Sydebolle

I think getting Chinese police officers to ensure safety in Thailand is an absolutely great idea. It will send their more-than-corrupt Thai brethren packing ;-)

He did not feel well, had to vomit and followed the content of his stomach ....... an actual headline in Pattaya Mail some +/- ten years ago explaining a "suicide"

Apart from not being worth the money - as in many other places in Thailand meanwhile - the visa mess, the extremely exciting news on hunting on dirty farang and alien ...... all helped a lot to destroy the little that is left. Their country, their monkeys, their circus!

The old goat again - she has been farting into politics of this country for too many decades already - some of these years she was even banned from politics for possibly sitting in the wrong party (and she changed political parties more often than some change their socks). Where on Earth should the government (irrespective of who is at the helm) get THB 560'000'000'000 - in words "five hundred sixty billion" from? The government only costs money and does not generate a single Baht and said amount is in addition to the present budgetary structure. In other words we are talking about 15+ billion (not million) US Dollars! The only way is to borrow such an amount. But no reasonable finance institute would grant Thailand such a loan hence it is only possible with somebody who is absolutely blind or stupid or both. How does Thailand want to return the money with interest and compound interest to the borrower? So it will be a government bank which they might send down the Mekong or Chao Phraya as the dress rehearsal of 25 years ago proved successful once already. That happening would nosedive the Thai Baht on the international monetary market, aggregate inflation further and possibly result in Thailand's financial collapse. The only reasonable thing to do is to crawl back and disappoint all those grannies and uncles who expect a financial windfall without contributing anything to it!

When asking a second-hand-bookstore owner on what people read these days he coined the unbeatable answer by saying that "People don't come to Pattaya to read books". After the floods 10+ years ago in Bangkok, the Bangkokians discovered Pattaya as a weekend retreat and subsequently stare into their mobile phones in Pattaya's coffee shops and restaurant or stroll through the increasing number of department stores which are carbon copies of the same outlets in Bangkok. With a family there are so many better and also cheaper alternatives to Pattaya. Those below-their-navel driven men from the past have mostly disappeared into thin air, as the red light offerings elsewhere is cheaper with less obese "service agents". The Russians came and left, the South Asians and Middle Easterner came and left and now they try everything possible to lure the red brethren from the North. Make Thailand attractive again, teach Khon Thai to provide a service beyond the rip offs, two-tier pricing and corrupt police forces, get the transgender troops of Pattaya's beach road off the street and put a public transportation service in place by having parking facilities out of town with very frequent buses plying their routes at a nominal flat fee per day. In closing, have you taken a closer look at the culinary offerings in a department store lately? The majority is Japanese food which has nothing in common with Japanese food and, if luck has it, there is a pizza outlet serving stuff which has nothing to do with pizze. I have not came across a decent Thai restaurant offering authentic food without MSG or tons of sugar - for a long time. And the subject of pricing is yet another chapter. So, get your act together and you will succeed!

13 a day is not even the tip of the iceberg. Many Thai men are chauvinists - to say the least; hardly a day goes by where nobody asks me about how many minor wives I have. Other men leave their unpaid homes bright and early morning, drive to work in unpaid cars or are sardines in Bangkok's public transportation, arriving at a job they don't like and show off with fancy, unpaid, mobile phones and wrist watches purchased with an unpaid credit card. Lunch is in many cases a street side culinary accident before they return back to their job they actually hate. In the evening they drive back to their unpaid home in an unpaid car and can't afford the highway hence burn time and money in Bangkok's endless rush hour traffic jam. Alternatively there is again the sardine treatment on the buses or trains. Once they're home, the release the steam which so nicely built up throughout the day and the culprits are wives and children. Spend only money you actually have, focus on human values rather than monetarism and materialism and a lot of that tension will never occur. Bottomline again is "education" and, as long as kids need basketball wear exceeding 10'000 Baht to keep up with the Joneses ......

Fine the owner a six digit amount plus the repair costs of the road. Having said that, the BMA might also consider proper road construction as, despite this mishap, the roads of Bangkok should not just cave in like that. It takes no rocket scientist to see, if a truck is heavily overloaded; either it is completely overloaded or the truck is not in a roadworthy condition. The "B" for bribes is the icing on the cake - see police which are unable to protect Chinese tourists as they focus more on "more tipping please" ;-)

