xbusman

Add the Phantom instead of including it under "choppery things". Having owned and sold innumerable motorcycles I consider this one of my favorites of all time. It does everything asked of it and more.

Interesting conversation, fascinating to see such diverse thought processes.

As one of the strongest proponents of the RULE... Never invest more in Thailand than you can walk away from. I feel called on to justify that position.

First, let me be very clear, its not really my position or something I came up with. In a past life, I used to be hired to go in a fix sick companies. Early on, it becomes pretty apparent that the transition from a healthy vibrant company into a sick company has to do with management. Duh.... So if you are under a gun, which we were, you go back to the last management that worked and LISTEN carefully. Successful old timers know the ropes, they know the market, they know how to make it work. They can also see easily and clearly what went wrong. They are not always right, or even clear, but with a little patience you can get a huge jump in the experience factor and reduce mistakes out of the gate.

So when I came to Thailand as a raw newbie, the old habit of learning the traps and tricks quickly caused me to search out old timers here. Honestly, anyone with less than ten years here and not completely fluent in Thai is not worth listening to, at best confusing, at worst plain wrong. One of the things that I heard from them over and over is "NEVER INVEST MORE THAN YOU CAN AFFORD TO WALK AWAY FROM". Almost every one of them let slip that jewel during my education.

It surprised me, like some here I wanted to argue with the premise. Over the years, I began to understand what they are alluding to. It has nothing to do with "investing in a condo" or "investing in a gogo bar" and everything to do with the rule of law and our status here. Our legal protections, our ability to protect ourselves and our interests.

There is the heart of the issue. Not only an investment of money, the investment of our time effort and heart.

Why? Over the years I have come to believe that there is no real rule of law here. No protection other than money and connections. No one goes to the police or courts for help or justice, if they do then they are sadly disappointed. As foreigners, we have even less protection than the Thais who enjoy slightly less than no protection.

There are a million examples, every day, every hour. If you want a few I remember off the top of my head there is poor Bill Monson who funded Thaksins first cellphone business and provided the equipment. After Thaksin simply stiffed him he tried for decades to bring the case to court. Poor Bill never got his day, Thaksin never showed up and the court refused to hear the case without a defendant. Last year the statute of limitations ran out and our multimillionaire buddy learned the RULE the hard way.

Or the poor monk that bought the land in front of his temple for 10 million baht only to find out the lady who managed it and the Land Department employees (her daughter) who gave him the clear deed docs were bogus.

We could go on with these horror stories for months. Is it us? No, none of the erudite posters on Thaivisa. But..... Think about investing in any third world country without the rule of law. With no protections, theft and fraud rule the day. Would you invest in Nigeria? No, why not? Then why would Thailand be any safer? Because the generals have nicer uniforms?

No, as westerners we assume rights and protections that don't exist anywhere except in the west and a few countries that got the hang of it. That assumption is deadly and can culminate on a high balcony in Pattaya if we are not forewarned.

The beauty of the RULE is that it fits all of us. Those with money to smoke are fully justified in investing whatever they want, and a few are very successful in that endeavor. If I were to guess, the probabilities are that fewer are successful here than in their home country where they know all the rules and have the contacts, but thats just a guess.

I think (now) that common sense should tell us to be careful. Its a different culture, a different way of doing things. At best we are a guest here at the whim of bureaucrat somewhere. That could change momentarily as most things here do, and seldom for the better.

In my way of thinking, these style of boards are for the dissemination of experience and practical wisdom. People here have helped me do everything from get a drivers license to importing motorcycles on a pretty large scale. The least we can do is pass some of our experience on to newbies reading this board. Would anyone here with good conscience tell the new immigrant to bring and invest everything here. I doubt it. At best we might tell them Jai Yen, get the lay of the land, learn your limitations before burning bridges. To do otherwise is in my opinion highly disingenuous.

I believe it is a RULE, and it applies to any place that is ruled with corruption or brute force. I have a tendency to lose in those battles when faced with those parameters, I think most of the people reading this are in the same boat. So, Russia or Nigeria, Indonesia or Thailand, China or Saudi Arabia, that rule helps us remember that we are not natives and without even the most basic of rights and legal protection. We are instead at the mercy of a chaotic and violent society and should act with extreme diligence. Its still a lovely place to live, just be extra aware and vigilant because even the simplest assumptions can cause us great distress (such as looking left when stepping off a curb).

