WinnieTheKhwai

I very often wear red shirts these days. And get LOTS of encouraging comments on it!

It's funny how yellow completely disappeared, even on Mondays around the office here. (Chiang Mai).

Have you read the charges he's facing, the details of the 6 cases waiting to proceed if the fugitive returns?

SJ can probably find them for you if you ask him nicely, very minor are not the right words.

Yes I have, all drummed up by the military and their masters. And I don't need anything from SJ thankyouverymuch and stopped reading/responding to his posts as they seem only meant to be inflammatory.

i noticed that a case of soda used to be about 108 baht,then 114 baht,now i noticed a box was 148 baht thats a big increase.

They know you drink it with whiskey,so they figured if you can afford the whiskey then you can pay some more for your soda to.

If that's the case then I'd pick better soda than the vile Singh or Chang soda stuff.

There is a regular fare and it's 15 baht, despite fuel prices having come back down. (Though in fareness they were REALLY insane for quite a while; let them make some money now I say.)

Key is to not wait for any negotiations; go stand at a sensible spot in relatoin to the place you're going (i..e not a one way road going the other way or on the wrong side of the moat) and make sure your destination is also something clear, not down some small soi or whatever. Then the driver will first figure out if he can get there sensibly given the destinations of any other people in the vehicle and then just nod. No need to wait for negotiations at that point, just get in.

It's really quite obvious if someone is a tourist or not.. you know they're the ones shoving maps in a Red Bus driver's face or specify they want to go to "The Tamarind Village Hotel" instead of just 'yaek klang wiang' or whatever. Try to make your destination into something like "just after/before temple/market/school/intersection XYZ". In Chiang Mai town, your destination is pretty much guaranteed to be near one of those. If you specify going to a soi, make it clear you don't expect him to squeeze into it. (naa paak soi khrap). Also don't specify a road that goes on forever; 'Yaek Rincome' is more specific than just 'Huay Kaew Rd'.

They're really quite a good form of public transport. You absolutely need to know where you are and where you're going though.

I'd love to be a Songthaew driver for a day.

Eactly, why should he call elections when his party is not allowed to campaign freely?

You can't hold elections under current circumstances.

They should stop harassing opposing candidates first.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that you're just writing stuff to get a response out of people...

I think it's strange they're still so excited about what amount to very minor charges for Thaksin (compared to all the crap the junta throught up about him in their weird dreams), but nobody seems to care about the PAD criminals.

(There, I think criminals is a much better word than terrorists; they're common criminals and corrupted individuals, 'terrorist' I think would be too much credit frankly. And in order to be a terrorist I think you at least need to aspire to kill people as a main objective. While PAD thugs were armed and did shoot guns and hurt people, it wasn't their prime objective. So criminals and corrupted individuals it is.)

Youknow.. Thai banks do offer shared accounts (and/or) where both partners have their own ATM card that accesses the same account. Also the question mentioned 'wife' (spouse, implied) specificaly. If you marry someone you better trust them with a lot more than your money.

oh wait, this is Thaivisa.

The *ONLY* proper thing Apeshit could possibly do is call an electoin and try to get his own mandate fair and square.

> I always said that there's no ideological split in Thai society

And you've always been wrong.

Time to get out of your ivory tower and smell the cold red earth.

If everyone would just buy their hamburgers at The Duke's I guess there would be nothing to complain about.

Going to a fancy restaurant and ordering a burger is silly. A burger should be something simple and filling, so Burger King is just fine.

The only good spider is a dead spider.

I think the dead ones are bad too. There are no good spiders.

Probably not. But in all honestly there's other things that stand in the way of press freedom, not just the one obvious law that cannot be discussed.

If you run a publication then you'll find that it's best to apply some self censorship before writing something less favorable about a local business, politician or influential person. Thailand can still be a very dodgy place if you're inclined to rock the boat.

Sounds like a bet coming up.

Maybe we could make it a night.. ' Be interesting.

Nim See Seng.

Good article.

But Pim, you know very well that the only limitation in press freedom that you ever had (and still have) is the one that would stop you from getting to the core of the matter.

You can't analyse any of this conclusively when limiting yourself to the likes of Thaksin, Abbyshit, Yellow & Red. But if you raise the topic at your office too, you may again be surprised.

I always thought the standing was mostly a Bangkok thing? (and possibly civil servants everywhere). People don't usually stand in Chiang Mai, and other places I've been.

I have a question.

