Sydebolle

Well, MBS is not known for his diplomatic pussy-footing around anything; the little consular affair in Turkey springs to mind and all that would have never happened if not explicitly sanctioned by MBS. But as the saying goes "Money talks, (M)BS walks"; just wait for it to happen one day in the future. He is not as popular and well liked as he is kept believing by his satellite underlings ......

Enjoying raw bat meat is an absolute delicacy when combined with the world-famous "Wuhan" dip ....

The next thing will be dogs which can detect the world famous "Wuhan" dip for smoked bats. What, on Earth, has the world become, honestly?

This American clown with a serious MINORity complex never misses an opportunity to: - try to make headlines - writes letters to the sitting prime minister If Heineke is serious about it, why not just starting in this hospitality empire of overpriced while more than average accommodation and then present the overcharges with big fanfare to whomever he wants. It is foreigners like him giving the non-Thai business community an undeserved poorer reputation. Yes, he sits on a Thai passport but he is as much Thai as a green-painted penguin is a frog!

What a load of bol...... ocks! As long as I can see staff standing/running around in air conditioned offices, shopping centres or predominantly government office buildings wearing Himalayan-proof winter gear ........... As long as I see supermarkets and shopping centres without air curtains on building exits ..... Many municipalities running street lights during the day (not on a survey/repair trip but for months) and nothing is undertaken despite calling them twice a week ......... Every 2-star hotel featuring a (sometimes huge, family size) fridge in the room for the pleasure of two glass bottles of drinking water .......... Education, education, education ......... would be the answer and not the bar lights!

Well, an UK citizen is sitting on a passport which is owned by the government and hence a court order can cancel his passport with immediate effect. Inform the Thai authorities which makes the fugitive an illegal immigrant. Now, instead of clocking overstay he then is extradited on a "laissez passer" being a "one-way/one-trip-only" identification paper for a repatriation back to the UK. Throw him into the slammer and keep him there for the full eight years (which is a joke as well; rapists should be, like pedophiles and drug dealers, facing the gallows) and then latest nail him for the costs involved in getting him back to the motherland.

Chickens come home to roost? Prayuth might now realize, that he was nothing but a puppet run by the puppet masters who, themselves, are run by puppet masters .........

If you sit on a Permanent Residence Status (lifelong stay permit without 90-days, yearly re-application, minimum fund etc.) then you have to get a TM22 which will allow you to leave the country on a re-entry basis. Beware thought, that this TM22 is valid only for one year; should you stay outside Thailand after the expiry date of TM22, then you will lose the PR. Attached hereto I send you the respective form TM22 for your perusal; good luck! TM 22 BLANK.doc

Unless you want to go through the (much, much cheaper) process of three juristic Thai entities owning your properties you might want to consider another country. They really do not know what to do; who puts 40 (legal) millions for three years not having a clue, where the forex will stand in three years from now?

Even better would be to move Prawit, Prayuth and all the other cronies to ........ another continent ????

If a pitbull would attack one of my loved ones or myself ...... go figure ???? Most Thais cannot care for canine or even a pussy cat 8-)

What a load of ......... Before June it was ILLEGAL hence very few medical cases 1) appeared and 2) got reported. So compare apples with apples and as there were no apples before June the entire statement of 566% is absolute rubbish. Below 20, well many things are forbidden for teenagers (smoking, alcohol, visiting short time establishments and houses of ill repute spring to mind), yet it happens on a daily basis. That would be law enforcement and is also not a relevant figure. Yet just another useless media contribution to bias the reader. I - for one - welcome the legalization as it takes the criminal element out of it. I never tried (nor will try) the stuff but it certainly brought the crime rate down .............

Back in the day, Air Asia (FD) had two daily flights between Udon Thani and U-Tapao and I used this service weekly. The big drawback then was shuttling between the airport and Pattaya (where my family lived). The minibus service dropping off people in/around Pattaya would give me the big ride on the merry-go-round and worked only U-Tapao-Pattaya. Took it once as the flight (50 mins) was in no relation to the minibus (130 minutes). Pattaya back to U-Tapao = hopless, Thai-style. The taxi mafia creamed off anything between 1'200 - 1'500 Baht for a 40kms trip between U-Tapao to Pattaya, Nong Khai-Udon (70kms) was 600 Baht. At the end, I opted Udon Thani-Suvannaphoum and a private taxi (Camry, Accord) to Pattaya for 1'000 Baht. Eight daily services (and many more in Don Muang is an option), marginally more time consuming and overall considerably cheaper. But then, the big wigs deciding on whose pockets are being lined next, don't fly coach and use buses and taxis from/to airports ..... I assume ????

