GuestHouse

Were these incidents between Thai people, or did they involve foreigners?

Between Thai people. But already with collateral casualties (other people tried to help) as well with guns.

I have no idea what 'Collateral Consequences' are, but if you are getting into confrontation with people in which guns are being used or waved around - do yourself a favour, get offer the pigheaded bit and move.

I definitely recommend driving around and seeing what you can find for yourself, you at least get to see the property and the area it is in before you decide to get in contact with the renter.

Despite that in order to save Bht3,000,000m, you need to be earning enough to save in the first place, it is not a great deal of money.

While ever the answer to the question: 'How long could you survive on Bht3,000,000?' is less that the time between now starting to do so and securing a replacement income stream you are faced with the fact that you will, when the money runs out, have to go back to work.

In that sense, 1 year is probably better then 4 years. If you take one year off you could relatively easily pick-up work again where you left off, if you take 3 or four years off you are going to struggle finding work and fitting back in again.

My advice is two fold:

1. If you need a break, take a break, but fix a limit on how much you are going to spend (perhaps a 1/3rd or a 1/2 of your savings), when you've spent that money get back on the big silver bird and go back to work.

2. During your break in Thailand - keep the wee fella covered.

Nice one, Chiangmai. I'm with you on that!

There is a problem, though. If you get figures from the FOI, as you suggest, they will just get their figures from the Thai authorities. And even Thais, in my experience, don't trust Thai statistics.

Since when has any foreign govt had any obligation under UK FoI act 2000?

Foreign governments are not subject to UK FoI requests, and that is not what is implied, rather the data received from an FoI to the UK government will itself come from official Thai reports and is therefore only the 'official Thai data' on murders of British citizens in Thailand. We have no idea if it is correct or not, many clearly believe it is not, others are reluctant to disbelieve the Thai data.

If you lost your job tomorrow how long could you last on 3 million baht with no other income?

Long enough to find another job.

Well, TAT and other sources provide us with the 900,000 British visitors to Thailand each year.

UK Government gives us 50,000 British expats living in Thailand.

UK government also provides us with 362 British deaths in Thailand last year, from all causes.

British Embassy deputy head of mission gives us what the British expat murder rate is in Thailand.

A UK FOI from UK Government gives us the number of British murders in Thailand.

Which of these is giving you difficulty.

BTW Tunisia and any other country apart from Thailand is off topic and outside of scope, as is any cause of death other than murder.

Hint 'see bold text above'.

The British Government do not investigate all cases of death in Thailand and are reliant upon data from the Thai authorities, what they say is based upon what they are told and, given the nature of international relations, may be influenced by what they are instructed.

For espresso I like Amazon's offering, I find Coffee World's too bitter, while Starbucks have no idea what any coffee is other than their Americano almost makes the grade - their Macchiato is disgusting.

The strangest Thai wedding I ever went to was one at which the 'happy couple' had hired another couple to play the part of the bride's parents.

Her real parents unhappy with her choice of husband had refused to turn up.

What was even stranger was when the hired 'MiL' started demanding her rights to the 'Sin Sod'.

Thailand pioneers air quality improvements throughout its northern provinces:

By switching off all the monitoring stations

http://aqicn.org/city/thailand/lampang-meteorological-station/

The strangest Thai wedding I ever went to was one at which the 'happy couple' had hired another couple to play the part of the bride's parents.

Her real parents unhappy with her choice of husband had refused to turn up.

Not much different than me calling myself Guesthouse or you calling yourself JackSmirkingRevenge ... to my mind.

borrowed from Guest House from another thread

Borrowed? I'm looking forward to you returning it asap.

That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. -Christopher Hitchens

I'm sure you can find yourself to the library, there's more than the works of Hitchens on offer.

A quick look...

Haste makes waste.

Well as ever attrayant, your own contribution is like a wet bar of soap, never anything that we can grasp.

Dangerous on what grounds please ?

I trust you only eat at home wrapped up in cotton wool.

Can you divulge your sources for this scaremongering please.

Sad life you must lead.

A quick look into a database of scientific research reveals hundreds of research papers on the subject of aluminium poisoning from cooking utensils, a few dozen papers on lead poisoning from lead in aluminium cooking utensils and as many on mercury poisoning from mercury in aluminium cooking utensils.

I can't see any references to teflon poisoning, or people wrapped in cotton wool - but as I say, only a quick look.

I live on the other side of the Mae Wong national park and our water supply also comes from the Mae Wong national park.

At least it would do if there was any water to have.

Our supply stopped in mid December 2015 and until there has been at least a months rain it will not return. We had some heavy rain on Wednesday night for an hour or so and the rain which didn't run off just soaked the surface. It was the first rain for 6 weeks.

Whilst I appreciate that tigers live there nobody has actually seen them for many years. The area they are talking about is less than 20 km/sq and the area or the national park is 894 km/sq.

The Mae Wong river which flows out from that side causes flooding and crop damage as far as 30km downstream in the really wet season which is about 3 years in every 8 and in a drought season such as now cuts the available water supply to many villages.

If and when the dam building starts the animals that tiger use for a food supply and the tigers themselves will simply move further into the park to less accessible areas for humans and people still won't see them.