Argue all you want, hide from the reality if it makes your world more comfortable, but dont do a disservice to those naive and fresh off the boat.

My experience stems from our golf group where the average tenure in Thailand is probably close to 20 years and everyone (with myself the only exception) being fluent in Thai to the extreme.

First, I believe these policies to be racist, as a general rule I believe the Chinese and Japanese get the Thai price, almost assuredly if they speak any Thai.

The old timers I am fortunate to associate with abhor the double pricing policy, much more so than I. Perhaps its because they are so much a part of the community. Fluency promotes that as I am learning.

At various golf courses we have raging arguments about foreigner versus thai pricing. These are private businesses and I would estimate around 30 to 50% of them practice discriminatory pricing. We have often left the course in opposition to paying the farang price. As this is an avid golf group, sometimes going out five or six days a week with 5 to 10 players, it seems like every slow season we start getting calls from course managers that have not seen us in months, assuring us that "we" can get the local pricing. For one or two rounds it works fine and then suddenly Asian amnesia kicks in and no one every heard of any farang ever getting local pricing and we walk again.

I guess the answer is that if you object in principal, when then do what we do and go home to have a lovely day watching thai television instead of paying the extra 1000 baht. The beauty of freedom is that you dont have to support someone ripping you off if you dont choose to do so.

Its a fact of life here. You might as well hope to change alchohol consumption, issues of face, or change the diet of rice for all the good it will do us. Over time, things change. Already the closing hours, drinking rules, double pricing, and on and on are having effects on tourism here. When it starts biting in the pocketbook, then people involved begin to notice but not before then.

Quicksilva, the annual gross rental receipts would be 240,000 Baht according to your formula, with a projected net of somewhere around 200,000 based on occupancy and fees (estimated) times ten would give you around 2 million baht. Right?

I always start at 100 times rent and work from there. Either way, looks like we agree 2 million is somewhere around the middle of the target range.

I would recommend you find the vacancy rate for rooms at 20,000 baht. They might have fifty rented at 10,000 and fifty empty at 20,000. Might be hard to get a good feel for what average rents and occupancy really are without some serious homework.

Quicksilva, your posts are reasoned and nicely balanced, thanks for chiming in.

That all might be true, could be rubbish. It could be brilliant deductive reasoning based on massive amounts of hard data or just another pitch by someone invested in the market. The point is, we dont really know do we? Where are the reports, the analysis, the data to back up all that speculation or is this just another press release by the Ellis group telling us that its poised to take off in a huge manner as we have been reading for three years now.

The conjecture that some investor is possibly going to be investing somewhere in Thailand sometime in the future hardly sheds brilliant light on an obscure subject.

No one discussed the quality of life, again all subjective information even though I agree with most of it, not relevant at all to the OPs question.

I dont agree or disagree with any of your points and neither can anyone else. Your speculation is probably a lot better than mine as it appears you work inside the industry.

However, this thread is about truth and nothing yet steps up to the simple fact that no one really knows. In fact, I think you agree with that premise based on your statements.

Due diligence would include working out the financial ratios, and frankly, for the past three years they dont seem to work out very well and guess what, it appears that the real estate market is on its butt. Not because of the coup, because of bird flu, because of tsunamis, or any of the lame excuses that periodically float around, but I would bet because the ratios are so bad. Why else would simple investors be so concerned about the "truth" in real estate here? Again my caveat, I dont know but obviously something stinks or investors would not be so worried as to "wait and see".

You could be right Alive555, I am unable to disagree with your conjecture and I am sure it fits in with your view of the world. For the sake of a lot of unsophisticated buyers who bought in based on wonderful sales pitches I do hope you are right because they dont really have much recourse do they?

You put forth some impelling cases for speculating in an extremely risky environment and there are lots of threads on Thai visa where that is argued to nth degree. You may note that I do not participate in those for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is they are simply a waste of time. Like political rhetoric, endless blather being broadcasted with no real hope of understanding by anyone involved. Obscure "facts" taken in isolation, personal observation, all the things used by the smart to obscure issues to manipulate the dim. I purposely avoid those conversations because at best they do nothing, at worse they mislead.

