Sydebolle

Well, the latest addition to funny ideas was to tax retirees on their pension payments. Given the fact, that most retirees spend (much) more money than what the average Thai books as income, it remains questionable, if that financially attractive cake needs to be cut up in different slices now. If the government, in its endless greed and need for submarines, F16s and other completely out-of-this-world ideas wants to cream off the icing on the cake ............ or ............ if all those retirees rather spend the same amount of money with the average Thai citizen in shops, restaurants, hotels etc. Needless to say, that the answer is the latter but given the present state of affairs those in the driver's seat simply could not care less about their tax paying underlings. Just beware of not killing yet another goose laying golden+ eggs ......... they did it with blocking the visa runners back in the day who must have also spent more money than the average Somchai. This country is in dire need of a complete revamp and proper spring cleaning with sand blasters and more .........

Well, what to do once the resident goat is not available and the camel went shopping for new toes .........

Well, of course Dr T will advise his daughter - there is not a single parent who would not lend a helping hand to its children under normal circumstances. On top of this it might be noteworthy, that of all those 30+ prime ministers I personally believe, that Dr T was the one-eyed among the blind. The country worked, the economy worked and the corruption was well under control. Each and every PM had corrupt underlings in his cabinet; no wonder if you look at the possibilities to choose 44 ministers to form a cabinet. So Thailand might be well advised to pick the most capable and professional candidate and might be served much much better than having the Anutins, Prawits, Prayuths or flour-to-heroin-wizard Thammanat getting close to the government house. But, as the saying goes, every country has the government it deserves and if the Thai people are OK in getting more than 14 million votes for a party thrown out and said party disbanded after having an initial 6+ million votes thrown out in 2019 and that party was banned too ........... For me, it's the Thai understanding of democracy and if they are happy then so be it!

The market in general is sooooooo dried out that it is literally almost impossible to find non-/low skilled staff willing to work diligently and willing to learn some basics. We sold our business for exactly that reason some 6+ years ago; no shortage of happy customers, suppliers, the works - the only thing we were short of was anything between 5 - 14 staff who would have been willing to actually do some WORK for the above-market salaries we paid. The sick buffaloes roamed in herds all over Thailand's countryside, grannies passed away between once and three times in the same year, the non-existing brother had an accident and needed immediate family help etc. etc. etc. etc. At the end we had hired illegals and had to keep them illegal, as the powers-to-be at all those governmental nose-poking offices with lunch breaks, photocopies being signed with exclusively blue ink and by all means not a hint of a smile on passport photographs of 4"x6" .... made it literally impossible to hire aliens, not from outer space but from ASEAN countries. Despite AEC2015 all those Burmese, Cambodians and Laotians could not be hired in Cholburi, as that privilege was granted only to Thai provinces along the borders and Bangkok. We moved the head office of our restaurant to a letter box in Bangkok and operated the restaurant as a branch. This would have allowed us to hire alien staff but all the paperwork would have had to be done in Bangkok requiring each and every time a (paid) absence of a full working day. So all this bla bla bla bla of whatever association serves purely to kiss backsides of those absolutely inefficient useless officers - more interested in "cookies", "tips" and contributions to the office's piggy bank. Bigger requests were underlined with "we should have a new fridge at our office". The result in tourism is evident; the enclosed picture was taken last Friday at the arrival floor of Don MEUAIONG Airport 😉 Your call!

I - seriously - can follow the lady's thinking. Arrived yesterday from Pattaya by Roongrueng Coach Services at Morchit Terminal 2 to connect to city bus A1 from Morchit to Don Meuang airport. The signage is literally non-existing and if you do not speak Thai, a foreign visitor has an uphill battle to leave the arrival hall to the "white tent" outside in the heat where some 20+ bus lines drive by. Some of those busses do not care and pass by on the main road outside the terminal compound. I waited a solid 75 minutes for the correct bus to arrive hence a motorized suitcase might have been the answer. I was doing a survey for a travel guide, otherwise I would have taken a taxi much earlier on. In short, a tourist from Pattaya has a challenging ride if (s)he wants to reach Don Meuang airport ........

Thaksin might want to reconsider his role as grandfather instead while his daughter might be well advised to disregard both dinosaurs. Politically unable and nothing but a nuisance giving Thailand's political face an ugly make-up while the clownery of these two self-centered crooks remains an utter embarrassment to the country and its people. But maybe the script reads something completely different; stay tuned for an exciting autumn 😉

I am glad that this disturbed kid is back in the lime light. So we shall see more calls on Presidents, Prime Ministers and Royals by the Swedish teenager; why not let her in peace and take care of her mental stability and health instead ...........

