Acharn

This year hasn't seemed hotter than usual -- so far. I live in Nakhon Sawan, and I haven't seen the temperature go over 40° -- yet. I well remember the heat wave during April 2018. Every damned day it got up to 44-5°. That was hot. Don't know what next month will bring, and my Thai family are complaining that it's too hot, but I'm OK so far.

Well, they're going to find some evil farangs, which I'm glad of, but everybody should know that by far most of the people who are into this kind of thing are Thai. Indeed, most of them are family members or at least well known to the children. The new law imposes serious penalties on those who abuse children under 15, especially if payment is involved. Back in the 2000s a sitting Senator was convicted and sent to prison for taking underage girls to "curtain hotels." This jamoke is in a world of hurt. Before the new law in December, 1996, it was quite common for girls to enter the sex trade when they were 15 or 16, and I used to know one very pretty half Korean girl whose mother put her to work when she was 14. After all, through most of human history women married at 13 or 14, otherwise they couldn't have enough children to be sure at least a couple survived to care for them in their old age (that's what "honor your father and mother" means).

Don't forget that we're south of the Tropic of Cancer, so during the summer months the sun's path through the sky is to the north. In fact, with the solstice approaching, I just noticed the other day how far to the south the sun is rising now, compared to when we moved in in May. I know in the States a lot of architectural rules of thumb are based on the rule that the sun always is to the south. Things are a little more complicated here.

Glad to see some positive reports. My experiences with Immigration in various places have all been positive, except the very first one in Bangkok in 1982. The officer was an elderly man with a very sour attitude, but he ended up behaving professionally and stamped my passport to come back in two weeks. I never saw him again. I'm currently dealing with the Nakhon Sawan office, and they are very laid back and pleasant to work with.

I believe the price of Thai gold (22 carat) is standardized, and all shops give the same price. The gold shops in Chinatown are the longest established. Look along Phahurat Road, but really any large gold shop, including the ones conveniently located in any shopping mall will likely have the same policies. The ones in the shopping malls are more likely to have staff who can speak English (my opinion, which may be wrong). Your best bet is to take the jewelry to one or more shops and ask them. I think European jewelry uses gold with a higher standard of purity, so they may not want it.

Nope, never happened. I never thought the Thermae was particularly dark. There used to be a joke, though: "I never took an ugly woman to bed, but I've woken up with a few." Luckily, I found out I'm an alcoholic, so I don't drink any more.

I never cared for the go-go bars. I spent some time at the Biergarten on Soi Seven, but mostly the Thermae. The girls dancing in front of the jukebox were enough, and if I wasn't looking for action I could actually talk to people there. I don't live in Bangkok any more. I wonder if the old place is still there. Chuwit makes me recall the Thai police chief back in the '90s who said there were no brothels in Bangkok. After days of ridicule he was forced to clarify that he meant the places where there was a mat on the floor and a spittoon to spit your betel nut into. And he was wrong that there weren't any of those even then.

We mostly just didn't do signals. Figured it was more an aspirational thing. I never heard about anybody getting in trouble for not signalling, but in those days we didn't ticket or arrest people for the money. Rich people paid 90% on the top segment of their income, so government worked.

Gaprao is also known as Thai basil, or sweet basil. I'm very surprised you can't find it. Might not be able to get it fresh, though.

I've been doing this for 40 years, now, and even though I meet all the requirements, and my immigration officers (Nakhon Sawan, now) are friendly, I feel a lot of anxiety every year. Irrational.

My (Thai) niece has been buying this type of plant recently, but only priced at ฿50-100. She seems to envision eventually selling them, and they're a good fit for her existing business, a small building materials company, but I think she has realistic expectations. She'd have a dozen or so plants for sale displayed in front of her shop and probably could expect a profit of a couple thousand baht a month, at best. At least she isn't sinking ridiculous amounts of cash in the project -- yet.

I don't know if Thai law requires signaling before changing lanes. I grew up and learned to drive in a time when cars didn't have signal lights, so drivers were expected to pay attention and anticipate what other drivers were likely to do. The driver ahead of you changing lanes shouldn't be a big deal. I don't know if the law has been changed, but one of the things that appalled me when I still drove was that the law did not require drivers to pull over to the side of the road when they heard an emergency vehicle. I have seen one story about a person who was arrested for purposely blocking an ambulance, but that seems to have been deliberate obstruction, not just ignoring it. When I had driver's training in Germany while stationed there, the law was the same, and we were warned the Polizei were very strict about all traffic rules.

Is this the place to ask about how to use the Mor Prom app? On my phone I don't see any way to change language to English. I can read Thai, but it's a painful process and I usually choose the English option if I can find it.