If you want the truth about the LA market, I have massive amounts of data and none of it is very pretty. That data told us to entirely revamp our entire business structure radically and quickly over the past five years which at great effort and expense we did. Now we sit back with cash and wait while the speculators are put through the juicer. Its all in the numbers, always is. Its just as simple as that. Complicating the issue for whatever reasons is disingenuous.

Thanks Quicksilva, nice post and I would agree on your points.

Regarding the "problem" portfolios. I sometimes think that the lack of any real information in the market causes us to naturally look at the big developments. If my experience in the US holds true here, I think that is a rather small segment of the market. I think the majority, the large majority, are places like town in town. Ten years old, mainly shop houses, some houses, a few small apartment buildings round it out. A lot of living units that seem almost invisible, blending in this massive city. It appears to me that alarmingly large segments of that style housing have "problems" that extend back as far as 97. The little housing complex where my office is located in Bang Khen is maybe 200 units, of which I have counted about 50 empty for at least three years and maybe at least 50 more I know of with "problems". About half of all the housing units. Could be unrepresentative, perhaps an anomaly created by a particularly bad developer. Perhaps. It just amazes me how often and pervasive it appears to be in that market, almost what I call the invisible market.

How do we know about it? There are no tax records, no title searches, no MLS style listing process. You almost have to count the signs on the poles to get a feel for whats going on. What a poor way to judge the depth and breadth of a market.

Thanks for those comments Quicksilva, I agree with them as far as I know.

Back to the OPs original question, "whats the truth about the real estate market" I can still only offer the following:

Nobody knows because there are no measurements or real data.

People that say they know are probably purposefully misleading for their own purposes, either positively or negatively.

In the end, you have to stay with financial ratios to determine if anything is an acceptable investment, unless of course you intend on living in it. Even then, know that if you purchase outside of commercially accepted ratios you stand an excellent chance of losing significant money.

Any property outside the 49% foreign ownership of a condo is for all extents and purposes illegal and should not enter into the mix without the complete understanding of how incredibly risky that route is.

I think these statements are about as close to the truth as you can get to in Thailand.

A final point. At no time did I say that violent crime was any worse or any better than London or New York. Having lived in all three cities, my personal experience aligns with those posters that feel it is more dangerous here. I do not have any statistics to back this up however and would not quite believe the Thai reporting even if they did keep accurate records. What I did say was this:

Look at the differences, just start with air quality and end with rule of law and policemen who dont shoot citizens when drunk and mad. There is a quantum leap between life in Paris and life in Bangkok and nothing we can say or do can make a comparison valid.

I am primarily talking about the rule of law. Incidents like Tak Bai dont really happen in London, at least not in the last three or four hundred years. The rule of law is a different concept than violent crime per capita which was brought up in subsequent posts. I cant address the violent crime but would be happy to discuss the rule of law here, I think its an interesting subject and a fundamental difference between third world and first. It is also something that Westerners dont quite get. Having been socialized in the West, we take the rule of law for granted. Too many of us have paid a terrible price for that naive assumption.

I think we should take a poll on that one.

A couple of points I'd like to add here:-

1. Theres absolutely nothing wrong with speculation in real estate. A lot of posters here either missed the boat on the market, don't have sufficient funds, or really hate to see others making profits on property. I don't know any stock investor who buys stock purely for dividend only. Usually they are also seeking a capital gain too.

2. Generally speaking the higher the quality of real estate asset the lower the rental yield you should expect. So just because the yield is say 3 or 4 per cent doesn't indicate a lousy investment opportunity (even if u could as an option put ur money into a risk free investment). That's because u would typically expect to see higher cap appreciation than mid or low class property.

3. Bangkok top end is strong because in many way we are playing catch up with rest of world. That reason prob more than most.

4. Scarcity. At the top end there are v few good projects. That's why 185 will go like a bomb . Ask yourself where u can replicate that project in the city. Answer you can't . What do u think it will cost in 10 years? Look at other regional cap cities where the projects are in Cbd next to 5 star hotels with largely unobstructed views. Long term its a no brainer.

