flip-flops, with one hand on the accelerator while the other holds his cell phone plastered to his ear, while on the back of his bike are two or three canisters of cooking gas. This tragi-comedy of errors would not get far in most civilized countries. In Bkk., it's normal.

Is anyone else out there boycotting 7-11 for this brazen disregard for a law that actually makes sense? The Family Mart chain of convenience stores is obeying the law. Or how about giving a little of your business back to the mom-and-pop stores that are suffering from the influx of the mighty retail giants.

I discovered a little something about the golf privileges of the Elite Card. While in Pattaya recently, I picked up a brochure from the Tourism Authority of Thailand office (now conveniently hidden up on the hill away from the prying eyes of most tourists). The brochure is entitled "Golf Guide Pattaya and the Eastern Seaboard". One side features a nice map showing locations of the golf courses and main roads. The other side has details, such as address, phone, fees for playing a round, hiring a caddy or cart, and facilities available. Twenty-five golf courses are featured. Of these 25 elite golf clubs, exactly one, Kiarti Thanee Country Club in Samutprakan, lists a 30% discount for visitors with "TGC", which I assume means Thai Gold Card. None of the other 24 clubs mentions anything about discounts for golfers with the glorious golden elite card.

Don't forget about Pattaya, where happy hour deals are too numerous to fully mention. A couple of my favorites are Club Electric Blue @35B, Peppermint @45B, Dollhouse @45B, Champion @45B, The Sea @55B, and many more in the Walking St./Soi Diamond vicinity. Happy hour prices can be found at some venues all evening long.

A couple weeks ago I was enjoying a glass of red in the Italian restaurant on Sukhumvit toward Soi 12. The gendarmerie has a little sexagonal box on the sidewalk. The loafing cop-in-the-box detained a farang about to enter the Korean shop arcade, walked him over to the scraggly bushes on the otherwise spotless sidewalk, pointed to a ciggie butt, and then walked the guy into the box. In a show of force, he then called in two motorcycle dicks, who assisted in the detention. After about 10 minutes, the farang left, undoubtedly with a lighter wallet. The amusement came when the cop-in-the-box closed up the box a few minutes later, took a last drag on HIS cigarette, and then tossed the butt into the same bushes. I was tempted to make a citizen’s arrest, but realized just in time that I’m not a citizen here. That’s fortunate. It’s street theatre, I guess.

You could try a building I lived in for 7 years, PetchSiam Apt. on Petchburi Soi 37. It's about a 10-minute walk, one block down Wittayu Rd. to Ploenchit BTS station. Rent and utils. about 4000, furnished, cable TV, A/C works well, provide your own TV and fridge. Not too bad.

Not far from Sukh. is AUA Language Center, at 179 Rajdamri Road near Lumpini Park. In the back of the property are two tennis courts, with lights. They are available by the hour, for 80 baht or a little more for lights when it's a bit cooler. To reserve a court, sign up in the AUA Clubhouse/cafeteria.

One problem with cigarettes is they don't kill the smokers quickly enough.

So, a 500B fine and "banned" from using their noise farting machines for 30 days....Sounds to me like the normal worse-than-useless Thai way of "solving" problems. The 500 (negotiable) goes into the cops' pockets and on his merry way goes the noise polluter with a warning to get his machine fixed (hahaha).

IMHO, the only effective way to solve any vehicle problem like this is to CONFISCATE THE VEHICLE. To get his precious motorcycle back, the offender will have to pay upfront to the vehicle repair shop to muffle the machine. Then he will get back a reasonably quiet bike, along with a real reason to keep it that way. The bikes that don't get reclaimed could be fixed and sold very cheaply to the underpaid cops who must buy their own motorbikes.

When the carpark at Nana Hotel was being modernized, their sign read: "Please apologize for the construction."

There is such a wealth of such signs, brochures and advertisements in Thailand with English so poor that it often becomes unintentionally funny. An English teacher with a camera could amuse and instruct his classes by taking snapshots of such signs and using them to show the students examples of Thailish. Often, the English written and "edited" by Thais starts pretty well, but if one reads through to the end, one can see that the quality of English tends to deteriorate markedly and often collapses completely in the last sentence or two. Many expensive, prominent signs contain embarrassing mistakes. It seems that the Thais think they know, or are too concerned with loss of face to ask a native speaker for help.

Take a look at the sign in Siam Square BTS station, just before the exit gate that leads to Bkk. Bank. This sign is intended for tourists, detailing the glories of attractions in Bkk. that can be reached via BTS. Pay special attention to the second half of the English copy on that sign. Read it and weep.

On the outside wall of Watson's store across from Central World Plaza:

Its Here

Want to keep the basketball thread going as playoff time approaches. I'm currently visiting the Philippines, which is a great place to watch the NBA. The Solar Sports channel is big on hoops, and with Star and ESPN contributing, I get to watch a game, or two, every day, not to mention the replays of classic games. There is more roundball on here than in USA, almost as much as the eternal soccer game that is always on.