I am hearing this every few years for the last 40 years now. It would help, if Bangkok's water supply is not overdependent on ground well water. It would also help, if all those geeks in charge of those water dams in central and northern Thailand are trained on HOW to operate the dams and its valves. It also might help to tell your red brethren in the North to operate those dozens if not hundreds of river dams in such a way, that tremendous - and in some cases life-threatening - deluges must be avoided in the interest of all those BELOW the Chinese dams. It also helps, if the people are being taught (i.e. prior to the nightly soap opera) on how to keep the drainages clean, free from oily leftovers of street kitchens, garbage and waste, construction rubbish etc. I've seen the most scary incidents by absolutely ignorant vendors and street kitchens; on mentioning this (in polite, smiling fluent Thai) the only thing I got back was an embarrassed smile. They know exactly, that this is not the way to dispose of greasy, solid or non-degradable waste.

If this spoilt kid walks - and the statutory limit is early next month - then you have to fire each and every police officer who ever touched this file, put them into jail and throw away the key. I'm getting fined for driving 8km/h too fast with 500 Baht - quite right so. But driving an ill-gotten Ferrari under the influence of prohibited drugs and therefore killing a fellow police officer on duty ......... seems to be wiped under the biggest carpet in Thailand called corruption which is literally everywhere meanwhile. The kid's family must have forked out a nine digit amount in Baht and the entire population fills their coffers again by buying Krating Daeng/Red Bull sludge in bottles and cans. Now how stupid is that, seriously?

Here is to verify the truth of your assumption. On the left picture you see an enlargement of the virus and to the right you see an updated vaccination certificate with the relevant stamps and stickers. You're welcome!

So this month is seems to be the Kuwaiti; we had the Germans, the Swiss and the Russians already in 2024; who is next? My tip to the rulers of the land; lock all borders, throw all alien, blacks, whites, farangs, foreigners and whatever else you hate, out of the country for good. Then only you will see, that nothing changes except that 90% of the money in circulation is gone! Pathetic bull"%ç", get your act together, reprimand misbehaving people irrespective of nationality and, in the case of a non-Thai, apply the existing rules and regulations on how to deal with uncalled behaving non-Thais. I cannot hear that hatred from each and every corner in shops, banks, buses and public places. It is "farang, farang, farang" literally everywhere as if I would have the plague ........... most uncomfortable indeed 😞

Force him to address her live on TV by name and kindly ask her to apologize for his unforgivable mistake as an elder, as a man, as a retired army general and as a politician. Once done, enforce his retirement of all posts, meetings, clubs, organizations etc. and send him off to retirement. Will not happen of course but only like that you can get such manure straightened out!

Looking at the absolute inefficiency of all those immigration offices, combined with a never-ending avalanche of bureaucratic paper nobody in his right mind could process - even if they wanted to ..... If Malaysia would not be run by the fidels, many people including me would have moved there long, long time ago. You can legally own one house/apartment, the first car is tax-free, the second car costs half the tax, the visa is issued for five years incl. a multiple re-entry. It is really only the presence of the Fidels in spiral building with loud speakers, the selection of meats and the instructions on drinks. Everything else is by far more advanced than the semi-divine land of the Thais!

Interesting, though confusing. The last PM was thrown out of office for the fact, that he appointed a former convict who did six months in jail for corruption. The same government flatly ignored the agricultural minister's little history background on some four kilogrammes of heroin smuggled into Australia. He left Bangkok with baking flour and, Lourdes or Fatima or any other Holy Spirit, converted the flour into heroin. The poor fellow insisted on Australia having thrown him into the slammer by mistake and the Thai court stated, that convictions OUTside Thailand had no relevance within Thailand. Hence now the poor flour-to-heroin victim bolts like a young foul over the fact, that his advice seems to be uncalled for by the 31st PM of the Land. All the while he could be so helpful indeed 😉

Just wondering how long it will take when someone in that area will serve the dogs their last supper.

30 Baht health scheme uncertain? 10,000 Baht digital cash - a post-election vote-buying? 20 Baht Red Line fares and the trains still empty? 3 submarines from China without engines for the navy? F35 air fighters on the wishlist of the Air Force? A prime minister evicted for appointing a (former) criminal into his cabinet? The same government tolerates a convicted smuggler of 4 kgs of heroin as a minister? A rich kid killed a police officer on duty on 12 September 2012 and has been on the run without any chance of "getting apprehended"; if luck has him, the statutory limitations will expire in less than three weeks. All this in the same country where millions of people cannot make ends meet as the oligarch elite keeps moving the ends?

Well, what do I know? Koh Tao is the place where you can get sheer unlimited supplies in unlimited tanks of nitrous oxide. I - for one - would not even know where to start looking for such gas, even if I wanted to..... but that's me!

As long as the government itself is promoting two-tier pricing in national parks, museums etc., it is hardly surprising, that Somchai the driver tries the same. Only once it is understood, that a passenger is a passenger, a visitor is a visitor and a guest is a guest, only then you can start to complain about all that to the government .......... stop whining and get your act together.