5. What Is a worry is the mid /upper end in sukhumvit where u def don't have scarcity its overbuilt and with relatively few new farangs coming in to the country who is going to pay for that mortgage? At the top end the large majority don't have any prob financing 100 of equity so that's another reason to invest at the top end . Quality comes at a price.

I would like to address those points, I think they are very good ones.

1 I agree there is absolutely nothing wrong with speculation and I think that investing in any third world country outside the rule of law is speculation in the extreme. A bit like junk bonds or penny stocks which are also completely irrelevant to dividends. In my career, I was fortunate enough to work with hundred of the wealthiest people in the world and I can tell you that pretty much universally those people did not speculate. When buying a company or property or anything for that matter, they were cold and calculating on the numbers and ratios. Even in the venture capital start ups which were about as speculative as they got, they worked portfolios to reduce the speculative risk. They were very speculative adverse. Now, I dont know if this is good, bad or indifferent. I dont know if they made their initial money in some speculative deal, I kind of doubt it. I do know they did not buy lottery tickets or pay for blue sky when purchasing companies. These were mostly self made people, decidedly different from the corporate animals getting 200 million dollar salaries. Those people were much more speculative, after all in a sense it wasnt their money. I dont think Warren Buffet is a speculator, I may be wrong but I think he got to where he was by extreme attention to ratios and returns. So while there is nothing wrong with speculation, I would doubt that there were many people living in Thailand who really should be speculating in such an extremely dangerous environment.

2. That may be true that higher quality properties have a higher growth rate but I think thats a dangerous guess in markets you know, much less a third world market where we are at a disadvantage. It is by no means a universal truth as people are painfully learning in LA and Miami. The largest depreciation is happening at the high end, why? because the economics and per capita income fails the upper end far sooner than the lower end. Just a matter of math really. Will it come back, probably but not in time to help people earning 80,000 a year make mortgage payments on houses purchased for 1.5 million. Again you are justifying speculation at below market rates in an extremely dangerous market. I am not sure I understand why those lower returns and much larger risks would be preferable to a tax free muni of some sort.

3. Bangkok top end may indeed be strong, we just dont know do we and anyone offering an opinion does not know either. When you talk about the rest of the world, I think you are talking about strictly the western world. I dont know the world market but I doubt that third world countries property costs as much as first world countries. Look at the differences, just start with air quality and end with rule of law and policemen who dont shoot citizens when drunk and mad. There is a quantum leap between life in Paris and life in Bangkok and nothing we can say or do can make a comparison valid. Why would we even imagine that Bangkok property should catch up with Paris. Perhaps we are catching up to other third world countries, I could not address that as I have no idea what property in Vietnam or Uganda is doing. I dont think we will live long enough to see a quality of living or safety in investing that you get in England, France or the US.

4. Scarcity. A relative term in my book. If they were so scarce the rents would not be so cheap is our line of thinking. We could well be wrong but scarcity has always allowed any product to raise prices until the return was reasonable. Returns on property are not reasonable here so I am not entirely sure there is scarcity in relation to the demand. I might be wrong, I have no idea what that top end is renting for but I am guessing its not 1% of purchase.

5. Worry on the middle market in Sukhumvit, perhaps there might be some, we are not privy to the credit reports on the people investing. I think if we expats live by the rule of not investing more than we can walk away from, there is no worry for us at all, anywhere for any property. So we are really only talking about the Thai purchasers and speculators on Sukhumvit possibly being in for a rough time. That might be the case, we can only watch it play out. I do know that there always comes a day that the music stops and property owners have to lease out their income property and pay the bills, every month. If we live in it ourselves, then we are not really all that worried about values as long as we make this months mortgage payment. So you might be right, I would guess that you are from observation but thats not a very reliable measure.

Unfortunately I am forced to do a lot of guessing so its easy to blow big holes in any analysis. Things work differently here, and I am the first to admit that I dont understand a lot of the mechanisms that are in play here. I dont understand the foreclosure process here. Lots of properties have "problems" with the bank and are readily for sale at some odd number irrelevant to anything and have been empty for a decade with no payments made to the bank. I know exactly what happens when one of our purchases fails to pay his mortgage to us and how long it will be before that property is back on the market and sold again. As I travel around bangkok, I come across entire streets that are boarded up, empty buildings, and echoes of the 97 disaster still hiding in the wings. How big is that mess still? How much is really out there? How long can they ignore it? Forever? These are things I dont know and I really doubt if anyone does know in detail or with any assurance.

