Sydebolle

Central Europeans brought the hotel management levels to Thailand and did VERY well. In the past, any decent 4*+ and 5* hotel was managed by a graduate of a hotel management school in (mostly German-speaking) Europe. As the levels dropped all over the planet, the few selected surviving premises remained keeping their extremely high standard, the rest went "normal". Today, after 40 years in the realm, I find it disappointing and frustrating; you can hear the quarrel of occupants next door, amenities are missing, basics are not working (flat batteries on TV remote controls and broken light bulbs). Check-in sloppy and absolutely disinterested focussing on Line, Facebook and whatever else phones offer today. Breakfasts are inedible with coffee in glass pots simmered for hours, fried eggs - cold - swimming in oil, ham swimming in brine and cheapest palm oil margarine replacing butter. All this a higher prices than ever before. Bottom line is, choose a boutique hotel off a platform (booking.com, Agoda.com etc.) - forget the brekky and have that separately in a restaurant. Travel with ear plugs and shades (the ones you also use on airplanes) and Bob's your uncle!

Surprise surprise. Apart from making sure that a builder puts in the cheapest of the cheapest brands in most cases the copper diametre is insufficient. A good report would list those brands which passed and a skilled electrician (yeah, I know, Thailand.....) will not only insert the third yellow/green ground wire but also ensure that normal sockets run on 4mm coppers and heavy duty equipment (oven, stove, hot water heater, air conditioning etc.) are wired with 6mm copper wire; solid copper and not threads. The colour of the casing is also not for funny decorative reasons but of life-saving importance. In a previous house I built, the electrician wired rooms per colour, i.e. light blue was one room, solid red another room and the kitchen got green. Education is the key as well as the liability issue by the people doing the job!

This governmental hot air released through the backside means, that the private industry pays for more holidays. The end is, that the industry makes less money due to higher costs for the same output and that means less tax income with then is whined about in connection with the purchase of most essential stuff for the country, i.e. three submarines. You simply cannot make up such nonsense; it happens here on a daily basis for decades already ...... and everybody is a bystander and watches silently - how pathetic!

Not in this context, no!

They will be reassigned with some more interesting bureaucratic f-a-rts, the 90 days might be boiled to 30 days or someone has to check, if all the photocopies are signed with exclusively blue ink. If I see, what the immigration madness has resulted in this country ...... the sky is the limit!

This is and remains a domestic affair within the United States of America and has to be dealt with by exclusively American citizens and voters.

Some really stop at absolutely nothing - name the culprit with photos and full details and throw him/her into the slammer for some "reconsideration time" and get the bills paid. That might include selling the ice factory/business, assets or whatever but drive the message home, once and for ever. Despicable, to say the least.

As prostitution is prohibited in Thailand, she opted to visit India as a tourist. Next thing might be, that her work permit application as "escort" is in the pipeline but, to get acquainted, she did some trial runs. While hurting any person for whatever reason is despicable, it would be more than interesting, what led this lady to ply the trade in India of all places. Hope she gets well soon and reconsiders working back in Thailand; salaries at 7/11 are possible lower but certainly safer and more acceptable by the locals here!

Lick your wounds all day long ........ the majority has spoken. So go back and do your homework better and queue up in four years again - simple as that.

You cannot have your cake and eat it. See Foodmart, which is closest do you most likely, or Friendship. If that is too expensive or too far away, then you eat salads in variations with chicken or tuna. Fresh salads from the market last easily a few days. If that is not possible either - just forget about salads then!

Nail the car owner and if it was not him/her, then (s)he has to reveal the name of the person who drove the car. Then book the culprit for drunk driving and fleeing the scene; two times a juicy jail sentence would be appropriate. The damage to the Mitsubishi is to be executed in a Mitsubishi workshop, payment by the culprit, if not possible by the Toyota owner and if no luck there then sell off the Toyota for spare parts which hopefully covers the Mitsubishi expense. Until the local authorities have understood the above modus-operandi, nothing will ever change and Thailand will remain a banana republic!

