petedk

<deleted>

just come to thailand don't buy anything because you'll goto jail. Don't go and drink because it might be near a school or temple and you'll go to jail. Don't go anywhere without your passport or you'll go to jail. And for gods sake to go to beach or you'll get KILLED.

You forgot the most important thing: "Give us your money or credit card and then you can leave."

Maybe a "gaming machine" means the so called slot machines that take money. Surely not playstation and so on.

BANGKOK, 19 February 2016 (NNT)- The Ministry of Commerce has announces a list of 8 goods that have been barred from transfer through the Thai border by the United Nations.

The 8 goods that have been banned from being transferred in and out of Thailand include products that infringe upon intellectual property, reproductions of licensed goods, hookahs and E-Cigarettes, gaming devices, elephant products, ancient artifacts, Buddhist paraphernalia and caffeine.

I don't quite understand this announcement.

Does it mean for commercial purposes?

I mean what about someone having an E-cigarette?

Also what do they mean "gaming devices"? Surely mobile phones are gaming devices.

While the main cause of death was road accidents (34), swimming and boating accidents claimed nine lives, congenital disease six, suicides four, and other causes 30.

The statistics showed that in 2015, visitors had a 1 in 301,204 chance of dying in Thailand, including a 1 in 735,294 chance of being killed in a road crash.

The main cause being road accidents at 34, but following close behind is "other" at 30.

What are the "others"?

So let me see if I got this right. Get beaten up and have your wallet & passport stolen. You report it to the police. Then one of the guys that beat you up, returns your stuff to the police. And now the police do not want to do anything, because this guy at least returned your passport & wallet (minus most of your money). What is the point of even having a police force if they are too lazy to do anything??

Hey come on! Be fair. The cops are not lazy!

They just used 50 men to bust a group of pensioners playing bridge. I am sure they are exhausted after that raid.

If the victim was happy to get his stuff back and decided not to press charges then the police can opt to drop it. That happens in the West too.

And for the hundredth time, the police did not raid the bridge players but City officials did.

I haven't read a hundred times that police were not involved, but I saw in the first headline that they were involved.

"PATTAYA: -- The Army, Pattaya Police and District Officials, conducted a raid on a 2nd floor rented apartment in South Pattaya on Monday Night which was being used by a Bridge Club for foreign nationals."

So I am pretty sure there must have been police officers involved in the raid.

So let me see if I got this right. Get beaten up and have your wallet & passport stolen. You report it to the police. Then one of the guys that beat you up, returns your stuff to the police. And now the police do not want to do anything, because this guy at least returned your passport & wallet (minus most of your money). What is the point of even having a police force if they are too lazy to do anything??

Hey come on! Be fair. The cops are not lazy!

They just used 50 men to bust a group of pensioners playing bridge. I am sure they are exhausted after that raid.

Are hotels required to report any overstayers to immigration? I usually book a hotel under my wife's name and never show my passport to them. I'm not on overstay btw....just askin'.

I think they just copy the passport and later bring these copys to immigration...so another few days when immigration find out there is an overstayer on the loose when one of these officers make it to the hotel the guy already left five weeks ago....

I am not even sure they copy the visa. I think they are only interested in the page with your passport number and personal details.

I doubt very much if anyone at immigration even bothers to check them all.

Xenophobia rears its ugly head again. All we see in the media is negative news about foreigners living in Thailand. I strongly believe that some day in the future all but the elite foreigners, ones that are either doctors or experts in their field will be allowed to work here. The men in uniform dispise foreigners it seems to me. If they had their way we would be back in Kanchanaburi building bridges and railways in a prisoner of war camp.

A few years ago I would have replied... What utter rubbish!, but now I am inclined to agree with you.

Are hotels required to report any overstayers to immigration? I usually book a hotel under my wife's name and never show my passport to them. I'm not on overstay btw....just askin'.

Hotels are required to submit the particulars of all foreign guests. Not sure if Thais have to be reported too.

I am surprised that the hotels do not ask you for some form of ID.

I have written about this before. I often stay in four or five star hotels with my wife and not one has ever asked for my passport.

Let's hope that it works better than their 90 day online reporting system.

The system will be pretty impressive when completed.

Kids need to know what is right and what is wrong. They should be able to play video games without actually cooying them.

How many kids play this game world-wide? Just because a couple of kids in one city get ideas from it, doesn't mean it should be banned.

I mean ... Thais are subject to violence with guns and knives everyday when they watch their beloved soap operas.

They are not influenced by these, are they?

A number of restaurants were hit by I believe these same district officials here in Pattaya over the holidays. A rather big fine for selling alcohol in their restaurant between the hours of 2pm and 5pm. Easy money maker for them.

The alcohol law is a law of which everyone is aware, so if you get caught breaking that law it's not easy money, it is stupid money thrown away.