Most of the conservationists and tree huggers don't even live in the area and have no real idea of the problems that local people face on a yearly basis.

As fot the klong across the road that supplies water to quite a few villages around here, well that is now just a series of puddles slowly drying out and there is no water flowing at all.

The purpose of an environmental impact analysis is, amongst other things, to gather the views and opinions of local people and place these in context of a systematic scientifically based assessment of what the existing environmental conditions are and how they might change due to the project.

Up until now the proposals for the dam have not been able to produce even near credible Environmental Impact Studies, while the proponents of the alternative multiple smaller dams have.

Your if and when assessment of what the impacts would be on the local fauna have not been supported by the EIS and are little more than a uneducated guess. Not a good basis for implementing an irreversible change in the environment (even if it is over the hill and out of your own personal line of sight).

News drifting in from a couple of Thai language sources that the police 'interpreter' for the recent and natorious case of the double murder of two British citizens on the island of Kho Tao, died last night in an apparent case if poisining.

The descriptions given of his final moments are not at all pleasent, so I'm not repeating here.

Do you people really live with so much fear and paranoia?

And they have no way to track down the criminals.

Or perhaps people exposing criminality, corruption and malfeasance.

It's a two edge sword, I wonder who is the most likely victim of being cut?!

How are your Thai language skills?

nglodnig,

You are failing to examine the demography of the British immigrant population, and British tourist in Thailand.

Prior to the economic crash in the late mid 90s there were virtually no British immigrants living in Thailand, a relatively small number of expat migrant workers, but the number of British citizens living full time in Thailand on their own account was relatively tiny.

The big influx came a couple of years after the economic crash and brought in a large numbers of British immigrants (mostly male) who where largely in the late 40s to early 60s age group. The recovery of the Baht and the global economic recession saw many of these people return to the UK (or to other locations).

As you recognise, a number return for health reasons, from the number of people I personally know who have returned to the UK because of health and for access to the NHS, I believe that number to be bigger than we might imagine. Your concerns about getting treatment on their return are ill founded.

Suffice it to say, many make a big show of arriving, announcing their arrival to the world, few say anything about leaving, preferring a quiet departure.

Then look at the age group of tourists, they start coming under their own steam in their early 20s but are for the most part 30s and 40s.

I don't think you can argue that these two groups are representative of any society, the age, health and life expectancy is not going to be representative either.

Then there is the question - are all deaths reported to the British Embassy? I very much doubt they are.

What is missing is any kind of data on the number and causes of death v the age and gender of the deceased, we might then draw some interesting conclusions.

OP, if you do get the right to carry, please come back and tell us where you live.

On the off chance I'm anywhere near you, I'll move.

'Pollution''

Yeah right....You guys need to awake

Maybe you should expand on that because your comment is meaningless.

Of course air pollution is a general term and includes many things. My impression is that large particulates are particularly harmful to health.

It is the smaller particles that are most harmful, sub PM 2.5 in particular because they can be absorbed directly into the lungs and enter the blood supply, nasal hair and even simply face masks can easily filter the larger particles..

It's not just the nano particulates but also some of the gasses, ozone, incompletely combusted carbons and NOx.

Those of use who have been in Thailand since before the mid 90s will remember that before Thailand's low sulphur fuel process plants came on line, the atmosphere in Bangkok and around any traffic jam reeked of sulphur - back the I could not stay in BKK for more than a couple of days without developing a searing sore throat. So some things have changed.

As an aside, I have my eye on a airborne particulate monitor that I know is coming up for sale - It is and EPA certified system that fits in a small case about the size of a carry on bag, and comes with the calibration system and wireless internet interface.

I've been pondering the idea of setting one of these up with a home weather station to produce my own reports.

Why would I do that?

Well because I have frequently seen the guy who takes care of the local official government dust monitor spraying a mist of water around the air intake probe of the local environmental measuring station.

And because, you can see this for yourself, when the pollution levels climb above the safety level, the dust monitors that report real time online data in Thailand have a habit of going off line.

However this does raise a concern - I'm not sure the people who order the monitors to be taken off line would take too kindly to an independent pollution monitor reporting live data to the internet.

In UK London I was on a puffer for years....When I moved to Ubon I threw the thing away after a few weeks...

But, my motor has an air filter for the air coming into the cabin....When new the filter is white, after a few weeks it is dark gray, that tells a story..........

I think transom the reason you are not using your inhaler in Thailand is the humidity. I too suffer asthma which improves dramatically when I'm in a humid atmosphere.

While in the middle east my asthma would be pretty bad in the dry hot periods but then improve immediately the weather changed and the humidity went up.

I'm struggling to understand what racism amongst Thais has to do with the opening post, racism amongst expats in Thailand.

expats speaking shit haha.. what do you think thai people say when they see you walking down the street hahah.

they don't like black people in this country! adapt or move..

I am Thai

No. I dont say anything behind them as long as they have decent manners. The most foreign targets for Thais are American I suppose, because they talk too loud, low graded attention draw. We cannot expect decency from them especially teens. Noisy in kinos, throw popcorns around, place their foot on front seat etc.

You forgot the bit about squeezing zits and picking their noses.