Often Asia is described as an enigma wrapped in a mystery. Why would the property market be any different than the culture.

5.

Here is the truth about the Thai property market.

Honest valuations:

A good general rule of thumb in placing a value on property is 100 times rent. Thats the value of purchasing plus all the costs to get it ready to rent, and all taxes and fees involved in the sale. The rent part refers to how much the unit will rent for given good condition and no more than three months vacancy. Thats the gross rent, there may be yearly fees and management fees, those are really not relevant to valuation.

Can you get around this, yes in some markets but not by much. Ten years ago we owned over 1000 residential properties in greater Los Angeles, when this formula was lost, we liquidated like mad, particularly over the past two years. When the crash came, we had six left. Everything was turned into commercial properties over the past five years which have a much more stable ROI.

From over sixty years in a variety of markets, anything too far away from this rule of thumb is stricktly speculative money and when the music stops, as it always does, someone will be left standing. Usually, there are far better investments than property if outside this ratio such as government securities or the stock/bond market. In other words, why take all the risk and grief with property at a 2% return when you can get no hassle government bonds at 4%.

There are lots of factors that can adjust for this, over time astute investors learn them all. Such as knowledge of mass transit expansion or other infrastructure improvements.

This is a pretty good investment and buying guide. If purchase is 60 times rent, buy all you can. If purchase is 200 times rent, as it appears to be in thailand, might be smart to rent.

Property dealers are salesman who get paid commission. Can we expect them to lie, distort cheat and steal? I would be amazed to think that any one of them would do otherwise. Why do we even print their words when we know that? Is it any different anywhere else? In the end, who cares what they say as long as the financial ratios are pretty much correct. Honestly, if anything was as good as any salesman promises, why dont they own it?

Do things sell in Thailand. First off, who cares really. It always comes back to the financial ratios. If I sell tomatoes for 1 million baht, who cares if I sell all of them, I only need to sell one and in the meantime my 80 tomatoes make me very wealthy sitting in my little wagon. You never know, I might find that idiot to buy one but I hope the music does not stop in the meanwhile.

Secondly, there is no good information on anything in Thailand. Its all pretty much distorted and created for a variety of reasons. Anyone here for more than a week should have an handle on that one. Truth is not a valued commodity here, getting along and not embarrassing anyone is. All our statistics and information follow that line of reasoning so in the end, we know nothing about what is really going on. Instead, we watch emergency economic measures being announced weekly and yet no one talks about the economic malaise.

Lastly, its important to remember that we can only talk about the condo market anyway, everything else is illegal. If we follow the rule of expats in Thailand and never invest more than we can walk away from, then in the end it doesnt really matter if it makes financial sense or not. We are talking about pocket change and mad money that is irrelevant to our life. Getting a reasonable return or even the risking of the entire amount does not really have to be considered for that kind of loose change.

In a nutshell. The market is grossly overpriced and a very bad investment other than a purely speculative play. The information on the market reality is poor at best, outright fabrication at worst, and salesman add to that delusion at every opportunity. Since we never invest more in Thailand than we can smoke before breakfast without noticing, its all pretty irrelevant anyway.

I found a place on the third floor of Fortune IT that is just great. Near the open circular end (Tesco Lotus side) on the left as you come from the escalators that start on the ground floor by Dairy Queen. Its not a back room shop, everything is out front and it is filled with all the classics. In addition to having everything from Citizen Kane to Chang (with English subtitles) they also have all the Japanese and Korean classics. The owner knows his stuff, have him pick out one or two for you, you wont be disappointed.

They better hurry.

Some friends bought a Cocker there a few weeks back and went through the same he11. My Thai is not good enough to completely understand but it was viral, the dog was very lethargic, then spending a week with the vet, coming home and dieing in a few days. The vet indicated that the virus was widespread at JJ market and he had seen other cases.

Bad stuff, it is not a good place to buy animals.

Bringing them in as bits is how we do it but its not as cheap as it appears.