The mother-of-all-hubs; we've been there before ........ yaaaaawwwwwnnnnn. 80% of Thais have access to high-speed internet; really? So my wife's village was not taken into the census evaluation then - not that it matters as they really have different problems like stable electricity, the very much interrupted fresh water supply. My mother in law (who is a wonderful woman with three years of public schooling) is in total disagreement with Techsauce Global Summit 2024 and the MQDC’s FutureTales. Is ever anyone reading what they write, are they aware that the internet can also be accessed outside Thailand? The statement that almost all you adults have a smartphone, is most likely correct. Another debt trap and I can give you this in writing; most users can handle the gizmo as a phone and otherwise it comes to good use for TikTok, LINE, WhatsApp, Facebook, Sanook and all the other stuff - apart from millions of photos nobody ever will look at ever again afterwards .........

Well, if you ask me, I can gladly attest, that the legalization of cannabis seems to work absolute wonders down at the offices of the Tourism Authority of Thailand. Nobody believes their figures - for years already. Nobody is interested in their fanfares of how great the TAT boys are and that without them the country would still run around half naked wearing coconut shells etc. They did it again, the first price of manure definition goes to .........

Got screwed in Nong Khai. Sitting on a permanent resident visa, having had a Thai license for 40+ years, I asked for an international driving permit, requested so by the insurance company in Phnom Penh in relation to cover my Thai-plated car. While the ASEAN license is OK for the Cambodian authorities, the insurance company saw that differently. The Dept of Land Transport wanted a letter of the immigration, queried my listing in the blue house register (normal for a PR) and wanted a yellow house register and a pink ID card. Latter I never sought for as I am not aware of a single advantage. To top it off, my wife was supposed to issue a letter of guarantee covering my request. Needless to say, that I had to just walk out of the office as I cannot handle stupid. At the DLT's head office in Bangkok it took 'em literally 15 minutes and all was done; no extra papers, copies, certificates, letters, seals and other funny ideas. The bureaucracy in this country has reached a level that it gets close to no longer manageable - while Khon Thai keeps kissing the feet of the semi divine officers and underlines their requests with the usual little "pour-boire" - as the French call it

What an embarrassment for the semi-divine Royal Thai Immigration Bureau - seriously. Look up your fancy computer screens and you can run lists of who exactly has an overstay and, if data were entered correctly, you would have had a start where to look for the culprit. Quite obviously, if he would not have been sleeping on the road as a caucasian, nobody would have ever noticed - me thinks!

The government does what? It now RACES to protect local businesses? What a load of crock is all this. The more the government is putting its noses and little fingers into anything, the worse the outcome. These online platform are an uncalled consequence of various elements. Prior to the pandemic, lots of customers (including me) bought stuff in retail outlets, supermarket etc. The frustrating element back then was, that you would walk up a shelf for a product, which was "out of stock" and nobody had a clue, when it would be in stock again. Then the pandemic came and people had to get themselves covered differently due to the governments stringent lock-down of anything (unlike Sweden, which never did anything the like). The internet is your friend and today I do my non-perishable shopping online, be it shaving cream, tooth paste, olive oil, WD40, light bulbs etc. - simply anything. The prices are even lower (as the retail is cut out completely) and there is no reason for me to go back to sometimes empty shelves, incompetent staff not knowing anything at higher prices. What is left is perishables for obvious reasons. Shoes and clothes are also purchased in stores to make sure, that I really get, what I want. The customer decides and the Thai retail trade has lost it years ago, arrogant, ignorant, unfriendly and incompetent. This should answer the question and TEMU is just the latest addition to the Lazadas, Shopees, eBays and other internet shopping facilities.

I just LOVE it, hilarious. Thailand is facing a significant competition of cheap, substandard goods from China, sparking widespread concern among local businesses and consumers. In the past, Thailand had no competition in fakes and cheap more-than-substandard stuff; now the same people cry foul as the Chinese seem to be quite a bit faster, quicker, smarter and better than their Thai brothers.

This article covers it all: - Common sense - or rather the complete absence of it by the court; let's face it, a jail sentence of two hundred and fifty years, seriously? Graciously reduced to only 150 years - what were these judges and courts thinking in the first place? - Reality - a budget of 20 Baht per meal per child is not enough to live and too much to die. What do you want to serve for 20 Baht. Nobody expects a five course Oriental meal but being a retired restaurateur I can tell you - mission impossible. The kids were shortchanged with the 20 Baht already. - Corruption; stealing 6 Baht and leaving 14 Baht - congratulations As long as schools are semi-divine, teachers are semi-divine and everything attached to a school is semi-divine = that's the outcome. Congratulations; well done!