The Republic of China was created 1912 in ..... China. Back in the day, Taiwan was a Japanese colony in line with the Shimonoske agreement of 1895. The ROC government began exercising jurisdiction over Taiwan after the Japanese surrendered at the end of World War II. The continued Chinese civil war saw the loss of the mainland part of China to the communists who had established the People's Republic of China; subsequently the ROC government fled to Taiwan in 1949. It is yet again about educated hatred in as much as you see all the other problems like racism, religion, ethnicity etc. There is hardly anyone alive today who was in a decision-making state back in 1949. Look at those caucasian Rhodesians or South Africans or ethnic Indians in Thailand. They've been in those countries for generations yet, due to education, are considered today second class citizen. Hence Beijing has to get to terms, that ROC and PRC are two different countries and all that rhetorics from either side is as much nonsense as the North Korean stalinism facing South Korean capitalism. If Beijing and its envoy to Thailand would have not mentioned the interview some ten days ago, hardly anyone would have noticed. Where I come from we call it "shot into their own foot"

Srettha should remind Anutin (in clear terms "kick Anutin's backside") who then can start doing his present job as interior minister and do a serious clean-up job among the police and immigration. The corruption is rampant, for decades, and getting worse and worse. But yes, Srettha stops at nothing to lure Chinese tourism money into Thailand and, as an extra bonus, if a red brother from the North is having problems, Srettha can turn around and blame it on the Chinese police force not doing their job properly. Bottomline is, clean up the police force - which could mean that more than 50% are sent packing for good; in a country avoiding confrontation at all costs = will never happen.

The hospitality business has seen shortages for two decades already. Unable to obtain legal permits for ASEAN citizen most employers have resorted to illegal hiring in this field. Along the borders of Thailand you find hundred thousands if not millions of illegal alien, some working for peanuts in an environment of no insurance or labour laws at daily wages, for which the semi-divine Khon Thai would not even work a few hours. It is - again - a governmental problem while other ASEAN states understood and promoted the hiring of qualified labour at market salaries, see i.e. construction industry in Singapore by Thai labour. Your call!

In many upcountry locations there is no running water at all .........

In the past they harvested mangoes etc.; in having moved into the 21st century it is cable harvesting time....... as long as copper and aluminium fetches premiums in the recycling market ....... where nobody asks about the origin of the ware being offered ;-)

Declare 13 November the offciial "Blame it on the GPS Day". This driver should be taken away the driving license for good - some are just too stupid, sorry!

You're aware that Thailand is the perfect place to cook your books; every expat working here (or having worked here) knows that. My company's auditor (above figures are apparently not audited yet - although that does not make a difference with TG) always asked me ahead, how much profit I want to show. If you run a Farang-managed company, you are well advised to show a profit each and every year, irrespective of your actual result. Showing a loss wakes up the revenue department which will turn your entire accounting upside down and downside up again and usually walks away after having received a "little gift". In my case it was a yearly refrigerator for the office and my contribution alone was 4 fridges - your call! Those planes parked longterm in Bangkok and U-Tapao (possibly on other airports as well) cost money each and every minute they stand around; minimizing losses or operate profitable for an airline includes their fleet being airborne as long as possible; see all those LCC (low cost carriers); some of them keep their equipment airborne for 14 to 15 hours daily despite operating mostly locally or regionally - i.e. hardly any long distances on an intercontinental network.

Interesting; Thailand stops at absolutely nothing to lure Chinese money into the country. Having foreign police on your own turf means, in no unclear way, that the local boys are simply not able to do the job as good as their foreign colleagues. In Thailand though it is not inability but unwillingness to part with bribes, kick-backs, beer money or whatever else you want to call it. Anutin, the interior minister, is also too busy accepting honorary doctorate degrees in public health and hence has not sufficient time to focus on his present job cleaning up this tremendous pot of corruption. As a surplus, if anything goes wrong with a Chinese as of now, the Royal Thai police can blame ....... their Chinese counterparts for not doing their job Thailand is making itself yet another laughing stock again. In other, more civilized countries which have arrived in the 21st century 23 years ago, police is not even crossing provincial borders; the difference between a state trooper and a federal police officer. What a joke!

Well, yet another lie in big capital letters might be more to the truth. 50+ jets of Thai Airways International are parked all over the Kingdom's airports, Suvannaphoum and U-Tapao to come first. Having had a debt load of THB 300+ billion and pretty empty planes on an above-market tariff structure ......... Well done, boys, keep up the good work. The next thing we will hear is to let Thai Smile go down the abyss and take all those nasty debts along. It is more than evident that it is pure management inability which has plagued this previously most profitable star on Asia's aviation skies. Ever since 1992, once the Air Force and the finance ministry invited the former professional management to "retire" or to "resign", things went South. Overheard the possibly best explanation on Thai Airways being compared to a 7/11 store where there is no cashier on the way out, i.e. everybody helped themselves and just walked away. Remember the little stint on the Rolls Royce engines - never ever heard anything from that seriously expensive corner either ;-)