First, to knock them down is a lot of labor, properly pack them so they can be put back together and dont get damaged in shipping and last to reassemble them (cheap labor but there always seem to be something missing). AND we still have to pay tax, just not as much as a new vehicle. The excise tax levied coming in is highly dependent on what the customs official had for lunch and if mia noi is well taken care of, generally it is a minimum of 30% and can range as high as 60% of the blue book value. Now, if you get hit by a lot at the border, when you register the bike you pay a lesser amount so in the end it sort of works out.

Now, the dirt cheap bikes that the Thais are banging together down in Klong Toey are mostly stolen bikes out of Japan, very hard to beat yakuza pricing. I thought this dried up a year ago but I was wrong, like our copy DVDs they just went dormant for a little while.

Real books are running 80 to 120K more, if its a stolen bike only bent books can be obtained (currently, changes every so often) and the book costs are directly dependent on the motorcycle. Most of the expense is the excise tax which varies based on size and model.

They are luxury items, the government does a good job of keeping them out without a lot of money sliding around.

Phuket touts itself as a world class beach resort destination. This will not last long if women are getting raped and/or murdered for wearing bikinis on a beach in the middle of the day.

Phuket needs to take a good hard look at what it is promoting, and what security it offers for its guests. You cannot be a 5 star beach destination catering for foreigners if those foreigners find themselves getting murdered on the beach.

..and its crime rate is still far lower than vacationing in a European or U.S. equivalent resort. I'm definitely no "thailand is perfect" poster but some of the comments here make me wonder if people ever leave their homes. Random violent crime can happen anywhere in the world. There is a certain colonial mentality that i'm detecting that the "locals" should be quarantined somewhere so the moneyed expats/tourists can do whatever they want.

First, I really would doubt that the crime rate in Thailand is lower than resort places in the US or Europe. Perhaps it is, I dont have the statistics and might not believe the Thai reporting anyway. I cannot remember the last story of a policeman killing a tourist in either regions, but I do know of a few instances in Thailand. Not to say it does not happen, but I am hard pressed to believe Thailand is safer than either of those places from personal experience.

You are correct that violent crime can happen anywhere, we have records going back thousands of years to prove it. The difference in modern society versus cave society is simply and only the rule of law. The ability to create a social framework which keeps the violence down to reasonable levels, and honestly the goal is completely to eliminate what we define as antisocial behavior. I think we can all agree that goal cannot be achieved for no more reason than we could not all agree on the definition.

I think that is the topic of conversation here, I dont see any "colonial" posturing of isolating the natives. Only a Western misperception that the rule of law should exist here and protect us in a manner which we came to expect in the west. In that regard, you are correct. Things dont work that way here despite the appearances. The article indirectly is talking specifically about these misperceptions and the inherent danger within. If Thailand wants to attract high end tourists, or tourism of any sort, it will require the hard work of creating and sustaining an environment that does not leave people dead or raped. If that means quarantine like certain parts of Mexico or the Caribbeans, well then your right, it is a colonial mentality but probably a necessary one if they intend on sustaining tourism.

Its not a matter of allowing tourists to do what they want. Its a matter of tourists obeying the law, and not getting killed in return. If Thai men have that big of a problem with exposed skin (and come on now.... ) then simply tali ban it and inform all tourists of the ban. We have a little cultural book to get tourists in line with the Thai way, just add a few lines about prosecuting anyone exposing themselves. Put the morality police on the beach and start putting women in jail for wearing a bikini, what do you think that will do for tourism.

In the end, it all comes down to money. The Thais will continue to promote tourism for the money it brings in, and fail to protect either tourists or citizens with the rule of law. IHT will continue to publish warnings, the embassy will publish warnings, and our mom will tell us to be careful, and yet next week some poor naive/ignorant/stupid tourist will piss off or titilate the wrong person and pay a dreadful price. Shangri-La we aint but its easy to mistake Thailand for Shangri-La if you dont know any better....

Sorry boys and girls, the civilized world never blames the victim for the crime. A crime is a violation of law and there are no "its okay if....". We call those yabuts. Its against the law, yeah but its okay if..... Yabuts dont work with judges, the law is the law.

