Luxius

Another blow for the tourism industry ,

Right now a lot of Scandinavians start their vacation to Thailand , and most of them goto Phuket.

Maybe not for long.

For your information - all of you: there's almost daily shootouts in Copenhagen, gang related drug wars. Why do you hype this one incident? Do you have nothing better to talk about than how terrible Thailand is treating you all?

The story doesn't say anything about injured tourists, right? I saw one comment about lack of accuracy, but to me it seems these gangsters were actually fighting each other - not shooting at random.

I am also a Krung Thai Bank customer, holding a golden plastic card with the well-known VISA logo on it. However, this card cannot be used online. This was the message from KTB's customer support, who I called after asking three employees of the branch in Patong, Phuket. They weren't able to understand "PayPal" and "Internet", all they said was "yes, this is a VISA card".

The nice guy in customer support told me only Bangkok Bank supplies VISA cards usable on the Internet, but I don't know if other banks support it as well. I would like to know.

/Lux

She wasn't lucky, the ultimate penalty would have been best case scenario. I wouldn't want to spend ten years+ in a Thai prison, anyway.

That is what I said - they are not here to study language. Just for a short visit (broken) over a four month period. Extensions of stay are not applicable. You provided a detailed explanation of extension of stay procedures for language study, which is interesting; but not what this thread was about.

Very interesting indeed. Another case of ED visa fraud?

Why not change the study plan to fit the visa rules, or use a TR visa, rather than go through the obscure rules of applying for an ED visa? As previously stated, it is not necessary to have an ED visa to study in Thailand. The main cause for having one, would be if the studies are taking a long period of time - like a year. I am currently studying Thai (ใช่ครับ เขียนภาษาไทยได้นิดหน่อยครับ) over the course of one year, and am absolutely thrilled that I don't have to cross a border every three months. Unfortunately, there is a lot of fraud going on with ED visas, which might eventually phase out or make it even harder to get these.

I am not trying to point fingers, I am only trying to make a point.

/Christen Stephansen

I guess it is all about respect, whether you respect having multiple wives or not. Once you understand the matter of respect in Thailand, it all makes a bit more sense. That being said, I have no personal nor third person experiences with the topic being discussed. Here in Phuket infidelity is (seemingly) looked upon as we do in the Christian parts of the world.

And by the way, nobody likes a lie, but in Thailand you don't lie if you're not caught. This makes it very hard to have a Thai lady (or man, I assume) admit having lied, but it is possible and will often result in a "loss of face", which is a serious matter here. Many of my relationships, serious or not, have ended because of this - they are simply too embarrassed to be around me.

I can't wait to read your comments on my conclusions.

Sincerely,

Christen Stephansen

I too don't have much sympathy for dopers traveling through SE Asia...

Does that imply you have far more sympathy for the more common alcoholic lowlifes that populate these boards? I mean I am sorry, but a guy having a little toke while on vacation does not necessarily equate to a "doper" in my mind's eye. But then again, I have no sympathy for the hordes who married a Thai woman met in the bars, get married, and then the woman leaves the man high and dry several years later. I actually have more sympathy for this guy.

I don't.

สมน้ำหน้า (som nam naa ~ serves you right).

When you come to Thailand as an educated farang, stay here for years and make the belief you know everything, and you still don't learn the language, but only judge Thai people as being "stupid", "lazy" and "unintelligent" - well, you certainly have not understood, and probably never will understand, the fundamental core of Thai culture. You pay for those kind of mistakes.

So many people enter a discussion with yet another trump card played, "See...it's Thailand's fault, it's the government's fault, it's the ministry of this or that's fault, it's the Thai people's fault..."

If Thailand bugs you so much, why do you bother with it at all?

Yes, I come from somewhere else and am a visitor here, but it's not easy seeing a child playing in the street with open holes in the sewers, open wells 15 meters deep with children playing around them no rules of the road, or at least no one follows any, zoning laws?, hospitals that turn dying people away, and now boats that are unsafe.

Does the government care? I like to think so. Hey, they put up lights after the murders between Nai Harn and Kata, even though now a year later, only a few of them work.

Infrastructure is lacking here. So are safety concerns. We are just trying to make it a better, safer place.

... so are tax payers, legal businesses, uncorrupted officials, and so on. Thailand is lacking a many lot of things, but it also have so much to offer. It doesn't matter how much you praise or glorify your standards and/or home values, TIT = This Is Thailand.

Give them time to evolve through the century they missed out on, so to speak. They are behind in many areas of government, but I am sure that even your country has a similar retrospective.

Everything cost money, and when the mafias are controlling a big chunk of resources you are not going to see development overnight.

On topic, this accident could have happened in ANY country.