Honestly, is there anybody out there believing this avalanche of nonsense from the finance ministry? Thais will have to pay all this back and once the bill surfaces, the puppet masters will be gone into oblivion - bye bye into thin air ;-)

It is not my money and I am not a beneficiary of it but maybe someone is calling the whole thing what it is. The THB 560 billion (that was the figure last time; now the jacked it up to THB 600 billion) is not "injected". The government takes that money from its tax income (so duly paid by all those obedient tax payers). In this particular case there is simply not enough tax money to be taken away and distributed in this populistic scheme, hence the government goes into debt and borrows the money from ............ a government-run bank. Bets taken, that this bank, possibly the Government Housing Bank, will go belly-up and hence will have to be "rescued" by future tax payers and their payments. By then all those clowns with the funny hats and crazy ideas will have creamed off what can be creamed off and disappeared into thin air. The government owns NOTHING, it redistributes money by taking it on one side and handing it out on the other side. Sometimes the other side is called "themselves", but that again is a completely different story.

It is not my money and I am not a beneficiary of it but maybe someone is calling the whole thing what it is. The THB 10'000 you want to distribute among 56 million Thai citizen is being paid by your own tax payers. As many beneficiaries are not paying (that much, if at all any) tax, the burden remains mostly with the Bangkokians. Latter wonder for a long time already, why they have to pay for all while their vote is continuously overruled and hence can result in a civil unrest in the future - latest then, when the Bangkokians had it. The government owns NOTHING, it redistributes money by taking it on one side and handing it out on the other side. Sometimes the other side is called "themselves", but that again is a completely different story.

Surprise surprise .......... next please; nothing will happen anyhow :-(

Fully agree, it takes a simple set of rules; minimum age of customers and staff, noise level not higher than X (if at all) and clearly stipulated working conditions. Guess what, all this is already written for decades but instead of enforcing the law, the bent rules serve to line the pockets of the selected few. So all those clowns at the interior ministry do is repeat what has been repeated over and over already. How about enFORCEment of those absolutely normal, acceptable rules? A decade ago I tried to get neighboring Somchai with his Karaoke (no licenses for anything like selling booze, playing music etc.) to tune down the extremely high noise level. He would not listen and all neighbors were sick and tired of his behavior. The BiB just laughed when I wanted to file a complaint. Some butyric acid poured in front of the establishment's door step in the midday hours finally did the trick and he went out of business due to the unbearable but otherwise harmless stench. Would he have played by the rules, would the BiB enforced those rules, all would have been OK - and that's my point ;-)

Well, they roamed a most harmless, officially licensed, bar in Nong Khai; had a drink on the house and checked ID of all the foreigners (not the Thais) and .... left again. As the folks there are not on drugs, the ID papers pre-scanned onto their phones the BiB left empty handed ;-) I assume that such checks will be much more frequent now - somehow those coffers need to be filled - one or the other way ;-)

The less influence the government has on market-controlled mechanism, the better for the private industry as well as for the tax-coffers of the government. You can see this in many Western countries which were "over regulated" some 30, 40 years ago with business hours of supermarkets, department stores, restaurants etc. Over time the government realized, that if they let the market decide, then the venue operator will open as long as he has customers - as they ultimately decide, where to shop, eat, drink etc. So, if the shop has staff and enough business, they remain open. Bottom line in many European countries was, that of 100 restaurants maybe 4 or 5 remain open 24/7; see existing modules in Thailand doing exactly the same. Foodland, 7/11 etc. are open 24/7, the department stores and supermarkets like Big C Extra or Lotus's's's's's open 12 to 14 hours only. Anutin should change his tailor, the expensive silk shirt must have been cut by a cross-eyed seamstress. He also might want to re-align the priorities; instead of correcting a mistake (by either him or the media) he should focus more on cleaning up his corrupt police force or his absolutely over-bureaucratized immigration with all their photocopies and blue inked signatures ;-) Latter might not happen though as he coined the "dirty farang" statement and, for sure, has neither apologized nor changed his stance 8-)

You're wrong, there are thousands of Thai millionaires. But they have excellent "tax planning" .......

It will create a black market to the enjoyment of the Indian money changers who are in permanent need of foreign currency cash for all those crooks evading taxes. I remember 30+ years ago a survey in either Bangkok Post or The Nation which stated, that among the top 100 income tax payers there are exactly six Thais while the other 94 were alien ........ Do you honestly think that this ratio has substantially changed ever since?