It is not government or city council which pays. It is the taxpayer who will be burdened extra with this. If payment delay interests are accrued, they should be collected from the pr-i-kc who refused to release the contractually agreed payment in the first place.... Yeah, I know, wishful thinking as we are in Thailäääääännnnnn

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte is yet another pencil-pushing nerd. A) Ukraine is NOT a member of NATO B) Zelenzky is fiddling around with Brussels for the last few years without getting anything inked C) NATO serves solely to DEFEND member states of NATO against outside aggression. It is nothing but an extremely well-oiled money printing machine, the bills are paid by NATO members and contributions by the EU (which in essence is very similar coverage) and hence feeds the never-ending hunger of the war industries of the United States and some European countries to the burden of the tax payer The Swiss, in their absolute disorientation lately, ran a peace conference in Switzerland some 5 - 6 six months ago. Unlike all other such (most successful) conferences, which usually take place in Geneve, this particular conference was in Central Switzerland. Big wigs and some self-appointed VIPs from far-away lands in Africa etc. attended this Ukraine Peace Finding Summit and the Swiss president was sooooo happy to have a selfie all over the news. What she forgot is, to invite one of the two fighting parties - the Russians were never invited in the first place. Once the media picked that up, she said that Russia would not have attended anyhow. So, unless someone is putting a screeching stop to all this Ukraine nonsense and getting the parties to the negotiation table, it will just burn more billions of (mostly) European tax money. Mark Rutte and his cronies should step down, go home and start peeling potatoes or anything else which would make more sense. What a hopeless farçe all this is .........

4,7 is the average reading when the Missus did not walk away with a winner from the latest lottery results 😉

All this rannygazoo serves only one purpose; to make those behind the desks collecting possibly billions of Baht in a year in all those agencies. That money then goes nicely distributed from top to bottom - an endless flow from the horn of plenty. I will no longer be around but it will be interesting to see, how Thailand will fall into the 3rd world status again in a generation or two. See the Philippines, 40+ years ago they were way ahead of Thailand but the people's greed, endless corruption and blunt disregard to existing laws resulted in the destruction. Thailand's government agencies would be here to serve its people; the opposite is happening and Thailand's worst enemy is its very own greedy, lying and cheating people. Their country - their call; their grandchildren will damn their forefathers to death one day!

The most often reason is the sheer greed of landlords massively inflating electricity bills to their benefit. While a unit is 4 Baht, the top I've heard of in an apartment on Sukhumvit Soi 71 was a staggering 25 Baht. Go figure - you're welcome! Clarify that question before signing a lease; get the electricity bill straight from the provider, in Bangkok it is MEA, the rest of the land it is PEA!

The most often reason is the sheer greed of landlords massively inflating electricity bills to their benefit. While a unit is 4 Baht, the top I've heard of in an apartment on Sukhumvit Soi 71 was a staggering 25 Baht. Go figure - you're welcome! Clarify that question before signing a lease; get the electricity bill straight from the provider, in Bangkok it is MEA, the rest of the land it is PEA!

While the Red Bull grandkid still roams the world despite being accused of murder, massive drug offences and possibly other wrong doings.

Without having my family here I would have left with a oneway ticket many, many moons ago - this country is in total overdrive

Yet another nuisance to disguise the inferiority complex of the semi-divines. Given the fact, that a large percentage of Thais do NOT live at the place shown in their house register, the racist element becomes apparent. Another joke is the TM30; most landlords renting out premises to alien and dirty farang could not be asred to follow TM30 and, subsequently, the tenant gets the blame. The bureaucracy here is second to none, marred with incompetence, arrogance and corruption; normally government officials are here to serve the public - in Thailand it works, like many other things, the other way round.

Hunting in droves - no work permit in selling fake goods ............ what a farçe. Or is this particular profession excluded in the alien business law so only Thais can operate in the fake goods business? Asking for a friend .......

It is not the weakness of the laws but rather the intended non-action and intended inability to ENFORCE the law. Your call .......

Correction: It is not the weakness of the laws but rather the intended non-action and intended inability to ENFORCE the law. Your call .......

Well, a simple example of law enforcement is the notorious Pattaya beach road. Nightly you see the 3rd gender semi-divines roaming the road and the side lines. Nightly there is disturbance by those 3rd gender nuisances stealing whatever from passing by foreigners (and that is their own fault). The transgenders get arrested, taken to the station, a big wai and some pocket money changes hands and off the 3rd gender disappears just to take up its duty next evening. In the statistics, an arrest took place. You're welcome!

All that went wrong once already after the "retirement" of Chatichai Bunya-ananta in 1992. Thai International afterwards transformed itself to a 7/11 without a cashier on the way out. Everybody could simply help themselves - in the West we call it looting. Thais can, simply said, not manage anything properly and the selected few usually run their own businesses - preferably on a very monopolistic basis. Hire experts who have seen an aircraft from the inside, irrespective of nationality, to run the show as the 320+ billion Thai Baht accrued losses speak for themselves. Latter is being picked-up by the taxpayer, as usual, and not the moneyless government. See what Western experts did to various airlines by turning them from money-burning flying clubs to prime airlines. Look at other industries like Sony, which was successfully led by a dirty farang to its glorious excellence it enjoys.