Phoenix is an amazing team and Steve Nash is such a slick player. Dwayne Wade really impressed me in last year's playoffs, and I was getting ready to root for Miami until they got Shaq. There is no way I can root for any team that has basketball's version of pro wrestling, a player who embodies the antithesis of what James Naismith envisioned when he put the basket up there so players would have to shoot up, not down. It must be nice to play a sport where the referees have been instructed to favor the stars because the fans would be pissed off if the big guy fouled out. Shaq gets away with murder. My vote for the best clutch player is Mike Bibby, who bailed out the Kings with last-second bombs for winners twice in a row, and is the only go-to guy Sac. has. Poor Peja, I keep rooting for him to get hot and he keeps missing. Chris Webber will fade by playoff time as he has for Sac. so he won't be enough help for the great Iverson who can't always score 60 points.

Don't know in Bkk., but in Pattaya there is a miniature golf layout on the corner of Beach Road and Central Pattaya Road (Pattaya Klang) on the grounds of Nova Lodge.

With less than a month remaining before my first one-year retirement visa expires, I seem to be caught in a frustrating Catch 22. I'm American, 57, lived and worked in Bkk for 11 years on a work permit visa without problems. My mom passed away in 2003, so I got the 800,000 baht needed for a retirement visa transferred from Bank of America to Bangkok Bank when I was in USA.

Now, hoping to continue living in Bkk., I need to "top up" my Bkk. Bank account by having about 200,000 wired here by Bank of America. But BofA has been most unhelpful. When I inquired by online banking about receiving a "Swift transfer", the BofA answer was "Unfortunately, we are unable to provide wire transfer service via e-mail, Online Banking, the Bank of America Web site, or telephone." Instead "please visit one of our local banking centers to perform the wire in person...." I went to the BofA office in All Seasons Place on Wireless Road, only to be told that they do corporate banking only, and could not help me.

BofA also wrote "If you are unable to visit one of our banking centers, we recommend using a commercial wire service." So I went to a Western Union office but was told that they only do person-to-person transfers, not bank-to-bank.

I may be missing an obvious solution, but wonder if anyone else has had problems complying with the Thai Immigration requirement to show that money has been transferred from abroad. Any suggestions would be most welcome.

Thanks.

There is a large swimming pool, exercise room and locker room at Goethe Institute on Soi Goethe off Sathorn Soi One, a 10-minute walk from Lumpini subway station. You can join for a month for 1200B, a locker is 100B. It's month by month, so you can drop membership and then rejoin later.

This is the kind of information that the benighted Tourism Authority of Thailand should publish in a safety brochure for first-time visitors from countries with different customs. They are so concerned with warning tourists about gem scams. Maybe signs in English posted at zebra crossings to the effect that vehicles will not stop? The American embassy has (had?) a sign inside its compound warning visitors about the dangerous traffic lanes on Wireless Road outside the embassy. Since I doubt TAT has any concern for tourists' safety (there will always be more of us), embassies should enlighten the uninitiated.

The hugger-mugger katoeys are especially dangerous when they hang out on the pedestrian crossing bridges. I was nearly knocked down the stairs by a tall one on the bridge over Sukhumvit just past Soi 23, tho this was a couple of years ago. Think I saw the same individual prowling the even side of Sukh. more recently.

Gee, I wonder if this new no-smoking-in-public-parks nonsense applies to future parks also? If so, now I can go stroll about smoke-free in the rubble of the coming-soon Chuvit (Chuwit) Park, on Sukhumvit and Soi 10, where the man guilty of causing the devastation has proudly posted his huge picture on top of the barbed wire.

All providers say their booths will adhere to the regulations by Dec 31.

Under the regulations, public phone booths must not block traffic or entrances and exits of buildings.

The phone booths must not be installed permanently on footpaths around important locations, or on sewer covers or in space reserved for public activities.

Do "public activities" include us poor pedestrians trying to walk on the footpaths?

Having Thai police actually enforce traffic laws is a mighty tall order.

The song is from the Broadway play "Chess", which, I belive, was about chess matches all over the world. The song just describes being in Bangkok to play chess and being tempted by other distractions.

Yes that's correct. A Bobby Fischer-like character plays a match for the world chess championship against some evil Russian grandmaster, but never fear for Bobby because as the song says, "One town's very like another when your head's down over your pieces, brother." The song also mentions other cities where big chess matches/tournaments have been played: Iceland (Rejkyavik 1972, where the real Bobby lifted the world chess crown from Boris Spassky, a Russian and a very nice man), Hastings (England, site of some big old-time tournaments), the Philippines (Baguio where Soviet hero Anatoly Karpov beat Soviet defector and extreme anti-Soviet Viktor Korchnoi in a very bitter, contentious match, I think in 1978).

Toxin recently lashed out (yet again) at some of the brightest people in Thailand who had criticized him primarily on human rights issues, saying in effect "I don't listen to losers." Since he is undoubtedly the biggest "winner" in Thailand at the moment, and he listens to practically nobody, except his wife to whom he owes everything he has, I guess that makes all of the rest of us "losers". Do the Thai people not take offense at being labeled as "losers"?

I consider it unclean to have to sit on a toilet seat that is covered with shoe footprints from all the Thai guys who can't be bothered to raise the seat before they squat on the toilet rim. This was a constant problem not in some upcountry farm town, but in the largest language school in Bangkok.

Does anyone besides me routinely say to their English-speaking friends things like "I've got to hit the hawng nam", " I really can't stand katoeys" or "The Thais are copying farangs again"? The more I think in Thai, the more of it comes out of my mouth.