WinnieTheKhwai

Whoa.. what happened yesterday!!! Even without rain the air just cleared out of nowhere.. I'm not sure I've ever seen that just happen in the middle of the day before. Blue skies this morning! This may finally be it for the hazy season.

Temperatures will be hot hot hot though, without all that cooling haze to reflect the sun back into space. dam_n.

Next: 21 separate topics complaining about the heat. And Songkran.

They may or may not be cheaper then the Red Trucks (rot saong taew) or tuktuks.

If Red Trucks aren't significantly cheaper than meter taxis then you're doing something wrong. Most rides in town are 15 baht. Different league.

While protests may continue, it's very unlikely to cause trouble for Chiang Mai or the roads in between Chiang Mai and Bangkok.

If you are thanking of traveling during this period you had better get your ticket now and it may be to late. This is the busiest time of year for public transportation.

Since Songkran is 13th to 16th, if I travel on 14th or 15th night, will there be less passengers ?

13 and 14 itself may be slightly lighter.

Thailand bus don't have online booking, I cannot buy it until 13th afternoon when I arrive Chinagmai, what's my chance ?

You can buy the ticket from anywhere where your bus company has an office or booth. For example you could buy the Chiang Mai to Bangkok ticket in Bangkok at the bus station. Assuming you don't speak Thai, you can also have someone call the bus company to make a booking, though bookings are iffy for this period so you'd want to pay money and get a real ticket ASAP.

Anyone writing something negative about Thaksin is off-topic. As per the topic title.

Its a dog thing. Dogs eat poop. Its not a soi dog thing at all. Even my sister's shih tzu back in the US likes to eat cat poop out of the cat box. This is why I always shudder when I see people letting their dogs lick their faces.

Not to mention licking there balls and anal area....urgghhh!!

Totally uncivilized. At least people can just get someone to do that.

Winnie.

You have actually just listed a number of things where it could be said he was detrimental to the country and deep into corruption.

Suvarnabhumi, for example, was a laughing stock for so long.

Primarily because Thaksin was ousted when it opened.. With such a high profile project and his CEO mindset I have little doubt that Thaksin would have been a LOT more pro-active in ironing out the bugs, compared to the generals who were then in charge and allowed it to, in your words, remain a laughing stock for so long. (The generals of course favored Don Muang, which was (is) under their control). Talk about corruption.

<snip>

- Several programs to bring benefit to the rural poor.. access to health care, education, roads, development loans.

<snip>

While some of your points certainly had pros and cons, I wonder if you could elaborate on the point quoted, particularly education, roads and loans.

Sure!

Education: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policies_of_t...cation_policies

Loans / Economic incentives:

Thaksin's government designed its policies to appeal to the rural majority, initiating programs like village-managed microcredit development funds, low-interest agricultural loans, direct injections of cash into village development funds (the SML scheme), infrastructure development, and the One Tambon One Product (OTOP) rural small and medium enterprise development program.

Thaksinomics, Thaksin's economic policies, helped accelerate Thailand's economic recovery from the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis and substantially reduce poverty. GDP grew from 4.9 trillion baht at the end of 2001 to 7.1 trillion baht at the end of 2006. Thailand repaid its debts to the International Monetary Fund two years ahead of schedule.

Income in the Northeast, the poorest part of the country, had been stagnant from 1995 to 200 but rose dramatically by 46% from 2001 to 2006.^[55] Nationwide poverty fell by half, from 21.3% to 11.3%, during the Thaksin years.^[4] Thailand's Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, fell from .525 in 2000 to .499 in 2004 (it had risen from 1996 to 2000).^[56] The Stock Exchange of Thailand outperformed other markets in the region. After facing fiscal deficits in 2001 and 2002, Thaksin balanced the national budget, producing comfortable fiscal surpluses for 2003 to 2005. Despite a massive program of infrastructure investments, a balanced budget was projected for 2007.^[57] Public sector debt fell from 57 per cent of GDP in January 2001 to 41 per cent in September 2006.^[58][59] Foreign exchange reserves doubled from US$30 billion in 2001 to US$64 billion in 2006.^[60]

( Roads and grass roots infrastructure development in rural areas came about primarily through the village development funds. )

General information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaksin_Shinawatra It's not actually hard to find LOTS of factual information on the Thaksin years.. Unless of course you only read this forum and some English language newspapers..

