orosee

Love the article: "a bill worth Bt596,398". So does that mean that she could sell the bill for this amount? Or hold it and wait for its worth to further appreciate?

I love the copy-paste English phases here. Something "is valued at" when actually it's "priced at". A bill has "worth" although it's just a statement of an amount.

Can you imagine what kind of money Naver (Line) is making?

Just THB 800,000 by 2 people in one month....and what about all the other users............

Why ain't I that creative?

They're abusing people with a gaming addiction and children. Those of my friends who play games such as "Candy Crush" told me that they've never bought any game items for real money. If the publisher's business model would be "many small purchases by a large number of people" then they would have set daily spending limits on game items. By not doing that they pretty much admit that they are targeting vulnerable people (addicts) and people who can't properly oversee the consequences (children).

The reason why you (joepattaya) never got this idea is probably because you're a good person and not scum. Don't feel bad about it.

A phone is for calling

My Nokia from 600 THB can do that

Despite what the name says, a "smartphone" is not "a phone with a big screen and apps" but a tiny computer with additional functions such as telephony and photography. It is also a communication device beyond the domain of voice. WiFi tablets are the same thing minus the telephony function (which can be added via service apps such as Skype). From observation I would say that very little time is dedicated by smartphone users to voice communication, it's mostly games, games and then more games, followed by Facebook time and chatting on "Line" or "Whatsapp". Which in turn makes the term "smart" phone more than a little bit ironic. The only smart people here are the hardware and app developers.

And if you look at this from a weird angle, you basically paid 600 Baht for a functionality that smartphones provide for free.

I hope they pronounced it "pyoonish". It sounds just so much more evil!

So the military government is applying populist measures and everybody sees this as proof for their benevolence and justification for the takeover? Why is good government suddenly measured by the easy and likable things that please everyone instead of the hard and necessary measures that need to be take but will always be unpopular with most of the people? Are good parents measured by the amount of candy they let their children eat? What will the Thais say when tax payments are fully enforced, when full prices have to be paid for original goods, when closing times are strictly enforced? Just ask the people in Singapore (I guess most of them are not even too unhappy).

Instead of watching the taxi prices, better observe how the military continues to deal with issues such as the three finger salute (two fingers too many but one is polite in these latitudes).

All of this may still turn out beneficial for the country as a whole, but I want to see the military government tackle the real issues - including those that are caused by powers that support the military (or are supported by them).

Turkey, Syria, Iran and a few more... why don't the neighbouring countries get involved at least once in a while? Muslim-on-muslim violence is a daily business and won't elicit anti-American/anti-Western reactions that would feed the flames more. The Rwanda issue was also largely "resolved" by central African troops from neighbouring countries. The West and East both have sent plenty of weaponry to the region, is it too much to ask our allies and enemies to use them on each other when the time is right?

I really hope the US and Iran will agree on a non-interference pact that'll leave local powers free reins to get their mess sorted out (with securities for Israel but I needn't say that).

This is absolutely useless without stating whether the voter has employment or not. And then, whether housing, transport is paid by employer or not. My boss had housing allowance that exceeded my monthly spending budget and was close to half my salary. I know a man with family (3 boys over 10) who got almost 200k Euros (!) annually for house, school fees and transport. And then, he got a salary, too. So, how much does one spend as an expat?

To be clear, for me an expat is defined as a person employed by an overseas company (main contract there), sent to work in Thailand for a limited period. Everyone else is a retiree, a migrant, a resident, a long term tourist or plainly a foreigner, perhaps seeking a job or just drifting.

That said, in my golden years (history now) I lived for a decade off 100k Baht in a small, modern apartment building near Sathorn and that much (or little) was more than I needed from 1995-2005. I guess it's a bit more now, but certainly not much. I'd say 60-80k would still make for a comfortable life in Bangkok. No need for envy, my savings got crushed during the crisis and I'm in Korea now, where I spend a lot more for a lot less.

Looking forward to see anything meaningful from a poll that mixes Isaan retirees with Silom money sharks in their 20s :-P

Author is a typical BKK Yellow shirt. How dare a farmer overtake ME in his pick up truck. Unbeknown to him, there is life and a country outside of BKK.

This.

Author requests abandoning ALL subsidies. Doesn't support argument with a careful analysis of current and future effects on economy and society, gives instead an anecdote of being overtaken by a pickup truck. PhD level market economics Thai style.

(Not sure if correct, but I believe there is a better tax bracket for pickup trucks which makes them more affordable than Diesel cars - I don't think Thais can look that far into the future to calculate fuel savings over say 10 years, but they do know how to compare a sticker price).

