Acharn

Not since the Democratic Leadership Council and Bill Clinton, anyway. I'd say the party leadership is mostly neoconservative now.

But when they have trouble they call the police anyway. Why is that?

This is the way Thai politics used to be. I very much miss Police Captain Chalerm and his threats to expose corruption.

I've known two guys who naturalized to Thai citizenship. Both had started companies that employed Thais and made a fair amount of money. This was some years ago, so things may have changed.

If they're richer than you they may have very powerful friends. It's not a matter of democracy, it's a matter of having bad things happen to you. I remember a case at an international school, many years ago. One girl (from a very rich family) threatened to kill another girl student (from a less rich family). After a few days of discussion and thought, the threatened girl left the school. Because the danger was real. Very few farangs are likely to run into this problem, but it is foolish to talk about "putting your head in the sand."

No, it was a few years later, after Vietnam ended. I'd guess during the '90s, but the World Bank study recommending they take advantage of the sex trade to lure tourists was back in the '50s. It didn't really take off until after the GIs left. I guess they spread the word.

Fifteen years. I'm surprised he still has such powerful enemies.

This is the request for verification. Somebody tried to log in to his account and had the correct password (or at least one that the operating system recognized). It's called two-stage verification. After they received the log-in they sent a request for verification to him. Since he didn't log in, the one time password (otp) is of no use to him, but the person trying to log in will be unsuccessful, too, because they won't have the otp. The op is confused, though. This can't be about his gmail account, because that's administered by Google. Whatever account this is, he should change his password immediately. Don't you have any accounts with two stage verification?

Just so. They may become Thai citizens, but they will never be Thai. Maybe their kids will be.

The Old Thermae closed (and was torn down) after the Flood of -- was it '92? Anyway, they tried to stay open for a while, but the place developed fungus and stank pretty badly. The New Thermae opened a couple of doors down Sukhumwit in the basement of a hotel whose name I can never remember. Most people started going in the front door, and you didn't have the stairway going down. Damn, I just realized I haven't been there for twenty years.

I remember reading an article about the subsidence problem at least 50 years ago. Nothing has been done about it since.

Go to a government hospital, not a private one. Foreigners are charged the same as locals, except we don't get the "one disease, 30 baht" deal. Of course, you'll wait a long time, but it's cheap.

So?

Nobody deserves a tip. The practice of tipping is a pernicious innovation by American rent-seekers, who refuse to pay their workers a living wage. Some workers become so desperate for food they accept work that pays too little, but they don't deserve my money. They deserve a raise.

Good grief, that was more than twenty years ago. I don't even remember what year it was. Was it after they caught the truck full of fertilizer with the dead body rotting in it, or after the threat to bomb the American embassy. Lasted for about two weeks, IIRC.

Probably because the court did not confiscate his passport. The American courts are very busy places, badly overworked. If you go to trial you might have to wait two or three years for your case to start. We have the most prisoners of any country on the planet (including China), but Congress does not want to increase taxes to pay for their War on Drugs. Most Americans, including judges, never think about overseas travel, so I can see how it could be overlooked.

It was this hot for thirty days a few years ago (2018?). The whole month of April. I haven't seen any rain for four months this year. This might be the new normal, but I hope we have a couple more cooler years first. By the way, I live in Nakhorn Sawan, too.

You've never visited a farm in the Northeast, have you? Say Buriram or Surin. Although I'll grant that after Thaksin a lot of them are able to make a decent living.

By no means all of them. Every small town has at least a couple of hookers, and often it's girls of 16 or 17 years old. Because most of the American troops were stationed at air bases in the NorthEast, the myth grew that they preferred darker-skinned women, opening up new career opportunities for the women who previously only worked locally (the lighter-skinned women from the Northern provinces were/are recruited for the rest of the country. Most of them did not work for the Americans).

Well, no, there was no tourist industry here until the 1960s, and then it was stifled by the Vietnam War for a while. However, merchant sailors and various navies loved visiting Thailand. The Erawan Hotel was opened in 1956, but did not start prospering until the 1960s, and for several years it was the only hotel for foreigners.

Absolutely right. The World Bank recommended to Field Marshal Sarit Thanawat that he adopt tourism and the thriving sex trade as his development strategies. That was even before the CIA's first anti-communist loan to FM Sarit, just a month before the first attack by the Communist Party of Thailand.

Do you have a reference to that legal age for marriage? Please see this article from Thaiguider. It's really quite complex, but I think from this that the age to give consent to marriage is 18. As far as the granting of consent, the Thai police have complained that it is almost impossible to prove whether or not sex took place. Two people going to a privacy hotel is not proof that they had sex there. Sexual assault charges are underreported in Thailand.

I'm referring to the contract with the caterer, and possibly with the local wat who provide the monks for the chanting (I don't know if that falls under Thai commercial law, but I think not). I presume your wife depends on your support, so she has a right to comment on how you spend your money, unless ฿500,000 is a trivial amount to you. If you're married in Thailand, by the way, the money is half hers, not yours alone.

Errr... He says his wife is paying for the wedding. If she has her own money, what right does he have to interfere? Thai law does not require a man's approval for a woman to sign a contract any more.

I think you can trust your Thai wife to not get ripped off. She knows the culture, after all. I'm sure she knows the appropriate cost of her son's wedding.