Winnie......Could you explain the procedure there for me please. I didn't know you can get Thai TV channels on the net.....and especially a choice of language.

While you can indeed get Thai TV channels on the net as well, I was primarily thinking of peer to peer streaming video. (Google those last 5 words). A good starting point where it comes to football in particular is myp2p.eu

While not a Thaksin supporter I could add some things. Note that I'm focusing on the positives only, as per your request in the OP.

- He was elected to get Thailand out of the economic crisis it was still in, and implement a business CEO style in government. That was very successful

- He was the first PM to make a serious impact against drugs. Possibly the first time in history that a 'war on drugs', while draconian, actually worked; if you were around in the Pre-Thaksin years, Ya Ba was dirt cheap and rife. Even today it's much harder to find and expensive.

- In addition to being tough on drugs, he was tough on other vices as well, and putting a stop to kids hanging in bars until dawn. This was the social order campaign which was actually very popular among the Thai middle classes, but probably THE point where most bar-stool Farangs started to seriously dislike the man.

- Leverage the skills and crafts of rural people and companies through the OTOP program, to bring their products to a national and even international market.

- Several programs to bring benefit to the rural poor.. access to health care, education, roads, development loans.

- In general he was good for business and investment, also internationally. Thaksin lives and breathes 'business' and as such provided a lot of confidence to investors.

- Opened up the airline industry... Thai Air used to be a stale monopoly; look at the aviation business in Thailand today.

- Suvarnabhumi Airport.. Don Muang had been in the claws of the military for so long, stifling the development of a modern airport that can grow with Thailand's needs.

Those are the ones that immediately spring to mind. Again, there are a LOT of qualifications and negatives you can add, both to the points above as well as in general. I'm sure others will be quick to point those out so I don't have to do it.

Yes! (And not sure if you're red the linked article, but it explains plenty about the goals of the demonstration as well)

Contrary to the OP, I didn't take the poll results to take that a huge number of foreigners drink and drive. To me a higher-than-expected number of people DONT drink and drive. Even when considering that many of those will live in places like Bangkok, don't live in Thailand at all, don't own vehicles and/or don't think at all, there still was a strong majority claiming they don't drink and drive, IIRC.

What do you mean with people who live in places like bangkok dont live in Thailand ?

Bangkok has an abundance on cheap meter taxis at any hour of the day and night. When living in Bangkok it's unlikely that you would even consider taking your car into a nightlife area because it's far more convenient, safer, etc. Not sure how far out of BKK or downtown Pattaya (etc.) you get, but the public transport situation at nighttime at night is pretty dismal. While that's no excuse for driving completely drunk, it does mean that people don't typically only drink water when going out to a restaurant or pub.

i would say only a few percent drink and drive in my country (i could be wrong)

So.. we've establshed that Thailand isn't like your home country then I guess? When people come from your country to Thailand, they don't take the stellar public transport system and draconian laws-on-everything with them... In fact it may even be part of the reason to come to Thailand anyway, the lack of laws (or lack of enforcement) that rule every second of one's life.

Had to put in a null vote.. I don't believe Thailand has a democracy at all.

This article is just as one-sided as what he claims the "main stream" press is doing.

That may very well be true. Still, it's nice to see some balance and counter-points. If it wasn't for people like him, we would have nothing by the English language printed newspapers. Imagine if your only source of news was Fox.. (Don't get me wrong, I appreciate Fox precisely because it represents a particular world view. But imagine have ONLY Fox. )

I think 1. is the best solution as well, though I don't think the wait will be until 2011.

To the OP: The issue may be your choice of newspaper / news source. Here is an alternate account of events:

http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2...or-bust-part-1/

And there are truly excellent international sources as well. I'm getting very enamoured with The Economist lately, but just about all of the serious international politics magazines are excellent. Some well known Thai dissidents also have blogs and Facebook pages, these are often in English.