I recently got an email from Bangkok Bank informing me that I will be charged ฿300 for my "debit card." I thought it was just an ATM card, and never tried to use it to make a payment online. The reason you can't use it with foreign vendors is because their payment systems don't recognize the card. It's not a credit card.

Yes. I have never heard the definition given here, before. In American political the word is only positive to the center right group called "centrists," primarily fans of the Clintons. People on both the left and right denounce the attitude, The term gained currency after NAFTA Billy Clinton imposed the Republican agenda on the government and got legislation passed which greatly widened the inequality of wealth by making it legal to do things which had been illegal before, like outsourcing productive capacity to countries with lower labor costs and borrowing money to pay as dividends or stock buy-backs. Government propagandists had some success in the Clinton and early Bush years putting lipstick on this pig by claiming it would raise everybody's standard of living and the downsides were not really felt until the Great Recession. Since then a great many people have come to consider the movement a policy to de-industrialize America and reduce the former middle class to serfs who will own nothing and like it.

Yes. It arises primarily from the Free Trade doctrine established by NAFTA Bill Clinton and the propagandists hailing "globalism" as bringing prosperity to everybody in the world. I never heard the definition given here before, but that certainly is not what the word means in political discourse in America. It is not only criticized by the right. Critics on the left think the ideology tries to justify the great inequality of wealth brought about by de-industrializing the U.S. and outsourcing production to countries with low labor costs.

I sometimes wonder about this. I do not use the internet on my telephone account, which is prepaid. I only use internet on WiFi, so when I go to the local BigC, for example, I am not able to upload the QR to the app, because they don't have an open, free WiFi . It seems a lot of other people don't, either, because they have a notebook that almost everybody signs in on. Is this also true in Bangkok?

And you know that how? They certainly had brothels. Have you ever heard the word "mangda?" There used to be folklore about kidnapping women on the street and forcing them to work in brothels. The mangdas were the men who controlled them. I don't know if the stories had a factual basis, but believe they did.

He's just wrong about his history, which surprises me, because he used to own several "ap, op, nuads." The sex industry as an openly acknowledged institution goes back probably to the Kingdom of Sukhothai. It certainly was well established by the time Bangkok became the capital. Thailand took advice from the World Bank back during the 1950s (even before the CIA started sending " military aid" to Field Marshal Sarit, which was immediately followed by the first "communist insurrection." I don't have a link, but it's been reported in reputable magazines that they advised the Kingdom to take advantage of the existing sex trade to attract tourists. I know there are people who try to claim that it's the GIs' fault, but they just supported an existing institution. There's a segment of the elite who are extremely puritanical and want to deny the past, just as there are many Americans who want to deny the reality of racially based slavery. I'm a little disappointed, because I quite like Chuwit because of the unorthodox way he broke into politics. Glad to see he's still around and feisty.

But you need to find the balance. A certain amount of salt is essential to good health. That's why ancient empires either taxed it or used it as money. The problem is much modern processed food adds lots of either sugar or salt (or both, I guess) because it tastes good. I think naam blaa counts as salt. Anyway, keep an eye on the amount you take in. You can avoid sugar completely and have good health, but you can't entirely cut out salt.

My niece and her husband run a small business. They usually have three or four employees, usually paid daily, no other benefits. Part of the traditional Thai patron/client culture requires them to treat their loyal workers to parties on their birthdays. What I hate is when they crank up the karaoke machine to 11, because they think the neighbor half a mile away would enjoy the music, too.

It's a good question. Thailand is incredibly more prosperous than it was in the 1950s, when the World Bank recommended developing the sex trade as Thailand's best prospect for development. I don't think the kind of tourists Prayuth wants will be attracted in the numbers he wants needs, but what do I know. Covid has so completely disrupted the old economy the future is more unpredictable than usual. There is still a large reservoir of rural poor who have been accustomed for decades, if not centuries, to sending their daughters to work in the sex trade for a few years. I'm sure the business is still operating at a reduced level everywhere in the country, and will resume in full when Covid restrictions end. Just don't know if their customer base will return.

Something happened when I was 18, in the Air Force, and stationed on a little island on the 38th parallel in Korea that made me understand at a very deep level that I might die at any moment. I think I felt enough fear that night to use up my lifetime's supply, but I suppose when I face the real thing I'll find it wasn't all used up. I saw a really schlock Chinese movie on TV back about 1985 where this Chinese warrior expressed pretty much what I feel. "I don't fear dying, I fear getting hurt." There's many ways of dying that are stretched out for years of helplessness and pain. I hope for something like a massive heart attack or brain blowout that takes me quickly.

I don't do opera, so I've never heard of the Italian, but Lisa is pretty, and she works hard. ฿100 million baht is only (approximately) $3 million, not bad for the bush leagues, but she's gotta grab it while she can. I don't think her dancing is very interesting, but I'm not in her target demographic.