What was 4-5 months ago? Christmas peak just over, tourist season on full swing, New Year cash bonus shopping frenzy, Chinese New Year, couple of other big Asian holidays... of course visitor numbers have dropped, never mind the protests or the coup

Let's not forget that the main targets by numbers of radical islamist are and always have been non-radical muslims. What a weird religion where people give support to their own murderers, the only moral equivalent I can think of in "our World" are military chaplains.

After talking to a Muslim cleric for 30 mins she calmly tells the judge she is a Christian and never committed apostasy. No doubt the cleric warned her of what she was facing. What a brave woman. She is worth a thousand of The mad judge and the mad mullahs.

I bet she will become a cause celebre for the liberal Hollywood crowd..

..on second thought.....nah...not PC enough..

Because what this World really needs are... more cynical fatalists?

Not caring is a personal matter, mocking those who care is just moral bankruptcy.

Just spent a few days in Fukuoka which is a smoke free city in most parts already. Lighting up is allowed in designated areas only, basically wherever you find a public ashtray. Those are mostly a bit aside from very populated spots so not to annoy others, yet still pleasant to hang out around. Few butts lying about the city, generally a much neater appearance. In addition, lots of hybrid cars running on electricity. Makes for a quiet city with pleasant air. To compensate, certain coffee shops offer large, well ventilated spaces for smokers, which is missing from all of the more totalitarian plans to re-engineer humanity. In my opinion a smart way to tackle the problem as there's no excuse to light up in a prohibited area if there is a licensed opportunity just a few steps away. There's rarely a crowd, making the smoking a much better experience than the gassing chambers found at airports. Korea's going a similar way but missing out on logic here and there. Thailand ought to tackle general pollution first before further restrictions.

Darn, I came here because I read "212 Fortune TELLERS."

So it does make sense that these guys didn't see it coming. Oh well...

Can't find anything in the articles that would indicate any evil plans or illegal activities. Some indication that one of them has a problem with his immigration status? Apart from that, I find that the real financial backers of islamic terrorism continue shopping at Siam Paragon with impunity.

Germany, where wearing a clothing label is banned. Yes, the Germans have much to teach the world about freedom of speech and association.

It would be useful to add that this label is worn only by skinhead/neo-nazi groups. I don't think it's "banned" unless it would openly display swastikas or the face of old Adolf.

There are many silly laws in Germany but not more or less than in most average western countries. Most people would gladly trade in their domestic speed limits for a "ban" of neo-nazi lingerie.

Sometimes, waking away from idiocy is as simple as not reading every topic on ThaiVisa...

Did anybody bother to read about the criteria for the ranking? This is UNHDP, not some silly expat or travel magazine. Quality of life doesn't mean access to cheap chardonnay, it means access to clean water, access to education... Still the #2 ranking surprised me.

For the parallel discussion, what inhuman beast calls "all men are created equal" "drivel", just because it was a concept of the American Revolution? How much more racist or sexist can you get?

A few years ago there was a story about a bar owner in Phuket who was arrested for sitting on the customer side of the bar and talking to customers. He was charged with working without a permit on the basis that he was actively "marketing" the bar while sitting and talking to customers. He was deported and lost everything.

It would seem that the laws are such that if you get on anyone's shit list anywhere, they can "tip off" authorities and have you busted and deported for essentially doing nothing. Perhaps someone wants your bar or guesthouse; perhaps your wife wants you gone; perhaps you didn't pay the local police enough... whatever. The fact is, there is NO protection under the law in Thailand. It doesn't matter if you have family here that you are supporting, that you are paying taxes here, hiring and paying Thai's an actual living wage, building a successful business, etc. Nothing matters; there is simply no protection under the law.

This man may have gotten on a black list for one or more very undesirable things--we cannot know. But what we can see and know is that the same thing could happen to most any of us if anyone had it out for us for any reason: an unhappy neighbor, envy, jealousy, an unhappy employee who was actually expected to work, etc. It is one of many things that make it difficult for me to be optimistic about Thailand's future.

I guess you hold the assumption that Thailands future is dependant on people working illegally in the country.

Future, past and present! At least if you include Thais and "illegal activities."

This is such a cover up. Of course they are calling off the search, they know they will never find anything. It is a wild goose chase right now.

Does it not strike anyone as odd that they are looking for a 22m piece of something off the West Coast of Australia? If not, would you please enlighten me as to which part of a Boeing 777 is that long and will still be floating after 3 weeks?