NEED

MORE

GIRL

PICTURES!!!

(What were you thinking?!! )

No, the seats are most definitely not the same in all models.

( Probably they're the same in all models, except the base one. )

The brochure mentions this as well. It doesn't however mention just how crappy the seats are in the base model! It has to be seen to be believed.

Nothing so far.

Agreed, excellent!

Both great and sad at the same time, that we can't get comprehensive first-hand account from the print media.

A nice quote I thought was:

We talked about how they felt about protesting in Bangkok they said that they were surprised how well they were received by Bangkokians: “Before we thought Bangkok people are all Yellow, and only us upcountry folks are Red. Now we can see that we are just the same.”

and:

Back home I went through the online editions of The Nation and the Bangkok Post. I wondered if I was at a different protest than they were. What I read there must have been a rather boring affair – a few people and not much support. The protest I went to was quite different – even though there was incredible heat it was a festive and at times even almost ecstatic event.

This of course leads us to ask whether most of the mainstream media, apart from a few individual journalists, is just sloppy in its reporting, or if there was a blatant suppression of news. The event was covered by on-the-ground journalists. I saw them filming and taking photos. What though happened in the editorial offices then escapes my knowledge.

The effects of this biased reporting are evident on this forum (and in real life) every day. Some (most?) people just gobble up what they're fed.

The last coup was because of the corruption.

There we disagree. I believe the last coup was about a feudal clique clinging to power. All coups anywhere are about power. Don't take my word for it though: look at the Mickey Mouse legal charges brought forward so far, in the last THREE YEARS.. Anything there worth a military coup? And then, people like Suthep are high and dry in the government again.. If corruption ranked anywhere on anyone's radar then he most definitely wouldn't be in the government..

Even the coup makers themselves didn't talk about corruption. It was to save the nation of rural protesters coming to Bangkok to cause trouble. Remember that? The Nation printed it so obviously that must be true.

Well, while history looks at Anand's time as PM favorably I think that's primarily because it was compared to the horrendous governments before him. For all his aristocratic and gentlemanly qualities, I'm not sure he's a democrat-at-heart. That's all fine so far, but the lack of a strong democracy in this country guarantees a very bumpy ride ahead. And we're out of time to establish a strong democracy, where elected government can rule without worrying about coups from the military or the judiciary.

I don't think we are out of time yet. There is still a lot to do, but these things don't happen overnight.

I hope and pray that we're not out of time. With big changes ahead, I fear that only a very solid and strong democracy can weather those changes. A weak and corrupt system on the other hand is a recipe for disaster, and there's really no telling how far Thailand can fall.

To be honest the system probably never was that strong to begin with, just the absence of coups and a democratically drafted constitution painted a nice picture. In the end though that meant nothing. I now think the coup was a symptom of Thailand not being a strong democracy to begin with, more than a cause.

Well, while history looks at Anand's time as PM favorably I think that's primarily because it was compared to the horrendous governments before him. For all his aristocratic and gentlemanly qualities, I'm not sure he's a democrat-at-heart. That's all fine so far, but the lack of a strong democracy in this country guarantees a very bumpy ride ahead. And we're out of time to establish a strong democracy, where elected government can rule without worrying about coups from the military or the judiciary.

Contrary to the OP, I didn't take the poll results to take that a huge number of foreigners drink and drive. To me a higher-than-expected number of people DONT drink and drive. Even when considering that many of those will live in places like Bangkok, don't live in Thailand at all, don't own vehicles and/or don't think at all, there still was a strong majority claiming they don't drink and drive, IIRC.

Get the shots. We wouldn't want to lose you both.

Possibly not enough light in that case? if they grow like vines they may be putting all their energy into growing tall, in an attempt to catch more light. That said, tomatoes are just difficult.

I'm mostly experimenting with chili pepper seeds and those do reasonably well. I'm still figuring out the best practices though. They need enough light, but don't like scorching afternoon sun. Probably some light shade cloth would be the way to go.