"Thai Beverage controls 80% of the spirits market and has 18 production facilities nationwide as well as control over imports via companies in its portfolio." One of these facilities (Thep Arunothai Co., Ltd.) บริษัท เทพอรุโณทัย จำกัด, GPS: 17°55'12.3"N 102°48'30.2"E) is on Road 212 when leaving Nong Khai towards the east (Phonpisai). On KM 7 on the left hand side there is a HUGE production. The waste (sludge) of the booze/beer production is pumped across the road into fields which leaves behind an unimaginable stench. The police, upon consultation, said to sort it out with the factory manager directly, who remains inaccessible. Money talks, stinking sludge stays .......... thousands of people in the neighbourhood are affected but nobody dares to open the mouth. Apart from the terrible stench nobody knows, what how if and when they pump out ...... for the betterment of the environment?

Works out to cost THB 86.60 for a stubby (330ml) ...... "uncheap", if you ask me for a local brew ????

......"police closes ...... the Queen Sirikit National Convention Center MRT station from Nov 16 to 19 for safety sake"....... Well, if the conference would be for the better of the people those "politicians" represent, then you would not need any concerns related to safety. Without closing entire Bangkok for three days (holidays paid by the private industry) and make life for those in the area miserable again; the bigwigs could have moved entire roadshow to IMPACT Exhibition and Conference Centre with absolutely no hinderance to the Thai public. But yes, then the limelight effect would have been gone and the government could not blow its own huge trumpet!

Did anyone tell Kamala Harris already, that she might have to queue like every other Tom, Dick and Harry for an extended period of time until Somchai with all his rubber-stamps has flipped through her entire passport, ask her if she is here "for the boys" (as I, male, was asked if I like Thai girls) and then stamp into a brand new page despite having plenty of space on half-used pages? How stupid of me, she does not need a passport, most likely ........

Back in the day I used to buy books from an (English) second-hand book vendor. I once asked him, what people would read these days to which he answered, that "Pattaya is not visited for reading books"; a ten-out-of-ten answer and we had a good laugh. Well, the deputy bigwig just outdid that lighter moment of long gone days with the "new Pattaya Walking Street painting is ready to impress tourists". Out with the old, in with the new; Pattaya wants to be visited for its paintings rather than for its endless choice of houses of whatever repute! You cant make up such stuff, thank you for this beauty!

My Thai teacher, bless her soul, taught me a few basics some 40 years ago. The shorter the name (first and family name) is, the more likely they are real Thai. The more syllables in a name, the more Chinese ethnic roots. Latter overran Thailand in the 20th century, last not least after China's Long March recalibration, to immigrate to Thailand where the locals had (and some even today) had no clue! If you ask me, Mongkolkit Suksintaranont's name has its fair share of syllables ....... and hence could be yet another prime representative of the latest immigrants two, three generations ago who do NOT want anyone else to spit into their soup! Dinosaurs 'r us? Even in China non-locals can buy property and have done so to the prosperity of themselves as well as to the People's Republic of China - your call!

Some old farts like me will remember a similar stint show. Remember the IMF congress in October 1991? Schools were closed so "school children could enjoy the IMF congress as well" was the official wording. This time round, photos from the front and back of the car, colour, number of doors and wheels as well as the shoe size of the owner are being required. My advice, leave town until those ever-so-important bigwigs as well as the even bigger-wigs of local government and administration had their climax. They, for sure, will be blowing their own trumpet once the dust has settled; what a farçe!

Only once those oligarchs understand, that you cannot eat money ............ The elite is afraid, that smarter aliens take over Thailand and jump-start it into 21st century. Leasehold went sour on countless Japanese and some dirty farang. A prime example was a 30-years leasehold of condominiums at the "Twin Peaks Residence" on Sukhumvit Road Soi 17. For years leasehold takers fight in the courts over the issue, that the original owner sold the building and the new owners want to take it down to make space for something even bigger. The losers are those countless leaseholders who have already vacated the premises while a few hardcore (mostly retirees, being in their 17th, 18th year of a 30-years leasehold) have sleepless nights over eviction orders. More than once served already and always kept on hold by expensive legal advice on the account of the leasehold beneficiaries ???? Such incidents lead you to the conclusion, that you might want to rent a property. This allows to leave with as little damage as possible, if the semi-divine real estate crooks are at it again!

"Pilot study on the Bangla Road in Phuket carried out by the Ministry of Tourism and Sports shows that 2 am to 3 am is the most profitable period for nightlife venues with foreign tourists only leaving their hotels at 11 pm." Interesting news indeed; Pattaya - as per the same source - is being visited for its temples, clean beaches and nature. Possibly though not at 11 pm ............ your call!

Thanks to Anutin it is noteworthy, that the quality smoked by the boys in the parliament seems to get better and better. Wondering now, what excellent ideas spring from their minds next week .............

Laws are here to be circumvented by the semi-divines .......

Well, as long as Somchai flips through my (almost) full passport, page by page, and comments that I would travel a lot .......... I hold a PR and little yellow ScotchIt stickers show where the present re-entry is. The passport is machine readable and has a chip; in Chiang Mai the fastest (from Mandalay back in the day) was 10 seconds, at Swampy they are more patient. It is ridiculous that a flight from Rangoon to Bangkok takes less time than the queue at Bangkok's immigration. But yes, Thais know better and at least you get a taste of how inefficient the bureaucracy in general works here.