The aircraft was deliberately taken over. No catastrophic emergencies or failures and no explosions.

The guys running this show are a bunch of clowns and dismissing data that they should be investigating further.

Hull diameter is 6m... Eat some "Pi" and do your math, 22m (estimated, not a precise measurement) is a very good match for the circumference.

Hull length is around 60m, you could easily make two large pieces of 20x20ish m from that.

Wing span is also 60m-ish.

First one is most likely in my opinion, based on aircraft engineering techniques and structural properties of cylindrical shells. Breakage from bulkhead to bulkhead, then lengthwise split of the resulting cylinder with unraveling, resulting in a flat, nearly square surface.

What an odd statement to make in the absence of hard evidence.......Unless yet again Malaysia Air

is privy to information they are not releasing..

"We deeply regret that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost".....

Indeed.... one of my first bosses as a young man told me the meaning behind the word assume...

Make an ass out of u and me.

I can agree that is is a logical conclusion, since the plane has not been found high and dry anywhere on land. However you would think that they could find a better way to say this than based on assumption.

The people who lost loved ones on that flight will have a hard time finding "closure" based on assumptions- especially those who heard a cellphone ringing after the aircraft went missing.

If I was one of those people, I would continue making my own assumptions until I was presented with irrefutable proof.

That's a lovely contradiction between your last line and everything else you wrote. :-P

But seeing as you're so close to quoting Samuel L. Jackson: "If you're making an assumption, you make an ass out of u and umption".

Xkcd has a little bit more on that as well.

The jerky part is really only the unprofessional, off-hand remark "nobody asked us". But that's in Lin with the aura of entitlement that high ranking Thai military feels (or anyone in a uniform). Technically, it can't be expected that a blip on the radar would give immediate concern that relates it to a missing plane that was supposed to be hundreds of km away. Such things take time to find, same as the satellite pictures took days to review before suspicious objects were found far down south.

Thai military needs a press spokesman, that's about the only sound conclusion I find. Top level brass going live on camera is bound to look like jerks, anywhere.

Seriously? A sub-discussion on a foreign country forum used by an international audience, discussing why the whole world does not use American words?

Both Benzin and Diesel are named after Germans car/engine inventors, and are synonymous in many countries for the more generic petrol (not named after a person) and gasoline (ditto). Also called gas, which confuses people who don't expect gas to be a liquid.

Next discussion: Why (oh why) can't all the world call a photocopy by its proper American name: Xerox (not named after a Persian king)?

Iranian links, obvious cover ups, absolute dismissal of the possibility that the plane could've suffered a mechanical problem and crashed, focusing all investigations on the Muslim pilots and passengers....

What we have here is an Israeli false flag operation similar to the ones in Thailand, India, and Georgia a few years ago. Mossad is taking it slow this time, because the last few attempts have been too obvious.

https://wideawakegentile.wordpress.Com/2014/03/09/malaysian-air-crash-mossad-has-a-history-of-using-stolen-passports-in-their-false-flags/

http://www.globalresearch.Ca/another-pretext-to-wage-war-the-fingerprints-of-false-flags-against-iran-the-thailand-india-georgia-terrorist-bomb-blasts/29307

Hmm.

I stated here or on another forum my disbelief at how quickly 1. The buyer of the tickets was identified as Iranian, and 2, how the two stolen passport carriers were identified as Iranian.

It has not been explained how Malaysian authorities came to the conclusion that the men were Iranian, and so quickly!

The ticket seller wouldn't know that Iran is a country let alone be able to positively identify the buyer as Iranian.

I think that was explained well enough. 2 people whose passports were on the plane were informed by Malaysian Airlines and replied that actually, they were not. Mother of one of the Iranians who knew her son was on 370 came forward. Second Iranian was friends with first, this also identified by people who knew him.

Plausible explanation, conspiracy theory evaporates. Plenty of other things left to creative imagination though.

Somehow the U.N. forgot to mention Mao's China and Stalin's U.S.S.R.?

It's cheap to whiff up some dead regimes from history while the grandsons of the World's greatest murderers are actually sitting on the U.N. Security Council and coincidentally are N.K. largest trade partners and political supporters.

In real life, North Korea is like the raving lunatic on the street who's annoying but harmless to passers-by (well, beating wife and kids at home, apparently). The really dangerous ones are those silent types that would, in this image, one day shoot up a High School. N.K. is fodder for the press, but on the global political scale, both China and the U.S.A. need Kim and his lunacy for their strategical goals.

He's far, far away from being a Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao or Stalin.