I don't dispute the data, but I do note that the air is visibly less clear; not talking about the morning fog which I love, but for example in the late afternoon when the sun is going down you know that there is 'something' in between the sun and your eyes, making it possible to even look into the sun in the first place, and observing it to be a nice shade of red. (In the rainy season you simply cannot look into the sun at any time; it's very bright)

On to my question: Could it be that this 'something' in the air is something other thatn teh PM<10 particles? Perhaps lots of particules that are 11 um and therefore don't qualify? Or something else entirely?

( Note that I don't have any complaints about the air quality in relation to health, and this is my favorite time of the year. )

One more for the wonderful legal system in this country.. Usual suspects please take note.

You can't beat the bakery at the Oriental hotel.

Would that be S, N, E or W of the Ping River? It's somewhere in Chiang Mai isn't it? Go on, give us a clue. By us, I mean those too lazy to search for it, or those who've mislaid their Guide Books, or are just clueless or whatever. Me, in other words.

Take the Sankhamphaeng Road (heading for Sankhamphaeng) and you should be able to spot a sign on the right indicating where you turn to the Oriental. Perhaps 500 +/- metres from the main superhighway.

The sign is not all that conspicuous so you need to keep your eyes peeled.

Yes. another way to get there is from the Middle Ring Road, the stretch between the tunnels/interesections with the New and the Old Sangkamphaeng Road. When going North emerging from the tunnel under the New Sangkamphaeng road it's a soi on the left about 2/3ds of the way until the next tunnel. The sign there is a little more conspicuous, I believe they actually bought a small plot of roadside land to plant their big cement sign on .

Then when entering the Oriental Hotel grounds, park a bit on the right hand side near all the wooden shop buildings.

Another tip about that hotel (esp. if you have kids), they offer a free horse cart ride to showcase the very impressive grounds.. It's amazing, it looks like a centuries old palace grounds, lots of wooden buildings and interesting plants and other features.

Don't get me wrong, I completely cannot afford to stay there with room and house/suite prices being stratospheric, but it's a nice place to look around at, and the shops are priced on very reasonably levels. The Chinese restaurant there is very good too (dim sum lunch for around 500 baht/pp I believe). The bakery however is something that would be completely unheard of in Chiang Mai mere years ago. The chef there has a website here: http://www.leblusfabrice.com/ also: http://www.muantae.com/index.php?option=co...12&Itemid=0

I sit there at the coffee & bakery shop and think "Chiang Mai has come a long way, since the days of horrific S&P cakes covered in white chemical paste where the whipped cream should be.".

So.. I'm confused, the pictures on page one DONT show any fake notes correct, just different versions of legit 1000 baht notes?

So what should I look out for then?

To me, for any kind of baked goods including breads and also cake/pastries, you can't beat the bakery at the Oriental hotel. It's NOT as expensive as you might imagine, and there's also a big discount after 7pm.

UG is completely correct.

UG at least runs a reputable business here, he should know. The same applies to me, Thailand was absolutely stuck in the years before Thaksin came to power.

To summarize, he upset some powerful people who shall remain nameless, and the rest is history.

I think things will remain fairly quiet for a while, but the cat is out of the bag though when it comes to elections.. Keeping up an air of a democratic system will prove a lot harder in the future.

The question remains "what will happen to Abhisit after his "government" is history?". He has been hand-groomed by the elites for almost two decades now, never really having a real job. Would it have been better for him to wait until the Democrats could have won an election, admittedly that may have been a long, long time. But he is young. Perhaps he is regretting being railroaded in?

I doubt he had much choice. The alternative to a Dem led parliamentary chosen government would have been a coup or a constitutional crisis rsulting in an appointed government. No doubt the powerful people and business in the country prefer the Abhisit option. Another Thaksin proxie government only hel_l bent on changing the constitution and not doing anything about government was never goign to be allowed and it wont in the future. If Abhisit falls it is liekly to be back to coups or constitutional crisis. That is also why so many ordinary people including Thaksin voters are willing to give Abhisit a chance. The alternative is ........

........... a general election??? Why nor let the people decide what government they want through the ballot box? Or would that be too risky?

Well, I don't think there is anything wrong per se about the way Abhisit came to power. He convinced people to jump ship, that's just business as usual in Thai politics.

Anywhere else he would have gone to the electorate to get a mandate for a complete change of government, but I'll accept that these are difficult times, so let's get on with things already. Let's see what managed democracy can bring to Thailand, it may not be so bad.

Enough of the flaming thank you.

Any more and suspensions will be awarded.

Maybe you could look at posters who like calling other posters 'trolls' as soon as they don't have good arguments anymore?

Oh wait..

And, maybe I'm secretly someone else too? Very convenient way to weed out people's opinions!