Having said that, there is a certain darwinism at work. Common sense and experience teaches us not to wear expensive jewelry and wander around nefarious places. The women I know are all too aware of the male ability for violence, particularly when traveling, and take appropriate precautions. Any third world country (read that as any country outside the rule of law) is a place to observe extreme caution and diligence. If not, the probability of being removed from the gene pool increases. Could more be done? Probably. Will anything be done, probably not. Its a question of education and resources, of which Thailand has very little to address these problems.

You can legitimately say that victims are not too bright, lack common sense, or were just plain naive, but you cannot assign mea culpa to them in any way. After all, often victims pay the most terrible price for their ignorance or stupidity while perpetrators seldom pay an equal share as a result of their assault and disregard for society and complete lack of empathy. No one deserves to pay the price as a victim, no matter the circumstances, to assign guilt to a victim is a poor way of excusing a dysfunctional social system.

The IHT article raises some good points, exposing the dark underbelly of Thai tourism that is so carefully shielded from exposure by the authorities. I dont think it goes overboard or sensationalizes any particular aspect. Most important, why do you think they added the incendiary line from the head of police

He also said that some of the attacks were occasioned by the behavior of the women themselves

Blame people for ignorance, blame them for stupidity, blame them for being naive, blame them for being too friendly and too trusting, blame them for drunkenness (a major cause of crime and victimization) but never blame someone for being a victim of crime.

Sorry boys and girls, the civilized world never blames the victim for the crime. A crime is a violation of law and there are no "its okay if....". We call those yabuts. Its against the law, yeah but its okay if..... Yabuts dont work with judges, the law is the law.

Having said that, there is a certain darwinism at work. Common sense and experience teaches us not to wear expensive jewelry and wander around nefarious places. The women I know are all too aware of the male ability for violence, particularly when traveling, and take appropriate precautions. Any third world country (read that as any country outside the rule of law) is a place to observe extreme caution and diligence. If not, the probability of being removed from the gene pool increases. Could more be done? Probably. Will anything be done, probably not. Its a question of education and resources, of which Thailand has very little to address these problems.

You can legitimately say that victims are not too bright, lack common sense, or were just plain naive, but you cannot assign mea culpa to them in any way. After all, often victims pay the most terrible price for their ignorance or stupidity while perpetrators seldom pay an equal share as a result of their assault and disregard for society and complete lack of empathy. No one deserves to pay the price as a victim, no matter the circumstances, to assign guilt to a victim is a poor way of excusing a dysfunctional social system.

The IHT article raises some good points, exposing the dark underbelly of Thai tourism that is so carefully shielded from exposure by the authorities. I dont think it goes overboard or sensationalizes any particular aspect. Most important, why do you think they added the incendiary line from the head of police

He also said that some of the attacks were occasioned by the behavior of the women themselves

Blame people for ignorance, blame them for stupidity, blame them for being naive, blame them for being too friendly and too trusting, blame them for drunkenness (a major cause of crime and victimization) but never blame someone for being a victim of crime.

This is really too funny. I can just picture the mass exodus at the wat, monks in disarray, dogs barking, children crying. It is good enough for a movie plot.

Lets hope that the people who purchased property from him have not invested more than they can walk away from CAUSE.... it looks like walkin time...

Great post and great advice Mijan24. I can tell you have had a lot of experience in this subject. I can only hope that you attempt to bring a motorcycle that beautiful through customs. It would be a just desert for such a pompous @ss.

What traffic. I keep mainly to the sidewalks and seldom need to slow down for anything other than elephants, they do have the right of way after all, they are larger.

What stop signs???? They have stop signs here????

Having just spent a few weeks tooling around on my motorcycle in beautiful issarn, I am pretty sure the rule for turning left is simply "UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES LOOK RIGHT OR ACKNOWLEDGE IN ANY MANNER ANY TRAFFIC CONTROLS THAT MIGHT IMPEDE YOUR LEFT TURN"

After just a week, you naturally assume that bugger approaching the turn will turn left without slowing. On right turns, particularly with traffic lights, they generally have a gander before they run the light.

Generally I find they dont need to make up anything to get their 100 baht. I am sure the laws are varied and wonderful to behold but I doubt we can find a living soul even the slightest bit familiar with any of em.

You guys cant be serious??? Traffic laws in Bangkok??? Your kidding right???