Sydebolle

Yesterday the media referred to "transferred police officers" which today seems to be not (no longer?) the case. Nobody has to "invite the tour operator and the Chinese tourist for questioning over controversial and unauthorised police escorts provided by Thai tourist and traffic police officers. The services were apparently on offer, the customer and the middleman (the tour operator) made use of the services and also paid for the services rendered. You have to fire all the police involved and, while you're at it, take the immigration officer(s) along, publish names with fingerpointing photos and then you might put the first watergate into this river offering anything between "special services" and outright corruption. Next please!

It is all in the selection of endless titles - and Thailand is faring VERY well. General Prayuth, General Prawit, Police Lieutenant Thaksin (alternatively also "fugitive") is referred to a former Prime Minister. All correct (I assume) but relevant is only the PRESENT title and all those "politicians" are no longer Generals or Police top bananas - unless it serves their purpose. The unnecessary purchase of three engine-less submarines fares slightly higher than a "misunderstanding" in the allocation of free housing but I might be wrong here too ????

Yes, the legislation clearly mentions "illegal". I've lived more than half my entire life in this country and am (not early) retired. I've seen the maidens serving Caucasians, Asians and then the majority of them serving local gentlemen in Café, Karaoke, Turkish Baths, "no hands" restaurants, Spas and not so traditional massage parlours. Due to my length of stay, can confirm that the next generation of "workers" have taken over the elder generation. So much to official; common sense prevails ???? And no, the legislation does also not suggest a nightly roll call ????

‘Fit and healthy’ = believed to have died from natural causes. If a 48 year old person dies without clear cause, there is certainly plenty to investigate - love the Thais concluding and trying to close also this file with "ripe roy"! A local diving school might have resorted to the only way to stop the successful operation of the "dirty farang" operation by ridding the market of yet another non-Thai competitor? In true Thai fashion - "nothing to investigate" ???? Interesting enough there was a website listing all suspicious death cases of non-Thais; dozens of Caucasians were listed. The site is ............ offline, surprise surprise as it could shed a less than excellent limelight onto the endeavours of the tourism geeks on governmental payrolls.

Well, the dirty farang, the stinky South Asian, the impolite rude Chinese etc. are proof enough that Thailand still believes being populated by the superior upper crust. If the endless corruptions everywhere on each and every level would be brought to a halt (wishful thinking, I know) then it would communicate a first step in the right direction. How many Thais get deported, without jail sentence of fine, from North Asian or European countries for overstay? No European country has a photocopy-phobia insisting on signing photocopies with blue ink only. Thailand's biggest problem is the attitude of their own people among themselves, among authorities and the fact, that the people must serve the government, i.e. police and army - whereas in other countries (which reached the 21st century) it works the other way round. Your call!

OK, work permit is work permit but the sheer appearance of the kitchen is clearly proof enough, that Thailand could use thousands of such Chinese cooks. I've never ever seen any kitchen in this country anywhere close to being clean as the pictoral proof above, that Chinese also have clean persons. Thai kitchens, run by Thais, usually are dungeons of dirt, sticky oil and food waste lying everywhere; the jackpot is a cat roaming the kitchen for rats or mice.

The "pot and kettle" saga again ............

Many thousands of Thais ??? It is more man HUNDREDS of thousands if not millions over the last few decades ....... but officially prostitution never existed here in Thailand, as many other things it was just "overlooked" ????

I claim nothing but you cannot identify pure tourism anymore. Immigration screens people for their ability to enter/leave Thailand which include i.e. working expats or hundreds of thousands of Thai nationals - just to name some groups showing up in the immigration database of non-tourism character!

900'000 travellers in total (in, out or in/out?) could be an AOT figure which include Thai nationals, expatriates working as well as all the transit passengers changing planes in Bangkok, i.e. coming from somewhere and continuing their journey to a third country. The domestic figure is irrelevant as some (like me) fly weekly domestically for work and I am not alone. We're talking tourism figures and some government offices blowing their own trumpet - as usual.

God help us all and Phiphat can go and close his tourism ministry, tourism authority and all other circuses under the tourism flag. See what happened to Sihanoukville and you'll see Thailands prime destinations devastated in no time. Well done, mission accomplished - unbelievable!

Chevrolet packed up and left Thailand quite some time ago. I would see "B Quik"; if they cannot fix it then they certainly know, who in town is your man! Here some details on how to find B Quik (in the compound of Robinson) in your town: บี-ควิก โรบินสัน สกลนคร (ติดปั๊มบางจากสี่แยกบ้านธาตุ), phone: 042 713 029, GPS: 17.179158 104.118426, open daily from 08h00 - 21h00 ;-). Good luck!