The Bridge debacle is a completely different story though.

I thought it was only shops that were not allowed to sell alcohol between the hours of 2 and 5pm. If it is a country wide ban I shall inform the authorities that every bar on Sukhumvit along with every restaurant is selling alcohol.

Look out for a raid near you soon.

Don't worry, properly licensed afternoon restaurants and bars are fine.

That isn't true.

I know several licensed restaurants that stop selling alcohol at 2 pm.

I don't know about bars though.

Escorted all the way back to England by a security guard? Seems a bit much. Surely just putting her on a plane would have been enough.

Anyway, she deserved what she got.

I wonder if she'll be able to get a new passport after she willfully damaged the existing one.

I make my own sausage patties from minced pork ( high fat content prefered ) and use cornflower as a binding agent. Works very well but you need to make a big batch to make it worth the effort involved. In with the minced pork I put 2 cloves of garlic , black pepper , mixed herb , a bit of honey , salt , ......in fact anything that takes my fancy. Make 20 at a time and pop them in the freezer ready to make a quick breakfast. Marinate the mix in the fridge overnight then cook the whole batch ready for freezing.

Yes, that is how I started. So easy to grab a patty from the freezer and fry it.

I use a mixture of pork belly and pork shoulder. I mince it myself and add sage or whatever herb you fancy. I bought a lot of mace in England and I think that gives the finishing touch.

Now I order casings from Foodland and stuff them.

Machinery: Kitchen Aid food mixer with mincer attachment. The add a sausage "stuffer" attachment which a friend brought over from USA.

Typical of how things go here, the BKK Post has a crappy report on the fire, filed online early today, that fails to make any mention at all of fire sprinklers, whether the building had any or did not.

Instead, their report said the BMA approved construction of the building in 2006 and quotes a City Clerk as saying the building was "legal," though we have no idea what exactly that's supposed to mean.

You'd think, in a high rise fire that basically burns out of control and people are killed, one of the immediate questions that any journalist should be asking is "did the building have fire sprinklers" and reporting whatever info or responses are available on that. But, this is Bangkok and Thailand, so apparently here, that common sense doesn't apply.

The same report also mentions a police helicopter supported firefighters by helping people in the building -- which seems contrary to other media reports yesterday that the police helicopter was unable to rescue residents who had escaped to the roof because of the heavy smoke. Of course, "helping people in the building" is a kind of vague reference that doesn't say or not say the helicopter actually rescued anyone.

The same Post report also noted there were conflicting reports on the status of the building's fire exits, with some saying it only has exits on the first and second floors.

Ahh...but curiously, The Nation's report does answer that important question, and well as providing some other details:

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/national/Desperate-scene-as-elderly-woman-dies-in-highrise--30278664.html

Saranuchit Ngarmwilai, who was among the first batch of firemen to reach the scene, said the building apparently did not have a sprinkler system or any other fire-prevention system.

The Nation report also focuses on one of the other important details of the fire, noting that:

A 65-YEAR-OLD woman begged for help for nearly 20 minutes on the small balcony of her fire-engulfed high-rise home in the heart of Bangkok yesterday morning but could not be saved

.

...............

When Angkana appeared on the balcony on the sixth floor, her relatives loudly cried for help. Firefighters, however, had difficulty containing the blaze due to its height.

.................

By the time a fire truck with a rescue basket reached the scene it was too late to save Angkana.

It sounds like the fatality was the mother of the building's owner, said to be a former senator from Rayong.

Quote:

"Saranuchit Ngarmwilai, who was among the first batch of firemen to reach the scene, said the building apparently did not have a sprinkler system or any other fire-prevention system."

So looks like GeriatricKid nailed the no sprinkler system. So instead of

being a Thai basher as one poster stated, he now appears to be astute

in the ways of Thailand......

How many buildings have sprinkler systems?

As I said in an earlier post, we are in the process of building a block of family condos ( 6 stories high).

One of the points raised was whether we should have sprinklers or not. Personally, I said No.

I have worked in an office where the sprinklers have gone off 2 or 3 times without reason and caused a lot of damage.

I said we should have smoke detectors and a very good fire escape. Hopefully, we will never need to use them, but I think that should be adequate.

I think in this case that if they had had a good fire escape then maybe a life could have been saved despite having no sprinklers.

And of course the building collapsed freefall less than an hour afterwards, because the steel structure was being weakened...

Where did you get that information from?

If you read the Bangkok Post today, the building was declared safe.

When this building was built, some 30 years ago, the laws about height were very relaxed and the building was quite legal.

As far as I know the building was built to standards at that time. No one thought about fire engines not being able to enter the small sois.

The laws have slowly been changed and nowadays if the road is less than 10 metres wide, the building can be about 6 - 8 stories high.