Phiphat and his boys at the Tourism Authority Club are having yet another light moment at the crystal ball. Border passers (Lao, Cambodian and Burmese) as well as Thai citizen do NOT complete a TM6 arrival/departure card anymore. All arrival by air, irrespective of nationality = ditto. Any idea, where these figures come from - neither airline nor immigration can have these figures?

The brethren in the big red North have gotten Prayuth over to Beijing more than once to receive instructions. So the puppet master of Thailand sits behind the Great Wall. The Saudis, well, that is another story. But as the princes of their Kingdom sort of wrote off the heist of the century dating back to 1989, everything is OK, fine and happy now. If these groups, together with South Asians, would be ranking in the class of "quality tourists" .... is yet to be seen; I for one would not vouch for any of them. The Russians, burning money as if there is no tomorrow, enjoy particularly Phuket. Rest assured that all those high spenders are gone the minute they can travel to Europe again; for the time being Thailand is an option, if you want to leave the Siberian winter behind you, as Russians cant travel to any European country - with compliments of Zelensky and Co. .............

If Prayuth would be doing anything to fight corruption he would have a conflict of interest .....

Instead of studying tourism in any Western university I might suggest that such students just keep reading, what those experts in Thailand do with their country. Epic teaching material and new stuff coming each and every day! Keep up the good work; one day you'll be surprised. And, on that note, be aware that you can do many things with money - except eating it! It's not the 300 Baht (no clue how they want to collect that at Bangkok's airports which are a mess in the arrival halls by people being slowly screened by immigration or wait 90 minutes for luggage off a domestic flight. No, it is the clear message "you tourist, you are here to be skinned alive and there is nothing you can do about it." Same with national parks, museums etc. - Well, there is something those tourists can do and that is voting with their feet! You've been warned, the writing is in huge big capital letters on the wall!

If I or anyone I care for would get attacked, I would take the case through all the courts and once I've won the case, the money would go for some charitable cause. Then the dog would be served its last supper - my treat! It is not the dog's fault but why should my loved ones suffer just because the dog's owner is a p1rck? It's time to start doing the jobs the lovely authorities and forces in this land strictly refuse or are simply too stupid/too corrupt to do!

As proven again, you can distinguish the difference between friend and foe during election campaigns or a reading of a testament ........ your call!

Details, details, details ........ The last run for the government house saw 6+ million votes for a party nobody ever expected when the dinosaurs pulled the plug, declared party and leadership illegal and hence 6+ million votes got ..... deleted. Any other country with a whiff of democracy would have cried foul - to start with. If there would have been a real election error/mistake, the whole process would have been repeated. Lets see what 7 May brings this time; maybe they will have to void 7, 8 or 10 million votes - your call and good luck to all - from "under the rock" as suggested ????

Valid question indeed. "still alive" would apply only, if nobody wakes the fellow up for meals "by votes" depends on how much lose change is involved and since Dr Thaksin most politicians understood to reward voters AFTER the vote with promises for which the VOTERS (in form of taxpayers money etc.) pay.

No Sir, that is not what I meant. In certain central European countries the court has the possibility to hand down fines according to income and wealth. A parking or speeding ticket goes according to tariff; continuous disregard to parking rules gets passed on to the court (I do not know, how many times you have to park wrong at the very same spot until that happens); so do driving "irregularities due to alcohol or substances. I recall reading an article about a filthy rich banker who used to get chauffeur-driven straight to the doorsteps of the bank which he served as a board member. The access was through a walking zone, i.e. except utility vehicles (ambulance, garbage, cleaning etc.) all other vehicles were banned to drive there. He could not care less and collected a daily fine of the equivalent of USD 40. Upon the 14th ticket, the police station in charge passed on the entire file to the court. There was an official hearing and the gentleman at fault was fined USD 288'000 - in accordance with his salary and wealth. Question is two-fold: did he ever consider driving there ever since? did anyone else ever consider breaking the law, pay the petty fine of USD 40 - or abide by the law? Your call!

How interesting indeed. Two questions: is the electorate ready for all those handpicked candidates; it could be that none of those proposed sweethearts of Thai politics will ever make it again all those populistic election promises, i.e. wage increases, adding dozens of public holidays and other goodies so graciously granted by the government; does the electorate know that THEY pay for all this? The government can only spend money it got/took from somewhere else and the private sector is laying flat already with trillions of losses carried forward from coronaphobian ideas and other governmental wisdom!

Interesting, everybody is equal in Thailand ....... some though are more equal than the others. Throw in skin colour, religion or cuisine into the equation and the result is, that non-Thais may not carve ice or run a barber/hairdressing saloon - among others. Thailand, when looked up, translates into "Paradise for dinosaur" - spot on, keep up the good work!

What a relief; so all those lies about those thousands of bars and houses of ill repute - one big lie! Praise the Lord for this good news then - your call!

Well, now the Indochinese junta can meet for tea again ...........