Why on earth do people have to send flowers at an extortionate rate on Valentines Day, Mother's Day and so on?

Surely you can tell someone you love them at any time of the year. If you do it on these days , it is almost a "duty" and has no meaning.

Wait a couple of weeks and send a whole bunch of roses for the same price.

555 ...one is per year, the other per month.

Thanks

I guess I read it too quickly.

Actually a bad marketing gimmick mixing monthly and yearly prices like that.

My wife has just had a phone call to say that her close friend died in the fire. She was in fact the owner of the building.

I don't know much at the moment, but I am sure that the building must have been up to date with safety features.

We are in the process of building a similar building, so of course we are anxious to know what went wrong.

To those that called it a "seedy hotel", then you are very very wrong.

I like the idea of a seed box, but I notice that the price varies a lot.

I like the look of this site

https://yourseedbox.com/page/shared_seedbox

but why is the 150G cheaper than the 75G. Am I missing something?

There is a store in BKK where they only sell items confiscated from passengers at either of the airports in BKK. Mostly perfume and booze....

Are you sure about that?

I know some customs officers and they sell a lot of "confiscated goods" quite cheaply. They have often asked me if there was anything I needed.

Touch wood.....i have never had a visit from immigration, or the police. Never had any problem at immigration either, nothing that going and making another photo copy didn't cure. I have never bribed them, apart from paying 500 baht for a certificate of residency, but if you don't pay, you don't get.

Do you people steal cars, or rob banks or something?

A lot of people seem to get refused for this, and refused for that, because of missing paperwork, or worse, just having the wrong attitude. Think ahead, get what they want BEFORE going there, and be hassle free. cheers.

Like you in 20 years I have never had a problem at immigration, either in Bangkok or Chiang Mai, it makes you wonder why some people end up on the police radar.

There is always a first time!

I have never had problems except long waiting times at immigration, but I can expect problems any time. They did ask me to ask the owner of the house I live in to register me. She hasn't done that yet.

My neighbours (Koreans) had a visit by the police a few weeks ago,

One of my friends said the same as you. "What do people do wrong?' and so on. "I speak excellent Thai, if they stop me I will just joke with them."

Well, I don't wish him anything bad, but I could say "som nam na". He was stopped quite randomly and asked to produce passport with visas. He didn't have it on him, but was allowed to show it the next day at the local police station.

Never say never!

This story is slowly appearing in more and more foreign news agencies.

aljazeera

ABC News

Daily Mail

Sky News

and others.

Get those scum bag Farangs.

Throw them in Jail, give them very heavy fines, deport them , and black list them for 99 years.

The Pattaya Pantomime, just gets more funny every week.

Wonder who the pleasant person was who grassed on them and why ? must have been a right story that one

The bust of the century.

You have every right to be sarcastic, and yes, the whole episode is both hilarious and pathetic, but let's have a thought of deep sympathy for the 74 year-old guy who actually got arrested. Being arrested in this country is not something I would ever want to go through, whatever the reasons.

As for the guy who ratted out on them, let's just say that, once you've spent a few years in this country, you learn that grassing up is nothing short of a national sport, and it's a sad, disconcerting discovery.

Why are so many Thais prone to do that ?

There must be more than one factor but I'd say that the main one stems from a very rigid pyramidal society where each degree has very little room for independance and must kowtow to those on the degrees above. Humiliation is constant, and must be covered up with a smile, even though it is a very painful experience for all Asians, known as 'losing face'.

The resulting accumulated frustration is unfathomable. Ratting out people is one of the meanest forms of revenge. Many, if not most Thais, suffer from both a superiority and inferiority complex with regard to white people (whereas most white people have only the former with regard to non-whites). Every single white business owner I have met in Thailand was grassed out at least once by one or several Thais (staff, neighbors, family, 'friends'), and they have a field day because doing business in this country 100% by the book is near impossible, so there is always one or more points where you just have to 'make do'. These 'loopholes' ought to be called 'wells of corruption', and the combination of grassing out and corruption is a highly stinky one.

Welcome to Thailand, brave entrepreneurs !

Absolutely correct! Put an Asian in a uniform and just watch them go! Never mind the police, just look at parking attendants, or security guards, they honestly believe they are world powers.

Now amplify this X 100 when a Thai is given a uniform, whistle, a TITLE, a few daft medals that were never earned, and a bit of braiding, and you have all the ingredients for a little Hitler!!!

Also, virtually all (or most) motorbike taxi ranks will have one or more guy's working there with radios connected to police frequencies, and they love nothing more than grassing someone up! It's like a national pastime, where they think they have gained face.

Pathetic!!

Oh that's why the motorbike taxi guys have radios.

Silly me!

I thought it was so they could the whiskey bottles when they heard that the cops were coming.